Test Drive #0.

[powersthatbe]

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cut there are four prompts to get you started: the first is if you’d like to test what intro-ing a new character is like, the second if you’d like to just chat and get CR with other prospective players just before the game’s starting event takes place, and the third and fourth for threaders looking for more active challenges to play in the game’s backstory - a bit of a look at what getting involved in this game’s plot would look like.

When you comment, be sure you specify what prompt you want to play with, and please put up your own threadstarter - it makes for a much more friendly environment than a forest of bare toplevels!

Before you start, we’d like you to please take a quick look at the game’s Concept, its Rules, and the Liminal Space & Previous Universes pages, just to give you the background, so you know what you’re getting into. And if you’re looking for more information, the Directory is here and the Reserves page is here.

Have fun!



Prompt #1: Liminal Space: New Arrivals

It seems to you that you’ve just stepped through a door, and you can feel the faint breeze of it blowing behind you.

You’ve just stepped into a mansion as imagined by MC Escher. This is the grand foyer, and zigzagging staircases with gilt balustrades curl impossibly along the corners, leading to a ballroom on the right wall, a theater on the left, or a fire-lit banqueting hall on the ceiling, far more rustic than the rest of the mansion looks. The far wall is a scattered collection of doors and windows facing all directions and opening who-knows where. Outside the windows you can see a beach, a mist-shrouded forest, and a starry sky. One door has a sheaf of papers nailed to it. Another has blood trickling out from beneath the doorframe.

When you look behind you, however, there is no door there. Nor, in fact, is there a wall in the traditional sense. Instead, there’s a marble-tiled bath-house.

In all of these places, whatever direction they happen to be facing with respect to tradition gravity, are people in strange clothing. Most of them seem to be looking relatively bored or restless, and only a very few seem at all bothered by the notion that the laws of physics seem to be being held in abeyance - mostly, the people standing nearest to you.

Most disturbing of all, beside the quiet murmur of conversation in your ears, you can also hear voices casually exchanging small talk inside your head.

After a moment, there’s a lull in most of the audible conversations, and a large portion of the room turns and looks your way. Someone -one of the voices in your head - says

Look at that. A new pack of Fools just arrived.




Prompt #2: Liminal Space: Everyone Else

This time, liminal space has manifested as a mansion as imagined by MC Escher. This is the grand foyer, and zigzagging staircases with gilt balustrades curl impossibly along the corners, leading to a ballroom on the right wall, a theater on the left, or a fire-lit banqueting hall on the ceiling, far more rustic than the rest of the mansion looks. The far wall is a scattered collection of doors and windows facing all directions and opening who-knows where. Outside the windows you can see a beach, a mist-shrouded forest, and a starry sky. One door has a sheaf of papers nailed to it. Another has blood trickling out from beneath the doorframe. Behind you, there’s a marble-tiled bath-house.

It’s up to you to find a way to amuse yourself. You’ve been here thirty-six hours, longer than any of your previous Jaunts between worlds has taken, and since the food in the banquet hall vanishes the moment it’s out of your sight (even if it’s inside you), you’re starting to get hungry. When is the portal going to appear?





Prompt #3: Alternities: Locked Rooms In Moebius

You wake up in a new world, but by now you’re familiar with that. Only… something’s wrong. You didn’t step through any portal. You’re lying on a cold surface with something draped over you, and you can hear confused murmuring coming from your left and your right, maybe above and below you too, and you hurt.

You sit up, shrugging off the dingy once-white cloth draped over you. You’re in a morgue. All the alcoves are open, and in many of them, other Travelers are stirring and waking up. Some of them are wild-eyed. Some are blood-spattered. Every last one is criss-crossed with unfamiliar white lines of scarring.

On the slab in the center of a room is a clock. The hands indicate that it is 3:01. A collection of bloody-edged tools - knives and separators and saw and scalpels - sits beside it.

There is one door out, up half a flight of stairs in one corner, and no windows. The door has been barred, and all around the edges doorstops have been jammed in - wedge-toed shoes, folded sheafs of paper, a length of rubber hosing - anything that will fit in the narrow gap between door and frame, used to create a seal.

Scratched into the paint on the door are the words In the name of Blessed Elua, listen to me this time and stay inside. Don’t go out there. Just wait. Please. -JV

Somewhere out there in the distance, close enough to be audible but far enough away to be quiet, barely audible over the hum of the fluorescent lights, there’s a loud, ragged scream, and then the distant voice begins to sob unevenly.





Prompt #4: Alternities: Extravehicular On The Spark

You’re standing on the curved, chrome-bright hull of a space station that stretches to the horizon in all directions - not a smooth horizon but a busy one, with shapes like distant cityscapes, mountain-ranges of conical turrets glowing faintly with violet light, and a faint if inaudible hum travelling upward through your feet, varying in strength and direction at the passage of distant traffic, scalloped domes sliding over the surface or small treaded runners like motor-trikes zipping by at much greater speeds. A white plastic belt around your waist puffs cool fog every few seconds, a black metal rod in your hand smells of ozone and seems glued to your palm, and your boots are heavy, steel-soled, and have a blinking generator at the heel - but otherwise, save for a pair of goggles tucked into one pocket, you’re wearing street clothes, just what you’d expect yourself to be wearing. Your hair moves around you in a cloud, and your stomach turns uneasily. Even though you seem to have both air and heat there is no gravity. You might as well be hanging from the underside of this craft, not standing on it.

Looking up - or down - anyway, away from the ship - you see a massive planet filling a quarter of the sky, covered in jade-banded rings of cloud that swirl and churn anxiously. Between you and the luminescent green world is suspended a miniscule shape, round, red, like a rough-edged droplet of blood. It and the planet above it appear to be slowly expanding as you watch.

You’re not alone. A group of other people, similarly equipped, stands around you, looking as confused as you feel. A startled expression crosses all their faces at the same moment as an excited, fast-talking voice enters your mind.

-- hacked the telepathic network and scrambled your heads! Bet the champs never thought that was possible! What does that tell you about -- never mind, it can wait. We’re live now, but only for a moment. We need to avoid any *further* psychic interference, so we’re going dark. Repeat, the network is going dark. They won’t be able to get into your heads again. The clock’s at seventy-two minutes at my mark, Fellow Travelers. Aaaand… Mark. Okay. Seventy-two minutes to bring down those engines, or we’re out of the World Series and you can all see how you like floating home! Let’s crash this sucker, kids! See you all on Sangre.

The voice vanishes. You have no idea who it was, and no memory of what it was talking about.

Comments

I WAS PROMISED 800 WORDS

[onetrackminds]

Anders looks surprised when Hawke doesn't immediately strike back; even if Hawke isn't a demon, he would have expected that, at least. Most likely he would have assumed Anders was, especially since he's fairly sure he's lost any trust the man once had in him now.

But he isn't a demon, or he would have attacked back, and he just... dispelled his attack. The realisation hits a little late, and for a moment Anders just stares, trying to make sense of what his eyes tell him most definitely just happened. He blinks, and half considers throwing a second spell just to confirm it, but that would definitely be pushing his luck. His stance drops into a slightly more relaxed one, to show he doesn't intend to try that a second time.

"I wouldn't think you'd been possessed, Hawke," he says, tone still unsure, trying to work out what's going on here. "But a demon might take your form in the Fade, make me think I'm seeing something I'm not."

He's explaining it as if he's talking to someone inexperienced with the Fade, someone who hasn't walked it time after time, the way all mages do. He also sounds as if he isn't expecting to be believed. He did just attack, and it's only luck that Hawke realised why. Actually, he wouldn't have thought that'd be enough to hold back his anger. The only explanation is that--

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?"

He says it with a sigh. This is his dream, his very own creation in the Fade, and that's why everything looks so real. He's actually dreaming about a Hawke who isn't angry with him now. Hawke, who opposes everything he stands for, who refused to help when he needed it most, and who most likely won't ever trust him again. Hawke, who is a threat to his cause, and probably the biggest one in Kirkwall. He's the only man who could sway Meredith, he takes down darkspawn and slavers without breaking a sweat, and he could easily stop Anders' plans if he found out. He could easily stop Anders completely.

And despite knowing all that, this is still a dream.

He sighs again. He isn't answering Hawke's questions, he knows, but what does it really matter? He's tired, even asleep, and... this is too bizarre to really deal with.

"I'd really like to wake up now."

s o o n

[deconsecrate]

Anyone else casually explaining the Fade as if it hasn't been a constant hum in the back of Hawke's life would be treated to three solid minutes of 'surely ye jest'-oriented sarcasm, but in this context the furrow between his brows just goes deep enough to set a coin into. "I...yes, in the twenty-aught years I've been wandering in and out myself I have noticed."

...which curbs most of his natural impulse, and leaves the tone of his own voice equally unsure, if not a little fonder and more acerbic.

There's always been a balance in dealing with Anders, who is, on the surface, easy to mistake for a broken bird. He's too skinny by half, and more than one person has remarked on the pallor of grief that drapes him like a caul. Yet as little as he brings up the subject nowadays, Hawke also knows he's survived more than any other three men he could put a name to, and there's a respect to be afforded to that. Balance maintained has always meant a bell-tone struck between that place and one that treats Anders with the gentleness he won't show himself.

So despite the growing alarm sloshing in the pit of his stomach, Hawke can't quite bring himself to initially prioritize digging out the exact source of the--whatever has welled up between them. Unrecognizable friction. Static just out of the corner of the eye. It can wait, or will dissipate on its own; it could be overstated, but not by much, the extent to which Hawke would prefer the latter. Breaking the news of their actual surroundings wouldn't be a prospect he'd be looking forward to regardless.

"It's not a dream. At least not as far as anyone's been able to tell. Whatever brings people here, it's powerful. A magic I don't understand."

He sounds frustrated by that, as if he should understand it, or has been trying. No joking now, palm-up hands turned out by his sides. A deliberately open gesture. Not ...that his jokes are always obvious, down-turned and absurdly tailored as they tend to be, but marked seriousness is still a different aspect to the one he was wearing before. "You ...may want to be sitting down for this conversation."

Why is there not someone else around better equipped to explain this. --right, because Hawke would insist on being the one to do it anyway, even if one of the truer Veterans wandered over right now.

[onetrackminds]

Anders hesitates briefly, but even if this is a dream, his best bet might just be to play along until he wakes up. If there are demons in this dream, they will also eventually show themselves, by suggesting a deal at the very last. And it isn't like he actually has to worry about demonic possession anymore - there's only room for one extra passenger on this ride - so he actually does feel fairly safe. For now. Unless they end up trying to take his head off instead.

He nods, and then looks around (left, right, up, spotting the banqueting hall. There are enough chairs there, at least. "Over there?" he suggests, sounding almost calm now. The realisation of this place still hasn't hit.

He starts walking, half expecting Hawke to just magically keep up like people do in dreams, but still slowly his pace just enough to let him keep staring at him in disbelief. Now Hawke is next to him it's obvious that what's on his back is a staff, and not an oddly shaped greatsword. He almost wants to reach out and touch it.

"If we've really been brought here by some powerful magic," he says, sounding as if he doesn't believe that for a second. "Shouldn't we be fighting our way out?"

He can't quite wait until he's sitting down to start questioning Hawke on his logic. And it's easier to talk than to focus on the fact that yes, he's now walking horizontally and sideways compared to what he was a second previously. As long as he doesn't fall, he'll be happy. As long as thinking about it isn't what will finally make you fall.

[deconsecrate]

After three years matching his steps to Anders' is ...more or less just the way Hawke walks, when he has the luxury of casually travelling from one place to another. Usually it's more for reasons like 'a sudden incursion of shades.'

Regardless. Hawke's never really thought about it to notice; there must be a hundred (or a thousand, or countless) little ways their lives tangled, invisible until a person starts looking for them. Which he does, even if--he doesn't know what he's trying to see, but he knows the same way he knows where to put his feet that he'll know it when he does.

Or doesn't.

In the present what this has the effect of doing is making Hawke quiet for a good....minute, enough that Anders speaking startles him a little. (That, too, the sudden reminder that he was good at being quiet, with Anders; sometimes it was a relief. He loves the sound of his own voice more than uh, anyone should, really, but even the Champion of Kirkwall gets tired.)


Fighting their way out, that's--well, Maker knows it isn't unreasonable, just--Hawke tips his chin down, meets this with the sardonic drop of lashes over his eyes. "Not usually my first recourse, is it?"

He's certainly no pacifist, and would make no attempt to claim the title, but talking his way out (or sitting back and listening to whatever fantastic weave of bullshit emerges from Varric's mouth) has always come first. Words and what they can do are their own kind of magic, as infinite and as malleable.

"Anyway," once they're on more or less stable ground (if ...on the ceiling), "it doesn't work. I mean, if you threw a fireball at this table--" Hawke raps on it with his knuckles, then takes the opportunity to like, actually sit down, knees apart with his elbows on them, "it'd burn, sure. But in a minute you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference."

He makes a bridge of his forefingers and rests the on either side of his nose, chuckling into his hands. "I have tried! Any excuse to fling fire at things, really."

[onetrackminds]

"Sometimes, Hawke, it seems like it's your only recourse." Anders says it without even thinking, the counter feeling so normal for a moment. And the claim that Hawke wouldn't is almost stranger than the place they're in. It's easier to fall back on the assumption that it's nothing but casual banter. It happens regularly enough. Happened regularly enough.

Then he sits as well, leaving enough space between the two of them to be noticeable. He's too used to Hawke needing personal space, and it isn't really about Anders, even if it might seem that way. He falls quiet again, too. He really has no idea where to even start.

"A fireball?" he says, carefully. Then he shuts up again. People walking on the ceiling really is a lot easier to accept than this. He rubs at his eyes. "Hawke, you can't--"

But having seen him do it, that argument seems a little weak. "Did whoever bring us here turn you into a mage, as well?"

And it isn't possible to sound more disbelieving than Anders does in that moment. This is a dream, and a particularly cruel one. The reality is that he's on his own; he's pushed Hawke away, and for good, and he's going to make it even worse. He never had a chance at an actual comfortable friendship with the man, but even if that chance had been there, he would have lost it by now.

He'd much prefer simply dealing with reality and getting it over with.

[deconsecrate]

By coincidence, and the fact that it's less than comfortable to sit in a chair wearing what amounts to a giant stick, Hawke is undoing the leather strap that supports his staff when Anders comes out with that, and if anyone is keeping a score board (someone probably ought to be), finds himself bereft of words yet again. His hands finish working open the buckle, slowly (his fingertips have gone numb, he realizes distantly), an autonomic series of gestures clearly no longer connected to the brain. "That'd be an odd choice," he answers slowly--carefully, the way he'd approach something skittish and feral, "turning me into something I've been all my life."

It's almost funny, Hawke thinks - he can find anything funny; a person laughs or he shatters - when he considers what he's survived--the Blight, seven years in a place that swallows mages whole, one death after another - maybe this, if it's what it seems, what it could be--maybe this will be the thing that finally guts him.

"Anders--" still with that caution, an undertone of coaxing, "who exactly do you think I am?"

[onetrackminds]

Anders' frown deepens slightly. That's a question he never thought he'd have to answer, and he isn't sure how. Hawke is... a force of nature, unstoppable, magnetic. He draws people in and he succeeds at the impossible and he can get anyone over to his side. He's a man unlike any other. But that's not what Anders wants to say, not after what happened the last time they talked. Because Anders went against him, and there would always be consequences to that.

He doesn't want to sound like he regrets that.

He shrugs. His eyes are following the staff, and the way it shifts slightly while Hawke works on the buckles. It's so strange, but there's no mistaking it for anything else, really. Then again, anyone can pick up a staff, and it wouldn't mean they could use it.

"You're Hawke," he starts, carefully. "The Champion of Kirkwall. The greatest warrior I've ever seen. And if anything stands in your way, you'll burst right through."

It'll have to do; he isn't Varric, after all. The dwarf would probably have a better way of saying it, and with more words as well. Anders is no storyteller, though, and this situation is making it difficult to find the right words. It's... strange. And it feels too real.

[deconsecrate]

Hawke's eyes actually go what he would identify, could he see them, as comically wide, and the fact that he doesn't drop the Hawke's Key once he gets it over his head is just--in battle it's a weapon, he bashes it around as necessary. But when not, then it's something else. Then it was Malcolm's, this complicated thing that binds the magic in their family to their blood.

So he manages not to send it clattering to the ground. Once it's resting safely by the side of the chair, though, he takes his eyes off Anders, drops his head into his hands and laughs, a muffled, ragged sound that lasts long enough to unnerve even him, a little. Maybe he just won't stop. He does, though, the reverberations in his chest dying away as he pulls a long draught of air in through his nose and lets it out again, slowly, taking his hands down as he does. "At least you've got my name right, that's something."

And yes, he's also Champion--or was, he supposes, for all that matters right now; the point seems exquisitely moot.

He watches one of his hands curl into a loose fist, palm-up (he's been making a lot of that gesture in this conversation, someone else less close to the situation could analyze; it's supposed to indicate supplication ...which frankly has never been one of his strong points--but everyone has something in his life he's not too proud to beg for), looks at Anders like he could move him with just his gaze. This is a Hawke who smiles at what stands in his way, takes it apart with charm and jokes and lies. And where charm doesn't work, daring does. Questionable wit spit like sparks at shadows.

...failing that, there's always lightning. Lightning works, too.

"I don't think they're going to let me keep the title." Eyes at half-mast, tone low with amused resignation. "Which I suppose leaves me with just 'apostate.'" As accompaniment to this, licks of flame curl up between his fingers, blooming languid and bright and effortless. "Like my father. My sister."

Hawke draws in a breath, shoring himself up. As if he could make Anders understand this just by willing it, by wanting it badly enough. "Like you."

[onetrackminds]

Anders can't help the way he stares at the flames when they first appear. It's difficult to deny it like this, with fire flickering up in front of him, which should be burned Hawke as well. But like all magic, the caster can control it, and there is no doubt who is in control of this.

There is an instinct in Anders, though, overriding the shock and confusion, and he's acting now without even thinking about it. He looks around desperately, checking all directions - he's learned now, up and down as well - and casting around for an angry or determined face, for anyone turning towards them, heading in their direction. The Templars, he knows, are everywhere, and they never quite go off duty.

He's expecting to be grabbed and arrested any second now, and for the same to happen to Hawke as well.

"Is it safe?" he asks, quietly. It's a little late to ask that, after he already cast a spell himself. But his had been less obvious, just a light and some movement, easy to miss if you weren't looking, especially in such a brightly lit area as this. Fire spells were different, and you'd expect even regular people to react to that. They weren't used to people burning their own hands.

He reaches out to grab Hawke's elbow, pulling his arm down in the hope he'll release his spell. He's saving his confusion at this impossible situation for now - he'll figure out what's going on later. Fist, he has to make sure he's safe.

"You can't be so careless!" he says, still barely above a whisper. "Even if there are no Templars-" he can't see any yet, at least- "most people would be frightened."

Except that if this is the Fade, like he still wants to believe, then it truly makes no difference. And if it's an illusion made by magic, then whoever created it obviously isn't siding with the Templars. If it's like Hawke says, though, and it's neither, then he can't possibly know what to expect. And experience tells him to expect the very worst.

[deconsecrate]

Hawke's head snaps up faster than he can get his hand down; he's entirely used to being in this proximity with Anders, so there's no reaction like there would be otherwise to someone pushing inside his guard. "You actually think--"

Maker. This is a stranger. Or at the least--he is a stranger to Anders.

"You think if it wasn't, I'd risk your safety to show off."

One of those questions that turns down at the end; not quite a statement because it can't bear to be. He's managed to close his hand by now, gaze hooking onto Anders' own eyes and then sliding away. "Magic is far from the strangest thing most of them have seen."

'Them', being, as Hawke indicates with the incline of his head, the general populace roiling in all directions at odds with gravity. He's been here long enough to have made some kind of contact with everyone, as is his way, and so the fact that his thoughts are touching on them now turns a few heads, but garners no active hostility.

"I know it's not what you're used to," he hastens to reassure; his own initial reaction hadn't been so different. Summoning up the energy to be wary had been a pretty daunting task at the time, but what else was there to do? "I just thought--" That Anders would know. That after so long it would be a foregone conclusion that anyone who wanted him had Hawke to contend with first. "You really don't know me, do you?"

What he's supposed to do with that, he doesn't know. What he does know is that Anders will definitely have to be the one to pull away first; even shadowed with the vague understanding he has now Hawke can't make himself break his grip.

[onetrackminds]

Anders hesitates. There's something in Hawke's voice he doesn't quite understand, but the idea of not knowing Hawke, the man he's followed around for more than six years now, is a surprisingly painful one. If nothing else, at least he could say he knew the Champion of Kirkwall, that once they'd even fought side by side. It had been... something.

And he can see that Hawke - this Hawke, the way he acts now, whatever that is - thinks of him as a friend. And that is information he is utterly lost as to how to deal with.

It's becoming more and more difficult to shrug this place off as a dream or a desperate hallucination, too. It doesn't feel like one, and he should have enough experience by now to tell. That means that this Hawke - whoever he is - it's still almost too strange to think of him as real. But he had to be. A real person, at least. Trying to work that out is only going to give him a headache.

He turns away, unable to quite meet that gaze, dropping his hand down in the process. He shrugs a little, to cover the momentary silence.

"Tell me about this place," he suggest. He's ready to listen. At least, it's easier to talk about that then how it is that they know different versions of each other. Is someone playing a trick on them?

They can work that out later. For now he has to know how to react to everything else.

[deconsecrate]

"Ask an easy question," Hawke drawls back; he's not quite righted, but his sense of humor serves the way a healthy circulatory system might--blood can only be blanched so long before flooding back in. A return of color to the skin signifies clean paths underneath. A sign of recovery in progress.

Which, as metaphors go, is probably too medically advanced for Hawke to follow in the first place, and even if he could he's not sure what his own heart is doing right now. Trying to turn into a square, probably. --right. Not helping. He bridges his hands together over his mouth again and spends a second working out where to start, casting half a glance at Anders the way people do when they're trying to look anywhere else. His coat is different, he realizes; or more accurately it's the same. The coat he'd spent weeks being mournful at before Hawke had beguiled him into a tailor's.

That keeps him quiet for another few seconds. Eventually: "It's all blasphemous to the core," he warns, dropping his hands - and revealing in the process that his mouth has gone back to faintly humorous even if the ghosts at the corners of his eyes don't match - "so do try to remember it's not my idea. I'd hate for you to have less reason to trust me."

...as a joke, the precept sort of falls flat on its face and then off a cliff. Hawke winces. "Right. To start with, you've got to throw out the idea that there's one world."

[onetrackminds]

Anders glances back at him, briefly, at that attempt at a joke. But he doesn't really know how to respond to it - it's somewhat true, anyway. He doesn't trust him. Knows Hawke isn't on his side anymore, and never was entirely, either. They were allies, and it ended there. So he can't exactly counter it, and there's little point in confirming it. But he does, generally, trust Hawke to tell him the truth.

He sighs a little. "Alright," he says, because that's not a lot of information to go on. Does he mean like the Fade, or something else?

Definitely something else. The Fade is familiar, and he hopes, at least, that Hawke would be explaining it a bit different if it was that simple. Then again, he might not, being so different as i is.

"And does "different worlds" entail different people looking exactly like ones you know?" he asks. He can't really help it, despite having decided to save that conversation until, at least, the room they were in stopped worrying him so much. Until he knew what to expect from anyone else.

"You're... nothing like him."

[deconsecrate]

Hawke tips his head back and considers that from under lowered lashes. It sounds like the kind of thing he ought to be pleased by, if there's some kind of silver lining to be found here, and because sometimes - often - his mouth has far less sense than his brain, "You're exactly the same."

Almost instantly: "Or near enough to fool most people."

As two sentences go, that pair rings ...fairly complicated. Even if he wanted to he wouldn't be able to staunch the tidal wave of fondness that crashes over the first four words; whatever Anders is, or is to Hawke, it's something that matters, beyond measure or price. The kind of value most people can't put words to.

Then there's the tacit implication that Hawke isn't, in this scenario, 'most people.' He makes some move with a hand over his mouth and tries to put that aside for the moment. "It's funny, I always thought I was inimitable myself."

....truly. Probably all the worlds at large should be horrified by the idea that there is more than one Hawke. "But I shouldn't have been surprised. It can entail that. It can entail--anything you can dream up, Anders. Everyone I've met, everyone you can see--the places they come from, some of them we don't even have in stories."

A part of him that can be heard now, or seen in the expansive gesture he makes, is fascinated by that. He wasn't pleased to be plucked away from home on the cusp of what was almost certain to be war, but someone with Hawke's life either develops an adventurer's spirit or dies trying.

[onetrackminds]

Anders looks a little surprised at that, face turning towards Hawke again. "How am I different?"

Because the implication had been clear enough. What isn't said is why Hawke would bother paying that close attention. But then, they've known each other for a while now, and there are a few things you can't help but notice about someone after that long. It's strange, though, imagining a version of himself that's not the same.

Actually, he's not sure if he can. The fact that Hawke is sounding slightly excited isn't helping, either. He rubs at his eyes, and his expression says clearly that he's hoping that his eyesight will clear up and he'll be back in Kirkwall again.

Maker, he never thought he'd be hoping to see Kirkwall.

"I don't think I want to hear about all the possibilities just yet," he says, cutting Hawke off before he can go on some more. It's already overwhelming, and he'd just like to know how to deal with the here and now. But that might be impossible. What he needs is-- Actually, he could really use a drink. Except that Justice hasn't let him get drunk in years.

[deconsecrate]

Notably there are other parts of Hawke convinced he should be angrier about this; it's not like he got a choice coming here, after all. But the fact is that what he'd said to the Warden (...Neria, which is strange to say or think when for so long she'd been more symbol than person, especially to Fereldens) rings true: this circumstance, a rapid and compulsory impressing into the service of some faceless entity's idea of good works--well. It's exactly the kind of thing that happens to Hawke.

So here he is, as exhilarated by possibility as he is annoyed by the circumstances: hurtled into chaos he will, as always, fight. A wall at his back just means he has something to push off of.

In all the time he's known Anders, though--every ounce of energy he has has been devoted to one singular cause. Realization clips Hawke a sharp blow to the back of the head; Anders can't know how it ends. If he did there would be more than small differences; Hawke is more familiar than he wants to discuss with anyone how a person grieving looks. He remembers the difference between his brother and his mother; there were pieces ripped out of Carver he'd never get back, but Leandra--for weeks after she moved like she'd died with Bethany.

He can't see that yet, in Anders, when he studies him with all the indulgence 'how am I different' affords. "You look tired," he starts--dryly honest, this has always been true-- "More tired. If there's such a thing. I don't--"

How can he articulate this, how does he condense seven years into the kind of package one person hands another? "We looked out for each other," he decides, eventually, looking at his hands, "and you don't look like anyone's been doing that."

[onetrackminds]

Anders turns away again at that. There's a truth to it, because he is on his own. He always has been, in the end - curse of being a mage, really. Allies have been temporary, and more often than not unreliable, and no matter where he is he always knows he'll never be safe. But the way Hawke is saying it rubs wrong, because after everything that's happened recently, it almost feels too much like pity.

He can handle it, because he wanted this, the situation he's placed himself in and the fight that defines his life. And Hawke, no matter who he claims he is now, should understand that.

And he should still be, well. He'd still be angry, wouldn't he?

He reaches out to lift a goblet off the table, twirling it slowly in his hands and looking at the pattern. He has no intention to drink anything here, but he's feeling angry again, and he'd rather not start lashing out while he's trapped in some unfamiliar situation. He'll focus instead on how it feels real when he touches it, and that means that even if this is some sort of dreamworld, or different world, he still needs to treat it like it's real and like it's dangerous. After all, the Fade is like that, and he'd never be incautious there.

He can't afford to remind Hawke of his anger while he still needs an ally.

"That's not entirely true," he says, slowly. He sets the goblet down again, reaching out instead to grab a fork and poke at some of the food. It definitely seems real.

And he doesn't have time for this. Whatever it is, whatever Hawke is, no matter what's gong on. He'd been so close. That's why Hawke had abandoned him. He only had a little more to go, and it'd be over, but he couldn't afford a single more distraction. So why did this have to happen now.

"You have no idea at all how to get back?"

[deconsecrate]

Hawke, requiring less in the way of needing to touch things - stillness doesn't come naturally to him, but he's also had longer to get used to this uncanny in-between space - keeps his hands slung loosely together and tilts his posture to watch Anders manhandle various table items. "I take it Varric is still Varric, then."

A hidden half-smile, even if he can only speculate (or hope, despite how little a person like Hawke is served by hope) his friend still bars hungry gangs from certain places in Darktown. Silence holds for a few beats after, and then: "I--no. No, I can't say that I do."

It's not ...short, precisely, but it is entirely free of the silliness or light self-deprecation that might otherwise gloss such an admission. He won't say that he's tried everything he can think of, or list of those things the way another person might do, because those would be tantamount to admitting failure. "Maker knows you might have better success."

Inflection: mysterious. Anders has compelling reasons to claw his way back to Kirkwall; in light of this conversation, Hawke ...can't be sure that he does. A person (uh, Anders, probably, that person) could tell him until he's blue in the fact that this cause should be Hawke's too, but the fact is that anyone fighting a war is fighting for his future, and he isn't even sure he knows what that's supposed to look like anymore, if it doesn't have Anders in it.

It's not selfless, and it's not noble, but frankly it's other people who commonly insist Hawke is either of those. "And you do have a more or less captive audience, if you want to make inquiries."

Look at all those people!