The theme could be a side of Anders to explore, or something that has been inflicted/gifted to him by someone else in his life.
@teamblueandangry This one’s short and sweet. Anders likes to be touched, though he knows that Fenris does not. So he tries to be content with what Hayden gives him even though it’s not nearly enough... until one day Fenris surprises him and the two come to an understanding.
It almost feels wrong to want more of what they give him.
Hayden would gladly do so and wouldn’t even think of offering anything else than a few more moments of their time should he but bat an eyelash their way. Anders could not seem to ask more from Fenris than the brooding elf was willing to give however, though that didn’t mean he never wanted to.
Sometimes in the evenings Hayden would get caught up in business with the other nobles and it would be just Anders and Fenris for a little while. Usually they would spend time in the library reading their separate books, or they would head down to the cellars Anders had repurposed into an alchemy lab and Fenris would curl up on one of the blanket draped benches while Anders brewed and poured over scrolls and scrolls of notes on his experiments.
Rarely did they ever share those evenings with an activity that was something other than retiring from dinner early to indulge in some of their more unusual kinks that Hayden was uncomfortable participating in. Still, Anders hungered for Fenris’ touch in the same way that he hungered for Hayden’s.
Was it possible to be envious of one’s own self?
Anders’ fingers drummed idly on the table as he ate his stew one evening, chewing slowly on the meat while lost in thought. That is until a hand came to rest on top of his, ceasing the movements of his fingers.
“Anders,” Fenris rumbled, slightly exasperated. “Stop tapping. It grates on the nerves a little.” Anders flushed and ducked his head, fingers still twitching.
“Sorry,” he mumbled into his food. “I just... can’t seem to stop sometimes.”
Fenris was quiet for a moment before he moved from the table, the movement causing Anders to look up to see what he was doing. Fenris merely slid his own food over and came around to sit next to Anders so that they sat shoulder to shoulder. The hint of warmth that radiated off of the elf seemed to ease Anders’ excess energy enough for him to relax, and his body sort canted to one side reflexively, pressing up against Fenris.
Fenris went still at this, and Anders pulled back slightly.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable...”
He tilted his head to see Fenris’ expression, though that was as unreadable as ever. Fenris merely shook his head slightly and huffed. “It is... alright. I am merely... unused to such contact.”
Anders raised an eyebrow as he cautiously went back to his eating.
“I knew you were averse to touch before, but at night you don’t seem to have problems cuddling.”
Fenris shrugged. “The two things are... entirely different, somehow. And I try not to let myself become the one in the middle. I prefer the outside.” Anders nodded thoughtfully after swallowing another bite. “Makes sense.” He glanced again between them and frowned at the elf, concerned.
“Yes, Anders. I’m fine. Go back to your eating and try to tap the table a little less, please. Thank you.” After that was said, Fenris returned to his own meal and left Anders to his food and his thoughts.
The urge to continue tapping returned a little while later while they were indulging in dessert and Anders, remembering Fenris’ request, reached over to take Fenris’ hand instead. Fenris still tensed when Anders’ hand grasped his, but he relaxed when Anders’ thumb began to idly rub against the backs of his fingers in a slow, repetitive motion.
The motion stopped when Anders realized what he’d done, and before he could pull away again, Fenris’ grunted and muttered in a low growl, “Don’t. This is... alright. Please... don’t stop.”
Anders paused for a moment more before continuing as he replied in a quiet whisper, “Thank you, Fenris.”
A gentle pressure to his shoulder and another grunt served as his answer.
Perhaps he didn’t need to ask more from Fenris.
Fenris was just as willing as Hayden to give Anders what he needed it seemed, he just spoke a different sort of language than most. His was a language of small gestures and soft touches, given only voluntarily yet not as sparingly as Anders had once thought.
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ignore how I ran out of steam towards the feet lmao
Day 3 (aka Tuesday) of @teamblueandangry‘s Anders Week theme was GREED/CHARITY and you know, I have feelings about Anders and charity. :D
He runs a free clinic in the bowels of the city, spending every last bit of his energy there helping the people of Darktown and Lowtown ON TOP OF doing his everything to help the mages of Kirkwall and peacefully (as peacefully as he can) protest their treatment by the Chantry and by the Templars by writing letters, smuggling people out of the city, writing his manifesto despite the ridicule it receives; AND he’s helping Hawke - the man gives every little sliver of his energy towards helping those who need his help. This is what the Chantry should be doing. This is what the Chantry should be doing. (Imagine, if you will, people of Darktown coming to Anders’ little shrine at the clinic to pray because up in Hightown they get nothing but dirty looks and cold shoulders in answer to their prayers. Down here they feel like somsone at least is doing the Maker’s work.)
Hawke probably sends a whole basket of food with Anders to Darktown every day because they know Anders just gives away his food as well. Too charitable for his own good.
Greagoir let him out of the tower once. While the templars stripped him, searched him, and re-dressed him in robes they brought for him, so that he wouldn't hide a pick-- like he had done last time-- Greagoir circled him and told him in nasal tones how he squandered his gifts. A Spirit Healer possessed rare talents. The power of life. Yet Anders turned his back on the Maker with his disobedience. A lazy student. Selfish. Petulant.
Anders had stood there naked but for the ring in his ear. He'd just laughed, hands on his hips, daring and insolent. He said: "And do tell me, Knight-Commander, how is it that my talent is held back when you never let me leave here? Am I to lavish the Maker's blessings on every paper-cut in the archives? Someone stubbing his toe? A bit of bad elbow-- and rubbing a little raw?"
A templar threw balled-up robes at his chest, but he preferred to stand nude and smile.
Enchanter Wynne came into the chamber and frowned at him, deeply unimpressed. "There is a woman in the village who needs our care. I'll deliver the baby, and you will assist."
"Are my hands to be chained the entire time?" He'd asked. "That will surely put her to ease."
The templars rowed them across, Anders in hobbles, and Wynne staring out across the lake. Rumor said she'd had a child once, that she'd barely held it before they ripped it from her. Looking back, Anders wondered how she found the strength to go on, and even more, to help other women in that way. But at the time all he thought of were his own problems. Karl sounded strange in his last letter. Surana had made a friend of the handsome and innocent new templar. And there were hushed reports of strange creatures seen on the surface, dark things, things that bubbled up from the Deep Roads below...
A young woman and a goat awaited them in the village. She was astride a buckskin stallion that pitched back and forth, stamping its hoof. A beautiful woman, fierce, with a mass of impossibly curly gold ringlets. She was dressed like a farmhand, like a man. The goat was a long-eared brown-and-red type, and it munched a stand of weeds whilst eyeing them sidelong. A young man in the colors of the bann came riding up, then, on a flecked gray horse; he must have been one of the bann's sons, or in the retinue, a dark-skinned fellow of mixed Rivain and Fereldan heritage.
"Noreen's still holding on-- we see a foot," the woman called to them. "Mage! Can you ride?"
Anders found himself bundled up on the woman's horse, and she spurred the stallion through a breakneck gallop and jump through all Honnleath. Anders thought he would surely die. Wynne showed much more horsemanship with the young Barris and the gray mare. At the end of it, horrified, especially with his ankles chained together, he was brought before a thatch-roofed cottage where a number of villagers clustered about in a muddy courtyard.
The goat trotted up without a care.
Mia hauled him down and set him to rights. "Your life flash before your eyes?" she'd said to him, and he'd given a laugh of false bravado. For a moment he'd thought he'd seen her somewhere, but a woman's scream took his attention.
Noreen had been in labor since the night before. The babe hadn't flipped in the womb, and it wanted to come out sideways if at all. Wynne glided into the scene with wisdom and compassion, and she'd spread out her calfskin tool roll and the contents of her basket. She bade Anders to boil water, and she'd asked nearly all others present to leave the little cottage.
The reality of the situation hit him full, and he felt the woman's terror, her pain. He had learned all the technicalities of childbirth, the physical process, the remedies. The cramping. The tearing. The entire constellation of agonizing consequences. He'd seen a few pregnancies in the tower-- one he feared now and again he might be responsible for-- but this was the first time he'd assisted a birth, to be there, to help her.
The midwife sponged the woman's head, looked up, and asked, "You'll do it, then?" And also, "Must he be here?"
Wynne had answered, gently, "Yes, I've done it a dozen times before," and also, "Young Frederick is my apprentice. He can be naughty, as you see, but he has a good heart, and he is the most talented healer we've had in ages."
Anders nearly knocked his head on the beams as he came back in to hear that. He'd hardly recalled a word of praise, but he knew she meant it. Wynne frustrated him-- kindly but aloof, with a tragic past, who had every reason to resent the control of the tower but never seemed to want a change for the better. Anders hadn't wanted his gifts. He'd only wanted to go home.
The enchanter cued him with a nod, and he went to Noreen's side, shuffling that way as best he could. It was more awkward given his height, but he had no care of that now. As soon as he laid his hand upon her head, the pain came away, and Noreen gasped with relief. Anders felt the spirits hovering around them, unseen, whispering about just beyond the veil. Lake Calenhad and its environs were old places, holy places, sacred to the wild people and their gods. The spirits here took animal form, when they manifested at all, and Anders had the sense of female creatures pressing in around them.
He had the impression of a cow, broad-faced, wet-nosed, a kindly mother from the ginger cattle native to this land.
Please help her, Anders thought.
The child couldn't be pushed out now. The time for that had gone. Wynne knew a way to help, a method the Tevinters named for one of their archons. Wynne told the woman what she wanted to do, and how it would help, and Noreen nodded through tears. Just do it. Be done with it. There was only one way now to go.
Wynne took the knife from her tool roll and heated the blade in her hand. Anders brushed sweat-damp hair off Noreen's face, talked softly to her, and let his healing flow through.
In minutes, Noreen was delivered of a girl, a child with a full head of black hair, squalling at the top of her lungs.
Anders thought of the ginger cow, her long thick neck bended down, her flat muzzle snuffled to the woman's hair. Thank you, he thought, eyes shut. Thank you for helping her.
Wynne and Anders left the woman a scar. A slight scar. Just enough for her body to remember. In the thatched-roof cottage, in the room with the bloody bed, Anders felt peace, a new purpose, wanting to do this and nothing else. The hobbles weighed now more than ever. What if he promised to stay here in the village? What if he didn't go? What if people brought their sick here, their wounded? Sometimes they brought their casualties to Kinloch, when their need was great, but so many died in the crossing. What would it hurt if he stayed here or in some village?
Later, in the rowboat, Anders broke the silence. "I want to be a healer," he said. "I want to stay in a village."
Weary, Wynne had only looked at him and said, "Frederick... "
"I promise to stay there. They can rotate the templars. Fresh air-- a village." He reached across and laid a hand on her hand. "Wynne. There was a mage living in that village, Wilhelm. Why can he stay there, with his wife?"
"Wilhelm fought in the war with Orlais. He has a dispensation from the king."
"So he can tinker with his artifacts. Fuck about with his little projects. For what use? Wynne, I could heal those people! Anyone they brought. No cost. I felt the spirits there, wanting to help... "
Wynne only sighed, and Anders pressed, desperate now: "It's not fair he was favorite of the king. Is there a law, or isn't there? The Chantry tells us the Maker wants us shut up in our towers, but is the word of the king greater than that of God?"
When she said nothing in the few seconds he allotted her, Anders rushed out, "They even say there's a mage in Lothering, a healer, a runaway from the Marches. Not to mention what else they say of him! Is he above the law then also? Why?"
"I've heard of Malcolm," Wynne told him. "He has a Grey Warden dispensation, and the local templars watch him. I know that you're upset, but in time, you'll come to understand... "
He never would. He never would see her way. After everything had happened, he was told she was killed in the broken circle, throwing her body to shield the apprentices. But he'd seen her alive, somehow, in Amaranthine, a weird sheen to her eyes, but no other clue. She met him kindly, cordially, as he stood there in his new blue uniform. He healed the injured in Amaranthine then, tended their sick.
"Better than the Deep Roads," he'd told Justice, when they sat together under the spreading branches of an oak. "I don't know why we even bother. Blight's done with."
And Justice intoned, in that deep hollow voice from the chest, "It is your duty, so you must do it."
"It is your duty, so you must do it," Anders mocked in a tinny voice. A fly landed on Anders' forehead. He brushed it away with the hand that held the forceps. "Rubbish."
He was suturing Kristoff's arm back to Kristoff's shoulder. The meat was falling off the bone these days, so it fit wrong, ball-and-socket. "That's your problem, Justice," he said. "You've no imagination."
"The Wardens are sworn to defend against the Blight," the spirit told him in words that carried. They sounded made of bronze, deep, powerful. The eyes were glazed over, like three-day fish, but there was a light kindled beneath them, weird and unreal.
"The Blight which is over, you know, by the way." Anders made his stitches small and neat. His healing magic had no power over flesh that was dead, so he made do as he could, to keep his friend together. "There will always be more darkspawn."
Justice said nothing.
"Does this hurt you?" Anders peered over his shoulder.
No answer, and Anders told him, "I just want to help. I know-- I know I'm a shit, like Nathaniel says. But I just. Fuck. I'm always doing what other people want me to. Go here, do this. The tower, and now Tabris. I want to be my own man. No one telling me anything."
Justice moved the arm of the body he inhabited. There wasn't so great a range of motion. He was declining in every way. "This will do," he said.
Anders waved away the flies, and set aside his suture kit. Sighing, he laid a hand on the shoulder, felt the give beneath his hand. "If I ran way," he said quietly. "You'd say nothing, wouldn't you? I can twiddle my thumbs here.. or I could do real good elsewhere. I'd travel, heal people."
The gray head turned toward him, the eyes staring dully at him from their deep sockets, the flesh drawn tight around them. "This is your duty."
"It's what I was given to do," Anders replied.
After the longest time, staring at each other, the flies around them, Anders said, softly, "You could come with me."
(for @teamblueandangry‘s Anders Appreciation Week, day three: greed and charity.)
When Samson says he’s turned away an apostate in need for not having enough coin, Hawke doesn’t blink. Goes without saying, really. Safety is expensive. Even the collective back home had always expected some kind of reward whenever he’d had to resort to asking for their help, and this is Kirkwall; breathing is expensive.
Anders, though. Lip curled and brows drawn down into a look of complete and utter contempt, he says, "I pity any mage who is forced to rely on you for protection," and Hawke honestly isn’t sure he’s real.
He even talks like something out of a story. Does that come with the Warden training?
And they can’t all run free clinics, and a little money flowing makes the world go round, but the look on Anders’ face in that moment sticks with Hawke, as if he’d somehow expected better, as if the world is supposed to be better than it is.
Anders Week // June 25 - July 1 // Fenris Week // July 2 - July 8
This year TBAA is putting our Anders and Fenris Appreciation weeks back-to-back. Both weeks will be using the same themes for each day, a concentration on duality: vices and virtues.
Sunday - Lust // Chastity
Monday - Gluttony // Temperance
Tuesday - Greed // Charity
Wednesday - Sloth // Diligence
Thursday - Wrath // Forgiveness
Friday - Envy // Kindness
Saturday - Pride // Humility
It’s time to explore our favorites’ personalities! You can use each day’s theme to express the strengths and weaknesses of each character or how these things have been inflicted on them by others. All ships welcome!
Tarot Cards, Flash Fic, Headcanons, Metas, any way you want to use the themes, @teamblueandangry so that we can reblog it here on the blog!!
#bluesummer #anders week 2017 #fenris week 2017
(Special thanks to @emotionalmorphine for the awesome banner!!)
During Anders week, all non-event reblogs will be Anders related.
During Fenris week, all non-event reblogs will be Fenris related.
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Summary: Written for @teamblueandangry‘s Anders Week (Envy/Kindness). Read this, and my other shorts, here on ao3.
Anders watches with rapt fascination as Isabela licks Hawke’s neck. He isn’t supposed to be looking—he really should look away, but he can’t. There’s something about the way she runs the point along the branch of Hawke’s throat that’s compelling—arousing, even.
But that isn’t what he envies. He envies the freedom. He envies the option—to love, to fuck, to lick someone’s neck in the middle of a bar. It’s an option that he’s never had. An option that was taken from him the moment he joined the circle. ‘Joined’ is a strong word, actually. The moment he was captured—the moment he became a prisoner.
That’s what he is, of course—a person whose entire life is decided by other people, a person whose choices have never been his own. So that’s what makes Isabela’s flagrant disregard for social norms even more infuriating. He couldn’t even kiss someone on the cheek without incurring the wrath of the templars, let alone initiate sexual preamble in plain view of a whole bar.
She’s free. That’s the crux of it.
Someone might argue that he’s free too. Now. ...but he isn’t. Not when there are mages to liberate and oppressors to overthrow. No, his life has never been his own. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. So the most he can do is watch—and envy. Isabela gets to be herself while he holds up the weight of the world—the weight of the future.
...but still. This is for the greater good.
So he’ll watch Isabela and secretly hate her while he works—tirelessly—to change the world. And someday he’ll be done. Someday he’ll walk down the street with a lover and kiss in public. Someday he’ll be whoever he wants.
But not today. Today he’ll wish. Today he’ll dream. Today he’ll envy.
Dr Anders, the youngest healer to receive his doctorate in medicinal magic has a side-job. He teaches sex-ed to the swarms of reluctant first years at his university as part of the new nationwide 'safer campuses initiative' and moonlights as the doctor on-call at KU (Kirkwall University) Student Health Services. Then he gets an anonymous note in class that turns his world upside down.
