faderift | [Closed] This isn't even my final form

"Skyhold?" But his attention is wandering to-

Ah. That. She rolls back her sleeves despite the cold and turns them about to satisfy him. The thin line on her thumb- it didn't call for much, this ritual- newly healed would be difficult to see in the dim light but it is not something she is going to deny. "The one blood ritual the Circles approved of, or at least insisted upon. Or rather an attempt at it."

Something new based on something old. "I haven't gotten it quite right just yet. Takes too much time for too little results. If I had more space and more information perhaps I could have the right of it."

He blinks at her as he follows the words. They make sense on their own, but for several moments they make none together. Then it clicks, and he steps backward in surprise and denial.

"Phylacteries? You're in here trying to make phylacteries? Why?" How could she possibly think this is a good idea? They'd spoken so much about fear, he thought she was on board with not wanting to go back, and she's trying to copy the way they tracked and chased down mages? His heart pounds, and he can feel Justice's anger rising. There has to be a reason, there has to, but how can there be?

"How many Inquisition forces have gone missing? Your friend- had you been able to know where he was on a map rather than having to trail after him, would you not have found him sooner? Whether or not it will work for those that aren't mages is still in question as I've only managed the one-" She reaches into her robes and pulled out a pendant made of clear glass, shaped like a teardrop and hollow save where her blood sits. "Using it for the sake of locating anyone is vague but I have managed to work it so you can tell if I am alive or not."

Frustrated with what little progress she's made- but proud that she's made any at all? She can't help the faint smug edge to her smile. "It is far from perfect. I won't be presenting the research to anyone for at least a year with all the polishing yet required."

Maker. She's wearing it. She's made a phylactery of her own and she's wearing it, and he stares in horror.

"And how many mages would be alive if not for phylacteries used to chase them down? How many would be free rather than broken? How many lives would be better? I can't... I was caught, caught so many times, because of them." She knows about the physical scars he carries, has to know about others' stories, and yet she's proud of what she's finding out. "We found Zevran in time. I've found so many in time."

Not Hawke's mother, though, and if anyone other than Templars would buy these up it would be nobles fearing for their own safety like Leandra. That doesn't change how afraid he is. He's making a move to possibly end his part in the fight for mages, and one of the mages he trusts most is endangering their people.

"It isn't that- it is and is not that. Phylacteries in Circles- blood is taken from children that do not understand what the purpose is, what it means, or what it costs them. This is intended to be voluntary should I ever get it right. It functions as it should but- the time it took to craft it, the resources involved? It is inefficient. Insufficient for the Inquisition's needs should they choose to have more made for those that want them." It is so terribly easy to divorce herself from his fears- she's never had them. She doesn't have them, with the phylacteries of the White Spire destroyed.

But sitting here and staring into his face...perhaps she's spent more time focusing on whether or not she could- and less on whether or not she should.

"If it is used for more than mages...Context and practice are ugly things in this." Her lips twist and she turns the glass in her fingers. Is it so wrong to want that precaution? "I had only thought to make something that would make it more difficult to lose members of the Inquisition. I considered little else."

"All it... All it takes is a few Loyalists learning." Fear is exhausting and his voice is full of tired dread. "The Inquisition can of course say it's for safety, but if someone, if..."

Anders takes a breath, sinking uninvited into one of the chairs in the tent. "I just want us to be free. It's all I've ever wanted. But they take our blood and our choices and our freedom and sometimes so much more. I've done what you've done. Thought to help, without thinking about everything else." And now he's possessed. It means he can't blame her for not thinking, but it doesn't help with how wearying all of this is.

It does, however, help with eliminating the anger Justice had been stirring up. Mages arne't perfect. They're human and fallible, and she'd never do this to harm them. It's research. Learning.

"I dream of a day fifty, a hundred years in the future, when there's no fear aimed at mages. I won't see it, but I worry sometimes that none of us will."

"I'm not about to give this to Vivienne." She likes the woman. Disagrees with her on more fronts than she cares to count in regards to the future for mages, but likes her. This is not something she would trust her with if only for her adherence to the Circle's mentality. Though it does beg the question who she would trust with this. No one else knows. Not Dorian, not Benevenuta, not her students. Certainly not Pel or Sina.

When it came down to it she can't truly think who she'd wish to give this thing to- she hadn't thought that far in the making. Only thought of the potential for the tool, the lives it might save.

Scrying spells might be better. Developing one that worked without blood, without this ritual, the vial and all it means. She tucks the pendant back in her shirt and stacks the notes, pockets the vial no the table. "...These are written in shorthand. No one else here knows how to decipher it."

Uncertain as to how much of a reassurance it is- she sets the research aside. Turns to him with apology in her eyes if not on her lips. "I will not make another. Not like this. Not- until we know what is to come of us, the mages. Until I can be certain it will not be used against us."

"I know you wouldn't," he says quietly to her statement about Vivienne. He has that much faith in Adelaide, but no faith in whose hands this might also wind up in. There are too many who still believe that everyone is safer if mages are caged. They fail to see that it's only a temporary safety, and fails the mages entirely. If his uprising fails, there will be others.

Anders watches her tuck things away and nods, feeling some of the stress fade. Not all, though. There's still the matter of why he came over, which he doesn't know how to address.

"Thank you. And I'm... I'm sorry for my anger. I've seen things go so wrong but that wasn't fair to you. You've done nothing to earn my fear. Only my respect... and my apologies."

"I hadn't considered the consequences- what it might mean to actually succeed. It was a puzzle." A private, harmless puzzle. Something to pick at between other projects, something she twisted about in her spare time to keep her mind busy, to work herself into exhaustion. It's easy to lose sight of what the ramifications of such a puzzle being solved when you don't think it ever truly will.

She still has the one- she'll not make another.

"For what? You have done nothing more than voice a completely valid concern." One she'd needed to hear.

He won't consider taking the easy route for a second. She deserves far better than that.

"For not being fully honest with you from the start. For putting the weight of Justice upon your shoulders as well. For judging you for taking up a puzzle when I've not just become an abomination, but a killer as well."

This time the point of no return is a relief. He can't take back any of those words and has to continue. He can't lie to her anymore.

"I'm going to Skyhold to turn myself in, Adelaide, but you deserve to have the whole of it from my lips before I surrender and the rumors spread. My name..." Actually, he should be completely clear. No mostly-truths. "I don't know my name. But what I've been known as for the longest... It's not Detlef, Adelaide. It's Anders."

I have lied to you. By deliberate omission, since we first met.

She'd been reaching for him to steady him. To squeeze his shoulder, to offer some comfort for the distress she'd caused with her research- but those words have her locking up entirely. Lies. She doesn't weather them well, she does not abide them, and for the second time in this month she is faced with them from someone she's come to care for and trust.

Warm as the tent had been in the previous moment it goes cold despite the brazier; though the chill comes not from the air beyond but Adelaide herself.

Turning himself in. A killer as well-

One name. One word and the bottom is ripped out from under her world.

"Anders?" The mage that-

The apostate at Kirkwall. The one that lit the fires that led among so many other things to the ruin at The White Spire.

He already knows this is going to hurt her before the cold, but that's complete confirmation. Everyone he cares about he hurts. Would it truly be so bad if he was executed, considering? At least then he couldn't wound more people.

"Anders," he quietly confirms. "There's..." There are things he can say about Kirkwall, about the situation, but none of it makes up for deceiving her. For getting close and letting her get closer. For the kiss at the party.

"I'm sorry, Adelaide. That doesn't even begin to make up for it, but I am. I shouldn't have gotten close, I shouldn't have... None of it." He'd been so starved for kindness and caring, and now someone who had given it is paying.

"You-" Her hand is still hovering in the space between them, trembling- and this cannot-

This is not-

A joke. A horrible joke. Rationalizations crackle through her mind faster than she can discount them, attempting to reason with this face, this person she now must reconcile with the monster that attacked Kirkwall's chantry. Every mage knew of him in the Spire. A warning, a lesson, the dangers of the world without. "Do you have any idea what you have done?"

One explosion, hundreds of lives. Thousands in the rebellion, in the war. The fear of something similar turned the incident at the Spire vicious quickly. For a horrible, visceral moment her composure snaps, her face crumpling as her arms curl about her ribs as though that will sill the roiling emotions threatening to overcome her.

Palm pressed to her mouth to- what? Prevent her from saying something rash? Keep her from retching at the vivid memory of the Spire's halls, the smell of ash and blood and death? Breath fogging through her fingers in a strangled noise- a sob, a laugh- a wounded something-

It passes. She swallows it back, swallows it all down, squeezes her eyes shut and tries to breathe. Freezes it and tucks it under her ribs withe very other hurt and frustration. The tent warms, her hands fall back to her sides, her face smooths over in a cold, distant mask. "You are turning yourself in- to who? The Advisors of the Inquisition?"

The ice isn't gone. It's simply internalized, and the pain from that is exactly what he deserves, especially after what he's just seen and what all she's told him. She's distant, like a stranger. It's better this way, he reminds himself. She'll be safer.

In return, he tries to gather himself, but all he really manages is to sound and look exhausted.

"I'm a Grey Warden. I'm turning myself in to them. I can't... I cannot turn myself in to an organization that's helmed by someone who tried to annul my Circle, and when he failed, went to be the right hand--"

Anders cuts himself off just as he starts to gather steam. No. His issues are his own, and none of them will be added to the burden she's already carrying.

"The Wardens," he repeats.

"You are a danger to the Inquisition." There's no heat to it. No condemnation, no disdain, no scorn. It is as clipped and flat as her voice has ever been, entirely devoid of warmth. "Hiding with the Wardens does not change that."

She should have reported him when he came to her as an abomination. She should have known him for the danger he was and taken him to the Advisors immediately as the rest of the Council agreed. Undermining herself, undermining them? Being a known associate of his? Protecting him? The reality of this sinks into her bones and crystallizes there like so much ice.

The look in his eyes is dead. He is a danger. She doesn't even know the half of it. A part of him simply wants to let her say whatever she wants, but the anger that he'd felt earlier from Justice won't let that happen. Who is she to judge him? A former friend, he wants to answer, but he can feel that it's not enough for the spirit.

"There will be no hiding." There's a hollowness in his voice, and it's not entirely due to Anders' weariness. "It is the Wardens we have abandoned, and they will be fair. They will be just." He exhales, and the extra depth is gone. "If I wanted to hide, Adelaide, I'd not be here. I'd not be telling you this. I'd already be gone, and my heading would not be what it is."

He looks at her a moment later before standing. There are so many self-indulgent things he could say and he won't. She's right to hate him. It hurts. A lot. But she's right.

"Goodbye, Councilor Leblanc. Should you think of me in the future..." Anders trails off. There's nothing to say. "Don't. Spare yourself that."

"Then you damn them as well." Everyone they've touched, everyone they have reached out to, everyone that has knowing or unknowingly harbored them- Adelaide's lips press thin as she watches him, them, leave.

It was easier, she imagines, to write this strange, mad apostate off as a frothing lunatic, as a monster before she'd had to meet him. Before he became a person to her- someone with hopes, someone with a sense of humor.

Someone that dances.

"Go." What else is there to say? What else is there to think but to damn herself for not knowing? For not seeing this sooner, for not suspecting?

Anders nods. This is his life. This is the mess he's made. The only person he can blame for any of this is himself, and he can't even be surprised at the lonely ache he feels at the last word. It's far too familiar.

Without saying anything else he leaves, headed to grab his pack and find his horse and wait. He is damned. He can only hope that he takes no one else with him.

[Closed] This isn't even my final form

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