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CHARACTERS ▶ Anders + Hawke.
LOCATION ▶ The Sleeping Sphynx.
SUMMARY ▶ Sim training absolutely counts as a date.
WARNINGS ▶ Will edit if any.

[ Anders hasn't spent as much time in simulations as he probably should have, and makes a point of refusing to jack into the Matrix proper, but he still has more experience than Hawke, who he'd lead to The Sleeping Sphynx and paid the man in an assortment of odds and ends he tends to use as currency, generally what's given to him in payment for his services that he has no real purpose for. The barter economy was never really and adjustment for him, given his last clinic had been in Darktown. Actually, getting anything at all is a shock.

They load in the white room first, and before Anders can really come to terms with Hawke actually looking like himself again, the city rushed into being around them. Skyscrapers. Cars. Streets full of people hurrying on their way. All of it different from both Thedas and Zion, and yet apparently one of the most common templates for Matrixes out there, including, if history is to be believed, the one Neo came from, before the fragmentation. Modern day Earth.

Specifically, New York City. With ... some minor variations, discussed in advance, a tweak in a code that gives them the capacity to make us of anomalous skills. It's not the same as their magic. More like... the capacity for superpowers. (Maybe it's lifted from Heroes, or the MCU, or a dozen other urban fantasy worlds.) The point is, there are plenty of chances to play around with the impossible.

Anders has a hand curled with quiet possessiveness around Hawke's elbow, like he doesn't want him to get swept off in the crowd, and he's still staring at him, though it's turned more nuanced, scrutinizing his reactions even as he gives him whatever time he needs to adjust. ]

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[ Other minor variations presumably include that unlike certain visual references, when the city rushes in around them it's not because they're planted in the dead center of a sidewalk. That's like asking Hawke to adjust to the idea of train travel by materializing on the tracks.

Even in Thedas it had been at least a year since he'd seen a city. When he'd been unplugged it had been mere days after physical entry into the Fade, an impossible landscape where the familiar inverted itself and crawled backwards; if he'd thought then he knew how it felt to exist in a bubble of not-belonging (unheimlich, a word he can't access but would understand)--apparently, the Black City itself has nothing on New York.

New Yorkers would probably agree! Hawke, meanwhile, focuses on dialing back his heartrate to something manageable, reorienting himself in physical space at once much higher and more claustrophobic than he's used to. ]

I can feel you hovering.

[ After ...some minutes. The observation - made out of his peripheral vision and delivered in response to the visual scrutiny, not actually the hand at his elbow even if that would be the most obvious assumption - is a warm one, though more or less immediately lost to the surrounding tangle of noise. ]

Right. Ready as I'll ever be, if you're satisfied my eyes and nose and everything are all where they're supposed to be.

[ He helpfully outlines a loose square around his own facial features with a forefinger, because a thin coating of ridiculous makes anything easier to deal with. ('Maybe 70% ready' would be more accurate, but really, that's a pretty high percentage under the circumstances.) ]

[ The major difference, the one he can't stop looking at, is the way Hawke is so visibly mage in here, from the curve of his muscles to his center of gravity. It's a difference that would probably be meaningless to anyone who hadn't memorized the body of a man who drew a bow and punctured armor with his daggers on a regular basis, but to Anders it's astronomical. Jarring in the same way the city is to Hawke. But he puts it aside, because they've had that conversation once already, and smiles instead. ]

Your hair's different.

[ Anders points out, resisting the urge to touch it. Also the urge to peel off his clothes and catalogue further differences, scars and freckles and all. Most of his urges are in fact Hawke-related, but there's an ever present third that makes him not quite willing to start anything. Not Justice — the operator, back out in the real world. The program should run itself, but Anders knows those guys check in, read the code like they're watching it play out in front of him, make tweaks. He doesn't want anyone reading about their sex life, as he once told Varric. ]

But your face is perfect.

[ Brusque, like it's not a compliment (it is). He'd probably still say it even if Hawke showed up without his nose or something, though, so it's not exactly reliable. For his part, Anders has fewer lines around his eyes, no strands of silver amidst the gold, his posture straighter and his frame meatier and his crooked smile familiar. Justice aged him in ways he wasn't even aware of, and though he's been free of that burden in the real world there is still a subtle difference to the man now holding Hawke's arm.

He has no intention of letting go of Hawke, though he might be convinced to link hands or slide an arm around his waist rather than holding onto him like a child. Normally he doesn't stay this close, but he has experience with traffic that Hawke doesn't, and it would be so typical for him to run off to explore some nook or cranny and get knocked out of the program by a cab. Instead, Anders steers them towards the greenery: this is supposed to be a city and park experience. ]

I haven't actually done this sim. But I've done others like it. For most unplugged, when you say "city", this is what they're thinking of.

[ Odds are Visibly Mage Hawke would end up gravity-smashing the cab out of instinct, and while playing around with the impossible is the order of the day, doing so in the first five minutes of the program might set the wrong precedent.

He adjusts the tabs Anders is keeping on him (knowing ...full well that's what they are; Hawke tolerates the helicoptering because he knows it makes Anders feel better; he likes it because the shine of reunion has yet to dim, let alone wear off), sans commentary, looping their fingers loosely together instead. The look he cuts sideways at the same time marks the first real assessment he's been able to make past the endless austerity of the white room, the clamor of the city.

Anders has always been most easily viewed through a kaleidoscope, from even the first moments Hawke knew of him, let alone the house-of-cards contradiction he'd met. Looking at him as he sees himself, through the crystal eye of the program--well, if he's one thing, he's consistent in all his fragmentation. Hawke likes it, that Anders imagines himself a little brighter, a little softer. Vanity is self-care, after all.

Meanwhile speaking of vanity, because if otherwise allowed these two will stare endlessly and argue who's prettier no matter what the environment, Hawke claps a hand to the top of his head entirely for effect. Especially entirely since it has no effect at all; his hair does what it wants, and probably has its own self-perception totally irrelevant to his. ]

Must be Tuesday, [ he sighs, modestly, of his face's perfection, then: ]

They're all like this?

[ The idea is ...interesting. He likes the ease of knowing everyone around him (or at least being known of) too much to really embrace the comfort of anonymity, but it is novel. So all facetiousness aside this actually kind of is a great date idea.

The 'park' part of the city and park sim from an aerial view gives the impression someone made a furrow in the middle of Manhattan and shoved in their capital G idea of Green, because that's kind of exactly what happened. After recovery in Zion it's suddenly a whole lot of Outdoors to take in, especially when the stark edges of metropolis still encroach from all visible angles. ]

This is just what I imagine Nature would look like if you bought it from a street vendor with one glass eye and two knives up each sleeve.

[ Hawke observes, in lieu of observing how profoundly disturbing it is that lines of code can perfectly replicate the sugary smell of birch trees, for instance. ]

That's like asking if Denerim is like Kirkwall. But the buildings, yes, and all the people.

[ There are so many people. Unsurprising, given a city this big could probably house the whole of Thedas. In here, they're just programs, but Anders is aware that the crowds would be the same in the true Matrix, each one part of those great and terrible towers of pods, being harvested.

But thinking about it makes him angry, and he wants a nice day. ]

I haven't been to a park before, but I know they're popular. I suppose if you can't just dash off to Sundermount you start to miss this sort of thing.

[ Varric probably wouldn't. Merrill definitely would. Anders' mind still does that, sometimes, think about the people who were once his friends. It used to be Hawke most of the time, but now Hawke is here for Anders to experience bona fide. He squeezes the other man's hand just to evoke a squeeze back. ]

[ Despite objectively knowing none of them are real, Hawke finds the people fascinating, all the ways they're completely different and yet startlingly alike. Later he'll probably solicit Anders for just sitting on the periphery and watching life teem by, the same way he initially had in Zion. Not that it's all metaphysical curiosity; such observation makes him feel better in control of his environment, but. Anders is presumably used to Hawke's need for that as well.

He looks over when Anders squeezes his hand, tightening his fingers back and following that with a companionable bump of their shoulders. ]

If you're implying you miss the monster-ridden mountain I'm checking you for fever.

[ The entrance to the park from this direction features a wide, tree-lined avenue, but there's also a little stone path wending off to parts unknown. Hawke knows his preference, but this is Anders' adventure (the protag gets to be the companion for once!), so he's contendedly patient to follow his lead. ]

Well, maybe not Sundrrmount specifically.

[ Anders muses, turning them down the little path without really thinking about it. Exploration is a habit borne of relative poverty; unexplored nooks and crannies tends to have all sorts of junk that can be collected and resold, something he actually picked up from Hawke. Of course, in the Matrix there's nothing that wasn't coded in, and none of it can be sold or taken into the real world, so they're not going to be rummaging about, but it unconsciously informs his decision. That and the fact that he quite likes being alone with Hawke, getting to stake a bigger claim on his attention. ]

Just, you know. Outdoors. Trees and such.

[ An airy wave of his free hand to indicate the environs. Anders doesn't really realize how unusual that is for him to say. He's always quite liked going outside, has spent plenty of nights sleeping under the stars, but most of his free time in Kirkwall was spent ensconced in the dank underground tunnels of Darktown. Justice had drawn him away from the beauty and the light, or maybe it was before that, the urge some unanalyzed byproduct of his Joining, but either way neither of those factors are influences now and Anders does miss the sun. ]

[ Hawke could count on one hand the number of outdoorsy environments he'd seen Anders in, ever, because there were all of three of them: the Wounded Coast, the countryside surrounding Chateau de Snot, or whatever it had been called, and the Vinmark Chasm. If the last even counted. So he notices how unusual it is, even if nature had appeared to be about the only thing Anders had liked about Duke Prosper's sporting even.

He's never taken sunlight or trees for granted, exactly, they've just always been part of his life, even if Malcolm instilled awareness of how much work that took the family as a unit. Just now observing Anders' interaction with the green-gold tunnel walls and ceiling that stretch around them, he's not thinking of any of that. Rather, that of everything it feels like he lost to get here, it might be worth it for this.

Which is probably his complete allotment of sentimentality for the month, so he doesn't exactly voice all of that even if his look speaks volumes. ]

We should do a beach sometime. I do miss the ocean.

[ He ...misses everything not Zion, honestly. Even caves! Integration could be uh, going better.

This is all right, though. To demonstrate he borrows their looped fingers as a whole so he can wrap an arm around Anders' waist for a second, smile close-mouthed and crooked. A bigger claim on Hawke's attention indeed. ]

We can go wherever you want. They can recreate just about anywhere.

[ But for now, something easy and peacable, that allows him to walk along with Hawke tucked into his side, arm slung companionably over his broad shoulders. There's a long inbuilt grace period in this sim, because he thought Hawke might need time to get used to simply being in a sim before actually having to do anything.

The air is cool along this pathway, fern-damp, and they find themselves walking along bars to the left, nearly invisible amongst the plants. Anders doesn't startle or flinch outwardly when he notices them, but they give him a tiny moment's pause, breath held, like he's bumped the place where an old wound was as is expecting pain.

Further along, the fence connects to brown brick struts that support an overhead bridge, the path widening out and turning into asphalt below their feet, gaining a sidewalk, though there are no cars on the road except for a single parked truck. ]

[ It doesn't feel particularly like anything he needs to get acclimated to; for better or worse the return to a body (or at least the casing of one) that makes sense to him stitches back into place all the self-assurance only slowly regrowing in Zion. Utterly unfamiliar surroundings aside the longer he's there the more he walks and talks and breathes and generally is, like he belongs there.

Not that that means complacency, the more visible signs of hypervigilance in someone like Hawke are just obscured by his propensity to lean on and flop against things like a puppy (yes) that could lapse into sleep at any time. Which he might! He just also might, or ...have might, until recently, also explode near things into flames. As the situation called for.

Right now thankfully it calls for none of that, the bars pricking more his curiosity than anything else. The sidewalk slopes up, becoming an actual hill the further it stretches, to the point where Hawke actually has to lengthen his strides to keep up with it and he ducks out from Anders' arm to hold his hand again instead. Actually, because he can, he snags both hands with an expression of intense (ridiculous) determination, like Anders is possibly a wheelbarrow that needs to be hauled up this incredibly steep incline.

Although emerging from the greenery altogether actually does stop him short a second, the source of the sounds slowly trickling in from inside now at least kind of explained. He'd just filtered most of them out because they seemed normal. ]

Anders, if you were any other person I'd suspect this to be a meticulously orchestrated prank.

[ It's not, it's just the very outskirts of the Zoo! Where they have a farm animal exhibit for, you know, who haven't left the same block in the Bronx their entire lives and are really only familiar with like ...pigeons, and maybe a neighbor's chihuahua, in terms of animal life. ]

[ Anders is the kind of person who would try really hard to come up with a really excellent prank, and it would end up having no effect, or worse, be actively upsetting. Chickens are so inane that they automatically exclude that possibility, so Hawke is right to do the same.

Anders' bemused expression is another point in his favor, since the man can't lie with his face to save his life. ]

Is that...?

[ They walk closer, and yes, it is. Anders has plenty of experience with farm
animals, given a large portion of his life was spent sleeping in stables and hay barns, stealing a couple of eggs. It's a sound he associates distinctly with the broad brown countryside of Fereldan, rather than all this programmed urban greenery, and while he gives back one of Hawke's hands he keeps the other squeezed tight. ]

It's some sort of exhibit. Look, they have signs with information.

[ Hawke also hangs on tightly, because chickens are vicious monsters, full of hate and perfectly willing to remind a person how recently, in terms of the average Earth Matrix's total life, they were dinosaurs.

...a little of that is actually serious. Specifically: chickens are by and large hideously tempered creatures, and Hawke is baffled why anyone would keep them for reasons that are apparently not food. He circles the exhibit as far as he can go without making handholding awkward, as if attempting to ascertain some inherent magical property. The laying gold eggs thing would be a little on the nose, surely. ]

Well, I suppose if you really wanted to enforce how the world works, you would take your children to see the animals most likely to shit on you.

[ Anders lets Hawke look, not particularly interested in the petting zoo and fairly inured to seeing farm animals, but also not finding it particularly bizarre that they're here. Or, no more so than every other bizarre thing that cities are and do. He does look somewhat wistfully at a goat, though. ]

I miss milk sometimes.

[ Remember, two years. ]

[ Ah, so perhaps by the same token in two years this kind of thing will seem normal to Hawke. As it is he's still used to functionality and display being entirely separate animals, as it were. A working sword, for example, doesn't belong behind glass no matter how pretty its hilt is, especially not in a city.

Meanwhile he just stops himself midst accruing frustration that he can't simply react to something Anders wants by getting it. That kind of thinking would otherwise be pretty capable of stalling him out, and the only thing to do here is move forward. Literally, in this case.

I know.

[ He gives that a second of softness, but then tugs Anders' hand where they're still tethered together. ]

Though I imagine I'll have to pass through several stages of wide-eyed barbarism before I can start properly missing anything, personally. Come on, I can't imagine animal husbandry was what you had in mind for this little venture.

I didn't actually know there'd be animals here.

[ Anders admits. ]

I wonder if they have cats?

[ He, of course, is thinking of ordinary felines, so when they reach the signpost indicating "big cats" among other animals he doesn't really think anything of it, just directs them down that way. Though they pass other animals first, and what seemed bemusing but charming when it was simply chickens and baby sheep, and then an aviary that reminds him of the one owned by the Earl of Redcliffe, becomes slightly more distressing as they go. The animals are bigger, more suited to the wilderness than the faux homes they've been locked in, and Anders stops for a while outside the cage of a black and white bear, reading the description with a frown. ]

It says here it's a vegetarian. I don't see why they couldn't just let it live in the park.

[ It also looks like it's perpetually comatose, so despite any sane former Ferelden's usual response to 'bears' being 'shit, shit, we're all going to die,' Hawke doesn't really make the correlation in this case. ]

Just zap open the latch. It probably won't even wake up long enough to notice.

[ He's not seriously suggesting this, but half the things Hawke doesn't suggest seriously are certainly things he'd do anyway. ]

If you need a distraction I can stand on my head or something!

[ Also something he'd do anyway, if he wouldn't just pitch face forward. ]

[ Anders glances around, but there isn't really anybody in sight; he feels like all the simulated people were back on the busy city streets. It's hard for him to really be concerned about being caught, since he's spent enough time in sims to have a constant awareness of his body lying in a chair in the real world, jacked in through the back of the neck, an operator ever-present. Somehow, this doesn't translate all the way through to thinking of the animals as programs.

So he does it, just a quick spell, the feeling of magic pulled from the fade through to him deeply nostalgic. The door creaks open half an inch, and as predicted, the panda bear does absolutely nothing. Anders shrugs. ]

Well, that was anticlimactic.

[ He leaves it be, tugging Hawke to move on. To yet more caged animals. He's starting to feel somewhat discontent with this whole experience. ]

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closed.

... have they ever been on a date where death /wasn't/ a pretty serious possibility

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