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They say it was the healer.
Oswald doesn’t buy it, not for a second. He knows - knew? - Anders. The man’s always been a bit off sometimes, sure, but that doesn’t make a killer. Men who put everything they have into helping like that and still try to find more to give do not just blow up Chantries. And the Champion certainly does not help them do it, or escape afterwards.
He bets it was Meredith. He’d put anything on it. The Knight-Commander had been doing all she could to remove any challenges to her authority. Maybe the Grand Cleric had finally stepped in, and Meredith had found a way to take matters into her own hands. He’s heard bizarre rumors of Meredith’s fight with the Champion, of the power given by that strange sword of hers everyone was whispering about. It's not beyond belief that she’d found a way to cause an explosion like that, and pinned it on the Champion and one of the last free mages in the city, the only obstacles to her taking control of the city at last.
Oswald doesn’t know. Maybe that’s not it, or it was something else. But he can not, will not believe that it was the man who’d saved his son’s life.
Healers don’t blow up Chantries. They just don’t.
They say it was the healer.
Ryley can’t believe it, but she can’t argue with the reports out of Lowtown. An apostate mage with blonde hair and a feathered coat slams his staff twice, and then… boom.
“But why?”
“He went abomination, apparently. Just started glowing and ranting.”
“What happened to him then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the Champion put him down?”
“I thought they were lovers.”
“What else could Hawke have done? You can’t save abominations, can you?”
She still can’t believe it. Anders, an abomination? She’d always heard that any mage could be possessed, but she’d never really believed it. But if even a man like that can fall…
Maybe the Circles really are the only way.
They say it was the healer.
Selby isn’t surprised. At one point, maybe, she would have been, but she’s known Anders for the better part of seven years now, and she’d seen how the man had been acting these past few weeks, before she herself had to flee or be killed. Desperate, despairing, drained. They’d all been. Meredith had all but destroyed the mage underground over the past few years. The templars had cut down or hanged half of them, and the rest had followed the mages they’d freed to safe havens. Things had looked utterly hopeless.
And then the Knight-Commander had sent for the Right. It was only a matter of time before she acted. She’d heard the whispers from the Gallows, but there was nothing she could do - she’d barely escaped with her own life.
They say that sometimes, you have to break a bone to heal it. Anders has broken a lot more than that, but Selby’s seen what the Chantry in Kirkwall has been twisted into, and maybe, just maybe, she understands.
They say it was the healer. Don’t they always have the bloodiest hands?
They say it was the healer.
Deven just feels numb inside. He remembers the first time he met Anders, sick with fever one night in Darktown. They’d escaped the Blight, worked their way into the city, for this? No one had been hiring, and he’d been reduced to scavenging, fighting for scraps, and one night the gouge on his arm had turned rancid. He didn’t know what to do. No one in his family knew even a bit of herbalism.
He’d fallen sick with fever, closed his eyes, and he opened them again to a blonde man, half-dead from exhaustion, hands filled with strange, soothing light. Anders had saved his life that night.
And now, he’d taken his daughter.
He’d been so relieved when Yvette had taken her vows. Proud, even. The Chantry was closed to most of them, unable or unwilling to take the burden of hungry Fereldan mouths seeking refuge within its folds. But Yvette had found the personal sponsorship of a kind brother with blue eyes and a Starkhaven accent. One of Hawke’s friends. The Champion had done so much for the refugees then. Deven had thought she was lucky. It wasn’t the life he’d have chosen for her, but she was safe, fed, and living in the service of the Maker. It was enough.
He runs into Sebastian by chance, storming out of the city with rage and pain in his eyes while Deven searches frantically for shelter.
“Is… is he dead?” Deven manages at last.
“No,” Sebastian says, turning. “You can thank Hawke for that.”
He leaves, and Deven is alone.
Deven wonders if he should have realized, every circulating manifesto pinned about and hooded figure slipping past the Clinic in the dark. The mage cares more for his own kind than anything else, and the Champion, it seems, cares more for Anders than for Kirkwall.
They say it was the healer.
Lirene doesn’t care. She can’t remember, honestly, the last time she even went to the service. She’s a faithful woman, to be sure, but the Maker’s not a building, and she’s sheltered far too many starving refugees while the Chantry gilded its halls to believe that Andraste’s words fell from those Sisters’ lips, that holy righteousness guided the swords of the templars practically ruling the city now.
Kirkwall’s in ruins again. Hightown got the worst of it, shrapnel scattered heavy over the city’s nobility. Lowtown and the Docks were better off, but it had seen its share of clashes between the templars and the fleeing mages, led by Anders and the Champion, and the damage was severe. Darktown, sheltered under the city, had been almost untouched, and the Fereldan refugees had thus been the least affected by the chaos.
She’ll always wonder if Anders meant it that way.
She won’t condone what the mage has done. But she still remembers Anders coming in and out of her store, buying reagents, checking in with clients, still remembers the jingle of the Champion’s coinpurse over her donation box. They’d done more for the refugees than the Chantry ever had, and she still knows where her loyalties lie.
They say it was the healer, and that the Champion had run with him. Lirene’s sorrier for their loss than any of the rest.