faderift | [Closed] I'm so tired

Entry tags:

[Closed] I'm so tired

WHO: Anders, Vandelin, and later Nathaniel
WHAT: An overworked healer is forced to take a short break
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Darktown
NOTES: None atm

It seems like every time he cuts back there's more to do. He'd promised Nate he'd take things easier, but this spreading disease means there are more patients than usual, more supplies being used than usual, and more time needed than usual. It's out of his hands, he feels, because there just aren't enough healers in the city to help everyone. Even now, when treating the injured and ill in Darktown, he's feeling like he simply can't o enough.

"This is why we need free, fully-trained mages everywhere," he's muttering to one of his helpers when everything feels a horrifyingly familiar level of heavy again. This time, when he falls, he's even more afraid. Spells like this only ever get worse and there's no comfort to be found in the tight-packed dirt floor of his Clinic. ...and on top of every other indignity he can see a bug crawling toward him and there's nothing he can do about it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

All right. At least he's conscious, and evidently lucid, and that's a weight off Van's mind when he doesn't have the faintest idea what to do if that weren't the case--but nothing about the rest of this is reassuring in the slightest. (Least of all, somehow, the need Anders feels to apologize--the sharp little shock of sadness that provokes is not an emotion Vandelin asked for, and he refuses to acknowledge it.)

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to make it worse," he says, forcing wryness until he can make it sound convincing, "because I only know one healing spell and I'm so rusty on it that we might have to call in the maintenance staff to oil the hinges first."

After he's dealt with the beetle, which he flicks away with more vehemence than strictly necessary.

"Will you let me?" Will it help?

Edited 2018-01-23 09:32 (UTC)

He feels like he's failing when he has to rely on someone else, letting them down. It isn't always or even often true, but Justice's conditioning sank in deep and guilt is something Anders is nearly constantly feeling.

"There are so many other things I'd prefer oiling," he says with a groan, trying to match Vandelin's joking around. The satisfying flick of the bug makes him feel a little less stressed about the situation as he nods.

"Is it Entropy? I've not tried that. Please." Maybe Entropy can find what Creation cannot. "But if you start bragging about out-healing me on me, I will have to deny everything. Reputation and all. I'm sure you understand."

He feels wobbly and weak and all he can do is try to joke convincingly as he lays on the floor like it's the most comfortable thing he's ever known.

"There's a spell for that, too." It's so much easier to joke when it's on his own behalf, when he's the one trying to put on a brave face before going under the knife--it feels inappropriate now, even if it's meant only to try to help Anders do the same, and it's what he'd want (and has wanted) when their positions are reversed.

But his stomach sinks low at the reminder of how out of his depth he is with healing--of course this must have happened before, if Anders seems so resigned to it and totally without surprise, and of course then he must have tried every Creation spell in his far-greater repertoire. What good is Vandelin's apprentice-level mastery of it going to be?

"You won't need to worry about that," he confesses, a rare and reluctant admission without a corresponding attempt to save face. "I'm sure that would work, but I'd need a fresh corpse for it. I just meant to try a boost to get you back on your feet; it's the only Creation magic I know beyond the spell I was just talking about. It's nothing fancy, but it's never backfired yet." He reaches for the Fade, uncharacteristically hesitant, trying to remember the technique by rote, because it's still too far opposed to everything he's mastered for him to wrap his mind around without Myr's step-by-step instructions playing out underneath it all.

"How often has this happened? And how much else have you tried?"

He gives the joke the smile it deserves, even if it's faint and short-lived before he looks serious again. This is what comes of being ignorant of nearly everything Entropy can do - he hadn't had an ability so he hadn't learned - but a boost should still help.

"This is Darktown," he jokes lightly. "I'm certain there are a few very fresh corpses lying around. And..." he returns to seriousness, "Once. It's happened once, I thought it exhaustion but it's... not."

Anders looks away. "There's little to try. I can't find cause. Everything says I'm not ill but there's this, there's... I felt Silenced, once, with no one around who could have silenced me, and I know of someone else who has collapsed twice. Something is wrong." His strength is starting to return now, far more slowly than the last time, but he flexes his fingers and shifts a little, trying to get to his elbows but not getting any real help from them yet.

"It's not related to the other. It has no trace. Its victims so far are mages. That's all I have."

"You know for sure it isn't related to the other?" There's likely enough all manner of ways a spirit healer would be able to discern that, Vandelin reasons, but it still seems like enough of a coincidence to pursue. He's been too often confined to the diplomacy office under a mountain of inherited paperwork to know a great deal about the illness himself, except what he can observe in his unfortunate colleagues.

Right now, it does seem that there are more helpful things to be done than grill Anders about further details and symptoms. All too belatedly, it occurs to Vandelin that the floor is both dirty and miserably cold, and for lack of a better way to help, he grabs a pillow from the nearest bed and makes to slide it under Anders' head. That done, he turns the rejuvenation spell quietly loose, toned-down and subtle lest he have made a mistake with it somehow, but better than nothing.

"If the spirit says it's not an illness...have you ruled out curses, or some kind of repeatedly-cast hex? The problem is that you can't really do that from a significant distance, or with much of a delay, and I don't know of any mage in the Inquisition who would go around inflicting torment like that on other mages, but just the bare-bones description of it sounds like entropy."

He thanks Vandelin for pillow and spell both, appreciating the boost as he takes a deeper breath.

"It's definitely not an illness, I'm certain. There are... You feel what's wrong with an illness, and with what's going on with Rifters and Templars specifically." He waggles his fingers and toes, feeling them come back to life before he slowly, carefully pushes himself up to a sitting position. There's still a little weakness in his movements, but he hates showing weakness. "There's nothing detectable wrong with me, thus, unrelated."

Another breath, as he considers Van's words with an expression of some dismay. "I don't want to think that it's another mage, but... I can't afford to dismiss that. Especially when you know entropy far better than I do."

Not every mage cares for him, and that's even without meeting him. He knows he can be hard to get along with sometimes too, but enough to the point they'd use magic against him? Anders reaches up with a shaky hand to rub his temples. "A delay or a distance would be hard, but if there's some workaround, something. We don't know everything there is to know about magic. The Circles deliberately saw to that. Maybe one Circle did know about one of those two and taught its captives, or it's something rediscovered..." He trails off with a sigh.

"Maybe," he says, faraway and trying to envision any theoretical way, in all the additional study he's done since he arrived here, in which a mage not already in the room could have paralyzed Anders and leeched all his strength away that quickly and thoroughly. Not without the usage of some kind of invisible glyph, perhaps, and there's nobody here but Myr, to his knowledge, who could do anything even remotely approaching that kind of magic. He does not actually entertain that thought for longer than the half-second in which it occurs to him.

"That still leaves the question of motive, though, and even presuming that any mage allowed into the Gallows wants to hurt you badly enough to actually try, it wouldn't make sense to do it like this. And it wouldn't account for the other mages suffering the problem, though I don't know who they are." He has to concede the point; nobody else has pissed people off quite like Anders has. It's hard to imagine any mage he's met here going out of their way to harm another mage for anything short of Anders' level of infamy.

"It probably isn't a theory worth pursuing right now. But--look, we can't have you sitting here on the freezing floor; that's not going to improve your health. Here." He offers a shoulder to lean on, hoping to help Anders up onto a bed. "Let me get hold of your husband. He should know. Does he know?"

He leans on Vandelin as the other mage starts to help him up.

"There are a few mages allowed into the Gallows who would gladly hurt me like this and gladly try. You've no idea how badly things went in the early months I was here. ...but it does not account for the others, you're right." If Vandelin thinks Anders is stalling a little on the other, he'd be right. The sideways glance probably helps confirm it as they get to a bed and Anders relaxes on it.

"Nate... knows some." He reaches up to rub the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish. "He can't do anything to help and I haven't wanted to bother him by making him worry. But he should know." It's hard to be weak. It's hard to be vulnerable. His body is not giving him much option in the matter, though.

"Please call my husband, if you don't mind."

Vandelin knows that sentiment well. He's been on both sides of it now, and while a couple years ago he might have identified wholly with Anders, might have respected his stoicism and wanted to help him maintain it--he can't help but envision Nate alone in an office and oblivious to the possibility of impending loss, the way he'd always been when Kit was away on one of his endless missions or another. It's not a position he'd wish on anyone anymore, no matter how tangential his acquaintance with Nate is when weighed against his friendship with Anders.

"All right. Hold tight and I'll be back."

He doesn't wander so far, though, that Anders can't hear him--he wouldn't stand for that if he were the one on the bed, having to let others talk about him where he had no way of knowing what they were saying.

"Warden Howe? It's Enchanter Vandelin. Can you spare a moment? It's about Anders."

Nathaniel reaches for the crystal so quickly he knocks it away, and has to chase it to the floor before answering.

"Yes? Is everything all right?" Anders' health has been so fragile lately, he's not sure what he expects from this.

He can hear the concern in Nate's voice and he closes his eyes, feeling guilty even though he's not sure there's anything he could have done to prevent this. Not heal in Darktown at all? They'd have no one. There's enough against them already, and he can't do that.

Vandelin can't help his own pang of regret at that audible worry, wishing there were nothing of concern to relay. But there's nothing for it.

"I don't want to alarm you," he says, "and he doesn't want to alarm you, but he isn't well. He took ill at the clinic and had a weak spell for several minutes. It seems to have passed and he's improving now, but if you can come, he would really like to see you."

It had seemed prudent, perhaps, to avoid the word 'collapse' until Anders can explain that himself in person.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Closed] I'm so tired

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject