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#BlueSummer 2017
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Published:
2017-07-02
Completed:
2017-07-02
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2,025
Chapters:
3/3
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Anders Appreciation Week Collection (2017)

Summary:

A collection of short fic for teamblueandangry's Anders Appreciation Week, the theme of which was sin/virtue duality. Only three works, because I joined in partway through the week.

Chapter 1: Wrath//Forgiveness

Chapter Text

Don’t scream. There’s a guard just outside the cell, visible through the bars, and you don’t want to scare him. He won’t let you down just because it hurts. He’s the one who fastened the chains to your wrists — or maybe the one who turned the winch until you were hanging with your feet not touching the ground. They were both wearing helmets, and you couldn’t keep track, but the point is, he knows it hurts. It’s supposed to. You can hurt people with magic, so when you get angry and scream, it scares even grown-ups. You got angry when you were scared, so you can’t blame them for doing the same. You have to hurt until you understand hurting, not just in your head, but deep enough down that you’ll never hurt anyone else no matter how scared or angry you get.

So don’t scream. Screaming is what got you here, and it would mean you haven’t learned yet.

Through the bars, the guard shouts and draws his sword. You flinch hard enough to set the chains swinging before you realize that he isn’t looking at you.

Then you see what he is looking at, and that’s even worse.

You scream. You can’t help yourself. You scream as it catches the sword by the blade and you scream when it tears off the guard’s helmet and then tears off the guard’s head. You scream when, covered in blood, it grabs two of the bars of your cell and bends them apart so that it can step through the gap. When it snaps the chains holding you up with its bare, dripping-red hands, you don’t have any screaming left in you. You’re too weak to run or to fight or even really to stand, so all you do is crumple to the floor and sob.

You can’t look at it, because you don’t want to watch it kill you, but you hear it say, “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help.”

It sounds like a person. When you glance up, it looks like one, too. The blue flames and black fog are gone, and maybe the man who’s standing there now was underneath them the whole time. The blood hasn’t disappeared, though. It’s everywhere.

The man starts glowing again, but it’s a softer glow this time, more like what you’re used to seeing from the enchanters. He picks you up like your dad used to do, back when your dad was willing to touch you, and somehow that’s enough of a reason not to struggle. As he carries you out of the cell and through the dungeon, his magic seeps into all the parts of you that hurt, but it doesn’t feel like how the spirit healers you know do it. It’s not soothing, like Faith or Compassion. The pain doesn’t quietly fade away, but instead starts itching with wrongness.

You did nothing to deserve a punishment like this. It is entirely incommensurate — it’s too much, you understand. But you scared people, and you can hurt people worse than they could ever hurt you, and that is a lie. They lied to you, and you are repeating their lies. Your suffering matters no less than that of anyone else. It matters more than theirs, because they are dripping with guilt for things they have done, not things someone fears they may someday do.

You haven’t been paying attention to where he’s taking you, but it doesn’t surprise you much when you realize you’ve left the Circle completely. You aren’t really hurting anymore. You itch all over, where the pain used to be, but the itching lessens as the spirit repairs the damage that was hurting you. You’re safe. You don’t have any reason to scream now — and maybe that’s why you suddenly start screaming.

Nothing bad happens.

Chapter 2: Envy//Kindness

Chapter Text

You aren’t taking it from them. There’s a difference. If you gave instead of taking…

It sounded wonderfully simple back then. His friends were so earnest in their reassurances that he could not help but believe them. He mistook the warmth of the kindness he felt from them for the illuminating fire of an epiphany. Too late, he realizes that though they meant well, they understood nothing. The line between giving and taking is as blurred and meaningless as the line between Anders and Justice.

He wants so badly to believe Hawke when she assures him that she knows what she is offering, but he cannot allow himself to be deluded again. He has already taken too much. He is still taking, by denying his friend the chance to reach for the love he has wanted for so long and that is finally within his grasp, but it will be so much worse if he gives in. He will hurt her, hurt himself, hurt his friend.

He gives in anyway. It feels too cruel to do otherwise. Hawke is a mage, and so is Anders, and the pain they have both suffered at the hands of a world that has denied them love is an injustice he cannot compound and remain himself. He fears that he will not remain himself anyhow, but fear is no less a danger than desire, and he cannot allow it to rule him.

He pulls away as much as he can when they let themselves into her room. He listens to Anders speak of disapproval, of disagreement, and knows that this is how it must be, even if it frustrates them both. Hawke is there, and she cannot possibly—

She cannot—

She—

She takes his hand when he reaches out to her. She sees him reaching, sees the way his palm cracks open to reveal the truth of what he is, a truth that burns too bright to be contained. Still she touches him, holds him, loves him.

He sleeps on his stomach that night, after the strangeness of unfamiliar bed sheets against his naked back proves just a little too much to bear. There are cracks in his flesh that were there long before Justice, tangible memories of pain and of punishment for wanting more than he was allowed to have. He wakes to find Hawke staring at them, though she must have noticed them the night before, and suffers a moment of panicked confusion before he feels Justice’s light welling up in them.

So many distinctions that should be clear have been irreparably blurred. Anders and Justice, giving and taking, cannot and should not. What he’s been told, and what he believes. What he believes, and what he is.

Hawke reaches out to him — tentatively at first, then with more conviction when he meets her eyes and does not flinch away. She runs her hand down his back, her expression one of reverence as the light spills over and swirls around her fingers.

Chapter 3: Pride//Humility

Chapter Text

“Is that what you really think of me?” she asks him when it’s all over, as they watch the billows of smoke on the horizon sink gradually below the Waking Sea.

It shouldn’t hurt. Hawke knows she’s not a good person. She’s violent, reckless, proud, and mean. She’s made peace with that, even revels in it. Still, she’d thought Anders of all people would understand where she’s coming from. How could he possibly believe she would turn against him over the bloody Chantry?

“No,” Anders says, and it doesn’t sound defensive. “I just thought… if I put anyone in that position, I shouldn’t be surprised by what happens to me.”

He turns his face away from her. Hawke isn’t having any more of that, so she takes his chin in her hand and turns it back. “I’m not ‘anyone.’” It’s the wrong thing to say. She shouldn’t be making this about her, because it isn’t, of course it isn’t, why did she ever think it was? “Things don’t just happen to you. You don’t invite it on yourself.” Though he was really trying to for a moment there, wasn’t he? If Hawke had— if she had been a completely different person, because that’s the only way it could have gone as badly as he was expecting, she doesn’t think he would have held it against her at all. “You know where the blame lies.” In a crater at the edge of Hightown. She suppresses a smile at the thought, because it’s more sad than funny; Anders eradicated the Chantry in Kirkwall, but he can’t wipe it out from his own head.

“Are you mad at me for not trusting you?” His words are anxious, but Hawke can feel him leaning into her touch anyway.

“Love, believe me, you are at the bottom of the list of people I am mad at right now.” She pauses, reconsiders. “Except for Isabela and Merrill. Actually, I don’t think they’ve done anything to piss me off in at least a few days.”

Anders sighs. “Maker help us. The best person we know is a blood mage. That’s the kind of life we lead.”

“The best person I know was healing the poor for free while I was killing for coin,” Hawke responds without missing a beat. So how could you think that I have the right to condemn you? she doesn’t add.

Maybe she should have added it, though, because the way he frowns at her suggests it doesn’t go without saying after all. “Love, I just murdered dozens of unarmed clergywomen in an instant.”

“And I now kill people for politics instead of money. You’ve corrupted me, truly.” It comes out more bitter than she intended. She’s never been much good at sarcasm, and thinking of how many idiots will probably really believe that makes her stomach clench in anger. Better just say what she means, instead of the opposite. “I’m proud of you. You’re wonderful, and you’re mine, and I’m perfectly happy to share you with the cause of mages as long as you’re willing to share the cause with me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”

“I don’t deserve you.” It’s an automatic, incongruous refrain, like he didn’t hear a word she just said — or, more to the point, like he heard it but can’t bear to believe it.

“Yes, you do.” The call and response is frustratingly old and worn, but she’ll repeat it as many times as she has to. “You will share, right? Isn’t that why you asked me to come with you? We’re going to spread the fire together.”

That wins her a smile — a small, tight-lipped smile, but one that reaches his eyes all the same. He knows that this is a good thing, that he hasn’t done anything to regret, so why does he hate himself for it? “Of course, love. I am grateful beyond words to have a partner in this. There is so much work to do, and I… Well. To be honest, I didn’t plan this far ahead.” He’s still smiling, like that’s normal, like it’s maybe a little embarrassing but hardly a damn tragedy. “I barely know where to start.”

“Ferelden,” Hawke tells him. In all this time they’ve been talking, he hasn’t pulled away from her grasp. Gently, she slides her hand up his cheek and begins to work her fingers through his hair. “The ship’s headed for Ferelden, so we’re going to start there.”

Anders closes his eyes and tilts his head back against her hand — like a cat, appropriately enough. “Well, yes. We can dock in Amaranthine. I have contacts there who may be willing to help.”

“And from Amaranthine, the road to Lake Calenhad?” She feels him tense suddenly, and hears his breath hitch. “Maybe not that, then. But when you do go, I want to go with you. I want to see the place that did this to you. I want to stand by your side and help you raze it to the ground.”

Anders stays silent for a while. A flicker of blue-white light passes across his cheek like a shooting star. “From Amaranthine to Calenhad,” he agrees at last. “I want it too. And I do trust you.”

It’s enough for now. In that moment, it’s everything.