faderift | [Closed] A perfect storm

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[Closed] A perfect storm

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.

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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.

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.

Edited 2018-02-03 05:10 (UTC)

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

With great effort she turns her gaze from the distant shore to Anders. She can hear him speak but she cannot hear the song that he exudes; only the ocean fills her ears and for that she is equal parts thankful and terrified.

His head is bent and his distress is palpable. Without that sound, that song grating against her mind, against the very heart of her fears, all she can see is a desperate, frightened man. Once she had turned away men like him, had left them to cruel fates, had ignored them to their own doom on her borders, but she was not in Lorien now and he...he had done her a tremendous kindness once.

"Was it truly?" She asks and reaches a hand out. She no longer glows and, with that dreadful change, she knows that she lacks the will to damage him. Even that has faded. Her hand settles on his shoulder and nothing comes of it.

"Or is it fear that drives you, as it does me?" She asks and takes a deep breath. "I cannot abide the templars, and I can no longer shield myself from their sight, so I linger here. Afraid of what is, what was, and what may come to pass...but I cannot regret lingering. If I did not care, I could not be afraid; I am afraid because I care for what happens here, to me, to all of you, and to Thedas should I die ere my goals are reached."

He barely flinches when her hand lands on his shoulder, expecting pain but he can take physical pain. The lack of burning, though, brings his head back up as he looks at her blearily. Right. Their powers fading. They hadn't asked for this mess either.

"Fear... Fear drove me before. And I could embrace it, before him. I could run, into the night, away, without worrying about leaving anyone behind, or it hurting anyone. It was just me. And now I care, and I'm bound here because of it, because I'm worried about you and the other Rifters, and one of the Templars, and all of my friends and all of my people, the mages."

He exhales. "It's always been fear. But care linked with fear... Care linked with terror." Because that's the true name of what's getting at him. He's not just afraid. He's terrified. "I'm caught in the perfect trap. As are you, it seems."

There's no running for either of them.

"What are your goals here?" That may be a better topic than how he's so scared that if he'd eaten breakfast he'd be throwing it up right now.

She stares at him, as he explains and as a shaky breath leaves him, and she can see a reflection of herself in him. No, perhaps it is her imagination, or a delirium from the fever. She lets her hand linger as he asks and considers how to answer him. It is such a long answer and she almost dismisses it, for all that it will require her to say--so much of it should not be spoken aloud, not here or anywhere...and yet.

What more can be done to her?

"I am certain you have realized that I am an elf," Galadriel says and gives him a moment for a snide reply. None comes and she smiles a bit as she carries on. "I have never been terribly fond of the race of Men, even before I came to Thedas and discovered the atrocities laid upon my people."

She looks back at the water and her brow furrows. Now she is staring at Kirkwall.

"I have never cared for Men because you all move so...so very quickly. In a few decades you may build a city, given a century you may have an empire, and then if I look away all of it will vanish before I return my gaze."

She gestures with her free hand but the motion is minimal, idle almost.

"In a hundred years this city will be crumbling. In two hundred years it will either be a relic, enshrined in stories, or utterly forgotten and overgrown. In five? The language that is spoken here will have faded away and will remain on parchment alone. In a thousand? Your countries will be distant memories; even your gods may be forgotten.

"I cannot keep up, I cannot protect you...especially you, for there is truly no hope of finding what you have lost. Thedas terrifies me because I cannot know what has happened in this place, not truly, but I recognize enough aspects of it to be truly and completely afraid."

He's a little lost. She doesn't like humans because she's... old? That she can't protect him he knows, except he's a little worried she still means protecting him from his own blood and setting him on fire in a slightly more dangerous way than holding his shoulder normally would. And Thedas scares her because she doesn't know its history but sees enough in it she's reminded of... home?

It takes him a few moments to find words, especially because he can't tell if she answered his question or not.

"I'm sorry. I don't understand. The aspects, are they what you were wanting to burn out of me? And how old are you that being old makes you not like humans? That's not anything I've ever heard before. I'm not going to apologize for trying to create a massive change in my world in my lifetime."

She chuckles then, though it is hard to say what has inspired her. She is feverish and only her great focus has held her together this long. She draws a deep breath and lets it out as a sigh.

"I am...how strange, I suppose I am not the eldest in this world...not anymore, but I am very close to it," she says and withdraws her hand. She settles the pair of them on her lap and looks up at the sky. The sight is uninspiring, overcast and grey as it is.

She had told Ellana this once, and had experienced her blatant disbelief. The very idea of such age in a world without the Eldar is jarring. Ellana had been more than willing to accept it...but she did not expect the same reception here. Anders did not have that rapport with her; up until quite recently they had bordered on adversarial. She could not simply tell him, he would think it a lie...or perhaps a hallucination...and how amusing that would be.

"I have witnessed more dawns than the forests that line the hills," she says instead. "I have seen the very height of the glories of the elves and watched as they diminish like cliffs being worn away by the tide. I have watched as empires of men rose and fell and rose again...and in all my time the only constant, the only thing that remains unchanged, is that men always forget.

"Change your world as you like, Anders. I cannot find purchase in this struggle your people have for I am no mage. The name is so ill fitted in my mind that I would sooner think myself a bird. It is a human word, one of so very many....

And here is where she hesitates, visibly and openly, but she forces herself to speak it.

"The last battle I shared with Men was one of the most hideous ever waged. A million men and elves and orcs perished upon my very doorstep; they fought and died and poisoned the earth with their bodies. Three thousand years and still it has not recovered...and the reason they fought was forgotten, as were they, as they would remain had their land not been named by the Eldar."

She is getting side tracked, the dead marsh is not the point.

"They fought a creature there, a shade of the ancient world, who cast his will throughout great Men, and Elves, and Dwarves. He sought dominion and nearly achieved it. They died to defeat him...and they destroyed him...but they also failed their task and he survived. Unfortunately, their failure was forgotten."

She looks at him again.

"That creature, Sauron, was a foot soldier in a greater army. His rank was forgotten long before men knew his name and he served a darker shadow, one whose arts forever poisoned the foundations of earth. His very name became legend, then myth...but I did not forget.

"The song that lives in you is the song that he sang, the song of Morgoth. It is the original notes of discord, the heart of the shadow. I am the only one who remembers...and so I cannot die until I wipe it from this world. It cannot be forgotten...I will find a way and when I do...I too will be forgotten."

Over three thousand years old. He's not going to call it impossible, he's heard too many things about other worlds to say as much, but it's not something he can easily wrap his head around. Nor is the rest. It almost sounds like she wants to die but cannot until Sauron is dead and she can't hear Morgoth's song anywhere.

There'd been a long time when he'd wanted to die too, after doing just a little more for his people. It's an exhausting parallel, no matter how different their ages.

"The struggle is for freedom, for equality," he finally says after he's run through what she's said a few times. This is the easiest part of it. "For the mages, elves and men and qunari alike, to not be caged in places like this again. To not be leashed again. To live as people. Our lives may seem brief, but we want them to be ours."

Not all of his people want that. But neither of them has the energy to delve into fine details tonight, and he's rather sure she doesn't care about them anyway.

"I was ready to fight a little more for it and then die for who I was, when you met me. That's why I joined the Inquisition. One more push, one more helping hand, and then... an end. And then Nathaniel interceded and changed everything. Nathaniel, who has been Blighted for nearly as long as me, who saved my life and gave it back to me."

He takes a breath. "I want that discord gone, badly, Galadriel. But I didn't have a choice in winding up with it, and neither did he, and neither of us deserve to be burned off the face of Thedas for being made Grey Wardens. I seek to cure it. I've said as much before. What I haven't said is that in four years either I'll have cured it... or we'll both be dead. If we're not dead before then. So in four years, at most, a little less of that sound will be here, even though I doubt this Morgoth ever touched our world."

"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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

Inessa nods, patiently giving him a moment to collect himself. She doesn't really expect normal, though. Normal is for people who don't have their particular set of circumstances, and his past.

"I am. I thought I would visit Potato, while I was feeling up to it." She pauses, then shakes her head. "You don't need to hide it from me, Anders. I know it must strain you to remain here. Perhaps it's unwise to recommend this, but...the griffons need exercise, anyway. We wouldn't be breaking any regulations by taking Potato and Buggie out for a quick loop around."

If the griffons never touch the ground outside, it can't be truly breaking quarantine, right? Were it Inessa alone, she would stop to ask a division head first, but she knows that look. Anders needs this, and perhaps so does she.

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.

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.

For a brief moment tears threaten to spill and then he's taking a breath, looking away and regathering himself. He loathes showing weakness, but she knows what's going on here. It's not a new thing.

"A loop wouldn't be wrong," he says as he looks back, sounding like he's trying to convince both of them. It's not abandoning Nate or what he needs to do here. Anders swallows hard and gets himself back under control the rest of the way. "Buggie would appreciate it, too. Please. Let's fly?"

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.

She waits without complaint, giving Anders all the time he needs to collect himself. When he meets her gaze again, she gives a small smile of encouragement as she gives that arm a light squeeze.

"Absolutely. They're waiting for us; shall we?" Those stairs aren't going to climb themselves, after all.

He reaches over to pat the hand that's squeezing his arm, nodding, before heading up the stairs. Anders' breathing is ragged by the time they get up to the top, but it's not from exertion. It's from keeping his steps even and preventing them from turning into a mad dash, the tension of which shows in his body. There had been no way to prepare for either feeling of being caged and leashed again.

Buggie seems nearly as glad to see Anders as he is to see her; he hastily opens her stall and she's quickly bumping into him, nudging him, searching for the bag of meat jerky he always brings up. Some of the tension leaves his body then, and he fishes around for any spare snacks he has. This hadn't been a planned trip.

"I'll make it up to you later, girl," he says quietly before he parts and gets her harness.

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[Closed] A perfect storm

Vandelin

Inessa

Galadriel

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Cyril

Gareth

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Colin

Twisted Fate

Thane

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Julius

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