Inquisition's Placeholder of Glory

[avisionofhawke]

Or, the post from which we shall dangle the actual thread.

Comments

[cattymage]

He puffs up his chest, a bit. "I'm the best healer most anyone will ever know! Us Spirit Healers, we're not exactly your average robe."

It's strange to hear what for all intents and purposes is a slur against mages fall from his lips so easily - it recalls an argument, one of the innumerable ones Fenris and Anders were always having, wherein the word had come up; the results had been nothing short of exasperating.

"The only mage I've even heard of who's better is Senior Enchanter Wynne, but, well, she taught me, so who knows, maybe I'm the better one by now," he mused. "Or even if she's alive. Last I heard, she'd been at that mess at Ostagar."

But as a matter of fact, Hawke's testimonial for the Darktowners' affection for their healer does have an effect -- once all the preening dies down, he looks genuinely touched by the idea. "..You mean it? When you said there's people here who'd stick their neck out for me like that."

Take it before I obsess

[avisionofhawke]

Hawke recalled it well - Fenris had used the slur, and Anders was rather offended. She didn't blame him, really - it was rather denigrating, and one couldn't help being born a mage.

"Why not just use the word 'mage'? You always manage to put enough venom in it to make up for its lack of rudeness."

Oh, and it had gone on. Days after the fact, Anders would think of it and grumble under his breath, starting things up again. Eventually Hawke had to step between them.

"Children, please. I'm sure there are much better things to argue about than a single word used in a conversation that happened a week ago. You're both grown men. Just let it go."

Back to the present, Hawke considered the Senior Enchanter. "Not many survived Ostagar. I was there with my brother... It's a wonder we both made it out in one piece." She smiled back at him as his preening faded, adding, "Of course they would take risks for you. You saved most of their lives, or if not them then a member of their family. They'd sooner be imprisoned themselves than give you up. And you can certainly count me among that number - I've gotten rid of a couple of Templars myself when they stuck their noses too far into Darktown for comfort. Oh, also, I had a copy of my cellar key made so you could have somewhere to hide. It's worked quite well so far."

[cattymage]

"Should have tried that 'secret savior of the masses' business years ago," he comments, though it's a tone nothing short of awed - he looks about their dismal surroundings with a new, gentler eye.

Sure, it's a sad, wasted pit of a place, but... it could be his sad, wasted pit. In a way he'd never had anywhere else.

He turns a surprisingly warm smile to her.

"A quick escape route, the idolization of an entire populace, and a general lack of Templars. You're making this sewer sound suspiciously like paradise, Aisling. "

[avisionofhawke]

She grinned back at him, practically glowing. "I'm glad you like the sound of it. And you're right, this place is paradise - except for the chokedamp, the crowding, disease, and starvation, anyway. It's much nicer upstairs, though, I promise."

With a quick turn and a hop up onto a makeshift staircase, Aisling planted a swift kiss on his cheek.

"Our house is pretty luxurious, and the bed is particularly nice."

[cattymage]

Anders lifted a hand to touch at the spot she'd pecked, smile turning cheesier. "Ahh, to know once more the satiny touch of a soft bed -- I could swoon simply thinking about it. Would you catch me, pure, fainting maiden that I am~?"

This flirting must be stopped. I'm getting sickened writing it.

[avisionofhawke]

"Of course. I'll have you know I'm quite the gentleman," she replied with a smirk. She took his hand again, feeling more comfortable with him as time passed. "Should you faint I'll sweep you off to that lovely bed and stay with you."

[cattymage]

"Glad to know I'm in such capable hands." He chuckled. "Not that there was any remaining doubt as to that."

[avisionofhawke]

Aisling kissed him one more time and hopped down so they could continue.

It wasn't long before they arrived at the clinic, or rather what used to be the clinic. The doors were wrecked, with one of them hanging crookedly and the other laying on the ground just inside. Ruined cots were visible through the opening.

"Bloody Void... The Templars must have raided the place again."

[cattymage]

A sharp intake of breath as the ruination came into sight -- then, that sinking feeling of certainty that of course, of course even with the obvious cons of being possessed and probably crazy, the parts that were tempting him the most would be tramped down just as he warmed up to them.

Keep breathing, Anders. He let the breath out in a slow rattle, and left Aisling's side in a hurry to go in, he had to see it --

[avisionofhawke]

Hawke rushed after him. She found him standing in the middle of the wreckage and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"We've rebuilt it before," she told him softly. "We can do it again. We have resources now that weren't available when you first put this place together, and your supplies are well hidden."

Sure, it wasn't all that much of a comfort, but it was what she had to offer.

[cattymage]

This time, he didn't brook her touch - "Aisling, I need," and he cut off there, squirming, until she released him, tearing away to keep on just looking and looking, eyes racing as he turned about.

He could see things that reminded him of himself, in the layout - daydreams he'd had about rearranging the infirmary to make things work smoother, damn it, if he could just be listened to - or what remained of a layout, amidst the chaos.

"Let me look around," he begged. "On my own. Please."

He didn't.. have the energy to bulwark against her caring. He just wanted to observe and process, without someone reaching in and in to try to tear at - to comfort, but still - his soft underbelly. And there were things he wanted to look out for, away from too-sympathetic eyes.

In general... he wanted to have his moment and to have it to himself, so that he could sew his guts all back in, metaphorically speaking. You don't just tell him -- he couldn't just hear that he had a place that was his, and then see it all in pieces moments after. It was too much jerking around, dammit, he had trouble keeping a stable lid on himself already.

He needed to pull back and be aloof Anders again. That was the short of it. He needed it all to stop mattering so damn much, this was too much, too fast.

[avisionofhawke]

Aisling nodded and stepped back. "I'll go ask around, then. I won't be far."

And with that, she stepped out of the clinic, her heart breaking for him. It wasn't fair, she knew - but this was Kirkwall, and nothing was fair. She just wished it could have happened to someone else for once instead of him.

[cattymage]

Anders spent a long time alone in the wrecked clinic. Occasionally, sounds of activity inside floated out to Aisling - short bursts of it, and it was easy to tell from the increased distance in noise when he'd made his way to the back, to where her Anders had kept his meager living quarters.

Once he'd finished in the back, he made his way out quickly, looking fatigued in a way that was achingly reminiscent of himself, as she better knew him.

He spoke matter-of-factly, before she could get the first word in - it seemed to be something he was starting to rely on, when he thought she might say something first that he couldn't handle.

"It's all covered over in dust. And ash, in back. Someone torched a lot of papers the old fashioned way. Made a little pyre of it. It was all very.. personal, the way it was carried out." His lips curled into an ugly sneer. "Maybe one of our Templar raiders had a crush. I'd be flattered, if Serrah's leavings didn't make me sneeze. But the point is - this happened a while ago."

[avisionofhawke]

The first thing he would have seen was Aisling hurling some unspecified thing angrily through the open wall. By the time he'd reached her, though, she had calmed down a bit.

"Sebastian," she growled. "It was bloody Sebastian. According to the lovely people stuck down here, he came in right after an explosion destroyed the chantry, ranting about you and tearing everything apart. They said that you never came back, and that was a year ago."

Were those... tears in her eyes? She wouldn't look up, so it was hard to tell.

[cattymage]

The urge to quip, to push away the complex weave of emotions spooled in his gut was difficult to shake - he just wanted to be dead to this. It wasn't really his clinic, it wasn't his problem, it wasn't his --

Not yet, at least. Wonder if you can run from a future that's already come knocking on the door?

"So he trashed your boyfriend's hovel in an impassioned fit, and now he's put a siege on the whole city? I'd hate to see how he treats the people that aren't his pals."

Ah, dammit. It had come out anyway, though sufficiently bile-fueled to not sound flippant.

A thought struck him.

"..you think your place has faired any better?"

[avisionofhawke]

"We'll find out," she replied quietly, finally looking up. For once, her eyes seemed more like ice than lyrium. "Sebastian might be a Chantry brother, but so help me... If he laid a finger on you I'll cut his princely heart out and grind it into the dust."

No, Hawke wasn't handling this well. That was a given. She'd lost her brother, with whom she'd fought at Ostagar, lost her sister to the Circle, had just lost her mother to a necromancer... And now she didn't know if the one person she had left was dead or alive. She could either break down or turn that pain into anger, so she chose the latter.

[cattymage]

He caught her gaze, the warm brown of his own eyes roiling.

"You do know just what to say to make a man feel appreciated, Aisling." Tentatively, he reached out a hand to clasp it on her shoulder, and give a comforting squeeze.

[avisionofhawke]

She laid a hand over it for a moment before leading him to the cellar entrance and taking out a key.

The door itself was plain, but it was sturdy and had a good lock on it. It was the sort of door which might last centuries if no one took an axe or something to it. The key slid in smoothly, even though the woman holding it was only half paying attention. Her mind was on what they might find inside-

Please don't be dead, please don't be dead, please don't be dead-

-rather than what was right in front of her. The lock snapped open with a quiet click.

[cattymage]

As soon as the door was safely closed behind them, a little spell-wisp popped into being courtesy of Anders, bobbing ahead slowly ahead of them and casting a pale, eerie light onto everything.

[avisionofhawke]

The cellar was empty. That was all Hawke managed to register as she stormed through and up the stairs.

Everything seemed in order.

Everything was coated in dust.

Her heart was hammering in her chest, loud enough that she was almost certain Anders - the Anders behind her, not her Anders, not the right one - could hear it.

No sign of anyone downstairs.

[cattymage]

He sped his pace to keep up with her - the wisp did it on its own, because Hawke was the one forging ahead, he'd considered it a better idea to set it to follow her - but still, kept silent. He could tell she was evaluating with as much of a strained, panicked eye as he'd been, earlier - except worse, because this WAS her home.

[avisionofhawke]

Empty. Everything was empty.

Empty, cold, and dead.

It was as she knew it, but... The life was gone from the place. This room - empty. That room - empty. She zipped up the stairs, taking them two at a time and making a beeline for the bedroom.

Empty.

At least there were no bodies...

She rushed through, the early afternoon sun shining through the windows as if to mock her. She stopped dead, though, when she saw it - Anders' manifesto, sitting at the table by the fireplace where it always was. She stepped closer as though in a dream, her fingers brushing against the dusty paper almost wistfully.

"He would take it with him," the rogue whispered, "if he left..."

[cattymage]

He waited in the halls, each time she dove ahead into yet another abandoned room - at the bedroom, though, he dared to follow her in, after the moments stretched on a tad too far as Aisling contemplated the manifesto.

He didn't dare come much further than the open middle of the room, taken in by the sight of her - enraptured, sorrowfully, by a paper.

--A note--?

No, she would be more intense about it if it was novel, he wagered - this wasn't the look of someone reading. More the look of someone remembering.

"I know one way to check," he suggested quietly, after giving her a few more minutes of reverie. "I know what wouldn't be here for certain, if... if he was still alive."

He always, always kept it where he slept, and it hadn't been at the ravaged clinic. He'd looked. Both in the likely hiding places, and in the ashes - nothing that looked like charred fabric. All paper.

[avisionofhawke]

She jolted out of her reverie as though struck by electricity. "Of course - the pillow," she muttered to herself, going to the bed and almost frantically tearing the sheets off. It...

It wasn't there.

"Maker, it's gone," she said with a distinct note of relief.

[cattymage]

"Then he's alright," he said, with clear conviction.

Dithering time was over. Where Hawke loomed, breathless, over the roughed up bed, Anders came over and sat down on it, so that he could look up into her eyes, for once.

"...technically, though..." Anders began, tone light, as he dug into his pack with motions practiced enough to not need to even look at what he was doing. The pillow emerged shortly, and he pulled it into his lap, carefully running hands over it and straightening it out. He left his fingers perched to trace the intricate embroidering. "Technically, it's also still right here."

It looked younger.

It made sense - the poor thing hadn't had to weather the Deep Roads once yet, after all - though it still bore the mark of long years of reverent love. It was brighter, but not truly bright.

It must have been beautiful, on the day it was finished. As fresh and ready for the world as the beloved son it was diligently sewn for.