One more chapter before I dive back into NaNoWriMo. I'll have a few new chapters ready by the new year, hopefully.

Special thanks to Olndina for taking time out of her very busy life to help me with this story!

Anders couldn't explain why he had started singing that particular song – there had been many songs sung in the time between that day in the kitchen and the day when he'd been ripped from his mother's bosom by the Templars, but this was the one he remembered best. So, in the lonely hours of watch, he sang it.

The soft tune was barely audible over the sound of the crackling fire; a lilting melody that was soothing not only because of its beauty, but also because of the memories it conjured.

He could not have been more than three or four, so small that he had to sit on his knees on the chair in order to see over the flat surface of the table. His mother had been standing at the counter, singing softly as she kneaded the thick dough that would soon become a loaf of fresh bread.

He had been too young to understand the meaning of the song, but he loved listening to his mother's sweet voice. She had a talent for singing, bringing out the nuanced emotions of each phrase.

It had taken repeated listenings before Anders had memorized the words, and it wasn't until his teens that he truly understood the meaning. War tears a young couple apart soon after they wed. Far away from home, he's killed in battle. So great is her grief that she vows never to marry again, nor even to court another.

As sad as the song always made Anders, he held sacred the memory of that particular day, the scent of cinnamon filling his nostrils as his mother's voice filled his whole self. Just after he was sent to the Circle of Magi, he relied on that memory in the dark of night when he was feeling incredibly homesick. Then it stopped assuaging the tears, stopped soothing him to sleep. The spicy scent of cinnamon became acrid, bittersweet in the reality that he would never see his mother again. He would eventually lose the sound of his mother's sweet voice in the drone of the senior mages assigned to be his surrogate fathers and mothers. And, no matter the skill of any castle cook, there would never be another loaf of cinnamon bread to dance across his taste buds as his mother's did.

oOoOo

He'd known for a few years that he could do magic, but the spells had always been very weak. A pale ball of light to help him read in the nighttime. A small force of will to help his rock skip the furthest across the lake. Tiny sparks of lightning crackling from his fingers. All were thrilling, but nothing too powerful, and – although he felt his mother suspected – he had always been able to hide his talent; he knew that magic was dangerous and the Chantry was dead-set against it. He'd heard the story of the young girl – a tiny thing of no more than five years of age – in the next village over who had become so angry with a playmate that she cast a fireball towards him, singeing his hair and, thankfully, wounding nothing more than his pride. The boy's father, so the story goes, had gone after her and, well, some said that the man had drowned her in the river, trying to drive away the demon that surely must have possessed her. Others whispered about something called "The Circle."

For the longest time, Anders had thought that the Circle was a place where all bad children were sent for punishment. It wasn't until after he had told one of the younger boys that he was going to have to go the Circle if he didn't stop pulling girls' hair that one of the Chantry sisters set him straight. The Circle of Magi was where all mages went to live. The kindly woman spoke of the Circle as though it were a haven for mages, a place for them to practice their magic while under the protection of the Templars. Mages were terribly dangerous, and needed to be watched over at all times, both for their own safety and the safety of others.

In her misguided attempts at educating a curious boy about the danger of mages, she had woven a dark story about how all mages were prone to being possessed by demons. Without the Templars to keep them in check, mages would become horrible abominations – mindless, evil monsters bent on destroying everything and everyone around them. Anders had had nightmares for a whole month after that conversation, and in the waking hours was wracked with fear that he would fall prey to an evil demon. His knowledge was hazy on just how possession occurred, and so any time he entered a room, he would check behind the furniture and peer into the corners, expecting at any moment that a demon would leap out and attack him.

Anders had vowed to himself that he would never practice magic ever again, no matter how strong the desire. As time passed, though, he could feel something strange (what he later learned was mana) bubbling inside of him. It had been vague at first, like a tickle in the back of his throat before his forehead would burn with fever and his body would shake with nervous energy. He ignored it as best as he could, until one morning he had awakened with his entire body tingling with the desire to do something. He snuck out to the barn, just for a few spells, he had told himself. It still hadn't connected that the strange feelings he'd been having meant that his magic had changed in any way, but it did. Just as his body became more powerful as he grew and developed muscles, so too had his magic.

Always before, he had taken delight in conjuring a small fireball, reveling in the fact that not only could he make fire, but that he could do so without burning himself. However, unchecked, the small fireball he held in his hand suddenly grew to the size of a melon, catching him by surprise. Without thinking, he had dropped it into a pile of hay. He hadn't meant to burn down the barn, hadn't even known he had the power to do so until he saw the flames licking at the aged wood.

Panicking, he jumped down the ladder and dashed outside, crying, "Fire!" as loudly as he could. His father and the hired farmhands ran to the scene and gathered buckets of water from the well, and managed to prevent the fire from spreading to the adjoining cornfields. But the fire completely consumed the barn, and it burned to the ground in a matter of minutes.

As soon as the fire died out, the questions began. Anders had been seen running out of the barn, and it was obvious that he had been present. How did it start? they demanded of the child. There were no lamps of oil within the barn, and no flint or tinder either in the barn or on Anders' person. What had happened?

After nearly an hour of questioning (and a few threats), Anders finally came clean: he had cast a spell of fire. He'd known there would be anger and condemnation at the discovery that he was a mage, but he hadn't expected the abject terror that was clear on his father's face. Upon hearing the truth, Anders' father, a man who had never before shown fear in Anders' presence, turned white as a sheet and backed away from his son so fast that he knocked a chair over.

Anders' mother pulled her son into her arms, enveloping him in reassurance. Her quiet sobs broke the overwhelming silence that had descended, and her tears dampened Anders' hair. The tiny family stayed in that frozen tableau for several minutes until Anders' father snapped to his senses, grabbed his coat, and stalked out the door, not even bothering to latch the door properly behind him. He slammed it so hard that it bounced back open

After another tight squeeze, his mother let go and tried to continue on as normal. She began to fix dinner – smoked sausages and red cabbage, Anders could remember it even now – and set out a plate for him, admonishing him to eat up, just as she always did.

After dinner, Anders retreated to his bedroom, even though the sun hadn't even set yet. He lay in bed for hours, tossing and turning, unable to sleep for the terror wracking his body. He had no idea what was going to happen to him, but he knew that the punishment for his deed would be severe.

His father returned sometime after midnight. Anders crept to his door and opened it a crack, peering out. He could hear a quiet mumbling coming from below and he crept to the stairway to get a better look. Halfway down, he saw his father in the main room, down on one knee, forehead resting on clasped hands in supplication.

The mumbling became clearer and Anders realized his father was praying. Not just praying, but begging for forgiveness from the Maker Himself. Over and over, his father entreated the absent god, apologizing for his sins and promising to atone for them. With dawning horror, Anders realized that his father was begging for forgiveness because of him. His father had become convinced that Anders was his punishment for the petty sins that he had committed in his life.

Anders retreated into his room and threw himself on his bed, burying his face in the pillow that his mother had made for him when he was younger. His tears stained the carefully crafted embroidery as he sobbed in grief and fear.

Many sleepless hours later, morning finally dawned. He heard a loud knocking on the front door, and then the sound of it opening and closing. Several voices – all male – sounded from the kitchen, though Anders couldn't make out what they were saying. Suddenly his mother gave out a loud, piercing shriek. Terrified at his mother's obvious distress, Anders ran out into the room, where three large men standing behind his father confronted him.

Their legs were covered with long, red skirts, and from the waist up they were clad in metal. Anders stared in fear and awe at the heavy steel helmets that hid the men's faces. He could make out a set of cold, piercing eyes through the slit of the nearest man's helmet – eyes that were devoid of emotion. His breath caught as realization flooded him: Templars.

Anders looked to his mother who was sobbing loudly, and then to his father. He saw no grief there, only wariness and fear. Anders listened in shock as the echoey voice of one of the metal men declared that Anders would have to come with them. His mother shrieked again and pulled Anders to her, clasping his head to her bosom and begging the men not to take her boy. There were no words of agreement from his father, only silence.

His mother grabbed him, and he clung tightly to her, crying just as hard as she was. A cold metal hand clasped his arm and pulled him from her forcefully. The Templar dragged Anders outside to where a large cart was waiting for them.

There was a long piece of thick chain hanging from the back of the cart, and as a Templar picked up the end of it, Anders felt his heart clench with fear as he saw the pair of manacles welded to the end of the chain.

His mother screamed again as the Templar holding Anders pushed him forward and bound his wrists in the manacles. Anders had tried to fight it, but he was small and wiry and no match for a fully-grown man with the bulk of a warrior. His mother turned and dashed into the house, and Anders' heart sank even further at the thought of not even being able to say goodbye. But she was back in less than a minute, clutching Anders' pillow.

Her voice choked with tears, she begged the head Templar to let Anders keep the pillow –something for him to remember her by. For the first time, Anders saw a flash of pity in the man's eyes. He took the pillow from her wordlessly and tossed it into the back of the cart.

It was then that Anders' mother had come to him. She wrapped her arms around him as best she could with the shackles constraining him and placed a soft kiss on his brow. In a hoarse whisper, she promised that she would never forget him, and that no matter what, he would always be her darling boy.

The Templars had all piled into the cart, save for one who stood behind Anders. The cart jerked forward, pulling Anders from his mother's arms for the last time. Her words of love rang in his ears as he was dragged behind the cart, off to the prisonlike Circle Tower that would be his home for the rest of his life.

His father hadn't said goodbye, hadn't even bothered to come outside.

oOoOo

Anders forced the painful memory away as he quietly sang the final line of his mother's beloved song:

"...for these four winds, and these stormy seas... came between... my love and I."

"What was that?" Gideon's gruff voice made Anders jump.

"Nothing, really," Anders responded, "just a song my mother used to sing." He looked up at the black sky, gauging the position of the moon. Months of traveling had helped Anders to judge time by the location of the moon (the mystery of the stars in plotting their location was best left to Nathaniel and his sextant). "You're not due to be on watch for another couple of hours."

Gideon ran a hand through his tousled hair. "Nightmares," he answered shortly, not needing to elaborate. Gideon had told him once that the nightmares were worse for Wardens who had Joined during a Blight. Anders had never asked him to elaborate, because, quite frankly, he didn't want to know how much worse the nightmares could actually be.

Anders picked up a nearby stick and poked at the fire, watching as the sparks flew up from the flames. He heard a quiet rumble as Gideon cleared his throat.

"I'm not really one to pry into personal things…" he began.

Oh, great, here we go, Anders thought. He had a good idea of what this was about, and it certainly wasn't anything he wanted to talk about with anyone.

"But when two of my Wardens are clearly having problems with each other, I need to know what's going on."

That wasn't quite what Anders was expecting, and he wondered exactly how much Nathaniel had told their commander. "What do you mean by problems, exactly?"

Gideon looked over at him. "Well, I'm not sure. That's why I was asking you. Nathaniel won't tell me anything, but it's pretty clear something's going on. When we went underneath the Keep the other morning, it was the first time the two of you had actually talked to each other in almost a week. And then after that, you went back to not talking to each other."

Anders really shouldn't have been surprised by Gideon's observations. The man might not talk much, but he certainly wasn't stupid. Apparently while everyone else was chattering, he was watching and taking notes, not unlike Nathaniel, actually.

Anders shrugged his shoulders. "There's not really anything wrong. We just... don't have much to talk about. We don't exactly have a whole lot in common."

"You didn't get along much at the beginning, I know, but there seemed to be some time in there where you two were getting along very well."

Anders shifted awkwardly, not really comfortable with this topic. "We get along okay. I mean, it's not like we're ever going to be best friends, but we don't hate each other or anything.

"No, I didn't think you did," Gideon replied. He looked at Anders thoughtfully. "Actually, it seemed like the two of you might be more than friends."

Anders bristled. "I don't really think that's any of your business," he snapped.

"Alright," Gideon said, "but just so you know, you could do worse than him."

"You think I don't know that?" Anders asked peevishly.

Understanding dawned. "He pushed you away, didn't he?"

Anders poked at the fire almost viciously. "You knew Rendon Howe, didn't you?" he asked, rather than responding to the question directly. "What was he like? Before the Blight, I mean."

Gideon thought about it. "I never saw him doing anything really evil, if that's what you mean. He kissed a lot of arse, especially Loghain's and my father's. I always got the impression that he was a weasely, spineless bastard who would do just about anything to get ahead." His expression turned dark. "I never thought he'd go as far as murder, though."

"What about his children?" Anders asked. "What was he like with them?"

"He was alright with Delilah," Gideon replied, "spoiled her quite a bit, actually. Thomas he didn't really seem to care about one way or the other, though I got the feeling he approved of his behavior. Thomas was wild, and he was a bully. He got into a lot of fights with the locals in Amaranthine, and his father did a good job of covering it up. The boys he fought were the ones who got punished, even though Thomas was almost always the instigator. I heard a rumor, too, that he got a girl pregnant, and that she was very quietly shipped off to the Chantry. I doubt anyone asked the girl if she wanted to go or not.

"Nathaniel, though... Rendon was hard on him. I got the sense that there was a lot of discipline, maybe to make up for all the punishment that Thomas never received. I don't know if Rendon was really disappointed in Nathaniel, but he definitely had high expectations, maybe too high."

"What do you mean?" Anders asked, curious.

Gideon shook his head. "If Nathaniel didn't go into details about his father with you, it's not my place to go against that. If he wants you to know, he'll tell you."

Anders scowled. "So in other words, mind my own business."

Gideon smirked. "Isn't that what you wanted me to do?"

"Good point," Anders agreed reluctantly. "I just…" he hesitated, unsure of how much he wanted to reveal. But Gideon had told them about Morrigan, after all, so maybe it would be good for Anders to confide in him. "I think he wants me. He said he did, anyway. But he also said that nothing can happen with us. And the only reason he'd give is that something happened with his father."

"I can believe that. Though I honestly don't know what it was that happened." Gideon seemed sincere enough, but Anders got the feeling that he knew at least a little. Obviously, he wasn't going to tell Anders.

"I never took you to be the type who wanted to be in a relationship," Gideon remarked.

Anders' eyes widened, and he actually felt something close to panic build up in him. "Relationship? I never said anything about wanting a relationship."

The air seemed to grow cold as Gideon spoke. "So you're just interested in fucking him and throwing him away?"

"No!" Anders protested, scooting away from him. "No. I... I respect Nathaniel; I'd never just use him like that."

Gideon's frown deepened. "You don't want a relationship with him, but you don't want a fling. What do you want?"

And that was the complicated part. Anders sighed. "I don't know what I want. Mages are rubbish at relationships, well, at least the ones that last longer than a couple of days. Most of us don't even know what being in a relationship means, exactly."

"I suggest you get a dictionary, then," Gideon said, still clearly angry. "I don't know much about Nathaniel's love life, but I'm pretty sure he's not the type to have some meaningless fling."

Anders noted how Gideon said he didn't know much about Nathaniel's love life, which meant that he knew something.

"I don't know what I want," Anders repeated, this time a little sadly. "I just – I don't know." He couldn't even explain how he felt to himself, let alone someone else.

Gideon relaxed a little. "Morrigan was like that, in a way. Even after all the time we spent together, and as close as we got, she never did make an actual commitment to me, not a spoken one. I think she was too scared of pinning herself down." He shrugged. "I never really understood why."

"Wouldn't surprise me if it was because she was a mage," Anders said. "Mages are all treated the same, whether we're good little Circle mages or 'evil' apostates." He scowled. "Even if we were good at relationships, who would want to be with a dangerous mage?"

"I would," Gideon reminded him sternly.

Anders winced. "Right. Sorry. What I mean is that everybody – that most people," he clarified, "just assume we're a bunch of deviants who dance naked under the full moon and sleep with anything on two legs. I'm sure they think we don't deserve to be in love, or even to be happy. We're just a bunch of wild beasts, not even human at all."

"I think you're human," Gideon pointed out. "I also think you're full of shit."

Anders started at that. "What –"

Gideon continued, ignoring him. "I think you're using the fact that you're a mage as an excuse to not commit to anyone, and to do whatever the hell you please. If you want to be like that, there's nothing wrong with it. I'm certainly not going to judge you for it. But at least have the balls to admit that you don't want to commit to anyone because you don't want to, not because you're some poor oppressed mage." What was just under the surface was now bubbling over, but now Anders was becoming just as angry.

"Now you wait just a minute –"

"No." Gideon cut him off again, clearly not wanting to hear Anders' excuses. "I've known mages who've fallen in love. And I've known mages who were in committed relationships. If you don't want that, or if you're too chicken-shit to admit that you do want that, fine. But don't fucking sit there and tell me it's because everyone expects you to be like that. You make your own choices about who you are; we all do. So either suck it up and take some fucking ownership, or do something to change your ways. You want Nathaniel, fine. Go for it. But Nathaniel's a good man, and the only way to get him is to earn him. And pissing and moaning about how it's not your fault that you can't get him is not the way to go about it. I'm pretty sure that you're a good man, too; you need to start acting like it."

Anders was on his feet, hands clenched, before realizing he'd made a move. "I'm not making excuses, I'm just telling the truth! You know how badly mages are treated, and you should know how hard it is to climb out of that! I never believed it when the Chantry sisters and the Templars told me I was worthless just because I'm a mage, but it was damn hard to listen to that every hour of every day. Mages don't get close to people because it's too dangerous! Falling in love in the Circle makes you weak, makes you vulnerable – both of you. The Templars will use anything against you that they can find, and if they find out that you're close to someone, that you're in love, they'll use that information to hurt you. They use it to try and break you."

He thought of Karl, the only person he'd come even close to truly caring about, and he thought about how the Templars had made Karl pay for Anders' final escape attempt. Anders wasn't there for them to punish, so they'd done next best thing: they'd hurt someone who they believed he valued. Whether it was just to get back at him, or whether they thought that they could lure him out of hiding as a result, he didn't know. It didn't really matter. They'd tortured Karl, and then they'd sent him to the Gallows in Kirkwall, all because Anders had had the audacity to think he could get away from them, that he could be free. Anders had learned his lesson: never, ever, let yourself get close to someone. He'd ignored that lesson when it came to Nathaniel, but Gideon's lecture brought it back in force.

"You don't understand. You can't understand. Not unless you're a mage. And I'm not going to waste my time explaining it to you. I don't care if you think I'm just using it as an excuse. I don't really care what you think. I am who I am, and I'm not making excuses about that, I'm just telling it like it is."

He threw the stick that he was holding into the fire. "And I don't have to earn anything, or anyone. I've paid my dues, and I've never gotten anything in return. So why should I bust my arse trying to get something if I'm never going to be able to have it?"

Anders started to walk away, but he turned back to Gideon. "And you don't have to worry about Nathaniel and me not getting along. We're still friends, and we'll back each other up in battle, and do our jobs. Anything else is none of your business." He stalked off, ignoring Gideon's order to come back. He was leaving his post, and he didn't really give a damn. He'd probably pay for making Gideon take the last two hours of his watch, but right now, he couldn't care less.

The lyrics of Anders' mother's song are from The Lowlands of Holland, a traditional British folk song. It always felt like the sort of song an Anders woman would sing while doing household chores (with a change of location names, obviously).