Anders (crazycatman) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-07-02 12:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, anders, tinkerbell |
Who: Anders and Tink, introducing Justice
What: Anders Dreams of leaving the Wardens, wakes up with Justice.
When: This morning
Where: Tink and Anders’ house
Warnings/Status: Dream cannibalism, blood (Warnings apply to above link as well).
“It is time. You have shown me an injustice greater than any I have faced. Do you have the courage to accept my aid?”
That was what Justice had promised him. The two of them, mage and spirit, working together to help change Thedas for the better. Justice had needed a new host that wouldn’t rot out from under him, and Anders had been willing to offer himself up to the cause. He would change the world, and they would help win mage rights for every mage in Thedas. Maybe not in his lifetime, because change often took a long time to come about, but someday, ten years, fifty years, a hundred years in the future, mages would be able to stay with their families, and they’d be able to make families of their own.
At least, that’s what Anders had thought. That’s what Justice had thought. The reality was that something inside of Anders twisted Justice. Maybe it was a combination of Kristoff - the Warden whose dead body Justice had possessed before joining Anders - being far too angry, mixed in with Anders’ own anger and hatred. It was an anger and hatred that Anders had tried to hide, had tried to pretend wasn’t there, but it still had simmered just barely below the surface. And when he had finally managed to get control of his own body after Justice and Anders had woken up, he was faced with the rent, ravaged, and devoured bodies of his comrades, his mouth filled with the blood of a man who he had hated - but certainly hadn’t wished this upon - and the taste of the men and women who he had combed through the Deep Roads with.
Anders woke with a start, sweating and terrified. The bed was softer by far than the cold ground and sleeping roll that he had often slept in, and it took him only a moment to remember that he wasn’t the Anders in the dream world. He was Anders, a surgeon in Orange County, sleeping next to his girlfriend and their two cats. His mouth was filled with something, and he swallowed, only to realize too late that the coppery taste in his mouth was blood. Rolan’s blood.
It was violently that he threw himself from the bed, and he ran to the bathroom to vomit noisily into the toilet. He’d be surprised if he didn’t wake up Tink, and he regretted that. He didn’t want her to see him with the blood running down his chin, and he wasn’t even sure if he could explain the dream he had just had if she asked.
He had, indeed, woken Tink. But it wasn’t the sounds that woke her. It was the start that roused her from her own dreams, made her roll onto her side, to regain some consciousness. Then she sat up when she heard him in the bathroom, eyes wide and frowning. She waited for the flush, her own pulse pounding in her temples.
“Anders?” She called out. She had to gingerly move a cat from next to her legs so she could climb out of the bed. “...are you all right?” Stupid question, Tink. He was just throwing up. “Can I get you some water?” She moved to the doorway between the bedroom and the bathroom, awkwardly.
Anders fought down a surge of anger. It wasn’t at Tink he was angry at, but it was everything else. The Templars and the Circle in the dreams. All the corruption and hatred in this world. He felt like he was managing to hold onto himself by a thread, and so it took him a while before he trusted himself to leave the toilet and answer Tink. “Yes please,” he said, his voice a little strained. He supposed that he had never told Isabela about that particular happenstance in Thedas, or he was sure that she would have warned him of it as well.
Tink waited for a long moment, toes curling into the carpet as she stood. Her wings gave a tiny, weak flap behind her. She was more awake now, nervous and foreboding. But he finally responded, and she nodded. It was a quick flutter to the kitchen and back again, leaving a trail of dust along the ground. She brought a tall glass of cold water to him, and held it out tentatively. “...bad stomach?”
While she left, he quickly tossed some cold water on his face, hoping to wash off the blood from his chin. “Dream,” he answered, taking the water from her. He took a mouthful of water and attempted to rinse the taste of flesh from his mouth, and spat it into the sink. Maybe that taste would never go away. That was a disquieting thought. “It was… I wasn’t…”
“It’s okay.” Tink leaned against the sink to talk to him, watching him with the water. There was a concerned expression on her face. She was nervous. “Take your time.” She’d wait until he had the words, no matter how long that took. She’d wait until he was ready to talk to her about it. Whatever it was.
“I love you.” She said, softly. Then both cats appeared in the bathroom doorway.
"I love you too," Anders said. When Sir Pounce-A-Lot showed in the doorway, Anders started. During his Harrowing, the demon had taken the form of a huge cat. It had told him he would eventually stumble, and the demon would pounce. He would be unmade, first in his mind, and then in his body when the Templars killed him. While normally he took comfort in the presence of cats, it was a reminder of how he had faltered, and Justice had never approved of keeping animals 'captive' as he had called it, and Justice took advantage of Anders' vulnerable state to seize control.
The skin across his entire body seemed to crack, with what looked to be a blue fire glowing underneath, and his eyes glowed blue. He stood up straight, looking now more angry than drained. "Remove those creatures from my sight," he commanded, two voices in unison - both Anders' and Justice's - coming from his lips.
Tink jumped at the sight of him with his skin cracked, the light coming through, his voice coming out so strange. She frowned a little, but didn’t hesitate to move forward and shoo the cats out of the bathroom. Then she pulled the door closed behind her, staying inside there with him.
“Anders?” She asked, tentatively. Was this… Justice? Must be. “Are you there?”
"Yes," replied Anders, eyeing the girl as she closed the door. He was still a little agitated from the dream, from those Templars and the Wardens that had abetted them, though he was calmer now. It had been harder to control himself then; he hadn't been expecting the difference between a living host and a corpse, and while he had perhaps gone a little overboard, he had no doubt that those people had all gotten what they had deserved. And while the Justice part of Anders did not agree that Anders needed a distraction such as Tink, he knew that she posed no threat to him. "I am Anders."
He may have looked like Anders, but he certainly wasn’t. Tink frowned a bit, even as the cats started to mew and paw at the other side (and underside) of the door. Her heart started thumping harder and faster in her chest, in her throat, and she nodded. “Oh. Well. I hope you’re feeling better.”
Seriously. What was it with Tink and boyfriends who got possessed? She turned around to open the door, then bent down to collect the cats and carry them back into the bedroom.
Anders watched Tink scoop up the cats, and managed to wrest control back, the blue disappearing. "Tink," he called, following her out of the bathroom, his voice back to normal. "I'm sorry. Did I scare you?" He couldn't blame her if he had; he had scared himself.
Tink turned around, both cats cuddled against her chest. She watched him with fear in her eyes--though she was trying not to show it. It was there. “I… I don’t know. You weren’t you.” There wasn’t any other way to describe it. She turned to put the cats down on the bed, her heart still thundering.
"I was me," Anders said, and frowned because that wasn't exactly right. "And Justice. We're..." They were the same. They were one person.
He shook his head. He couldn't fall into that. He and Justice were separate. They had to be separate, because he didn't want to go down the same path as his dream self. He went to give Sir Pounce-A-Lot a scratch behind the ears. "I'm sorry. I wish I could have given you more warning that this was coming."
“It’s okay. I mean… Dream stuff, right?” The cats--well, Lady Widge, especially--looked very confused. Tink moved to the bed to stroke along her back, wishing she could have had just one more hour of sleep. She was tired, and freaked, and could absolutely not imagine what Anders was going through.
She watched him for a moment. “...it’s okay,” she repeated, even though it wasn’t really, was it? “I’m just… confused. A bit. You wanted the cats out?”
“I really, really hate these Dreams,” Anders sighed. “And the cats are fine now. I’d rather they stay here. Justice… does not approve of pets.” It was hard to tell right now where Anders ended and Justice began, but if he could focus on their differences - on Justice’s disapproval of having a pet, of his apparent disapproval of Tink - then it would probably be easier to figure it out. Like peeling away the corner of a sticker until you could pull it off of the backing.
"How is it...?" Tink frowned a little, trying to find the right words to ask the question she wanted to ask. "Is that how I'm going to tell when... I mean..." She sighed. "Is he there now? Or only when you go all... blue?" Her nose crinkled just slightly. If this was going to be how things went from now on... she needed some kind of a warning system.
"And the throwing up. The blood. Is that... I mean, is that going to happen a lot?" Tink was ridiculously loyal, and head over heels in love with Anders. This wasn't a deal breaker for her. She'd just have to... adjust. She wanted to learn what this was going to be like. Now. What being with a possessed man was going to… be like.
“He’s here,” Anders said. “He’s always going to be around, I think.” Unless he found a way to get rid of Justice. “He’s part of me. His thoughts and mine, for the most part, they’re ours.”
Anders blanched at the idea of the blood happening again. “Oh god, I hope not,” he said. “Isabela… never warned me of it, so I have to believe that it won’t happen again. Tink, I… I did something terrible in the dream I just had.”
Tink sat down on the bed, and Lady Widge climbed into her lap. She brought her hands to the cat's fur, idly. "So. You're... him now?" Food this make him a different person? Did he still love her? Would she still love him?
She gave him her full attention. "What happened? Do you...want to talk about it?"
"Kind of," Anders said. Part of him wondered if here he could control Justice a little better. In the dreams he had been broken, enough so that it would be easy for the spirit to take advantage. Here though, he wasn't. He had never been locked in a tower for most of his life, had never been put into solitary confinement for a year. "I'm still me. But he's part of me too. I think he might have always been there, just not very strongly."
As for whether or not he wanted to talk about his dreams, he frowned. When they had started dating, they had said that they would be completely honest with one another, though it was getting harder and harder for Anders to want to follow through on that. There was just… so much. He didn’t want to burden Tink with it all, and he didn’t want to scare her away. But she deserved to know… “I… Justice and I joined, and when I woke up, there were Templars standing over me. Rolan was there, too,” he had complained about Rolan on a few occasions, because the smug bastard really did piss him off. “And I lost control. I killed all of them - The Templars, the Grey Wardens, Rolan. I… ripped off Rolan’s head. That was… his blood on my face.” Maybe Tink didn’t need to know that he had intentionally drank Rolan’s blood, and she didn’t need to know about the whole feasting on the flesh of his enemies thing. “I dressed one of the bodies in my clothes and burned it, and then I ran.”
Tink nodded, listening to him speaking about the horrors of his dreams. She felt a pang in her heart that felt something like pity. Sympathy? Empathy? She couldn't imagine how horrible this must be for him, how much he must be hurt and scared and... whatever else.
And she had to force herself to swallow. "I see." She said, both hands still tangled in Lady Widge's fur. "...I'm sorry, Anders." She really didn't know what else to say. These dreams were so real. He must have felt like he'd actually just done those things. It was slowly processing in her own mind.
The most unsettling part of the dream was that a very strong part of him was telling him that those people deserved it. They deserved it for siccing the Templars on him, for betraying him. Anders had to keep telling himself that no one deserved that. He was a doctor. He was a healer. In both the dreams and here. The fact that he could so easily take a life - in this reality as well - didn’t sit right with him. He sat down on the bed, scratching Sir Pounce-A-Lot behind the ears and staring at the very interesting patch of floor between his feet.
“You should leave me, my love,” Anders said after a long pause. “If I ever hurt you, I don’t think I could live with myself.”
Tink turned to stare at him. As if it was that easy. As if she could just... walk away. They were in this together now, they were lovers and best friends and roommates. She couldn't simply turn her back because things got rough. (Though, this was pretty rough.)
"Anders," she said, her eyes narrowed as they stayed on his face. "I'm not…” She paused for a long moment. “Do you… do you think that’s likely?”
Anders opened and closed his mouth, feeling a little like a fish out of water at the question. “I… don’t know,” he answered finally. “I think I can control it, but… I thought I could control it in the dreams too. I wish I could tell you I wouldn’t but… I love you more than anything in the world, Tink, and I would never intentionally hurt you. But I don’t have a clue about what’s going to happen.”
Well, it was nice to hear that he loved her. She loved him, too. More than anything. Her gaze moved from his face to the bedspread. "Do you--" she felt another pang in her chest, and couldn't believe she was about to ask it, but... "Do you need some time? Space? To figure things out?"
It was the last thing in the world that she wanted, but he told her to leave him. It was terrifying and painful. She felt like she was going to cry.
Not really. Anders thought, but… In the dreams he had killed all those people. In the dreams, he was an abomination, no matter how much he tried to trick himself into thinking otherwise. That probably made him one here too. He could pretend all he wanted, but he had killed all those people in his dream last night, and he knew that he was only going to kill more.
“Maybe,” he said after a long time. “Just until… I can figure out if I can control this. Until I’m sure I won’t,” rip your head off and drink your blood, “hurt you.”
Tink felt like she couldn’t breathe for a moment. She closed her eyes and forced air into her lungs, but it came in a stuttering breath. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Flashbacks to what happened with Neal, fear that she and Anders would never… Her chest was imploding.
“Okay.” She managed to say, somehow, against all odds. “Okay, you… take as much time as you need. I’ll… you know where to find me.” And before she could stop herself, she was up off the bed. Her wings gave a flutter. She turned to head out of the room, not wanting to burst into tears in front of him.
Anders’ heart clenched so tight it physically hurt. This was exactly the kind of emotional vulnerability that a demon would use to take control and he knew it, so instead of chasing after Tink like he desperately wanted to, he stayed on the bed for a moment longer to collect himself and focus his attention on Sir Pounce-A-Lot.
He didn’t completely calm himself, but when he was sure he could handle things without Justice taking control, he stood. “Tink?” he called. He wasn’t sure where she had gone, or if she’d want to see him, but he felt like he had to see her before he left. Give her a kiss goodbye, assure her that he would come back to her as soon as he was able.
Tink was in the kitchen. Lady Widge was at her feet, mewing and curling herself around Tink's ankles. Tink's body was shaking, her face pressed into a kitchen towel. It was damp from her sobbing. She didn't want him to see her like this. She knew he was doing what he thought was right, and she didn't want to make it any harder on him. But it hurt. She couldn't deny how much it hurt.
She was going to be broken without him.
At the sound of her name Tink tossed the towel onto the countertop and turned to face him. Her hands desperately wiped her cheeks to try and force the tears away. "Yes?" She managed to say, then cleared her throat, swallowing it all back.
Seeing her face wet with tears was one of the hardest things Anders had had to see. He had never wanted to hurt her, but he obviously already had. It could be so much worse though, so he swallowed hard and went to her side.
"It's just for a little while, Love," he said. "I promise you I will be back once this is under control." If he could get it under control. It would kill him to lose her, but it would destroy him if he harmed her.
Tink wanted to hug him. That’s all she really wanted. Some comfort from him, comfort for him, whatever. But she knew that would just make this all harder. She wiped at her face with her hands once more, then reached for the towel again. “Okay. I’m--” She cut herself off, taking a breath to try and calm herself. It didn’t work. The next words came out with tears and squeaking. “I’m gonna miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Love,” Anders said. It might make things harder, but he’d be remiss if he just left without some sort of physical contact, so he reached forward to cup her face with his hand, hoping at least that he’d get a kiss.
One last kiss? Tink’s wings fluttered, spreading a shower of dust throughout the kitchen. Her lips met his, her eyes closing, tears rolling down her face. She tried her best not to sob against his mouth.
If this was the last one she’d ever get, she wanted it to be memorable.