"I am," he says, reaching slowly for a full mug and bringing it over, "a healer. A very gifted healer. Exceeeeee... Very much. Which is the sole reason I am still alive. How dare someone want freedom and not be very useful?"
There was a point to this. What was the point? Oh, right.
"Hangovers are something that happen to someone else, because I heal. And, apparently, that is all I should ever be doing. Heal. Keep my, my head down. Don't try for things for mages."
He peers into his mug, takes a drink, and sets it down with the same exaggerated care as everything else.
"What are you?" No. No, that's not quite what he wants to ask. "I mean. Standing. Do you want to go hide in a Circle again?" Anders isn't feeling very polite about loyalists at the moment.
Kostos spends most of that speech squinting at him, trying to follow and having some difficulty with it. The sentences are plenty coherent, really, but without context, Kostos has no idea what he's complaining about. Being useful? Keeping his head down? Both of those are among Kostos' favorite things. So, not quite following.
The question is simple, at least. He doesn't miss a beat.
"And are you fine dragging the rest of us down with you? Most of you are. Forget the ones who got abused, or made tranquil, or killed, or all of the above." It's abrasive, it's asshole behavior, but he can't summon enough energy to care right now. He has to take all of them and their preferences into account when trying to find a future, but Loyalists don't give a damn about everyone else.
Kostos frowns at him for a few second—unfazed by the tone, he isn't sensitive, if he couldn't take the sort of bluntness he dishes out then he would be even more of a dick than he already is—and then says, "I've not forgotten."
Idly, and without asking, he begins taking each of the empty tankards next to Anders and tipping them over to spill whatever drops are left into a single mug. It's barely anything, but maybe it's enough for him to get one drink. How much of that drink will be Anders' spit—let's not think about that. He is both broke and unfinicky. He's had more questionable body fluids in his mouth belonging to people he's spoken to for even shorter periods of time.
"And I am not dragging anyone anywhere. What I want and what I will get are two different things," he says, and drinks. He doesn't have the charm to allow for even a sardonic toast beforehand. It's perfunctory. He puts the mug back down. "If someone has the power to put us back in Circles after all of this, I won't live to hide in one. I have killed too many Templars by half."
He's so confused, and he's not sure how much of that is the ale and how much of it is Kostos. The guy wants to hide in Circles but he goes around killing Templars?
"I don't get where you stand. At all. You want to hide in Circles but you can't so... what then? What do you work for? Or toward? Why do you kill Templars if what you want is to be held by them again?"
Anders pulls the last full tankard closer to him and his mostly full one. He's not ready to share just yet.
Kostos, over here on his side of the table, has no idea what's confusing about it. "We voted," he says, sort of slowly, like he wants to make sure Anders can understand his accent. "We agreed to abide by the results. We lost." That didn't stop every Loyalist from turning on their brothers, but it stopped plenty. It stopped Kostos. With nothing left to drink, he fidgets with a loose splinter of wood on the edge of the table. "I fought under Nell for three years."
Three years, when the war lasted two; when he said by half, he was being fairly precise. If there are pardons to be had under a new Divine, he doesn't imagine they will extend past the date of the ceasefire. He smiles a little, in a grim way, one side of his mouth rising and falling.
"I won't let my friends die because I can't have my way."
He stares at Kostos as if the man's grown a second head. There had been a vote. Kostos, however, is the very first Loyalist who has given a care about it. After a moment of staring and a couple of moments of processing that yes, those are indeed the words he's heard, Anders pushes the full tankard over. He's found a Loyalist he can respect just after the ground's been yanked out from under him again.
Thedas is bizarre. No wonder the Rifters have trouble adapting, when some days he can't even foresee what's coming.
Kostos takes it. He doesn't hesitate. He says, "I am not going to say thank you," for two reasons that he isn't going to explain out loud: first, because it went horribly last time he said thank you, and second, because this is clearly for Anders' own good. He's had enough. Before he starts drinking properly himself, though, Kostos holds the tankard poised near his mouth and eyes Anders again. "What does what I am have to do with you trying to drown yourself?"
He's starting to feel like he's never going to quite understand where Kostos is coming from at any given time, but he can respect the man's stance so that's all right. Anders takes a moment so he can make the effort to get his voice low rather than be loudly angry.
"Every time I think I've found some footing to help the mages stay free after Corypheus is defeated, to help make sure captured again, the ground falls out from beneath me. And I didn't want to share a table with someone who was going to celebrate that."
Kostos looks back blankly, which is probably the most convincing way to say of course I am. It might be less that he's incapable of celebration than the fact that he hasn't had anything worth celebrating since he passed his Harrowing, which he wasn't permitted to discuss and was rattled by besides, or perhaps being made an Enchanter, which was accompanied by his fourth experience with being involuntarily uprooted and severed from what few friendships he'd managed to slowly build over several years and dropped into a new Circle where he... was like this. You see the problem.
Anyway, he doesn't answer beyond that look and, after a few seconds, an uncertain smile, like maybe Anders is the one telling a joke. It could be sarcasm.
He's serious. He doesn't celebrate. And maybe Anders should have seen it coming, because it took being free for years and getting a new chance at life before he was actually celebrating anything. Kostos has not been free as long, and his freedom has been wrapped up in war. Anders drops his gaze before taking another drink.
After a few moments he nods. "We're not doomed. Yet. If I thought we were I... I don't know. But right now the clearest path for the Chantry to regain power is by appointing a new Divine and imprisoning us again, and we don't have things in place to protect us. There isn't a... a foundation."
He is not as drunk as he wishes he was. Or maybe it's starting to wear off. Cheap ale, or something like that. He doesn't know. He just knows that he came here to ignore his reality for a bit and that is not going to actually happen.
"Most of the mages that want to go back give some lip service about the Templars being better this time, not caring about those of us who want freedom or the generations to come who deserve a choice. And it feels very much like the ones who would drag all of us back outnumber the rest. I want a peaceful end where all mages get to choose and I don't see that coming."
It'd be nice if Kostos were someone who might take this opportunity to dispense optimism and hope, or at least something constructive and supportive—providing ideas, pointing out the Inquisition's likely influence over the next Divine—but he's a pessimist and a critic and has more or less accepted the inevitability of a return to war, the rebel mages' eventual defeat, and dying in a fight if he's lucky, on a gibbet if he's not. He doesn't have any optimism to spare.
But on the upside, he also doesn't pile on. He doesn't say that the mages might have held Andoral's Reach indefinitely, but what is he being reluctantly dragged into fighting for if they're all going to spend the rest of their lives in a single fortress fending off attacks anyway. He doesn't point out that they were losing, when Fiona made her bargain with Tevinter, and if they pick up the war where they left off after this ceasefire they will go right back to losing and everyone will die.
He only says, "Some gift." Thanks, Maker. Then he takes a last mouthful of ale before putting it back down in front of Anders. He was clearly wrong about the man having had enough.
He stares at the mug being pushed back at him, squinting up at Kostos after a moment.
"What, it being free doesn't make it taste better?" It always had to him. Sure, this ale leaves something to be desired, a lot of something, but free. "Or is the conversation making it taste bad?"
Deciding there's little to no chance Kostos dropped something dangerous in it, Anders takes his own drink from the mug.
Kostos raises both eyebrows, blinks a couple times beneath them, and then says, "Magic."
The ale was fine. Magic is some gift. One that damns them if they do or they don't, and so on, and so forth; there is no hope and they will all die even if the rest of the world is saved; there is no happy ending. All the hallmarks of a curse instead of a gift. But if Anders can't understand all of that from that one word, magic, then he may be out of luck, because Kostos doesn't pause to clarify any further before trying to explain the other thing:
"I thought you were drunk," he says, "but you said generations to come without stumbling. You can keep going."
He'll allow it. Because he's the boss of how much Anders drinks now. Apparently.
"It is a gift," he says quietly. "It's no curse. Others make it so, act like it is, cause it to be. But it could do so much, help so much, if people let it."
The ale understands. Or at least the ale doesn't judge what he is and what he can say, and so he takes another drink.
"And I can always say 'generations to come. It's a gift from my... former company. Oppression, too." He's not serious. Which means Kostos might miss the joke, and Anders isn't sure if that's funny or not.
They'll have to agree to disagree about magic, for now, because Kostos doesn't argue, only pulls a face that's subtle enough not to quite demand commentary and returns, too, to pulling at the splinter on the table. The joke, meanwhile, flies right over his head—not because he can't recognize a joke, but because he's only vaguely and barely aware that Anders might have been possessed at some point and, given the dearth of cases of mages coming back from possession, even less aware of former possession leaving any sort of imprint, which if true would have incredibly alarming implications for the viability of depossession as a solution in the future—
—all of which is a mental tangent he doesn't go on, because he doesn't get it. He assumes Anders' former company were rebel mages. Which also makes sense, and is also almost a joke, he supposes, enough to warrant twitching one side of his mouth in acknowledgment.
And then to just sort of sit there. He doesn't know what else to say.
At least he got a mouth twitch. Maybe Kostos has a tiny sense of humor after all? He's really not sure. Anders takes a breath and rests his elbows on the table, resting his head in a palm.
"I wish there was some path forward, some clear way to make progress. But we've never, we've never had a group get better rights or freedoms in Thedas. Other worlds have stories of it but not the steps, no guide, nothing, and even if we get somewhere we could have it all fall apart like the Dalish did with their promised lands and betrayal. I... I don't know what will help."
Anders sighs heavily before motioning the waiter over for more drinks, because he's truly not drunk enough.
Kostos doesn't know what would help, either, but he says, "There was Andraste and—everyone." Everyone who no longer lives under the Imperium. Surely that counts for something.
He's quiet as the waiter brings two tankards over, nodding after to one of them.
"Take one. Please. Because it's clear you want a drink but you're not for some reason and after you've maybe just implied what we need is a martyr who has a lot of writings I think you need it too."
There was a time when he would have accepted the role of martyr. Now he has too much to live for, and doesn't really feel like sacrificing any mages. ...Except Vivienne, but that would hardly be sacrifice or helpful.
"We didn't lose our war, but we didn't win it either. I don't know that we would have won. No offense to those of you who were on the front lines, because you deserve a great deal of credit. But we weren't organized. Now? The battlefield is public opinion and I still don't think we're organized enough for that."
Kostos takes the drink without comment, which is probably for the best, because if he did comment it would be to say maybe Anders should have tried harder to die during the Kirkwall Rebellion.
It's also for the best that he's give a drink at all, because it leaves him feeling appreciative enough that he doesn't bristle too badly—some, but not a lot—at the comment about organization, doesn't snap back. He just takes a very long drink, and then speaks slowly, choosing words not out of care for anyone's feelings, but because he is really not very good at talking.
"It has always been a battlefield of public opinion," he says. "People gave quarter to the Templars as they would never give to us. We could not stay where we were not wanted or take supplies we were not offered, because then we would be what they fear we could become. Redcliffe is the only place we were ever offered shelter. Even the children."
Perhaps if the Templars traveled with eight-year-olds they had to consider as well as grown men, or elderly Templars who could hardly life a sword—perhaps if locking Templars in a house and setting it on fire wouldn't have been regarded by the people as an atrocity beyond forgiveness—
"The Grand Enchanter could not have been a commander and a caretaker at once," Kostos finishes. "It is too much to ask. And as long as it is a war between people who are chosen and trained, and people who are born, there is no evening those odds."
"Fiona did the best she could with the situation," he agrees quietly. The reminder of children is unfortunately sobering. People can't find it in their hearts to feel for mage children. They have such a climb ahead of them.
Anders rests his forehead in a hand and stares at his mug.
"We need," he starts slowly, "a few leaders at the top. Two, three. More than one, no more than five or decision making gets dragged out too much. This way we can have a commander, we can have a caretaker, we can have a quartermaster, and a diplomat." That makes four. An odd number would be easier for coming to decisions, but they need to keep things streamlined too. He'd like to be caretaker, he could be quartermaster, but he knows he's not suited for the other two roles.
"And we need a clear idea of what we're trying to make, a unified idea. What our end goal is. Something to inspire mages and maybe somehow ease a portion of the fears of the non-mages. Somehow."
That word deserves an echo because he doesn't know how to achieve that. He's been in over his head for years now.
They should be afraid, Kostos could say, but they've been having such a bizarrely nice time. He doesn't. He also doesn't offer up the ideas he has—because, however terrible he is at dealing with people in the moment, he's somewhat better at understanding them from a distance—because this is starting to feel uncomfortably like a planning session instead of a complaining session. Instead he swirls his ale and stares down into the whirlpool that results, and he says, "Sounds like a problem for Libertarians."
He's joking, a little, but also not joking at all. Call it self-aware seriousness. He knows he's being somewhat irrational.
He lifts tired eyes up to look at Kostos, but he doesn't really have a retort to whatever that is. It's a problem for all. So few will approach it, though, that it becomes a bigger problem for those who will. Finally he exhales and half-slumps, doodling in the condensation pools on the table.
"It's our future," he mutters. "One way or another. Either we find something, or the Chantry takes all of you back in, in chains, and it's not going to show mercy."
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There was a point to this. What was the point? Oh, right.
"Hangovers are something that happen to someone else, because I heal. And, apparently, that is all I should ever be doing. Heal. Keep my, my head down. Don't try for things for mages."
He peers into his mug, takes a drink, and sets it down with the same exaggerated care as everything else.
"What are you?" No. No, that's not quite what he wants to ask. "I mean. Standing. Do you want to go hide in a Circle again?" Anders isn't feeling very polite about loyalists at the moment.
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The question is simple, at least. He doesn't miss a beat.
"Yes."
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"And are you fine dragging the rest of us down with you? Most of you are. Forget the ones who got abused, or made tranquil, or killed, or all of the above." It's abrasive, it's asshole behavior, but he can't summon enough energy to care right now. He has to take all of them and their preferences into account when trying to find a future, but Loyalists don't give a damn about everyone else.
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Idly, and without asking, he begins taking each of the empty tankards next to Anders and tipping them over to spill whatever drops are left into a single mug. It's barely anything, but maybe it's enough for him to get one drink. How much of that drink will be Anders' spit—let's not think about that. He is both broke and unfinicky. He's had more questionable body fluids in his mouth belonging to people he's spoken to for even shorter periods of time.
"And I am not dragging anyone anywhere. What I want and what I will get are two different things," he says, and drinks. He doesn't have the charm to allow for even a sardonic toast beforehand. It's perfunctory. He puts the mug back down. "If someone has the power to put us back in Circles after all of this, I won't live to hide in one. I have killed too many Templars by half."
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"I don't get where you stand. At all. You want to hide in Circles but you can't so... what then? What do you work for? Or toward? Why do you kill Templars if what you want is to be held by them again?"
Anders pulls the last full tankard closer to him and his mostly full one. He's not ready to share just yet.
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Three years, when the war lasted two; when he said by half, he was being fairly precise. If there are pardons to be had under a new Divine, he doesn't imagine they will extend past the date of the ceasefire. He smiles a little, in a grim way, one side of his mouth rising and falling.
"I won't let my friends die because I can't have my way."
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Thedas is bizarre. No wonder the Rifters have trouble adapting, when some days he can't even foresee what's coming.
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"Every time I think I've found some footing to help the mages stay free after Corypheus is defeated, to help make sure captured again, the ground falls out from beneath me. And I didn't want to share a table with someone who was going to celebrate that."
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Not even being given a free drink. He downs a good fraction of it in one go.
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"You're not serious."
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Anyway, he doesn't answer beyond that look and, after a few seconds, an uncertain smile, like maybe Anders is the one telling a joke. It could be sarcasm.
"Are you going to explain why we're doomed now?"
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After a few moments he nods. "We're not doomed. Yet. If I thought we were I... I don't know. But right now the clearest path for the Chantry to regain power is by appointing a new Divine and imprisoning us again, and we don't have things in place to protect us. There isn't a... a foundation."
He is not as drunk as he wishes he was. Or maybe it's starting to wear off. Cheap ale, or something like that. He doesn't know. He just knows that he came here to ignore his reality for a bit and that is not going to actually happen.
"Most of the mages that want to go back give some lip service about the Templars being better this time, not caring about those of us who want freedom or the generations to come who deserve a choice. And it feels very much like the ones who would drag all of us back outnumber the rest. I want a peaceful end where all mages get to choose and I don't see that coming."
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But on the upside, he also doesn't pile on. He doesn't say that the mages might have held Andoral's Reach indefinitely, but what is he being reluctantly dragged into fighting for if they're all going to spend the rest of their lives in a single fortress fending off attacks anyway. He doesn't point out that they were losing, when Fiona made her bargain with Tevinter, and if they pick up the war where they left off after this ceasefire they will go right back to losing and everyone will die.
He only says, "Some gift." Thanks, Maker. Then he takes a last mouthful of ale before putting it back down in front of Anders. He was clearly wrong about the man having had enough.
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"What, it being free doesn't make it taste better?" It always had to him. Sure, this ale leaves something to be desired, a lot of something, but free. "Or is the conversation making it taste bad?"
Deciding there's little to no chance Kostos dropped something dangerous in it, Anders takes his own drink from the mug.
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The ale was fine. Magic is some gift. One that damns them if they do or they don't, and so on, and so forth; there is no hope and they will all die even if the rest of the world is saved; there is no happy ending. All the hallmarks of a curse instead of a gift. But if Anders can't understand all of that from that one word, magic, then he may be out of luck, because Kostos doesn't pause to clarify any further before trying to explain the other thing:
"I thought you were drunk," he says, "but you said generations to come without stumbling. You can keep going."
He'll allow it. Because he's the boss of how much Anders drinks now. Apparently.
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The ale understands. Or at least the ale doesn't judge what he is and what he can say, and so he takes another drink.
"And I can always say 'generations to come. It's a gift from my... former company. Oppression, too." He's not serious. Which means Kostos might miss the joke, and Anders isn't sure if that's funny or not.
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—all of which is a mental tangent he doesn't go on, because he doesn't get it. He assumes Anders' former company were rebel mages. Which also makes sense, and is also almost a joke, he supposes, enough to warrant twitching one side of his mouth in acknowledgment.
And then to just sort of sit there. He doesn't know what else to say.
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"I wish there was some path forward, some clear way to make progress. But we've never, we've never had a group get better rights or freedoms in Thedas. Other worlds have stories of it but not the steps, no guide, nothing, and even if we get somewhere we could have it all fall apart like the Dalish did with their promised lands and betrayal. I... I don't know what will help."
Anders sighs heavily before motioning the waiter over for more drinks, because he's truly not drunk enough.
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"Take one. Please. Because it's clear you want a drink but you're not for some reason and after you've maybe just implied what we need is a martyr who has a lot of writings I think you need it too."
There was a time when he would have accepted the role of martyr. Now he has too much to live for, and doesn't really feel like sacrificing any mages. ...Except Vivienne, but that would hardly be sacrifice or helpful.
"We didn't lose our war, but we didn't win it either. I don't know that we would have won. No offense to those of you who were on the front lines, because you deserve a great deal of credit. But we weren't organized. Now? The battlefield is public opinion and I still don't think we're organized enough for that."
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It's also for the best that he's give a drink at all, because it leaves him feeling appreciative enough that he doesn't bristle too badly—some, but not a lot—at the comment about organization, doesn't snap back. He just takes a very long drink, and then speaks slowly, choosing words not out of care for anyone's feelings, but because he is really not very good at talking.
"It has always been a battlefield of public opinion," he says. "People gave quarter to the Templars as they would never give to us. We could not stay where we were not wanted or take supplies we were not offered, because then we would be what they fear we could become. Redcliffe is the only place we were ever offered shelter. Even the children."
Perhaps if the Templars traveled with eight-year-olds they had to consider as well as grown men, or elderly Templars who could hardly life a sword—perhaps if locking Templars in a house and setting it on fire wouldn't have been regarded by the people as an atrocity beyond forgiveness—
"The Grand Enchanter could not have been a commander and a caretaker at once," Kostos finishes. "It is too much to ask. And as long as it is a war between people who are chosen and trained, and people who are born, there is no evening those odds."
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Anders rests his forehead in a hand and stares at his mug.
"We need," he starts slowly, "a few leaders at the top. Two, three. More than one, no more than five or decision making gets dragged out too much. This way we can have a commander, we can have a caretaker, we can have a quartermaster, and a diplomat." That makes four. An odd number would be easier for coming to decisions, but they need to keep things streamlined too. He'd like to be caretaker, he could be quartermaster, but he knows he's not suited for the other two roles.
"And we need a clear idea of what we're trying to make, a unified idea. What our end goal is. Something to inspire mages and maybe somehow ease a portion of the fears of the non-mages. Somehow."
That word deserves an echo because he doesn't know how to achieve that. He's been in over his head for years now.
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He's joking, a little, but also not joking at all. Call it self-aware seriousness. He knows he's being somewhat irrational.
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"It's our future," he mutters. "One way or another. Either we find something, or the Chantry takes all of you back in, in chains, and it's not going to show mercy."
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