Where is the line?

Chapter 1

Anders withdrew his hand, and with it the pleasant chill of shimmering blue magic pulled away too. Thankfully, the reddened flesh on Fenris’ chest didn’t erupt into the earlier sensations of flaming heat and sharp agony, but rather descended into the comfortable tenderness of a bruise – the kind you want to poke every now and then to make sure it’s still there, and immediately regret doing so, only to repeat the mistake five minutes later (of course, Fenris had already begun that pattern, and winced as his fingertips stung like nettles brushing over the exposed surface of his skin). The elf let his hand rest in his lap, exhaled slowly, and waited a few seconds for the prickly pain to die back down.

The mage’s eyes were too dazed and unfocused to notice such things, and he was already mechanically turning around to rinse his hands in the bronze bowl beside him; he used the same soft white towel to dry them as he did to wipe the sweat from his brow and neck, and then tossed it half-heartedly into the corner, so flippantly that he seemed he could be expecting rats to scurry over and carry it away.

With a slight scowl, a tense jaw and held breath, Fenris tugged his shirt back over his chest, and tried to position his shoulder so that as little cotton (although, at this point, it felt more like sandpaper) as possible touched the sore patch. He kept his eyes diverted, but he need not have – Anders showed no intention of facing him again, already busying himself with shuffling bandages and poultices around on the other table, forcing an aura of faux-purposefulness.

Fenris could have stood up and left at that point, and the invitation to do so was as clear as day, but something – probably foolish curiosity – bade him to speak. “What is that around your neck?”

“Hmm?” Anders kept his preoccupied persona on point, disguising the slight twitch of his head – the expression of an internal desire to turn around – by following it with a step in that direction, and by scooping up the papers that lay on the surface in front of where he had moved to. In all honesty, he had no idea what half of them meant – old warden documents mingled with thank you letters, deeds on top of receipts, underneath Justice’s angry scribbles. Nevertheless, he began sorting through them, trying to create some kind of filing system for the chaos.

Fenris sighed, mentally begging himself to just leave, just forget about it… “The vial.”

“Darkspawn blood.” Anders answered blankly, and plainly, as he dropped all but one of the papers down. The page he held onto was clearly one of the oldest, stained with spilt drinks and rain and tears, with ripped corners and dense patterns of creases – the black ink that almost covered it was as good as illegible, but Anders knew what it said, over and over again in the handwriting of someone who’d almost never used a quill. His right hand had tightened on the page as he read, and he wasn’t quite sure when his left had lifted up to rub his forehead. “To remember those who didn’t make it.” He added, with a still-distracted tone.

“Did not make what?” Fenris couldn’t see the paper from where he sat on the make-shift hospital bed, but he could see the mage’s hunched shoulders and bowed head, and the tense muscles of his upper arms.

“The joining.” It took him a few moments to realise that he would need to clarify even further, “Becoming a Warden.”

“You are a Grey Warden?” Fenris scoffed; a disbelieving smirk formed almost instantly, dispelling his grimace. “I had assumed they were more… selective.”

The mage straightened his back – he dropped his left hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to release the crumpled page, and instead his fist seemed to be clenching of its own free will. “I thought Hawke told you.”

Two conversations were happening at once by this point – one aloud with Fenris, which was at least bearable – and a second silently inside his skull, distant, never-ending, and painful, the same four words repeated, in the voice of the spirit who’d tattooed them onto paper years ago. “Where is the line? Where is the line? Where is the line?”