closed | can you feel the lightning cover your skin

[dissent]

▶ WHO: anders & cole.
▶ DATE: around when everyone went to get all those radios
▶ WARNINGS: may contain traces of spirits.
▶ SUMMARY: dragon ages talking.


It's quiet, up on the roof right now, with most people having set out to investigate the train crash and the radio tower. But the peace of the late evening can't soothe the violent whirlwind within Anders. He leans heavy elbows on the railing with his eyes squeezed shut, ignoring the sight of the town stretched out in the twilight.

Justice is discontent. It's been a while since he's felt that so clearly, felt the spirit as a separate entity from himself rather than simply a corner of his own mind — theyve been together for so long that Anders has forgotten what it is to be separate, like two trees twined around each other after a lifetime of growth to become one thing. And yet the wind is rattling only one tree's branches: Anders is glad to be away from Kirkwall, just as he would have been glad to finally die, and he's glad of Hawke's presence too even if the other man is still a point of contention between he and his passenger spirit. Justice, on the other hand, has defined himself so thoroughly by the plight of the mages that without it he is very little, incapable of simply turning to right other injustices as he once might have before the corruption of humanity and the blight twisted them both into some strange and impossible creature.

Abomination. Anders opens his eyes and sighs, looking down the long drop below him, the slope of the building. There must be something for him to do, some way for him to help, here at the end of the world.

Comments

[byheart]

"It's different here," says a voice, gentle as a breeze and just as sudden.

Legs bent and dangling over the side a little ways down, where the rail becomes brick, wider, better for sitting—it's a boy, thin and pale and placid, simply there where he wasn't before. Wearing the same dirty leathers Anders has never seen, long knives sheathed on his back, a child's doll tucked into his belt. He looks down without fear, except for his hat, which he holds tight to his head in case the wind really stirs up. From up here, even a hat with a brim as wide as his would be difficult to find.

"Quiet. Not as bright." He settles back, bent into a youthful slouch, rocks gently where he sits. "They're so far away."

But this man standing up here, not alone but feeling lonely all the same, is like a beacon, and it's a great comfort just to be close to his light. To their light.
He'll enjoy the glow while he works out what he should do.

[dissent]

Anders startles, because he thought he was alone, but represses the automatic flinch. There are monsters here, but they all look like monsters, or so he's told, and they can't get into the facility. That's probably the major difference he's discovered: everyone works together and the danger comes from outside the group, not from being a part of it. Not yet, anyway.

But for all the differences from Thedas, 'quieter' and 'darker' would not be his first choice. He cranes his head and looks up at the hat with a sharp-armed boy somewhere under it. "What's far away?" he asks, even though it seems a silly sort of question. Lots of things, not all of them physical, are out of reach now.

[byheart]

The rocking stops once he's spoken to, not abruptly. Not all of them are physical, no. It's hard for him, but he didn't come here for himself. He could have stayed unnoticed if that were so, lingered, listened and then left, like he's been doing for days, not yet ready to appear for strangers in this strange world.

"The tear in the sky..." A soft voice, reflective, distinctly Fereldan. The hat dips. "My friends. The people we were meant to help." But then it lifts, and turns toward Anders, and the glow from beneath partly lights a young face, the sensitive shape of a mouth, the glint of an eye still in shadow. The gaze is intense, piercing, but calm. The people we were meant to help—but not all of them.

"There's always a way. They need you here, too."

Blondie stares at the table, angry, always angry. Varric would want him to stay.

[dissent]

The tear in the sky. Who in Thedas hadn't heard about the rifts popping up, what Warden hadn't heard the call? Varric had written about the rifts and the Inquisition in his letters. Hawke had gone to help them. Anders squints up at the young man, wondering if they're talking about the same thing, if he's someone from home.

More unnerving is the sense that his fears are being assuaged, and Justice stirs — they've already had enough of intrusion into their head for one day, that strange Xavier who'd called himself a telepath.

"I'm Anders," he says, fishing, trying to prompt a reaction, or a name in return.

[byheart]

"I'm Cole." There: a name. This might be a good time for a smile, too, but he doesn't think of it. Instead he looks down again, straightening his legs so the split cuffs of his pants bare his bony ankles in the air. He likes the way his feet look, hanging in the sky above the city—or above the grounds at Skyhold, or the trees or stones. Anywhere up high, anywhere free.

"You were with Varric, in the band bound together by a bird. His wings carried you away." His heels bump against the wall's face before they hang, legs once again relaxed. "You think you're heavy because you wear armour inside, but it isn't yours."