justice_is_blond | Inbox for Fade Rift

[ she sounds a little less now like someone speaking through their teeth, ]

At your leisure.

[Wren. Asking to speak with him at his leisure. It's about fifteen minutes later that he responds, after he's gone over everything he remembers saying and doing and is fairly certain he's not crossed a line.]

Yes?

You were in that office for the same reason as I. [ why the fuck else would anders go seek out a seeker ] Were your concerns at all assuaged?

[ she sure doesn't sound like hers were ]

I can't say that they were.

[The same reason as him. Had the Templar truly taken interest in a mage being assaulted after a justified, harmless gesture? He wonders what else might be going on here.]

Yours were not?

He attempted to dissuade me from filing a report with his superiors, and implied my motives should be investigated.

[ dryly, ]

So no, they were not. [ and if the two of them are in agreement about something then it's well and fucked up ] How well do you know the Hawke girl?

[...he was protecting Cade at the expense of Wren? Anders blinks at the crystal, eyebrow up high, before realizing she can't hear that reaction at all.]

I don't know what he's thinking.

[Anders sighs, but the tired tone gives way as he talks to something very frustrated.]

I don't know what she's thinking either. There is no question that the mages of Kirkwall were abused, and horribly so. Not even the Seekers try to deny that, though I've heard plenty of people attempt to justify it. And yet earlier, apparently, a mage and a Seeker were fine standing and watching an abuse victim be roughly handled? After a slap. A slap, not an actual attack, not any magic.

[ Simply: ]

He is not.

I have kept her clear of the write-up, but I am concerned her relationship with Darton draws the situation out of his context. How might he mistreat a mage, after all, when he is married to one? The forest for the trees.

[ the sound of a sharp breath, fingers tapping on wood. ]

Darton seems apt to pin the full blame upon Harriman. His actions were unacceptable, but I will not see him used to lever the Seeker clear of responsibility. Not when he's been reporting to the man for months. Harriman doesn't hold anyone's command.

This fire will be put out, one way or another. But there is only so much influence I may exert over my brethren. Darton wields a great deal.

He doesn't see her as a mage, which is an issue unto itself, especially combined with the cover it gives him.

[He takes a breath as well.]

Harriman's actions are what they always are in regard to a mage; Darton bore a responsibility that he did not fulfill. Just as Harriman has never bothered to stop abusing mages, because he doesn't have to. No one will take any sort of action that matters, like stripping him of Templar status.

[Abusers protect other abusers. It's how they make sure they stay in power, after all.]

And apparently this isn't the first time Darton has failed his duties. He was one of the Seekers who came to Kirkwall and turned a blind eye, by his own admission. But there's nothing I can do. I can talk at him, attempt to get him to understand there are people involved in the equation, but he doesn't hear what I say. No Seeker ever has.

[ 'reed is dependable', she'd like to say — can't. reed is dependable for her. he's dependable, she'd like to think, for most mages.

but reed is not going to listen to anders. she wouldn't ask him to. not when they're agreed upon the point that anders would be of most benefit to the inquisition as a head on a platter.

(not, she still worries now and then, with dairsmuid as it was) ]

I do not have the power to remove Harriman from his position. I do not know that doing so would solve the problem — we would have the same man, the same reactions, and even less structure to hold him to.

It is clear we cannot continue to pawn him off between us as though that will do anything. I've an offer to make him, but in the mean,

[ she trails off, unhappily, ]

We all need this peace to hold.

I will do what I can with my people, and with the loyalists. If you might put out a quiet word among the rest, to caution with Darton — I hope we will not need it.

[ but hope's never done a whole lot ]

Structure does not hold him as it is. Instead, it is a shield to hide behind. He's still a Templar, which means he has backing and authority whether you will it or not. As far as your request...

[There's a stretch of silence. This wouldn't cost him anything, and warning his people that they do not have a friend in Aleron after all could protect them. While he wants to object to working with Wren simply on principle - she's a Templar who seems utterly unpredictable - the bottom line is that it will not set him or his people back.]

I will spread the word through my people. It was nice to think for a few short days that perhaps one Seeker saw mages as people.

[ There are two problems at play here: A crisis of public image, and the potential for lives lost down the line. Both need to be handled. Both are her intimate concern.

Wren doesn't like Anders. She doesn't trust him. But she trusts him to act according to his nature, and she trusts his word to carry more weight than hers among the Inquisition's radical set. A warning he gives will be heeded, and if he does so quietly? If he can be convinced to not cry this small disaster from Kirkwall's rooftops? So much the better.

The true danger to their image here isn't in alienating the Inquisition's staunch libertarians (if they're here, they're here because they believe in the cause or they've made the risky calculation to claim the legitimacy it offers), but in driving off those in the middle, those who might yet be convinced of compromise. It's in appearing to be another storm brewing before the eyes of the Viscount.

She can handle the moderates. The Inquisition can handle its landlord. In the mean time, better that no one be hurt — whatever their politics — for trusting to the wrong man's sense of objectivity. ]

Thank you. For what little it is worth...

[ She tries. For like, a whole second. But — Nope. Still can't do it. Still can't apologize to this fucker. ]

...I will keep you updated, on what Harriman chooses.

Edited (typos) 2017-06-30 20:51 (UTC)

[Quiet is not Anders' forte. His protests during his first time in Kirkwall were loud, with letters written to every group that should have helped, talking to anyone who couldn't escape his voice, and it hadn't made a difference. So this news will spread, that they have one of the Seekers among them who had been there, had deliberately turned a blind eye and helped cause the disaster, and will still turn blind eyes to Templar abuses, but the news will spread quietly.]

I'd thank you, but I already know what he'll choose. Who would leave the order that protects them every time they attack someone? People change when they've reason to. He's no reason at all, and he'll continue to have no reason.

The Templars will protect the abusive as they always have, because so long as they lie to themselves and believe Kirkwall was entirely my fault, they've no reason to change either.

Do let me know how predictable the results wind up being, thank you.

Inbox for Fade Rift

At some point later I'm dropping it here now so I don't forget; crystals

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