exsiliumlogs | (no subject)

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Date & Time: Not too long after Martin's kaffeeklatsch with Delphine
Characters:

Anders, and

Nathaniel Howe
Summary: Anders is made of tact
Warnings: ~~None? I dunno~~ eta: Gross stories about blood magic

Anders still isn't sure what to make of Delphine's sassy comeback to his very tactful questions. All he knows is that this woman is somehow after his mage bro. It can't be anything good she has in mind, her hatchet face suggests very strongly.

One time, a woman was following Anders all over the place, and the woman was actually a Templar (Ser Rylock, if anyone's keeping track), and she just kept on dragging him back to the Circle, and Anders just kept on escaping, until finally it all ended in tears. And blood, lots of blood. And awkwardness between the Wardens and the Chantry.

Right, so Anders has reason to be suspicious of humorless women in dogged pursuit of mages. That's setting aside his original Oghren-esque hypothesis, mind.

Whatever it is, he figures he'd better have a chat with Martin and let him know that this woman's looking for him, and also that he, Anders, has not ratted him out. Also, he's curious as to what really is going on.

He makes some more cereal squares just to sweeten Martin's disposition a bit before prying into the man's personal life. As Martin crunches into the marshmallowy, wheaty goodness of frosted-flake treats, Anders broaches a delicate subject.

"How long's the average lifespan in Tamriel?"

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Anders simply glowers at the table. Blood mages.

Nathaniel looks from Martin to Anders anxiously. He likes Martin a great deal, and it's obviously that these are hard things for him to talk about. And he doesn't really understand why Anders is being so surly towards his friend.

"I'm sorry," he says to Martin. "I didn't mean to bring up painful things." He won't apologize for Anders' behavior, that's not his place.

"It's not your fault, Nathaniel. My past refuses to stay buried. I was a fool to think I could run away from it." A second chance to live as a modest priest, a healer. Right in his grasp, the happiest days he's had in a long time, only to be snatched away by the painful knowledge of the events his death enabled. Eternal rests sounds kinder. "I'll try to get some rest, it's been a taxing day," he informs his roommates, walking towards his room, closing his door as quietly as possible.

Without a word, Anders sets about cleaning up the kitchen.

Nathaniel takes another bite of his cereal square. "You were awfully harsh with Martin." No accusation in his voice, it's merely a statement.

"He's a mage," is Anders' reply. "Dreams are a connection to the Fade. Do I need to spell it out? And he's a blood mage. I like the man, I really do, but he's tracing these ... these nocturnal visitations back to an act of blood magic, and I'm supposed to believe this might be a friendly ghost talking to him? Ancestors dropping by to chat him up?"

"Just because Martin used something like blood magic one time, it doesn't mean he's a blood mage," Nathaniel reasons. "Have you ever seen him use blood magic? And I've talked to other people -- I think the Fade might be exclusive to Thedas. You can't paint everyone with the same brush." Especially when they're from a completely different world.

"There are plenty of blood mages I've never seen performing blood magic." Anders is furiously scouring at marshmallow residue burnt onto the sides of an otherwise marvelous glasslike pan. "Like, oh, the ones who killed most of — well, most of everyone at Lake Calenhad, and it took the bloody Hero of Ferelden to clean up after that mess. Never saw old Uldred doing any blood magic, no." He resorts to chipping at the marshmallow with a butter knife. "This stuff is dangerous, Nate," and he does not mean the marshmallow or the pan. "Really, really dangerous. You know when demons find it easiest to get close to you? In your dreams. Because of the Fade. And you know when demons find it easiest to take over your body? When you're doing blood magic, that's when. In dreams, your sleeping mind crosses the Veil; when you do blood magic, you're tearing the fucking Veil, in the real world, the waking world. If you want to tell me that dreaming works differently here, that there is no Fade and there's no Veil between us and spirits, first off, the metaphysics of people dreaming differently in every world may not hold as much water as we'd like to think. Even so, let's say, for the sake of argument, that yes, dreaming works differently in Martin's world, and so do spirits and demons and the dead. Never mind that magic seems to work exactly the same way, only with different names stuck on, magicka instead of mana and Restoration instead of spirit healing and so on and so forth."

(He may be rambling.)

"Never mind all that, let's say: yes! Mages are absolutely at minimal risk of demonic possession and dreams have nothing to do with it, because Tamriel is completely different, and Exsilium is different to that! Well, then, we still have to explain this: who's visiting Martin in his dreams? If the friendly ghost of his father is really hanging about and giving him advice, how did that ghost get here? Did it hitch a ride through the aether on the way to the Initiative Hold, like ... like a child hanging onto the back of a cart? And why wouldn't it have anything better to do than give Martin nightmares? Nightmares are generally not a sign of benevolent spirit visitation. Nightmares are generally bad. And I've not yet begun to touch this idea of twenty-odd ancestors having their souls all mashed together in a necklace thanks to some of that blood magic we're not finding fault with."

Nathaniel sits there calmly, listening to Anders' rant. Finally, he speaks.

"This seems a bit hypocritical, coming from someone who's possessed by a spirit," he remarks a bit sternly. He likes Martin, and isn't happy about Anders' seeming condemnation of him. "First off, you're assuming that the ghosts visiting Martin are more demonic than benevolent, and you don't know that that's true. Secondly, you want to know how the ghosts made it here? How did Justice make it here? As intelligent as you are, love, even you have to agree that there are things going on that are beyond our comprehension."

Anders drops the butter knife into the mercifully resilient pan.

"Justice. Is not. A demon. You know him. He's a spirit and he's part of me now. That's not possession, it's ... like having a roommate all the time." A very bossy roommate who makes you write manifestos? "He's here only because he can't be separated from me. We're one being. If you're going to compare Justice with Martin's ancestral apparitions, then that would mean Martin has joined with all his ancestors, yes? I don't have dreams where Justice appears to me and gives me advice. I can't have conversations with him, waking or sleeping. In short, Justice is not haunting me."

Nathaniel and Anders haven't talked much about Anders merging with Justice, it being a touchy subject with both of them. But Nathaniel's not willing to just brush over this.

He stands up and walks over to Anders, a hand resting on his arm. "I know Justice isn't a demon. But it's not exactly easy for me to understand the relationship you and Justice have now. I hate to say it, but you sound a lot more like Justice than Anders right now. And you're doing Martina disservice by thinking like this."

It would be easier for other people to understand Anders' relation to Justice if Anders himself understood it better. Then he could explain it more clearly, without so much seeming self-contradiction. He claims they're one being, and talks about Justice as a separate entity using a third-person pronoun. It's partly to do with the difference between the way he knew Justice before they joined — Justice as a fellow traveler inhabiting someone else's body, a person he could talk with — and the way he knows Justice now, which is wholly intangible and inaudible and invisible. He characterizes Justice the way someone might characterize their own conscience, personalized, anthropomorphized. And in a sense, that's what Justice has been all along: he's only a spirit of the Fade, personifying human virtues, serving a sort of archetypal or symbolic function.

And it's partly to do with the fact that Anders just doesn't know, can't know, there are no rulebooks for this, there are no lectures given, nothing in his Circle education can prepare him for sharing a body with a Fade spirit. A spirit of virtue, yes, but there's no insurmountable difference between spirits and demons. As Anders once said himself to Justice, back in the good old Amaranthine days: Aren't demons simply spirits with unique and sparkling personalities? Yet it's accepted wisdom that spirits are good and demons are bad; and that only a demon would want to possess a human, living or dead.

So many gray areas, and neither Anders nor Justice have ever been much good at navigating those. Justice sees in stark absolutes, and while Anders was fairly apathetic toward all matters of morality prior to joining with Justice, he's always had a certain tendency toward pigeonholing people and concepts too. (Exhibit A: Templars.)

He's not sure how to react to Nathaniel's objection. He might take it as a reproach if not for the reassurance of Nathaniel's nearness. Anders reads distance as negative, elective proximity as positive. Mostly, he's confused, and the touch derails his rant more effectively than the words could have done.

"When a mage turns to blood magic, he does a disservice to all mages everywhere," he retorts, but quietly and without heat. "Most of all himself."

Nathaniel's seen rants by Anders before, usually in regards to how mages are treated, but nothing of this degree; and frankly, he's unsure of what to do. He's glad that Anders seems to have calmed down a little, at least.

"Not everything is black and white, Anders. I haven't known Martin for long, but I know he's a good man -- and he's someone I'd trust with my life. I don't for a minute believe that he's some sort of blood mage bent on doing evil deeds."

Hawke used to keep the peace between Fenris and Anders, between Merrill and Anders, even between Sebastian and Anders up until the very end. Anders may not be capable of sweet reason, but he'll fall into line — grudgingly, with much sulking and simmering — as long as he's not pushed.

Like Hawke, Nathaniel's not telling Anders what to do, or shouting at him, just sort of being reasonable at him. Leadership. This would be why Hawke is a city's champion and Nathaniel is the Warden-Commander of Ferelden, whereas Anders ... is a malcontent who writes manifestos and blows up buildings. (All right, one very long and continually revised manifesto; and one very large, very important, rather symbolic building.)

"It is your life you're trusting him with," he says quietly. "Demons don't only possess mages, you know, and I've got Justice, no room at the inn for any evil spirits our friend might summon up. Which leaves you and Pounce as vessels, and contrary to old wives' tales, a cat would not be the vessel of first choice." Anders sighs and leans against the counter. "You're right about one thing. We're not in Thedas; things might well be different. Maker only knows, it could be that microchip I got stuck onto your spine will repel any demon." Easier to worry about blood mages, who Justice can defeat, than about the Masked, who can't be stopped. "Then we'll all have to band together and take down a Ser Pounce-a-lot abomination. Doesn't that sound like fun."

He sets the marshmallow pan to soak with an inch of soapy water in it, and dries his hands on a dishcloth. "From what Martin says, that Delphine woman off the network is apt to appoint herself his babysitter. So he'll have a minder of sorts, anyhow, and not even a Templar type, just an odd woman obsessed with royalty. She'll probably try to braid his hair. Give him manicures. Blood magic's right out, it would stain his robes."

That's as close as Anders will come to dropping the subject outright, and it will stay dropped unless or until someone picks it up again.

Nathaniel recognizes the finality in Anders' statements, and while he'd rather not have yet another thing that the two of them can Never Talk About, he's not willing to argue over this. Any difficulties that Anders and Martin have over this, is between the two of them.

For Nathaniel's part, this doesn't really change how he feels about Martin, and he'll make sure to let his friend know that soon. For the meantime...

"I do trust him, love." He tries to smile reassuringly. "And I'll trust you to look after the cat's well-being."

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just rounding this off for y'all before the Mesopotamia logs commence

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