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cruelangelstheses · 5 years

Text

every nasty thought

fandom: dragon age rating: T characters: anders/hawke words: 2.4k additional tags: canon compliant, mental illness, ocd, trichotillomania, angst with a happy ending, intrusive thoughts, solitary confinement, gender neutral hawke description: anders has been dealing with intrusive thoughts his whole life. an exploration of anders’s character through the lens of ocd and trichotillomania. a/n: HELLO i’ve been very busy recently and haven't had much time to write but i’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while based somewhat on my experience (im projecting lol) so i banged this out for day 5 of @proandersweek - neurodivergent anders! title from “obsessions” by marina and the diamonds. for the full tag list that goes into a bit more of specifics wrt the intrusive thoughts, check the ao3 link

read it on ao3

—

After Anders’s magic manifests for the first time, in the quiet solitude of his bedroom, he finds his fingers itching with the power in his blood. It was always there, he supposes, but now he knows it’s there. Now he can feel it, can recognize the fire always pulsing through his veins, the sparks he could bring to his fingertips in an instant if he so willed it. The magic calls to him, like the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff and wondering how it would feel to jump, or like a book he’s forbidden to read. The world screams danger, but his hands ache to break the rules.

He’s not stupid. He knows what would happen if anyone in the village discovered his powers. Still, it feels strange trying to continue on living as if nothing has changed now that he knows what he is. Suddenly he no longer feels perfectly at home; when he looks around at his friends and neighbors, all he can think of is how he’s different. He no longer feels like one of them.

Anders lives in a small house in a small village, so he doesn’t get a whole lot of privacy. Before he found out he was a mage, he didn’t really mind it. He likes having friends, likes having a group of people he can think of as his second family. He likes talking to the neighbors and helping to take care of animals or children. Now, though, he finds himself wishing for some alone time, a place where he can practice his magic without getting caught. He’ll sometimes conjure ice in his bedroom at night, but other than that, he doesn’t really have anywhere to go. He could maybe practice in the barn when nobody’s in it, but he’s afraid he might harm one of the animals.

The desire to learn spells, the temptation of the taboo, wages war with Anders’s fear of hurting someone. The thoughts come late at night, when he’s lying awake overthinking, but they also come in the middle of the day, when he’s walking around in the village square or talking with a friend: I could kill any one of these people. I could do it right now if I’m not careful. What if I snap and electrocute my father? What if I try to pet one of the barn cats and accidentally freeze it?

Anders has had distressing thoughts before, thoughts of someone he loves dying, or thoughts of being harmed himself. The difference this time is simply that he’s talked about these kinds of thoughts with his mother; he’s had her remind him that his fears are unfounded, that he’s safe, that they’re all safe. He still feels the need to perform rituals, like feeding the animals just the right amount of food or touching both his shoulders with his fingertips when he wakes up each morning, to ensure that nothing bad will happen, but when he has someone in his corner, the thoughts don’t consume him as much as they could if he were dealing with them alone.

Unfortunately, his newest obsessions all have to do with him being a mage. He can’t even attempt to use logic to fight the bad thoughts, because all of his fears are not only possible, but probable. It’s all he’s ever heard about mages. They can snap at any moment. They can kill twenty people in one fell swoop. They can lose control. They need to be locked up, for everyone else’s safety. He can’t confide in anyone, can’t rely on anyone to tell him that he isn’t going to set his friends on fire. So he deals with the thoughts in silence, the fear mounting with every passing day.

It’s around this time, then, that Anders starts pulling at his hair.

He likes keeping it fairly long, though he often puts it up in a ponytail so it doesn’t get in his face while he’s working or playing. There are always stray hairs, though, and soon he finds that they serve two purposes: to give his fingers something to do so that they no longer twitch with energy, and to help him cope with his obsessions. When he pulls, he goes into a trance, his mind almost empty as he focuses on the feeling of the hair on his fingertips, the slight pinch when he plucks it from his scalp. It’s oddly satisfying, even calming, and it makes him feel safe.

—

About a month after that first surge of magic bloomed in his hands, Anders accidentally starts a fire in the barn.

They get all the animals out in time, but his secret is out. His parents saw him trip and fall, saw as his hand shot out a blast of fire. It may have been his body’s method of self-defense, but it doesn’t matter, because now his mother is looking at him with tears in her eyes, and his father is staring at him in horror.

“I—I’m sorry,” he sputters desperately. “I didn’t mean to, I swear, it won’t happen again, I—”

His mother steps toward him and puts her arms around him, but his father might as well not have heard him. Anders has to fight the urge to push his mother away, the terror crowding in his head: You have no self-control. You’re going to kill her. You’re going to kill your own mother like the monster you are.

That night, Anders lies awake in bed, listening to his parents argue back and forth. His mother wants to protect him. His father, however, thinks it would be best to call the templars. Anders can hear the fear in his voice: fear not just of magic, but of him, his own son, twelve years old and a danger to everyone around him.

Anders pulls almost frantically at the hair on his scalp, but it doesn’t feel like enough, so he starts pulling at his eyebrows too, the coarser hair providing a different sensation. If he pulls enough, maybe it’ll serve as penance.

By morning, his eyebrows are half gone, the skin bright red and rubbed raw. His father contacts the templars anyway. His friends and neighbors stop talking to him. All Anders can think is that it wasn’t enough.

—

It’s strange. His obsessions tell him that he is dangerous, that he needs to be locked up to protect everyone else, that he will kill innocent people if left unchecked. Yet, on his good days, days where he’s better able to fend off those thoughts, he decides that the Circle is bad. In his moments of clarity, Anders recognizes his desire to be free. He daydreams about being able to live a life without being a slave to the Chantry or to his own fears. He starts taking an interest in healing spells in the hope that he can challenge the idea in his mind that magic means pain.

Anders soon realizes that everything he’s been told about mages is a lie. He meets mages who are in complete control, who have been studying magic for decades, people who could live outside of the Circle for the rest of their lives and probably never fall prey to a demon or hurt a civilian with their magic. He meets mages who are compassionate and kind. He meets mages that he could dare to love.

His year in solitary confinement is the worst year of his life. Alone with no one but himself and nothing to do but sit and think, his brain has a fucking field day. This is for the best, you know, it tells him the first few days. You should be locked up in here forever, not just a year. You could snap at any moment. You could kill an apprentice. You would’ve if they hadn’t put you in here.

His mind blames him for Karl being transferred to Kirkwall, has been blaming him for years. He got too comfortable. He let himself feel happiness, feel love. He didn’t perform his rituals enough, didn’t pull enough, and because of it Karl is gone.

During his time in the Circle, his obsessions sometimes take a more religious turn, probably due to the immense amount of Chantry ideology that permeates every corner. He’s gone through periods where all he can think about is how he is unworthy in the eyes of the Maker, how his magic is punishment for all the horrible things inside him, and his time in solitary is no exception. He has intrusive thoughts about the intrusive thoughts. You’re an affront to the Maker. You think about killing your peers and loved ones, and for that you’re going to suffer for eternity. He uses praying and repenting as one of his rituals in the vain hope that it’ll make his brain stop, just stop.

Then the thoughts take a turn for the morbid. He has visions of hurting himself, of electrocuting or immolating himself, of digging his fingernails into his skin until he draws blood or hitting his head against the wall so hard he passes out. I could do it. I could do it right now. I could set myself on fire and be done with it. The thought terrifies him. He doesn’t want to die. He just wants to be able to live.

It’s during solitary, though, that he has his revelation, a revelation that he feels he should’ve figured out a long time ago: all of his obsessions are about things that are the exact opposite of what he really thinks or wants. He doesn’t want to kill. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t truly believe that the Maker gives people magic to punish them. And he certainly doesn’t believe that he should be locked up forever simply for an accident of birth.

Two things make his time in solitary bearable: that realization, and the cat Mister Wiggums, who listens to him talk about these things without judgment, and who curls up in his lap when he senses that Anders is in distress. He pulls a lot of his hair out, though. When he’s let back out, the other mages comment that he looks like a different person.

—

Anders isn’t sure if merging with Justice has made things better or worse. On the one hand, it’s comforting, having a friend always with him in some way. On the other, now he has a new fear to obsess over: the fear that Justice will take over and hurt someone.

He realizes, though, that that fear is actually just one of his old fears, rebranded to look like something new. He’s come full circle. He’s twelve years old again, unsure how to handle this newfound power, feeling out of control and hurtling into a strange world.

—

Kirkwall’s Circle is awful, and Darktown is...well, Darktown, but the people that visit Anders in his clinic make it worth it.

It’s incredible, seeing ordinary people, refugees from the Blight, who look at him not with fear but with respect and even a sort of reverence. Children whose sicknesses he’s healed gaze up at him with a spark in their eyes and a thank you on their lips. Even people who aren’t sick or injured start to visit him every once in a while, to check up on him or talk to him or even give him a couple bandages, in the case of Lirene. He hears about them sticking their necks out for him when templars comes snooping around—for him, an apostate mage with obsessions that have made him believe he’s nothing but a danger to everyone around him. It doesn’t make the thoughts stop—nothing does—but it makes them easier to bear, at least somewhat.

Anders’s hair has mostly grown back since his time in solitary, but his eyebrows are a bit sparse, and he still sort of looks like he’s balding already, at the ripe old age of thirty-two. He’s not usually very self-conscious about his looks, but he’ll admit, it catches him off guard when the next person to take an interest in him is none other than a fellow apostate and Fereldan refugee named Hawke, who turns to him one night a few weeks after their initial meeting and says, “You know I’m not kidding when I flirt with you, right?”

It comes out of nowhere. They’re heading down to Lowtown to check out a job. Behind them, Hawke’s brother scoffs in annoyance, and the dwarf, Varric, chuckles knowingly.

Anders raises an eyebrow, suddenly aware of how he must look. Hawke is younger and more muscled than he is, with thick, dark hair that’s probably softer and smoother than his. “You’re...not?” he says slowly. He has to refrain from asking, What do you even see in me? He already warned Hawke to stay away from him, and he hasn’t been able to figure out if the subsequent flirting was serious or not.

Hawke laughs. “Of course not. You’re passionate. You’re serious when you need to be, but you’re also funny. You understand me. You’re attractive. You’re—”

Anders holds a hand up, unable to contain the surprised little smile working its way onto his face. “Did you just say I’m attractive?”

Hawke snorts. “That’s what you got from all that?”

“No, I—” Anders lowers his hand as they both laugh. “It’s just...kind of startling. I mean, even when I’m like...this?” He gestures to all of himself. Hawke noticed his hair-pulling not too soon after they met, and Anders decided he might as well explain at least a little bit of his state of mind.

The fact that Hawke didn’t leave after that, didn’t even seem too fazed, was enough for Anders to trust them almost completely. He’s only told two other people about his obsessions: his mother and Karl. Thank you for not running away, he’d said after he told Hawke about Justice, and he felt the need to say it again then. He feels like he needs to say it now, too, like if he says it enough times, it’ll erase everything bad that could ever happen.

Hawke flashes him a soft smile, eyes twinkling. “Yes, even when you’re like that.”

Hawke’s brother gags exaggeratedly, so Hawke turns around and makes an obscene hand gesture at him. In the back of his mind, Anders hears those familiar voices threatening to take hold again, telling him that he’ll only hurt Hawke if he allows himself to get close. They’ll never really go away, he knows, but he has someone in his corner, and that makes all the difference.

#dragon age #dragon age 2 #anders #proandersweek #handers #hawke #da2 #dragon age ii #my fics #im making myself cry over here but its Fine

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