faderift | OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

Her statement gets a brief eye roll. Sure, some fates were decided by bears. And dragons. And so on. A great many were decided by men, though, and it was men who liked to overlook abuses and harm against those they considered lower than themselves.

Anders meets her gaze without flinching, without showing weakness. He's had practice since he was twelve for this, after all. This is his healing tent and he won't back down, no matter how stiff or angry the Templars get, no matter how many times glares turn to actual assault. On the other hand, he also won't take any pleasure from the wince. This is his healing tent and that matters a great deal to him.

As the potion does its work to minimize the scar tissue that's grown from the inside out, Anders casts and joins the effort. It's no easy task. Progress is slow because the throat is fragile, but that's also why the drink is as large as it was - to give him time to work internally and externally.

Anders glows and heals and tries very very hard not to wonder how many mages she's killed or harmed, because with the way she holds herself, the answer isn't zero. Eventually, shortly after she's finished drinking, he drops his hand and works to still show no weakness or tiredness despite how he'd gone a little pale.

"It will likely reoccur. Once scarring has overgrown once, it has a habit of continuing to do so. And at that time you'll have choice of what healer you wish to see, as, interestingly enough, healers choose to stay around in a place where they're treated as people."

It takes a moment, to return from such distance.

Her eyes lower as it recedes, watching him more obliquely than before. She knows that expression, the face of someone pushed just a little too far — but damned if they're going to show it. It's familiar in more ways than she can count.

"You should sit. Your cat will want you." Gently, peculiar to her previous tone. Wren remains still herself. To stand immediately would look a little too much like an attempt to shift the room's dynamics. Mostly she just doesn't want him to faint. "I will fetch some water."

There's a flask of something stronger, tucked into a pocket, but that's not a gesture she expects would inspire anyone's trust. Better for them both to retain the appearance of their full faculties.

She presses a hand over the skin, works in a deep breath. Skillful work. But we always knew that much.

"Is this agreeable?"

It's a privilege, however thin, to hear the rhetoric he chooses. It's the sort of thing that's gained ground, even among less extreme individuals. She'll need to listen more widely, to learn which versions are in vogue about Skyhold.

"I've water in the pitcher still." He doesn't want help from her. He's a big strong independent mage who don't need no Templar. That, and he can't bring himself to trust a Templar offering help, not so quickly.

He does, however, step back to fill a different glass from the same pitcher he'd filled hers with, promptly taking a drink.

"Is what agreeable? That you can breathe? Or to be treated as a person? What do you think? Likely you've never been denied the sky, or relationships, or personhood, so it might be hard for you to tell, but those are things people want. I'd suggest trying to go without for a time so you can understand, but I don't expect a Templar to try for empathy." How many had, really? He could count them on the fingers of one hand. They hadn't needed to try for it, and in fact they'd had more power when they didn't.

She should've known better than to angle for trust. A misstep. She lets it lie; perhaps he'll feel more empowered for the small act. The freedom to fetch one's own water.

“All of it,” Empathy. As though that tool were always wielded to kind ends. He’s right of course, that many didn’t need to try. The phylacteries were fine insurance for dull men. “Such freedoms have come at cost.”

To him, to everyone.

“Is there still personhood in the figurehead?” A rhetorical. She’d have been curious to hear the Herald’s thoughts. “The Wardens would shelter you regardless of your decision to heal.”

“And yet, I can breathe. A risk.”

To have traveled here, to maintain such a public presence. Wren pries away her hand away from her throat (don't be an idiot, no one’s about to rip it out). The anger is helpful — unfortunate, that to dig any deeper she has to concede that she’s been paying attention. There's some small consolation in the knowledge that she can hardly put Anders any more on the defensive.

She wants to know: If it hadn’t been practical, would he still have tried to become Detlef? The Tale of the Champion is hardly reliable source material.

"A high cost," he agrees. It costs him nothing to admit the truth of the matter. "Better if it had come at none, but that was never to be."

The Rite of Annulment had been called for, Templars had been saying as much in the streets, and his network had been slaughtered. Not to mention the Starkhaven mages. No, blood had been spilled and the path to freedom was going to take more blood one way or another. That didn't make what he'd done right or excusable. It was simply the nature of Thedas.

After another sip of his water he's relaxing just enough to rub behind Purrelden's ears while he contemplates the other question and what she's asking.

"And I've a choice in whether or not to heal. They would shelter me whether I was up here or not, which means yes. There is personhood. Those who see me as a figurehead are..." Anders shakes his head. It's complicated, and he doesn't want to delve into things that are personal when she'd already bristled at who he was. "I decided what risk there was to healing was acceptable. And again, I decided. Freedom, and personhood. You chose to stay in this tent rather than walk to another. There could have been risk in that. It would have been easy to close up your throat the rest of the way, after all, and claim there was nothing I could do. Chances are high I would have been believed, considering how impressive the scar is. And you stayed."

Her head tips in faint curiousity. Dissension in the ranks? Anders' politics remain, but he hardly seems enthusiastic for his flock. The potential causes are too many to guess at. Still, a question perhaps worth pursuing outside of this audience.

Interesting that he should define himself so intently by function, even still. The sort of single-minded intent that attracts spirits, she supposes, but it's common enough among his opposite number.

Better it had come at none,

"Careful, warden, or you may talk yourself into the personhood of templars."

She can't think that all would have remained. The Order is far from monolith.

Edited 2017-01-30 11:30 (UTC)

Anders snorts before taking another sip of water.

"I believe in the personhood of everyone, Templar. I simply also believe that when someone closes their mind to the personhood of mages they become an abuser, and often a brutal one. I've had plenty of first-hand experience in this. Most Templars have chosen to ignore that mages are people. And most Templars, in my experience, have harmed mages."

He's known so few exceptions. Sometimes he wants more, and sometimes he finds a sort of security and rightness in not knowing many. Currently, he knows of one decent one here, a couple of abusive ones, and plenty of ones who are unknown to him. The odds aren't in favor of them being friendly.

Would it ease your heart, had I only slain conscripted soldiers? What of poor men, turned to desperate means? Or perhaps penitents at prayer?

An obvious dig, one she needn’t press. He must have heard it often enough to have learned to shut it down, to deaden the feeling.

Instead she sits at silence a moment, and considers. He’s not wrong, of course — not wholly. It just doesn’t make him right,

(A pause, for the fourth wall to roll its eyes at that line of reasoning.)

"When I was five," A heavy offering; she doesn’t bother to disguise the reluctance in her voice. "My brother told me that one of our sows could talk. She had such funny ideas, but she’d only ever speak to him —"

"We lost the barn and half our stock before we figured it out." A hungry winter, after that. "I never saw him so frightened as when they went to kill that pig."

Though she’s certain he matched on his Harrowing. Stiffly, she rises to her feet, moves so the little chair rests between them. Her hands linger on its back like a shield.

"A long time ago." And an anecdote of little relevance, but let him make of it what he will, read into her reasons for choosing it. If it cast her as a coward or a panderer, either's of potential use.

"Will it pain you, should I have occasion to return?"

A wiggly bit of phrasing. She’d prefer to keep to one healer if possible.

Edited 2017-02-11 10:05 (UTC)

Her brother was a mage. Her brother was a mage, and she'd become a Templar. Had it been to protect him, or aim for some sort of misguided redemption for the horrible crime of having a mage in the family?

"And what happened to him?"

Anders exhales, setting down his cup. What's the point of telling him this? If it's to say that she sees mages as people, he may grant her the point. Otherwise, he doesn't know.

"I'll not be pained by treating you again. I'm here to do as I can."

What happens to all maleficar, but she doesn’t say that. If Logen had reaped what he’d sown, it was only for want of options, for lack of supervision, for youth and fear.

She will always believe that.

"Montsimmard, for a time." For too little of it. She straightens, a short nod. At least it's managed to pause the lecture. "Very well. Thank you, Warden. If there is nothing else?"

For a time. He's dead, then, more than likely. Her getting up suggests she doesn't want to talk about the rest of it, doesn't want to explain why she brought it up. He'll see if anyone else around here is from Montsimmard and remembers a mage with the family name of Coupe. If he'd been old enough to hold onto it.

"There's always something else," Anders replies. "But as far as your health goes, what can be done has been. You may go."

Somehow he refrains from sounding or looking amused while giving a Templar permission to leave. It feels a little satisfying.

OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

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anders don't want no scrubs

a scrub is a templar who can't get no love from him

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...I thought I tagged this, I'm sorry!

no worries! i do that all the time ❤

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