justice_is_blond | Inbox for Fade Rift

Letting it find him, it sounds like Alan's asking, and that's... complicated. Anders looks off to the side. He's not one for opening up, much of the time. He'll use details to make a case, certainly, tuck something into a joke to soften the truth of it, but it's only rarely that he voices something that strikes close to home.

His lips press together, and he shakes his head after a moment. When he speaks, his voice is hushed.

"In some ways, yes." Another breath, and then he's looking back at Alan.

"There's a fair chance, with the world as large as it is, that none would have found me. That I could have taken up residence as a healer in a small village somewhere warm, and simply avoided the world." Grown a full beard, kept his hair short, few enough survived that had known him that he could have made it.

"But I couldn't. I'm only one of the multiple causes of the war, the mage-templar war, but I am one of the causes. I've a responsibility to help, and I knew it. That awareness... I couldn't step back from that. I couldn't become non-aware, non-involved."

A shrug, as if to suggest walking into an outpost where people knew him and others were likely to discover him had been nothing.

"I didn't think I'd long left, when I walked into Skyhold. But I knew I had to use it the right way, and so yes. It's better to take a stand than slip away, even if it's far from easier."

"You could have done good there, too,"

He points out, voice soft. A responsibility to help,

Anders has bared his throat here, Alan isn't unaware, wants instinctively to comfort — but it's a token sort of offering, because the decision that Anders speaks is familiar, almost nostalgic for its certainty.

Perhaps it shouldn't be, they always held themselves apart from the world below. But it was to a higher purpose. It was taking a stand, in its own way.

(It couldn't last.)

It's all... complex. He doesn't know what to make of it still, all these shifting little convictions, the way his feelings flit from one view to the next.

"We have to," He mulls, begins again. "We have to choose our responsibilities, I think. Have to commit to them. To each other."

"I just wonder at what we trade. Andraste gave her life —" Twice over. "— At times, I wonder if it was the only way."

A confession he's not aired elsewhere, and guilty for it.

"She probably didn't see another way."

It's blasphemy to compare himself to Andraste, he knows it, but in this he feels there's a parallel. They hadn't seen other ways.

"When the situation is overwhelming, sometimes it seems like there's no options save what one can do in that moment. And sometimes that's not a good option, not in the least. They forget to hope, or they've forgotten how to hope."

He doesn't think Andraste wanted to die. Then again, sometimes having a martyr can bring power to a group it otherwise wouldn't have had. Maybe that had been her hope. Or maybe there really hadn't been any other choice. He can't say. He wasn't there.

"You make a choice, and it's made. Sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. And yes, returning to the other. I could have done good for a time. But I would not have done the right sort of good if I stayed hidden away."

What choices Alan is facing, Anders doesn't know. He just hopes the boy has more room here than Anders had felt he had in Kirkwall.

"Thank you,"

He shifts, at last, to stand.

"I should," Think about all of this. "Should check on the soldier."

(A broken leg, that's what happens when you run on a slippery battlement. At least that's what happens to other people.)

Anders stands with Alan, nodding.

"Let me know if you need anything else. I'm often available on the crystals or in the healing tents."

And hopefully he helped here.

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