Title: In the Dark
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: T
Length: 500 words
Content notes: No warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘nightmare’ challenge in fan_flashworks. Takes place in Act 2.
Summary: Anders reflects on the difference between his nightmares as a Grey Warden and as a mage.

***

Nightmares came with being a Grey Warden. Nightmares of darkspawn, the Deep Roads, and the horrors he had seen there. Nightmares full of regret for the innocents who had been killed, the people he had been unable to save, and for his own future death alone in the dark.

But those weren't the nightmares that truly troubled him.

The nightmares that troubled him long predated the Joining.

Sometimes, the nightmares were a literal retelling of the day the Templars came to take him away. His father, refusing to acknowledge him; his mother, screaming and beating at the Templars' chestplates with futile fists.

Other times, it was some twisted version of the truth. Maybe it would be his mother who had turned him in and disowned him, and his father who was inconsolable. Or it would be both who wanted nothing to do with him. Less often, it would be both fighting for him to stay. Sometimes, the Templars killed them, sometimes they didn’t. But, always, always, the Templars took him.

He wished that he could control his dreams, the way that some mages could, but Anders seemed entirely beholden to their whims. Even Justice was helpless to influence them. When Anders asked him about it, Justice said that it was Anders himself creating the dreams and the manner in which they played out, not the Fade. Whatever it was, Anders wished that he could make it so that, occasionally, he was able to stay with his family. But that seemed a bridge too far, even in his dreams.

The other form of nightmare that preyed upon him was that which recalled his time in Kinloch’s solitary cells. Faceless Templars taunting him in isolation, beating him and threatening more. He would reach for his magic, and it just wouldn’t be there. Like trying to take a breath and finding yourself unable to. He would wake up gasping from those, heart racing, and – just to prove that he could – he would bring a small flame or spark to his fingers. Only then could he lie back down and try to slow his heart.

Whenever he woke from either of those nightmares, he would turn to Sara in the darkness of the room, wrap around her sleeping form, and hold on as if she were the shore and he was drowning. Her warm and steady breathing reminded him that he wasn’t alone anymore. He had a family, someone who loved him and wouldn’t abandon him. And, he told himself in the darkness, there would come a day when no mage child would need fear being turned in by their parents or being locked away in solitary. There would just be love and belonging.

The thought made him cling onto Sara tighter still. For no change was made without great sacrifice. And, though he did not yet know how he would achieve it, the price that he would be forced to pay was all too clear.

But that was a nightmare for another time.