[There is very little that is beyond the CDC's capacity to accomplish. He's learned that well in the time he's spent with them. They need the 'Yes' in order to keep the crew, and they'll use whatever coercion or bribery is necessary to get it.
The mission is finished. The rewards go out. He is alone in the corridor leading to the Neheda's medical bay when it happens.
There's no way to describe it other than what it is: having his consciousness ripped in two. As it turns out, unmaking an abomination is even less enjoyable than making one was; the separation is not gentle, and Justice does not go willingly. It's a snarl of rage and desperation and pain, like pieces of himself being torn off one by one, as inelegantly as by an apprentice butcher. His vision goes dark around the edges, and it's only distantly that he sees himself hit the floor on his hands and knees.
At first, he feels the protests as his own. Then, just that simply, he doesn't -- the anger is disconnected, an echo, like Justice were back in the corpse and simply shouting in his ear.
Then, nothing. It could be stillness, if there were anything peaceful about how empty his mind suddenly feels. It's silence louder than he's felt in years, since before Kirkwall, before the night he left Vigil's Keep, and it isn't calming in the slightest.
It doesn't take a genius to deduce what happened. It doesn't even take beyond a single leap of logic. Whatever he'd been doing before is abandoned; it doesn't even take him long to search the ship. When he finds Fenris, he's a mess of frayed nerves, jumbled emotions, and bald-faced panic.]
[ Fenris gives him a long look, expressionless except for an armored softness in his eyes that feels almost rueful. He's seated in what passes for his living quarters for the time being, balancing on his tucked-up legs a book that once belonged to Martin before his... disappearance. Martin, who managed in his gentle and patient way to get him to accept that not magic, perhaps, that made an enemy. That even Anders was not beyond redemption, but categorically could not go on without losing himself to the spirit and the brightness of its anger. His feet swinging from the bed to the floor, he closes the book and straightens a bit, aware that Anders may be about to try beating him to within an inch of his life. ]
No. I did not. But it had to be done.
[ Fenris can't know what it's like for man and demon to be cleaved apart, but he does know what it is to have a choice taken from you. He doesn't regret it, but he feels guiltier than he thought he would. A beat passes; he glances away before glancing back. ]
You have absolutely no idea, do you? About what could have happened to me, with them-- digging around in my head. Or do you get to decide that too, which risks are worth taking?
[His connection to the Fade has never felt so fragile as it does now, like he narrowly escaped having his entire self ripped out by the roots, instead of only half.]
It was my mistake to fix. [For once, he can call it that -- a mistake -- without the answering wave of anxiety, fear, and guilt that he'd come to associate with Justice's disapproval. The anger in his expression cracks with either distress or relief. It's hard yet to say which.] You don't get to gamble my life for me and then say sorry.
[ He's surprised to find how much of his fear of Anders has abated. Anders is a dangerous man, a powerful man, but he is, at last, only that. Fenris's life as he's always known it has been steeped in dangerous mages, and they've known each other long enough that he has a sense of how Anders operates. If it came down purely to this, power against power, Fenris thinks maybe—
Without the abomination, has Fenris any reason to kill this man as he always promised he would?
Anders has come deeply enough into the room that the door slides unnervingly closed behind him—Fenris still struggles against the instinct that he's fallen into a trap whenever that happens. He tenses, then lets it abate. He still doesn't stand to meet Anders. ]
You would not have succeeded. Gamble with your life, perhaps. Better that than to allow you to return and gamble with the lives of hundreds more, mine among them. And Hawke's. [ And here he does gain some momentum, leaning forward as though aiming his words for a target. ] After all she has [ meant to me ] given you, you will not sentence her to a wasted life as a hunted fugitive.
[ They've lived their lives running for so long, all three of them. Damn her influence and damn Martin's, too, for instilling in him this foolish belief that the mage might see reason. ]
[Anders understands the power dynamics of space very well. It's why, consciously or not, he's taking up as much of it as he can, in his stance and his body language. But the shot lands true, and the fight in him dissolves. A day ago, bringing up Hawke in that manner might have incited something vicious and defensive in him; today, there's nothing to beat back the guilt and uncertainty that washes over him.
Hawke deserves better. Every mage in Kirkwall deserves better.
When he speaks, his voice is softer. Sapped. He feels clearer, now, but also adrift. There was at least certainty in Justice's warped force of rage.]
You don't know that I won't. Even without him.
[What's truly terrifying about imagining Kirkwall's future is seeing his own logic in it. If he were fearful enough, desperate enough, to somehow think that force was the only option, then the plan is a sound one. Provoke Meredith, hand her power on a silver platter, and let her abuse it in the most egregious manner possible. Demonstrate to the world in blood everything that's wrong with the Templar Order. It's how he would do it, if he were playing at some kind of macabre thought experiment.
It's how he will do it, maybe.]
I know you prefer to think of me as a-- mindless abomination. Like I'm completely at the mercy of some spirit. [A painful pause.] Was. But it wasn't like that, Justice and me. Does doing this really make you so certain anything will change?
[If he were talking to anyone else, he might be looking for reassurance that yes, it could still make all the difference. With Fenris, even he's not sure what he's fishing for.]
[ The Chantry caught him outside of Treviso after months of fleeing through the wilds, worn down and starving, too vulnerable and too outnumbered to withstand their descent. He was a fool to have thought travel by land would be safer than by sea, having guessed the Templars would be looking for Hawke and his co-conspirators on ships bound for Rivain. Fenris had opted to find his way to Dairsmuid via Afsaana or Ayesleigh and he was used to running across entire continents, so figured the journey would be difficult but doable. Now he's rotting away in Antiva City, in a cell in a Circle-turned-gulag. The Templars must surely have more connections to the Magisters' methods than they care to admit, or to the Qunari's, because they've found a way to hold his lyrium at bay by the shackle round his neck. It's not quite slavery, but some days it may as well be for the loss of freedom he's suffered.
It is 9:39 Dragon and Fenris has been here for two years, interrogated, beaten, tortured, and largely unaware of the chaos in the world outside. He does see the Templars gaining fervor while simultaneously leaning away from the word of their Maker, packing these chambers to bursting with apostates and fugitives and whomever else they deem a sufficient menace to Thedosian society. By and large it seems they've given up on being discerning.
Fenris listens to anything he can these days to keep from going mad. The solitude is deafening. He's had too much time to think about the events that brought him here, how he'd followed Hawke into the fire and had genuinely begun to believe they had chosen the lesser of two evils, but can't linger too long on thoughts like friendship. The only thing crueler than having never been free is having tasted freedom only to have it wrenched away again, and Fenris spends every day fighting the slip into acceptance that he's going to die in this place.
Once day, when he's bruised and shaky and pale (the Templars have learned that his blood contains no shortage of self-replenishing lyrium, given time) the door opens and his jailer says something about a partner, he thinks, in gruff Antivan. There's scarcely any room left in the Circle. Seems even special political prisoners are beginning to get bunkmates.
[He's known since Kirkwall that he was using up grains of borrowed time. He'd never expected Hawke to show him mercy, had never planned for anything beyond the precious minutes between his attack and proper retribution. But Sebastian, in all his righteous anger, has been at his heels every step of the last two years, and even Anders had known that it was only a matter of time, against the might of Starkhaven.
But it hadn't been Sebastian who'd won, in the end. It had been the templars -- and wasn't that fitting? The ending his story was always supposed to have: a mage locked in the Circle, never to see the world again lest he corrupt it. It had been the worst kind of deja vu: he'd watched his allies die, then watched as they held back from doing the same to him. They'd shackled him, taken him, and he'd found himself wishing that Hawke had made the opposite choice, all those years ago.
They mean to interrogate him, maybe. Or perhaps they've been following him so long that they know there isn't any greater punishment than to lock him back in a prison he spent so much time clawing away from. He doesn't care. There have been whispers from Val Royeaux, of unrest in the White Spire, but that's beyond him now. The war is out of his hands, and whatever happens, he won't live to see the fruits of his choices.
The door locks behind him, the jailer's footsteps recede, and Anders gave himself to hopelessness a long, long time ago.]
Fancy meeting you here.
[His voice is hollow, and he does not smile. He is a shell of the man he used to be. He might have been surprised to be reunited with Fenris like this, or at least struck by the almost poetic irony of it, if he had the energy for anything at all.]
[ The late afternoon had broken apart by periodic cloudbursts, leaving the cell clammy and chilled by the sea wind as night begins to fall. This room had once been home to mages of the Antivan Circle, probably no more than two, but any vestige of comfort has since been replaced by shattered furniture and scraps of torn vellum, blood stains, and a small pile of discarded robes that Fenris had found in a cracked chest and quickly put to use as a makeshift bed in one corner. That's where he is now, knees tucked loosely to his chest, too-heavy head braced on the stone.
Get angry, he commands himself. Get bloody angry! He makes it just far enough to clutch double handfuls of Anders' collar before his knees give out and he's left sprawled at his feet. Leathers long gone and wasting with hunger, he's less the ferocious warrior Anders knew—but for the lyrium, more just an elf in rags. But the lyrium is still alive in his skin despite its constraints, able to hum and hurt but not be called upon, and it's at this moment spent so close to this mage that he realizes he can feel magic's unmistakable vibration and he looks sharply toward Anders with a look of open confusion and despair and just a momentary flicker of hope. ]
Why were you not collared?
[ His voice is jagged from exhaustion and disuse. He understands the answer before the question's even finished. The door's enchanted, of course. Fenris knows this. This whole fortress was made especially to control mages. Nothing short of self-immolation will help Anders out of his predicament now. An elf who can spirit through walls calls for special consideration to be paid.
He should get up. Instead he's just staring at the floor between Anders' boots. ]
[He doesn't resist when Fenris comes at him; he's almost a rag doll for all that he fights back. When the blows don't come, he's almost disappointed. It would be something, anything, better than this.
He stays where he is, watching Fenris slip to the floor without any movement to help or hinder. This was his doing, too. It might have felt like a victory, once, when Fenris was nothing more than a representation of an abstract enemy. But there aren't any victories in all this, he's found. It's just suffering, pointless for everyone. If it's eventually recorded by historians as a skipped time period between oppression and freedom, every bit of pointless suffering will have been worth it. But here, in the moment, he just feels vaguely nauseous.]
Don't ask me questions like that. [He says it even though Fenris seems to already have his answer.] I know the Circle better than you do.
[He sinks into a crouch, hovering over Fenris with the same air of detachment, until he reaches out to trace the top edge of the collar with two fingers. He doesn't ask permission, but also doesn't care if he doesn't have it.
The line of his mouth turns down, the closest thing to an expression he's made since the door locked behind him. He used to think about this, back when he had the luxury of putting his life into perspective. Maybe the templars put him in a cell alone for an entire year, but at least the Qunari didn't have him on a chain like a dog.
Even he gave the templars too much credit sometimes, it seems.]
[ Fenris is so surprised by the way his hand flashes up to seize Anders' wrist indignantly, defensively, that it pulls a choked and slightly crazy little laugh out of him. To have been given something to feel, anything, even if for just a second—
He lets go with some reluctance.
Does it hurt?
Physically? Or otherwise?
This was your doing.
Only when they choose for it to.
What business is it of yours, mage? ] Yes. It does.
[ If he expected he'd have more to say, it's gone and left him now. The sun is setting; it's already passed beyond the barred periphery of the window near the ceiling. Lately Fenris can feel the approach of winter in the air every time night falls, and he knows soon enough he and Anders will be alone in the cloying frigid damp with only the glow of torches under the door and the large cold moon for light. Food is intermittent at best, only ever sufficient to keep a man clinging to life by a few fine threads, and he knows with Anders' arrival there's no chance of it today.
There's a crude bandage around his right forearm, made from scraps of an old mages' cowl. All Fenris can think about is how today's bleeding means he'll be blessedly left alone for the next several days and what a piteous wretch he is for feeling so much gratitude for it. He shivers. ]
Your spirit could not save you.
[ Spirit, he says, without heat or judgment. But spirit, demon—neither term means much anymore. Any remnant of his life before this room feels like nothing but an abstraction. ]
[There's no flicker of anger, no defensiveness. Justice has been quiet since Kirkwall, or maybe just better in sync. The line between them, never fully defined in the first place, has only gotten muddier and hazier as time has gone on. Anders or Justice. He's found he cares less about the difference now, to the point that he's not sure why he ever cared in the first place. They stepped forward together with the Chantry, and now they've fallen together. It's appropriate enough.]
Nobody could. [Murmured, matter-of-fact, as he withdraws his hand. The list of people who tried and failed is too long.] Just as well. Saving me wasn't the point.
[He would have preferred to die, when the templars trap closed on him. In retrospect, it would have been kinder to die after the Chantry. But here he is all the same.
He stands, and steps over Fenris to go deeper into the room, for all that "deeper" can be applied to it. Kinloch Hold had at least pretended it wasn't a prison, with its open dormitories and tall ceilings, but that doesn't stop the wave of old familiarity.]
Get up. If I'm going to take a look, I need to do it now. Otherwise we have to wait until morning.
[ Maybe there had even been a moment in there where Fenris hoped the demon was still inside, still angry. Maybe it could see them out of this. Maybe it could just kill him. Still, though, something continues to stick in him, a stubborn thorn—he's clinging to life in here. He doesn't know why other than that surviving is what he's always done.
The dying light has settled on the edge of the nest of robes, which Fenris briefly feels compelled to protect as his and so he twists around to follow Anders, first with eyes and then with the rest of his body. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he should really be raising more of an argument, but he...
He just...
Kneeling in the fabric, he fixes Anders with a gaze like a docile animal, pained but tolerant. ]
That's it? It used you once and then discarded you?
[For a moment, he doesn't say anything at all. He tips his head back to watch the window, to glimpse the sliver sky there, maybe the last piece of it he'll ever see. Maybe Justice gave up on him. Or maybe Anders has just warped him further, with despair now instead of anger.
He crosses the remaining distance and sits cross-legged in front of Fenris. The floor has seen better days, and not much cleaning in recent months, but that's typical. Better now to get used to it.]
He didn't use me. [He would have sounded angry before. Now he just sounds weary.] We wanted the same things. My choices were my own.
[He doesn't meet Fenris' eye when he says this; the nice thing about being a healer, sometimes. There's usually something to be used as a convenient distraction. He turns to look at the light beneath the door, watching intently for shadows crossing beneath it. Practiced. Some things you never really forget.
He was prepared for the consequences of what he did, whatever those may have been. He just wasn't prepared to deal with them like this.]
And he isn't gone. [He reaches but this time doesn't touch, indicating where Fenris has wrapped his arm.] Let me see.
[ Fenris gazes at the poorly-hidden wounds with a sluggish eye. Speaking with someone is... odd now. It feels as though he's awoken from a long sleep, disoriented and sore. The gentle command and the little vibration of magic in his skin make him offer Anders his hand with the instinctive ease of a slave, the only sign of how much he hates himself for it the haphazard twitch of his fingers when their skin makes contact at last. ]
Is this what you want?
[ A soft question. Very nearly conversational. Where was Justice now? In this.
Where was Hawke? ]
It has been two years, I think.
[ He doesn't know why he's offering this information. Just to talk, perhaps. He watches Anders work in the dying light, even ignoring a rat scurrying in the far corner that might otherwise have been supper. ]
[His eyes lift, briefly. Two years, just for the association. Fenris hadn't wanted any part of this, and suffers for it anyway. (It is depressingly easy to place blame on the templars for that, more than himself.)
He doesn't apologize. It's too little, too late, and he wouldn't change any of it if he had the opportunity to do it again. In the years he's known Fenris, he knows an insincere apology would be more of an insult than none at all.
Except, maybe, to tell Hawke a little bit more.]
No. It isn't. [He focuses again on what he's doing (Fenris' too-thin wrist in one hand, the other weaving the thread of mana into something to push back infection). His touch is gentle but firm, healer's hands. The glow of his magic strikes harshly against stone; too much. He should have waited.] But the rest of it, out there—[some of his old harshness creeps back into him, into the thin slant of his mouth]—that is what I wanted.
[ The worst of it is, Fenris does blame the templars now. He does see. The abuses perpetrated on him in Tevinter feel dreams away, made shamefully appealing by thoughts of a warm bed and a full belly and light and space and people, so that the indignities and horrors—the boy, drained of blood— Fenris thinks he hears the screams of children here, in this place, too. Sometimes. Sometimes he makes himself listen just because it's preferable to the silence. ]
If you're here, what's out there is not for you.
[ It comes out rougher than intended. The sick heat crawling over his wounds begins to dissipate, followed by an easing of pain, then only an itch. A small amount of light returns to Fenris's eyes, the faint upturn of his mouth unreadable. A little less than comforted, a little less than bitter, a little less than sad.
He swallows around a parched throat. ]
Thank you.
[ It's so freely given, all the pride beaten out of him.
A few seconds pass. His voice suddenly feels stronger, eager, heart seized by a foreign rush of inspiration. ]
[His expression twists. His grip suddenly becomes much more firm, and much less gentle. You could kill me, like it's a blessing, like it's the ultimate answer to everything in this place. Not freedom from it, just an end to it.
Anger lances through him, for the first time since the templars took him, an old and familiar sensation. Because he's right, isn't he. The templars are under no obligation to pretend at the Chantry's guidelines for humane treatment anymore. They can be just as brutal as they always were, only now out in the open, and Fenris isn't even a mage. He's a prisoner. There's no reason to hope for mercy.
Once, a long time ago, sitting alone in the dank, humid gloom of Kinloch Hold's isolation cells, Anders had thought about it too. Idly, the first time, stroking a cat's ears through the door's meal flap, and then again later, not so idly. If only there was someone to slit his throat for him, so he didn't have to muster the energy to crush it himself.
He'd thought it could have been a similarity, before. A thread of understanding beneath all the noise of their differences. Now that he has it, he feels disgusted.]
I could. [Each word has to be drawn out through his teeth, gritted in anger.] But I won't.
[ Fenris laughs hollowly; just breath and a little sound, completely bereft of humor. Of almost any emotion, really, except a sour feeling around which his throat wants to close. ]
Of course you won't.
[ There's a deliciously vivid corner of his mind left that wants to straighten, hurl invective. Point out the blatant hypocrisy of... whatever his reason for refusing happens to be. His wrist aches a little in the grip, but the magic brings him the first merciful ease of his pain in so long, so long. He can't get angry because it would only taint this reprieve with more suffering. He's so tired of suffering. ]
If you asked it of me, I would oblige.
[ This is a lie.
Fenris can't say just how much time passes after that. He fears for the way he's allowed each day to bleed into the next. Their time together is interspersed with the templars' regular grisly harvest of their new lyrium well. Fenris remembers how it used to be, watching and feeling the steady drip and pulse of his life slipping a little further away with every beat of his hammering heart. And he'd always think, this time will be the time. Surely this time, when he passes out, he won't wake up. It used to be he even hoped for it.
Though Anders scarcely fares much better some days, he eases what he can when he can. Fenris offers nothing in return but a standing offer he desperately wishes he hadn't made, flippant and in a fit of pique, on that first night. Fenris does not think he can endure a return to aloneness now, which might make Anders the greatest danger of all. Tonight the templars do as they always have: the door crashes open and Fenris staggers in fast and wipes out on the stone, more thrown than led. He's pale as a corpse. Just needs to sleep for a long while. But for the first time in a long time, he realizes that the prospect of dying frightens him.
Damp Antivan winter is in full swing. Fenris clambers without remembering to his nest of robes (which has gotten bigger in the last several weeks; big enough, maybe, for two people) and pulls one over himself without regarding Anders, unable to do much but shiver violently. There's a poultice slapped crudely over his inner forearm that keeps him from bleeding everywhere, at least. He needs to stay awake so Anders can do his job, he needs— ]
Please... talk. Anything.
[ His request is groggy, half-muffled into the fabric. ]
Did I ever tell you about the time someone's farm dog caught me stealing eggs out from under their chickens? [A distraction tactic, old bedside manner, but here, in this place, it doesn't come as easily as it did before. His voice is rigid with barely restrained anger.] It ends with me stranded in a tree with my robe skirts over my head. I think you'd like that one.
[Despite all the helpless anger, despite everything, his touch is still gentle. Two fingers at the pulse point in Fenris' throat, monitoring the way it flags, the other hand at his elbow, encouraging the arm to extend toward him. They're practiced motions, and not just because of previous patients. Because of this one, in this environment, under these circumstances. It's happened again and again, and it likely will until there isn't any lyrium left to drain.
What he's doing is delaying, not healing. The templars will kill Fenris eventually, for no other reason to fuel their own addictions.
It's naked brutality. He wonders, not for the first time, if he made a mistake, that first night. If they wouldn't both be better off ending each other's misery, if it might actually be the kindest thing they could ever do for each other in their long history. It's not a place he ever wanted to go back to, and he doesn't know how he managed to find his way there on accident.
He swallows back the old memory, and reaches to twitch Fenris' hair back from his forehead.]
[ His answer comes in the form of a sightless flicker of a smile. The sinews in Fenris's bad arm twitch with attempted motion, unfurling toward him, shaky fingers catching on the edge of his robe and tugging ineffectually. ]
Eggs in your skirt, yes. Come h— [ His voice is a wisp-thin croak, confused. He's so tired, freezing cold, and Anders is making a nuisance of himself with his continued non-compliance. ] ...what are you doing?
[ They'd taken to huddling together on particularly clammy nights, ones when the wind and rain swirl freely into the room, but it's a testament to his state that Fenris is willing for the first time to openly reach, touch, demand the warmth he knows Anders can provide. When the rational part of his mind is able to kick back in, he will chide himself for cleaving to the smallest bit of sensory relief like a child or a dumb animal—as he's done his whole existence in one form or another, hasn't he? There's no drinking himself into oblivion here, no escape to be found through battle or cards or—or sex. But there is Anders's warm body to ease the cold, Anders's conversation to ease his mind...
[Before now, any contact has been about grudging necessity. It's necessity still now, true, perhaps even more so than normal, but— different, even still. He's always craved contact, the touch of another person, the way the templars always tried to deny him, the way he denied himself for so long, and now.... He doesn't realize the way his body sways slightly forward when Fenris reaches for him.]
Then— hah. [It's an exhale, more than anything. His fingers catch around where Fenris' hand is at the front of his robe to keep his arm steady.] I could tell you that a dragon swooped down and plucked me out of the tree, for all that you're actually listening to me. You're all right. Just let me do this one thing.
[His eyes scan smoothly back towards the door as he peels the poultice away, a cursory check for anyone hovering outside. Satisfied, his palm glows faintly, following the length of Fenris' arm; the main wound closes, deep blood bruises fade, overstretched muscles relax.
It all feels so insignificant, compared against the delirious state Fenris is in. Important, but still too small to matter. Anders grits his teeth against flashes of new anger; if he can do nothing else, if they're both meant to eventually die in this place, he will at least ensure the templars don't get the satisfaction of causing it.]
All right. Let's warm you up. Hold still for me.
[He leans over Fenris to reach for more scraps of robes to tuck around his torso. Taken together, they could almost be a decent blanket. They won't be enough by themselves, but that's all right. Anders won't have much between him and the stone floor either, but that's all right too. The priority now is making sure Fenris makes it through the night.]
[ Fenris is momentarily overcome with anxiety he doesn't know how to address, the material a shock on skin sticky with cold sweat. He feels his heart racing. He's trying not to pant. It is by virtue of the magic, however, that his body is at liberty to experience these things as they rush in to replace the pain and weakness that rushes out, and Fenris remembers and appreciates this in the sad, sad way of a man who finally feels good enough again to feel bad. He dimly registers a small commotion outside, even through the heavy wards on the heavy door, but by and large he's stopped trying to think of life outside this room. It's been nearly three years, after all.
He's not certain how long he passes out—just that he has a dream while he's unconscious and he can't remember anything about it but Justice blazing bright from the cracks in Anders's skin and summoning shade upon shade into the dark heart of Corypheus's prison. He wakes with a bodily jerk, flailing to find himself constricted, brands flaring effetely through the worn fabric.
It is not Justice he sees in front of him; only Anders. All this time, it has only ever been Anders. Justice has abandoned him, Fenris thinks, having revealed its true colors as an opportunistic demon—or simply knowing, perhaps, that Anders is here because this is the fate he's earned. Fenris, too, for having been, despite all intentions and principles and experiences, so complicit in the end.
His thrashing settles after a moment. His breathing slows but it's still harsh, ragged.
Outside the door it's quiet as death.
We deserve this, he wants to say. What he chooses instead is: ]
Water—?
[ And he's also chosen to ignore his fingers, twisted clawlike in the cloth at Anders's waist. ]
[He's dozing, a little more than half-asleep despite his best attempts to stay awake, but his body knows to react even without his mind being on the same page. He yanks himself back and away, even as he makes a startled, disoriented noise, more a reaction to the glow from the tattoos than anything else—an age old defensive thought of Fenris is finally taking matters into his own hands.
Instinct screams at him to pull himself more firmly away, to retreat from a threat, but after the moment passes and his mind catches up, he only settles back to where he was. He's so tired, and he spent so long running and clawing his way from threats, real and imagined, only to end up exactly where he was trying to get away from in the first place. Compared to that, if Fenris is any kind of threat at all by now, it's a merciful one.]
I don't know that there's any left. Soon.
[His voice is a murmur, thick with interrupted sleep. He hopes he isn't lying. He's taken to trying to hoard food and water when he anticipates the templars might be coming for Fenris again, but their behavior has gotten more and more erratic in recent months, and the two of them already get so little food and water between them as it is.
His hand smooths up Fenris' back to his side to his shoulder, evaluative. Warmer. That's good.]
[ He doesn't do it on purpose, float inward toward Anders's body heat like this, hungry for more touch and more relief. Blindly, in the dark, he encircles his wrist in clammy fingers and tugs his hand to his face before either of them really know what's happening—and by then it's too late and Anders's fingertips make contact with his parched lower lip. ]
You ca—let it melt. If it must.
[ It is cruel to demand this of Anders. He knows. Whatever remains of his well of mana must be dried almost to nothing given how weak they are; whatever remains of that, used to tend his wounds. But it doesn't stop him. Doesn't stop the desperate, drugged way his too-dry tongue slides over a long-softened staff callus, hoping for ice, or maybe at least to raise enough of Anders's ire that he might put him out of his misery. ]
[His breath stutters out of his chest. He doesn't pull away, doesn't resist, only curls his fingers slightly into the touch.
His head is pounding. Everything aches. The idea of another spell feels like scraping the bottom of a barrel with nothing but his nails, splintered and painful. But he owes this. He'll protect Fenris from the templars and their madness, because otherwise he doesn't have anything else.
He reaches again for a thread of the Fade.]
All right. All right.
[The space of a breath, and then frost clings to his fingers, thin tendrils of ice spreading across his skin. His thumb rests against Fenris's jaw, gently, encouraging his mouth to open wider so that Anders can press two fingers inside.
He has to concentrate, needs to keep the temperature lower, not the unnatural, freezing temperatures that normally come alongside offensive ice magic. He wants it to melt, not freeze Fenris's skull from the inside. It's hard to concentrate, what with the way Fenris's tongue drags against his skin, but he manages it.
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branchandroot
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, or: THAT TIME JUSTICE GOT HIS SHIT WRECKED BY THE CDC
Date: 2014-11-16 11:37 pm (UTC)The mission is finished. The rewards go out. He is alone in the corridor leading to the Neheda's medical bay when it happens.
There's no way to describe it other than what it is: having his consciousness ripped in two. As it turns out, unmaking an abomination is even less enjoyable than making one was; the separation is not gentle, and Justice does not go willingly. It's a snarl of rage and desperation and pain, like pieces of himself being torn off one by one, as inelegantly as by an apprentice butcher. His vision goes dark around the edges, and it's only distantly that he sees himself hit the floor on his hands and knees.
At first, he feels the protests as his own. Then, just that simply, he doesn't -- the anger is disconnected, an echo, like Justice were back in the corpse and simply shouting in his ear.
Then, nothing. It could be stillness, if there were anything peaceful about how empty his mind suddenly feels. It's silence louder than he's felt in years, since before Kirkwall, before the night he left Vigil's Keep, and it isn't calming in the slightest.
It doesn't take a genius to deduce what happened. It doesn't even take beyond a single leap of logic. Whatever he'd been doing before is abandoned; it doesn't even take him long to search the ship. When he finds Fenris, he's a mess of frayed nerves, jumbled emotions, and bald-faced panic.]
You had no right.
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Date: 2014-11-17 12:14 am (UTC)No. I did not. But it had to be done.
[ Fenris can't know what it's like for man and demon to be cleaved apart, but he does know what it is to have a choice taken from you. He doesn't regret it, but he feels guiltier than he thought he would. A beat passes; he glances away before glancing back. ]
...I am sorry.
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Date: 2014-11-17 03:44 am (UTC)You have absolutely no idea, do you? About what could have happened to me, with them-- digging around in my head. Or do you get to decide that too, which risks are worth taking?
[His connection to the Fade has never felt so fragile as it does now, like he narrowly escaped having his entire self ripped out by the roots, instead of only half.]
It was my mistake to fix. [For once, he can call it that -- a mistake -- without the answering wave of anxiety, fear, and guilt that he'd come to associate with Justice's disapproval. The anger in his expression cracks with either distress or relief. It's hard yet to say which.] You don't get to gamble my life for me and then say sorry.
decides to end my evening crying
Date: 2014-11-18 04:11 am (UTC)Without the abomination, has Fenris any reason to kill this man as he always promised he would?
Anders has come deeply enough into the room that the door slides unnervingly closed behind him—Fenris still struggles against the instinct that he's fallen into a trap whenever that happens. He tenses, then lets it abate. He still doesn't stand to meet Anders. ]
You would not have succeeded. Gamble with your life, perhaps. Better that than to allow you to return and gamble with the lives of hundreds more, mine among them. And Hawke's. [ And here he does gain some momentum, leaning forward as though aiming his words for a target. ] After all she has [ meant to me ] given you, you will not sentence her to a wasted life as a hunted fugitive.
[ They've lived their lives running for so long, all three of them. Damn her influence and damn Martin's, too, for instilling in him this foolish belief that the mage might see reason. ]
i see your tears and raise you my tears also
Date: 2014-11-19 06:52 am (UTC)Hawke deserves better. Every mage in Kirkwall deserves better.
When he speaks, his voice is softer. Sapped. He feels clearer, now, but also adrift. There was at least certainty in Justice's warped force of rage.]
You don't know that I won't. Even without him.
[What's truly terrifying about imagining Kirkwall's future is seeing his own logic in it. If he were fearful enough, desperate enough, to somehow think that force was the only option, then the plan is a sound one. Provoke Meredith, hand her power on a silver platter, and let her abuse it in the most egregious manner possible. Demonstrate to the world in blood everything that's wrong with the Templar Order. It's how he would do it, if he were playing at some kind of macabre thought experiment.
It's how he will do it, maybe.]
I know you prefer to think of me as a-- mindless abomination. Like I'm completely at the mercy of some spirit. [A painful pause.] Was. But it wasn't like that, Justice and me. Does doing this really make you so certain anything will change?
[If he were talking to anyone else, he might be looking for reassurance that yes, it could still make all the difference. With Fenris, even he's not sure what he's fishing for.]
POST-GAME MEGA BAD END
Date: 2014-11-16 11:56 pm (UTC)[ The Chantry caught him outside of Treviso after months of fleeing through the wilds, worn down and starving, too vulnerable and too outnumbered to withstand their descent. He was a fool to have thought travel by land would be safer than by sea, having guessed the Templars would be looking for Hawke and his co-conspirators on ships bound for Rivain. Fenris had opted to find his way to Dairsmuid via Afsaana or Ayesleigh and he was used to running across entire continents, so figured the journey would be difficult but doable. Now he's rotting away in Antiva City, in a cell in a Circle-turned-gulag. The Templars must surely have more connections to the Magisters' methods than they care to admit, or to the Qunari's, because they've found a way to hold his lyrium at bay by the shackle round his neck. It's not quite slavery, but some days it may as well be for the loss of freedom he's suffered.
It is 9:39 Dragon and Fenris has been here for two years, interrogated, beaten, tortured, and largely unaware of the chaos in the world outside. He does see the Templars gaining fervor while simultaneously leaning away from the word of their Maker, packing these chambers to bursting with apostates and fugitives and whomever else they deem a sufficient menace to Thedosian society. By and large it seems they've given up on being discerning.
Fenris listens to anything he can these days to keep from going mad. The solitude is deafening. He's had too much time to think about the events that brought him here, how he'd followed Hawke into the fire and had genuinely begun to believe they had chosen the lesser of two evils, but can't linger too long on thoughts like friendship. The only thing crueler than having never been free is having tasted freedom only to have it wrenched away again, and Fenris spends every day fighting the slip into acceptance that he's going to die in this place.
Once day, when he's bruised and shaky and pale (the Templars have learned that his blood contains no shortage of self-replenishing lyrium, given time) the door opens and his jailer says something about a partner, he thinks, in gruff Antivan. There's scarcely any room left in the Circle. Seems even special political prisoners are beginning to get bunkmates.
Nothing prepares him for what he sees. ]
no subject
Date: 2014-11-17 03:43 am (UTC)But it hadn't been Sebastian who'd won, in the end. It had been the templars -- and wasn't that fitting? The ending his story was always supposed to have: a mage locked in the Circle, never to see the world again lest he corrupt it. It had been the worst kind of deja vu: he'd watched his allies die, then watched as they held back from doing the same to him. They'd shackled him, taken him, and he'd found himself wishing that Hawke had made the opposite choice, all those years ago.
They mean to interrogate him, maybe. Or perhaps they've been following him so long that they know there isn't any greater punishment than to lock him back in a prison he spent so much time clawing away from. He doesn't care. There have been whispers from Val Royeaux, of unrest in the White Spire, but that's beyond him now. The war is out of his hands, and whatever happens, he won't live to see the fruits of his choices.
The door locks behind him, the jailer's footsteps recede, and Anders gave himself to hopelessness a long, long time ago.]
Fancy meeting you here.
[His voice is hollow, and he does not smile. He is a shell of the man he used to be. He might have been surprised to be reunited with Fenris like this, or at least struck by the almost poetic irony of it, if he had the energy for anything at all.]
DOUBLE CRYING
Date: 2014-11-18 04:45 am (UTC)Get angry, he commands himself. Get bloody angry! He makes it just far enough to clutch double handfuls of Anders' collar before his knees give out and he's left sprawled at his feet. Leathers long gone and wasting with hunger, he's less the ferocious warrior Anders knew—but for the lyrium, more just an elf in rags. But the lyrium is still alive in his skin despite its constraints, able to hum and hurt but not be called upon, and it's at this moment spent so close to this mage that he realizes he can feel magic's unmistakable vibration and he looks sharply toward Anders with a look of open confusion and despair and just a momentary flicker of hope. ]
Why were you not collared?
[ His voice is jagged from exhaustion and disuse. He understands the answer before the question's even finished. The door's enchanted, of course. Fenris knows this. This whole fortress was made especially to control mages. Nothing short of self-immolation will help Anders out of his predicament now. An elf who can spirit through walls calls for special consideration to be paid.
He should get up. Instead he's just staring at the floor between Anders' boots. ]
It'll be dark soon.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-19 07:19 am (UTC)He stays where he is, watching Fenris slip to the floor without any movement to help or hinder. This was his doing, too. It might have felt like a victory, once, when Fenris was nothing more than a representation of an abstract enemy. But there aren't any victories in all this, he's found. It's just suffering, pointless for everyone. If it's eventually recorded by historians as a skipped time period between oppression and freedom, every bit of pointless suffering will have been worth it. But here, in the moment, he just feels vaguely nauseous.]
Don't ask me questions like that. [He says it even though Fenris seems to already have his answer.] I know the Circle better than you do.
[He sinks into a crouch, hovering over Fenris with the same air of detachment, until he reaches out to trace the top edge of the collar with two fingers. He doesn't ask permission, but also doesn't care if he doesn't have it.
The line of his mouth turns down, the closest thing to an expression he's made since the door locked behind him. He used to think about this, back when he had the luxury of putting his life into perspective. Maybe the templars put him in a cell alone for an entire year, but at least the Qunari didn't have him on a chain like a dog.
Even he gave the templars too much credit sometimes, it seems.]
Does it hurt?
no subject
Date: 2014-11-21 01:17 am (UTC)He lets go with some reluctance.
Does it hurt?
Physically? Or otherwise?
This was your doing.
Only when they choose for it to.
What business is it of yours, mage? ] Yes. It does.
[ If he expected he'd have more to say, it's gone and left him now. The sun is setting; it's already passed beyond the barred periphery of the window near the ceiling. Lately Fenris can feel the approach of winter in the air every time night falls, and he knows soon enough he and Anders will be alone in the cloying frigid damp with only the glow of torches under the door and the large cold moon for light. Food is intermittent at best, only ever sufficient to keep a man clinging to life by a few fine threads, and he knows with Anders' arrival there's no chance of it today.
There's a crude bandage around his right forearm, made from scraps of an old mages' cowl. All Fenris can think about is how today's bleeding means he'll be blessedly left alone for the next several days and what a piteous wretch he is for feeling so much gratitude for it. He shivers. ]
Your spirit could not save you.
[ Spirit, he says, without heat or judgment. But spirit, demon—neither term means much anymore. Any remnant of his life before this room feels like nothing but an abstraction. ]
no subject
Date: 2014-11-21 05:29 pm (UTC)Nobody could. [Murmured, matter-of-fact, as he withdraws his hand. The list of people who tried and failed is too long.] Just as well. Saving me wasn't the point.
[He would have preferred to die, when the templars trap closed on him. In retrospect, it would have been kinder to die after the Chantry. But here he is all the same.
He stands, and steps over Fenris to go deeper into the room, for all that "deeper" can be applied to it. Kinloch Hold had at least pretended it wasn't a prison, with its open dormitories and tall ceilings, but that doesn't stop the wave of old familiarity.]
Get up. If I'm going to take a look, I need to do it now. Otherwise we have to wait until morning.
sware i'll tag the other one soon sware on me mum
Date: 2014-11-26 04:23 am (UTC)The dying light has settled on the edge of the nest of robes, which Fenris briefly feels compelled to protect as his and so he twists around to follow Anders, first with eyes and then with the rest of his body. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he should really be raising more of an argument, but he...
He just...
Kneeling in the fabric, he fixes Anders with a gaze like a docile animal, pained but tolerant. ]
That's it? It used you once and then discarded you?
[ He hasn't had anyone to talk to in so long. ]
shhhh you are a peach
Date: 2014-11-26 05:36 am (UTC)He crosses the remaining distance and sits cross-legged in front of Fenris. The floor has seen better days, and not much cleaning in recent months, but that's typical. Better now to get used to it.]
He didn't use me. [He would have sounded angry before. Now he just sounds weary.] We wanted the same things. My choices were my own.
[He doesn't meet Fenris' eye when he says this; the nice thing about being a healer, sometimes. There's usually something to be used as a convenient distraction. He turns to look at the light beneath the door, watching intently for shadows crossing beneath it. Practiced. Some things you never really forget.
He was prepared for the consequences of what he did, whatever those may have been. He just wasn't prepared to deal with them like this.]
And he isn't gone. [He reaches but this time doesn't touch, indicating where Fenris has wrapped his arm.] Let me see.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-11 05:32 am (UTC)Is this what you want?
[ A soft question. Very nearly conversational. Where was Justice now? In this.
Where was Hawke? ]
It has been two years, I think.
[ He doesn't know why he's offering this information. Just to talk, perhaps. He watches Anders work in the dying light, even ignoring a rat scurrying in the far corner that might otherwise have been supper. ]
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 03:36 am (UTC)He doesn't apologize. It's too little, too late, and he wouldn't change any of it if he had the opportunity to do it again. In the years he's known Fenris, he knows an insincere apology would be more of an insult than none at all.
Except, maybe, to tell Hawke a little bit more.]
No. It isn't. [He focuses again on what he's doing (Fenris' too-thin wrist in one hand, the other weaving the thread of mana into something to push back infection). His touch is gentle but firm, healer's hands. The glow of his magic strikes harshly against stone; too much. He should have waited.] But the rest of it, out there—[some of his old harshness creeps back into him, into the thin slant of his mouth]—that is what I wanted.
[War.]
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 03:56 am (UTC)If you're here, what's out there is not for you.
[ It comes out rougher than intended. The sick heat crawling over his wounds begins to dissipate, followed by an easing of pain, then only an itch. A small amount of light returns to Fenris's eyes, the faint upturn of his mouth unreadable. A little less than comforted, a little less than bitter, a little less than sad.
He swallows around a parched throat. ]
Thank you.
[ It's so freely given, all the pride beaten out of him.
A few seconds pass. His voice suddenly feels stronger, eager, heart seized by a foreign rush of inspiration. ]
You could kill me.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-12 05:29 am (UTC)Anger lances through him, for the first time since the templars took him, an old and familiar sensation. Because he's right, isn't he. The templars are under no obligation to pretend at the Chantry's guidelines for humane treatment anymore. They can be just as brutal as they always were, only now out in the open, and Fenris isn't even a mage. He's a prisoner. There's no reason to hope for mercy.
Once, a long time ago, sitting alone in the dank, humid gloom of Kinloch Hold's isolation cells, Anders had thought about it too. Idly, the first time, stroking a cat's ears through the door's meal flap, and then again later, not so idly. If only there was someone to slit his throat for him, so he didn't have to muster the energy to crush it himself.
He'd thought it could have been a similarity, before. A thread of understanding beneath all the noise of their differences. Now that he has it, he feels disgusted.]
I could. [Each word has to be drawn out through his teeth, gritted in anger.] But I won't.
then it got worse oops
Date: 2014-12-15 07:18 am (UTC)Of course you won't.
[ There's a deliciously vivid corner of his mind left that wants to straighten, hurl invective. Point out the blatant hypocrisy of... whatever his reason for refusing happens to be. His wrist aches a little in the grip, but the magic brings him the first merciful ease of his pain in so long, so long. He can't get angry because it would only taint this reprieve with more suffering. He's so tired of suffering. ]
If you asked it of me, I would oblige.
[ This is a lie.
Fenris can't say just how much time passes after that. He fears for the way he's allowed each day to bleed into the next. Their time together is interspersed with the templars' regular grisly harvest of their new lyrium well. Fenris remembers how it used to be, watching and feeling the steady drip and pulse of his life slipping a little further away with every beat of his hammering heart. And he'd always think, this time will be the time. Surely this time, when he passes out, he won't wake up. It used to be he even hoped for it.
Though Anders scarcely fares much better some days, he eases what he can when he can. Fenris offers nothing in return but a standing offer he desperately wishes he hadn't made, flippant and in a fit of pique, on that first night. Fenris does not think he can endure a return to aloneness now, which might make Anders the greatest danger of all. Tonight the templars do as they always have: the door crashes open and Fenris staggers in fast and wipes out on the stone, more thrown than led. He's pale as a corpse. Just needs to sleep for a long while. But for the first time in a long time, he realizes that the prospect of dying frightens him.
Damp Antivan winter is in full swing. Fenris clambers without remembering to his nest of robes (which has gotten bigger in the last several weeks; big enough, maybe, for two people) and pulls one over himself without regarding Anders, unable to do much but shiver violently. There's a poultice slapped crudely over his inner forearm that keeps him from bleeding everywhere, at least. He needs to stay awake so Anders can do his job, he needs— ]
Please... talk. Anything.
[ His request is groggy, half-muffled into the fabric. ]
no subject
Date: 2014-12-20 05:05 am (UTC)[Despite all the helpless anger, despite everything, his touch is still gentle. Two fingers at the pulse point in Fenris' throat, monitoring the way it flags, the other hand at his elbow, encouraging the arm to extend toward him. They're practiced motions, and not just because of previous patients. Because of this one, in this environment, under these circumstances. It's happened again and again, and it likely will until there isn't any lyrium left to drain.
What he's doing is delaying, not healing. The templars will kill Fenris eventually, for no other reason to fuel their own addictions.
It's naked brutality. He wonders, not for the first time, if he made a mistake, that first night. If they wouldn't both be better off ending each other's misery, if it might actually be the kindest thing they could ever do for each other in their long history. It's not a place he ever wanted to go back to, and he doesn't know how he managed to find his way there on accident.
He swallows back the old memory, and reaches to twitch Fenris' hair back from his forehead.]
It's a long story, Fenris. Are you still with me?
no subject
Date: 2014-12-21 06:46 am (UTC)Eggs in your skirt, yes. Come h— [ His voice is a wisp-thin croak, confused. He's so tired, freezing cold, and Anders is making a nuisance of himself with his continued non-compliance. ] ...what are you doing?
[ They'd taken to huddling together on particularly clammy nights, ones when the wind and rain swirl freely into the room, but it's a testament to his state that Fenris is willing for the first time to openly reach, touch, demand the warmth he knows Anders can provide. When the rational part of his mind is able to kick back in, he will chide himself for cleaving to the smallest bit of sensory relief like a child or a dumb animal—as he's done his whole existence in one form or another, hasn't he? There's no drinking himself into oblivion here, no escape to be found through battle or cards or—or sex. But there is Anders's warm body to ease the cold, Anders's conversation to ease his mind...
Anders's magic to ease the pain.
Incredible. ]
What then?
no subject
Date: 2014-12-22 04:16 am (UTC)Then— hah. [It's an exhale, more than anything. His fingers catch around where Fenris' hand is at the front of his robe to keep his arm steady.] I could tell you that a dragon swooped down and plucked me out of the tree, for all that you're actually listening to me. You're all right. Just let me do this one thing.
[His eyes scan smoothly back towards the door as he peels the poultice away, a cursory check for anyone hovering outside. Satisfied, his palm glows faintly, following the length of Fenris' arm; the main wound closes, deep blood bruises fade, overstretched muscles relax.
It all feels so insignificant, compared against the delirious state Fenris is in. Important, but still too small to matter. Anders grits his teeth against flashes of new anger; if he can do nothing else, if they're both meant to eventually die in this place, he will at least ensure the templars don't get the satisfaction of causing it.]
All right. Let's warm you up. Hold still for me.
[He leans over Fenris to reach for more scraps of robes to tuck around his torso. Taken together, they could almost be a decent blanket. They won't be enough by themselves, but that's all right. Anders won't have much between him and the stone floor either, but that's all right too. The priority now is making sure Fenris makes it through the night.]
no subject
Date: 2014-12-22 05:24 am (UTC)He's not certain how long he passes out—just that he has a dream while he's unconscious and he can't remember anything about it but Justice blazing bright from the cracks in Anders's skin and summoning shade upon shade into the dark heart of Corypheus's prison. He wakes with a bodily jerk, flailing to find himself constricted, brands flaring effetely through the worn fabric.
It is not Justice he sees in front of him; only Anders. All this time, it has only ever been Anders. Justice has abandoned him, Fenris thinks, having revealed its true colors as an opportunistic demon—or simply knowing, perhaps, that Anders is here because this is the fate he's earned. Fenris, too, for having been, despite all intentions and principles and experiences, so complicit in the end.
His thrashing settles after a moment. His breathing slows but it's still harsh, ragged.
Outside the door it's quiet as death.
We deserve this, he wants to say. What he chooses instead is: ]
Water—?
[ And he's also chosen to ignore his fingers, twisted clawlike in the cloth at Anders's waist. ]
no subject
Date: 2014-12-23 03:28 am (UTC)Instinct screams at him to pull himself more firmly away, to retreat from a threat, but after the moment passes and his mind catches up, he only settles back to where he was. He's so tired, and he spent so long running and clawing his way from threats, real and imagined, only to end up exactly where he was trying to get away from in the first place. Compared to that, if Fenris is any kind of threat at all by now, it's a merciful one.]
I don't know that there's any left. Soon.
[His voice is a murmur, thick with interrupted sleep. He hopes he isn't lying. He's taken to trying to hoard food and water when he anticipates the templars might be coming for Fenris again, but their behavior has gotten more and more erratic in recent months, and the two of them already get so little food and water between them as it is.
His hand smooths up Fenris' back to his side to his shoulder, evaluative. Warmer. That's good.]
I suppose I shouldn't ask.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-01 09:08 am (UTC)You ca—let it melt. If it must.
[ It is cruel to demand this of Anders. He knows. Whatever remains of his well of mana must be dried almost to nothing given how weak they are; whatever remains of that, used to tend his wounds. But it doesn't stop him. Doesn't stop the desperate, drugged way his too-dry tongue slides over a long-softened staff callus, hoping for ice, or maybe at least to raise enough of Anders's ire that he might put him out of his misery. ]
Please?
no subject
Date: 2015-02-01 07:08 pm (UTC)His head is pounding. Everything aches. The idea of another spell feels like scraping the bottom of a barrel with nothing but his nails, splintered and painful. But he owes this. He'll protect Fenris from the templars and their madness, because otherwise he doesn't have anything else.
He reaches again for a thread of the Fade.]
All right. All right.
[The space of a breath, and then frost clings to his fingers, thin tendrils of ice spreading across his skin. His thumb rests against Fenris's jaw, gently, encouraging his mouth to open wider so that Anders can press two fingers inside.
He has to concentrate, needs to keep the temperature lower, not the unnatural, freezing temperatures that normally come alongside offensive ice magic. He wants it to melt, not freeze Fenris's skull from the inside. It's hard to concentrate, what with the way Fenris's tongue drags against his skin, but he manages it.
Softly:]
Suck.
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