[Fanfiction] I Ask For Nothing, Anders-centric
Title: I Ask For Nothing
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Characters: Anders
Pairing(s): nope
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Summary: Anders visits the Chantry.
I Ask For Nothing
The air smells of incense and holy oils and scented wood, the hum of the Chant in the background, a young Sister with a lovely voice who stands beside the massive bronze statue of Andraste, her eyes fixed on the prophetess’s sword and her hand resting on the sacred flame amulet about her neck.
He nearly turns right around and walks out. There is something so wrong about this place-the towering statue of a woman who fought for freedom looming over the tiny figures of those who now serve her, the opulence of the perfume in the air jarring, like a smack in the face after the reek of Darktown’s sewers, the Tevinter bones of the building stark and strange beneath the burnished Orlesian trappings of the Chantry. This is not a place for him, and he knows it.
He refuses to leave, instead steels his shoulders and steps further in. The incense wafts around him, so different from the stark plainness of Chantries in the Anderfels that he only remembers from the journey away from home, when the templars had forced him into vigil after vigil, kneeling through the night on plain stone steps, to pray for his immortal soul, as if the experience had erased all his memories of the services of his childhood-the simplicity and strength of the wooden Chantries of Ferelden. He thinks of the sisters in Lowtown asking the whores around the Hanged Man for coin and his fists clench.
What has brought him here he isn’t entirely certain. He’d come intending to confront Grand Cleric Elthina, to ask her to use her position to rein in Meredith, to work for some sort of change in Kirkwall, but now that he is here all he can see is Karl, his dead eyes staring out of his familiar face, his body slumping, lifeless, from Anders’ own knife, and his breathing goes ragged, he feels the familiar surge of rage from his own mind, the breath of the Fade, of power, and fights it back. When he asks one of the sisters, however, she says that Elthina is sequestered in her own personal meditations, and is not to be disturbed.
Typical.
There is nothing for him here, then, but Anders still stays.
He can remember his mother’s voice as she knelt and repeated the words of the Chant as it was sung, one hand on the shoulder of the boy next to her.
All men are the Work of our Maker's Hands,
From the lowest slaves
To the highest kings.
Those who bring harm
Without provocation to the least of His children
Are hated and accursed by the Maker.
All men, Anders thinks. From the lowest slaves to the highest kings. But not mages, apparently. Surely that is not what the Chant means. He can’t believe it, that he is cursed by the Maker because of the abilities the Maker gave him. He won’t believe it.
Before he knows it, he is kneeling before the altar himself, clumsy and unfamiliar, looking up at the statue of Andraste. She looks too much like Meredith here, so he directs his gaze instead to the brazier in front of him, the shifting light of the flame, thinking instead of the statue of Andraste in Vigil’s Keep back in Ferelden, beautiful and serene in her strength. That is how he imagines Andraste, with fire in her eyes and freedom in her heart.
Those who bring harm
Without provocation to the least of His children
Are hated and accursed by the Maker.
How can the templars here believe that what they’re doing is what the Maker wants, when the Chant itself says that those who bring harm upon the innocent will be accursed by the Maker? Ella, an innocent girl he had nearly killed-Anders swallows, feeling ill, and presses his forehead to his clasped hands. What had she done wrong?
Anders knows he has sinned in the eyes of the Maker too many times to count, that he is nothing like Andraste, who led people out of slavery. He is damaged and broken and no inspiration to anyone, no matter how hard he tries. The Maker would never come back to listen to the prayers of someone like Anders. These sisters and mothers milling about would probably tell him that a mage shouldn’t even pray to the Maker except for forgiveness for the sin of possessing magic in the first place.
But he too has people he would see free. Like a carpenter is free to build a cabinet or a boat but not to use his tools to kill, why should a mage not be free to use magic to help and heal? Magic is meant to serve man, never to rule over him, not magic is a sin and a curse and the Maker hates everyone who has it. It’s not like mages start using blood magic because they wake up on the wrong damn side of the bed.
Even if the Maker hates Anders, how can he hate people like Daylen Amell, back in Ferelden, or Karl, or Ella?
Anders takes a deep breath and tries to remember the words his mother used to pray. He doesn’t want anything for himself, except maybe the sort of wisdom he’s all too aware he lacks, to know what to do and how to do it without destroying everything he touches. But he’s free, or at least as close as he’ll ever get. He’s already made his choices, thrown away his future. He can take care of himself. He’s lucky, and he knows it.
But what about all the mages he’s seen out of Kirkwall through the Underground into an uncertain future? The mages still in the Gallows, helpless to do anything but wait for someone like Alrik to decide they’ve done something wrong in his own eyes? In all the Circles across Thedas, afraid of a templar’s glare, miserable and hopeless? Surely they need the Maker’s help more than all the rich denizens of Hightown praying here for the strength not to visit some prostitute in the Blooming Rose.
Surely the Maker can’t want this. Surely magic is a gift from the Maker, whatever the magisters did with it. The Maker created it, created the Fade, created everything.
Foul and corrupt are you
Who have taken My gift
And turned it against My children.
The Maker calls magic His gift in the Chant. Isn’t it just as wrong not to use it?
Anders kneels there until his knees go numb, not even sure what he’s doing there. It’s not like he expects the Maker to do anything. He hasn’t done anything for anyone since Andraste. He hasn’t done anything to help Anders, even when he prayed not to be taken away from home. He didn’t do anything to save Karl, even though Anders knows that Karl prayed every night like a good believer should. He won’t start now. The Maker has abandoned mages even more surely than everyone else, it seems.
No, if anything’s going to change, they’ll have to do it themselves.
He’ll have to do it himself. That’s what he promised Justice, after all.
He just has to figure out how.
Andraste didn’t write the magisters a strongly worded letter, did she?
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Characters: Anders
Pairing(s): nope
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Summary: Anders visits the Chantry.
I Ask For Nothing
The air smells of incense and holy oils and scented wood, the hum of the Chant in the background, a young Sister with a lovely voice who stands beside the massive bronze statue of Andraste, her eyes fixed on the prophetess’s sword and her hand resting on the sacred flame amulet about her neck.
He nearly turns right around and walks out. There is something so wrong about this place-the towering statue of a woman who fought for freedom looming over the tiny figures of those who now serve her, the opulence of the perfume in the air jarring, like a smack in the face after the reek of Darktown’s sewers, the Tevinter bones of the building stark and strange beneath the burnished Orlesian trappings of the Chantry. This is not a place for him, and he knows it.
He refuses to leave, instead steels his shoulders and steps further in. The incense wafts around him, so different from the stark plainness of Chantries in the Anderfels that he only remembers from the journey away from home, when the templars had forced him into vigil after vigil, kneeling through the night on plain stone steps, to pray for his immortal soul, as if the experience had erased all his memories of the services of his childhood-the simplicity and strength of the wooden Chantries of Ferelden. He thinks of the sisters in Lowtown asking the whores around the Hanged Man for coin and his fists clench.
What has brought him here he isn’t entirely certain. He’d come intending to confront Grand Cleric Elthina, to ask her to use her position to rein in Meredith, to work for some sort of change in Kirkwall, but now that he is here all he can see is Karl, his dead eyes staring out of his familiar face, his body slumping, lifeless, from Anders’ own knife, and his breathing goes ragged, he feels the familiar surge of rage from his own mind, the breath of the Fade, of power, and fights it back. When he asks one of the sisters, however, she says that Elthina is sequestered in her own personal meditations, and is not to be disturbed.
Typical.
There is nothing for him here, then, but Anders still stays.
He can remember his mother’s voice as she knelt and repeated the words of the Chant as it was sung, one hand on the shoulder of the boy next to her.
All men are the Work of our Maker's Hands,
From the lowest slaves
To the highest kings.
Those who bring harm
Without provocation to the least of His children
Are hated and accursed by the Maker.
All men, Anders thinks. From the lowest slaves to the highest kings. But not mages, apparently. Surely that is not what the Chant means. He can’t believe it, that he is cursed by the Maker because of the abilities the Maker gave him. He won’t believe it.
Before he knows it, he is kneeling before the altar himself, clumsy and unfamiliar, looking up at the statue of Andraste. She looks too much like Meredith here, so he directs his gaze instead to the brazier in front of him, the shifting light of the flame, thinking instead of the statue of Andraste in Vigil’s Keep back in Ferelden, beautiful and serene in her strength. That is how he imagines Andraste, with fire in her eyes and freedom in her heart.
Those who bring harm
Without provocation to the least of His children
Are hated and accursed by the Maker.
How can the templars here believe that what they’re doing is what the Maker wants, when the Chant itself says that those who bring harm upon the innocent will be accursed by the Maker? Ella, an innocent girl he had nearly killed-Anders swallows, feeling ill, and presses his forehead to his clasped hands. What had she done wrong?
Anders knows he has sinned in the eyes of the Maker too many times to count, that he is nothing like Andraste, who led people out of slavery. He is damaged and broken and no inspiration to anyone, no matter how hard he tries. The Maker would never come back to listen to the prayers of someone like Anders. These sisters and mothers milling about would probably tell him that a mage shouldn’t even pray to the Maker except for forgiveness for the sin of possessing magic in the first place.
But he too has people he would see free. Like a carpenter is free to build a cabinet or a boat but not to use his tools to kill, why should a mage not be free to use magic to help and heal? Magic is meant to serve man, never to rule over him, not magic is a sin and a curse and the Maker hates everyone who has it. It’s not like mages start using blood magic because they wake up on the wrong damn side of the bed.
Even if the Maker hates Anders, how can he hate people like Daylen Amell, back in Ferelden, or Karl, or Ella?
Anders takes a deep breath and tries to remember the words his mother used to pray. He doesn’t want anything for himself, except maybe the sort of wisdom he’s all too aware he lacks, to know what to do and how to do it without destroying everything he touches. But he’s free, or at least as close as he’ll ever get. He’s already made his choices, thrown away his future. He can take care of himself. He’s lucky, and he knows it.
But what about all the mages he’s seen out of Kirkwall through the Underground into an uncertain future? The mages still in the Gallows, helpless to do anything but wait for someone like Alrik to decide they’ve done something wrong in his own eyes? In all the Circles across Thedas, afraid of a templar’s glare, miserable and hopeless? Surely they need the Maker’s help more than all the rich denizens of Hightown praying here for the strength not to visit some prostitute in the Blooming Rose.
Surely the Maker can’t want this. Surely magic is a gift from the Maker, whatever the magisters did with it. The Maker created it, created the Fade, created everything.
Foul and corrupt are you
Who have taken My gift
And turned it against My children.
The Maker calls magic His gift in the Chant. Isn’t it just as wrong not to use it?
Anders kneels there until his knees go numb, not even sure what he’s doing there. It’s not like he expects the Maker to do anything. He hasn’t done anything for anyone since Andraste. He hasn’t done anything to help Anders, even when he prayed not to be taken away from home. He didn’t do anything to save Karl, even though Anders knows that Karl prayed every night like a good believer should. He won’t start now. The Maker has abandoned mages even more surely than everyone else, it seems.
No, if anything’s going to change, they’ll have to do it themselves.
He’ll have to do it himself. That’s what he promised Justice, after all.
He just has to figure out how.
Andraste didn’t write the magisters a strongly worded letter, did she?