Warnings

"Will you… just stop."

"Stop what, little brother?" She was polishing her staff - the one that had belonged to father, the one that Carver was always embarrassed by because of the naked lady on the top. Malcolm never carried it in Lothering. He'd kept it hidden away. Saoirse suspected the form at the top was based on her mother's. "Got to keep the Aurum clean, or it sticks on ice spells."

"Not the staff. Sod the staff. Stop looking at him like that."

She started guiltily. Ok, so her eyes may have been resting on Anders'….bits a little more than was strictly necessary, but he was the warden. If there were darkspawn about he would be the first to know. It was a simple survival tactic. She arranged a look of innocence and eyed her brother. "I didn't mean to step on your parade, Carver," she said. "You know he fancies men? Tends to go for the dark haired ones too, from what I could…"

"Maker's breath sister, I'm not interested…"

"Really? Because mages can do this grease spell…"

"Stop talking, now!"

She smirked, but Carver, surprisingly, didn't leave. She sighed and set the staff aside. "Carver, I'm old enough to look after myself."

"He's an abomination, sister."

"Yes. And I'm a mage. And you're a… whatever it is that you are. What are you, Carver?"

"Can you take nothing seriously?"

"When I find something to take seriously, I promise you I will," she said sternly. "But at the moment I'm too busy thinking of all the delightful things a good electricity spell can be used for." She waggled her fingers. "Did you know if you target it at the very tip of…"

Carver held up his hands and stood. "Fine. I'm leaving. Mother can't claim I didn't at least try to stop you from destroying your life."

She caught his hand before he could get away. "Wait, did mother put you up to this? Bit of the pot calling the kettle black, surely?"

Carver sighed. "No. I just… I worry about you sister. I don't think you appreciate the danger you are."

She dropped his hand as though it were white hot. "The danger I am?"

Carver looked haunted and guilty and she narrowed her eyes at him. "The… look. I can be worried about my own sister, can't I?"

"You just don't want to go to a wedding where the bride and groom can both electrocute you," she said, smiling a little. But that little slip of his had hurt, more than she thought it would, from him.

"Ha! No Chantry would perform the service. It would collapse first."

"Who's collapsing chantries?" Anders said, approaching with that damned smirk on his face - the one that started all the trouble. "Oh, I'm sure I could get more creative…" damn the man. She thanked the maker it was dark, because she knew she was blushing.

"Not me," Carver muttered, stalking away.

"I don't like to speak ill of your relatives…" Anders said as Carver retreated.

"Please, don't. That's something I like doing far too much."

"Your mother seems like a nice woman…"

Saoirse grinned and motioned for Anders to sit next to her. "It must be something in the male line then," she said. He settled next to her and poked at the fire. They all stank, but for some reason he didn't smell as bad as the rest of them. Maybe it was the warden thing, or maybe it was because he was a mage and managed to wash a bit with ice spells the way she did, but it wasn't offensive to have him next to her the way it was to have pretty much anyone else in the party closer than a few feet.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Just like old times," he said. "Apart from the crushing lyrium headache."

"There's no way you can…" she waved a hand "turn him off?"

He laughed. "I wish there were," he said. "But no. We're blended, you can't turn off part of yourself."

"Huh." She rested her chin on her hand and watched his long fingers hand as they gripped the stick. It was nice, having him next to her like this, but her mind kept circling around what Carver had said.

"Your brother seems particularly grumpy today," Anders said.

"The boy has something permanently wedged up his arse," she said forcefully. Anders cocked an eyebrow and she sighed. "He's been like that ever since we rescued Keran."

"First time he's seen blood magic then?"

"Yes. Bit of a pity, actually. I half hoped he and Merrill might…"

"You'd set your own brother up with a blood mage?"

She shrugged and grinned. "It'd get me off the hook for fancying an abomination," she said.

Anders' face fell and he coughed a little. "Well, he has a point. I'm not a good target for fancying."

She rolled her eyes. "It's not like I've got a lot of options," she said, waving a hand. "Elves who can shove their fists through my chest and hate mages, dwarves who have unhealthy obsessions with crossbows, darkspawn, templars… I really should have stayed in Lothering."

He grinned. "There's always Isabela," he said.

"Oh yes, there's always Isabela. Maybe she'd deign to tell me exactly how to do that electricity thing."

He waggled his finger. "Now that is a trade secret. You'd have to learn it from the source."

"Are you offering?" she raised her eyebrow at him. He raised his hands, frown returning.

"No."

She sighed. "Fine. Well, you get second watch then. As punishment for…"

"Being an abomination?"

"Rejecting me," she shot back, pointing at him. He laughed and got to his feet, heading to his bedroll.

"Bastard," she muttered under her breath.

He wasn't screaming, exactly, but she got the impression that wasn't by choice. She'd had nightmares, but never like what he was obviously having. He thrashed from side to side so violently he was in danger of rolling into the fire.

When cracks of blue light appeared on his face she figured now would be a good time to wake him - the dwarves and other expedition members probably didn't need to know they were traveling with an abomination.

"Anders," she hissed in his ear, shaking his arm. "Anders, you're dreaming, wake up."

"Late," he mumbled. "Why are they late…?"

"Anders," his eyes flew open, brown and wide. She could feel the throb of his pulse under her fingers - he was obviously terrified.

"Saoirse," he said, and his hand gripped her arm, hard. "Oh, thank the Maker." There was so much feeling in his voice that she almost flinched from it, a level of desperation she'd only heard from people who were incapacitated from fear.

"Bad dream?"

He sat up, groaning and letting her arm go. "Nothing new there," he muttered.

"This warden business seems a bit excessive," she said.

He shrugged. "…wasn't a warden dream."

"You were muttering about someone being late. I'd assumed you weren't talking about the archdemon."

Even in the half light from the lyrium and the dying campfire she saw the violent shudder that wracked him at her words. He hugged his arms around his chest and took deep breath that was almost a sob. She settled back on her heels, unwilling to leave him in this state, unsure of what to do to bring him out of it. "I would pretend to be tactful and distant," she said after a moment, "but I'm way, way too curious. How could someone being late make you…"

"… gibber with fear?" he said, his voice shaking.

"Yes."

He ran a hand through his hair. "You know, I could explain it to you, but I doubt you'd understand."

"Try me."

"Saoirse it's not that I don't appreciate you trying to be nice to me…"

"Was it something to do with the Tower?" she asked. The firelight glinted off his eyes as he looked up at her, the answer written plain on his face. She nodded. "I thought so. Look - I don't know much about the Tower, but I am a mage - you could probably do with a bit of venting. I vent about Carver to you all the time - you could consider this pay back?"

He looked at her, long and hard. "You can't know how lucky you are not to be captured," he said then, softly. "I wish… I wish my parents had been as…"

She shrugged. "So tell me," she said. "I know you want to."

"They put me in solitary confinement," he said then, his voice hoarse. "For a year. After my sixth escape."

"Solitary?"

The shadow that was his head nodded. "It's not something you could understand - you've never had to… you never will…" the cracks of blue started to appear again and she shrank back. "No mage should ever have to go through that. They had no right." His voice boomed and she leaned forward and grasped his arm.

"Anders!"

"Unngh…" he bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Stupid. Stupid of me. Sorry. I shouldn't have…"

"It will help, you know. If you talk about it." He shook his head again.

"You should go to sleep. It's close enough to my watch."

She frowned at him, even though she knew he couldn't see it. "My father was in the Tower," she said finally. "He never talked about it. To anyone. I sometimes think he might have been better off if he did."

There was a long silence. She got to her feet, finally, intending to go back to sleep, or attempt to, but his voice cut through the darkness and she stopped.

"Routine is important," he said, and his voice was flat and cold. "When you're alone. The cell had no windows, no natural light, and they bound my hands so I couldn't make any. There's no way to tell what time of day it is. So you have to count the days by when your meals come. Because they don't want you to starve to death, that would defeat the purpose. What they want… what they need to happen is for you to be possessed. If you're possessed they can kill you, without betraying chantry law the way the Templars here do all the time."

"You know they're defying Chantry law in Kirkwall?" she said.

His eyes flashed blue for a second. "Karl was Harrowed. He'd been Harrowed for fifteen years. I could point you to the direct line that prohibits that, if I had the right volume with me."

She nodded. "So, tranquility for you wasn't an option."

"In Ferelden, the Templars still believe. Greagior may be a total prick, but at least he obeys the law. When he can. Tranquiling harrowed mages is not allowed. Killing mages who haven't shown they're using blood magic is not allowed. Lucky for me the Templars at the Tower still cared about that sort of thing."

The words were pouring out of him like a torrent, now. Her hands itched - she wanted to hug him, take his hand, do something… but she had to be content with sitting across from him, not touching, just… listening.

"So, mealtimes are regular, in the Tower, and they obviously used to feed me just after they fed the rest of the mages. Different food, sure, but there was always enough of it and it always came at the same time… until…"

"What?"

"They changed my guard every now and then. It's boring, being the guard on solitary. The sort of thing they do to punish Templars who've done the wrong thing. Go and stand outside Anders' cell. Don't talk to him, if you talk to him we'll punish you. He might be possessed. He probably is. Give him his meals. Make sure he's not dead. Don't talk to him…

"… they replaced the guard I had the first few months with a bloke I… had a run in with. William, his name was. He was one of the ones who took me from my parents…" she saw him shudder again, and his arms wrapped even tighter around his middle. "Karl warned me about him. I was lucky enough not to have… experienced the things Karl warned me about, but I… suffice to say he wanted to get back at me. So he started messing up the meal times."

She frowned and he made a desperate sound. "See, you don't understand… it's impossible for you to understand. Because you don't know what it's like… to have no frame of reference for time passing - it's the worst kind of madness." He was rocking back and forth now, and she couldn't deny it, she was frightened. For him, of him, of what he was telling her, of something she'd never truly been frightened of before. Or at least, frightened enough.

Oh, her father had tried to tell her she needed to be more careful, but she'd never truly listened, because for all the haunted, hunted looks he'd given her he'd never ever told her what the circle was actually like.

Anders was right, she had no idea why or how it could be so terrifying for him. But she could see that it was. And she could see he needed to talk about it, and so she shoved her bedroll next to his and they sat in the almost darkness, talking, well past her watch, and his, and by the end of it, when she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of a lonely and desperate man and his deal with a spirit that had begun to make a whole new kind of sense to her.

At least now he's never alone, she thought, when she woke the next morning, or whatever time it was down here (no wonder he's having flashbacks) to see him sleeping peacefully next to her, strands of blond hair loose across his face.

"Maker's breath, sister, please tell me you've still got all your clothes on."

Anders' eyes flew open and met hers and she smirked, trying to make it as dirty as she possibly could, and was rewarded with a blush. "Honestly Carver," she said, pushing herself up to reveal that she still had her robes on, as did Anders. "If you think you have to take your clothes off to have sex you really haven't been going to the Rose often enough."

When they were on their way again, she felt an arm on her shoulder and looked back to see Anders.

"Thank you," he said simply. She smiled at him and squeezed his hand, gloved fingers lingering for a few seconds before he let go.

Something loosened in her chest, then, as she watched him walk ahead of her. Truce for now, Anders, she thought.

For now.

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