"Wash our socks, Alistair. Go fetch our equipment, Alistair," Alistair kicked at the ground in front of him as he waited for their contact. "Go stand in the middle of nowhere in the dark and wait for our contact, Alistair."

Words could not convey how much he hated this. Living in the monastery was bad enough and knowing what he was giving up by becoming a templar was a horrible thing. But actually spending time with other templars, out and about and not under the watchful eye of the Knight-Commander or Revered Mother, was an utter nightmare.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad once he had taken his vows and they saw him as an equal and not some overgrown child playing at being a templar. Somehow he doubted it. He had a tendency to draw negative attention and hold it. He wasn't a small guy, or mean, or particularly anything at all, he was just the sort of guy that people hated for some reason.

"Go find a corner somewhere and die, Alistair."

The contact he was waiting to escort back to the inn wasn't even anyone important. It was just some guy who had sold another templar a few sundry items that he would need once they got into the Tower.

"Alcohol, jewelry...perfume," Baker was by far the friendliest of the crew that Alistair was traveling with. Not that it meant much, considering most of the crew treated him so badly that he might as well be a mage and not on his way to becoming one of them. "Good for trading, mostly. Money doesn't mean much in the tower."

The tower. The idea of it made Alistair a bit queasy and he almost sympathized with the mages trapped there. From what he'd seen, and despite Chantry indoctrination, mages were just normal people trying to live their lives. It sucked that they had to be sequestered because of the potential for demonic possession, or for them to become blood mages. Most of them would never become possessed, or even think about trying blood magic. And yet they were all treated as if they would.

"Alistair, you are the worst templar ever."

As a child, freedom had never meant much to Anders. He took everything for granted- like grass. Who ever thought of grass ever beyond hey, it's grass? But there was a lot to grass. Like its color, and its smell, and the texture of it between his finger tips and how it felt to run over grass, as opposed to running over dirt or stone.

There were other things he'd taken for granted, like rain and direct sunlight and being able to say what he wanted when he wanted and almost as loudly as he wanted. He also took people for granted, because outside of the tower there were all types of people and they knew different things and thought different ways and wore different clothes. They were free to be who they wanted to be and he got to share in on that through conversation, trading and observation.

Then he got caught, and everything was turned right inside out and his perspective made a dramatic shift from this is all alright to none of this is really working for me.

Freedom then became all about not being in that damned tower, where the lure of comfort food and a well-stocked library came with an utter lack of privacy and subtle abuse doled out by grown men hidden behind their facades of steel. He could impress the enchanters all day long and have it undone in one second by a templar catching him as he climbed up to lean out of the high windows in the dining hall.

Couldn't a boy just want some fresh air? The air in the tower was as stale and staid as the Knight-Commander who passed judgment on him time and time again until "Anders" became synonymous with frustrated sighs and Maker's breath, maybe we should just let him fall out next time.

Eventually, he did fall out...in a way. He started finding weaknesses in the seemingly impenetrable fortress around him. There were supply lines and hidden tunnels and templars who were less tied to duty than they were to not having their secrets spilled by smartass mages who had somehow learned to turn the tables on them.

Every time he escaped he ended up in Lake Calenhad; the surround of freezing water an affirmation of sorts as it simultaneously numbed his limbs and revived his will. Freedom was dragging himself, exhausted, from those waters and lying hidden under the crumbling stone causeway until he trusted his legs enough to carry him away from the settlement near the tower docks.

It just would not do to be discovered twenty yards from the dock, collapsed on the road with a silly muscle cramp.

The fifth time he escaped, the shirt and pants he'd traded from Bran Who Liked To Watch Enchanter Leorah Bathe and the boots he'd bummed off of Carroll the One With The Taste For Higher Quality Lyrium were ditched a few miles from the tower in a tiny shack where he'd hidden another outfit the last time he'd gotten out.

That the templars had been waiting for him when he emerged had made it a less than stellar event, but at least they hadn't bothered to see what he was up to in there.

Templars. So single minded in their pursuit and so utterly pointless outside of their incredibly specific skill sets.

With dry, clean(ish) clothes on he took off again. He would run the rest of the night and for most of the day tomorrow. Then he'd meet a man in Tunnelton who would give him a package for a Ser Lowell Who Really Loved Rabbits, who would then help smuggle Anders aboard a boat in Highever that would take him far, far away from Ferelden and his phylactery.

Maybe he'd even meet a pretty pirate on his way and have lots of splintery sex at sea. It seemed like something that could happen.

But before the Rabbit Lover, or the splintery sex, he had to get to Tunnelton. So he ran onwards, the stars streaking overhead while he enjoyed the way the grass felt beneath his feet.

Alistair was sick of waiting, his hands cold and the wind cutting right through his cloak. He'd been instructed to not wear his armor out and all he had besides armor was a thin linen shirt, wool trousers and a threadbare cloak.

He'd almost just worn the tunic, to be smart. The tunic was the best part of being a templar. Well, that and the overdramatic posturing. He swore sometimes that mages and templars would be able to get along perfectly well if they'd all stop trying to outdo each other with the dresses and the posing.

Or maybe he was just being irreverent again. Maybe that's why nobody liked him.

"Uh, hello?"

Alistair jerked to awareness, realizing, of course, that there was a man standing right in front of him. He was tall, slender and incredibly pale. He had long, blond hair that was messily pulled back from a face that was hard to make out in the dark.

There was something else going on with him, but Alistair couldn't quite place it.

"Uh, hello to you," Alistair had no idea how these things worked really. "I suppose it's not coincidence that we're both standing around in the forest. At night. In clothes."

"As opposed to naked?"

"I meant...inappropriate clothing, considering the weather," Alistair didn't like the way the man talked. "Whatever, you know what I mean. You're meeting someone here to take you back to the inn."

"And you're here to meet...me?"

"Unless there's other clandestine meetings scheduled to take place in this random clearing, then yes. I assume so," Alistair frowned. "Uh...so come with me? Sorry, I'm not very good at this. I just want to get this over with, to be honest, and get to bed."

The other man nodded, "I hear that."

Anders followed the blond man towards the tavern, his eyes searching the darkness around him. There was something off about this contact. Anders had expected someone a bit more jaded. It took a special sort to undermine the Chantry, confident confidence men. Not young, stammering guys who admitted to their inexperience within minutes.

Or maybe this is his game, play dumb and take you by surprise later. Anders was fine with that, respected it even. If that was the case, of course. As the man stumbled over a root and fell face first into a pine tree, Anders decided that was definitely not the case.

"Andraste's tits, are you all right?" He caught up to where his contact was extracting himself from the branches, his cloak covered with needles and his head bleeding from a nasty looking gash above his left eyebrow.

"I'm fine," the man staggered ahead until they were only a few feet away from the inn and then came to a halt, his arms out as if the world may fly out from beneath him.

Anders took in the blood and general unsteadiness and sighed. He couldn't just leave him like that.

"Because you're helping me..." he held up his hand and healed the gash, knowing that the spell would help with the balance issues, too. What he didn't know was that the other man would react with utter panic, eyes going wide.

"You're a mage?"

Anders' heart stopped.

"You didn't know?"

The man shook his head, "No! Oh, Maker."

That didn't help with the heart stoppage.

"What's going on?"

What was going on became clear a few seconds later when the doors to the inn flew open and three huge men in familiar purple and yellow tunics streamed out. Even without their armor they were able to take Anders down with little trouble. Not that he put up a fight. He was too busy chastising himself for being so stupid.

"Real nice, you bleeding jackass," the other man only blinked as one of the other templars smacked Anders in the back with their shield.

"Hey! He healed me," the man pointed to his forehead with an unsteady finger. "You don't have to hurt him."

"He's a mage," as if that meant he could be treated like an animal. Another templar grabbed the rope they'd circled around Anders' wrists and tugged him towards the inn. "Even though you're just an initiate, you should know that mages who break the rules deserve to be hurt. Chances are they've hurt someone else along the way, or they plan to."

Anders looked back at the man, one last time. He didn't look like he believed what the others were saying. He looked...guilty. And unhappy. And completely out of his depth.

Maybe it had been an accident, and he was just naive and not a jackass at all. Whatever it was, he was definitely the worst templar Anders had ever met.

Which, by default, made him his favorite.