Broken Souls: Chapter 58

Chapter Fifty Eight

The previous evening…

"… and as it reasonable for one man to master himself, in all things controlling his own nature, so should we expect that a mage is capable of controlling their own wilder impulses without the threat of violence. As every man is his own judge before the Maker, so should-"

Anders' hand stilled, staring at the words he had written before scowling and tearing the page from the journal. Another hour wasted, as he crumpled the paper in his fist and tossed it into the nearby camp fire; he bitterly turned to a blank page and waited for inspiration to strike, his quill hovering for what seemed like an inestimable amount of time before he made a derisive sound and tossed the journal on the ground behind him.

It does the cause no good to give up now.

The words were not voiced gently, and Anders ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "I'm not going to write rubbish just for the sake of writing. And you've hardly been a font of inspiration yourself."

The words cannot come from me. They must come from within you, from a mage who has lived through these circumstances and speaks from experience. Even I am not so foolish as to think that my words alone will be enough to turn the hearts and minds of Thedas to our cause.

Standing up from his place by the fire, Anders stalked around the outskirts of their small camp, giving a wide berth to the sleeping forms of his companions. Varric was snoring, Merrill was curled up into the tiniest ball, and Garrett was lying on his front, his face buried in the blankets. Glancing up at the moon, he could tell it was nearly time to wake Garrett for his turn at watch, but what was the point? He was awake and on edge and there was no way he'd be sleeping anytime soon. Might as well let them all enjoy a full night's sleep for once.

You are distracted. We must not let distractions interfere with-

"Shut up," he snapped, lowering his voice when Varric's snores grew louder for a moment. "You're just as distracted as I am. You haven't stopped thinking about Tahlie all day."

She is unprotected. It is our duty above all else to defend those who cannot defend themselves and she-

"-Is a grown woman who is completely capable of taking care of herself." He didn't believe it for a second, even if Tahlie would have slapped him for thinking her so vulnerable, but Justice was annoying him more than normal tonight and he was in the mood to be contrary.

Not against Melissandra, she cannot. Not against the more determined demons, she cannot. This is foolishness, aiding the elf witch; she cannot be trusted not to resort to the aid of foul demons and blood magic. We should turn back now, go back to Tahlindra and protect her. Work on our manifesto at her side.

"I made a promise to Garrett," he muttered under his breath as he made a cursory check around the camp. If he was on watch, he should at least pretend he was keeping an eye out for unsavoury creatures. But the woods were still, and the small ruined house they sheltered in provided a much needed wind break; the crumbled stone walls still hinted at rooms that had once been a home, rather than a shell, but the forest had reclaimed it and beyond that vague hint not even memories remained. Only stone, and moss. His thoughts drifting towards the morose, he shook himself and repeated "I made a promise to Garrett, and I will honour my commitment."

The mortal and his affairs are none of our concern. We have much to do; we cannot be wasting time away from the city when so much is at stake. Alrik-

Anders hissed out a breath at the mention of that fiend. "Will be dealt with," he said quietly. "We can do nothing while our numbers are stretched so thin."

The Tranquil Solution cannot be ignored.

"And I don't mean to," he murmured; he kicked angrily at a stone on the ground, watching it skitter across the ground… and come to rest beside a pair of boots. A pair of boots currently filled by a sleepy and tousled Garrett.

"'s always interesting listening to you having a conversation with your better half," Garrett said with a yawn as he slouched towards him. Even without his armour, the warrior was a hulking presence, and his droopy shamble in the dark seemed almost comical. "I like to fill in the blanks, pretend that you're talking about something completely irrelevant and vastly unmanly."

Despite his foul mood, Anders couldn't help but grin a little. "And what, pray tell, was I talking about just now?"

"Something to do with shoes, I think," Garrett replied, pretending to concentrate for a moment. "Mm, actually, more like shoe shopping; I think the bit about a promise to me was about swearing you'd never make me go shoe shopping with you. For which, I have to say, I am eternally grateful."

Anders sighed and looked up at the stars, tucking his hands inside his pockets. "What are you doing up, Garrett? Go back to bed."

"Well, maybe it's just me, but it looks like it's my turn for watch. My understanding of such affairs is that I can't really be on watch if I'm still fast asleep. Call me old fashioned, I know, but…"

"You can go back to bed. I can't sleep, so I'll just do your watch for you."

Garrett ignored him and walked past to the log they'd dragged near to the fire. Slumping down onto the wood, he glanced over his shoulder and patted the spot beside him. "Come on, you grumpy bugger. I'll try and cheer you up and you can try and keep me awake."

"Are you always this charming first thing after waking up?" Anders said wryly, taking the spot that was offered. "Or am I just lucky?"

"Just lucky," Garrett said, yawning widely. He rubbed at his face, looking appallingly dishevelled and not at all like a noble son of Kirkwall. Sitting half-dressed on a log in the middle of the wilderness with an abomination- Hightown would be scandalised. "So feel like telling me what you were muttering about, really? Unless it really was shoes after all. In which case I really don't want to know."

"Just… things," Anders said weakly.

"Wouldn't happen to be secret mage things, now, would they?" Garrett wiggled his eyebrows at him. "Oh don't give me that look, your secrets have hardly been exposed to the whole world."

"And what makes you think it was 'secret mage things' and that I wasn't just thinking about Tahlie?"

Garrett held up a hand and began to count off on his fingers. "One," he said, "you were stalking around kicking rocks as if they were Meredith's head. Two, your notebook is lying on the ground over there. Three, I've known you for- what? Three years now? Four? So I think I'm quite capable of telling what your moods are like, and four, when you're thinking about Tahlie you smirk more. You aren't smirking right now."

The fire made a particularly loud cracking noise as one of the logs collapsed, sending a shower of dancing, burning ashes into the air. They both turned their heads to the side, holding a hand over their mouths to avoid breathing in the ash.  When the air was a little clearer again, Anders said "You think you know my moods, do you?"

Garrett made a derisive sound. "You're hardly difficult to predict. Plus, you very handily come with a walking barometer who is kind enough to explain your eccentricities to me and then calm you down when you've been pushed a little too far."

"You wouldn't be comparing the love of my life to a weather gauge, would you?"

The younger man held his hands out in a placating gesture. "I've seen you angry, and I've seen Justice angry. I have no desire to encourage an early death by suggesting something so ridiculous to either of you... even if it is a remarkably accurate description for her."

Anders couldn't help but smile at the younger man's pluck. "Speaking of Tahlie… she told me something interesting," he said, glancing sideways at Garrett who was absently shredding a leaf between his hands.

"Mm? And what would that be?"

Anders shifted, fishing behind him for the stick that was digging into this hip and throwing it out of reach. "She said you came to apologise to me about what happened with Feynriel."

"If you'll recall, I did apologise to you about what happened with Feynriel." He sounded a little pained now, as if the topic was hardly pleasant for him. "And I'll say it again if you really need it of me. Although I hate apologising, so can we just move onto the manly jesting and snide, uncomfortable jokes as soon as possible?"

"What, skip the argument and move straight onto the make-up sex? I hardly think you've earned it."

Garrett laughed, although it was a not a natural sound. "Out with it then. You clearly have something you want to ask. And I'm clearly not going to like it, or you wouldn't dance around the issue with jokes"

Anders was silent for a long moment, considering his words very carefully. "Tahlie said that she attacked you… and you didn't fight back. And she seemed remarkably well informed as to what went on in the Fade, which I found surprising, since I didn't tell her anything. You wouldn't happen to want to shed some light on either enigma, would you?"

His friend groaned and flopped backwards off the log. Anders raised his eyebrows and leant back, eyeing Garrett on the ground. "That bad, huh?"

"Andraste's flaming tits, Anders, what do you want me to say? I went there to apologise- it's hardly going to endear me to you if I knock your woman around first, is it? Plus, you don't really fight back against Tahlie, I found. You just kind of lie there and hope she doesn't kill you."

At that, Anders had to smile; his hand went almost absently to his nose. "A rather apt analogy." He shook himself after a moment. "But I digress. She said you were upset… mostly because you thought you'd killed your best friend."

The silence stretched on for a few seconds, and then a few more. If a cricket had started chirping, he would hardly have been surprised. "And?" Garrett finally asked.

"And… I guess I was just surprised that you think of me as your best friend. I don't know many people who would deliberately choose a sewer dwelling abomination as a friend in the first place… least of all a best friend. Plus I didn't even know I'd been elevated to that lofty position; I feel like I should have been doing something differently."

Garrett snorted. "What, you would have made me a cake? We could have swapped diaries and had a sleepover?"

Anders kicked him in the ankle. "No, idiot. It's just been a while since I've had someone stand by me so adamantly. I… kind of forget sometimes, what it feels like."

"Wow, so Tahlie must be really thrilled to know that you think she's going to abandon you."

A second kick to the ankle. "Not what I meant, and if you dare say anything to her of the sort I will disembowel you, best friends or not." It was Anders turn to sigh. "Okay, honestly? I've only had two true friends in this life, one of whom happens to be Tahlie. The other was also female. So sometimes I overlook things about friendship, especially male friendship, that I think must be obvious to everyone else."

"Karl wasn't a true friend?"

Anders looked at him sharply. "He was a friend," he said carefully, "insomuch as the environment of a Circle Tower allows for friendship. We watched each other's back, and we were fuck buddies for a while, but he-"

"Whoa, wait right there just a second, you did not just say what I thought you said."

"What? Fuck buddies? What's wrong with that?"

Garrett looked scandalised. "But… with Tahlie, you're so… I guess I never thought you'd be the type to swing that way. You seemed quite happily heterosexual."

Anders shrugged. "Circle Towers are boring places. Plus, what's the harm in a little fun, when you don't have to worry about relationships and children, and getting married… experimentation is natural. Karl and I were only a few years different and, well, things happened. Carried on for a few months before we got bored. That's just the way of things in the Circle."

Levering himself off the ground, Garrett propped himself back onto the log. "But you seemed so upset when you… when he died."

Something darker fell over Anders, and his words were brittle. "And wouldn't you be? Just because we weren't best friends doesn't mean we weren't close. And it doesn't mean I don't have a right to be furious and heartbroken about the way that he died. It's against the law to force Tranquility on a Harrowed mage. What happened to Karl was one of the most invasive, horrifying things that can be done to a person. It's like having your mind raped, your soul ripped clean away after being defiled on the most base, personal levels imaginable. It's-" He broke off as he felt angry tears burning at his eyes, and felt the way Justice seethed just beneath his skin.

A hand appeared over his; Garrett was staring quite pointedly at the ground, his face blank and eyes cold, but his hand was warm over his. "For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I'm sorry I took you out drinking that night. That wasn't the right way to mourn a friend."

Anders laughed darkly. "What's the right way?"

Garrett's lips twitched, as if a smile had attempted to break through and failed. "I… that stuff terrifies me too, you know. All those years, with Beth and Father, and then when he died, knowing that I was responsible for making sure it didn't happen to her. It was never easy. I jumped at the sight of Templars for most of my childhood until I was old enough to control myself."

Something compelled Anders to stay silent, as if interrupting now would stop the flow of words. And Garrett clearly needed to purge something dark and angry from his soul.

"You know, it's not really stress-free being family to an apostate," Garrett said slowly. "For all that people talk about how hard it is for mages… it was the same for me. Me and Carver and Mother; we all lived the same life as Beth and Father, always running, always afraid. We were constantly moving around, changing homes, never making friends, always afraid I'd blurt out the wrong thing and be responsible for the Templars discovering them and dragging them away. It was just drilled into me from before I can even remember- don't let the Templars find us, don't let them break up our family, don't let them hurt your sister, don't say anything suspicious." He sighed, and there was such bitterness in his voice when he spoke next. "I shouldn't complain, because I had much less to worry about than them. At least Tranquility was never a threat for me."

"A life on the run is never easy," Anders said quietly.

Garrett sighed and poked at the fire with a stick. "I guess… I didn't make a lot of friends, and I was always afraid I'd make the wrong friend. So all I had for the most part was Carver and Bethany, and Carver could be an arse most of the time which left Beth, and when you're fourteen and gangly and trying to make a good impression with the girls you hardly want to admit that your best friend is your little sister. And then these past few years have been even harder, because I don't even have her anymore and…"

His hesitation dragged on until Anders gently prompted "And?"

"And, well, I suppose for a while there I suffered from a little case of hero worship. You're a Grey Warden; you attempt to save everybody in the world without ever asking for anything in return; you treat me like an equal, which still flabbergasts me no end." The smile that had tried to break through earlier made a quick appearance. "And you're a mage. An apostate, no less, so I kind of feel like we have a kinship, like we both know what it's like to be hunted and hiding and always watching who we trust and what we say to people. I know I can't really understand the terror of being hunted by Templars, but I guess…"

The moment was uncomfortable enough already, but Anders couldn't help himself. At the hesitant, dejected way that Garrett bared his soul, he felt something inside of him soften. He shuffled along the log until he was sitting beside him and threw an arm around Garrett's slouched shoulders, tugging him into his side. After initially stiffening in alarm, Garrett slowly relaxed by inches until he finally slumped against him; it was a little awkward, given that the younger man had a good few inches on Anders in height but somehow managed to twist himself until his head drooped onto his shoulder. The odd tremor ran through him, as if he were fighting off some vast surge of emotion. Otherwise, they were silent.  

The minutes ticked by, the only sounds in the night the crackle and hiss of the fire in front of them. Eventually, Garrett straightened and extracted himself from Anders' hold, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

"Right," he said, a slight waver in his voice. "Now, if we could make sure to tell absolutely no one about that that would be just dandy by me. Also, let's not ever talk about it ever again either."  

Anders couldn't help but grin. "What, you don't want people to know you spent long, sultry minutes in another man's arms? In that case, I don't know if this is the kind of friendship I want to be a part of."

Garrett laughed hesitantly, rubbing a hand over his neck awkwardly. His eyes were red, as if he had been fighting off tears after all. "No, no, it's just that I have this image to maintain, you see. Fierce, macho warrior, the terror of Hightown and what not. If people find out I enjoy cuddles I'll never live it down- and then who will the Viscount turn to next time there's crazy shit going down with the Qunari?" He sighed and scrubbed at his face. "Okay, so that was absolutely not what I was expecting to happen tonight."

"Oh? You had a plan for how you were going to confess your year's long adoration of me? Did it involve candles? Chocolate? I'm more partial to sugar candies, if that helps at all."

"Arse," Garrett muttered, but there was affection in his voice.

"What?" Anders said, spreading his hands wide in a querying gesture. His face was the very picture of innocence. "The way I understand male friendship, you have now agreed to a lifetime of genial and outrageous teasing on my part, and you can't ever complain. Correct?"

Garrett gave him a pained look. "You've been teasing me for four years already, you wretch."

"Oh, good, then I don't have to stop now."  

Garrett stared at him for a long moment before snorting and muttering "Fine," under his breath. He picked up a stick and began to poke at the fire. "So, moving on to less uncomfortable topics- any idea what to expect tomorrow? With the Keeper, I mean."

A frown crept over his brow. "I don't honestly know," he said slowly. "I mean, I don't even rightly understand why you needed me and Varric in the first place. If you're just going to the Dalish camp to collect the artefact and come straight back, what's the use?"

"It's hardly as simple as 'there and straight back'," Garrett pointed out. "For one, I'm not going out on a trip that takes well over a day and requires an overnight bag if it's just me and a girl. My mother would get all kinds of ideas about that if she found out."

Anders raised his eyebrows. "I was somewhat under the impression that you and Merrill were… well, amiable to the idea of each other's company."

"Which you disapprove of wholeheartedly, going from the tone of your voice; as if you weren't one half of a disastrously thought out pairing yourself."

He stilled instantly; even Justice went quiet, waiting with dangerous stillness to see if Hawke clarified himself. "And what, pray tell, do you mean by that?"

"You and Tahlie, of course." Garrett was still poking at the fire, his movements a little more jerky than they had been a moment ago. "She's wonderful, and it's clear you love each other, but she's practically allergic to magic. And you, my friend, are a walking receptacle of magic. Not the smartest match in the world, so if I happened to be thinking of being more than friendly with Merrill, I don't think it's the worst thing I could do. It's certainly no worse than what you put Tahlie through."

He took a slow, careful breath before replying. "You'd best take that statement back, Garrett. This is not something you have any idea what you're talking about."

Garrett finally glanced up at him and scowled. "What, so you can sit there and look all stern and knowledgeable about relationships when it comes to me and Merrill, but I'm not allowed to comment on you and Tahlie?"

"You have no idea. The magic involved-"

"I know about magic, Anders, I grew up in a home with two apostates. I'm fairly certain that there are no other non-mages who know as much about it as I do."

"You don't know about magic, Garrett, otherwise you'd wouldn't be smiling indulgently at Merrill and helping her in what is undoubtedly going to be another blood magic ritual." At the flare of guilt in the other man's expression, he knew he'd hit the nail on the head. "Why are you doing this? Why are you helping Merrill further down the path of ruin, helping her to contact demons and tamper with blood magic? If you want to talk about knowing better when it comes to magic, then you should know better than to enable blood magic. Did your father just not teach you such things, or do you just not care because you're hoping to score points with Merrill?"

Hawke's eyes flickered angrily for a moment before he smiled easily. Whether the anger came from the slur against his father or the implication that Merrill was leading him around by the front of his pants, he couldn't tell. "But she just looks so darned cute, staring up at me with those big eyes. How am I supposed to say no to that?"

Anders stared at him for a long moment until Garrett dropped his gaze. "I can understand you need to lie to me to justify it," he said softly. "But I don't understand why you're lying to yourself."

"Just…" Garrett stared at him for a long moment, quiet anger bubbling in his eyes before he looked away. "Get some sleep, Anders. It's my turn for watch anyway."