#pro-anders

Burning. Bright. Blazing rubble. scorching heat. his fault. it feels familiar. a lifetime ago.

The barn is gone. Father sends him away, away. A tower, a circle. He must get out of this place, he must be free. A year alone, dark, silent, so silent. He can feel himself slipping, were it not for gentle mewing. He clings to it, a lifeline.

Warden. Protector. He cannot stay, he will not. He cannot protect, grey as he may be. He knows there is work to be done, Justice to be served.

Healer, criminal, vagrant, savior, down in dark tunnels he dwells, out of sight but not out of work.

The hawk. The one light in the gaping, gathering dark. He can’t lose it, he won’t, he will stay by it’s side, he will drown in blood to keep it safe. Love, passionate, unwavering as the ground beneath him falls. It cannot last, he is undeserving

He knows that there can be no peace. there is no other choice. Justice must be served, ringing in his ears, his cheeks again scorched, singed. The bright blaze bursts before him. The look on his light’s face. A martyr of himself he has made, and there is no turning back.

[Anders]: “..... I’m sorry.”

[Cole]: “I understand.”

Anders is twelve when the Templars take him away, and his mother screams and cries and he doesn't know why at first. The Templars were meant to protect mages, so why would his mother be crying?

Then he is in Fereldan, and he understands why.

At first, he doesn't try to run. He tries to make friends, focuses on his studies, but he doesn't get any letters from his mother, and he finds a letter he wrote to her almost burned away in a fireplace.

He's twelve and in a different country, with words that are broken and no letters, just like he now has no name, and he just wants his mother.

He runs, and they catch him and drag him back, even as he cries and begs to see his mum.

He keeps trying to run - once more to see his mother, and after because he hates being trapped. He has heard whispers of mages flinging themselves from the tallest windows, of trying to kill themselves, and he doesn't want to become like that. He refuses to become like that.

Anders is not going to lose all hope, only to be found dead one morning and be another faceless victim amongst the many. He is going to survive.

The sixth almost-successful escape from the Circle lands him in solitary for a year, and Anders is sure it’s going to drive him mad, this time. He had been beaten and bruised, threatened the other times, and he’d laughed in their faces, in the face of a fate worse than death, because he would be successful one day.

Now, he wonders, if that is even possible, when he fears that he forgets the sound of Karl’s voice, his face, the feel of sunlight on his skin.

The seventh attempt? He stays out of the Circle, recruited by a commander who yells at the Templars, who conscripts him. It’s like another cage, the Wardens, but at least he’s free to walk, to go outside in the rain and laugh with the joy of being able to do so legally.

He makes friends amongst the Wardens, even if it’s more tentative than it ever has been. He doesn’t sleep with any, but he flirts and hides his hurts with jokes and humour. Sometimes it works and Nathaniel rolls his eyes, but sometimes he must sound too bitter, and the commander looks at him. Anders isn’t sure if the look is concern or something more malicious.

He decides it’s better not to ask, and continue as though he isn’t breaking apart inside.

Then the Templar comes, nearly kills him, would have if not for Justice, and he tears them all apart, blood and body pieces scattered when he comes to, and Anders vomits, before he does what he does best.

He runs. All the way to Kirkwall.

It’s a shithole, and the Templars are more vigilant, but Anders blends in with the refugees easily enough, heads to Darktown and decides he will do some good. He opens up a clinic, treats people without thought of money, and sometimes gives what food he has to people who look far too thin, whose bones are too visible beneath their skin. He stays there, keeps his head down as much as possible. He gets letters smuggled out of the Gallows to him, from Karl, and almost cries at the familiar writing, the way his letters form a reminder of times before he had a spirit rattling around in his head. He had never been happy, they had not been happier times, but it was easy to say they had been easier.

Then Hawke comes, and that’s when everything seems to go wrong.

He can’t blame Hawke for it, and Anders knows it’s cruel to say that when Hawke showed up things got worse, but the correlation is there, coincidental as it seems. Karl is made Tranquil, and Anders kills him and he sees the blood on the knife, on his hands, and he can’t speak, chokes on his words and his breath. For a second he wants to join Karl in nothing, in death. Then he squares his shoulders, takes a breath and raises his head.

Never again, he vows. Never again shall they touch another mage. No more Karls will happen, not if he has any say in the matter.

The mage underground starts, and he and others smuggle mages out of the gallows. He’s surprised to get help from Templars - he recognises Thrask, the man who asked them to save those from the Starkhaven Circle, and Keran, the one kidnapped by a blood mage - but it makes sense that even Templars can see that things have reached a breaking point.

The Tranquil Solution reaches his ears, and there is a plan to draw him out, to see if there is proof. Hawke comes with him, and Justice takes over and he nearly killed that girl, nearly tore her apart…

He wants to be sick. He isn't, but it is a close thing.

The Qunari try to occupy Kirkwall, the Qunari fall at Hawke’s hand. The viscount is dead, there is no man upon the seat, and Meredith grows worse and worse. The mage underground is destroyed, and Orsino rallies support in the streets, only to be quelled by the woman he is trying to oppose and the one woman who could put an end to the terror of the Circle has the gall to play neutral. To act as though Meredith is a little girl, and not the monster Anders sees in his sleep, joined by Templars from his past and a sunburst burned onto the head of his past lover.

This cannot stand. If Elthina won’t take action, Anders will, and it breaks his heart to do so.

But first, he has to make sure they don’t know, and that? That is harder to do than planting a bomb in the Chantry.

Because Hawke and their friends seem to care, like maybe a few Wardens did, and Anders wants to hold onto that. Wants to keep them close to him, because his friends have never stayed as long as these ones have and he cares for them, too.

But he can’t keep them. It will only end in heartbreak.

He pushes them away. He acts surly and moody and refuses to answer questions. If they hate him, it will make it easier. Easier to look at him and see a monster. Easier to do what needs to be done. They can't know, can't even suspect, because either they will stop it, or they will be accused.

He still dreams of a starburst brand, and sees it on their forehead and it just solidifies his judgement.

The final nail in the coffin is Danarius, and he lets out words that suggest he wants Fenris to go back to him.

He goes home, not walked back, and throws up his meager lunch and hopefully the poisonous words that had dripped from his tongue with it.

Then there is the final straw, the last argument between Meredith and Orsino, and the Chantry explodes, bright as the sun, and Anders can only watch. He feels numb, instead of triumphant.

He never wanted it to come to this, but it was the only way. They speak of compromise when there is none. There can be no peace.

Hawke has the task of dealing with him after, and Anders doesn’t plead for his life, pretends he can’t feel the hatred and betrayal from them and their friends. Theirs, not his. They were never his friends, even if he wanted to believe it. Karl had cared, and maybe the commander, but thinking that hurts too much, so he doesn’t.

His eyes hurt from staring at the flames, the bright flash. He wonders what angers them more - that he blew up a building, or that he left no chance of a (false) compromise.

'Why?' Asks Hawke, voice shaky. 'The Chantry is a place of peace.'

Anders wants to scream. What about the Exalted Marches, Halamshiral? What about the elven boy tortured for information? The hundreds of thousands of mages dying at the hands of those ordered around by the Chantry? Rivain? Was any of that peaceful? He killed a few to save the many. He wonders if the Divine can say the same about the millions slaughtered at her command, can look at the trees in The Emerald Graves, and say it was just.

He blew up a building after giving chance after chance for Elthina to save his people, the Chantry has blown up men and women and children and danced on the ashes.

Instead, he says nothing, other than if he is destined for the head man's axe, then swing it and be done with it.

Sometimes Hawke does, and Anders dies on the steps of the Chantry, blood staining the stone and becoming a victim he swore he’d never be.

Sometimes? Sometimes he lives, and though he thanks Hawke, he hates them for it. He was ready to die - wanted to - and the Chantry was his note and Hawke didn't have the decency to let it be. He doesn't yell at them, doesn't try to get close again. He joins his people in the fight, and some look at him like he has signed their death certificate.

If only they knew that they were dead the moment magic flickered to life in their hands.

And then he runs. He runs and sometimes stops and then runs when they suspect. He runs and runs and runs.