As Hawke's hands frantically tore the ichor-stained shirt from Anders' unresisting body, Isabela started pulling towels from a drawer, tossing them onto the bed beside Hawke as Sebastian leaned out the cabin door and bellowed for hot water. On the other side of the bed, Fenris was stirring groggily.
"How long was I out for?" he muttered as he pushed himself up onto his elbows and frowned.
"Over a day," replied Hawke distractedly as he tried to wipe up the dark fluid seeping from the opened wound over the apostate's heart. "Maker's balls, what is this stuff?" he added, pulling a face as the slimy liquid clung to the soft fabric in his hands and smeared over his fingers. "It smells somehow familiar, and yet..."
Fenris rolled over and pushed himself up to his knees next to Anders' limp form, bending low as he inhaled slowly. "Venhedis, it can'tbe... It smells like... the Deep Roads?" he said, a note of uncertainty in his low voice. Hawke swore, echoed roundly by Isabela.
"It can'tbe his Calling yet though surely?" protested Fenris as he reached for a cloth and dipped it in the bowl of hot water Sebastian brought over before suddenly twitching and then pushing himself between the one-eyed Prince of Starkhaven and the unconscious apostate. "What's he doing here?" he snarled, glaring at Isabela.
"Calm down Broody, he's on our side, believe it or not," dismissed Isabela breezily as she produced a knife and swiftly began slicing Anders' shirt from his body, pulling away shreds of stained silk as Hawke began to sluice the strange-smelling liquid from the mage's skin. Now that Fenris had identified it, Hawke too could recognise it - that strange, half-rotten, half-metallic scent of unclean things hidden too long away from the light of day.
"Fenris, you're glowing," remarked Hawke briefly, glancing to the glowering elf.
"Do you mean to say you both trust him? Am I surrounded by idiots?" he growled.
"Anders told me to trust him. That's reason enough for me," replied Hawke.
"And Chantry Boy and I had a long talk whilst you two were snoozing like babies," added Isabela. "Quite the fascinating tale. Not sure I believe the half of it mind - but then again, after all those years spent traipsing after Hawke you'd think I'd know better by now."
"Fenris, I know you have no reason to trust me, but believe me - I swear by Andraste that I mean no harm to Anders. He has helped me to see more clearly with one eye than I ever saw with two."
Fenris' lip curled in a sneer; but before he could answer Hawke nudged his shoulder briefly. "Help me turn Anders onto his side," he asked as Isabela tugged at the remains of the shirt still trapped beneath the mage. With a glare that told Sebastian he wasn't finished yet, Fenris turned to help Hawke roll the unconscious man onto his side, facing towards the elf.
The back of the shirt was soaked through with more of the black fluid; as Isabela pulled it from the pale flesh of the apostate it clung to his skin. Hawke took a wet cloth and swept it over Anders' back, cleaning away the ichor with difficulty. Wringing out the cloth, he ran a hand over Anders' slick skin - and then froze as he felt the rough raised edges of the scar beneath the palm of his hand. There, between two ribs, where the knife had slid home, seeking the mage's heart. Snatching his hand away as though burned, he turned it over and stared at it, covered in
blood. His hand was covered in blood. Anders' blood. He could feel it, over and over in his head; the hilt of his knife, its heavy weight in his hand as he set the tip against the worn suede of the coat. Just beneath where the feather pauldrons hung over the upper back of the heavy coat, between two ribs, angled a little upwards. The feeling of resistance as he pushed the knife through the leather hide of the coat, suddenly giving way as the knife thrust through that initial barrier to tear easily through the thinner patchwork leather tunic beneath. The worn linen shirt offered no resistance at all as the blade slid easily into warm living flesh that parted like soft butter, almost melting away from the unerring blade driving up through skin, muscle, seeking the heart. Anders' gasp as the cold metal bit deep and then drove mercilessly through him. And then the blood,running hot and wet over the hilt of the knife and across his hand. The shudder as the tip of the blade reached the apostate's heart and the shudder that ran through the man before with a sigh, he slid bonelessly from his seat to sprawl upon his side in a spreading pool of blood, the hilt of the knife wrenched from Hawke's suddenly nerveless hand as he stared at the blood covering his fingers, his palm - blood, so much of it...
"... Hawke? Hawke, are you alright?" Isabela's voice held a note of concern as Fenris stared up at him, perplexed and worried. Sebastian's hand upon his shoulder, warm and comforting.
"I'm losing him again," Hawke managed hoarsely. "It's all my fault. Everything. Every. Last. Thing. And now he's dying and there's nothing I can do to stop it this time."
"Hawke, stop that!" said Isabela briskly, jerking him around to face her. "If you give up now then he isas good as dead. Is that what you want?" Her lip curled into a sneer not unlike that Which Fenris had given Sebastian not minutes before. "Some Champion you are! Giving up when things get tough. I told Anders he should give up mooning over you and I was right - you're just a gutless drifter who quits like the queasiest landlubber when there's foam atop the waves."
Hawke stared at her, his expression of shock changing to a furious glare as he suddenly launched himself at the pirate, swinging his fist towards her face with an angry bellow. She evaded it effortlessly then double him over with a fist to the gut that robbed him of breath and dropped him to his knees, retching.
"Nice try Hawke, but you were never that fast and you'll never be that lucky. I've been outrunning angry men since I was knee-high to a Qunari, and right now a blind nug could beat you. You're not thinking straight and you're running on reflex." She nudged his knee with her foot. "Come on, get up, if you've quite finished wallowing in self recriminations. I'm sure it'll make a wonderful scene for Varric's next book but right now we don't have the luxury of pity parties."
"Did anyone tell you that you can be a real bitch, Isabela?" gasped Hawke, bracing a fist against the floor before slowly getting back to his feet.
"Frequently," said Isabela frankly. "You make it sound like it's a bad thing."
"When we've all quite finished fighting?" said Sebastian pointedly. Isabela flashed him a bright grin.
"Oh darling, that wasn't fighting; that was just a love tap." She gave him a wink.
Fenris had been steadily and deliberately ignoring the scuffle, instead focussing upon Anders as he cleaned away the last of the ichor. It seemed to have stopped seeping from the reopened knife wounds, but the scars themselves looked angry and inflamed, with dark blotches mottling the skin around the broken skin and shadowy lines faintly radiating out into the white flesh.
"Hawke," he said slowly, not looking up as he patted the damp skin dry with a towel. "You would know better than I - does this look like the Blight to you?"
"It does," agreed Hawke reluctantly. "Though how that's possible, I don't know; his Warden blood is supposed to make him immune to the Blight."
"I have a theory, if I may?" suggested Sebastian. Hawke glanced at the Prince, then nodded, gesturing to continue. As Hawke and Fenris finished cleaning Anders up then straightened the bed around the unconscious man, Sebastian began to slowly pace, hands behind his back as though he were back within Elthina's office explaining some newly-understood liturgy rather than tentatively expanding on impossible-seeming arcane matters of spirit and magic.
"By all rights, Anders should have died when you stabbed him - and in one very real sense, I think Anders diddie. But somehow - Maker knows, I know not how - the last surviving fragment of what was once the spirit known as Justice managed to capture the fleeting spark of Anders' soul, and surrendered itself in his place, allowing Anders to return to his body. But because he had died, the demon we know as Vengeance was severed from his body - driven out. It cannot possess a dead body. Whatever was done to allow Justice to possess the dead Grey Warden Kristoff's body, Vengeance couldn't use that route back again to reclaim its recently-deceased host."
He paused, turned on his heel, and slowly began to pace the other way, one hand gesturing. Isabela, who had already heard this tale, quietly slipped out of the cabin to make her way aloft to check upon the ship.
"Somehow, Anders' death and subsequent resurrection caused something to change or in some way affect the taint in Anders' blood. I don't know what. We don't know what it is that the Wardens do to create more Wardens; it has something to do with magic, the Chantry believes that much - and somehow it is connected to the Darkspawn, but we know nothing further than that. The Wardens keep their secrets more closely guarded even than the Chantry itself. It may be that when Anders died, whatever it was that made him a Warden also died. And what was left..."
"But Kristoff was also a Grey Warden. So surely whatever was in Anders' blood must also have been in his - so why could Vengeance take over Kristoff's form but not Anders'?" asked Hawke.
Sebastian turned and glanced to Hawke and Fenris, and shrugged. "I do not know. Kristoff had been a warrior in life, whilst Anders was a mage. Perhaps it was the magic in his blood. Maybe it was the very change within the demon itself; perhaps as the spirit Justice it could move freely into the dead flesh, whereas the demon could only possess a living host. I am no Templar; I have not had the training in such matters that they do. It would be a matter for the Chantry itself to investigate and understand, not a failed priest such as I." His mouth quirked in a rueful expression. "I have thought on what you told me of the magister Corypheus and how it had called to him through the taint, weakening him and even briefly possessing him?" Sebastian's voice was uncertain; he had not been present when they had defeated the former Tevinter magister. He had had only Hawke's brief explanation of the events after their return to work from, and there was much he had felt the warrior had hid from him. He had trusted that Hawke had had good cause, and he had come to understand why only after encountering Anders in the Fade.
Hawke nodded. "That would make sense," he agreed. "You think that was how Vengeance is now seeking a way back in past his defenses? And this remnant of the taint within him has perhaps been... what, reawakened by him? Which means he is now succumbing to the Blight, with whatever made him a Warden having died with him?"
"It is only a theory," answered Sebastian apologetically.
"It's all we have to work on," replied Fenris tersely. "But you still have not explained why your sudden about-face where Anders himself is concerned. Why should you care if he dies of the Blight? You wished to kill him yourself, not so long ago."
"I spoke earlier of having been blinded, and I spoke only the truth," replied Sebastian slowly, leaning against the edge of Isabela's desk. "For years I have been blinded by my own desire for vengeance - first against the murderers of my family, and then later against the murderer of Elthina and the Chantry. I had never questioned it, or examined how far from the Maker I had fallen in my lust for blood. Every time I raised my voice in the Chant, it was all a lie; how could I pray for the Light of forgiveness with only hatred in my heart?"
His single blue eye lifted towards the low wooden ceiling, staring beyond it. "I was dying. My templars were already dead around me, having saved me at the expense of their own lives. I was in such terrible agony that I could not appreciate their sacrifice; instead I cursed the Maker for ever having breathed life into me even as I begged Him to end my pain. I didn't even have the strength to pray to Andraste to take me to Her eternal embrace. I had nothing left but the pain.
"I think I must have passed out from the pain, for it seemed I began to dream; and in that dream I saw a figure walking towards me across the waves, and it raised a hand towards me. I thought it were Andraste Herself come to give me blessed release, and I would have cried if I had had tears left. Then the figure placed its hand upon my breast, and I was healed.
"And it was Anders." Sebastian lowered his head. For a moment he was silent; when he spoke again his voice was low. "I thought he had been sent to punish me. That here, when I was on the point of dying, he had been sent to drag me back to life against my will. I waited for him to gloat."
He glanced up. "He didn't gloat. He seemed sad. He apologised to me that he could not restore the sight in my eye. And we... talked. Well, I ranted, he listened, and made no defense of himself. And when I grew angry and drew a blade upon him, he seemed to accept it and offered to die for me, that my vengeance would be complete. And that's when I realised we had both been the servants of the same demon." He smiled sadly. "I had been ruled by base emotion, and he had given it succour and a host in which to grow and take root. We had both been blind in our own ways, but he shone the light of truth and I realised that we were not enemies. He had saved my life and asked nothing in return. He did it because at heart, Anders is a good man. And I realised I had misjudged him most grievously."
He glanced at Fenris. "So that is why I am here. I owe him my life and my soul, and I swore I would stand by his side and fight this demon with him, as friend. And whilst I do not ask you to trust me, Fenris - I do ask that you trust him. Please."
Fenris stared at the one-eyed Prince for several minutes in silence. Then slowly, he nodded.
"For his sake, I will."