Chapter Text
Darkspawn, ogres, abominations, broodmothers and an entire menagerie of demons: Anders had faced his fair share of grotesque creatures during his surprisingly long life. He had seen the entire spectrum of evil, both in this world and beyond, and he rather figured nothing could surprise him anymore.
And then Orsino had turned himself into a writhing mass of blood magic and corpses – proving the wrong point, again – and only a few hours later, Knigh-Commander Meredith lorded over the Gallows courtyard, eyes ablaze with red lyrium.
And then a thirty-foot bronze statue began to climb down from its usual perch by the stairs that led up to the Templar Hall, and Anders realised he really needed to readjust his perception of what was normal, again.
Another statue moved. Then three more. Their heavy footfalls shook the courtyard, and their long arms swept down with brutal force, threatening to wipe out everyone and everything in their path.
The Gallows courtyard fell deeper into chaos, with everyone frantically trying to fight off these newly-made creatures or, at the very least, survive to see the next five minutes.
How in Andraste’s name was anyone supposed to fight a statue?
Anders watched arrows ricochet right off the creatures' metal bodies, and Marian's Force magic did hardly anything to stop the things. Aveline and Fenris were doing what they did best, heroically slicing at one statue’s legs and barely denting them.
Merrill shot out a Stone Fist, and a statue shook, if only a little.
They weren’t invulnerable.
Anders racked his brain trying to think of anything he might have once read on something similar. His thoughts latched onto bronze instead, which Anders didn’t appreciate, until—
Fire.
Of course.
The statues had been forged in fire.
Fire had softened and melted the bronze before a smith cast it into shape, and fire could alter it again. Hopefully.
Feeling like an idiot for not thinking about something so obvious immediately, Anders took a deep breath and cast Fireball, following it with a Firestorm right after. The courtyard was engulfed in flames that only touched what sought to hurt him and his, and the magical fire began to bring one statue down, its legs slowly bending out of shape and collapsing under it.
Anders let out a shaky breath, his fingers trembling minutely. He shook each hand in turn, willing them to stillness.
Another deep breath, and Anders sent a Tempest to strike the ground over the sea of flame. His pool of mana was depleting fast, and he knew he should have reserved some for whenever someone needed healing, or for when he needed to make way for Justice to pick up any possible fallen companions.
Anders closed his eyes for a brief second, calculating if he could cast another Fireball this soon after the first, and felt the air shift around him. He blinked his eyes open and saw a massive bronze foot approaching him far too fast to dodge. Time seemed to slow, and then, all at once, everything was pure, scorching pain as the statue made contact with Anders’ ribs, and he was fairly certain one or ten of them shattered and, maybe, punctured a lung.
This was it, then.
The kick sent him tumbling back towards where he knew a solid stone column stood, ready to break his fall, and his spine, or maybe smash his skull. Justice would soften the blow – he always did – but Anders didn’t know if the spirit could save him from certain death. He had once, that first time, when they merged, but they had changed so much since, and—
“Anders!”
There was an out of place echo that cut through the ringing in his ears and the white hot flashes of pain that crackled behind his eyelids. He’d always doubted the romanticised stories of how one’s life would flash before their eyes at the moment of their death; how their fondest memories and most precious moments would curl over them and safely carry them beyond the Veil.
Instead of shattering against the column, skull cracked and ribs splintered, Anders felt caught, held. There was a solid body at his back, arms wrapped around his chest, and he was not dead.
Anders was sat on the ground with his back against the column that should have killed him, and had a healing potion gently placed on his lips and tipped back.
He tasted Elfroot and felt the numbing effects immediately, while the purely magical properties of the potion burrowed into his body and began stitching it back together. His right shoulder still hurt, the way something crushed under the foot of a twenty-foot statue might, and he really did not enjoy breathing. If there was shattered bone in his lungs, no amount of potions could dig it out. He needed to access his magic, needed to heal himself.
“My… my staff?” he choked out. Black and white spots danced across his vision, and his ears just kept ringing.
“I’m afraid it’s beyond help,” that voice said, and it was so familiar, and so comforting, and the stars swirling inside his skull were like a layer of damp cotton over every single thought and memory he tried to grasp. He blinked and blinked and blinked, hoping it might clear his head.
He knew the voice, but he couldn’t, not really. He wasn’t dead, he wasn’t swathed in the warmth of past affection, and so the voice could not be what he knew it to be.
The fight continued on behind him, loud and brutal.
Anders looked, and time didn’t slow; it stopped entirely.
“Nate?” he breathed, like the word might make this illusion, this figment of his dying imagination, shatter.
It hadn’t quite been a full year since Marian had told him about a Grey Warden she had been asked to locate and bring home from the Deep Roads. That the Warden and his men had decided to follow the route the famed Champion of Kirkwall had taken all those years ago, to discover the ancient thaig.
Anders had wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it because Grey Wardens and, more pressingly, the Deep Roads were both a likely threat to his physical and mental well-being, and he had promised Marian he’d stop torturing himself with past mistakes.
Marian had only mentioned a name after the fact, when she had returned from the trip, and the Wardens had left the Free Marches. She had said it so casually, recounting the events of the past few days as they were getting ready for bed.
Nathaniel Howe.
“In the flesh,” Nathaniel said, a hand on Anders’ good arm, holding him up when he threatened to keel over.
Anders couldn’t breathe for a beat, and it had nothing to do with his injuries. He couldn’t breathe, and he blinked until his vision cleared and he could really look at this man, this Grey Warden, who had no reason to be here, but was.
This man, this ridiculous, impossible man, who had been the sole reason Anders had hesitated when he left Vigil’s Keep for the last time; who had grounded him, without a question, and showed him he was more than a runaway mage with nothing to lose.
Anders reached out his good hand and buried his fingers in Nate’s hair, catching the unravelling braid at the back of his head. Anders tugged him forward, just a little, tentatively, and then Nate’s other hand was gently touching his chin, thumb resting on Anders’ cheekbone.
Grounding, grounding, grounding.
Anders kissed him.
Nate responded in kind immediately, pressing forward and pinning Anders to the column at his back. Anders tugged on Nate’s hair a little more insistently, pulling him close, because he had never been able to deny the man anything, and he wanted this, needed this, hadn’t known how much he had needed and wanted this, needed to get lost in this.
The warm, dry lips on his were a brand of something long past; a memory of a simpler time when Anders’ biggest concern had been tearing his expensive new robes while killing darkspawn, or having to wake up at the crack of dawn to go kill darkspawn. When Nathaniel had been the one constant he never asked for or expected, or really felt like he deserved; when he had known there would be a warm body in his bead at the end of the day, and it wasn’t a secret or an exchange or a passing fancy.
A stab of pain shot up Anders’ bad shoulder and had him flinch and curl over himself.
“Sorry,” he muttered, breathless, “I need to—”
Anders gestured vaguely at himself, and let his healing magic flow, the cool threads of it patching up his insides, and putting pieces of bone back where bone was meant to be. He would do this, he thought, and then reach for Nate again, reach for his familiar warmth, reach for the calloused hands that were far more gentle than the man ever let on.
And then Nathaniel stood up abruptly, bow at the ready, and released a flurry of arrows in rapid succession. Anders flicked a bit of magic his way, and the arrows sparked into flames that didn’t burn them but would scorch their targets. The man barely reacted, but Anders saw the slight upwards twitch of his lips.
Right. There was a battle. Rather a big one.
The first of what was to become a war, Anders knew. He had started the war, he also knew, with absolute clarity.
Anders looked around from behind the column, pulling himself up to a crouch and then fully up, leaning on the stone for extra support. He spotted a fallen mage not far from where he stood, her discarded staff still intact next to her.
“Cover for me,” he yelled at Nate, and made a run for it. He all but slid on his knees to a stop next to the body, and grabbed the staff. It felt like lightning and spirit magic, and like it would serve him well enough.
Anders spun around, his pool of mana now nearly full again, and aimed another ocean of fire at the statues. He counted four that were still up and moving. Meredith was a maniacal force of glimmering red, standing watch over the chaos she was wrecking over the city.
He turned his focus back to keeping his friends alive and safe, and started by aiming a healing spell at Fenris, who seemed like he might collapse at any moment.
Anders called on Justice, summoning an aura of healing magic around himself, and made a run towards his companions. Darting between them, the spell gently touched each of them in turn, darning together the worst of their wounds and keeping them on their feet for a while longer.
He came to a stop near Marian, who was flinging her own Fireball towards the heaps of metal. Another two had fallen, and the two remaining ones were nearly done for.
There was blood and sweat on Marian’s face, and her short black hair was stuck to her forehead, covered in the dust and grime that was all around them; the remains of spells, broken stone, and broken bodies. She was stunning.
She cast Crushing Prison on a statue that was on its last legs, and Anders was impressed to see it worked. She followed it with a field of magic that brought everyone within it to a stuttering halt, and while it didn’t stop the massive creatures completely, it did slow them down long enough for the two mages to rain elemental destruction on them.
Anders gave Marian a satisfied grin, but received a sharp stare in response.
She spun into a Chain Lightning, then turned back to look at him.
“You were in the Wardens together, was it?”
Shit.
Marian and him had no secrets between them – apart from, quite recently, Anders’ whole entire plan for the Chantry, which he knew he would hear a few stern words about if they ever made it out alive – and he had no idea why he had never elaborated on what had happened between him and Nate.
He said nothing, and inspected the ground at his feet. He looked up to heal Varric.
“Sorry,” he said, “I should have told you.”
Maybe it was because it had never really ended, whatever had been between them; maybe that’s why he never told. Years had passed, and feelings had become memories, and memories only hurt when poked at frequently, and Anders was very good at not doing that. Hadn’t wanted to do that.
Maybe that was why he had never told, even when he’d had the chance right after Marian’s last jaunt into the Deep Roads.
Marian scoffed; a sound full disappointment and the vaguest bit of hurt.
“Not what I’m angry about,” she hissed, aiming a Fireball at Meredith who had decided to come down to the courtyard and preach nonsense. Anders shot a Fireball at her as well.
“Sorry,” he repeated, knowing full well it was completely inadequate. He wanted to think it was true, at least.
“I didn’t— I don’t—” he tried. “I’m sorry, alright?”
Marian looked at him, slowly, and shook her head.
“You’d better survive this,” she ordered and took off to find a better spot somewhere closer to the blathering madwoman, where her Force spells would hit more precisely, and where she, Anders suspected, could also beat something with the pointy end of her staff.
Shit.
Anders took another look at the battlefield, realised he couldn’t see a single burning arrow, and cold dread crept up his spine. It couldn’t be, it could not—
He must have stopped concentrating on Flaming Weapons once he’d started healing and casting fire, and he suddenly felt very, very guilty, which then made him feel very, very guilty for an entirely different reason, and he had started a war, for Maker’s sake, but here he was instead: a mess of emotions stirred up by an old flame.
Shit.
He jogged towards an alcove with a broken column that would shield him from view, and scanned the area for what he needed to do next. If his eyes drifted a little more towards the edges of the fight, the kind of spots where a sharp-shooting archer might have the best view of his targets, well. No one needed to know.
There was a gentle touch on his left shoulder, and a very familiar palm against his upper back, for the briefest of beats.
“Right here,” Nate said from behind him, and Anders both hated and loved how it made him relax.
“Good,” he said so softly he hoped it might have been drowned in the cacophony of battle.
Marian glanced at him then, at them, her eyes widening and then closing for a moment, her jawline tense. It almost looked like she might say something, but only shook her head, and ran towards Meredith instead.
Anders hated himself.
What else was new?
He hated himself when he set Nate’s arrows aflame again, and then settled into a familiar formation with the man, fighting side by side and back to back, efficient and lethal, just like they used to all those years ago.
He hated himself when he, on instinct and purely from muscle memory, reached behind himself and to Nate’s back to pull a dagger from the man’s belt, and threw it, with surprising accuracy, at a raging templar who was running towards them. He didn’t see Nate’s face, but he knew the small pleased smile that was definitely there. Knew the secret intimacy of it.
Marian really should have killed him when she had the opportunity to.
And then—
Meredith collapsed, overtaken by the red lyrium. She fell on her knees on the ground, screaming, howling, raging, as the red rock encased her, turning her into a grotesque statue.
A silence fell, like the world was suddenly unsure how to continue.
Warriors sheathed their swords and put away their shield.
Mages secured their staves on their backs, and archers and assassins tucked away their bows and daggers.
Time stilled.
Marian let her gaze fall on everyone, every single person still standing, before she gave a minute nod, and gestured at her companions to leave. She made direct eye contact with everyone but Anders.
They all walked away, a heavy silence draped around them like a damp wool blanket.
It was over.
It changed nothing.
Anders didn’t dare to look back.