"If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden." – Claudia Adrienne Grandi
It started slowly, and progressed the same, enough that by the time Anders actually noticed, it was too late. The first sign was a single white petal, coughed into his fist after a fight on the Wounded Coast. Anders had been overwhelmed, pinned down by two slavers away from the rest of their group. Fenris had swept in and elegantly dispatched two of them with a well aimed swing of his greatsword. The bright sunlight seemed to glitter off his starlight colored hair and played across his tanned skin and the white lines of his brands, and the image made Anders' breath catch in his throat, a tickle remaining even when the mage remembered how to breathe again. Fenris had even lingered a moment to make sure Anders was alright to continue fighting, regarding him with a tipped head until Anders nodded and began throwing spells again. Once the battle ended and they all drifted apart to tend to their weapons or search for loot, Anders couldn't hold the cough building in his chest any longer. When he brought his hand away from his mouth, a single fragrant petal remained. Even if he had not known what flower it was from based on just the petal, the smell told him everything he needed to know; it was the cloying smell of gardenias. He hadn't seen the flower since he left Fereldan but he knew the smell anyway from his mother's flower garden as a boy.
He had known right then that it meant he was doomed; Anders was a healer, had been before he had even really known he was a mage, always tending to other sick children or interested to know which herbs helped pain and which helped fever, so he knew what it meant to cough up flower petals. There had been several mages he treated in the Circle for the affliction, and almost all of them had died. The cure was unthinkable to them, and at the time Anders had thought they were foolish. Now that it was him, he understood why they had refused. To have his feeling removed was a step too close to being Tranquil. Besides, he still had time. Anders knew that it was a slow disease, that some managed to live with it for years, that there were usually more than one kind of petal and flower, that it was excruciating at the end.
Anders tucked the petal into his pocket and ignored Justice's brewing arguments about their situation. If Anders had to die for something, he had always hoped it would be for love or freedom.
It goes on quietly for months like this; Fenris will do something small like cover his back in a fight or give a handsome half smile at one of the other's comments and that tickle would appear in Anders' throat until he managed to find a moment alone to cough up handfuls of white petals. Whenever they had a particularly spiteful interaction, his lungs would ache from the thorns growing and the petals would inevitably be speckled with blood for the few days following their argument. The softer side of Fenris he has seen directed at Marian, Isabela and even Aveline made him ache for something that was not meant for him, but Anders would rather hurt in awe at the magnitude of his feelings than have no feelings at all.
"So I hear you think mages should be free."
For a moment, Anders was sure Fenris was talking to him and his heart rabbited in his chest. His lungs were still tender from a brief spat they had the previous day but he knew his stubbornness wouldn't let him back down from an argument about this. However, when he looked, the elf was looking at Isabela, who responded breezily.
"Everyone should be free. Not just mages."
"Not everyone's dangerous."
"It's not about who's dangerous. It's about having choices made for you. Don't you wish you had the choice not to have lyrium stuck under your skin?"
"I do."
Anders opened his mouth to agree with Isabela but the woman was quicker. She waved her invisible white flag with a heaved sigh. The mage couldn't help but be grateful to her, more for the state of his lungs than out of wanting to avoid a fight.
"This is silly. I don't want to argue."
"Do you want to guess what color my underclothes are again?" Fenris abandoned the brewing brawl without regard, a fond smile on his face as he teased the pirate with easy familiarity. Anders suddenly wished he was anywhere else. His throat felt swollen with his swallowed words.
"Oh, yes, that's much more fun."
Anders tuned out the rest of their conversation and focused on putting one foot in front of the other as they followed Hawke through Lowtown, selling the loot they had acquired and returning lost things they had found. He focused on breathing around the petals and buds no doubt building up in his throat. While the others were absorbed into conversation with Lady Elegant, Anders stepped away and coughed into his fist. For the first time since he had started coughing up petals, they were not just gardenias. These were bright yellow tulip petals, mixed with the usual white petals. As the healer slid them into his pocket, he caught Isabela's shocked eyes on him and forced himself to look away. The rogue may be an insufferable gossip, she was good at keeping quiet about sensitive things, at least for her friends.
It didn't stop her from pulling Anders aside later that evening when they all normally split up to go their own ways home. Her hand locked tightly at the bend of his elbow and she steered him out to the docks instead. Neither of them spoke as the rogue led them out onto a pier with no ship docked at it. She sat down nimbly on the edge, her legs dangling towards the churning waves. Anders sat beside her, much slower and clumsier.
"You should tell him," the woman told him. Of course she would know what the flower petals meant, and of course she knew him well enough to see who had caused the vines and roots to begin to bloom in his lungs and wound around his heart.
"No. It would only upset him and I don't want anyone to blame him for my death. Karl always said I have a foolish heart that wants things it can't have."
Isabela rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath in Rivaini before asking, "and you don't want to remove it?"
Anders shook his head.
"Why?"
It was a fair question; why would a healer choose to accept a slow painful death when there was a cure he could administer himself?
"Because I've treated mages for the same condition and they are just… blank. It removes all feelings they may have for that person, some of them even forgot who the person was. Many of them had trouble forming connections with other people afterwards, even in other relationships they struggled to feel anything towards them. Emotions are what make us human. I would rather die than give them up."
Isabela didn't respond for a while. There was only the call of the seagulls and the sounds of sailors and dockhands going about their day, all beneath the rhythmic melody of the waves slapping the stone of the city's sea walls.
"I've seen my fair share of it. In brothels it was rampant, as I'm sure you know, but I can't tell you how many of my best men went down spewing roots and thorns instead of in battle. It is your choice, sweet thing, but at least consider telling him."
Isabela is correct, Anders. If it involves Fenris, he deserves to know. It is unjust to take this to your grave. Justice encouraged. The spirit had also recoiled from the idea of having the flowers removed and had been unrelenting in insisting Anders tell Fenris of his problem.
"They're my feelings, I'm entitled to do as I see fit with them. Besides, I… can't do that to him, Bela. I can't ask him to carry that burden for someone he barely tolerates. I can't control how I feel and he can't control how he doesn't feel."
"Oh, Anders…" Isabela whispered.
"Please don't," he begged, his throat tight.
The pirate nodded before holding her hand out to him. He stared at it blankly, unsure what she wanted. Coin, maybe, for her silence? He dug in his coin purse and set his only silver piece in her upturned palm. The woman clicked her tongue disapprovingly and used her thumb to flick the coin at his forehead. He fumbled to catch it, barely saving it from being lost to the sea. He would have tumbled into the water himself had it not been for Isabela's quick grip onto his arm.
"Careful," she cautioned, though she was giggling some, "I was wanting to see the flowers. They have meanings, y'know."
"Oh, and you know these meanings?" Anders asked. He had known that some flowers had certain meanings but he also knew Isabela was as likely to know the answer as make one up. He wouldn't put it past her to have an entire catalog of fake flower meanings that amounted to crude phrases that she had mainly conceived while drunk.
"My mother made a living telling fortunes. Most of them were nugshit but I remember my grandmother talking about flower meanings. My grandmother was a fortune teller too, but she wasn't like my mother. I believe the things she said."
"Do you think she could actually tell fortunes?" Anders asked, genuinely curious. He knew that many dismissed such claims as smoke and mirrors along with lucky guesses and manipulation, but Anders had heard both sides. He was never sure which side to believe.
"I believe they both could."
"Then why only believe your grandmother?"
"They could both tell when someone would die within the year; my grandmother would tell the person to get their affairs in order and refuse to take any payment while my mother would charge them an exorbitant amount, draw them up a fake treasure map and tell them that within a year and a half they would be the wealthiest they had ever been."
Isabela looked away from him, out over the sea towards the horizon. The sunset had turned the skies golden red and the water dark like wine. The middle distance was spotted with ships returning to port for the evening. The rogue looked older than her years, and sadder than Anders ever remembered seeing her. It was hard to mesh the woman he knew with the one he had met years ago at the Pearl. They had both different people then. It felt like they were different people than they had even been a few months ago; the mage was reminded starkly of a conversation he had had with Isabela not five weeks before.
( "I can't believe you're still not taking sides."
"I told you, I only like to be on top."
"I mean against the templars! You like freedom, right? You hate slavery. Why wouldn't you side with the mages?"
"Maybe I just don't like you." )
Wordlessly, Anders dug the small collection of buds and petals from that day and passed them over to Isabela. She studied the blossoms for a long moment before she nodded.
"Gardenias and yellow tulips. Secret, hopeless love. Keep in mind that the flowers just reflect your own feelings, not the other person's or even the reality of the situation." She let the flowers go, and they both watched as they landed in the water. They floated along the top of the water until a wave folded over them and they were swallowed by the current.
Isabela may have not believed the flower meanings told the truth but Anders did. He wasn't sure he could describe his feelings towards Fenris as anything but "hopeless secret love." Anders found he was fine with it being secret; he had seen too often how an illness like this would mar the person's memory. The people left behind did not remember the actual person as they had been, only remembered how long and hard they had suffered before finally dying. He only wanted his friends to remember some of the nicer things about him. They could even remember all the terrible things about him as long as they did not remember him with heartache and pity as a shadow of who he had really been. He knew it was more realistic to hope they remembered him at all but didn't allow himself to think of how few people would truly mourn his passing.
Gardenia: you're lovely; secret love
Yellow Tulip: hopeless love