Work Text:
Justice couldn’t argue that the banishment had not been rightful. But it was… inconvenient. There was so much work to be done in Kirkwall, work that they couldn’t accomplish in the oh-so-brief visits when Tethras smuggled them into the bar for a drink or two.
Anders agreed, naturally. Loudly complained about all the good they could be doing. He was a very agreeable mortal, despite what some templars might say.
No, his problem wasn’t that he was contrary. It was that he would say one thing and do entirely another. At present, he was on the run from the Wardens, an apostate, and with not even Hawke’s dubious protection to his name, but Justice had never known him to sleep so soundly. Even in Kirkwall, he had feared that the mortal’s convictions only ran as deep as penning pamphlets, and here was the horrible proof. So much injustice yet remained in the world. They had both seen it. But here he was, content. Content to pet the local cats and do what under-the-table medicine he could manage. Content to let all the larger ills of Thedas pass him by, unchallenged.
Varric, of course, saw it as a good sign. Said he was “healing” and better off without Hawke’s influence (on that much, Justice agreed). But any healing that made him forget the wrongs of the Gallows was no healing at all. A few times, he caught him remembering Karl fondly, without any trace of righteous anger underneath it. It was unconscionable.
He told himself he couldn’t return. Justice strongly doubted this. Hawke had been incandescent when she threw him out of the city. In the time since, she had only grown more attached to power, groveling before it — as if it had any intention of leaving her sister alive once it no longer needed a tame noble in its pocket. In short, she was a coward. Cowards could be dangerous enough, but they were nothing if not predictable. They were certainly no friends to justice. But nor would they go out of their way to find and stop its wheels turning, as that only brought more attention to themselves. Indeed, Hawke was very politely absent every time Anders darkened the doors of the Hanged Man, “banished” though he might be.
Sebastian was never there either.
He reminded him, so vividly, of how Anders had been. But- more controlled. Settled. Justice sometimes wondered, in the folded-over corner of his mind where Anders couldn’t reach, if someone such as him would ever agree to a partnership. Idle speculation. But it wasn’t as if he had much else to do.
He was trapped, anyway. That’s what Anders thought, and he was the expert on the waking world. Yes, bound to a mage, the first dream of any demon. They never took the time to study and learn the world they sought to enter, distracted by shining hands when some other mortals commanded armies. Chased out of cities and cut off from power. Theoretically able to shape reality as it ought to be. In practice, pushed into hedges and cellars and limited to only the quietest spells.
Even the Qunari, who barely tolerated magic, had gaatlok. Justice watched, and he observed. He understood, now, that there was value in carefully learning mortal ways, rather than impulsively entering the first receptive host.
Sebastian had a fire to him that, truthfully, Anders had never had. Something that could be stoked rather than needing to be created whole cloth. It was so cold out here, under the warm sun and the soft grass, staying with folk that minded their own business and never had any call to interact with templars. His cheeks rounded out, the way they had been, all of his angles scrubbed away. Mirrors looked wrong, there was none of the dead rictus that there was supposed to be. The devotion to duty he was supposed to have.
He was dying. He was becoming mortal. What did it matter, it was all the same thing. He needed to get back to Kirkwall. If he let this continue, there would truly be no justice in the city. Hawke was favored to become the Viscount. The whole place cried out for an Exalted March. The mage underground still sent correspondence, but their couriers were fewer and fewer in number. The smugglers found the formula for gaatlok, but no one left had the courage to use it. He would get one chance to break his exile. To dispel this awful fantasy he had lived in for too long.
The prince of Starkhaven was disciplined, focused… devoted to the Chantry. He’d reject the whisperings of a demon out of hand.
Justice was a spirit, though, and he had made a careful study of this world.