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You know what to do.

He's slumped on the pillows after, absolutely exhausted, shaking his head... and chuckling despite himself.

"I walked so happily into that one, and I would walk happily into it again," he admits, wrapping tired arms around his husband. "We should have you help in the infirmary with the difficult patients, suggesting how to keep them resting. Is this the plan for tomorrow? Several rounds of sex until I've no ability to even think about work?"

"If that's what it takes, I will make the sacrifice." Nathaniel plucks another kiss from Anders' lips before carefully pulling out and wiping them both down. "There are also a few books we could read together. That's one of my very favorite things to do with you. And we can also just...talk. I love talking with you, and we're both so busy we've barely had the chance."

Despite all of the things that won't be getting done at the Infirmary or Clinic tomorrow, or in the garden, or continuing work on the mages' support group, that sounds... rather nice. As nice as the kiss, and Nate gently cleaning them.

"I like the sound of that." There was a time when he hadn't been quite so much of a workaholic. While he's fairly certain he can't ever live as relaxed and going-with-the-flow again, one day shouldn't hurt. Anders gets up enough to grab the caftan Nate had brought over and wrap it around himself, protection against the cold, before starting to pull blankets in place. Once situated, he reaches for Nate. "We'll spend tomorrow like that, my cunning, determined, beloved husband."

He is fully known, and loved anyway.

In the morning, Nathaniel sneaks out to buy fresh eggs and a slab of ham. It's very difficult, in their small room, to make breakfast without waking Anders, but he tries. Toast is toasted, water is boiled for coffee, and maybe everything isn't quite ready when Anders awakens, but it's getting there.

He's not a heavy sleeper by any means, which means waking up to find Nate already up and having mostly prepared breakfast eases his worries about not finding something wrong slightly. He is tired. Maybe that can be all it is.

Slowly Anders gets up, stretching before coming over to the table. Any comments about how Nate could have had him help are dismissed; they're not welcome here today.

"Thank you." His voice is quiet. "I... I appreciate you doing this." It's very hard to simply accept being spoiled. Anders feels idle and strange, but he tries to push it out of his mind as he settles in for coffee and toast and, by the scent of it, ham and eggs shortly here. "This wasn't too much effort, I hope?"

"No worrying," Nate says flatly, coming over to give Anders a good-morning kiss. "It's never too much effort. You've done the same for me on mornings when I've been ill."

"No worrying," he echoes before kissing Nate back. "It feels different because I'm just tired. It's not like I got stomped by a Vengeance demon."

Anders takes a slice of toast and starts buttering it. "At least next time the mage gathering should be easier. The interest is there, and I hope it will take root with the spreading word of mouth. I don't know how to take anything else off my slate, though. ...Unless I cut back on what I teach at the Clinic."

There's coverage there, at least, with the teaching. Not so much with the healing, but he's used to that level of work. "I'll do that," he says before Nate suggests taking on less Warden work. He's worked hard for this appointment, he thinks. It matters.

"Maybe appoint a new teacher," Nate suggests, pouring Anders' coffee. "If the lessons are doing the community good, someone else ought to take over. Can you think of anyone, offhand? Bethany? She's itching to take on extra-curricular activities, and the Dartons could benefit from the publicity."

"Bethany would be a fairly good choice," he allows. She's sometimes a bit flighty, but she's compassionate and diligent. He just wishes he wasn't getting old, or whatever's going on here. Even if he manages to get well-rested somehow, an unfamiliar feeling, he has a hunch Nate won't want him picking back up what duties he's set aside.

"It's a shame Kaisa isn't a mage. She's all fired up about teaching. ...Incidentally, there is a private student I've taken on who I won't be handing off. He's on the deeply hurt and scared side of things when it comes to being a mage but he managed to get up the courage to ask me for further training. I can't abandon him, not when he was in Kinloch Hold too and he's young."

Nathaniel stops scooping eggs onto Anders' plate to fix him with a critical look.

"Got up the courage to ask for lessons? That is a very minimal amount of courage, Anders. I'm sure someone else can handle him."

They don't... often hit a point like this, where the misunderstanding is about the mage experience. Anders meets Nate's gaze.

"No, love. Everything he says and does speaks to a massive amount of trauma, and he's terrified to be known as a mage so lessons took so much courage. He is hurt, but he found the strength to ask my help, to put trust in me, and I will not betray that. I know you don't understand, and that's all right. But I need you to trust me on this as a mage who knows what it means to nearly be broken as a mage."

Nathaniel is less and less aware of the vast privilege he enjoyed up till the age of thirty, as it is put further and further in the past. Now, he has to take a moment to backpedal and reevaluate. Courage and cowardice were the greatest virtue and the gravest vice...as taught to him by a man who died in his own dungeon while torturing helpless innocents. He continues spooning eggs, shaking his head and trying to wrap his head around it.

"It's beyond me to tell you what a mage's experience is," he admits. "Though it seems to me that when you were hurt, you ran. Even when it branded you apostate, even if it had branded you maleficar. You joined the Wardens and became an advocate for other mages at the risk of your own life. But your standards for another man are so low, he gets up in the morning and you call it courage?

He gets up to take one of Nate's hands in his, holding it gently.

"Everyone reacts to abuse differently, and he's scarcely more than a boy, love. He was a boy when I saw him last. He was preyed upon and he got creative, he started bribing some of his bullies to protect him from worse ones and can you imagine the strength it takes to even suggest such a thing when they had every ability to beat him and worse? He didn't accept it as inevitable. He found a way to survive that took so much more work than bowing one's head and accepting it."

Now he squeezes Nate's hand. "He was surrounded by rabid dogs who just wanted to hurt him and he made it. And now he's trying to heal from it and find his identity in a shape that isn't broken. Without you, I wouldn't have found my own shape again, love. Now it's my turn to offer him strength and solace and friendship as he learns who he is without the threat of pain and suffering breathing down his neck."

Nathaniel looks at Anders in growing surprise. He recalls to mind Thomas, and feels suddenly like he understands his brother's difficult behavior better--they were both trying to survive, weren't they? In a situation where their father pit them against each other like fighting dogs. To this day he is hesitant to use the A-word, but he doesn't have to because Anders sees it for what it was already. Did anyone give Thomas any such words?

A conciliatory nod. "All right, love. Help him. But please, don't forget there are people who will help if you get tired. And don't let your eggs get cold." He leans in to kiss the tip of that perfect nose.

Nate gets a tight hug before Anders is taking his seat again.

"I will pay more attention to my energy and what I'm doing, I promise. I don't want you worried or hurting. ...And I'll hardly be a good model for him to follow if I'm falling over again." And he needs to be a good model, with how the young man looks up to him.

"Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, those are our lesson days. Three lessons a week with one student won't be taxing."

"I am duly warned." A kiss on the cheek before he starts dishing out ham. "I know what it's like to find a case you relate to. I first had that with Bethany. More lately with Ciri. Who I've made an assistant part-time, by the by. Hopefully one of these days she'll have my job. She's a good skeptic, and knows better than I do the cost of doing business as a Warden."

Edited (wrong meat) Date: 2018-01-16 01:19 am (UTC)

He looks up at his husband, processing the information before asking the question that suddenly seems a little dangerous.

"Where do you see yourself when she has your job?" Worrying isn't supposed to happen today but he can't help himself right now.

"Retired with you," Nathaniel answers easily, first because it's the fantasy they have together, and second because it's actually somewhat true these days. He sits down and reassuringly rubs Anders' thigh. "With a houseful of children and animals"

Breathing a sigh of relief, Anders leans against his husband.

"I want that so much. Sometimes I think about what I dreamed of before everything fell apart in Vigil's Keep, how I would have been happy to be a Warden the rest of my life and have you as a fuck buddy. My dreams were so small." He chuckles, cutting up his ham. "Now that it will be difficult to find a country that will be fine with me living in it I want a house and to keep you forever and to no longer be a Warden eventually and to have children and pets. I want it all."

"The most completely mundane of all dreams," Nathaniel sighs as he starts cutting his own ham. "I'd have felt it too lacking in ambition, even shirking of my duties, when I was younger. Now, it's the pinnacle of my imaginings. A safe world, a house in the country, and a family. Maybe the world will even stay safe this time."

He pops a bite of ham into his mouth and chases it with egg.

There are a million ways it could go wrong, as emphasized by how he'd collapsed earlier, but it's a non-worrying day.

"Not mundane for a former Circle mage," he says, quietly and happily. They're huge, massive dreams and they're already partly accomplished, marked by the ring on his finger and the locket around his neck. "I'm so lucky to have you and be able to see a future ahead. I'm so happy to have you, even when you restrict me to resting for a day and a half."

"Which I'm doing because I'm also very happy to have you. Your job is to look after absolutely everyone in the world, and my job is to look after you." A bite of ham. Chews, swallows. "And the Grey Wardens all over the world," he adds. "But I often think that's easier than what you do. I share my burden with innumerable others."

It's an exaggeration, to be sure, but there's a grain of truth to it. His people are spread throughout Thedas, there are injured and ill everywhere, and so many have been impacted by what he did or have opinions on it or both. He lives on the world stage now.

"I hope to pass some of the thinking and strategizing and planning to the mages I got to gather together. I don't know that it will work, but it's worth trying. Our people need so much more than I can provide, and everywhere we go needs healing. I keep hoping that maybe some people will realize that if mages were free, there'd be more options for healing. But you realize it. You're there for me, behind me, and you make me able to do what I need to, love."

"I have structure. I have organization and precedent. You're unlikely to find the last one with any effort besides waiting, but the other two you might create." His brow furrows. "Is there any resource to find and train potential mage healers? You say it's extremely rare, but it might be there are more potential healers than have been discovered, even among the older mages."

Edited Date: 2018-01-16 02:13 am (UTC)

He takes a breath, shaking his head. "Plenty of mages have a minor ability to heal, but it's the spirit healers, the ones who can work so much more, that are rare. I'd wonder if there was a way but I'm trying to avoid any system that involves finding mages. The... The young man I will be teaching, he's asked for Creation lessons especially so there's a chance he could go that way, but spirit healing doesn't just rely on having a lot of strength in Creation. It also requires a spirit willing to work with you, and that's quite the process."

Breakfast gets finished and he looks at his empty plate. He'd been rather hungry, apparently. After a beat he gets up... and obediently stretches out in bed again. Nate's looking after him. That's a luxury and he should remember that.

"The mage also has to be willing to work with a spirit. There are plenty of mages who are too scared to do so because it's been driven into their head how easy it is to become an abomination. We have... We have so much baggage. Sometimes I think the task ahead is insurmountable. And then I remember that I got out of Kinloch Hold and I'm no longer possessed so there's still a chance."