Pictures of You
Meine Worte sind Schweigen
So können sie nicht fliehn
Das was dunkel ist das bleibt
Und lässt das andre ziehn
(My words are wrapped in silence
So they can't escape
What is dark remains
And chases everything else away)
Kann nichts sagen, will nicht vergessen
Oh nein, nein, nein
Wie ich es fühl, wie ich es fühl.
(Can't say nothing, don't want to forget
Oh no, no, no
How I feel, how I feel)
Bilder von dir
Überdauern bis in alle Zeit
Bilder von dir
Überdauern bis in die Ewigkeit
(Pictures of you
Remain until the end of time
Pictures of you
Remain for all eternity)
Song: Bilder von dir
By: Laith al Deen
It is quiet when she arrives at the clinic. No one is there. The lantern over the door is dark, the sign that the healer is not in but that doesn't keep her from entering. Maybe Anders is there anyway. She needs to talk to him. It is a conversation she'd rather not lead but there is no way around it. He saved her life and if she likes it or not, she owes him and if it is just to say thank you in person before she leaves Kirkwall again.
Her steps don't make a sound on the dirty floor as she determinedly walks through the rows of cots to his private quarters. She wants to get over with it as soon as possible. But just as the rest of the clinic, his room is empty as well.
With a frustrated, angry huff, she kicks her heel against one of the shabby cabinets lining the walls. Vials clatter their protest inside and a box that has been sitting on the edge tumbles to the ground with a thud and a rustling noise. Some of the sheets it contains slip out when the lid pops and scatter on the trampled dirt.
With a curse, she kneels down to gather them back up. She doesn't really pay attention what it is she sent flying until she finds her own eyes staring back at her. It is as if she is gazing into a mirror. There on that sheet is a drawing of her in accurate detail. It makes her speechless. And curious. And instead of just putting the pages back, she grabs the box and sits down at his desk with it.
She did not know Anders could draw and that he obviously does it quite frequently. The box is heavy. Full with hundreds of drawings, some new from the look of them, some old and yellowed, some of them crumpled, ripped apart even. She feels as if she is looking at a diary in pictures, a map of emotions and she just can't take her eyes off them as she is flipping through the pages.
The drawings are beautiful. Funny. Sad. Scary. Wild. Some make her want to laugh and then there are others that make her want to cry. She can feel what Anders had felt when he had done these sketches, can see how content or desperate or drunk he had been in the way of how precise or hard or soft the strokes are.
He has captured so many scenes, so many motives. Kids playing in the streets of Amaranthine. A vendor in his stall praising his wares. The view you have when you stand on the cliffs not far from the Keep where you can see the ocean. Molly how she scolds one of the scullions. Pounce trying to catch a butterfly.
Those are the yellowed drawings, the ones he must have drawn shortly after he had come to Kirkwall. They are happy scenes, full of hope and they make her smile. But the further she works through the contents of the box, the darker the drawings get. Darker and angrier. An old man without legs propped up against a shabby wall. Two little girls holding each other's hand, begging for coin in the Lowtown market. A tranquil mage. The Gallows. And the Gallows again. Especially those pictures are executed in angry, seemingly uncoordinated strokes. The paper is ripped in parts where he has set the quill down too hard.
Every now and then, sketches of her turn up amidst the dark and dreary scenes. Random delineations that show her he thought of her, remembered her, glimpses of light in a gray world full of anger and loneliness; the only ones that are drawn with care and a love for detail.
Until suddenly they stop about half way through the box's contents. The last one she finds is unfinished. She can tell he started over a few times and the more he tried, the angrier the lines became until finally he had scrawled three words across the entirety of the page in big, edgy letters: I DON'T REMEMBER!
The words hit her like a punch to the guts. She thought he didn't care. She thought he had forgotten all about her the moment he fled from the Keep. From her. But seeing those words and the despair that lies in every anguished letter couldn't make it any clearer that he hadn't. On the contrary, he did not want to forget.
The thought makes her shiver and leaves a tiny thorn of guilt in her heart. She knows how that feels.
When she had realized his image was fading, she had cried. She had so desperately tried to cling to the memories but the harder she tried the more they seemed to elude her. After a while, she did not recall his smile anymore, the sound of his voice, the exact color of his eyes and eventually she forgot how his touch had felt, how his kisses tasted. She had felt as if she was betraying him by forgetting when all she wanted was to keep the memories alive. She didn't want to forget, never thought she would.
The pictures that follow after that are a study in anguish and darkness; hopeless, broken. There are dead templars, dead mages, a city on fire, blood in the streets, blood on his hands. He also had begun to take notes, starting with those painful words scrawled across her unfinished portrait. Sometimes it's just a word, sometimes whole passages, accurately put down on paper in his curved, elegant script. Most of those words speak of rebellion, of war even. Flaming words talking of injustice, slavery, hypocrisy. Even only thinking of rebellion in a city like Kirkwall is dangerous and knowing Anders, she can imagine that he does more than just thinking of it.
The further she gets to the end of the pages, the fewer the drawings become. Sheet after sheet is filled with text now, sometimes orderly and easy to read, sometimes hastily scribbled down in barely legible letters. She can tell that he has written these passages when he was barely holding up anymore. They are desperate efforts to hold onto reality, to focus his slipping thoughts. She knows how he gets in times like these; nervous, twitchy, aggressive. It happened sometimes at the Keep as well but never this pronounced. Her eyes catch a sentence here and there but she does not care to read in detail. She doesn't want to know because knowing would only make her care and she doesn't want to care and so she skips to the very last pages where she has put the drawing of her that first picked her interest.
Those are pictures again. The writing stops as suddenly as it began and she is confronted with her own image once more. Like the yellowed ones he has made so many years ago, these sketches are lovingly drawn and detailed. There is one of her sleeping. Another shows just her hands, followed by a portrait of her face and then her hands again and a reluctant smile tugs at the corners of her mouth as she remembers his fascination with her hands, how much he loved to touch them.
The memory flees her, though, when she turns the page and is confronted with a nude drawing of herself. A blush creeps into her cheeks as she looks at the woman on the parchment. He captured every single mark on her body, every scar, every flaw and insufficiency. But despite all those many imperfections, the woman staring back at her is beautiful. She never saw herself like this; beautiful and desirable and… feminine. But it obviously is what Anders sees and it leaves a curious warmth in the pit of her stomach that she tries to ignore because with that warmth, there's something else rising right there in her guts. Doubt.
Maybe she was wrong? Maybe he did not betray her the way she thought he did?
It still hurts, this knowledge that he faked his own death and it still makes her angry but now that she has seen all these pictures, all these memories brought down on paper with so much love and care, the edge is taken off that anger and what remains is a dull feeling of regret and confusion and the nagging question why.
A sound coming from the other side of the door startles her out of her contemplations and in a hurry, she shoves the sheets back into the box and puts it back on the cabinet where she found it. When she turns, her eyes are met by Anders' amber gaze. They stare at each other for a long, silent moment, none of the quite sure how to react. It is she who breaks the silence at last.
"We need to talk," she says and to her surprise, it sounds gentle, pleading even. Maybe she doesn't want to get over with this just as quickly as she thought and maybe this time, she's going to get some answers.