Work Text:
Anders awoke in an unfamiliar room.
This wasn't an uncommon occurrence for him while on the run, he must've bribed and begged and flirted his way into hundreds of different beds over the years. It was better to wake up in bed with a stranger than a cell, after all.
But something about this room made him nervous. It was still and quiet like a sickroom, with thick curtains pulled tightly across the windows, letting in only the thinnest rays of moonlight. What little of the furniture he could see was grand but old, shabby from years of use. It was the kind of room you could really believe was haunted, if you allowed yourself to.
A little anxious, Anders tried to sit up and winced as pain shot through him. Every muscle in his body felt sore and weak, as though he'd just been beaten. This, too, wasn't uncommon. Something about apostates attracted violent lovers.
A shuffling in the corner startled him and he realised, with a sharp spike of fear, that he wasn't alone.
"Hello?" he said, struggling again to sit up.
His body wasn't co-operating, and the sense that something was wrong began to press in on him, making him reckless with fear. He tried to throw himself from the bed, suddenly desperate to escape the room and his invisible observer.
"Don't do that," a sharp voice said suddenly – it sounded like a man.
Anders immediately stopped moving, shrinking back into the pillows as he turned his head towards the source of the sound. There was a dark figure reclining in a chair in the darkest part of the room; at a first glance, Anders had taken him for a pile of blankets, but looking closer he could see the outline of a tall, thin man.
He swallowed. If he could only remember how he'd got here, he'd know exactly how to play this man, whether to flirt or to threaten or to beg.
At random, he chose a strategy that had worked in the past and played it out, blinking weakly at figure and trying his best to sound seductive.
"Aren't you cold?" he asked, "why don't you come back to bed?"
The man stood up abruptly. Anders saw him more clearly for a moment as he passed through a patch of moonlight – he was younger than he'd been picturing, perhaps Anders' age, and surprisingly handsome – he avoided looking at Anders and hurried from the room, closing the door behind him and turning a key in the lock after. Anders sighed as the familiar feeling of being held captive washed over him.
Just as his eyes were beginning to feel heavy, the bedroom door opened again. The man reappeared, mumbling something beneath his breath to a woman who followed closely behind him. Nervously, he approached Anders' bedside and strick a match, lighting a fat candle and illuminating the room.
Somehow, the wavering light made the room seem even more sinister. Dark shadows danced up and down the walls, catching themselves on the threadbare furniture and brushing up against each other. It was so overwhelming that Anders worried he might vomit.
He looked up at his captors. They didn't seem too threatening. The woman smiled down at him anxiously, reaching out to pat the bed linens.
"It's good to see you awake," she said, with a slight Orlesian accent, "we were beginning to worry."
Anders tried to speak but found he couldn't, his throat tight and sore. Noticing this, the man took a glass from the bedside table and held it to Anders' lips impatiently, waiting for him to drink whatever was inside. It was humiliating, but Anders took a few sips, finding the glass to be full of good, clean water.
When he was done, the man took the glass away and Anders, exhausted, leaned back against the pillows.
"You've been delirious for a week," the man said seriously, "we weren't sure you'd ever fully wake."
A week. Anders looked down at himself and saw that he'd been changed into a clean nightgown, with his own clothes nowhere to be seen. He thought about the few belongings he'd had on him when he'd left the Circle and his heart contracted – his only coat, his boots, his letters.
"I can't-" he started, trying and failing once again to sit up, "I can't stay here."
But he was exhausted. Already, he found his consciousness fading, weak from sickness and the struggle against it. He sucked in thick lungfuls of air, hands beginning to shake.
"Rest now," the man said seriously, taking his blanket and pulling it more securely around his shoulders, "Maker knows you need it."
Of course, it turned out that his captors were his saviours. Henry and Jeanette, as they introduced themselves the next morning, had found him curled up and on the brink of death in the forest a mile or so from their small country house. They'd carried him home and bundled him up, spending a week spooning broth into his mouth as he drifted in and out of consciousness, delirious with fever.
"The Maker must've been watching over you," Jeanette had explained when she'd told the story, "this house is usually empty in the winter. We're only here because Henry wanted some peace and quiet for his work, and of course the cities are so hectic these days after the Blight."
The two of them were newly married and self-conscious about it. Henry was some kind of writer, an academic who wrote long difficult essays on history and sent them off to Orlesian universities to be rejected. The room Anders had awoken in was his study, with the bed laid out in anticipation of bouts of writing where he lad to lock himself away for days on end.
When Anders had asked him about it, he'd tried to explain himself, a little red in the face, "I'm up at all hours when I'm inspired. I wouldn't want to bother Jeanie with my comings and goings."
Was this love outside of the Circle? Anders remembered nights where he'd risked beatings to climb out of his own bed and sneak into Karl's. He couldn't imagine depriving himself of something so rare and sacred in the name of work, and bad work at that.
It was weeks before he was strong enough to leave his sickbed. Henry and Jeanette continued to care for him with surprising tenderness, sitting at his bedside for hours at a time, talking to him and keeping him sane. Jeanette grew very fond of him, and Henry seemed glad that she had someone to talk to while he worked.
As he recovered, he regained his memory of what had happened to him piece-by-piece. He remembered the cold night he'd escaped the Circle, stealing out of an unlocked door under the cover of a distraction he'd spent weeks preparing. He'd managed to work his way up North for several days, travelling towards Amaranthine, before getting lost and running out of supplies. If he hadn't been found, it would have been a stupid, stereotypical death for an escaped Circle mage.
It was only natural that Anders never told them he was an apostate. It would ruin a good thing, make it too complicated. They both seemed to sense that he was hiding something and tried to draw it out of him with leading questions and sympathetic gestures but he held firm, no matter how painful it became.
The more he revealed about himself, though, the harder it was to continue hiding. He found that stories about his childhood became neutered, anecdotes and jokes thin with a lack of context, friends stripped of their personalities. It hurt him, sometimes, to trail off in the middle of a sentence and keep something to himself. He could tell it hurt his new friends, too, but past experience told him that the risk wasn't worth the pain it might cause.
He came close to being found out sometimes. Circle mages were an oddity. Henry thought his literacy to be strange, though he enjoyed having someone willing to read his writing and talk about academic topics he thought to be above his wife's understanding.
"I knew you were educated when we brought you in," he's said as he watched Anders' reading, "your pockets were full of letters."
Mages rarely had possessions to call their own, maybe a favourite quill snatched from the library or something small crafted by a friend. Letters were Anders' vice – he collected kind words sent his way, reading and rereading them to try and remind himself that he existed. When locked in solitary confinement, he often tried to keep himself sane by closing his eyes and trying to remember the exact wording of the letters, the exact way the ink lined the page.
His favourite letters, the ones he could never leave the Circle without, were from Karl. Karl had never been the best writer, but his feelings were strong enough that they translated into his short, muddled sentences. Anders barely needed to read them anymore, just pressing a hand into his pocket and feeling the worn, delicate paper was enough to put him at ease.
The thought of Henry reading the letters with his clinical, academic eye made him sick. Sicker, even, than the fear of being found out as an apostate.
"Those are private," he said, aware that he sounded like a child.
Henry smiled at him, "don't worry, I didn't read them. A man's business is his own. I'll give them back to you when you're well."
Anders wasn't sure whether he would ever really be 'well', his body weakened and strange after his illness, but he soon found himself able to leave his bed and roam the rest of the house.
The rest of the house was strange, growing cleaner and more comfortable the further he ventured from Henry's study. It was as though the rot started there, spreading outwards as it wormed its way through the corridors. But what the rot meant he had no idea – there was nothing wrong with the room, beyond the slight unease it put him at.
He took it upon himself to help as much as he could with cooking and cleaning. His hosts had dismissed their staff for the year, some fad amongst the lower nobility to preserve diminished funds after the Blight. They both tried to protest against Anders' help, but he could tell they were relieved by it.
He never used magic. Even when he was alone, he always resisted the urge to lighten his workload with a quick spell. It felt wrong, somehow, ungrateful, to contaminate their belongings with his spells. He usually made fun of mages who thought this way – he knew that magic was natural and good and only suppressed by those who misunderstood it – but it was surprisingly easy to fall into the mindset that he was, in a way, poison.
One evening, Anders found himself curled up by the fire next to Jeanette. The two of them had taken on the daunting task of re-hemming an old pair of curtains that Henry had insisted on moving to another room. The fabric was thick and tough, resistant to their efforts.
"So," Jeanette said, "are you going to continue on to Amaranthine when you're well enough to travel?"
The needle slipped through Anders' fingers and he pricked himself, yelping. His hands had been clumsy since his illness, so Jeanette didn't comment beyond eyeing him sympathetically.
"Yes," he said, once he'd composed himself, "though I don't remember telling you that's where I was headed."
"You talked about it a lot in that first week. You kept mumbling it – Amaranthine, I need to get to Amaranthine. Maker knows why you'd want to go there, though, the city has barely been keeping itself afloat since the Blight and the farmland has been ravaged."
What else had he said while barely conscious? "I see."
"It's a few days from here on foot," Jeanette continued, "but Henry knows a man in the village with a horse and cart who does business there regularly. He might be able to take us along someday, if you like."
"Really? That sounds perfect, if it's not too much trouble."
Jeanette smiled, "I've never seen someone so excited to go to Amaranthine – there must be something very special waiting for you there."
Not quite. What waited in Amaranthine was a port and a boat and a way out of this Maker-forsaken country that had never done anything for him. And, of course, on the other side of the ocean, there was Karl.
Anders flushed, "it's nothing exciting. Just business."
"Come on, Anders, drop the mystery for a moment. No man ever gets this excited about anything unless there's a woman involved."
It was the kind of thing that made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Anders smiled and kept his eyes on his needlework.
"I knew it!" Jeanette cried, "why didn't you say anything? We could've sent word to your lover if we'd known she existed. She must be worried sick."
It had been two years since he and Karl had managed to exchange letters. Sick was an understatement, "it's complicated," he mumbled.
Jeanette looked as though she was about to say something else, but she was interrupted by the front door being flung open and Henry calling out wildly from the hallway. It was the first time he'd raised his voice in the few weeks that Anders had known him, and he was surprised to find that the sound made him itch with anxiety; he exchanged a glance with Jeanette, who looked as nervous as he felt.
"Henry, love?" she called, rising to her feet, "are you alright?"
Henry came racing down the hall and burst into the room. His cheeks were red and he was still wearing his coat, shaking snow out onto the rug that he usually fussed over.
"They love it!" he said, breathless, "the professors in Orlais – they read my paper and they love it. I just got word back, they want to commission me for a book, a whole series of essays. Fucking finally!"
He was happier than Anders had ever seen him, almost giddy with joy. Jeanette tried to embrace him but he brushed her aside, raising his arms and smiling up at the ceiling, almost in prayer.
"We have to celebrate," he said, "Jeanie, go fetch some glasses."
Jeanette grumbled at being ordered about but left the room. Henry smiled at Anders and beckoned for him to follow.
"Come on," he said, "you strike me as a man who can appreciate a good wine."
Anders had never been in a wine cellar before. It felt like a dungeon; quiet and damp and cold and windowless. Descending the stairs had his stomach twisting with anxiety and he was filled with a strange urge to run, as though he might find templars lying in wait for him there.
Oblivious to his discomfort, Henry began to browse the shelves of wine. His collection wasn't vast, with most shelves only holding a handful of bottles, but it seemed old. Inherited, perhaps.
"This is a good sign," Henry said absently, "I'm sure you know how hard it can be to get a foothold in Orlesian academia."
Anders laughed. He had no idea.
"I'm happy for you," he said.
Henry turned to smile at him, "thank you, Anders."
He gestured for him to come closer, and Anders did so reluctantly. The scent of damp became more overpowering the further into the cellar he ventured, and he found his nose wrinkling involuntarily, making Henry laugh.
"I really took you for a wine man, but I see I was mistaken."
"No, I like wine. I just don't like…" he trailed off, trying to find the right words, "to tell you the truth, I'm a little claustrophobic."
"Oh!"
Henry put down the bottle of wine and reached out, touching Anders gently on the shoulder. It was a little patronising, but he sensed the good intent and smiled, as though comforted. Henry's hand lingered for a moment longer than it should have before he dropped it, turning his face away.
"I'm the opposite," he said, "I like quiet, small spaces. They feel safe. Down here, I know I'm really alone when I want to be."
There was some meaning behind his words, but Anders couldn't grasp it. He was caught between processing the lingering feeling of Henry's hand on his shoulder and the way the damp made his heart pound in his chest. He wanted to be back upstairs by the fire.
"Don't you agree?" Henry asked, "that it feels very lonely, down here?"
Anders swallowed the lump in his throat, "actually," he said, "I think being alone is what frightens me the most."
Henry shook his head, but didn't press the issue. He seemed disappointed.
A few hours later, the three of them were steaming drunk. It had been months since Anders had last had a drink, and the wine had gone to his head almost instantly. He sat sprawled out on the floor, head resting against Jeanette's skirts as she sat in her usual armchair.
Maybe it was the wine or maybe it was the lingering unease brought on by his trip to the cellar, but Anders kept feeling as though he was in the Circle again. He'd blink, and suddenly he was curled up in the apprentice dormitory, huddled by the fire with a dozen other shivering mages. Jeanette's soft dress became a coarse robe, the rug beneath him became the sheets he'd dragged from his bed in an attempt to keep warm.
It was stupid. But he couldn't shake the feeling that if he braved the cold and stepped outside to look at the house, he'd find it had transformed into a tower, stretching high up into the sky.
"Anders is falling asleep," Jeanette giggled, as though her eyelids hadn't been drooping as well.
Anders sat up straight, blinking his heavy eyes. He chanced a look at Henry, who was staring at him intently.
After silently holding his gaze for a moment, Henry hauled himself out of his chair and stood there swaying for a moment.
"Need a piss," he muttered, attempting to steady himself. Looking at Anders one last time, he stumbled out of the room, bumping into a table and almost knocking over a vase on his way.
Once he was gone, Jeanette leaned down over Anders and draped her arms around his neck. She was warm and smelled strongly of wine – she must've drunk twice as much as Anders had.
"Anders," she whispered, her breath tickling his cheek, "guess what?"
"What?"
"I know your secret."
Anders stiffened, Jeanette's arms suddenly feeling like a cage.
"Oh?" he said, feigning ignorance, "and what's that?"
"Your lover in Amaranthine. You haven't been completely honest with me, have you? About who they are – what they are?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
For a moment, he was afraid Jeanette was going to try to strangle him. People often had inflated senses of how easily they could overpower a mage, sure that if they could prevent them from speaking or moving their hands, they could somehow cut off their powers. They were wrong. Anders braced himself, terrified of what he might do if cornered.
"Karl," she whispered in his ear, "that's his name isn't it? You kept crying out for him when you were unwell. I thought he might be your brother or – well, it's unusual, is all. To be a man and take another man as a lover."
"Oh."
"Why did you hide it from us? Did you think we'd judge you?"
If only she knew the full story. She would judge him then, even if she didn't want to. She would feel betrayed, confused, upset that she had welcomed him under her roof under false assumptions that he'd done nothing to correct. It had been about survival at first, not wanting to upset the people who held his life in their hands; but now, he wasn't sure he could bear her looking at him differently.
"I told you it was complicated."
"Have a little faith in me, Anders, please? Tell me about him."
He sighed, "there's not much to tell. We were together for some time and then we were separated. We've been trying to reconnect for years, but something always seems to come up-"
"Like the Blight?"
"I wish," he grimaced, realising too late that it would've been the perfect cover story, "but it was just people in our case, thinking they knew what was best for us, trying to dictate our lives. Idiots."
Jeanette sat back and was silent for a long moment, her fingers still knotted in Anders' hair, pulling at it absentmindedly.
"I always wondered how it worked. Between two men, I mean."
"You never tried using your imagination?"
Jeanette made a sound of disgust and pinched his ear, "not like that! I just – I'm not naive, I know that certain people have… certain preferences. But what did he give you that was so different to what someone else could offer? How did you decide that he was worth it, over settling down and living a quiet life with someone else?"
"Does everything have to be so complicated? We were friends first, and everything else fell into place after. Was it not the same for you and Henry?"
"But we're normal."
"Hah!"
"You know what I mean. I suppose I just wondered whether you never considered spending your life with a woman, even if you'd be less happy with her than with... Karl."
Anders stretched out his long legs, turning his head to grin up at Jeanette, "a woman like you? I'm flattered."
"Don't let Henry hear you say that, you flirt," Jeanette laughed, "he might fly into a jealous rage and throw you out."
There was a slight edge to her voice, as though she was desperately trying to communicate something to Anders. He understood what it was and looked away from it.
Just then, Henry reappeared in the doorway and coughed loudly, surprising them both. When Anders turned, he was surprised to see his face serious and drawn, his good mood from earlier suddenly soured. It was strange to see; Anders had never taken him for a melancholy drunk.
"Time for bed, I think," he said quietly.
Jeanette sighed, "you won't have just one more drink?"
He wouldn't. Jeanette negotiated with him for a moment more, like a child trying to delay her bedtime, before she eventually gave up and stumbled out of her chair, following him out of the room. Before she left, she turned and gave Anders a shy little wave and mouthed a silent, "goodnight."
Anders made his own way up to the room that he'd started to think of as his own. He stripped off his clothes and began to change into his nightgown by the light of the moon. Between the wine still lingering in his bloodstream and the warm, quiet conversation from earlier, he felt oddly relaxed. He lingered for a moment in front of the mirror, untying it and combing at it with his fingers.
It was hard not to feel like he was lying when he spoke about Karl to other people. He flattened their relationship into lovers because it was easy to understand – my lover across the ocean, my lover who was taken away from me – a status that everyone was at least a little familiar with. But Karl was simultaneously more and less to him than that; they had been long enough apart that they were hardly lovers anymore, but the time they had spent together had been more intense than most people could comprehend, a love compressed and crushed like a sweet berry between his teeth.
He sighed and gave up on playing with his hair, closing the curtains and climbing into bed. His eyelids were heavy and he found himself sighing with relief as his head sank against the soft, sweet-smelling pillow. He would miss this bed more than anything when it was time for him to move on.
And then, as he was drifting off to sleep, he heard the doorknob turn.
Anders stiffened and closed his eyes tight. Fear lurched in his stomach, old instincts and memories resurfacing and making his palms sweat.
"Are you awake?" a voice hissed into the darkness.
Opening his eyes, Anders saw Henry hunched in the doorway, gripping the doorknob in one hand. He was pale and wild, looking ghostly in his white nightgown.
Sitting up, Anders couldn't help his heart from beating a little faster, "is everything all right?" he asked.
Henry didn't speak. He drifted into the room like a man possessed, letting the door swing shut behind him. Though he was still a little unsteady from the wine, he moved slowly and gracefully, footsteps barely making a sound on the thick rug.
There was a familiar look on his face, one Anders had seen on his own face in the mirror many times. He was hungry and afraid. Suddenly, Anders was taken back to the first time he'd approached someone else's bed as an apprentice, so broken and tired and desperate that he was willing to risk it all to be held.
A desperate man could be dangerous. He drew back, watching Henry carefully.
Without a word, Henry stopped in front of the bed. He reached down and touched the blanket with a tentative hand, on the verge of making a decision. It was so tempting to invite him inside. Anders found that he wasn't that attracted to him, but it had been so long since he'd been in bed with someone he knew and liked, since he'd been kissed and touched with anything approaching affection. Henry was strange and secretive, but he seemed like he would be gentle.
In the next room, Jeanette lay alone in bed. Did she know where he was? Did she suspect? Her curiosity from earlier was beginning to look less and less like curiosity.
"Henry," Anders murmured.
Taking it as an invitation, Henry peeled back the duvet and slipped into bed beside Anders. He was warm. After a moment of hesitation, he took Anders' outstretched hand and pressed it against his chest.
"I know about your lover," he said, "Jeanette just told me, but I knew before. You used to cry for him when you were sick."
Anders smiled at him, "Jeanette was surprised."
"I wasn't."
He was growing in confidence. He reached out and pressed a hand to Anders' back, caressing him as he looked him in the eye. Anders knew that he should resist, but he basked in the touch for a moment, feeling as Henry's hand drifted lower and lower until it was tugging at the hem of his nightgown.
Anders pulled away, "wait."
"Your lover won't mind," Henry whispered roughly, "he doesn't need to know."
"Never mind my lover, what about Jeanette?"
"Fuck Jeanette."
He touch remained gentle, but there was an air of authority to his voice that scared Anders. It was a tone often taken with mages, an assumption that you could do whatever you wanted to them, that you deserved to. Maybe he'd guessed it somehow, from Anders' delirious ravings, or maybe he could just sense it, either way he knew that there was a hierarchy here, and he was at the top of it.
"Don't do this," he said, taking Henry's hands and pulling them away from his body, "it's not right."
Henry frowned, "what? Don't act so coy, I'm not asking you to marry me. Don't you think I'm owed a little something after you've been under my roof, eating my food and drinking my wine, for a month?"
He reached out for Anders again, trying to hook an arm around his shoulder, and Anders finally snapped. He pushed Henry's chest with enough force to topple him out of bed, landing on the floor with a heavy thud. He cried out with anger and leapt to his feet, raising a fist to retaliate. He would have followed through with it had the unmistakable sounds of Jeanette's footsteps in the hallway hadn't distracted him.
Heart pounding in his chest, Anders looked up at him, "go back to your wife, Henry."
They didn't speak to each other after that. The atmosphere in the house became frosty and strange. If Jeanette suspected something had passed between the two of them, she pretended to remain oblivious, acting confused and hurt by their sudden distance and Henry's volatile moods.
Amaranthine became a top priority for Anders. He went down to the village himself to speak to the merchant willing to bring him along, striking a bad deal out of desperation to be taken away as soon as possible. When he announced the date of his departure, Jeanette and Henry took it without surprise. All questions of whether he was well enough to travel, his body still weak and prone to dizzy spells, were forgotten.
"You must write to me," Jeanette had whispered to him one day, when she was sure Henry was out of earshot, "it's been so nice to make a new friend."
Henry was rarely out of earshot, however. He grew paranoid and watchful, keeping the two of them apart. Anders knew that he was afraid of his secret being revealed, that something would be revealed either by accident or out of spite. And he was right to be worried. Anders had never pretended to not be petty.
On the eve of Anders' departure, Henry was even moodier than usual. There was an impatience in him that Anders recognised, a prisoner waiting desperately for a change of scenery. He paced up and down hallways and muttered odd words to himself, occasionally darting to his desk to write a few sentences before jumping up again and resuming his pacing.
Just before sunset, Henry announced that he intended to walk down to the village and ask after a letter he was expecting. It was a cold evening, too cold for a comfortable walk, but no amount of reasoning from Jeanette could convince him to stay home. He pulled his coat on and slammed the door hard, leaving nothing in his wake but an uneasy silence.
Jeanette wouldn't look Anders in the eye, "don't mind him," she said, "there's no sense in letting his moods spoil your last night here."
She'd spent all afternoon cooking a farewell dinner for Anders, roasted beef and thick gravy and more vegetables than Anders thought was possible to get in the dead of winter. She'd insisted on doing it, despite how much she hated every second she spent in the kitchen. There was a long cut on her finger from where her hand had slipped while peeling vegetables, and Anders felt bitterly sorry that he couldn't heal it for her.
He smiled, "he's under a lot of pressure. I understand."
Henry was gone for longer than Anders had expected. He drifted upstairs to his bedroom and stood in front of the window, staring at the darkness outside. It was strange to think that only a month ago, he'd been clawing his way through the Ferelden wilderness that pressed in on the house, sure that he wouldn't survive; it was stranger still to think that Jeanette and Henry had existed before him, living their quiet, sad lives uninterrupted. Maybe things would've been better for them if they'd left him to die.
As he was staring out the window, he saw Henry hurrying up the path that led to the house. He was clenched in on himself, shoulders and neck hunched. Anders knew his look – a man enraged, humiliated. Something in his stomach sank, and he wasn't at all surprised when the sound of the door slamming was soon accompanied by raised voices.
It took him longer than he'd care to admit, but he eventually found the courage to tear himself from the windowsill and creep downstairs. The sounds were coming from the kitchen, loud and frenzied – it was the kind of argument you heard carry from other rooms and buildings while thanking the Maker that you weren't involved, maybe quickening your pace to put distance between yourself and the sound.
Carefully, Anders cracked open the kitchen door and peered inside.
Henry had Jeanette backed into a corner and was berating her loudly, wagging his finger as though he was talking to a child. Jeanette was listening to him with barely-concealed rage, cutting in loudly whenever he paused for breath. It was madness. Anders clung to the door, feeling embarrassed to have caught them in such an intimate moment and considering turning to leave them to it.
But then Jeanette caught sight of him and smiled, "and here he is."
Henry's back stiffened but he didn't turn around. He was still wearing his overcoat, hair soaked from the rain. For the first time, Anders found himself oddly attracted to him – the thought passed his mind without permission, and he felt suddenly sick.
"I didn't mean to intrude."
"No," Jeanette said, still smiling, "come in. We were just talking about you."
"No we weren't. Fuck off, Anders."
They were the first words Henry had said to him since coming into his bed and they felt like a punch to the gut. Anders found his anger finally and stood up straight, frowning.
"Don't tell me to fuck off."
Something about staying here in this house, with these people, had made him forget that he had a spine. He'd spent so long bending himself this way and that to make them like him that he'd forgotten how to be annoying, how to get in the way and stand up for himself. It was satisfying to see Henry clench his fists in rage at his disobedience.
Henry turned around and looked at him coldly, "are you two in this together, is that it? Do you intend to ruin me?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Jeanette sighed, "he's upset because I told him I'd noticed him sneaking into your room the other night. I only pointed it out as a point of hypocrisy after he accused me of having an affair."
"Were you?" Anders asked, suddenly curious. It had never occurred to him that Jeanette might have secrets too.
"Does it matter?"
Henry threw his hands up, "yes, it matters! You're my wife, you're supposed to be faithful. What I do is my own business –"
"Oh, your business. The reason you don't want me is your business, the reason you won't touch me, hate touching me so much that I wondered whether something was wrong with me, is your business and nobody else's?"
She was fumbling with something behind her back, hands shaking as Henry cornered her against the kitchen counter. Anders' own body itched as he suppressed the urge to step in, the rising fever of the scene making the lyrium in his blood sing.
"Don't." Henry said, turning to her.
"What? Don't what? Tell the truth? I know this isn't the first time – I saw the way you looked at the servants back in Orlais. I put up with it, because I loved you and wanted to marry you. Do you know how sad that is? To spend months lying to myself, pretending I didn't know you were–"
"I said, don't!"
Henry raised his hand, ready to strike her, but Jeanette was faster than him. Before Anders even had a chance to shout out a warning, she'd thrust a kitchen knife deep between his ribs.
Suddenly, Henry was on the floor, clutching his side and howling. Anders watched with a spreading sensation of cold terror as he watched blood trickle from between his fingers.
Jeanette dropped the knife, "oh Maker."
"Shit." Anders agreed.
"I didn't mean to-"
But the damage was done. They both watched as Henry wailed, bleeding out on the floor. He was wheezing, fighting for breath – just by looking at him, Anders could tell that the knife had been plunged in deep enough to puncture one of his lungs. If Jeanette had been aiming to kill, she might've been proud.
But she was pale and shaking, edging away from Henry in horror.
"I only meant to cut his hand," she said, looking down at him, "I only wanted to teach him a lesson."
Anders had seen this play out too many times before, an apprentice tired of being kicked lashing out at a templar, an apprentice snapping as their last nerve frayed. He looked at Jeanette hopelessly.
"I don't want him to die," she said.
It would've been so easy for Anders to heal him. It had barely been a minute since he'd been stabbed, and he was clutching the wound tightly enough that he hadn't yet lost a dangerous amount of blood. If Anders got down on his knees and used his magic, the only thing he had to offer the people who had saved his life all those weeks ago, Henry would live.
But he was frozen on the spot, unable to force himself to move. It was stupid, selfish, but he was stuck clinging to the fact that Jeanette trusted him. Nobody trusted an apostate.
Henry reached out for him, dragging himself across the floor.
"Please," he gasped, "please help me. Heal me."
So he knew. Of course he knew. He'd probably read Anders letters the second he'd realised what they were.
Anders stepped backwards, away from his grasp, "I'm sorry."
Realising that Anders wasn't going to save him, Henry curled up on the floor and began to weep.
"What do we do?" Jeanette asked.
"There's nothing we can do. He'll be dead by the time we can fetch a healer."
"Can't we bandage the wound? Isn't there anything-"
"It's too deep."
Henry was barely conscious now, slumped over on the floor and making wounded, terrified sounds. He didn't have long.
"Do you want to be alone with him for a moment?" Anders asked, the healer in him taking control for a moment, "say goodbye?"
"No."
Jeanette crossed the room to stand beside Anders, and together they watched as Henry took his last shuddering breath. It was only once they were sure he was gone that Jeanette began to cry, kneeling beside him and taking him into her arms.
"Oh Maker," she cried, kissing his cheek, "oh Maker, what have I done?"
"It was self defence," Anders said uselessly, "he was going to hit you. And he'd done it before."
"Yes – hit! I stabbed him! Why? Why did I do that? It wasn't his fault, he was angry, I provoked him. He was just so stupid."
She shook Henry's body with each word, his limp head lolling against her neck. Anders had seen plenty of gruesome sights in his time and hardly considered himself squeamish, but this scene made his stomach turn badly enough that he had to press a hand to his mouth and close his eyes for a moment.
They stayed like that for a long time, Jeanette weeping and Anders swallowing bile. Outside, rain beat against the windows and the house groaned in time with the wind, as though digesting their sorrow.
Just as Anders thought he couldn't stand to be in that kitchen a moment longer, he heard the unmistakable sound of voices outside, heading up to the path towards the house. They were loud and their cadence, clipped and rough at the same time, was unmistakable. The templars had finally caught up to him.
It was the stupidest, funniest time for them to have arrived. If they'd come a day later, he'd have been long gone and safe in the bustling crowds of Amaranthine. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time at the absurdity of the situation.
A strangled sound escaped his throat, breaking Jeanette out of her grief for a moment, "Anders?"
"Don't speak!"
Jeanette went silent, clinging to Henry's body tightly. Anders shut the kitchen door and crouched down beside her, "do you hear that?" he hissed.
She nodded, "we can't let anyone see this. I'll be hanged!"
"They're here for me. They're templars. You know what that means, don't you?"
For a moment, Anders was afraid that she didn't. She looked at him, confused, before understanding dawned on her face followed by the fear that he'd been dreading.
"No," she said, letting go of Henry and scrabbling away from him, "you're not-"
"Jeanette…"
"Maker, do you know the punishment for harbouring a maleficar? They'll kill me!"
"I'm not an maleficar, I'm just an apostate," Anders said, fear giving way to annoyance for a moment, "you don't know what the Circles are like, Jeanie-"
"Don't call me that," Jeanette said, edging further away, "get away from me!"
"But-"
It was all Anders had feared and more. He looked around helplessly. Jeanette was right, if the templars walked in on them now, they'd see Jeanette as an accomplice, and potentially one that had just committed murder. They would kill her on the spot. Unless Anders could do something about it.
He hadn't been able to save Henry. He wasn't sure whether Henry had deserved to be saved. But he couldn't let Jeanette suffer from his own cowardice.
"I'm going to surrender," Anders said slowly, "and you're going to tell them that I forced my way in here and killed Henry. It's the only way you're getting out of this alive."
"What will happen to you?"
"Don't worry about me."
Looking sick, Jeanette took a step closer, "you could have healed him, couldn't you?"
"Yes."
There was nothing more to be said between them. Anders picked up the knife, still covered in Henry's blood, and felt its weight in his hands. With any luck, the templars would think he was a blood mage and give him a quick, painless death.
He waved the knife at Jeanette, "scream for help," he said, "make sure they hear you."
Jeanette hesitated for a moment, conflicted, before opening her mouth and starting to scream.
Everything after that was a blur. The templars broke the front door down and found the kitchen with ease, tackling Anders to the floor and casting their mana nullification over him, leaving him breathless and queasy. Jeanette played her role well, thanking the templars for saving her and tearfully recounting how frightening Anders had been.
He tilted his head to get one last look at her, surprised to see that she was looking at him too.
"They forced their way in," she said dully, "him and his friend. They tried to hurt me. I stabbed the weak one with my carving knife, but the other one got the better of me. Maker knows what would've happened if you hadn't shown up."
Despite himself, Anders laughed. His vision was swimming but he didn't care. He was dead already but he didn't care. The templar that had him pinned hit him and growled at him to shut up, but he still didn't care.
"What will happen to him?" Jeanette asked.
"We were planning on taking him back to his Circle, but his crime is more serious than we anticipated. He'll be taken to the nearest keep and dealt with by the law, most likely. His friend will be burned – we don't have a contract for him, must be Orlesian or something."
Anders was hauled to his feet, weak and in pain. He stared down at Henry's lifeless body and wondered whether he'd been the one to call for the templars, or whether they'd managed to track Anders down through their usual dumb luck.
He raised his eyes to see Jeanette staring at him. There was pain on her face, pain and fear and regret, but none of the hate he'd been expecting. She offered him a slight nod.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"So am I."
And then a firm hand gripped his wrist, and he was led away.