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Most mages never learn the healing arts. Some cite a fear of blood; others claim they lack the aptitude. It is not talent alone that makes a mage a healer, though; more than that, it is objectivity. Anders learns this young.
He is eleven years old when their cat Buttons limps into the house late one night long after he should have come inside. Anders’ mother gasps, then cries, at the the wounds gouging the cat’s leg. There is a raw slice of red sinew visible, crusted with dirt and blood and hair. Anders cries too. He’s frightened of the wound in Buttons’ leg, scared of the old cat dying. Then he reaches out his hand to the cat, wanting to pet him one last time. Buttons purrs and nudges his hand.
Anders’ tears stop, and his will strengthens. The fear and disgust at the wound slips away. The cat is Buttons but not-Buttons, he realizes; he is Buttons but he is also a puzzle to be solved, a problem to fix, a… a patient to treat. And Anders will fix him; he will find a way.
That is the first time Anders knows his magic.
It comes to him like breathing, like moving his hands through water or air. He feels the pull of mana and energy, the flow of power coursing through him, the warm light blooming in his hands and gently washing over the frail cat.
Buttons stretches. He stands, and he only limps a little. Anders quickly reaches to touch the cat’s leg, and the gouges are scarred and old, no fresh blood staining his hands now. He laughs with relief, but his mother’s weeping begins anew.
She tells him to stop. Tells him not to let his father see. But he can’t stop — this magic is in him, it’s part of him, and it begs to be used now that it has awoken. It wants to be used, even though Anders is not always sure how.
There are accidents. The fire in the barn. He doesn’t know how to fix it. And when the templars come for him, his mother weeps again.
Anders hates the Circle. He gets in fights with the other boys, is made fun of by the girls, mouths off to the templars. The only thing he really likes is learning. He knows now that the place he goes every night is called the Fade. He learns spells and forms, arcane words and ancient history, deep legends and half-forgotten stories.
One day Anders and the other young mages are called for their lessons. In the center of the room is a lamb. It bleats piteously at them, its leg broken. It is hobbled to a chain, and it cries so.
The other apprentices are useless. They shudder. One boy is sick and a few of the girls cry. It’s only Anders who charges forward, who puts the bleating out of mind, who lays one hand on the lamb’s back and the other on its leg and calls for the Fade.
That is when he learns that not every mage can heal. It isn’t that the spells are too difficult for the other mages, or that healing energy comes only to a few. It is that the others, faced with a creature in pain, quail before the wounded. It frightens them, makes them all too aware of their own mortality.
It is only a few mages who can retain their objectivity; only a few who can master that fear, set it aside, and do what needs to be done.
He is a man now, warier than he once was, changed by what he has seen. Darkspawn blood taints him and templars still dog his footsteps but there is no Circle tower stone beneath his feet. His companions in the Wardens trust him, and his healing keeps them strong against the hordes.
There’s a spirit with them in Amaranthine, and when Anders tells him of the Circle, the templars, the Tranquil, Justice’s anger flares. It feeds Anders’ own. He remembers a boy saving a cat, his magic clean and pure. To be chained and trammeled for what he could not help but be —
When Justice asks him for help, Anders says yes with open eyes. And when the spirit in him burns part of him away, he takes it. Better to be less than human than to suffer lock and key again.
Anders has watched the old pass in his clinic, the sick, children with their faint, faint cries. Each time Anders stands with them until they go, unflinching, unwavering, refusing to look away from their faces at the moment of death. It is a thing he does not fear, though he does regret it.
Sometimes he grieves for the patients he has lost too soon, no longer needing to be strong for them. It hurts but it feels human, a feeling that grows difficult to remember with Justice seething beneath his skin. He asks himself what more he could have done, and he holds these losses close to his heart for a day, a week, a year.
Other times he watches a child die and he feels like a shell, like he does not remember how to grieve. At those times the emptiness within him swells and he is a man pithed of what he used to be, all gangling bones and hollow spaces, hiding in the Darktown shadows.
But the days pass as they always do and he meets Hawke, brash, remarkable, ready with a grin. She trusts him. She fights for him. The hollow spaces begin to fill.
It happens slowly, so slowly he might almost be imagining it, but it’s like a part of him is human all the time.
It’s far too late to be awake when there’s a mighty crash at his door. He’s up in a flash, fighting off grogginess, still in his clothes. He must have fallen asleep at his desk again.
It’s Merrill, her face white in the dark. “Hawke’s fallen,” she gasps. “We need you.” He sees Fenris and Varric behind him, Fenris clutching Hawke in his arms. She’s limp. Not moving.
A healer remains objective, his mind tells him. But it’s Hawke that needs him and that fact sets him shaking, his blood freezing. He pulls open the door for them, fumbling at the latch. “Set her down,” he says, and he does not recognize the fear in his own voice. Not her, not her, please, not her.
Fenris lays her out on the closest cot, taking care to support her head and her back. Her limbs flop to the sides and her eyes flutter open, but they stare into the distance, pupils dilating, fixing.
“No, no!” Anders chokes, and his hands are useless, closing and opening without purpose.
“Heal her!” Fenris orders. “That’s what you do, isn’t it?” There is hatred in his voice, and fear.
The words should galvanize him. Were it any other patient there would have been no need to say them. Anders would have already been there at their side, touching the Fade, bringing forth his healing. But now it’s like his muscles don’t want to work and his head reels. All he can feel is the panic in his chest, the catch in his throat.
For one agonizing moment he does not know what to do.
He closes his eyes. Remembers Buttons’ face, eyes trusting and hopeful. He could do it then. He can do this now.
He’s at the bedside, hands roaming over her prone form, touching, sensing. Pale skin, clammy. Thready pulse and shallow breaths. Blood-drenched hauberk. Spear wound, left axillary region. She’s lost so much blood.
He reaches for spells of creation and kindling, calls for new blood within her veins, energy sealing the wound edges and flickering into her organs, muscles, brain. He’s gone hollow again, no room for anything but the magic, no human here. He is healer once more and it consumes him.
Hawke coughs. She rolls toward him, her body curling to protect the wound, her face a grimace. Anders’ hands shift, fingers splaying as golden light spools from his palms, a balm of soothing and quieting. The pained look on Hawke’s face slips into something peaceful, and sleepily she blinks at him.
“That… must have been a bad one,” she says, her voice rusty. The others surround her, eager to cheer her onward now that the danger has passed.
Anders lets them do it. He withdraws from her side, lets them finish tending to her. He goes to fetch bandages. The wound will still need to be dressed, the skin there is so fragile and new.
He pulls out the bandages from the cabinet and realizes that his hands still tremble.
That night she stays at the clinic. Anders refuses to let the others take her back to Gamlen’s, insisting on a proper healing environment. Hawke doesn’t argue, simply falls asleep.
There’s only a faint light from his lantern, casting a golden shadow on the curve of her cheek. She’s beautiful, hair tangled against the pillow, blanket drawn up to her chin.
Anders realizes, bleakly, how much he’s been lying to himself.
She’s your friend, he tells himself, but he knows he lingers too long on her smiles, watches her too closely just for friendship. And the way he froze today —
Justice tells him to let her go. Distraction, he hears. It’s true. So great a distraction he almost could not save her.
His hands ball into fists, his breaths coming short and fierce. He mustn’t. She deserves someone human, someone real. He cannot be that man for her. He needs to stop this. Needs to stay her healer, nothing more.
But his chest aches, and he realizes he feels something more than hollow. It hurts, but it feels good, feels right. There can be no more objectivity, not with her.
He sits in the chair beside her, bows forward, rests his head in his hands. He does not move.
Not until he hears her stirring, then he lifts his head to check on her. She opens her eyes, reaches out a hand from beneath the blanket.
"Anders?" she asks. "What’s happened?"
"You’re resting up. You gave everyone quite a scare," he says, smiling at her despite himself. He clasps her hand in both of his, meaning to tuck it back beneath the blanket. But she grips his hands with surprising strength.
"Thank you, Anders," she whispers, and burrows back against the pillow. But her hand is still enclosed in his, small and fine and warm. She closes her eyes, and in a moment she is fast asleep.
Sometimes Anders is a healer, all thoughts and emotion set aside to do what needs doing. Sometimes he does not remember who he is, soul choked in tainted blood and rising spirit. But sometimes he is human, just a man beside a woman; and he holds her hand until the morning’s light, remembering what it is to feel.