faderift | i’ve been waiting on the fault line

He takes a slow breath, opening his mouth to answer and then closing it again as he helps reset the board, trying to pin it down without letting on too much. When all the pieces are back in place Anders looks up.

"I've lost people to Tranquility," he finally says. "You see them again in the halls, but they're not themselves. They're gone, their bodies used to serve whatever the Templars want. It's slavery by another name and worse, because at least slaves still have hopes and dreams and themselves. Who are you now, Casimir? What do you hold important, as a reason to get up in the morning?"

It's not the proper question to ask, and not just because he's rather certain Casimir doesn't have an answer. Casimir probably had no options, no chance to escape this, and it's not fair to question him on it. But nothing about Tranquility was fair.

Anders gestures at the board. "White or black?"

"Black."

Quicker to revert to old habits, than to explain an indifference that doesn’t bear repeating. His eyes don’t linger upon Anders to fold his hands, to wait for the first move.

They’re gone. How often he hears such rhetoric — how easy most are about it, this business of dismissal, freely-given to his face. Politics matter little, affiliations less; if there’s one thing the war has left all sides in agreement upon, it’s this:

Not people, not any more.

"I’m myself." Another sort to the self he’d been (to the one he’d played but minutes before), and that’s the case of everyone, isn’t it? He blinks back, impassive. There’s no offense to be found in the bland neutrality of his features, nor behind them. But certainly, "I used to find that more difficult to see."

Certainly it will be remembered.

Edited 2018-01-28 08:28 (UTC)

He takes white quietly, moving a pawn forward in a basic opening move. The lack of an answer is an unsurprising answer in itself. There's nothing that drives the man anymore, and what does that make Casimir? Alive, but not living?

"You found that more difficult to see for a time while you were Tranquil?" He wants that to be what the man is saying, wants to know there's at least some journey there, but fears it isn't. Briefly he bites his lip, studying Casimir across from him. Karl had not been Karl, and knew it... but only when he'd not been Tranquil. Right after, he'd asked why Anders was looking at him like that.

"I can't figure out how to reconcile is how someone is themselves if there's no emotional significance to everything they've been through to them," he says softly. "We are shaped by what's come before, our reactions, our experiences, our feelings. I had... One man in particular betrayed me to the Templars, but it wasn't him. He wasn't himself, that was something he would never have done prior to Tranquility. He was not himself, and when the Tranquility was lifted for a short time he confirmed as much. All colors, all joy was gone from the world, he said."

If they're going to try something that horrific on Casimir, a temporary lifting, then Casimir deserves to know it has happened before. Anders swallows.

"I find being around you uncomfortable because he begged to die rather than become Tranquil again, but he begged when he was in full control of all of who he was. The whole man was horrified, terrified, and hurting, but as a Tranquil he was no longer in touch with all of him, he was calm, unbothered, not him. I don't know... I don't know who you are, as your whole self. And I don't want to patronize you, but I don't know if you know who you were when you were whole."

It terrifies him. He would rather hear his Calling and charge to his death a thousand times over than be made Tranquil.

Edited (Writes you a novel, fails at basic things like punctuation...) 2018-01-28 09:59 (UTC)

A more astute man might comment that Anders sees the dead, a cruel one might add he sees only himself. Both observations, too slippery for his grasp.

So he listens. Listens in silence, and thinks of the black-bound books in his case far above. It’s news, that this might be lifted; it’s too a diversion from their present purpose. A more practical matter, to know those who’d see him dead.

"No," He corrects, pushes out a queenside pawn — a defensive play, but testing — "Before. You don’t see me, when you look at me."

As he once hadn’t of the others. Horror, hurt; an occluding stain.

"You don't know me," He agrees, without heat. It's half a guess, though not phrased so: "But you don't want to."

If the man before him hadn't been Tranquil, Anders would argue it immediately. As it is, he considers Casimir's words before moving a second pawn to protect his first. Where one piece stands alone, it falls.

He thinks he sees Casimir. If he didn't, all of this would be a lot easier. But the other... He isn't sure if Casimir is right or wrong. What he is sure of is that there's no room for deflection. A joke would do nothing for him here, shield nothing, protect nothing.

"I haven't particularly thought about it." Which might say something. He takes a breath, still studying Casimir. How much is left to know? Does that matter? He'd come over to join Casimir; he has no deep love of chess that compels him to play every game he sees.

"I do want to," he says slowly, "if you've no objection. I can't promise to always be comfortable. But I would work on that, and on seeing you." He doesn't want the Tranquil dead. He wants them to have what they want, and even know what they want, but he'll settle for a Tranquil knowing what they do and don't object to.

"I've yet to end a conversation," His queenside knight snakes out, the better to begin freeing a line. "By inviting someone to speak."

He's no objection. That its absence should apply more or less as general rule?

"You described my whole self," A streak amid all the little red flags that he's learned to signal danger. "But I don't believe there is such a thing."

A pause, to gauge whether he's still listening.

"Your companion. You knew him quite well," An assumption of Anders' speech. "Would you say that you knew all of him?"

No moment unspent, no secret left unshared.

He swallows, a flash of pain on his face before he gets that back and brings a knight out, past the pawns. The quiet hangs between them. All of Karl? He knows the answer that his heart is giving, but it takes several moments before he's felt like he's weighed it enough to know that it's true.

"Yes." All of the talks in Karl's classroom, the library, the mess hall, all of the stolen moments in dusty corners and musty rooms, they meant that he'd known all of Karl, and Karl had known all of him.

"I knew him as I've known no one else." He and Nate are close, but he and Karl had had years and a desperation that added urgency to their time together. "I think there is a whole, when you know, deep down, what someone would do in any situation, and what they'd feel, and what they'd say. I can't claim to have been able to know his exact thoughts, but what I know of him is close enough to that."

He pauses as he draws his hand back from his knight. There's no reason to keep it there. He's not going to see a better move.

"Why don't you think there's such a thing as a whole self? Do you feel like you're not missing a part of who you were?"

He nods once: Not agreement, but a show of attention that needn't be shown — plays in a second knight. One mage has a clear out now.

"I've always been missing pieces." A slow glance to the board, he notes the wordplay, lets it pass without remark. It's not what he's searching for. "I could feel them. Unseen, save for what they collected. Hollows,"

Hollows to fill up with rain. It's been a long time since he's shaped the words, aloud or in ink. They travel at a pace that would have frustrated once, too-slow between fog and thought and tongue.

"The Fade is vast. You see only fractions; you see only through the shape you give it. The Fade is unknowable, but it isn't unknown."

"There's a face we show, a face we don't. And mystery between." He blinks again, "You won't lose him, to find it."

Edited 2018-02-24 02:10 (UTC)

Always been missing pieces.

Anders' gaze lifts from the board, stays on Casimir as the Tranquil talks. He'd felt broken after solitary, but to feel that way all along? And it's not like a Tranquil is going to exaggerate. To hurt like that, constantly... It clashes against his belief that Tranquility is always cruelty.

"Did you ask for Tranquility?" He asks the question as if he's afraid of it, like it might shatter if voiced. There's still an element of power imbalance, no matter the answer, but Anders had been ready and wanting to die once. Everything had been too much. Hawke had stayed her hand, spared him, made him learn to live past that moment, and now he considers it a mercy. Then, he hadn't been sure. Anyone asking for Tranquility should be given a similar mercy, given help and support, but if someone is always feeling this... He doesn't know.

What he does know is that while he certainly works to hide vulnerability and weakness from most people, he'd never hidden things from Karl and doesn't hide things from Nate. All he can do is trust his feelings that the reverses have been true.

"As far as he goes, though, he never would have betrayed me. Even if there was a part of him he kept closed, something left to find, Casimir, he loved me. He wanted us both to have freedom. He didn't want to lure me into a trap so I would die. This is something I absolutely know, that Tranquility altered him. He was not himself."

He moves his bishop a space diagonally, protecting his knight.

"It was offered, and I accepted." The second time around. "It was the better option."

He knows it’s not enough, that he’s not saying enough — not saying it in the way that others would bid him, for all the shape of their want eludes. Nell, Myr; he isn’t blind to the frustration he engenders (Why are you telling people that you chose this?), but six years' spared detail isn’t recovered so quickly. There’d only been one way to speak of it, and now the board’s shifted about him, the rules have changed. His moves haven't.

His eyes slip shut. This time they rest in place; a hand moves to find the back of his neck, instinct circling the base of his skull. Not distress. Just a bit much at once, a moment to shut it all out. To restart.

He looks up, pushes a pawn out mechanically two spaces. Agrees:

"Perhaps." Anders would know the most of that, of the stranger he's fixed his image to. "But perhaps he had a self. Gone is too often said for different."

His eyes fix in glassy place.

"Whether marked by magic, or its lack."

"Are you all right?" It looks like a pain gesture, the rub of the neck. The start of a headache? The Tranquil are not immune to pain and Anders has no desire to hurt the man.

"We can speak of something else if you need to." The question of what it was a better option than lingers, as does discussion of what having a self means if it is not their self but he's not going to push Casimir. The man, whether a fragment of a fragment or a different sort of whole, still deserves that.

"How awful I am at chess and if you're taking pity on me by not already putting me in check, for instance."

"I'm well." It's more or less automatic; that doesn't divest it of truth, or of choice. Anders shifts the topic, and he makes no effort to hold it in place. "But I apologize, perhaps we might finish this game another time. It would stretch a while yet, and I'm certain we've both duty to see to."

Time again to check with Thranduil. To alert someone (Anders, he supposes, Myr) if matters have progressed.

A bit much at once — chess has never been a natural game, and more difficult for it now: To stare down the shape of the possibilities ahead. To guess how others might shift. Easier to pick apart past strategy; to better understand his own history of play.

"Thank you for the conversation."

Anders nods. A break could be good for both of them. He stands, stretching, and quickly resets the board in case someone decent wants to take a go at it.

"There's no need to apologize, Casimir. Thank you, too." He has things to process himself, and there are some people to make sure aren't exhausting themselves during this odd spell of hyperactivity as well as the usual amount of patients coming in and out of infirmary and Clinic both.

"Have a good rest of the day."

i’ve been waiting on the fault line | OTA

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