Prompt: Spectrophobia – fear of ghosts and phantoms, Anders and Thistle Hawke

Originally Written: 12/4/13

Notes: also from a tumblr phobia prompt meme

Anders is a healer. And a mage, and an abomination, but his mother taught him to bandage cuts and set broken bones long before he became any of those things. He had learned well, for life in the Anderfels had brought with it plenty of injuries, and it hadn't been long after seeing his first cow fall and fail to rise again that he had watched his first man bleed out from the careless slip of another's axe. He'd watched his mother try her best, but more than that he'd heard the victim's screams, the raspy sob of the axeman's regret; he'd watched as the man's lifeblood drained from his cheeks and into the dust, leaving only a sallow cold in its place.

"You shouldn't have brought the boy," his father had said that night, and his mother hadn't replied, had tucked him into bed and kissed his forehead to hide the guilt in her eyes, but he saw that too.

Since then he has traveled half the mortal waking world and wandered more of the spirits' realm than he wished, but never has he seen even a trace of a departed soul. The Chantry teaches that death is the soul's last crossing of the Veil, its only crossing into the worlds beyond the Fade, but no one has ever seen these worlds and even the spirit in his head knows only that mortals are until they are not. That souls exist, he cannot dispute, but that they continue to exist, that they contain some immortal stuff such as gods are made of—

That he doubts.

He tries not to care. No magic exists powerful enough to reunite soul and body, after all, and once he has lost a patient, the pain of their passing becomes—he has seen too much death to care for someone who no longer cares, to worry what happens after when he has no evidence that an after exists. Better to remember what was, and though in Darktown what was is usually more pitiful than the pallor that follows, it is enough for him to cope. Karl's death is harder; Karl's death hurts beyond the sting of professional pride and failure of compassionate effort; Karl's death lingers, wakes him on the nights when Justice's protection is not enough to save him from the nightmares that demons work upon the easy prey of his mind.

He cannot heal himself. He throws himself into the work of healing others, of healing Hawke, though deep within her eyes he sees the deaths that dog her steps and nothing he can say or do will convince her that they are dead and gone, as far beyond her reach as she is beyond theirs. You cannot help them, he wants to say, you will kill yourself trying, you can only touch the living, though some days he is not sure if his words are for her or for the gnawing anger in his heart. Some days he sees the long shadows stretching behind her, clawing at her feet, and wants to say instead, they cannot catch you; they cannot hurt you again.

But of course the memories still linger, and of course she wouldn't listen even if he did speak, and he watches as the dying and the long-dead alike sink their skeleton bones into his love, as her lifeblood pours out, a libation splashed on barren soil, an offering on deaf ears. Her face turns pale in the rosiest firelight, and she is cold to his touch, and when he watches her turn that ice upon the world he is—afraid, though he cannot name his fear. He cannot help against specters only she can see, and so helpless he stays by her side and hopes, for her sake, that the deceased yet live beyond the shambling corpses they see, if only so that she may meet them and slay them again. If only it will give her peace.

Foolishness, Justice calls it. Let her exhaust herself; we have our own work to do.

Anders is a healer. There is no cure for death.