‘perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.’ for dadwc!
For @dadrunkwriting, a lil Kanders cause I was really feeling it. Thanks for the prompt! This line always gets to me and I knew immediately who I was gonna write about
tw: extremely light suicide ideation Anders has spent the last few days picking up and putting down letters Karl had sent him from the Circle. The idea that maybe Karl hadn't been made tranquil recently, - how soon? as soon as Anders had escaped? no it must have been later - that the script written so beautifully in his handwriting might have not have originated from Karl, but from a templar that had understood his writing patterns and had dictated them to him instead formed a hole in his heart that was impossible to ignore.
How could Anders ever know the truth? There was no one now to tell him, Karl was dead and with him had died the knowledge of how the Gallows knew Anders would be there that horrid night.
And what of his love that he had poured in the letters back? Nothing more than flowery language to hide coded messages but words Anders had meant. Words that Karl intimately knew the meaning of, the same words that they'd written in secret admirers' letters, coded to avoid punishment if confiscated. Those little notes and letters had been personal, and he'd always thought that those would've been the one thing the two of them would've always had. The Circle of Magi might have taken everything else from Karl and him, but this would've been for just the two of them, forever.
So, the idea that his gorgeous words, his professions of love and their secret had been aired, that they could have made Karl tell them what Anders had meant, that his love for Karl had been used against him, was too much to bear.
Anders had previously briefly considered burning the cursed letters, forever having to live with the knowledge that he could never truly know but discarded the thought. Karl wouldn't have wanted that. Or would he have?
How much of the Karl he'd had corresponded with had truly been Karl? Was there even a way now to know what Karl would've possibly wanted?
And therein lied the problem; Karl had taken his secrets to his grave, and Anders wished he'd gone with him.
