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

[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.