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Anders tucked his hood around his ears against the biting cold and fog, swinging his feet on the low stone wall that he and Hawke sat on. They’d been a while, but Hawke was fairly sure he knew the rendezvous point. If nothing else, the dizzying stone bridge leading to an enormous fortress with Inquisition banners seemed to prove him correct. It was only that Varric was missing. When a lone small figure finally did stride out of the mists, and into view, Anders could have leapt up and hugged him, if only for the fact that they’d been waiting in the damn cold.
“You were supposed to come alone,” said Varric, by way of greeting. Anders tipped up his hood, and waved. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. That’s exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Nice to see you, too, Varric,” said Anders.
“Maker’s fucking breath,” moaned Varric, apparently not done. “Half my friends here want to kill him. The rest just don’t know who he is yet.”
Anders looked up at the fortress again. He had met rather a lot of people who wanted to kill him along the way, but it still seemed difficult to imagine that so many people in such a very large stone fortress might want him dead.
“I couldn’t leave him behind,” said Hawke. “He goes where I go. He’s experiencing the same thing the Wardens are. It’s Corypheus, just like it was in the temple.”
Varric put his face in his hands.
“I’m here to help,” said Anders. “I mean, I can’t hear the song that well, what with Justice trying to drown it out, but I can tell you—whatever you suspect is wrong with the Wardens, you’re right.”
“And see, you say things like that and it doesn’t make it better,” said Varric. “Because I don’t want to turn you in.”
“You won’t,” said Hawke. “He’s the condition that I help your Inquisition. You do have a way of making powerful friends, don’t you?”
“All part of my charm. All right, pick one: Curly, Ruffles, or Leliana. Well. Sister Nightingale.”
“We know Sister Nightingale,” said Hawke, uncertainly. “She… didn’t want the Exalted March?”
“Good choice,” said Varric. “Heads up, though? You know Curly too, and if you’d picked him, I would’ve let him have ya.”
Sister Nightingale had eventually agreed that keeping the mage who’d started the rebellion under supervision in secret was preferable to letting him run loose on the world. It was Leliana who’d set up Anders’s Skyhold clinic, Leliana who quietly trained the combat nurses and surgeons to direct worse-off patients to a mossy room under the library tower with little more than a bed, a fireplace, and a few cabinets, providing help in the form of the apostate mage she introduced as Leander. (He probably should have told her it made him jump every time, for the wrong reasons.) It was Leliana who ensured his lyrium potions were stocked. He had never before seen so many all at once.
And it was Leliana, who now sauntered into Anders’s clinic. She moved like he remembered, like water. He wondered if she could turn it off. It was terribly impractical for a spy to be so recognizable. But she didn’t seem to be on the ground much, these days.
“Need some medical advice?” asked Anders.
“I am quite well, thank you,” said Leliana. “I came to see if you needed anything. Are you content?”
“Well, you haven’t set me in front of that big throne to judge me,” said Anders. “I don’t think I can really ask for more than that.”
“Our jurisdiction extends to crimes committed in the name of the Breach or as a result of its appearance,” said Leliana. “We sided with the mages, by necessity in the current political climate, but we do not claim to have the authority to weigh in on your crime, to deem your actions justified or not.”
“It’s a blessing, regardless.”
“Do you believe in blessings? In the Maker?”
“If I say yes, will you ask me why I made the choices I did?”
“It is a difficult question, I know. This is no interrogation.”
“If you would like to turn our attention to less esoteric matters,” said Anders, “you can see my patient logbook. I’ve been keeping records. I know the surgeons’ assistants are noting my work, too, but there’s information that I like to keep track of, myself.”
“May I?”
He handed it over. She set it down on the table, and began to flip through it, the pages scraping against one another in the silence of the stone room. He busied himself lighting a fire to keep it warmer, since at this time of day, when the sun was setting, the temperature often started to drop.
“You keep a clean clinic. I have had very few complaints from patients who have been to see you, regarding your skills or your manner. And this detail is appreciated,” said Leliana. “May I send someone to copy these records for me?”
“How could I say no?”
“Varric told me you were… funny,” sighed Leliana. She stood up, and shut his logbook.
“High praise, coming from him.”
“Your friends are quite fond of you,” said Leliana. “Hawke, Varric, at least. I hope you know that is a blessing, too.”
“I do, Sister.”
She smiled. She had a sweet smile, earnest even, which Anders supposed was a necessary professional skill.
“If I may ask one last favor?” she said.
“For you, anything.”
“Speak to Warden-Commander Blackwall, when you get a chance,” she said. “I should think, if he suffers the same malady Hawke described you and all other Wardens suffer from, he would benefit from someone else who understands.”
“Send him my way,” said Anders.
“I shall let that happen in due course,” said Leliana. Someone knocked at the door.
“Leander? Leander, are you in there?” The door opened. Anders turned around, but they were already bringing the patient in. He ran to help, and by the time he turned back, Leliana was gone.
“No, no,” moaned the soldier, “no, I don’t want to be healed with magic—no—”
Anders pulled back from reaching for the man’s wounds. The reaction was instinctive. Blood dripped onto the bed beside him, adding yet another stain on the sheets. There had been a few deaths on this bed, that Anders had seen, although fewer than there might have been if he hadn’t been here. There were few mages who’d dedicated themselves so thoroughly to the healing arts, these days. And most of them were somewhere out on a battlefield.
Anders had the distinct impression that this man had never met any of those mages before.
“Mm, yeah, bad experiences with magic are a bit common these days,” said Anders. He bit his tongue, before he could blurt out something like and on whose shoulders do the blame of provocation lie? A purely Justice turn of phrase, a purely Anders-the-man sentiment, but, combined, not what the Anders-the-abomination felt would be prudent in the moment.
“My brother—” said the soldier.
“You can tell me in a minute,” said Anders. The soldier swung at him, feeble and awkward-angled, but with enough force behind it to connect. “Hey!”
“I don’t want you—”
At that point, the blood loss took over, and the soldier went unconscious, which meant that Anders could do his work unhindered. Under his fingertips, the warm green glow of healing magic swelled, repairing that which was broken, easing the dull ache of open wounds, filling veins and arteries with life again. The soldier, limp on the table, breathed evenly again, not the short sharp gasps of one trying to avoid the tensing of torn muscle but the deep and slow breath of sleep.
Anders released his own breath, feeling the exhaustion take hold in his bones. He would be better in a few minutes.
“Thanks,” said the battlefield surgeon, her accomplice in hauling the man down to Anders’s makeshift clinic nodding alongside her. “We can take him back out now.”
“Hope he’s not too angry when he wakes up,” said Anders.
“If he knows what’s good for him, he won’t say anything,” said the surgeon.
“Ah, well, do any of us know that?” said Anders. She didn’t laugh.
When the patient and the surgeons were on their way back out, Anders sank into his chair.
It was, of course, a step up from Darktown. He didn’t mind the deep blue skies of Orlais, the bitter chill in the air, the breathtaking mountains in the distance. It brought back memories of childhood, to be sure, but not… bad ones. He didn’t mind the way that the stash of lyrium potions never ran out here. Hawke was here. And Varric. Real friends, through thick and thin. The Calling clutched at the back of his mind, yes, but—
We are not a Warden any more, said Justice. The Calling may shackle us, but we will always refuse our chains.
What are we, if we aren’t a Warden? What if this isn’t a chain we can break?
Anders and Justice wanted to know the answer to that very badly.
The first mouse was startling, but not unexpected, given that half the castle seemed to be rotting from the inside out, no matter what the stonemason—Anders had had a drink with him the night before—said about good bones. The second made him clear out his cabinets, and he was just about to ask Justice if Justice had, for some Makerforsaken reason, decided to put food in them—
“No, no, no, no!” said a boy who had almost certainly not been there before. “No, leave that!”
Anders screamed, and dropped the cheese.
“I’m sorry,” said the boy. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
When Anders recalled this later, it was with the foggy, floaty Fade memories of Justice—the face of the boy nearly unobtainable, only an impression of dark circles under icy blue eyes, less vivid than Sebastian’s but no less startling. Shaggy blonde hair under a very large hat. Try as they might, neither Anders nor Justice could recall how the boy left. They were still arguing about it when his next visitor came in—though, fortunately for his sake, the entirety of the argument took place in his own head, wordless flashes of possibilities and confusion.
The visitor was a mage sauntering in. She cocked a hip, resting her hand on her staff.
“An apostate healer,” said the woman. She was dressed in Orlesian fashions, with a horned hat, though her accent was decidedly not Orlesian. “Though we are all apostates now, as I am constantly made aware. I expect you were drawn by the noble calling to defend your brethren by terrifying half the countryside.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Anders, though he wanted very desperately to tell her that he was the apostate, because he got the sense that it would have sincerely pissed her off. “But my talents run towards healing.”
“A worthy endeavor,” said—Vivienne. That was her name, he’d heard someone say it a few days ago when the Inquisitor’s party returned. She spoke like a schoolteacher, like she had any sort of authority over Anders, and he bit the inside of his cheek. “Stick to healing, and you’ll be all right.”
“I try.”
She looked at him, for a moment, and he felt—cowed, in a way that he hadn’t since he was very young.
“A word of advice, my dear?” she said. “I have seen a great many apprentices pass through the Montsimmard Circle. I have been unfortunate enough to see some fall to possession during their Harrowing. You are, of course, old enough to have passed yours, if you had been trained in a Circle, which you no doubt were given the methods of healing magic that you perform.”
“Mm,” said Anders. He weighed his options before agreeing with her. “I was.”
He hadn’t known much of the Orlesian Circles, only their names. Montsimmard had sounded impossibly grand. He had learned, since Kirkwall, that things were different elsewhere. But mild injustices against many could never excuse grievous injustices against the few, Justice said. And in any case, the Orlesian Circles had joined the rebellion anyway. (In his mind it was always the rebellion, not his rebellion. It never had been his. It certainly would never be now. And try as anyone might, they could never blame him for the Conclave where the schism had truly occurred.)
He felt terribly small in Skyhold, and terribly small in front of Vivienne. Elthina had seemed approachable, somehow, ordinary even as the Chantry had loomed over Kirkwall. Just another Chantry sister who excused the templars’ abuses of power, even as they happened in front of her eyes. Sebastian had been noble, but behind the Chantry platitudes was a rich man's bratty son who had never truly wielded power. He did not know what to make of Vivienne, who seemed to have so little in common with either. Vivienne was regal. Anders wanted to pick a fight with her on principle. He knew he would lose if he did.
“Did you have a Harrowing?”
“I did.”
“It does not predict that one will not fall later,” said Vivienne. “Those outside a Circle may be under the misapprehension that it does. A properly trained mage knows better.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I have a… sense, of who is a danger,” said Vivienne. “I do my best to avoid sending them to their Harrowing too soon. It is only a needless tragedy, if they are precocious. If they are not ready. If they are volatile. I take great pride in the fact that no apprentice has failed their Harrowing in the past three years, under my watch, nor have we had any incidents resulting in Tranquility or death during that time. I consider every prior incident a lapse in my leadership and have acted accordingly. I do not like to fail, Leander.”
Anders inclined his head.
“Would that every First Enchanter shared your caution.”
“I do not know you, and I expect your Harrowing is years behind you. But were I First Enchanter in a Circle you inhabited, meeting you as an apprentice, I would… not recommend you for the next step in your work. Take care, for I should not like to have to put down an abomination in the middle of Skyhold. I believe it would be bad for morale. We have so few templars.”
“And what,” said Anders, “gives you such an impression?”
“It is a twist of the mouth,” said Vivienne. “A certain crackling in the air around you. There is a resentment in many of these apostates, which is a danger to the entire Inquisition. Even one falling would provoke a shift in the Fade which could create a domino effect. Even one needing to be put down in the middle of the camp by their fellows will spread despair not unlike disease. It runs deeper in you.”
She gave him a small, sympathetic smile.
“It is why you are here healing, I expect,” she said. “Does this work show you the best of humanity? You are taking precautions. I see it, and admire it.”
“I watched one person die this morning, and another tried to stab me,” said Anders, unable to keep the bite out of the words. Justice roiled in the back of his mind at the memories. Justice would have no one die, not when they had worked so hard to save them. Justice would have stabbed the other man back.
(Anders’s words, not Justice’s, though it was hard to tell.)
“Yes,” said Vivienne, “and look at you, what patience you have, to keep at your work! Keep a hold of it. I will be back to check on you.”
“To put me down if I step out of line?”
“And congratulate you if I do not need to do anything,” said Vivienne. “The carrot and the stick. Nothing less will do. Now, do pick up that cheese that appears to be on the floor. Vermin in our clinic would be terribly distressing for the patients. Do you have help around here? I shall have to see to it that someone assists with keeping this place clean. You can’t do it all yourself, my dear.”
The door opened, moonlight spreading across the floor slow as honey, though this only drew out the long creak of the door. Anders clenched his fist around the knife under his pillow—not that it mattered, necessarily, but if it was a templar it was always good to have a backup plan—when Hawke muttered, “Damn.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” said Anders. “Enough people know your relationship to the mage who fucked it all up for everyone. Probably a few people would put two and two together, and then where would we be?”
“Yes, well,” said Hawke, “I could go and cuddle Varric instead, I bet he’d say yes.”
“He would,” said Anders. “He’d fit just right up against your chest, too.”
“And he’s not ninety percent elbow and ten percent pointy scratchy chin,” said Hawke.
“Fuzzy, too,” said Anders.
“You’ve convinced me,” said Hawke, flatly, and Anders laughed—how could he not? Hawke always made him laugh—and cried out, “Nooo,” in just the way that Hawke wanted him to, before the bed dipped below him and he was surrounded, again, by Hawke’s warmth, Hawke’s beard tickling the back of his neck, rustling his hair as Hawke breathed him in. Anders felt every muscle in his body relax. Better than royal elf root, Hawke’s embrace, and they settled in, Hawke tucking Anders against himself. Any closer and Hawke would be an Anders-abomination.
Anders couldn’t say that he hadn’t dreamed of the thought. It would be good to be part of Hawke, he’d thought idly, though he’d never voice it aloud. Hawke balanced him out, drew him along paths winding where Anders wanted to dive straight to the problem. Hawke settled him, settled Justice, easy to trust when the two of them lost their way.
Anders yawned, and covered his mouth. It was mostly useless to think of Anders-thoughts versus Justice-thoughts, but he noticed a tendency to drift towards rather more metaphor when he was tired, even though Justice these days was busier wrestling with the Calling.
“Ow,” said Hawke, shifting against the pillow.
“Oh, the knife,” said Anders, wriggling until he could push it aside.
“Have you needed it?”
Hawke’s hands were flat against Anders’s belly.
“No,” said Anders, truthfully. “Thought I might, earlier, but it was just my lover giving me a fright and risking my anonymity.”
“Mm,” said Hawke. “Sounds like a bad guy. You could do better.”
“He’s really very wonderful.”
“That’s what they all say,” said Hawke.
“They do indeed,” said Anders. “Everyone from here to Kirkwall, telling me all about how lovely my boyfriend is. He rescues little puppies and orphans, from big bad blood mages.”
“And evil templars,” said Hawke. “And nasty demons. They always forgot I was trying to save people from templars too.”
Anders shut his eyes, and Hawke’s nose made itself apparent somewhere at the crown of Anders’s skull.
“Are they asking you to save them here, too?”
“Yeah,” said Hawke. “Don’t know why, it’s not like I was any good for Kirkwall, either. I should be persona non grata right now, but the Seekers got it into their heads that I’d be able to help. It seems Varric was covering for me, up until they realized that the Wardens were involved.”
Anders ran his thumb over Hawke’s knuckles, warmth settling into his bones. Justice felt it too, curling up deep in Anders’s stomach like a cat on a windowsill.
“I’m going to have to go get Loghain,” said Hawke. “He can’t be alone. It’s not safe. And you can’t be alone, here.”
“Like a stupid logic problem,” said Anders. “Can’t leave the abomination in the Inquisition stronghold, can’t leave the Warden alone. But the abomination is also a Warden. I think the trick is that you leave the fox with the grain.”
“And the Inquisitor said we could bring Varric, because I think she knows we’re friends. So it would be suspicious to leave him behind with you.”
“The entirety of Thedas knows you’re friends. Varric’s book about it is sort of a global bestseller.”
“And I don’t want to leave you,” grumbled Hawke, somewhere into the back of Anders’s neck, and Anders.
“In the morning, love,” said Anders, pushing Hawke’s hands a bit lower, an invitation they were well familiar with. Hawke made a muffled noise of surprise, not displeased, but rather more like he hadn’t realized that rubbing all over Anders would be… stirring. He really had been distracted.
The warmth of Hawke’s hand through Anders’s nightshirt was welcome, the rough texture just unpleasant enough to tease rather than dampen Anders’s interest, and he bit down on a moan and buried his face in the pillow as Hawke palmed him, slow and easy—
That was Hawke’s gift, after all. When you had his attention on you, his faith in your motives, he would have moved heaven and earth to do what you needed. All of Kirkwall followed him because he had served them, had been happy to help them with every inane little request they threw his way for far too little coin. Anders writhed, when the fabric of his nightshirt grew damp and slick where it touched his cockhead—
“Missed me, did you?” said Hawke.
Yes. Just for a moment, between Hawke’s hands and Justice’s tireless work, there was a single moment of Andraste-blessed silence in his head, and then Justice flashed a series of images in Anders’s head—a candle blowing out, a fabric tearing, a single coin dropping, all the spirit’s version of swearing—and the Calling was back, the rhythm of it counterpoint to Anders’s own heartbeat. No matter.
“Anders?” asked Hawke.
“I’ve got—” gasped Anders, “oil, in the bedside table, if you want—”
“Do you?” asked Hawke.
“I want to feel you come,” said Anders. “I don’t care how.”
If left to his own devices—if not specifically asked, Hawke would have brought Anders to completion, rolled over in the bed, and contented himself with the success of caring for a lover. Anders had to be the selfish one between them, had to beg for Hawke to fuck him, to need him, because Hawke never wanted anything the way that he wanted to be needed himself. Hawke reached over him, a thick weight pressing against Anders’s back as he rummaged around in the drawer. Anders fucked into the bed, Hawke’s cock pressing into him from behind.
Justice was quiet, here. The giving and sharing of lovers in bed held little interest for him, at least not after the years that Hawke and Anders had spent together, and Anders was grateful for the reprieve from his second mind’s worth of thoughts.
Mine and mine alone, thought Anders, now that I don’t have to share him with Kirkwall, and he doesn’t have to share me with Darktown. Those first few months on the run had been glorious.
Hawke had slicked himself up, and was running his finger down Anders’s cleft to find—ah, there it was, and Hawke’s first press into him elicited a moan. Anders tensed against the touch, and let himself relax.
“We should be sleeping,” said Hawke.
“Now?” asked Anders, half out of breath, with Hawke’s finger still fully inside him. He shuddered, feeling himself clench. “You’re saying that now?”
“I’m sorry,” said Hawke, moving his hand again, and Anders curled his fingers in the bedsheets and let himself relax again. “It’s just, it feels like it did. When everything was falling apart in Kirkwall. Like someone could walk into the room at any minute, and we’d be needed to deal with some problem.”
“It’s not our problem here,” said Anders, grinding his hips back. “You’re not the center of things any more, my love. I told you—just fuck me, Hawke.”
Anders felt Hawke’s shuddering sigh on the back of his neck, Hawke’s finger with its delicious curl slipping away, replaced with Hawke’s decidedly less dextrous cock. But Hawke was always gentle with him, always slow. He fucked Anders, not with desperation but with care, and—this part, Anders knew was for Hawke, not for him, but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel good—he pressed mouthy kisses to the back of Anders’s neck. Anders, pinned to the bed under Hawke’s attention, Hawke’s hand sliding down his arm, still wet with oil, and already at the edge from Hawke’s preparation, fought desperately to let it last and failed.
Hawke didn’t seem to notice that Anders had already come, or perhaps he knew that this was how Anders liked it, on the edge of overstimulation and entirely surrounded by Hawke, everything gone quiet in his head. Hawke, making small, soft noises that Anders wasn’t even sure he was aware of, hips stuttering, gave Anders exactly what he had asked for.
Anders rolled back over and kissed Hawke on the mouth, lazy and open as Hawke liked it, and when they finally drew back, Anders searched Hawke’s gaze, but only found the reflection of light from the windows.
“Are you happy?” asked Hawke.
“Stop worrying about me,” said Anders.
“I’m always going to worry about you.”
“Yes,” said Anders. “I’m happy. I like being here with you. I like my new clinic. I always feel like I’m doing something good when I’m healing people.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to end,” said Hawke.
Anders’s heart seized in his chest.
“Don’t be,” he said.
And it wasn’t what he wanted to say. What he had wanted to say was, of course it will, but that had sounded dismissive. He did not know the shape of the words he wanted to say, and he was almost asleep, fighting desperately to find something to tell Hawke, something to comfort him, when someone knocked at the door.
“Leander? Leander, the scout patrol just returned, and Charter took a bad fall—”
Anders was out of bed, wiping himself down with the basin in the room. Hopefully no one would get too close—but, oh, Maker, had Hawke left marks? He passed a hand over his neck, the healing spell buzzing like a bee and the glow of the magic lighting up the room. It exposed Hawke, who was trying to find his clothes.
“You know, I really hate that they practically named you after my mother,” hissed Hawke. Anders let out an explosive snorting giggle, and Hawke couldn’t help but return the same. “Listen, I’ll hide under the bed, and you go help them—”
“Yes, yes,” hissed Anders. “Get down there now!” To the person at the door, he called, “Just a minute! I’ll be there soon! Take her to my clinic.”
“She’s already there!”
Hawke blew Anders a kiss and rolled under his bed. Anders flung open the door, and ran out.
“Your Warden’s not a Warden,” said Anders, when he was reasonably sure no one else was at the top of the tower with Leliana.
Blackwall had come in—a minor burn from one of Sera’s pranks—and Anders had felt nothing. Wardens could sense each other. Cole had muttered something like “a small spark of Blight in their souls singing like starlight” to Anders, while Anders was accidentally thinking about it too loudly, and it had seemed as good a description as any, and Anders had been glad that the patient Cole had been helping with had calmed down enough to be asleep by that point.
But Blackwall had been like… well, a black wall, where you expected a night sky, and Anders had puzzled over if he even ought to tell Leliana (which was probably why Cole had noticed, honestly). For all that, he had liked the man, although perhaps he simply had a type.
“Oh my,” said Leliana. “What could that mean?”
“Nothing good, I would have thought,” said Anders. This, ultimately, was why he’d determined to tell Leliana and made his way up all of the stairs. He was lying, of course, to most everyone he met, but at least he wasn’t lying to her. And anyway, the Inquisition had taken in the rebel mages. He might not be theirs—he was always Hawke’s—but he sort of felt like he owed them. “But Justice said he doesn’t mean any ill for the Inquisition. Said he’s…” Oh, Anders had really tried to put the thought that Justice had passed to him into words. “Something like a kindred spirit. Only not a spirit. Justice... Justice was looking for him, I think. Or he was looking for Justice. It’s all very mixed up, with spirits.”
“Sounds complicated,” said Leliana.
Her crows cackled behind her, and her nugs squeaked. She shuffled some papers on her desk. Anders’s curiosity got the better of him, but he couldn’t read them from where he was standing, and he knew better than to step forward.
“Well, I’ve told you now,” said Anders. “And I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t want to go back to the Wardens, so I’m glad he’s not a Warden, but I’m not going to tell him I’m one either. And he’s in love with your Inquisitor. Justice was very clear on that point. I think he thought it would help. Justice is a romantic, you see.”
“I knew about W—about Blackwall’s feelings,” said Leliana. She had looked more surprised by the point about Justice, and Anders was regretting saying it, feeling as if he had given something away that was not for anyone else to know. “I shall have to start researching his real name. Thank you. This is very much to think about indeed. Hm… I wonder what this means for Josie’s treaties. We still have a Warden, of course, but we certainly can’t tell anyone that you were here. Perhaps when Loghain is back…”
She sounded more amused than anything else.
“Well, anyway. It is interesting, but I have other concerns. Does the Calling bother you?”
“No,” said Anders. “Well, yes, but I’ve felt it before. When Hawke met Corypheus the first time.”
“What is it like?” asked Leliana. “What do you hear?”
“Music,” said Anders. “It’s beautiful.”
“Could you sing it for me? I should like to hear it.”
“No,” said Anders. “Even if I weren’t terrible at singing or playing, it’s not that kind of song. It’s like how we say we sing the Chant. But it’s not really singing, usually.”
“I have raised my voice often to the Maker in song,” said Leliana, not a little bitterly. “But I wonder if He manifests Himself more in music I cannot hear.”
“Well, good day,” said Anders, and fled before he could accidentally drive the Inquisition’s spymaster to heresies.
Without Hawke around, and with the Inquisitor’s forces on various missions, Anders had plenty of patients, and plenty of patience for each of them as well.
He saw to the ill and the injured alike, and since their missions tended not to put them further into harm’s way than the occasional distant wolf, he mostly succeeded in caring for them. He staked out a corner in the Herald’s Rest, and while it wasn’t the Hanged Man, they at least had a brutally disinterested barkeep, and the bard seemed to know a good variety of music, but when she began to sing a song about the mages, he downed his ale and headed outside, sitting in the sunshine.
“You all right?” said the redheaded dwarven girl, who mostly sat outside the tavern.
“Just need a minute,” said Anders.
“You’re the mage who’s helping with the lost causes,” said the girl.
Anders smiled.
“I wouldn’t really call them that,” said Anders.
“Well, everyone else does,” said the girl. “They say you’re the one that they go to if they think they’re going to have to amputate, or if they’re afraid a bone is going to heal wrong.”
“I had a clinic in Kirkwall,” said Anders. “I’ve seen a lot of hopeless cases.”
“Well, thank you,” said the girl. “I’m Harding, and you helped out my friend Weaver when she got bit by that thing in the Fallow Mire. So I’m grateful.”
“Glad to help,” said Anders. The Fallow Mire snake bite had been a difficult case, and Weaver had lain on the cot in Anders’s clinic for days, sweating and hallucinating. He tried not to remember what she had said. It was always best not to know. But she had come through it, with the aid of some tome on the neutralization of poisons that the Tevinter mage had found in the library. (Anders had tried not to be too starstruck, and quickly lost his awe when he realized that a magister was just another arrogant noble. Although the man had been helpful.)
“What’s Kirkwall like?” said Harding.
“A lost cause,” said Anders, and smiled at her kindly. She looked so relieved he realized she’d thought he was making fun of her. “But I’ll always want to go back. Where are you from?”
“Ferelden,” said Harding. “Grew up in the Hinterlands, if you’ve been there. I saw the Breach, and I just knew I had to join. How’d you get all the way here from Kirkwall?”
“I followed my—friend,” said Anders. “He knew Varric. When he found out what Varric was doing, we came here to see if we could help. You?”
“Everybody knows Varric,” said the girl, nodding. “I came here to help, too. It’s nice to be doing something.”
It was, but there was more to it. It was nice not to be known, to be nothing more than a pair of healing hands once again. It was nice to talk about something that wasn’t the mages or the templars, although plenty of people were constantly sharing their opinions, and frankly it felt like Anders could have a break from sharing his own. In Skyhold, Anders felt lost in a crowd, in a way that he didn’t think he ever would have again. He didn’t have anyone to talk to, to ask about Hawke and the Inquisitor, so he made do with making friends in the tavern. He showed up to an archery contest and cheered when Harding won. He asked Pavus for more help in the library.
He had very nearly forgotten what Varric had said about ‘Curly’ being here when his clinic door opened with Seeker Pentaghast—the Chantry official who had kidnapped Varric to find Hawke—pushing fucking Cullen into his clinic. His heart dropped, and Justice reared up inside of him, when he noticed how haggard Cullen was, how sleepless he looked, how very nearly green.
“This is unnecessary,” Cullen was saying. “I will sleep it off! There is nothing that can be done!”
“You must see the healer,” said Seeker Pentaghast sharply. “You are not well! You, healer! What is your name?”
Every instinct in Anders wanted to run. He desperately wished Hawke were here.
“Leander,” said Anders.
Cullen looked at him, and his jaw fell open. A slow, steady realization dawned over his face.
“Do you know how to hold your tongue?” barked Pentaghast. “It is a matter of some importance for the Inquisition.”
“I am practiced in discretion,” said Anders.
“Commander Cullen is in need of aid,” said Pentaghast. “Aid him, but our Commander must not be seen to be unwell.”
Mutely, Cullen allowed himself to be handed over to Anders, to be led to the table. Pentaghast left.
“You’re alive,” said Cullen. “I thought—I can’t believe—of course. Hawke was here. Of course he didn’t come alone. He never did anything alone. I can’t believe I didn’t think to check. And they said there was a healer who’d had experience in Kirkwall—Maker’s breath. Of course it was you. Are any of the rest of your wretched band of troublemakers here as well?”
“Discretion, Commander,” said Anders.
“You murderer,” said Cullen. “You smug, insufferable—I should haul you up before the Inquisition. Who let you in?”
“Leliana,” said Anders. “She said the Inquisition wasn’t appropriate to judge my crimes.”
Cullen groaned.
“Then there’s nothing I can do. You’ve been vetted, by our spymaster, who no doubt has full knowledge of your crimes and multiple others I could never even imagine. Well-played.”
“That’s right,” said Anders. “Now, tell me your symptoms, and perhaps we can find what’s ailing you?”
“I already know,” said Cullen. “I’ve stopped taking lyrium.”
“Finally get a conscience about what you did to mages for all those years?”
Cullen looked up at him.
“If you must know, yes,” he said. “So I thought I was doing the right thing, by stopping. After I saw what it was doing to the templars’ minds. But seeing you here is surely a test from the Maker.”
Anders checked his forehead. Feverish, but not dramatically.
“No open wounds?” said Anders. “No other symptoms, such as a cough?”
Cullen shook his head.
“They have me at a desk. I’m not even fighting. I don’t even get out most days before dusk.”
Anders checked his stores. Elfroot—a fever reducer, and painkiller, among other things, and a bit of black lotus, for the lyrium supplemental properties. He diluted it, and gave Cullen a flask.
Cullen stared at it.
“You wouldn’t…” said Cullen. “You wouldn’t need to get rid of me, right?”
“For fuck’s sake,” said Anders, and he took the flask back, popped it open, and took a swig.
“That really doesn’t mean anything,” said Cullen. “You could take an antidote as soon as I leave.”
“Check it with the Tevinter fellow, or with the Circle mage,” said Anders. “Though they’ll know what it does, so you might as well tell them too. They can make you more, though, if you don’t trust me.”
“They’re part of the Inquisitor’s circle,” said Cullen. “I suppose they’re trustworthy…”
“For what it’s worth,” said Anders, “I did what I meant to do. I’m not here to make things worse. I always preferred healing.”
Cullen frowned at him.
“For what it’s worth,” said Cullen. “I’ve changed, and not because of what you did, or anything in this stupid war. Because well-meaning people talked to me, and explained the situation calmly, and without violence. They took the time to educate me—”
Anders stopped listening before he tried to kill Cullen again. The Battle of Kirkwall had really had given him enough of that for a lifetime.
“I didn’t guide her here so you wouldn’t name her,” said the boy reproachfully.
Anders wanted to yelp, and certainly he jumped, which startled the cat, too, but Justice had been ready, waiting even, and said, “Hello, Compassion.” Justice had been aware of Compassion for some time, and Compassion hadn’t wanted to be seen.
You could have told me!, Anders told Justice.
Why?, asked Justice.
Damned spirits.
Because it was scary!
You knew he was here, said Justice. You just didn’t see him either. Compassion has those little tricks. It sneaks in, where you least expect it, and disguises itself.
Anders wondered at the disdain in Justice’s voice.
“You do have names in mind,” said the boy. “Lady Nettle was cute, I thought. Captain Clawhands was good. Do cats have to have titles?”
“It suits their air of superiority,” said Anders. “But really, it just makes it so I laugh instead of get mad at them when they do something wrong. You can’t seriously yell at Captain Clawhands for knocking a mug off the table, it won’t do.”
“I like when people are mad but not mad,” said Compassion. “You can call me Cole, by the way. Not Compassion. That would upset everyone else.”
“Cole,” said Anders. “You can call me Leander. Are you… like me?”
“No,” said Cole. “There was a Cole. I’m like him. But he was a body, a boy, not buried but left.”
Anders picked up Lady Nettle, who, despite her name, did not sting when touched. She settled into his arms, purring.
“I thought she would like you,” said Cole, and Anders thought he was happy.
“Thank you,” said Justice, with Anders’s mouth. Anders hated when he did that. “We like her. We’ll care for her.”
“She cares for herself, mostly,” said Cole. “But she’ll care for you if you let her stay.”
Afterwards, the sight of Cole on the wall was familiar, as if Anders had seen him many times before.
“I’m back,” said Varric. He stood, in the doorway of Anders’s clinic, a dark, small shadow against the setting sun.
In his memory, Anders could never recall what he noticed first. Perhaps it had been the absence of anyone behind Varric—perhaps it was the tone with which Varric said I, or even the fact that he hadn’t said we. Perhaps it was simply how awful Varric looked, like he hadn’t slept a wink.
Anders dropped the pestle he’d been holding, and it hit the floor with an alarming crack.
“It’s exactly what it looks like,” said Varric. “Hawke didn’t make it. There was a nightmare demon… thing. You know him.”
Justice reared, but there was no justice to be sought. Anders did know Hawke.
“He’s not—” said Anders. “He couldn’t be. He’s done worse before and survived. He’s in the Fade, not dead.”
Varric looked at him, crushingly sad. He stayed with Anders, for the rest of the day, as patients filtered in and out. The patients were unaware and uncaring that Anders’s world had just fallen out from under him. He preferred it that way. He could be a good healer, of course, in front of them—it was perhaps the only thing that was keeping him from losing his mind.
Varric—who ought to have been a reminder of what Anders had just lost—was instead a refuge in the darkness, solid and warm, chattering with the patients, some of whom recognized him and some of whom didn’t.
“You should come back to my room,” said Anders, and Varric followed him up to the room that Anders had shared for so few nights with Hawke. He beckoned Varric close.
“You gonna let me take the bed, or am I supposed to be a gentleman?” asked Varric dryly.
“We’re going to share it,” said Anders. “That is, if you don’t mind. I thought you might not want to be alone. I certainly don’t.”
“What, did you need a replacement already?” asked Varric, but he took off his shirt and crawled into the bed. When Anders pushed under the covers next to him, he let Anders slide an arm around him, and pull him back. “You move fast, Blondie.”
“I love him, but this is for you,” said Anders. “I know he loved you, too.”
“…I don’t know if I want to talk about this,” said Varric.
Anders, who had spent quite a few years in the Circle seeking whatever comfort he could get, and not being too bothered what anyone thought about him, had to remind himself that Varric had spent years claiming he pined for one woman, and that it had almost been believable, what with the lack of serious relationships. He’d always wondered. Varric settled himself in, keeping his hands very close to himself. Anders wished he could explain to Varric that it wasn’t like that, or at least, it didn’t have to be, but Varric probably didn’t know how to ask, so Anders didn’t answer. Anders thought of joking about this with Hawke, and wondered if he had accidentally made light of something too real. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“You don’t have to,” said Anders. “But I suspect you like talking about him, and I like hearing it.”
“Did the whole book I wrote about him give it away? How much more do you think I have to say? Don’t you think you’ve heard it all already?”
Varric turned around, until his nose was pressed up against Anders’s collarbone.
“I think I could never get tired of him,” said Anders. “And anyway, I didn’t read your book.”
“Only fair. I never read your pamphlet thing either.”
It didn’t seem real yet—that there would be no more stories of Hawke, that there was an end to it. Anders realized that he’d always imagined he’d be first, probably at the hands of some disgruntled mage or templar, and if he wasn’t first, then he would have been by Hawke’s side whenever it happened.
The grief that he had been fighting all day threatened to come up violently, and he swallowed. He hadn’t been there. He took a deep breath, trying not to shudder or sob, and felt Varric’s fingers curl into fists at his sides.
“They only ever wanted him for what he would give,” said Varric, his raspy voice buzzing against Anders’s chest.
“I know,” said Anders. “I always thought I was selfish. I… I needed him. He knew that.”
“Wasn’t just you,” said Varric, voice hazy and sleepy. Anders wondered at it. “I warned him away from you, you know.”
Anders laughed.
“He never said!”
“And here I thought you were probably holding it against me. I’m not apologizing, by the way. You’re a mess, and a bad influence, and you damn well know it. But he loved you. He chose you for himself, and fuck it if anyone else had anything to say about it.”
Varric, hesitant, ran his knuckle along the side of Anders’s waist. It sent a shiver up Anders’s spine, but he let it happen quietly, pleased that Varric was getting comfortable. He let Varric talk, and he suspected Varric kept going even after he fell asleep, and in the morning when he woke up Varric was snoring on his back next to Anders, and Hawke was still—dead. In the Fade, he reminded himself.
The rest of the day he moved about as if in a dream. Justice, still quiet, sometimes took over for Anders with the patients. It wasn’t really his forte, but after a few years of being Anders he had picked up the knack and could puppet Anders through basic healing spells.
He received a note.
My condolences. While we cannot return what you have lost, this sacrifice does not go unnoticed. Please know that if you were to shut your clinic doors for several days, you would be untroubled by questions. —Nightingale
By necessity it was vague and brief. He kept it in his robes, and reread it often. Varric had told him in person, and that was right—Varric always said things best in person, even if he said things damn well in writing too, but Anders had nothing to hold in his hands to tell him that Hawke had been there and was now gone, except for Nightingale’s words, nothing to tie him to this place, to the Inquisition. He wished it might have said Hawke’s name, but he was grateful that it did not.
He did not shut his clinic doors. A great tall Qunari man came in with a minor wound to his leg, introducing himself as “the Iron Bull.” He said it lightly, but Anders had heard people refer to him that way, and had wondered about the designation. He didn’t think he was going to get answers.
“And I told Viv it was nothing,” said the Bull, irritated, “but she told me to come by here anyway. Said you’d probably have something better for a varghest bite than she would, if you were worth your salt.”
Anders had heard that the Qunari sewed the mouths of their mages shut. Everyone knew the Bull was actually Qunari, not just a runaway, but no one was supposed to say it. He ought to have been frightening—Anders ought to have disliked him, but he had a disarmingly friendly voice.
And Anders didn’t like Vivienne, particularly, but the easy way that the Bull referred to her reminded Anders terribly, viciously, of how Varric gave the Kirkwall crew nicknames, and he felt a sudden stab of fondness. Despite everything, she had made friends with this Qunari.
Of course she had.
“She looks after her people,” said Anders.
“That she does,” agreed the Qunari man. “Funny you say that, though. You weren’t in her Circle, I think.”
“What?” said Anders, startled. He hadn’t meant to imply it, but now the Bull was looking at him, over the green glow of the spell he’d developed to counter the toxin of the varghest bites. People kept coming back from the Western Approaches with them, and they could turn quite nasty. The spell had needed to counter several different types of toxins, and fever.
“Oh, well, I thought it was weird when she recommended you specifically. You do an entirely different style of magic,” said the Bull. “You hold your hands different. A bit closer to your hips, and your shoulders are hunched over. Fereldan apostates do that, usually so they won’t get caught. So I wonder how you know what she’s like.”
Why was everyone in the Inquisition so damnably nosy? He’d been around a lot of places, and nobody had ever been so attentive before, usually out of self-preservation. If you looked too long you could be questioned, and if they were foolish enough to do so anyway they usually saw “mage” and ran screaming, or collapsed in relief at finding solidarity. It had never occurred to him that his magic might have an accent of its own, and that it might tell a story that made people ask other questions.
“She drops by every now and then,” said Anders. “She asks how I’m doing. She must be used to that, I think, looking after all the mages.”
She thinks she’s First Enchanter here, Anders almost said, but didn’t, because while the words were not critical on their own he certainly meant them in a critical way, and he was trying to be diplomatic like Hawke would have done.
“Nice to know it’s not just us she’s shepherding,” said the Bull, smiling. “Nipping at the heels of the flock to keep us in line, I think. Makes me feel right at home.”
It set Anders’s skin crawling, but he wouldn’t say it.
“Ahhh,” sighed the Bull, as Anders pulled his hand away. “That’s a lot better, apostate. Viv said if it worked, she’d ask you for advice on how to do it. If that’s all right with you.”
“Of course,” said Anders, “the more people know it, the better. If she wants to bring the other mages that travel with the Inquisitor, I’d be willing to teach them, too.”
“Maybe. They don’t seem much for healing, to be honest. And, er. Don’t tell her I called her Viv if she drops by, okay?”
Anders smiled.
“Of course not.”
The Bull wiggled his foot, and got up, unsteady on his feet for a moment, and then back in balance. As if he had never been injured, he strode to the door.
“Sorry about your friend,” he said.
“What?” said Anders.
“That warrior,” said the Bull. “The one who helped us find the Warden? You were close. Famous guy around here, I think, but he liked you specifically, didn’t he?”
Anders felt a chill run up his spine.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said the Bull. “Take care.”
Anders was in a letter to Par Vollen now, he was sure of it. All that stuff with the Arishok probably didn’t help, either, although Anders had never personally antagonized the man. He thought. He couldn’t remember. Okay, he had been there when Hawke had killed him. Well, hopefully the Bull enjoyed the feather it would put in his cap to give that information back. He threw the rags he’d used for the Bull’s wound into a bucket, wiped up his table, and tried not to think about anyone sewing his mouth shut. Which wasn’t going to happen if he didn’t go to Par Vollen.
…Probably.
Varric often spent the night with him. Anders was getting used to the sight of him, shirtless and furry and solid as a brick, wandering about Anders’s room in the evenings. Sometimes he asked for stories about Hawke. But he didn’t write the stories down as Anders told them, rather, he turned them over in his mind. Anders wondered what they would become, when filtered back out through his pen.
“And Hawke rolled under the bed!” Anders told him, as Varric’s shoulders shook from laughter. “She looked in the door—Maker, I was trying to figure out if I should pretend he was an assassin, but everyone knew the Champion—”
“Can’t you just turn people invisible?” asked Varric.
“Well, I’ll learn that spell now, I suppose.”
“Would’ve been handy for the heists we pulled in Kirkwall!”
They fell silent at that, both of them thinking of years past, and Isabela, and Merrill, who had always been up for a little bit of crime, and Aveline, who had not. Of Fenris, who was in Seheron, doing more than a little bit of crime now. Of Bethany, who, out of everyone, had responded first to Varric’s letter, but then she’d been the easiest to reach.
If he’s in the Fade, I’ll try to look, she’d said.
“I miss him,” said Varric. He lay back on the pillow, settling himself in. Anders propped himself up on one elbow. He considered his options, considered how comfortable Varric looked, and leaned over, pressing a kiss to Varric’s jaw. Varric leaned into it, closing his eyes, so Anders pressed one to his lips next, and shifted his weight when Varric kissed him back.
He’d always wondered how Varric would kiss—had wondered if Hawke had ever wondered. He got an answer, at least for his part if not Hawke’s. Varric kissed tentatively, a little clumsy, though maybe that was the angle they were at. But he didn’t push himself up to meet Anders, he was content to lay back and be kissed. He’s not experienced, Anders realized.
Anders adjusted accordingly. He liked kissing, liked learning the feel of another person’s body against his, and he was charmed by Varric’s hesitation and his rough lips, and too much of a gentleman himself to try to use tongue, so they kissed slowly for a while.
When Varric drew in a shaky breath, Anders let him go, and rolled back onto his side of the bed.
“What the hell was that about?” asked Varric.
Anders wondered if he had misjudged, or moved too fast. Probably he had. It was a tendency of his. Andraste knew he’d practically jumped directly into Hawke’s arms.
“I don’t know,” said Anders. “You’re in my bed, you’re sad? Honestly, Hawke was a romantic. I expect it was all those stories of his parents’ marriage. I, on the other hand—well, the Circles are different. You take comfort where you can get it. If you don’t like it, we can go back to cuddling.”
“I guess we did do that…” said Varric. Anders, not for the first time, wondered if maybe the mysterious Bianca was not the one who got away, but instead had just lacked the subtlety of a mace to the head.
“What did you think we were doing?”
“I don’t know?”
Anders squinted at him. Varric reached up and tucked Anders’s hair behind his ear, so gently and tentatively, and Anders just knew he was mirroring something he’d seen in a play, or read in a story, and laughed. Varric flushed.
“Can we just go back to the kissing?” asked Varric. “Because it kind of seems like you wanted to do that so we wouldn’t have to talk about Hawke, and that’s—I can do that.”
It was not what Anders had expected Varric to say, and it rattled in his brain, even as he pushed forward and fit his lips to Varric’s again. This time, he was less cautious, swinging his leg over Varric’s, letting the kiss get deeper until Varric’s teeth—so much cleverer with words than with kisses—opened up to him.
“He’s not dead,” said Anders, taking a moment to breathe. “You said. He’s just in the Fade.”
Varric, hair splayed out beneath him on the bed, said, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
His hands—and perhaps something of Anders’s attitude had emboldened him, because he was suddenly gripping Anders firmly by the hips—were thick and strong through the rough fabric of Anders’s shift.
“He can’t be,” said Anders.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And of course, every dead body on the road these days was someone’s loved one, just because this was Anders’s loved one didn’t make that any different—it was only fair that Anders had suffered, as his actions had led to others suffering—
Shut the fuck up, Justice, Anders said, in his mind. I’m not talking to you right now.
“It’s impossible,” said Varric, in between kisses, his chest heaving. “I know. It’s not possible. He was—he was incredible.”
“He was your golden goose,” said Anders, nosing along Varric’s jaw to press kisses there. “You were going to live off of his stories for the rest of your life.”
“Fuck you,” said Varric, and he sounded actually angry, which, all right, Anders had just said it to see if it improved the quality of Varric’s kisses. “Fuck you! He was my friend. And what are you even saying, anyway? You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for him!”
“I know,” said Anders.
Their teeth clashed, and Varric actually did bite down on Anders’s lip, and made a soft noise of surprise when Anders ground against his thigh.
“Fuck,” said Varric again, trying and failing to get purchase. “I know. You said. He saved you. He saved me, too.”
Their cheeks were wet, and Anders didn’t know which of them had started crying, but he suspected that now their tears were mingling. Varric kissed Anders ferociously. It was not an improvement on his other kisses. Anders thumbed at his cheeks, brushing away tears, tangling his fingers in Varric’s soft hair, whispered soft quiet things like “I’ve got you” and “it’s all right.”
Varric was easier to care for than Hawke. He didn’t demand deference, and he leaned into touch like he was starving for it, even as he cried. Anders closed his fingers around Varric and stroked him, watching his chest heave (Maker, Anders could have put his head down on Varric’s chest hair and been content), as Varric’s thick hands clutched at Anders’s hips and held him close, as Varric finished on his fingertips with a moan that seemed to surprise even him.
We broke him, said Justice. So we did not break ourselves. It does not feel good.
(Anders had to disagree. It felt a little good, actually.)
“How come we could never save him?” asked Varric, voice thick. “I can’t even go in the Fade. I can’t do anything for him.”
He didn’t say it like he hoped for anything, but Anders heard what Varric didn’t say.
If Varric went looking for Anders the next night, he wasn’t in his bed. Instead, Vivienne found him in the library. There were a few others sneaking around, too, mostly seeking a quiet private place—but Vivienne had been searching for him, and the others had fled.
“My dear,” said Madame de Fer. Her grip tightened on her staff. “You are a danger to this Inquisition, I suspect. It is a shame. You have been a remarkable healer.”
Energy began to crackle around her.
“Tell me truly, do demons plague you?” she asked.
“They do not,” said Anders. “I am no danger to this Inquisition!”
“You are holding a tome which contains powerful information. It is one of a few that I thought I might place a charm on, to ensure that its examination could be tracked. I wonder, what could a healer have to do with journeys into the Fade?”
“Do you love anyone?” asked Anders.
It was a desperate plea, and she raised an eyebrow at him.
“Demons promise wild and wonderful things to those who profess to love,” said Vivienne. “But love would not drive a man to the Fade.”
“Not unless the man one loved was trapped there,” said Anders.
“Trapped?” said Vivienne. “People don’t get trapped in the Fade, my dear—ah. With rare exception, I suppose, they do. ‘Leander,’ was it?”
“Anders,” he corrected. “Of Kirkwall.”
She had been well-informed, he supposed. The significance of the name was not lost on her, and it was a long moment before she responded. He stood his ground, forcing himself to keep his shoulders straight and his head held high. He was not an apprentice, she was not his First Enchanter. He had sworn no allegiance to her, and he owed her nothing.
“Tell me,” said Vivienne coldly, “why I should not simply strike you down where you stand. The suffering you have caused! That our leaders let you in here is remarkably short-sighted of them. No doubt someone vetted your credentials, and I shall have to find out who. I knew they were taking anyone, but really. This Breach is driving everyone mad.”
“Haven’t you ever lost anyone?” pressed Anders. “What would you have done to save them?”
Her face twisted, just for a moment. An opening.
“Hawke,” said Anders, “was everything to me. He saved me. He loved me, I meant nothing to anyone, and he found me. If there’s a chance—I can’t leave him alone there. He would have hated to be alone.”
She clenched her jaw.
“Your desperation is palpable,” said Vivienne, but he knew he had gotten to her, because ice was beginning to form around the tip of her staff. “I am told that the apostate who destroyed Kirkwall’s Chantry was an abomination of Vengeance.”
“You heard incorrectly. Justice abides within me,” said Anders. “And he could not ignore our people’s suffering, even if you can.”
“Ignore their suffering?” she snapped. “So you set an all-out war? No—I will not litigate this with you. I would kill you where we stand.”
“And if you did, Justice would right the balance,” said Anders.
Vivienne hummed a mocking laugh.
“And what a waste that would be, of a perfectly good life,” she said. The ice at the tip of her staff began to fade, its corporeal nature slipping away. “Tell me, do you plan to open a portal into the Fade right in the middle of Skyhold? You are more than an apprentice, you know that would be foolish in the extreme.”
“Where else might I do this?” asked Anders.
“Well, for starters,” said Vivienne, “I know of a perfectly good Circle Tower. It may surprise you to learn this, but it’s not in use at the moment.”
“I ran away seven times,” said Anders, by way of making conversation, as the tower in the distance started to make itself known above the trees. They had traveled the way to Montsimmard in near total silence. Anders thought the loudest thing he’d heard had been Vivienne’s furious quill-scratchings as she’d drafted a letter for the Inquisitor regarding her brief and sudden absence, although despite the noises she’d made her handwriting itself seemed to have the polished perfection of a professional scribe’s hand. She had sealed it, set it above the library in the tower with the crows, and driven Anders out onto the stone bridge again.
And from there they had walked. She had complained rather less than he had expected about the accommodations, although he could catch the stirrings in the Veil of small magics: cleaning spells, spells to make bedrolls comfortable, simple things. She did not share them with him, and he did not ask. They ate field rations, and it was not so different from traveling alone. Wolves accosted them once, and Vivienne froze them in place, shattering them, before Anders could react.
“A bit excessive,” said Vivienne, in response to him now. “Surely you made your point after, oh, the fourth, at least.”
“You don’t understand,” said Anders. “I don’t know how you don’t understand—weren’t you a prisoner? You lived your whole life in a Circle, and you felt no anger?”
Vivienne held her head high, and Justice noted the level set of her shoulders, the sturdy yet fine leathers she wore.
“My dear,” said Vivienne, “the Circle is not the only cage in the world. Did you not break open its doors only to find yourself in another, uglier one?”
“I found Hawke,” said Anders.
It was an oversimplification. First he’d found the Wardens, and then he’d found Darktown, and there had been more than a few stops along the way. There had been hunger and despair and exhaustion and fear.
But it was not a lie. There had also been Hawke.
It didn’t matter. She sighed, and gestured before them.
“We are here,” said Vivienne. “No doubt it has already been ransacked of all valuables, but the architecture remains. The Harrowing room will still retain its wards. There is no use in stripping those out of the foundation.”
The door was open. With a snap of her fingers, she lit the lanterns around the room.
Will we be able to walk into the wards? Anders asked Justice. Justice did its equivalence of a shrug. Anders was used to being unable to predict himself, and stepped over the threshold. It didn’t hurt. Vivienne eyed him critically, and followed him in once she was apparently satisfied.
She approached the bowl in the center, and began to pour lyrium into it.
“Will you read a passage from the Chant, too?” said Anders, intending to needle him.
Without looking up, she began to speak.
“Though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing can break me except Your absence. When I have lost all else, when my eyes fail me and the taste of blood fills my mouth, then in the pounding of my heart I hear the glory of creation. You have grieved as I have…” She paused, briefly. “We are alike in sorrow, sculptor and clay, comforting each other in our art… I cannot see the path. Perhaps there is only abyss. Trembling, I step forward, in darkness enveloped. Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide.”
She stopped there. Anders waited one breath, two breaths, before he could be sure she had meant to stop.
“You skipped some,” said Anders lightly, but the tone of her voice had sent chills down his spine. It was not the passage that had been read at his Harrowing. It was not a passage that, as far as he knew, had been read at any Harrowing. Usually they went for the ones about magic serving man, or whatever.
“It was not important today,” said Vivienne, the cold light of lyrium casting strange shadows on her face. “You recall, yes?”
Anders stepped forward.
“I should have told Varric where I was going,” he said.
“You are procrastinating,” said Vivienne, with clear disgust. “I will bear word to him of what happens to you.”
The implication of her words was not lost on Anders. Justice stepped forward, then Anders, following the movement through, then Justice again, because something in Anders’s heart screamed that it was not fair what happened to Hawke—it wasn’t fair that Anders lost him, after everything, to something so stupid as being the only person since Tevinter magisters centuries ago to step into the fucking Fade. They could right that wrong.
He put his hand in the lyrium—the good blue stuff, not the terrifying red stuff from Kirkwall—and then he was under, the room around him dark and warped.
“He was lost to a demon of Nightmare,” said Vivienne. “Do you understand what that means? It is fear.”
The Circle mages would conjure the demons in one’s Harrowing, but Anders would have to do this himself. Vivienne did not seem to be offering.
Very well then. Fear.
Anders Kristoff Justice in the Circle, screaming at an enormous cat in his first Harrowing, the demon—it had been rage—burning him, and he’d heard the templars trying to decide if they should act, which had ben worse than the demon. The first darkspawn he had ever seen, as the Hero of Ferelden leapt forward and began to hack them down—no, those weren’t the first darkspawn, Kristoff Justice had seen darkspawn and had not been afraid of them, for they had felt them coming with the power that Grey Wardens held. Those wretched fucking monsters in the caves below the Storm Coast. The battle of Kirkwall, the thing that had been Orsino not moments before and was now hurling itself at them—
Anders! Anders, it’s me!
Anders Kristoff Justice turned, and when he spoke, he spoke with three voices. The world, which had been shifting, misty like Kirkwall’s beaches in the morning, began to take shape. It was less comforting than he might have hoped, because all he saw was green dark skies, and a wet muddy swamp like ravine.
“How do I know it’s you?”
“It’s me,” said Hawke, smiling at him and holding out a hand. Something glinted in his eye, something purple.
Anders rolled his eyes.
“It was worth a try,” said the desire demon, shrugging, and dissolving.
Anders clutched his staff closer, and began to walk.
He had the distinct feeling he was going in circles, after some amount of time, although to Vivienne it probably seemed to be an instant so he wasn’t worried about her deciding he was done for and ending the little experiment with a bolt of lightning. But here, in the Fade, his feet were beginning to hurt, and the wet mud was seeping into his shoes.
He burnt a mark into the rocks beside him. He knew he passed the spot again ten minutes later, but the scorch mark was gone. He found a stuffed nug.
“What a wretched place,” he said aloud, and then the rocks around him spoke a name, the name he had been given by his mother, which he had told no one since he had arrived at Kinloch Hold, not even Hawke.
They spoke that name in a deep, bellowing echo, that seemed to rattle his bones.
“Hm,” said Anders. “That must be for someone else. Don’t know anyone by that name, myself.”
ANDERS.
“Ah,” said Anders. “Now, that! That is a message for me.”
YOU WILL NOT DIE HERE.
Anders opened his mouth, about to say something about how he thought this was a Fear demon and that was really a rather pleasant offer, and then it spoke again. YOUR SNIDE COMMENTS WILL NOT SAVE YOU, NOR DO THEY DRIVE ME OUT OF YOUR HEART, HOWEVER HARD YOU PRETEND THEY DO.
Anders took a deep breath.
JUSTICE.
It rumbled in his chest, and Justice hid from it, curling himself into Anders’s heart as a cat might have curled into a ball in its bed.
“What if I said he wasn’t home?” said Anders.
JUSTICE CANNOT THRIVE WHERE FEAR REIGNS, said Nightmare. FEAR DENIES JUSTICE, FEAR INVENTS HARM WHERE THERE IS NONE AND JUSTICE BECOMES VENGEANCE.
YOU HAVE NOTHING HERE. YOU ARE NOTHING HERE.
YOU WILL WANDER MY HALLS FOREVER, LOOKING FOR HAWKE, BUT YOU CAN’T SAVE HIM.
“Well, he’s somewhere,” said Anders. He stood still, because walking was getting him nowhere, and he really didn’t want to see any other demons. “And we lost him here, so you’ve got to have him.”
THIS IS MY REALM. YOU FIND WHAT I ALLOW YOU TO FIND. YOU WILL NEVER SEE WHAT I DO NOT LET YOU SEE.
“Fine, then I won’t see it,” said Anders, and he shut his eyes, and he thought of Vivienne saying, though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide, and what pushed him forward was not the light of the Maker. It was a hand on his back, guiding him as a lady might have been guided at a dance. Something leaned close to his ear, and told him, “When you return. Tell her that Bastien appreciated that she tried,” and then the hands were gone.
When he stepped forward, the water of the swamp no longer splashed beneath his feet, and he did not trip.
He sought not light, for Hawke had never truly done his best work in daylight, but he sought warmth—the warmth of the Hanged Man, too full of people for how late it was. The warmth of Hawke’s home with its fireplace always burning and his big smelly dog trying to crawl into your lap. He sought Hawke, the way he sought him in their shared bed in dark nights, reaching forward blindly, and as he did in their bed, he found Hawke.
And he knew it was Hawke, because he knew how Hawke smelled, how Hawke touched him, how Hawke laughed, he knew Hawke when he kissed him and Hawke kissed back.
(Hawke kissed back with tongue, and Anders, pleased by this, reciprocated gladly. He kissed Hawke through laughter, and his cheeks were wet, not with sorrow but with joy.)
Fear growled at them, shaking the world, but Anders had never been afraid when Hawke was by his side, and he slammed his staff down on the ground, and let Vivienne pull him out.
Vivienne peered at him. She inspected his eyes, pulling them open with the practiced, impersonal touch of a First Enchanter who had managed dozens of Harrowings—very nearly the touch of a physician, if you really wanted to take it that far. Anders submitted to the examination.
“I am no less or more than I was,” he told her. “But I was given a message: Bastien appreciated that you tried.”
He did not think he imagined her sharp intake of breath.
“You really must not listen to things you find in the Fade,” she said. “But it is true, at least.”
She turned her attention towards Hawke, who was panting slightly, looking flushed and not a little bit dazed. Anders hoped that it would pass successfully for “flustered by his rescue from a nightmare realm” but Vivienne might be perceptive.
If she saw anything untoward, she didn’t say so.
“Very well then,” she said. “You appear to be fully human. Welcome back, Champion of Kirkwall.”
Hawke put his head in his hands, and laughed. They were lit solely by the warm lamps of the room, the cold blue light of the lyrium having dispelled with its potency, and Hawke was so beautiful in that red light that Anders wanted to kiss him again.
“You came for me,” he said.
“Of course,” said Anders. “Of course I did. I couldn’t not.”
Vivienne allowed them to embrace, and then she said, “I shall return to Skyhold in the morning. I suppose you can stay here, if you can find some quarters that are sufficient.”
“What?” said Anders. “We have to bring him back to Skyhold—Varric thinks he’s dead!”
“I don’t see why you are so upset,” said Vivienne. “You said yourself you had run away from the Circle seven times previously. You will be fleeing here in the morning, will you not? Think of this as merely the eighth, and go as far as you can.”
“You can’t do this!” said Anders.
“Anders,” said Hawke quietly, taking his hand. “Anders, she’s right.”
“If I see you in Skyhold,” said Vivienne, “I will kill you myself. I will not allow you to sully the Inquisition with your presence any further.”
“Even if I help to heal people?” asked Anders.
Vivienne took a deep breath.
“I may recommend that you may help to heal people at one of our other camps. Once this situation is fully reported to Leliana and Cullen,” she said. “But something like you in Skyhold is a danger to our troops. The fact that this ritual was successful at all—I shall be writing papers on it myself I suppose, but only because I can’t let anyone else attempt anything similar. You are very powerful indeed, and this cannot be repeated.”
Anders grinned.
“I was never really a very strong mage anyway,” he said. “Just for healing magic, and only because it was useful. I can’t believe that worked.”
“On that point I am afraid we do agree,” said Vivienne. “My dear, if there was any justice in the world, you would be the food of a Nightmare demon right now.”
And, even if Anders could well attest to the presence of Justice in the world, he had nothing to say in response to that.
“Can you two stop getting yourselves kicked out of all my favorite establishments?” said Varric, in The Gull and Lantern.
They’d agreed to meet up here, since the Inquisitor’s business took her to the area every now and then, and now that all the rebel mages had been moved to Skyhold it had gotten quiet in Redcliffe. Quiet enough in this tavern, at least, that the innkeeper shot them a concerned look, and Anders knew they had just been placed on her mental watchlist of possible troublemakers. Varric didn’t seem to care, though, and had paid for a room upstairs with rather more money than the place seemed to see on a regular basis, so she let the comment slide for now. Anders thought it was rather a nice place, warm and cozily lit by firelight. The Inquisition’s songs didn’t seem to have made their way here yet, and the bard played something older and less rousing, which Anders thought was rather a relief.
“I seem to recall you didn’t even want me there in the first place,” said Anders.
“Because you always ruin the party with some weird mage shit!”
“I do miss it,” said Anders. “It was a fascinating place. I’ve never seen so many mages just… walking about freely. I’ve never felt like that before. Not even in Darktown.”
Hawke smiled at him.
“Do not congratulate him,” snapped Varric. “People fucking died, Hawke!”
Hawke shrugged, and took another swig of his ale.
“As if you didn’t turn all of this into being the viscount now,” said Hawke. “Varric Tethras, always making the best of a difficult situation.”
“I am not the viscount,” said Varric.
“Yet.”
“Well, I won’t be, either.”
“Not if Bran has anything to say about it.”
“That’s him taking his revenge on me,” said Varric. “You’re not around, so he’s taking it out on me. I always gotta clean up your messes. Maker’s breath, I fucking missed you.”
Hawke leaned over, and Anders practically felt Varric’s sigh when Hawke reached for him to clasp him in a one-armed hug—Hawke’s other hand was holding Anders’s, under the table—and press their foreheads together, something like a kiss and yet not so bold. Whatever this thing was between them was new and tender. Maybe even in time, Varric would learn to do something other than simply pine. Although, Anders had wondered about Varric renting a room with only one bed…
“I almost forgot,” said Varric, pulling away from Hawke. Evidently, he was still shy. “Madame de Fer sent me with something for you. I kind of didn’t think you were friends?”
“We’re not,” said Anders.
But it was a note, and it didn’t burn in his hand. He didn’t know why he’d expected it would. She preferred ice magic, after all.
I hope it pleases you to know that your cure for varghest bites has proved most useful in our travels, she had written. Be well. I am glad you found your Hawke.
“What did she say?” said Varric.
“I know you read it on your way here,” said Hawke, elbowing him. “Nosy bastard.”
“Okay, yeah, but I didn’t get it.”
“Tell her carrot received,” said Anders. “And that the eighth time was my favorite, actually. If it makes her feel any better.”
“Do you ever stop saying weird shit?” said Varric, but Anders made him repeat it. Hawke smiled, knowing what it meant (Anders had told him everything).
Yes, Anders supposed, he missed Skyhold. Hawke had no desire to see his home, destroyed as it had been by darkspawn, and so, they stayed here. It wasn’t the Inquisition, but there was an Inquisition presence here, and there were still healing spells to cast, refugees to point in the direction away from the war, bandits to fend off. Anders wondered if he would spend his whole life on the run. If someday, this would end in a manner that was as abrupt and dark and cruel as this peace had been painfully won.
And that was a silly thing to wonder. Of course it would. But it was not ending today, and Anders could be content with that.