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Date & Time: Saturday, March 3rd. Evening.
Location: Unit 205
Characters: Nathaniel

septim
Summary: Stomping microchips should not be tried at home
Warnings: Mild violence and more than a little angst

Nathaniel staggers into the apartment, looking like he’s had ten kinds of crap beaten out of him – which, unfortunately, he has. He’d been doing rather well in his silent observations of the Masked, keeping to less noticeable vantage points and using the shadows to slip from place to place. He was a highly skilled rogue, but the Masked were better. And more numerous.

He’d fought back viciously, of course, but in the end it hadn’t done him any good. He’d emerged from the attack bruised and battered, and with what he assumes is a microchip inserted into his back.

He slams the door closed behind him and leans against it heavily. At least he was fortunate enough to be living with two mages that specialized in healing. Hopefully, at least one of them was home.

“Anders…? Martin…?”

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Nothing about this situation sits right with Anders. He's fixating on the use of stitches rather than magic to mend torn flesh (oh, he can do it, Karl made sure he knew how, but he's always considered it barbaric) to keep from thinking about what's truly, truly intolerable: the fact that those bastards got Nathaniel, and Anders wasn't there to watch his back or cover him or unleash an apocalyptic firestorm on the blighters. Destroying the chip ought to give Anders some small measure of consolation, and perhaps it does. But it's not enough.

"Worse than broodmothers," he mutters. "I don't see why we should give them the satisfaction of keeping their little toys intact." And he makes sure to clean up every last fragment of what used to be Nathaniel's microchip, painstakingly, taking care not to touch it directly, as though it were coated in concentrated magebane or Quiet Death. Only then does Anders give into the old bad habit of pointless pacing.

He's pacing the living room when the Masked arrive.

Predictably, they kick the door in. Anders wheels at the sound and knows at once who he must be seeing. While he's never seen them in person, he's kept abreast of the news on the network. He hasn't only been associating the microchips with phylacteries, he's been associating the Masked with the Templars who use the phylacteries to track mages, and he reacts to the Masked with the same immediate and all-consuming rage that he'd react to a group of armed and hostile Templars.

He goes all blue and glowy.

The effect is truly bizarre: as though he weren't a tangible body but a painted figurine, hollow, filled with blue fire, and the shell is crazed and cracking along hairline fractures to let the fire's cold light bleed through, through flesh-semblance and clothing-semblance alike. His eyes aren't eyes anymore, only windows ablaze with the same frigid inferno. When Anders speaks, the voice is a good range lower than Anders' voice, and the speech is thickly labored.

"These mortals are not yours," says Justice, flatly, and raises an arm to blast them with raw energy.

And he does it; he blasts them. His strength is exponentially greater than Anders' magic unassisted could ever be. There are only two of these Masked, and Justice has taken down more Templars at once than this paltry pair, and they are knocked back by the wave, staggering against the wall and the outflung door.

It sets them back all of three seconds.

Then they do something, too fast to be seen, and Anders slumps to the ground, the blue light guttering out as he falls.

Martin knew the Masked would arrive. There wasn't a point in trying to sleep, not when their privacy would be invaded, when their sense of security would be torn. Best to stay sharp for such an occasion.

And they arrive, kicking in the door, the sonic boom shaking the walls of his room, where he'd been reading, not really committing anything to memory of analysis, just a way to pass time. Martin saunters towards the living room first, then runs as he hears an inhuman, piercing voice address the Masked. Bright, stinging blue light flashes and moves in a straight light, the very same that pulses in cracks out of Anders.

Martin will ask about this, later. For now, he's frozen in shock as the Masked take down Anders in an instant, pouncing upon him like beasts to a kill. They won't hurt him, Martin knows, but it's still not pleasant to watch, his teeth gritting into a snarl as they finish, and set their sights on him.

"Get this over with, so I may heal my friends," Martin says as his arms are pulled back, robe pulled up and away until only an undershirt and a pair of loose pants remain. They chip him at his collarbone, tossing him onto the floor, then his robe after him.

Impotent rage threatens to overtake, but Martin drives it down as he props himself upwards, then runs towards Anders, checking his pulse. He'll live. That doesn't mean he'll leave his friends with wounds, so Martin casts a wave of healing magic onto Anders, more than necessary.

He'll do the same for Nathaniel.

Everything had happened so damned fast. Nathaniel had been sitting on the couch, silently berating himself for his inability to successfully fight off the Masked, and keeping a weather eye on Anders. Not that he expected the man to do anything rash, but he had developed a strong feeling of protectiveness towards Anders as of late.

The span of time that passed between the Masked breaking in through the door and Anders being knocked unconscious was all of thirty seconds, at most. Thirty seconds of complete chaos.

He watched in horror as Anders started to glow blue, his eyes becoming empty sockets of pure light. The voice that eminated from him chilled Nathaniel to the bone. For the first time, he saw the chilling results of Anders' and Justice's merging. This was not his lover, nor was it his friend Justice.

A loud shout of rage emanates from him as he watches several of the Masked attack Anders ruthlessly, but he doesn't even have a chance to go on the defense. While Anders is being knocked out by a few of the Masked, four or five go after Nathaniel; they catch him easily and pin him to the ground. There is a flash of agonizing pain in his back before everything goes dark.

Anders hasn't seen any of it happen. After the first pair of Masked enter the flat, there's nothing.

This is typical: he never remembers what Justice does or says, whenever the spirit takes over.

The insistent pawing of Ser Pounce-a-lot at Anders' shoulder is what stirs him from unconsciousness. Pounce does have the power to revive fallen comrades, after all. Dizzy, Anders struggles to sit up. His skull throbs, as does a spot between his shoulder blades that he can't reach to check.

"Andraste's knickerweasels." The epithet comes out slurred and nigh-incomprehensible. He blinks gritty eyes and raises a hand to his head. A vague conviction that he ought to stand and fight electrifies him, and he staggers to his feet, only to find there's no one left to fight at all. Only Pounce, mewing at him loudly, and nearby, the slumped and fallen form of —

Adrenaline kicks in then. Anders is at Nathaniel's side in a flash, though he nearly trips over his own feet en route. His own pain forgotten, he searches for wounds on the other man, and finds nothing he can heal. The wave of healing magic Martin sent, that Anders never saw, has closed and sealed everything. Those sutures Martin set earlier are split and useless in a field of smooth skin, Anders finds when he undoes the fastenings and yanks up the hem of Nathaniel's shirt. A healer's hands stay steady no matter what. He finds nothing, nothing at all, except that there's a smallish lump that doesn't belong marring the line of Nathaniel's backbone, and Anders knows this because he's mapped out every inch of the man's back before this.

They've put in another chip. Why there? It ought to be embedded in muscle if they're not going to be satisfied with subcutaneous placement, Anders guesses. Not that he knows anything much about microchip use beyond what he's seen and heard of the ones being used by the Masked, it's just common sense. He can't even imagine how they've gotten it to sit just so, poised on the ridge of the backbone, looking for all the world like an exceptionally knobbly vertebra.

Yes, he's going to want to cut it out. (And that's how he's going to find out it can't be removed, eventually.) But first things first; he wants to revive Nathaniel.

As it turns out, he doesn't have to try. ~~Pounce's ability works on the whole party, after all.~~ Nathaniel's stirring under his hands, even as Anders tries to muster the mana for a casting of Regroup.

Martin considered moving both Anders and Nathaniel into their beds, yet they've woken up quicker than he thought possible. Pounce is all over them (leaving behind shimmers, somehow), providing some much needed cuteness to this grim situation—Martin tries to smile, but it comes out as a grimace.

Anders care for Nathaniel, given what he knows of the pair, is admirable. Martin doesn't interfere, standing aside near the wall, watching as the other mage searches through Nathaniel's skin, realizing just where they've placed it. Martin knows why it's been placed there, but he keeps quiet, as Nathaniel stirs under Anders' hand.

"It's fused to his bone now," he speaks, finally. "Removing it will be very difficult, and dangerous."

Edited 2012-03-11 04:35 (UTC)

Nathaniel sits up quickly, body tensed, eyes darting around the room. It's only when he sees that their attackers are gone that he allows himself to let his guard down.

He's scanning Anders, checking to make sure he's alright, when Martin catches his attention. "Fused to my bone?" He looks at Martin incredulously, suddenly conscious of a slight discomfort in his back. "To my spine?"

Pounce scampers away and over to Martin. Anders, just as incredulous as Nathaniel, stares at Nathaniel's back, though the shirt has fallen back into place when the man sat up.

"Surely not." The image that the word fused conjures in Anders' mind is that of glass, heated and forced to melt together. He can't imagine bone surviving that heat. It ought to char by then ... "I don't see how that's possible." Still kneeling beside Nathaniel, he runs his hand under the shirt and up Nathaniel's spine to rub over the spot in question, gingerly. The knot where the chip sits doesn't budge, sits obdurate under the healed new skin. It's as though the thing has always been there.

Martin allows Pounce to figure-eight around his legs. "It's a special metal that fuses to the bone," he explains as simply as he can. "To remove it, we'll have to go through nerves that travel down the spine." A sigh, a pause of exertion. "It's a dangerous procedure. Could leave him paraplegic."

A paraplegic. Meaning that one wrong step during the "procedure" and he'd never walk again. He curses lowly. "I think I'll pass on letting anyone cut into my spine, thank you all the same."

He rolls the muscles in his back experimentally. There's not really any pain, just a slight feeling of pressure, of something being there that hadn't been. Nothing he couldn't live with; and even though he hates the idea of those bastards being able to track him, he likes the idea of not being able to walk even less. For someone who's as active as Nathaniel, being paralyzed is almost as bad as being dead.

The hiss of an indrawn breath. "No. That would be bad." Anders flattens his palm across the small of Nathaniel's back, more for the comfort of contact than anything else. "But perhaps they haven't really done that. We can't tell unless we look at it, yes? Just look, not ... cut into."

Martin nods at Nathaniel's decision. As a healer, it's his duty to respect the decisions of his patients. Besides, he isn't skilled enough to cut into someone's spine, nor does he fault Nathaniel's hesitance towards the procedure. A few months ago, Martin didn't think it possible.

"If Nathaniel allows it, you're free to look at it." He's seen it before, but he understands the need for closure.

Nathaniel grimaces a little. This would be the second time in just a few hours that someone's sliced open his back, but Anders is right: they need to know for sure. He nods to Anders. "I trust you."

So the whole thing's to be done over again, minus the part where anything actually gets removed, and Anders does everything he saw Martin do, administration of local anesthesia mercifully included. Except, again, for the removal, which is definitely not an option, Anders can see for himself all too clearly, and confirms for Nathaniel in what might pass for running commentary were it not so terse. In the end he heals the small cut right back over, not bothering with the pointless suturing, relying on the fine spirit healing that Karl taught him and Justice amplified.

Martin hasn't followed — later, Anders will understand why, as it's clear Martin already knew what Anders would find — so Anders is alone with Nathaniel here, and once he's cleared the medical paraphernalia away, he climbs onto the bed where Nathaniel's still lying on his side. "I'm sorry, love," he says. The apology is completely inadequate, he knows, and he needs to say it all the same. "You're right. We can't afford to tamper with it, not the way it is now." He's angry with himself for a number of reasons. He's angry that he doesn't know how to make it better, for all the training he's had and all the work he's done in the past. He's angry at the Initiative for bringing them here. Anger at the Masked is almost an afterthought, a given. Anders is fairly shaking with anger as he wraps his body around Nathaniel's, his front to Nathaniel's back, like a blanket, like a shell.

Nathaniel welcomes the comforting embrace, relaxing against his lover. Truth be told, he's more than a little shaken up by everything that's happened. He's angry; both at the Masked and himself. He despises feeling helpless and weak, and he chastises himself for not being able to fight them off. Or to be able to keep his friends safe.

"I should have left after you destroyed the chip," he says with a sigh. "I led them right to you." He finds Anders' hand and squeezes it tightly.

Anders squeezes back, and laces his fingers between Nathaniel's. He can't think of a thing to say that isn't horrible, or trite, or both. He can't recap what happened, because he doesn't remember anything beyond the first few seconds.

What he says is: "We're both alive. That's something." Not negligible, either. They've both been in scrapes they didn't think they'd survive. "If you'd have left, I'd have gone after you anyhow."

"That is something, I suppose," Nathaniel agrees. "They could have killed us easily." That much was obvious. Nathaniel's fighting skills and Anders' magic had had almost no effect on the Masked; if they'd wanted to, they could have killed all three men before they'd even had a chance to defend themselves. The though makes him shiver.

"At least now we know not to destroy the chips; we can pass that information on." It was a heavy price to pay for knowledge, but it might hopefully be useful to others. "And you and Martin can get your own chips out easily enough." Honestly, that's more important to him than his own predicament.

"I'll have mine taken out," Anders assures him. "Not at home. I'll have Martin's friend Watson do it, at their clinic." He'll take no chances on a second visitation of the Masked, however unlikely it is that the chip would be damaged in a routine removal.

Guilt is rising in him, the way bile rises in the throat, but he swallows it back. No time for it now; he's in healer mode, concerned primarily with the well-being of his patient, and as his patient also happens to be his lover, he's that much more intent on caring for him. It's unfortunate that nothing material remains to be done or disposed of. Gently he strokes Nathaniel's hair away from his face.

Nathaniel's eyes close at the gentle touch; Anders' fingers running through his hair is soothing, and he leans into the touch.

He doesn't speak for a long time, just enjoying this closeness and the sense of security that comes from it. Finally he voices the thought that's been running through his mind for hours now.

"I feel so helpless," his voice is soft, barely more than a whisper. "I feel weak...and utterly useless."

There was a long time when he would never have admitted to such vulnerability, and even now, Anders is the only one that he can be so open with. It's still hard to give voice to such thoughts, but he knows Anders won't think less of him, or--even worse--pity him.

If they weren't lovers, if they weren't old friends, Anders would still be the least likely person to feel pity for Nathaniel right now, or to think less of him. What Nathaniel has described is the same thing any mage feels when pressed by well-prepared Templars. Templars who've got magebane, or who know the arcane techniques to block a mage from touching the Fade. There's no shame in being overpowered by such foes. In all Anders' stories of his many escapes from the Circle, he has never once expressed shame at his eventual recapture.

There is nothing to be pitied in such a defeat.

Fighting back is an option, usually a futile one. There's the chance of catching the point of your staff (if it's a sharp one, or steel-ornamented) in a crevice between plates of armor, at the armpit perhaps. A very unlikely chance. The best option is to run. If you run, you're not a coward, and if you're caught, you're not a loser. The odds are stacked against you from the beginning. All this stands between Anders and the possibility of pity. The analogy's too close: phylacteries, the microchips; Templars, the Masked.

"I know the feeling." The rueful understatement is as close as Anders will come to unpacking all that for Nathaniel. Anything more specific would sound wrong, somehow, as if detracting from the seriousness of Nathaniel's situation or the very real violation he's suffered today. "I was just as helpless. I hate that I couldn't keep them off you, and I hate what they did to you. It may take some time, and some doing, but we'll make them pay."

This is a promise, filled with cold certainty. Coming from the man who blew up the Kirkwall Chantry, it means something.

"We will," Nathaniel agrees, his voice hard. Focusing on revenge is good; it keeps him from dwelling on his own feelings of failure. At least he has a reason to want to fight for the Initiative now.

He slowly turns in Anders' arms to face him. He runs his hand along Anders' cheek before leaning in to kiss him lightly. "We'll make all of them pay," he says as he rests his forehead against his lover's.

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