( closed ) one track mind, one track heart

[fightingale]

WHO: Advisers (Cassandra, Cullen, Josephine, Leliana), some Grey Wardens (Herc, Bethany, Nathaniel) and that other Grey Warden problem child (Anders); closed
WHAT: Leliana informs the Advisers she discovered Anders, the Wardens call dibs, everyone is grumpy and stressed.
WHEN: almost immediately following this with some timeywimey in the middle, before Cassandra and Leliana's epic disagreement
WHERE: War Room? War Room.
NOTES: AHHHHH
Not sure about warnings so I'll edit here as necessary, however! If a warning-worthy thing pops up in a tag, pls warn in the subject line!

More ooc notes, I think I got this all correct from our discussion but prod me if I got this wrong:

Leliana's initial starter - open to all the Advisers, Anders reveal, discuss
Grey Warden starters - individual starters for Herc, Bethany and Nate, advisers feel free to thread individually as you see fit or as your whims/character stuff guides you, no need to tag all wardens unless you are keen to :]b

and then freestyle discussion threads, basically :Db

And finally:


How everyone is going to feel after this, probably

Comments

Nathaniel Howe | Open for Interrogation

[pinprick]

He knew this was coming. Hoped it was coming. The moment he agreed to protect Anders, he agreed to be prodded at by authority figures and loathed by angry people. But, you know, that's been his life for the last ten years anyway. It might as well be for two associates instead of just the one. He looks politely resigned, and feels oddly like he's about to be lectured by his father.

[fightingale]

"Warden Howe."

Leliana has the distinct pleasure of being able to interview the Wardens one on one, and the first she would speak with is the son of Rendon Howe, whose body and soldiers she feathered with arrows. It had been a horrific day, and he had been a horrific man. She makes no mention of her involvement in his father's death, nor his father at all. Those are crimes long past, and it is an entirely different problem that she would see addressed.

"Shall we spare each other the usual games of interrogation?"

[pinprick]

"I would appreciate it." Nathaniel inclines his head politely. "I'm here of my own free will, specifically to answer your questions. Consider me fully at your disposal."

No purpose in trying to drag things out of him when he offers them freely.

[fightingale]

"Good." That is lovely to hear. Her voice remains even, for all the anger pulsing in her veins.

Part of her feels like her hands are tied, as though a woman of the Chantry and the Maker, as though one who is not a mage can have no empathy and outrage on behalf of mages. Anders complains that all mages are made victims, and he is right. But so too is he right that not all mages are murderers, and the simple fact of who she is does not mean she shares or even tolerates those damaging and dangerous inclinations.

Her anger and her hurt has no place here. She has no right to it, when she is not the wronged party, but that does little to stay the hurt, especially in the wake of Justinia's death.

"I know you are a comparatively new arrival at Skyhold," she starts, calmly. "What knowledge do you have of Anders, his associates and activities since you arrived here? Or before."

A broad start, but such will allow her to find other avenues to explore.

[pinprick]

"Before I arrived, I hadn't seen him since the night he destroyed the Chantry. That night, I was in Kirkwall with my sister. I saw her to the docks and ran toward the chaos to see what I could do. At that point, Meredith was a giant lyrium statue trying to kill everyone, so I helped. Before that, I saw him briefly in the Deep Roads. Before that, it was 9:31, and we were brothers-in-arms.

"Since I arrived, I met Anders on my first day here. We've been roommates. I was the one who convinced him to turn himself in. The associates I know of are all people who knew him before he came here, chiefly Wardens, and his activities have been healing the sick and wounded and adopting a small, hyperactive kitten that climbs on my face when I'm trying to sleep.

"The associates I've been aware of are Bethany Hawke, Kaisa Daesun...Maker, I don't know. Any number of his fellows from Kirkwall, I'd imagine. Velanna knows him, but she's only just arrived. Give me a piece of paper and I'll write down the people I can think of."

[fightingale]

She listens, patient, and as he speaks slides a piece of parchment towards him, a quill, some ink.

"Bethany Hawke and Kaisa Daesun are both Grey Wardens," she considers, aloud, gaze narrowing. "I was under the impression from Warden Hansen that the Grey Wardens were not collaborating to keep Anders' identity hidden. Indeed, any indication that the Wardens as a group concealed him from the Inquisition would seriously jeopardise any standing you have to defend his life."

And part of her wishes, wishes they would make that blunder, because she would so love to see him executed, even if the thought of allowing such a man to become a martyr, to be celebrated, sickens her. He should have to live and suffer through each day with the knowledge of what he has done. He should feel that weight upon him.

"I assume those others that travelled with the Champion are well aware." It seems the only sensible deduction.

[pinprick]

"The Wardens as a group did not. As I said, I urged him to come forward, and he has. Bethany, Kaisa and I arrived only recently."

Nathaniel twitches a smile at her.

"Even so, Anders' assumed identity was not assumed so he could escape the law. To the contrary, he assumed it because he was afraid people would circumvent the law to achieve a personal vendetta. I told him to give the Inquisition the chance to be better than that."

He begins to write names. Completely cooperative.

[fightingale]

That much she is aware of, that they are new arrivals. She spoke with Bethany soon after she first arrived, and nods stiffly.

Not entirely despite herself, she huffs out a bitter breath of laughter. "Your friend seems very fond of painting everyone else as the villain. He and mages are not alone in their suffering, nor in their hatred of it."

Very quietly spoken, and she waits, until he has had a few moments to write names before she continues. Softly, though not without-- heat, a low burning fire that she is never truly free of, she continues. "Do you believe what he did was right?"

[pinprick]

"No." Nathaniel was there that night, and saw the madness. Experienced the fear when the explosion first happened. He shakes his head. "Right and wrong don't enter into it, when it comes to Anders. You have to think of it a whole different way. From boyhood, he was taught death. Mages killed or made Tranquil at the slightest provocation. Death was the cure for being a mage. I witnessed it. The templars who persecuted him...they wanted any excuse to kill him. He hadn't been worse than an annoyance they had to keep chasing after, and they wanted him dead. I...missed telling you something, because I didn't witness it. Bethany Hawke did, apparently. In Kirkwall, they set a trap for Anders by finding a mage he once loved and making him Tranquil. So that when he broke in to save him, he found him like that. There's no reason for that except to hurt him. Pain and death. He was schooled in it. It must have seemed cheap, if it was flaunted in his face every turn. Pretty soon, I suppose he started treating it like a language. To get through to people who speak nothing but death to you, you speak death back to them. It's not right, but it's the world as it was taught to him.

"Imagine if someone spoke love to him, just once. That might've given us a different outcome."

[fightingale]

To get through to people who speak nothing but death to you, you speak death back to them. It's not right, but it's the world as it was taught to him.

It strikes a cord in her, too familiar, too painful. Her experience was nothing to that of mages, this she knows, but the Left Hand does not deal in love and affection. The Left Hands is a knife wrapped up in shadows, as surely as the Right is a valiant sword, held up in the name of what is right. She manipulates, she collects secrets, and she kills as needs must. Always for a good cause, always for the right reason, but it is never right. Justinia's orders fulfilled, but Leliana's heart that must bear up under the weight of what those orders truly mean, their actual cost.

She, at least, had love spoken to her. She had known the Maker's kindness and His heart.

"Even those who know love can turn to the darkness," she says, carefully. "I had thought that he found solace in the friendships forged with the Champion and their band. Not without flaw, certainly, but my information gave me reason to believe that there was love in those bonds."

It is not a dismissal, more just a question. "How much love must a person be given before they realise that murder is not right?"

A question as much for herself as for Anders, though Nathaniel Howe need not know such.

[pinprick]

"I...don't think they could've known him well enough to love him. His friends in Kirkwall."

Nathaniel has no idea of Leliana's struggle. He knows his own. He knows how narrowly he escaped a darker path. But...proper time.

"They only knew him while he was possessed by Justice. I knew them both, separately. Justice..."

His teeth click together. No. He doesn't have to be diplomatic about Justice when Anders isn't around.

"Justice wasn't good. Anders was well on his way to being good, till he left the Wardens, but Justice never was. Justice only had the one concern, to the exclusion of all other virtues. The day I saw Anders in the Deep Roads, he was thin and pale, exhausted, he'd neglected his own appearance, things that were against his nature as I knew him. And to hear him talk now...Justice demands sacrifices of him that contradict his own self. Justice made him come here in the first place. Justice is willing to sacrifice Anders for his own sense of self-righteousness. This single-mindedness is a quality of Justice, not of Anders. When they were separate, I once heard Anders denounce the idea of the Circle separating from the Chantry. He had limits. Justice used to harass him about his apathy, not wanting to fight for mage freedom. He used to harass me the same way about...foolish things. And Anders, lacking his own direction...he was ripe for it. Nobody in Kirkwall could've seen the signs, or told the difference between a happy Anders and an unhappy Anders, not in the way he dressed or spoke or carried himself.

"But if you see him the way he was by his own nature, happy and free to choose, and then see him the way he is now..."

Nathaniel opens a hand, letting the rest of that sentence complete itself in her mind.

[fightingale]

There are so many that would strike against the Nightingale, in her past and her present, those who denounce the Inquisition and the Divine's Peace and so much, but they cannot reach her heart.

Nathaniel Howe deals in words that cut her to the quick, and does not even know it. At least she is terribly good at appearing as though she has everything in hand and in control. He speaks of people not knowing another well enough to love them, of happiness in your own nature and in freedom, and there is part of her that feels as though a tenuous, desperate grip is being slowly sabotaged, as though she is hanging to a cliff's edge and he is gradually pressing down on her knuckles with his weight.

Her jaw clenches for a moment as she considers his words. I knew a women possessed by a spirit, once. The most noble and kind woman I have ever met. I did not know her before she and the spirit of Faith were bound together. She considers saying it, and sharply cuts the thought short. It is too close and too personal a thing to unveil in circumstances such as these, and Wynne could never be compared to Anders, or what Justice had made Anders become, if what Nathaniel says is true.

"Any one quality left unchecked can be a danger," she agrees, cautiously. What is his game? What is his motivation in speaking thus? "If what you say is true, then what Justice has done to Anders is a tragedy. To be robbed of freedom of will, even, when freedom was all he pursued is horrific, but remains that Anders and Justice are bound together. No matter who he was before, he and Justice are still one."

She has seen abomination restored to their old selves, but Wynne died releasing Faith.

[pinprick]

There is a long, breathless pause. Nathaniel teeters on a fence, stares down at the side he's considering, and looks back. This is the perfect opportunity. Everything could be made or destroyed by this moment. But even though he is Fereldan, Nathaniel is versed in the Game. His own mother played it against him when he was a child, and he knows what it looks like when an opportunity is ripe. She is sympathetic. She has laid down a single condition. Now is the time.

"That," he says, quietly, as if Justice could be listening now, "does not have to continue to be true."

He glances up at Leliana to gauge her reaction.

[fightingale]

She has seen it done before, had watched when Connor was freed, yet Leliana holds her tongue, keeps her expression carefully schooled. She will not be played for a fool, be manipulated, and she will not risk this Inquisition any more than it has already been rocked.

"Explain," she says, calm and quiet - keeping her cards to herself, for the time being.

He has not earned her trust, nor her good will, and neither has Anders. Feeling for him is not the same as forgiveness. Feeling for him is not the same as no longer wanting to see him suffer. But Nathaniel has... said words that bear consideration, even if she will interrogate them from every side, consider every motivation and try to scrutinise them.

[pinprick]

Nathaniel holds her gaze and lays two words at her feet.

"Connor. Guerrin."

There. He has sealed Anders' fate. There's no turning back now. Maybe one day, Anders will forgive him. Maybe one day, Nathaniel will forgive himself.

[fightingale]

Leaning forward, Leliana studies Nathaniel carefully. It seems a risky card to play. There are so many ways it could go awry, and it had not been easy to see Connor freed. Based on what Nathaniel has said thus far, Leliana starts to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. It is hardly a great leap - of course Justice could not know, and by extension, neither could Anders.

"You want to see them parted." Not impossible, she thinks. "Why?"

There are so many reasons to imagine, but she wants to hear his reasons. Neutrally, she elaborates: "Why is it important to you?"

[pinprick]

Of course this question would be asked. And as he decided before, he will hide nothing.

"Because I'm one of the ones who failed him, well before this occurred. And I'm done with it."

He lets out a breath.

"I...may have been part of the reason Justice considered possessing a living, willing person."