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peopleofthedas2011-01-13 01:12 pm
amhran_comhrac) wrote in peopleofthedas2011-01-13 01:12 pm
Fanfic: Don't want to kill you but...
Title: Don't want to kill you but I will...
Characters: Anders/Jowan
Rating: T, if that
Word Count: around 2500
Summary: Jowan decides he has to have a talk with Anders
mods: can I get a Jowan tag?
"We need to talk."
Anders looked up from his book. He was sitting in the main hall, curled up on a fur tossed on the floor near the largest fireplace. Jowan stood over him, the firelight glinting off the buckles of his robes and an anxious expression plastered on his face. "Is something wrong?" Anders asked him.
"Yes," Jowan said, followed quickly by "no." He briefly tensed and looked like he was about to bolt from the room. "I… look, just come with me, all right?"
Sighing, Anders unfolded his legs from below himself and stood up. "All right," he said, wondering what had Maggie's best friend so clearly upset. He followed Jowan through the hall, eventually stopping in the dimly lit yard of the Keep, not far from the statue of Andraste. Anders was pleased to notice that the char marks from the attack by the Mother's forces were finally starting to wear off. "What's wrong?" he asked the other mage.
Jowan wrung his hands, looking down. "So," he began, "I was talking to Nathaniel not long ago. And he mentioned that you, um, went shopping while you were in Denerim. For, um, a ring." The way he stressed the final word left no doubt that Nathaniel had been slightly more specific than Jowan was being at the moment.
Anders narrowed his eyes. "And people think I'm a gossip?" he snapped. "Little Nate is a dead man, and I'm making sure that's what they call him on his tombstone." Sighing, he pushed his hair back. "Don't tell her. Please," Anders said. "I haven't figured out how I'm going to—"
"I wasn't planning on it," Jowan said drily before Anders could finish. "I figured it wasn't exactly public knowledge."
Anders was momentarily relieved. "So…" he said after a moment. "What's wrong?" Jowan was silent for a moment, struggling for words. Anders grimaced. "Andraste's bloody rags," he muttered. "It's true, isn't it? You have been carrying a torch for her all these years!"
"What!" Jowan said, shocked. "Are you insane? Of course it's not true. Even if I wasn't happily married, which I am, why in the name of Andraste would I have tried to escape the Circle with Lily if I was in love with Maggie? And why would I have asked Maggie to help us? Even I'm not that stupid!" Anders relaxed. Jowan made a good point.
"Well, something's clearly bothering you," he countered. "What? You don't think I'm good enough?" Jowan didn't say anything. Anders winced. "I see," he said coldly.
Jowan bit his lip. "It's not… it's not like that," he said. "Just… do you really believe all her talk about how the Chant doesn't mention any specific kind of magic and that she's fine because it's only against darkspawn and not people?"
"Not really," Anders admitted, not seeing the point. Maggie could talk circles around most people, especially when it came to defending her
decision to become a maleficar. Most of it was just that, though: talk. It was clearly something that bothered her much more than she admitted; otherwise she wouldn't spend so much time trying to justify it.
"Huh," was all Jowan said. "You know, I always figured you did."
"I'm not an idiot," Anders snapped.
"And yet despite knowing the woman you claim to love has been sincerely worried she's actually damned for years you continued to rub the Chantry's views on blood magic in her face?" Jowan raised an eyebrow, clearly feeling much bolder than he had been a moment earlier. "So you're not an idiot, you're just an asshole?"
"Hey!" Anders snapped.
"You've made her cry, you know," was all Jowan said. "Alistair was a templar and he never drove her to tears over this. Zevran never even cared. You thrive on chances to put her down for it, though."
Opening his mouth and then closing it before saying a word, Anders stared at the other mage. With a sigh he looked down. "All right," he admitted, "maybe I have been a bit of an asshole."
"Maybe?"
"Fine," Anders snapped. "You're right. What do you want me to say? It was a lousy thing to do." Looking up at Jowan he struggled for an explanation. "Sometimes I just talk without thinking, it just… slips out. It isn't easy to remember she's a… a…"
"Maleficar," Jowan said pointedly. "Don't mince words now, you never have with her. She's a maleficar. A blood mage. Call it what it is."
"All right," Anders said. "But it makes no damned sense. She's so… Maker's breath, she's so bloody perfect. She's nice to everyone, she's funny, she's generous, she lives to help people… someone like that doesn't become a blood mage! It's so hard to reconcile the two in my mind so, well, I just prefer to pretend she isn't."
Jowan actually laughed.
"What?" Anders said. "What's so damned funny?"
"You really must love her," Jowan said. "Maggie? Perfect? You're kidding me, right?"
"No," Anders said, now on the offensive. "Why, what's wrong with her? She risked her neck to save your life, what, twice? Three times? I can't even keep track anymore!"
"And I can never thank her enough for it," Jowan said. "Doesn't make her perfect." Anders glared at him. "Really? Putting aside the violent hair-trigger temper, her tendency towards fanatical jealousy which you seem to share, the cursing and the drinking, and her complete inability to see flaws in her friends, she's also a bit, well… crazy."
"She is not!"
Jowan only raised an eyebrow. "Well then… all right. That isn't the point, anyways."
"And the point is?"
"You need to get your head out of the sand since you're hurting her. Either accept that using one kind of magic isn't enough to make someone a bad person or…"
"Or?" Anders pressed.
"Or decide if you really should be with someone who you see as evil. Since she deserves better than a man who looks down on her."
"I don't look down on her!" he snapped defensively.
"Then quit acting like you do!" Jowan's eyes practically spit blue fire. Anders would normally have been happy to see him defending Maggie so passionately, if only he wasn't the target of the softspoken man's rage. "Since it seems pretty damn clear to me that funny, nice people who like to help others do become maleficar, seeing as how you sleep next to one of them every night!"
Anders looked at his feet, unsure of how to respond.
Jowan sighed. "Look, I know you didn't set out to hurt her or anything. But you did, so, well… stop that. Don't want to kill you but I will and all that…" he shrugged.
"Very funny."
"Wasn't really kidding," Jowan said. "I've never had a family; since I was six years old she's been the closest thing I've had to a family. You really think I'll sit on my hands if she keeps showing up at my door in tears?" Anders nodded, remembering that Jowan was the one who taught her blood magic in the first place and, despite the impression everyone had of him, was an utter terror in a fight. "I never wanted to teach her," he said after a moment in a much softer voice, as if reading Anders' thoughts. "She demanded. It was in Redcliffe, when she saved me from the dungeon."
"She told me," he said. "When I asked how she learned she gave me the whole story."
"Well I'm sure Maggie wanted to make sure you knew she wasn't consorting with demons," Jowan said sensibly. "I argued with her. I…" he sighed. "I've always regretted learning. It's my greatest mistake. I'm always wondering if there's a greater price I'll have to pay eventually. I told her all that, but you know Maggie…"
"So why would she even want to learn?" Anders asked. "If the only blood mage she knew was telling her it was a mistake why would she possibly think it was a good idea? It sounds like a horrible idea."
"Because she was scared," Jowan said. "She was a mess. Broken bones she couldn't heal from getting pounded on by the darkspawn, a good twenty pounds lighter than she'd been in the Circle since they couldn't afford food and she had no idea being a Grey Warden meant she needed to eat more, and being followed around by half a dozen people who expected her to make every decision for them. She'd never even been outside for eighteen years. Imagine how terrified she was, and none of them had any idea." He shook his head. "She thought they would die before even seeing the archdemon. Probably right, too." He looked over at Anders. "So when she demanded… I taught her. She said she needed every bit of power she could find to keep them alive, and I knew she was right."
"Well, I'm feeling fairly ashamed," Anders said.
"Ah, then my work here is done," Jowan said with a smile. Anders clearly had something else on his mind, though, if the look on his face was any indication. "What's wrong?" Jowan asked.
"Besides the fact that you just told me I'm not good enough to marry your best friend and that I've been making the woman I love cry without even realizing it?" he raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, I had to say something," Jowan said, actually sounding apologetic.
"No, I understand. I'm glad you did." He sighed. "It isn't easy being with her sometimes. Even if she wasn't more powerful than me I'd still have to deal with the legend, the titles, the whole hero thing… and she has no damned idea it even bothers me. And I'm not about to say something since really, what could she do? Go back and not end a blight? Step down as commander, relinquish the title, stop being a good mage? It's silly. But… there are days I feel like shoving that in her face is the only way I can measure up."
"I know how you feel."
"Do you?" Anders looked surprised.
"Imagine sitting in class next to her. Watching her get moved ahead or given advanced lessons months or years before you…" He gave Anders a sheepish glance, holding up one palm. "Why do you think I learned?" Anders eyes went wide.
"Does she know?"
Jowan nodded. "She asked me why. I couldn't not tell her. She'd know if I lied." He shrugged. "I used to make fun of her healing. It was the only thing she wasn't better than everyone else at."
"Now there's a thought…" Anders said.
Anders found Maggie curled up in bed, reading a book. He couldn't help but notice how she shifted, covering the front with her open palm, letting her hair drape over a shoulder to block his view of the page. "Anything good?" he asked, stripping off his robes.
"New magic book," she said. "Commander Augustus from Tevinter sent it to me. Nothing interesting."
Sliding in next to her he caught a brief glimpse of the page she was on before Maggie quickly closed it, sliding the heavy volume under the bed and out of his line of sight. He bit back the comments that flashed through his mind.
Every book on blood magic in Ferelden isn't enough, now you're importing them?
What, you don't already have enough fun ways to slice yourself open?
Oh good, the self inflicted injuries you already know how to make were getting boring for me to heal.
Now I can watch you kill yourself with newer, more exciting, spells. Thanks, sweetheart. The old spells were getting a bit repetitive.
So why don't you regale me with how these spells are actually just fine according to the Chant and it's the Chantry that's wrong?
For someone who claims it's a last-ditch measure you sure spend a lot of time learning a forbidden spell for every occasion.
"I was thinking," Anders said. He couldn't help but notice her tense next to him and felt another flash of guilt. "Maybe you should start taking my remedial healing class with the junior Warden mages?"
Characters: Anders/Jowan
Rating: T, if that
Word Count: around 2500
Summary: Jowan decides he has to have a talk with Anders
mods: can I get a Jowan tag?
"We need to talk."
Anders looked up from his book. He was sitting in the main hall, curled up on a fur tossed on the floor near the largest fireplace. Jowan stood over him, the firelight glinting off the buckles of his robes and an anxious expression plastered on his face. "Is something wrong?" Anders asked him.
"Yes," Jowan said, followed quickly by "no." He briefly tensed and looked like he was about to bolt from the room. "I… look, just come with me, all right?"
Sighing, Anders unfolded his legs from below himself and stood up. "All right," he said, wondering what had Maggie's best friend so clearly upset. He followed Jowan through the hall, eventually stopping in the dimly lit yard of the Keep, not far from the statue of Andraste. Anders was pleased to notice that the char marks from the attack by the Mother's forces were finally starting to wear off. "What's wrong?" he asked the other mage.
Jowan wrung his hands, looking down. "So," he began, "I was talking to Nathaniel not long ago. And he mentioned that you, um, went shopping while you were in Denerim. For, um, a ring." The way he stressed the final word left no doubt that Nathaniel had been slightly more specific than Jowan was being at the moment.
Anders narrowed his eyes. "And people think I'm a gossip?" he snapped. "Little Nate is a dead man, and I'm making sure that's what they call him on his tombstone." Sighing, he pushed his hair back. "Don't tell her. Please," Anders said. "I haven't figured out how I'm going to—"
"I wasn't planning on it," Jowan said drily before Anders could finish. "I figured it wasn't exactly public knowledge."
Anders was momentarily relieved. "So…" he said after a moment. "What's wrong?" Jowan was silent for a moment, struggling for words. Anders grimaced. "Andraste's bloody rags," he muttered. "It's true, isn't it? You have been carrying a torch for her all these years!"
"What!" Jowan said, shocked. "Are you insane? Of course it's not true. Even if I wasn't happily married, which I am, why in the name of Andraste would I have tried to escape the Circle with Lily if I was in love with Maggie? And why would I have asked Maggie to help us? Even I'm not that stupid!" Anders relaxed. Jowan made a good point.
"Well, something's clearly bothering you," he countered. "What? You don't think I'm good enough?" Jowan didn't say anything. Anders winced. "I see," he said coldly.
Jowan bit his lip. "It's not… it's not like that," he said. "Just… do you really believe all her talk about how the Chant doesn't mention any specific kind of magic and that she's fine because it's only against darkspawn and not people?"
"Not really," Anders admitted, not seeing the point. Maggie could talk circles around most people, especially when it came to defending her
decision to become a maleficar. Most of it was just that, though: talk. It was clearly something that bothered her much more than she admitted; otherwise she wouldn't spend so much time trying to justify it.
"Huh," was all Jowan said. "You know, I always figured you did."
"I'm not an idiot," Anders snapped.
"And yet despite knowing the woman you claim to love has been sincerely worried she's actually damned for years you continued to rub the Chantry's views on blood magic in her face?" Jowan raised an eyebrow, clearly feeling much bolder than he had been a moment earlier. "So you're not an idiot, you're just an asshole?"
"Hey!" Anders snapped.
"You've made her cry, you know," was all Jowan said. "Alistair was a templar and he never drove her to tears over this. Zevran never even cared. You thrive on chances to put her down for it, though."
Opening his mouth and then closing it before saying a word, Anders stared at the other mage. With a sigh he looked down. "All right," he admitted, "maybe I have been a bit of an asshole."
"Maybe?"
"Fine," Anders snapped. "You're right. What do you want me to say? It was a lousy thing to do." Looking up at Jowan he struggled for an explanation. "Sometimes I just talk without thinking, it just… slips out. It isn't easy to remember she's a… a…"
"Maleficar," Jowan said pointedly. "Don't mince words now, you never have with her. She's a maleficar. A blood mage. Call it what it is."
"All right," Anders said. "But it makes no damned sense. She's so… Maker's breath, she's so bloody perfect. She's nice to everyone, she's funny, she's generous, she lives to help people… someone like that doesn't become a blood mage! It's so hard to reconcile the two in my mind so, well, I just prefer to pretend she isn't."
Jowan actually laughed.
"What?" Anders said. "What's so damned funny?"
"You really must love her," Jowan said. "Maggie? Perfect? You're kidding me, right?"
"No," Anders said, now on the offensive. "Why, what's wrong with her? She risked her neck to save your life, what, twice? Three times? I can't even keep track anymore!"
"And I can never thank her enough for it," Jowan said. "Doesn't make her perfect." Anders glared at him. "Really? Putting aside the violent hair-trigger temper, her tendency towards fanatical jealousy which you seem to share, the cursing and the drinking, and her complete inability to see flaws in her friends, she's also a bit, well… crazy."
"She is not!"
Jowan only raised an eyebrow. "Well then… all right. That isn't the point, anyways."
"And the point is?"
"You need to get your head out of the sand since you're hurting her. Either accept that using one kind of magic isn't enough to make someone a bad person or…"
"Or?" Anders pressed.
"Or decide if you really should be with someone who you see as evil. Since she deserves better than a man who looks down on her."
"I don't look down on her!" he snapped defensively.
"Then quit acting like you do!" Jowan's eyes practically spit blue fire. Anders would normally have been happy to see him defending Maggie so passionately, if only he wasn't the target of the softspoken man's rage. "Since it seems pretty damn clear to me that funny, nice people who like to help others do become maleficar, seeing as how you sleep next to one of them every night!"
Anders looked at his feet, unsure of how to respond.
Jowan sighed. "Look, I know you didn't set out to hurt her or anything. But you did, so, well… stop that. Don't want to kill you but I will and all that…" he shrugged.
"Very funny."
"Wasn't really kidding," Jowan said. "I've never had a family; since I was six years old she's been the closest thing I've had to a family. You really think I'll sit on my hands if she keeps showing up at my door in tears?" Anders nodded, remembering that Jowan was the one who taught her blood magic in the first place and, despite the impression everyone had of him, was an utter terror in a fight. "I never wanted to teach her," he said after a moment in a much softer voice, as if reading Anders' thoughts. "She demanded. It was in Redcliffe, when she saved me from the dungeon."
"She told me," he said. "When I asked how she learned she gave me the whole story."
"Well I'm sure Maggie wanted to make sure you knew she wasn't consorting with demons," Jowan said sensibly. "I argued with her. I…" he sighed. "I've always regretted learning. It's my greatest mistake. I'm always wondering if there's a greater price I'll have to pay eventually. I told her all that, but you know Maggie…"
"So why would she even want to learn?" Anders asked. "If the only blood mage she knew was telling her it was a mistake why would she possibly think it was a good idea? It sounds like a horrible idea."
"Because she was scared," Jowan said. "She was a mess. Broken bones she couldn't heal from getting pounded on by the darkspawn, a good twenty pounds lighter than she'd been in the Circle since they couldn't afford food and she had no idea being a Grey Warden meant she needed to eat more, and being followed around by half a dozen people who expected her to make every decision for them. She'd never even been outside for eighteen years. Imagine how terrified she was, and none of them had any idea." He shook his head. "She thought they would die before even seeing the archdemon. Probably right, too." He looked over at Anders. "So when she demanded… I taught her. She said she needed every bit of power she could find to keep them alive, and I knew she was right."
"Well, I'm feeling fairly ashamed," Anders said.
"Ah, then my work here is done," Jowan said with a smile. Anders clearly had something else on his mind, though, if the look on his face was any indication. "What's wrong?" Jowan asked.
"Besides the fact that you just told me I'm not good enough to marry your best friend and that I've been making the woman I love cry without even realizing it?" he raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, I had to say something," Jowan said, actually sounding apologetic.
"No, I understand. I'm glad you did." He sighed. "It isn't easy being with her sometimes. Even if she wasn't more powerful than me I'd still have to deal with the legend, the titles, the whole hero thing… and she has no damned idea it even bothers me. And I'm not about to say something since really, what could she do? Go back and not end a blight? Step down as commander, relinquish the title, stop being a good mage? It's silly. But… there are days I feel like shoving that in her face is the only way I can measure up."
"I know how you feel."
"Do you?" Anders looked surprised.
"Imagine sitting in class next to her. Watching her get moved ahead or given advanced lessons months or years before you…" He gave Anders a sheepish glance, holding up one palm. "Why do you think I learned?" Anders eyes went wide.
"Does she know?"
Jowan nodded. "She asked me why. I couldn't not tell her. She'd know if I lied." He shrugged. "I used to make fun of her healing. It was the only thing she wasn't better than everyone else at."
"Now there's a thought…" Anders said.
Anders found Maggie curled up in bed, reading a book. He couldn't help but notice how she shifted, covering the front with her open palm, letting her hair drape over a shoulder to block his view of the page. "Anything good?" he asked, stripping off his robes.
"New magic book," she said. "Commander Augustus from Tevinter sent it to me. Nothing interesting."
Sliding in next to her he caught a brief glimpse of the page she was on before Maggie quickly closed it, sliding the heavy volume under the bed and out of his line of sight. He bit back the comments that flashed through his mind.
Every book on blood magic in Ferelden isn't enough, now you're importing them?
What, you don't already have enough fun ways to slice yourself open?
Oh good, the self inflicted injuries you already know how to make were getting boring for me to heal.
Now I can watch you kill yourself with newer, more exciting, spells. Thanks, sweetheart. The old spells were getting a bit repetitive.
So why don't you regale me with how these spells are actually just fine according to the Chant and it's the Chantry that's wrong?
For someone who claims it's a last-ditch measure you sure spend a lot of time learning a forbidden spell for every occasion.
"I was thinking," Anders said. He couldn't help but notice her tense next to him and felt another flash of guilt. "Maybe you should start taking my remedial healing class with the junior Warden mages?"