Inconsonant Conversations

by kosmonauttihai

Summary:

Fenris and Anders try to understand each other, and sometimes they succeed.

(It's a snapshot Act2-and-onwards canon rewrite along the lines of Least Favorite Acquaintances to Haphazard Two or Three Person Group Therapy to Friends—to Lovers if we get that far, but my main motivation for writing this is to give their relationship the positive development they could have had and deserved to have in canon and that they would need to have for 'to Lovers' to be a plausible and healthy step to take. So... mind the Slow Burn tag.)

Notes:

For more clarification on the warnings: The characters' past trauma comes up often, but won't be described in graphic detail, and apart from scenes that are found in the game it's all in the past. In addition to what's indisputably canon there are references to child sexual abuse, and transphobia as a facet of abuse. There will also be some misgendering by accident when characters aren't out to each other.

Chapter 1: Impression

At the end of a busy day, as Anders tidied up the clinic for the night, they noticed their desk was not as they had left it.

It had been at least a few days since there had been enough time to concentrate on the next edition of the manifesto. For that time, most of the incriminatingly mage-y papers (a book on herbal remedies could be found on anyone, right?) were supposed to have been kept in locked drawers, not out in the open. Right now, one of the bound copies of what Anders assumed was the previous edition of their manifesto was neatly placed in the middle of the desk, with a loose sheet peeking from between pages.

Anders stopped to wash their hands, all the while searching their memory. There had been so many people coming and going and keeping the clinic packed all day, it was impossible to keep track of everyone's every move. And what had that person brought it here for? Did they know Anders was the author, or had the already distributed work found its way back as something a patient simply thought Anders might find interesting?

Picking up the copy, they drew out the sheet of paper.

'You have given me something to think about,' was written in unsteady script, the letters' form overly correct without a personalized style. 'I have decided to return the favor, and hope you will find my critique worth considering. I concede there are things I did not know, but the same goes for you as well.'

Anders blinked at the letter. Did that mean what they thought it meant?

Sure enough, when they leafed through the manifesto, the pages were annotated with questions, rebuttals, sometimes requests for clarification. Someone had taken the liberty of appointing themselves Anders's editor. They weren't sure how to feel about it yet. At least this meant someone had indeed read the manifesto, obviously with thought and care. Anders had to admit, they had been a little worried whether most of the copies would even be found, let alone read and considered. So far Hawke was at the top of a very short list of even friends who had shown interest that seemed to be out of more than simple politeness.

And it was frustrating, definitely. Anders would often downplay it to keep peace, but it got exhausting to have the people you spent time with seem unmoved by something that for you was a matter of life and death.

Well, maybe that was a bit unfair, surely at least Isabela and Varric cared about Anders's safety. Varric was the one who had used his connections to get the manifesto discreetly printed, in the first place. Isabela seemed to feel very strongly about freedom—if perhaps strongly enough that getting involved in causes felt like compromising hers, but it did mean she was not in support of the templars, either. And Merrill was a mage herself, if one with very... different ideas than Anders's about what causes to get involved in. It could be they didn't believe the manifesto was the right way to go about it, too, though Anders wished they would say so, in that case. Perhaps Bethany would have wanted to discuss these things, but she was locked in the Circle now, herself. Maker, they hoped she was alright.

Aveline and Sebastian... well, Anders wasn't sure they would ever see eye to eye. But Fenris's disdain hurt the most. They had so much in common—if anyone should have understood, it was him. Sometimes it seemed like he avoided seeing the obvious truths out of sheer stubbornness not to agree with a mage.

But someone had taken the time to consider their views. Someone not one of the other local mage renegades whom Anders had done the occasional favor for as they became more and more organized (and there was something to be said for more cooperation with said organization). They each used an alias in their correspondence, while this person seemed to prefer staying even more anonymous. But that was fine. It was a dangerous subject to get caught writing about.

Anders hurried to finish their cleaning, and settled in their desk chair for a late night reading the mystery person's feedback.

They were not sure what they had expected, but the first annotation caught them by surprise. In the sentence 'The oppression of mages stems from the fears of men, not the will of the Maker,' the word 'men' was underlined, with the added comment 'Is this who you wish to limit your audience to?'

Anders had indeed used rather archaic wording. They had thought imitating the style of Chantry sermons this way would give the argument more weight, but it was also hardly inclusive. There was no suggestion for a replacement, and they hesitated. 'Men and women' seemed just as inaccurate; there were more than people of those two genders in the world, Anders would know. They considered 'people of all genders,' but dismissed it as just as off-topic. Then it suddenly seemed obvious.

Not only did the word Anders had used treat one gender as the only one that mattered, it also did so with race. The defense of Chantry texts doing the same seemed insufficient, as the Chantry did indeed look down on anyone who wasn't human. Anyone who wasn't a non-mage human, to be specific, but Anders supposed they should not ignore that elven mages were oppressed on several fronts—as were Qunari mages, something they should look into more but to their shame kept forgetting to. Although, wasn't it the fears of mostly humans, then, that the oppression of mages did stem from? The Dalish at least were pretty fond of their mages. But, it would not do to lose an elf as a potential reader if they might drop the manifesto on the assumption it was just more talk of humans as the default. Which... that sentence at least had been, when Anders had written it. Point taken, if that was the point the person had wanted to make.

Anders settled on 'mortals'. They could feel an inclination to add some sort of qualifier to make sure it was understood the author was part of this group, as well, but decided Justice would have to trust them on 'my fellow mortals' sounding even more suspiciously like an abomination pretending not to be one.

Curiously, the first two sentences of the manifesto had gotten no comment.

'Andraste suffered at the hands of magisters, thus she feared the influence of magic. But if the Maker blamed magic for the magisters' actions in the Black City, why would He still gift us with it?'

Perhaps the person had no answer, and was letting the question stand. Well, they had said they had gotten something to think about. For the first time that day, Anders felt a genuine smile tug at the corners of their mouth. Point possibly gained.

They ended up spending the night reading the notes and considering them.

On some points Anders had made, the other person just didn't agree, but it gave them an example of a counterargument to pre-emptively cover. The person asked a lot of questions, and many of these Anders hadn't considered, either, in great detail. What did Anders suggest should be done about mages' education, in place of the Circles? What about protecting the public when things went wrong, and what were things that could be done to minimize things going wrong? If there were to be no templars, who would punish mages who abused their powers to hurt others? Drafts for answers to their editor's questions filled many a sheet, and Anders started paying attention to not using up all their paper.

Hardest were the questions about Tevinter. What would Anders suggest could be done to avoid turning southern Thedas with free mages into another nest of ruthless, powerhungry blood mages and unabashed slavery, was what they mostly came down to.

Here Anders had to admit they didn't actually know terribly much about Tevinter. And, it was hard to get objective information. The southern Chantry seemed convinced that all associated with the country was evil, end of discussion, and Anders's other primary source of course thought the same.

There was some merit to Fenris's account, though—he had lived there most of his life, after all, and as much as it wasn't pleasant to hear so much negative about a land younger Anders had somewhat idolized as a safe haven for magic, they had to concede his bitterness was not unwarranted. Not that they said so a lot to Fenris himself, considering that any time—or most times, at the very least many times—they might do so, it was pre-emptively cut off with more blaming magic for Maker knew what next, instead of Fenris just bothering to listen. Anders had even used up some of their best jokes on trying to illustrate their point when other means had failed, only for it to apparently go over Fenris's head. It was such a shame, really.

Anders sighed and looked up from the paper to think. How were they going to prevent legalized slavery...? It was a bigger question than they had the means to answer, they decided, and made a note to gather more information. People didn't automatically become slavers the moment they stopped being slaves just because they had magic, that shouldn't need explaining, but Anders knew it was something many non-mages were concerned about, and thus worth addressing.

Some of the annotations were less serious, even humorous without veering to mocking. Anders lowered their head in their hands in a burst of giggles when they caught on to the double entrende the commenter implied in one of their word choices. Maker, they hadn't even thought of that when they had written it, but it was so obvious now. And this version of the manifesto had already been made into how many copies? Well, maybe it made it more memorable.

They had to wonder about their self-appointed editor. What kind of person were they? Someone eager for information, and not afraid of an argument, at least. Not having the argument under their own name perhaps diminished that impression, but their comments weren't mean-spirited enough to be taking that kind of advantage of their anonymity. They were perceptive, and took the subject seriously, but had room for the occasional quip. Anders wouldn't mind corresponding with them more often, should they be so inclined.

The person had an excellent grasp of grammar, and a wide vocabulary, but their handwriting and spelling started out quite clumsy, though both improved towards the end. Anders had met their share of adults who had not had the opportunity to learn to read and write due to various circumstances, mainly poverty. There was plenty of that in Darktown. They assumed their editor was also someone unused to the written word. Good on them for finally getting to learn the skill.

Anders was honored this bright, thoughtful person had considered their manifesto fit to be among some of their first reading material.

Chapter 2: Challenge

"So, there must be mages in Tevinter that don't use blood magic."

For a moment a twitch of his eyebrow was the only indication Fenris had heard them.

The hypothesis was something Anders had been wondering about for a while, and with the flood of new ideas and questions from two nights ago, it had been on their mind since the group had set off for the coast early that morning. Passing by this tenth indistinguishable pile of rubble that Hawke still managed to find loot of varying useability in seemed an occasion as good as any to bring it up.

Fenris walked a few more brisk steps up the path, over a dune, and sighed. "Of course. There are slaves. The magisters do not hesitate to collar their own kind."

"But no magisters?"

"Why must you go on about this?" Fenris asked almost before they had gotten to the end of their sentence.

Despite having expected some arguing, that took Anders aback a little. Fenris certainly sounded like they had been questioning him about magisters' abilities all the time, but they didn't think they had actually asked that in particular, before. What they had done was include some speculation on the matter in the manifesto without a lot of facts to go on, and apparently had not quite gotten it right, if their editor was to be believed. So here they were, giving Fenris as a source a go against their better judgment.

"No magister would turn down an advantage over their rivals," Fenris deigned to answer. "Any who did would be dead."

"You know, to use blood magic you must look a demon in the eye and accept their offer," Anders tried. "I just figured some of them would say no."

Fenris said nothing.

Anders shrugged. "For aesthetic reasons, if nothing else."

"Why this preoccupation with magisters' redeeming qualities?" Fenris asked. "You must know going out of your way to sympathize will win you no favors, from me or anyone else outside Tevinter." He kicked at a pebble on the path and added as an afterthought, "or inside Tevinter, for that matter. Fawning signals weakness."

Anders hopped to dodge the pebble, but it turned out not to fly in the direction of their ankles, after all. They stopped to wait for a few steps to have Fenris walking beside them. Quite a few steps further ahead, they could see Hawke crouching down to pluck something from under a bush—probably yet another potion ingredient, which was something Anders should keep an eye out for as well. But they could get this over with first. "The Chantry has most people who don't have magic convinced we're all blood mages, any four-year-old child levitating their toy for the first time equal to a tyrannical, conniving magister who uses innocents for blood sacrifices," they explained. "If not even every magister is one... I just figured that would make a good argument."

"It does not," Fenris said. "I can tell you right now one thing every magister is—an enslaver."

"And I have no desire to make excuses for that," Anders hurried to clarify. "But is it because they're mages? You just said yourself there are mages at both ends of the social ladder in Tevinter. Here in the south a mage is forbidden from owning any property or inheriting their parents' title if they have one. Why are magisters used as the rule when they seem more like an exception? Magic isn't all it takes to get to be a magister, right?"

Fenris had yet to look at them directly since they had started talking. "Of course not. Anyone not from a wealthy and reputable family will have to work hard to form the right connections and not get trampled. Is it not the same with southern nobility?"

"But then, Tevinter isn't ruled by mages at all, is it?" said Merrill suddenly from ahead of the both of them.

Anders stopped walking and stared at her, unable to do more than blink in response. Fenris seemed to have had the same reaction.

Merrill tapped a finger to her chin as she turned around to face them. "It's just people who've made sure by any means possible that they have more than others, and refuse to share. Magic is just one more resource they hoard."

Anders felt like they might need to pick up their jaw from the sandy rocks. "Merrill, I could kiss you!" they declared.

"Oh, no thank you. I didn't mean to eavesdrop," Merrill said, generously ignoring how loud and impossible to overhear the two of them had been getting. "I can catch up to Hawke if you would like some privacy."

"It's just the usual," Anders said with exaggerated nonchalance, "trying to convince Fenris we deserve to be treated as people."

"That has... never been the issue," Fenris spoke up, now finally demonstrating his head did indeed still turn to the side.

Anders couldn't believe their ears. "Not been the issue? Fenris, what do you call locking someone up for crimes they hadn't yet and might never have committed? Isolating them from their family, telling them day in, day out, that their very existence is a sin?" The day was swelteringly hot despite being overcast, but Anders found themself shivering as they went on. "Having them be for the rest of their life at the mercy of armed guards, who can whenever they please decide to kill one of their charges and lie that the victim had used blood magic so they had to, and no one will investigate? Being forced to fight a demon to prove you shouldn't be killed or made Tranquil? Is that treating someone like a person?"

"I have no desire to make excuses for mages being treated with cruelty," Fenris echoed Anders's own phrasing from earlier, frowning. "I thought I had made that clear."

Anders had no words, but their incredulous expression must have spoken for them, as Fenris sighed again, and begun to clarify on his own.

"Of course mages are people. What concerns me is whether they see others as such."

Anders barked out a bitter laugh. "What? Do you honestly think every mage is just waiting to start oppressing others? In most of Thedas, we're the oppressed ones!"

Fenris stood a little straighter, and raised his chin. That alone would have been easy to miss, as he was looking up at Anders in any case due to their height difference, but something about how Fenris carried himself suddenly conjured more presence.

"Do you see me as a person, Anders?" Fenris asked. "Sometimes I am not so certain. You hound me about your cause as though it were in my power to change things, and ignore my wishes to leave the topic be. I have given your views my consideration in a way I found palatable, and had hoped you would respect that." He took no step towards them, and despite the intensity, his voice had not risen in volume.

It wasn't out of being intimidated that Anders's gaze strayed to the ground, anyway.

Fenris noticed the movement, brief though it had been, and continued with increasing confidence. "Do I ask you to relive your worst memories every time I strike up conversation?"

Anders wanted to say he had, once, when asking out of the blue about the reason Karl had been made Tranquil. But would that help? Fenris couldn't have known just how much they had lost that night. "You don't strike up conversation with me all that often," they pointed out.

Fenris simply nodded. "I know how it will go. If you wish to dig through my closet for skeletons so badly, are you willing to open yours?"

It was not a response Anders had expected, but they supposed it was only fair. Just, even. "What do you want to hear?"

"Whatever there is," Fenris said, deadpan. "You speak of the mages' plight in general terms. But it is personal to you, is it not?"

"Perhaps some other time, and not in front of everyone, though," Anders said—and then immediately realized: "and yes, it's not fair I've been expecting you to talk about this stuff unprepared and with people overhearing, either. I'm sorry, Fenris."

Fenris said or did nothing, but Anders took his lack of retort as at least not rejecting the apology. He was so hard to read sometimes, probably on purpose.

Anders put their hands on their hips and shifted their weight from one foot to the other, throwing a useless glance at their boots. "So... what, are we agreeing to meet, just the two of us, sometime? To compare our tragic pasts?"

"Not to compare," Fenris said. "Trying to outdo each other with sob stories will get us nowhere. Come to the mansion when we are done on this errand, and we will talk like two people who respect each other."

Anders let out a snort. "Wow, and I thought Aveline's asking someone out sounded stilted."

"Hilarious," Fenris said, looking and sounding the opposite of his words. "The mansion is acceptable, then?"

"I'll show up," they said with a nod.

At that moment, Hawke and Merrill appeared from behind a curve in the path, and Anders realized they had completely ignored their surroundings. Fenris, too, looked appropriately embarrassed about it, at least.

"Everything alright?" Hawke asked, their eyes not at all subtle in the once-over. "Merrill said you started fighting again."

"And it was ugly," Anders said with a smirk, "Fenris pulled my hair, and I think I bit him. Honestly, Hawke, we're not children, we can handle ourselves."

That much they could at least say with clear conscience. No matter how annoyed the two of them got at each other, their quarrels had never gotten physical. Anders might go so far as to admit to trusting they wouldn't, which was probably a low bar for people regularly fighting on the same side, but they would take what they could get.

"Where did you go, that Merrill had to fetch you?" asked Fenris.

Hawke coughed in their hand, and reached into their pack. "I kept finding these shiny stones along the path, and I guess I didn't notice you got left behind. Sorry about that." They held up a small piece of something blue and translucent to catch the light seeping through the clouds, and turned it around a few times. "On closer consideration, it was so much like a trail that either someone's pocket has been leaking or it was leading to a trap. I'm not sure these are even worth anything or that I'll need the coin." They shrugged. "Old habits."

"So none of us was keeping an eye out for an ambush," said Fenris. "Wonderful."

"No, I was," Merrill whispered from where she was still standing a bit ahead of them.

This time no one turned to look at her like she had just said something interesting. It had not been necessary in years, between them, to spell it out what suddenly whispering meant.

"There are two bandits lurking with weapons drawn behind that boulder just up the path leading to the left," she said. "I imagine they're planning on jumping us."

"Oh," said Anders, also whispering. "Good work, Merrill."

"Why, thank you, Anders," she replied with a sweet, but very pointed smile. "I did it with blood magic."

Chapter 3: Expectation

Isabela's laughter echoed in the mansion, and the firelight reflecting off her jewelry danced along her cheeks as she shook her head.

"I like the way you think," she said, and settled deeper into the armchair she had curled up in.

Fenris chuckled as well, lounging in a matching chair. It had been a good idea to drag these in front of the fireplace, much more comfortable than the bare benches. "It just seemed ridiculous," he continued. "Both men loved her, yet alternated between stepping aside to let her be happy with the other, and fits of jealousy aimed just as likely at her as at each other. They should have all three gotten together in the second chapter and saved the reader the drama."

"It's a little on the 'two hot men competing for the privilege of boringly normative courtship with apparently the only single woman in the world' side, at the expense of acknowledging people can love more than one gender," Isabela said with a few nods. "But the author wrote the heroine very well, and seems to have a passing knowledge of the effects of toadfish poison. Both very important requirements to meet in romance."

Fenris let out a hum he hoped communicated amused agreement. "Five out of ten?"

"Seems about right," Isabela said. "How are the other two coming along?"

"Slower," Fenris admitted, "but they are interesting. Thank you for lending me them."

Isabela waved off his thanks. "This is a clever ploy to get more people to discuss Rivaini philosophers with, once you're done. The Chantry isn't exactly fond of these being widely available."

To have something to do instead of replying, Fenris took another spoonful of the dessert they were sharing (the only rather than last course of their meal though it was, but what was he supposed to do with food and drink that had come into his possession, if not whatever he wanted.) He had gotten far enough in his reading to see why the Chantry might object to the works, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it yet—wasn't sure it even was his place to feel one way or the other about it. Isabela was hardly going to start summoning spirits with him, and the books were certainly not about the subject, it merely came up occasionally as part of the authors' culture. He had meant his thanks, and in the pause that savoring the pie gave him, he decided he appreciated her not witholding the books from him for fear that the nudge these details were would shatter him.

And, glancing at A Slave's Life on his shelf (accompanied by a short book of Marcher children's stories that he had actually started learning to read with, before moving to the heavier text and smaller print), he supposed he had a fondness for banned books.

This had probably played a part in his decision to read the garish pamphlet he had found in a stack of novels Hawke had lent him, when he had recognized it as Anders's handiwork. But he had been curious, too. The subject made him profoundly uncomfortable, but he liked to think he was not a complete ignoramus. He knew he had no answers to questions put forth by mages' situation in the south, only that he wanted the freedom of staying away from them if he wished to. He had seen enough of the Gallows to know the current state of things wasn't fair, but who was he to fix it—life wasn't fair. He had not escaped slavery under mages only to dedicate his life to mages all over again.

But the manifesto had been there, and more importantly, its author had not been. If a person could be the worst kind of advertisement for their own cause, Anders worked hard to qualify as an example, sometimes. With the freedom of choice to read and consider it at his own time, and no pressure to let anyone know whether he had, the manifesto for mages' rights had fed Fenris's hunger for information and for practice of his new skill, and he had been surprised at his own interest in the subject as he had read on. The annotations had been for his own benefit at first, but at some point he had decided that he might as well share his thoughts. Anders had certainly pestered him enough times about getting to pick his brain.

He had thought that might have gotten him peace and quiet. Instead...

Isabela took a sip of her drink. "Something on your mind?"

Fenris sighed, and picked up his own glass, only to twirl it by the stem and watch the liquid move. "Indecision over the merit of Hawke asking me to camp at the Bone Pit tonight."

She chuckled. "Oh, not bloody likely. Merrill told me about your little date, and if she knows, Hawke knows. They wouldn't dream of ruining a chance of all their friends starting to get along."

"They do have talent for befriending people remarkably incompatible with each other," Fenris said, and on a whim, raised his glass.

Isabela clinked her glass to his. "With some notable exceptions."

"To notable exceptions," Fenris said, and drank.

Isabela was not staying for long. She had plans of her own, and he wouldn't keep her from them, but he was glad she had taken the time to see him regardless.

The first time he had set foot in this building, it had been with strangers he had trusted only not to outright stab him in the back. He was not quite certain when the change from being alone with no shelter in the world but for the wall against his back to... this had happened. 'This' was still frightening, but for different reasons.

Beside him Isabela launched into one more amusing anecdote from a job he had not been present for, promising to outdo his mentioning Hawke's magpie tendencies from that morning.

He smiled as he listened, at the tale, and at their unspoken agreement not to acknowledge the way Isabela said Hawke's name lately, more aloof the closer she had become with them. If he had found himself growing roots already thought irrecoverably withered, perhaps not being alone at that helped explain how it had happened.

After she had left, Fenris found himself restless.

He had to stop more than a few times to marvel at his own ridiculousness. He had known Anders for three years, and owed no attempts to impress. But, he was letting a new person into what had, more or less, become his home—the first home he remembered having.

Part of him was struggling not to hide personal touches and signs of living from the room he mostly used, no matter how unembarrassing. Another part reminded him to still keep private what Anders didn't have to know. He wanted their meeting to go amicably, but no need to give out information that could be used against him if it didn't.

Fenris sighed, and decided he might as well fuss to some productive end.

He cleaned, but only as much as he usually did, to keep his surroundings comfortable. He lived in a run-down building abandoned by anyone with legal claim to it, and there was no use pretending otherwise.

He stored the rest of the pie under a glass dome that, despite his steady hands and sufficient coin to replace it, always made him nervous to handle in a way that the wine glasses he had also purchased never did. He tucked away the question what suppressed memory was behind that for a more idle moment.

He walked around the mansion when it started raining, and quietly closed any windows that had been letting in the cooler evening air, except for the very narrow one he never closed, which opened to the weed thicket of a kitchen garden. He checked that the large vase in his bedroom was under the hole in the roof that resisted fixing. He added wood to the fire and brought more from the cellar.

On the way down he took the bottle of wine he had opened with Isabela to store it in the cool and dark of the cellar—a little belatedly, but if it spoiled, that was his loss and his business. He had gotten rid of the last of the Aggregio Pavali not long ago, but this wine he actually liked, so it was a bit of a shame if it ended up going bad before he got around to finishing it. It paired so well with the pie, too. But as much as he did not regret giving Hawke such an open account of his past, and perhaps the drink had helped him along there, drunken confessions was not a habit he wished to cultivate, especially not tonight.

More alcohol would also do no favors to the effectiveness of what he realized he was not going to be pleasant company without, by the time he stood in front of the fire again. Rain always made the pain worse. A peek into his stash of already prepared and preserved elfroot did not improve his mood. He would have to restock soon, and if the weather persisted—the pressure in the air all day had promised a storm, but it had gone nowhere yet with this thunderless rain—he would need the rest for his hands not to ache too much to prepare more. He put a generous pinch in his teacup anyway.

In front of his wardrobe, he stopped. He was fully dressed and decent in his long tunic and trousers, but perhaps he should change before Anders arrived, keeping with the plan of not giving away what could be used against him. There were days he felt remarkably at home in his body the way it was, aches aside, only made uncomfortable by other people treating him differently for it. Today had been such a day, and he and Isabela understood and trusted each other in this.

He wasn't entirely sure their group's healer didn't already know, after all the times of putting him back together. They occasionally ended up sharing a tent, too, but then again they did mutually avoid looking at, speaking to, or touching each other as much as they could when that happened so as to not risk an argument. Fenris kept that up even when he would not have minded light conversation, as he desired no attention on himself when he had to take off his breastplate, which covered the shape of his chest and made binding under it unnecessary. It had never come up, in any case.

He picked up his binder, then put it back, and picked it up again, and sighed. It wasn't good for him to wear it more than he had to, even the new, better fitting one. He could decide whether to put it on once he heard Anders at the door.

He managed to sit in front of the fireplace for long enough to read through one page and drink his cup of herbal brew, before he got up and stomped back to the wardrobe to throw off his tunic and undershirt, and put the binder on in place of the latter. He would trust Anders that much some other time.

By the time the knock came, the rain had increased so much Fenris wasn't sure he had heard anything over the beating his roof was taking, until it repeated, louder and more urgent. His predictably soaked visitor lunged inside as soon as the door was open enough to fit through.

"We sure can pick a day," Anders said, seeming undecided whether to try to keep from dripping everywhere or if the mansion's state made it acceptable to shake oneself dry like a mabari.

The feathers at least had some purpose, Fenris observed, as the water on them beaded and slid off, presumably leaving most of the fabric underneath dry.

"You could have stayed at home, I would not have minded," Fenris said has he fiddled with the lock it had, in retrospect, taken him entirely too long to ask Varric to install.

His was hardly the mansion most attractive to burglars, and should any hunters track him down here, one more lock would merely slow them down long enough for Fenris to grab a sword, but it did discourage random passers-by from using his foyer as shelter on evenings like this (foyer that he could, at least, lock apart from the rest of the mansion after having found that key, but the inner doors were useless at sound insulation—his reluctant knowledge of one noble couple or another's scandalous divorce could attest to that). He was already taking care not to make the place seem too occupied to the outside, he would not hide quietly in the dark of his bedroom waiting for uninvited guests to leave, too.

But right now, Fenris realized, he was doing a wonderful job of encouraging his present company to feel counted among the uninvited guests, despite having been, in fact, invited. "That is, I would have understood the need to reschedule," he amended.

"Why, Fenris, what do you take me for?" Anders said in a tone so cheerful it had to be a mockery of not only genuine cheer but pretense thereof. "I couldn't let all your careful preparation go to waste, not with the lavish feast and fun party games you've surely prepared for us." Anders took a moment to look down at the still dripping coat, and then simply took it off to carry it at an arm's length. "I know you're just as thrilled about having me in your space as I am to be here, but you're trying, so I'm trying, and we might as well get this over with."

"Fair enough," said Fenris, and left the foyer, heading for the stairs. "The feast is leftover cherry pie, and tea."

"Oh," Anders said behind him, and at Fenris looking back with an eyebrow arched, added, "sounds really nice, actually."

Once they had reached the room at the top of the stairs, Fenris waved a hand to the right of the door, then to the corner across the room. "There is a clothesline attached to that candelabrum, you may tie it to a hinge on the wardrobe door. It should bear the weight of your coat." He left Anders to getting hands free of the wet heap of plumage, and was already reaching for the pie on a high shelf when a loud gasp drew his attention back to his guest. The cause of the sound was not hard to spot in the room.

With a delighted 'oh, look at you,' Anders abandoned the coat on the floor and walked slowly closer to one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, a hand outstretched. The black cat in the chair raised her head to stare at the approaching human. Fenris watched as they regarded each other, and after a moment the cat craned her neck to sniff at Anders's hand, then swiped her cheek against it.

Anders cooed at the cat while petting her, then turned to Fenris with wide eyes to exclaim, "You have a cat!"

Well, that took care of the decision whether to neglect to mention it, then.

"There are three of them living here," Fenris said as he started on setting the table. "They are not mine."

"But you take care of them?" Anders asked.

"I feed them and let them shed hair onto my furniture, yes," Fenris confirmed with a small smile. "They originally showed up to eat the mice this place was crawling with."

"Well, you seem like a well-fed little hunter, mister... or miss...?" Anders said to the cat, then turned to Fenris again.

Anders certainly seemed careful to get a cat's gender right, for what that was worth, Fenris noted to himself, part of him preparing for the bitterness he would regard that note with, should it eventually turn out he was granted no such consideration. He refused to skip straight to the bitterness pre-emptively, however, and reminded himself that Hawke had, from the start, made no secret of wanting to be addressed as neither a man nor a woman—one of the reasons Fenris felt lucky to have met them, as well as Isabela—and Anders had never disrespected that.

"The cat is female," Fenris said.

If Anders had noticed an awkward pause for Fenris to think of an answer so simple, no sign of it was outwardly shown.

"All three of them are," Fenris added as he prepared the kettle to put over the fire, "and they have no names."

"Really? You've had them for how long, and...? Want me to help you name them?"

"No," Fenris said, then supposed that was a bit impolite to leave at that. "I do not own them, they... need no names from me for us to share a living space."

He didn't say he was still struggling to feel settled, himself. Could he take them with him if he had to leave again and run? They would find ways to get by without him.

At Anders's shrug, Fenris let himself hope he would hear no name suggestions made up of titles and babytalk tonight. He picked up the neglected clothesline, and suspended it across the room.

Anders paused in the cat petting for long enough to finally hang the coat up to dry, and after a speculative glance at the floor in the room, took off the scuffed boots, too, and set them upside down near the fire.

Fenris willed himself not to be offended. The mansion was what it was, but he was hardly leaving sharp things on the floor to step on when both he and his housemates liked to be barefoot.

"I am surprised you have not asked to take one with you," he said when Anders was back to kneeling in front of the armchair.

"Oh, no," said Anders, scratching behind the cat's ears. "I'd love to, but I'm afraid Darktown isn't safe for small things made of meat."

"Ah."

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure the milk I've left out sometimes has been lapped up by my neighbours, too. She's better off here. I could come visit, I guess?" Anders blinked, and the hand on the cat's fur stilled for a moment. "Wait, that's why you haven't told me you have cats here, isn't it."

Fenris tried not to be embarrassed. He had every right to withold that information and not invite to his home people he didn't want there.

He wasn't devoid of all sympathy for Anders's separation from a specific, obviously very beloved cat, or ignorant of that Anders could often have used the joy brought by having such a creature around. They had known each other for three years, and it wasn't like every word they had spoken to each other had been hostile up until that evening. Anders lacking joy did not obligate him to provide it even if he had the means, however, and his threshold for meddling was high with anyone. He supposed he would soon see whether the merits of lowering it might outweigh the inconvenience.

"Fair enough," said Anders.

Fenris didn't know what to say to that, so he pet the cat, as well.

"So, I'm here now, so... where do we start?" Anders said after a while, when the cat's tail had started twitching to signal that was enough petting for now, and following a single, unconvincing cough, continued: "I was twelve years old when I was taken to the Circle... "

"We don't have to start with that right away," Fenris found himself assuring. "And we don't have to tell everything tonight."

He thought Anders looked about as unsure of how to proceed as he was feeling, so after ruling out feigning a cough of his own, Fenris gestured at the table.

Notes:

Don't give cats milk, they can't process lactose and will get sick.
We'll pretend that Thedosian cats have developed the same mutation some populations of humans have that makes milk-drinking as an adult worthwhile.

Chapter 4: Disclosure

The rain outside showed no signs of letting up. Their digging into their pie slices was accompanied by the cozy sounds of a torrent best experienced from shelter, crackle of a warm fireplace, and occasionally, a cat brushing against either one's shin with a loud purr. The other two cats had also found their way in from the streets through the kitchen window, as wet as Anders had been. Currently all three were grooming each other on a blanket Fenris had set on the floor for them in front of the fire—a sight that inspired far more smiles than the stilted conversation.

Anders had complimented the taste of the pie. Fenris had mentioned the Hightown bakery it had come from. He stopped there for lunch or dinner more than was probably healthy, but he liked the pastries, and sometimes the other patrons' faces when he had the coin to afford them. He had told Anders this, too, because why not.

"I can imagine," said Anders. "I don't like to draw attention to myself in Hightown, but with the looks I get sometimes..." The sentence trailed off with a headshake.

"No doubt unpleasant ones," Fenris conceded. "They... look at your clothes and see a person of financially lower class." He belatedly considered if that qualified as an insult, but it was hardly a secret one of Anders's boots was held together with bandages and that ever-present, threadbare neckerchief was indeed more bare than thread. Fenris wondered why Anders still bothered to wear the latter when it seemed completely useless for its function, but it was none of his business, really. "But they look at me in any clothes better than rags, or ones not obviously picked out for me, and they see a servant acting above his station."

Anders frowned, and looked down. "If they knew what I am they wouldn't even see a person."

Fenris regarded his guest for a moment before speaking, his voice carefully level. He supposed they had pretended to enjoy small talk for long enough. "They can look at you and not know."

"Like living your life hiding who you are is a privilege, when you have no choice but to do so," Anders said, looking up, eyes and voice sharp. "I thought we weren't going to compete who has it worse."

Fenris clenched his jaw, words to stoke the quarrel at the tip of his tongue. This was exactly how it would go, wasn't it, when he was only trying to explain himself. But, Anders must have been thinking more or less the same, he reminded himself. "We are not. I simply mean, our situations may have similarities, but they are not the same."

Anders seemed to want to argue at first, but then thought better of it. The victorious smile that followed almost made up for it in annoyance, though. "So you admit there are similarities?"

Fenris sighed. "Some. Is that not why we are here?"

"I suppose so," said Anders, and had a drink of tea. "Just, help me understand how this isn't an oppression contest. Will you get arrested for the crime of being an elf and existing, since you can't hide that?"

"Some day, I might. It is illegal for us in most cities to carry weapons."

"What, really?"

Fenris didn't feel inclined to dignify the incredulity with a response. He certainly wished he could have made that up.

"But we walk around with you carrying a big sword all the time."

"Flanked by similarly armed humans, or a dwarf who has connections everywhere. That one of those humans is the guard captain undoubtedly helps."

Anders was quiet for long enough that Fenris couldn't help but feel like he had gained a point, despite his insistence they weren't competing. Perhaps he was being a bit hypocritical. "The law is not enforced in Kirkwall, Aveline has told me," he said. "That does not mean I let my guard down. People determined to harass do not need the law on their side—though should it come to an elf's word against a human's, it still almost certainly will be."

"I'm not far from getting arrested for my staff, myself," Anders pointed out, "however well I disguise it as a walking stick."

Fenris had to agree on the skill involved in the charade. It had taken him seeing Anders move in a fight to believe the support indeed wasn't needed all the time, and he was still not entirely sure the limping wasn't genuine at least sometimes. For an act it resembled remarkably well the gait he was very familiar with on bad days, though tried to allow himself only in the safety of privacy. Still...

Anders held up a hand as Fenris was about to speak. "No, I get it, it's not the same. A sword doesn't pass for anything but a sword. But you have to understand..."

"I do," Fenris interrupted in turn, but waited a few breaths before saying more. It would do no good for them to start shouting over each other. "The templars do have the law on their side, yet..." He let his gaze drop to his hands for a moment, before forcing it back up. "Neither that law, nor how they enforce it is always completely fair."

"No, it isn't," Anders agreed, in a light voice in contrast with the bleak implication of the words. "It's not for either of us."

Fenris nodded, feeling a tad hopeful, himself.

They each took a sip of their tea.

"Merrill's told me enough times I don't get what it's like for her because I'm a human, I guess it's high time I consider that," Anders continued on the topic, while taking a new slice of pie onto a plate already picked so clean it was like it had yet to be used, leaving one more slice on the tray. "I mean, not in those words, but I think that's what she's been getting at, and she's not the first. I can hardly bring justice to all southern mages if I'm only considering how things affect human mages."

Fenris refilled his teacup, not offering to top up Anders's, but leaving the pot within reach for them both. "So who was the first?"

"Huh?" Anders said before being done chewing.

Fenris couldn't help but wonder if Anders had gotten anything else to eat today, between snack stops on their quest and now. They had gotten back not long after mid-day. "These elven mages you have talked to before Merrill," was all he said out loud.

"Oh! Let's see... I knew two in the Wardens. Well, I knew one of them from before, she was in the same Circle when we were kids," Anders said, now absently stirring the spoon in the half-full teacup. "You know, it never occurred to me to question why there were so few elves there... I bet she noticed that, though."

Fenris said nothing. He could think of reasons, but he didn't like being someone's encyclopedia on elven cultures, especially when he had barely been allowed any personal connection to them. But the Dalish would not give over their mages, he knew that much. Perhaps the elven communities in the cities came together the same way. Templars were humans, after all, armed and armored, and they unnerved him, too, for that reason, even though their words often made him feel validated for his experiences. Then again, so did Hawke's and Isabela's. The thought of alienages teeming with untrained apostates wasn't exactly comforting, but neither was the explanation that might very well be true simultaneously: that templars preferred to simply kill elven mages rather than bother capturing them.

"The other one was Dalish," Anders continued, "and if you think I'm angry about my oppression, you should meet her." The stirring stopped, suddenly, as did the speech for a contemplative moment. "Well, especially since, when we met her, her clan had been recently killed, and she'd thought it was humans. Turns out it was darkspawn, but some humans had been harassing them, too, so she wasn't far off." The spoon was left alone as the hand that had been moving it became a chin-rest. "I didn't really get her, and she didn't trust me very much. Now that I think about it, I suppose I didn't exactly do a good job of convincing her she could."

Fenris didn't doubt that last part was true, but also that it would not help to say so.

"But we did talk, and sometimes managed to get on the same page," Anders reminisced. "I thought it was prejudiced of her to paint all humans with the same brush, but she explained it was more complicated than that, and I think I understood for the first time there's such a thing as systematic discr—" The cut-off sentence was finished only with a delayed, quieter "oh."

"What?"

Anders straigtened from having been slightly hunched over while eating, and looked over Fenris's shoulder with wide eyes. The moment before Fenris noticed how unfocused those eyes were made the back of his neck itch with the urge to turn around.

"That... that was Justice she had those conversations with, I... hadn't consciously thought about that before," Anders wondered out loud. "Huh. It's weird remembering things from when we were separate, yet both present."

"You said 'I'," Fenris reminded, and leaned back a little as well. "Am I speaking with Anders or Justice?"

Anders's gaze returned to him, eyes still a warm brown in the light of the fire. "Both. That's just how it is, even when I'm not glowing. Have you just now remembered I'm an abomination?"

"You call yourself that willingly, I see," Fenris said, and returned to his previous position, if not quite to his level of relaxation, rather low to begin with as it was.

Anders leaned forward again as well, on crossed arms. "It's not like the Chantry has seen fit to bestow upon us a more neutral term, so, I guess. What do they call a mortal and a spirit merging in Tevinter?"

"Abominamentum," Fenris said, deadpan.

Anders let out a burst of laughter so suddenly it startled Fenris a little, but he found himself chuckling, too. If it was partially out of relief at the break of tension, he elected not to care, and welcomed it.

"Should've guessed," Anders said. "I'll stick to the one that's shorter to pronounce, thanks."

"How uncharacteristic," Fenris said, hoping he was smiling like he thought his face was. Sometimes he was better at suppressing his facial expressions than making the ones he wanted to make, and had to consciously construct them, moving each feature individually. Hawke, Varric, and Isabela could usually tell when he was joking, Aveline increasingly often (and Sebastian he had not known for very long), but he and Anders had more history interpreting even friendly jabs as merely jabs.

Anders was smiling, too, so he must have been. "What can I say, making up for lost time. I didn't speak for months after they brought me into the Circle, haven't shut up since I started again."

Though flippant, it was an admission. Were they discussing a theoretical scenario, Fenris might have pried about the reason for the temporary nonverbality, or whether the reaction had truly been warranted. As it was, the answer was in that it had happened. He supposed he might nudge the door open, himself, for a change. "I... have no memory of being very young, myself. But I can understand it was a frightening experience at twelve years old."

"No memory?" Anders asked, growing more serious again.

Fenris was beginning to notice a pattern to Anders discussing trauma. The mages' as a group was a thing to get angry over, Anders's own was softened with a joke. Fenris's... he couldn't place yet. He had come to expect it to be jokes, too. He was questioning now how often it had actually been.

"Not from before the lyrium was carved into my skin; the agony wiped away everything that came before," Fenris confessed, telling himself not to second-guess the decision. He had told this before, just not to or around Anders. "I have been told I was born on Seheron. Danarius never specified whether that was in freedom, though if it is true, his silence on that detail might speak for itself." Fenris broke a piece of the pie apart onto his spoon, but left it on the plate for now. Mixing a sweet treat with the acrid taste of memories felt an increasingly poor choice. "He called me a new name, and had me know nothing of my having been or it being possible for me to be anything else than his obedient pet."

Anders looked back at him in silence, and Fenris didn't move a muscle. "That's monstrous," he was told after a moment.

'No shit,' Fenris thought. But Anders sounded sincere, and Fenris let out a breath.

"You... weren't twelve when that happened, were you?" also sounded more horrified than comparing.

"No," Fenris said, voice more strained—more telling—than he would have liked. He cleared his throat. "Of that much I am certain. I was never informed of my exact age. Perhaps Danarius did not know, did not care."

Anders's lips twitched into a smirk, and Fenris braced himself. But he had seen that same expression just now.

"Now you're going to tell me you're something like fifteen years younger than I am," Anders said, "and I'm going to feel like shit for having ever been mean to you."

Fenris smiled (he was pretty sure he did, at least), accepting the shift of direction. Softening need not equal belittling, did it. It hadn't, always, from other people. "Tempting, when you put it like that. But I doubt we have more than ten years between us. You are fifty-five, yes?"

"Oh, thanks!" Anders was laughing again. "Try twenty years younger than that. And if you're ten years my senior and look like that, I'm going to cry."

"Feel free," Fenris said, and when he deemed he had stretched the pause long enough, relented: "Thirty, approximately."

"Oh, thank the Maker," Anders sighed.

They shared a quiet laugh, before falling silent.

Over the rain and slowly resuming clink of tableware, Fenris could hear a distant rumbling of thunder. He couldn't see the lightnings to judge by the sound delay, but suspected the storm itself was out at sea.

Anders whispered his name, and pointed towards the fireplace.

Fenris turned just in time to see one of the cats finish yawning, and stretch first her front, then hind legs straight towards the ceiling while lying on her back. He turned back to nod his appreciation of having had the sight pointed out to him.

When he continued watching the cats, thinking Anders was doing the same, he felt eyes on himself instead. Anders's gaze when met was calculating, but did not turn away at being caught. It didn't feel like a challenge, instead, Fenris thought he could tell Anders had something to consider saying. He pushed forward the tray with the last slice of pie on it.

Anders gratefully took the pie, but still looked undecided, so Fenris waited.

"'Anders' wasn't originally my name, either," was finally said.

Fenris put his spoon down, in anticipation of more incompatibility of flavors.

"I suppose it is now. It's what they called me at the Circle when I wouldn't speak, and the templars hadn't bothered to ask my parents, apparently. I don't know if it's lucky I at least know what my name was before, but I was going to change it eventually, I think. This one's as good as any."

"It means a person from the Anderfels," Fenris knew, but still half-asked. He had thought it odd, like a Fereldan naming their child 'Fereldan', but maybe some even did. At least Isabela's name wasn't actually 'Rivaini' any more than 'Elf' was his, and it was only Varric they let get away with addressing them as such.

"Never been there, but half my birth family's Ander," Anders confirmed. "Most of our neighbors were, too; the village mostly sprung up from a group of Ander immigrants settling in the same place. Maybe some of the other apprentices meant it as derogatory, to single me out, but there's hardly a reaction that would piss those types off more than to wear it with pride." Anders moved the last spoonful of pie back and forth on the plate a few times, ate it, and then added, with seemingly unwarranted hesitation, "And... I guess I like that... it just means a person."

Fenris didn't think it did; it was a general descriptive for all things Anderfels, including the language. But maybe Anders was trying to hint at something... 'Was going to change it eventually'? There was a reason he could think of.

"It might be impossible for me to ever recover my birth name," Fenris said before he could lose the nerve. "If not, I do not know that I will. It depends on what it is."

Anders nodded, but the motion was a little stiff, the words that followed it a little tense for the joke. "I guess it could be ugly."

"It might also not mean simply a person. Likely will not," Fenris said, and realized his hands were shaking. He hadn't been intending to do this tonight—what was he thinking? But he couldn't help the rising suspicion there was something he had had no idea they shared.

"Are we doing what I think we're doing?" Anders asked, sitting so still while staring it was unsettling.

Fenris forced himself not to look away.

"I mean, I know what I'm doing, but you know, too, right?"

"I... have an inkling," Fenris offered.

Anders's gaze made an exasperated detour to the ceiling, but when it returned to him, true to Anders's luck at cards it was with a myriad of tells promising the hand about to be shown was a bet with a lot to lose. "Fine, fine. I'll go first, then. The, uh, name I got at birth... it was meant for a gender that isn't mine. I'm guessing that's what you're trying to say you're not sure about, when it comes to yours."

Well, it was.

Fenris could say he held onto a name forced on him, a name most definitely meant as derogatory, because it at least wasn't out of place on a male person, and he just couldn't bring himself to pick a new one when there was a chance there was already a name that could be all his. His birth name might be something that could be given to a child of any gender, and then he might still use it. He would likely never find out, but a part of him hoped. Another part, bolder, still nascent, was determined 'Fenris' did not define who he was; instead, he would define who Fenris was.

He said none of that—wondered if he needed to for it to be understood—and nodded.

Anders shook his(?) head and lowered it to the table. "Three years we've known each other, and didn't know?"

"You didn't know my age, either," Fenris said, and was taken aback at the waver in his own voice.

"You don't know your age," Anders said, and looked up.

Fenris saw a smile, and... tears? Well, that was... something.

"I... Fenris, thank you for telling me."

"You as well," Fenris said, and realized he was tearing up, himself. Oh, wonderful. "I fear I may have addressed you incorrectly over the years. If so, I apologize."

Anders laughed. "I'm going to refrain from making that about anything but my gender, I hope you appreciate that. It's... it's alright, but, yes, I'd like it if you referred to me like you do to Hawke. I'm not a man and I'm not a woman."

"I am a man," Fenris said, holding his head high more naturally than with effort, now, he was thrilled to realize. It was a fact, after all. "As you have already been addressing me," he acknowledged. "You truly did not know about me?"

Anders put a hand over their heart (Fenris noted with increased confidence in the skills of the group's healer that it was indeed on the actual location of the heart). "Truly. If you're, you know, worried I've seen anything I shouldn't have, well, I haven't looked. I didn't think you'd want me to."

"I am glad," Fenris said, and swept imaginary pie crumbs off the table. "This is for me to share, or to keep to myself."

Anders nodded emphatically. "Absolutely agreed! I feel the same way! Or... I want to say the same, but is this is one of the ways our situations are similar but not the same?"

"Same enough," said Fenris, noting the corners of Anders's eyes crinkled when smiling fully. "I take it the Circle is not the most accommodating environment for... people like us."

"People like us," Anders repeated, experimentally, chuckling a little.

The phrase was a novelty for Fenris, too. He would sort out his feelings over it another time. But they had already been part of the same group as Hawke's friends, it wasn't completely new, and were it too disgusting an idea, they would have long since refused to spend time with the group with the other present. Hawke would likely have understood, had they requested it. Hawke, who knew about and supported him... and probably did the same for Anders. They had told him about never having met many people like themself in the small town of Lothering, and how having found this group of friends was important to them, as it was to Fenris. He was beginning to understand the multitude of ways.

"The Circle's not an accommodating anything, but yes, definitely not to us," Anders replied to his assumption. "I should write about that, too, shouldn't I. I guess you're right about my arguments having been pretty impersonal. The lack of privacy or freedom to express yourself are horrid for anyone to live with, but anyone specifically vulnerable is a target for abuse even more, there."

"Thank you for not asking how accomodating slavery in Tevinter is," Fenris said, when Anders looked like they might have been about to (though maybe they weren't.) He was not ready to discuss that, no matter what horrors Anders would divulge in return.

He was tired of that discussing his life so inherently had to involve discussing horrors in the first place. He was sure that was seeping into his voice. That... probably didn't help.

"I... guess I can imagine," Anders said.

"No, you can't."

Anders was silent for an instant, and then sighed. "You're right. I've hardly known anything about you."

"Likewise. Before, I had not wanted to," Fenris told them, honestly. "I cannot promise we will no longer argue. I intend to keep speaking my mind when pertinent."

"But you admit Merrill had a point, today?" Anders prompted. "There's something I don't say often, but I mean what she said about how anyone with power can abuse it—it doesn't have to be magical power, and magic isn't the only power that's dangerous. That's something we're agreed on, right?"

"Yes," Fenris said, more quietly than he would have liked. "It is just... difficult to overlook the stain that particular power has left on my life. Before Danarius is dead I do not have the luxury to do so even if I wanted to... Even though I want to." He looked up from where his gaze had drifted to the table again, and stilled his fingers that had been tapping against the surface for a length of time unknown to him. "Can you agree that I as an individual do not have to trust every mage I come across—or any, should I see no reason to, sufficiency of such reasons left to my discretion?"

Anders shrugged. "That's fair. Not easily trusting people in this city is good thinking in general."

Yet someone had trusted him, after he had deliberately led them into an ambush. Someone had trusted Anders after they had unintentionally done the same, and turned out to be harboring a spirit on top of that. He would endeavor to see what had caused Hawke to make that decision, apart from one type of shared marginalization in society. "I am... willing to further improve our communication," he declared, and saw his tentative smile matched from accross the table.

"Let's give it our best shot."

They sat in silence again, both seeming to remember they had spoons they could move from one side of their plate to another as if that accomplished anything. Then they noticed what they were both doing, and shared slightly bigger smiles.

"Well, this has been... an unexpectedly nice night," Anders started.

"For an evening," Fenris couldn't resist adding.

They shared a laugh over the remark. Aveline would never hear the end of that.

"Case in point," Anders said, stacking up their cup and plate, before getting up from the table. "Maker, it's late. I should get going if I want my clothes to dry again before morning."

"You are joking," Fenris said, because they had to be. "Will you even be able to see where you walk in that downpour?"

"I'll manage," Anders said, now touching the coat to see if it had dried at all, as if that would matter if they were planning on going out there again. Judging by the wrinkling of their nose, no significant progress had been made. "Mage rights manifesto calls, I suppose I can say in your company, now."

"Ah. I was wondering when you would get to that."

Anders paused. "You know about it?"

Fenris stilled as well, where he had been collecting the tableware onto the tray to take to a washbasin. He had a moment of paranoia about mind games and mockery, but Anders's confusion seemed genuine. He decided to trust it was. "Clean your desk more often," he said, and placed the glass dome over the tray.

"Wait... that was you?" Anders said loudly enough that one of the cats that had been napping nearby startled. They hurried to comfort her with ear scritches. "You read my manifesto?" they said in Fenris's direction as soon as the cat had been appeased. "And left me notes?"

"You didn't know?"

"It's not like you've been eager to discuss the topic before."

"Which you refused to accept, so I considered your words and responded in a way I found palatable."

"Oh."

Fenris put the tray down, and Anders left alone the coat. The cat settled down to nap again.

"You really read it..." said Anders. "And you found my points worth thinking about?"

"Must I repeat it?" He wondered if the gloating he had wanted to avoid would start now.

But Anders sounded subdued. "No, I suppose not. And... you did return the favor."

That it had been considered a favor because its source had been unknown did not need spelling out.

"The fireplace keeps the bedroom on the other side of the wall warm, and it is dry, with clean bedding" Fenris blurted out instead. "You will sleep there."

"You're really alright with that?" Anders asked, but Fenris could see they were making no move to pick up their coat again.

"I am alright with you not being ridiculous and insisting on kicking yourself out into the rain. Though I will not stop you."

Anders rubbed a finger over the bridge of their nose, and smiled. "Well, I was kind of hoping to stay, but I didn't want to ask."

It was indeed ridiculous. And Fenris knew he would not have, either, in their position. "The door does not close fully," he let them know, "which means the cats often use the room for naps, and might sneak into your bed during the night."

Anders gasped in feigned offense. "And you were going to let me make a decision without knowing that!"

Notes:

There's a short side story I wrote for this fic that takes place between this chapter and the next. You can find it here.

Chapter 5: Adjustment

Anyone who had trouble waking up on time in the morning should consider merging with an impatient spirit, Anders mused, as they blinked their eyes open and took in the unfamiliar room. Right, Fenris's mansion. Not Amaranthine, as they had thought for a few confusing seconds, though there was a tabby cat (brown and with longer coat than Ser Pounce-A-Lot's) curled up on their chest. Anders reached up to pet her, and smiled at the chirping sound she made in greeting.

The sun was just rising, judging by the light. The windows on one wall were tightly shuttered, sounds drifting up from the busy street below them to demonstrate why, but the windows facing the head of Anders's bed had only thin curtains obscuring them, and through them Anders could see silhouettes of rooftops and a rosy sky.

They felt oddly well rested, but then, that could just be a regular amount of rested, after years of sleeping in a rickety cot or a tent. How did Fenris stay as cranky as he did when he got to do this almost every night?

No, that wasn't fair. Fenris had been a good host last night, even good company. Anders would have to pay closer attention to not judging him by a one-dimensional impression they had constructed of him, the past couple of days had made that clear. Hopefully, the effort would remain mutual.

The clink of dishes caught Anders's attention, as well as apparently the cat's, who jumped off the bed and quickly disappeared through the gap in the doorway.

They found Fenris sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the rekindled fire, curled up in what was either a blanket or a large dressing robe, and cutting up an apple. The cats—the beautiful and very soft brown tabby they had woken up with, the majestic black cat they had met first, and an adorable grey tabby that was a little smaller than the other two despite seeming to be an adult, probably with a history of malnourishment during growing months, but she seemed healthy and happy now—were all busy on the floor in front of Fenris's chair, devouring their own breakfast off a plate. A surprisingly pleasant sight to be greeted by, all in all.

Fenris put the apple down in the bowl in his lap and handed Anders another bowl already full of apple slices. They took it with a quiet thanks, and sat down in the other chair, deciding not to look too deeply into Fenris not having put down the knife instead. There were less useful habits that could stick from years on the run.

"The rain has stopped," Fenris said suddenly.

"Oh," Anders replied, holding up a slice they had been about to bite in two. "Um, yes, I'll be out of your hair soon."

"No, I..." Fenris's hands stopped, and he sighed. "It was merely an observation."

"Oh." Anders glanced at the piece of apple, and ate it quickly. "Well, no-one's at their most eloquent on an unexpected morning-after," they said with an only somewhat awkward chuckle.

Fenris finished slicing the apple and placed the core and knife on a cloth on the nearby bench. "I will take your word for it," he said before popping the first slice in his mouth.

"Not that I've experienced that many," Anders backtracked, not that the subject should need any disclaimers, but they decided to go with it. "I mean, the actual sleeping together part is not a great idea in the Circle, since mages are explicitly forbidden from... well, 'fucking' I guess is the nice word." They wrinkled their nose and didn't let themself stop to think if maybe they shouldn't take the day's first conversation there. It might as well be taken somewhere. "The language they used when one of the apprentices was discovered to be pregnant was something I'd previously heard when my parents would talk about the cattle."

"And... this is what the Chantry sees mages as? Cattle," Fenris said without looking up.

"We should be so lucky," Anders said a little too emphatically, and wiped the apple juice from their chin before continuing. "When you live on a farm you take better care of your animals than you do of yourself, they're your livelihood. You don't kick them in the head and tell them they're inhuman and deserve to die. We're something lower, a plague to eradicate... or sic on their enemies."

"You do not teach a weapon to read and write," Fenris said, still staring at the flames, and with enough venom Anders was reminded of the faltering, inexperienced writing on the manifesto's margins. "Nor an animal."

"You do if it needs to study spell books to be of any use. Rest assured they went out of their way to teach us as little as possible what could be useful for rejoining society," they said. "And now I've pissed you off. I'm sorry I brought it up, let's just, I don't know, go back to making fun of my sexual history."

"You are not sorry," Fenris said, and finally turned to look at them. "And the mages I'm pissed off at are not in Kirkwall." He let his shoulders drop and took a deep breath, which ended in the corners of his mouth twitching up. Only slightly, but it was definitely one of Fenris's... perhaps incorrectly assumed elusive smiles. "But of course, I would not deprive you of an opportunity to make fun of yourself."

Anders laughed. They considered turning the teasing around, but the impulse got buried under an instant of doubt, and worry over being misunderstood. Fenris seemed to appreciate lightening the mood, but he deserved a turn in something else first. The laughter was brief, and followed by a pause and a serious assurance: "There is nothing justifiable about what was done to you, either."

Fenris's smile slipped away as well, but the scowl did not return.

"The southern mages are my cause right now, and I realize I can be ignorant of other wrongs..."

"Would you wage war against the magisters, demand they end slavery in Tevinter, had you not already taken up this?" Fenris asked, sarcastic, or perhaps not.

"Should this body live to see mages freed, perhaps I will," Anders said, and wasn't entirely sure they were joking, either.

"Empty words, until you do," said Fenris, sounding almost calculatedly bored—or perhaps without the almost.

It used to infuriate Anders when he spoke like that, but now they wondered if that was the intended reaction—if perhaps it wasn't for the sake of their reaction at all. Were they making him uncomfortable?

"In any case," Fenris said, leaning back in his chair, "you will not convince them by educating and petitioning."

"No," said Anders and turned back to their bowl. "I'm not always so sure I'll ease the plight of mages with a manifesto, either. I thought, if people knew... if they thought about it from our perspective... They would sympathize, I suppose."

Fenris cleared his throat. "If indeed you are oppressed... No oppressor will free their victims because they ask nicely. No slave master would, or even if one did it still would not change the system." He turned an apple slice around in his hand, probably without realizing the fidgeting. "They need the underclass to stay down, or they would lose their power, since it is only power over others."

Anders nodded. They knew as much, deep down, but they couldn't help hoping there was another way. The world couldn't be that rotten throughout. Still... "Perhaps it's time for more direct measures."

Fenris didn't seem so sure he liked the sound of that. Anders wasn't, either, if they were honest with themself. Neither said anything, though, and they turned to finishing their breakfast.

Outside the windows that Fenris had shuttered in this room as well, someone complained loudly, as if on cue, that a criminal investigation should not be stopped just because the suspect was a nobleman, and that they would file a complaint with... Meredith? Good luck with that.

Anders placed the empty bowl on the floor by the chair. One of the cats, the brown tabby they had woken up to find on their chest, walked over to the bowl to smell it, but made a face when it was only fruit scent she found. They would have reached down to pet her, but with fingers stained with the same fruit juice, thought it would not have appeased her.

Fenris thoughtfully handed them a cloth with a damp edge. When Anders turned to take it, they saw in his other hand the stick of the apple and nothing more.

"You eat the core, too?"

"Yes. I have just... gotten used to doing so," Fenris explained, and Anders could have sworn he looked a bit embarrassed.

"I mean, I do, too, usually," Anders said. "Not a lot of fresh fruit in the Circle, I'd eat any I could get my hands on whenever I got out. We had some preserves, but it's not the same. The senior enchanters got to try having a garden on the island at one point, though, but hardly anything grew, and then we stopped getting to go out anyway and..."

"Oh." Fenris said through their babbling, and hurried to turn to the bench again. He turned back to hand them the other core. "I apologize for assuming. Here."

"Thanks. Uh, if you were going to eat the whole apple, why slice it?"

"It just seemed..." Now Fenris definitely looked embarrassed. He tapped a finger to the armrest a few times, again seemingly unconsciously, and then shrugged. "...inhospitable, I suppose, to simply hand you a plain fruit in the way of breakfast."

Part of Anders wanted to poke at the more there clearly was to the subject. They had meant the apple Fenris had brought for himself to eat, of course, and surely Fenris could tell... Anders could see ways his bothering to prepare someone else's—a mage's—food more than his own could be misinterpreted. Was that it? Anders wouldn't have taken it that way—obviously! But who said Fenris had even put that much thought into it, or intended it as anything more insulting than wanting to properly share a nice meal. They were again doing him a disservice, and the mood had been made dour enough. "Well, I'm flattered for the effort," they said with a deliberate smile, telling that part of themself not to make it a lie. "My last morning-after I stuck around for didn't even involve breakfast. Well, it did, but everyone at the barracks had breakfast, so it doesn't count. My point is, you're doing a better job."

"I'm beginning to think you want to tell me about your one night stands," Fenris said with a smirk. "Alright, then. I'm guessing this was among the Wardens?"

"Well, it was more of a one week stand, but yes, the Wardens," Anders conceded, out loud, and silently to themself that elusive or not, they wouldn't mind seeing more of Fenris's smiles. Those definitely felt better to be on the receiving end of than glowers.

"With one of those mages, or...?"

"Maker, no," Anders laughed, "I flirted with Velanna—she's the Dalish one—once, and she told me she finds humans, how did she put it, 'physically and morally repulsive'."

"Respectable honesty," Fenris said, and was definitely smiling now, the bastard.

"And the Commander, well, we'd known each other since she was seven years old and I was sixteen. It would have been so weird. She has a girlfriend now, too, of course, but even without that..."

"The Commander?" Fenris interrupted. "The Hero of Ferelden is the Warden Commander, correct?"

"Yes, Commander Surana," Anders confirmed, and felt a wave of wistfulness that both spirit and human echoed to each other. Would she even want to see them again after the way they had had to leave? They really had turned out to be quite a lot of trouble, hadn't they. Then they caught on to why Fenris was asking. "And yes, the shortest Blight in history was made so short by an elven mage."

"The Chantry must hate her guts," Fenris said, and didn't sound like he did.

"Oh, they do," Anders couldn't help being a little proud to say, "and some of the nobles look so sour when they have to bow and address her respectfully when they ask some kind of favor of her. The Chantry hasn't touched her so far, maybe because of her title, and I think her girlfriend is in a pretty high position, herself. But you let one mage out and she..." Anders wagged a finger sanctimoniously, then gasped. It felt like an unnecessary flourish, but theatrics had once been second nature, and Anders was on a roll. "Why, she saves the world, it turns out! Then I get out, too, again, but hopefully for good this time, never mind that they still have my phylactery. And I also take up fighting darkspawn—you know, keeping the world saved. Which is apparently not reason enough not to follow me and infiltrate the Warden ranks to try and drag me back or kill me, even though the Commander had the Queen of Ferelden herself tell them to leave me alone." They scoffed. "Just think of he humiliation of mages thriving outside their cages. How would that look?"

"Not as good if they knew of your spirit," Fenris pointed out.

"No," Anders agreed.

Fenris sat quietly for a moment. Then he wiped his hands on another cloth like the one he had offered Anders, and got up. With long strides he walked to his bed, and to a book that was left open on it.

Anders smiled as they watched Fenris shoo the black cat from where she had curled up for a nap on top of the book, and then Fenris was bringing the book over, and handing it to them. Anders glanced at the cover, and wasn't sure what had brought this on.

"The book is on philosophy, but it also mentions... Particularly chapter seventeen...," Fenris struggled. "It is Rivaini, but translated to the Common Tongue."

"Oh," was all Anders could think of to say.

"The culture there has a rather... different approach to spirits than the Chantry, or Tevinter," Fenris continued.

"Oh," Anders repeated, with much more understanding now of where this was going.

"Perhaps you will find it helpful. Keep the book well, it is Isabela's. She may also know of a word other than 'abomination', should you be looking for one." Fenris adjusted one sleeve of what Anders could now see was a robe and not a blanket. Though a few seams ago it might actually have been a blanket. It looked cozy. "Do not move my bookmark."

Anders stopped themself from saying 'oh' a third time in a row. "You don't think I deserve the term, then?" Anders wasn't always sure whether they did, themself, but if Fenris of all people might come to see their merging as something other than a mistake, perhaps there was something to it.

"I do not like the spirit's presence. But it is your body, and so long as you keep the effects to that, my dislike matters little." Anders knew they had failed to suppress a grimace, because Fenris said, with a little more fidgeting (he had started doing that more in recent years, they had noticed): "As I said, perhaps it will help. To better limit those effects, and control them." He sat back down in his chair.

"Well... thanks," Anders said, not sure they liked Fenris's reasons for wanting to help on this. They had their fears over what the merging might have done to Justice, and the logical conclusion for the source of corruption between a pure spirit of virtue and a mess of a human like themself wasn't comforting. But when others expressed concern, it always sounded like they were waiting for Anders to turn into an amorphous blob and start attacking everyone in sight eventually, and were trying to prevent damage to these potential victims, rather than being concerned for Anders. That wouldn't... they did have this under control. Fenris at least wasn't coy about his doubt in said control being a factor.

Anders tried not to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Perhaps I should find out more about other cultures' practices regarding spirits," they admitted. "The Chantry only ever says to stay away from them, with some exceptions. Not very helpful for what to do when you do merge with one and want to keep being a productive member of the community."

"What are the exceptions?" Fenris asked, and Anders should have known he would latch onto that. His face was an inscrutable mask again.

"As it happens, I've always been one," Anders said, trying to be subtle about studying his expression, "'Spirit Healer' is not just a title; we summon small, benevolent spirits every time we heal. The templars would watch every one of us particularly closely, but they kept us around, because selling healing services is good business and we're very good at that. Well, the spirits are. We're still proper physicians and need to know what we're doing, but it's the spirits doing most the healing, so on top of medical knowledge, what we're good at is directing the spirits." They hoped Fenris was at least a little impressed by that bit. "We're rare, too. It's probably why I was never made Tranquil, despite the escapes."

"Hmm," said Fenris, whatever that meant in this context. He didn't look very betrayed, so that was something.

"Another one is the Harrowing, because of course it's alright when it's done at the Chantry's command."

"...So you wrote."

One of the first things Anders had wanted to inform the public of was the torture ritual mages were subjected to as the only alternative to Tranquility. It was supposed to remain a secret, inside as well as outside the Circle, and there was certainly a reason. People in this city, in all cities, had family in the Circle. These were the kind of things their children were subjected to, not by random bad templars, but by design of the system. And yes, that it involved summoning a demon every time, when that was supposed to be a bad thing that should never be done.

"And it is the same with blood magic?" Fenris asked.

"Blood magic?"

"These phylacteries," Fenris said. "I believe I know how Danarius keeps finding me, now."

"Danarius, who is a blood mage and using it to track down runaway slaves," Anders said, to clarify it to themself more than to Fenris. "You know, we used to joke among ourselves about the phylacteries being blood magic, but you actually think so, too?"

"I... it certainly sounds like it, from every description I have heard of them," Fenris admitted. "The thought of a vial of my blood somewhere far away being a leash I may not be able to break... is disconcerting. But it is likely."

"Maybe there's something that can be done about that," Anders wondered, though they had no idea yet what. "Speaking of which, I couldn't help thinking... you said you lost your memories in the ritual that put those markings on you."

Fenris stroked a patch of his arm that bore a thick branching in the markings. "So it seems. The first I remember is pain, and having them on me, barely healed."

"It just seems too convenient for him, to be just a side-effect," Anders said, and at Fenris's hand pressing down on the arm and brow creasing, hurried to add, "I don't mean to belittle what you went through, just... what if it hadn't wiped your memory? It was so much easier for him to manipulate you when it did. It could be a separate spell."

"I have thought of that," Fenris said, bringing his hand to lie carefully still on the chair's armrest when he seemed to notice it was doing something. "But what would it change? I still can't get back the memories stolen from me."

"If it's a spell, it could be broken," Anders argued. "It would take magic, of course, but..."

"It would take blood magic," Fenris said, louder than they had been speaking.

"You don't know that."

"I do not wish to discuss this further."

"Suit yourself. Just thought you might find it helpful." Anders couldn't help feeling a bit vindictive getting to echo Fenris's words from the presentation of his not-entirely-comforting gift. They did want to help, and it was strange Fenris wouldn't accept it, even if magic was involved. Being able to remember his childhood, a family he might have had... it had to be a big deal to him, enough to set aside his apprehension towards magic.

"I apologize," Fenris said after a moment's pause, calmer.

Anders felt the sprout of vindictiveness shrivel into shame.

"I appreciate the offer, but the answer is no."

Anders took a calming breath, as well, before speaking. "It's your memories. It should be your decision." That didn't help Fenris's decision make more sense, but they wouldn't push it.

Fenris simply nodded in response. Not that there was much else to say to that.

Anders got up to check their coat, and this time they found it dry.

Fenris also got to his feet, and rolled up the sleeves of his robe. He gathered the apple bowls and knife in a bundle with the cloths, and moved it to the table, where Anders now noticed was a basin covered with a towel. Fenris uncovered it to place the bowls in the water that already had the dishes from last night's pie left to soak in it.

"The cats might attempt to drink it," Fenris explained the towel without needing to be asked.

"Probably would," Anders agreed. "Anything they're not supposed to get into." They picked up their coat, went to put it on, and then set it down on the back of a chair instead. "Um, would you like help with those before I go? I helped dirty them."

"Then you have helped already," Fenris said, with enough mirth Anders would have called it laughing at his own joke, which decided it for them.

With a smile, they promised: "Just say the word if you're actually waiting for me to leave already, no offense taken. If not, well, it'll be quicker. You can wash, I'll dry?"

Fenris moved aside, and handed them the towel. "Let us be quick, then." Awkward though it might have been, not the worst way to end a visit Anders had been undecided on whether to expect it to make or ruin their day.

They saw little of each other in the following weeks.

Hawke came by the clinic a few times, one of those times on the day following the sleepover and quite blatantly to check on Anders because of it. Anders spent fewer words on what felt like a private development, than they did on the overheard, unfairly abandoned criminal investigation, which with so little to go on went nowhere anyway. Between those visits, Hawke wasn't taking on jobs where they felt a healer was needed, and accepted Anders declining invitations to several of the group's regular card nights as well.

Anders was made both relieved and anxious by the limited interaction.

They had gotten a good momentum to build on, and Anders was, for the first time in years, intrigued to see what would become of their relationship with Fenris. One evening, as they had been putting away rolls of bandage, they had thought of a particularly good point to make about the Chantry, and had had to sit down and remind themself of the hour to keep from jogging to Hightown to ask for Fenris's opinion on it. They had written it down, instead.

On the other hand, Anders was not sure how to break the news of their recent extracurricular activities, or if Fenris would appreciate hearing about them at all. One night of tentative bonding aside, there was a lot at stake with this secret should it get out, mostly for other people, and trusting Fenris with it was a risk. A few weeks ago they would never have considered it, and they hadn't even told Hawke, so it was probably premature to move keeping Fenris updated on their life higher on their list of priorities, consequences to the momentum be damned.

Anders had finally approached their contacts within the Mage Underground for a more involved role. A manifesto was all well and good, and they would still finish the Fenris-proofread edition, but times were dire, and change needed to come faster.

For as many as five mages, change had already come in these weeks, to avoid the change into a Tranquil or a corpse. The sight of their tears of happiness at getting out into the world was what Anders clung to whenever in doubt. This was important. This needed to happen. This was right. Each rescue mission left Anders euphoric and energized afterwards, no matter how taxing, and eager to take on more work, to the point that on a handful of nights they simply didn't sleep. But they were a Warden, and could run on a bit less than your average mortal just because of that, or so they figured when they stopped to think about it. It was not a concern.

Stopping to think didn't happen often, or for very long. Anders was happy for every mage they rescued, and felt a reinforced sense of purpose, but this work also brought back emotions Anders wasn't ready to look at—didn't have time to look at, either. They had come to Kirkwall to save one very specific mage, and that one they had failed. It didn't feel like a sufficient atonement, but they doubted Karl would have disapproved.

One evening after Hawke had gotten at turns concerned and nosy at Anders's attempt at a fourth refusal to attend a card night, they were sitting in Varric's suite of rooms at the Hanged Man, a little dazed at the leisured atmosphere. Their friends' joyousness was infectious, but every so often they found themself channeling restless energy into leg bouncing or checking cards they remembered full well.

The chatter and Anders zoning out came to a pause at the sound of a chair being pulled back, followed by "Shall I get everyone another round?"

The words that were answered with a loud cheer had been spoken by Sebastian. The prince looked bashful at the attention, including Hawke declaring him their new best friend, and Varric adding he didn't even mind being demoted if he got a pint out of it. Anders snorted, and turned back to nursing their still half-full one. It was far from the worst thing they had put in their mouth for sustenance, granted, but shitty beer didn't quite retain its appeal when the taste was all you got out of it.

Another chair's legs screeched against the floor.

"I will go with him," said Fenris, and got up as well. "A lot of beer for one person to carry."

"Ah. Thank you," said Sebastian.

Varric informed Fenris that while Choir Boy (since when did Sebastian get a nickname, too?) already had dibs on being Hawke's new bestie, he suddenly had the spot open.

The two of them had barely closed the door behind them when Anders got up, too. There wasn't anything they could do right now that would cure their restlessness, but perhaps walking around a bit would at least help.

"Now you've done it," laughed Isabela. "Here I've spent years scouring the seas and ports for treasure, and it turns out, the most tradeable currency was the friendships we made along the way. Alright, Anders, you can be... Aveline's new bosom bud."

"I'll leave my bosom out of this, thank you," said Aveline. Anders caught her wrinkling her nose—probably at having just drained her pint and caught the dregs. They didn't think the idea of being friends with them was quite that unappealing.

"I'm afraid no one's getting any drinks out of this," Anders told the room, "just catching some fresh air. Well, fresher than Darktown at any rate."

"We'll wait for you to get back before dealing again," assured Varric, shuffling the deck, "don't get in trouble."

Anders nodded in thanks and left the suite.

They fully intended to just wander the corridors of the inn part of Hanged Man for a bit to keep in motion, maybe briefly pop outside. But passing by the stairway to the taproom, Anders caught sight of Fenris and Sebastian still at the foot of the stairs, and more importantly, the sound of their conversation.

"So... this is quite an unusual group of companions," said Sebastian.

"Indeed," agreed Fenris. They made their way towards the bar slowly, at least at the moment not bothering to lower their voices in the noisy room.

Anders wasn't entirely sure who had decided to invite the Chantry brother to hang out with them on the regular, or why. Sebastian seemed an odd one out among the criminals that made up their group. Granted, Aveline was the captain of the city guard now, but she had at least started out as a Fereldan refugee who had come to the city as penniless as the rest of them.

Anders hadn't been there when Hawke had apparently helped Sebastian confront the people who had called assassins on his family, just heard about it from Varric, who along with Fenris and Merrill had gone with them. They hadn't expected more to come of it, Hawke got involved in other people's business all the time. The couple of businesses Anders had helped them get involved in with Sebastian also there had definitely not left them any more comfortable around the man. 'No one had ever asked' why mages were kept locked up? Equating Anders's imprisonment with Sebastian having been 'given' to the Chantry? Who did this prince think he was? Perhaps mocking his belt buckle had been a bit uncalled-for provocation, but Anders had thought it was pretty harmless.

"I must confess I did not expect you to get along so well, but you seem to be such good friends despite your differences. I'm glad of that," Anders heard Sebastian marvel at Fenris, and decided they wanted to hear more. Eavesdropping wasn't exactly just, but it was a public place.

They crept down the stairs after the two, and hoped the conversation would stay loud enough they wouldn't have to get closer. Since 'Choir Boy' was confused, too, one of them might as well get some answers.

"Yes," Fenris simply said.

Sebastian then turned to the bar, no doubt to place their order. Fenris added something, then seemed to remember one more thing, probably to put it on Varric's tab—they came here often enough it might actually just be assumed by now, but it didn't hurt to make sure when you remembered to. You got upgraded to being served shitty beer instead of incredibly shitty beer when you were considered a regular customer, for one.

They waited for Corff to draw the drinks without further talking, but after he had loaded the last of the pints onto the two trays and they turned to go, Fenris continued as if there had been no pause: "We certainly do... refrain from murdering one another." Not giving the bartender gossip to spread, good thinking.

"Am I mistaken, then?" Sebastian asked.

"A jest," Fenris said—with a smirk, Anders could guess if not confirm, having ducked out of sight after the other two had started walking in their direction. "Never mind me."

"I see."

Fenris and Sebastian were nearing the stairway, so Anders climbed to the top as quietly as they could. They figured they could wait behind a corner while the other two got to Varric's door. The speakers stopped at halfway up the stairs, though.

"I can't help but to have noticed, though... You and Anders and Merrill do argue a lot..." said Sebastian's voice. "They trouble you?"

"They trouble themselves," answered Fenris's. "Both insist on foolish choices, and cannot deny I warned them, when their luck eventually runs out. That is all."

Anders frowned. It shouldn't hurt, Fenris had said pretty much the same of them before. What had they expected, that suddenly they were bosom buds now?

"If... if they have difficulties controlling themselves...?" Sebastian said, quieter now. "Is it not our duty to... well?" He didn't seem to want to spell out the rest, perhaps due to being in public, but he didn't have to.

For a moment Anders was twelve years old again, hands still stained with soot from trying to put out a barn fire the same way it had started. Thank the Maker for it turning out they also had a talent for healing.

The duty of a Proper Andrastian, was it, to call the templars on someone for existing, so they could be locked away for life? A shudder crept up the back of their neck through cold sweat, and suddenly any amount of fresh air wasn't enough. Anders had to get away, but the way out was blocked. They felt a wave of confused readiness to fight, and pushed down Justice's impulse as they recognized it. They could not do that here! They should warn Merrill, too, they should—

"No."

Anders blinked at the sound of Fenris's voice, holding in a breath that had started coming out at a frantic pace.

"I will not turn them in, and neither will you," said Fenris, with a bite to his voice that had dropped to a whisper. "What little trust there is between us, I will not betray it, or give them reason to. Have I made myself clear?"

There was a pause, and then Sebastian's voice spoke again, calmly: "More than."

Anders let out the breath, and it didn't feel quite as much like air was out of reach anymore.

They heard Sebastian clear his throat, and then continue: "It is not something I wish to do, I assure you. The Maker has been generous with His second chances when it comes to my life, Fenris. I would not take away someone else's. I was just... concerned."

Fenris was quiet for a moment, then resumed walking up the stairs, and Anders scrambled to get behind that corner.

Before the door to Varric's suite opened, Sebastian spoke again: "My apologies. It seems I hadn't even realized how much I've missed having friends outside the clergy, and I truly wanted to fit in with your group. Now I feel I have broken an unspoken rule in it."

"Not to worry," said Fenris, "breaking rules is how we communicate around here. You will fit right in." Then he opened the door and walked in without clarifying if that was another joke.

Loud cheers could be heard from behind the closed door as Anders came out from their hiding place. They decided to wait a moment before going in, to avoid seeming suspicious, and... well, to get their heart rate under control.

When they slipped in a little later it was to a slightly less impressive reception, but Anders was glad not to be the center of attention. The people around the table had changed seats a little in their absence, Isabela now sitting next to Merrill, who was leaning on her shoulder. Sebastian had sat next to Fenris, and they seemed to be well into another topic of conversation. That left an empty seat at...

Fenris glanced up briefly, and shrugged at the chair at his other side. Anders sat down to find their half-full pint had already been moved in front of the empty seat, now also accompanied by another one full of... was that sweet mead?

No one was missing a pint, including Fenris, whose refilled one had identical contents judging by the scent. They took a sip of their new drink, sugarier than they would usually have gone for, but with a distinct lack of shittiness worthy of immediately following up with a bigger gulp.

Varric stood up from his seat at the other side of the table, and took out his deck. "Blondie, good of you to join us. Everything alright?"

"Sure," said Anders.

Varric hummed approvingly, and begun to deal the cards.

Perhaps it was, after all. Or would be.

Chapter 6: Accord

"Trash. Trash. Keep. Trash. Trash... Won't be needing that anymore..."

Fenris watched Hawke's attempts to calm down the mage, somehow both keenly aware of his surroundings and lost in calming himself.

The child had been saved, and Fenris found himself glad of that. Hawke had advised her to run away, get out of the city altogether. He was more conflicted on that decision, but he had expected no different. What they had walked in on spoke quite clearly of the Gallows not being a safe place for her, and on reflection, out of all those present, the mage girl (Ella, Hawke had called her, someone Bethany had mentioned—and oh, how Fenris did not want to think about Bethany being in that same place, right now) had handled the situation with probably the most self-control.

What he had seen... Anders's spirit had unnerved him since he had found out about it. He had stared down abominations of truly creative amounts of grotesque over the course of his remembered life. He had severely underestimated how jarring was the possibility of having to fight one wearing the face of a friend (friend of a friend?).

Beside him, Isabela was no less unsettled. Though she let Hawke do the talking, her hands would twitch in little, aborted motions, and Fenris realized it was out of desire for comfort, perhaps to give it, or to receive. He had no skill at either, but he reached out his hand, and she took it with a squeeze, careful of the sharp edges of his gauntlets.

But they had found their evidence, which seemed to finally cut through Anders's panic. The plot had been real, the suspicions warranted, yet it was not as widespread as they had feared. Perhaps the Grand Cleric would listen. There was hope.

Isabela let go of his hand, and stretched, with a nonchalance that to her credit did not seem entirely feigned. "She's got her head far up her ass, alright," she said, "but it's got to come out for long enough to face documented facts. Hawke will be there." She glanced to her other side at them, and Hawke gave a determined nod. "She can't deny a noble an audience. Wealth and titles are what speaks to these types no matter how pious, might as well use it to your advantage."

Anders snorted. It came out a little snotty, but it was a laugh. "She can always have us thrown out for saying things she doesn't want to hear."

"We won't know until we try," said Hawke. "Whenever you're ready, let me know and we'll go."

"Besides," Isabela said and stepped forward. She took Anders's hand this time, and for a moment she made no effort to keep the seriousness from her voice. "The world has one less Ser Alrik in it, and that's today's good deed, never mind the method. That scum can't hurt anyone else now."

"I know," Anders whispered, looking her in the eye with equal intensity. "Thank you."

The group was taking their leave, Anders assuring Hawke of being fine, and that they would go bother the Grand Cleric soon together. Fenris dawdled, and when Hawke noticed he wasn't following them out, they shared a look. 'Be nice,' Hawke's seemed to say. Fenris wasn't sure what they had read from his, but he found himself left alone with the mage regardless. He was not sure he was going to be nice, nor that this was a good idea, but here he was.

Anders sat down on a nearby crate, and stayed quiet. It looked like he was going to have to start.

"What was it you said?" he asked, not bothering to hide his sneer. "'I can control it'?"

Anders scowled up at him through strands of hair that had come loose from their tie. No, this was not going to be nice.

"Maybe it's time to realize your limitations," Fenris continued.

"Yes, fine," Anders snapped at him. "Kick me while I'm down. Clearly you're right about everything."

Fenris sighed. "It was a suggestion. Not a condemnation"

"Oh, please. You've never liked Justice," Anders muttered, then said a little louder: "You think our merging was a foolish mistake."

"Perhaps it was," Fenris said, and took a step closer. "But it is done now."

"It most certainly is." Anders shook their head, and like a switch had been turned bent forward to lower that head in their hands. "I wanted to help my friend, instead I have warped them with my rage and inadequacies. I know it's not all gone wrong yet, but how long will it take before something worse happens?" From the sound of it they were clenching their teeth as they spoke. "I'm the monster they tell little mages never to become, now. It would be better if I left Kirkwall altogether."

"And became someone else's problem, somewhere else?" Fenris crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, as he stared down at the friend-of-a-friend he had brought back to the brink of tears. Perhaps the tears would have come anyway, or they would have been pushed down but their cause would have remained. He told himself that, to keep from feeling like a bully. "You would be simply running away."

Anders scoffed. "It's what I'm good at."

Fenris scuffed his feet on the floor of the clinic, never quite clean despite Anders obviously having done their best. "That makes two of us," he finally said. He walked to another crate, and dragged it in front of Anders, who looked up when he sat down on it.

"I... would not claim to know how you are feeling," Fenris started, looking down at his hands. He kept fiddling with his fingers enough that he opted to unbuckle his gauntlets and set them aside. He was already going to bleed himself metaphorically, it seemed, no sense adding actually scratching himself to it, too. "But being compelled to hurt those you would seek to protect... of that, I know a thing or two."

"I know," Anders said, softer than their jabs had been just before. "Danarius made you kill for him, right? Probably quite a lot." They sniffed, and quickly wiped at their eyes with a thumb, straightening enough to signal the threat of another breakdown had passed. "You were a slave, so it wasn't your fault."

"Perhaps not," Fenris conceded. He knew that, factually. Sebastian had said as much, and Fenris had snapped at him at the time for his trouble. He had not appreciated having the topic inflicted on him; if he was to talk about his past to feel better about it, if that was indeed the effect it would have, it would be of his own initiative. But he would not deny he wanted to believe Sebastian's blanket absolution of his deeds. Perhaps one day. This, however, was a bit murkier still. "I have not told you of my escape."

"No," Anders agreed.

Fenris laced his fingers together to keep them from trembling. Yet again he was laying a part of himself bare for Ander to see, and he wasn't quite sure what was driving him to do so. They had trusted each other about the truth of their gender, though Fenris didn't think he would have if he hadn't realized it was a secret they shared. He had seen Anders tonight more out of control than ever before, in a state Anders themself described as monstrous. But would this be something they couldn't be understanding towards? Was Fenris looking for that absolution, from someone actually qualified to give it?

He had recounted the full story to Hawke already. Anders, he decided, would get the highlights. "The first time I escaped, on Seheron, I had not intended to, at first. Nevertheless, I was wounded, and then found and saved by a group of local freedom fighters, the Fog Warriors. It was among them I first learned what it would be like to live free."

"The first time?"

"The second time was when Danarius caught up with me, and ordered me to kill my new companions." He looked up to meet Anders's eyes, realizing he hadn't been doing so.

Anders looked at him silently for a moment, and their mouth thinned into a straight line. "And you did it," they said. It was not a question.

There was no use confirming the guess. Fenris figured his lack of denial said enough.

Anders leaned forward more, and Fenris wasn't sure if it was out of attentiveness or to get a beam of light out of their eyes. The sun had begun to rise, Fenris realized.

"Why are you telling me this now?" Anders asked.

Fenris tried to choose his words carefully, but soon decided to simply say it rather than hopelessly seek to perfect it. "It took that for me to realize Danarius had no right to tell me what to do. That I was nothing more than a puppet to him, and it had to stop." Fenris realized his hands had disentagled from each other, and instead of keeping them still he was gently tapping the backs of his fingers together to an imagined rhythm. For a moment it made all the difference it was a mage in front of him, seeing him do that, and he deliberately stopped himself from suppressing it, because now he could. "You seek freedom from the Chantry, but I would have you acknowledge they are not the only ones pulling your strings."

Anders was quiet, and Fenris realized he had been looking away again. When their eyes met, Fenris tensed.

"What?" Anders whispered, and the most flattering mental image Fenris could muster for comparison was when he had accidentally cornered one of the cats in the early days of their acquaintance, and the small beast had hissed a warning.

Fenris scowled back, and stood his ground.

"Do you think you're going to help me by comparing Justice to your slave master?" Anders said, suddenly sounding very brittle. Fenris had half expected the other, deeper voice to start joining in, but it hadn't, at least not yet. "How dare you! Justice was my friend!"

"I thought Danarius was my friend," Fenris said, refusing to yell. "You blame yourself for everything that goes wrong, when that spirit is manipulating you. Have you not considered that you are not the one at fault and ruining everything, but that Justice, or whatever it calls itself, is the one hurting you?"

Anders breathed heavily for a moment, glaring at Fenris. Then they sighed and closed their eyes, their chin lowered to near touching their chest. "It's not like that."

"Then how is it?"

"I am Justice. And I'm Anders," Anders said. "I—or, we... We both hurt each other, but we don't mean to. We've hurt others, when we didn't mean to." They scrubbed a hand over their mouth. "When that templar infiltrated the Warden ranks to stalk me, and brought a number of his so-called-former colleagues to ambush me right after we had merged, there were other Wardens present, new recruits we were supposed to be training, and they got caught in the fighting. I say 'fighting', but it wasn't a battle. I just killed all of them." Anders shrugged, but they sounded rather like they were about to be sick. "Much like your Fog Warriors, I imagine."

Fenris didn't know what to say.

"Only I wasn't brainwashed into it by an evil magister. That wasn't some outside entity manipulating me into almost hurting an innocent girl just now, there was only me." Anders raised their head, and... well, now there were tears again. "Fenris, there's no monster using me as a puppet. I am the monster."

Fenris looked to his hands, and tapped the backs of his fingers together a few more times. He didn't know why, but it and other similar motions seemed to help him think. "Alright. You are a monster," he told Anders.

"Well, good," Anders spat, but the bitterness didn't seem to be directed at him. They got up from their crate and stood aside for Fenris to move, too. "Now that that's established, why don't you fuck off and leave me to haunting the sewers like a proper abomination."

"Shut up, Anders," Fenris said back, calmly.

For once, they actually did.

"So, you're a monster, after a definition of such. That is a factor, not a course of action."

Anders furrowed their brow and blinked, but still said nothing, which was just fine with Fenris. He wasn't done.

"Neither is self-pitying and working yourself into a panic about it, or avoiding the matter until something happens again that you are unprepared to deal with," he said, still sitting firmly on his crate, not going anywhere. "I apologize for my inconsiderate take on your situation. I admit I do not understand it very well."

"I don't always understand it, myself," Anders admitted. "We didn't really know what we were doing when we merged, and there's... never been time to stop and figure it out."

Fenris nodded. "Do not run away, then. Not this time."

Anders ran a hand through their hair, finding their ponytail had come mostly undone. They pulled their hair loose entirely and retied it. Then they sat back down on the crate.

"Uh, thanks for the book, by the way," Anders said. "It didn't help. From what I've gathered about Rivaini seers—from other books, and Isabela—they have methods for preventing prolonged possession, and, well, that ship's sailed. But you tried, I appreciate that."

It must have occurred to both of them, so Fenris thought it might as well be said out loud, even if it might be overstepping: "Nothing about... separating a spirit from the possessed?"

"I'm not sure that applies. Justice was well and truly outside the Fade when we merged. And we did merge. Is that even possession? It feels like... more."

Fenris couldn't say, so he didn't.

"Do you need to open the clinic?" he asked instead, wondering whether he should have. Anders hadn't slept all night. But they were an adult, and Fenris wasn't going to keep them from most of their bad decisions.

Anders shook their head. "If there's an emergency, people will knock whether the lantern is lit or not."

They sat in silence long enough for the gold of sunrise light to descend where it reflected off the smirch on the walls. The wind outside rattled the giant chains hanging from the cliffside like a grimly ironic windchime, and Fenris wondered if it had factored in Anders picking this spot for a base of operations they likened to liberating slaves. But then, there were few locations in an old Tevinter city that were not reminders of the existence of slavery, his own living quarters certainly not an example no matter how much he was slowly making the mansion home. He was starting to miss his bed, realizing he hadn't slept, either. It was the first thing he had cleaned up and refurbished into usable condition in the mansion, and it was terribly cozy, if he did say so himself. His back would not thank him if he didn't make his way to it sometime soon.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was doing here, anymore. He had wanted to make Anders understand. Hawke and Isabela were sympathetic, but they seemed to have faith the problem would solve itself. As much as Fenris felt anxious going out of his way to involve himself in other people's affairs, this had not been a matter of making tracks that could lead danger to him. Anders's instability was a danger. Only, he had not had the solution, himself. Somehow, he had still managed to encourage Anders to seek one, and they seemed calmer again, so perhaps any good he could accomplish had been done, and he should leave before he put his foot in his mouth and undid it.

"It was overwhelming," Anders spoke before he could excuse himself. Their gaze was aimed at a spot on the floor.

Fenris remained seated, curious where this was going.

"What we walked in on... it was a reasonable thing to get angry about, wasn't it?" Anders asked, but seemed to expect no answer. "But it wasn't just that. It was like it was the instance of abuse in front of us, and every single one that had come before, suddenly condensed into one moment, and I was reliving everything."

"Everything that has happened to you," Fenris clarified.

Anders nodded. "It was like that, sort of, in the chantry, when we found Karl. When they'd condemned a man to a lifetime in a state so unbearable he chose death over having to return to it, just to use him as bait. I was so angry for him, but I still knew where I was... I have always feared being made Tranquil, or having it happen to someone close."

But it hadn't happened before. Obviously not to Anders, and apparently not to someone so close. Being ambushed by templars after evading them for a time and hoping that perhaps this time, it would be for good... well, Anders had alluded to multiple escapes, before, hadn't they.

"Time does not exist in the Fade, not as it does here," Anders said. "For a moment... it didn't, to me."

"The spirit was angry for you," Fenris realized as he said it. "And frightened, because you were." Had been. He would not ask. Sebastian already had, which he had overheard; the man was eager to help, for what it was worth. Fenris thought back to the conversation in front of his fireplace, on another morning spent with Anders. Being kicked in the head was... 'fortunate' when it came to beatings, if 'fortunate' meant 'it could have been worse'. Fenris had certainly told himself plenty of times that it always could be.

"Justice is me, and in ways isn't," Anders said. "We're, uh, like a soup, I suppose, not all evenly mixed together into a mush, but with... the occasional potato and carrot, and other bits floating around." They laughed a little, the sound coming out more nervous than joyous. "Oh, Maker, I'm hungry, apparently. I'm the potatoes, by the way, in this analogy. Justice can have the carrots."

"I could convince Varric to change your nickname."

Anders mimicked weighing things in each hand. "'Potatoes', or 'Blondie'... it's a tough choice, but I think I'll stick to what I've got."

"Anders," Fenris said, the smile that had crept on his face slipping off again. He could see the attempt to distract and lighten the mood for what it was, but he would say this one thing, at least.

Anders put their hands down on their knees, and waited—for judgment? From someone qualified to give it?

Fenris took a deep breath before speaking. "There have been times I have longed for someone to be that angry on my behalf," he admitted before he could change his mind. "Your spirit had cause to be."

Anders's hand twitched, and Fenris thought, well, he had already taken off his gauntlets. He reached out the hand on the same side, and after a moment's hesitation, Anders took hold of it.

The problem was not resolved. Innocent bystanders being at risk was not acceptable. But he had to concede he saw a logic to the spirit's behavior, and it was, to some extent, quite just, if still undeniably dangerous.

Fenris let go of Anders's hand, and finally stood up. "I will leave you to your breakfast," he said. "Soup, perhaps."

Anders snorted, and stood up as well.

Their goodbyes were only slightly less awkward this time. There was no use pretending they hadn't just shared, once again, something unexpectedly intimate about themselves with each other, but how did one behave accordingly in that situation? The amusement at the shuffling and the unfinished words was mutual, though, so Fenris counted the social ritual a success.

He later heard from Hawke that they had taken the evidence to the Grand Cleric the next day, only to be hastily brushed off. They had tried their luck with the Knight Captain as well, and found out Ser Alrik's plan had been not only widely known and tolerated among the templars, but that support for it had not died with him entirely, after all. Hawke was livid. Fenris was concerned what Anders and their Mage Underground would feel pushed to do in response.

He had not escaped corrupt exploitation of a class of de jure non-persons when he had left Tevinter, it would have been laughably naive to expect so. Evil always found a way to take a form fitting its surroundings, and laws were made by oppressors and peppered with enabling loopholes. He couldn't trust mages wouldn't take advantage of what power they amassed, but he could see those who opposed them weren't any more immune.

But Anders believed in clean victories through hard work. Or perhaps it was Justice who did, he wasn't sure it made a practical difference. Fenris knew it was foolish, and had no envy for the crashes with reality they were likely far from done experiencing, yet part of him wished he had the foolish courage to see the world as so inherently good, its unequally distributed suffering a malfunction that could be fixed. If not out of a sheltered life, it was mystifying to him where such faith could draw from.

The Fade? For all he knew.

He just hoped he would not have to interact with that, or its inhabitants, quite so closely for a long time.

Chapter 7: Hurt

Arianni had little to pack, and with the help of Hawke's companions and the Dalish who had travelled to the city with their Keeper, she was quickly on her way. Some of her neighbors had come out to say their goodbyes to her despite the time of night, but were gone again (into their houses; they had not stopped existing) as soon the small retinue was out of sight. Justice was pleased they had been able to bring aid to her and her son.

Their own group—Justice themself, Hawke, Aveline, Fenris, and Merrill—lingered in the deserted Alienage square, three humans and an estranged elf seeming very lost under the Vhenadahl.

Fenris in particular was reminiscent to Justice of when they had first met him, in this same location, with how haunted he appeared (by thoughts; he was not possessed—Justice had very recent reference for what Fenris was like possessed, and the experience of having had to fight a demon wearing the face of a friend haunted Justice as well, in this same manner as Fenris's thoughts). He had lied, then. The plot to get them to fight his enemies he had admitted to immediately, as was right. The lie that he was also telling right now they had had to learn what to look for in order to uncover, Anders with more reluctance out of the two of them (it was with demeanor, not words, and something Anders had more confidence in already understanding than Justice did).

A gust of wind rustling the tree drew Justice's attention (actually Justice refocused their attention as a result of the wind, it had not blown for their sake).

They were momentarily fascinated with the moonlight filtering through the foliage, how it was met by the soft flickering of candles from below. In the Fade, the two lights might have been a creation of a spirit, or a mortal's dream, perhaps both in attempt to communicate, but here their behaviors existed on their own, unattended. Remembering that helped ground Justice. This world was subtler to shape to one's liking, but it continued to function by its inner logic even when no one was there to witness every detail. Justice missed the familiarity of home, but was this world not also home, now? It was Anders's home, and they were now part of Justice and Justice was part of them.

Merrill took Hawke by the hand, and addressed the whole group: "It's been a long night. Do you want to come in, for a moment, get your bearings?" She had stayed behind with the Keeper, with some reluctance, to assist in the spell, but it must have been clear to her things had not gone entirely to plan in the Fade.

Justice could feel gratitude for the offer, but their mouth wouldn't speak to accept it.

"I have tea," Merrill said. She then pretended not to look at Fenris out of the corner of her eye as she added: "and cookies." Justice was not looking at his reaction, but saw that she smiled.

"Maker, I could use a drink," said Aveline. "Anything with alcohol would be ideal after this, but I'll gladly have the tea. Thank you, Merrill."

Merrill nodded, and lead the way across the square. "Oh, don't worry. I have that, too."

They gathered around a hexagonal table in Merrill's living room as she fussed, finding them things to sit on and moving books and papers from the table to make space. Hawke insisted on helping.

Justice looked around, wondering at the placement of bookshelves on each side of a fireplace. They felt a thought that such foolishness was to be expected of her, but remembered an open firepit at the clinic that had once spat a spark onto the rag of a curtain hung right next to it, and kept quiet.

Fenris and Aveline stood stiffly near the doorway, and sat down without a word when they had seats.

"The water is clean," Merrill assured as she poured their tea. "Not because of blood magic, I bring it from Hightown. Most of us do."

She put an unlabeled bottle in front of Aveline, who, after a careful sniff, poured a rather large amount in her tea. She held out the bottle to the others, but Fenris shook his head, and Justice did the same. Hawke on the other hand filled half of their cup with the liquor before letting Merrill top it off with tea.

Merrill sat down next to Hawke, and without missing a beat (if there was music playing that included drums, which there was not) patted them on the back as they coughed after taking a sip.

"This is... is it cold in here?" Aveline said at the same time as Fenris started with an "I..." on the other side of the table.

"...apologize, for your weakness," Justice interrupted him, ignoring Aveline for now. "You already did that."

Fenris glared at them for a moment, then turned to Hawke. "That a demon could have played so easily on my fears... disturbs me. But we should not have been in the Fade in the first place."

"You would have preferred we let Feynriel die?" Hawke asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Or be possessed, or made Tranquil?"

Justice moved their grip from their cup to the edge of the table, hoping those broke less easily.

"You didn't have to come," said Hawke, despite having asked him to come (because he could decline, now, and should if he wanted to).

"No, I... I do not know what I would have preferred," Fenris said from behind his fringe (it actually only covered his eyes and forehead, but Anders seemed to consider one or both of these an important part of communication). "Who knows what the boy will become. He may yet regret the mercy you provided."

"Yes, we mages can't all be as strong as you in resisting temptation, after all," Merrill said, cheerfully, and nudged the cookie tray closer to him.

Fenris made a pained noise (which was not caused by a physical injury he had sustained tonight; wounds gained in the Fade did not follow mortals out of it), then took a cookie.

Justice felt themself smile, though they saw little to rejoice in their companion's misery if it contributed nothing to an atonement. The impulse must have been Anders's. They pushed against it, and the smiling ceased, but they accepted the satisfaction at a hypocrisy brought to light (because vision was based on light, though it was possible to notice things without seeing them) to be corrected.

"Everything in the Fade is a lie, or a trick or a trap," Merrill said. "I don't know what the spirit offered you, Fenris..."

"Demon," Justice interjected.

Merrill didn't acknowledge the correction. "...but it must have been very important to you. It's never easy to turn away."

"I'll say," Aveline joined in, and the others turned to look at her. "It took a memory I was at peace with and... well..." She took a swig from her cup. "If that's what mages contend with... I'm less opposed to the Gallows. I can't say I'm sure the world is a safer place with Feynriel still having his powers."

"So out of the four of us besides Hawke, it's Merrill and I who should be locked up?" Justice countered her. "Because two non-mages suddenly had a taste of what mages are strong enough to resist every day, and immediately gave in?"

Aveline leaned back, and her eyes had gone wide. Justice realized the spirit's voice had joined the mage's.

"And you haven't?" said Aveline, gesturing at their general being, then crossed her arms. "Are we pretending you didn't just almost start glowing again. You've been possessed for as long as I've known you, and seem quite proud of the fact."

"Do not compare Justice to a demon," Justice said back through their teeth, carefully letting only their human half be audible, to make a point (a rhetorical one, though they hoped it stung a little). "You would have an innocent made Tranquil because you fear him?"

"I don't claim to like it. Sometimes there is a case for it."

"Whoah, can we all just calm down for a moment?" Hawke raised their voice (in volume, not altitude), looking around the table. "Like Merrill said, it's been a long night. We're tired, and maybe some of us are a bit drunk already. And some of us are both drunk and have had quite enough of fighting their friends—for this night and any!"

"Hawke is right, this is counterproductive," Fenris said, still sounding miserable. "Three people not already possessed went in, and one came out without falling. As strong as the demon's hold on me felt, she still didn't manage to influence them. And here we are ruining their night further."

"'She'?" asked Aveline.

Justice did not see the need for confusion. Simply because an idea was not inherently gendered did not mean some spirits aspiring to embody it might not choose to also inhabit some mortal concept of gender or another, and some mortal concepts of its expression. Justice had no need for a gender, but that was also not a state of being excluding mortals, and had been the case for Anders already when they had existed separately. It did not seem so complicated.

"Her name was Wryme," Fenris explained. "I wish I didn't have to know that, or anything else of her."

Hawke sighed. "Fenris, she didn't target me, and it was probably just by chance that she picked you instead. Don't beat yourself up over it too much." They smiled when they turned to Aveline. "Either of you."

Hawke's composure was a lie. Justice could see they were more shaken (emotionally, which could feel like something had been shaking you even when nothing had) by the experience than they wanted to admit, and the others probably could, too. But if their forgiveness was genuine, Justice had learned to let people have their lies that were told to comfort rather than to hurt others. They should check on Hawke later, to make sure they were alright. Hawke did so much to make sure they all were.

"Is this a bad moment to ask if you would like to see what I've been working on?" Merrill said.

Fenris and Aveline said nothing. Justice wanted to answer 'yes' honestly; her projects that also involved demons would hardly be beneficial. Anders pushed down the impulse, and the thought came to them that saying it out loud would not be conductive to helping Hawke be alright. A lie by omission to comfort others; this was acceptable.

As predicted, Hawke perked up and got up with her. "No, where is it? Can I see?"

Merrill led them by the hand to the other room. "Oh, help yourselves to the tea and cookies," she said from the door. "Try not to empty the bottle, it's quite strong, and I'd like some for cooking later. You can stay the night if you want."

She closed the door after her, leaving a silence other than the crackling of the fireplace and the indecipherable but cheerful murmur that the door (passively, not by its decision) let through of their conversation.

Fenris put an elbow on the table and leaned his chin on the hand. "Is it any good?" he asked, indicating the bottle with his other hand.

"Horrible," said Aveline, and drained her cup. "But it is strong."

Fenris grabbed the bottle, and poured a bit in his tea. He took a sip and scrunched his nose at the taste, and reached for the teapot and the sugar dish instead to carefully mix a blend meeting his standards.

"Oh, to the Void with it," Justice heard themself say, as they took the bottle themself.

"I thought your spirit didn't 'let you' get drunk," Aveline said.

"Well, I doubt I have such luck that I actually will, despite my best efforts." Justice did seem extraordinarily resistant to poisons, which alcohol technically was, but they didn't get to test this ability on it often, as the thought of actually succeeding also made them uncomfortable, most of the time. "So, my spirit is going to try some spirits tonight."

Fenris chuckled, and somehow that warmed them more than the burning brew did.

"Nice try," they told the cup, though the inanimate object would likely not understand speech in this world, "but just ask any Warden—not that they'll tell you, the secretive bastards—I've had much worse than a weird batch of Alienage moonshine."

Justice tried to reconcile the drink with the beautiful light on the leaves outside. It was answered with a memory of drinking with friends, and Justice felt a longing for a moment only part of them had experienced, and people the whole of them had known. It was a soothing association, despite the (emotional) pain of loss attached to it. Justice acquiesced in the momentary imbibing with the caution of other associated memories from before they merged. That it wouldn't be like that came simultaneously as both an assurance and an instruction. For one, they did once again have company that could perhaps be described as friends. The 'perhaps' was (despite words not having mass, here) particularly weighty tonight.

"So, is locking me up and putting the brand on me still on the table, or are we going to talk about something else?" Justice asked.

"I didn't say it should happen to you," Aveline argued.

"No, you just don't have a problem with it being done to people like me. No big deal." It was a big deal, Justice thought, not sure this lie would comfort anyone. "Though I finally got to see the man whose memory you're willing to delude yourself about the templars' righteousness for, there's that. Handsome enough, I suppose, probably more so before the taint."

"Don't you start about him," Aveline said. "I don't know what you get out of making inappropriate remarks about a dead man to his widow." She had picked up the bottle again, but put it down before pouring any in her cup. Probably wise considering the headstart she had gotten (they were not racing, but it probably did go to her head). "I've moved on, and I'm happy with Donnic. But I will not have you insult him, not now."

"Aveline?" Fenris asked. Justice remembered that he had not been with them anymore at that point.

Aveline sighed. "The demon made itself look like Wesley. It played on my guilt for not being able to save him, for what I had to do to give him peace... even though I know I had no choice back then."

Fenris nodded. "Yet it made sense in the moment. I know what I was offered would not protect me from my pursuers, and I would be trading away... what little freedom I have, even if it did."

"You are not alone in this, Fenris," Aveline reminded him. "You have friends, and we will fight him by your side when it comes to that."

Fenris hid behind his hair again, briefly, and emerged with a small smile. "Thank you." He glanced at Justice, who nodded. They would not let a slaver walk free, no matter how annoyed they were with Fenris right now.

Apart from annoyance, Justice experienced confusion. Aveline they were sure had been caught off-guard (though she was a guard—there was a wave of amusement at that, though Justice didn't know why) by the fact she even could be targeted, but Fenris had endured close proximity to demons and their summoners, witnessing their cunning deceit even if it had not been directed at him. He should have known better.

Anders, too, had feared more the people who had hurt them than a potential death from drowning or darkspawn blood. But those had been necessary means of escaping a torment they had grown up suffering. Fenris had been lured away with a mirage of improvement he did not need—Fenris, who was so strong and resourceful. Did he not think he was?

"For what it's worth, I am sorry about your husband, Aveline," Fenris said.

"Thank you," Aveline told him, and glanced at Justice as well. "Don't worry, I won't ask you to be."

"Well, excuse me for not mourning a man simply for being someone's husband, when mine is dead because of his ilk," was out of their mouth before Justice had finished thinking it. Their mouth was full of spiked tea (not with actual spikes, though it felt like it) by the time they had.

At the sight of Fenris and Aveline looking at them with surprise, what they had said caught up with them.

Justice felt a strong impulse to get up and run.

"I... didn't know you were married," said Aveline.

"Of course I wasn't," Justice said, an echo seeping into their voice as Anders cowered back. "Mages aren't allowed to marry, or even form relationships. Wouldn't want us to have nice things in our lives that might make living as a prisoner bearable, after all."

"Templars are discouraged from marrying as well," Aveline said, but she was being cautious. "And Wesley said it was possible for Circle mages to earn the right to marry."

"A RIGHT SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE EARNED."

"Justice!" Fenris cut in.

Justice turned, finding him breathing a little faster and with shoulders a little tenser than usual. He was frightened enough not to completely lie about being so, with his demeanor.

Justice looked down at their own hands, and observed they were, as Aveline had put it, glowing.

"Is Anders alright?" Fenris asked.

"No, I am not," said Justice, getting a frown in response.

Justice felt the wooden table under their fingers, and swallowed the trace taste of the drink from their mouth, reminding themself of where they were, and when. Fenris was here, they observed. He had not been present when the events to which the thoughts and fear cautioning against letting the most important thing in their life— the one good thing about Kinloch Hold—be found out belonged. That Fenris was here meant those events were not happening now, because this was not the Fade.

Reliving the events now did not recreate the events outside their mind. Fenris had also been there when they had explained this to themself.

The emotion behind the drive to make this injustice known was both familiar and foreign. Justice had memories of being Kristoff, and wanting to stay near Aura even after his Joining and to keep the world safe for her. They had memories of being Anders, and enduring the Circle for years without attempting to escape because Karl couldn't have come with them and Anders's home was where he was. But those experiences had been lived by parts of Justice before they had become those parts. The entirety of Justice as they existed now had never been them. The only related memory they had that was all theirs was...

"I killed him," Justice said, quietly, or at least trying their best to speak quietly. It was difficult in Anders's body, which was capable of speaking without magical amplification.

Aveline's chair dragged back, and she begun reaching for her sword, a little clumsily (a good reason not to drink, see? Moving these limbs when it was entirely up to the spirit part was disorientating enough, though they had gotten better at that, too).

Then Justice realized they had never informed her of that pronoun not applying to Anders, and she probably thought they had meant—no! They wouldn't! Justice was no demon!

"You speak of Karl," Fenris said, before either of them could speak or move further. He was looking at Justice, but held a hand up, palm towards Aveline. "Karl Thekla. I remember him, Anders."

Aveline looked confused for a moment, then leaned (slumped) forward with a quiet (properly quiet) 'oh', both hands on the table.

"He asked me to kill him," Justice told Fenris, although Fenris must have already known that. "To spare him from a worse fate, and I knew of no way to save him. But it was still my hand in the end that held the knife."

Fenris and Aveline looked at them without speaking. Justice didn't have to turn around to know that the door had opened, and Merrill and Hawke were present again, too, having overheard.

They had made it known now, and the people who knew were not templars. The worst that could happen already had, three years ago. What were they afraid of, anymore?

"I do not know how to be at peace with this memory."

Slowly, Aveline sat a little straighter. "I doubt one ever fully will be," she said. "You've admitted that it hurts. It's a step."

The lighting in the room changed, and when Justice spoke again, their voice was only what came out of their body's vocal cords.

"Aveline," Justice said, "look, I..." They brushed a strand of hair behind their ear (it was an unproductive movement, the strands never stayed there). "I doubt I would have liked Wesley, but I am sorry you lost someone you loved." Justice's hand came up again to sweep their thumb over their cheek and along the side of their nose. "Wouldn't wish that on anyone."

"I don't know if I would have liked Karl," said Aveline, her unarmored fingers wrapping themselves around her teacup, though it was empty and unlikely to provide warmth. It was also small enough her hands almost enveloped it fully. "It doesn't matter. I'm sorry you lost him, all the same."

It would be customary to now make the offer of 'if you ever want to talk...', Justice knew. They also knew they did not want to talk about this with Aveline more than they just had, and the offer would be a lie.

Aveline shifted in her seat, also not saying anything. Justice considered the practice of further confiding between them mutually, and mercifully, rejected.

"That was quite a lot of bearings to get. Is everyone done?" Merrill said, and walked over to discreetly inspect the remaining refreshments.

She and Hawke had each had an arm around the other as they had stood at the door. Well, Justice thought, they had certainly danced around each other long enough (they had not been dancing, at least most of the time; it was a metaphor). But now that Hawke walked closer as well, Justice saw their eyes were reddened. Merrill had taken Hawke aside to offer them the comfort of company in front of which they could let themself cry, while the rest of their friends had been focusing on their own crises.

"Right. I think we are," Aveline said. "I'm sorry we've kept you up, Merrill."

"Oh, I invited you, didn't I, don't worry about it," Merrill said as she failed to suppress a yawn. "It's still dark outside, too. Anyway, you're the one with a regular job. Will you be alright?"

"I suppose I can take a day off for once." She stacked her empty teacup with Fenris and Hawke's which were within her reach, Hawke's at the top of the stack as it was only half-empty. Fenris handed her Justice's, leaving alone the cup Merrill hadn't used. "Donnic can say the captain is ill." She put the cork back on the bottle, getting it right on the second try. "It may very well be reality by morning."

Merrill smiled. "Glad I could help."

They did end up staying the rest of the night. Merrill dug up her travel bedroll and a spare matress and blankets, which they spread in front of the fireplace (at a safe distance, Justice observed). She politely offered to utilize a spot on one of these and give up her bed, but the thing she actually had indeed shown Hawke turned out to be a strange, magical mirror in her bedroom, and her guests were reluctant to sleep near it—or at least most of them were. Almost as soon as Hawke lay down on the bed and hugged Merrill close, both of them were snoring. Aveline didn't take much longer to fall asleep.

After an entirely too long a stretch of watching light from the fireplace try to reach the desk in the corner they were facing, and arranging and rearranging the blanket measured for Merrill's height to cover most of them, Justice felt the mattress they shared with Fenris shift behind them.

"Anders, are you awake?" Fenris whispered, close enough that he must have turned around to face their back.

"We can paint each other's toenails tomorrow, Fenris," Justice muttered back, not feeling like talking, even though with sleep eluding them there was little else to do.

Fenris snorted almost in their ear. "You are sleeping in your boots. If by habit, I'm sure I wish to go nowhere near your toes." He cleared his throat. "In any case, I just wanted to say..."

"That you're sorry. You say it a lot. Is that a habit or do you really mean it every time?"

It was a low blow (a verbal one; they were not hitting each other, and hopefully would never have to again), but Fenris didn't take the bait. "I mean this. I do not know if you remember it, when I asked you about Karl years ago, but..."

"Some mages deserve what was done to him, how could I forget. Do you still think that?"

"I never meant him. I realized just now you might have thought I did, or that I meant you, which is also not true. I wanted to make sure you knew that."

"Got it. And you're forgiven for your inconsiderate timing to ask. Anything else?"

Fenris sounded calm despite his words. "No more inconsiderate than your proposition to use the rite on slaves."

"Isn't it already, by templars? Don't answer that, I'm too tired to argue. I know you don't think the Circles are really real slavery. Anyway, that's what I meant by it, it wasn't a suggestion."

"Do you think I would go anywhere near the rest of you, either, had I not realized that?"

Justice sighed. "You didn't answer my question. Do you still think some mages deserve the torture that's Tranquility?"

Fenris shifted again, and didn't say anything.

"I see."

"And there are no templars you think would?"

"I'd prefer to kill them. What's the use of relishing in their prolonged pain?"

"I didn't say I wished to do it. But I would shed no tear on their behalf."

Justice said nothing.

"You said you thought what was done to me was monstrous," Fenris said.

"So is the rite, and it's specifically used to target mages. I'm a mage, what do you want me to say?"

Fenris scoffed, and turned back around. "Go to sleep, mage."

Justice pulled their borrowed blanket tighter around themself. "Yes, let's do that."

Chapter 8: Comfort

Notes:

In addition to what's already warned for and canon-typical violence in general, warning for animal death briefly in this chapter (no, it's not the cats).

The witch had been right.

Not that witch; Merrill was no doubt ever adamant on her doomed path—arrogant, thinking herself the one exception, above the rules, in doing so proving herself the furthest from an exception. The witch she had summoned like one of her spirits, but who was something far more.

The chains were broken, but he was not free.

Hawke readily agreed to seek out the threat, the venomous snake that had come to drag him into the nest of vipers, to be consumed while paralyzed. He tried to focus on that he had aid. He had doubted, for half a heartbeat that shamed him, but he had not been cast aside or disbelieved. He had friends, who would fight by his side. A free man, they had called him, in the slavers' face, refusing to be addressed over him about him.

Sand beneath his feet turned to gravel, barely noticed, as he made up for every step delayed by an ambush with a leap twice its length, cutting down hunters before they could sink in their fangs. He could not allow her the luxury of waiting. If there was one thing she thrived in, it was patience to prolong his suffering.

A voice came out level when he spoke outside the den. It had to be his own voice, but he would rather it wasn't. His legs and spine held him at his full height when all he wanted to do was curl up and be somewhere else. He had been careless, carefree, and now this nightmare had come true. He had to charge now or be chased to exhaustion as soon as he turned his back again. He would make his limbs run to meet the beast, he had forced them into worse.

Incredulity met a scene of scarifice. They could not be that naive, he had been telling them of the magisters' depravity, boundless greed. A life was nothing when you had the power to own another's. There was always more blood to spill when a person could be its mere container on legs, to be emptied for a means to an end justified at your discretion. Why had he expected them to understand? A man, a father, nothing but a commodity, and the blame could not be shifted onto a spirit—one did not need to not be human to be capable of atrocities.

Betrayal burned like the bright light in his eyes, too much of everything at once, lasting an instance before it plunged into more shame he had no time to feel. They should have been clear. He should have trusted them. He could feel the phantom pain of hunger, and tasted bile. He had to keep going, or this would never end.

The bait was the same he had been lured with three years ago. He couldn't listen, but he did, and she got her final vengeance even as he got his.

When Bodahn opened the door to let him in, he had no memory of how he got there.



"We're friends, Fenris."



"I'm not certain I know what that is."



It had gotten dark outside while he had waited for Hawke.

He spared a thought to another ambush waiting for him in the shadows, but decided the possibility changed nothing. He could be vigilant, he would not surrender functionality to uncertainties.

At least most of his armor was clean. Bodahn had insisted on seeing to it while he sat in the foyer, and Fenris had not resisted when he had realized his gauntlet was dripping blood onto the floor. Bodahn had left the breastplate alone at Fenris's first 'no', though, and fortunately it was not as bad off. The man was a good servant. He hoped Hawke paid him well (of course they did—he knew Hawke, he trusted Hawke).

He had not seen the girl, he realized as he ascended the stairs from the chantry courtyard. He scolded himself for having been too dazed to ask. He had accused Hawke of enslaving her and then forgotten about her, himself. But she might have been waiting in another room the whole time, if she had managed to find the place (had he met her on the way?) and Bodahn would not have troubled him with the matter. She would have sought out a servants' entrance, he reminded himself. The estate had one, though Hawke simply treated it as a back door (and so he trusted Hawke). He would ask after her later, and trust that Hawke would go looking for her if she had not arrived. Despite how heavy his feet felt by the last stair, he would accompany Hawke in the search if they asked.

At the sight of the mansion's entrance, he froze. The bush flanking his doorway was joined by a dark shape, unmistakably someone hunched over in hiding. Not hidden very well, but hard to spot until up close if one was not paying attention.

He took a step towards the wall at his left at the same time as the other person straightened.

"Oh. It's you." Fenris let out a breath, and strode to the door with a compensating stomp.

Anders brushed a leaf out of their pauldrons, a feather coming loose with it, but stopped and looked up at Fenris's words. "Oh, I didn't think... Maker, that must have looked suspicious. I was staying out of sight in case of templars—I'm still carrying a staff."

The streetlight near them let out a pop, and a cloud of sparks floated up to be extinguished in the wind. Not a loud sound, except in a silence.

"Uh, you walk really quietly. On the stairs."

"Hmm," said Fenris.

Anders cleared their throat. "Look, if you don't want to see me right now, I can leave. I just... figured you'd show up here sooner or later and wanted to check on you. You kind of disappeared." They inhaled deep. "Anyway... I wanted to apologize."

"I just finished doing so to Hawke, myself," Fenris said, feeling his shoulders droop despite his best efforts. "I behaved poorly, towards you as well."

Anders snorted. "You did at that, but I could have been less of a dick about it, too. It was hard to take into account when you were saying people should, and I quote, 'rot', for something I have in common with them..."

Fenris turned away with a groan. He had indeed said that, and then some, out of fear and anger misdirected. He wanted this day to never have happened and for it not to end. There was not enough of it left to repair the state his world had started arranging itself into before it had suddenly broken again—to repair his conviction that he belonged in that state of the world.

"Just hear me out, will you," he heard Anders say, and suddenly there was a touch on the uncovered palm of his hand.

Fenris spun around, his skin scalded and clammy at the same time, and shoved the reaching hands away, away, off his person—

Anders's back hit the wall beside the door with a thud and a grunt. Fenris relaxed his face from the grimace that had contorted it, and saw his hands on their shoulders, markings alight.

He backed away quickly. "I apologize." He sounded a little breathy. His heart was beating very fast, he realized.

"Shouldn't have touched you. I thought... you held my hand that time, but I just, ugh, grabbed yours... Shit." Anders shook their head. "I'm not helping, am I."

"Not with that, no." Not today, especially.

"Noted." Anders stepped away from the wall and dusted off their coat again, not really making any difference in its shabby state. "What I wanted to say is, I didn't get it at the time, but I had time to think, and... I don't blame you." Anders looked up from their grooming to meet his eyes. "It was like everything she'd done to you, brought to the forefront of your mind at the same time, right? Something triggered it, and it was like you were reliving it all."

Fenris nodded slowly. "Are you saying that excuses my outbursts?"

Anders shrugged. "Explains them. Hasn't excused all I've done in a state like that. But I guess I hadn't thought of just how... Well, I can see how you'd have trouble trusting mages on principle if that's been your frame of reference."

"What?" A flame inside him flared to life. "You knew I had been a slave! How much worse does it have to be than simply that?"

"I know, I know! Just, look, I'm sorry I kept snapping at you when it really wasn't the time for a debate. That was unfair." Anders shifted their weight from one foot to the other. "Unless you meant every word, of course."

"No," Fenris said, looking down at his feet. "Of course not."

"Alright," Anders said, barely louder than a whisper.

Fenris took the key from his belt, and Anders nearly jumped aside.

"Oh, right, I've been keeping you outside! So I'll..."

Fenris sighed. "Come on, in case there is still someone in Hightown who hasn't seen your staff." He caught on belatedly to the potential for a double entrende, but took seeing on his companion the smirk his own face felt too sluggish to make to mean it had not gone to waste. He held the door open after himself. "The cats have missed you."

Anders only hesitated for the time it took them to glance behind them, before following him inside.

The cats had missed him as well, it seemed, and he had to admit it was mutual. He had not realized how heavily he had still felt weighed on until he held the small, grey tabby to his chest as soon as he had divested himself of his armor, and pressed his face in her fur. He breathed in her near lack of scent and exhaled again like there had been air stuck in his lungs all day, and listened to her purr. He heard himself let out a giggle when she started licking his hair.

He peeked over the cat's ears to meet Anders's eyes, feeling embarrassed for a moment for his unguardedness. But Anders was smiling, like they understood, and perhaps they did.

Anders petted the other two cats and bent down to their level, earning a headbutt to the chin as a greeting from the black cat. Fenris held the grey tabby and watched them.

Anders had wanted to comfort him, like Hawke had at the caves when he had brushed them off, not wanting to be touched even through his clothes. He knew the appeal of physical affection, but did not feel up to pushing his limits with it right now to receive the comfort he knew he did crave. But the cats were a safe source, and recipient, perhaps a medium.

They took turns getting themselves cleaned up as well as one could when tired to the bones and not bothering to run a bath. Anders took the guest room again, and after feeding the cats according to his instructions, disappeared to it. Fenris had wondered if he would be able to sleep after today, but his bed was very soft, and so were the cats, and, there was the fact that should something happen, he wasn't alone in the mansion.

A mage was his bodyguard, Fenris thought, too exhausted to smile at the irony as he drifted to sleep.

He woke up with a jolt to a dark room and his own scream.

He couldn't tell how long he had been asleep, and at first he had to remind himself of where he even was, as his eyes adjusted. That he couldn't remember his dream should have been a blessing, but the lingering certainty of its importance drove him to chase what he had seen. It slipped from his grasp, only leaving an ache in his chest.

He heard one of the cats chirp next to his bed and reached out a hand to pet her, but let out another shout as the hand met something wet and mangled.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Anders hurried into the room carrying a candle—no, a magelight. They noticed Fenris looking at the small spell, and quickly reached down to pinch the wick of the candlestub on the crate serving as Fenris's bedside table, leaving it lit, and let the magical light go out. Fenris appreciated the gesture, but he hadn't minded. It was just good to have light, and, he had to admit to himself, company.

"Oh, you've got a present," Anders said, wrinkling their nose even as they smiled.

The dead rat was impressive in size, and it had apparently held a proportional amount of blood, judging by the red trail where the cat had dragged it over the sheets next to his pillow. Fenris wiped at his face with the hand that hadn't already blindly smacked the rat, relieved when he found no stains on it after.

"He appreciates it," Anders told the black cat sitting patiently on the floor, while petting her.

"I do when they leave these by the door. The bed is a bit... much."

"I guess she could tell you're unhappy. What better way to cheer someone up than a snack."

Fenris felt himself laugh a little. "It is a fine gift," he told the cat, mostly to reassure the only one in present company who actually understood speech that he was alright. "Would... you have liked some?" he asked Anders suddenly, remembering he had all but fallen into bed as soon as he had gotten inside. The cats had gotten supper, the two of them not so much.

"Looks tasty," Anders quipped.

"As convenient waste disposal as that would be, perhaps some proper food," Fenris said, and got up. A rat blood-stained bed wasn't particularly cozy to stay in anyhow. He paused to think when he had last gone to the market. He had mostly eaten on the road with Hawke the past few days, one of the few exceptions being at the Hanged Man. Of course, the latter and eating rat were not necessarily mutually exclusive, but so long as the meat they served was well cooked and didn't make him sick he had deemed it best to grin and bear it and not investigate. At least tolerating food he didn't like but had available was a skill he kept reminding himself was essential to a fugitive, and he had been falling out of practice. At the mansion he had had meat in cold storage for the cats—scraps, really, which the butcher didn't charge much for—and none for himself. "I... believe I have honey cakes that are still good," he recalled.

"Do you actually eat anything but sweets when you're by yourself?" Anders asked. They were looking around the room in apparent search for something.

Fenris walked over to the fireplace when he realized what it was, and brought back the most worn and disposable one of the rags he wrapped around hot metal handles when cooking. "Do you actually eat anything at all when you're by yourself?" he shot back. Anders ordered a meal along with the drinks at the Hanged Man quite often as well, and rat or not, the stew got scarfed down at a speed that was somewhat alarming.

"Doesn't seem to make much difference," Anders said, and left it at that. They took the rag and used it to pick up the rat by its tail. "Where do you want this?"

"There is a compost in what would be the kitchen garden," Fenris said, and then raised one corner of his mouth. "But if you have good aim and see an open window on one of the neighboring mansions..."

Anders laughed. "You menace! Think I could reach the chantry from here?" They resumed the light spell as they walked back to the guest room to retrieve their boots, and down the stairs, which was probably a good idea considering the floors made uneven by missing tiles, not to mention that Fenris was not entirely certain Anders even remembered where the kitchen was (but they hadn't asked, so if they spent the rest of the night wandering corridors and holding a dead rat, that was on them.)

Fenris sighed deeply once he was alone in the room again, apart from the cat. He peeked behind the window shutters to judge the time, finding it not far from sunrise based on the placement of the stars and moons on the cloudless sky, though the lights and smoke of the city made the former a little harder to read. He had become familiar with the constellations while on the run, finding his way south across the continent. Isabela made the occasional remark which he had come to understand meant he would be a welcome addition to her pirate crew. Fenris thought he had a long way to go before he could be responsible for a ship's navigation, though.

For now he decided to navigate his way to the bathroom to wash his hands. No matter how dilapidated the mansion was, at least the plumbing and runes still worked.

Without distractions, he became aware of the pain. Today had no doubt aggravated it, and it had pulsed as a mounting accompaniment to his panic and fatigue, too familiar to warrant his full attention. Fenris dug out the wooden box holding his prepared mixture of dry herbs, and chewed down a pinch of it with a grimace. He would wash the taste down with cake soon.

He wrapped himself in his large, soft robe, not feeling like being seen in his sleep clothes or sacrificing his meager comfort to alter how he looked in them. True to their word from the other night, though, Anders hadn't looked. It was a comfort in its own right to notice that. This was not a night Fenris wanted to be looked at with attention paid to the shape of his body.

When Anders got back, they ate the cakes while sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, on the cats' blanket. Fenris asked Anders to light the fire with magic to get it done faster. The season was not yet very cold, but there was a breeze in the night air that reverberated through the stone of the building, and there had not been a fire lit all day.

They sat in silence even after the cakes were gone.

The world felt unreal this time of the night, or perhaps it was the deviation from routines. That Fenris had been in Kirkwall long enough to establish routines, ones that were his own and not imposed on him, was unsettling to realize. The complacency he had fallen into was so easily upended it cast a shroud of unreality on the whole of his new, tentatively free life. Thinking about it had him shivering even near the fire. The leaping shadows of the room cast by a single flame in darkness had become familiar to him years ago, after a few weeks' worth of nights of sparse sleep. He forced himself not to let his gaze start darting to the corners now, in his own home.

"I should be happy now that Hadriana is dead," he finally said. Neither turned from where they stared into the fire, but Fenris didn't take it as a sign of being ignored. "Instead I feel nothing but... disquiet."

"Vengeance can be necessary," Anders mused. "Doesn't keep it from leaving you feeling like you've lost another piece of something, by going through with it at a cost you didn't expect you'd pay."

It would have sounded like a platitude a few months ago. Now Fenris thought of the night Anders had killed Ser Alrik, and of another spent in Merrill's house. He nodded in acknowledgement. "I do not remember a time when violence and death had not yet become commonplace in my life." He balled up the cloth the cakes had been wrapped in, and absently moved it from one hand to the other. "After everything Hadriana had done to me, she deserved neither forgiveness nor honesty. Nevertheless, I do not like not affording to be someone willing to give those things."

"But you would do it again."

"In a heartbeat."

He let the cloth stay in one hand, and squeezed so it spilled between his fingers.

Anders let out a quiet hum while glancing at the rather unsubtle gesture. "You really don't have the temperament for a slave."

Fenris stiffened instantly. He questioned if starting to relax had been a mistake, after all, if starting to trust Anders had been. He could throw them out, he reminded himself. It wasn't even raining this time. "Is that a compliment or an insult?"

"I'd just been wondering how you didn't get yourself killed," Anders said.

"And now you have solved the mystery?" he scoffed, hoping he was laying the sarcasm thick enough. "How did the templars not kill you?"

"I'm charming," Anders said almost cheerfully.

"I remain unconvinced," Fenris said, not bothering to hide his irritation now.

Anders finally turned, and took in whatever his eyes were apparently communicating better than his voice had. "Too soon for a joke?"

"Not for you to joke about," Fenris said. "Did you have a point?"

Anders rubbed the back of their neck. "I'm sorry. I was just thinking about the girl we found, how you talked to her..."

He had spoken to her in Tevene at first. Not even for her benefit, but not realizing he had switched back to the language, until to his surprise she had answered in Common when his companions had spoken to her. It would certainly save Hawke the trouble of asking him to translate as she worked for them.

Did Anders speak Tevene, on top of everything else? He indulged in the thought that of course a mage would, only briefly before focusing on what had actually been said.

"You were so upset, and rightly so, but it was like you temporarily pushed that aside just to reassure her," Anders elaborated, taking his not immediately cutting in to require that, apparently.

"Because she is how I was before, is that it?" Fenris got to the assumed point, forcing it through his hesitation. He had volunteered that information, more or less, before, and it should be no more a vulnerability when it came with a demonstration. Knowing that did not soothe the memory of a young elf abused into accepting being thought of as nothing, nor the memory of words that came a decade too late. "Now that you have seen that, you 'can see how I would have trouble trusting mages'?"

"Well, yes?" Anders said, their brow furrowing. "I don't claim to know everything you've gone through, I know I don't."

"Indeed you don't."

Anders made a frustrated sound, shaking their head a little. "I'm trying to say I'm glad you're as much of an asshole as you sometimes can be, now. I don't always agree with what you say, but at least you're saying it now! So, good on you, you asshole."

"I don't need your approval," Fenris said more weakly than he would have liked.

"Exactly," Anders replied.

Fenris said nothing. He didn't want to argue, and he was unsure what he wanted to do istead.

"I wasn't always so loud and proud about my defiance of the templars," Anders continued, then waited to check if he would object.

He didn't.

"I started trying to escape almost as soon as they first locked me up, but when it came down to fighting to be free or playing the meek, little mage who hadn't meant for things to get that far and was glad to go back to the tower, I always went. As much as that part of me is frightened sometimes of what I've become, it wasn't until Justice that I got the courage to fight back."

"You can go down fighting or you can live to try again another day. That is not cowardice," Fenris whispered, his throat tight, his whole body feeling like a bow's string.

He scolded himself for the presumptuous metaphor. He had only ever fired an arrow once in his life, part of the surprisingly large amount of strength needed to operate the weapon lended by someone who might have become his first friend had he stopped sooner being something to be wielded. Danarius had had him fight with twin daggers, the weight of a larger blade too much for the 'dainty but deadly' waif he had wanted his elven pet to remain, fast and agile to defend him on the enclosed battlefields of ballrooms and parlors without spilling his drink, equal amounts spectacle as efficiency. Fenris had traded his daggers for the biggest, heaviest greatsword at the first opportunity, and had regained his speed handling it within months, along with a welcome bulking of muscle that was enough to change how people addressed him so long as he didn't speak much.

"No, it's not," Anders agreed, bringing Fenris back to the fireside again. "But you don't have a spirit's power bolstering your confidence, and whatever happened in the Fade, you started cutting your chains long before that demon offered you even a shadow of that. And I always knew I'd been free already, and what it's like."

"What is it like, then?" Perhaps he felt more like a blade meant to cut being used to thrust—metal breaking, despite its toughness when not pushing its limits. Or perhaps he should stop comparing himself to weapons, if he claimed to be one no longer. "No matter how far I have run, after today I am sure I do not know."

"Andraste's arse, Fenris," Anders huffed—no, sighed. They were not angry after all. "Out of anyone I've ever met you're the most difficult person to tell that I think they're amazing."

Fenris tried to come up with something to say, when the burning of his eyes got too much to ignore, and he realized what it was his body wanted to do.

"I'm obviously going about it all wrong, but if you'll grant me one more try: you're a man of honorable character, Fenris, and someone to admire. I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to start seeing that. Seeing you." They paused again, and though the fire had been dimming, their decision to add a piece of wood to it came just late enough not to be the reason. "They really..." Anders started again, the slightest bit of echo to their voice. Then it quickly faded away as they spoke. "They really took everything from you, even hope, and even so you are still surviving."

"Barely," Fenris got out. "You think I am wasting my freedom. That I should rebel like you. You need not embellish it." He could feel tears spilling as he blinked in the momentarily increased light, but didn't bother wiping them away.

"I did think that," Anders admitted. They cleared their throat. "And I've been talking around this, like I just today realized slavery really is bad, and that's not fair to you. That you expect a mage to hurt you before you know them, a belief that has been used to hurt me, and my people... I think what it took today for me to see is how for you, it really does have nothing to do with antagonizing us, and everything to do with your self-preservation. You said you can't afford to overlook it, and I thought I knew what you were saying, that it was something to... open your mind about."

"Educate the ignorant, which I must be," Fenris said with a sneer that did not help with his face leaking.

"Which I've been, about how much you're not," Anders agreed. "I didn't realize how much I've still been thinking in terms of which one of us is more entitled to act traumatized. So you're putting yourself first in your own life? It's high time you get to! So I fell into my abusers' clutches while only a child—any amount of time spent treated like you're not a person is still too long."

Fenris turned his head to face away from them at that, almost reflexively, though the gesture would probably speak as much as his expression. Did he truly need to keep what those would say from getting out, though? Why guard this weakness so? Or perhaps it was not the specific contents of the secret kept that he was afraid would render him weak. He uncurled his fingers from around the hem of his sleeve, and flexed and stretched his hands to rid them of the tingling. The tips of his fingers were cold against his palm.

"So it terrifies me what could come of saying this to someone I can't trust... you deserve having it be acknowledged," Anders said firmly. "Yes. Some mages truly deserve every bit of suffering imaginable. Even Tranquility."

"I only want them dead, so they will stop," Fenris said. His gaze was on the fire again, but he saw little more than dancing lights.

Anders's opinion of him had not mattered to him in the early days of their acquaintance as much as Anders might have have liked for it to matter, but neither had their readiness to assume the worst and cruelest of him hurt as little as he would have liked it to. He had taken the occasional step closer, and could recognize Anders had as well, but they had walked right past each other more often than not. The sheer stubbornness to hear a desire to wound in his admittance of his wounds would make him step back and retreat further away each time.

"I know," Anders said, and Fenris reminded himself they had had their reasons to withdraw as well—reasons he knew better, himself, now. "I'm saying it to you, aren't I."

Fenris sniffed his nose, and used the cake cloth to wipe it to his best, not particularly amazing ability. He let Anders babble, allowing himself to cling to the words tighter than they probably realized.

"I'm... I'm sorry for every time you could have used someone being angry on your behalf, and I made it worse by searching for an enemy in you instead." Judging by the direction of their voice Anders was looking straight ahead as well.

Fenris was glad. He was so very tired of being stared at.

"When you said that, at the clinic, I thought you meant only from before you escaped. But it was after, too, wasn't it, even recently. There was today, and as established, I blew it. There was..." They cut themself off, and had changed the angle of their head by the time they resumed talking. Fenris guessed they were looking down. "No, I'm sorry, I don't mean to drag up every shit day you've had, and you're probably tired of the sound of my voice already. Suffice to say, I've done you an injus—"

"The murderer," Fenris said, quietly, but Anders heard him.

"Which one? It's Kirkwall." They gave a startled laugh.

Fenris returned it. It was, indeed.

The laughter died when Anders spoke again. "At the ruins. The magistrate's son."

"Yes." He hadn't been sure how much Anders remembered of the day over three years ago, whether at the time any of it had been worth remembering to them beyond that the vile man preying on the vulnerable and shirking repercussions through his connections to power gave mages a bad name by claiming association.

"Isabela was," Anders reflected. "Angry, that is, about how it got resolved. I don't know if you knew."

He hadn't.

"I could tell she was, but I didn't understand why. You asked to kill that piece of shit."

"I did kill him," Fenris said.

From the corner of his eye he saw, a little clearer now, Anders leaning their forehead on their hands, elbows braced on their knees. One hand stroked over a single finger on the other, near the palm, as if twisting a ring. Then they seemed to realize they weren't wearing one, though Fenris didn't think he had ever actually seen a ring on them.

"I thought Hawke was doing you a favor by letting you be the one to do it," Anders said. "In their defense, I think they thought so, too. She must have known better."

Fenris didn't know how much Anders knew about Isabela's past, and it wasn't his to tell. But she had picked up on his long before he had realized. She spoke to him like he wasn't broken, without ignoring the cracks. He shouldn't be surprised she had seen the situation for what it was even then, with his turmoil carefully contained while facing a threat that steadily escalated as opposed to blindsided him. He had barely known these people, back then.

Fenris untagled his fingers from where they had been twisting the soft fabric of his sleeves again, but only enough not to tear it.

"It shouldn't have to have been you," Anders put into words. "Not when you only needed him to die so he would stop. So that..."

They let their hands drop and turned to look at Fenris, and he knew they had caught on to why he had, badly enough to volunteer and ensure it would be done, even if this time, either, no one else with the means to interfere cared enough. That though it had been the right thing to do regardless, the heart he had crushed was not the only one he had thought about wrapping iron-clad fingers around while he did so.

"So that he could never hurt another child... like..."

"Lia," Fenris said through a sob. "Her name is Lia."

Anders nodded, and did not finish what they had been about to say.

Fenris knew it had not been the name of the young elf barely in her mid-teens whom they had found pleading for mercy for her abuser, for the sake of what seemed like a kindness only when compared to his other treatment of her.

Did it matter to him that Anders knew how close to the truth their half-joking guess had hit? He did not need to have been twelve years old or only barely older when his memory had been wiped blank, to justify the damage. Did he need Anders not to know? He hadn't thought about that day in the ruins in years, himself, if by deliberate effort rather than disinterest, but it had been merely pushed aside, hadn't it, as today had been for still hours longer than he had expected. Packed behind a locked door that eventually you could either open and not close again until you had worked to clean away the spilled contents, or leave closed forever in fear of that work taking all your strength and never ending.

He was fed up with worrying that people he fought beside were hiding things from him or deducing things about him out of malice or condescension. He was only that suspicious when he was very afraid, wasn't he? And he was fed up with fear he couldn't let be seen for what it was, leaving him alone to bear it. He shouldn't have to possess all the strength that made him so allegedly admirable, and, perhaps, it need not be him alone who did. He could not ignore he was in danger every moment of every day while Danarius still breathed, and that he was wary of people was neither his fault nor unfounded. But he had to get back on his feet from where today had tripped him up, if he was ever to be truly free.

He had friends. They didn't always understand him, but they could learn to, if he let them. He would learn to trust, and that trust would not be betrayed.

He was rebelling by surviving.

"Does it make us bad at sleepovers that we tend to end up crying when we have one?" Anders asked suddenly. They were smiling when he turned to look. Their eyes were soft, and a little damp.

Fenris laughed, louder than he had expected, and felt the bowstring slacken. The laughter turned into a yawn.

"So what's the state of the rest of the beds in the mansion? There's a couple more in here, right?" Anders asked.

Fenris stretched his shoulders, carefully in case the tense hunching over had been developing a crick in his neck. Mercifully, he only found mild stiffness. "Most are intact. But I only have clean bedding for these two."

It had been only the one he slept in, but Anders could thank the cats for having a guest bed available. As much as he was not responsible for the creatures, he had been loath to see them nap on things that looked like they had been left under a hole in the roof enough times they were of questionable salvageability, when he had realized they liked the room's warmth and quiet as an alternative to only enjoying the fireplace in his company. He could understand: he enjoyed socializing on occasion, but also needed his space. He had started using the smaller room's bed sometimes, himself, partially to justify the purchase, but also to satisfy the urge to hide and keep on the move. It was good to have options.

"You can have the guest bed, you know," Anders said. "No need to start cleaning yours in the middle of the night just to get to sleep on linens not decorated with rat. No offense." The last part was addressed just behind Fenris.

He turned to find the small, grey tabby cat sitting there, and guided her in front of him so he could pet her properly. She rose to put her front paws on his leg and rubbed her face on his cheek, and he stroked down the length of her back a few times, careful not to cage her in, enduring the faint pinpricks of her claws. "Generous," he said to Anders when she had sat back down and turned her kneading paws on the blanket instead. "Where does that leave you?"

"Bunking with the cats?" Anders replied with a shrug, and petted the one between them as if to demonstrate, carefully avoiding Fenris's hand that was scratching behind her ear.

A little too carefully for his liking, he realized.

"I've had worse arrangements," Anders assured, "don't worry about me."

"You are welcome to borrow my travel bedroll if you wish. It will be quick to set up." Fenris drew his hand away. He gave himself some time to consider, but found he had already decided. "Otherwise, I'm certain the bed fits two."

He looked up when Anders's hand stopped on the cat's back. They regarded each other, trying to puzzle each other out, and then Fenris decided it was best to just use words and be clear. "Only to sleep, and either of us is free to take the bedroll, or ask the other to move to it should the arrangement get uncomfortable."

For a moment he thought Anders might start asking if he was sure, but they seemed to have understood only a little after Fenris had, that he was making not a concession, but a request. The nod that followed was a relief.

It was a closer fit than sharing a tent, or a mattress you didn't have to worry about falling off of since it was already on the floor, and Fenris decided that was exactly what he wanted. After some maneuvering they settled to sleep, with Anders lying under the covers with their back to the wall and Fenris in front of them over the covers—to keep from getting too hot with his robe still on, but Anders didn't ask. They did ask to put their arm around Fenris, to which he answered by leaning back and pulling the arm over himself like a blanket, bringing the hand to rest on one of his and Anders's chest flush with his back.

When Fenris next woke up, it was to a room full of sunlight, the faint sound of the street below, and a cat sleeping against the top of his head on the pillow, with another cat on his foot, and a third (the grey tabby, the only one he could see without moving) cuddled up to his front. In addition to the cats, the biggest change since falling asleep was that he had mostly straightened from where he had been tightly curled in on himself and around the hand he was still somewhat holding. Anders was still sleeping behind him, peacefully, judging by the pace of their breathing that he could feel in his hair and against his back as much as hear. Their arm around him was still comfortable.

The world was not repaired, but he was surviving.

Fenris closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Chapter 9: Admission

It was by all accounts an otherwise normal afternoon when Sebastian Vael walked through the doorway to the Darktown clinic.

Anders was just finished with advising a patient on the long-term management of their ailment, when a glint caught their eye. It was good to pay attention to people with shiny things showing up. Especially down here, you never knew when it was a weapon, or an armor engraved with a flaming sword.

One didn't have to know who the man standing in a sun beam was to know he was royalty, or from the Chantry, which in this city was of little difference. Sebastian seemed rather awkward looking around, and stood out in his polished, white getup enough to draw the gaze of everyone present. But to his credit, if he was disturbed by the contrasting dirt and poverty surrounding him, he didn't let it show. As Anders's patient, an old woman, walked past him out the door, the prince greeted her with a bow that caught her off guard, and brought a flustered smile to her face.

"Hello, Anders," Sebastian said to them, without a bow, as he reached the desk where Anders was putting potions back in their drawers.

"Vael," Anders acknowledged with a nod. They put in the last bottle, and looked up with a smile they hoped didn't look too fake. "What can I do for you?"

"This is quite the place you've established here," Sebastian said with one more sweeping look around the room.

"Thanks," Anders said. "I'm sure it's nothing compared to the free clinic at the chantry, but... I do what I can, under the circumstances."

Sebastian cleared his throat. "Yes, that's rather why I'm here. I'm... sure I don't need to convince you the local Chantry could be doing more for the good of the people."

"Its job, allegedly," Anders said with a nod, still smiling. "Wouldn't that be something."

"Her Grace is a busy woman," Sebastian reminded them, sternly, but politely.

"I'm sure," Anders said less politely.

Sebastian sighed. "I do not seek an argument, Anders, though I do expect one might come with the territory. I joined the Chantry largely out of a wish to do good. A place of healing and salvation in the poorest part of the city, taking no payment... it sounds like a good place to learn how, don't you think?"

"You're... asking me, an apostate, to teach you, a Chantry brother, how to do charity?" They had been about to add in 'abomination' as well, but were not sure Sebastian actually knew about Justice. If not, finding out could wait.

"I am not clueless, believe it or not. And I said the Chantry could do more, not that we do nothing as it is." The armor clinked and glittered as he shrugged. "But if there is something I can help with, I would offer my labor."

Anders stared at him for a moment, blinking. Then they gave a shrug of their own. "Alright. Consider yourself hired, for today or whatever you had in mind." They glanced over Sebastian's shoulder, and nodded at the two people lingering at the front of the clinic, already healed but hanging back. Their concern was touching, but Sebastian had had his chance to be a threat, and for now Anders would trust that those plans had been buried in the Hanged Man.

The two Fereldans returned the nod, and left.

"For starters you might want to put the bow in the back room, be less intimidating. Behind the curtain on the right." Anders pointed over their shoulder with their thumb. "And some of the armor if it's fine with you. A shining light in the darkness is fine symbolism, but wouldn't want to blind anyone."

Sebastian laughed, to their surprise, and went to do as suggested.

It was a slow day and no more patients at the moment, so Anders had a moment to think. There was something about what Sebastian had said that still bothered them, and going over the conversation it struck them what it was.

When they heard approaching footsteps behind them again, Anders turned, a suspicious squint at the ready. "Who told you about the clinic?"

"Does it matter?" Sebastian said. He looked a little more like a mere mortal in a plain tunic and hooded jacket, if Anders had any room to talk about what a mortal looked like.

"You quoted me my own words, only I haven't said them to you. And forgive me for not trusting the Chantry has my best interests in mind, or would let me continue this charity should my... exact methods come to too much light." Anders snapped their fingers, and a small light flashed in the point of impact, for emphasis.

"Ah."

Anders raised their brows.

"Rest assured that I have heard only good things, and I am here as myself, not a representative of the Chantry." Sebastian's gaze darted back to the hand Anders still had raised at shoulder height, but didn't linger there. "What is known of you has not been heard from me. But I'll leave it at that we have mutual friends."

Anders exhaled at length, and reached the hand up to tuck a strand of hair behind their ear before lowering it again. "Fair enough," they said.

Of course Hawke would have mentioned the clinic, they had probably given a small introduction of each of their friends to make Sebastian feel at home, since he was apparently a permanent fixture. They could have left out the location, at least. Although perhaps Sebastian had lowered himself to asking the common folk for directions. That thought was immediately followed by one admonishing that they were not themself being quite 'fair enough'. Anders sighed again, and set about to seeing how much guidance Sebastian would need at changing the sheets on the cots.

The prince turned out to be a rather adept assistant, and had good bedside manner to boot, which certainly helped balance out their working together being full of awkward silences. Sebastian was polite enough not to stare at the patients and their escorting friends and family, but there was something that kept drawing his gaze.

The third time, Sebastian cleared his throat as he noticed Anders had noticed. They waited to bring it up after the dock worker had gotten her leg healed, and she and her wife had finished their quick prayer and left.

"I know it doesn't look like much, but it is, in a place like this," Anders said, and walked over to the small shrine near the door.

Sebastian reached out to touch, very carefully, reverently, the worn stack of paper set on a stand on a rickety table. "The Canticle of Trials?" he asked.

"Prayers for the despairing," Anders specified. "A lot of those down here." They crossed their arms, then uncrossed them. This technically wasn't revealing personal information. "It's also the verse I know best by heart and could write down without reference." They had recited it enough times, in the space of a year, once.

Sebastian was silent, still looking at the shrine.

"What, are you surprised I'm a good little Andrastian after all?" Anders said, laughing a little, but stung in advance in case of a 'yes'. The Circles did their best to drill the religion into their prisoners, it was hardly uncommon for it to stick.

"I'm realizing why I mostly see the city's nobility at sermons," Sebastian said.

Anders frowned. "It's not like I'm attracting away your flock. You've been in Kirkwall longer than I have, right? You'd have noticed if your chantry was teeming with poor people one day and empty the next. Do you know how Darktowners get looked at when they venture into Hightown? The chantry included. I don't need a staff and a robe for the sisters there to look at me down their nose—and considering my height that takes some effort—the patches on my coat suffice."

Sebastian had his hands on his hips, but he nodded. "I should speak with the Grand Cleric about that." He looked up at the sound of Anders snorting a laugh.

"Do you think you could speak her into melting one of those golden statues down into coin to donate, actually improving things for anyone but themselves? It's a fine welcome to walk into the Maker's house to see how opulently the clergy lives, when you know you won't be able to afford both breakfast and dinner."

"Most of the statues aren't actually solid gold, only gilded," Sebastian pointed out. "I'm told the gold was already on statues found at the building, when it was converted."

Anders shrugged. "Well, so long as you get to have statues. Are you sure it's ever stopped being a palace for a magister, just one without magic?"

Sebastian's startlingly bright, blue eyes fixed Anders with a thunderous glare. "Do not speak of her that way! Elthina is a kind woman who is dedicated in her faith. Her position is not easy."

"I didn't say it was her, but if the shoe fits," Anders said with a smirk they had heard from a reliable source was insufferable. "No punching in front of the Chant," they added with a sideways glance at the item, when the glare only sharpened, their own smirk faltering a little.

Sebastian scoffed, and turned away, tension draining from his shoulders. "I'm not going to punch you, Anders." He nodded in direction of the shrine. "And I'm not concerned about the main site of worship having competition, it's good people have alternatives. But do take care with your accusations about all the reasons those are needed."

Anders took a step away and a deep breath, themself. "Look... she's important to you, I can see that. But she has a responsibility to more than just the nobility, and if she was doing everything perfectly, you wouldn't be here seeing what helping people feels like."

Sebastian turned to look at them at that, annoyed, but said nothing.

"Did you know you're the first person from the chantry we've seen down here, in all the years I've been in Kirkwall?"

"I will speak with her," Sebastian said, after a moment.

Anders supposed that was about as good as they could hope for.

They were quiet for long enough for Anders to start looking for something to do. Not an unusual impulse, but with a clinic empty of patients and the day's most urgent maintenance tasks taken care of, the thing to do tended to be writing. What might Sebastian think of the manifesto? Perhaps he should be given a copy to read, even.

Anders walked over to the large bucket sat in a corner instead, and picked it up. "I'm going to get some more water. You can come along. Put those strong archer arms to use."

Sebastian followed them to the back room, and through the door in the scrap wood wall Anders had put together where the old mining cart tunnel led to an opening in the cliffside.

"Careful," Anders said, with an arm in front of Sebastian so he wouldn't walk to the edge too fast. The daylight from outside was disorientating after a long stay indoors with only a few small windows and fires for light.

Sebastian seemed amused by the protectiveness. 'Don't take it personally,' Anders could have said, but didn't.

They went over to where the stone floor met a half-rotten wooden ledge. It wouldn't support the weight of a person, but it made it a little easier to maneuver the bucket onto the pulley Anders had found elsewhere in Darktown, and managed to attach to a loop of metal embedded into the rock that had presumably once held up a similar contraption, by now rusted and fallen off. There was another loop in the tunnel's ceiling near the edge, and Ander used it as a support handle to reach the clasp at the end of the coil of chain and rope, then let the tethered bucket fall down.

The water level was far below, and it had taken some scavenging to get enough materials together to cover the distance. It was worth it for the relatively easy acces, though. Who knew when there might be a time one would need to hole up in the clinic for days. Anders hoped there never came a time they would have to test whether the rope and chain, or the loop of metal, did support the weight of a person.

"Be my guest," Anders said, and gestured at the crank of the pulley.

Sebastian got two pulls done before asking, "You usually do this yourself?"

"Usually, yes," Anders said with a smile, and put a hand over the coil, starting the spell to pull the bucket up, taking on about half of the weight. "Oh, don't worry, you are helping. It's still draining, even if it's magic, and I'll be happy to save what I can for potential emergency healing."

"Impressive view," was all Sebastian said.

Straight ahead was only the opposing cliffside of the canal and its creepy slave statues, of course. But if you leaned out a little on either side you could see out to the sea, which way Sebastian was facing right now, or into the city port and Lowtown. Most days Anders preferred the former, but found themself turned to the latter eventually, gaze fixed a little closer, on the Gallows.

Now they were looking up, to the top of the cliff. "If Darktown was on the opposite side instead of under Hightown to catch its shit, do you think I could see your house from here?" Anders asked. "Its towers are probably high enough."

"You are not letting that go, are you?," said Sebastian.

"No, it's too much fun not to," Anders said with no actual fun. "How much does she tell you about what's going on in the chantry? You do live there, right?"

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. "I assume you are about to tell me. What goes on in the chantry?"

"A lot I can't prove, I'm sure. How quickly do they scrub the blood off the floor usually? In time for morning sermon?"

"People have died there, I know that," Sebastian conceded. "It is sometimes used as a secluded meeting place by various ruffians who manage to break in. I suppose Hightown is a little short on abandoned warehouses."

"So you walk into the tiny portion of the palace—sorry, chantry—reserved for the common people to actually practice religion, in the morning, and stumble over..." Anders made their voice deliberately flat for the effect. "Oh, dear. Just another pile of corpses." They shrugged. "You don't hear about it while the fighting's going on?"

"Not if it happens in the altar room. I sleep on the other side of the building," Sebastian said. He gave the crank a careful sideways tug when the chain got stuck for a moment. "I rise before the sun just to make it there by mid-day."

Anders didn't laugh, but decided that yes, perhaps the chantry's size had been pointed out enough for one conversation.

Sebastian didn't seem to take additional offense to the lack of reaction. "And it doesn't happen that often," they said in a more serious tone again.

"Then you remember each time it happens?"

"I believe so."

A flock of gulls flew past the opening, towards the harbor but taking their time. There must have been a fishing boat passing through the canal. Anders had almost hit one of those once when dropping the bucket down.

"Have any templars died there?" Anders asked, trying to sound casual.

Sebastian frowned. "There was one time, three years ago. I was told a dozen of the order's finest had been murdered by blood mages."

Anders snorted, not able to help it. "There were nine, and no blood magic was involved. Did Hawke tell you about Ser Alrik and what he'd been up to? Those guys were his friends. But maybe the bar really is that low for the order's finest."

Sebastian paused in pulling the crank. "It was you who killed them."

"You can't be that surprised, Vael," Anders said, suspending the movement of the spell, too, and looking down at their hands only for long enough to do that. "How much do you know about why those templars were there that night? About who else was there?"

"Only what I was told," Sebastian said, and got the bucket moving again for the last few feet.

Anders narrowed their eyes. "And when was that? Did someone say to stay away from the altar room for the night, perhaps? No late night prayer binges?"

"I know what I was told happened, after it had." Sebastian secured the coil and pulled the full water container onto the stone floor with apparent ease that Anders might have been impressed with under different circumstances. "Are you going to tell me the rest, then?"

"Ask Hawke. Or Fenris." Bethany had been there as well, but of course she was now a bit harder to reach. Never mind that her house Anders could see from here. "Then, maybe you can ask Her Grace who gave the templars the key, and if she ever had to look the tenth person who died there that night in the eye while he was still alive."

Anders took the water bucket, and walked back into the clinic.

They were beginning the process of purifying the water in portions with their potion distillation kit when Sebastian approached them again.

"You really don't want to give me a chance, do you, Anders?"

"I don't see why it's such a big deal if I don't," Anders said as they started the small flame under the glass pot with the sea water in it. Fire spells still felt unnerving after over twenty years, but it wasted no firewood and made less smoke to have the flame be fueled by the Fade on the palm of their hand. At least there was plenty of water on hand should it get out of Anders's control. It hadn't in almost as long as those twenty years, but the precaution was calming.

"Don't take it personally," Sebastian said with a small chuckle. "You are hardly the first self-righteous arsehole with an alleged heart of gold I've had the pleasure of dealing with."

"The man in the mirror included?" Anders said, their gaze and half of their focus on the flame and not wanting Sebastian to see how tenuous it was.

"Yet another thing we share, I suppose," Sebastian said, causing Anders to look up.

"I understand you and Fenris see eye to eye on a lot of things. He has respect for you, which I'm under the impression is mutual."

That was a bit of an understatement. Anders and Fenris had by now seen each other at some pretty low points, yet understood where that had come from for the other, and if the understanding took a lot of conscious effort, they had started seeing the merit of putting in that effort.

Anders admired Fenris—had told him so themself already. Sometimes it felt that there were parts of Anders that perhaps only Fenris understood. That feeling was not new; Anders had thought from early on they had a lot in common, but they had made the mistake of assuming that the obstacle to that similarity leading to them being seen and heard for who they were was Fenris alone refusing to bridge the gap while Anders was already doing their part. What they had been doing had not been bothering to see and hear Fenris for who he was.

"That's Fenris," Anders said. "He's my friend."

"He's wary of your cause."

"He doesn't work against it," argued Anders. "And if anyone has a justifiable reason to be scared of mages as a group, it's him. I don't recall you having grown up in slavery in Tevinter."

Sebastian was quiet for a moment, then sat down on the chair on the opposite side of the table. Anders spared a glance to the flame as he did so.

"I'm not here to compare myself to Fenris, or to talk you out of befriending him. I hardly have the right even if I wanted to. I came to see if I could get to know a friend of my friend."

"So... the whole thing about helping people was just a ruse?"

"No, it's what he brought up as a reason I should."

Anders was at a loss for words, and could feel their cheeks heat up. Fenris had told Sebastian about the clinic? As a... character testimony on their behalf? The ways they had quite deliberately earned the label of 'self-righteous arsehole' felt a little less justified with every word they recalled having said since Sebastian had showed up. They weren't going back on their arguments, but they had been going out of their way to insult someone their friend had apparently told to give Anders a chance.

Was this how they had been treating Fenris, as well, only a few months ago?

Anders cleared their throat. "I'm sorry. For some of today, at least. I'm... really not used to trusting people from the Chantry."

"From what I hear you have a justifiable reason."

Anders frowned. "What have you heard, then?"

"Exactly that," Sebastian said with a small shake of his head. "If you are willing to say more on it, I would be willing to listen. I meant it when I said the Chantry, here or otherwise, could be doing more for the good of the people. All people."

Suddenly Sebastian's gaze was pulled sharply to somewhere below their face. Anders looked down, and saw the flame had grown a little without them having intended to. It was not yet dangerous, and they were surprised Sebastian, who they were going to trust did not have templar abilities, had been able to tell the difference.

Doing anything about it was interrupted by a voice from the door: "Is this where I can find the healer?"

Anders shook their hand to extinguish the flame, and they and Sebastian both got up. "Yes, you've come to the right place," Anders said, and took in the new visitors—an adult with two children, one walking on their own and the other very young and carried by their parent. "How can I help you?"

"The children have been coughing all day, the little one especially," the adult explained.

When the three of them stepped closer, into the light of a lantern, Anders froze.

After two more steps, she stopped, too.

"Anders?" she asked hesitantly, and that confirmed it.

"Maker's breath! Evelina? It's good to see you alive after everything that's happened!" They walked the rest of the day to meet her.

"You as well," Evelina said, and clasped their hand. "They told us... no, that can wait. These are Enid and Cricket." She indicated the children, the one she was carrying in her arms looking to be about five years old, the other about ten. "I'm worried they might have caught something, contagious or from the dust in the air. Children, this is my old friend Anders, who is very good at healing. You're going to be fine now."

Anders hoped they would be able to live up to the confidence she had in them. "Hello, Enid," they greeted the younger child in a soft voice. "Can I put a hand on your back, and use magic to check what's causing you to cough? It won't hurt."

Enid let out a burst of coughs trying to answer verbally, and then, still clinging to Evelina's shoulder, just nodded.

After a moment where the other two waited holding their breath in anticipation, Anders ended the spell and declared, "It's dust. There's no infection, but it will get worse if the air you breathe won't clear. I can definitely heal this, though. Cricket, can I do the same for you?"

Cricket coughed once before saying, "Sure," and turning around, back to Anders.

As soon as Anders was done confirming that it was the same ailment, they realized Evelina was looking at Sebastian awkwardly, having probably been waiting for Anders to finish in case they needed quiet, to ask about him.

"Oh, right! Evelina, this is, uh, this is Sebastian," Anders stumbled over what exactly to call him. A friend? Assistant? Should they alert her to the fact he was from the Chantry? "Sebastian, this is, as established, my old friend Evelina, from Ferelden," they said quickly before turning back to healing Enid and Cricket now that they knew what was wrong, the spell that would numb the airways to the unpleasant feeling of foreign matter being drawn out while they healed the damage needing extra concentration to succeed. They hoped Evelina could tell from the fact they were keeping it vague that they had known each other in the Circle that it was not a good idea to let it be known she was a mage as well. Sebastian had said he didn't want to rat people out to the templars, but it should still be Evelina's informed decision.

"P-Prince Sebastian Vael? It's an honor to meet you, Your Highness," Evelina said, eyes wide, to about equal surprise on Anders's part.

"Ah, yes, though nowadays I am merely a brother of the Chantry. It is an honor to meet you as well," Sebastian said, with a bow of course, conveniently taking care of making Evelina's decision informed.

"Who's that?" Cricket asked, with another cough before turning around again for Anders to heal. It was actually easier to do through the chest, but if it made the patient more comfortable and didn't decrease the effectiveness of the treatment, that was how Anders would do it.

"Prince of Starkhaven. That's the place where I lived before coming to Ferelden," Evelina answered, wiping Enid's mouth on her sleeve to clean away the dust expelled from the child's lungs, before being offered a handkerchief (almost sparklingly clean, with embroidery in one corner) by Sebastian for the purpose. She thanked him with more flustered stuttering.

It wasn't every day you got unexpectedly helped by a monarch of your country, Anders supposed, though thinking back on their own such experience, they hadn't even had the sense to kneel before the Queen despite everyone else doing so. Well, everyone but Oghren, but since when was Oghren an indicator of etiquette.

Anders hadn't known about Starkhaven being Evelina's country of origin. She was an 'old friend' in the sense of being from the same Circle, but they didn't actually know each other terribly well. Anders had only known she had been transferred to Kinloch Hold from somewhere else eight years before the Blight. They wondered if she knew Grace and Alain.

After healing the children, Anders asked Evelina and them to stay for catching up, hoping Sebastian would at some point take the hint and leave them to converse freely. It didn't seem to be happening any time soon, but they learned Evelina had been adopting orphaned children spared but left abandoned by the Blight, there being six of them altogether living with her in Kirkwall. Enid was the youngest, and the rest were being looked after by the oldest of the children, a fifteen-year-old by the name of Walter, while she was here.

She was struggling to feed the children who had nowhere else to go, Kirkwall offering few other career options for Fereldan refugees, especially late arrivals, than begging at street corners. It was a profoundly unfair state of things that needed righting. Evelina hadn't known about Lirene's shop, and Anders gave her directions there, though what aid they could provide was scarce and largely donation-driven, too. She mentioned having considered going to ask for alms at the chantry soon, but Anders warned her against that, to Sebastian's annoyance.

"That is what the Chantry is for, after all," he said. "I know the Grand Cleric, I could bring this need for assistance to her attention."

"You can add it to the list," Anders pointed out. "It's Lirene who's actually been feeding and clothing the refugees, and making sure they find affordable care for their illnesses. The Chantry here would do none of those things, their job or not."

"I wouldn't ask for anything for myself," Evelina said.

Anders regretted more by the second not having gotten to know her better before. Or perhaps Justice did, in which case they couldn't have, not that part of them.

"I love these children, and think of them as my own now, but if I had to separate from them for them to be cared for..." She glanced to where, a bit further away and out of earshot, Cricket and Enid were busy filling with drawings the piece of paper the manifesto had been able to spare. "In the orphanage, they would have a roof over their head, a real one, not the soot-crusted ceiling of an old mineshaft."

"The orphanage?" Sebastian asked.

"I'm afraid so. Surely the Chantry would take them in, even though they must be full after so many refugees arriving."

"Evelina," Anders said, and glanced at Sebastian as well. "The Kirkwall Chantry doesn't maintain an orphanage."

She looked from one of them to the other. "But, then... where do the children born in the Circle go?"

Sebastian looked confused—then, horrified.

"Officially, there are none," Anders answered. "So I'm guessing that's where they go here."

Evelina's hands rose to cover her mouth, her eyes on her children again.

"I... will speak to the Grand Cleric," Sebastian said, and to his credit it did not sound like it was a platitude, despite how many times he had made that promise over the course of the day. It might turn out to be about as effective as one, though, Anders was beginning to resign themself to believing. Talking was about the only thing Elthina was good at, it seemed, especially finding ways to say with authority that everything was fine and needed no changing. But who knew, perhaps Sebastian would be lended the ear that Anders with their inconvenient facts and Hawke with their money and connections hadn't been deemed worty of.

Soon afterwards, Anders promised to watch Enid and Cricket for Evelina as she went to get the rest of her children. Their current living quarters were going to make all of them ill, so for the time being at least, they might as well come live at the clinic. It would certainly give Anders an opportunity to eventually talk to Evelina, without Sebastian there to overhear.

It turned out, though, Sebastian had been waiting to talk to them alone as well. Keeping their eyes on the children as promised—though currently they were unlikely to get into anything they shouldn't, as both had curled up to take a nap in a cot, probably having been kept up by the coughing the night before—he herded Anders back to the table they had been sitting at with Evelina. Then, with a pointed glance at somewhere between Anders's face and chest, he said, "Is that what I think it is?"

Anders looked down and saw nothing out of the ordinary, but the hand they brought up to feel around their neck suddenly met a small plate of metal on a chain. Anders closed their fist around the pendant, but of course it was too late to try to hide it. They had forgotten they were wearing it.

"That is the mark of the Black Divine," Sebastian whispered furiously. "I think I have been very patient trying to understand you today, Anders, but this I will hear an explanation for, right now."

Anders swallowed nervously, and fumbled behind their neck to undo the clasp of the amulet. "Hawke gave it to me," they said, already knowing it was hardly sufficient. "They were going through a sack of loot to divide up, and thought I would find it amusing. I don't support the Tevinter Chantry any more than I do the Orlesian one, but Tevinter seems to be synonymous with 'fuck the system' for the latter, isn't it. It's... ironic."

"Does Fenris know you have it?" Sebastian asked.

He didn't, unless Hawke had told him. It had been a recent gift, from last night, and Anders hadn't talked to Fenris in a few days, not since... well, since the morning after sleeping with their arms around him like they were someone he could feel safe with. Anders hoped he hadn't been told, and knew right then they had messed up.

They gathered the chain into their hand. "I didn't mean it like that."

Sebastian's glare wasn't relenting. "Where did Hawke even find such a thing?"

It hadn't occurred to them, perhaps at the time of digging it up from the bottom of the sack it hadn't to Hawke, either, but... of course it should have. Where had they recently been that someone from Tevinter might drop their amulet? Whose had it likely been?

"You know what, Vael," Anders whispered, their voice a little shaky. "You're right. This was a bad idea from start to finish." They uncovered the amulet to look at it. "It's a shame, really, it's good quality metal, not a speck of rust on it. But it doesn't even have any enchantments on it, it's just a piece of jewellery, so..."

"So?" Sebastian prompted, no longer sounding so angry. And as much as it stung, he had had every right to be.

Anders looked up from the amulet, closing it in their fist again and intending to only ever look at it again once in its current form. They wouldn't ask if Sebastian was going to tell Fenris about it. Perhaps he wasn't; it would hardly bring Fenris joy to know, after all, and not wanting Fenris hurt the two of them seemed to be agreed on. But if he did, Anders supposed having to explain it was fair retribution. That conclusion was unpleasant, but in a moral sense satisfying.

"I'll melt it down," they said. "The clinic could use a new measuring spoon."

Notes:

Prayers for the despairing from the Canticle of Trials can be found on the da wiki.

Chapter 10: Confession

It had been by all accounts an otherwise normal morning when Fenris had walked into the chantry.

He had been inside a few, in Tevinter, and had seen a few others elsewhere. He had never felt welcome. It was easy to say the feeling that morning had been more of the same, being an elf in a house of the humans' Maker who seemed to barely remember he and people like him existed—as far as their doctrine was concerned these days, the elf who had fough at that Maker's mortal bride's side hadn't.

Fenris had witnessed bloodshed in this very building, had been the cause of some of it, although, where had he not. He could see why Anders might want to avoid the place on the grounds of what had happened there the night he and Hawke had first met them, especially knowing now how much they had lost then. But there was more to it, he had thought, walking past the enormous statue of Andraste and recalling being greeted by having its shadow fall on him from across the room. His first introduction to the place three years ago felt no less indicative in daylight when he wasn't breaking and entering. The Kirkwall chantry did not seem like it welcomed anyone, and was instead inconvenienced by your intruding.

And yet there he had been, looking for some kind of peace and solace.

Fenris did not think he had been Andrastian, that his family had been, if he had even had one one for long. The Andrastianism he had been surrounded by, if not exactly practiced, in Tevinter, was very different from the south's in any case. Some of what he knew of the Chant could be comforting. He had clung to what he had had when necessary. But, he knew it for the straws it was. Whether there was a god he had once prayed to in earnest, and whether that god listened any better than the Maker did to a prayer he would say in a chantry, he had no idea, and he did not know how to begin trying.

Yet there was something... familiar, even in that dreary fortress of a temple, that rustled the veil over his memories—a flicker of the candles, something in the scent of the incense, perhaps, if not the entirety of it. He did not know if that meant the memories were not gone, simply locked away. These scraps might be all that was left. He clung to what he had.

The actual solace he had hoped to find had been from a person. Sebastian had greeted him warmly, the only person in the building who had been happy to see him.

In a way the chantry now felt like a mirror image of what only a few months ago had been his impression of another alleged sanctuary in this city, Fenris thought later that day, as he walked into the Darktown clinic with Hawke (and instead of Sebastian found a group of children and their mother, though after introductions Anders said he had indeed been there earlier). Fenris had found solace of a kind here as well, in the form of care for his injuries, and despite all the unpleasantness of the Undercity he had never felt his presence in the clinic was unwanted—hardly anyone's was, though he was unaware of Anders ever having had to make the decision whether to treat a templar. That is, so long as he had been a patient.

The welcome he received here now with no visible ailments, feeling no need to doubt its sincerity, was that of being happy to see him. Now wasn't that something. The thought made him smile a little longer as he returned the greeting.

Before he could enquire after the day's events further, Hawke recognized one of the children—orphans rescued and adopted by the woman, Evelina, whom Anders knew from the Fereldan Circle, it turned out. What ensued was a bittersweet reunion of Lothering neighbors, knowing they had both survived, and who else hadn't.

Hawke and the child's new family seemed content to discuss things among themselves, so Fenris took Anders aside for the other reason he was there, the reason most people were.

"I would have need of elfroot, if you have any to spare," he said quietly.

"I think I do," Anders said, and led Fenris to one of the back rooms, on the left and behind a door with a lock instead of a moth-eaten curtain. There, they went over to a shelf holding various jars and bottles. "Does it matter what kind? And is it something I can help with?"

"I... " Fenris started. When Anders turned to look at him, he continued with more confidence. There was no reason to keep this hidden, was there? "I use it to soothe the pain from my markings. I usually prepare it myself, but it seems I have run out."

Anders frowned, the shelf forgotten for now. "The markings? Do they hurt when you use them?"

"They hurt regardless of whether I do. Although some uses do make it worse," Fenris answered.

"What? Why haven't you said anything?" Anders asked, and for a moment Fenris thought they were offended.

He was about to explain he had not wanted to trouble anyone and was accustomed to dealing with it himself, perhaps leave out that revealing things that counted as weaknesses did not come easily to him, althought Anders must have known that by now. Then he realized it was worry.

"I had medicine for it. It is not severe," Fenris answered, more or less truthfully. At least, on most days it wasn't severe.

"Just elfroot?"

"I add dragonthorn, or an extract of foxite or heatherum, to enhance the effect, and spindleweed, as it is a pain related to magic," Fenris listed. As he did so, he realized he had never said some of those names out loud or had reason to hear them said, in this language, and hoped he had gotten the pronounciation correct. 'Heather-um', not 'heat-herum', right? "I have enough of the other ingredients, which are not required in large quantities, and I did have a shrub of elfroot growing in a corner of the mansion's garden..." He absently brushed the hem of his tunic, whether it had actually acquired dust or dirt being irrelevant. "It appears I have picked it clean."

The frown only deepened.

"Anders?"

"Magic... literally, physically hurts you?" Anders said. "All this time, I had no idea!"

"It is what it is," Fenris said, looking to the shelf away from the intense eye contact. "I do not require anyone crying about it."

Anders laughed, rather joylessly. "Perish the thought. But I could have actually been more careful about casting around you had I known! Is there a difference between spells?"

"You misunderstand. Proximity to magic is... I feel it, but not as pain—an awareness. To offensive spells targeted at me, I am even somewhat resistant. It is just the markings themselves."

"Oh."

Fenris cleared his throat, and glanced at the shelf again.

Anders turned to pick up a jar, and handed it to Fenris. "They hurt all the time, then? Does it help with that at all when I heal you in battle?"

Fenris nodded, and moved the jar from one hand to the other, then back again. "It is hard to discern when I am otherwise injured. A healing aura does usually lessen it."

Anders brought two fingers to their forehead in a familiar casting gesture, and activated one, though Fenris had not intended it as a request. "Do the herbs? Lessen it, or take it away entirely?" they asked.

"Lessen considerably," Fenris said, and waved the jar a little. "Thank you. Do not be concerned, this is plenty."

He walked out to the main room of the clinic, Anders, and the aura, following close behind.

He missed it when he finally stepped out of its range halfway to the lift.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting would come of the conversation. Hawke had invited the family they had met at the clinic to dinner at their mansion, saying he and Anders would also be welcome, but he had politely declined. He hadn't wanted to worry his friends, but he could feel the ache was going to get worse towards the end of the day—no matter how all predictable external factors should have granted him a pleasant evening, but he had learned his instinct knew better than his logic did on this subject—and he had wanted to rest at his own home and get himself medicated as soon as possible. Hawke and the others would have a lot to talk about, in any case, and he didn't feel up to being anything but awkwardly in the way.

Later that evening, when there was a knock on his door, he opened it to find Anders, waiting a little off to the side so as to be hidden by the bush again.

They raised the basket they were carrying by way of greeting. "Delivery service."

"I thought I might not get out of it so easily," Fenris joked as he let them in.

"Hawke is terrible like that," Anders agreed as the two of them made their way to Fenris's room upstairs.

Anders looked around, obviously searching for the cats, but Fenris had to tell them he hadn't seen them that evening. With the warm and dry weather they would likely be out hunting, and come home only to sleep sometime later.

"Well, I'm afraid I'm terrible, too," Anders said. "Can we talk about that pain? I trust you when you say you have it under control, but, I am a healer."

Fenris sighed and sat down at the table. "We can."

Anders set down the basket and started unpacking it. "Let's start with whether it's been like that for as long as you can remember, or gotten worse over time? And is it just pain, or are there other symptoms?" They took a bottle out of the basket, and looked around for what Fenris guessed was something to drink from.

He got up to retrieve the pair of wine glasses from one of the wardrobes, the one closer to the fireplace that he would tie a clothesline on. Anything a cat could push off a shelf and break and that he cared to keep was stored behind a door. Anders made a twitch of a motion in the same direction as he walked past them, like they had been about to tell him to sit and let them handle it, but this was not a house call on a patient, and Fenris was not so in pain he needed his guest waiting on him.

"You ask if I have lyrium poisoning," he answered the enquiries on his health. "There is no nausea or irritation of the skin around the markings involved, and I do not recall it having changed over time. The pain ebbs and flows, but not in a linear progression."

When the glasses were on the table he picked up the bottle to read 'apple juice' on the label. Well, what he had was four tea cups and sundry mugs already found at the mansion that he had deemed worth cleaning and keeping, in addition. Juice could be drunk from wine glasses.

"That's good, then," Anders assured. "Although, I'm sure you know what I'm about to say. One symptom of lyrium poisoning is memory loss."

Fenris turned the bottle around in his hands, then set it down. The thought was sickening, but he knew it could not be dismissed. He had lost so much already, unable to gain it back despite his efforts. The candle of his memories burning from both ends was discouraging to entertain. "Would I remember if I have it, then?"

"Does it feel like you have trouble remembering recent events? Confusion over what you were doing, things like that?"

Fenris let himself consider the possibility. He had lost time the day he killed Hadriana, after fleeing the holding caves, and the realization was frightening in a different way now. Where had he been wandering? He knew he hadn't gone straight to Hawke's...

He realized he hadn't known even that much, at the time. That was something regained.

"Of the journey back into the city, after... after Hadriana... I remember only..." He closed his eyes, but it didn't make a difference, so he opened them again. But suddenly there was an image. "The Rose. I walked past it. I remember it because..." Because it had only made him more upset. The place had always made him uncomfortable, never being able to feel reassured of how consenting its workers were to be there. But he was certain now it had been that day. "I had no clear memory of how I got back, but I can recall details I didn't, now." He looked expectantly at Anders.

"It could have been just the shock," they said. "There are a lot of reasons a person might not pay full attention to what is going on around them."

Fenris nodded, and did not say how true he knew that was.

"It doesn't seem like poisoning. And obviously if the markings were leaking into your system, the symptoms should be more obvious and severe. But you do have what's basically a foreign object embedded under your skin all over, so I shouldn't be surprised it hurts." Anders's hands paused, leaving a pot halfway out of the basket. "I'm sorry, I hope I'm not ruining your appetite with all this, it's just..."

"No, it is a relief to know," Fenris assured. "Simply pain, I can live with."

"About that," Anders said as they placed the last item on the table. "When we went into the Fade, did that have any effect, one way or the other?"

Fenris thought back on it. He had been too nervous to catalogue the sensation too thoroughly, on edge and concentrating on recognizing threats before they got to him (and such a fine job he had done at that...) rather than on how his body felt. He had thought it coincidental. "It eased the pain, I think."

"Good," Anders said eagerly. "There's something I'd like to try, with your permission. You said a healing aura helps?"

Fenris nodded.

"Tell me if this is an improvement." Anders made a gesture for a spell again.

The feeling that spread over Fenris was so unfamiliar it was almost unpleasant in its own way. Then he realized what it was.

"The pain... it's... It's gone!" He rubbed his hands together to ascertain he still had feeling in them, and hadn't simply gone numb all over. The pressure didn't aggravate the ache into returning, either, but he could sense the touch. "What did you do?"

Anders smiled widely. "I'm glad to hear that. I realized I knew some things that might enhance passive spells, that I hadn't put into practice, so I studied up on that a bit more and... and then I thought of something else, too. Your condition may not be poisoning, but your markings are lyrium, and they react to the Fade as the Fade reacts to lyrium. I can hear it in changes in its sound. I don't have much of an ear for music from this side of the Veil, I have to admit, but guiding this song when it falls out of tune, so it comes closer again to what reminds me the most of when I lived in the Fade... it seems to be working?"

Fenris frowned, a contradictory motion in the comfort he felt. "A song. When you... lived in the Fade?" He tapped fingers of one hand on his thigh, in hopes the motion would help his thoughts move into their proper places, as well. "Justice? You came up with this?"

"I did," said Anders's voice, as Anders's face smiled. No, it wasn't only Anders's, was it. "This substance has been used to cause you so much hurt, it's high time it gives back some of what it took."

Fenris searched their eyes, not sure what he was looking for. He knew, if did not consciously think about it most of the time, that the spirit was still there even with nothing to outwardly differentiate who was closer to the surface. Was that how it even worked? Anders had not gone anywhere now that he was talking to Justice. One of them had seamlessly answered a question addressed to the other. Fenris wasn't sure why he didn't find that more concerning.

Justice was dangerous. Right now he had no reason to believe that potential for destruction would be turned on him, wanted to trust there was no will for it to ever be, any more than he wished to be a danger to the spirit. He knew one need not intend harm to cause it, but of course it was not exclusive to creatures of the Fade. He thought of the person in front of him as 'Anders'— it was what they called themself most of the time—but they were both Anders and they were Justice, and could he truly tell when something they did was more mage than spirit, or the other way around?

It should have been a frightening thought.

Justice had been part of every experience he had shared with Anders. Justice had admitted to having been wrong to liken his distrust of magic to that of a templar. Justice had held him as he had dried his tears on his pillow and let himself feel safe and cared for.

"Thank you," Fenris said.

He glanced around the table that had been laden with food containers, and started actually paying attention to guessing the contents. The smell was delicious, and he realized he had not eaten much more than the herbs after coming home. "Would you like to stay for dinner?" he thought to ask.

Anders, and Justice, laughed. The person who might have been called by only one's name, but was both, did. "I already ate at Hawke's just now. You go ahead. But if you want me to stay anyway, I can. The effect from the aura should linger, by the way, even after I leave, if that affects your decision."

"Do you need to go back to the clinic before the children's bedtime? I understand they will be living with you now?"

"I thought they would be, yes. Turns out one reason for the dinner was Hawke has invited them to stay at their mansion instead. Which really is a better solution for them. I have a hole in my wall that leads to a drop into the canal. I would have put a lock on that door, of course, but... it's better for them this way, for a lot of reasons."

Hawke had lamented the number of empty bedrooms before, and regularly encouraged their friends to treat those as their own whenever convenient. Fenris had taken them up on the offer once, since he lived close anyway. It had felt safe there, though.

"They only made the invitation just now because Leandra was already a bit overwhelmed by having an elven girl turn up unannounced to say she works there now," Anders continued. "They wanted to ask mother, first."

And it had also felt strange, being among a normal family.

Then Fenris remembered the girl—Orana. He had missed a good opportunity to check on her. He would rectify that soon.

"Did Orana cook this?" he asked about the food. That explained the smell of familiar dishes.

"She and Bodahn did, yes."

"How is she?"

"Settling in alright, I guess," Anders sighed. "I hope she doesn't think babysitting has just been added to her job description. Hawke mostly pays her for getting out of bed in the morning and coping, though she doesn't seem to want to show she's upset at all that her father just died."

Fenris nodded, unsurprised. "She doesn't trust them yet."

"No, I don't think she does."

Fenris uncovered the first container, and breathed in deep. If there was one thing he had missed from Tevinter, it was food. Well, some of it.

"There's dessert, too," Anders said with a smile. "But the healer in me is happy to see you excited about eating something that isn't."

"It is... difficult for me to find food that is appetizing to me," Fenris admitted. "Sweet food is easier to not be so particular about. I eat what I must, and rarely got to choose while on the run, but, some flavors and textures simply do not sit well with me at all."

"Huh," said Anders. "Do they make you ill, or..."

"Mostly no, and not severely so. Just... are an ordeal to consume." It seemed like a ridiculous quirk to have for someone so dependant on circumstances for sustenance, but guilt over it did not make it go away. He was teaching himself to cook now that he could read cookbooks, and from memory (which he noted with some relief was rather detailed on at least this subject, though he lacked vocabulary in Common to connect names to a lot of ingredients), but he wasn't always sure what exactly he wanted to make in the first place, for the desired results. Sometimes the way he preferred a food item was not how it was 'supposed to' be served. "I know it is strange."

"After a definition of such. You're a grown man, what you eat and how is your business."

And he did not need Anders's permission for that. But that was not what he was being given, so he accepted it.

"Anything in particular you're avoiding?" Anders asked.

The list of what he wasn't avoiding was probably shorter, if he knew how to fit them into such coherent cataloguing. Done with experimental nibbling, Fenris determined that at least most things currently on offer would make the short list. "Fish," he said.

"That's a lot of dishes; we live in a coastal city."

"Exactly."

He set aside from the other containers the one whose contents he would rather not touch further on that account, and instead pulled closer the ones with chicken, rice, and a salad he thought he recognized, despite Orana having replaced the particular fruits that were the main ingredient with what had been more easily available. Not as spicy as he remembered it, either, but that suited him fine, and probably even better the Fereldans it had been prepared for.

"What about you, healer?" Fenris asked. "I rarely see you eat at a pace that does not suggest starvation. Do you not get enough food?"

"Wardens are always hungry," Anders explained.

It did not escape his notice they neglected to elaborate why.

"I've learned to ignore it a lot of the time. I do eat."

"Good to know. Still, help yourself." Fenris gestured at the food.

After sitting still for a few seconds, Anders picked up a lid to use as plate.

Fenris handed them the spoon, knife, and fork bundled in a napkin, that had come in the basket, as he was himself using the chopsticks Orana had thought to provide as an alternative. He pushed the container with fish in it towards them. "Not to imply that is the only one you get to have. But you will probably appreciate this more than I can," he said.

Soon after they had dug in, Fenris felt something brush against his shin, and when he looked down, there was the grey cat circling his leg as well as the chair's.

"Lured by free food, I see," he said, and reached down to pet her. "I'm afraid this is not for you."

"Am I going to have to worry about another dropping from the ceiling soon if I don't pay attention?" Anders asked as they held out their hand for the cat to come bother them instead.

"Perhaps. I don't give them food that has already been prepared for people. But they seem determined to change my mind." Fenris watched with a smile as the cat walked over to them with her tail held up in greeting, and rubbed her cheek on the back of their hand. "I will feed you later," he said to the cat, as if that would have any effect.

She at least didn't try to get on the table, and after sitting at Anders's feet for a while and staring plaintively, she wandered off to curl up on the blanket in front of the fire place to keep an eye on them from there. She let her eyes close from time to time, but Fenris got the feeling she was waiting for them to leave the food unattended.

"Did Hawke give you the amulet?" Fenris brought up, once he was convinced she would at least wait for them to leave before pouncing.

It was abrupt of him, perhaps, but it might need to be for him to get to the subject. He had thought it was something he didn't need to know just hours ago, but turns out he did mind at least that much.

Anders froze. "The what?"

"The one they picked up from the holding cave," Fenris continued, calmly, as he refilled his glass, and gestured at Anders's glass as well with the bottle still in hand.

"You were paying a lot more attention than you give yourself credit for," Anders said, and almost knocked their empty glass off the table with their elbow before holding it out to have it refilled as well. "Um, yes," they answered after thanking him. "They did."

"Hmm. I thought they might," Fenris said, and took a sip. It was juice, not wine, so he need not drink it in such small portions, but it was less for the drink and more for the moment longer to consider whether to point it out. He decided he would. "With how you dress I assume you would find it ironic to wear, if not as openly."

Anders sputtered a bit, having thought to have a drink as well. "With... how I... dress?"

"Your jacket," Fenris said. "It is made out of a Tevinter mage robe. Or did you not know?"

"No, I did," Anders said and put their glass down, this time in a different spot to probably avoid further elbowing. "I... owned one. It was the fanciest outfit I'd ever had, and, it would piss off Chantry folk, which is always great fun, so I admit its origins were not a coincidence, fancy or not. It wasn't exactly subtle enough to wear in Templar City, so I did this." They raised one arm a little and ran a hand over the seam along the sleeve, clearly put together from scraps of limited fabric—parts of the robe's skirt, Fenris deduced—with stitches more surgical than sartorial. "I thought you'd be angrier about it."

Fenris had been, initially, but there had been plenty of other things to dislike Anders for, and most of the time plenty of reasons to avoid drawing them into a conversation about those. "If you worry I have had to look at Danarius in similar robes, you underestimate the speed at which fashions change among the Tevinter elite," he said, because that was true, and as much as he found the feather-encrusted thing ridiculous, he didn't wish for Anders to overhaul their attire out of guilt for his sake. "I was on the run for three whole years before we met."

"No, I mean the amulet. It doesn't bother you?"

Fenris sighed, and put his chopsticks down. "I cannot say it makes me happy, exactly. But... if it helps give you strength to defy those who hurt you... I have my ways of coping that you don't like, and I don't have to like all of yours. Keep it if you wish. It does me no harm."

"Oh," Anders said with a brief, nervous-sounding laugh. "Uh, I kind of wore it for a day and then thought you'd hate me if you found out, and destroyed it."

Fenris failed to keep the surprise out of his voice about as much as he did every time Hawke handed him a gift, or the fact that despite his efforts, it was a very similar surprise. "You... did?"

"To give credit where it's due, Sebastian chewed me out on your behalf when he noticed it. And, even if you don't have to like it, I don't feel right having something you just grudgingly tolerate." Anders shrugged. "It's a spoon by now."

"You don't need to coddle me," Fenris said, to be clear, though part of him would have like to leave it at that. "If it truly bothered me I would say so."

"I'm not! Uh, think of it as payback for setting me up for an afternoon with Sebastian?"

"I meant no offense," Fenris told them, and he hadn't, just now, either. But it was easy to see how they had managed to get to a point where they would rather not talk to each other, once, because so many things between them were dangerous when one left room for ambiguity. "I suppose I wished for you to get to know him better than the overheard conversation about whether to turn you in to the templars. I believe he is a good man."

Anders's eyebrows shot up in a valiant effort to reach their hairline. "You knew I was listening?"

"Not until I saw you try to be discreet about diving behind a corner, at the top of the stairs," Fenris said, not minding if he sounded a little smug about it. "But I was a bodyguard."

To his relief, Anders laughed. "Is there anything you actually don't know about that I've done? What did I have for breakfast this morning?"

"I'm guessing nothing."

"Too easy, doesn't count." They tapped a finger against their chin a few times. "Did I... reluctantly swoon at Sebastian's biceps when I got him to reel in water for me from the canal?"

Fenris considered for a moment, then smirked, and pulled off his long-sleeved tunic, leaving his upper body clad only in a sleeveless undershirt. He leaned back in his chair, and flexed the muscles on one arm.

"That's cheating!" Anders said, with a look that said they did not mind in the least.

"We established no rules," Fenris pointed out, the smirk still on. "My answer is you did." He held the tunic in one hand, and before peeking into the last little cup on the table that was still full, for dessert, decided to set it down on the back of his chair instead of putting it on again.

Let them look. It felt good for once.

Anders shook their head, mock-serious. "You got me. Your prize is, yes, I'll try to get along with him—and not just because of his biceps."

"I appreciate it."

"You did talk me up at him quite a bit, apparently. It's only fair," Anders said to Fenris, and then a little to the side: "Oh, hello to you, too."

Fenris turned to look to see the black cat walk into the room. When he pet her as she walked past, he saw two small feathers clinging to her fur. Well, that answered how her evening had gone.

Anders looked a little offended that she went straight to the blanket to cuddle her feline housemate instead of stopping by their chair. There was barely any food left, and she had already eaten, so not much was drawing her to the table. No doubt she would be all over Anders when they bothered to get up and be the one to go to her.

"Sebastian and I, we spoke of my sister as well," Fenris said, not willing to end that topic just yet. "I haven't decided yet whether to seek her out."

"I don't blame you for not having jumped at the chance. You did say it's likely a trap," Anders said.

"Danarius knows I seek to reclaim my past from before the ritual," Fenris agreed. "It was information on my family I wished to find in the chest planted in the hovel Anso sent you to, as well. Nevertheless, it is a tempting bait." He begun stacking the food containers, now that the meal was done. It would not do to leave them out for the cats to examine. And perhaps he needed something to occupy his hands now that eating wouldn't keep them busy. "My sister's name says nothing to me, and I don't know whether it is a lie or if I truly cannot remember anything about her."

Anders handed him the items they could reach better, which was nice of them, though it was less helpful and more led to the task being over sooner.

"I think I understand why you don't want me to look into if losing your memories from before the ritual is a spell that can be lifted," they said when everything was packed back in the basket. "You're afraid you'll find out with certainty that it's not."

"I am," Fenris confided.

"Who wouldn't be."

Part of Fenris wanted to take it as belittling, the part that was used to that being the reaction, and the meaning behind something about his problems being framed as widely relatable. The rest of him trusted it was to assure him his upset over the problem was justifiable. It was beginning to sink in, he supposed, that this was safe to let himself do around Anders.

"What about your family?" he asked. "You remember them."

Anders nodded, and looked to the side, gaze fixing on the cats—perhaps because the third one had appeared among them as well from somewhere while they had not been looking, and their mysteriously silent movements were something to find fascinating, or, perhaps mostly because they just happened to be there, as an an excuse to look away. "It was just my mother and father and me when I last saw them. I don't know if I have siblings born after that."

"You have not thought to seek them out now that you are no longer in the Circle?" He trusted Anders would say so if it was none of his business. They had certainly not had trouble keeping things private from each other before.

"I have. And I did; the first time I escaped, all I wanted was to go home. Perhaps my mother would have still been happy to see me, she didn't want to let the templars take me away. But take me away they did."

"You are afraid you will find yourself no longer welcome?"

He might have seen that as reasonable, once—'giving away something nobody wants' is what he had thought about Merrill's clan letting her go live among humans, though of course that wasn't quite the attitude the Dalish had about magic. He hadn't spoken much more favorably of Feynriel avoiding the Circle, because he had been afraid of a powerful, unstable mage on the loose. A mage that he had later had to look in the eye only to see an equally frightened child, in the clutches of Tevinter slavers, ones he might have been more eager than usual to cut into pieces.

"It was father who called the templars," Anders said by way of an answer. "I'd burned down the barn—I hadn't meant to, but a mage is a mage, I guess. I stopped thinking of the farm and those people as home decades ago."

It wasn't something Fenris could relate to. But he didn't have to see himself in everything for it to be reasonable, did he.

Anders spoke quieter when they continued. "Sometimes I wonder, though, if they ever regretted letting me go... if they missed me, father included, even tried to get me back. Even if not, it's been long enough we barely know each other now, so perhaps we could, I don't know, start over." They turned back to the table, and to Fenris. "The thing is, I'm afraid that if I decide to go down that path after all..."

They didn't say any more, so Fenris did it for them: "The Blight."

"They might have been fine. I was."

Fenris reached across the table, to place his hand halfway between them. Anders didn't hesitate to place their own on it with a firm squeeze.

"Maybe you could come with me, if I ever do go," they said, smiling, but punctuated with a sniffle neither outwardly acknowledged. "If worse came to worst at least it wouldn't be a waste of time. We could pretend to be travelling around to see Ferelden, in all its muddy and dogshit-covered glory."

"A sight to behold, then," Fenris said with what felt like a smile of his own. Anders's widened, so apparently it was. "If you wish to impress your parents with the company you keep, are you sure an escaped elven slave squatting in borrowed mansions is whom you wish to introduce?"

Anders laughed, which was becoming a sound Fenris was quite fond of hearing. "Well, if you're not bothered by travelling with an apostate abomination and a Grey Warden deserter, who are they to judge? Anyway, this is all talk. I'm not going to Ferelden any time soon, let alone to Crestwood. But the offer stands, you know, in case."

"If we ever do meet my sister, perhaps that is how I'll introduce you," Fenris suggested.

"Throw in that I live in the sewers, too. I'll remember to mention you cheat at guessing games."

"That hardly paints a complete picture. I cheat at plenty of other games, as well. Which reminds me, how do you feel about diamondback?" The odd lack of pain in his fingers should make hiding cards up his sleeve that much easier, after all. Although for that kind of cheating, specifically, he would have to put on something with sleeves.

Anders, and Justice, held onto his hand for a moment longer before letting go to let him go fetch the card stack (and probably first feed the cats, who would drop the act of napping the moment he would get up if he knew them at all). "With an endorsement like that, how could I refuse?"

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Inconsonant Conversations