Chapter Text
The day that Anders had ceased to identify as a woman, was the same day the Templars had come for her.
Her mother had hauled her from the small kitchen in their tiny, thatch roofed house, her eyes wide and frightened. She’d pushed Anders towards the corner of the main room where Anders’ pallet was, and began to roughly strip off her clothing. She had been twelve at the time, and hadn’t understood her mother’s fear. When she was stripped naked, her mother had thrown open a large trunk and rummaged through it, hauling out pieces of ratty clothing.
Her mother’s silence had infected her, and Anders had stood shivering in the cold of the room while her mother took a strip of linen and wound them over her budding breasts, flattening what little flesh she had there. A plain tunic had gone over her head, and her mother had instructed her in hurried tones to slip into a pair of britches. Where her mother had gotten the clothing, Anders would never know. It wouldn’t be until years later that Anders would realize that her mother had been waiting for this day, and had prepared accordingly.
She had taken a pair of shears that Anders’ father had brought from a peddler once. They were fine and meant for delicate work on the fabrics her mother used to make their clothing. They were her prized possession, a frivolous expense that they couldn’t afford at the time, but Anders’ father had gotten anyway, just to see the delight in his wife’s eyes. She would use them to make rough spun clothing for Anders. With scraps of fabric she had taught Anders how to sew, her small fingers carefully making each stitch for dresses for her doll Molly. Anders had been horrible at it, but her mother had sat patiently with her while she had worked.
Those shears had been used to cut away at Anders’ long, blonde hair, the same hair that her mother use to take such delight in brushing every night, gently braiding the shining strands. Her mother’s hands had shaken as she had lopped off Anders’ hair in uneven clumps that had fallen around her face. Tears had trickled down Anders’ cheeks as the strands had fallen to the hard packed earth. Her mother had told her that a woman’s hair was her crowning glory, and now her mother had taken that from her.
Anders hadn’t understood.
But she was a good girl, and had stood silently as her mother worked, gathering up the hair in hanks and throwing them into the central fire in the middle of the room. The acrid smell of burnt hair had filled the room, and Anders had wrinkled her nose in disgust.
It wasn’t until her mother had reached for Molly that Anders had cried out in dismay.
Her father had bought Molly for her during a trip to Hossburg. Molly had been her only friend in their remote village in the Anderfels. She and Molly had gone on adventures together, told each other secrets. But as Molly burned, Anders had known that nothing would ever be the same again.
Her dresses had come next, torn apart at the seams and thrown into a scrap pile in one corner of the room. When she had finished, her mother had grabbed her by the shoulders and knelt down in front of her.
“I’m sorry. The Templars are coming for you. You must not let them know you’re a female. Do you hear me? Do not let them find out. I do this so that you can be safe. I have heard… stories. Do not tell them your name. You must be a boy from now on. Do you understand me?”
Even as Anders had nodded, she had not understood. It wasn’t to be until she would hear a woman’s screams her first night in the Circle that she had known what her mother had done for her.
“I thank the Maker your father is in Hossburg,” her mother had whispered. “He would get himself killed trying to stop this.”
As the Templars had broken down their door, Anders’ in her mother’s arms, her mother had leaned close and had whispered Anders’ name softly.
It would be the last time anyone would call her by her true name.
**
Anders had learned quickly how to hide, how to evade and deflect. Humor worked best, throwing people off her scent and flustering them until they no longer knew what it was they had originally been asking. It became second nature to her, but had the disturbing side effect of endearing her to others. Men and women were drawn to her infectious humor and witticisms. There were times when she had forgotten herself, when she had so entrenched herself in her lies and her persona that she no longer knew where one ended and the other began.
But she had stayed safe, even if not completely undetected.
Circles the world over were not a place for secrets, not if you were a mage. But Anders had become good at watching, at understanding who were the types to become suspicious and who were oblivious. But it was never the other mages or the Templars that gave her cause for concern. People saw what they wanted to, and Anders had perfected the callous youth that she had become.
Instead, she lived in fear for a week once a month.
When she first started her menses, she had been prepared. Her mother had explained to her long before the Templars came what to expect, and what to do about it. She had been twelve at the time and her body had been on the verge. Hiding the rolled up scraps of cloths had become something of an art form for her. Stealing them from other girls and slipping them back into the laundry. She learned how to get blood out of clothing, and what herbs to take in order to ease her pain.
While other girls got to rest during their time, Anders had to endure and hide.
Finding out her proficiency for healing had started out as a necessity. One of the enchanters had noticed she had been spending time reading some of the more obscure books in the library on healing, and had taken her aside.
Anders had used it to her advantage, stating that she only wanted to help others with their pain. It wouldn’t be until much later that Anders would come to realize that she really did have a talent for it.
But secrets never lasted and Anders would become complacent in her role. It would cost her in the end.
**
“Why must the abomination come with us?” Fenris groused. He, Anders, Sebastian, and Hawke, had met on a sand covered path at the Wounded Coast.
Maker, but Anders hated the elf. It was if someone had rolled all the Templars into a ball and sculpted out an incredibly handsome elf from the mess. He was so damned pretty to look at, until he opened his mouth and some of the most hateful words Anders had ever heard spewed from his lips.
Unfortunately he wasn’t the only one.
Sebastian Vael raised an eyebrow at Fenris and gave him a speaking glance. Great, now the two bigots were partnering up to create Team Asshole. When Anders had first seen them, she had been momentarily struck dumb. Good looking men like that couldn’t possibly exist, right? It had almost made her drop her façade in order to have one or both of them.
That had been until they had started to speak.
Sure their voices sounded like sex and forbidden things, but that only lasted as long as it took for Anders to actually hear what they were saying.
Justice felt that she should forget her salacious thoughts, and she concurred. The few times she had slept with someone and revealed the part of herself that had remained hidden for years, it had not gone well.
And these two, were definitely not worth it.
Pain sliced through her at the thought. It had been months since she had slipped a knife between Karl’s ribs, taking from the world the only person that truly knew her. Taking from her the one person that knew her every secret.
Anders might be surrounded by friends, but she was alone.
Hawke raised the dark slashes of her eyebrows at Fenris. “The abomination happens to be my friend. If you don’t like it you can go home.”
This was one of the many reasons that Anders adored Hawke. Marian not only stood by her friends and was fierce in her loyalty, but she was in credibly beautiful as well. She had dark skin and high, sculpted cheekbones that Anders would have killed for once. In fact, all of Marian’s friends were beautiful or handsome.
Anders did not include herself in that assessment.
Her hair hung at uneven lengths to her chin, and she had scraped most of it back off of her high forehead to tie it on back of her head. The years had seen her grow as tall as most men, a trait that she had gotten from her father. Her breasts on the other hand, whether from binding them for most of her life, or something she would have always had, had never grown very large. Karl had told her they were a wonderful mouthful, and he hadn’t needed more than that.
Her eyebrows were thick for a woman, but perfectly fine for a man’s. She’d never touched them with a pair of tweezers, and a razor had never scraped down her legs. She had no real desire to do any of these things. Not because it would have given her away, but because the little girl that would have delighted in them had long been gone. In her place was a woman who saw them as frivolous.
Maybe Aveline would have understood it, but Anders was never going to have that conversation with her. The guardswoman was everything that Anders wanted to be, a woman who was in charge of her life, and didn’t care what others thought of her. She didn’t feel the need to play up to people’s notions of what was female, or what was male. Aveline had always been, and always would be, herself.
Anders envied her in that.
“Anders is a mage and we are going after mages. We need him to help talk them down,” Hawke told Fenris.
“You didn’t tell me that when you came by my house to get me.” Fenris crossed his arms over his chest.
“Nor me,” Sebastian added.
“If you don’t want to come, then don’t come,” Hawke said again. “I’ll go and get Izzy and Varric instead.”
Anders gave a mental wince. Isabela… She knew, Anders was sure of it. She didn’t miss the way Isabela looked at her with speculative eyes, or how the pirate asked her pointed questions about the Pearl in Denerim.
It had happened during one of Anders’ escape attempts. She had fled the tower to Denerim and ended up hiding out in the Pearl. The whores there had been grateful to have someone to see to their various medical needs, that they had let her stay for free.
One of them had been more than grateful.
Anders didn’t know if the Lay Warden had told anyone else there her secret, but she was sure that Isabela had found out. Anders had to have a talk with her in private, and soon.
Bored of the conversation and the inevitable bickering, Anders tapped her staff on the ground, lodging it in the sand. “Are we going? Those mages won’t save themselves.” She grinned at the glare Fenris sent her way. “I’m sorry, am I not supposed to say that we’re saving mages from Templars? How shall I put it to make it more palatable for you?”
Fenris snarled at Anders as he rose to the bait. “I am not the one that needs things made more palatable. You are the one that is the abomination who thinks that Tevinter is sweetness and light. I’ll go, but only to make sure you don’t get Hawke killed with your stupidity.”
“I’ll go too,” Sebastian declared. “If only to keep an eye on you.”
“Wonderful,” Anders muttered. “Another lovely day at the Wounded Coast
**
“The mage is wounded,” Fenris observed as he watched Anders slide down to the sandy ground. The Templars had taken their leave, and he was still bristling that Hawke had blatantly lied to Thrask in order to help the mages inside the cave flee.
Why was he friends with this woman? She had no real sense of self preservation. She consorted with an abomination and a blood mage. Her sister was an apostate. But as he watched Marian kneel down next to Anders and pull his hand away from his bloody side, Fenris knew.
Marian Hawke cared about people, and Fenris wanted to be a part of that, even just a little bit. He wanted to know what it was like to work towards making this world a better place, what it was like to give second chances, the way that Marian had given Fenris his second chance. He knew that when Danarius finally came for him, Marian would not hesitate to be by his side.
How could he do no less than to return the favor?
Anders’ normally pale face was bloodless, his eyes wracked with pain. Fenris refused to feel pity for the mage. He was the one that had had inserted himself in front of Sebastian in order to block an incoming spell, taking the brunt of it.
Sebastian was a different story, though. The brother went down on his knees in the sand and helped Marian to pry Anders’ hand away from his side. Blood had oozed through his fingers, and they slipped over Sebastian’s wrists as Anders tried fruitlessly to push the other man away.
“I’ll be fine, I just need a moment,” Anders said, his eyes in a panic.
“Let the mage heal himself, Vael.” Fenris tapped an impatient foot on the ground.
“You saved my life,” Sebastian told Anders. “Why did you do that?”
Wait… Did the mage just blush? Fenris carefully moved closer to get a better look. There was no mistake. A hint of red had crept on Anders’ cheeks. Fenris didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Anders or to deride him for being so foolish. Even if the good brother was willing to break his vows, it wouldn’t be for a man.
“Because then Fenris would be lonely being the only one calling me names,” Anders snapped. He slammed his hand back over his wound and closed his eyes. Magic filled the air, and Fenris was sure he was the only that felt it. His lyrium brands were sensitive to the pull of magic, and they lit faintly in response.
Anders exhaled in relief and color returned to his skin. Fenris had never noticed it before, but Anders had the smooth skin of an elf, or a woman, his jaw bare of even the slightest hint of stubble that plagued most humans. Sebastian was smooth skinned as well, but Fenris had seen the brother meticulously shaving in the morning.
Anders dropped his head back against the stone of the cave opening in exhaustion and blew out a breath. “Okay, so this time they were blood mages, but I still say that they were the exception, not the rule.”
Laughing, Marian stood and helped Anders get to his feet. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get to that. You had me worried for a moment.”
**
Anders closed the door to Isabela’s suite behind her. It had been dark by the time they had returned from the Wounded Coast, and she’d hurried to the clinic to change into clean clothes before rushing out again.
That had been a close one. If Anders hadn’t acted quickly enough, Sebastian and Marian would have pulled open her robes to tend to her, and bared her before the perpetually grey sky of the coast. That would not have ended well. Her identity as a man kept her safe on many levels. If something went wrong in Kirkwall, she could easily slip out of the city as a woman, while the Templars looked for the male mage. Not that she was planning on leaving anytime soon, but she had to be careful now that the mage resistance was starting to take shape.
Isabela glanced up at her when she entered. The pirate was lounging back in her bed, and she lowered the book she’d been reading to sit up. “Well, well, well. And what brings you here?”
“As if you don’t know,” Anders replied. She walked forward until she stood next to the bed.
“Well if you’re not here to seduce me, then I am to assume you’ve come to try and find out what I know, and how I know it.” She grinned up at Anders, a spark of mischievousness in her eyes. At Anders’ look of dismay, Isabela laughed. “Oh, don’t look like that, Honey. I won’t tell anyone that you have some extra baggage on your chest.”
Anders slumped heavily on the edge of the bed. “Why? What’s in it for you?”
Placing a hand on Anders’ cheek, Isabela turned her head to the side to face her. “Nothing, except the knowledge that a woman does what she must in order to survive. I know that feeling. Have I ever told you the story of my first husband?”
Anders blinked. She had expected Isabela to lord her knowledge over her, to ask for something in return for her silence. She felt guilty that she had thought so little of the pirate. “No.”
“I was married when I was sixteen to a man my family chose for me. I hated him. He was cruel with his words and his fists. One day I’d had enough. One day he did something that I could no longer look past or forgive.” Isabela titled her chin up, as if daring Anders to judge her. “I made friends with a handsome Antivan Crow. I seduced him. Then one night I asked him to kill my husband for me. I’ve been free ever since, and I allow no one to control me the way he did. You, me, Hawke, even Man Hands and Kitten, we’ve had to forge our own paths. We’ve had to do things that others might consider wrong in order to survive. So no, I don’t want anything from you.”
The sincerity in Isabela’s eyes, her softly spoken words as she vowed to never reveal Anders’ secret was what broke her. A tear slipped down her cheek, and then another, until she was sobbing in Isabela’s arms, telling her everything. Words escaped her lips that she had never spoken of before. For the first time she talked of Karl and what she had lost when he’d died.
In that room, a bond was forged between the two women, born of a common past.