faderift | [Semi-closed] A tisket, a tasket

"No news, she says, looking in a better mood than usual?" he asks, and then regrets it a moment later. If she got laid with Wren, he doesn't want to know. But maybe there's something else going on. Maybe Bootsy headbutted her adorable earlier or something. It's not likely, but it's possible, and he'd really like to focus on someone other than him riht now.

"She sleeps occasionally these days," Teren brusquely replies, with the most momentary of glances to Anders; if one squints, it almost looks grateful. "What do you want?"
The question isn't any less friendly than usual, not that it's moreso either. Just, y'know, no need for beating around the bush.

"That's actually what I was coming to check on, if it was helping." And now he's out of clear excuses to linger and it's time to get creative if he wants to hang around.

"Could you use... anything?" That was not as creative as it could have been, but at least he's not outright saying that he wants company.

Letting them both into the room, Teren goes to set down her things on the writing desk for the time being. "Yes," she answers simply, sounding almost pleased. "It's been some time since I was able to sleep so well, and the respite is welcome." Brushing herself off, she turns to face Anders, pursing her lips as she watches him. "What is it," she asks, instead of answering. If there's one thing Teren can do better than most, it's read people, and Anders is by no means difficult to read.

He should really surround himself with less-observant people. For a moment Anders debates playing dumb, but he dismisses that idea as actually dumb promptly.

"I was reminded by someone I thought a friend that I don't have many people who don't hate me so I wanted to drop by someone who didn't hate me and I haven't messed matters up with." Anders shrugs. "It's only a matter of time, I chase everyone off, but it hasn't happened yet."

Lose everyone might be more accurate wording for his early life, but he knows he's not the easiest to get along with this last decade.

"So can you use me for anything?"

"Ah, well." Teren shrugs one shoulder, seemingly unmoved by the dilemma, but it's one she's well used to. "Seems to me that's the nice bit about messing matters up, so long as everyone lives you can wait a few years and try to kill each other again." In other words: people fight, and they're stupid, and as long as everyone involved is still alive, it's not over.

She beckons him over, pulling out a chair for him while she sits on the bed and begins to bring out her sewing, half of which she heaps onto Anders' lap. "Pin the seams," she instructs, demonstrating, "like this." After pinning the first garment herself, Teren begins to mend the tear, under the impression that Anders will figure out what to do from here.
"Being hated's not so bad all the time," she muses, stitching away, "it's nice and quiet if you do it right."

He's got four years left, probably. Waiting that long to try to see if things are healed seems a waste, but so do a great many things when you've likely got a time limit set on your life.

At least sewing's easy. Anders gets right to work, familiar with the task due to making his own robes more often than not.

"Being hated is exhausting." Keeping his guard up all the time, trying to act like he's fine with a barb strikes, wondering where the next attack is coming from, it's all so much work. "I think you're talking about a you-level of whatever it is that's not hatred so much as it is a distance from nearly everyone. I don't know how Loghain's managed it for so long."

"Do you," Teren asks, her gaze sharpening. "Well, I shall have to inform the people of Pike." He saw how she was received there; there's little self-imposed about being spit on by the locals.

"You're insufferable when you feel sorry for yourself," she sighs, fairly relaxed all things considered, continuing to stitch. "You're hated for a reason, however justified. But whinging about it won't change anyone's mind, nor will pretending everyone who hates you is stupid or blind. You made the choice to do a thing that would upset a lot of people, and you made it because you felt it was the right thing to do. So own it."
Finishing the first garment, Teren lightly takes the first one Anders pinned, beginning to work on that. "Though I know little of Loghain, it seems he's managed it by accepting the hatred and living with it. Perhaps, as with you, some of it is undeserved. But it's not your choice to make, so all you can do is live with what's happened and make the best of it. Or be miserable, whichever you like. But people have their own problems and expecting them to put them aside to forgive you is a fool's errand."

"You asked. We could have sewn in silence but you asked, so there's no call to call it whinging or me insufferable."

He came here for refuge and he's feeling very prickly and defensive.

"I've never said it's not for a reason, but everyone acts like I'm claiming I've done nothing, and I've never said it was the right thing to do, either, and everyone acts like I have. There are plenty of assholes who I owe no apology to whatsoever who act like I do as well. Fuck them. Fuck a good many of the people who think I owe them anything at all when they never cared about my people. I try living, I try going forward, and then the very next thing I know it's back in my face again. I am tired and I can find nothing nice and quiet about this life."

He grabs the next garment roughly, frustration in his movements as he pins it.

"If you want me to go, just say so. Don't accuse me of whinging and being insufferable and being a fool to indirectly make me leave. I won't break down. I don't need anyone, I'm fine if every Warden abandons me. They've done it before."

"Oh Maker," Teren sighs through gritted teeth, "tell me truly, Anders, do you think you'd be sitting here helping me with my sewing now if I wanted you to leave?" She pauses her sewing to stare hard at him, exasperated.
"You are whinging. There is and will be nothing quiet about your life because you ensured this to be so, and if I have to spell out again that I don't think less of you for that, then you're better off shouting into a bucket." She plucks the garment from Anders' hands when he starts to pin it more roughly, since there's no reason it should have to suffer.
"People will treat you like scum, that's what people do. You're expecting them to change just for you, and they won't. Be bloody thankful for the people you do have, because many who have done less have fewer." Stitch, stitch.

He stares back before grabbing another piece of clothing out of the mending bin. Tell him there's a way to have a quiet life while being hated and then tell him that he can never have quiet? Take that, pants.

"I expect the people who act friendly to me to not then go and encourage people who hate me into drinking against me. I expect them to not get pissy when I point out that if a mob gets roused against one man, it could just as easily go for more because it's a bloody mob. I'm not asking for idiots to make sense, like the ones who hate me and at the same time refuse to go into the Gallows because it's so horrible as if it wouldn't have been worse without me. I'm asking for people who I thought weren't idiots to make sense or give a damn when they seemed to before."

"Then why didn't you just say so?" Teren asks, exasperated, "you come round all gloom and doom as though the whole world's done you wrong, and it's just one person? Maybe a few?"
She sets down her sewing to give him more focus. "What's going on, then, have you lot been bickering?" She's going out on a limb and assuming it's to do with the Wardens, since Anders had mentioned being abandoned by them.

"One person, but I thought we were friends so that's more than enough to justify doom and gloom as if the whole world's done me wrong." He's a little huffy as he sticks pins in the new pants, but at least he isn't damaging them.

"Alistair goes off and talks about hating someone forever and Korrin joins in and they're all chummy and dandy as if he's not halfway to stirring up a mob against someone and she's not wishing that mob was aimed at me but it's all entirely fine if he pretends she's not drinking out anger at me with him because as he pointed out if he stuck to only drinking with people who liked me he'd have scarcely any choices at all. I shouldn't care that any toast either of them raises will be a toast against me as well. I should be fine with that. I'm not. And apparently I can go fuck myself."

It's a lot of words, and a lot of frustration.

It is a lot of words. Teren is trying to follow, and narrows her eyes as Anders speaks, but ultimately the story loses her sometime around Korrin's drinking.
"...ah..." she falters, "....what?" After a pause, she straightens and pulls her thoughts together, trying to respond to the overall gist of it. Or at least what stuck out.
"Alistair wouldn't raise a toast against you," she decides. It's not a defense of his character, necessarily: she's just pretty sure he wouldn't work against a fellow Warden like that. ...except maybe Loghain.
Hm.

"If he's raising a toast to holding grudges and continuing to hate with Korrin, touching her glass with his, he's toasting to hatred of me."

He finishes pinning these pants and glares at them. "It doesn't take a genius to know who she's ranting about in her idiotic way time and again. Hates me, but oh, going into the Gallows? Did you know what they did there? How dare anyone ask her to venture there? As if it wouldn't be worse without what I'd done. She's entirely brawn and no brains at all."

It is, apparently, the hour for ranting.

Teren knits her brow, canting her head slightly, like a bird trying to get the lay of something in front of her. "...he hates Loghain," she says, uncertain as to maybe whether Anders missed this detail. "Never mind Korrin, she doesn't strike me as the forgiving sort. But she can't hurt you as long as you both work under the Inquisition."

His shoulders slump a little. He's heard so many times that he can't be hurt, when he worked for the Wardens before, when rejoining the Wardens had been settled, and it's never true even with physical attacks.

"Alistair hates Loghain," Anders confirms. "And went drinking with Korrin to hatred and grudges. Which means she's drinking to his hatred of Loghain, and he's drinking to her hatred of me. Can you not see how that would hurt?"

To a degree, Teren understands. But there are some leaps she can't make, and she finds herself staring at Anders with mild incredulity.
"Maker's breath, Anders, that's insane." She goes back to her sewing. "Mind you, sanity isn't requisite, but sweet void, where do you find time to make connections like that?" Even smirking a little, Teren glances back up at him. "Alistair is drinking to his hatred of Loghain, Korrin is drinking to her hatred of you, they're mates sharing a drink. Alistair isn't even thinking about you. He's probably not even thinking about her. He's thinking about his ale." Stitch, stitch. "You'll go mad assuming every awful thing is about you. Some of them will be, you're not an idiot. But sometimes people just say things."

A busy pause, after which she adds: "are you afraid they don't like you, or that they'll kill you?" Her expression is suddenly serious. It's clear one option takes significant precedence over the other.

"When has it ever been unconnected?" The Templars haven't liked him and they've tried to kill him, and they're not the only ones who dislike him anymore.

"When has the one not followed the other?" He can still hear Sebastian's yelling about how he would attack the people of Kirkwall if Anders lived, and every day there's mutterings about how he should be dead. "He was inciting people to remember their hatred and hold to it, and that's what leads to things going worse. Attackers prefer a crowd, prefer a mob, even. I don't think Alistair's going to attack me. But the Warden leadership has actually gone and opened a door for an attempt on my life before."

Nate would do everything to protect him, but that requires Nate to know that an attempt's coming.

"You're being dramatic," Teren sighs, "Alistair is who we're talking about. It was one thing he said in a conversation that wasn't about you. And since we've established he's not going to attack you, the point is moot."
She sets down her sewing to look at Anders, eyes slightly narrowed. "You've your reasons to be paranoid. But you need to learn to determine when something is about you, and when it isn't." After a moment's hesitation more, she shakes her head and starts sewing again. "Assuming everything's the former is self-absorbed, not to mention a nuisance if people can't talk about a thing that's aggravating them without you thinking it's you and going on the defensive." Stitch, stitch. "I don't know what else to tell you."

[Semi-closed] A tisket, a tasket

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