AN: Written in response to the ubiquitous LJ kink meme, the prompt was for a female mage Hawke made Tranquil in early Act 2 with the requested twist being that the cure for Tranquility can be found through a Fade spirit arrangement a la Justice.
Anders knew they were hiding something from him. He saw it in Varric's face in the Hanged Man when Aveline burst in on card night, shot a look in Anders' direction, and dragged Varric bodily out of his chair and up the stairs to his suite. When they returned, Varric's expression was as grim as Aveline's.
"Blondie, we're gonna need you down at your clinic," he said gruffly and grabbed Fenris by the arm. "You're coming with us."
While he spoke, Aveline leaned down to murmur something in Isabela's ear that made the woman go ashen under her usual tan.
Anders stood up, grabbing his staff. "What is it?" The most likely suspects, considering who was absent were Merrill and… His stomach clenched. "Is it Hawke?"
Aveline gave him a push. "Your clinic, Anders. Go!"
Anders stumbled with the push – and that had been Aveline when she was holding back. She, Varric, Fenris, and Isabella hurried past him and nearly ran out of the tavern, leaving Anders dazed and terrified. He ran to the door to see them disappearing in the direction of the Gallows ferry dock.
Didn't want the apostate in the Gallows? Maybe that made some bit of sense, but still didn't explain why.
He trudged down to the nearest passage into Darktown and left the sun behind to pace his clinic and wait. While he waited he conjured a spectacular list of scenarios for why they had left him behind without even a word of why.
After trying on Hawke is dead for size, he decided that it made him too nauseated to allow in his reality for even a moment longer. Carver? Perhaps Carver had been hurt and they couldn't ask an apostate mage to heal him in the middle of the Gallows. Right, and Carver just lovedhim. Perhaps Merrill had gotten herself into trouble and they were trying to keep the apostate count down right in the Knight-Commander's face. Why bring Fenris to help Merrill then? He bore the little blood mage no more love than Anders had for her.
He scrubbed his face with his hands, folded blankets, paced, and started to think of more ridiculous scenarios. The Gallows had been invaded by monster kittens and they didn't trust him to fight them rather than bring them home and give them all absurd names. No, he'd only keep a half dozen at the most. Perhaps only two if they had a serious yen for human flesh.
They were planning a surprise name day party and Meredith was going to jump out of a giant cake. No, his name day wasn't for months. And he didn't want to picture Meredith out of her armor.
Giant birds! They were trying to save him from being picked up by giant ravens drawn irresistibly to his pauldrons, mistaking him for a hatchling and flying him…
Shit.It wasn't working. It was just pathetic.
He moved a barrel to have a clear view of the two doors into his clinic and sat, waiting, his staff over his knees.
Four years – charitably, maybe they were only four hours – passed before Anders heard armor rattling on the stairs leading up to the landing outside his clinic. He tensed, listening to pick out how many sets. Not a full templar squad's worth, he was sure of that.
Then he heard Aveline's voice and relaxed slightly. If anything, she sounded subdued, but not urgent.
She came in first with Carver – maybe he had been right after all – close behind her. They both looked grim, but Carver let Aveline do the talking.
"Anders," she said carefully. "We have something you have to see, but you have to keep that spirit under control. Do you understand me?"
He frowned. "Just drop the other boot already. This is worse than every time I knew the templars were just outside my door waiting to pounce to take me back to the Circle. What happened?"
Carver edged out from behind Aveline and swallowed hard when Aveline looked to him. "It's my sister," he said uncomfortably.
"What?" He tried to push past them to see who was waiting outside, but Aveline caught his arm and Carver put a hand on his staff – his staff!
"Anders," she said again. "Your word. I need it now. You mustcontrol the spirit."
Now he was panicking, his breath coming fast, his heart beating faster. What was so bad that they had to get him to promise to—
"Maker no," he moaned and jerked free of Aveline's grasp, dropping his staff much to Carver's surprise, running for the clinic door to find Marian.
Oh, sweet Andraste, no.
She stood flanked by Varric and Fenris, Isabela and Merrill at her back as silent guardians. She was unhurt, but not unharmed.
The sight of the Tranquil brand on her forehead nearly drove him to his knees before the swell of righteous rage burned strength into his spine. Justice clawed toward the surface of their mind, his thoughts a red wash of abhorrence.
"No!" they screamed together, Anders' skin crackling with Justice's power, fissures opening that let the pure energy of the Fade spirit wash out into the Darktown gloom, lighting the scene an unearthly blue. "I will kill them all. So many lost, so many good people. I will not let them live!"
He barely heard Aveline snap, "Carver!" through the haze of anger and justified need to bring justice to those who had destroyed a powerful and conscientious mage out of fear and barely veiled evil.
Carver gripped one of his arms, Aveline the other. The templar thrust the order's anti-magic into Anders, draining his mana and forcing the spirit back a little at a time while Aveline repeated over and over in his ear that Hawke was safe, she was with them, and that if he didn't calm down right bloody nowsomeone was going to get hurt and he would never forgive himself if it was Hawke.
What succeeded where templar skills and Aveline's exhortations could not was Marian's question. "What the bloody hell are you three doing?"
Everything stopped. Marian stepped forward and cupped Anders' face between her hands. Oh, her hands, so small, so soft, so warm. Anders looked down at her with tears tracking down his cheeks and murmured her name as a question.
"Remember Karl?" she said. "I understand now. It's Justice."
He remembered Karl. And he remembered how quickly Karl faded after Justice's power was gone.
"I can't do it again," he said brokenly. "Don't ask me to. I can't kill you."
"You sure as Void can't," Carver growled. "I didn't risk everything to get my sister out of the Gallows just to let you murder her."
"Carver," Marian said, looking up at her brother. "Don't make me live like this. Ple—"
The light left her eyes and her hands slipped away from Anders' cheeks. "I am supposed to stay at the Gallows," she said dully.
Isabela put an arm around Merrill's shoulders and held her when she sobbed, letting her turn her face away from the sight of this broken reunion.
"No," Carver said, shaking his head. "No. No, mother wouldn't have it." He swept the group with a glare. "None of you are going to 'put her out of her misery,' do you hear me?"
"I can't cure this in my clinic," Anders rasped. He wanted to shake Marian, to shout at her, to do anything to rouse her from her blankness, but it would do nothing but jostle her and break his own heart still further.
"Marethari," Merrill said softly, then repeated herself more loudly. "Keeper Marethari. We can take her to the Dalish. If Marethari knows of anything, even rumors, she'll tell us for Hawke. Hawke was touched by Asha'bellanar, that has to mean something."
Aveline nodded. "It's something, and it's safer for her there than here where the templars might stumble over her at any time."
Carver tightened his jaw and surveyed his sister's cohorts before jerking his head in a sharp nod. "Do it. I can't go with you. I have to get back to the Gallows before it's obvious I helped her get away. Keran can't cover for me forever."
He released Anders. "Marian. Look at me."
She turned her face up to her brother, waiting patiently, forever patiently.
"You are to go with these people. Listen to them as you would to a templar, do you understand me."
"Yes, Carver," she said.
For all that Carver had always hated his sister's primacy, he looked ill at her subservience now. He seemed ready to say something else to her, but shook his head and looked instead to Aveline. "Go. Take her to the Dalish. I'll do what I can at the Gallows."
• • •
Usually they broke down into a smaller group, but this time Hawke traveled to Sundermount protected by all of her companions. None of them were willing to let her out of their sight until there was some resolution to this horror.
Anders walked behind her the entire way. He could not trust himself to see her face, to see that brand, and not lose himself to Justice again. He warred with himself. If he let Justice out, let him have his way, it would bring Marian back again, even if it was only for a little while. But with Justice came his fury, and that was too much for Anders to face.
Merrill trotted up beside him as the path that would lead them to her clan came into view up ahead. "We have to tell Marethari about you," she said. "She should know that you can bring her back at least a little."
"I can't bring her back," Anders said bitterly. "That's all Justice. I'm just, I don't know, the cup he's poured in. Sometimes he sloshes out."
"And all over Hawke," Merrill mused. "Maybe you should slosh on Hawke more."
Anders turned his head to look down at her, but she was honestly oblivious to any kind of double meaning in what she had just said.
"No, Merrill," he said dryly. "No sloshing. Sloshing is bad."
"Oh I don't think so," she said. "After all, the last time you sloshed on her, she came to."
Anders heard Isabela cough to suppress a laugh and shot her a glare over his shoulder. She raised her hands to silently protest her innocence, leaving him to look back down at Merrill.
"Do you honestly not know what you're saying?" he asked. How did a blood mage manage such blithe innocence? Weren't the two things diametrically opposed?
"What? I was just saying that if your spirit's power helps reconnect her to the Beyond, maybe she should be around him more."
"That—" he stopped walking. "You might have something there. I don't know what yet, but… something."
"Oh good," she said, turning to walk backwards to talk to him. "Because I hate when I don't have anything at all. Isn't it better to have something than nothing? Unless it's the plague. Then it's better to have nothing, but we weren't talking about the plague, so I think this is better."
Anders scrubbed his hands on his pants and sighed before jogging to catch up with her. "Let's just see what Marethari thinks about it."
• • •
The Dalish did not greet the group warmly, casting dark glances at Merrill and staring openly at the brand on Hawke's forehead. They parted before the outsiders, and Anders could see that they counted Merrill as an outsider now as well, letting them pass through the camp to where Keeper Marethari waited for them.
"Merrill, have you changed-" she began, but stopped when she saw Hawke, murmuring mournfully "Emma ir abelas."
"Keeper," Merrill said, wringing her hands fitfully. "You can see why we're here."
"I see, child, but there is no cure for this," Marethari said in the tones of someone delivering news of a loved one's death.
"But there's something," Anders cut in. "We brought her back for a few moments. We thought you might have some ideas for how to make it last longer."
Marethari gestured the group toward a circle of benches, signaling one of the elves to bring them water laced with restorative herbs.
She listened to the story, giving Anders a piercing look when Justice was explained to her and how his manifestation had restored Marian's contact with the Fade, albeit fleetingly.
"We thought that maybe you would have an idea of how we could do that for Marian all the time," Merrill said hopefully. "She's a good person, Keeper, and Asha'bellanar knows her name. Surely we can't let her stay like this. She has helped us and she has helped Feynriel, and so many other people."
Marethari's expression grew grim. "Feynriel is not well, Merrill. If you had not come to me, I would have come to you in the city. But perhaps there is an opportunity here if you and your friends are as daring as I think you are.
"Feynriel has fallen into a deep sleep and does not wake. I fear that he is trapped in his dreams, and if he is not soon rescued, he will fall to the demons that hunt him and we will be faced with a truly terrible power. I will perform an ancient Elvehn rite to send you and your companions into the Beyond. Perhaps you will find the answer for your friend there, but you must save Feynriel from the demons."
She swept her gaze around the assembled friends. "Will you do this?"
Merrill nodded immediately, as did Anders. Aveline was stern-faced when she said, "Yes."
Varric smiled. "A dwarf in the Fade. Now there's a story I want to tell."
Isabela shrugged. "If I don't they won't pick up my tab at the Hanged Man any more. I'm in."
Fenris spat on the ground by his feet and grudgingly growled. "For Hawke."