Chapter Text
Anders had woken up in some strange places in his life, but he had to admit, finding himself not only in an unknown bedroom, but in a city he had never thought to step foot in and in a part of Thedas he hadn’t seen since he’d been thirteen, had to be one of the most disconcerting things he had ever been a part of.
And he’d seen a broodmother and a darkspawn have an argument, while a spirit of Justice inhabiting the corpse of a Grey Warden stood next to him.
Anders stood in front of the lush estate he had found himself in when he had woken up. He had been stripped down to his smalls and his clothes had been folded neatly on a chair nearby.
At least, he thought they were for him. They had been right next to him and everything had fit, even the ratty coat with the feather pauldrons. Anders couldn’t decide if they looked dashing or if they gave him the appearance of a crazed hedge mage, one that caught pigeons to eat raw and named every feather he had plucked before sewing them onto his shoulders.
Anders tucked his hair behind his ears in irritation. Whoever had cut his hair was going to find out what it felt like to have their eyebrows singed off. He separated a few strands and held them up to his eyes. Maker, the ends were ragged and the rest oily. His hair hung just below his chin, where before his blonde locks had swept past his shoulders when released from the tight ponytail he had always kept them in. He released the strands and blew at them in frustration. Even his earring was gone, its ever present weight a loss he keenly felt.
Maybe he’d been robbed and thrown on a ship. How in the Void else would he have ended up in the Free Marches of all places. Maker knew that he never would have stepped foot here voluntarily, especially not in Kirkwall.
Oh, Anders knew precisely where he was, just not how. All it had taken was a charming smile to the first woman that had passed by him and she had told him while she had giggled at his flirtations that he was in Kirkwall’s Hightown. He had apologized profusely for not knowing, since he was so bad at directions. He was sure his friend’s house was around somewhere. With a light kiss pressed to the backs of her knuckles, he had sent her on her way.
Frankly, he was a little surprised she hadn’t run from him screaming, he looked like shit.
But if Anders knew how to do anything it was how to charm people into giving him what he wanted.
He turned around to face the house he had just come out of. Hightown seemed to be the literal and figurative definition of where he was. The mansions and estates that lined either side of the meticulously clean streets, screamed nobility and old money. He would be willing to bet the house he had just come out of was a prime example of those that surrounded it. Neatly trimmed trees were planted in just as neatly trimmed grass in sections down the middle of the street.
No one had been there when Anders had awakened or after he had dressed and grabbed the lovely looking staff from the corner, leaving the room. He had noticed that there weren’t any guards either.
So maybe not robbed and kidnapped then. Who in the void would go through all the trouble to knock Anders out for the length of time it would have taken to get him from Amaranthine to Kirkwall, and then not guard him? He had walked out easily enough.
He had never thought he would ever want to, but he needed to find a way back to the Vigil—quickly. Where once he had contemplated leaving the place, it had eventually become a home of sorts to him, the first he’d ever truly had.
Besides, Kirkwall wasn’t known for being friendly to apostates, Warden or not.
“And here I am standing out in broad daylight,” he muttered to himself. With that, he began to stride purposefully away from the house. He needed to find a bolt hole, preferably near the docks. From there, he could find a way to barter passage back to Ferelden.
He got no more than a few feet from the house when he heard someone calling him name.
“Anders! Oh, thank the Maker you’re awake. What are you doing leaving so soon?”
Anders hunched his shoulders and slowly turned. A man with dark hair and a very impressive looking beard hurried towards him, a dwarf and an elf at his side. Anders took a step back, edging away from him.
He licked lips suddenly gone dry. Granted he had met a lot of people in his life, but he could have sworn he had never seen them before. He was positive he would have remembered them. The dwarf was beardless and sporting a pelt of chest hair that was as blonde as the hair on his head. He also had a wicked looking crossbow on his back. The elf was even more memorable. He had a shock of white hair on his head, his bangs hanging in his eyes. White markings that reminded Anders of the tattoos the dales gave themselves could be seen standing out starkly on olive skin.
Plus they were three of the most attractive people Anders had ever seen. He tended not to forget something like that.
The dwarf and the human were smiling at Anders with the kind of comradely that only came from a long and intense acquaintance.
The elf on the other hand was scowling.
Anders decided to go with it. He had found no money in the pouches that were slung around his waist, only vials of lyrium and health potions. He was friendless and copperless. He had survived on less before. The trick was to use his wits and right now he needed information.
That is, unless they were responsible for his predicament. Then all bets were off he was getting the Void out of there.
“Hey… you…” Anders said lamely when they stopped in front of him. “What are you doing here?” he countered.
The smile dropped from the human’s face. He gestured to the house that Anders had woken up in. “I live here… Are you okay? You had us worried. What happened to you?”
“Me?” Anders laughed. “I’m perfectly fine. No worries.” His heart slammed in his chest, a thumping rhythm he was surprised no one else heard. “I’m going to head off now. Thanks for…” He drew out the last syllable.
“Finding you unconscious on the clinic floor after you blew the place up and dragging you back to Hawkes,” the dwarf finished. His eyebrows were drawn down in confusion. “You’re acting strange, Blondie.”
Anders snapped his fingers. “That’s right!” Clinic? Why had he been in a clinic? But that didn’t explain why they thought they knew him, or what he was doing in the Free Marches. He tapped his temple. “Must have hit my head. I’m fine now. Thanks for helping me out. I’m just going to uh… go and…” His mind scrambled, but he couldn’t think of a convincing lie.
“Well, see you later,” he settled on. With a wave of his fingers he edged around them, their eyes tracking his every movement.
“Something’s wrong with the mage,” the elf said. Under any other circumstance, Anders would have stopped and listened to that lovely voice with its cultured tones. But these were far from normal circumstances and Anders only moved faster, turning his back on them.
“I think he’s finally snapped,” the elf continued.
“Sane as always!” Anders called over his shoulder, picking up his pace. He could feel their eyes on his back, making the space between his shoulder blades itch.
“Asshole,” Anders muttered under his breath.
Docks, docks, docks. Have to find the docks, he thought. He heard hurried footsteps behind him, the sound of bare feet slapping on the cobblestones. He had just enough time to grab his staff off his back when a clawed hand snatched at his arm and turned him around sharply.
“Yeah, we aren’t doing this right now,” Anders drawled into the elf’s face. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to fuck with a Warden?”
“Since when do you tout your status as a Warden so freely?” the elf asked. “Most of the time you like to pretend you never were one.”
“I…” Anders shook his head. “Fuck this. I don’t owe you people anything. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the ones who took me from Amaranthine.” With a muttered word his hands burst into flames. “I usually like to shoot fools with lightening, but I’ll settle for fire. I know one of you assholes cut my hair.”
“Blondie’s gone insane,” the dwarf said in a shocked whisper that still carried to Anders.
The human held his hands up and took a cautious step forward. “Anders, I don’t know what’s happened to you, but we aren’t your enemy. Come back into the house and we can figure this out.”
“You want me to come back into a house with people I don’t know, just on your say so that you aren’t my enemy?” Anders laughed bitterly. “Yeah, no… I’m not above killing the three of you in the street.”
“That has always been evident,” the elf said dryly.
“And you,” Anders snapped. “Get your hand off of me. You’re handsome, but I like to have at least a nodding acquaintance with people before they touch me. So unless you’re planning on fucking me into a mattress, let go.”
The elf yanked his hand back as if burned. His lips curled in disgust, as if Anders had become something foul that could be found under a broodmother’s backside.
“Hey!” Anders shot, offended. “Don’t look so disgusted. I’m not a bad looking fellow… normally…”
Then he did what he did best, the thing that had made him famous in the Tower, what he had thought he had finally been able to stop doing once he had joined the Grey Wardens and helped save Amaranthine from destruction.
He turned and ran.
**
The Hanged Man was everything that Anders had thought it would be—sticky floors, people of dubious intent, and a tavern owner that didn’t blink twice when he entered the place.
He had made his way to Lowtown, throwing off his pursuers with the genius plan of running as fast as he could and ducking in and out of alleys. He was in Kirkwall, there had been no way he was going to have the huge display of magic it would have taken to incinerate his probable captors. The Templars would have been on him before he could have finished saying ‘apostate’.
Anders had needed somewhere to hide and get information and the Hanged Man looked like his kind of place. No one had spoken to him when he had entered, but he had felt eyes watching him with predatory speculation. He had chosen a table in the corner with a good view of the door and the rest of the main room. Anders loosened the staff on his back just enough for easy access if he needed it and evaluated his options.
He had never been obliged to make a sea crossing on his own before. The only time had been when he’d been young and sent to Ferelden. He had been shifted onto someone else’s shoulders, an unwanted burden that had caused more trouble than he had been worth.
Anders hadn’t cared. Being passed off onto other people was a theme in his life. His father had done it when he had turned Anders into the Templars. As far as he had been concerned, the further away from the Anderfels the better.
So that left him in a bit of a quandary. He had no coin, only his skills as a healer. He had bartered those skills before, but any kind of ship’s captain that would take an apostate out of Kirkwall, might not be the most trustworthy of souls. Still, Anders had little choice at this point. He had to get back to the Vigil.
He knew there was a Warden keep in the Free Marches, but wasn’t sure where. If worse came to worse, he could make his way to them.
The answer to his problems took a seat across from him at his table.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Anders.”
Anders grinned at Isabela. He raked his eyes up and down her, taking in the way her tightly corseted body and white skirt that stopped just short at her thighs and split up the sides revealed far more than it covered. She had a pair of wicked looking daggers strapped to her back and a blue bandana trimmed in gold held back her dark hair.
“Isabela!” His grin widened. “So lovely to see a friendly face in here. Please tell me that you have a ship.”
She frowned, her dark eyes flashing in annoyance. “You know I don’t have a ship. Why would you even ask me that?”
“Uh… Because this is the first time I’ve seen you in years and you’d had a ship when last I had…” he drew out slowly. “It’s not like I keep up on what you’ve been doing.”
“The last time you saw me was a few days ago when you asked to borrow one of my daggers. Which you’re lucky wasn’t damaged when you blew yourself up.”
“No I…” A pit opened up in his stomach, one that yawned wide and threatened to swallow him whole. “I last saw you before the Blight in Ferelden,” he replied in a strangled whisper. The room swam before his eyes and he gripped the edge of the table tightly in his hands, his nails digging into the scarred and stained wood. “What’s going on here…” It was spoken as less a question to her and more one for himself.
Ever since he had woken up in a strange bedchamber, everything had been turned on its head. His hair was different, his clothes, his earring missing. He was in the Free Marches and people who he did not recognize, spoke to him as if they had known him for years. Now Isabela claimed that she had spoken to him only a few days before hand.
“What year is it?” he demanded. He leaned forward, the table creaking ominously. “Tell me what year it is!”
When she told him, Anders heard nothing she said after that, the blood roared in his ears and drowned out all other sound. Her mouth moved, he could see it, but nothing that she said made sense.
Years… Years had gone by since he last remembered anything. Years in which he had gone to the Free Marches, cut his hair, and made new friends. If Anders had been a praying man, he would have beseeched the Maker right there to help him. But he had lost his faith long ago and the Maker was not there to hear him.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and he glanced up.
“Come on,” Isabela said. “Let’s go to my room. I’ll send a message for Hawke.”
Hawke… The man with the beard. The one whose house Anders had woken up in. What choice did he have at this point? He had lost years and he needed to find out why.
**
“So what you’re telling me,” Anders said incredulously, “is that I left the Wardens, came to Kirkwall, and now I free mages from the Circle?” He held up a finger as if he just remembered something. “Oh… Oh! I also opened up a free clinic in the slums where I sleep in dirt and deprivation. All of those things sound completely like what I would do. I’m just that heroic and selfless.”
“I don’t know about heroic,” the dwarf—Varric—muttered.
“Or selfless,” Fenris concurred.
“Oo,” Anders cooed at Fenris. “I bet you and I are the best of friends. I can already tell we stay up late at night and spill our deepest secrets to each other.”
Fenris stiffened, but Hawke interjected before he could get a retort in. “You don’t remember any of this? Not coming to Kirkwall? Not meeting any of us? Nothing?”
“You don’t remember that you’re an abomination?” Fenris’ lips curled in a cruel smile.
“Excuse me?” Anders whirled around on Fenris in the middle of Isabela’s suite. “I might have done a lot of stupid shit in my life, but making deals with demons isn’t one of them.”
“Fernis,” Hawke warned, “don’t—“
“But you always said Justice wasn’t a demon,” Fenris pushed on. “That you had him under control.”
“What in the Void does Justice have to do with…” Anders trailed off. He turned and sat down heavily on an overstuffed chair that had seen better days. “Someone tell me that this is a joke. The commander put you up to this, didn’t he? He’s getting back at me for filling the main hall at the Vigil with cats. In my defense he was insisting that Pounce was a distraction. He needed to know that a single cat wasn’t a distraction, but a bunch of them were. I mean, there is nothing on Thedas that would ever compel me to allow Justice to… I would never…”
He shook his finger at them. “See, now you’ve tipped your hand. You should’ve just stuck with the basics. Don’t feel too bad about it. As far as pranks go, this wasn’t half bad. Dragging me all the way to the Free Marches. Fess up, how much did Cousland pay you?”
“Blondie,” Varric started, “you need to listen to us and—“
“Enough talk,” Fenris growled. He strode over to Anders and placed both hands on either side of him, gripping the armrests tightly in his fists. He leaned close, until their noses were almost touching, forcing Anders to look at him.
“We can just show him and be done with it.” Fenris’ tattoos flared to life, an iridescent blue that bathed Anders in their glow. He pulled his hand back and drove it towards the mage’s chest.
“What in the Void are you?” Anders asked in a choked whisper. He had seen many strange things in his life—talking darkspawn, creatures that hatched from eggs and devoured anything in their path, tears in the Veil that had encompassed a whole town. But he had never seen anything like Fenris, his tattoos shining like veins of lyrium, with a blue fire that did not burn.
“They’re made out of lyrium,” Anders gasped. His thoughts ran rapid-fire, taking only a few heartbeats before Fenris’ clawed fingertips met his chest. Instead of the sharp pain he had been expecting, a tearing of his flesh and bone, there was only the sickening sensation of something pushing right through him, felt, but not felt.
Fenris got only as far as his third knuckles before he froze, his eyes widening in the first showing of emotion that Anders had seen other than distain. “You did it…” Fenris whispered. “I didn’t believe you when you said you would…” He yanked his hand free and took a few stumbling steps away from Anders. He stared at the mage as if he had never seen him before, as if Anders was some new creature that didn’t quite fit into what Fenris knew of the world.
Anders clutched at his chest with trembling hands, gasping. “You tried to kill me!” he accused. Maker, it still felt like Fenris’ hand was inside him, his skin crawling in horror. “What was the supposed to show me!”
Ignoring him, Fenris began to pace the room, his eyes never leaving Anders for more than a second. “I don’t understand,” he murmured.
“I think you knew more than you were letting on, elf,” Varric said.
Fenris whirled around on him. “How was I supposed to know to take him seriously? The mage likes to hear himself talk and he has never proven to be the most trustworthy.”
Trustworthy…
Pain sliced through Anders’ head and he groaned, clutching at his temples.
Heated words ringing in his ears, accusations thrown back and forth. It wasn’t what was being said, but the intent behind them. Words were meaningless, actions were what mattered.
Liar…
Prove it…
Untrustworthy…
Prove it…
Prove what you say is true…
Or don’t you dare touch me again.
Anders heard himself screaming, but it seemed far away, as if the horrible sound were coming from another.
When the darkness took him, he sank into it gratefully.