I've done my sentence but committed no crime

[wolfehawke]

Who: Adalwolfe Hawke and you!
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: On the Iskaulit
When: Nowish

Broadcast

[The video pops up with Adalwolfe's face centered in the camera, but with the background moving behind him, clearly showing the familiar corridors of the Iskaulit. He's making his way to his new job at Málum as bartender.]

So I noticed on the list of scheduled lectures posted a bit ago that there are several on magic, not to mention several people I've spoken with having positive or relaxed reactions to its use. It's incredibly strange to me that everyone is so open and accepting of this, considering the doctrine regarding magic in my home of Thedas, so it begs the following question and I hope at least someone from outside of Thedas will indulge me:

What is magic like on your world? Is it regulated? Does everyone have the ability to use it, or only a small number of people? Are there prejudices that go along with that.

Ah, well, I suppose that's more than one question. Still, if you're willing to talk about it, please feel free to respond to this post and I'll get back to you when I'm finished with work. Thank you!

[The video clicks off.]


Action

It's only a short walk from the hanger to the bar, but Adalwolfe takes his time since he can't watch where he's going very well as he's recording on his device. Which could lead to all kinds of problems. He seems to be avoiding walls okay, but if a person, say, came out of a corridor nearby or happened to step in front of him at just the right time before he put down the little screen, he might just bowl right into them, or walk right past without noticing a mischievous foot out for him to trip over. Honestly, he's an open target. Or at least seems like it...

Comments

[apurrstate]

[He hears it, hears how the brief exchange has affected them both already, Hawke likely more than Anders. After all, Hawke apparently didn't have to imagine that hard.]

Thank you.

[He takes the glass back, but is quiet, his mind fickle and running without his permission. What would it be like to be with someone who already knew what he liked? Probably amazing.

No, what was he doing? His thoughts were filled with images of hands grabbing at skin and fingers tangling in hair and mouths hot and rough on each other and it was wrong.

He loved Karl, he barely even knew this man aside from what he'd told Anders about their apparent history. Or future history. Karl was going to die for Andraste's sake! Anders failed him and he was imagining sleeping with another man! Some loyalty he had. Their last night together played through his head instead, a hot and fast moment in a hidden nook in the library, followed by hushed promises and fantasies of plans. The next morning, Karl was gone long before Anders even woke up.

The shame ate at his gut and he tossed back over half the glass in one swig.]

Where were you born, Hawke?

[A seemingly pointless question, but it was a distraction and still served a purpose. He was caught in this man's spell whether he liked to admit it or not, he should at least know a bit more about him.]

[wolfehawke]

Ferelden. Or, rather, on a boat to Ferelden.

[He busies himself by cleaning more glasses. It's easier than noticing the shadow that falls over Anders' face and thinking he knows why. Easier than resisting the temptation to ask and getting told off and ruining whatever good graces he'd been edging into.]

My father escaped the Kirkwall Circle for my mother and ran away with her. Pretty romantic, I'll be honest.

[Especially if he doesn't think of what his father had to do in order to get the chance.]

[apurrstate]

[That draws the smile back out, Anders can imagine it even if he's never heard of it. Romantic stories like that were popular in the Circle.]

He ran away for love, huh? What a rare notion. He must have been a good man.

[He wanted to ask about the Kirkwall Circle, was it as bad as Karl had made it out to be? Was that why Anders would lose him? But the questions stayed in his head, he was trying to keep the conversation light. Or lighter.]

I can't imagine they simply let him waltz off. He must have fought hard for it. Tales like that are things people whisper about in passing, rumors. I've never known of a real person who did it.

Where did they meet?

[wolfehawke]

He was both.

[Hawke shrugs much more easily than the question of his father should allow. He's working through it, always or so it seems, but that's all personal and easier to brush off when speaking aloud. Besides, it can wait. Malcolm is dead, and unless Atroma has a sick and twisted sense of drama, that's not going to change.]

They met in Kirkwall. My father was transferred to the Gallows and then made to perform for a noble party put on by my grandfather. The way she tells it, it was love at first sight but I have the sneaking suspicion he talked her into it. My father had a silver tongue.

[One he inherited, Hawke thinks with a smile.]

[apurrstate]

[He can picture it all too clearly and it brings a slight smile to his face to know that particular tale held a happy ending. Or at least a happier ending than most held.]

I'm glad they got to run away together. I can't imagine that life was easy for them, but clearly they made it work.

[And while part of him was perhaps a little jealous of it, the romantic in him could only appreciate the idea of love winning out over pain and oppression.]

Kirkwall must be a strange place if they can call on mages to entertain at parties. I don't think anything like that ever happened in Ferelden. A good chunk of mages got called away to halpe fight the darkspawn and apparently the rest were allowed out to help in the final fight against the Archdemon, but I'm certain that was the first time venturing out for most of them.

[wolfehawke]

well the Gallows are actually in the city instead of like Kinloch where it's fairly far from any of the houses of the teyrnirs or arlings, let alone Denerim itself. Kirkwall is just one city state, not a country, so there's not as much ground to cover. It's likely mostly geographical.

[Though part of it, as Hawke gathered from their travel to other Circles after Kirkwall's had fallen, was the Ferelden attitude. There's something of a feeling along the lines of 'out of sight, out of mind' in the south. Ostwick's circle seemed more lenient, while Hasmal and Ansburg were so insular that some of them weren't even aware of what happened in Kirkwall at all.]

But... yes, he was lucky.

[Hawke pauses a moment to put some glasses away and get a small shot for himself. That sake stuff Crowley had showed him. He needs something smooth but fortifying right now.

It also occurs to him that while he knows Anders was escaped out of the Tower during the Fifth Blight he doesn't actually know what exactly the other mage was doing during that time.]

You weren't there though, I gather by how you said that. Where were you then?

[apurrstate]

[He shrugs.]

Here and there.

[It seemed such a silly little thing for Hawke not to know about him when he apparently knew a lot of big things, it made him wonder, for the first time, what Hawke's Anders hadn't told him.]

During one of my earlier escapes, I'd helped a nobleman in need and he'd been very grateful. He'd tried to gift me an amulet to show I had his favor, but I wasn't allowed to keep it when I was recaptured. Still, I hoped maybe he'd remember me despite the years, so I went to his estate after I lost the templars on my tail. Had it not been for the chaos the tower suffered and the templars being called back to help with the situation, I'm sure they would have caught me by the time I'd gotten to the Lord's estate.

But they didn't and when I got there, it was very nearly deserted. The whole family had been called to Denerim both for the Landsmeet and for the war, but some of the servants remembered me and allowed me to lay low in exchange for some help for a little while. I stayed there about a week, but the blight and darkspawn were spreading quickly and the lands weren't safe anymore. The estate was abandoned and I went with the remaining people to Denerim; safety in numbers and all of that. I stayed in Denerim for nearly a month, but I heard the Landsmeet was approaching quickly and it's not wise for an apostate to stand on the capitol's streets when there were bound to be plenty of nobility and chantry Templars along with the city guard, so I went north from there to Amaranthine.

Better I did, too, because the battle against the Archdemon apparently happened over Fort Drakon in Denerim proper. That would have been a nasty end. I was hoping to buy passage to Kirkwall, but there were a lot of refugees fleeing then because of the blight and it wasn't easy to find room, much less the coin to do it when I had nothing to my name. So I tried working where I could and when people would take me for whatever coin I could scrape together. The blight ended and things calmed down, saving up actually started to pay off.

[He looks down at the counter, one long finger tracing the wood's pattern slightly. The smirk that flicked across his face lacked it's usual humor or charm.]

It all seemed like it was coming together, actually. I'd learned some phylacteries had been stored in the city during the blight and there was a good chance mine was among them. I had an opportunity to try and find it and break it once and for all, so I bought my passage to Kirkwall and went to find it so I'd finally be free.

of course the blighted Templars found me that night. I never got on that boat of even got to see if the phylacteries were there. They probably weren't, I learned later they'd been moved at some point, it might have already happened by then. I don't know.

They dragged me off to Vigil's Keep just in time for the darkspawn to attack the resident Wardens and the rest is history. [That smirk widened into a sharp smile.] You know, listed like that, my life sounds like a never-ending streak of hilariously terrible luck, doesn't it? At least until the Commander.

[He sat up a little more and waved a bit at the air as though he could brush away his own melancholy.]

Better than others, though, so I shouldn't complain. The templars have ruined other mage's lives far more thoroughly than mine and continue to do it day in and day out, at least I'm free now. And alive! Alive is good, some mages don't even get that far, of course.

[wolfehawke]

[Hawke opens his mouth and then closes it. More than once. What do you even say to that, especially when he can fill in past the part that Anders calls history, all the ups and downs that fill the next decade of Anders' life, nine of which he was actually present for and seven of which he's trying to pretend he doesn't know far more intimately. Should he tell him any of it? How they'd found his phylactery and finally destroyed it? How they'd debated over destroying it and finally Hawke had convinced his love to do it for the sake of Anders' safety?

He remembers that night vividly, laced with emotion as it was. Hawke had never been in a Circle so he'd never had it done, but it had been a source of worry for Anders for such a long time. More than he knew, if Anders had hunted for it even before Kirkwall. After perhaps it had fallen by the wayside, what with the Wardens and their having kept him safe for a time, but then he fled to Kirkwall and that is what's history to Hawke.

He shakes his head, deciding it's not something Anders needs to know. Or at least, not something he needs to know before he's ready. It involves too much between them; Hawke imagines Anders like this hearing that he hadn't wanted to destroy his phylactery when they finally got it, that he'd wanted Hawke to keep it in order to always be able to find them should they get separated, it's romantic and sappy and not something this Anders will be able to stomach, he's sure.]

Didn't it ever want to make you do something for them?

[Instead, another question he'd never asked. He'd never thought to, his Anders being someone who had always acted on the behalf of all mages, for the betterment of his people. How he'd needed Justice to finally get that kick in the seat of his robes is unfathomable to Hawke. Or it was, until he met this Anders.]

[apurrstate]

[The expression that crosses Anders' face is measured, as though trying to read something in Hawke that wasn't quite visible.]

Did you get that from Justice? Or whatever part of him was there when you knew him? He asked me something very similar. In fact, he insisted I had an obligation. [He practically spits the word. But his tone is light and airy in the next second.]

No matter, I'll simply tell you what I told him: I prefer to mind my own business and live my own life. Anything else is too...difficult. And likely to result in death, which I hear is painful and I'd rather like to avoid it for as long as I can.

So, no. I wish them all luck, but there is no point rallying against an immovable object like the Chantry.

[wolfehawke]

I wouldn't go so far as to say an obligation.

[He's taken aback by the very visceral reaction Anders has to his question, half expecting the blond to storm off in a huff. It's a far cry from the flirting they'd started the evening with but maybe it's folly to think he could talk to Anders without his own past/Anders' future coming up. Maybe he shouldn't be tip-toeing around it the way he is.]

It was just a question, Anders. No need to get riled up.

[Though it raises more questions for Hawke, internally. How much of the Anders he knew, the one he fell in love with, was actually Justice? It's an unsettling thought.]

I asked what you wanted to do, if you could, not what you thought was actually possible.

[apurrstate]

[His hand comes up to rub at his chin, his annoyance still flaring in him even as his tone evens out.]

Right. Sorry. I'm not trying to sound 'riled up,' I simply thought I'd escaped the Judgement Committee when I learned none of my party came with me.

I don't want to do anything except live my life in peace. That's all I've ever wanted. I said my prayers, listened to the Sisters in town and the minute I was able to conjure fire, I was thrown into prison and considered unworthy to exist with the common man.

I just want my life to be my own again. Not the Circle's, not the Templar's, not the Chantry's. I've fought long and hard to see it happen while others simply sit idly by and wish for better, so I think I've earned that right for myself; and if that means I spend the rest of my days burning darkspawn, then I'll take it. Better to be of use than gathering dust like some old useless book.

[wolfehawke]

[It makes sense. It makes all the sense in the world and he knows it first hand because that was him at twelve, at thirteen, into his young adulthood. So angry that suddenly he's a wanted criminal just for how the Maker made him. He'd tempered over time, probably because of his father, but here's Anders without that experience. Betrayed by his family, forced into a Circle, forced into the Wardens just to escape that life... it's no wonder he's angry. He has even more right to be than Adalwolfe did at half his age.

It makes sense, too, that this is the anger that could turn Justice in the Vengeance. That a spirit could look on this and be overwhelmed. It's consuming, and it's the Chantry's fault more than anything and the worst part is that he doesn't feel he can tell Anders that, or tell him that it gets better.

Does it? Is his definition of better really better? People died, innocent people. They're still dying because of the choices made for them by Anders and Hawke and Justice. Or is it because of the Chantry and the Templars, oppressing mages until they break.

Which came first, the dragon or the egg?]

I can understand that. I was angry, too.

[He idly wipes at a glass, not making eye contact.]