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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 22 days ago

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22- fade tongue

A silence passed between them; not peaceful, but fragile. Then, hesitant. Tentatively: “You knew me once,” he said, “Not as I am cast in your legends, but as a man all too acquainted with his own failures.” He took a single step closer. Measured and careful, afraid to trespass beyond the boundaries the shared dream might permit. “You must know: that night, in Crestwood, I…” faltering, “I could have shared the truth, or even put my plans aside and simply stayed with you as Solas. As I wanted.”

“Did you imagine,” she said at last, “this would console me?”

He said nothing.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62038768/chapters/170296870

When the former Inquisitor passed beneath the archway, she was struck by the strangest impression she had arrived somewhere wholly unfamiliar. Uncanny, even, as dust clung to lifeless banners in Skyhold’s courtyard. The fire had gone out in the great hall. Her throne sat bereft of some verdict long deferred. Ellana had returned only once after the Exalted Council, to collect what few possessions she might reasonably call her own. She’d wanted to leave after Crestwood, actually, with her dignity if not her satisfaction. The machinations of a certain darkspawn magister derailed those intentions, leaving her pride a somewhat secondary concern.

In time, Skyhold had become less a home and more a monument; an edifice consecrated to burdens she no longer had the strength or inclination to shoulder. It was a relief, then, to surrender it to those who wished to preserve the Inquisition’s legacy. For eight years she managed to evade the place, convinced that whatever comfort it once held would be spoiled by her return. The moments of warmth and clarity that had unfolded within its walls would curdle with time– she even believed it, too. But when the Veil thinned and the world cracked open again , the South began to burn, and there was nowhere left to stand but Skyhold.

The first refugees had arrived in a trickle, their numbers scarcely a dozen. They soon grew to fifty, then a hundred, and by the third week she no longer bothered to count. There had been little use in measuring sorrow when it arrived daily. Yet amid the mumbled comforts and linens drawn over fevered limbs, purpose found her willing; that which had been set aside with equal parts relief and reluctance still bore a familiar weight.

The knowledge of Varric’s absence was painfully obvious, however. Cullen’s quarters had caved in entirely. And though she knew she would find Josephine’s office empty and the undercroft dormant, naive expectation did little to blunt the sting of lost friends and shared purpose. A subtle sense of dread soon settled into something patient, stirring in the early morning before the day truly began, and again at night when the silence stung too keenly. Avoiding the rotunda had been a particularly helpful strategy, one of several quiet evasions that formed the pattern of her return. Indeed, she relied on avoiding those places she had frequented before, as to retrace those steps might invite the past to nip at her heels.

Her new office had been established in a dusty antechamber tucked below the western wing, a neglected library of dubious cataloging. She found it suited her; the solitude, the scent of aged parchment, the complete absence of light. From there, the world remained at a polite distance. At night, she slept beneath a crumbling statue of Andraste, who offered neither comfort nor condemnation. Yet for all its renewed occupancy, Skyhold had remained a hollow place.

Perhaps that was why her mind so often turned to Haven. More and more, Ellana found herself returning, though whether she was dreaming of the village or remembering it had become increasingly difficult to parse; memory had been so thoroughly blurred that recollection now mirrored reverie. Was she watching herself return, or making the steps of her own accord?

Regardless, it was a plesant, hazy sort of stupor. A gentle detachment that dulled any sharper sting. The effect was not displeasing. Then, the transition was seamless as great stone walls dissolved into the modest slope of snow-dusted cabins. She knew this trick well, and what a cruel one it was: that after a decade, after all they had fought to preserve and all they had lost, she found herself back at the beginning.

So it was a dream, then. And worse still, the Fade no longer troubled to disguise itself– even the illusion of home had worn away, having grown threadbare with repetition.

Haven appeared as it had before. The snow fell gently, in the polite, unhurried manner of dreams. It softened rooftops and gathered in neat drifts along the walkways without clinging to her cloak or melting on her cheeks. The scene had all the trappings of warmth, yet Ellana could not shake the impression that it had been arranged for her benefit alone. She might have admired the courtesy, had it not felt so bereft.

The hush commenced gradually, the way silence often does in dreams. A shift, a subtle quickening as the spirits rousing the illusion took notice. They felt her awareness stirring, blooming like a drop of ink in water. And more than that; something else, as well. Ellana quickened her pace, having familiarized herself with a particular presence in the way one might feel warmth before a fire came into view, or the way a scent might summon feeling before the memory formed.

Standing before the same cabin with hands clasped behind his back the same way, his gaze was fixed on some middle distance when she approached. When her essence stirred the Fade, calling to him like a half-forgotten melody, he followed, helplessly. Upon seeing her again, lovely still, he thought: I am unprepared for this. He should turn back, or be kind in his absence, at the very least. Then slowly, reluctantly, still , he faced her. He looked, in every respect, as though he had intended to vanish before she noticed.

His eyes dipped, briefly, to the snow.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me now.”

Emotion flickered across his features; shame, yes, but too something steadier. Familiar, and unsettling. Ellana took another step, stiff with the sort of restraint that masks sorrow in civility. To his credit, he did not look away again. If he possessed presence of mind, he might have spoken. Her name, perhaps. A word meant to soothe. But he did not think, and moved in kind. One step, then a second, and in the space between the second and the third, she reached for the fabric at his neck. In the Fade, he was always vanishing; she was right to fear he would turn into mist.

Some fragile current passed between them, then. Whether it was the ache of recognition or the ghost of some memory long starved, neither would admit. But for the briefest instant, the space between them stoked something that might have been tenderness. And then, softness withdrew like the tide to be replaced with a sharp and shrewd thing; honed by absence, and pain, and too many imagined apologies that never arrived. Her palm met his cheek with a crack. Solas received it with silence and a long-suffering kind of dignity that was neither defense nor remorse. His face remained composed as a ruddy flush bloomed on his cheek. He had anticipated her hatred.

“You killed Varric.” She spat, fury rising fast and bitter in her throat. “He was our friend . He believed in you, in your goodness, and you let him die like a stranger.”

“I did only what I believed was necessary.” He replied, with the kind of precision one could easily attribute to callousness.

Her eyes narrowed. “Your smug aura mocks me,” she hissed, “And you are still insufferable.” The words cut, precisely, as truth so often does. She took a step back then, as if the sight of his pride were suddenly too much. And yet, for all his careful anticipation, nothing he imagined could quite match the devastation in her voice, and that she had once loved him enough to hurt like this.

“You believe I drew the blade with ease, I did not.” A pause. “It was never a question of cruelty. Only consequence.”

“You speak of necessity as though it were a virtue,” she bit out the words. ”For all your insistence that you are no god, you are keen to decide who is worthy to live and die.”

“I had hoped–” He opened his mouth, but found the words ill-fitting and useless in the face of her condemnation.

“That mission; I was meant to lead it. Would you have slain me,” frustration only mounting with each new word, “if Varric hadn’t convinced me to remain in the South?”

Silence fell. The kind that stretches out not for lack of speech, but because there is too much that cannot be spoken plainly. She felt it gather at her throat and behind her eyes, a pressure with no outlet.

“You have nothing to say. Nothing at all?”

He flinched enough to betray that he indeed had something to say, and still did not speak it. His expression grew intolerably quieter; not absent, but decidedly still. He would not cloak himself in rationale, nor insult her by pleading for mercy. Standing steadfast, maddening, unreachable, her fury rose to meet him.

“Say it!” she shouted, “Say anything . Wound me, curse me, but do not stand here and deny me the truth again.”

“I do not know,” he admitted, and that was no lie. “I would have taken no satisfaction in it.”

The words shot through her like ice. “You would have killed me ,” she hissed.

Solas closed his eyes, only briefly. “No part of me would have been untouched by your death.”

Once, it would have moved her. Then, a realization : “I am nothing to you.” It was laughed rather than shouted, and worse for it.

“I did not want to kill Varric,” His voice was hoarse as the words sunk without careful tempering, growing softer still. “What is necessary is not always just. Desire can hold no power against duty.” All the while, his eyes remained elsewhere.

Ellana thought of Elgar’nan’s fury, of the blind and brutal force of it, and how she had placed herself squarely in its path to grant Solas the time he needed to flee. Not because she believed in his cause, nor even because she believed in him . But because, in some stubborn, stupid way, she loved him.

A harsh laugh tore from her throat. And, turning from him a second time, refusing to let her anger, or her grief, for that matter, make a supplicant of her, “I should not be surprised,” she continued, “I suppose I thought, in some dim, pitiable way, I might be spared the humiliation of watching you leave.” It was an accusation, yes, but something wearier still was the sullen familiarity of a pattern well-rehearsed. For his vanishings had long become his only constancy.

Ellana spoke into the charged nothingness between them, “Why are you here? You, of all beings, are not bound by dreams.” She caught the line of his face, half-shadowed and unreadable. Her mouth curled into something like a smile, only mirthless and keen as frost. “Is this mercy? Guilt? Perhaps some final indulgence before you destroy the world?”

“I feared for you,” he replied too quietly.

“How noble.”

“On the island. Elgar’nan–” He faltered then, and she glared, unwilling to help him find the words. “You should not have been there, vhenan .”

Ellana let out a huff, “Tell me, which part frightened you more; that I might die, or that you might be the one to deliver it? Was it self-pity, or grief speaking?

Wounded pride, she guessed, flickered in his eyes; a dangerous expression if not thoroughly compelling. Anger surged there then, a shift in his face so sudden, stricken, it served only to stoke her acrid amusement. His gaze dropped below her eyes, to some point on her cheek.

“The vallaslin,” he uttered through clenched teeth, “You are not ignorant to their true meaning.”

“Correct.”

“And still, you have made yourself Elgar’nan’s slave.”

A laugh, “I did not–”

“You did not what?” His voice took on the sort of mocking lilt he reserved for the willfully blind.“Did not remember? Did not care?” Violet eyes pinning her in place, “You bear his mark on your face. Was the first desecration insufficient?”

“How dare you,” she hissed, warping composure further into offense, “Speak plainly, Solas, if you ever cared for me at all.”

“You wear them!” He shrilled; unable, or perhaps unwilling, to hide the bitterness in his voice. He had meant only to warn her. Not coldly, as he had done with gods and tyrants, but wretchedly. Personally . “You let Elgar’nan carve them into your face. You– you allowed it! ”

“I do not wear the vallaslin,” she shouted, “I would never agree to that.”

“No?” The word held no gentleness. “Tell me, what do you see when you gaze upon your reflection?”

The Fade answered him with glass like ice upon stone. His voice echoed strangely in the space; new, but seemingly unchanged, as though they had been there already. Mirrors in an endless sequence; circling impossible symmetry. In every one, her face was not her own. She stepped forward, her breath hitched, her reflection caught from every angle; a dozen, no– a hundred faces bearing the same brand. She felt intolerably small. Her stomach turned, confusion laying way to panic, and then–

Enraged, she turned to him, “I am not so easily persuaded by gods with silver tongues and parlor tricks.” Her voice cracked furiously as magic danced across her fingertips. “How can I trust you, after all you’ve done?”

Solas laughed. “Did you not aid me at Tearstorne Island? Surely you trust me enough to conspire against your god.”

“ Elgar’nan is not my god !” she shouted, casting light across the mirrored walls. The chamber, so carefully ordered, seemed to tilt. Ellana blinked, her anger caught somewhere behind her ribs, bewildered by what exactly had just torn free of her throat. Her chest heaved in exertion, or panic, and the sound of her voice retreated into some scared, meek thing. Then gravely, “I had never seen it before this. I do not know where it came from, or how it got there.”

Solas had, it seemed, made the worst of all errors: not in trusting too freely, but in doubting too soon. He had taken her silence for betrayal, and her survival for submission– a dreadful misjudgment that now turned to ash on his tongue. The truth revealed proved both unremarkable and unbearably cruel; simpler than he anticipated yet evermore brutal. He might have laughed at his own foolishness, had the moment permitted even that small reprieve.

How proud he had been. How certain, and how completely wrong .

His eyes dropped again to her cheek. “You did not know,” he mumbled against the fragmented remains of his own assumptions, his certainty, emerging raw and stripped of pretense.

She said something he couldn’t hear. He found his hands had curled into fists.

“You do not remember,” with conviction, as if saying it aloud might protect her from further subjectation. “Elgar’nan has taken the memory from you.”

Her eyes continued to chart the mark in the glass. “He took many things,” she said, “Even so, you looked at me and saw complicity. You would believe I chose this?”

It was not an accusation, exactly, but required no emphasis to wound.

The feeling was a steady, expanding emptiness that flowered in his chest. For all it shadowed, guilt did not always arrive with spectacle. More often it settled in quietly, like dusk. Pride had feared many things in his long and weary life. And in hubris, looked upon her in doubt, lashing out, like a wounded animal toward the only creature that had ever seen him as more, and simultaneously less, than Fen’Harel.

“I did not know,” he whispered. It was the only defense he could offer, and a poor one at that. He had looked at her and chosen a pain he could bear, preferring that of her betrayal to the knowledge of her violation. Better , he had thought, to think she had chosen freely than consider the alternative . “I would undo it,” he added softly.

“Then do it !” She snapped.

“Ir abelas ,” he looked at her sadly, “But I cannot. We are not here physically, or I could–”

“Would you?” she spat, “Or would you retreat again to serve your own ends?”

“No,” he replied, bereft of hesitation. Unquestionable in its finality. “I would not leave you in chains.”

The two regarded one another, guarded and still. It was not affection that lingered between them then, nor reconciliation. The recognition of old injuries, of former selves, and trust broken. Each studied the other as though meeting again for the first time. Not as lovers. Not as adversaries. Perhaps, then, as something like equals. Her hand drifted again to her cheek.

“You must tell me what happened,” Solas said, urgency threading through the careful evenness of his voice, reigning himself in visibly as comprehension were a thing lying just beyond his grasp. “Whatever stands between us must wait. I need to know what Elgar’nan has done . ”

Ellana stared, the words ready to fall yet uncertain where to land. Her heart raced from the terrible dread of being asked to bear herself to someone who had wounded her. It would be simple to say nothing and let silence protect what self-regard remained. Looking past the trickster god and ancient rebel, she might still find the same wise, quiet man who dispensed wisdom freely, who had valued her mind as much as her magic, and once looked at her like she mattered more than anything else around them . For all that had transpired, she wished to believe that some part of him remained in the place where grace extended as risk, not reward. And in the willingness to be known again, setting aside her anger had become more necessary than her censure.

“I do not know. So much is… incomplete.” Her brow contracted with the effort of recollection. “There was a cage, I think. And before that,” a pause, “Darkspawn? They had breached our line.” She hesitated, speaking slowly at first and halting in the details. But once begun, the account unfolded in fragments and impressions that proved immune to the logical nature of time.

“And before that. What do you remember?”

“I was holding the South together,” she replied evenly. “Fighting the monsters your ritual unleashed.”

“I was trapped ,” he snapped, “By that fool, Rook. One of your agents.”

Humorlessly, “How convenient.”

There was a pause. His jaw tightened as indignation flared– the instinct to correct her, for it would be entirely to easy to remind her of the burden he bore and the necessity that framed his actions. But he stopped himself, realizing that too would be a failure. He had come seeking truth, not victory. Reluctantly, his posture shifted. Not defeated, but softened. “…Please,” he said at last, resigned. “Continue.”

When she did, it was not a question so much as a prayer denied. What she remembered. What she did not . The gaps where her voice bent strangely, of where her limbs moved without thought, where her thoughts fogged like breath against glass. How her mind dulled after that, and the heat that followed Elgar’nan into a room. Weight that fell over her shoulders like a hand pressing her into place, or a child arranging a doll.

He had saved the most delicate inquiry for last; lingering at the edge of his tongue, as naming it might confirm some private horror. He cleared his throat once, quietly, without meeting her eyes. “There was mention–” he began, the words catching like thorns, “of a child.”

Her arms folded across her chest to ward off some lingering embarrassment. “There is no child,” she snapped, like a blade drawn in reflex. Of course not. He raised a brow. Just slightly. A flush rose to her cheeks, “I had no time to– to think. I said it only to stay his hand,” she frowned. “He found the idea… utilitarian, or so I suspect.”

The lie, such as it was, had merit. It might have bought her time. It might have appealed to Elgar’nan’s appetite for dominance, or his hunger for leverage. But Solas knew that alone, it would not have sufficed. For all his titles and thunder, the All-Father would not have spared her out of some sacred awe for his enemy’s bastard. That was not his way. What haunted Solas more deeply than the lie was what it concealed; not why Elgar’nan had spared her, but how he had chosen to keep her alive.

“I see,” he said, and asked nothing more. Her path to survival was already plain to him, and the cost she paid to keep breathing. Worse still, what he suspected but would not name. There were questions he did not have the right to ask.

She fixed him with a sharp glance. “And you? How did you escape?”

He drew a breath, steeling himself before beginning. His account unfolded in hushed detail: of the ritual disrupted, the god’s prison in the Fade, of Rook’s progress in his absence, and lastly, his escape.

“You trapped Rook?” She was not, by any measure, pleased, “In the Fade. Really , Solas?”

“I did,” he replied plainly. “I could not allow them to interfere. There is no gentler truth.” Ellana frowned.

“And the Veil?” Her voice was lower now, tight with restraint, though not devoid of hope entirely.

A pause. Then, grimly: “My plans have not changed.”

“Of course not.”

“You are right to be angry,” he offered. Her disappointment was a lash he had long expected.

“You deserve considerably worse than my anger,” she replied coolly. And then, with a weariness that robbed the words of malice: “But I haven’t the energy.”

“Were it within my power to ensure your safety, I would–”

She arched a brow. “How very comforting,” she said dryly. “You do possess such a stirring history of coming to my aid.”

“Fair,” he admitted, the corner of his mouth quirking in some morbid form of amusement. “Should I live to see Elgar’nan slain, I will do what I can to preserve your life. That, at least, I can offer.”

“Ah. After you destroy the Veil, of course.”

Exasperated, “Vhenan, please .”

“I neither expect nor desire your rescue,” she returned, quite plainly. “If I am freed, it will be by my own hand. I have long since ceased to count on yours.”

“I would not deprive you that,” he said. “Even if it were within my power to do so.”

“Can you?”

“No.” The word was a bitter draught, quiet and final. “I can offer no more now than I could before. So long as you are bound to Elgar’nan, your will is not wholly your own. I cannot ask you to act in defiance of it– not without risking more than either of us can afford to lose.”

Her jaw tensed, indignation flaring behind her eyes. “You’re afraid I’ll turn on you,” she replied coolly. “How very ironic.”

“I fear what he has done ,” Solas replied gravely. “Not who you are .”

“Did you imagine,” she said at last, “this would console me?”

He said nothing.

“That you might wound me beyond measure, then soothe the injury with the memory of what might have been?” Ellana turned, the weight of looking at him directly having become too much to bear.

“I do not ask for your forgiveness, nor do I offer this as recompense.”

She let out an aggravated growl. “I knew you were hiding something,” she hissed, biting back tears. “And I did not care. I would have followed you anywhere .”

And I nearly asked you to. “I know, vhenan .” The breath she held escaped her like steam from a kettle. "I feared I would ruin what little good you might still think of me."

Her shoulders rose slightly. One hand came to cover her mouth in an instinctive attempt to contain what was swiftly slipping past her guard: a soft, strangled breath, too quick, too close to a sob.

“Ellana,” he said, low, hoarse, barely more than a breath. His hand moved nearly of its own accord, uncertain at first and trembling slightly as it hovered above her shoulder. For a moment he hesitated, fearful the slightest presumption might shatter what little understanding remained between them. Emotion long held at bay rushed forward all at once, though by choice or exhaustion, she allowed the contact to remain. “If there is one truth I may leave with you, let it be this: loving you was never a mistake.”

“You should not say that!”

“I am aware.”

“Then why do you?” She demanded.

“Because I do not believe I will have the chance to say it again.”

That caught her. “What do you mean?” she asked, spoken too quickly to be measured.

Solas did not answer at once. It seemed he might not answer at all. Then, “I walk the dinanshiral . That journey is not merely metaphorical.” Looking away, the words he meant to offer required their own distance. “There is no certainty I will survive the Veil’s collapse. In truth, I think it unlikely.”

“You believe you’re going to die.”

He did not deny it.

“Yet you speak of it so plainly,” she continued, hiding the offense behind her hand. “You would leave me with a confession, and not even grant me the dignity of a reply.”

“If I could choose another path– one that led me back to you– I would take it without hesitation.”

There was a pause, pregnant and uncertain. She said nothing at first, the stillness between them brittle and liable to crack if touched. And then, without much forewarning, her hand rose and came to rest against his cheek. The gesture was neither bold nor assured, not yet ; rather, it shuddered with a kind of intimate uncertainty. He startled, naturally, but did not retreat. At last, her voice emerged, “Then stay with me,” she said. “As long as this dream allows.”

He blinked, bewildered, before steeling his expression. “We shouldn’t.”

“I know this for what it is,” she continued, more firmly, “And I know who you are. If this is all we are allowed, I will still choose you.” Ellana stepped closer, her hand slipping from his cheek to rest lightly at the nape of his neck. She seemed to seek something in the touch itself, some echo of truth that might live in the body. As though her fingers might read what his lips refused to tell: the weight of regret, and of tenderness buried beneath pride.

“Even knowing what you do, you would still–?” Solas did not have to complete the question.

“Yes.”

“This cannot change anything,” he warned, though his voice shook with something like bliss having crept in despite him. But it felt like penance or reprieve, and he was very tired of pretending he needed neither. The part of him that stayed cold and dutiful for a decade cracked like ice meeting spring. That she could choose him even now was a mercy he could not understand. And still, he wanted quite terribly, to believe he could be just a man, trembling beneath her hands.

Solas closed his eyes, nearly weeping, “ Ir abelas .”

A faint laugh escaped her, begrudging and scarcely voiced. “I do not forgive you.”

“I know.”

A pause. Then, quieter: “But I have missed you.”

He had not intended to touch her, nor surrender himself to sentiment; then again, he had always wanted things he never expected to receive. So when she raised her eyes to his and placed her hand upon his flesh, it became clear that the notion of preserving his composure was entirely laughable.

The first kiss was hesitant and exploratory, like strangers fumbling through the script of a play they had once known by heart. Yet memory is not easily governed, and it is rarely kind. What began with caution soon gave way to fervour: a soft sound escaping her lips, scarcely more than a sigh, and he, in turn, replying with a noise more instinct than reason. The better part of him, such as it remained, hoped the restraint lingering at the back of his mind might yet anchor him to what sense he still possessed. And then he was speaking against her neck, whispering that this was a terrible idea, all while his lips refused to leave her skin.

“This is not wise,” he murmured.

“Probably not,” she replied, tilting her head slightly. The invitation did not go unnoticed.

His mouth traced a slow path downward. His lips parted, trembling between a laugh, pitiful at that, and a prayer as he confessed he had dreamed of her for ten long years. It was all too familiar, this effortless convergence of tension and tenderness, or teasing and truth. Ellana laughed again, only this time the sound carried a startling tenderness. “You mentioned caution,” she teased; her own restraint had collapsed like parchment in rain.

“You are making that increasingly difficult.”

“Do you suppose I am impervious to you?” she asked; not in jest, but with the kind of sincere inquiry she reserved for things that mattered. “That I have ever been?"

Her gaze did not wave, it burned. The expression was earnest, unadorned, so much that whatever breath he had intended to draw fell midway, caught between anticipation and rapture. A low laugh escaped him then, the chamber forgotten, as was the circumstance that had brought them. Only that she was near, and he was, quite unexpectedly, at peace. “No,” he whispered. “nor would I ever wish you to be.”

She kissed him then with such gentleness, such quiet assurance and no urgency at all, that it proved a far greater undoing than any provocation. “Solas,” Stealing away to the space below his ear, “Come to me.”

It was not a demand, nor a plea, but something far more devastating: permission. For a moment, he did not move. Had he heard her correctly? He made a muted sound– half breath, half gasp– before something within him surged all at once. And then he was on her, pressing her against the nearest wall, a gleaming pane of mirrored glass. He took her into his arms with a care that belied the urgency of his longing, and undressed her with hands that shook only slightly. The Fade, ever attuned to the will of dreamers, altered in accordance with desire. Ellana found herself reclined beneath him, catching a glimpse of them in the looking-glass: the flush on her cheek, and the pale slope of her throat resting against his shoulder. “We appear to be surrounded.”

Solas laughed with an expression both wicked and content, and wholly devoid of apology. “I find it…” he began, his fingers trailing up her side, his palm curved over her breast, lingering there, “exquisite.” Then he bent, mouth closing over her nipple; his tongue traced languid circles first, parting her thighs beneath him. He bit down enough to make her breath catch, to remind her that softness was not the only language he knew. Things had always been easier for him in the Fade, after all.

“I thought you preferred shadows to spectacle,” she managed. “This feels dangerously close to the latter.”

He did not smile. Not quite.

“If this is to be the last dream we share, I would have you remember it.” His fingers moved again slower and coaxing.

She blinked at him, perhaps in bemusement, or adoration, or something nearer to sorrow. Her fingers brushed his cheek, and though the mischief was not wholly vanished, it tempered at least. Her voice arrived as little more than a sigh, “Do not speak of it, then. Only, do not stop, either.”

The words became an invocation. Drawn forward by the promise in her voice, Solas lowered his head, his lips brushing the curve of her ear, then trailing lower toward the line of her neck. His teeth followed, grazing skin until she squirmed and arched toward him. A whimper, then a moan, spilled from her lips. He heard it– he felt it . And he answered, not with speech, but with a low, shuddering sound that vibrated against her throat. Tangled in breath and heat, she felt the distinct weight of him pressing firmly against her thigh. Warn and wanting and familiar , her hand slid between their bodies, searching, fingers curling around him in a gesture newly startling in its intent. His breath stuttered against her skin.

“ Vhenan ,” he murmured, like it was prayer and warning both. But he did not design to stop her.

Ellana moved her hand slowly, brushing her thumb over the head, spreading the liquid beading there. Heat pulsed beneath the touch. Humming contently, Solas bowed his head into her shoulder, allowing his mouth to drag open along her collarbone. She felt the effort it took for him to remain mostly still, and the trembling tension he answered with every stroke of her hand.

His hand found hers, and stilled it. He kissed her shoulder, then the hollow just above her heart. Then lower, each press of his lips a wordless prayer. When he reached her hips, he lingered. “Look at me,” he said, low and coaxing. Awed almost, and wrapped in a tenderness more commanding than desire. And at his urging, her lashes lifted, and their eyes met as he entered her with a single, slow thrust. Her name slipped from his lips, more breath than language, and she responded with a low noise that echoed off the mirrored walls. Stilling, a moment held between breaths where his forehead rested against hers. For a moment, he simply breathed her in. Then, he began to move in deep, languid strokes. A sob caught in her throat as she rose to meet him, her mouth finding his all desperate and consuming. The kiss broke and returned, again and again, as though every lost year came rushing back to be spent in a single dream.

“I have missed you,” She admitted, tears threatening to spill from her eyes, “Terribly.”

He pressed his forehead to hers as they moved together, eyes fluttering closed, voice catching as he whispered, “No hour passed that I did not ache for you.” He moved with the patience of a man who had known only pining and had fed upon dreams for too long. There was no haste in him; he was all depth, and constancy, and a kind of devastating stillness. And through it all, he held her gaze, as if the union of their bodies meant little without the meeting of their eyes.

And now I tremble to be made whole .

His movements slowed, not for lack of want, but because each thrust left him more breathless than the one before. When he stilled at last, she kissed his temple, then his cheek, and his mouth. With a glint of something wicked in her eyes, she shifted, pressing her palms to his chest to ease him back. Hands falling away like they no longer belonged, eyes never leaving her face as she moved above him, rising over him like a tide returning to shore.

Ellana braced her thighs around his hips, lowering onto him in a motion that made them both shudder. She moved slowly at first, setting a deep and rolling rhythm like waves smoothing stone. Her hands braced upon his chest as he lay beneath her, practically senseless. His fingers traced her thighs, her waist, the curve of her belly with something more than desire. It was grief and gratitude braided together, the joy of being remembered, and of being welcomed.

The muscles in his jaw tightened each time she sank down. And when she leaned forward to kiss him, the rhythm of her body never faltering, his hands came up at last simply to hold her. His voice broke around her name. And when her pace quickened, he answered with a low groan in his throat. She rode him like she remembered every place they had ever touched, and sought to remind him of all they had missed. And he let her, for he had nothing left to give but this: his awe, and his body, and the unspeakable ache that had haunted him for ten years. And here, she took him as if she meant to keep him. If only for a while .

“You are so beautiful,” he said softly.

She leaned forward, capturing his mouth with her own; unhurried, intent. The kiss was not frenzied but filled with feeling, a slow exchange of breath and memory. As she began to move, her hips described a lazy rhythm, determined to draw out every moment they had been denied. When she rose again, he watched her entranced and wordless. His hands glided along her thighs, reverent in their path, until they came to rest lightly at her waist.

Her body gave a violent little tremor, thighs trembling as the wave overtook her. The sound she made was soft, strained, and wholly involuntary, one of surprise as much as surrender. She folded forward into him, spent and shaking. Solas caught her; cradled her, even. There was nothing of pride in his expression. Then he turned them gently onto their sides, one arm looped around her middle, his hand resting low on her stomach. With the other, he found her fingers and laced them with his.

Kissing the length of her spine, each press of his lips was quieter than the last. And slowly, he began to move once more. Her body sang with oversensitivity, each stroke both unbearable and sublime. Solas buried his face in her neck as the tension in him began to build anew, and with a strangled groan against her shoulder, his hips stuttered, and he spilled into her with a sound that hovered on the edge of a sob; one final, desperate thrust before stillness. They lay that way for a long time, bodies tangled and limbs slack under the weight of exertion. Solas murmured soft words against her skin, words she could almost grasp, their meaning just beyond reach. But her mind was too dazed, too full of him to translate.

The stillness between them was no hesitation, but sanctity. His body trembled, his breath faltering against her skin as he tried to commit each detail to memory: the hitch in her throat, the press of her fingertips against his spine. He kissed her temple, her jaw, the corner of her mouth. Whispers spilled against her skin; Elven, broken, soft. The desire to linger was not strategic. It was not wise or kind. And when the Fade began to soften, neither of them spoke of endings. They did not need to.

#solavellan #datv spoilers #lavellan #elgarnan #solas #lavellan x elgarnan #solas x lavellan #veilguard spoilers #sollavellan #elgar'nan

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lebuc · 3 months ago

Text

this paradigm shifting

* this latest paradigm shifting, a sign of impending strife

or is it simply grifting & dismissing with the honed end of a pointed knife, moving forward

to that which most of us deem untoward:

rewarding those already hoarding the largess the rest of us would otherwise possess, in the best of times;

unnecessitating this crest of rhymes attesting to such, brinking on the verge of being too much in a surge of reflective thinking & hopefully not too much drinking to assuage the pain, draining the will to do naught but sit still - but then, again until we decide strategically to pay the bill, since we drank from freedom's cup near-filled to the tip-top from the bottom up;

for now, there remains but a few sips in our view which could be mistaken for a 'mourning' type dew by its scarcity & the tragedy of its taking

should our purview remain waning & shaking, unstirred - at this occasion of a dream deferred upon waking, by huns at the helm, or should i say curs…

& the dream train once on track, now deterred by those who wish to tack, take back what we preferred to remain a part of the terrain - laid, paved & trod in halting, but not faltering paces

reflecting an evident pride on our faces for making this faux-merited space* a home for many a creed & race, even at a stuttering pace in yet segregated homes comparatively degraded.

if truly meant, what was written in a document of note of which many were & are still smitten, still harboring hope that we'd fulfill its lilting words' heft

with the spirit of those not yet bereft of curds of courage to face the bellowing herds heralding a purge of persons at the flick of foul words; who parse their prounouns, nurse the verb 'to be', & verse the adjective 'inclusively' cursively, not curtly; who deny & dismiss a woeful missal to homogenize, neutralize & ostracize as unoffical

some good folk - in an stunning reversal of DEI, where all 'outside the pale' need not apply - joke/no joke.

already fatigued of the flack upon the redux & the mess the rest of his back-slapping crew promote clearly & hotly, in a spirit quite mottley ( a snickering doge, 'f you get the reference/pun )

…& frankly, that's all i gottly, this here traipse around the sun. * 4/25 - lebuc - this paradigm shifting (...it's reigning men - hold the hallelujahs)

#poetry #poets on tumblr #creative writing #free verse #spilled ink #twc #writerscreed #poetryriot #alt lit #lit #this paradigm shifting

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mariacallous · 17 days ago

Text

I am Black. I am Jewish. I work in the field of hate crimes not only as a professional who responds to incidents, builds coalitions and educates others but as someone who has lived their reality. I carry it in my skin. In my breath. In my children’s safety plans. I don’t need a white paper to define what I already feel in my blood and bones. I know what hate looks like.

When Black people are murdered in Buffalo while grocery shopping, we do not sit in circles wondering whether we can really call it racism. We do not write op-eds asking for nuance. We do not entertain long think-pieces parsing whether it might have been just a tragedy or mental health-related. No. We say: This was a racist, anti-Black hate crime. Because it was.

But as a Jew, I have learned that our community doesn’t always offer that same clarity or solidarity when the hate targets us.

In Washington, D.C., two people who attended a Jewish event, working for peace, were executed outside a Jewish building. It is clear to me and to so many others: This was a hate crime. A Jew-hating hate crime. Call it what it is: antisemitism.

Then on Sunday, as Jews around the world prepared to receive Torah once again on Shavuot, I began receiving messages from friends in Boulder: Molotov cocktails were thrown at people standing in peaceful protest rallying for the return of hostages in Gaza. Every Sunday, in the rain, in the cold, in the fatigue of waiting, these people have shown up. Most of them are Jewish. They are showing up as Jews. Not to make a political statement. To bring our people home. To bring all hostages home. Some are not even Jewish. But their gathering is marked, labeled, targeted as a Jewish event.

The attacker? He didn’t run. He didn’t try to escape. He told police he had been planning this for over a year. The only reason he used a Molotov cocktail instead of a gun? He couldn’t legally get one. But don’t miss this: He stayed. He told us why he did it.

And still within our Jewish community I hear the same questions: Was it really antisemitism? Should we say that out loud? Will it alienate people? Is it too complicated?

Let me be clear: it was antisemitism. Full stop.

To my Jewish community: I write this as one of you. I write this as someone who brings their whole self Black, Jewish, queer, mother, community protector to this moment.

I am tired. Not because the work is hard (it is). But because some of the hardest parts aren’t out there. They are in here with us.

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talshiargirlfriend · 1 year ago

Text

Remember when I said I’d been thinking about how (some) other Vulcans (mis)treat T’Pol? This…

— post Terra Prime ficlet

“Perhaps the kin-kur-savas would be more to your liking,” the Vulcan steward suggests.

T’Pol’s lips tighten fractionally before she quietly responds, “Thank you for the recommendation, but I am content with my choices.”

The man turns slightly to include Trip in his blandly disapproving stare.

There’s some Vulcan social subtext Trip can’t parse, so he just stands sternly at T’Pol’s side. She has hardly eaten a thing since Elizabeth died, and if this jackass puts her off her meager breakfast Trip’s gonna put him out an airlock. Mentally, of course, while outwardly observing appropriate decorum on the Vulcan transport delivering the grieving parents to Vulcan for an acknowledgment and internment rite with T’Pol’s clan.

Enterprise had been ordered to remain in-system around Sol tying up Terra Prime loose ends and doing coalition schmoozing. Blessedly Trip and T’Pol have been spared any more Earth media scrutiny for now.

Shran had actually offered to give the pair a lift to Vulcan on his way back to Andoria to continue rallying support for the fledgling Coalition of Planets, but T’Pol was insistent they travel via Vulcan ship. At Trip’s questioning she’d reluctantly admitted that her ties to Vulcan society were somewhat tenuous, and there were many who would view her arrival on an Andorian vessel as evidence she no longer belongs to her home planet at all.

Trip quietly wonders if it was worth the trouble given their reception aboard the T’Mara. For every “I grieve with thee” there’s been a haughty look or three. He’s doing his best to be a perfect guest and support T’Pol. Most of the time he wants to scream, cry, hit someone, or all three.

The steward has thankfully left to go be dour elsewhere, and he and T’Pol take their breakfast trays to a table near a window.

T’Pol glances at her food and drink and then stares out at the passing stars.

“You wanna tell me what that was about?” he asks her gently.

He can see by the tightness around her eyes and mouth that she very much does not “wanna.”

“Kin-kur-savas is a Vulcan stone fruit. It has variegated skin of yellow, green and red, pale yellow flesh, and a small deep red pit at the center. You once likened them to Vulcan peaches.”

“I remember.”

She hesitates, “It was an insult meant to imply that while I may still appear Vulcan I am human at my core.”

Trip inhales sharply and bites down on his anger.

“Additionally, his use of English gave him the plausible excuse of deference to your presence while effectively… alienating me further,” T’Pol finishes.

He doesn’t insult her by asking if she’s sure she’s not reading too much into it. It doesn’t surprise him that Vulcans can be just as bigoted and cruel as humans, but it’s still hard to see it directed at T’Pol, especially when he knows how hard she’s working to hold herself together right now.

Trip is absolutely not going to do anything that will bring shame to his daughter (may she rest in peace), or her mother (may she live long and prosper), so he breathes in a controlled manner and tries to keep all traces of what he’s feeling off his face.

He reaches for a utensil and casually touches T’Pol’s hand. When she makes eye contact he thinks as clearly and deliberately as he can: What an asshole. There’s a flicker of amusement in her eyes. Whether she understood his thought or was just entertained by his pathetic attempt at telepathy, he’ll take the win.

“I’m sorry if my presence is making this worse for you,” he tells her with sympathy.

She gives him a long look. “Trip, his actions reflect only on himself. Your attendance is appropriate and necessary as Elizabeth’s father,” she looks down briefly before continuing, “and I personally find your presence… beneficial. As I said, I am content with my choices.” Her voice is soft but firm.

It may not be a romance novel confession of love, but Trip is moved nonetheless.

“That’s good. I … I feel better when you’re around, too.”

T’Pol gives him a soft look and sips her tea. Trip flashes her a quick smile and takes a bite of the strange but not unpleasant plomeek porridge in front of him. Silently he rejoices when she follows suit, and they finish their meal together in companionable silence.

#trip x t'pol #star trek enterprise #fanfic #my fic #post ep: terra prime #ficlet #vulcan culture #trip tucker #t’pol #grief

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hosannan · 1 month ago

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Ishtar had been doing a good job of minding her own business for the evening. She'd walked about the beach and observed many enjoying the thrills of the ball. But she was passionless. All she wanted was the night to come to an end and to return to her abyss.

The world was not so kind, not that she had earned that much. The shore greeted her with a familiar face of gold haloed with a blue gown. She knew that face. She'd know it anywhere.

Nanna. "Well, look what we have here."

Well, it was not like the girl could hurt her. No one had weapons on them, and everyone was attired for a ball. But if she thought she could do anything. Ishtar squared herself up. She'd just returned from the brink of death, and yes, there had been pledges to be good and that was all fair...

But defending yourself wasn't exactly bad, was it? Ishtar was not a woman to go down without a fight. Looking into this girl's eyes, this pure, holy woman, her sins only rained down on her. Ishtar could feel the pressure, the weight.

But she could not afford to die again. No matter the cost. "If you're looking for a sob story, try again," Ishtar quips, throwing her hand out. "I won't lose to you." Her chin tilts upwards in confrontation.

“...Ishtar!?” It is so quickly relieved that she has ripped Ishtar of her title. She was no Goddess in Nanna's eyes.

Her name passed through Nanna’s lips like something half-remembered and half-warned against, with little deference for someone who was supposed to be dead. The waves at her back whispered over the sand, but her gaze did not stray from the woman before her. Not when the thunder was already curling in the distance of Ishtar’s voice.

“If you mean to posture,” Nanna said, her steps drawing her just close enough to be felt, “you’ll find I’m not so easily dismissed. I can't even fathom your intentions in coming back.”

Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. There was nothing shrill or defensive in it—only the still weight of someone who had held enough burdens of her own to not shy from another’s shadow. She wasn’t afraid. That was the difference.

A beat passed. Her head tilted slightly, as if to regard her more clearly through the veil of pride and pain. Nanna's hands, once delicate at her sides, now folded carefully in front of her. She had learned just enough magic without a conduit to shoot up a flare, if need be.

“You didn’t come back from death just to flinch at the sight of someone like me, did you?” That's why you chose me, of all people. Nanna thought bitterly, parsing her hands in case Ishtar truly intended to start something irreparable. "...If you mean to stand, then stand—otherwise, step aside.”

#mourningcomess #{ queued ; exam time you know how it is #{ what's her DAMAGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE #{ COMING BACK AND HECKLING NANNA RIGHT FROM THE HOLE SHE STEPPED OUT OF!!! (PUSHES HER BACK IN)#toaball2025

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greyias · 1 year ago

Note

22. playful teasing from the blossoming romance prompts?

Pairing: Gale x Tav (pre-relationship) Words: ~4600 Notes: More self-indulgent fluff, takes place the first morning/second day. A follow-up to this previous piece, but can be read on its own.

Gale woke with a crick in his neck, an ache in his back, and an all-too familiar gnawing deep within his chest. A groan escaped him as every bone and muscle protested the hard ground that had been his bed. He had a few choice words for the many scribes who extolled the virtues of sleeping under the stars, nestled in the ample bosom of nature’s beauty. He would take a proper mattress any day.

The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon, its golden rays starting to chase away twilight’s dim gray hold over their camp. He’d never been much of an early riser, candles usually burning low into the night as he’d get lost in one text or another — and the comfort of his tower back in Waterdeep afforded him the luxury of the simple things: an actual bed, linens, and the ability to snooze well into the morning hours. A twinge of protest in his lower back chased any thoughts of trying to close his eyes and catch a little more sleep, so he resigned himself to face the day.

Pushing himself to a half-upright position, that unnatural, ever-present hunger churned with a renewed vengeance. It hadn’t been sated in days, and it certainly wouldn’t be assuaged by any worldly meal. Absently, he brushed his hand against the ache, only for his traitorous stomach to voice complaints of its own with an insistent gurgle. Well, it seemed everything was just going to complain today.

Scrubbing the grit of sleep from his eyes, he slowly shuffled toward the campfire. Despite the late summer date, a chill still clung to the pre-dawn air and the warmth of the fire beckoned now that he’d abandoned his bedroll. It had burned low overnight, and Gale could make out the silhouette of one of his newfound companions tending to the dying embers. Faint light danced off scale mail, glinting underneath the deep blue and silver tabard embroidered with the tenets of a paladin’s oath to devotion. It seemed Aravyn had risen early enough to change from the fine yet travel-worn sleep attire she’d worn in the evening. If she’d managed to change into her armor already, he had to wonder exactly how early she’d woken up.

She glanced over her shoulder at his approach, and he suspected the keen sense from her elven lineage had picked up the sound of his footsteps in the quiet of the morning — not that he’d been trying to be particularly stealthy. In the dim light, he could just make out her quirking a brow in amusement at his approach, but she kept her voice pitched lower, likely in deference to their still slumbering companions. “That is quite the windswept scholar look you have going on today?”

Gale blinked, trying to parse that statement before raking a hand through his hair and encountering a wild tuft sticking straight up in the air. He attempted to smooth it with his fingers and hoped the slight reddening of his cheeks could be blamed on the morning chill. “Yes well… not all of us can wake up looking freshly groomed and put together, can we?”

“Contrary to popular belief, not all of elven descent awake fresh and pure as morning dew.” She gently stoked the fading embers, trying to prod the struggling flame back to life. “Even we must contend with bedhead and morning breath.”

“I will respectfully keep my distance in that case.” Despite his jest, he still shuffled closer to the sputtering flames, although the embers did little to provide much warmth. “So if you do not wake up perfectly composed and dressed for battle, I take that to mean you’ve been up for a while then?”

Aravyn gave a small shrug as the returned her focus to the struggling flames. “My sleep was a little restless. Too many thoughts swimming about, not to mention our unwanted guests.”

“I was going to blame our accommodations, but that is a valid point.”

“Not used to roughing it?”

“I’ve camped among the elements many a time,” Gale insisted, “but sleeping on rocks have never done my back any favors.”

She wrinkled her nose, glancing back at him. “You set your bedroll up over some rocks?”

An exasperated sigh escaped him. “I was intending a broader condemnation of the unyielding nature of the earth itself, rather than implying I selected the most jagged plot to sleep.”

“I don’t really think the ground is going to listen to any constructive criticism you offer.” From the suspicious way her lips quivered as she pressed them together tightly, Gale gathered he was being teased.

“Perhaps not.” He eyed the way she continued to gently prod the logs with her stick, and while there was nothing wrong with a light touch — certainly a clumsy oaf could push the smoldering logs apart and smother the flame, but there was a far quicker and more effective way to achieve this particular goal. “Here, allow me.”

With a murmured incantation, he conjured a small bolt of fire and let it loose at the embers she was still trying to coax a proper flame out of. The kindling popped and crackled before the fire roared back to life. There was once a time that he could have made the whole thing come alive, take a shape of a dragon that would roar in delight. And maybe even would have, just for a little extra show.

“I could have done that,” she protested.

“Why didn’t you then?”A small huff escaped her, and he just managed to keep from smirking in response.

“Not every problem needs to be solved with a magical solution, you know.”

“Yes, but now we have a nice fire.”

“We still would have if you’d been a little more patient.” Another huff, and this time he couldn’t stop the smirk from blossoming, or adding a little poking of his own.

“But this allowed us to reach the desired outcome much more expediently.” The gnawing void in his chest may have spoken to at least some of the wisdom of her statement. Still, old habits died hard, and it was easier to feign exaggerated indignance than to indulge in too much self-reflection before the sun had even fully risen. “Honestly, wasting time poking it with sticks is borderline arcane masochism.”

Her brow arched as she quietly echoed, “Arcane masochism?”

“There’s no reason to abstain from magic merely for some misbegotten sense of character building?”

“Are you about to tell me to go to hell again?” For a moment he thought the question might be serious, but the glitter of mirth in her eyes gave her away.

Despite himself, the corner of Gale’s mouth twitched at the reminder of his darker musings from the previous night. “I wasn’t really planning on it — but perhaps that’s just my hunger talking. Clearly sustenance is in order before my temperament grows any darker.”

“I’ve got just the thing.” She held up a finger, as if telling him to wait, before delving into one of the nearby bags where they’d gathered all of the provisions from their group’s scrounging the day before. After a few moments of rustling around with some quiet mutterings, she produced a plain strip of dried meat for him, with the flair of a subject presenting a prize catch to their lord. “Here. You’re not you when you’re hungry.”

“Hilarious.” Gale eyed the meager rations with the air of a man facing his imminent demise.

He wouldn’t have to deal with such indignities if he still had the power to summon an extradimensional space with a fully-stocked larder that could even put the one in his tower to shame. Even a Heroes' Feast wouldn’t go awry — not that particular spell had ever been part of his domain of magic. And would disappear in an hour. He really was desperate, wasn’t he?

Gale was stalling. Out loud he added, “I seem to recall us having a conversation just yesterday about you not inflicting your culinary masterpieces on others.”

“Yes, but this is different,” Aravyn insisted.

“How?”

“I haven’t boiled this piece of jerky.”

“That statement is not nearly as comforting as you mean it to be.”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

"Yes, your generosity truly knows no bounds.” His tone was as dry as the piece of jerky he accepted with great trepidation. Rather than eating it right away, he just stared at it glumly. “What I wouldn’t give for a proper Waterdhavian breakfast right now. Almond cakes, buttered buns, oh, gods — some strong coffee would not go amiss either.”

“Oh, coffee…” A wistful, borderline indecent sigh escaped the half-elf. “What I wouldn’t give for a mug of the Smilin’ Boar’s finest roast.”

“The Smilin’ Boar?” It was Gale’s turn to quirk an eyebrow.

“Oh, it was this old tavern that got turned into a cafe back in Baldur’s Gate. The menu took, let’s say, some creative liberties when naming their dishes, but they served the best coffee inside of these cute little mugs shaped like a pig’s head. Or at least it was the best coffee in the Bloomridge District.”

The Bloomridge District — now that was interesting. If memory served, that was one of the wealthier neighborhoods in the Lower City, with some of the estates there threatening to rival the opulence of the Upper City itself. If he factored in the fine leather and golden embroidery from her sleepwear the night before, Gale was starting to suspect that whatever her past, their troupe’s little paladin hadn’t been born to the life of pauper.

It was an intriguing puzzle these little details presented, and it just a little too tempting for him to resist plucking those loose threads and trying to weave them into a larger fabric of knowledge. He peered past the thoroughly unappetizing slab to appraise her with renewed curiosity, an investigator sizing up an intriguing conundrum. Breakfast (if it could even be called that) could wait — this enigma required his full concentration.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” she asked.

“I’m looking for inspiration.” He waved the desiccated mystery meat product absently in the air. “Tell me more about this creative menu.”

“Oh, you know. They had things like ’Sow’s Delight’ and ‘Three Pigs in a Blanket’. It’s all a little raunchy for such an upscale cafe, but considering they reused the signboard from the old tavern…” She trailed off, as if hoping that maybe his attention had wandered, then seeing it had not, cleared her throat. “Well, the original tavern incarnation didn’t cater to quite the same clientele.”

“You’re really building this up,” teased Gale.

“The sign featured a smiling boar.”

“I had gathered that much.”

“…mounted atop a sow.”

The loud guffaw that erupted from Gale took them both by surprise, and he quickly glanced around the camp to see if he had accidentally woken any of the late risers. Mindful of his manners, he lowered his voice once he managed to contain himself. “That is positively delightful. If by some happenstance our merry little band winds up in your hometown, we must visit this charming little cafe.”

“That’s a long way to go for a cup of coffee.” Aravyn pointed out. “If you just need something bitter to sip on, I could try boiling some tree bark or mushrooms.”

“You do know that there are other ways to prepare food and drink than merely boiling everything into an unpalatable pulp?” Gale countered, still holding the unconsumed jerky almost at arms’ length. “Although at this point, I can’t say whether that would help or hurt this allegedly edible morsel.”

“I’m beginning to think you’re seeking distraction from that rather than inspiration.” Her teasing lilt was as sweet as honeyed wine but contained just a little too much levity to be believed as completely innocent. “Go on, just pretend it’s a Sow’s Delight.”

He wasn’t sure how, but she’d managed to make the bland piece of meat even more unappetizing. His lip curled involuntarily as he valiantly tried to banish the image of said sow’s delight and its causes, and took the daintiest of nibbles from the edge — and nearly gagged.

Aravyn beamed at him with the widest and most innocent of smiles. “Inspired yet?”

“Thoroughly.” Face contorting, he forced himself to swallow the salt-cured leather. “However, I do think we need to fill our larder with something of a bit more sustenance.” And flavor. Never forget flavor.

“We do have quite a few mouths to feed.” She tapped her chin, considering. “I’m not sure how far we’ll be able to stretch our current rations.”

“Well, perhaps if you ask everyone else to picture two pigs rutting, it should give us a few more days.”

Aravyn’s cheeks flushed a deep scarlet, as if only now realizing her perhaps unintentional double entendre, before her lips curled in a smile that was caught somewhere between apology, mischief, and mirth. “I don’t know. It somehow got you to take a bite.”

“I… you—” Gale sputtered. While not for the first time in his life, it had been a long, long while since someone had rendered him at a loss for words.

Dawn chose that moment to crest the horizon, its warm glow highlighting the faint spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. The deep flush there lingered, spreading all the way to the tips of her ears. The image had a certain endearing, almost innocent charm that was captivating. An unexpected stirring in his chest skipped just a single beat, but it was enough proof there was maybe something in there beyond the rot chipping away at him.

The impishness edge of her grin softened, hovering on the edge of something warmer. That moment, that stirring, lingered with a tension that seemed to crackle like the kindling had.

“I guess I need work on my sales pitch.” Aravyn rubbed the back of her neck, a little flustered.

“Maybe start by avoiding porcine copulation.” Gale said, though his gaze lingered on her smile a beat too long before he redirected it to the sparking flames. Clearing his throat, he grasped for a fresh conversational thread. “You know, while scavenging yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice those ruins up on the cliffs.”

“Yes, they did look rather… crumbly.”

“That is a way to describe them, I suppose.” He stole a glance back in her direction to see her lips pressed together, whether in amusement or deep thought, he couldn’t tell. “Their structural integrity aside, I can’t help but wonder what sort of secrets they might hold.”

Aravyn tilted her head, considering yet also dubious. “I doubt we’ll find any coffee there.”

“I have other needs aside from coffee.” His tone was light even as the dark, necrotic orb in his chest twinged once more. He resisted the urge to massage it — best to not draw attention to his condition, especially with a group of strangers he’d not even known a full twenty-four hours. “The whole place has an air of mystery to it, don’t you think?”

“I mean, a little.” She slid a considering glance in the far distance where said ruin lay. “Although I think it it may just be a chapel. I’m not sure what you’d expect to find there.”

“Yes, but a chapel to who? Aren’t you curious?”

From the furtive way she averted her gaze, he could tell that her curiosity had been piqued. “I thought you were eager to find a cure before the ‘wee ones’ got too hungry. I think we’re more likely to find that at the druid’s grove those tie flings mentioned. Or at the every least some fresh vegetables.”

Gale tried not to make too much of a face that that, but some adding some roughage to their diet was probably not entirely uncalled for. “Yes, yes, fresh produce is nice and all. But it’s hard to resist a good mystery, is it not? Just think of the secrets those old walls could hold, magical relics even.”

Perhaps that was giving away his true intentions too strongly, but as she began to chew her lip in consideration, he could tell she was losing the war. “You could say they’re almost on the way we were being directed. It would only be a little detour.”

“That’s the spirit! Besides, how long would it really take to poke our heads into an old church?” He waggled his eyebrows with a conspiratorial flourish. “Who knows, it might even shake loose some ideas rattling around in our skulls about what to do about our larger problem. Give the ol’ noggin something to do besides house our new guests.”

Aravyn scrunched up her nose in distaste at the description. “I’d rather not be reminded on how much they're.... squirming up there."

“Ah come now, just imagine them as hairless spiders giving your mind a massage.”

“Is this revenge for the Sow's Delight?”

“Perhaps.” To his credit, he managed to not sound too smug, but they were rapidly getting off topic. Time to veer the subject back around, although bury the lede lest he come across overeager for the expedition. A spot more innocuous chatter should do the trick. “But regardless, those ruins don’t look too massive. Should be a quick in and out. And even if we don’t find any fun arcane toys to play with, there might be some dusty tomes in there to add to my collection. My personal traveling library is rather paltry at the moment.”

The indelicate snort that escaped her echoed nearly as loud as his earlier burst of laughter. “I thought you said last night you already had enough books to fill a shelf or two.”

“If I’m being completely honest,” he was certainly threading the needle on that particular phrasology, but no matter, “I may have embellished slightly the amount of reading material on my person. It was only a satchel’s worth when I was snatched up by that ship.”

“You only had a satchel filled to the brim with books on your person when you were unexpectedly kidnapped by mindflayers?” There was just enough dubious sarcasm laced in her tone, he wasn’t sure if he should take offense. Probably best to forge past it.

“Well, should our luck prevail, we’ll find a veritable enchanted horde, but barring that, I’ll settle for uncovering a few tomes. Never been much for religious reading, but you never know what knowledge you may find.” Ever a hand talker, Gale instinctually went to rub his hands together in eagerness, but the feeling of dried meat smushed between his palms gave him pause, making him glance down in confusion at the half-flattened jerky. With a small huff, he futilely tried to reshape the pulverized snack as he forged on. “And you never know, perhaps we’ll find a musical score or hymn to expand your own repertoire?”

Aravyn tilted her head in that unique way of hers, as if she were trying to examine him from a different angle. “I’m not sure why I would need that.”

“Apologies, I just assumed after your performance last even—”

Gale caught himself as she flushed again, this time a deeper shade of scarlet as she averted her gaze once more. “Ah. I… guess you heard that.”

Sensing that he might have stepped into a sore subject, a bit of diplomacy was probably in order. “I may have caught a few notes.”

Her gaze was still firmly fixed on the campfire, the glow from it and the dawn seeming to accentuate the color in her cheeks. “Yes, well… it was the first time I had played since I was a child. I’m afraid it showed.”

“I was under the impression that the lute was a difficult instrument to master.” The smile he offered was meant to be encouraging, but the sentiment was likely lost as her eyes were firmly fixed on anywhere but him. “That you had done so as a child speaks volumes.”

“I wouldn’t—I wasn’t a master by any means.” She gave a small, awkward half-shrug. “Certainly not talented enough to pursue it beyond a hobby. Scholarly pursuits are far more practical and likely to pay the bills.”

A nearly imperceptible undercurrent of bitterness ran underneath that confession. None of the details shared quite meshed with the reality before Gale, and once again those frayed threads just begged to be picked apart a little more. A rounded education made sense for a privileged upbringing, but in his experience, rote book learning was rarely a sure path to fortune. Probably not best to lead with that, though.

“I would be the last person to discourage the pursuit of knowledge,” Gale said, “although it seems a shame your creative passion had to fall to the wayside because of it.”

The embarrassed, almost shuttered expression gave way to surprise and her startled gaze finally met his, before flitting away once more. “That is kind of you to say but… I’m not sure I’d count yesterday’s attempt as anything particularly creative.”

“Come now, it wasn’t that bad. You certainly seemed to be enjoying it before, well…”

“Someone suggested a violent and gruesome end to the performance?”

“Pshh,” he waved a dismissive hand in the direction of Lae’zel’s tent, “a little culture won’t hurt this lot.”

“It’s more than a little generous to call that noise ‘culture’.” A dry humor laced those words. “We should probably let yesterday’s mistakes be erased by the dawn.”

The urge to prod, poke further and try to trace those threads to their source was strong. Just as a careless hand could smother the fledgling flame of a dying fire, so too could a clumsy nudge undo delicately laid social groundwork. Trying to wrest secrets not meant to be thrust into the light of day was a recipe for disaster. Of that, he knew far too well.

It would be far wiser to let matters lie. For now.

“I feel like you are being a little too harsh,” he said, “but I can also tell when a subject changed is required.”

“Thank you.” The words came out almost as a breath, but they still rang with gratitude. A small victory, but well earned.

“However, I do admit that you have piqued my curiosity.”

Her brow crinkled. “I thought you were changing the subject.”

“I am — to you, my friend.” He meant to emphasize his point by pointing directly at her, but once again forgot he was holding his inedible breakfast, and wound up using the desiccated meat product as an impromptu pointer.

Unintentional as it was, the absurdity of the visual was apparently what was needed to deflate the remaining tension, and she tried to cover her smile with her hand. “Me?”

“You have to admit, you present an intriguing conundrum. You claim education took precedence for you for financial reasons, and yet now walk the path of a paladin.” He tactfully left out the part about her musical proclivities. “That’s a curious progression.”

“I never claimed I was a good scholar.” The breath of laughter that escaped her had a hint of that same self-consciousness from before. “I was always a little better at wielding a sword.”

“That can be very lucrative work itself.”

“Depends on who you ask.” Something in her inflection gave him pause. Her expression darkened for a fraction of a second, and then melted back into a pleasantly neutral facade so quickly he wondered if he’d imagined it.

“And yet something brought you here,” he tried once more.

“Oh, you know that one already.” The glint in her eye and that impish curl to her smile let him know he’d walked right into something again. “Same as you: mindflayers.”

“Very funny.”

Her eyes crinkled as her smile blossomed further. “I like to think I have my moments.”

“You do realize this is not diminishing any of the intrigue.” As Gale shifted to steeple his fingers for emphasis, he once again had to catch himself mid-gesture, still holding that thrice-damned scrap of petrified mystery meat. He resisted the rising urge to hurl the horrid thing away in favor of making his point. A point he most definitely had.

“I think you’re building up more mystery to the situation than there really is. My life has been pretty mundane, especially when you look at the rest of our motley crew. I’m afraid I’m very boring in comparison.”

“I’m starting to suspect your self-assessments might be more than a bit biased.” He shook his head. “But! Our acquaintance has been brief. So, who am I to judge?”

A particularly bright beam of sunlight forced them both to squint, and the dawn’s growing light crept over the rest of camp. Around them, the first stirrings of life broke the relative quiet — a loud moan about someone needing to turn off the sun, shuffling footsteps, and a murmured curse or three.

Aravyn looked at the untouched jerky still pinched between Gale’s fingers. “Well, go on then. Might as well eat up before the others descend. Can’t imagine you want more of an audience for choking that down.”

“Ah, yes.” He grimaced at the fate he had managed to put off until now. “Sustenance.”

As she watched expectantly, that endearingly elfin grin threatening to spill over, Gale steeled himself. He endeavored to banish the lingering images of phantom hooves and porcine faces in flagrante delicto, and shoved the entire strip of jerky in his mouth. He chewed valiantly through what now tasted distinctly like old saddle leather, with about the same consistency. With visible effort, he managed to swallow it down and fixed her with the most aggrieved expression he could summon.

She returned it with a grin radiating playful delight. “As they say, ‘waste not, want not’.”

“The eponymous ‘they’ may want to rethink that particular axiom,” he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. It did nothing for the lingering aftertaste. He wasn’t sure even the highest proof alcohol would get rid of that.

“Must you both make such an insufferable racket so early in the morning?” Lae’zel grumbled as she stalked over with a scowl. “You sound like a pair of foo dogs with a bad case of interplanar indigestion.”

Gale was extremely proud of himself for managing to keep a straight face. “Apologies. You must forgive our zeal, as we were just discussing the merits of the local cuisine.”

“That is far more enthusiasm than I can bear at this hour.” She rubbed at her eyes irritably. “Especially over something as pointless as a culinary debate.”

There were a few more choice gith words uttered Lae’zel’s breath before Aravyn oh-so-helpfully produced another piece of jerky for her complaining companion. The friendly effort at first seemed to yield only a withering look, before the offering was accepted with far more grace than Gale had been able to muster.

The githyanki seemed much less bothered by the meager fare, and chewed it in contemplative silence as the other two members of their merry band roused and joined them at the campfire. Gale tracked Aravyn as she cheerfully inflicted more of the tasteless rations on a bleary and unsuspecting Astarion and Shadowheart. Their grumbling complaints echoed his own, but somehow that relentless cheer managed to win over in the end. Astarion’s exaggerated eye rolls, Shadowheart trying to hide spitting out the jerky, only for Lae’zel to loudly call her out.

It was an unremarkable, entirely mundane moment, yet something still stirred within him. A resonance that touched beyond even the ever present void behind his ribs. Like he was witnessing another kind of dawn, and they were all on the cusp of cresting a brand new, unseen horizon.

#bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fic #gale x tav #(pre-relationship)#gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 tav #oc: aravyn #greyfic

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astreetcarnamedwynn · 1 year ago

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fic: a difference in being

Astarion ponders the differences between wizards and sorcerers. Baldur's Gate 3, Astarion/Tav & Gale/Tav. Tav is a male Drow & a wild magic sorcerer.

Prior to his current circumstances, Astarion never gave much thought to the differences between wizards and sorcerers. They both used magic and, because of it, Cazador had forbidden Astarion from targeting either of them. They were too risky, untold power at the ready with just a flick of their wrist, power that they could use to fight back, so they were best left avoided.

Now, though, Astarion ponders the differences as he watches Tav and Gale in camp.

They’ve bunked down for the night at the edge of the Blighted Village. Astarion had anticipated a fight to get through, yet the goblins guarding the entrance had immediately granted access to Tav simply because he was a Drow. Astarion would have preened under such visible deference, but Tav had just stared for a moment at the goblin addressing him before he strode past. Another set of goblins had been similarly deferential, ceding the remains of what seemed to be a house at the southern edge of the village, and there the group had set up for the night.

It hadn’t taken long for Gale to ensare Tav in a discussion about magic, and now the two are by the fire, demonstrating to the other their spellcasting techniques. Even to a casual observer the differences between them would be obvious, yet Astarion has spent a significant portion of the past two centuries studying people, searching for the perfect victims, for the perfect way to lure them into Cazador’s trap.

To him, the differences between Tav and Gale are monumental.

Gale stands mostly upright, his feet planted shoulder width apart. His motions are powerful and precise and clearly practiced for there’s little variation as he repeats certain incantations at Tav’s request.

Tav is different.

If Gale is solid rock, Tav is shifting sand. His feet are apart as well, but his knees are bent and he moves with the motions, as though he were sculpting the magic out of the air.

It’s fluid and flexible, a rushing river to Gale’s still pond.

The differences grow even clearer when they retrieve their respective weapons. Both of them use a quarterstaff, but Gale grips his securely in both hands and brandishes the staff in front of him, making quick, powerful blows that would efficiently stun or trip an enemy.

Tav’s staff swirls around him in swift, graceful arcs. It reminds Astarion of the coin tricks he’s learned over the years, how he can make a copper dance across his knuckles as though it were alive.

Astarion isn’t sure if Tav is the hand or the coin, if he wields the magic or is an expression of it.

At the thought, Tav glances his way.

There’s no time for Astarion to avert his gaze or even to school his features into something arch or wry. Tav has caught him staring, so Astarion holds the stare. And another difference becomes clear. Tav doesn’t question him, doesn’t demand an explanation for the staring or offer one about the lesson. Gale would. Gale would elucidate and pontificate and prattle on and on until Astarion shoved his daggers into his ears to get a moment of peace and quiet.

Tav simply stares.

He stares and then, after a couple of seconds, one corner of his mouth curls into a smile.

Before Astarion can parse the flavor of it, whether it’s pleased or mocking or sly, Tav turns away, back to Gale and their conversation.

Astarion’s hands tighten around his book. For a moment, he contemplates chucking it at the back of Tav’s head. What sort of reaction would he provoke if he did? A lecture, no doubt, from Gale. Disdain from Shadowheart. A cool inquiring gaze from Lae’zel, at least until she realized that a fight was unlikely to ensue and lost interest.

But Tav? Astarion isn’t sure.

So far, he’s persuaded when Astarion thought he would fight. Then he’s deceived when Astarion thought he would persuade. He stood down Kagha when she threatened to kill that tiefling brat for stealing, yet he had Astarion slink around the Emerald Grove to find something, anything, that could be used to unseat her, sending them on this current mission to the southern swamps to find her conspirator.

Flexible, fluid tactics, and all the more dangerous for it.

Hunger flares within Astarion. His gaze drops to the back of Tav’s neck, placed on display for all to see with that ridiculous hairstyle. Only a Drow raised in the Underdark would think that an undercut is the height of style. Though if Gale’s hair were any indication, perhaps the lack of style has less to do with Tav’s race and more to do with his magic. The wizard could manipulate the Weave at his will, but he lacked the ability to effectively use a comb. Tav does at least, his long white hair gathered into a neat, if utilitarian, bun at the back of his head.

Perhaps Astarion could aim for the bun and knock it loose. The strands would tumble free and whip about in the wind.

Perhaps Astarion could grab a fistful of them and yank, pulling Tav’s head back and exposing the graceful line of his neck and-

Astarion shuts his book with a snap. At the sound, Tav looks back at him. Gale does, too, a few seconds later, his gaze following Tav’s. The frown that forms on his face as he spots Astarion is almost enough to satisfy Astarion’s hunger. Twice now Astarion has drawn Tav’s attention away from him, and all without saying a word.

Slowly, gracefully, Astarion rises to his feet. Tav watches him as he does, yet from this distance Astarion can’t discern how, whether it’s with lust or apprehension or simple curiosity.

“Do carry on, darling. I was quite enjoying the show.”

At that, the small smile returns to Tav’s face.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Astarion flashes him a grin before he turns and saunters away. He had seen boar tracks on the way into the village. That would do for now.

Later, he would have bigger prey to hunt.

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #astarion ancunin #astarion #astarion x tav #bg3 fic #fic by wynn

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aramblingjay · 1 year ago

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The weave of your hands (part 3/6)

Tags: Aragorn/Legolas, friends to lovers, canon era, braiding Words: 7.2K (so far)

Written for @aralas-week Day 3: Between Anduin and Rohan

“I see Hope, for he stands before me. And as long as he stands, there is no room in my heart for despair.” Aragorn had thought the time of words past, thought himself beyond the reach of them, but he was not beyond this. “Come, Estel. Come, Aragorn. Braided by your hand, I shall be with you until the end, whether it may come on this day or any day hence.” Or: 5 times aragorn does legolas’s braids + 1 time it’s the other way around

previous parts

III. Rohan

There was no time.

In the beginning of their journey, it had seemed as though every day stretched for as long as an age, the slow trudge through the mountains, the endless darkness of Moria. Even their brief rest in Lórien had stretched long and languid in the ethereal aura of the forest. At each turn, there had been moments of quiet and rest, time allowed to camp and replenish reserves.

But every moment since leaving the forest seemed to pass like the hoofbeats of a galloping horse, relentless and steady and uncomfortably swift, no time to parse one apart from the other.

Boromir fell.

The hobbits, whose welfare they had been charged with protecting above all else, were lost.

They ran across the plains of Rohan, Legolas and himself and Gimli, on and on and on in pursuit of their friends, no thought of rest in their minds, stopping only when they were stopped by Éomer.

Even then—there was despair, then joy, then despair again, and then the most profound of joys deep in the heart of Fangorn at the return of Gandalf—but still no time, to pause or reflect or linger for longer than the space of a single breath in the embrace of any moment before they were urged once again onwards.

This time to Rohan, to set right an ailing King. And then, still before he truly had the chance to catch his breath, they rode toward Helm’s Deep and straight into a warg attack.

Aragorn might have collapsed at the first sight of the beasts if he had not been bolstered by his companions—Gimli, who he had come to understand and love simply by the resolve with which the Dwarf had run across the plains for Merry and Pippin, despite being entirely unsuited to the endeavor. Gandalf, who had disappeared with words of hope, and whose continued presence on Arda had itself bolstered his waning strength. And Legolas, always Legolas, the first to follow his pledge at the Council, the first to defer to his lead at the banks of the Anduin, the first to notice when he was flagging and offer an encouraging nod.

He watched Legolas perhaps as closely as Legolas appeared to watch him—it was easy enough to track that golden hair no matter how far in front of the group Legolas went to scout, Ranger’s eyes or no. As such, he did not miss when Legolas lingered on the approaching hillcrest, still and wary, just before the attack. If something was amiss, none would likely notice it before Legolas, sharp-eyed and elven-eared and intensely aware of the nature around them.

Once the attack began, it was the sight of Legolas up ahead, standing down the oncoming wargs as though he would fight them all on his own if need be, that spurred Aragorn onto his horse and lent him the energy to join the fray in earnest. There had been no time to rest thus far, but there was certainly no time for it now.

They were all separated in the battle, but his awareness never strayed far from his friends—the tracker in him was always attuned to where Legolas was, but he was newly aware of Gimli as well, having spent days running just a few paces in front of him. It felt good coming to Gimli’s aid in the skirmish, etching deeper the bond that had grown between them.

And then, all too soon, he was caught on a warg and falling.

Legolas will be the first to notice my absence, he thought wildly as the ground approached rapidly closer, and then he knew no more until his dear horse and even dearer sister conspired to breathe awareness back into his limbs.

Once atop his horse, he rode to Helm’s Deep like a man possessed, for still there was no time to take a breath—the Orcs were coming in numbers greater and more terrible than anything they had dared to imagine, and Théoden King had to be warned. The journey was hard on his aching limbs, but he did not let up until the stronghold soared into view. No time, no time.

When Gimli welcomed him back with a vigor that suggested he had truly thought Aragorn dead, he had only a moment to wonder—did Legolas—had Legolas thought—before he walked straight into the friend in question.

They had but fleeting minutes to reunite, though he saw the darkness in Legolas’s eyes that suggested he had, indeed, thought Aragorn dead. And if his fingers lingered over Legolas’s as they exchanged the Evenstar, if he basked in the feel of those archer’s callouses on his skin for every fraction of a second he was allowed, he was certain not even Éowyn’s watchful eyes had noticed. The rest of his fleeting seconds he would relinquish, and had; this one he kept for himself.

Then it was a blur of motion once again; there were defenses to prep, men to outfit, swords to be distributed, plans to be drawn, and above all else hope to be ignited—Legolas himself commented on how drained he seemed, and Legolas was right, of course he was, but if Aragorn admitted his exhaustion he thought he might keel over and simply collapse.

So he continued on. He fought with Legolas, who seemed already to court with despair, for the first time in years. He gave what words of inspiration he could to Haleth, son of Háma, though Aragorn could not say what hope he held himself—not for Haleth’s survival, nor for his own. In barely any time, tens of thousands of Orcs would be at their gates. No amount of preparation would be enough, but he did all he could.

Hours and hours after he’d been dragged from the clutches of certain death, he finally found himself in the relative privacy of the armory, knowing there was nothing left to be done but wait for the battle to begin. For what seemed to be the first time since the fellowship had set out from Lórien, there was time enough to take a breath.

He took several, lingering over the familiar steps of pulling on his mail, lacing his jerkin, tightening the straps of his vambraces—Boromir’s braces—until he reached for his sword, and a stirring in the air drew his attention. Only one person could come this close to him without drawing notice.

Aragorn turned, already expecting the fair face that greeted him.

Legolas’s apology was unnecessary, but appreciated all the same. They clasped shoulders, the oldest gesture of familiarity they shared, and it was then that Aragorn noticed only one of Legolas’s side braids was neatly in place. While Legolas did not speak the words, the very crook of his head to expose his unbraided temple was a clear offering.

He wanted to. That much should have been clear from how he had asked for this very favor in Lórien, not only asked but begged that Legolas teach him. Still, the air felt strange between them. They had not fought in years, and he regretted that they’d done so for the first time in Elvish—necessary, due to the audience they’d had, but it had always been a language of joy between them, not a tool to cause hurt. If it was pity or remorse behind Legolas’s offering—

“If this is because you feel a need to further apologize—”

“Aragorn.” Legolas was quiet, solemn.

They did not need to say the words for this either, to know it was more than likely neither of them would live to see the sun rise. That he might live, but lose Legolas to the Orcs, was a possibility he feared down to the marrow of his bones but refused to contemplate.

“Very well.”

Legolas did not move, merely watched him steadily with those piercing eyes, and Aragorn once again had the strange sensation of being laid bare.

“I am so tired, Lassë,” he confessed in Elvish, unable to keep back any longer the thought that had been his constant companion for days. And certainly not when faced with that expression. The weariness was in his very bones, an ache too deep to dig out, and while he would fight with every last ounce of strength he had to protect the people of Rohan, he was no longer sure how much strength truly remained. “So much loss already, and even more to come. I counsel hope, but I know not if I have any left.”

If Legolas thought it hypocritical for Aragorn to confess such a thing just hours after they had argued over the very issue of despairing, he said nothing of it. Indeed he said nothing at all.

Instead, Legolas sank in one fluid motion to his knees.

Time stopped.

Aragorn’s breath caught in his throat, spellbound. He didn’t—he wasn’t—what in the name of—

Legolas began to speak. “I see Hope, for he stands before me. And as long as he stands, there is no room in my heart for despair.” Aragorn had thought the time of words past, thought himself beyond the reach of them, but he was not beyond this. “Come, Estel. Come, Aragorn. Braided by your hand, I shall be with you until the end, whether it may come on this day or any day hence.”

Aragorn could not explain the feeling in his body. There was no word to describe it in any tongue he could speak. Joy was too simple, grief too heavy, supplication too divine to explain something that felt so very grounded, a vow bound up in the everlasting truth of dirt and root and tree. He was still so very tired, and hope seemed so far away, but he felt a profound sense of sureness, as though he had no greater purpose than to fight this night beside his friends. And stand with his dearest friend of all, who had known him by every name, who had seen unfailingly past each one to the core of him, who had pledged something so valuable as the immortal life of an Elf to service at his side.

Unable to speak, Aragorn could only act.

He walked as if in a trance to stand behind Legolas and brought his hands to the unbraided side of his head. With Legolas kneeling, the angle was surprisingly comfortable to fashion the thin braid Legolas himself had taught him in Lórien, one he had practiced so many times that night he could likely weave it in his sleep.

Indeed, it felt as though he was, for still his mind traced over the words—braided by your hand, I shall be with you until the end—unable to let them go, unable to accept the magnitude of them, unable to fully face their implications.

If they both survived—if, if—there was so much to be said between them, if that moment came.

In this moment, he simply braided. The repetitive motion calmed some of the maelstrom in his mind.

When he was nearly finished, Legolas suddenly tensed. He thought at first that he had forgotten himself and pulled too hard or otherwise ruined the braid, but a quick glance over his handiwork suggested otherwise.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Gimli approaches,” Legolas said, neutral. He did not make to rise from his knees, and Aragorn understood the decision to be in his own hands.

To continue, or to stop? This moment felt private in a way that even their previous ones had not, but the Dwarf had become a fierce friend and companion to them both. Besides, if even he did not fully understand the significance of what they were doing, only knew that it was significant in some way, more than likely Gimli would not either.

And he did not wish to hide, as though they were doing something wrong.

Aragorn continued braiding. Legolas did not move.

A few moments later, Gimli appeared in the entranceway, so comically drowning in his mail that Aragorn felt his spirits briefly lift and a genuine smile curl at his lips for the first time in far too long.

Gimli said nothing as Aragorn secured the braid the way Legolas had shown him and stepped back. Legolas rose to his feet. Still the Dwarf did not speak.

Aragorn glanced between them and realized he and Legolas appeared to be locked in a battle of wills, holding a conversation with their eyes alone that Aragorn could not parse. It seemed Legolas eventually won, for Gimli looked away first and lightened the mood with a quip about his ill-fitting mail.

That sureness settled ever firmer in Aragorn’s chest. Whatever occurred this night, he felt certain this was exactly where destiny had designed for him to be.

From nowhere, a horn blew in the distance. Legolas’s eyes met his, and understanding came to them both at the same time.

Hope kindled.

#lotr #aralas #aragorn x legolas #aralasweek2024 #*writing #*twoyh #this will probably be the last i write for aralas week #next few days are pretty busy for me and what i have in mind for the next chapters doesn't quite fit the prompts #it's been a lot of fun writing and seeing what everyone made!

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starswornoaths · 2 years ago

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Prompt 6: Ring

Lucia comes to Aymeric hoping that he will forsake duty just this once.

She knows he will not. She asks anyway.

(hi I'm late and haven't written anything personal in so long, help)

word count: 2,218

Even knowing the Lord of the house would be away for at least another bell, Lucia had opted to spend it pacing the foyer of Manor de Borel all the same. Possessed of both a spare key and a first name basis with the staff had made the choice easy, when weighed against the prospect of calling him back to the office after hours.

Were she choosing to do this in armor and on record, she might have opted to wait until the morrow to discuss her findings. Were she more loyal to Ishgard than to its leader, she would not have gone through the trouble of being seen buying a bottle of wine from the Crozier as a show of turning up at a friend’s house after work for a genuinely not-uncommon nightcap. Were she a better person, she would not have come at all.

But she was none of those things. So sat she on a sofa in the foyer self soothing with a cat in her lap and an unopened bottle of wine on the table, just beyond reach. By her design, a neat pile of papers writ in as many different hands had been stacked just beyond the bottle, just out of reach and folded for discretion.

Duchess had made herself known the moment she awoke from her nap, yowling and weaving between Lucia’s legs until she made her lap available to be kneaded. Petting her feline friend was a better use of her hands than crumpling an otherwise pristine report, anyroad.

Aymeric’s arrival was a bell and a half after Lucia, as it turned out. There was no worry of her presence being startling, as even from her spot on the couch she could hear a brief conversation in the entryway somewhere between the clacking of boots and the muffled shifting of coats. An announcement on her behalf, as far as she could parse.

When he rounded the corner into the foyer half dressed for more arid climes than Ishgard and beginning to shiver faintly, the buzzing in her mind quieted with another mystery to fixate on. Old habits kicked in, and she read him from head to toe.

Though his head was free of a hat, the telltale blemish of fading marks across his forehead outlined the headwrap he had likely worn all the way to the door. She recognized his blouse as one more familiar to Thanalan, long sleeved and light and wrapped lightly in a vest gifted by Raubahn for wear during his visits. His pants and boots were of standard Ishgardian build, however; likely, he only dressed warmly as far as his coat fell to make his business in Thanalan more comfortable.

His expression was somewhere between a grimace at being unkempt in front of company and a smile at her presence as he gave the end of one sleeve a tug. “Lucia! I beg your pardon, you find me only just returned from Ul’Dah—”

“Get settled in.” she gestured at Duchess kneading biscuits in her lap. “I am off duty—and clearly not going anywhere.”

Though the journey was short and lightning quick, Lucia mapped the path Aymeric’s eyes darted, from where she had gestured to the report at the table to the unopened wine beside it before looking back to her. On at least some level, he understood the Game was afoot.

Aymeric’s virtue was also his vice: he will do the right thing—the just thing—every time, even to his own detriment. But Lucia knew that he also trusted her judgment. When she bade discretion on a matter, he deferred to her expertise.

That, and he hated being unclean to the point of distraction. The longer he hovered at the door with pleasantries, the more it had become apparent in the way he idly picked at his hands.

“Of course. My thanks—and a thousand pardons,” he said, ducking his head as he crossed the foyer and took the stairs two at a time.

Lucia had given herself a full hour and a half to think of what to say before he got here. Aymeric gave her another quarter bell by performing the same hasty but deep cleanliness that the military demanded, with an extra five minutes for him to dry and dress. Two hours, all told.

It was still not enough time.

By the time Aymeric returned to the foyer, all casual attire and damp curls, Lucia still lacked the words to present her findings. All that time, and she had nothing but an apology mangled in her throat.

“What were you doing in Ul’Dah?” she asked instead of explaining anything.

Any hope of him already knowing had been dashed the moment he came home, but it was rendered clear as day now: he was still happy.

“Ah,” Aymeric sighed around a smile. “Business- both official and personal. I had thought to reopen trade discussions with the Sultanate. Discussions all around have been delicate, but enthusiastic. Progressing.”

It was so like him not to mention what he had done for himself unprompted, assuming a lack of interest. A habit he had not yet fully broken, but one he had indulged in far less of late.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lucia croaked, “And the personal…?”

“Oh!” he startled, but lit up at the chance to explain, “Do you recall that trip I took to the Forelands? Some three moons back?”

Lucia remembered. After a jaunt in the Forelands with Uthengentle, he met her at the airship landing wearing durable working clothes and positively smudged with dirt from head to toe. At the time, she had thought to congratulate him on actually using some of his vacation time of his own volition and only half in jest, but ultimately walked away with more questions as to what it had been for.

She knew what had become inevitable when he had only offered an explanation of, “I was in search of a star sapphire. I worried I had taken too large a piece but Uthengentle assures me he will use the excess in other pieces.”

At the time, Lucia had not asked him what it had been for. A part of her had already known—or perhaps, had hoped. It had been a happier prospect, at the time.

“Uthengentle finished my commission. ‘Tis a beautiful thing, really—should all go well, I expect you will have ample opportunity to see it often.”

Seeming unaware of her stomach falling out from under her, he gestured to the stack of papers she had brought with her. “But it seems I have more business to yet conduct before the night is over. What have you brought to me, my friend, that you would do so out of armor and for no pay? For all you complain about my lack of freetime, yours is precious little better.”

Alas, their friendship was an ongoing tug-of-war between both their propensity for overworking. If Aymeric was not discreetly scheduling days off for her, Lucia was liable to rearrange what duties she could to give him at least a few hours free a week, if not a full day.

Lately, it had been getting better—for both of them, due in no small part to the efforts of one Warrior of Light. An ally playing both sides of the war, as lover to one and sister to another but loved fiercely all the same.

An ally that might well have betrayed them both in one fell swoop. If it might not risk weeping, Lucia would laugh at how thoroughly they might have been played.

“Physikal reports.” she said, at last freeing herself from Duchess’ leaden weight and handing Aymeric the papers. “From the incident in the Tribunal.”

An ongoing mystery that had taken a back burner by necessity during the Dragonsong War. Small mercies and damnations, then, that there was no finger drumming in the wake of peace. Not for the righteous, at least.

A principle that Lucia had until recently believed shared by the Warrior of Light.

But righteousness does not demand silence from its victims. Righteousness was not complicity.

And yet—and yet—there were gaping holes of information. Stories that did not align. Lucia’s mind bounces wildly between conspiracy and betrayal, unsure of which would wear on her more but knowing which one would unmake them both entirely.

Lucia studied Aymeric’s face as she shooed Duchess off her lap and rose from her seat to join him by the hearth. There had been a lingering smile in his eyes as he had taken the report. A lightness he was halfway through storing away for the sake of work as he delicately unfolded the pages.

He was the Lord Commander again before he had finished the first paragraph. If she wanted to play a morbid guessing game, she imagined it was somewhere around the phrase, “healing magicks interfaced poorly with deeper wounds—suspected use of Dark Arts at play.”

She would also guess at what point he caught the reason for this clandestine turn-in: Serella Arcbane found consorting with a heretic’s corpse on Tribunal grounds four hours prior to incident that occurred inside. Association suspected, extent unclear.

“Aymeric—” Lucia croaked, dropping all pretense of titles and duties.

In that moment, such things were too heavy for her to carry. The flames in the hearth were too tempting in that moment; if she had been holding the reports, she might have thrown the pages in the fire just to be free of the tension. Old habits crept in from the most bent and beaten parts of her. Not even in Borel Manor was she safe from the shadows of the Empire, not when they so darkened her heart.

“You know what it means that I am here off duty. No other has seen this report,” she continued, and though her words were evenly measured out, tested carefully on her tongue, it still felt as though she were rambling. “None that yet live, at least.”

His expression was inscrutable. Like he was trying desperately to mask how his heart threatened to break. Like he was failing, for all his spectacular effort.

Far from emboldened but already there, Lucia leaned closer and whispered, “One word…one word, and this never leaves this room.”

Because she would take the secret to her grave, if Aymeric asked it of her. Over country, over duty and faith and god she would, if he but bade it of her.

But she knew that he would not. He would not even consider it. In a way, it was why she had asked it of him in the first place: her loyalty to him was always rewarded. His honesty, the compass that pointed them north.

And how bittersweet her reward was this time, when he did not so much as glance at the fireplace, eyes never leaving hers.

“And what would we be burying? A half-truth that would never come to light. We would bury victims, and any chance they ever had of justice with them. We would be no better than those who came before us.” Aymeric said, passionate and predictable.“If the crime is one of unconscionable evil, we must needs condemn it—even should the transgressor be our closest kin. I said as much to her, once. I meant it then as much as I mean it now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she felt she must.

It wasn’t her apology to make, not really. Not when the perpetrator might well be someone they so dearly loved. Not when, just this once, her hands were clean. Knowing that did not make her feel less dirty for the work.

No rest for the righteous and all that.

“You have done naught that needs forgiving.” he replied, his tone crisp and curt in that way it was at the war table.

Tapping the papers lightly against the palm of one hand to hastily straighten them, Aymeric folded the reports along the crease she had already made for them with quick, decisive movements, and held the stack out for her to take after only a moment’s hesitation.

In spite of herself, Lucia flinched.

“You will submit this as a cause for concern on the morrow, Ser Lucia.” he ordered. “You will formally request leave to pursue this case, and I will formally assign you to investigate it—which you will. Thoroughly. What evidence you find, you will submit in its entirety. Regardless of what your findings are.”

“Yes, Lord Commander.” she said in a voice of warped steel.

Lucia was reminded that he had gotten a commissioned piece when he began to fiddle with a small velvet box in his hand. Were it not for the way his expression crumpled, she might not have left him to his grief.

Even knowing the answer, her voice bent toward something softer as she asked him, “What did you commission?”

After a moment to swallow heavily, he gently set the box down on the table and said, “Depending on what this investigation yields…nothing.”

When he removed his hand, he hooked his thumb into the meet of the box’s hinge and lifted the lid to show Lucia the contents inside.

Nestled between layers of velvet coated cushions, adorned with a large but immaculately cut star sapphire wrapped in gold like a stained glass window, was a ring.

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite2023 #ffxivwrite #aymeric de borel #wolmeric #wol x aymeric #lucia goe junius #serella arcbane #I am as ever your shield #I had an outline of this I'd been meaning to fill out and this seemed like the right prompt for it #I'm not really 'participating' in ffxivwrite so much as chasing vibes #literally anything to make the writing happen again

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blackjackkent · 1 year ago

Text

All right, more Rakha adventures today. She's had a really wild couple days, what with Alfira dying, and then Arabella not dying, and then Wyll turning into a devil, but on the bright side hopefully she's about to have a nice, relaxing long rest--

Narrator: Tonight, you can't chase the thoughts of that poor girl you killed from your head.

It always seems to be much worse when she sleeps. When she is up and moving, it is a little easier to make some distinction between her own active choices and the mindless blood-hunger of the beast. At night, when she closes her eyes, everything surges to the forefront. There's no relaxation, no pleasant oblivion, no sense of rejuvenation for the coming day.

There is only blood.

Narrator: You wonder what she looked like as she died. Squirming. Skewered, in abject agony.

She shivers. The beast's hunger for the image is unmistakable. She feels the lingering ache in her arm from the stab and stab and stab into Alfira's ripped and ruined torso.

Can't sleep. Not like this.

Go for a walk, to try and stop yourself from retching.

She sits up slowly, feeling a strange distance from her own body. It's disquieting, unsettling. With a sudden burst of energy she surges to her feet, leaves the bedroll, stalks off towards the edge of camp. She feels on the edge of her own control, and should she slip... she does not want her companions within reach...

-----

Narrator: Your body barely complies. You feel such rushes from your thoughts of the dead woman. Why did she die? The mystery gnaws at your pounding heart.

She paces the far edge of the cave where they have made camp. Her legs are trembling, the steady rhythm of her footsteps hiccuping occasionally as she wrestles with the dark thoughts. She has no answers, but the images swirl in her mind, flashes of Alfira's face, contorted with agony, screaming up at her in the darkness.

She is so deeply within herself that she almost doesn't register the soft sound of a footstep behind her.

"Milady? Jubilant day! I have found your vile self at last!"

The voice - a high, keening, slightly obsequious whine - almost sends Rakha out of her skin. The taut-pulled strain between her and the darkness in her head snaps, and she turns with a sudden harsh roar and lashes out with a blind, frenzied strike behind her.

KILL. BLOOD. RIP HIS FACE OFF. SHOW ME HIS GUTS.

She misses, of course - partly because the source of the voice is almost three feet shorter than she is, and also because the unexpected visitor dodges backwards with a deft agility that suggests he might have expected the blow.

She sucks in a hoarse breath and steps backwards, pulling herself to a sudden trembling stillness. Her fists clench at her sides so strongly that she feels her nails drawing blood in her palms.

The visitor is like nothing she has yet seen since she woke up. About the size of the halfling they met selling goods in the grove, but with a skeletal, angular face with sharp nose, ears, and chin, all in strange, elongated proportions. His fingers are long, with two-inch claws. He wears a ragged jacket that looks as if it was once fine, and a similarly battered top hat.

"Sceleritas Fel," he says with a half-bow, clutching his hands in front of his chest. "Your loyal and ever-adoring butler. I followed you, my dear rotted Master. We have been parted so tragically long!"

Rakha stares at him, her chest heaving, her eyes wide. What?

In the best of circumstances, this incredibly strange speech would take time to parse. As it is, the words filter in only slowly past the angry roar percolating in her head, the instinct that wants to pull the creature's head from its shoulders for interrupting her.

Milady. An expression of deference. He is a butler, which means almost nothing to Rakha except that it seems to go along with that subservient attitude. And he has followed her. They have been parted.

He knows her. The realization goes through her like a lightning bolt. The beast urge in her head recedes just slightly at this revelation, at the possibility of answers.

She hisses out her breath between her teeth, loosens her jaw enough to speak.

"My head is sick. Very sick. Do you know about it?" she asks hoarsely.

The little creature hunches his shoulders with an ingratiating eagerness. "Ooooft," he says, with an air of deep sympathy. "I had heard of Milady's indisposition. But I had hoped the rumors were untrue."

Then he perks up visibly, his smile spreading wide across his skeletal face. "No matter! We will get you back to committing five villainous acts before breakfast in no time!"

He hops up to sit on a nearby rock, his legs dangling off it as he watches her with frank admiration. "I found you, following the stench of that bard." He draws a long, appreciative breath through his nose, makes a satisfied noise. "Ah... she reeked across the coast like a piece of dog-muck on the road."

The bard. So he knows not only her but what she has done since the nautiloid crash. How long has he been following her? "Did you cause me to kill her?" she rasps. Her fists, which were starting to loosen, clench again sharply. Did you put this beast in my head?

Sceleritas seems to interpret this question entirely differently than she means it, as his smile, if anything, seems to widen and become even more obsequious. "Such fine work could never be done by a wretch like me..." he croons.

The Weave shifts and twists around him with a sudden prismatic shimmer, tinged sharply with red. She watches, with so much astonishment that for a moment the fury recedes entirely, as he sticks a hand out in her direction.

There's a flare of harsh red light. An object slowly shimmers into being in his palm - a thick, red cloak of what appears to be some kind of very fine fabric. "Anyway," he says cheerfully, "I come once again bearing a part of your dreadful inheritance. You earned this iniquitous prize through your great show of exceptional violence the other night."

It's almost like talking to Gale; the words flow over her, bewildering, slightly too rapid to follow. But she can catch the gist. This creature knows what she did, and he is pleased. He offers this cloak as a reward.

She reaches out slowly, fists her fingers into the fabric and draws it from his hand. It falls in a heavy cascade to hang between them.

Scleritas looks pleased. "I'm sure Master will be better soon," he purrs ingratiatingly. "A fellow of your fine breeding is never down for long. I cannot wait until your next act of shameless barbarity."

Her knuckles turn pale as she squeezes the cloak's edge between her fingers. Enough of this dancing about. This creature has the answers she needs; she cannot allow him to deflect her from them. "You're going to tell me *everything* about my past life," she snarls.

If he hears the threat in her voice, he is entirely unbothered by it. His eyes narrow in what seems to be gleeful amusement. "Though I would love to regale you with past triumphs," he says with an apologetic shrug, "I cannot. I am forbidden to interfere. Our *betters*--" He leans on the word with evident significance that is completely lost on Rakha. "--will not allow it."

He leans forward conspiratorially. "Be true to yourself, my Lady," he instructs.

He takes a step backwards. She can see the flare of the Weave around him again, the burst of magic.

He's leaving. NO. She lashes out a hand, going for his collar, intending to grab him, hurl him against the wall, demand answers - everything he is refusing to tell her, about her past and her memories and the beast in her head - and tear a piece from him for every answer he denies.

But he slips through her fingers, vanishes in a surge of red light, and her fist closes on empty air.

"RrrrrrrraaaaaRRRRRRGHHHHHH!" She screams with harsh rage and blinding frustration and falls to her knees. So close... so near to answers, and instead just more, and more, and more questions...

Who was he? Who sent him? What does he know that he did not tell her?

One things is unsettlingly clear. She does have a history, and that blood-rage is a key part of it. Someone is watching her. Someone knows what she did and sees it with pleasure.

And she has absolutely no idea who, or why, or what to do about it.

#bjk plays bg3 durge #rakha the dark urge #well that was unexpected #O.O;#durge is already wild lol

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