faderift | [Open] You'll think "how did I get here, sitting next to you?"

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[Open] You'll think "how did I get here, sitting next to you?"

WHO: Anders and anyone who wants to come pester him or be pestered by him
WHAT: Anders Does Skyhold
WHEN: Through Harvestmere
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: He's Anders.

1. Healing Tents

His robes are dark blue today with silver trim - Warden colors - swooshing around a little as he works around the tent. He likes these robes, which is one of the reasons for his faint smile. The main reason is far more simple; this is where he feels like he's accomplishing something good. Which is why, as long as you're not dripping blood all over the place when you come in, the small smile stays in place as he asks what brings you in today.

In the slight event someone is dripping blood all over the place, they'll be greeted with bandages and help down into a chair.

--Alternately--

He's got much of their dried herbs set out in front of him so he can take a measure of what they have and what's still good. Even in the cold mold can still set in. Supplies look mostly good, though, and he takes notes as he starts pulling some of the fresher herbs out to begin a drying process on them.

2. Training the Hero of Purrelden/Garden

Ser Pounce-a-lot had been a very special cat. He'd been easily trained, for one thing, and Anders hadn't needed to worry about hauling him down to the Deep Roads to deal with Darkspawn. Purrelden? Isn't as brave. In fact, she has a habit of being timid when first encountering new insects. Which means the best thing to do is to have her in the area where the most bugs are found - the gardens.

"You're fine. It's smaller than your paw, you can take it on." She doesn't look sure, but he has dried meat and by now she at least seems to know that batting at a bug will get her a treat. "You can do it. You're a fierce warrior. You can take on anything."

He probably looks like he's talking to a bush if someone's coming up from behind or the left, but his attention is on her. And really, talking to plants is about the least harmful thing that could be done to his reputation.

3. Teaching

Since the conference, Anders has let it be known that he's open to working with anyone who wants to learn more about the practical spells he has under his belt, as well as learning in return, or even working on trying to make new ones together. There's a few stumps left set up where the conference was, and he can be found here some evenings to teach or learn or work. Until someone drops by he's reading or playing with his cat or both. Most of the time both.

4. Mess hall

He's trying to be better about eating all of his meals. It's a work in progress. Which is why he's eating his lunch 'late,' sometime in the early afternoon, and eating is a relative term. There's food on the plate in front of him, yes, but Purrelden's batted some peas off of it and Anders is more focused on notes than actually shoveling food in his mouth at the moment.

5. Wildcard

[ooc: Want something you don't see here? Toss it up! He gets everywhere so there's no worries about coming up with a reason for Anders to be somewhere. If you have a question or want to run an idea past me first, hit me up on Plurk at Nadat or Discord at Nadat#4647!]

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He shifts a little to the side as someone approaches, giving them room, before he glances up. Oh. Her. For a few moments his attention goes back to his task, until he's noting what she's gathering and adding that to how she looks. Anders debates saying nothing, but in the end he can't. He's a healer, just as much as he's sometimes a jerk.

"...You know there's better mixes to use, likely, for someone as small as you are, right?"

The elven woman who'd attended her when she was last here is gone; no other maid shadows her steps in replacement. It means there's no go between to speak with her, and she'd been accustomed to that enough in the tents that it takes her a moment to remember she has to answer for herself. That Guenievre isn't here any more.

That that's why she is.

"This is what I know how to make," she says, evenly, brittleness betrayed in the unsteadiness of her hands and how carefully she doesn't look up, how stiffly she holds her shoulders.

This is what she knows how to make. The translation seems to be that this is all she knows how to make, and he's quiet for a few more moments, tying the stems of a few herbs so he can hang them.

After that time, he looks back over at her.

"Would you like to learn some other things? The one you're making is like using a firestorm to light a torch, and might have a lasting impact on you. Lasting negative impact. Not that it's bad to use in the short term, but I think it's not likely that you need that. And I've seen you making other mixes in the tents before, so you're the sort that can learn."

It's a compliment. Plenty can't, plenty more simply won't. But she's been to the tents and helped out before, even if for short stretches as far as he can recall, so she may be in a better category. With this.

It still makes her bristle, at first, at the implication it needs to be said; that she could have possibly been anything other than exceptionally clever. And she's so sick of everything, it's so tempting to just take offense and fight with him. Not because she's angry with him, particularly, not because she finds being called clever such a terrible thing, not for any reason but that it's so much easier to be angry than anything else she feels, right now.

Maybe it would make her feel better.

She knows it wouldn't. She says, "The servants mixed most of them at home. I only know a little." Which doesn't sound like much, except in the way that she does set down what she's been doing and shift so he can show her something else, if he means to.

After a moment, unprompted, she volunteers, "I can reset a dislocation, though. If someone holds them still. And I've sewn wounds." None of this is anything she's done here.

Her words are more defensive than anything, as if she thinks he's judging her lack of healing knowledge. They make him stop and look at her again. It strikes him as young, as... vulnerable, almost, and Anders eases his guard a little. She's not attacking. She's prepared to be attacked and he feels a twinge of guilt. It's gone quickly enough. She'd held her own in their interactions previously; he hadn't been simply picking on someone in his opinion.

But it does mean his voice, while not warm, is more friendly than merely civil when he speaks again.

"That's more than many." Anders pulls out a few specific herbs before pausing, frowning down at them. "Is it difficulty getting to sleep, or staying asleep? Bad dreams, pain...? I don't ask to pry, simply to figure out what would be best."

For all her sharp edges and bravado - Gwenaëlle is young, still. Sheltered in ways she doesn't always notice for all the others in which she's much more worldly; a little thing shouting at the world, trying to make sense of it. It doesn't always work.

This doesn't feel like it's going to work, not when he asks his perfectly reasonable question and the words to answer it stick in her throat. I don't ask to pry and she believes him, it isn't his ability or inclination as a healer that she's doubted - but it's exposing and uncomfortable and she'd almost, almost just rather leave empty-handed and hope this all passes on its own.

That hasn't been working, though.

"I don't get tired," she says, finally. "And when I sleep, I - dream."

Bad dreams.

He waits, wondering at what has her hesitating, mind lingering on the vulnerability earlier. While he knows he's not the only one who works hard to show no weaknesses, no openings by which someone can get to him, it's sometimes difficult to recognize it in others when he sees it. This might be that, however.

"So you want something to ease you into a dreamless sleep." His voice is quiet and lacking judgement. "Here."

He puts a couple of his current choices back, leaving out a few of them and adding to the mix, naming each herb in turn. Most of them are for effect, two are for taste.

"Steep a spoonful of the blend in a cup of hot water for five minutes. The effects should be gradual, slowly growing drowsiness for a half-hour until you can't keep your eyes open. If this doesn't suffice, if you get woken up or bothered by dreams, come back and we can alter it. Sometimes the precise balance is a little tricky."

She doesn't merely pay close attention; the reading glasses that hang from her hip are not purely decoration, and she slips them on her nose and writes down each herb he names into the blank pages of the book she usually carries to record any spontaneous observations.

(The herbs for taste rather than effect she notes separately.)

Loose hair slips around her face and she doesn't tuck it back.

"Thank you." That it's slightly curt doesn't mean it isn't sincere.

"You're welcome." It's the first time he's heard her say those words, so the tone doesn't take away from them. Beyond that, friendly isn't exactly what he associates with her so he'd not been expecting it.

"Is there... Did it start around the time of an injury?" Too much prying will backfire. He knows it. But he can see if there might be something physical he can take a look at, help with.

"No, it - "

Her discomfort is almost a physical thing, even as she assures him that this isn't.

"It didn't start, it's only always," with a one-shouldered shrug. "Sometimes it worsens, that's all." As if she doesn't know what triggered it this time; as if 'I'm not injured' means nothing happened. The words taste bitter in her mouth, brittle and unconvincing, but -

She isn't injured, and she's always struggled this way; those things are all true. Sometimes it is worse than others, that's true, too.

(She misses her mother as if she's lost a limb, and it seems so stupid that she should. That her heart should presume the loss is hers. She barely knew her; she was never allowed.)

Always.

Granted, he can't really be shocked; he's had dreams that touch the Fade since he was 12, and dreams of the Blight since his Joining. But he's used to it happening for people in those groups, not those outside.

"I'm sorry," he says after a moment. If it's simply something that happens, there's nothing he can fix. He can only offer herbal help and understanding of what it is to have nights filled with awful dreams.

"We'll adapt this and find the blend that works best for you. I'm assuming you know breathing exercises and the like for when something isn't enough?" A lack of sleep would also make for a short temper, among other things. It could explain a lot. Not that he'll allow for it to explain everything, but it does mean a little more lenience.

The blank look she gives him is a different beast to those she's previously turned his direction - genuine incomprehension, not false vapidity to put him off.

"No," after a pause that's long enough to be awkward. The different ways that could become a sentence long enough to finish are all unpleasant; it's always been easier and more expedient to hide it than to ask for help, the people who've known her well enough to know that it's not laziness that has her rising in the afternoon have uniformly not been healers or equipped to help her, the mix she does know she learned because it'd knock out a fucking horse and it's sometimes better to slip something into Emeric's drink than deal with him drunkenly fighting the process of treating his wounds.

She does not want to talk about her father at all.

Eventually, she settles on saying, "I know how to steady my breathing. I've never used it to sleep. To slow my heart."

If he could just not ask why she'd need to do that, that'd be great.

Once, he would have wondered what a noble girl could have been through that would cause her that much difficulty with sleep and a pounding heart. He's grown since. He's learned since. Which means he simply looks at her for a moment before nodding. There's no reason to ask; he's not about to tell anyone what it is he sees when he's woken by nightmares.

"Would you like me to run you through it, breathe with you? There's a chance this will work perfectly the first night and that it's not necessary. But on the off chance..." He doesn't know why what works for one person doesn't always work for another when it comes to herbs. Magic doesn't tend to differentiate that way, but herbs can be complicated.

That sounds like roughly five kinds of nothing she wants to do, actually, but - it also sounds like it might be useful. And maybe she's been doing it wrong, all this time, and he's a healer, he'd know the proper way, wouldn't he? The discomfort and hesitation are both visible - he looks at her, but it's not that she avoids meeting his gaze so much as her own doesn't hold anything, birdlike in her inability to both be composed and hold still the longer this conversation continues.

Everything's fine, probably. She ignores the thought in her head that says I want to go home because she was home, and it was fucking terrible. It's the desire for comforts that never existed, and it doesn't mean anything.

"All right," she settles on. "Maybe it will be useful for." A beat. "Things."

You know, stuff.

('Trying to get to sleep' isn't the only time she could stand to know how to breathe herself still.)

He waits. She's not comfortable with this, which is understandable, and thankfully there's no rush, no reason to push. When she allows for it, Anders nods and gestures towards a chair, setting the gathered blend of herbs in easy reach for her just in case. It should, in theory, be a comfort, a wordless way of saying she can take that and leave if ever she felt it was too much.

"Have a seat, and we'll run through this." Anders takes his own seat. "Rest a hand on your chest and one on your stomach, like so," he demonstrates, "mostly to feel where you're breathing into this first time. We'll exhale, relaxing shoulders, and then breathe slowly into our stomachs through the nose. Hold it for a heartbeat, and then exhale through the mouth slowly. Slow and steady is the key. There's no rush. And when you're ready, we'll try it."

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[Open] You'll think "how did I get here, sitting next to you?"

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