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Fenris could not sleep, although it was not his nightmares keeping him awake this time. He sat up slowly in his bed, looking down at the thrashing Anders, and reached out a cautious hand to the other man's shoulder. Anders' nightmares were few--he claimed that with the Blight gone and so many of the darkspawn still centered around Ferelden, he was safe enough from their nightly invasions--but when they did happen, they tended to fierce. Fenris had long since come to suspect that Anders had plenty of things in his past to contribute to nightmares, aside from just his tainted blood. He did not press Anders for details, because he had no wish to stir up that past, but he did what he could to ease Anders' waking when such dreams occurred.
"Anders," Fenris kept his voice low, but firm. He pressed down on the shoulder beneath his hand, halting Anders' motions. "You are dreaming, wake up." His voice dropped even further as he whispered, "Come back to me, love."
"Fenris?" Anders' eyes opened and darted around the room. When they fell upon Fenris, he relaxed, taking a few deep breaths. "Maker! I'm sorry, I was--"
"Dreaming. Yes, I had gathered."
Fenris leaned down to press a kiss to Anders' forehead. He scooted back against the headboard and Anders shifted so that his head was in Fenris' lap. Fenris idly rand his fingers through Anders' loose hair. Anders closed his eyes and hummed at the touch. It sounded suspiciously like the kind of sound a cat would make, Fenris noted with a wry smile. Once Anders had fully relaxed again and his breathing evened out, Fenris risked asking him about the dream.
"Was it darkspawn again, or something else?"
"Darkspawn, at first," Anders agreed. "Likely spurred on by our recent adventure." His eyes were still closed but Fenris could see the motion beneath the lids that indicated Anders had rolled them.
He bit back a laugh. They had just returned from a week in the Deep Roads, looking for some fool dwarven boys who had gone off in search of glory. Anders had not wanted to join them, of course, but he and Hawke both worried that the dwarves might be in need of healing. Fenris had been glad that their relationship was already known to their companions. He had been able to sleep beside Anders each night of the journey, helping him cope with his fear of the place, and no one had felt the need to comment on it. There had been a few stray looks, but for the most part everyone had simply taken it in stride, and Fenris was quite grateful for that small favor.
"At first?" He prompted Anders to continue telling him the dream.
"It changed, as dreams do," Anders sighed. "They were chasing me through the Deep Roads, and then they weren't. Or I wasn't. There anymore. In the Deep Roads, I mean. One moment I was running through them, and the next I was back at the Circle..." He bit his lip, drifting off. He did not like to speak of his time in the Circle to Fenris. It was too contentious a topic for them, even when both tried to keep an open mind. He must have decided to risk it, however, because he continued a moment later. Fenris suspected that meant the dream had disturbed Anders even more than he was letting on.
"I was in solitary confinement again. Only this time...this time Justice was with me. But not with me. We were separate."
"He was back in the body of that Grey Warden?"
"No," Anders shook his head. "He was a spirit, somehow manifested in the real world. Well, what I was dreaming was the real world."
"I see."
"He tried to free me," Anders said quietly. "But everything he did only made it so much worse." Fenris' hand stilled in Anders' hair. "The Templars grew so angry, and that only made Justice angrier and, well, it...it was not pleasant." He finished with a choked off little laugh, clearly wanting to shrug it off, to chalk it up to just another nightmare.
"Justice is always angry, it seems," Fenris observed quietly. He resumed his stroking of Anders' hair.
"Can you blame him?" Another laugh, this one bitter. "He is an ideal, a spirit of Justice. His very birth into this world was an act of injustice, as was the cause of his merger with me. Now he is trapped in mortal flesh, losing himself, becoming a perversion of his true form. And all around him all he can see is injustice heaped upon injustice. He is driven by the need to act, to make it right. That is his purpose. But now he must also think of self-preservation, because if I die, so does he." Anders shook his head and sat up, leaning against Fenris.
"So many injustices," Fenris agreed. "Yet he focuses on mages. Is that your influence then?"
"Yes and no," Anders sighed. "If he did not keep his sights on a single cause, he would have long since been driven mad by his ineffectiveness, and likely have taken me along with him." He sighed again as Fenris adjusted his position, moving an arm around his waist, pulling him closer. He rested his head on Fenris' shoulder. "As it is," Anders whispered, "with the mage situation in Kirkwall worsening at the rate it is, I am not sure it won't happen anyway."
Fenris tightened his hold on Anders. Anders let out a small gasp of surprise. Fenris was surprised as well. Not at the sound, but at the flash of fear Anders' words had caused to course through him. He had thought that he hated this man once, though it seemed so long ago. Now the thought of losing him, even though he knew it was a very real--and would in all likelihood be a very necessary--probability, made Fenris feel close to panic. He would still stop Anders--no, Vengeance, for anything that would warrant such an action from Fenris would mean Anders was no longer Anders anymore--if it needed to be done. But he knew that doing so would likely be his final act. Still, there was hope, was there not?
"Once you have separated yourself from him and he has returned to the Fade, this will no longer be a concern. Is that not so?"
Anders went very still beside him and a small voice that Fenris had been trying to ignore for weeks cried out in triumph. He issued a short curse and turned to Anders, catching the other man's gaze and holding it. Through clenched teeth, he gave voice to the fear he had been trying to ignore ever since Anders told Hawke about his plan to separate from Justice.
"Of course, the spell to separate the two of you won't actually work, will it?"
"No," Anders whispered. His eyes were wide with fear, but his voice was steady and he did not look away.
"You lied to Hawke then?"
"I did."
There was no hesitation, but in the dim light Fenris could see Anders was biting his lower lip, waiting for his reaction.
"What does your spell actually do?"
"I...can't tell you that."
"Can't? Or won't?"
"Justice does not feel you would approve, and I agree."
"Yet you plan to do it anyway." Fenris felt his face harden. He tried to relax against the warm body beside him, but it was more difficult than it had been in a very long time. This time it was Anders who held Fenris' gaze. He reached up, tracing a finger lightly along one line of lyrium on Fenris' face before cupping his cheek.
"We must," came the whispered reply. "If the situation becomes dire enough, it will be the only hope of bringing about change for the better. Else Justice and I truly will be lost to his rage."
"If the situation becomes dire enough?" Fenris latched onto that word. "So you may not go through with this?"
"I fear it is inevitable. But yes, if by some miracle things improve, then we will not go through with our plan."
"I see," Fenris said thoughtfully. He was surprised when Anders smiled, leaning forward to kiss him lightly.
"You cannot stay with me every hour of every day to make sure I do not act, Fenris."
The elf's eyes widened in surprise. He had been considering something along those very lines. Briefly he wondered if he should tell someone about this. Hawke, perhaps, or Sebastian. But...no. There was little they could do either, other than to lock Anders up. Fenris knew that would be the death of the man, one way or another, and he would not be part of it. Not like that. Anders had made his own mess, Fenris could only hope he could find a way out of it without causing too much damage to himself and others. That, and he could keep his eyes open and be ready to help Anders if he could, or stop him if he couldn't.
It occurred to him that he might be able to forcibly remove Anders (and Justice) from Kirkwall. To take them somewhere else, away from this simmering mess of mages and Templars. But though he believed Anders that Justice was no longer truly a separate entity, Fenris had seen enough to know that some part of the spirit remained. If he felt that Fenris threatened his plans--their plans--he would emerge and put a stop to Fenris' interference. Then Anders would be lost to him forever anyway.
"Very well," Fenris said softly, leaning in for a kiss of his own. He pulled back with a soft frown, his thoughts driving him to seek confirmation. "Is there truly no way to separate the two of you? I know you say that you are one, but sometimes it seems as if you are still separate entities..."
"I'm afraid not," Anders said. "He has changed too much. He is not what he was, and in occupying me, he has changed what I am, too. There have been possessions before, but never anything like this, not that either of us has ever heard of. He was ripped from the Fade. He cannot go back, not unless he is carried by a dreaming body, and he will only be there as long as the dreamer remains."
"Yet if he stays in you, unable to fix the unfixable, he will be driven mad, and you with him." Fenris shook his head. "You have doomed yourself," he whispered, "and me as well."
"It is not too late to end this, if you wish it," Anders said. There was resignation in his face, as if he had expected just that.
"It was too late the first time I stayed my hand," Fenris said wryly. "I should have killed you when I found out about Justice. But I did not, and now here we are. No. I am with you until the end, no matter how it comes about."
Anders started to protest, but Fenris silenced him with another kiss, this one messy and desperate and full of everything he could not say yet. Anders relaxed into him, returning the kiss. When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against Fenris' shoulder, and Fenris could feel dampness there. Tears.
"I never meant for anyone else to be caught up in this mess with me. I am so sorry, love," Anders breathed.
"I'm not," Fenris reassured him.
He wasn't even that surprised to realize that he meant it.