#Proof of Capability | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

brocflowers · 4 months ago

Text

Metal & Ink

Alistair drops his hand in his lap, considers. Brosca is not the first person he’s ever met with tattoos, but she’s the only one he could safely consider himself a friend to, that he was familiar enough with that he could ask questions, and he’s always wondered… Well, this would be the time to ask, now wouldn’t it?

Tags: Aliwarden. Pre-relationship. Ambiguous Brosca/Morrigan. Child abuse/injury discussion. Brosca uses she & he.

Word count: 4,208

[AO3]

“So,” he says, leaning back on his elbows, “how does it work?”

“How does what work?”

That’s what one of the things Alistair likes about him, he’s easy to start a conversation with. If he just starts talking during a quiet moment, Brosca will just talk back, or listen, or tell him very directly that now isn’t a good time. His lack of subtlety also leaves little room for doubt, and Alistair appreciates that. Guessing can get tiresome, and on top of that, he often guesses wrong.

“In your eyebrow, the piercings. Do they just go straight in?”

Brosca looks puzzled, the eyebrows in question pulled in towards each other.

“Straight in. Like towards my skull?”

“Yeah.” A beat. “Sorry, I’m sure it’s a stupid question.”

“It’s not stupid,” she says, quickly, frowning at him a little, “I just wanted to make sure I understood. No, that’s not how it works. They-” she pauses, thoughtful, “-well, it’s not two piercings, first of all. It’s just the one.”

“Just one?”

She nods, gestures vertically at her eyebrow with her pinky,

“It’s a bar. It goes in one side and out the other.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He does believe her, no reason not to. But he knew saying it with that inflection would make her laugh.

It does. A short, small noise, under her breath. He would never admit it, but he feels so proud of himself when he hears it, so thrilled.

“Alistair,” she says, flatly, with an air of false seriousness, “I would never lie to you.”

“Especially not about something so serious.”

“Exactly.”

(Maker, he’s funny. It drives him mad that he tries to insist that he’s not funny. He wonders who told him that, because he really can’t imagine having spent any length of time with Brosca and not coming away with the thought that he is hilarious.)

Brosca pauses for a moment, cocks his head in consideration, then turns to face Alistair straight-on, shuffling closer and then folding his legs beneath him. He leans in, eyes averted slightly so they don’t meet Alistair’s directly, balances his elbow on his knee and his chin in that same palm.

Alistair lifts an eyebrow at her.

“So you can get a better look,” she explains, tilting her head so the right side of her face is closer to him than the left.

He hesitates for a moment before pushing himself upright, leaning in a bit to get a better look. It still really looks to him like two studs, one above her eyebrow and one beneath. He reaches up without thinking and then stops, hand hovering in the air.

“Can I-”

“You can touch,” she says, “it feels pretty cool, actually, the metal under the skin and all.”

He nods, folds his legs up too, shins crossed, so he can get closer.

There’s barely any space between them, the distance between their bent knees couldn’t be wider than the length of his fingers. Sitting this close to her makes all his nerves light up, and touching her feels almost like bravery, like he’s doing something risky and daring.

He presses his one hand into the grass beneath them to steady himself as he leans in, traces her eyebrow with the pointer finger of the other, inside to outside, feels the bump of the piercing as his finger passes over it. He pulls away a little, pokes at the exposed metal, and she leans back.

“Gentle.”

He mumbles a quiet apology, then nudges the metal again, much more carefully this time, watches the way it shifts.

That makes more sense. He can understand the shape of it now, a silver bar, capped by a ball at each end, which is why it looked to him, from a distance, like two piercings pressed directly into the flesh.

“Huh,” he says, framing the piercing with his pointer and middle finger so he can feel and see the way it fits under her skin, “you’re right, that is cool.”

“Told you.”

“And they put that in you with a needle?”

“Big one,” she confirms, and the length she indicates with her fingers makes him sweat, “thick too.”

“Ouch?”

She shrugs.

“Wasn’t that bad. It’s over quickly.”

Alistair simply can’t imagine letting anyone get that close to his eye with a sharp object. Let alone multiple sharp objects over and over again, as she clearly has, given the tattoo beside where his fingers rest. He’s never really been able to make out the design before, her hair often partially obscures it, and her distaste for eye contact means that he’s usually making an attempt to look elsewhere (nose, forehead, between her eyebrows. Not her mouth if he can help it, but he often finds his gaze drifting there nonetheless).

It’s simple in shape, a stripe of dark purple ink about two fingers wide that cuts vertically through her eyebrow and ends in a pointed slant about halfway up her forehead. Solid in color except for a geometric spiral of uninked skin in the middle. It reminds him of the engraved blade of a knife that he saw at the stall of a dwarven woman last time he was in Denerim.

Well, this would be the time to ask, now wouldn’t it?

“I have another question.”

“Anything.”

Anything. He believes her too. He could ask her anything he wanted, and she’d give a clear, direct answer. Earnest and gentle in its delivery, unmocking. She would never tease him in a way that hurts.

It catches him off guard every single time he realizes it. He’s never had someone he could ask anything to before. Someone he felt comfortable enough with, and who liked him enough that they could just talk in the way he talks with her. He still doesn’t quite know what to do with it. How to hold the feeling, it's- odd. And terrifying. And he really, really likes it.

“What does it feel like? Your tattoos, I mean.” She cocks her head, “After they heal? I imagine there’s a texture, what with ink in your skin and all, but I’ve never touched one so I don’t know and I’ve always, well I’ve always wondered and it-” he clears his throat. Too much. Too many words. He’s babbling. “-well, since we’re here I thought I’d ask.”

She looks at him confused, but like he’s said something funny, also.

“It doesn’t feel like anything. It's just skin.”

This time he really doesn’t believe her, but keeps that to himself.

“May I?”

She nods, and he reaches up again, smoothes his fingers across the ink above her eyebrow, and finds that it really doesn’t feel like much of anything. The skin is just smooth, healed and whole, there’s no difference between inked and uninked skin that he can detect. If he had his eyes closed, he wouldn’t even know.

Which is, admittedly, exactly what she told him, and he feels a little bad for doubting her.

“Huh.” he says, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What did you think it would feel like?”

“Rough, I suppose? Or, slick, the way scars are sometimes.”

“Tattoos don’t usually scar, not if you’re being careful and taking care of it after. Anything else?”

He hums, thinking, traces over the shape with one finger.

“I like it,” he says, approvingly, and he swears she turns a little pink in response.

“Thank you.”

“Does it mean something?” he asks, “I’ve heard that dwarven tattoos tend to mean things.”

“It might? I’m not sure. I chose it because-” a pause, like she’s embarrassed, “-it’s the same design as Gherlen the Bloodrisen had. You can see it on his statue.”

“Gherlen the Bloodrisen?”

“One of our Paragons. He was born casteless, but he was also a great warrior, the Assembly recognized that and named him a living Paragon, then after that, he became king,” she smiles lopsidedly, “Rica used to tell me stories about that. They were my favorite, growing up. I always really admired him.”

She’s definitely blushing now, but he can’t imagine why. It’s such a charming story. And it’s clearly very, big. Very important to her. It makes him a little sad that she would find telling him about it so embarrassing.

“Cool.”

Brosca smiles bigger then, with his teeth, and Alistair’s stomach flips. He rarely shows his teeth, unless he’s very happy, and very unguarded. Comfortable. He’s honored.

He passes his fingertips over the tattoo again and- okay, he really is just touching her for no reason now. But she doesn’t seem to mind (he’s confident that if she minded she would have said something, she always does) and he- well, he doesn’t really want to stop. Her eyes close for a moment as he brushes his thumb over her brow, or else she just blinks very slowly. It’s hard to know for sure.

He shifts his fingers to her temple, resting there for a moment before continuing down to her cheek, following the narrow line of soft hair that grows down past her ear. She once privately lamented to him about her inability to grow a full beard, and he thinks it’s too bad that this would be a place of disappointment for her. He likes her little sideburns, neat and angular and well-maintained, thinks they make her look terribly handsome.

Alistair wishes he was brave enough to tell her that.

He traces over her cheekbone. The tattoo below her eye is very different than the one above it. Rough edges, unevenly dark ink, slightly raised, textured to the touch. It feels more like he expected the other one to, like a scar.

A thick, deep, nasty scar.

Brosca tenses almost the moment he touches it, but he only realizes that after several seconds have passed, and he feels absolutely horrible for it.

“Sorry-”

“Oh, no it’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting you to-” she pauses, shakes her head, “You just surprised me,” she says, “You can touch it. It’s fine.”

The way she says “it” strikes him as odd. Different than the way she talks about her piercings and other tattoos, almost as if the marking on her cheek isn’t really part of her, not in the same way everything else is. Like it's a wound.

He puts his fingers back where they were, hesitantly, and traces the shape. A rectangle with a sort of sideways “s” in the center. Simple and large, imprecise.

“This one’s different.”

“It was done with a knife,” she explains, and his fingers stop, linger in place, “Casteless are branded when we’re young, so we can’t hide it. You get taken to a servant-caste who does it as a job, they make the mark, work ink in, then a bandage, some elfroot if you’re lucky, and send you home.”

Alistair’s stomach twists into a tight knot. The only thing worse than what she’s describing is the completely calm way that she describes it. Branded. Casually, as if the word has no weight. As if it’s nothing, to be a child and have a grown man with a knife scar you. It’s normal. It happens every day.

He imagines her small and scared, bloodied, and feels sick. He knew that she’s casteless, knew a little bit about what that meant, but only because she told him. He’s wondered before how it is that other people, dwarves especially, can always seem to tell that she’s casteless just by looking at her. He supposes that now he has his answer.

She leans in a little, cheek pressing into his fingertips.

“I don’t remember it,” she says, as if to reassure him, as if that makes it better, “I was too little.”

“How old were you?”

“Two or three. That’s about the age it happens for everyone. Old enough that it’s clear you’re going to make it, but not too old that the guards think your parents are trying to get out of having it done. You get in trouble if you wait too long.”

“Brosca, that’s terrible.”

She gets very quiet for a moment, then shrugs. Looks away.

“Nothing to be done about it now.”

Alistair feels awful for her, he can’t imagine- but he doesn’t know how to say that. Not without risking sounding condescending, or pitying. He doesn’t want to do that to her, he knows what it feels like, how awful it is. Being pitied, being talked down to like you aren’t already aware of what you are. He knows that she’s likely experienced more than enough of that in her life as it is.

He reaches down, taps the back of her right hand where it rests in her lap. There are bands of black ink, about as wide as a pinky nail, positioned like rings between the first and second knuckles of each of her fingers. These markings he knows for sure are something she chose for herself, something she continues to choose. The long nights she spends by the fire letting Zevran put needles in her are proof of that.

“And what’s all this about?”

She blinks, then smiles a little, pleased, proud in the same soft way she was when they were talking about her piercings, her other ink, and Alistair feels himself relax. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it's changing the subject to something lighter.

“It doesn’t have a specific name or anything but, if you work with your hands, you get ink on them. Warriors, smiths, tailors, pleasure workers… mostly the first two, though. I’m hoping to have all my fingers done eventually, but that takes time.”

He hums, lifts her left hand carefully so he can get a closer look. Every finger on her right is tattooed, and her left looks almost naked in comparison. It was just her thumb and pointer finger when they first met, but now there’s a band on the middle finger as well, and two lines on her ring finger, an outline waiting to be filled in later.

Unlike the first two, the mark on her middle finger is not solid black. Instead, uninked skin makes the shape of several four-pointed stars around the circumference.

“Zev’s idea,” she says, “said he just wanted to try it, and he’d fill it in if I didn’t like it.”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

Brosca’s hand twitches subtly when Alistair’s thumb passes over his knuckles, but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t even seem like he wants to, either. In fact, he doesn’t really seem to have realized it happened. An involuntary motion, then. Like a shiver.

WIthout meaning to, he imagines running his hands up and down Brosca’s arms, dragging his fingertips down over the soft insides of his wrists, just to see if he’ll shiver then, too. Goosebumps rising on his forearms, a sharp intake of breath, dark eyes looking up at him as if to ask-

Stop, Alistair tells himself, stop it.

“He’d probably do something for you too, if you were interested.”

“Who, Zevran?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Oh, trust me, he’s offered.”

Brosca raises her eyebrow. He considers elaborating but- it still makes him blush a little to think about it. For some reason. It’s stupid.

“He pierces too.”

“Yeah, not interested in that either.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

“You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who isn’t interested.”

“I’m not interested for me.”

“You were just interested in mine.”

“Right.”

Something about it feels like giving away a secret. He regrets saying it as soon as it comes out of his mouth.

He’s holding her hand still. Well, not, not holding her hand, really. He’s not- her hand is resting in his, his thumb slightly overlapping her knuckles, not gripping. Just resting there, relaxed, like she has no intention of moving any time soon. Heavy and warm.

“That’s too bad,” she says, “you’d look nice with a few earrings.”

“Would I now?”

“You would,” she replies, very earnestly, “high up especially. It would really compliment the shape of your ears.”

His guts clench instinctively when she says it. He tries not to let his face match the feeling, but clearly doesn’t succeed.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” A pause. “I’m sure you’re right, I’m just generally trying not to call attention to the shape of my ears, is all.”

Brosca blinks, then gives him a sympathetic look. It makes him feel terrible, even though he knows it shouldn’t. It feels like he’s called too much attention to himself, more than he deserves.

“That didn’t occur to me.”

“Ah. Well.” He shrugs, too exaggerated, too silly, voice a little too fast, “It’s not a big deal really, I shouldn’t have-”

She squeezes his fingers once, very briefly. Lightly. He almost jumps. It’s the unexpectedness of it, more than anything, that makes him fall silent.

“You don’t have to do all of that. I understand.”

Alistair swallows. He never knows how to respond when she says things like that. You don’t have to do all that. As if she knew exactly what he was going to say, the stream of deflecting words that were about to bubble out of him, drowning everything in their path. It’s so odd, to be known well enough that you can be predicted.

“I know this isn’t the point,” she says, words a little stilted, as if she was reading aloud, “and I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but for the record, I always thought they were very pret- handsome. That they’re handsome.”

“What, my ears?”

“Yes.”

Brosca’s voice often takes on a sort of roughness when she’s uncomfortable, a low undercurrent of gravel. He’s heard it enough times now to be familiar with it. Her eyes dart away for a moment before coming back, and he would apologize except he has the strangest feeling that her discomfort doesn’t really have anything to do with him.

“I mean you are- very handsome in general, it’s not just that. Part of it, though, definitely. They’re attractive.”

Alistair feels the ears in question heat up a little, which is embarrassing. He hates how easy it is for him to blush.

He struggles for a moment, with what to say in response. It doesn’t help that he can’t really tell how she means it. The hopeful, and probably very stupid, part of him can’t help but think that maybe she’s- but probably she’s just being polite.

Well, not polite, that’s the wrong word. Nice. Sweet, even. Because he was self-deprecating. Because she’s one of the best people he’s ever known and that’s exactly something she’d do.

But if it’s the other thing then, well, he has no idea what to say next. How to proceed without making an even bigger fool of himself. He’s imagined a moment like that in his head a hundred times, but the set up was never quite like this, and he feels stuck.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He really needs to stop holding her hand. He should- this is too much. Too fast? Especially since he’s still not sure. About her feelings. About his. About what it means about him if he- About anything, really.

And he should be sure, shouldn’t he? Before he does anything? Wouldn’t it be unfair not to be?

“And thank you for answering all my silly questions,” he says, again too fast, patting her hand once before releasing it altogether, “I do appreciate it.”

Brosca’s hand sort of floats for a moment after he lets go, hovers in the air like she isn’t sure what to do with it.

“Anytime,” she says, but she sounds sort of… distant. Confused. A little lost. She flexes her fingers, returns her hand to her lap.

“Careful, I might take you up on that.”

“You should,” she says, plainly, “I meant it.”

He’ll find it eventually, the tipping point where her indulgence becomes irritation, where he stops being charming and starts being annoying, the bottom of the well of her patience. He always does. But in the meantime, he appreciates just how deep it is.

“So here is where you both disappeared to. I had almost begun to worry,” Morrigan stops at the edge of the trees, head tilted, a terrible glint in her sickly yellow eyes, “My apologies, I’m not interrupting anything, I hope?”

Morrigan’s voice is smooth and dark as always, unaffected and distant as the ocean. And as always, hearing even a single word spoken by it gets his hackles up instantly. Truly, a single note hummed by her and heard from half a mile away would be enough to ruin his entire day.

She casts him a look out of the corner of her eye, subtle and pointed. Alistair straightens his spine and shoulders, returns the glare.

Brosca seems blissfully unaware of the dark and terrible energy that’s settled over the grassy little clearing they’ve been sitting and talking in. In fact, she seems rather happy to see her,

What Brosca sees in that woman, he will never understand.

“Not at all, we were just chatting.” Brosca smiles. Close-mouthed, but unfortunately very genuine. It covers his whole face, creases the corners of his eyes in a way that would be deeply charming if it was directed at literally anyone else. “Do you need something, salroka?”

Morrigan’s eyes linger on Alistair for a moment before pulling away. Her pointed and ferret-like face softens into something almost human the moment her eyes land on Brosca, her posture shifting ever so subtly into something more open, less predatory. He might even call it friendly

“Leliana was looking for you,” she says, “I’m not sure for what, she was terribly secretive on the matter.”

Brosca looks confused, and for a few brilliant moments Alistair nearly convinces himself that Morrigan is about to be caught in a hilariously petty and embarrassing lie before he suddenly straightens up, as if having just remembered something.

“Sand, I completely forgot.” He stands (and quite gracefully too, Alistair must add. Didn’t even use his hands.), tugs at his shirt a little to settle it, “is she still by the campfire?”

“Last I spoke to her, yes she was.”

Brosca turns to him.

“This is going to take a bit. See you at dinner, yeah?”

“Very well,” he says, pulling back his shoulders back and addressing her as he would a superior officer, “I will make a list of new inane questions to present to you at that time.”

Brosca laughs, and maybe this is just wishful thinking on his part, but he swears that Morrigan scowls because of it.

“I look forward to it, salroka” she says, patting him affectionately on the shoulder as she hurries past.

Even despite the briefness of the contact, the place where her hand landed stays warm even after she’s left. He feels it under his shirt and under his skin, in his bones almost.

He flexes his hand, feels her there too. A ghost of her square, strong fingers and wide palms, heat and weight and shape all wrapped up in the same memory.

He imagines, if he were braver, less prone to panic at her mere proximity, he might have taken the opportunity to kiss the ink on her fingers there, or the pale white scars on her knuckles. The inside of her wrist. Cup her face in his hands and kiss the tattoo over her eye, and the terrible scar underneath it, and-

A chill creeps up his neck as he realizes that Morrigan is still present. Lurking at the treeline. Creepily.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all.”

There is a knowing look in her eyes, a smugness in her words. She always acts like she’s winning somehow. Beating him in some competition that exists only in the depths of her twisted mind, a competition he never willingly entered, and isn’t even sure the goal or parameters of.

(He thinks of Brosca napping in camp, propped up against the broad side of a massive bear, his face pressed comfortably into its brown fur. He thinks of the day it rained, and Brosca turned to him and under his hood, tucked up against his neck, was a small black bird with beady yellow eyes. His eye twitches.)

The worst part was, sometimes he thinks she might be right.

Alistair goes to stand, but his ankle is tucked too awkwardly beneath him and he falters, has to brace his palms against the ground in order to get his feet under him. All while Morrigan watches.

Because of course he does.

“Do you require assistance?”

He scowls at her.

“Why don’t you-” Deep breath, a pause as he finally hefts himself up, “-go crawl under a bush and die.”

Morrigan snorts.

“How very mature of you,” she says, turning her back to him without another word and heading back to camp.

Alistair brushes off the front of his trousers, waits for enough distance to build between them that they are unlikely to cross paths on the way, and then heads in that direction himself.

#mountain sound #aliwarden #dragon age fanfiction #warden brosca #proof that i can post normally. that im even capable of it.

74 notes · View notes