[open] we sit and grow our roots into the floor

[onlyhymns]

WHO: Cade and his many friends and admirers
WHAT: a dumb sulky baby got hurt at the Winter Palace because he was dumb and now he is sulking about it
WHEN: post-Halamshiral, simultaneous with red lyrium plot hell
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Injury stuff, nothing ridiculous



The Healing Tents

For the umpteenth time in the span of two years, Cade is under supervision. But this time it's not because he was violent-- well... it was, but indirectly-- it's because he got a couple spikes of red lyrium through the thigh after flipping out and battling Red Templars completely unarmored in the Winter Palace.
He ingested red lyrium once before, and from what anyone can tell it caused him to smack an elf. This is a lot more of the stuff, and Cade is notoriously unstable, so he's being watched to make sure it doesn't alter his personality.

He's the first to reassure the healers that lyrium doesn't work like that, you have to take it daily and it slowly builds up in you and so forth, but, you know, caution is caution. He respects it. But he hates being fussed over, so periodically he'll sneak off a small ways just to have a bit of solitude.


Near the Healing Tents, Being a Renegade

Usually this means sitting up on the ramparts and watching people, reading, anything that gets him a little peace and quiet. For someone who seems to thrive on being told what to do, no one can tell Cade what to do and he will be stubborn for as long as it takes for him to be deemed Safe again.

This is pointless.


Choose Your Own Adventure

Whatever else! Hit me up if you want a specific scene, or just start one here and I will accede to your whims.

Comments

[onlyhymns]

"Apostates are dangerous," Cade weakly insists, avoiding Anders' eyes as he tries to help himself up on the crutches and is mostly successful. His ire has left him, replaced now by uncertainty: the only thing standing between him and total chaos is the belief in his worldview, so this conversation is stressful in more ways than one.
He looks at Jeannot in anguish, immediately jumping to the conclusion that he's about to be outnumbered. "I'll go," he says quickly, "just not with him."

[apologist]

"I see," Jehan says to both of them. He does not entirely see, but he does see well enough to go on: "Then you may take my crutch, Ser, and Anders, perhaps I might take your shoulder—"

He doesn't need it. He does, in fact, loathe asking for assistance when it isn't necessary, and rarely admits it's necessary until he's bleeding. But if pretending to helps make a point to Cade about cooperation, smooths Anders' feathers, or otherwise facilitates everyone moving toward the tents—where no one will injure themselves further and where there are people who can do more than stand here and die helplessly if Cade makes good on any threat of violence—then that would be worth it.

"—and we can refrain from killing anyone, Maker willing, for a few more minutes."

[justice_is_blond]

Apostates are dangerous. Anders' eyes narrow at that, but Jeahan's request distracts him from his anger. He's not going to let the man suffer or struggle just because he's letting a Templar take advantage of him.

"Of course." There isn't warmth in his voice, but there's no anger either. Anders steps close and offers his shoulder (and an arm, in case,) to Jehan.

"And refraining depends entirely on him." The man who had just been throwing a temper tantrum. "Has anyone looked at your injury?" Likely, as he had a crutch, but Anders can ask. And maybe help Jehan to be able to walk, and show off to Cade about what happened when people listened and cooperated with mages rather than caging and slaughtering them.

[onlyhymns]

As with any situation in which Cade finds himself losing his cool, the embarrassment kicks in the instant he starts to calm down. Though still very much averse to interacting with Anders, he is now more compelled to flee the scene and avoid causing further damage than he is to score any points on him or see anything done about the invasion of space.

"Thanks," he mutters quickly to Jehan, taking his leave toward the tents as rapidly as he can, his heart pounding and his head swimming. Stupid, stupid, can't you go anywhere?

Once he arrives back at his bed, he sheepishly requests of a non-magical healer that they return the crutch to the Chantry brother outside.

[apologist]

The look Jeannot gives Anders, eyes sliding sideways without turning his head, falls somewhere between exasperated and conspiring. He knows who needs to refrain. He also knows something about deescalation, even if that something is only that you can't berate and snark a man clearly having some sort of breakdown into behaving better.

"Many people," he says, have looked at his leg. "I would not call it an injury any longer, I think. I would call it my leg—ah."

Cade is leaving. Jehan isn't very sad to see him go. He takes back his crutch when offered it and watches until he's talking to someone else to look at Anders.

"Do you know who he reports to?"

[justice_is_blond]

"Norrington," Anders says after a beat. "Norrington's in charge of the Templars here to the best of my knowledge. If that's changed..."

He shakes his head and sighs. "I try to pay attention to Templar organization, because that has repercussions for my own people, but it's not exactly like many Templars want to discuss matters with me for some reason." His voice says he knows exactly what the reason is.

"Will you be reporting him? I think they'd be as quick to listen to a report from me as they would discuss their hierarchy." Not a surprise, probably to them both. He is who he is, and even before he'd blown up the Chantry no one was listening to him. The unanswered letters about the issues in Kirkwall served as proof of that. Just about everything regarding the Chantry and the Templars was, really, in his opinion. At least this Brother was actually treating him like a person.

[apologist]

"I will speak to someone," Jeannot says. "The boy—" who's older than him, but that's neither here nor there "—does not seem well, to behave that way."

Traumatized, he would say, if he were in the business of diagnosing people rather than calming them down and telling them the Maker loves them. He looks off in Cade's direction again and shakes his head. Pity. The war between the mages and Templars doesn't strike particularly close to his heart, the loss of a Grand Cleric in a Free Marches hellhole five years ago doesn't stir any serious passions, and his personal preference for having mages and their fireballs residing somewhere they may not light him on fire is tempered to something even milder by the former Divine's sympathy for their situation. But it is sad, how many lives have been ruined.

"In the future it may not be wise to force the issue quite so adamantly, monsieur," he says, "if only for your own safety. And I would say the same to a Templar who insisted on approaching a panicked mage. No cause will be served by a murder in the courtyard."

[justice_is_blond]

"So I should leave someone injured, who may not be entirely right in the head, out in the open?" Anders shakes his head. "There was no way for me to come out of that well. Either I pushed to help, or walked away and dealt with issues and talking for leaving a hurt Templar outside when I was the sole spirit healer on duty."

He's calm. It's not Jeannot's fault for not understanding the situation Anders is stuck in.

"The former won't get me removed from the healing tents. The latter, abandonment and neglect? Could. And then I've larger problems. Templars worked up on a sense of superiority aren't going to change that. Thank you for your intervention, but... I'm not certain you've any idea of the balance I have to walk here."

[apologist]

There's a glimmer of something—an impatient, unimpressed something—on Jehan's face, but it's gone in a blink.

"If in the future you are faced with a distressed man who is not dying," he says, "who only needs a strong shoulder and not your particular miracles, and you call for assistance rather than insisting on touching him against his will—if in that event you are removed from your position, then you will find an advocate in me, monsieur. You have my word."