#somethinglikehome

A few hours after he departed, he heard a tentative rap on his locked clinic door. Their knock — developed between then when they were still denying the degree to which they had intertwined their lives and their selves with each other.

"This way, you know it's me," Hawke had said, "and that you're safe."

He had felt something then - a flood of warmth, because damn if this man wasn't about the only place he felt safe in this Maker-forsaken city - and he felt it now, despite himself.

Still, he sighed, dropping his head to his arms folded before him on his desk, until he head a Hawke's rumbling voice on the other side,

"Come on, Anders. I know you're there."

Anders stood, opening the door and standing shame-faced before the man he loved - the kind, generous, open man that had for some reason chosen him.

"Anders." He said, as he followed Anders into the empty space of the clinic. There was a note of hesitancy in his voice. He wasn't a man who often tread lightly, but he seemed to be doing so here. "You left…"

Anders sighed. "I did."

He braced for the recriminations that would surely followed, but Hawke simple asked, "Are you okay?"

He looked up, met his eyes. His brows were knitted, concern apparent in his face. Anders felt a flood of guilt, self loathing at the sight - why do I have to make everything so difficult?

"Yes. Of course -" he shook his head, "I mean, I don't know, Hawke. Look at me. I can't do this. I am a mess. What could I possibly offer that little girl but more hardship?"

Hawke paused. He thread his arms under his heavy coat, around his waist, and nestled his head in the crook of his Anders neck before speaking.

"A father?" He said, "It means something, knowing where you came from"

A sob choked unbidden from Anders throat, "You say that like it's so simple."

Another hesitation.

"Maybe it is." He said, "Maybe it doesn't have to be complicated."

Frustrated, Anders pulled away, and went back over to his alchemy bench. He needed to move his hands and steady his thoughts.

"What could I know about being a father, Hawke? I haven't had a parent since I was 12 years old - I barely remember what it was to be parented. What in my life could possibly have prepared me for this?" He felt the echo of Justice in his voice. "Just another thing the blighted Chantry took from me."

"Hey - fatherhood suits you - you're glowing!" Garrett quipped. Inappropriately.

Anders felt a stab of annoyance - His own or Justice's he wasn't sure.

"It's easier for you - you had parents." He snapped.

Garret looked stricken at this. Anders raked his hands through his hair again.

"Maker, I'm making a mess of things" he mumbled, before continuing: "what I mean is… I don't have any guide for this. I don't know what to do. To say."

There was a long silence, before Garrett asked, "Did Anneliese have a guide?"

Anders learned forward over the tall counter, resting his forehead on his hands. He didn't reply. What was there to say. Selfish selfish selfish.

Garrett sighed this time.

"What I mean is, you'll take it day by day. Like Anneliese has done. Like my father did, I suppose."

After another minute of heavy silence, "Look-" he said, "just come to bed."

Pouting, he added, pulled Anders too him by the waist, "It's cold without my honeybear"

Anders laughed, as he always did - the incongruity of this big, hairy, hulk of a warrior and his sappy, pleading voice catching him off guard - and accepted his kiss before resting his head on the man's broad shoulder.

"It'll be right as rain tomorrow, love" Garrett added, "You'll see."

-♡-

The next morning came upon them quickly, finding Anders still awake. He lay on his back, with Hawke tucked against him. In his sleep, he looked untroubled. Unburdened. A little more like the man he had met 5 years ago now. The man he was before Bethany had gone to the Wardens. The man he was before Leandra's death.

When Anders thought about the burden he would add to his life in the future, he felt sick. He didnt know yet where this cause of his would lead him, but he knew that peaceful methods were failing. Every day, the templars got more brazen. More extreme in their actions. Sanctioned by the Chantry, untouched by the Guard.

He knew whatever the solution was, he wasn't likely to survive it.

He had laid awake most of the night, drifting into a sort of almost sleep for only short periods before he jolted awake once more with the shock of the previous nights revelation.

His mind was spinning, struggling for purchase. It felt like trying to run through deep and shifting sand.

He knows there was a time when he longed for parenthood- in the abstract, at least. The idea that it was denied him for who he was chaffed.

Had had delivered many babies in the Circle. Placed many infants in the waiting arms of templars or Chantry sisters over the anguished cries of their mothers, or, worse, their mother's stone-faced silence, their bitter and resolved detachment. He had granted countless more the simpler and less painful path of termination — illegal for mages, and performed in secret; only possible if they learned of their pregnancy before it was discovered by the templars.

It had left him with a burning and simmering but ultimately impotent rage. But he had long since accepted his reality.

To have that upended was disorienting. To have it upended here, in Kirkwall, and now, when they knew how this would likely end — it was all too much.

The light was streaming though the window in a way that indicated early morning - the warm light of sunrise painting the room in soft yellow light. He watched Garrett for a moment longer - the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the soft curve of his lips. The pressed a kiss to his dark, messy hair and, with a sigh, rose.

There would be patients in the clinic soon. He hardly thought this was a day he would make it through without coffee.

He pulled on his house pants and robe, sliding his feet into the soft plush slippers that had been waiting for him when he moved in - purchased for him in a fit of romanticism by Garrett before they had even kissed. ("I just wanted you to be comfy…" he had said, looking very much like a little boy in his abashed demeanour, when Anders had asked him about it, when presented with them on their first morning together.)

He padded down the stairs to the kitchen, pausing for a moment when he saw Anneliese already sitting at the table, a mug of tea clutched between her hands.

Circle mage habits, he thought. He wondering if they were all like this - early risers, keyed to routine. He had always woken with the dawn, no matter how little sleep he had had.

She looked up, and Anders felt a clench of shame once more at the weariness his found in her face.

"Morning Anders" she said, a false brightness in her voice.

"Morning" he mumbled, shuffling over to the stove in the corner to set the fire.

"Will you sit with me a bit? I could use some adult time. Andi will be up in about an hour and it'll be chaos from there on." She laughed, that high clear laugh of hers, and he felt like time collapsed. He couldn't help but look up at her round, smiling face and meet it with her own.

"Of course." He said, "Let me just get the coffee on. It was a long night."

"Coffee?" She laughed, "Look at you, fancy britches, with your coffee and your Hightown Estate."

He felt Justice grumble at this, his own discomfort with the privilege of their life here surfacing momentarily. You know I love you. But shove it.

He laughed instead. "It's new to me too. But the coffee is addictive. Sadly cant function without it some days. Do you want me to make you a cup?"

"Hmm" she said, "I'll try a sip of your first."

This seemed like a strangely intimate proposal, but he nodded.

Once his coffee was made, he settled at the table with her.

"So…" she said, "last night…"

"I know," he sighed, finding himself unable to meet her eyes, "I know. It was just…a shock."

She was silent for a moment, before reaching out and picking up his mug, taking a sip of the coffee. She screwed her face. "Maker, that's bitter. You like this?"

"Well, you know me" he quipped. "Bitter but sweet, right?" He added, reflexively falling into flirting and cringing at the directness. Old habits.

She laughed, but didn't respond. They sat in silence for a moment.

It was Anders who broke it.

"Why now?" He asked.

"Hmm?"

"Why now? Why did you seek me out now?"

She tapped her finger on the rim of her mug, looking at his appraisingly for a moment, before answering.

"She's a mage, Anders. Her magic manifested and we had to flee. I didn't… i didn't know where else to go. And I was.. tired of doing this alone." Her voice was matter of fact, as if her words hadn't made the bottom of his own life fall out - and peaked Justice's attention too. "Anyways, I had no idea where you were, if you were still alive."

"She's a mage." His voice was undercut by some combination of awe and dread.

"You're surprised? Both her parents are. Strong ones too."

"Still, it doesn't always…." he paused, "Maker, and you brought her here. Do you know how bad things are in Kirkwall."

"Things are bad everywhere, Anders," she said, "surely you know that. Fereldan just came out of a blight. Food is scarce, people are desperate. Magic is a good scapegoat."

"Kirkwall is different, Mell. Things are —"

He felt Justice rise within him again, quickly shoving his hand under the table. Too late.

Mell eyed him wearily. "Hawke told me about that… About.. your 'spirit.'"

Fucking. Garrett. The man had the discretion of a drunken school girl.

"Ah." He said. Stupidly.

"Is he truly safe?" She asked.

"Yes" he said, a little too quickly. "I mean, no. Its complicated. He wouldn't hurt you though. Or Andi." He was certain of this.

She nodded.

"Does she know?" Anders asked, "About me?"

Mell responded slowly. Her caution brought to mind a person speaking to a frightened cat, afraid they might bolt.

"She is a bright girl. She probably has figured it out. But I wanted to be sure I would find you before I told her. I had hoped we might tell her last night but…"

Anders stared down at his hands for a moment, massaging his thumb into his palm - a habit he had developed in recent years as his communication with Justice became easier. It had started as a short hand - an affectionate gesture meant to soothe; to say "it's okay". The world could be a lot for Justice, despite his love for it. But the world could be a lot for him too.

"Could we… try that again?"

The woman behind the door looked different than he recalled - a little older, a little more worn - but he wasn't likely to forget those eyes - vibrant and blue as the Waking Sea.

"Mell?" He says, a little breathlessly.

"Anders." Her face carries open relief as she pulled him into a tight embrace.

He waved her into the clinic, and only then did he register the presence of a small child clinging to her leg.

A small child with blond hair and brown eyes. A small child that looked to be around 5 years of age.

Fuck.

"Huh. Well, this is interesting." Garrett laughed.

-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-

Mell was here. Mell had a child. Mell had a child that looked like him. Mell was here. Mell was in Kirkwall. Mell wasn't safe. Mell had a child. Mell had a child that looked like him.

Maddening. He felt struck like a bell, ringing and reverberating on the same panicked thoughts, repeating in an ever narrowing circle until they landed on a single point- "I can't do this."

It hadn't taken Garrett long to realize that Mell was Anneliese Amell, and that they were, in fact, cousins. When Mell had matter-of-factly told him that the little girl clinging to her leg was named Leandra - "a family name, I believe" she had said, oblivious to the impact of her words - Garrett had, in a voice choked with emotions that Anders wasnt sure anyone else would hear, extended an invitation for them to stay the night at the Estate.

The invitation probably would have come anyways - Garrett being the gregarious and outgoing man that he was. But Anders was sure this felt too like providence for Garrett. He had so little family left.

"It seems we all have some catching up to do!" He had loudly proclaimed, that big, goofy smile of his plastered across his jovial face. Despute this, his gaze met Anders meaningfully.

Now alone in the sitting room while Garrett went to speak to Bodhan and Orana about their two unexpected guests, Anders had watched the girl that looked so like him. She had taken quickly to Maric, speaking to the mabari in a steady, babbling stream. Telling him some story, it seemed, about. … a cat that turned unto a dragon? Or perhaps a dragon that turned into a cat. It was hard to follow over his churning thoughts.

"Is she mine?" He asked quietly, his eyes not leaving the girl in front of him, dreading the answer he already knew was coming.

"Do you need to ask, Anders? Look at her."

"Maker," Anders scrubbed his hands over his face. "I just… how? It only happened once."

Mell laughed.

"It only takes once. You know that."

Anders felt sick.

That period of his life had been a blur of bad decisions - emerging from a year of solitary with only the barest hold on his own sanity.

His emotions had always had a tidal quality - prone to bouts of melancholy, to periods of near manic activity. He was known for his impulsiveness for a reason and you didn't escape the Circle (and get caught) six times without it.

But that period following solitary could best be described as a frenzy. He couldn't stop moving - speaking in a near continuous ramble, ignoring the looks of confusion the faces of the people around him as he spoke; fucking his way through what seemed like half the Circle, mages and templars alike, before his last escape attempt. And not always with the caution he usually employed.

He recalled feeling, at the time, that if he stopped - if he let himself sit for even a moment with the experience of that last year - he would never move again.

Mell was his friend. A good friend. And she had come to him with such tenderness and he had broken in her arms, impulsive declarations of love on his lips as they met.

And, in another selfish act in a seemingly endless list of selfish acts that he felt defined his life to date, he was gone the next day. His seventh, and final, escape attempt.

He had never known if Mell had survived the events at the tower, though he had thought of her as he listened to his Warden- Commander tell him of them, an anxious dread twisting in his stomach. Still, he had never thought to seek her out. What would be the point? She was in the Circle. He couldn't reach her even if she was alive.

And now here she was. And there was her child.

(My daughter, he thought testing the words in his mind and feeling the flood of panic - and confusion - that accompanied them.)

And they were here - in Kirkwall.

A rumble in the back of his mind. A twisting of anxiety and guilt and dread in his guts. They had much to do here. And he had to see it through.

"I can't do this." He said, simply, before leaving the room.

-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-

Anders had intended to stay the night at the clinic, burying himself in his writing, in cleaning, in making potions and salves - anything to distract himself from the steady pulse of shame he felt at having fled. At least there, he could avoid having to face Garrett.

Andi was playing tag with two children she had met the previous day - fast friends in the way that children so often were. Her loud, peeling laughter carried over the gusting of the wind and the creaking of the ship. She knew it should have been heartening - her daughter's unbridled joy. It wasn't. She hated the careful way she watched her. The way fear creeped into her heart, stealing her of the joy of her own daughter's happiness. She felt like her own templar. She already felt like her daughter's. Ready to strike at a moments notice — to step in if her emotions ran too hot or got too big, lest an unexpected display of magic expose them. When the blight had ended, Anneliese and Andi had settled in a small village on the edge of the Brecialian forest. After years on the run, their life there had felt peaceful, if lonely. She had earned a meager living as a laundress and seamstress and whatever else was needed. When Andi's magic had manifested, it had come hard and fast and decimated the small life they'd built in the same moment it had decimated the barn she had burned. At the time, it had felt like a sign. The older Andi got, the more it was clear she was her father's daughter. It was apparent in the copper blonde of her hair that shone like gold in when the light hit is right, and in the amber of her eyes, true — but it was also apparent in the oceanic nature of her moods. The way she felt all things with a depth that was almost unsettling, even in a child so young. Anneliese remembered with clarity the first time she had seen it - 3 years old, stumbling into the kitchen with a dead mouse in her hands, her breath hitching as she sobbed over this small creature. "Can you fix him, Mama?" She had found the thing in the woods, already dead and swarmed with wasps, and she was filled not with the morbid curiosity of childhood, but with an earnest and intense desire to help. When Anneliese had told her it was too late, she had been inconsolable. Sobbing so hard into her mother's arms Anneliese had to remind her to breath. She had insisted on a pyre for this little creature she hadn't known. And as Anneliese rubbed her hand in circles over the girls shuddering back as she cried over the little fire, she had thought of Anders. So it was fitting, she had thought wryly as she had thrown their meager belongings into a bag to flee their little home, that her magic had manifested as it had. As the City of Chains came into view, she closed her eyes- a small prayer to a Maker she knew wasn't listening whispered near silently into the ocean air - "Maker, let him still be here. And Maker, let me find the strength to keep her safe."

I also really liked this little bit from the next chapter:

"Love, you need to eat." Garrett had arrived around dinner and was fussing over him in a manner he found equal parts deeply endearing and wildly annoying. "Garrett." He sighed. "I am serious, Anders. If you get any damn skinnier you'll waste away." Anders dodged a playful pinch to his side, but there was true concern in Garrett's voice. He glanced over at the man and noted how tired he looked - wan and pale in a way he never had been before. He hadn't been sleeping well since Leandra's death. He hadn't been eating properly either. Of course he was fussing over him. He had lost so much. He felt his irritation soften. "Just let me finish up here. I'll leave the cleaning for the morning." Garrett offered him a broad, relieved smile and planted a too loud kiss on his cheek. Anders face flushed a little at the display but he couldn't help but smile at the open affection. "Well, there you are." He said to the boy on the table, who was staring up at him wide eyed.

Hoping to buckle down and get this written once im through the Mini Bang :)

Gently tagging @mylosingdogs @snail-woman @the-cryptographer @atiya-nagrano and @teine-mallaichte

It was Garrett's name day, and they had taken him to his favourite fish stand at the far south-east corner of the docks. They sold some of the crab cakes Kirkwall was famous for - deep fried and dripping in the beef tallow. Not to her taste- but *Leandra* -

“Momma - it's so good!” Andi had grinned, her chin and her fingers coated in grease.

“Hmm, yet your wearing more than you're eating, Sunshine” Anneliese had said, wiping her chin.

“Daddy - Do you want one?”

Anders had stiffened- this was a new development, and Anders hadn’t exactly embraced fatherhood- but before he could respond Garrett had laughed and given Anders a smack on the back -

“See - I knew you I liked you, little dragon!” Garrett boomed, “We’ve got the same goal! Gotta fatten him up!”

Anders had grinned at the man with an only lightly queasy smile, something like aggrieved long suffering spouse meets proud parent.

Now, Anneliese sat down next to Anders on the sunwarmed steps.

“He's good with her isn’t he?” She said, nodding her head towards Garrett and his squeeling hanger-on.

“Who isn't he good with?” He said, voice thick with admiration.

“You sure are sweet on him. The only other time ive seen you like this before was with Karl.” She cringed as she said it - Karl wasnt a topic to raise casually, she had learned.

Anders didnt respond for a few long beats, but then said softly, “I am glad you got her out of there. She has big feelings. She must get that from me. She wouldn’t have done well with the Chantry. And she wouldn't survive the Circle.”

They sat in silence for a while, watching their daughter, who was now attempting to climb Merrill like a tree while Garrett hovered to catch her.

“Do you ever miss it?”

“What? The Circle?” Anders snorted, “Is that a joke?”