Anders (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
justice_is_blond) wrote2016-01-15 11:45 am
justice_is_blond) wrote2016-01-15 11:45 amInbox for Fade Rift
[Please leave a message after the beep that doesn't actually exist.]
justice_is_blond) wrote2016-01-15 11:45 am
no subject
No one who has a strong opinion on Kirkwall who wasn't there, who didn't try to help, gets to ask me that. You've all placed plenty on me with no grasp of what was going on. Which we'll not agree on, likely, so yes. We will agree on very little.
As far as Harriman goes...
[A beat.]
This is not an actual solution. We agree on that, it seems. But while we might even find something together that could be ideal, this is a done thing, is it not? He is stripped of his rank, they are stripped of responsibility, and the next time he harms a mage it's the Inquisition that suffers the appearance blow. And there will doubtlessly be a next time.
I can make no claims about knowing what it is that drives him, nor can I pretend I can cure whatever madness lurks in his head when I'll not have opportunity to examine him. What I can guess at, however, is that this gives him nothing left to lose. And I speak from personal experience when I say that someone who has nothing left to lose is at their most dangerous.
Someone needs to give him a goal or it's likely that next time the mage will suffer serious harm at the least.
this is what happens when i can't find synonyms
it's not another mage she expects to come to harm, at this point. perhaps that's projection. she's still glad enough the man isn't rooming alone, at present. tap. ]
What goal did you find?
[ they've spoken of this before, however elliptically. she'd been a bit preoccupied with a burning throat, with the pressing question of how to approach the problem his presence here posed. ]
no subject
But they've been able to do it because he keeps taking the risk in case someone in the crowd legitimately gives a damn about more than their own experience and survival.
When Anders speaks, his voice is tight and his words are slow and measured. He is no fancy speechmaker, and he wants to make sure his meaning comes across.]
To make sure the world changes so that something that horrific never happens again. That no one ever again sees hundreds of their people signed away for the slaughter and also sees no other way to give them even a chance to fight back except by going too far.
My goal is equality, and my goal is peace. Mock its scope if you will; I have no illusions about accomplishing it single-handedly. Mock the whole concept altogether if you will. I have enough people aligned with those goals that you'll not shake me.
[Okay. Maybe there's a little lie in there. If someone with her seeming sway mocks this, he will be a little shaken. But he'll also go on. There is no other choice.]
no subject
the simplest solution,
anders has been fiery thus far, a defensive breed of aggression. a man who finds threat in every shadow, who begins snarling before it might ever close in. a frustration before, a signal now: she doesn't expect this for a lie, not with his talk of mockery. the man is not a skilled manipulator.
(the best never appear as though they are, but there is a point at which even orlesian paranoia must be reined in)
he's found her weaknesses before, and he's pushed. regardless of his aims, she'd sooner not cede him this ground now, would rather not connect a pattern to her opinions. but this isn't something that she can lie about. however dearly she might try, the words would taste false.
the truth does, too — she knows it wasn't anything to satisfy amsel, will not be here and now. but,
the simplest solution cuts the sharpest. very well. ]
They say that the Spire's Annulment, [ she puts the pen down. better not to indulge that bad habit any further, they'd have a bloody drum march. ] Marked the beginning of hostilities in the South. Perhaps.
But holding things together, those final few years —
[ there's only so tight one might grip before forming a fist. refugees from the north sowing trouble. other apostates growing bolder, the fraternities inside set to boil.
detached, as though an afterthought: ]
— Until the very end, you know, I believed that we'd make it.
no subject
He spends his life on the defensive because he's been attacked regularly, frequently. He's lost everything before, repeatedly, had it stolen multiple times by the Templars. Almost all of them have attacked every chance they've had.
This doesn't mean he will trust her. He cannot. She still sees the Circles as a 'we.' As together. It's a naivete that is dangerous and over-trusting of the Chantry, eyes closed to how mages are people too, but at least it implies she may be one of the few who were not abusive.]
The Circles were always going to fall. It was just a matter of time.
[It's quiet.]
If you deny a people personhood, lock them away, some will accept it. For them, a cage is better than the lives they left behind. But there will always be many that suffer as well.
[His voice is calm throughout. She can listen or she can choose not to. All he can do is speak when someone might listen.]
For every Vivienne, every mage who thrives, there was a mage who said no to an assault and was made Tranquil for being too willful, and there was a mage who died, and there was a mage who could not find the strength to say no.
We are people, Ser Coupe. We want families and lives, not to have everything torn from us over and over. If the Circles rise again, they will fall again, and likely in a more bloody fashion. The cycle can be broken here and now, for good. The bloodshed can end.
It will take unprecedented cooperation and understanding from multiple sides. It will take work. But I believe it is worth it to spare my people another fifty, hundred years of suffering, and to spare Thedas yet another war at the end of that.
[She had faith in the Circles. In the Templars. Anyone still calling themselves one does. He can't completely fault her for trusting in something she's served for Maker knows how long, but he does have to wonder if she can be reached.]
apologies for her everything, and for *my* blatant theft of your metaphors from other threads lmao
At once it seems foolish to fear he’s seen her true; the man might glimpse pieces, but he’s no interest in finding their shape. Cannot.
There will always be many that suffer, and that’s the world. Those evils: cracks seeping water, eating the foundation. It doesn't make it right, but if you live in a hovel, you don’t take a hammer to the walls, you build.
He’s right in this: This has gone too long. They've all grown too used to ruins, and so few yet remain. An entire generation of mages wiped out, the curated work of Ages alongside, and who will teach the new ones? Who will guide them? The Order is dying by slow rot, each new bloom of corruption excised until nothing's left, no one.
It will take decades to make whole; the public trust may never be. There are those that will see a swift end to this as a solution for all involved: That more blood hasn't already been spilled is a testament to how screwed the South is in every other respect. The countryside, the cities, they're afraid. Some it might bully into compromise (she may dearly pray), others will see their resolve hardened. Thin odds, thin enough to sliver down the end of a blade.
Perhaps he finds hope in that,
She doesn’t. When she thinks of the way this will end, all she finds is flood. It’s never been trust that binds her to the Chantry; it’s grief. To have everything torn from us over and over, as though he didn't rip it from the hands of so many.
The Circles were always going to fall, he claims. They didn't need to fall like that. Not hers. Not her people.
Softly, ]
You have spared us nothing.
[ The creak of wood, she moves to stand. ]
You see it, yes? To act in the name of others, when that is what you rally against?
Heehee
There's an edge of anger in his words now.]
You are no part of us.
[Spared her? What should the Templars be spared?]
I act for choice when we had none. Should some wish to return to being constantly watched because the Chantry has driven into them a fear of themselves, they should be free to. Even now they could ask for it.
The rest of us should not be dragged down with them, dragged to where we are, at best, forgotten to die in dungeons like the very one in White Spire. And at worst, made Tranquil for daring to believe we have the right to say no to sex.
You want to be a part of us, Templar? I've plenty of Resolutionists who would be glad to spend a week roleplaying Templar to your mage, to show you exactly what their days were like. We'd even give you the luxury of setting limits, something we were never given, and you'd have the extra luxury of knowing it would only last a week.
But you won't take that offer. Because you thought you were going to make it, to still hold tight the bars around the mages, to still make mages bend and bow and come at your beck and call.
Good day, Templar.
[He's done wasting his time for the day.]
Do go and enjoy convincing yourself that you've suffered enough to be one of 'us.'
itp: two rational people have a completely unemotional rational conversation