Child's Play

The rebels don’t want Anders with them, and he understands.

He always meant for it to be that way, meant for him to be the one the world hated. His name had to be the one that became another word for monster, because then it wouldn’t be Hawke’s, or Orsino’s, or the name of any mage in the Gallows. So he wanders Thedas alone, except for the spirit woven in with his flesh, because even the people who are free because of him don’t want him near them.

But he still helps them, of course. How could he not?

He keeps an ear to the ground, listens to the rumours and watches the shadows. He learns where the Templars are heading and what their numbers are, puts himself into their path. They go after him, eager to be remembered as the one who caught the abomination who began the war - and the group of runaway mages they were tracking reaches a place of safety, unscathed.

Sometimes, he stumbles upon a battle. A group of mages huddled back-to-back, robes ripped at the hems and eyes wide and shadowed from lack of sleep, hurling ever-weaker spells at the Templars who stamp closer to them. Justice bursts from his skin with a roar, and when the blue light fades, there are steel-clad bodies strewn across the ground.

The mages thank him. A few stare in wonder, in gratitude. But some glare, some step backward, some curl their lips. Anders understands, and it’s what he expected, but pain tugs at his insides as each ragged party leaves.

Then one day, there’s a group who don’t leave. Or rather, he can’t leave them.

At first, he thinks they’re yet another bunch like all the rest - surrounded by Templars, cowering, terrified. And then he takes a closer look. He sees the senior enchanter lying motionless, sprawled across the grass nearby with her limbs at all the wrong angles. He sees the tallest of the group step forward and sweep the others behind him, sees the plump face and huge eyes and lack of staff. He sees the others - crying, hiding behind the oldest boy’s robe, clinging to each other. The youngest of them all’s a tiny elf girl with ragged pigtails. She can’t be more than five.

Anders looks at the Templars, and silently he tells Justice, kill them all.

He and the spirit have rarely agreed so strongly on anything. 

And once the bastards are dead or fleeing into the woods, he’s left standing, his skin prickling as Justice retreats into the back of his mind with a parting feeling of satisfied and righteous fury. Facing a bunch of children.

‘You’re him,’ says the oldest, the boy who was trying to shield the others. He’s thirteen, maybe, no older. His back is straight and his eyes defiant and he’s trying so, so hard to be brave, but his hands are shaking.

‘Yes,’ says Anders, and waits for the inevitable get away from us, stay back, the senior enchanters said you’re a monster, you’re the reason we’re out here alone being chased by Templars and the mage protecting us is dead. He’ll deserve it, too, because without him these children would be safe in their beds now. This is the price for the breaking of the Circles, the children who couldn’t fight back, and the Tranquil and the elderly, and it kills him to think of it. Of what he did to them.

They would not have been safe, Justice reminds him with a wave of simmering anger, they were waiting for a life of suffering, but it’s a small comfort.

‘You killed them.’ It’s one of the girls, her overlong robes frayed at the hems and smeared with dirt. Maybe blood, too. Anders looks at her face, ready to see fear, but what’s in her eyes is... 

Hope, maybe. Or awe.

And that’s when he knows he can’t leave them. Because he’s the reason they’re out here, and they’ve no one else. Maker knows he’s the last person who should be around children - he’s dangerous. Him and Justice. But he’s all these kids have got, and to leave them now would be unjust, wrong, monstrous.

‘Come with me,’ he hears himself say. ‘I’ll get you someplace safe.’

It’s hard, trekking across the wilderness with seven children in tow, but easier than he expected. He knows kids, after all. He read stories to them in the Circle a few times, helped teach healing magic to a few, healed dozens - even hundreds - in his clinic. He knows how to work gentle Creation magic through them to ease their aching feet and give them the spark of energy they need to make it up just one more hill, how to speak gently to them so that they know they can trust him to look after them and it’ll be all right, how to tell stories about Ser Pounce-a-lot and the Warden-Commander and Hawke that have them all rolling on the ground with laughter. 

And he knows how to fight to the last drop of blood in his veins to keep them safe. Because as the days pass, he feels more and more like he’d do just that for them. Like he’d risk anything for them.

He comes to know them. The oldest boy, Simon, was taken to the Circle when he was nine, old enough to remember his life outside it and to miss his family. The girl who looked at him with awe that first day is Aimee, who had trouble getting even the simplest spells to work and was already hearing whispers that she’d be made Tranquil rather than be put through the Harrowing. There’s one, William, who dreamed of being an actor until the Templars dragged him away. Leona, the tiny elf girl, is an alienage orphan who’d been at the Circle less than a month before the rebellion threw her outside it again.

Maybe it’s his fault they’re out here now, traipsing through mud and rain, sleeping in caves with helmeted figures chasing them at every turn. But it’s also thanks to him that Simon has a chance to find his family again, that Aimee will never have a brand-mark on her forehead, that William might yet step onto a stage, that Leona will never have to know the agony of a life that would crush the laughter from her. And when he watches them sleeping about the fire that Aimee lit with her slowly strengthening magic, he feels a faith in himself, a certainty, that he has never known before.

Sometimes he has to leave them. Word will reach him of a gang of Templars getting too close to comfort to another group of runaways, and he takes up his staff and heads out alone to stop them. He leaves Simon in charge, gives him the location of a safe place to take the others too if he never comes back. But he always does come back, and the children leap up and cry out his name with grins on their faces. Little Leona runs out to meet him, yanking at his sleeve and tugging at his robes and begging him to tell her about the battle. 

He makes something up, so it sounds heroic. She’s too young to learn the painful truth, that justice isn’t heroic or happy. Justice is righteous. Justice is hard.

Except... that’s not so true anymore, because Justice would give as much for these children as he would, and defends them just as fiercely. It’s easier now, since he left Kirkwall and saw an end brought to the Circles, and more and more often Justice is calm, sane, himself, when he comes out. It’s a long time until Anders trusts both sides of himself enough to let Justice appear around the children, so he can meet them, talk to them, take their hands in his, but eventually, he lets it happen. Since he took these apprentices under his wing, keeping it controlled... it's easier than he every imagined. Child's play.

Anders watches, a passenger in his own body, as Justice greets them all and they poke curiously at the blue light showing through his skin, and he feels peace settle inside him. The war with himself is ending.

Years pass, and the other war he started ends too. One by one, he lets his little flock go, so they can live in this new world. So Simon can be reunited with his family, be embraced by the parents and brothers who thought they’d never see him again. So Aimee, whose magic was only held back by her fear, can thrive in the new College of Enchanters, stunning mages three times her age with her gift for spirit healing. So William can learn to make smoke appear with a flick of his fingers and make thunder crash with a twist of his hand, so that he can be not only an actor but the very first mage to use his magic as part of a play.

He lets them go. Except for one, who he can’t let go. Who flat-out refuses to leave.

‘You should join the College too,’ he tells Leona one day, as they travel on through the wilds together, her pulling at his sleeve every two minutes to ask what a certain plant is or whether he has any more stories about being a Warden. ‘You should have a life. It’s not safe for you with me. I’ll always be hunted, and there are more dangers out here than bandits and wolves.’

‘I’m not scared. You’ll fight them off.’ She grins up at him, gap-toothed and completely unafraid, utterly trusting. He knows he should beg her to leave, force her to, that she deserves better - but she’s given him peace, and he can’t form the words on his lips. ‘You can fight off any wolf. You and Uncle Justice.’

She slips her tiny fingers into his.

If Justice is your uncle, what does that make me? Anders almost asks, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to ask, and she doesn’t need to say it. They both know.