OPEN | coldest comfort, safety glass

[limier]

WHO: Wren, Anders, Gwen, and OTA.
WHAT: Arrivals at Skyhold & Junk.
WHEN: Post-Winter Palace. Catchall.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: I'll edit if anything comes up!

Starters in comments. If you'd like a specific starter, or to make plans for later in the month, just let me know on plurk or Discord (oeste #8807).  :)

Comments

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

[justice_is_blond]

"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."

[limier]

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.

[justice_is_blond]

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.

[limier]

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.

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

[justice_is_blond]

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."

no worries! i do that all the time ❤

[limier]

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?"

❤

[justice_is_blond]

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.