@cuerrvox // desires angsty smut with the mage
━━━ ANDERS STARES INTO THE GAPING, EMPTY ABYSS THAT IS HIS CHEST. He has stripped it of all personal belongings that do not contribute to the clinic ━━ the neat baubles he had been gifted over the years by friends and thankful patients have been given to Lirene, for proper redistribution to those who would keep them longer. Most of his clothes had been given to those needier than him ; the many dirty faces in Darktown that wore scraps of cloth.
The letters had been the hardest part.
Stood over a fire late the night before, Anders reread every word Karl had written to him in his flourishing penmanship. It had been risky to keep all the letters. A single one of them could implicate both of them ... but he was sentimental, and at the end of everything, if what undid him was the only love he had ever known, then so be it.
He had traced over every letter with a feathery fingertip ━━ the words long committed to memory. Every confession, every proclamation, every mawkish line of poetry ...
Every promise he had broken.
The last of his heart shattered as he held the folded letters up to the flame and watched the final bits of his personhood crumble into ash.
All that remained now was his mother's pillow.
It was a stained and dirty thing, despite the care he had held for it over the years. Square and yellow with use, the edges frayed where he resewed its hem time and again. Yet the embroidery remained intact. His mother was ━━ is ? ━━ talented.
However long he spends staring down at the all but empty chest is how long it takes him to figure out what he should do with his final earthly possession. Decided, Anders stuffs it in his pack and slips out through one of the many Darktown tunnel exits towards the Lowtown Alienage.
He has spent the last six years pushing people away. Isabela lost her patience for his erratic emotions after one too many capricious displays. Hawke was successfully persuaded to keep her distance from the abomination. He watched the group of people who followed her call each other friend, ally, comrade and pulled himself taut at the edges of their circle.
He is a healer and, services rendered, there is no further need of him.
Except for the infuriating blood mage who looked at him with pity ━━ as though he was the one who didn't understand. As though he was the one who flirted with demons for favors. She chipped at his walls and like the man he was beneath the raging vengeance, he engaged her. They bickered and fought over the same argument, again and again, coming away no less closer to a middle ground than when they started.
And, Maker help him, he had caught himself starting to care.
But of course he cared ! He was nothing if not living proof of how even well intentioned Spirit communication could go wrong.
He had committed himself to an atrocity. Much blood was going to coat his hands very soon. The most he could do was attempt, again, to guide Merrill to the light.
So, he knocks on her door in the dead of night, pack held tight against his chest like a saving grace.
