entrancelogs | Maker of the World, forgive them! [CLOSED]

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Maker of the World, forgive them! [CLOSED]

Who: Cullen Rutherford (

morework) & Anders (

circlejerked)
Where: First floor, room 003
When: Wednesday, 02/10
Rating: PG-13 for mutual antagonising?
Summary: This floor is not big enough for two people with the same voice actor.
The Story:

Cullen steps into the plain room the way other men would step into a den of monstrous spiders. The first he found empty, but in truth he should not seek out any of them, at all. A thing which changes on a whim, and claims that it only follows their wishes? He should not be here. He should not be in here, but Maker, Maker, forgive him, he is bone tired.

Cullen steps forward, and watches his surroundings warily. He thinks he catches something like red lines by the mirror, but when he looks closely they are gone. Or perhaps never there, nothing but a reflection of his features, exhausted and ashen. Drained, but he tries not to think on it, that there is a sharp pain in his stomach where his strength ought to be. That his throat is dry, and that he wonders if meals are the only thing Wonderland gives freely.

Cullen sinks down on the bed. The room is plain and unchanged still. He would wonder how long it might stay that way, and what effort it would take to make it so. If such an effort would even be a victory at all, or merely a different desire which this place chooses to grant. He would wonder, but his eyes close before he can, and he drifts off to sleep.

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It's been a little over a month since Anders' unceremonious "blink once and you're here" arrival, and he's kept himself busy since then. He'd gone through a week-long phase of circling around the kitchen, dining room, and tea rooms like a watchful cat, trying to parse out how the food comes and goes, and then another manipulating the size and shape of his room, sometimes turning his mind in knots with new designs and the effort to bring them into being.

Each day takes his exploration in a new direction. This moment in particular he's on his way back to his room after a stint outside when he notices something out of place.

Something out of place is relative in a world that by rights shouldn't exist, but when a single door is cracked open slightly in a hall of otherwise closed, neatly-facing doors, it stands out. Anders stares at the band of sunlight streaming through the gap. Immediately a thousand different possibilities comes to mind. A new arrival? A thief? The rooms have gained sentience? Maybe a wayward ghost is haunting the mansion? Someone forgetting to close their bedroom seems too simple (and too dull) an explanation for Wonderland.

"Please don't be a ghost." Anders creeps over and gingerly opens it wider. Lost spirits make terrible neighbours, he'd much prefer a thief. Peeking his head around, he sees the occupant is neither of those things.

He'd prefer a violent spirit and a knife-wielding burglar to what he finds sleeping like a baby on the bed. Rutherford, the templar. The out-of-uniform templar, but still a templar in all the ways that matter--namely, in making Anders' life harder.

"The Maker has a sense of humor," he murmurs under his breath before reaching behind him and slamming the door as hard as he can. Then he all but gleefully shouts, "On behalf of every mage ever startled out of sleep, wakey wakey! Rise and shine, lazy bones, no napping on the job!"

Edited 2016-02-12 21:55 (UTC)

Farris is crying out her name, over and over. Cullen pulls him to his feet hastily, as long as he can still be steady for two. Don't look, he says. We need to move, he says, throat hoarse. He doesn't look either, almost. Eyes locked on her breastplate, where he sees only the flaming sword, not the charred skin above. Move, move, the both of you, the captain's voice urges them on, before he disappears around the corner, before Cullen's legs stop moving. Farris gone, the captain gone, around him red walls and the stench of burnt flesh. The gate stands wide open in front of him, barely five steps ahead. His legs won't move. Don't close the gate. His legs won't move, but the gate will. Wait. Please. The light in front of him grows dimmer. The gate's arch, first. Then only a gap. Smaller. Smaller. Maker, please. Smaller--

Shut.

"Wait!"

His eyes shoot open, and the second he feels his knee arch is the second he pushes himself up, frantically but finally moving, to the edge of the bed as fast as he can, sitting-- Sitting. He should not be sitting. Not be on a bed. His fingers dig into the sheets, and he glances around the room, fear slowly fading from his eyes. Cullen breathes out a sigh, half frustration, half relief.

It's only then that he realises he's not alone in his room.

Cullen turns his head slowly, as if to give the other person a few more seconds to not really be in his room, after all. But then he faces the door, and oh. Oh, that is another person all right. Cullen's features harden into a glare.

"You. Again."

Somebody on the floor above them plays an odd sort of tune. Cullen pays it no mind.

The templar wakes up screaming and Anders almost... almost feels badly for interfering where he doesn't belong. But then he remembers that's all Cullen Rutherford's been trained to do, and by the time Cullen glowers at him like vermin that's scuttled into the room, Anders' pang of conscience is forgotten.

Before Cullen can leap off the bed and attempt to strangle him, Anders opens the door partway again in case he needs a quick escape. Safety first.

"Yes, me. Again. And you're welcome. Just think if an evil blood mage had crept in on you--why, you might say I saved your life." This gamely reply brought to you in part by Anders' utter delight at the irony of their role reversal. Cullen should really be thanking him for not being the type to do worse. Kicking him in the head is the least a mage with a grudge could do to a helpless templar. "I was going to add something about you getting your beauty sleep, but good grief, that's clearly not the case."

Cullen looks haggard, and not just with exhaustion. He looks old. Older than the boy barely out of his swaddling clothes that Anders remembers.

His gaze traverses the length of him, then finally he releases a heavy sigh. "And here I was hoping you were the bad dream. No such luck, eh?"

"No such luck for either of us."

Cullen rises to his feet, not taking his eyes off of Anders for a second. Out of uniform he may be, but out of armor he was not, not even when he let himself fall asleep against his better judgement. He will not make that mistake a second time.

He advances a step, and stops himself. Last time Anders ran. This time Cullen would know why he did not. And Maker help him if gloating is all there is to it.

"I'm surprised to find you draw the line at killing people in their sleep, after--"

He freezes. The mage's demeanour, different from what he's come to expect. His features, now that Cullen makes himself pay mind to them. Grey Warden Anders, and nothing more. So what if it's not? After.

"What year is it?" A beat. Precaution: "Answer, and spare me the quips."

Despite the air of carefree detachment Anders gives off, his eyes follow Cullen through every move. Out of all of the people trapped in Wonderland, he's tempted to label Cullen the most dangerous if by virtue of the fact he probably wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire.

Truth be told, he'd hoped with all his might Cullen had been nothing more than a terrible hallucination his water-logged brain had cooked up on a rainy night, or that maybe he'd just poofed away sometime when he hadn't been looking, but those hopes are getting kicked in the teeth right about now. And to find him just a few feet down from his room? That can't just be a coincidence, can it? Had the templar sniffed him out and followed him? Well, he wouldn't put it past one to default to standard operating procedure and decide a mage needs monitoring.

In front of him, Cullen breaks off in the middle of a rather uninspired insult. What year is it? Anders raises an eyebrow at the contortions the other man's face starts going through. What does that matter? Unless... Please don't be time travel, please don't be time travel...

"But keeping people on their toes and quips are two of my favorite things," he protests. "You weren't asleep that long--it's still the same year it was yesterday. Is this where you do your afternoon catnapping, then?"

Can they talk about how a templar is right across the hall from him? Yeah, let's talk about that.

Edited 2016-02-14 03:52 (UTC)

The answer suffices, this is not the man he knew. So Cullen would like to say, but truthfully he hardly knew him well enough to judge. Fleeting impressions and the fact that manifestos do not yet litter the mansion floor really only proves so much. The same year as Hawke then, perhaps? Earlier still? He clenches his fist. Maker, but you are testing him.

"How long have you been in Kirkwall?"

He pays Anders' question no mind.

"Is this an interrogation now? Am I in trouble, professor? I swear I didn't mean to be imprisoned somewhere not the Circle--you know that privilege is reserved for you and yours." Cullen has a better chance of squeezing blood from a stone than answers out of him, and Anders informs him of this with a raised eyebrow.

What is it with Kirkwall? This is the second time someone's expected him to be a tourist in the Free Marches. It unnerves not to know why, but in view of a templar he puts in the extra effort to banish his uncertainties from his expression. Every self-respecting Ferelden knows that dogs can smell weakness.

"I might have overdone it a bit. I didn't think slamming the door would addle you this much. You must be confusing me with a dream me who knows what you're talking about."

"One simple question," Cullen growls through grit teeth.

He turns from Anders as much as he dares, keeping him in the corner of his eye. The room, at least, has not changed on him. It is as it was, and Cullen makes his way to the desk. If it was an interrogation he would know it, he barely keeps from his tongue, as sharply as the pain that awoke with him.

Cullen grips the chair, and steadies his weight. He fixes Anders with a glare.

"I would ask you to leave, but then you might lie down on the bed. Is it enough that you woke me, or did you want something else?"

The sound of frustration in a templar's voice is sweet, sweet music to Anders' ears. This little bedroom rendezvous obviously isn't as good for Cullen as it is for him; if only one of them leaves the room satisfied this day, he's perfectly fine with that.

"With a simple answer," he retaliates with trademark irreverence. "It's the same year I left. Ferelden is still recovering, the Wardens are still chasing the last of the darkspawn, and the last I heard, you were still being shipped off to parts unknown on account of..."

A twiddle of a finger around his right ear. You know, nuttiness.

Friends of his who'd survived, and even some templars, had implied Cullen had walked away from Uldred's power play about as stable as a door off its hinges. Kind of surprising, really, that Cullen hasn't pounced on him screaming about accursed abominations yet, all things considered. He looks different, but that doesn't mean anything... or so he'd like to hope. What's worse, a freshly tortured and crazed templar, or a templar from his future who's had time to marinate in craziness?

Ignoring the crack, Anders takes in the plain little room with a long sweep of his eyes. It doesn't seem lived in, which leaves him unsure what to make of finding Cullen here in the first place. "Can you blame me for thinking this room looked unoccupied from the outside? Are you staying here?"

Edited 2016-02-16 03:12 (UTC)

Cullen looks at Anders. For once he would have wished it a mere quip, but the mage truly doesn't know, does he? About Kirkwall, about- about Kirkwall.

Andraste preserve him, but this is too much. What is he to make of a man with such monstrous deeds to his name? Is he Elthina's Florianne, a tragedy waiting to be prevented? Cullen's fingers twitch. If he runs his sword through Anders now, is there a world which is spared the Chantry's loss and destruction? Or would another simply take his place under Meredith's cruel reign?

And more, if one Thedas is truly so different from another, is there not room for men to make different choices?

Cullen looks through Anders. He blinks, and cannot say how long he has stood silent, only that the last of the mage's words leave his lips, -here?, and Cullen has no idea what was said before.

"I, ah, what? You were saying?"

Edited 2016-02-16 19:41 (UTC)

Okay, this is getting a little worrisome. "What are you looking at me like that for!?" he says.

Belatedly, Anders almost wishes the night they'd bumped into each other hadn't involved the dark and the rain which had aided him in getting away. If he'd been able to make out Cullen's expression, he wonders what he would've seen. The templar been acting strangely that night, too, talking about Orlais... He hadn't been shipped off that far abroad, had he?

More importantly, how is this back to being about Anders? This is supposed to be about his templar stalker passed out across the hall from him like the inept guardsman he is!

"What is the matter with you? Were you nipping out of a bottle before you dozed off?"

"What? -No! Maker, you're--"

Cullen shakes his head. No, never mind. Never mind all that, never mind that Anders is the most frustrating mage- most frustrating man he's met since his arrival. He steps closer.

"You must know that it's not as obvious as you make it out to be!" Maker, but if only it was. "The power the magic here has over time is--"

Impossible. Disturbing. Impossibly disturbing and disturbingly impossible for good measure. Those are not the words he wants to voice. Troubling. That's one, understated. Unspoken. The other, as much an explanation as this place will allow:

"The year I left behind is 9:41."

"--you staying here?", belatedly, more words catching up to him in the wake of his discovery. Cullen frowns. What sort of question was that?

"...and whatever the year, none of us seem to have much choice in whether we stay here now or not."

Anders crosses his arms. Even so simple a gesture comes across as militant. Whack him over the head with a truth stick? Yes, then he might admit he's purposely being aggravating to skate over the greater issue. Something in him rebels from looking too closely at what the templar's saying in the same way a person avoids looking too closely at the sun to avoid their eyes being burned.

People travelling to Wonderland from the actual future? His future? The whole point of "his" future is that he's the one who decides what it'll look like--not a Lothering refugee and certainly not a bloody templar.

He laughs a sharp bark of disbelief. "9:41? You're joking! That's ten years from now." Head tilting, he narrows his eyes in thought, humor fading to serious speculation. Or so it seems until he opens his mouth. "No wonder you're starting to look like cracked leather. That would make you older than me if my math hasn't failed me."

But if Anders were to let his guard down an inch... If he pushes aside his disbelief and let himself think about it, being alive in a decade and in Kirkwall doesn't sound so bad. That had been the plan, after all. Find his phylactery, get to Kirkwall, find Karl.

"And that doesn't explain what you're doing here," he emphasizes before indicating the bed. "Here. This room. This room of every possible empty room in this mansion."

"It is." Cullen is not laughing. His glance trails to the mirror, once. Or twice. "And it does." Three times. And he looks fine. Arse.

...He looks tired, and Anders is not helping. Anders is not asking a single question about the future, which is just as well for Cullen, who wouldn't much care to elaborate, but shouldn't it be of more interest to- to anyone? More interest in general, but certainly of more interest than this room.

Cullen looks around, frowning unsure. It is as plain as it was when he entered it, as plain as he demanded for it to stay. As plain as any empty room he's discovered since his arrival. Chosen only for its property of being the closest empty room to the entrance hall.

"What of it? It looks just like all the others."

And that's it? Anders stares, expression blank.

Does everyone in this Maker-forsaken dimension simply accept time magic with a smile and a nod this easily? For those who've lived the future, perhaps it's a reality one has no choice but to take in stride. For someone who hasn't, hearing of an entire decade he has no knowledge of is a bit like being blindfolded in an already pitch-black room, left to flail and bump into furniture he can't see coming.

Well, forget that. Let the templar believe what he wants--and he will no matter what Anders says. The present is where he roots his attention.

"I'm supposed to think finding you here is pure chance?" Sighing, Anders sees no way around spelling it out. "There are ten floors and infinite choices. You picked a room to stay in near mine because you liked the neighborhood?"

Chance, as opposed to--? If anyone here was in charge of assigning rooms, then their presence has eluded Cullen entirely so far. They all seemed freely available to those who wish them, or those whose needs must, for even a moment's rest. And strategy? Suppose there could be benefit in certain locations, but Cullen has not been here nearly long enough to make such discoveries.

But none of that is what Anders meant, is it? A room near his. Maker, this cannot be as ridiculous as it sounds. The implication that- what, Cullen hunted the mage down, not to take action, but to monitor him? So poorly that Anders would catch him asleep on the job the very first day? This is insult and injury hand in hand, and Cullen rolls his eyes with corresponding zest.

"They're all the same," he repeats slowly, as such a complex message apparently requires time to sink in. "This one was nearest to the entrance."

It's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.

"Can you blame me for thinking it's more than coincidence? As I recall, you were aiming to be templar of the year back in the Circle Tower." Anders props his hands on his hips. Perhaps Cullen's memory's waned in ten years, but the templars are known for their ridiculous extremes--especially the dutiful ones. He's not convinced they both just so happened to pick the most tactically-sound area to stay in case they need to get to the entrance in a hurry...

Actually, that does sound fairly reasonable, but damned if Anders is going to admit that. He's committed to his suspicion the way Chantry sisters are committed to the Chant.

--He has a point, perhaps. Cullen did not push for Anders' pursuit in the woods, thinking himself outmatched by circumstances. But here? Now that he's had time to assess the situation? Perhaps Anders should be guarded more closely, especially if he intends to stay among them, rather than secluded in the forest. No such luck as out of sight, out of mind.

"And now I'm no templar at all, anymore. And our abduction seemed the greater concern by far."

He crosses his arms. Ten years, what does that say about the mage's state of mind? About his dealings with spirits and demons? A long, a very long time ago Cullen thought that minds could not twist without leaving marks on the body as well, but he was wrong. He stares into Anders' eyes, and wishes he knew just what he was even looking for.

"--All the same, if you don't trust yourself without supervision, then I can make appropriate arrangements for you."

Perhaps Cullen already knows that this is the opposite of what Anders meant to achieve. Perhaps.

Anders is immediately hung up by Cullen's next sentence. "Not a templar anymore?" he echoes. Surprise relaxes the stern grip he has over his features. If Cullen were to look closely, he might detect a hint of delighted hope in the way Anders' eyes widen. "Did they put you out to pasture permanently?"

Maker's breath, a dishonorable discharge would be the best news he's heard in a while. Cullen walking away of his own volition would still mean one less templar, and that's good news in any world, under any circumstances.

So amused is he at the prospect of the Templar Order being down a man, he fails to bristle at the threat right away. It feels like a threat the way he let the word "arrangements" hang between them, but after a moment's consideration Anders cocks his head, wondering if this is what Cullen trying to get a rise out of him looks like. Humor is not his strong suit.

"I'm not the one who passed out with his door open, remember. Spy on me all you like, the most you'll find is a Warden doing Warden business." He's curious to see if the hint embedded in his reply shifts some pebbles at the base of Cullen's mountain of secrets. He's still a Warden, still stationed in Ferelden, still theoretically out of the Chantry's clutches.

He rolls his eyes. And yet, whether Anders meant it or not, Cullen grudgingly admits to himself that the assumption would hardly have been so far-fetched at the time. Greenfell is an uncomfortable place to remember on any day, without bringing to mind that, at the time, Cullen sometimes wondered if he would be called back to a proper Circle at all. He was, of course, and at the time he thought what he felt in response was relief.

"My time with the Order was done," he says as plainly as he can think to, without Kirkwall and all that came after to give it colour. Without making Anders privy to his own reasons. Hardly the point now, is it?

"And I'm not the one who woke me for this- futile debate. What legitimate business could the Grey Wardens possibly have in Wonderland, anyway?"

"So... that's a yes?" Implying that if it's not a yes, Anders is still going to tell everyone who asks that it was.

He suspects he won't get much in the way of elaborate details without--Maker forbid--opening up some kind of dialogue with Cullen and holding a proper conversation. For obvious reasons, the chances of that happening are slim to none. Anders is prepared to get comfortable with his dissatisfaction and he hopes Cullen feels the same way.

"I don't know, we there may be plans in the works to take over. Establish a new fortress. Refortify the armories with the magic closets," he says with an absent shrug. You know, Warden business. The very-believable-and-not-at-all-bullshit kind. "How does one sleep deprived retiree manage to fall through a hole in time and end up here?"

"I'm with the Inquisition now," he says, because there is no retirement, no green pastures, forced or otherwise. "They are better suited to address Thedas's problems than the Order-" -ever was? No, no such concession. Not yet. "-has been of late."

Does it even matter? It's rather obvious how serious Anders is- isn't taking their conversation.

"I stood on a balcony. Apparently that is all it takes."

There was a salient point to their conversation, once. Cullen catches a glimpse of it again. So:

"Neither of us are here by choice. Nor am I here," here, this room, he indicates with a wave of his hand, "by any reason other than chance."

"You mentioned that before," Anders recalls slowly, faint distaste and curiosity alike in the downturn of his lips. The Inquisition. Cullen's mention of the bygone institution had in part been what had made Anders think it best to vamoose the night they'd met. Reunited. Whatever. "The Inquisition helped make the Templar Order. I studied history."

His tone clearly says what he doesn't: so don't think to pull a fast one on me. You can't rejoin an ancient order that doesn't exist... or can you? A lot can happen in a decade.

But does he want to believe it? In time... being not quite what it seems?

He grasps for alternatives, but there's no logical explanation for Cullen's appearance. His eyes and the unwavering certainty they hold, set in a face chiseled by years and experience, do more to sell Cullen's story than his words ever could, and Anders doesn't know what to do with that. He casts a reluctant look around the room again, frown growing, looking like someone chasing their own tail with the heavy-hearted acceptance they won't be able to catch it.

It's an odd sensation, feeling that a templar--or a man that had dutifully been a templar at one point--is telling the truth. When was the last time he had cause to take a templar at their word? He can't remember if there'd ever been a time he hadn't distrusted them on principle.

"So you're from the future. And you just happened to arrive here around the same time as me. And you just happened to take a room near mine. And that's all... pure coincidence?"

Edited 2016-03-09 03:31 (UTC)

"You're not wrong about history," is all he will say on the matter, because the present is another one entirely, and the way there is- if not complicated, then at the very least deserving of more words than he thinks Anders would listen to. Coming from him, anyway.

And yes, yes, it is, he almost says, as coincidental as his influence can make it, but isn't that the rub? Cullen crosses and uncrosses his arms. A hand comes to rest on the hilt of his sword. Forlorn, with no proper culprit to draw it on.

"None of this is coincidence, but whatever the plan here may be, I have neither a hand in making it, nor knowledge of its extent."

Other than far greater than any rooming concerns, but must he make another futile stab at that point? Cullen sighs sharply.

"That we are trapped here concerns us all. I asked for your help when I arrived, I will not to so again. As long as you make no attempts to keep us here I could not care less what you do, or where you do it."

Entirely true that may not be, depending on what intricate madness might escape Cullen's imagination at the time, but for a mission statement it rings true enough.

He's not wrong about the past and he doubts he's wrong about the present, but he bites his tongue before saying it out loud. Sniping loses its effectiveness when you're at a disadvantage--and in this moment he's painfully aware Cullen knows more than he's letting on. An annoying disadvantage.

"Hm, it's a stretch to see you responsible for all of this, I'll give you that. Magic closets seem like a punishment for you, not devised by you. But I don't recall you asking for help so much as demanding it. I believe the word 'chaos' was used. Would it kill you to use a 'please'?"

It's possible Anders' fondness for hyperbole is working double time. Truth be told, Cullen had asked before whipping out the condescension, but Anders had been too surprised and wary at his sudden appearance to believe the request genuine. Reconsidering their exchange in light of the new information he's gained and thinking he could have... maybe... possibly... read the situation wrong is something he's not sure he has the intestinal fortitude for.

Just because he isn't the public enemy at the top of Cullen's to-do list now doesn't mean he wouldn't find a way to trip him up later. You can take the boy out of the Templar Order, but can you take the Templar Order out of the boy?

Edited 2016-03-13 03:56 (UTC)

That he would invite it for his own ends, Cullen remembers. Would any ends be served if he reveals what he meant then, what he knows now? He thinks that there would be little to gain, for either of them; that the man in front of him would treat it a ridiculous accusation at best. Although if he did, and if he meant it, then perhaps that is a good sign for a different course.

"The Anders I last met had enough to atone for without empty pleas. I pray to the Maker that you can yet become someone other than him."

He steps towards the door then, in as wide a berth around Anders as the space will permit. For a person who so incessantly objects to Cullen's room being near his own at all Anders certainly has very few qualms about spending an incessantly long time in Cullen's room itself. About that - and about much else - Cullen can think of nothing conducive to add for the time being.

And so, a strategic retreat. He stops on the threshold, to glance over his shoulder.

"If I must stay here long enough to go back to any room, then this will be the one I choose. Do with that what you will."

Set it on fire, probably. Cullen tries not to follow more possibilities to their conclusion. Instead he walks out into the corridor.

What does that mean, 'had done enough to atone for'?

"I know what you pray for. Don't hold your breath," is the first unthinking retort out of his mouth. He's so used to being told to atone that it's second-nature to remind those praying for his salvation that he'll never be the subservient, slack-jawed doormat they want all mages to be. And Cullen, especially, is the fact of that exact way of thinking.

But before he can begin to wonder if there's more to it than that, Cullen makes a move toward him. Anders maneuvers out of the way with a questioning frown, but it's not, as it turns out, a move toward him so much as toward the door.

"You're leaving? Just that like?" Anders almost can't believe this is the anticlimactic result of finding Cullen in the mansion--it's not quite what he'd been expecting. Cullen seems... different. Subdued? No, maybe more like restrained. He doesn't seem inclined to rip the chord from the curtains and try to tie his hands together with him, and that's all Anders can ask for. Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He still gives the retreating templar a strange look, though.

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Maker of the World, forgive them! [CLOSED]

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