[Open] Save tonight, fight the break of dawn

[justice_is_blond]

WHO: Anders and OPEN
WHAT: The last open log with J!Anders before Justice is gone
WHEN: Mid-Justinian, from around the 8th to the 15th
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Anders, as usual. Prose or brackets work, I've just started everything in prose because that's less html I can screw up.

Healing Tents

Anders (and kitten) are constant sights in the healing tents in Skyhold from morning until evening. One of them works. One of them prefers to play, and is currently most fascinated by a slowly-unraveling string from a scrap of cloth that the larger of the two made sure was dangling down to draw attention.

"Watch the cat," is the warning someone coming in gets first, before being nodded toward the nearest table right away whether they've got a visible injury or not. That they're here for medical reasons is the safest assumption.

Library

He can be found here an early evening, paging through older books with a few pieces of parchment next to him where he's taking notes. Or hoping to. The top page is mostly blank, though, and Anders is frowning as he closes one book and pulls another off one of the few stacks he's made around himself.

People walking past don't even get glances, he's busy and he doesn't care if there are glares shot in his direction right now. People who stop get a glance up with a raised eyebrow and neutral-as-he-can-make-it expression.

Training Circle

It's early. Ridiculously early, early enough to be considered late the next day and that's why he's here now, working with his staff against a dummy. An opponent would be better, but few are here at this hour, and no one who was there when he arrived is someone he'd trust to work instead of actually attack. That being said, for once he's not seemingly radiating irritation and aggravation and he's even looking over as other people start to show up. He could use a hand and he knows it.

Hot Springs

He enters a little hastily, freezing after sweating in the cold and needing to get ready to head into the healing tents. There's not a lot of time to linger. ...but that thought fades away once he's fully in the water. It's so warm that he's sinking in to his chin almost right away, and really only leaving his face above water so he can keep an eye on Purrelden as the kitten chases a beetle.

Courtyard

Not since his Detlef days has he actually sat out here for a time. Dinner tonight is a simple affair, a few strips of meat washed down with a weak excuse for ale along with some a handful of fruit and nuts, but it seems better out here in the open air. People passing by get a nod whether they look at him with a smile or a scowl; he's actually not in a mood to fight right now. In a week's time he might be dead, he might be entirely without hope of having his head to himself again, or he might be alone in his head. It's an odd feeling, and the chill breeze and stars seem perfectly suited for it. There's room on the bench to join him, a cat on his shoulder, and he's... at peace.

[For Cole]

Since River and Simon's disappearance, Anders has been looking out for glances of Cole more often, just... checking on the boy. He's worried about River, and while she and Cole aren't exactly the same, thinking of one brings the other to mind often. Popping up to the third floor of the tavern one evening bears fruit and Anders smiles as he heads over to join Cole.

"Hello. I... I realize I've not actually thought of what to say when I do run into you. You're doing well?"

[For Zevran]

This speech, however, he's practiced repeatedly, and as Anders knocks on Zevran's door with a package in hand, there's a whole lot of amusement in his voice.

"Zevran? I know you said not to bring back a cow, but..."

[For Nate]

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, and potentially useless, and there's not a chance that Nate will hate the wriggling animal in Anders' arms because Nate is Fereldan. In fact, he'll probably love it. Anders is counting on that. He hadn't exactly been counting on Purrelden being confused, though, so the cat on his head digging small claws in as she struggles to stay perched and far away from the tiny confusing barking thing is not something he'd been prepared for. Anders ducks into their tent awkwardly, hoping Nate's in there and talking without even looking.

"A little help, please?"


Wildcard me!

[Want something with Anders? Come on in! Start a header, or poke me on Plurk at Nadat for one. He's easily found around the healing tents in Skyhold and around Camp Shady Fucker/the Warden camp.]

Comments

[elegiaque]

He is not very subtle, but what can you expect from someone who solves their problems with explosives? Whatever it is he specifically fears is sufficiently ambiguous, but that for some reason he seems to think that she is dangerous and must be talked to slowly is both obvious and sort of laughable. It is his cat, though, so she obeys the letter if not the spirit of his instruction, sitting down rather than walking any closer to the water so Purrelden can have the run of her lap - claws snag on the way down and she unhooks them absently, sucks the blood off the soft part of her palm and tickles her under the chin.

She could be offended, she thinks, that he thinks of the two of them she's the untrustworthy one, or that she might hurt a kitten for no apparent reason, but -

What does she care what some rude man thinks of her? And besides, it will only validate him. The terrible Orlesian noblewoman oppressing the poor put upon terrorist who killed all those people by petting his cat. The tales they will tell of her.

"Not much for water? I suppose I wouldn't be, either, had I so much hair to dry after," amiably, preferring to talk to kitten rather than man. Bellamy can't complain that she talked to a kitten politely.

[justice_is_blond]

Purrelden is a traitor, enjoying the scratching underneath her chin. He's... fairly certain he has her trained well enough that she'll come when called, but he isn't certain he wants to try it and give this asshole something to laugh at. Then again. There are plenty who would do anything they could to hurt him, and he'll not leave that option open. Anders climbs out of the springs, dries his arms without giving a care about how his leggings cling, and looks over at Gwen.

"You'll let go of her. There are some risks I'm not willing to take, and her safety is one of them." He's lost too much. He's not losing his cat too. If you don't, I will be taking her from you physically. It's your call."

Her opinion of him is already made, and it's worthless. He has nothing to lose by confronting her.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle isn't angry, or aggressive; when she looks up at him, it's with some bemusement.

"I have let go of her," she points out, lifting her hands illustratively - he had asked her to set the cat down, and she'd ... set the both of them down, but she hadn't held onto Purrelden when she sat, just let her roam her lap if she liked and continued to stroke her.

She doesn't stop Purrelden from moving, or Anders from taking her.

"First," she says, now more puzzled than she had been wary to recognise him, "you interrupt a perfectly nice conversation I am having with someone else to call me stupid and frivolous. Now because you were rude to me, you think I'm going to hurt your cat...?"

She squints at him.

"Do you think I'm someone you know?"

--it isn't mockery. He seems so certain. Maybe there's more confusion of identity than just her initial ignorance of his.

[justice_is_blond]

He's a little surprised there isn't mockery. That doesn't stop him from clicking his tongue and seeing his cat come over, to a great deal of relief.

"First, I attempted to join the conversation as it was started to help Adelaide and myself on a joint project, and you began the rudeness. I responded in turn, because I'll not be seen as a weak target on the crystal. I've already been attacked a couple of times. I won't invite more." It makes sense to him, for the most part. Except for the part where he's suddenly hoping he's right and remembering correctly, that she'd been rude first. He hasn't always... waited for someone else to be rude first. Anders continues as if he has no doubts at all, though.

"Second, not precisely, but close enough. I think you're like many here who would hurt her if given the chance because it would hurt me, and I've seen nothing to tell me the opposite. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd simply rather be wrong and rude than polite and losing again." This he's certain on. He has to protect the small gaps in his armor. Purrelden, Nate, Kalli, maybe a few others. He can't leave any of them vulnerable, open to being hurt, because of him.

[elegiaque]

"I didn't begin the rudeness," she says, affronted, although that is a debatable assessment. "I've been told I'm not ought to speak to you, and you interrupted me." Joined the conversation, whatever; Gwenaëlle does not recall extending an invitation, and sticks firmly with her own assessment. "You called me stupid and frivolous for being reluctant to speak with you. I didn't say anything rude."

She might have had a tone, but she'll be damned if she'll concede as much out loud. That's how she talks, she can't help it, sod him.

"In any case, I haven't any slight reason to want to hurt you, and even if I were the awful sort of person who'd hurt a cat for the misfortune of having an unpleasant owner, I'm certainly not one who's going to go out of my way to provoke someone who's already quite happy to be unpleasant to me unprompted. As," with a neat air of finality, "you are now. Oh, I suppose for the terrible crime of thinking your cat is pretty. I'm terribly sorry I failed to realise the world revolves around you on a point."

[justice_is_blond]

"And you always listen to what you're told as far as to whom you speak?" His voice is fully doubtful there. "You didn't have to respond at all, but you chose to be... what was that? Unpleasant to me unprompted. The world does not revolve around me, but I've lost enough to be wary of anyone who is suddenly rude coming near my cat. And I refuse to apologize for it."

He's heard the whispers, the people who say that him having a cat is something he doesn't deserve, that he needs to understand how people have suffered as if he doesn't have quite a grasp on loss and pain already.

"I will protect her." Even when she's greatly diminishing the image of strength he's trying to present by licking at waterdroplets dangling from locks of hair. "And it's not like not having reason to want to hurt me has stopped people before, so sorry. That doesn't help."

A beat. He is being rude, though. It would cost him little to offer an attempt at peace if she truly doesn't want to hurt him. She could throw it back in his face and... what does he lose?

"If you actually want to, we could try to restart our acquaintance. But that would require you speaking with me, so perhaps that's not an option."

[elegiaque]

He doesn't seem like the sort who apologises for much of anything. Discretion being the better part of not making him keep going on and on about how hard his life is to her, she keeps that unsympathetic thought to herself and shrugs instead, lithe, unknotting her robe so she can slide into the water now that there's no cat to disturb by doing so.

(She's going to have it to herself and she got to pet a cat. This entire exchange is a win for her already, as far as she's concerned.)

"Well, I don't always listen to what people want me to do, that's true," and she says it too candidly for it to be any sort of admission; Anders is a perfect example of how little acquaintance is needed to notice exactly how willful she can be. "But it costs me nothing at all to choose not to hurt a friend, and you'll have to forgive me for weighing that against getting better acquainted with someone who's already made his mind up about me and erring on the side of considering my friend's feelings first."

She lifts her hair carefully to keep it out of the water, leans back against the rock -

"You don't make it very appealing. I don't know, I only think..." She wrinkles her nose, tries to put it into words. "I don't mean to be unpleasant in saying this, before you get your smalls twisted, I mean to say ... if I were a different sort of petty than I am," self-skewering and self-aware, lightly puncturing the tension, "then all of this carry on might have made me spiteful to you when I'd just been indifferent before. You don't seem to have such a shortage of people who actually dislike you that you've got to shake more down out of the trees. You could have just left because you don't like me instead of implying that I'm a kitten-murdering lunatic first. Some people might take that sort of insult more amiss. And then it's nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone hates you, so you're nasty just in case they hate you, and then they hate you more."

Her eyes close.

"I don't care, I like your cat. It's only my thought."

[justice_is_blond]

At least she admits she's petty. That's one point for him.

"Just left, when you had my cat in your arms? Just left, as if I'll simply surrender when someone walks in? And why would I care if more people hate me? You've already decided to listen to someone who is going to be hurt if you speak with me; I've nothing to lose in that case."

She's got it backward in his opinion. They already hate him. There's no need for prophecy. People have all sorts of reasons for their hatred, and most are ridiculous reaches by those who wouldn't have ever cared if it had just been mages slaughtered that night. They have no right to outrage. Their people hadn't been dying or worse by the day.

He sits down and sticks his legs back in the water, careful not to get too close to it. He hadn't been lying about Purrelden not having any desire to go in.

"Besides, you fail to consider that maybe I prefer spite to indifference." Someone who is indifferent can close their eyes and easily let everything go wrong again. Someone who views him as a thorn in their side will be very aware. They might even help other mages just to 'prove' him wrong about non-mage treatment of mages.

[elegiaque]

"You could have said, excuse me, I am leaving, I will take my cat," she says, without bothering to open her eyes. "I would have said, it was nice to meet your cat, and we would all have moved on with our lives."

That sounds lovely, and overall preferable to how he still appears to be here, complaining about his terrible life.

"But I take your point. I was crediting you with not being that stupid or contrary."

The thing of it is that her tone doesn't change from the frank, easy way she'd critiqued him a moment ago - there is no hostility in the assessment, no apparent shift in her stated indifference to him as a person, merely her honest opinion just rather more freely expressed than is either socially acceptable or particularly fashionable in Orlais. Gwenaëlle is no stranger to being disliked, she only prefers to be disliked accurately.

[justice_is_blond]

"And I wasn't done here. But I was overestimating your ability to notice the obvious. Like the fact that you're still talking with me." Maybe it will make her stop talking. Maybe it will make her snap. At this point, he's simply pushing buttons to see what they do.

"Is your poor friend suffering yet? Do you think they feel threatened? Maybe they're suddenly feeling a calf ache and have tumbled to the floor, all for the act of conversation. How they suffer." There are people he hates. He's not petty (or stupid) enough to tell people not to talk with them, which means he's rather interested in knowing who is.

[elegiaque]

He makes an excellent point, and then immediately gives her cause to stop - Gwenaëlle is not overly concerned with Anders so long as he doesn't seem a direct threat to either her or anyone she cares for, and in this very moment, he isn't. It had been reason enough to carry on the conversation, as puzzlingly as it had begun, but -

They aren't engaged in a conversation any more, he's only being unkind for the sake of being unkind, or because he thinks she can be provoked into giving him something. She supposes Bellamy was right, then, to think so poorly of someone who thinks to make a joke of someone hurt by what he did, or worse to want to find them, to mock them himself and not merely by an intermediary. If it were her hurt, probably, she'd not have such distance; she'd not be able to stop. She'd keep pushing back until this got so much further out of hand, and she'd only regret it when it was too late, when she'd humiliated herself and made a much bigger mess than it had to be, but it isn't. It's someone else's, and Bellamy is ...

Well, he's ridiculous. He's sullen and he has a smart mouth and he becomes a prissy baby when someone just innocently and graciously helps him with his admittedly minor injuries. Like all men, he thinks he's funnier than he really is, and he blows irritatingly hot and cold at the slightest provocation for reasons he only sometimes shares.

And this stupid boy is her friend, not some prick's joke. Gwenaëlle doesn't do anything dramatic; she doesn't leave, because she's comfortable where she is and she doesn't want to. She doesn't answer, either, only seems to come to a decision and settle in the water, tilting her head back, closing her eyes.

[justice_is_blond]

Silence at last.

Anders sets his cat on her towel and slips back into the water and relaxes. He doesn't want to deal with a spoiled noble child who lets people tell her who to talk with. That alone shows an immaturity that he doesn't have the time for, especially if he's only got a few days left. Maybe the rest of this will be spent in silence. He won't be complaining.