Chapter 28: Apostate

The evening seemed bizarre to Fenris after and he was grateful for when Anders decided he was going to get some sleep, or try to as the crew of the ship had started to filter back aboard. Fenris headed up to the deck to assist with the moving of crates and supplies that had been exchanged and purchased at Traiders Bay. The warrior needed to stretch the newly healed muscles and bones.

Anders removed some layers of clothing and sat on the bed just pondering what transpired. The massage, the free offer of it whenever he wanted or needed it, that he kissed Fenris on the top of the head and told him he loved him. Playfully of course! Not that it meant anything, really. Really? By the fire blasted and blighted Deep Roads and the Void too! Anders sighed. Each week had brought him closer to feeling stable, even though there was the constant whisper in his mind of what he should and should not be doing from Justice, or sometimes Vengeance. That mixed with the whispers and dreams of the darkspawn for a spectacularly confusing and dark mess inside Anders mind and heart. But this evening, this little moment, caused the strangest fluttering inside his stomach. Last time he felt that was over the years he wanted to confess his feelings to Hawke. This time, it was Fenris.

Fenris. Anders had to really absorb the reality of this. Fenris, the Tevinter elf, the slave infused with lyrium to be a deadly and vicious killer, the man who had seemed to hate him for six or more years just because he was an apostate. But that was not exactly true. Fenris hated magisters and was terrified that Anders would become one. And over the last few months, Fenris had been sometimes difficult, but how much of that was Anders' doing? Fenris dragged him out from starving himself to death, which he had almost managed to do. Fenris stirred his morals to heal those who need it. Fenris risked dying of the plague to stay with him and help him in the clinic. Fenris saved his life when he burned himself out and learned what mage shock was. Fenris… took care of him like no one ever had, ever in all the time Anders could remember.

As Anders evaluated his growth and understanding of this elf, of their interactions and each their personal beliefs, he had to acknowledge that friendship had grown between them. It bonded them together, even if it was because Hawke bade Fenris to watch over him. Fenris had started to reach out, learn, share, even touch. By Andraste's smalls, Fenris had kissed Anders only a few days ago, and allowed Anders to snuggle against him on the deck. Anders wished he had not been so mad about that kiss. It just scared him. The feelings inside him scared him. Then the anger blasted through him and he wasn't sure if it was his own or the spirit inside. He licked his lips that still had the tiny sensation of the thick straight strands of white hair when he kissed the top of Fenris' head. That flutter returned to his belly and a smile started to cramp his cheeks. His fingers drew absent circles over his knee where Fenris had rubbed in the salve. He bit his lip and threw himself into the bed and groaned aloud. "No….. no….. What is wrong with me? He hates apostates… but he had said… didn't he say that he might actually like the Anders I try to be, the one I used to be, remember being before I gave into you?" He was alone. It was acceptable to talk to himself. Wasn't it? This was something he did often since he always felt alone. And actually, he wasn't alone and talking to himself. That was crazy. He was talking to the spirit inside him, talking to Justice. But Justice did not approve of this relationship. Justice liked it far far less than the relationship with Hawke. "Well, I like him!" Anders declared to the disapproving voice inside him. "Let me have at least one thing!"

Anders wanted to have some contact, something more than the ethereal connection he had with Justice. He liked the challenge Fenris presented and found he even enjoyed that Fenris disagreed with him often and treated him with complete and sometimes brutal honesty. Fenris held very high standards, unlike Hawke who simply accepted you as is, and Anders found that he wanted to meet those high standards. He wanted to be what Fenris would expect from a mage if he respected a mage, strong and sure, never to give in to blood magic or demons, to only use magic to serve and aid and heal.

Anders wriggled under the bed sheet in his single layer of clothes. He fell asleep thinking of all the little things, because they seem so much more important right now, all those little things Fenris had done over the last few months and how much he had grown fond of them.

Hours later as all the crew were finally aboard and all the crates were stowed away, Fenris returned to the little cabin he shared with Anders. He expected Anders to be asleep and was not disappointed. He sat on the edge of the bed and simply watched the apostate. After the kiss and declaration, however false and joking, Fenris needed to simply do something else. However, neither words nor deed left his mind. He knew Anders well enough by now to know that a joke was always the truth pretending to be a false jest. He just wasn't wholly ready for it. Maybe he should have been. He started it after all. What a fool he was. Then again, maybe this would push Anders to fight for control all the harder. He had been honest about the fact that he really liked this Anders, now that he had set aside his bias. He still did not like mages, but now he could differentiate between them. Anders was admirable for an apostate. Selfless, compassionate, sensitive. And yet when necessary, as fiercely protective as Fenris could be. He had never thought he could let his guard down and just be, allow himself to be the one being protected. Anders was admirable in that too.

As per usual, Anders tossed here and there, rolled, and kicked the blankets from his feet. Fenris debated pulling the blankets over Anders yet again and then decided instead to remove all but the thick sheet. Now that he had felt the furnace-like heat that radiated off the mage when Anders had held him, he understood easily why the blankets so oft became discarded in a pile at the end of the bed. He stroked through Anders' hair and stole the tie from it, tying it with the first around his wrist… for safe keeping! He stretched his fingers and let Anders' hair slide through them. Feather-soft. He wanted to lean down and smell his hair. Fenris shook his head at how absolutely ridiculous that would be.

For the first time, his soothing touches did not ease the night terror Anders' started to suffer. Anders whimpered and scowled. He rolled over again and struggled with something unseen. Fenris untangled the sheet no less than three times over his watch as his concern intensified. His soothing touches always helped before. This time they seemed to make the situation worse. Finally he decided to just wake the mage. He shook Anders gently. It did not wake him. He shook him harder. That too did not wake him, but instead, Anders started to yell unintelligibly, or maybe in a language that was of the spirit or of Anders' childhood. Either way, Fenris could not wake Anders.

Now Fenris really worried. A sleeper trapped in the fade, especially a mage was at risk of being possessed by demons. While Fenris logically understood that Anders was already possessed, maybe he was trapped in the Fade at war with the spirit that possessed him. Didn't he recently tell Fenris that he was so entangled with the spirit that he no longer knew where he ended and it began? Feynriel was in such a situation and special rites had to be performed to send people into the Fade and help get him out. That was impossible here on the ship. Impossible. He didn't know what to do.

The yelling and struggling brought Athenril down and knocking, hoping they were not killing each other on her ship. She opened the door to a pleading desperate look on the elf's face. He explained as curtly as possible to her, leaving out the possessed parts. She left swiftly, yelling something to someone about a bath basin and water, then returned to Fenris. "Can you carry him?" At Fenris' nod she instructed that he bring Anders to the larger room down the hall.

Fenris tugged the struggling Anders to hear Anders blithering in Arcanum. Now Fenris understood and wished he had not. Anders fought with Justice for the right to like, to feel, to be with Fenris. Fought for the rights to be on his own sometimes like before… and was losing the battle. Fenris was losing Anders… to the spirit. With a snarl, Fenris called for assistance and dragged Anders out. Two men came over and each lifted under Anders' arms while Fenris took his feet and they manhandled the fighting mage into the room where a huge basin was being filled with water.

"By the Dread Wolf!" declared one of the two men who saw something under the edge of Anders' rising shirt.

"You have NO RIGHT TO LOOK!" roared Fenris possessively. He had to quickly catch Anders around the chest as he forced the other men away. A look that announced to them all 'MINE! DO NOT TOUCH!' made them all back up a step.

Athenril called Fenris' attention, "Stand him up back to the basin and push him in."

"What?!"

"The sense of falling and the rush of water to drown you will yank you from the Fade. I've had to do this a couple times for mages in my employ," she explained.

Fenris looked skeptical, but even with all the moving, carrying, yelling and shaking, Anders still had not roused. He had expected the mage to wake glowing and rumbling with Justice in control to be chased back by Fenris' hand. Fenris refused to let the spirit have Anders. He shuffled his feet till he held Anders to his chest and could see the basin over Anders' shoulder. Then he pushed.

Anders fell with as little self-control as Fenris had when he was pushed off the cliff. The sense of falling already stirred him as Fenris witnessed muscles tensing and bracing for an unknown impact. The water splashed all over the floor as the mage landed into it with a yell and flail. A hand grasped the basin's rim and he pulled himself to the surface gasping and choking, magic coiling around his fingers and arms.

"Out!" hollered Fenris. Everyone bolted from the room to let Fenris calm Anders. Fenris grabbed Anders and pulled the soaking mage from the tub. Aggressive magic stabbed and tugged at his brands and made them flare. He gritted his teeth. Then he saw the flickering light and knew it was not him but Justice. The struggling voice was overlaid with the spirit. Anders but not Anders. Fenris restrained him, held him tightly to him to be sure Anders did not cast anything that might sink the ship.

"Mage. Anders… calm yourself. You were stuck in the Fade. I had to do something. But you are safe. No danger is here." Fenris gritted his teeth again against the pain and then banished it.

A slur of strange words mixed of their voices and of Arcanum with that foreign language growled and ground out through clenched teeth. Anders still fought for control. Only now the fight was here, now, and not in the Fade.

Fenris flexed a fist as he debated phasing it and grabbing Anders' heart to force the spirit back. But Anders was here too. Sometimes there would be a pleading word or an angry one that was all Anders. "You can fight this, Anders. He shares your body. It is YOURS not his! Anders…. Hold onto me if you need to." Anders did. Grabbed hold of Fenris, letting out a keening cry that ended in a yell. "You fought for me against a magister. Fight again now for me. Shon Anders. I know you are a strong mage."

One more rough yell and he sank into the elven warrior. "Fenris," trembled out a bare whisper from Anders, in his own voice. "I will... always… fight for you." Fenris offered a fanged grin. Anders rested his head on the elf's shoulder a moment before he lost consciousness out of exhaustion.

Fenris carried him back to their room. "Forgive me. I know you never wanted me to see you naked, but you give me little choice at the moment." He stripped off the wet clothing from the mage. "Vanhedis!" He saw what Athenril's elven man saw. He moistened his lips and stared in disbelief. Swallowed for his throat went dry. His fingers hovered over the scars. A… P… O… S… The letters started at Anders' navel. Fenris tugged Anders' left shoulder and turned him over. T… A… T… E… followed by a symbol he did not know. Once Anders was turned over, he saw again the very word Anders hated so badly scarring across his upper back. It too was followed by a symbol. This one Fenris recognized from a note taken from a Templar, a proposal for a 'Tranquil Solution' by Alrik. Alrik's personal sigil. Anders hated the word apostate as much as Fenris hates the word slave. "I will never call you this again…" He winced with shame, and then redressed Anders in a thin layer of dry clothing.

Anders flinched. His eyes flew open. "No… no don't look! I'm hideous… a monster…"

"Then I am as well." Fenris tugged the shirt down over Anders' stomach and then the sheet up over his shoulders. "Our brands are testament to our strength to survive and fight for our freedoms."