Title: ON THE CARE AND FEEDING OF MAGES
Rating: T
Warnings: Self-neglect, starvation, possible eating disorder TW.
Pairing: Hawke/Anders, bonus Justice
Summary:
Author's Notes:
This one is entirely Fauxfires' fault. I commented somewhat wistfully that the one down side of the Justice-Anders situation is that it cuts down pretty heavily on the potential for hurt/comfort scenarios with Anders and Hawke, what with Anders having a 24/7 overprotective spirit bodyguard who can literally shrug off bullets and rip apart anything that even remotely threatens his bae.
HER response was that I just needed to try harder.
Set sometime in mid-Act II.
It was just before dawn, or just after - with a thin covering of grey mist over the whole sky, it was hard to tell for sure whether or not the sun had crested the horizon. The sky was lit with a dim grey light that showed up Kirkwall in a strange, shadowless half-light - time for the nightlife to slink back into hiding, but not yet time for the (marginally) more honest business of the day to commence.
Down at the docks and the Lowtown bazaar, Hawke knew that workers would already be rousing from their beds, the industry of the city kicking into high gear; but up here at Hightown, none of the high nobles or officials were yet awake. Hawke wasn't entirely sure why he was, himself - sheer bloody habit, he supposed, that woke him with the light no matter how many heavy velvet curtains he piled in front of his bedchamber window.
He'd gotten up for a drink and a piss, and was heading back to his nice warm bed to indulge in the deliciously decadent noble pastime of sleeping in, when he heard a knock echoing from downstairs. He wouldn't have heard it if he wasn't already awake - it was a big house, and an empty one, the stately double doors too far from his bedchamber. Who would be knocking at his front door at this hour, for Andraste's sake? Not that there weren't people of all stripes lining up to take a piece of his time, but they usually waited at least until the sun was properly up.
Maybe he should just go back to bed, teach whoever-it-was a lesson about proper visiting hours. Hawke glanced out the tall, narrow windows on the second floor gallery, and caught a glimpse of his mystery visitor. Even from this hazy, foreshortened perspective he recognized the silhouette - tall and thin, shrouded in shabby layers of cloth, the disordered spray of feathers at his shoulders.
Anders? Enough alarm shot through him to dispel all further thoughts of sleep; Anders almost never came to Hightown willingly. Too exposed, too close to the Chantry. Two possible scenarios presented themselves, both equally bad: either Anders was on the run, Templars having finally found his clinic (in which case why not go to ground at one of the bolt-holes Hawke knew Varric had prepared for just this eventuality, instead of coming all the way up here?) or there was some kind of emergency with their friends.
Either way, it had to be important. Hawke hurried down the stone stairs into the front room, just as the knock sounded again: hollow, booming impacts that seemed to reverberate the very air about him. At this rate, he was going to wake the neighbors out of even their inebriated sleep. With a sarcastic quip to that effect on the tip of his tongue Hawke pulled back the heavy bolt, threw open the door, and stumbled back a step in shock.
It was not Anders on his doorstep, or at least not Anders alone; the feathered apostate looked at him through eyes that glowed white with streaming fire, and jagged cracks of light made their way across the skin of his hands, face and throat. The rest of him was covered up by layers of tattered cloth and tight-wrapped bandages, but here and there the light peeked through there, as well, like the brief burn of the sun through thinner patches of haze. Hawke never quite knew what to make of those shining lines of light, whether they were cracks in Anders' skin or cracks in the world itself.
"Uh - Justice!" Hawke said, much less witty than what he had planned, but he couldn't help being thrown off by the glowing apparition suddenly on his doorstep. "Fancy, uh, seeing you here! What, what are you doing here?"
Hawke's feelings on the Fade spirit were... mixed at the least. On one hand, he had an earful of Anders' dire warnings and gloomy premonitions about the tragedy that was slowly corrupting Justice into Vengeance. On the other hand, he had actually met Justice face-to-face (so to speak) on two occasions, and neither of those had borne out Anders' frenzied anxieties.
The first time, the ambush in the Chantry shortly after he and Anders had first met, had been... a shock, to say the least; but even in the heat of battle, throwing gouts of crackling blue fire every which way, Justice had never had any trouble telling foe from friend, and had never so much as lifted a hand in any of their direction. That didn't quite square with Anders' account of Justice as a ravening berserker, a mindless menace to the life and limb of anyone who crossed his path.
The second time, on that ill-fated expedition into dreams to try to save Feynriel, had been in Justice's own element - and while it was beyond spooky to see someone else moving in Anders' body and speaking with his face, the spirit had been calm and composed, a steady guide and a loyal ally. More loyal, it had turned out, than the rest of Hawke's own friends.
Not that he was bitter about that or anything.
So on the whole, Hawke was inclined to take Anders' grim portents of Vengeance with a grain of salt. He was very fond of the mage - more fond than he ought to be, definitely more fond than Anders wanted him to be - but he had no illusions about his friend's persistent inability to be objective when it came to things close to his heart. Or inside it, as the case might be.
But then again, it was one thing to approve of Justice in the abstract, and another thing entirely to have the actual spirit standing here in his foyer. Hawke couldn't help but recall visions of Justice smiting down Templars with eldritch fire, and tangentially to remember that Justice didn't approve of him, at least according to Anders and, well, Hawke supposed he couldn't entirely fault him for that.
"I did not know where else to go," Justice said, and his voice filled the foyer the same way his knocks had, a sound so deep and resonant it was almost physical sensation. "I had no one else to turn to."
"Turn to?" A prickle of apprehension crawled down Hawke's spine. He hardly knew Justice well enough to guess at his moods - not that he necessarily had the same tells as a human, anyway - but if he had to guess, he thought Justice sounded... upset? Anxious?
What could frighten the literal incarnation of righteous war?
"I have... erred," Justice said, taking a step forward, eerie blue eyes fixed on Hawke. "No, not just - I have committed a great wrong. I know that you care for him. Please. Help him."
"Help him?" Hawke demanded, the prickle turning into a cold horror all up and down his arms and back. Under the circumstances, there was only one 'him' they could be speaking of. "Justice, what happened? What's wrong?"
Justice pulled into himself, chin tucking down and shoulders hunching - in the process, looking a lot more like Anders - before the blue-white fire flickered and died away. Hawke had approximately two seconds of looking into Anders' eyes - normal, hazel-brown human eyes - before they rolled back up in Anders' head and he collapsed like an empty sack.
A panicked shout lingered in the foyer as Hawke leapt forward - not quite in time to catch the falling body - and it was only a few foggy seconds later that Hawke realized it had been his. What had happened? He gripped Anders' shoulders, rolling him over onto his back, pulling his legs out straight so that he was lying - if not comfortably, then at least flat - on the marble floor. No bloodstains marred the stone, or his hands, or Anders' clothes. No wounds then. What could have caused this? Some sickness? Worse - some curse? What, exactly, did Justice think that Hawke could do about any of that? Anders was the one they went to for help with mysterious ailments, not the one afflicted by them -
Anders' body moved too easily over the polished stone, as limp and light as a rag doll. Seized by a sudden formless suspicion, Hawke reached up to the clasp holding his jacket closed, and began to unlace his tunic and pauldrons. Something here wasn't right. Wrapped up in as many layers as he was, it was quite a struggle to divest him of his jacket, tunic, and undershirt. "This was not exactly how I wanted to get into your clothes," Hawke mumbled, to his unconscious audience. Not that Anders would likely have laughed even if he'd been able to hear him. Nobody ever laughed at Hawke's jokes. Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered.
Nor was Hawke himself laughing a moment later, when he finally manage to open up Anders' clothes enough to expose his chest, throat and stomach to the air. His heart dropped into his stomach, and he clenched his teeth, because Anders was...
Anders had always been skinny; it was just part of his physical presence, like Aveline's intimidating height, Isabela's curves and Varric's stout solidity. Both of the latter had made jokes on more than one occasion about trying to fatten Anders up, Varric with his usual jovial concern and Isabela with a sly grin and pinch to the bottom.
But the body that had been hiding under all those layers wasn't just skinny, it was emaciated. Hawke had seen malnutrition before, in various stages, around Ferelden and in Kirkwall, and he knew what a man looked like in the last stages of starvation.
No wonder he'd been so easy to move.
"Serah Hawke?" a timid voice came from behind him, and Hawke looked up in the direction of the passage under the stairs to see Orana hovering there uncertainly - drawn out by Hawke's yelling, no doubt.. She stared at Anders' prone form with shock and fear, and Hawke was only glad she hadn't arrived while he was still glowing. "Is - is he -"
"Orana," Hawke said, harsh and urgent. "Go to the kitchen and get me - " Get him what? He should know this, he should know what to do, he should - "Milk. Milk and water. At least a jug of each. Then meet me in the sitting room. Hurry!"
Orana bolted off. Hawke gathered Anders carefully in his arms - he was far, far too light for a man of his height - and stood. It was awkward, his long legs hanging over the side of Hawke's arms and nearly brushing the stairs as he took them two at a time.
Thanks be to Bodahn, the fire was still going on the sitting-room mantle. Hawke hooked one ankle around the leg of the couch and dragged it over as close as he could to its heat, then laid Anders out. He had to keep him warm, the other man wasn't producing enough heat for himself - his skin was already too cold.
Orana arrived with the milk and water, rattling in a tin jug, almost at the same time as Hawke managed to locate a heavy blanket and tuck it around Anders' unconscious form. Hawke thanked her, taking the jug and the bottle and - oh, good, she'd thought to bring a mug to mix it in. "Is there anything else I can do, Serah?" Orana half-whispered, looking at Anders with huge, worried eyes.
"Yes," Hawke said. "I'm going to need -" He closed his eyes and concentrated, fighting to bring the memory back - "Fruit juice. Any fruit will do. And then meat broth, thin, not too rich. Keep them warm in the kitchen and bring them up when I ask."
Orana nodded, dipped a quick curtsey and hurried away. Hawke turned back to Anders.
He was still breathing, but only barely, shallow and weak. His skin was grey, cold under Hawke's fingers even in the wash of the fire's warmth, and his pulse was fast and thready in his throat. This was a body that was in the process of shutting down, and Hawke wasn't even entirely sure why he was still alive - except for the faint flickers, here and there, of an uncanny blue light.
Justice. Justice was fighting to keep Anders alive, even as Hawke was. But magic couldn't create something out of nothing; if spirit energy alone could nourish a body, then it would never have come to this in the first place. Hawke knelt on the floor and began to mix the water and milk together - praying that he remembered the right proportions, from a foggy half-remembered childhood event - and then tipped back Anders' head to slowly feed it to him.
It had been in the South Reach, back when Hawke himself was only a boy. The twins had barely been toddling. They'd been traveling again - one of many relocations - when their path crossed through a village devastated by a nasty bout of plague. It had run its course, thankfully, but left too many dead in its wake - and even those left alive were often too weak to care for themselves.
Malcolm always helped when he could - he'd been known to say that community goodwill was a better armor from the Templars than any silver plate could be. They'd stopped in the little, nameless village for a week, tending to the survivors. He had a vivid, distinct memory of lingering in a cottage doorway, watching with sympathetic horror as Malcolm tried to get watered milk into a child no older than his own little brother and sister. Both the parents had succumbed to the plague a week earlier, leaving the boy alone in the house with no way to get help, and he was no more than skin and bones.
He remembered approaching the cot, shyly offering a cookie he had saved from his last meal to the starving child, when Malcolm had pushed his hand firmly back. "I know it's kindly meant, Garrett," his father had said, his voice filling up the world the same way Justice's had, "but you can't. Rich, heavy food like that will only make him sick, and he can't spare the strength to be sick. We have to start slowly, get his body used to food again, a little bit at a time."
Malcolm had told him the regimen then, showing him as he mixed the proportions and what to do. It had taken hours, pouring liquids down the child's throat a little at a time, as he fought to rekindle the guttering spark of life and pull the tiny body back from the brink of total failure.
Not that he could have given Anders real food right now anyway, unconscious as he was; it was enough of a challenge just to get the liquids down his throat without choking. He went a sip at a time, supporting Anders' back against his knee and his head on his chest, stroking his throat carefully, and tried not to feel like his heart and lungs were being crushed in a vise.
This wasn't the intimacy he'd wanted with Anders. He'd long admired the blond man, almost from the very first time they'd met - even if Anders had been aiming a weapon at him at the time. Standing in the hole in the wall in Darktown, ferocious and suspicious, ready to defend himself and the people he was sheltering in that ragged, run-down excuse for a clinic. Hawke had been impressed by his nerve, the more so when he realized exactly how much he was risking to so freely offer healing magic in the City of Chains. He'd made up his mind then that he wanted Anders' magic on his side as an ally, wanted Anders' determination beside him as a friend.
But it wasn't until later - ironically, when he'd followed Anders back to his home after the disaster at the Chantry, with Karl's blood still sticky on their clothes - that he'd really gotten in trouble. Anders had been so upset - well, and why wouldn't he be? - that Hawke just wanted to do something to distract him, to bring him out of his unhappy circle of grief and self-blame. Wanted to show Anders that he wasn't repulsed by him, far from it. So he'd flirted - awkwardly, inappropriately, trying to lighten the mood - and Anders had smiled.
Maker, it was like the sun had come up in Darktown for the first time in the city's history when he smiled.
Ever since then they'd been dancing around each other awkwardly, much to the amusement of their friends. Hawke was pretty sure that Anders knew how he felt - Maker knew he hadn't exactly been subtle. And he was also reasonably sure that Anders felt the same, given the way the mage would light up in his presence in ways he wouldn't with anyone else. But something had always lingered in the way, the time or place or situation never quite right, and every time Hawke tried to take things a step further, Anders would give that subtle little flinch and pull away.
Hawke wasn't sure whether it was Justice - at least partly that, he thought, given Anders' admission that Justice didn't approve of him - or Anders himself. Some of both, he suspected. There was still Karl's memory, hovering close, and Anders' Circle background that made it so hard for him to stop running. And something more, something that hung over them like a shadow, something that Anders never talked about. Kirkwall itself, maybe. A city of blood and hate and fear wasn't exactly conducive to a romantic atmosphere. And okay, maybe dragging Anders out on moonlit dates along the Wounded Coast with smugglers and fanatics and blood mages wasn't exactly helping his suit -
But he'd needed a healer, and Anders had followed faithfully along. Anders had always given him his support and time and effort and mana, without hesitation (if not always without complaint.) Anders gave too much of himself away, not only to Hawke but to the Ferelden refugees and to the Mage Underground and to Justice, and he gave and gave until he bled himself dry and was left with nothing. Even then he hadn't come to Hawke for help - Justice had.
And this was not helping him in his efforts not to cry.
Morning passed, although the sun remained hidden behind a stubborn layer of grey. Bodahn came twice to stoke the fire and add more wood, keeping the room stiflingly warm. Orana brought up the requested juice and broth, as well as tea and bread which she scolded him into eating - "You can't help him if you don't take care of yourself, Serah!" Hawke thanked her, and stuffed the rolls into his mouth between draughts, although the tea remained untouched and went cold on the table behind him.
Finally, it seemed like they'd turned a corner; Anders' pulse steadied, becoming deeper and slower, and his breathing deepened. His skin warmed up from its clammy pallor, although Hawke was still reluctant to lose either the blanket or the fire. Hawke let himself relax a bit, setting aside a bowl of creamed wheat to stay warm by the fire until Anders awoke and could eat it himself. He let Anders back down against the couch cushions and stood, pacing beside the couch and stretching his arms to work out the kinks.
"Thank you."
That voice was not Anders. Hawke startled and whirled around, seeing eyes opening onto blinding white fire. The cracks of light crawled over Anders' skin, smaller and fainter than they had been before. Hawke was not entirely sure how to react to him.
"You're awake?" Hawke took a cautious step back towards the couch, reaching for the soup he'd set aside. "You should - well, try to eat this, at least, see how it goes..."
"Anders is asleep," the spirit answered, and it was still so blighted bizarre to hear that voice coming out of Anders' mouth talking about him in the third person. "I wish him to remain so. It is the first time he has slept since the encounter with the Tal-Vashoth on the coast."
That had been over two weeks ago. Hawke inhaled a deep breath, feeling the strain in his jaw as he bit down on the words that wanted to escape him. "So it wasn't enough to starve him, you had to deny him sleep, too?" was the kindest thing he could bring himself to say.
It was a really, really bad idea to provoke Justice. Hawke had seen what he was capable of doing, and even assuming the spirit didn't just flash-fry him on the spot for making him angry - which he probably wouldn't - getting Justice worked into a frenzy wouldn't do Anders' body any favors. Hawke slowly let out the breath he'd taken, willing himself to stay calm.
Much to his surprise, though, Justice didn't get angry. If anything he seemed to flinch, and shrink in on himself, like he had when he was begging Hawke for aid earlier. "I - did not mean to," he said, and his voice, while far from quiet, was definitely subdued. "It was - a mistake. My mistake, my lack of understanding."
"A misunderstanding," Hawke said, his voice flat and heavy with disbelief. "You didn't understand that humans need to eat? "
"Yes." Justice blinked, slowly, a deliberate an inhuman movement that reminded Hawke of a cat. "I - I regret, very much, what has come to pass. I wish to explain myself to you, so that you can explain it to him, that I did not mean to cause him such pain."
Well, fair enough. From Hawke's understanding of their arrangement, they couldn't talk to each other directly, so short of leaving notes around the house this was probably the only way they could communicate. "All right," he said. "Go on. I'm listening."
"When I first crossed the Veil into this world, it was in the body of a dead man," Justice said. "Kristoff did not eat, nor did he sleep. It was my energy alone that sustained him. I saw those around me doing these things, but I did not see the necessity. I thought it to be another social pastime, such as their alcohol or games of cards and dice, as they seemed to take great enjoyment from it."
Maker. Once past the initial blinding stupidity of it, that almost made a kind of sense. What would a Fade creature know of mortal needs? "But surely you must have realized, when you joined with Anders, that it wasn't... that it wasn't optional, " Hawke said, struggling to maintain a reasonable tone. "You feel what he feels, don't you? You must have felt it when he got hungry, or tired."
Justice seemed to flinch once more, and his voice when he spoke again was palpably miserable. "I did feel it," he admitted. "But... you must understand... it is different, in the Fade. There, I knew hunger only as the weapon of demons. The feeling marks their approach, marks the corruption they seek to spread in others. When I felt it again in Anders' body, I thought for a time we were under attack by such a demon of Hunger. Fatigue, too, is the preferred weapon of Sloth. Eventually I came to understand that there were no demons, but the sensations still... distressed me. I urged Anders to ignore them, to block them out, rather than to succumb to their temptations.
"I thought that he would be able to draw from me, as Kristoff had," Justice continued. "I tried to supply him with energy, when he began to flag, with strength, when he weakened. When he felt pain in his stomach, I silenced it, as I always had before silenced our pain in battle. It was not until last night in the clinic, when he collapsed - when I was left standing alone in this body, as his consciousness drained away around me - that I understood what I had done. If in that moment I could have unmade myself from shame, I would have done so."
Justice's words painted an all-too vivid picture in Hawke's head, lit a crawling horror under his skin. Visions of days, weeks spent without food or rest, unable even to feel the natural demands of your own body, driven on by the incessant demands of an alien creature in your head. "You nearly killed him!" he exclaimed, hours of frenzied anxiety and frustration driving the fury in his voice. "And you've got the nerve to say you were only trying to help? Get out! Let him go! Why don't you just go back to the Fade and leave him alone?"
"I cannot." Justice's voice was outright wretched, now. "I have tried. We are too tightly bound. I would let him go if I could, but we cannot.
"I swear to you, and I do not lie: he is my friend, and I never wished to harm him. I do not ask for forgiveness from you, or acceptance. I only ask that you convey to him my explanations and apologies. My words do not reach him. My intentions go astray; he takes my remorse as his own, as evidence of his own wrongdoing. Please, you must tell him for me."
Hawke took a deep breath, wrestling his anger down. Yelling would accomplish nothing. There was no reason to think that Justice was lying - he was Justice, after all. Which meant that he and Anders were stuck together, and not only that, but making Justice upset would kick off a spiral of guilt and recrimination that would drag them both down. He had to find a way to come to terms with Justice - not just to accept him, but to comfort him. Andraste's boots, he had to find words of comfort for the alien spirit that had nearly killed the man he loved.
Once he put his mind to it, though, it was actually not so hard to drag himself around to see these events from Justice's point of view. He was just as stuck as Anders was, after all; the more so because Anders had control of their body for most of the time, and all of their words. Trapped in an alien world, overwhelmed by sensations he could neither understand nor control - he had coped with it the only way he knew, by refusal and endurance, and if he had fucked up, at least he had done so with only the best of intentions.
That was definitely something that Hawke could understand.
There was more to it than that, as well. If Justice could not speak to Anders - had to beg Hawke to relay his words - then it stood to reason that Anders likewise could not speak to Justice. Would not be able to explain to him the simple necessities of mortal bodies, why and how often things like sleep or food (or a quick wank, by Hawke's reckoning) could not be put off any longer. If Justice continued on perceiving every new sensation as a demonic attack, they would inevitably spiral back down to another disaster.
It was up to Hawke to provide what Anders couldn't, Mortality 101 to a distressed Fade spirit.
"Okay." Hawke cleared his throat, and sat back down on the floor by the couch, near Anders' head. Justice tracked his movement, but did not himself move - perhaps worried that too much movement would wake Anders. "So, uh, you've probably figured this out on your own by now, but - mortal world. Very different from the Fade."
"I had gathered that, yes," Justice said with a hint of a growl in his voice.
"I get that in the Fade, hunger and sloth are evil," Hawke continued. "But in the mortal world things are a lot more complicated. Hunger's no fun, but food tastes better when you're hungry than when you're not. Same as sleeping when you're tired. They feel good, and that's not a bad thing either. Pretty much everything here is more like a... a blend of good and bad."
"You mortals are like that," Justice commented. "Hybrid creations of spirit and flesh. Everything you do is just such a blend of good and evil. It is hard, not to set myself to fight against sin."
Hawke shrugged. "The Chantry calls them sins, but they're just needs. It's not wrong to give yourself what you need. Rage, pride, desire... they all have their place in this world. There are some things that it's right to be angry about - you know that better than anyone.
"Even Pride... well, too much of it is bad for sure, but to have none at all? That's even worse. You need a little pride in yourself to hold your head up at the end of a day, to have a reason to go on fighting. And lust? Seriously, what's so bad about lust? As long as you don't overdo it, anyway. It's part of what we are - and it's part of love. I mean, even I feel - I mean, everybody feels..."
Justice just stared at him, his eyes white and unblinking, and Hawke began to feel uncomfortable, like he'd given too much away.
"What I'm trying to say is, you don't need to be afraid of these feelings," Hawke concluded a little weakly. "They're just feelings. They're not corruption. They aren't evil, and they don't make you evil. Either of you."
"You spoke of - lust," Justice said, and the spirit now sounded almost hesitant. Embarrassed, even? Hawke suddenly had a very foreboding feeling about where this conversation was going. "As a part of love. I am not unfamiliar with what you speak of. Anders has these emotions, also - regarding you."
Well, Hawke thought, this officially topped the time Carver had read his crush's love-note out loud in the playground at West Hill in terms of 'awkward ways to find out that the person you like likes you back.' "Uhm," he said, and swallowed, and tried to follow the track of the conversation. "Let me guess - that upset you too? Pissed you off, or made you think you were being got at by a Desire demon?"
"No." Justice's eyes narrowed, his lips turning down in a frown. "The body before this one, Kristoff - he had - had a wife, whom he loved, and she him. The memory of that feeling was still very strong within him, even after he had passed. I well recognized the form of it, the beauty."
"Oh." That was not at all what Hawke had been expecting. Truth be told, he had never thought about Justice having had past relationships, or a wife... or thoughts or feelings of his own, honestly, or of being a person of his own at all. It was a disorienting shift of perspective, and simultaneously made him feel both better and worse about Justice and Anders' cohabitation. "Wait, but - if you understand love, and you think it's grand and all, then why don't you approve of me?"
"I could feel Anders' emotions. I knew them to be true," Justice said. "I did not know yours. To love so full-heartedly opens one up to pain and regret, and I did not want that for him. I especially did not want to be called upon to exact justice on you, should it become necessary."
Hawke's mouth dropped open in shock. "Justice," he said. "Did you just threaten to break my face if I broke his heart?"
Justice gave him a frosty glare, but it quickly subsided. "In truth, I could see no good outcome," he admitted. "If your affection was false, then Anders would be devastated. If it was true, and you were true... then he would still be devastated, when the call to our cause ripped the two of you apart. It seemed... better not to begin at all, I thought. Better not to let it grow."
Hawke sat back slightly, reeling as those words sank in. He did not particularly want to examine the source of Justice's conviction that Anders' fight for mage freedom would inevitably drive Hawke away. "Look, everything ends eventually," he said instead. "Everybody dies, eventually. That's not a good reason not to live, not to try to be in love and happy in the time we have."
"Perhaps you are right," Justice admitted unhappily. "Or perhaps I was wrong to think it my place to try to spare Anders that pain. If my mistakes of today, of the past months, have taught me anything - I am far more fallible than I once believed. I am no fit guardian for Anders."
"Well - maybe not," Hawke said awkwardly. He could hardly dispute it, under the circumstances. "I mean, I don't know that what Anders even wants is a guardian. He got enough guarding back in the Circle, I think. But you're still his friend, aren't you? I think that's plenty."
"I do not know if I still am," Justice said miserably.
Hawke patted Justice on the arm, feeling a slight fizz as his skin touched one of the glowing blue cracks. "I know Anders," he said. "He's ridiculously forgiving. I'll tell him everything you said, and I'm pretty sure he'll understand. All right?"
Justice heaved a sigh. "You have been a truer friend to him than I," he said. "I did not want to have to gamble his life on your loyalty - but my own heedlessness forced me to do so. Your aid has been more than I could have hoped. You have more than proven yourself steadfast. If you still wish to pursue a relationship with Anders - and if he still wishes it - I will no longer stand in your way."
Hawke sputtered a bit. "Did - did you just give Anders and me your blessing?" he said, voice slightly strangled.
"For whatever that is worth," Justice replied. "In fact I - I wish it for you, for him, and even for me. It will be good to have a touchstone, someone who lies outside our own skin, to listen... to help us when we are no longer capable of helping each other."
"I," Hawke said, suddenly caught out. He'd been volunteering for the role of boyfriend, not mage-and-spirit marriage counselor. At the same time, he was incredibly touched (and a little bit daunted) to have the respect and regard of a literal incarnation of virtue. He'd wanted to be what Anders needed, and it looked more and more like Justice was a part of that. "I'd... be honored."
"Thank you," Justice said, the words more felt than heard, rumbling through his ribcage. The spirit closed his eyes, and the blue lines of fire faded into nothingness.
Anders woke up to sunlight, an unusual event in his lifestyle. He let out a breath in a soft groan and turned away from the intrusive light, burrowing his face in the soft pillow under his head and tugging the silken sheet up towards his face…
Wait, what?
He opened his eyes to slits, blinking hard against the glare of the unexpected sunlight, and felt a moment of ungrounded panic while he tried to orient himself. This wasn't his cot in Darktown. It wasn't a cell in the Gallows either, for certain, which let out his two most probable options. Where was he and what had happened?
His body was an odd mess of contradictions; he hurt all over, a deep shaken fatigue in every bone and a vague churning nausea that seemed to spread throughout most of his body. His heart felt odd, beating too quickly but with a worrying shallowness, and his hands and feet felt too cold.
But at the same time, he felt… profoundly warm and comfortable, softness shielding him on every side, a comfortable fullness in his stomach, and it had been a long time since he felt that part of his body reporting in. Not just physically, either; he felt an entirely unexplained sensation of well-being, safe and satisfied and… reassured.
He could also feel what he privately referred to as a 'Justice hangover,' a unique and largely indescribable collections of aches and strains that resulted from being controlled by an inhuman presence that didn't really quite understand how a human body was and wasn't supposed to move.
Justice. Justice had been here, had been out, and… In a panic Anders worked his hands free of the blanket (this wasn't his blanket, either) and examined them closely. Clean, or at least as clean as they had been from his last memory, washing up in the clinic after the last of his patients trickled out. No blood or char worked into the creases of the fingers, or under the nails. Anders breathed again. There had been no fighting, no killing.
What, then?
Anders made a second effort to get his bearings, pushing himself up from the soft surface he was lying on. Even that slight effort sent long shudders of weakness through his limbs, but he managed to raise himself partly up on one shaking hand. He was not on a bed at all, as he had assumed, but a wide plush-covered couch. And the room he was in, though he had never seen it before from this angle, was familiar - it was the sitting-room of Hawke's new Hightown estate. He'd been here once before, at the housewarming party Varric had insisted he attend, each of them bringing booze and books and terribly tacky decorations.
"Oh, you're awake," a familiar voice spoke up from behind him, followed by footsteps; he'd been hidden until now by the back of the couch, but Hawke must have seen him sitting up. The man himself rounded the end of the couch, dressed in a comfortable-looking red outfit; pants and slippers and a loose housecoat closed by a sash with the Amell crest. He looked ridiculously handsome, as usual, well-dressed and brimming with confidence, and Anders' weakly beating heart seemed to skip a beat at the sight of him.
"Hawke," Anders said, trying to swing his feet down from the couch so he could sit up properly. Hawke came around, tsking in disapproval, and placed a hand on the center of his chest, pushing him steadily back against the cushions. Anders stared at him, wide-eyed.
"Don't try to get up just yet," Hawke said, and though he was smiling, the rest of his face was drawn by worry. "You're very weak. You were… very sick."
"I don't get sick," Anders said automatically. "I'm a healer." What in the Void had happened here?
Hawke pulled a face that Anders couldn't quite decipher, before he managed to smooth the expression again. "Nevertheless," he said. "You still need to rest. Go back to sleep, if you feel like it."
"How long have I been sleeping?" Anders asked, alarm bells suddenly ringing in his head.
"Depends on whether you count a death-like mortal collapse, or actual natural sleep?" Hawke shrugged. "If the latter, about four hours; if the former, about eight."
Anders swore and tried to struggle up again, flinging the soft blanket aside (though not without a twinge of regret.) "That's much too long," he gasped, trying to get his breath back in his lungs. "I've got to get going - get back to the clinic, get back to work -" Justice hated it when he overslept (slept at all.) Justice thought he was weak and selfish and lazy, and Anders knew it to be true. What use was he, after all, if he wasn't helping people? If he wasn't helping the mages?
Hawke's easygoing manner suddenly turned to iron. "You're going nowhere," he said, and his hand pressed harder on Anders' chest, forcing him back against the cushions. Anders glared at him and tugged at his wrist, surreptitiously reaching out for Justice to lend him strength.
To his surprise, no surge of power sizzled down his arms. Justice? Anders queried into the silence of his own head, and got back a certain… smugness? Complacency?
Stay.
What was going on here? Why was Justice not growling his disapproval towards Hawke in the back of Anders' mind? Where where the bracing jolts of energy that punished him when his mind accidentally drifted towards sleep? What in the Void had happened while he was out?
Some of his panic must have leaked onto his face, because Hawke's expression softened. "You don't know how close it was," he murmured. "You almost died, Anders."
What? What?
Anders stared at Hawke for a long moment, long enough that Hawke began to squirm uncomfortably. "If you're trying to set me on fire with your mind, I'm only feeling a little bit warm," he joked.
"I was just checking to see if I could will any changes," Anders answered. "You know, since we're in the Fade and all and this is a dream."
Hawke made an incredulous noise. "It's not a dream," he said, sounding somewhere between amused and offended. "Do I look like a demon to you? I thought they were more, you know, purple-y. With horns and… other bits."
Anders snorted. "They don't all look like that, Hawke. In the Fade, they can look like anything they want… like anything you want. Anything that seems too good to be true, probably isn't."
Hawke's smile slowly widened into a smirk, and Anders realized he'd walked right into a trap there. "So are you saying that this -" he spread his hands to indicate the whole setup, his sitting room, the crackling warmth of the fire, the softness of the cushions and the blankets, warm tea and hot food, Hawke himself - "is something you want - something too good to be true?"
Anders bit his tongue on well obviously, of course. He sighed. "What happened, Hawke?" he asked. "Why am I in your house? What do you mean, I was sick?"
The smile faded off Hawke's face, straightening up to set both boots on the floor stand up tall. The full weight of his regard, without the shield of flippancy, was both warming and deeply disconcerting. "I think it will answer your question," Hawke said, "if you answer one of mine. When was the last time you ate?"
Busted.
The blood drained from Anders' face, and he heard himself stammering while his mind raced for an answer. Selma had brought him a basket of fresh-baked bread two days ago, as thanks for healing her daughter's leg… but he had wound up giving it to the urchins that hung around the Darktown lift, instead. They had both been in to the Hanged Man two days before that… but Anders had limited himself to one mug of watered beer, and excused himself after that. Before that… before that…
The truth was that he wasn't sure. There was just never enough money for food, especially food in the amounts that it would take to satisfy a Grey Warden's unnatural appetite. Food prices had skyrocketed in the city lately, and of course the people of Darktown were hit the hardest; what little food he did acquire, he usually ended up giving away. It just wasn't right, wasn't just for him to eat his fill while children starved on his doorstep. He was a grown man, strong and capable, and he could take care of himself; who would take care of them? How could he call himself a healer if he let others suffer so, from something with so simple a remedy?
Honestly, in the past couple of months Anders had rarely felt hungry at all. Only a sick sort of blankness that was easier to put out of his mind than to indulge.
"I thought so," Hawke said with satisfied relish, which quickly sobered up. "You collapsed in the clinic, apparently. Justice brought you up here to ask for help."
"Justice came here?" Anders was startled, despite all the evidence to his senses. He frowned. Why Hawke? Why not Selby or Lirene? Either one of them would have helped him with no questions asked, patched him up and sent him back home to continue on just as before.
…And maybe that was why Hawke.
"If he'd waited any longer, it would have been too late," Hawke said. He grabbed Anders by the shoulders and pulled him around, forcing Anedrs to look him straight in the eye, and there was something raw and painful in his expression. "Don't… I don't ever want to see that again. It was awful, seeing you like that."
Anders winced, trying hard to look anywhere but into Hawke's eyes. "What, possessed? You've seen it before," he protested.
"Dying," Hawke said with a snarl, and Anders quailed. "I already told you I don't mind Justice. I do mind you neglecting yourself into a coma!"
He released Anders' shoulders, straightened up and leveled a commanding finger in his direction. "You're stable now, but you've still got a long way to go," he said. "So what's going to happen is that you are going to lie right there by the fire, drink tea, and eat porridge for the rest of the day."
Still shaken by the revelations Hawke had dropped on him, Anders decided to take refuge in sarcasm. "Yes, Oh Fearless Leader," he said, obediently taking the bowl Hawke pushed on him. He couldn't deny that it tasted great, creamed wheat with butter and molasses - actual molasses. He couldn't remember the last time he'd tasted sugar, and he tried very hard not to burst into embarrassing tears in front of Hawke. "Got any other marching orders?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Hawke said mercilessly. "It's probably a lost cause to tell you to take it easy for the rest of the week, 'cause I know you won't. But what you will do is come up either here, or to the Hanged Man, to eat dinner every night. No exceptions."
Anders sputtered. "And you think I'm going to go along with this?" he demanded incredulously. Maker, when had Hawke gotten so bossy? Even if a weak, shameful part of him craved that overbearing authority, someone to take him firmly in hand and order him around and… and take care of him, so that he didn't have to take care of himself for a little while -
No, no, no. Anders pushed the distracting thoughts away. He had a cause. He had people depending on him. He couldn't afford selfish indulgences, he had to be strong and focused and why was Justice not backing him up on this?
"Yes you will." Hawke looked incredibly smug, and the attitude rang a bell in the back of Anders' mind somehow. "I'll have you know that I've been officially appointed as Anders-sitter."
"Appointed? By who?" Anders eyed Hawke suspiciously, expecting him to announce he'd taken it on himself, just like usual. He wasn't expecting Hawke to lean in again, that insufferable grin fading to a smaller, sweeter smile.
"By Justice," Hawke said. "He gave me quite an earful of instructions on the Proper Care And Feeding Of Mages. But if you think you know better than me and him, feel free to object…"
Anders knew that he was staring, mouth open but only able to produce little leaking-cauldron noises of protest. This didn't make any sense. Justice didn't worry about him, there was too much injustice in the world to worry about. Anders had his freedom and his safety, which placed him much further down on the list of priorities than everybody else who didn't. Justice despised his weakness, his selfishness. Justice was disappointed in him.
Wasn't he?
"I -" Anders broke off, a heavy feeling growing in his chest that pressed all the air out of his lungs. He swallowed hard and looked down at his hands in his lap, trying to disguise the stinging in his eyes. "I don't know what he wants any more. I can't hear him, I can't talk to him. It's been so long…"
"Yeah, so I hear," Hawke said, a wry sympathetic twist in his voice. "Well, I talked to him quite a bit this morning, and he gave me a lot of things that I'm supposed to say to you. So how about you work on that oatmeal, and I'll tell you the story of how I got woken up at the crack of dawn by a Fade spirit on my doorstep?"
~end.