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WHO: Warden!Felix and OPEN. (Starters for Kaiden, Bruce, Dorian, Ellana, and Adele. If you want your own starter just ask!)
WHAT: Felix returns after his Joining and looks much better. Also he's hungry. (The Kaidan thread is during training, set before they return to Skyhold.)
WHEN: About a week or two after Felix's Joining.
WHERE: His training took place at the remains of Haven, the rest is at Skyhold.
NOTES: None yet!

Less than a month ago, Felix had been a dead man. Now, he's at least upright. Things aren't prefect. He still has the taint and he has the ever present fact of the False Calling to contend with, but he's not wasting away anymore.

People who had seen him before will know that he's doing better. His cheeks are fuller and he isn't stumbling. He's able to move without aid. Despite the less than perfect circumstances, he thinks it's wonderful. If it weren't for the fact that he was trying to put on a good face as the newest Warden, he might have tried to dance around like an idiot.

He's still acting a bit like an idiot, but rather than dancing he's trying to get food from the kitchens. The servants might be a little annoyed that he keeps pestering them, but at least he knows how to apologize and thank them. He pesters politely which is likely a nice change.

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Being back at Haven was strange. He could remember the night of the dragon attack. They had followed an injured man through the snow storm to find the pilgrim's path and had waited to see if there were any sign of the Herald before giving up and moving to Skyhold. At the time, he had been far more concerned with making sure his father made it out of the dungeon - all while his father was concerned with him being able to walk at all - to really pay attention to the extent of the damage done to the village. There was no way to escape the sight of that damage once he had arrived with the Wardens.

It was a particular thing to look at the wake of so much destruction and know that, yet again, Tevinter was at the heart of the blame for it. He wasn't sure any of the Wardens with him could really understand that, though. There were only two people in the South that he knew of who really understood it, and his father might have been far too gone to care anymore. He'd have to talk to Dorian about it when he returned to the castle.

As he thought about that, a small smile came to his lips. Just the fact that he could return at all was such a joy that he could deal with the constant tug at his mind and facing monsters underground. Which was where he and Kaidan were now.

There were tunnels under Haven that the darkspawn had taken a liking to. It had turned out to be slightly lucky for him, as that was where they had gotten the blood for his Joining. It also gave him time to figure out his new senses and face the creatures again. It was a couple of days into his training and he had already dealt with how he felt seeing the twisted faces of the monsters again. That had been a bad night, after the first time, as he could remember the way it had felt to be attacked by them, the way it had looked when they have killed his mother. But he managed, mostly, because he was in pretty good company.

"You know," he started. The silence as they walked had been getting to him, making the noise in his head too loud. Instead of dwelling on it, he was going to fill the air with nonsense talk. "For some reason I thought the darkspawn in Tevinter would look slightly different than the darkspawn down here. That's silly, isn't it?"

Kaidan gave a low chuckle in response. He didn't mind the chatter. He'd learned to live with the song, but for someone new to it - well, chattering helped. "It could be worse, I always thought that up in the Anderfels, they were twice the size of any other Darkspawn. It turned out that no, they're all the same, no matter how close to Weisshaupt you are." A little bit of hero worship from young Kaidan. "I suppose it depends on what broodmothers are close by."

He was impressed at Felix's attitude. He'd trained a lot of young Wardens, where they wanted to flex their muscles as it were, posing in the local taverns, and not easily taking on board what it meant to be a Warden, but Felix seemed to want to throw himself into it. He would need a lot of work with his fighting technique, but his quick mind would be a real asset to the Wardens. Maker knows they had to rebuild after what Clarel was doing to them. How he'd initially felt about Darkspawn was understandable, but he seemed to want to move past it. Kaidan hadn't drawn a huge amount of attention to it, letting Felix work past it on his own. This was something he couldn't help with, no matter how much he wanted to.

"The fact they're so similar throughout Thedas probably says more about dwarves than it does about them," he said thoughtfully as they picked a path in the tunnels. "The access they have to the Deep Roads enables them to spread without needing much variation. They say the Deep Roads are under all of Thedas, but far too many assume that means 'all of Thedas except where I'm standing.'"

Kaidan chuckled. At least Felix knew more about the Deep Roads than most average people. Another proof that Alistair and Sabriel were right to push this. "Well, I haven't travelled the whole of the Deep Roads, but yes, there are entrances all over Thedas. The dwarves guard what they can, but a lot of them are simply blocked up because it is all we can do." At least with them no longer in a Blight, the Darkspawn are spending most of their time seeking Old Gods rather than attacking on the surface.

"That's amazing," Felix said thoughtfully. "Often I feel like many in Tevinter underestimate that. They like to believe that only the elves and Tevinter spanned all of Thedas, and take pride in the fact that we destroyed our competition. Meanwhile, the dwarves were right under our feet the whole time."

"To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if it was deliberate," he pointed out with a smile. "What better way to thumb your nose at so-called superior races than to do something like that right under their noses?" It would be so typical of dwarves.

"Still, you will become acquainted with the Deep Roads soon enough." It was too early to tell Felix of his ultimate fate, but there would be trips there, he had no doubt.

The thought was a little harrowing, honestly, because he's only heard terrible things about the Deep Roads. Still, he wanted to be of use, and if that helped him be so he would face it head on.

"How often do you go down there?" he asks of Kaidan, wondering what's typical for Wardens.

"We try not to go often, if we can help it. There are missions that will draw us down there, and we do what we can to support the Legion of the Dead, the caste of dwarves that have dedicated their lives to fighting Darkspawn."

But... he had to know. "The song you hear, that Calling? In the end, every Warden hears it. Normally when we do, we know it is... near the end. Wardens go down into the Deep Roads, and fight beside the Legion for a year until it grows to be too much. We then... seek out the Darkspawn for one last glorious fight. That knowledge is our deepest secret."

He sighed. "I am sorry. But it shouldn't happen for around thirty years. I've been a Warden for fifteen years, and apart from this false one that Corypheus appears to be sending, I have had no sign of it." At the end of the day, Felix could easily have thirty more years of life, compared to the hours or days he had before undertaking the Joining.

Felix raised his brow at this news and remembered not to share it with anyone. Then he chuckled a bit. "Did you just apologize to me for giving me thirty years?" he asked. He knew this was a terrible and dark secret and he would treat it with the respect it deserved once he was over the delight he felt at being alive.

"Oh, we're sorry Felix instead of thirty seconds you have thirty years." He grinned a bit, showing off a bit at how silly that sounded. The teasing wasn't meant at Kaidan's expense though, more just at the absurdity of his situation. "I'd say that's a trade up, and dying in the heat of battle helping to help make up for the sins of my forefathers sounds much better than wasting away in a puddle of my own sick."

Kaidan looked at Felix, and after a moment gave a little bit of a laugh. "I suppose when you put it like that, it is a little absurd, isn't it?" he said, still laughing. "Well I'm glad it was the right decision for you." Even though it had been touch and go as to whether they would even offer it. It was a hard choice.

"I am very grateful that you put your faith in me," he said. "I know at the time everyone was acting like you were saving me, but it was more than that. You were risking a lot on me. What if I turn out to be complete rubbish at fighting darkspawn? Then you've wasted time and energy to save a weak mage with questionable family ties." He pointed this out just to show that he did understand the weight of what had happened. "I'll do my best not to make that true."

Kaidan stopped walking, and turned to look at Felix. "Everyone has some kind of worth, no matter what they can and can't do. We will often find that the poorest fighters make the best administrators, something hardly any of us want to do," he said with a smile. "I'm not saying you will be rubbish at fighting darkspawn, but we Wardens don't waste any resource. There will always be a role for you. We are believers in second chances."

He snorted. "Besides, you've got nothing to worry about with being a weak mage. That's what I am."

Felix was comforted by that more than he could say. It meant something to feel like he belonged. "I don't suppose we have to do any accounting?" he suggested, though mostly as a joke. He was good with numbers but it still seemed weird to think of the Wardens in those terms.

"You seem to manage. I've seen you cast a few spells." The fire one to destroy the rest of the blood after his Joining, for instance.

Kaidan chuckled. "They might as Weisshaupt. Certainly the archivists up there could definitely use you if you ever looked for something out of the field."

He shook his head. "And I pay for it afterwards. You didn't see, but I had a migraine almost straight after - until your friend cured it." It was casually said - he didn't draw a huge amount of attention to it, as it was a weakness. But Felix had to know that he wasn't the only one with troubles.

He frowns a bit at the idea. "Is there anything you can do the treat the headaches out on the field if you don't have a healer around? A potion perhaps?"

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