It's heaven to hear Nate's voice, all the more to hear those across the crystals.
"Oh, me," he says quietly, happily. "I'm here, love. There's nowhere else I'd be. Except perhaps there." Anders thinks about leaving Kirkwall and following Nate on a near-daily basis but he's trying very hard not to run for once. Even though it would be running to rather than running from.
"How are you?" Now he opens his eyes and pulls his plate toward him... and away from Pawdric, who had been stretching out a paw to try to touch the meat.
“I’m fine,” Nathaniel says, picking up his own fork. When they do it together, it’s like eating dinner at the end of the day. “A lot of work has gotten a bit slow. Everyone is waiting to see who becomes Divine.”
He takes his bite before he can respond, trying to force down the spike of fear in his chest.
"I don't think it's going to go well." The election, he means. "They're going to try to put us back in. They think they can, and enough will try that it's..." It's going to be war. Again. Anders can't really finish the thought out loud, not alone in this former cell in this city.
“The women who are up for this are shrewd. They are very much invested in ensuring there’s no repeat of the last ten years. And they won’t trust the templars in a hurry, so their only option is to compromise with the mages. Who are helping in the war effort very visibly.”
"I don't have your faith," he says quietly. "And I don't believe that the compromise will be favorable, even if it's offered. Go back to your Circles and be pardoned, that seems the most likely one."
So many nights he's spent sleepless with thoughts on this topic.
"They'll be nicer, she'll promise. You won't be beaten, or raped, or murdered, she'll assure us without admitting that it ever happened, without any plan to stop it. They're shrewd, and we aren't. They're used to politics, and we've been cut off from the world for so much of our lives."
He's tired of fighting, but they're going to have to gear up to fight again. Will the mage struggle for freedom ever end?
"We deserve freedom and lives, and I think taking them away from us will be a priority again, as soon as Corypheus is defeated. Three of the four candidates left want this."
“What they want now is what will get them elected,” Nathaniel reminds him. “After, they will be faced with the very real task of peace, and their own legacy. None of them want further war as their legacy.”
"Alternately, they worry that their legacy will be as the Divine who failed to keep the southern mages from becoming magisters. They'll worry that they'll be known as the Divine who failed to regain control of mages became the last."
Nate's not afraid of mages. He's rare. Even Teren, who would gladly stab anything that came at her and was fond of Anders, was terrified of him healing her.
"Mages are feared and hated. Your ability to see past the magic and love one of the worst is rare, love."
“Ferelden and Orzammar both have elective processes, Anders, I am not coming at this from an angle of sentimentality or naivete. What you ought to consider is that mages, too, are in the running for an election. Think less in terms of your fate being sealed and more in terms of earning votes. From all the grand clerics, and from all the world. Maybe your ideal outcome won’t happen, and we’ll run away to the country and never be found again. But there doesn’t need to be another war.”
"Can we run away now?" The question's rhetorical. They can't. But Kirkwall has always been heavy on his shoulders and he doesn't have someone to hold him through it right now.
"Find a place where no one can find us, little and quiet." And together, he thinks but doesn't say. He can't fault Nate for following orders in the continued fight against Corypheus. "And I'm trying... I've a small plan. For votes. I don't know if it will do anything, but I have to try something. I can't not."
"I'd like that." He pauses for a moment, thinking, before continuing. "I've the bones of the idea, or maybe the first seed of one. I keep coming back to the school with open doors, and outreach, teaching people that we're... well. I think they'd see that we have use long before they'd see us as people. So useful to start, and from there, equals."
It would be so easy to dismiss Anders completely, but she's aware of the fact that Anders has been married and in love for longer than she's held any kind of affection for anyone. There's an edge of frustration about her and it makes her nose wrinkle and her head turn, looking away from him for just a moment.
She doesn't like the idea that she is being patronised, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels completely genuine; he wants to help her and that makes her just as uncomfortable as anything else.
"I have never had that feeling. No one has ever..." She purses her lips, frowning. No one has ever put her first - not her mother, her father, not even Octavian. He had stolen her dreams and run off with them when once he had been her entire world; her faith in him had been shattered. If she cannot even trust her twin...
They're on such personal ground, but it's nothing new. Anders wears everything on his sleeve and thus things are always emotional and connected to one thing or another. So he offers back:
"No one had for me either, not until Nate." His father had been so hasty to get rid of him, Karl wouldn't run with him, Hawke had walked away. Only Nate found him important enough to remain with.
"But it is. It's worth it. For him I would do nearly anything, and he'd do the same for me. Knowing I have that is inexplicably powerful. I've an ally in everything, someone who wants me to succeed, someone who wants me to hope and dream and try. There's nothing like it, Sidony. It's... It's what makes life worth it, with all of its ups and downs."
Without Nate, more than likely, he'd not be alive. He wouldn't have wanted to still be alive so many times.
Sidony has a level of faith and understanding when it comes to Anders; she recognises that he understands her on the same level that Byerly might and she trusts that, even if she struggles to admit things to herself and to him. She wants to deny it because it would be easier to follow her path if she did; everything would be so much easier.
"So I'm supposed to wait until my own Nate comes along?" An eyebrow raises, looking at him sternly. She was planning on waiting anyway and waiting means marriage, so it all seems rather pointless.
"My work is what makes my life worthwhile, you said yourself. I'm not going to settle down here and waste my time waiting for something that might never happen when I have a job to do. You really are spouting a lot of nonsense, darling."
"Wait?" He raises an eyebrow back at her. There's no heat in the 'nonsense' bit, thankfully. For a split second he'd been stressed, but then the petname returned. They're fine. He isn't back to the old ways of driving people off.
"By no means should you be waiting around. You should be putting yourself out there. Meeting people, seeing who you like, spending time with them, deepening relationships. Nate is far from my first relationship, and not the first person I've loved. Do your job and look."
Anders has never been the sort to sit around and wait for things to happen, though he's getting closer to it as he gets older. That's not a change he likes. Being active is the only way to see positive change occur. The only way to make positive change.
"And be seen. Speak your thoughts, show who you are. It might backfire some, people don't like people having opinions, but you dress and carry yourself like nobility. You can get away with more volume than some."
Sidony raises her own eyebrows back, watching him for a moment. She's not ever going to be the type of person to give into scolding or any looks that someone else might give her - it hadn't worked when it was her mother and father, so it's certainly not going to work when it's a friend who's laps he happens to be sitting on.
"I am far too busy for all of that and you know it," she complains, shaking her head. "I've been spending time with people and I have been speaking with them, but it's not as if I'm aware of what they want from me beyond healing. It's easier with men, you know."
Which is the closest she's come to admitting her attractions without explicitly stating it, and she bites her cheek, frowning a little. She doesn't want to give too much away, but she's desperate for some way of understanding how to get her feelings across properly.
"So I need to be louder? I can think of many people who would disagree with you."
As one can never have enough cat names, I present a few more:
Shadowfighter (as in, fights his or her own shadow.) Furrever Free Queen Purrnora First Pawnchanter Pawsful Loaf Prophet's Purrel Mewbrium Petlandris Purrium
Feel free to let me know if there is more need. I hope you've created a cat army to fight the Darkspawn/Corypheus/demons/dragons/watch me behave and not add what we both know I want to add/Venatori with and have converted from your former dog lord ways.
He opens the door, considers his visitor, and moves to let the young man in. Both cats are in evidence, Purrelden snoozing away while Pawdric bats lazily at her tail. The room is rather warm, because there's not a chance Anders is gonna let his room get cold.
"Do I need to guess? Juggling pasta? Attempting to turn a fish into a pet? Come in, the tea's just finished steeping."
"Yes. I've spoken with him a few times and healed him as well." And healed for him, that had been an... interesting time. Anders closes the door behind Colin and goes to pour the tea since Colin hadn't turned down the offer.
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