[Closed] A perfect storm

[justice_is_blond]

WHO: Anders, established-CR people; poke me on plurk or in Discord for a top level if you'd like!
WHAT: A pair of triggers collide and fuck up Anders
WHEN: Early Guardian
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Panic attacks, possible talk of trauma in the past, related issues, dark thoughts

He'd run from being locked up seven times, knowing that the seventh was a death sentence, and been willing to go in alone to what seemed likely to be a lethal trap (and was) to try to destroy his phylactery. With both of them, life like that wasn't worth it.

Now both are back. He's held again, in a Circle, his phylactery is being messed with, and on top of that he can't heal in Darktown so he can do even less than he could in Kirkwall seven years ago.

Comments

Vandelin

[justice_is_blond]

When he has someone with him it's easier. Especially if that someone is Nate. But he cannot afford to show the weakness he's feeling, cannot afford to let his shields down, so he can't ask people to stay with him. He bottles it up, clamps down on it, pushes it back until it bubbles up to the point he has to run and hide and break down in private or else start panicking in front of someone.

It's mid-afternoon when his hands are shaking badly enough that he knows he needs to duck out or risk being ill in front of people. He winds up in the room he works on what he hopes is a cure for the Blight, curled up in the corner, hands around his crystal despite how he's not about to make a call. He's not that broken, he tells himself. He doesn't need to burden anyone. And so he sits there in a room lit by a candle, trying to breathe and trying to be invisible.

[misdirection_hex]

It would be neither kind nor fair nor fitting for Vandelin to offer his vote in favor of the quarantine, and then seclude himself in the Diplomacy offices again without a care for those who objected. The least he can do is make himself available for discussion--but Anders' problem with the lockdown clearly goes beyond logistical disagreements, and every mage here, regardless of opinion on the quarantine, knows why.

He goes to offer what help he can in the infirmary, a check-in and a peace offering at the same time, expecting to find Anders in his usual spot. Finding him missing, he asks around and has no luck, learning only that one of the assisting researchers had seen him slip out the door not very long ago.

It's by sheer trial and error and luck that he stumbles on the room his friend is hiding in. The light is dim enough that were Van human, he might just overlook him--but he can see what's happening, and it's a struggle to keep the pang of concern off his face. "Anders?"

[justice_is_blond]

He hears the door open and can't quite process what that means until he hears his name. Someone else is here. A few seconds that feel an eternity later he's recognizing the voice and looking over.

"Van," he says tiredly. "I..." He'd like to say anything to make it seem like he's okay, but there's no sense in trying to hide the obvious. "I'm sorry, I'm not good company at the moment. Is there an emergency?"

Maybe he should have left a note with someone in case of one, but he hadn't had a lot of time to think. "Forgive me if I get ill in front of you, it's... not a good day."

Inessa

[justice_is_blond]

They could fly. He'd lost sight of that in feeling the cage snap around him, and as he's still not sure about it because he doesn't know if people might shoot a griffon in flight Anders is stopped at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to where the griffons roost. It isn't like he can just leave, though, not with so many lives hanging in the balance, so he's caught, stuck, trapped by indecision and fear and longing.

[circleprodigy]

"Anders?" Inessa is on her way to the roost herself, when she spots a familiar figure ahead. It's understandable, he's bonded with Buggie after all, but his just standing there at the foot of the stairs has her brow furrowing in concern. She closes the distance between them, resting a small hand on his arm.

[justice_is_blond]

He starts at the touch, blinking at the woman as he tries to place her face. A few moments later it comes to him and Anders swallows. Inessa. Fellow Warden and mage. A friend. Not a threat. Anders tries for a smile, though it comes out more like a grimace.

"Ah. Hi. I was... standing. Just standing. Not..." Not making a break for it, he wants to say, since she's from Kinloch Hold, but he can't quite manage his own defense right now. "You're... here."

He can totally pull off seeming normal.

Galadriel

[justice_is_blond]

The pressure is too much. He is aware that he has support, that he's not alone this time, but knowing doesn't always override feeling and sometime one morning he breaks, making a desperate way out of the Gallows and onto the rocks of the side. He could swim it. He has the ability, he could vanish in Darktown, even have protection in Darktown... but he'd be abandoning so many.

With a noise of despair he sits down, shaking, only to have it slowly dawn on him that he's not alone. Anders glances over hurriedly, trying to come up with any sort of excuse but it's Galadriel. Maybe he doesn't really need one, especially if she's as out of it as she might be.

"It's so close and so far," he says, barely audible over the waves to human hearing, and probably very audible to hers.

[laurenande]

Galadriel has come to this place for solace, though it is more macabre than anyone of Thedas might understand. To stand at the shore, looking across to the land on the far side, is to stare forward into death. She feels it, in her bones and in her skin, with the fading of the light she exudes and the bruises that come so easily to her now. She is tired and as she stares off at Kirkwall, she sees somewhere very different, somewhere she would be neither welcome nor is ever likely to set foot upon again.

Not ere the ending of the world.

"It is," she agrees, and her voice is less luminous, less melodic, and far too aged for her own comfort. She is beginning to sound her years--or perhaps it is simply the weight of the plague settling over her.

"I would give anything to be there, but I dare not cross, not for fear of what will come of it," she adds and her distraction is severe enough that she could be talking about his distress or her own, it is impossible to say.

"We are needed here, uncomfortable though it may be. We cannot leave."

[justice_is_blond]

She sounds so much older, or maybe he's just tired enough to be reading that into her voice. Anders leans forward and rests his forehead in his hands as she continues to talk. Her words are true and unfortunate. If not for the need of others and Nathaniel, he'd be gone.

"We are caged here. But fleeing the cage could hurt others." His voice is hoarse. "It was easier before I cared so much. Before Justice." He wouldn't be having this discussion if he was still possessed. They would be slipping out to go to Darktown despite the quarantine, and coming back after, heedless of whatever the Inquisition ordered. Greater good over impressions and all that. But he doesn't have the... whatever it requires to be like that anymore. Singularity of focus? Strength? He certainly feels weak.

Cyril

[justice_is_blond]

He's stressed. It's not a surprise, everyone is stressed, and maybe it doesn't stand out so much to people who have a lot to pay attention to. But when Cyril drops by, Anders can't find a smile or come up with words, both of them pretty obvious signs that he's struggling to someone who knows him the way Cyril does.

After a pause in which he tries to remember how to person, Anders manages a nod and a gesture to come in.

[samahl]

Cyril moves closer and tilts his head a bit as he considers Anders. "Is everything all right?" he asks, concern obviously on his face. Whatever else he was going to say seems to be on the sideline as he focuses on Anders' well being.

[justice_is_blond]

He takes a breath. The question helps him gather back up his scattered thoughts, though it takes a couple of moments.

"No," he finally says, quietly. "I'm..." Another breath, and he shakes his head. "The cage is back all over again, no one is listening in Kirkwall again, I'm leashed and how easily it was done." Now that he's started talking, it comes out all in a rush.

"It's not contagious to others, it's not spreading, but we're caged in the Gallows because no one can listen to a spirit healer. How long will we be trapped here? I can't..."

Gareth

[justice_is_blond]

Conventional options are not working. Traditional methods are falling through. It has Anders considering means that are... not viewed positively. While he knows he isn't thinking clearly, he also knows he can't think clearly again until he has freedom again. Until he feels like he can breathe again.

Anders goes down to the morgue to stare at what few bodies are there, wishing they would simply hand over the solution. Instead of chatty corpses, though, he finds Gareth. There are a few mages he knows who would be having a bad time of this, and Gareth is another among them.

"What a fucked up mess," he blurts out. A filter is for when one isn't feeling like they're losing everything they've ever fought and worked for.

[foundmyselfagain]

Gareth is careful when he studies the deceased, now. They're no longer enemies of war, he can't just shove a knife in them and start poking around. In fact, if all the Templars weren't currently blue and half-dead, he'd probably not be bothering with this at all. But research is research, and there's no one who's going to brand him Tranquil, probably.

Still, he doesn't dare actually cut any of the bodies open. Instead, he simply studies them, taking notes, sketches, occasionally trying to move a limb and study the muscles that contract. "Oh, they're not that bad," He replies automatically when Anders comes down, not looking up from his sketch. "I've seen worse. I hate that whole rigor mortis business--When the body stiffens after death. I think it's got to do with the muscles not getting blood or oxygen?"

He turns to Anders, a grim look on his face. "Or are you talking about being stuck here again? Because, yeah. It's fucked up. At least the Templars are all dying, or I'd say we best watch out for red lyrium maniacs with swords." He turns back to his notes, frowning at them. "After all of this, running for three years, fighting a war. It looks like I might die in the Gallows anyway. If there is a Maker, he sure fucking hates me."

[justice_is_blond]

He blinks at the initial response, following after a few seconds and then nodding when Gareth looks over to him.

"He hates a few of us," Anders agrees, voice equally grim. He's not sure that any of the people down here are Rifters or Templars. He'd... not hoped to find any particular dead here, but it would have been nice to see if there was blue going on in their veins too. "Getting freedom, having choices, and then back in a cage, ordered there by an institution that's another extension of the Chantry."

He breathes out heavily, stressed and tense, before finally coming in the rest of the way and starting to check each corpse just in case. "But I'm glad the Templars can't harass us about any means we may take to try to cure this. It's a shame that one of them would be a loss." Otherwise he'd only be focusing on the Rifters, honestly. But Alistair matters.

"What are you checking for?"

Colin

[justice_is_blond]

He's not panicking every moment of the day, thankfully. He's got friends who are suffering too, and while he can't help himself, he can still maybe help them. When Colin comes in on his regular drug-running schedule, he finds a pale Anders paging through his notes and muttering to himself as he makes more notes on another page.

Both cats are in attendance; apparently they've some caretaker instincts after all.

[keenly]

Colin has managed to keep his composure by mentally singing I'm freaking out for nothing to the tune of "The Maid who Lost her Bonnet," which is a deceptively dirty song and that alone raises his spirits. The Gallows is more spacious than the brig he worked aboard, but at times, that makes it worse and not better. He arrives with hands in his pockets and a hesitant stance.

"Anders?"

[justice_is_blond]

He knows that song, and it gets a faint flicker of a smile on his lips as he waves Colin in. Company is a welcome distraction. Plus it's nice to not have to find an excuse to find Colin and check on him.

"Please, come in." There's hesitation written in the young man's frame, so Anders grabs the other chair and brings it close to his desk rather than asking Colin to do so. The effort would be a clear invitation, even more than his words. "Join me."

Twisted Fate

[justice_is_blond]

He can feel another panic attack coming, practically taste the bile in his throat, and so he does what he feels is the responsible thing - he gets out of the Infirmary and out of the way. Less responsible is how far he winds up from the scene, as he ends up in one of the darker storerooms that has a hidden passage to the outside. As he told Nate, he's not running. But Maker does he feel the temptation, and sitting here where he could run is helping him breathe a little.

[wickedchase]

Running is definitely something that Twisted Fate relates to; nothing quite like cutting your losses and knowing when to ditch, but then, Anders is stronger than him in regard to that.

Regardless, here Fate is, nosing around in the storeroom. Maybe because he could track Anders there, maybe not. Either way, he's there now, humming to himself as he jostles around some bottles in the back.

"Rum?" he muses, then lets out a mournful noise. "No, it's Ferelden. Just end me already, Creators. How's a man supposed to get drunk good and proper on drinks that don't belong to him?"

[justice_is_blond]

He hears the movement and stays quiet, expecting the person to leave. Then Fate talks. As an elf there's already a fair chance he spotted Anders, and... if anyone was to understand a compulsion to escape something, it might just be Fate.

"I hear Thranduil is incapacitated, and he strikes me as the sort to have nice wine in his office." He's not really serious, though that might be hard to tell from his shaky voice. "I can't recommend my own supplies as Nate somehow likes Ferelden drink."

They could rob Beleth, he thinks uncharitably. It's her fault they're caged.

Thane

[justice_is_blond]

It's slow.

With anything else, this would be a good sign, but ideas are coming more slowly and there are moments when time just... stretches. Something has to work, but he's between thoughts and attempts. Sleeping draughts work. They're the only thing. Why? Blood is changing. Why?

When the door opens Anders looks up, expression a little blank before he recognizes the man and nods. It takes a moment to find his voice.

"Are you ill or hurt?"

Julius

[justice_is_blond]

He'd thought he couldn't be more stressed, and then he'd gone on the crystals and opened his dumb mouth. Now he's dealing with fear of being called a blood mage on top of everything else and despite his saying he'd be int he infirmary for the forseeable future Anders has to take another break, has to find a place to get back to breathing again.

He returns to the room just off the infirmary, the room he pokes at the Blight in and rests his head between his knees, counting slowly so he can't think about anything except numbers.

[overharrowed]

Julius isn't actively looking for Anders at all, for all that the crystal message had been concerning for a variety of reasons. What he's actually looking for is towels or other cloth, since it occurs to him it might make sense to minimize the sharp corners in his room as long as he remains prone to sudden disorientation or Maker knows what else...


... but that flies out of his head completely as he catches sight of the man in the corner.

"Anders?" He's not sure exactly what's going on, so he approaches cautiously, but the concern is real. What's wrong is not a helpful question; too broad and perhaps too self-evident in some sense. Instead, he asks, "Can you hear me?" Because there's a nonzero chance he could be in a state caused by... whatever it is that's affecting them, and that's the first possibility worth ruling out.

[justice_is_blond]

His looks up with a jerk at the sound of his name, giving Julius an ashamed look.

"I can hear you," Anders says quietly. He's pale and looks tired, leaning back against the wall now that he's sitting upright again. "If you're coming in, can you close the door? I can't..."

Now he looks away, closing his eyes. There's no way he can just get up and act normal, his whole body feels shaky and he still feels sick to his stomach. "I need to be away right now," he finally continues.