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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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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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