Hard to Silence
Dragon Age 2 Anders Anders gets separated from the group during the Qunari invasion and finds himself facing off against a group of Qun soldiers, including an Arvaarad who thinks he needs Saarebasing. He isn't going down without a fight, and neither is Justice. Mature rating. This fic is part Anders getting to do fun action and make sarcy, barby, pro-freedom quips, and part him experiencing peril and encountering some triggering implied Circle memories. Please read the tags for content warnings! Written for @chaos-company‘s Angstpril 2022 Day 24, 'Left Behind'
Triggers were a funny thing. Anders could feel himself keeling over mentally, struggling like a captured cat to avoid engaging with the situation currently crushing against him. He was reaching for solutions and, to his rising panic, coming up empty, even though in reality he was far from beat. Tell that to the unstable laughter wobbling its way out of him and crashing around the alley. Trust the Orlesians to create a concept as vile as deja vu.
Those bastards were going to choke on their piety when they finally came back for him. The fire had reached Hightown, though not with the same decimation that had already taken Lowtown. Even destruction, it turned out, was not an equaliser. The four unofficial soldiers had run through the white-stoned streets, the slaps and smacks of leather boots, metal boots and bare elven feet making the paths around them feel empty, despite the chaos they could hear just out of sight.
They had already taken heavy injuries; Qunari blades and arrows, Saarebas spells. Anders had been keeping them replenished as well as he could, but even the greatest healer in the Free Marches had his limits. It was growing difficult to keep reaching back into that well of healing when, after every leveled home and slaughtered civilian, the other pit called out to him that bit louder.
He could do so much damage. But then his friends would fall. Or, Hawke and her friends would fall. Three years, and neither Choirboy nor the Mage Hater were exactly 'pals'.
It wasn't long until a new cluster of the Qun's zealots were showing up to ruin their day - as if crossing Kirkwall at night was ever easy, invasion or not. "Don't look now!", the mage called ahead. Hawke whipped around to call back, somehow laughing through her anger at this nightmare: "Just when I was stopping to take the air!"
They’d been doing this all night; they were flagging, growing desperate. Two handed, Anders wielded his arcane polearm grip over grip, bracing it against one forearm, then the other, before twisting around to fire behind. Up ahead, charging towards the worst of the group, Hawke and Fenris wove together in their usual half competitive, half cooperative tango, twin daggers and a giant hammer making seemingly incompatible bedfellows. Fitting. Further back, part way between Anders and the chastity-locked lovers, Sebastien fired a one-man volley into the invaders' eyes. Impressive stuff - it went to show the training a wealthy birth could buy.
Things got ugly, fast. Anders’ heart stopped as he heard Hawke cry out, out of sight - she was screaming Fenris' name, fear piercing the vowels. Mr Fog Warrior clearly couldn't handle his Qunari. Shit. Sending a bout of healing magic the elf's way, Anders mentally assessed the number of enemies he had around him: enough for him to handle. Hawke and Fenris were getting ever further away, separated by the tide of the skirmish. "Stay on them!", he called urgently to Sebastien; "I'Il cover the rear!" Smirking to himself, he had a little titter over that as the chantry bore sprang into action, not sharing in the fun.
"Maker watch over you!"
Anders grumbled at the retreating back: "I'd rather he didn't."
Fear. “You think I’m that easy to shut up, do you?” the mage demanded, spitting at his convivial alley companions. “We’ve clearly not met.” Four Qunari hands were pinning him to the soot-covered wall, two near-identical bodies caging him in. Their lumbering scale was like sets of armour towering over an underfed apprentice, but Qunari needed little such compensation. “Beefy boys, aren’t you?”, he’d commented in mad cheer as they’d seized him, his head knocking against the stone as they’d slammed him backwards. The world span, leaving him unable to think in a straight enough line to summon a spell; as it finally came to, inaction gripped him for far more maddening, less logical reasons. What he could comprehend, as the pair pressed in against him, holding him prone for their far worse ringleader, was a tightness in his throat; the speed at which his heart was hammering; the intensity with which his skin was attempting to peel itself from his flesh. The third Qunari - an Arvaarad, if he trusted his shaky memory of terrible helmets and, far more reliable, the Maker’s sick sense of humour - paused by one of the corpses that had greeted Anders as he’d skittered into this alley. The thud had slowed his otherwise racing heart when he'd seen it, making him forget his pursuers in a moment of complicated but no less real grief: it was a Saarebas.
"Sorry, friend…" He had attempted to give the corpse a moment of dignity, with the few seconds he had to work with; "You deserved better." Those moments were long lost now. Stepping to the corpse with no sign of acknowledgement, the battle-reeking Qunari reached down and, with no ceremony at all, wrenched the blinding, muting mask free. Anders heard the neck crack, saw threads pull and snap as the muzzle was torn from the mutilated mouth beneath. There seemed to be an agreement between the group - one that, the trapped mage decided as he eyed that bloodied, smothering mask, he didn't like one bit.
He couldn’t breathe, and yet he laughed: it was either that or scream. “Oooh, the mage’s words are so dangerous! The Qun’s a crock of shit - how’re those words for you? Success and peace mean nothing without personal liberty - there’s another. The fact you need Qamek at all means your educators are failing."
The acts of defiance stirred a mania in him that had long been his companion. He grinned maliciously at his captors: they might have him held, but they couldn’t stop his words, his thoughts. Wherever he had been locked up, whatever he had endured, his caged spirit held on to the conviction that it was free. They could never touch you, then, no matter what they thought they were doing to you. The mask was a type of copper, blackened with blood. Prison bars covered the eye slits, glimpses of the world seen through them visible as the approaching slave-driver brought the mask towards Anders’ resisting face. He’d never seen one from this side: as he strained and turned his head away, he couldn’t help his vision being pulled towards that mouthpiece: dried thread from its previous owner still clung to it, snagged on sharp, metal points that looked like they drove and hooked inwards. Heart hiccuping with fear, Anders’ expression snarled into smugger, ever more savage defiance, turning from this threatened headgear to their own.
"Your helmets look dumb.” The Qunari didn’t react, but still, he smirked venomously. "And I've seen dumb." His palms crackled with warning sparks; as they did, he noticed his captors’ grip loosen - just for a moment, before they reasserted and doubled their efforts, but it was enough. He’d noticed it earlier, too. That was the problem with fear - it crippled everyone, on all sides.
Triggers were a funny thing. They shut you down, wiped your mind clean of thought, of focus, of answers - but he’d always been a creature of survival. And, that apprentice had been alone, facing men who knew exactly how to counter him. These Qunari didn’t know shit…And he wasn’t alone any more. Anders’ connection to his allies’ weapons had snapped and broken, just like the strings on that poor sod's mouth, the aura of healing he always wrapped around them unable to find them at this distance. He was free. Justice waited until the soldiers were close enough. Finally.
He reached into the well.
Electricity filled the sockets of the mask as it was lowered into place. Lightning had consumed the mage's eyes: no pupils, no iris, no whites. The power cracked with a sound like fire snapping through the roofs and homes of the city, the light arcing down his neck and over his arms, covering him until it reached the blood-covered ground. Justice drew his power, their power, to them, turning everything they used to heal others around to its sharpened edge, pouring their need to help into their much-ignored, ever-brewing need to hurt. The Qunari hesitated, but it was too late. "Afraid of mages?” Anders’ voice was no longer his own: it was impossibly deep, reverberating off of another plain as much as the alley walls. “I'll show you why mages are feared."
Lightning coursed through the copper mask, traveling up the arms of the Qunari holding it before the man could think to let it go. That split-second of shock from his captors was all Anders needed: the mage wrenched his arms free, both hands flying to his captors’ mouths, grabbing one in each clawed fist. The smell of melting meat rose as the bodies shook. It only took a few terrible seconds - seconds that Anders would not remember - until they fell. Copper was twisted around the smoking remains of what had once been hands, the metal twisted and fused with bubbles of flesh and bone. The Arvaarad's contorted fingers had become a part of the broken, bent mask’s bars and barbs. Beside him, two more corpses lay charred, each with an expression morphed by pain, yet each one’s mouth melted shut. Attempting to open, the flesh reached down to bind the lips like threads.
Anders stepped over them, walking away. He had to find his friends.