driftfleet | [LFG] Dino-hunting

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[LFG] Dino-hunting

Who: Adalwolfe Hawke and YOU!! (Also a closed prompt for Adalwolfe and Anders in the comments)
Broadcast: Yes
Action: Yes; down in the forest. Closed to specific people tbd
When: Right now
Notes: Spillover from the previous mingle will be continued here as well.

[Broadcast | Video]

Hello everyone! Since the network seems to double as the fleet-wide Chanter's board, I thought I'd put out a request for some help. I'm looking for a few people - no more than three - to come help hunt down one of these big scaly beasts in the forest. Any companions chosen to come along are welcome to its hide, meat, or whatever else; I'm just after a few of its bones for a project.

Any and all skill sets are welcome, but I'd like if there was at least one person with better than my middling healing magic. At least one person versed with a shield might be a good idea as well, but not strictly necessary.

[Priorities.]

I'd like to go later today, so please let me know as soon as possible if you're interested in the endeavor. Thank you very much.

[Action | On the hunt | Closed to those chosen in the broadcast]

This part of the forest is quiet, too quiet, which is why Adalwolfe is guessing their quarry uses this as its stomping ground. The other forest animals would know to keep away after awhile, so this is likely the heart of its territory. The trees are taller here - though it hardly matters considering how tall they are anyway - but the ground cover is more sparse. The gentle slugs can still be seen dotting the trunks of trees and the leaves of the few ferns growing here and there, but any other wildlife is either well camouflaged or simply not present. The only noise aside what they make themselves is the breeze through the trees and echoing birdsong from high above in the canopy, where even the giant lizard's head can't reach.

It's perfect.

"Everyone be on your guard," Adalwolfe warns, his new and unfinished dragon-headed staff in hand and a note of glee behind his tone. This gets his blood pumping more than harmless sparring or running the Iskaulit's obstacle course. Facing danger, big sharp teeth, and the possibility of death? Bring it on!

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Obediently, Hawke puts the handful of leaves in his mouth and gets through a chew and a half before one eye closes of its own accord at the taste that assaults his tongue and he draws his face up in a grimace.

"You weren't kidding. Ugh." He keeps chewing regardless, but once he swallows he runs his teeth against his tongue a few times like a dog trying to get the last dregs of peanut butter off, only instead of it being because he wants more it's because he wants the taste gone. "I'd almost rather recover naturally."

Hawke shakes his head, clicking his tongue a few more times. "My head is fine. I only banged it once, but it was sliding down a tree so my back took the brunt of that."

Anders smirked and moved his hands from Hawke's arm to the back of his head and back. His hands traveled where the damage was and a few minutes later, Hawke was put right again.

"There, good as new." He moved away from Hawke then and retrieved a new leaf, thinner and more delicate that the ones before. "Here. It's mint, it'll help with the taste." He offered a smile but it was a little more strained than usual. He hadn't just asked Hawke here to heal him and he knew it...he just needed to figure out how to say it. "While you're here, I actually had something I needed to ask you."

The mint leaf is taken gratefully and popped right into Hawke's mouth. He sucks on it, rather than chewing, trying to make it last. "Thank you. Honestly I probably would have been up a creek without you. The only other healers in the fleet I know are doctors. Well, and Nightingale, but she's not as well versed in healing as other schools."

He idly reaches over and scritches the back of Ser Pounce's head, just behind his ears. Hopefully the cat doesn't mind overmuch. "What did you need? I owe you, after all."

Anders makes a face at the word 'doctor.' What a horrible practice that was, cutting people up and stuffing things inside them to fix them. Barbaric. "Even if you simply have a fever, I'd feel better if you came to me instead of one of them."

But that wasn't the point, it wasn't what he'd wanted to talk about. But he's still stalling. He watches Hawke pet the kitten and how the small fluffball purrs louder and sits up with his eyes closed to get that scratch to go deeper. It warms his heart and for one moment contemplates keeping his mouth shut. But he had to know.

"Your Anders...you said he took Justice into him. Cole said Justice turned into Vengeance, Vengeance was in this fleet with that other Anders and Vengeance turns into Rage. A demon. This future me, he's an abomination, isn't he? And yet you still claim to love him. Why?"

"I'd feel better about it too, honestly." He trusts Anders completely, even like this when he doesn't remember. Anders is still Anders, even with the differences, which is why it leaves such a raw hurt in Hawke when he lets himself think about it too much. He's gotten a bit better at that lately, but even so every actual conversation with the man is a masochistic exercise.

Especially when he brings up things like that.

Hawke leaves off petting Pounce and frowns hard, sobering up in an instant. "Do you want the popular opinion or do you want what I think? Or are you sure you want to know at all? This is hardly a concern for you, if you never happen to leave the fleet."

He's afraid to tell him, blast it. Afraid that it will turn out like Fenris, but worse for everything they'd been through. Fenris was a mistake he sought not to repeat, Anders was the shining beacon of his life and he'd already lost him once to the time difference Atroma had brought upon them. To lose him again, through his own words? Hawke's not sure he can take it if Anders reacts poorly.

Pounce simply goes back to sleep and Anders is left standing, staring at Hawke as he processes the questions. "I've never cared for the popular opinion. I want your opinion, you're the one who claims to care for him."

His arms cross as he bites the inside of his mouth. He didn't want to tell Hawke why, but he'd have to if he wanted the other mage to understand. "Fenris said he was an abomination and said he wouldn't listen to another's suffering. I apologized to him and he acted as though it were the first time he'd ever heard it from me, yet he claims to have known this Anders for upwards on ten years. Yet Cole claims he healed and helped...what kind of a man is that?" He scares me.

It wasn't something he could work past his lips, but it was in his face and he turned to put the plants away instead of looking at Hawke.

"Even if it doesn't matter, I still need to know. I have pieces to a puzzle but the picture doesn't make sense."

"He and Fenris never got on. He was a slave to Magisters and viewed all mages with suspicion. Especially him though. They fought like cats and dogs because neither of them would admit the other was even marginally right. Fenris maintained that mages were dangerous, he pushed for Fenris to see how they needed to be free without restriction. Neither of them would budge."

He sighs, able to look at Anders for that part, but not the next. He's not sure he wants to see how Anders reacts to what he has to say about him.

"I loved that about him, though. So passionate, so dedicated to the cause. Wanting to help, always wanting to right what was wrong with the Circles, with the Chantry. Knowing you now, I think it was Justice that drove him to act. You see it how you are now, how mages are oppressed, how can you not? But it's Justice that made it impossible to let slide and not do something." He falls silent for half a moment, tracing the rings in the wooden floor with his eyes. "He wasn't an abomination. Not as such. He had control over yourself for the most part, most of the time, though not in the Fade. Near the end of our time in Kirkwall, though... it got bad. The Templars were cracking down as the Knight-Commander lost her grip and everything stopped making sense. We were all angry. Including Justice. Or Vengeance, if you like."

"Whatever happened, though, he was always a compassionate man. He healed people whether they could pay or not, delivered their children, helped their elderly. The Ferelden refugees in the city defended him with their lives. I first went looking for him to find a way into the Deep Roads - Varric thought he might have a way in, being a Grey Warden - and he threatened me the second I stepped through the door. 'I have made this place a sanctum of healing' he said, staff up and magic at his fingers, accusing me of threatening it. They protected him, he protected them, and showed what good a mage - an apostate - could do." He lets out a small chuckle, remembering that moment. Remembering the Anders who crackled blue, ready to lay down his life in the protection of people he hardly knew simply because they needed him.

"Yes, I love him. I respect him and everything he tried to do, even if it got muddled later on. He only wanted for mages to be free, to be treated like people instead of slaves. He never wanted anyone else to have to escape a Circle tower seven times only to be dragged back, or to face Tranquility at the hands of those who have all of the power and none of the compassion." His eyes close, imagining Anders as he'd left him in Orlais, smiling sadly through the calling, swearing to be right there when Hawke returned. "I love him, and he returns it, fool that he is."

It still didn't add up. Fenris was an ass, for sure, but Anders could see where he was coming from too. Why couldn't the future him? Because of Justice? Justice had always been so cut and dry, black and white, did he drag Anders into that frame of mind as well? Had his friend blinded him from reason?

But he could see Hawke's side of it as well, the emotion was written clear as ink on the other mage's face. He'd rarely witnessed such passion for another person. He'd seen it in the loving looks between the King and his Queen and the way Riona had talked about Alistair around the fire. Love and devotion so tightly intertwined was a new concept.

How foolish was it to be envious of yourself?

"I'm going to guess he'd likely think you were the fool for loving him in the first place. Mages in love rarely go so well." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. As he thought, one more question came to mind, perhaps the one he'd been wanting to ask from the get-go. "I appreciate you being honest with me, Hawke. If you don't mind, I have one more question: do you think it was the right choice? Justice. You know your Anders and you know me, do you think it was really what was best?"

"He said as much. He said no mage he'd ever heard of had dared to fall in love. Maybe it's because I'm an apostate and always have been, I don't know, but I found it easy to love him." Even after the Chantry, even when Anders had lied to him, when he couldn't look him in the eyes for several days, he didn't love him any less. He was hurt, he was angry, but he still loved just as deeply, just as easily. That had been the problem until they reconciled.

Then Anders asks him that question, a question he supposes he should have expected if he'd been looking at it from Anders' perspective. He's still younger, still separate from Justice and therefore sees him as a vital concern instead of...

Well. Instead of a problem.

But knowing that, how does he answer? Knowing that while Justice prompted Anders to do some horrible things, he also made Anders into the person Hawke found so very easy to love. Giving with his care, passionate for his cause, troubled but still willing to step forward and do something even when everything's falling apart. This Anders isn't all of those things, and Hawke doesn't know which came from Justice.

"I don't know what was best, Anders. I know that his letting Justice in lead to the path we took, though, and I don't think it would have happened if he made a different choice." But was it right? That he can't answer.

"Right."

He shouldn't feel disappointed at the lack of an answer, what would he do about it either way? Well, nothing, but at least he would feel better about this whole thing if he heard a 'yes.' Maker, there was nothing easy about this. He was definitely going to change, that much he'd learned from talking to the various people who knew him, but there only seemed to be one good possibility out of all these possible futures and Anders wasn't even guaranteed that one. All he knew was that, for better or worse, everything was going to change and he couldn't change it. A cosmic promise.

His eyes traveled back to Hawke, the kitten nearby and that look in the man's face. Pain and fondness and certainty and Anders couldn't even imagine how it must feel to be the man Adalwolfe described instead of the man Fenris described. What must it be like to have someone who so intensely believed in their love for you? Whether it was foolish or not, he was truly envious.

"It's too forward...and Maker help me, I don't care, but for what it's worth, I hope you're the Hawke waiting for me in my future. Whatever else happens with Justice, I imagine it's a little easier with someone like you around."

At Anders' words, Hawke's head snaps up, looking at him with an unnameable expression. He'd never have expected that, for all that Anders seems to rail against becoming his future self, and that had hurt Hawke in how vehement the spirit healer had been, to hear him say that. That the version Hawke held in his heart was the one he wishes he were, that he hopes he's Adalwolfe's Anders, it's enough to put a lump in the Champion's throat.

"I hope-" He stops himself, clearing his throat to beat back the emotion threatening to overwhelm him. "I hope, if I am, that you're not disappointed."

That he doesn't hate what he became, that he doesn't wish, in retrospect, that things had turned out differently. He'd been so sure of everything before the Fleet, so sure of his work with Anders, that the mages needed help, that the Circles needed to rebel, that they would have to be the ones to spread that flame. But here, seeing how other worlds function with magic, seeing how it could have been different in so many ways, he's not sure of anything anymore. Nothing but how he loves Anders even still, but not sure if Anders will still love him after.

Or if he's even the same Anders.

He runs a hand down his face, turning away to stand up. "I should get going. These bones aren't going to craft themselves."

There's a range of strong emotions in how Hawke talks and holds himself and all at once Anders wants to take it back. There'd been a flicker of happiness and it had been worth it but also a betrayal and wrong and he shouldn't have wanted to see it.

But then there was doubt and quiet and Hawke was leaving because of what Anders said and he should have just sent him away as soon as he'd healed him. He never should have asked a question with no answer or expressed an opinion that held no promise.

He was nothing but a selfish idiot.

"Of course. Good bye, Hawke." He turned, pretending to busy himself with something else, anything else, but looking at Hawke again. They were both foolish for playing whatever this game was that lay between them. It needed to stop.

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[LFG] Dino-hunting

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