[video]

[songofvalor]

[ A FEW MINUTES AFTER THIS THREAD. Leliana's voice is shaky and her accent heavier than usual, too much anger bubbling inside her. ]

Anders! Where are you, you fiend?

I can't believe I thought you were a good man. You were one of Elissa's friends, for Andraste's sake! To find out this out from someone else while you walk around like you didn't... you didn't...

The blood of Kirkwall's grand cleric is in your hands. Grand Cleric Elthina! How could you murder one of the holiest people in Thedas!? What have you to gain!?

[ ANDERS BRO GET YOUR ASS IN HERE BEFORE SHE HUNTS YOU DOWN HERSELF ]

[ ooc: I am so sorry for spamming! Important development that can't be delayed and stuff. ]

Comments

[ladyspitfire]

No, it wasn't the point. Freedom was.

[And to think that he had never been so obsessed with the freedom of others - only his own - until after he met Justice. How quickly things change.]

And did you succeed? Was Kirkwall's Circle truly liberated once she was dead?

[birdhousesoul]

Kirkwall's Circle no longer exists. Meredith annulled it before she was put down. [Put down, he says, because there's no better term for it; what is done with a rabid animal.] The mages had to fight or die.

They fought. We fought.

As will every Circle. Did I succeed? What kind of a question is that? I don't know how you think this works, exactly, Commander. Do you think it should have been immediate? One Chantry falls and the fetters burst from every mage's hands, everywhere across Thedas? Of course I don't know whether I succeeded. I may not live long enough to know.

[ladyspitfire]

[Put down like a dog. She closes her eyes for a moment because that's the only way she can keep the bile from rising in her throat. Fight or die. And she'd known it, too, known that this would be the eventual outcome of Circles. The destruction of Kinloch Hold during the Blight only proved that to her.]

The success of your war is measured by you, Anders. There are no countries to save, no monsters to drive from the land. Your success will be measured in the destruction of towers and the deaths of Templars.

So you tell me if you succeeded in Kirkwall. Was the death of the Grand Cleric what you needed to free them?

[I may not live long enough to know. She keeps her anger in check and pushes it all away, though she wants to yell at him for such a statement. This is your damn war, you foolish bastard. And now you'll just abandon responsibility for it by dying?]

[birdhousesoul]

That's just it. The towers won't fall in unison, with the snap of a finger. I can't know whether I've truly succeeded until more has happened. I can only say the first blow has been struck decisively. The first crack has been made.

I do know this: the blackpowder will have made a tremendous difference. Will make a tremendous difference. A Templar can use his lyrium-fueled techniques [not magic, oh, no, not when a Templar does it] to sap our mana, but that won't leave us defenseless. Not any more. We aren't allowed weapons or weapons training in the Towers, but it doesn't take a precious lot of training to use gaatlok.

And with magic, the explosives can be made so much more effective.

[The sky dull weeping pink. The blast fueled not only by the sewer scrapings and dragon dung, but by arcane preparation. Mere blackpowder doesn't make an explosion of that magnitude.]

You're still harping on the Grand Cleric. As if her single, solitary life were the real crux of all this. Must I repeat that her death was not the point? This was not a mission to assassinate the Grand Cleric of Kirkwall. This was to take down the entire Kirkwall Chantry. Decisively. Conspicuously.

Maker's breath, Cousland, if we'd simply taken out Elthina, the Chantry could've claimed she was ill and simply gone on letting Meredith run things without her. That's how much Elthina was doing for the people. That's how effective she was. It all could have gone on without her, without skipping a beat.

[ladyspitfire]

[Gaatlok. Magic and the Qunari's gaatlok. Oh Maker, she can already envision the destruction that will cause. That Anders has gotten a hold of it some how - when were the Qunari in Kirkwall? - and not only knows how to use it but has the tenacity to use it in tandem with magic only frightens her further.

The first blow has been struck. And here she is, staring at the one person who knows all of what's happened, one who has no intention of changing or backing down.

(I have to stop him somehow. And if I can't stop him...)

The idea of helping him slips so nicely into her thoughts that her fear doubles, nearly triples. How she can so easily think of aiding him without a second thought, giving him shelter or an excuse to hide, fighting off his attackers and helping his fellow runaways... It makes her stomach clench.]

I don't give two shits about Elthina or the Chantry. I've fought in enough battles, Anders, and I know that what you've done has grander implications.

A woman, defenseless and incapable of defending herself, was struck down. She did not physically attack you. She posed no threat - since you say she did nothing to help you or hinder you beyond her proposed ignorance - and still she was killed. You've set a precedent now: any who refuse to help deserve to die. You've signed the death warrants of innocents with this one act. Others like you will follow your example and will destroy anything they deem unhelpful, anyone they don't trust, and even the people who want to avoid conflict altogether.

Strike down your captors all you want. Kill your oppressors and break your shackles. I've never told you otherwise. [Maker, I've even helped you, and I don't regret it. I never will.] Destroy those who oppose you. But don't destroy the few avenues you have for peace. When Thedas is covered in the ashes of towers, you will need that for the people you've saved.

[songofvalor]

[ Leliana's listening to this. She doesn't understand Elissa's grander points -- in her rage, all that registers is that Anders is excused. She is encouraging him to fight. ]

[ She opts to say something, but nothing comes out. She just turns her video off. ]

[ladyspitfire]

[Elissa begins to say something but when Leliana departs, she simply closes her mouth and puts her face in her hands. Maker, she's done it this time.]

[birdhousesoul]

Yes. Yes, it does have larger implications. Thank you for acknowledging this, finally.

You're still missing the point, though. She did nothing to help. She did plenty to hinder, simply by giving Meredith the dignity of the title Knight-Commander. She was the only person in that city with the power to curb Meredith -- to call that power-mad monster to heel. Every day she turned a blind eye to those abuses, she certainly hindered justice. Hinder is too weak a word. But removing her from power would not have helped our cause by much at all.

You call the Grand Cleric defenseless? The power of that office is such that she commands every Templar in the region, as she commands the Knight-Commander. As many swords as there were Templars, that's how many swords the Grand Cleric can wield. Maker, Cousland, you're a noblewoman born and bred. Don't pretend to me that a high office is nothing more than a name.

Don't pretend to me that the authority is not responsible for the actions undertaken in his name. Or hers.

[ladyspitfire]

I'm not missing the point. I hear every word you're saying.

It is more than a name. But you keep insisting that she did nothing. Removing her without killing her would have done next to nothing, you're right. But that doesn't mean it was impossible.

I'm not telling you not to fight, Anders. But Maker's breath, don't act like you aren't condoning enough bloodshed and destruction to cripple the entire world. You could have been smarter about this. Instead, you've chosen this path. [She shakes her head sadly.] And even now, I don't know what else you could have done. I don't know what better option there may have been.

[You could have called for me. But even that is hollow, every thought going back to everything he's said before. Where were you, Elissa, when he needed you?

She has no answer and no way of knowing why she hadn't been able to help him.]

Enough. My word means little and you have made your choice. I hope you will be successful one day. I only wish there will be less bloodshed and turmoil in the future, though that's unlikely.

[Because even now, she hopes mages will be free, just as Morrigan was and Wynne had the opportunity to have. She hopes there will be a day when they won't be imprisoned. But she also knows deep within herself that she won't be around to see it; such a war will take decades to decide and she will have gone to her Calling long before it is over.]

[birdhousesoul]

There have been ages of bloodshed and turmoil already. For the Maker's sake, Elissa, do you think I was the first? Do you think Rylock was the first? Across Thedas, for hundreds of years, that same story's played out, only without some Hero of Ferelden to stand between the mage and the Templar. And let's be honest, if it weren't a mage you had personally known and conscripted, would you care? Because it's gone on happening. That and worse. Would you conscript every mage, make them all Wardens? Make them pay that price for their freedom, which you won't let me name aloud? And even then, even with all the authority and tradition of the Warden order at my back, I wasn't safe.

Let the bloodshed to come be brief and decisive, and we'll be spared hundreds more years of the same.

[ladyspitfire]

And so I should be the one to throw down my blade and take up arms with you? Should I also go into every city and free the elves, let them do as they please so they can pay for decent living wages and escape from under the thumb of nobles? And perhaps I should go into the wilds and crusade for the elvhen to get the few pieces of their heritage back as well. Would that satisfy you?

[She shakes her head vehemently.]

What do you want me to do, Anders? Do you want me to regret helping you? Would you rather I have let you go back with Rylock? Nothing I have will satisfy you, not my blade or my arm, not my title or my authority.

Tell me what you want from me.

[birdhousesoul]

I want you to know that you can't pick and choose which mages are important and which mages aren't. The life of your friend Anders isn't intrinsically worth more than the life of my friend Karl. Nor his sanity, nor his safety, nor his dignity.

People don't acquire more worth simply because you like them. They don't derive special, added value from the fact your life has touched theirs.

That's what I want. For you to accept that.

[ladyspitfire]

I didn't choose you because you were my friend, Anders. I barely even knew you. But you can't tell me that the people you love and care for don't take precedence for you in some way, shape or form. You would throw me to the wolves if it meant saving Nathaniel, and he would do the same for you. If you try to tell me otherwise, then you're lying.

[But she falls silent and glances away briefly before she turns back to him and nods.]

I will accept it, however, because it is no less true.

[birdhousesoul]

You presume too much. You have no idea what I've done for the sake of my cause. What I've given up, or whom.

Don't presume that because you'd place a lover above a friend, I'd do the same.

[True, Hawke had never been his lover. Not his Hawke. But he'd loved Hawke more than anything, anyone, he'd ever known or met. Anders would have followed that man to the ends of the earth, and sometimes it seemed he did -- the Vimmark Mountains should surely qualify as something like an end. Some boundary better left uncrossed.

And he chose Justice over Hawke. His friend over the man he loved. He used Hawke ruthlessly for Justice's cause.

And he'd do the same again. If he had to.

Not that he can tell Cousland this. Not that it's any of her blighted business. But oh, the gall of it, to be told he'd choose a lover above all -- the bitterness of knowing how wrong she is -- Anders had to say something, as vague as it is, and as ineffective.]

If you acknowledge that you don't know the first bloody thing about the mages' plight, that spending time with a couple of mages here and there under completely extraordinary circumstances does not in any way qualify you to judge what we suffer, and that the mere fact that you've known that handful of mages doesn't make them more important than the countless mages you've never known -- then good. That's all I can ask of you, or hope for, rather.

Mages must speak, and act, and fight, for themselves. Without a fight, there'll be no freedom. There is no way around that necessity. We have every right to take action against our oppressors. That includes Grand Clerics like Elthina as surely as it does Templars like Rylock.

[ladyspitfire]

[Elissa, for the first time in months, flushes with rage.]

Then don't presume the same of me.

[The ritual comes to mind, knowing that she will never have Alistair as she wishes she could. She's watched her friends leave her, one by one, each one returning to a life of their own making. But not her. Every time she's done something for another, tried to put them above the good of Thedas, nothing has come out right.

Anders is a perfect reminder of that very fact.]

Why do you think I don't take up your cause? I don't know the tortures you've experienced nor do I know of anything beyond what I've seen and been told. It would be presumptuous and downright disrespectful of me to do anything else. I can no sooner understand your plight than you can understand my views.

[Elissa has been privileged in so many ways and ruined in so many others, but even she knows her life is far from pitiful, far from the horrors Anders has hinted at. And she'll never think otherwise.]

[birdhousesoul]

You're questioning the justice of the action I've taken.

You have no right to question it.

[ladyspitfire]

Considering our positions, Anders, I have every right to question them.

[She's a Warden, protector of Thedas, and being the Hero of the Blight has only put her in a position to openly monitor the goings-on of the politics and the world order. Nothing less would be expected of her.]

My opinion doesn't matter, nor should it. I can't stop you nor can I change what's already happened. Be glad of that fact. [But maybe things can still be fixed.] And if Justice has a problem with me, then he can speak to me himself.

[birdhousesoul]

You have no right at all. You have not lived our pain.

[ladyspitfire]

Look around you, Anders. Even your fellow mages judge what you have done.

[birdhousesoul]

You could not keep safe the one mage you tried to save.

Let the mages speak for themselves. You have no voice in this. Hero of Ferelden. This goes beyond Ferelden. And you were never the mages' hero. Only mine, once.

[ladyspitfire]

[Her blood immediately goes cold at the accusation, though it's true in every way. She couldn't save him. The reminder has never made her feel more helpless and distraught, though her face doesn't show it. Instead, her expression is entirely blank, even her gaze hardening so she won't break now that she's come so far.]

I never was a hero. I am only a Warden. I have no borders.

[Her voice never wavers, though it softens, as if speaking anything else will snap her threadbare control over herself.]

I did fail you. And for that, no apology will ever be enough. But I am sorry.