faderift | [Closed] The best part of leaving

He's not helping. He doesn't know what to say here that would, and Anders longs to help. Nate's hurting. But what truly catches his tongue and holds him up is the whole castle, silent and empty. It's a striking mental image, and one he doesn't really want to dwell on. Easier to apply what Nate's saying to when he met the archer in those cells so long ago. Simpler. This is about Nate, Nate's needs, not his, and Anders swallows hard, trying and failing to ignore his own thoughts.

"I don't know what to say. I want to ease some of this pain but I don't know how."

Nathaniel touches Anders' chin with his thumb, lifting his face to look at him.

"People aren't locks, love," he murmurs. "You can't fuss around looking for the thing that makes us open, or solves everything. There is no secret part in us that makes us stop hurting when you find it."

He tucks stray hair behind one of Anders' ears.

"I know that's...hard. For someone of your background. You want there to be a way to fix everything, and you believe nobody has found it yet because nobody has looked hard enough, or loved enough, or given enough."

"I could poke things in you and try," he mutters. It's an attempt at making the situation better with a joke, but he knows it's not going to help even as he says it.

"There's so much that can be fixed if people would just make an effort. Not everything, but..." Anders doesn't quite meet Nate's eyes, curling up against him almost defensively. Is it so wrong to try? To want Nate to be happy? To want freedom and a chance at joy to be available to those who don't have it?

"Some people could do with giving more and trying harder. The world won't be perfect, but it could be better."

"You're right." Nathaniel knows where this is going. He knows where Anders' mind has already gone. Very well. He loves this man; he will follow him even there. "But a half a world of apathy is far too much for you to make up for. Even a quarter, or an eighth. Especially when all you have to do to make me feel better is listen, and be my Anders."

Now he does meet Nate's gaze.

"I want you to feel better. I love you. And I want so much more, too. And I don't... I don't know what to do to help more, or to fix more, or even fix at all." He exhales. "Maybe that's my confession. I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know all of who I am anymore, I don't know where I'm going but I'm afraid to stop and I don't know why."

"Perhaps because if you stop, you have to look back," Nathaniel says slowly, though there is no gentle way to say this, "and reconsider what you've done?"

He has never pretended, though he loves Anders, to think that what he did in Kirkwall was right. This moment must be the real reason he initially resisted going into this relationship--knowing he must one day look at the man he loves and call him a murderer.

He stills against Nate, barely breathing before he shakes his head and pulls back a little.

"I... There weren't... I was out of options, and I didn't like the path I, we took but I didn't see another. We'd tried my path for years, years and years, and my people died the whole time. Every week we continued the way I thought we should, they died. Or, or worse." His voice is pleading, asking Nate for... he doesn't know what. "There wasn't any time left. She was escalating and there was no where else for her to go. What else could I have done?"

Nathaniel holds his gaze. Keeps touching him, to let him know he's here.

"Prayed. Sat on your hands. Had faith in whatever it is you can hold on to that someone would have done something. That perhaps Elthina would have kept stonewalling Meredith, or if not her, then someone closer to her. I love you. But it is your arrogance to believe that nothing can be done simply because you can't be the one to do it."

"I don't have anything to pray to!" Anders looks away abruptly, ashamed at the heat in his voice. "I had no faith; no one had stopped any of the slaughter except for, for..."

Hawke. Hawke had saved Ella, both from Alrik but also from Justice. And some of the Starkhaven mages, even though some of that number had gone wrong. And others, here and there, and Anders doesn't know why that hadn't occurred to him until now. Except maybe he does, and it could be the easy reason - the previous person who had saved so many people and inspired him had betrayed him in the end - or the harder one - that he hadn't wanted to think about it.

"I trusted in Jonas and lost everything I'd gained. If I stood there and trusted Hawke and she failed like he did, they would lose absolutely everything. And I..."

His voice has lost its intensity and passion as he continues, looking down at nothing at all.

"I physically couldn't have stood back. I'm... I was an abomination. He wouldn't have let me. Better, I thought... I mean, my methods weren't doing anything, Elthina wasn't, Orsino wasn't, Meredith hadn't listened to Hawke before, and..."

And he'd been a coward who hadn't even tried denying Justice his plan, deluding himself into thinking it was simply fair since they shared his body. He'd never said no. Never argued. Simply went along with it, accepted it as inevitable.

Nathaniel takes Anders' hand. Holds him close. Doesn't stop showing love.

"You're no abomination now. You can suffer no consequence from him. But listen to what you are saying, love."

There's a long hesitation, because this is going to hurt. Anders might hate him for this. He doesn't want Anders to hurt. He wants Anders to be free of the poison in him, to see himself truly and find his own way from there. That has always been the mission--not for Nathaniel to rescue Anders, but for Anders to rescue himself. Nathaniel's heart pounds, but his voice is steady.

"I think you've heard people give those excuses before, and still called them complicit. Haven't you?"

The Templars.

"What?" His expression is confused as he looks back at Nate. "Who? Who else couldn't stand idly by and let slaughter happen, who has been accused of anything? Who tried peaceful methods to save lives and watched it fail? Who had no reason for faith and poured everything into one last attempt? Complicit in what?"

He shakes his head, and there's a wary edge in his voice now. "The only people I've called complicit in things are Templars and Chantry brothers and sisters, and they hold people down. They relish in their power over people. They have faith, they encourage the slaughters. I don't see when my... excuses have lined up with theirs."

Nate's holding his hand, holding on to him, and suggesting what? He isn't sure, and that scares him.

"They were following orders. They had no other choice. Something had to be done, and they would do what must be done when no one else would. Slaughter happened that night. It was only a matter of which people died, and at whose hand."

Loghain, Clarel, Meredith, and everyone who worked under them. They made sacrifices. They killed those sacrifices with their own hands.

"And I know, I am certain that Justice would have made you do it anyway. I believe that about him. He didn't care about your consent. But now you are free of him. Now, you can see clearly. He doesn't control you anymore. What you do now, what you believe now is your responsibility, not his."

Edited 2016-08-16 14:51 (UTC)

He pulls his hand away from Nate's, staring, hurt in his eyes and voice.

"You see me as them. As no different from them. They had all the power. They could had stopped things and they didn't. They didn't want to, because they enjoyed it. The cruelty, the exploitation... I'm no Templar, I'm not like them at all! They had choices and they decided to hide behind orders."

Nate loves him, says he loves him and... "How could you love someone like--" Except Nate loves Rendon. Nate loves Rendon Howe, a man who took pleasure in killing and hurting. That's how he can love Anders, because once you go that far, you can love anyone. The pain transforms into a heavy numbness.

"You called me good, once." His voice is small. He'd wanted to believe it when Herc and Nate said it, even though he'd accepted Zevran saying neither of them were good men.

"You lived as a pauper for years so you could run a free clinic in the worst place I've ever heard of." Nathaniel's vision blurs. Tears. But they don't matter. Anders matters. He reaches for his hand again and takes it firmly, not letting him go this time. "All you want is to do good. You wanted so badly to do good that you gave yourself to a spirit that led you astray. I've seen bad people, Anders. My parents, my whole family but my sister, I know what bad people are like, and you are not like them. You don't need me to tell you that. You know it. You know what you've sacrificed and why.

"But you also don't need me to tell you that destroying a building with dozens of innocent people inside was the wrong thing to do. You know it already. That's why you won't believe you are good. You know what you did. And I say you are still good, and I love you and your giving heart. But it was the wrong thing to do."

He wants to get away, to go curl up somewhere and hide from what Nate's saying, but the hold on his hand is sure of itself. Nate won't let him run. His chest feels like it's been grabbed and squeezed, and Anders can't meet Nate's eyes or even look at the man.

He'd wanted any other way. He'd tried for seven years, working at it constantly, writing, talking, helping, begging, and he's used that as an excuse, as a thin veneer over what he'd done.

But it doesn't excuse it.

He's never stopped and thought about it because he hadn't wanted to. Deep down, he'd known what he would find if he looked at his actions too closely and it was far easier to expect to be executed than face what he'd done that made it fair in the first place.

Anders curls in on himself as much as he can with Nate there, holding him. "If I... If I don't believe I had to do it, how do I..." How does he go on? How does he get out of bed in the morning? How can he accept Nate's love when this is what the archer has?

"You keep on. You keep living, as you have, and you will find yourself again. Look at me. Please, my love. Look at me."

If Anders looks at him, he will see tears shining in Nathaniel's eyes. But it is the same face he loves, the same affection written on it.

"Nothing has changed. Nothing I feel about you, nothing I know about you is any different from what I have told you. You are kind. You are selfless to a fault. You see brightness and good in the world and you bring it into my life every day. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to see all the good you continue to accomplish, because you know you must have saved more lives than you took. You heal and you respect each life, even the smallest. And the world has awakened to what happened to the mages. There is still fighting, and your voice can still be heard. If you call for peace and reason, who could be heard louder?"

Edited 2016-08-16 22:34 (UTC)

Breathing is hard. Looking up is even harder, because Anders is terrified of what he's going to see even with Nate calling him his love. But slowly he does, and he watches Nate's face as his lover keeps talking. Nate means it. Even with what Anders has done, he still has faith.

Anders closes his eyes and buries his face against Nate's chest as one tear slips out, followed by so many more. He clings to Nate, who is only wrong on one thing. Something has changed, even though it's not in regard to how Nate sees him. It's how he sees himself. He'd been so defiant and so proud... of murder. Of a slaughter. They hadn't had a chance to fight back, death hitting them the way he'd been afraid it would hit his people. He'd acted in fear while judging people who acted in fear.

Eventually the tears stop and he lies there against Nate, quiet, floating a little in his own head. Nate knows. Nate sees it. And Nate shas faith in him. He didn't in Rendon. People here knew what he is, and some of them accept him. Some of them had even been there. That has to mean there's still something he can do. It has to mean that there's still some good he can do, even if he's not sure he can look anyone in the eye anymore. But oh, it's hard to have faith in anything right now.

"There are some who listen to me," he finally says. He's tired, and he can definitely feel the temptation to just stay here and stop. Devastation fills his trail. Who is to say this won't be any different? But he's never really been able to run when people needed help. He's always come back, and to not try now would be to betray the man he wants so desperately to never hurt.

Waiting through the torrent of tears is agony. He holds Anders, cradles him waiting to hear if he's gone too far, if he's simply being cruel. But there is no way to be good to Anders in this without hurt. Allowing him to delude himself and wander life in confusion is crueler than the pain of setting the bone and letting it heal.

Then the silence comes, and for a moment, Nathaniel pretends it's fifteen minutes ago. He pretends, in the emptiness, that there was no pain inflicted, no wounds ripped open. But Anders fifteen minutes ago wasn't as fully Anders as he can be now that there are no more lies. And Nathaniel may be the only person he would listen to, on this. Perhaps it was the Maker's work, bringing them together, giving them a love to share, so that there would be someone Anders would listen to when he began to question. Nathaniel won't think too hard on it. They have love, and Anders will be whole again.

"I will always listen to you." He strokes that beautiful hair. "I will always be here. I will always love you and never judge you. I promise."

He wishes he had a joke, anything to make all of this a little less heavy and massive. Anything to hide behind at all, and feel less like he's completely laid open.

But no joke comes.

Anders takes a shaky breath. There isn't any deflection that can be made here, and it's... all right. Or it will be. Nate's not using his vulnerability against him and isn't going to.

"I need you here." He's weak, and he's broken, and he has so much blood on his hands that he'd closed his eyes to, and he absolutely needs Nate if he's going to continue moving and not give up.

"Will you... Would you walk me to the tents tomorrow?" The long walk up, knowing what people are thinking as the watch him while no longer secure in the knowledge of being right and them being wrong, is not going to be easy. At all. And likely not something he can quite deal with on his own. "I don't want to be so weak. I'm sorry. But I don't know that I can make it."

He wants to call Nate love, wants to return the archer's assurances, but it feels cheap. There's no question that he does love Nate, only one of how unfair it is to saddle Nate with his love. But the promise is there, unflinching, and Anders lets out a shaky breath.

"My love."

You're not weak. You're the strongest person I know. You escaped the Circle of Magi seven times and the last one was for good. You beat Templar after Templar who tried to abuse and kill you. You stood against the Broodmother. You helped beat the tyrant of Kirkwall and end the qunari invasion. You hosted a violent spirit in your body for years, kept it in check, and then defeated it when it grew corrupt. Just one of those things would make you a hero to me, and you have been through them all.

Nathaniel thinks all this, and also thinks that he has probably overloaded Anders with words, as if by saying the right ones he can make this pain go away. They just had that conversation, though, reversed. Nathaniel has just said that there aren't going to be words that do it. He presses a kiss to Anders' brow and silently promises that he will tell him all this tomorrow, when he is less overwhelmed and more grounded.

"Of course I'll come with you. But I don't think you're weak. I think we're both stronger together."

He's very overwhelmed. He has no idea how tomorrow is going to go, forget all of the rest of time to come. It's too much to think about, all of it.

Instead he works to narrow his focus down to right here and right now, and the kiss on his forehead and Nate's words. He makes Nate stronger instead of simply taking all the time, and that's a thought he needs to hold onto. He helps Nate. That's one person he's helped more than hurt. Kalli makes two. Bethany, three. Isabela, four. He needs these names, needs to remember that they don't excuse him but they do mean he's not just hurting others. Maybe he'll be able to make the list longer in time.

Slowly his breathing gets easier. Four people. He'll work on it.

He shifts so he can kiss Nate's lips briefly, tiredly. Words are hard right now, but he can manage a kiss and Nate deserves that at the very least.

Nathaniel returns the kiss, but doesn't press. Doesn't deepen or lengthen, just offers what is to be taken. He feels Anders' breath ease, and thanks the Maker. His hand rubs soothingly up and down his back.

"I love you so much," he sighs, feeling exhausted himself, like he has been helping Anders through some spell of illness. It will get better from here, though, now that there is truth.

[Closed] The best part of leaving

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