How much can a man lose before he loses his soul? I ask myself that question daily, watching as the people around me fray around the edges, losing both hope and faith. How much can someone give of themselves before the well runs dry? Another question I will never get the answer to before it happens.
I could never have done this without Justice. I would have folded and fled, would have broken apart in tiny shards or maybe fallen to the despair of blood magic. Perhaps in a way I already have, Vengeance is a curse I'm not ready to let run rampant yet, even though the urge grows stronger daily. My secret I can't share with anybody, not even Justice. How do you tell your oldest friend that he is slowly going insane? Changing? I could never make him understand, and I have to admit to myself that I don't really want to. This is a road we are walking down together, driven by circumstance and atrocity.
But neither of us has fallen yet. How long can a man cling to the edge of a cliff by his fingertips?
Maybe I will find out.
Maybe it's the lies I regret the most. Hawke trusted me with his heart and his home, and I have been abusing it every step of the way. Oh I love him, he's the one shining light in this cesspool of a city, but he is just one man. Just one heart to break, not counting mine. In the grander scheme of things some things can be sacrificed. Has to be sacrificed. Happiness was never part of the equation. An equation I am beginning to hate but can't escape from. Too many people rely on me to fail.
And so I lie. I tell him that I am going to the clinic, even though it lies mostly deserted these days, people frightened by the increasing Templar presence. I lie and tell him that I am visiting the sick in their homes; I tell him that I am going to pick up some more herbs and a myriad of other boring tasks that I don't need his company for. Maybe I should involve him, but I dare not. If I can save something from this mess, I want it to be him. Plausible denial. I've had no choice at times, but Selby is a good enough actor that she could keep talking to Hawke without involving me, enlisting his aid in some of the more dangerous tasks we've had.
Varric wondered where my sense of humor had gone and I wanted to scream at him and show him where it had gone to. Buried under the memories of the dead and lost, withered away by a responsibility that grows heavier by the day. But I did not. I could not. I love him like a brother, but he's a businessman. And this is not a good business to be involved in. Maybe he knows. I wonder sometimes, he is a sharp man, the sharpest of us by far. But he's kept his silence even if Hawke told me that he tried to warn him off from having me move in. From falling in love with me. I loved the dwarf a little more for that. Not that it worked but… it was a nice thought. Andraste knows I'm too weak to resist Hawke by now. I need him. Even Justice has agreed to that.
"Alms for the poor," begs the woman wrapped in Darktown rags, stopping me in my path. She holds out her dirty hands, and I can see the sigil of the eye there, sketched with saliva on the dirty palm.
I feign fumbling with my purse, leaning in to hear the bad news.
"Franke the Cobbler has disappeared," she whispers. "The hounds came for him last night."
I bite back a curse and press a few coppers in her palm. If they had Franke, and the means to make him talk, that means that they might know of Eduard and Jemma. Last night. We still had time. He would not crack easily. I hope.
"Be safe," I tell the woman as I leave, knowing full well that nobody is safe. Not anymore.
Meredith has taken the next step. It is not just the mages she targets now, but their friends. Their families. Their sympathizers. Thom Beshcal and his wife were killed a few days back. They put up enough of a fight that they had to be slain on the spot. At least their secrets were safe. No, who am I fooling here. Nothing is safe. Nobody is. How many more people can I let die before I take action? Before we take action?
I take the time to scribble a note in a dark corner. Bancroft needs to know about this. We need to meet, and to the Void with the risks. I seal it, and send it with a trusted beggar boy who is alive because I once cured him from the dreaded shivers. How many people have I saved by now? I'm a healer, but… some wounds can't be healed. Only burned out lest they fester. Lose a limb or lose the patient? A choice I have made too many times.
…
"I can get two out by tonight," Bancroft says, pacing the sewers nervously. "If you have the coin for the raiders."
"I do," I say, dropping a small bag of gold in his hand. Another theft, after Leandra's death, Hawke has little concept of where his money goes or how much he actually has. I could simply ask for it, but he would ask questions and I would rather steal than lie. Another breech of trust. I try to make it up at night, and sometimes I wonder how much of a whore that makes me. Still, I could be worse things. I am worse things.
"I will tell Eduard and Jemma to be ready," Selby says, face severe in the torchlight.
"I still wish you would reconsider and go instead," Bancroft says, giving her a sad little smile as he scratches his beard. "They know your face and name; Eduard can hide in Darktown for a few more days."
"I am needed here," Selby replies with a shrug. "You know that. I have evaded Meredith's hounds so far."
"So far," I echo, wanting to talk her into going as well. She deserved a chance at happiness, but at the same time I do not want her gone. I need her. But I can never tell her that. She's enough in love with me already.
"I could never leave you alone here, Anders," she says and the smile makes her face light up a little. "You can't do this alone."
"I know," I admit, even though I wish it wasn't true. "We are in this together."
I never thought I'd be a leader. Juggling people. Juggling lives. Deciding what would be the best course of action. Minimize the losses. Amell would laugh if he knew; I used to avoid responsibilities like the plague. But things changed. People changed. Justice will be served. One way or the other.
…
Four days later. I haven't slept in two.
"We have to chance the tunnel," Selby argued. "You heard what Bancroft said, we can't trust the raiders now that the Templars have raised the bounty on us. And we can't stay here; we need to get these people out before it is too late."
"It is dangerous, you have no idea what is down there," I argue. "Smugglers are the kindest things we might encounter. At least with the raiders we cannot be sure they plan to betray us."
"You can keep us safe," she says, stepping close enough for her conviction to burn me. "I know you can. We do not have the time to wait, and we are not helpless. We can fight."
"Oh Andraste's flaming crotch," I mutter to myself. She really has no idea what it is to be in a real fight, not a skirmish on a street corner. The Carta controls the tunnels, and they might as well work for the Templars that are their biggest customers. An unholy alliance if there ever was one. I debate whether to ask Hawke for help, but… no. I can't. Not in this. He would ask too many questions. Escorting a mage or two out he could understand, but a dozen people? Most of them just common citizens, not mages but their friends and family? He would ask why they needed to flee. I would tell him. And then he would not be able to stop himself from doing something about it. I love the man, but I don't want to put that on his shoulders.
"You know I am right," Selby argues. "Minna is a mage as well, and the rest of us have weapons. We can do this. We have to do this. What other choice do we have?"
"If we do this, we do it my way," I say, finally relenting because she is right. We have no choice. Perhaps we will be lucky. Perhaps we will encounter nothing worse than the usual pests. "We move tonight, the longer we wait the greater the risk. And Selby?"
"Yes," she asks, looking up at me. Looking up to me. Maker preserve me, she really do trust that I will keep them safe. Just like I have in the past. Healed them. Protected them.
"If we do this, then you do not go back inside," I say sternly. "I want you out of Kirkwall. Your luck can't last forever."
The smile she gives me tells me that she disagrees.
…
The smuggler's tunnels are just as I remember them. Our group moves as quietly as it can, considering its size and the face that none of them are trained fighters. Maker help us if we actually encounter anything, I know that Selby is not unfamiliar with a blade, and most of the others are equipped with bows or clubs, but these are just people. Ordinary people. Tailors and dockworkers and housewives and coopers and one very nervous mage. I can't blame her; she can't be more than fourteen, coming late into her powers with no or little training. If she is pushed I do not know what will happen, but if we get outside the walls at least there will be other mages there that can show her the way. Show her how it is done. How to resist the demons.
She is the one that dies first.
An arrow through the eye, folding gracefully like the rag doll she carried. I feel her powers snuff out like a doused torch, and hear Selby's scream a moment later.
"Ambush!" she yells, and chaos ensues.
"To me," I scream at her, half closing my eyes to reach out with my other senses. My own body becomes insignificant when wielding powers of this magnitude; I need her to keep me safe. I need her to keep me safe, so I can keep us safe.
There is a beauty to magic even in the horror of battle. It is not a tool, but art, not harsh words but song. Hawke asked me once why I couldn't just keep healing all the time, why I had to wait and pace myself. I tried to explain but I am not sure he understood. I'm not sure anybody who is not a mage could. There has to be balance for there to be power, a melody not just disparate notes. As a healer you have to see things before they happen, predict what will happen before it actually does. You need to know when to strike and when to protect, because a missed beat, a false note, and suddenly you have someone dying in your arms with no means to save them.
I clench my fist and feel the shields shiver to life around people. It requires a constant focus on my part, but I am used to that by now. Like keeping the beat of a tune with my palm against my thigh while I hum the rest of the song. So many people. More than I usually protect, but I will myself to be enough for them. Wards float out over the stone floor, protecting the most helpless of us from the smugglers that went for them. But I can't protect them all. I can't save them all.
And suddenly there is one less. I feel the shields fail, another life flicker and die and I dismiss the wounds as too severe to heal. To be a healer is to be cruel at times. To save that man would doom us all, and all I can do is to grab the tail end of that frustrated rage, unleashing fire against the distant bowmen. Screams I do not listen to, smoke I do not smell. Everything shifts with the grip of the staff in my hand, and in the wake of fire comes ice, my constant companion, trapping enemies in its grasp. More lives ending, at my hand, at the hands of the people I am trying to protect. People fight with the desperation of cornered rats, but they are not fighting cats but dogs.
Pain gnawing on my senses, people bled and scream, and I am tempted to turn my mind from their misery to the spirit world, to call down their aid and heal these people. Help them. But they don't need a healer; they need a killer if they are to survive. They need fire and lightning and violent bloody death. They need Justice.
And before long they need Vengeance.
He surges willingly to the top of my mind, and the world turns red and bright, bright blue. Things move faster, sharper. A man crushed in the grip of my mind like a grape, people screaming as they catch fire from the inside. Men and women and children have died for no other reason than for being who they were, and this is right. This is Just. My staff burns in my hand, and then it flickers and it dies, the backlash throwing me to the floor.
Templar. Not in order armor. A fallen one? Working with the smugglers?
I try to get to my feet, leaning on my staff. Bodies surrounding me. I dare not look at them. The Templar bashes Geoff aside, laying him out flat with his shield. I can't feel whether he is unconscious or dead, I am cut off from my magic, wrung dry, my mind on fire, and Maker I should have taken Hawke up on the offer to have one of his daggers. I fend off the first blow with my staff, but the second connects, scraping open my side, and I fall. Not a lethal wound, but his sword is heading for my gut and then Selby is there.
There is a gurgling scream as the sword hits her in the chest, but her dagger hits the Templars groin, and he falls to the ground, screaming. Selby is on top of me, bleeding out, and I try to reach for the spirits, to beg for her return as I have begged so many times before when people I have cared about have lain on the brink of death. But I cannot reach the fade, still reeling from the Templar's blow, my magic scattered to the winds. She lies on top of me and she is smiling. She is smiling as she dies and I watch the light in her eyes go out.
I do not even notice that Geoff crawls back to his feet to end the Templar with a hard blow to the head.
She is dead. Really, truly dead.
Hands pull her from me and I want to cling. I want to cry and beg her not to go, because I need her. I can't do this alone. But I am alone now. And they need me. I can't afford to break apart.
Instead I let them help me to my feet, ignoring the blood that covers me. I can't afford to hurt. They are relying on me. And so many of them are dead or wounded. My magic slowly dribbles back, and I spend it as freely as I am able. I knit bones and mend organs, and leave the smaller wounds to bandages and salves. I am not inexhaustible, I see spots when I stand too fast, and only then do I realize that the gouge in my side is already healed. Did I do that? I don't even remember. Five people are dead, which is less than I feared, and the wounded ones will live if we only get them out of here.
Selby will not. I should bury her, but we do not have the time. She would understand.
She would understand what I have to do.
My eyes glow brightly blue as I lead them from the caves, Justice taking point because we have passed the point of no return. This infection cannot be healed, I know that now.
The time has come for things to burn.