( 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

[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."