justice_is_blond | Inbox for Fade Rift

They were stupid, messing with something they didn't understand... but many of them had seemed to at least have good intentions for doing so. Lack of foresight didn't outweigh that many of them might in fact have been good. He spoons some green stuff onto his bread before finally nodding. It doesn't cost him anything to only look at one factor here.

"They were. Estmond especially." He's always going to be a little more biased toward someone trying their best to fix people with meager resources and training. Even though he never did find the bodies Estmond had suggested were there. Then again, when your basement is flooded and filled with illusions, you could potentially hide anything in it.

"I still don't understand all of what happened there. It got... chaotic."

The mention of Estmond hits Myr harder than he thought it would--one of those sudden, swift darts to the heart that makes it skip a beat, makes the throat close with grief. He puts a fist to his mouth and closes his eyes until it's passed, until he can say, "He deserved better."

A pile of rock on a frigid little rainswept island for a tomb. Pray the fall killed him instantly, and not the slow suffocation, or the cold, or the crushing press of organs ground to a pulp--

Myr shakes his head once, dislodging the thought. "It did--get chaotic." Something lurks between the words, something culpable and painful and curled barbed around his heart. It invites him to lash out, place the blame elsewhere, not examine his own role in that.

Except he's been doing exactly that in his obsessive rereading of the abbey's library, recognizing every instant he could have said or done something different and maybe changed the ultimate outcome.

(Though there wasn't any stopping Alvar once she'd died. And she would have, whoever it was up on that stage with her. That's not blame on him, at least.)

"I had," carefully, "meant to speak to you again after we argued. I asked Estmond about the bodies." For--perhaps--the wrong reasons, but he had done it.

Edited 2019-01-07 07:06 (UTC)

Because he doubted and mistrusted you, Anders' mind non-helpfully fills in. He takes a bite, acknowledging the blow to his pride and breathing past it. It's not fair to be upset about it when he'd done his own searching with Teren. Not that he'd told her there might be a lot of corpses to be stumbled upon.

"I'd meant to ask him for more," he says slowly, "but then every time I saw him after that there were too many patients and I became preoccupied." He'd had to prioritize the still-living, no matter how barely they were hanging on, over the dead.

His expression is as guarded as possible when he looks up, but the slight tension in his voice betrays him. "And did he have more to say on the topic?"

"He did." Myr does not look up immediately, though he knows Anders has--knows the other mage is looking at him. Instead he's found something in the binding of Odetta's journal to preoccupy him, fingers searching for a loose thread before stroking it back into place. It helps him to think--it's always helped him to think--to be moving, somehow, when he does it.

But in this case it's an excuse not to answer and he realizes as much, and laces his hands together over the journal before looking up to meet Anders' gaze. "There were thirty--just the Revered Mothers. They burned through themselves as fast as they could to keep anyone else from dying."

A pause, and then more quietly, "I expected more, too. Not as many as you did. But I didn't imagine..." That there had been that many women in all of Thedas--let alone one little backwater quarter of Ferelden--who'd think their own lives that kind of acceptable trade. Even knowing the ring may have had a part in that--

It's still humbling to confront face-on.

"Just..." There's puzzlement on his face, confusion and surprise. "But he..."

There'd been such a clear implication, such obvious doubt. If they didn't lose people, why had Estmond been so convinced they would? Why had there been so much discarded clothing?

"He was certain we were going to lose people." It isn't an argument. He's trying to talk himself through understanding something quite this inexplicable. "So certain. The way you are after you've..."

No longer is he looking at Myr; instead he's staring at a wall as he rubs one of his temples. That one factor had set him entirely on the wrong path, and while certainly his attitude toward the Chantry had influenced how readily he'd accepted it, the heaviest influence in his acceptance had been Estmond's certainty and worry and the way it tied into Anders' experience as a healer. He'd given full blind belief to a medical worker the way he'd accused Myr of blindly believing anyone involved with the Chantry.

He breathes out a quiet, frustrated 'fuck' before shaking his head. "Half-answers. I went with half-answers the entire damn time. They lost lives, but not the patients. Spirit magic was dangerous, but to the targets of it rather than the casters. There were demonic influences, but not demons of our world's making."

It's strange, watching from the outside as someone goes through the same realization he did--I only had half the story, what I assumed wasn't true. It's strange and it wakes emotions in him he's not sure he likes, the same doubt and and remorse for misjudgment he'd come away with after their first conversation.

It was easier, not to see parts of yourself in someone you'd long believed you hated.

But the world's not made for ease.

"We all," Myr says softly, once Anders has reached his conclusion aloud, "put together the story we wanted to hear from the truth we actually heard. Miracles that came at a dreadful cost because what one man gains, another has lost. An empty Fade because the Maker's power could drive His first children away. And spirits of the dead that truly lingered because--"

He looks away at that, studying something across the hall and breathing out in a low sigh. "I never worked that one out. It didn't seem worth asking too closely and dissolving everything else like it was a dream."

Demons had promised him his eyes before and it hadn't been hard to resist, knowing what they'd take in trade. But say the cost is mine to bear, and mine alone,...

He doesn't think he wanted the Abbey to be bad and demon-laden, but that's beyond the point. The point is that they came at it seeing different things because they'd different lives. Or maybe it lines up with the point. He's not entirely certain, and he can find no added insight in the shredded meat he's pushing around on his plate.

"The dream of seeing again?" The question is very quiet. He's not certain when healing was offered to Myr, or how much the elf was told beforehand.

"Or some other dream?" A dream of those who were lost sticking around? He doesn't know if that would be a good dream or not, no matter how many he misses. Most are better off at the Maker's side than in this world; if the Void is real it's only him and Merrill he cares about who the Chantry says are going there.

A twitch of Myr's head goes for acknowledgement of the question--that and no more, at first. To say something requires confessing to having a desire he should have killed and buried before it did the same to someone else. Requires confessing just how far beyond the bounds of orthodoxy he believed, and how it misled him, and how he fears--as Odetta did--he'd failed the test set before him.

"Of having my eyes again. Yes."

His fingers walk the spine of the journal once more, those same eyes drawn down to its cover.

"Was it worth it?" There isn't judgment in his voice. He's never been without a sense, and while people died... it hadn't been Myr's choice alone. And if it hadn't been Myr being healed, it may have been someone else setting off the chaos. The place had always been bound to, well, explode considering how it was fueled and run. But that hadn't meant it had to be Myr who lit the match.

The question echoes Teren's the night of the abbey's utter collapse, recalls the rain and the cold and the pain of fingers scraped raw by digging. Why ask me that, Myr wonders anew, as if his own judgment on the worth of what he'd experienced redeemed it. As if it could somehow balance one small part of Thedas' ledger of suffering and injustice before Andraste's returning to do away with it all.

As if seeing Simon's face outweighed Alvar's lost sanity; as if Van's tentative return to the Chantry was just payment for the lives lost to it.

As if. As if--

He'd equivocated last time, too stunned for certainty. This time he's a better idea of what to say, when at length he looks up at Anders: "I've got to live as if it was. They did."

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