A Separate Path - Chapter Ten (Part One)
Title: A Separate Path - Chapter Ten (Part One)
Series: Dragon Age 2
Characters: Anders, Hawke, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The aftermath of the battle against the qunari and the beginning of Meredith's rise to power.
The first day after the qunari battle, Anders spent curled up in bed, focusing what little energy he had on not weeping in pain. Everything hurt, his head most of all, and when he tried to draw on mana to heal himself it just made the pain worse, like burns on the inside of his skin. Emma brought him elfroot for the headache and tea so he'd have something in his stomach. Sometimes he slept, and when he was awake, he prayed for sleep again. It didn't hurt quite so badly when he was unconscious.
The second day was a bit better. He was able to drag himself out of bed and bathe and change clothes and consume an unholy amount of food before sleeping again. When Varric came by to talk with Emma, he tried to pay attention to the conversation, but he ended up passing out on the couch, his head on her shoulder. He woke up hours later in a dark study with a blanket over him and barely managed to stagger back upstairs before falling asleep again.
On the third day, Anders convinced himself that he felt well enough to go down to the clinic, if only for a few hours. Lowtown had borne the brunt of the attack, and the people there depended on him for healing. Pounce jumped up onto his shoulders and wouldn't be dislodged as he headed for the cellars. He ended up at the clinic for about twice as long as he'd planned, treating dozens of barely healed injuries from the battles. And there were plenty of people who came just to yell at him, to demand to know where he'd been, why he'd abandoned them. People had died in the two days he'd been gone, and while he knew that it would have been physically impossible for him to have done anything to help, it didn't really do much to relieve the guilt.
By hour six, he was feeling pretty fragile, and Pounce was yowling at him, seemingly worried. Anders put out the lantern and treated the last few patients waiting for him, and then the two more that’d shown up just as he was leaving, before finally trudging back up through the cellars to go home.
As soon as he reached the kitchen, Pounce sprang down from his shoulders and darted down the hall. Anders sighed and raked a hand through his hair, wondering vaguely how long it would take to stop feeling so exhausted all the time. Probably sooner if I'd stop pushing myself so damn hard, he thought wryly. Flames, when did I become such a blighted martyr?
There was a note on the table in Emma's barely legible scrawl, informing him that dinner was on the stove. Despite Orana's protests that it wasn't as good as her father's, her soup was still the best Anders had ever had. He ate two bowls while leaning against the counter and tossed a chunk of chicken to Mal when the dog came begging. It seemed the safest way to avoid getting tackled and devoured. Or slobbered on. Both were pretty terrible fates.
The house was quiet as he headed toward the stairs. Pounce's meowing from the study caught his attention, and he changed course, wondering if the cat had gotten stuck in his toy box again. Last time he'd done that he'd shredded the underside of the couch. Emma had not been pleased.
Pounce attacked Anders's ankles as soon as he opened the door. Emma sat in one of the chairs in front of the fire, chin in her hand, staring morosely at the flames. A smile flickered across her face when she saw him standing there. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Anders stepped around his cat and perched on the arm of the chair. “You okay?”
“Mm.” She leaned back and sighed. “I went to see Meredith today.”
He tensed. “Ah.”
Emma glanced up at him and stood abruptly, pushing him down into the chair, and then settled herself on his lap, her head on his shoulder. Anders smiled, quite pleased with this turn of events, and wrapped his arms around her. “How'd that go?” he prompted after a few moments.
She shrugged. “I feel rather like a whore at the moment, to be perfectly honest,” she replied with false lightness. Anders frowned at her, and she exhaled slowly. “I cut a deal.”
“What sort of deal?”
Emma shifted in his arms. “As long as I don't oppose Meredith, openly or in secret, she'll leave you and Merrill alone.”
“Ah,” he said again, staring at the fire. He wasn't quite sure how to feel about that-- relieved, on the one hand, that the Templars wouldn't be kicking in the door and dragging him away, but part of him felt guilty that he'd be sitting in safety and luxury while other mages suffered and hid. “She didn't ask for your support?”
She shook her head. “She and I both knew no one would buy it-- the woman with an apostate lover and a long history of supporting mages isn't going to change her politics that quickly. Everyone would know I'd been bought.”
Anders pressed a kiss to her temple. “Can't say I blame you.”
She snorted. “That makes one of us.”
“What else would you have done?”
“I don’t-I don’t know. I’m one of the most powerful people in Kirkwall right now, and that’s blighted terrifying.” Emma sat up enough to look at him. “But the nobility, collectively, owes me their lives. If I wanted, I could be Viscount by the end of the week.”
“And then Meredith would have your head on a pike three days later,” he said dryly.
Her lips quirked up in a smile. “Aveline will be pleased that someone’s reading those history books she keeps dropping off.” She looked away, gaze distant, and shook her head. “On the one hand, I really don’t want to be Viscount. I don’t want to be responsible for, very likely, kicking off a civil war when Meredith tries to depose me. I just want to keep everyone safe.”
“But...?” he asked, waiting for the other half.
She sighed. “I could get the nobility’s support and take the throne. And I could do something about this blighted city, drag it kicking and screaming into something resembling sane. Meredith’s going to destroy Maker-knows-how-many mages because I won’t stand against her.”
She was right. He knew that-- she had the power and influence to change Kirkwall, and she was sacrificing it for him. But... “ She’d try to kill you, Emma,” he said quietly, his arms tightening around her. “She’d try to kill all of us. And she does have an army backing her. Much as I hate to say it, our odds aren’t good. Nothing would change, other than the fact that we’d all be dead.” Or worse.
Emma shook her head and cuddled back against his chest. “I know,” she said. “The nobility will find a new Viscount soon enough, anyway. Then she’ll go back to her island, and this whole Champion thing should be enough to keep you and Merrill safe.”
“Yeah.” He hoped she was right. Deals with Templars tended to be fragile things. At the end of the day, the only law the Chantry respected was its own... and with Meredith, he wasn't even certain of that. “I almost wish I could have seen the two of you chatting over tea.”
She chuckled. “Oh, she well and truly hates me now,” she said. “I was extra charming. I think I nearly killed her when I started talking about the many talents of mages and how good some of them are with their hands.”
“You told the Knight-Commander of Kirkwall about our sex life,” he said flatly, eyes wide.
“Not in any detail,” she assured him. “Besides, it was totally worth it for the look on her face.” She paused for a moment, then continued contemplatively, “And I'm not sure I was telling her anything she didn't already know. The sexual tension between her and Orsino is downright smoldering.”
“I... what?”
“I'm serious,” she said. “I really should bring Varric with me next time I go to the Gallows. He'll be inspired for a new serial and distracted from writing about us.”
Anders smirked. “Everybody wins.”
“More or less.” She let out a sigh and slid her arms around him. Anders let his eyes close, and he was halfway asleep when she spoke again. “How was the clinic today?”
He made a face. “Shh. Don't ruin the moment.”
Emma sat up again, and he cracked his eyes open to see her smiling at him. “Don't fall asleep here,” she said as she got to her feet. “You're too tall for me to carry upstairs.”
“Mm.” He let her pull him out of the chair and half fell against her, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
He shrugged. “Dealing with Meredith. Taking care of me. Everything. I don't know.”
She laughed and hugged him back. “C'mon, you. Let's go to bed.”
--
Given that Emma had been attending funerals for the nobles killed in the qunari attack all week, Anders wasn’t too surprised when he came home to find her face-down on the bed, still dressed in her black gown. Both Pounce and Mal were cuddled up next to her, taking up the rest of the bed. Anders regarded the situation thoughtfully. “Any room for me on there?”
Emma halfway rolled over and looked up at him. She’d been crying, going by the blotches on her face and her bloodshot eyes, and she sniffled a bit as she sat up. “Shoo,” she said, waving her hand at Mal. The dog raised his head and whined a bit. “I know, but Anders is here now, and he can keep me company.” He whined again and put one paw on her leg. “No, of course he’s not replacing you.”
“Except for the part where I’m completely replacing him,” Anders muttered.
Mal practically grumbled. “You can stay at the end of the bed, how about that,” Emma suggested. With a sigh, the dog crawled away, settling in with his enormous head on his paws and staring mournfully at Emma.
Anders sat down and leaned against the headboard, angling his legs to keep his boots off the sheets, and held an arm out to Emma. She sighed and slid over to curl up next to him. Pounce climbed into his lap and settled into a neat ball, purring. “I’m so sick of these blighted funerals,” Emma said after a few moments. “I don’t know anyone there, and everyone wants to talk politics, and the prayers are all the same…” She scrubbed a hand over her eyes. “I miss her,” she murmured.
“I know.” He turned his head and pressed his lips to her hair, lightly stroking his thumb across her shoulder.
“I miss all of them. Mother and Father and Carver and Beth… Beth’s the only one I’ve got left, and she’s in another country.” She shook her head. “I’m only twenty-six, three-fifths of my family shouldn’t be dead already. It’s just… it’s not fair.” She sighed again and fell silent, absently tracing her fingers over the stitching on his coat. “I wish they were here,” she murmured. “Or even just one of them. I’d even take Carver, the little prat.” She chuckled, a bit tearfully. Anders frowned. She almost never talked about her brother. He wished he could have met him, even if he was as annoying as Emma and Beth claimed. They’d loved Carver, and he was a part of their lives that he’d never know.
“Not that you and-and our friends aren’t wonderful,” she continued, a bit hastily, “because you are, it’s just-I miss my family.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I understand.”
Emma tensed suddenly. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, pressing her face against his shoulder. “I’m whining about my family and you haven’t even seen yours in-in however long.”
“You’re not whining,” he said with a smile. “And it’s fine. That was-that was all a long time ago.”
She was quiet for a few moments. “How long?” she asked, a little hesitant. “I mean… how old were you, when…?”
Anders sighed. They never talked about this, either. She’d told him once that her father never spoke of his life before he’d become an apostate, and she seemed to assume that Anders would follow a similar pattern. She rarely asked him about the Circle and never about his life before that. Generally speaking, he didn’t like talking about it, didn’t like remembering it, but… well, if he wished he knew about Carver, then maybe she wished she knew more about his family. “Twelve,” he said. “I-I burned the barn down.” Even after all this time, he still felt twinges of guilt and fear with that admission.
Another short silence. “Where was your family from?” she asked, sounding a little confused.
“The Anderfels, originally, but that was well before I was born. They moved to Gwaren when my parents were young. That’s where I grew up.”
“Huh.”
She still seemed a bit confused, and Anders shifted position slightly to look down at her. “What?”
“Oh, nothing, it’s just-your accent is straight-up Denerim,” she said. “I assumed that’s where you were from.”
He grinned and huffed out a faint laugh. “Well, thank you,” he said. “Took years to learn. I’m glad it’s so convincing.”
Emma straightened up and leaned against the headboard beside him, eying him curiously. “That’s not your real accent?”
“It is now,” he said. “But I had to teach myself to talk like this. My original accent was, well-did you ever live in Gwaren?”
She nodded. “For about a year when I was nine or so. That’s why I was confused, I know that accent, no r’s or h’s in anything,” she said, dropping into a brief imitation of the dialect.
He laughed. “Okay, and have you ever heard an Anderfels accent?”
“A few times, around Kirkwall.”
“Right. So imagine the worst parts of both those accents combined, and that’s what I sounded like when I showed up at the Tower,” he said, shaking his head. “It was bad enough being stuck in classes with six-year-olds, but throw in the weird accent-- I didn’t make a lot of friends my first couple of years.” He shrugged. “So I figured out how to talk like the popular kids and studied hard enough to get caught up with the apprentices my age.” Emma smiled sympathetically and hugged his arm. “Not that it made much of a difference,” he continued wryly. “I had to escape from the Tower before I stopped getting made fun of.”
“No wonder you kept running away.”
“Yeah. You’d think that the shared oppression would give us some common ground, but…” he trailed off and sighed. He’d never had many friends in the Tower. People he got along with, sure, people he’d drag into dark corners and abandoned closets, definitely, but no one that he really trusted. Especially not after Karl was sent away.
“You ever try to go back home?” she asked.
“No,” he said shortly. “The whole point was to escape the Tower, not get sent back.”
Emma frowned at him. “What do you mean, your family… they turned you in?”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Most mages’ families do,” he said, turning his attention to Pounce, scratching the cat’s head to distract himself. “Yours was the exception. The very rare exception.” He risked a glance over at her; she was watching him, the curiosity nearly drowned out by sadness. “I was actually pretty jealous of Bethany, when I first met the two of you… the fact that you and-and Leandra did so much to keep her safe, accepted her, loved her…”
He blinked, realizing belatedly that he was twisting his fingers together anxiously over Pounce’s head. Emma slid her arms around his chest, her cheek resting on his shoulder. “What happened?” she asked quietly. “If you-I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, I just…” She trailed off and briefly tightened her arms around him.
Anders sighed. In for a copper... “I’d managed to keep my magic secret for almost a year,” he began, voice low, staring blindly ahead. “I knew it was-dangerous and probably evil, that’s what the Chantry said, but I could make ice or lightning in my hands, and I was just a kid, you know, I thought it was fun… I’d sneak off into the barn to practice sometimes. Couple of weeks before First Day, I was playing with lightning in there when one of my cousins startled me.” He waved a hand vaguely in the air. “Huge blast of lightning, all over the hayloft. The whole thing started to burn, and I just-I ran.
“They caught up with me, though, my uncles and cousins, and dragged me back.” Anders managed a mirthless chuckle. “Sign of things to come, I suppose. They dumped me with my father, and…” His chest ached at the memory, the furious, disgusted look on his father’s face, his mother sobbing brokenly, everyone else in the village just staring. “He locked me in the cellar and sent for the Templars.”
Emma sat up to look at him. “For how long?” she asked. “How long were you…?”
“Three days.” His very first stint in solitary confinement, really.
She blinked at him incredulously. “Your father locked you in a cellar for three days in the middle of winter,” she repeated in a mix of horror and shock.
He looked away. “It was a long time ago.”
Emma stared for a few seconds, then practically tackled him into the headboard, pinning his arms to his sides in a crushing embrace. He let out a startled yelp; Pounce yowled unhappily and extricated himself to go sit on Emma's pillow. Anders worked one arm free and hugged her back. “I'm fine, love,” he said, shifting around slightly so he could breathe. “Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment.”
She just tightened her arms around him. “Never again,” she mumbled into his neck. “You know that, right? I'd never let that happen. Never.”
He nodded slowly. It had taken years of looking over his shoulder, but he believed her. No one was going to take him back. “Yeah. I know.” He let out a slow breath and gently pushed Emma away. “Okay. We're going out.”
“We are?”
He nodded somberly. “Otherwise we'll both sit around here brooding, and I don't want either of us to end up like Fenris. I'm not sure Kirkwall could handle that much angst.”
“I don't know,” she said, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “Have you seen this city?”
“Have you seen Fenris?”
She paused. “Fair point.” She leaned in and stole a kiss and then climbed out of bed, scratching Mal behind the ears as she headed for her wardrobe. “Where are we going?”
“I don't know. Hanged Man? I'm sure Varric's up for a game of cards or drinking or asking us extremely personal questions.”
Emma paused in unlacing her dress and grinned. “We could help Donnic pry Aveline away from her desk first,” she said. “Then Varric will have multiple targets.”
“Oooh, good plan. Should I get the crowbar?” Anders asked, sliding off the bed.
“Hm. Aveline really didn't think that was funny the last time.”
“That's a yes, then.”
“Of course.”
--
Summer in Kirkwall was a fairly reliable season. It always brought horrifying smells from the sewers, oppressive humidity, and a marked increase in the number of bloody noses and broken bones that came into the clinic. The hot weather shortened tempers, and fistfights became increasingly common. The number of people slinking in with scraped knuckles and bruises, always looking vaguely ashamed, kept Anders busy throughout the summer months.
He finished healing a sullen teenager’s black eye and shooed her out the door with a warning to be more careful and then moved to the next patient. The man was holding a bloody rag to his bicep and staring into the middle distance, looking annoyed more than pained. “Let’s see here,” Anders murmured, easing the makeshift bandage away. “Oh, someone thought to bring a knife to the fight! Such foresight.” He prodded at the wound and glanced up at the man. “Was this just today?”
The man nodded, and Anders flashed him a reassuring smile. “Good. No time for infection to set in. I’ll just heal this and you can--”
The door slammed open, wood splintering as an armored boot unnecessarily kicked it in. Anders jumped to his feet, heart pounding, as a pair of Templars strolled in. “Heard a rumor about an apostate hiding out in the sewers,” the lead Templar drawled, looking around the silent room.
He swallowed hard, trying to rein in the choking surge of panic, hands clenched into fists at his side. Stupid to think that Meredith would honor any deal, he should have just convinced Emma to run with him as soon as the Arishok was dead, she promised, she said this wouldn’t happen, this can’t be-
“Oh, wait,” the second one said, feigning surprise. “He’s the special one, right? We aren’t supposed to touch him.”
Anders blinked, the panic ebbing slightly in favor of confusion. “Oh, yeah,” the leader said. “This one’s the Champion’s bitch, isn’t he?” He looked Anders up and down with a sneer. “But we still gotta make sure he’s not hiding anything dangerous here,” he continued. He strode into the room, coming to a stop a mere six inches from Anders. “That won’t be a problem, right, mage?”
He just glared at the man, jaw clenched, practically vibrating with the effort of keeping himself from detonating this end of Darktown. “I asked you a question,” the Templar said, poking Anders’s shoulder with a gauntleted finger.
Anders rocked back on his heels. “Thought you weren’t supposed to touch me,” he said, voice low, nails digging into his palms.
“Sass me again and you’ll find out exactly what we can do without breaking the rules,” the man breathed. “Now answer me.”
For a second, he considered telling the Templar that it was something of a problem to have them in his clinic at the moment, and perhaps they could come back some other time, maybe when he’d invited a few of his well-armed friends over for tea. But the threat of what they might do-not to him, but to his patients, collaborators and criminals as far as the Chantry was concerned-made him bite his tongue and nod. “No problem at all,” he ground out.
The Templar bared his teeth in something approximating a smile. “And they said you were difficult,” he said, shouldering Anders out of the way as he walked past. “She must keep you on a tight leash.”
Anders kept his gaze straight ahead, trying not to look at the cracked hinges or the hole in his door. The second Templar sauntered past, smirking. He drew in a few deep breaths as they ripped down the sheet separating his storeroom from the rest of the clinic, and then he went back to his patient. “Let’s get this taken care of,” he murmured, avoiding the man’s shocked gaze as he cast the spell. Anders glanced around at his patients for a familiar face. “Rita, do me a favor and put the lantern out?” he asked. The woman nodded, leaving her daughter sitting on another cot, and stepped around the battered door to extinguish the light.
He finished with the man’s arm and stood up. “There, good as new.” The man nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, a surprising gesture of solidarity, before heading back out. Something wooden smashed against the stone floor, and Rita winced as she came back inside. Anders gritted his teeth and crouched down in front of the young girl. “What’s--”
His question was swallowed by the crash of shattering glass. Anders flinched and closed his eyes for a moment. He’d just picked up that crate of potion bottles two days ago. “Nothing illegal in there,” one of the Templars commented, glass crunching under his boots. Anders was suddenly, desperately glad that he’d left Pounce at home. They seemed like the sort that would dropkick a cat for fun.
He swallowed hard and shook his head to clear it. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked, glancing between Rita and her daughter.
Rita winced again. “She, ah, she was sick a few weeks ago,” she explained. “But she hasn’t been able to shake this cough…”
He focused his attention on his remaining patients, doing his level best to ignore the Templars as they finished with his store room and moved on to the desk, tearing out the drawers and dumping everything on the floor. A few more people trickled in, familiar faces, Edan and Ellis and Marjorie, though none of them appeared to be injured. Ellis just nodded at him as they drifted around the room, taking up casually alert positions around the clinic, watching the Templars.
Anders turned away, unable to look at them, gratitude and guilt twisting his stomach into knots. He ushered his last patient out the door and leaned against one of the pillars, arms folded over his chest, gaze locked on the ground. The tension between his shoulders just got worse with every crash.
Eventually, the Templars ran out of things to break. “Well, well, looks like everything’s in order,” the lead Templar commented. The other one snickered. “For now, anyway.” He came to a stop in front of Anders and poked him in the shoulder again. “You look at me when I’m talking to you, mage.” Anders raised his eyes but otherwise didn’t move. “Best behave yourself,” the Templar continued. “We’ll be watching.”
With that, they strolled back out, slamming through the door again and tearing one of the hinges off the frame. Anders leaned his head back against the pillar and exhaled slowly, then forced himself to look at the clinic. It was a disaster. His workbench had been gutted, and every crate and box in storage had been smashed or dumped to the floor. The contents of his desk were scattered across the ground, the stacks of parchment greedily soaking up the spilled ink-years of patient notes, destroyed.
“Well,” he said, straining for levity, “I’ve been meaning to redecorate, anyway.”
Ellis pushed off the wall and shook his head. “Friend of mine’s a carpenter,” he said, heading towards the former store room. “I’ll have him come down and fix the door tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to--”
“By the Void I don’t,” he cut in. “You delivered my girls, took care of them when they were sick-flames, this is the bloody least I can do!” He gestured at the wreckage and raised an eyebrow. “And don’t think you’re getting rid of us before we help clean up.”
Anders swallowed hard. “I… thank you.”
Edan had already started collecting the papers, salvaging what he could. Marjorie patted him on the arm. “I’m sure Gerard will get you more bottles, after what you did for his boy’s hand,” she said. “D’you have a broom?”
His shoulders slumped and he nodded. “In the back corner,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Assuming they didn’t break it.”
“Oh, we’ll make do, even if they did,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get this place set to rights.”
Anders nodded again and pushed off the pillar, heading over to help Edan with the desk. Flames, I hope Emma doesn’t find out about this.
Series: Dragon Age 2
Characters: Anders, Hawke, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The aftermath of the battle against the qunari and the beginning of Meredith's rise to power.
The first day after the qunari battle, Anders spent curled up in bed, focusing what little energy he had on not weeping in pain. Everything hurt, his head most of all, and when he tried to draw on mana to heal himself it just made the pain worse, like burns on the inside of his skin. Emma brought him elfroot for the headache and tea so he'd have something in his stomach. Sometimes he slept, and when he was awake, he prayed for sleep again. It didn't hurt quite so badly when he was unconscious.
The second day was a bit better. He was able to drag himself out of bed and bathe and change clothes and consume an unholy amount of food before sleeping again. When Varric came by to talk with Emma, he tried to pay attention to the conversation, but he ended up passing out on the couch, his head on her shoulder. He woke up hours later in a dark study with a blanket over him and barely managed to stagger back upstairs before falling asleep again.
On the third day, Anders convinced himself that he felt well enough to go down to the clinic, if only for a few hours. Lowtown had borne the brunt of the attack, and the people there depended on him for healing. Pounce jumped up onto his shoulders and wouldn't be dislodged as he headed for the cellars. He ended up at the clinic for about twice as long as he'd planned, treating dozens of barely healed injuries from the battles. And there were plenty of people who came just to yell at him, to demand to know where he'd been, why he'd abandoned them. People had died in the two days he'd been gone, and while he knew that it would have been physically impossible for him to have done anything to help, it didn't really do much to relieve the guilt.
By hour six, he was feeling pretty fragile, and Pounce was yowling at him, seemingly worried. Anders put out the lantern and treated the last few patients waiting for him, and then the two more that’d shown up just as he was leaving, before finally trudging back up through the cellars to go home.
As soon as he reached the kitchen, Pounce sprang down from his shoulders and darted down the hall. Anders sighed and raked a hand through his hair, wondering vaguely how long it would take to stop feeling so exhausted all the time. Probably sooner if I'd stop pushing myself so damn hard, he thought wryly. Flames, when did I become such a blighted martyr?
There was a note on the table in Emma's barely legible scrawl, informing him that dinner was on the stove. Despite Orana's protests that it wasn't as good as her father's, her soup was still the best Anders had ever had. He ate two bowls while leaning against the counter and tossed a chunk of chicken to Mal when the dog came begging. It seemed the safest way to avoid getting tackled and devoured. Or slobbered on. Both were pretty terrible fates.
The house was quiet as he headed toward the stairs. Pounce's meowing from the study caught his attention, and he changed course, wondering if the cat had gotten stuck in his toy box again. Last time he'd done that he'd shredded the underside of the couch. Emma had not been pleased.
Pounce attacked Anders's ankles as soon as he opened the door. Emma sat in one of the chairs in front of the fire, chin in her hand, staring morosely at the flames. A smile flickered across her face when she saw him standing there. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Anders stepped around his cat and perched on the arm of the chair. “You okay?”
“Mm.” She leaned back and sighed. “I went to see Meredith today.”
He tensed. “Ah.”
Emma glanced up at him and stood abruptly, pushing him down into the chair, and then settled herself on his lap, her head on his shoulder. Anders smiled, quite pleased with this turn of events, and wrapped his arms around her. “How'd that go?” he prompted after a few moments.
She shrugged. “I feel rather like a whore at the moment, to be perfectly honest,” she replied with false lightness. Anders frowned at her, and she exhaled slowly. “I cut a deal.”
“What sort of deal?”
Emma shifted in his arms. “As long as I don't oppose Meredith, openly or in secret, she'll leave you and Merrill alone.”
“Ah,” he said again, staring at the fire. He wasn't quite sure how to feel about that-- relieved, on the one hand, that the Templars wouldn't be kicking in the door and dragging him away, but part of him felt guilty that he'd be sitting in safety and luxury while other mages suffered and hid. “She didn't ask for your support?”
She shook her head. “She and I both knew no one would buy it-- the woman with an apostate lover and a long history of supporting mages isn't going to change her politics that quickly. Everyone would know I'd been bought.”
Anders pressed a kiss to her temple. “Can't say I blame you.”
She snorted. “That makes one of us.”
“What else would you have done?”
“I don’t-I don’t know. I’m one of the most powerful people in Kirkwall right now, and that’s blighted terrifying.” Emma sat up enough to look at him. “But the nobility, collectively, owes me their lives. If I wanted, I could be Viscount by the end of the week.”
“And then Meredith would have your head on a pike three days later,” he said dryly.
Her lips quirked up in a smile. “Aveline will be pleased that someone’s reading those history books she keeps dropping off.” She looked away, gaze distant, and shook her head. “On the one hand, I really don’t want to be Viscount. I don’t want to be responsible for, very likely, kicking off a civil war when Meredith tries to depose me. I just want to keep everyone safe.”
“But...?” he asked, waiting for the other half.
She sighed. “I could get the nobility’s support and take the throne. And I could do something about this blighted city, drag it kicking and screaming into something resembling sane. Meredith’s going to destroy Maker-knows-how-many mages because I won’t stand against her.”
She was right. He knew that-- she had the power and influence to change Kirkwall, and she was sacrificing it for him. But... “ She’d try to kill you, Emma,” he said quietly, his arms tightening around her. “She’d try to kill all of us. And she does have an army backing her. Much as I hate to say it, our odds aren’t good. Nothing would change, other than the fact that we’d all be dead.” Or worse.
Emma shook her head and cuddled back against his chest. “I know,” she said. “The nobility will find a new Viscount soon enough, anyway. Then she’ll go back to her island, and this whole Champion thing should be enough to keep you and Merrill safe.”
“Yeah.” He hoped she was right. Deals with Templars tended to be fragile things. At the end of the day, the only law the Chantry respected was its own... and with Meredith, he wasn't even certain of that. “I almost wish I could have seen the two of you chatting over tea.”
She chuckled. “Oh, she well and truly hates me now,” she said. “I was extra charming. I think I nearly killed her when I started talking about the many talents of mages and how good some of them are with their hands.”
“You told the Knight-Commander of Kirkwall about our sex life,” he said flatly, eyes wide.
“Not in any detail,” she assured him. “Besides, it was totally worth it for the look on her face.” She paused for a moment, then continued contemplatively, “And I'm not sure I was telling her anything she didn't already know. The sexual tension between her and Orsino is downright smoldering.”
“I... what?”
“I'm serious,” she said. “I really should bring Varric with me next time I go to the Gallows. He'll be inspired for a new serial and distracted from writing about us.”
Anders smirked. “Everybody wins.”
“More or less.” She let out a sigh and slid her arms around him. Anders let his eyes close, and he was halfway asleep when she spoke again. “How was the clinic today?”
He made a face. “Shh. Don't ruin the moment.”
Emma sat up again, and he cracked his eyes open to see her smiling at him. “Don't fall asleep here,” she said as she got to her feet. “You're too tall for me to carry upstairs.”
“Mm.” He let her pull him out of the chair and half fell against her, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
He shrugged. “Dealing with Meredith. Taking care of me. Everything. I don't know.”
She laughed and hugged him back. “C'mon, you. Let's go to bed.”
--
Given that Emma had been attending funerals for the nobles killed in the qunari attack all week, Anders wasn’t too surprised when he came home to find her face-down on the bed, still dressed in her black gown. Both Pounce and Mal were cuddled up next to her, taking up the rest of the bed. Anders regarded the situation thoughtfully. “Any room for me on there?”
Emma halfway rolled over and looked up at him. She’d been crying, going by the blotches on her face and her bloodshot eyes, and she sniffled a bit as she sat up. “Shoo,” she said, waving her hand at Mal. The dog raised his head and whined a bit. “I know, but Anders is here now, and he can keep me company.” He whined again and put one paw on her leg. “No, of course he’s not replacing you.”
“Except for the part where I’m completely replacing him,” Anders muttered.
Mal practically grumbled. “You can stay at the end of the bed, how about that,” Emma suggested. With a sigh, the dog crawled away, settling in with his enormous head on his paws and staring mournfully at Emma.
Anders sat down and leaned against the headboard, angling his legs to keep his boots off the sheets, and held an arm out to Emma. She sighed and slid over to curl up next to him. Pounce climbed into his lap and settled into a neat ball, purring. “I’m so sick of these blighted funerals,” Emma said after a few moments. “I don’t know anyone there, and everyone wants to talk politics, and the prayers are all the same…” She scrubbed a hand over her eyes. “I miss her,” she murmured.
“I know.” He turned his head and pressed his lips to her hair, lightly stroking his thumb across her shoulder.
“I miss all of them. Mother and Father and Carver and Beth… Beth’s the only one I’ve got left, and she’s in another country.” She shook her head. “I’m only twenty-six, three-fifths of my family shouldn’t be dead already. It’s just… it’s not fair.” She sighed again and fell silent, absently tracing her fingers over the stitching on his coat. “I wish they were here,” she murmured. “Or even just one of them. I’d even take Carver, the little prat.” She chuckled, a bit tearfully. Anders frowned. She almost never talked about her brother. He wished he could have met him, even if he was as annoying as Emma and Beth claimed. They’d loved Carver, and he was a part of their lives that he’d never know.
“Not that you and-and our friends aren’t wonderful,” she continued, a bit hastily, “because you are, it’s just-I miss my family.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I understand.”
Emma tensed suddenly. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, pressing her face against his shoulder. “I’m whining about my family and you haven’t even seen yours in-in however long.”
“You’re not whining,” he said with a smile. “And it’s fine. That was-that was all a long time ago.”
She was quiet for a few moments. “How long?” she asked, a little hesitant. “I mean… how old were you, when…?”
Anders sighed. They never talked about this, either. She’d told him once that her father never spoke of his life before he’d become an apostate, and she seemed to assume that Anders would follow a similar pattern. She rarely asked him about the Circle and never about his life before that. Generally speaking, he didn’t like talking about it, didn’t like remembering it, but… well, if he wished he knew about Carver, then maybe she wished she knew more about his family. “Twelve,” he said. “I-I burned the barn down.” Even after all this time, he still felt twinges of guilt and fear with that admission.
Another short silence. “Where was your family from?” she asked, sounding a little confused.
“The Anderfels, originally, but that was well before I was born. They moved to Gwaren when my parents were young. That’s where I grew up.”
“Huh.”
She still seemed a bit confused, and Anders shifted position slightly to look down at her. “What?”
“Oh, nothing, it’s just-your accent is straight-up Denerim,” she said. “I assumed that’s where you were from.”
He grinned and huffed out a faint laugh. “Well, thank you,” he said. “Took years to learn. I’m glad it’s so convincing.”
Emma straightened up and leaned against the headboard beside him, eying him curiously. “That’s not your real accent?”
“It is now,” he said. “But I had to teach myself to talk like this. My original accent was, well-did you ever live in Gwaren?”
She nodded. “For about a year when I was nine or so. That’s why I was confused, I know that accent, no r’s or h’s in anything,” she said, dropping into a brief imitation of the dialect.
He laughed. “Okay, and have you ever heard an Anderfels accent?”
“A few times, around Kirkwall.”
“Right. So imagine the worst parts of both those accents combined, and that’s what I sounded like when I showed up at the Tower,” he said, shaking his head. “It was bad enough being stuck in classes with six-year-olds, but throw in the weird accent-- I didn’t make a lot of friends my first couple of years.” He shrugged. “So I figured out how to talk like the popular kids and studied hard enough to get caught up with the apprentices my age.” Emma smiled sympathetically and hugged his arm. “Not that it made much of a difference,” he continued wryly. “I had to escape from the Tower before I stopped getting made fun of.”
“No wonder you kept running away.”
“Yeah. You’d think that the shared oppression would give us some common ground, but…” he trailed off and sighed. He’d never had many friends in the Tower. People he got along with, sure, people he’d drag into dark corners and abandoned closets, definitely, but no one that he really trusted. Especially not after Karl was sent away.
“You ever try to go back home?” she asked.
“No,” he said shortly. “The whole point was to escape the Tower, not get sent back.”
Emma frowned at him. “What do you mean, your family… they turned you in?”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Most mages’ families do,” he said, turning his attention to Pounce, scratching the cat’s head to distract himself. “Yours was the exception. The very rare exception.” He risked a glance over at her; she was watching him, the curiosity nearly drowned out by sadness. “I was actually pretty jealous of Bethany, when I first met the two of you… the fact that you and-and Leandra did so much to keep her safe, accepted her, loved her…”
He blinked, realizing belatedly that he was twisting his fingers together anxiously over Pounce’s head. Emma slid her arms around his chest, her cheek resting on his shoulder. “What happened?” she asked quietly. “If you-I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, I just…” She trailed off and briefly tightened her arms around him.
Anders sighed. In for a copper... “I’d managed to keep my magic secret for almost a year,” he began, voice low, staring blindly ahead. “I knew it was-dangerous and probably evil, that’s what the Chantry said, but I could make ice or lightning in my hands, and I was just a kid, you know, I thought it was fun… I’d sneak off into the barn to practice sometimes. Couple of weeks before First Day, I was playing with lightning in there when one of my cousins startled me.” He waved a hand vaguely in the air. “Huge blast of lightning, all over the hayloft. The whole thing started to burn, and I just-I ran.
“They caught up with me, though, my uncles and cousins, and dragged me back.” Anders managed a mirthless chuckle. “Sign of things to come, I suppose. They dumped me with my father, and…” His chest ached at the memory, the furious, disgusted look on his father’s face, his mother sobbing brokenly, everyone else in the village just staring. “He locked me in the cellar and sent for the Templars.”
Emma sat up to look at him. “For how long?” she asked. “How long were you…?”
“Three days.” His very first stint in solitary confinement, really.
She blinked at him incredulously. “Your father locked you in a cellar for three days in the middle of winter,” she repeated in a mix of horror and shock.
He looked away. “It was a long time ago.”
Emma stared for a few seconds, then practically tackled him into the headboard, pinning his arms to his sides in a crushing embrace. He let out a startled yelp; Pounce yowled unhappily and extricated himself to go sit on Emma's pillow. Anders worked one arm free and hugged her back. “I'm fine, love,” he said, shifting around slightly so he could breathe. “Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment.”
She just tightened her arms around him. “Never again,” she mumbled into his neck. “You know that, right? I'd never let that happen. Never.”
He nodded slowly. It had taken years of looking over his shoulder, but he believed her. No one was going to take him back. “Yeah. I know.” He let out a slow breath and gently pushed Emma away. “Okay. We're going out.”
“We are?”
He nodded somberly. “Otherwise we'll both sit around here brooding, and I don't want either of us to end up like Fenris. I'm not sure Kirkwall could handle that much angst.”
“I don't know,” she said, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “Have you seen this city?”
“Have you seen Fenris?”
She paused. “Fair point.” She leaned in and stole a kiss and then climbed out of bed, scratching Mal behind the ears as she headed for her wardrobe. “Where are we going?”
“I don't know. Hanged Man? I'm sure Varric's up for a game of cards or drinking or asking us extremely personal questions.”
Emma paused in unlacing her dress and grinned. “We could help Donnic pry Aveline away from her desk first,” she said. “Then Varric will have multiple targets.”
“Oooh, good plan. Should I get the crowbar?” Anders asked, sliding off the bed.
“Hm. Aveline really didn't think that was funny the last time.”
“That's a yes, then.”
“Of course.”
--
Summer in Kirkwall was a fairly reliable season. It always brought horrifying smells from the sewers, oppressive humidity, and a marked increase in the number of bloody noses and broken bones that came into the clinic. The hot weather shortened tempers, and fistfights became increasingly common. The number of people slinking in with scraped knuckles and bruises, always looking vaguely ashamed, kept Anders busy throughout the summer months.
He finished healing a sullen teenager’s black eye and shooed her out the door with a warning to be more careful and then moved to the next patient. The man was holding a bloody rag to his bicep and staring into the middle distance, looking annoyed more than pained. “Let’s see here,” Anders murmured, easing the makeshift bandage away. “Oh, someone thought to bring a knife to the fight! Such foresight.” He prodded at the wound and glanced up at the man. “Was this just today?”
The man nodded, and Anders flashed him a reassuring smile. “Good. No time for infection to set in. I’ll just heal this and you can--”
The door slammed open, wood splintering as an armored boot unnecessarily kicked it in. Anders jumped to his feet, heart pounding, as a pair of Templars strolled in. “Heard a rumor about an apostate hiding out in the sewers,” the lead Templar drawled, looking around the silent room.
He swallowed hard, trying to rein in the choking surge of panic, hands clenched into fists at his side. Stupid to think that Meredith would honor any deal, he should have just convinced Emma to run with him as soon as the Arishok was dead, she promised, she said this wouldn’t happen, this can’t be-
“Oh, wait,” the second one said, feigning surprise. “He’s the special one, right? We aren’t supposed to touch him.”
Anders blinked, the panic ebbing slightly in favor of confusion. “Oh, yeah,” the leader said. “This one’s the Champion’s bitch, isn’t he?” He looked Anders up and down with a sneer. “But we still gotta make sure he’s not hiding anything dangerous here,” he continued. He strode into the room, coming to a stop a mere six inches from Anders. “That won’t be a problem, right, mage?”
He just glared at the man, jaw clenched, practically vibrating with the effort of keeping himself from detonating this end of Darktown. “I asked you a question,” the Templar said, poking Anders’s shoulder with a gauntleted finger.
Anders rocked back on his heels. “Thought you weren’t supposed to touch me,” he said, voice low, nails digging into his palms.
“Sass me again and you’ll find out exactly what we can do without breaking the rules,” the man breathed. “Now answer me.”
For a second, he considered telling the Templar that it was something of a problem to have them in his clinic at the moment, and perhaps they could come back some other time, maybe when he’d invited a few of his well-armed friends over for tea. But the threat of what they might do-not to him, but to his patients, collaborators and criminals as far as the Chantry was concerned-made him bite his tongue and nod. “No problem at all,” he ground out.
The Templar bared his teeth in something approximating a smile. “And they said you were difficult,” he said, shouldering Anders out of the way as he walked past. “She must keep you on a tight leash.”
Anders kept his gaze straight ahead, trying not to look at the cracked hinges or the hole in his door. The second Templar sauntered past, smirking. He drew in a few deep breaths as they ripped down the sheet separating his storeroom from the rest of the clinic, and then he went back to his patient. “Let’s get this taken care of,” he murmured, avoiding the man’s shocked gaze as he cast the spell. Anders glanced around at his patients for a familiar face. “Rita, do me a favor and put the lantern out?” he asked. The woman nodded, leaving her daughter sitting on another cot, and stepped around the battered door to extinguish the light.
He finished with the man’s arm and stood up. “There, good as new.” The man nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, a surprising gesture of solidarity, before heading back out. Something wooden smashed against the stone floor, and Rita winced as she came back inside. Anders gritted his teeth and crouched down in front of the young girl. “What’s--”
His question was swallowed by the crash of shattering glass. Anders flinched and closed his eyes for a moment. He’d just picked up that crate of potion bottles two days ago. “Nothing illegal in there,” one of the Templars commented, glass crunching under his boots. Anders was suddenly, desperately glad that he’d left Pounce at home. They seemed like the sort that would dropkick a cat for fun.
He swallowed hard and shook his head to clear it. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked, glancing between Rita and her daughter.
Rita winced again. “She, ah, she was sick a few weeks ago,” she explained. “But she hasn’t been able to shake this cough…”
He focused his attention on his remaining patients, doing his level best to ignore the Templars as they finished with his store room and moved on to the desk, tearing out the drawers and dumping everything on the floor. A few more people trickled in, familiar faces, Edan and Ellis and Marjorie, though none of them appeared to be injured. Ellis just nodded at him as they drifted around the room, taking up casually alert positions around the clinic, watching the Templars.
Anders turned away, unable to look at them, gratitude and guilt twisting his stomach into knots. He ushered his last patient out the door and leaned against one of the pillars, arms folded over his chest, gaze locked on the ground. The tension between his shoulders just got worse with every crash.
Eventually, the Templars ran out of things to break. “Well, well, looks like everything’s in order,” the lead Templar commented. The other one snickered. “For now, anyway.” He came to a stop in front of Anders and poked him in the shoulder again. “You look at me when I’m talking to you, mage.” Anders raised his eyes but otherwise didn’t move. “Best behave yourself,” the Templar continued. “We’ll be watching.”
With that, they strolled back out, slamming through the door again and tearing one of the hinges off the frame. Anders leaned his head back against the pillar and exhaled slowly, then forced himself to look at the clinic. It was a disaster. His workbench had been gutted, and every crate and box in storage had been smashed or dumped to the floor. The contents of his desk were scattered across the ground, the stacks of parchment greedily soaking up the spilled ink-years of patient notes, destroyed.
“Well,” he said, straining for levity, “I’ve been meaning to redecorate, anyway.”
Ellis pushed off the wall and shook his head. “Friend of mine’s a carpenter,” he said, heading towards the former store room. “I’ll have him come down and fix the door tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to--”
“By the Void I don’t,” he cut in. “You delivered my girls, took care of them when they were sick-flames, this is the bloody least I can do!” He gestured at the wreckage and raised an eyebrow. “And don’t think you’re getting rid of us before we help clean up.”
Anders swallowed hard. “I… thank you.”
Edan had already started collecting the papers, salvaging what he could. Marjorie patted him on the arm. “I’m sure Gerard will get you more bottles, after what you did for his boy’s hand,” she said. “D’you have a broom?”
His shoulders slumped and he nodded. “In the back corner,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Assuming they didn’t break it.”
“Oh, we’ll make do, even if they did,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get this place set to rights.”
Anders nodded again and pushed off the pillar, heading over to help Edan with the desk. Flames, I hope Emma doesn’t find out about this.