Lyna's eyes ran over the piece of parchment as Anders watched her. She could feel his eyes as well as if they were boring holes into her, and she pointedly did not acknowledge their presence. She could sense the growing anxiety in the way his fingers played at the fabric of his robes, and then the way his shoulders grew tense. She took her time. She had already read it. When Anders' eyes finally left her was when she turned to look at him, and the expression of reluctant anticipation on his face when he looked back to meet hers almost made her feel bad about the stony front that hid any indication of the cracks under the surface.

When she said nothing, he began uncomfortably. "...You did say you would never force me to stay here."

It took real effort to keep the displeasure out of her voice. She did her best at a hard monotone. "Yes, I did. I will be no one's jailer."

"No one's warden?" He flashed her a smile that wasn't quite convincing. "Come now, it's not exactly as though I plan on cutting off all contact. I'll write..."

Lyna could not keep the bitter smile off her face. "You do care. That's cute."

"Oh for-" His humor burned away, quickly replaced by frustration and hurt. "Lyna... It's not about you, it's only-"

"How much better the circle is than the wardens and how bleeding eager you are to get back to them?" All illusions of neutrality were gone as she rose from her chair, slamming his application down on the desk.

"Now that isn't entirely fair, is it?" He began toward her, making a sharp gesture with his hand. "They're asking me to teach, not be their property."

Lyna's hands balled to shaking fists at her sides. "That's not the bloody point!" She bit her lip and swallowed hard as heat rose to her face. There was a moment when he fumbled for words, not finding them, and then she cut off whatever direction he was going with a sharp "fine." She snatched up a pen and signed the request form hard enough as to nearly tear the paper before throwing the pen back down.

"Why do you have to make this so difficult?"

"I'm not. It's signed. Done. You're free to go."

Frustrated, Anders took a step to move around her desk toward her. "Yeah, just a thought, consider listening to me? I have it on good authority that's what real adults do, so I thought you might give it a try." A moment later his form was shoved into his chest more forcefully than was strictly necessary. He stumbled back, clutching at the paper with one hand and reaching for her with the other. "Alright, I'm sorry for being insensitive, but I hardly think I'm asking for anything unreasonable! It's only a couple-"

"No, you aren't asking for anything unreasonable, I'm just angry. We are not talking. Now get out of my office."

.o.
-o-o-o-
'o'

They made landfall in a cove a small ways down the coast, and Lyna dragged the rowboat into the bushes and covered it with branches before heading inland. They walked for what must have been hours through the driving rain, and slowly the fear and panic resolved into a vague stewing of other thoughts and memories. Occasionally the commander would pause and drop silently into the brush, and Anders would do his best to follow suit. Usually, nothing would happen and eventually she would rise and continue her silent trek. Once, he could hear horsemen not far off. But once they escaped the sound of crashing waves into the woods, these brief moments of stealth ceased altogether.

"Why did you do that," he asked quietly when the edge of the woods was a good ways behind them. Tension grew in the muscles of her shoulders, and her pace quickened. It was the only answer he received. He stared at her back thinking about nothing in particular for a long time. "...how did you find me?"

"I wasn't looking for you," she said tersely.

"What were you looking for then?"

"A blood mage. Which I found."

Memories stirred, dozens of faces, twisting and distorting into abominations and monsters, a girl bleeding on the floor. They felt distant, but urgent. And dangerous. The memory of shock and horror and vowing never to become that. Maybe he already had been. He shied away from the thought. His voice was hard and strained, as though someone had pulled it taut. "I don't do that anymore."

"Yeah, I didn't want to see you either."

"Where are we going?"

"A safe place. To plan."

"What exactly do you need me for?"

"It's none of your-" She stopped speaking abruptly. There was another long quiet, and a second brief halting of Lyna's steps. Just as he was giving up on receiving an answer, she looked back at him. "Anders." Her expression was one of stony neutrality. He stilled. "...not now." Her eyes fell away from him and lingered at his feet before she turned her back on him, resuming her steady pace. The remainder of their walk was conducted in mute silence. It was the first time his mind had been his alone in years.

He had spent so long asking Justice to leave him be. Now it felt uncomfortably, terribly quiet.

By the time they reached the hut the trees had grow, and the air was full with rain and fog to the point of near opaqueness. The hut itself was a small wooden structure, built quickly on rough earth and hidden til near contact by trees, and its interior was hidden in deep shadow behind small windows. In front of it sat a large golden-brown wolf. As they approached, the Commander raised her hand for Anders to stop. He did.

Lyna herself approached the wolf and knelt as it padded around her and licked at her teeth and face. "Aneth ara, Revas," she murmured to the large she-wolf, stroking its fur and running her fingers along it. "Ma serennas, ir nuvenin tel dar mana." The wolf butted its head against her appreciatively and then perked up, looking at Anders.

Images came to mind unbidden of speaking to the wolf in the hallways of vigil's keep during the small hours of the morning, of teeth and darkspawn corpses and the feeling of blood on his face and robes, of Ser Pounce curled up a tiny ball of orange against the wolf's golden flank. He blinked the memories away and actually looked. The wolf was older than she had been when Anders had last seen her, assuming she was even the same one. He was no expert on animal lifespans, but Revas looked larger, a bit, and greyer. Even so, she was clearly a powerful animal.

Revas raised her nose toward him, but Lyna's fingers tangled within the fur found a tighter grip. "That is Anders. Do not harm him." The words were accompanied by a motion made into the wolf's flank, and Revas returned her attention to Lyna. "Thank you," Lyna said, voice hushed. "Dareth." With that final word, Lyna released her companion and Revas loped away, into the trees and out of sight. Anders had not realized til that moment that he had been holding his breath.

"Come in," said Lyna. "Find yourself a blanket and a place on the floor. There are no spare beds." She lit a candle and entered the small hut. Anders followed.

.o.
-o-o-o-
'o'

Anders stood alone before a towering gate and silvery walls. A templar stood at either side of him, and one of the two held him in place with a heavy gauntleted hand. Though the air felt rife with magic, Anders could not breathe in enough of it to light it between his fingers, and the templar's grip was far too heavy for him to pull himself free. The second templar knocked twice on the wooden gate, and slowly it opened to reveal a courtyard, sparse of vegetation and overlooked by a stone balcony. A woman stood atop the balcony, looking down at him over the rails, long pale hair bound by a red cowl. Her head was ringed with a halo of the sort the chantry would occasionally place behind Andraste in paintings, but instead of gold the templar woman's was blue, and sharp enough that he could feel it from where he stood trying to cut him.

There was another woman in the courtyard as well, though he could hardly see her through the fragments of glass that hung in the air around her. She too was blue, but it was darker and edged with subtle traces of gold. Two others were at her side, and Anders saw a younger self glance back at him from the glass woman's side. Their eyes met.

The world fragmented. The woman on the balcony had black hair an a knife in hand, and the halo of blue was his. It cut into his skull and their should have been pain but instead there was only a deep feeling of dread and wrongness as he fell sideways, disoriented. There were demons everywhere and the woman surrounded in glass killed the templar holding him in a single swift motion that left two more templars behind. They shoved him roughly against the wood of the gate, twisting into a grey mass of claws as they did. The glass fell away from the woman behind them, and her cold yellow eyes held him with icy contempt. He lunged at her, through the masses of grey flesh, and his fingers pressed into her throat, except it was a copy of himself who he strangled and he could feel his own fingers cutting off airflow as he did, knew he was doing the same to himself as to the mirror image before him, but he had to- The face in front of him was no longer his own but that of a dark-haired girl, blood pouring from where he had touched her, pouring from her throat and his fingertips and staining the very world red. He drew back in horror-

Anders awoke in darkness, heart pounding, images still running behind his eyes in the absence of truer imagery. His breath came quick and shallow and his chest felt tight, at once too light and too heavy. He curled his body against the wall, clutching his head in his hands. He'd killed a girl he'd killed her he'd killed her he'd killed her. A wave blotchy of color flashed across his vision, rolling over the dark and lingering even after he had squeezed his eyes shut to block it out. Ghosts of faces arose out of the invented color, not real ones but wrong ones, gaping abstract ones that felt so wrong it was threatening. He opened his eyes, but they did not fade, and remained mutating themselves further out of proportion til he brought sparks to his fingertips and the true image of wavering orange flame replaced the invented horrors. Gradually his breathing slowed as he stared into it, not daring to look away into the darkness. The pressure in his throat lifted. The adrenaline faded away to mild shivers. Only his mind remained wide awake, focusing on the flame to the obscuring of all else.

Eventually there was the sound of a match striking and a larger light filled the room. Tentatively, Anders' eyes left the glowing light at the end of his fingers and traveled up to see Lyna, barefoot and dressed in pale nightclothes, looking at him from across the room. She silently made her way around the table, lantern in hand, and knelt by him, looking at the flame at Anders' fingertips. Anders looked at her, and at the orange reflection in her pale eyes, turning them from blue to an odd golden grey.

"We are safe here," she said simply.

Anders did not feel safe. He felt terrified. He felt wrong. His very existence felt warped and strange. He did not want her to touch him for fear blood might start leaking from the point of contact. He did not feel safe. "We-I-killed a girl. I think." When Lyna's eyes met his in a frown, he went on. "I can't be certain." Her frown deepened.

"Why not?"

He tried to describe the fog and distortion, the utter lack of clarity. "Everything feels as though it was all... turned sideways," he began, and the sound of his own voice drew reality back in, allowed reality to breathe and draw out the tension in his mind through his words. He went faster. "Or like it was bigger once, and then suddenly, bang! You're small again and all you have is an expired self and a head full of old thoughts built for someone ten feet tall. And that person is so different nothing of theirs makes any sense anymore..." The fire on his fingers died away and he looked away from her. "I wasn't a good person."

Lyna shot him an annoyed frown. "You were always a selfish bastard."

"I know."

"Didn't make you a bad guy." Anders looked back at her as she slid down onto the floor, legs crossed. She set her lantern on the floor with a dull thump. "Just a deserter and a liar."

He flinched a little. "I started a war. The circles dissolved, the templars want blood, innocents died. I..." The smell of blood and shit filled his nose and images flashed in his mind. Cobblestone streets running with red, bodies, towering abominations, patrols of men killing anyone who might be a mage, which was everyone. The sounds of shouting and steel had followed him well past the walls of the city.

"Anders." His eyes snapped back into focus and blinked away the memories. Only memories. They had felt very real a moment ago. He looked at her and she held eye contact for several moments. Then there was the subtlest pressing together of her eyebrows, the smallest tightening of her lips, and she looked away. "The war was a cavern full of gas waiting for a spark. It was no fault of yours. Go back to sleep."

He didn't want to sleep. "I can't be absolved of guilt just like that. I- I planned that. For a long time, I think."

"You want me to call you a villain, tell me why I should."

And slowly, often halting to pull apart his own jumbled memories, he did.

.o.
-o-o-o-
'o'

Lyna was sparring with Nathaniel and beating him soundly when Anders found her. Nathaniel was an archer and couldn't use swords (or in this case sticks) worth a rat's ass, and she was hitting harder than was strictly necessary and had resolved to feel bad about it later. She needed this. She didn't need to hurt someone per se, but she needed very badly to hurt someone. She saw the mage standing on the green out of the corner of her eye and she swung her stick as hard as she could at Nathaniel's face. The movement was telegraphed seconds in advance, that much force makes a person predictable, and her stick snapped in half against the pair Nathaniel raised to block. Half of it went flying across the field. The other half she dropped to the ground.

Nathaniel's eyes surveyed her for a moment, concerned, and then rose to Anders about a hundred feet off. He looked back at her. "I take it we are done," he said neutrally. "I will be in the barracks if you need me." That was about as close to an offer to talk as Nathaniel ever came, and Lyna forced a smile, just to let him know it was appreciated. Then he excused himself.

Lyna strode toward Anders briskly and purposefully, and he came toward her at a slightly slower pace. "You have ten seconds," she said.

"I had been hoping you would be a little less angry with me by now-"

"I'm not."

Anders sighed. "Walk with me to the river, alright? We can talk and things will get better and maybe if we're very lucky there will be rainbows at the end." He extended a hand to her. She did not take it, but she went with him regardless.

They sat by the tree they always sat by, Lyna with her arms crossed over folded knees and Anders trying to reach out to her without being too intrusive. She knew he was attempting to be comforting, but she did not permit him to touch her.

"There's a story," Anders began, breaking the silence. "I heard it from this one dwarf during my fifth escape attempt, a big hairy fellow with atrocious luck at dice. The wisest king Orzammar ever had, back when all the tunnels were connected and not full of darkspawn, called his finest smiths and said to them, 'craft me an object so powerful that it will make me glad when I am in the deepest of despair and sad when I am at my most joyful. And the smiths all spent days debating what they would craft, but after a week, they had it. So a week later they returned to him with a ring, inscribed with the words 'this too shall pass.'" Lyna looked at him, anger and hurt gnawing at her insides but entirely absent from her face, and Anders gave her the sorriest expression she'd ever seen. "This too shall pass."

"Don't," said Lyna, "I need you," but quietly, with pain in her voice. Anders reached out to cup her face in his hand, and she allowed him to draw her close and gently kiss her. She kissed him back, hungry, desperate kisses and then angry ones with teeth and force as she pushed him down onto the hard earth. How dare he.

She cried as she took him, and afterward she raged against him with hurt and bitterness worn on her sleeve. She didn't speak to him again, and at week's end a pair of mages came to collect him and he was gone.


Thanks for reading. Reviews are always appreciated. :)