#in my cups and in my feelings. sten........................................

[numbaoneflaya]

having sten feelings. kadan...

the way he calls the warden kadan. where the heart lies. also means the center of the chest. or the heart itself. both in a platonic and romantic way, both or either its just.... a person who you feel is so deeply lodged within you that you feel their presence in the heart. In the center of your body. to Bull that has an obvious romantic connotation and its only ever his lover he calls that. But for sten who as we see in the fade sequence at the circle, even the closest friends he remembers so deeply that they appear in his unconscious, he doesnt call them kadan. To only know someone for barely two years and to take to calling them his heart. I know that mf misses his bestie so damn much

[sihtricfedaraaahvicius]

warnings: angst/fluff, nothing crazy.

pairing: Sihtric x you (f)

summary: You had disguised yourself as a man to be able to join Uhtred and his men, proving yourself to be a fearless warrior. But catching feelings for Sihtric and getting drunk with Finan did not make things easier.

word count: 3,9k

Note: requested by @lady-targaryens-world!

taglist: @clairacassidy @finanmoghra @uunotheangel @hb8301 @bathedinheat @neonhairspray @anaeve @bubblyabs @travelingmypassion @sylas-the-grim @anditsmywholeheart

‘There is no lady here!’

--------------------------

‘There is something wrong with him, Sihtric, I can feel it. Sten is not who he says he is.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I can’t explain it,’ Sigdeflaed sighed, ‘he is just different.’

‘So because he is different, there’s something wrong with him?’ Sihtric frowned at his wife.

‘I… I just rather not have him around anymore.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Sidge, you can’t be serious. We have a strong bond. I… it just feels like I’ve known him forever.’

‘I do not like the way he looks at you!’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘Sihtric, enough. Keep him away from our home.’

‘I have fought alongside him, he has saved my life. I will never close my door to someone who has saved my life!’

‘I do not wish to see him here anymore, Sihtric! Is that clear?’

Sihtric nodded and stormed out the door, to the alehouse.

-------------

It has been several months since you joined Uhtred, and you quickly became one of his best warriors. You became close to his men too. Finan lovingly called you baby warrior, to which you always rolled your eyes, yet Osferth was happy that he was not the only one with a nickname anymore. Uhtred cared about you as if you were his little brother. Sihtric was mainly quiet around you, but always looked out for you during battles. You were like a brother to all of them, except… you were actually a sister. 

Your long hair was always braided and rolled into a hair knot and you were often covered in dirt, making your female face features harder to see. The gods had also blessed, and cursed, you with a rather flat chest, making it easier for you to pass as a man. 

It’s not that you didn’t want to be a woman, but you knew that as a woman you would have never been accepted as a warrior. 

It was a struggle to keep your identity hidden from the men, but so far it had worked. Your biggest concern was Sihtric. He always stares at you, even when you didn’t catch him in the act, you felt it. And you worried he was onto you, because he knew you. Your family had lived in Dunholm with Kjartan when you were a small girl, and Sihtric was your best friend back then, but after you moved away you had lost contact with him. And to make everything worse; you developed romantic feelings for Sihtric shortly after you had joined Uhtred.

-----------------------

Sihtric sat alone, sipping from his ale before Finan startled him with a slap on his shoulders.

‘What are ya sulking about?’

‘Nothing,’ Sihtric huffed.

‘Fine,’ Finan shrugged and ordered himself some ale. 

‘Actually,’ Sihtric mumbled, ‘it’s-’

‘It’s the baby monk and the baby warrior!’ Finan shouted as you came in, and he quickly ordered two more cups of ale.

‘Shut up,’ you and Osferth hissed together and chuckled.

Osferth sat down next to Finan, which left you with no other choice than to sit next to Sihtric. You gave him a smile and a nod as you sat down, ‘Sihtric.’

Sihtric didn’t speak but returned the nod and looked away from you, fidgeting with his rings.

You frowned at Finan. 

‘He was like that when I got here,’ he shrugged.

‘Everything alright, Sihtric?’ Osferth asked.

‘Fine,’ he huffed, and everyone was silent for a moment.

‘Tough crowd,’ you chuckled.

Suddenly Sihtric jumped up and walked away, without saying another word, leaving everyone speechless at the table, except for Finan.

‘I guess his wife didn’t let him hump her.’

Finan laughed at his own words, Osferth shook his head and you chuckled, as you felt your heart break a little more.

--------------------

‘Sihtric,’ you said curtly, ‘a word?’

‘Why?’

‘Now, Sihtric!’

Sihtric sighed, putting down his whetstone and sword before he got up and followed you. You walked away from your camp out into the forest, where you could speak in private. Sihtric’s behaviour towards you had turned rather unpleasant after he had stormed out of the alehouse, and you had enough of his attitude. When you were sure you were far enough for anyone else to see and hear you, you turned to face Sihtric.

‘What is going on with you lately?’

‘Nothing,’ he shrugged.

‘I am not a fool, Sihtric, I know you are a little quiet around me, which is fine, but these past few weeks have been different. It seems like you suddenly hate me and I am sick of your hostility.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay? That’s all? Really?’

‘Yeah,’ he scoffed.

‘That’s not good enough!’

‘What do you want then?’

‘I want to know what I did! Why do you cut me off every time I try to make a suggestion? Why do you not speak to me anymore? Or share your food with me anymore? You used to invite me over to your house every now and then, for dinner. And now … now you won’t even look at me anymore. What did I do to deserve this?’ you tried to compose yourself as you felt your bottom lip quivering.

Sihtric smacked his lips and rubbed his hand over his chin, looking at the ground, going over all his thoughts about you. The thoughts about how his wife had demanded to stop inviting you to their house, even if he disagreed. About how he swears he knows you, but can’t seem to place you in a memory. About how confused he feels when he’s around you. He goes over the thoughts he has about you at night, the way he desires you and simply doesn’t understand himself anymore. About how he has a wife and never had romantic feelings for a man before, but something about you caught his attention and caused him to fantasise about you. He thought about how he directs his anger and frustration at you, because you are the reason for it all. 

You are the reason he can't stand being around his wife for months now, as she constantly complains about you, showing a side of her he never knew. A side which he quickly came to hate so much. You are the reason he divorced, in secret, before he left for the trip you’re on now. You are the reason he barely sleeps because whenever he does, he dreams of you, causing him to feel unsatisfied and frustrated when he wakes up. But he could never admit this to you.

‘Nothing,’ Sihtric said, ‘you did nothing to deserve it.’

‘Then what is the problem?’ you scoffed, ‘was Finan right? Your wife didn’t let you hump her?’

‘The problem,’ Sihtric suddenly snapped, cornering you against two large trees, ‘is you.’

‘What is wrong with you!?’ you hissed as Sihtric clenched his jaw, pressing his forehead against yours to keep you cornered. He chuckled and ran his hands up your arms, squeezing your biceps as he pressed his body against yours, causing you to flinch, worried he would find out your disguise. He licked his lips as he looked you up and down before he spoke.

‘Wrong with me?’ he scoffed, breathing heavier than before, ‘there is something wrong with you,’ he shook his head and squinted his eyes, ‘there is something wrong about you.’

He suddenly released you and backed away, before he turned from you and walked back to the camp. Causing you to feel flustered as he left you leaning back against a tree.

-------------------

You had kept away from Sihtric for days, since your last encounter in the forest. Finan and Osferth were more than happy to joke around with you as you all travelled to Wessex to attend the wedding of some royalty you couldn't remember. You looked forward to arriving, not for the wedding, but to get absolutely drunk with Finan afterwards.

And that is exactly what you did.

---------------------

‘Did ya know,’ Finan slurred, ‘that… that Sihtric’s wife hates ya? He told me!’ 

Finan gave you a serious look before bursting out in laughter.

‘Does she now?’ you giggled, before taking another sip of your ale.

‘Aye, he told me!’

‘Well,’ you stood up, ’the feeling is mutual, I never liked her either. But she has nothing on me,’ you shrugged and twirled around, tripping over your feet. 

Finan was quick to keep you from falling, or so he thought, but instead he tripped over his own feet and pulled you down with him. Finan grabbed onto your tunic as he fell, accidentally groping your boobs as he did, and he may have been drunk, but his face told you he knew the feeling of what he was holding in his hands right there. You were not drunk enough either to not notice it, and quickly tried to get away from him. You tripped again as you made your way out of the alehouse, causing you to fall right into Sihtric’s arms.

‘Watch where you are going!’ he snarled, but instead of pushing you away he held you in his arms for a moment, until you pulled away first.

‘I am sorry, my liege,’ you slurred slightly and bowed to him before you stumbled away.

‘Where are you going?’ Sihtric asked, agitated.

‘To find my bed.’

‘Fetch someone to walk with you, you’re in no state.’

‘Sure, my liege,’ you mocked, ‘except everyone is more drunk or already asleep. And,’ you hiccuped, ‘I’m not even that drunk. I don’t need anyone to look after me.’

You stumbled further and felt yourself slip into a giggle fit.

‘Sure,’ Sihtric hissed as he grabbed your arm to keep you from tripping again, ‘I’ll walk you.’

‘Oh, ohhh,’ you howled, ‘don’t tell your wife about this,’ you giggled and you couldn’t help leaning into him. Sihtric sighed but kept quiet and walked you to the inn where you all stayed at.

‘You need to sober up,’ Sihtric said before he walked you inside, pointing to a barrel of water, ‘or you will regret this when you wake up.’ He guided you to the barrel and you dunked your head in a few times.

‘Better?’

‘A little,’ you sighed as you felt yourself sober up.

You had no idea Finan had done the same and was on his way to the inn, to confront you about what had happened. 

In the meantime Sihtric had walked you upstairs to your room, and you thanked him, albeit a little awkward.

‘Look,’ Sihtric said, ‘I’m sorry about my behaviour. I’ve just… had a lot on my mind lately.’

‘Maybe I confronted you too harshly. It’s fine, really. And… I’m sorry about that childish comment just now,’ you mumbled, ‘to not tell your wife. I know she hates me, I always knew. I never cared about it, but I knew.’

‘It’s fine,’ he sighed, ‘she’s… we’re… I divorced her, actually.’

‘What? When?’

‘Shortly before we left to travel here.’

‘Gods, Sihtric, I am so sorry,’ you sighed and took his hands in yours, squeezing them lightly. Sihtric felt his cheeks heat up at your touch and pulled away.

‘May I ask why?’

‘I just… we grew apart,’ Sihtric said, and then there was a knocking on your door.

‘Lady! Open up! I know yer in here!’

‘Lady?’ Sihtric frowned at you.

‘There is no lady here!’ you yelled, shrugging at Sihtric.

‘I had yer tits in my hands, lady, and I know what those feel like!’

‘What is he on about?’ Sihtric chuckled lightly.

‘I… I have no idea,’ you said and hid your face as it flushed red.

Sihtric then opened the door and Finan stormed in, surprised to see Sihtric.

‘Ya felt her tits too?’ Finan asked him.

‘What? Whose?’

‘Hers!’ Finan yelled and pointed at you, ‘baby warrior! He’s not a he! She’s a … a she!’

‘What?’ Sihtric said again, and both men looked at you.

You opened your mouth to speak, but couldn’t bring out a word. You knew there was no hiding anymore, Finan was not going to let this go until you admitted it.

You took a deep breath and sighed.

‘Finan is right,’ you said softly. You pulled your hairpin out and let your hair down, which was enough for both men to suddenly see you for the beautiful woman you had been all this time. Finan gasped and Sihtric’s heart stopped.

‘My name is not Sten, my name is (y/n).’ 

‘It’s you,’ Sihtric said, his voice suddenly trembling, ‘you… you… we..’

‘We used to be friends… in Dunholm,’ you said and looked at your feet.

‘Wait,’ Finan said, ‘ya know each other?’

‘I…’ Sihtric couldn’t bring himself to say more as he tried to grasp the situation.

‘Yes,’ you said, ‘we do. But Sihtric didn’t know it was me. At least, not that I am aware of.’

‘Did ya?’

‘No!’ Sihtric huffed, ‘how… how could I?’

‘How could ya not recognize this beauty?’

‘I, she, we, I…’ Sihtric tripped over his words.

‘We were just kids when we last saw each other,’ you said, ‘we hadn’t seen each other in over 18 years. I only recognised him because of his name and his eyes,’ you blushed lightly.

‘Jesus,’ Finan chuckled, ‘but why do this? Why hide? Does Uhtred know?’

‘No, he does not. And would you have accepted me as a warrior if you had known before?’

‘Yes,’ both men said at the same time.

‘But,’ Finan said, ‘we wouldn’t have let ya fight at the frontline with us.

‘Exactly,’ you said, ‘and that is why I hid. I have proven myself, I have saved both your arses multiple times. But if you had known about me before…’

‘We would’ve been dead,’ Sihtric suddenly chuckled.

‘Aye,’ Finan snickered, ‘we owe our lives to ya, baby warrior.’ Finan walked up to you with his arms open and pulled you into a hug.

‘I still care for ya all the same, little sister,’ he winked, ‘and, eh… sorry about the… ya know,’ Finan mumbled as he placed his hands on his own chest.

‘Grabbing my tits?’ you frowned, ‘it was an accident, I know,’ you chuckled.

Finan pinched your cheek and smiled, ‘Jesus. A handsome woman, that ya are.’

‘Shut up,’ you punched his shoulder and laughed.

‘Just saying,’ he shrugged. Finan saw your eyes direct to Sihtric and noticed how you blushed upon seeing him. And he suddenly understood why he had seen you blush around Sihtric many times before. He cleared his throat. 

‘I, eh, I’ll leave ya two to it. I am sure ya have a lot to catch up on.’

You smiled and nodded. And unbeknownst to you, Finan gave Sihtric a wink as he walked out the door, causing Sihtric to blush too.

‘Sihtric,’ you said, ‘I’m sorry. For all of this.’

‘No,’ Sihtric hushed you and stepped closer, ‘you have no idea how relieved I am.’

‘What? Why?’

‘I thought I was losing my mind,’ he chuckled, his fingers reaching for yours and intertwining, ‘since you joined us I have been so confused. I felt like I knew you, but I just couldn’t remember how. I didn’t know anyone named Sten, so it made no sense. And I,’  he paused and sighed, ‘I was so confused, because I couldn’t get you out of my head.’

‘W-what do you mean?’

Sihtric stepped closer. You felt his breath on your lips as he spoke, and his hands sneaked around your waist.

‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you,’ he whispered, ‘about your eyes… your smile… your shape,’ he sighed and bit down on his lip, looking you up and down, ‘you did things to me, sly lady’ he chuckled, sending a shiver down our spine, ‘like the way you aroused me each time we trained together, and I always needed to cool off in the river afterwards,’ he smirked and brushed his lips lightly over yours.

‘Sihtric,’ you sighed and closed your eyes, ‘but you had your wife?’

‘My wife? She was a wife who couldn’t satisfy my needs,’ he spoke low, pressing his body against yours, ‘she couldn’t stop my longing for you,’ he brought his hands up to the nape of your neck, ‘she couldn’t stop me from thinking about you when I was inside her.’ 

His words had set you on fire and the feelings you already had for Sihtric became unbearable. Your hands ran up his chest, gripping his collar and pulling him closer.

‘Sihtric,’ you sighed, ‘I don’t want to be the reason for your divorce.’

‘You’re not. You just made me see who the woman I married really was. And I hated it. I… I really only married her because I didn’t want to be lonely anymore,’ he whispered, ‘I thought I was happy, but then you came around,’ he smiled, ‘and I felt things for you in a way I had never felt before, making me realise my marriage wasn’t good at all.’

‘Gods, Sihtric,’ you whispered, ‘you don’t know how I’ve longed for you.’

‘Tell me,’ his whispers became hoarse, ‘I need to hear how you’ve longed for me.’

‘Every day,’ your breathing became heavy as Sihtric grabbed you tighter, ‘I wanted to be close to you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you the truth.’

‘And so you tortured me,’ he hissed with a chuckle, his breath sneaking into your mouth, ‘all this time. You don’t know what you’ve been doing to me,’ he choked on his words and a moan escaped him when you giggled against his lips.

‘Kiss me,’ you said.

Sihtric leaned in and your lips had barely collided into a heated kiss when Uhtred suddenly barged in, followed by Osferth and Finan. The latter looked guilty, while Osferth just stood there with his jaw dropped, and Uhtred looked as if he was about to kill you. Sihtric pulled away as fast as he could and you tried to hide your red cheeks.

‘What is this news about a lady?’ Uhtred huffed at you, ‘why did you lie?’

‘Lord,’ Finan said, ‘I already told ya.’

‘I want to hear it from her!’ he snapped, stepping towards you and Sihtric immediately shoved you behind him.

‘Lord,’ Sihtric said sternly and clenched his jaw while staring at Uhtred.

‘Step away, Sihtric,’ Uhtred said curtly.

‘No.’

‘I said step away, that is an order!’

Sihtric didn’t move and shoved you back behind him when you tried to face Uhtred.

‘Sihtric. If you do not obey, you can leave with her.’

‘What?’ you snapped.

‘Lord?!’ Finan scoffed.

‘You can’t be serious, lord,’ Osferth said.

‘I trust those who fight alongside me to be loyal and honest,’ Uhtred raised his voice to silence everyone, ‘if there is no honesty, then I cannot give my trust. You have lied to me for months,' he shook his head.

‘Lord, I only did it-’

‘I know why you did it!’ Uhtred snarled, ‘but those who serve me have earned their place with me because they have always been honest. I will not have a liar in our midst. I want you to be gone tomorrow.’

With that said, Uhtred turned on his heels and walked away. Leaving you breathless and on the verge of tears.

‘I… I…’ you stammered.

‘He can’t do this,’ Osferth said, ‘right?’

Finan rubbed his hands through his hair. ‘He is our lord, Osferth, so I’m afraid he can.’

‘Then I will leave with her,’ Sihtric said as he pulled you in his arms.

‘I’m sorry,’ you sobbed.

‘Sihtric, you can’t just leave with her. What about your wife?’ Osferth asked.

‘I divorced her before I left.’

‘What!?’ Osferth shouted.

‘Jesus Christ, ya got to be joking!’ Finan yelled, bewildered.

‘You divorced to be with her?’ Osferth frowned.

‘Partly,’ Sihtric said and clenched his jaw as he held you tight to his chest.

‘But ya said ya didn’t know it was her?’ Finan frowned.

‘I didn’t,’ Sihtric said and looked between both men, ‘my ex wife and I simply grew apart before this all happened, but it became worse when (y/n) joined us. I… had feelings I couldn't explain. And I will not be unhappy again, so I will leave with her.’

Finan and Osferth were too stunned to speak, they couldn't believe they just lost two of their best warriors.

‘No, Sihtric’ you sniffled, ‘I can’t ask you to come with me. Uhtred needs you.’

‘You didn’t ask me. And Uhtred,’ he scoffed, ‘he doesn’t need me the way that I need you. It is done. I leave with you.’

‘No,’ you pleaded, and looked at Finan for help.

‘Sihtric, just think for once, I beg, before ya make any rash decisions.’

‘It is done!’ Sihtric snapped to Finan, ‘and you two need to leave this room, now!’

‘Please, just-' Osferth started.

‘Now!’ Sihtric growled.

‘I’m sorry,’ you mouthed to both men as they looked at you before leaving.

‘Sihtric, please,’ you said after he had closed the door behind the men, ‘don’t do this.’

He took your hand and pulled you close, and you could see the tears in his eyes.

‘Nothing and nobody can keep me away from you,’ he said and cupped your cheeks, ‘I will not argue about this, my love. We leave together, first light.’

‘But where to?’ you spoke softly.

‘Anywhere,’ Sihtric hushed you, pecking your lips, ‘I promise I will protect you and find us a new home.’

You sighed and took his face in your hands, ‘Thank you for not abandoning me.’

‘I never will,’ he said and nuzzled your nose, ‘now come and lay down with me. You need to rest before we leave.’

-----------------

Soon it was dawn. You and Sihtric had already mounted your horses and were ready to go. Sihtric stood beside you to help you up on your horse, but first he placed one hand on your cheek and his other on your neck as he leaned his forehead against yours.

‘Everything will be okay,’ he whispered. ‘I promise.’

‘I know,’ you smiled weakly, ‘I will be okay as long as I have you by my side.’

Sihtric smiled and blushed lightly. 

‘I love you,’ Sihtric whispered. He lifted your chin slightly up and kissed your lips softly.

‘Say that again,’ you smiled against his lips. 

Sihtric chuckled and caressed your cheek with his thumb.

‘I love you,’ he smiled and kissed your cheek, ‘I love you,’ he kissed your temple, ‘I love you,’ he chuckled as you giggled when he kissed your nose, ‘I love you, baby,’ he whispered before kissing you deeply.

‘I love you too,’ you giggled again and buried your face in his neck.

‘You better, I just gave up everything for you,’ he winked with a smirk, ‘we should leave now, darling, the sun is coming up.’

He helped you up on your horse and was quick to get on his. He halted his horse next to yours and reached out his hand to cup your cheek.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ you sighed and smiled, ‘you?’

‘I am ready to leave and finally be happy,’ he smiled and leaned towards you, giving you a sweet kiss before you both spurred your horses to walk.

‘Halt!’ a voice shouted behind you. 

You frowned at Sihtric, who shrugged, and you turned to look over your shoulder.

‘Uhtred?’ you said, seeing the man walk towards you. Sihtric frowned as Finan appeared, followed by Osferth. Sihtric placed his hand on his axe as the men came closer.

‘What is this?’ you scoffed, ‘a final scolding? I’ll pass.’ You rolled your eyes and wanted to spur your horse again, as did Sihtric.

‘Wait!’ Uhtred said, and sighed, looking at Finan and Osferth.

‘You’ll want to hear this,’ Osferth smiled.

‘You’re a good lair,’ Uhtred said curtly, ‘a little too good for my liking. But these men convinced me,’ Uhtred paused. Finan grinned at you.

‘You can both stay,’ Uhtred continued, ‘I have a use for you. You two will become my spies.’

[imagine-silk]

Day Recovering: Day One; Husband?

The first thing was the beeping, that steady tick. Daylen twitched his fingers and felt cold sheets. 'Cold sheets?' As soon as he opened his eyes he regretted it. The white was blinding like heaven was refusing him. "Ah fuck." His voice was sandpaper.

"You are awake. That is good.” Looking to his bedside he saw Sten sitting in a chair too small for him. “You should get your bearings in order before the nurses swarm you." He grabbed a pitcher and a foam cup, still calm but it seemed so off.

"You're-" He didn't know what he was going to say but a coughing fit made it so he would never find out.

"Do not strain yourself. Drink and I will give you a pen and paper." Sten stood up briefly to station a table with the cup of water and a straw in front of Daylen. His first thought was, ‘I am not a child’ and sat up to try to pick up the glass. A sharp spasm shot through him and he spilled it before he could get away from the table. He stared not understanding what this feeling was. Shame? Violent? Despondent? Sten said nothing, he simply cleaned the water with the bedside tissues and reset the water, straw and all.

When two glasses were finished Sten held out a pad of paper and a pen. Daylen's voice was raw but he decided he could bear it. "I can talk."

"I would rather you not."

What others would say was an insult Daylen recognized as a concern. Sten very rarely insisted against him in recent years. Question, yes. Directly opposed, almost never. 

The pad and pen changed hands. "Firstly, do you remember what happened to get you here?"

Driving home from a day of answering crisis calls, taking the freeway a route he did every day and could do with his eyes closed, a long-haul truck was in front of him, then pain, lights, it's silent, it's loud- Maker please don't take me.

With a shaky sigh and an unsteady hand, he wrote, Yes.

"What do you remember?"

The highway and the headlights. As he tried to write the next thing he pushed too hard and dropped the pen. He huffed with glass eyes and picked it up again. Was I the one who swerved? 

Sten gently took the pen and laid it on the paper. "No. The truck driver fell asleep at the wheel and leaned into your lane."

"Did anyone die?" Daylen wavered.

"No. Everyone else on the road got out of the way. You were the only person hospitalized."

“That’s good.” Normally Sten would say something to the contrary like, ‘Your lack of self preservation is unmatched.’ but Daylen’s glass eyes were threatening to break. So his mouth stayed closed and a gray hand wrapped the smaller one.

"Oh, Maker!" A nurse at the door screamed.

"And now peace will be robbed from us," Sten said as he watched the terrified nurse run out.

Daylen took his hand back and wiped his eyes like nothing had happened. How long was I asleep? 

"Nine days." Sten took the moment of Daylen’s bewilderment to rip off the top paper on the pad and put it in his pocket. "We don't need anyone to see this, especially before I can explain everything to you." 

Before that statement could be digested the doctor walked in. "Mr. Amell, you gave my nurse quite the scare." His tone was humorous and light, reassuring. "Don't worry, she's just new. I hope she didn't scare you."

Before Daylen could say anything Sten replied. "She did not offend. But I would ask you not to ask him to speak. He has a pen and paper."

The doctor gave a knowing smile, "Of course." And proceeded to address Daylen. "Your husband has been very concerned. He's here every day during visiting hours."

Daylen knows he must have looked very stupid at that moment. He opened his mouth to speak with a tsk but he couldn't find his words. When he looked at Sten he was as stoic as ever. "This is true." Daylen could help but think, 'What part?' All he could do was give him a confused smile.

The rest of the conversation with the doctor, Dr. Mullins, was swift. Probably because he was in some sort of rush. Sten did not talk, only jumping in when the doctor ordered a sedative that came in the form of a needle. The good doctor didn’t notice Daylen’s apparent fear, or simply didn’t care. “I do not think that is a good idea.”

“Pardon?”

“He has a fear of needles. And I will not hold him down so I trust you have oral medicine.” Sten was many things. Blunt came to mind today. A part of Daylen wanted to say Sten was being dramatic and that it was fine. A bigger part of him wanted to make sure a needle never came close to him. So all he did was smile politely and hoped that was enough.

After everything was said and done, and the doctor had left for good that day, Daylen turned to Sten and wrote Husband? 

His eyes drifted away as Daylen’s bore into him. “The only ones who could see you were your family.”

You lied to medical staff?

“Yes.”

That’s illegal.

“Yes.”

Daylen couldn’t help but huff in irritation. So I suppose this means nothing to you but I could get fined. [1]

“Kadan, listen-” Scratching paper cut him off.

Don’t ‘Kadan’ me. Why didn’t you just get my family?

“Because they would have let you die.” The simple statement cut into Daylen’s outburst and left his stomach empty. “A family member had to sign off on your final surgery so I called them. They told me to let you die so I  assumed the role of your husband. As far as they know you are dying or dead.”

Daylen had never been particularly close to his family, and when the circle took him they drifted farther apart. They all found some issue with him. Something they didn’t care for. But he never believed they would let him die. After all he did for them, after all the chances he gave them, after all the things he was willing to overlook, after they used his honors after the blight, after he got them higher status and connections, and they would let him die. That simultaneously was too unbelievable and too on the nose.

I’m sorry and thank you.

Sten grabbed the pen and scratched the page. I’m sorry and thank you.

“Do not apologize. My actions were impulsive, brash. I risked your status and I risked my visa. I was wrong and I would do it again.”

Daylen couldn’t help but laugh even when it turned into a coughing fit. Only Sten could say something so endearing in the most obtuse way. But he wouldn't had him any different.

 I thought your people didn’t get married.

“We don’t.”

Then you should learn how to play the part if we don’t want to get caught.

“I will admit, it was much easier when you were unconscious.”

[oh-yeah-i-exist]

Synopsis: Druig & Nara - best friends, pen pals, and idiots too stubborn to admit each other’s feelings. She assumes he doesn’t care, he assumes she’s found someone else. For over 500 years, he’s kept her letters, while she resists the urge to send more. Hopefully, the end of the world might knock some sense into them both.

Chapter: 3/? (Chapter 1; Chapter 2)

Pairing: Druig x OC!Fem!Eternal (named Nara)

Warnings: ANGSTY, y’all, ANGST. Depictions of violence and warfare (from historical events). And Druig in that grey tank top?

Word count: ~1735

Feedback totally welcome!

The harvest was bountiful; the barley had been stored away in the silos, and the animals secured in the barns. They were well-prepared for the winter, which was upon their doorsteps.

The inhabitants of Danelaw huddled together inside for St. Brice’s feast. The banquet hall glowed with the light of a large stone hearth, the air filled with the appetizing aroma of skewered pork. Long tables laden with food, cups overflowing with mead. Rafters hung with wreaths of evergreens that swayed rhythmically with the dance below.

The Eternals, the chieftain’s honored guests, were invited to share in the merrymaking. Ajak led the delegation, dressed in a gown of dark blue. Sersi and Ikarus, each in their signature colors, followed closely behind. Makkari and Sprite glided along, all smiles at the festivities; hardly had Kingo arrived in the building than he’d started chatting up the ladies. Thena and Gilgamesh took up the rear, their heads held high as esteemed warriors. Phastos, as usual, preferred the quietude of his laboratory. 

Nara, for one, didn’t fail to notice Freydis––one of the maidens with whom she’d grown close during the Eternals’ stay in Danelaw––refilling her cup with a liberal amount of mead.

“And just what are you trying to get me into?” She raised an eyebrow, sliding the cup out of Freydis’s reach.

“What might you mean by that, my lady?” The Danish woman feigned ignorance, although her playful tone gave her away. 

“I think I’ve had enough to drink, Frey.”

“Oh, come on,” Fredyis laughed, putting aside her jug of mead to sit down next to Nara. “I’d hate to see all my hard work go to waste,” she explained, gesturing at the lady’s hair––which she’d spent the entire afternoon styling into intricate braids, weaving in thin strips of colorful cloth and topping everything off with a circlet of forget-me-nots.

“Alright, alright,” Nara relented, letting Freydis pull her to her feet. 

“Dance!” The Dane encouraged. With a wide grin, Nara complied, relaxing her movements. The young men and maidens around her readily welcomed her into the fray. Switching partners every now and then. Swinging their interlinked arms to the beat of the drums.

“It’s been an honor, m’lady!” Exclaimed one of the young men once Nara parted from the crowd after several rounds of carefree dancing.

She gave him a gracious nod before settling back down at her table, cheeks flushed from the excitement.

“You’re quite the dancer,” said someone to her left.

“Oh yeah?” She teased, turning to look at him. “You should join sometime, Dru.”

The telepath was nursing a drink of his own. “I can assure you, I’m not nearly drunk enough.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Nara giggled, leaning on the palm of her hand. The alcohol had had more of an effect on her than expected, but no harm done. At least she wasn’t smashing empty cups to the ground like Kingo.

“The English king just sent for some of the men,” Druig abruptly changed the subject, glancing around the hall. One moment, Ajak had been giving her blessings for the Danish crown prince, Harald Sigursson, upon his voyage home to the North. The next, the prince’s half-brother, Sten––who was expected to remain in this settlement––had been summoned to court.

“Why?” Asked Nara with a slight frown. The Danes and the English, on whose land Danelaw had been built, were not exactly on good terms, but there had been no signs of hostility in the months since the team had first set foot on the island. If anything, the English king had been distracted by the appearance of ‘blood-thirsty creatures of Hell,’ of which the Eternals were making quick work.

“They’re plotting something,” Druig alleged. It didn’t take reading someone’s mind to comprehend the treachery of man. With the settlement’s best defenders gone, the hall was conspicuously vulnerable. Fish in a barrel. 

A quick look up at the second-floor banister confirmed his suspicions.

“Get down!” Shouted Nara, her eyes wide and alert at the sight of Saxon archers. The warning had barely left her lips when they let fly a barrage of arrows straight into the banquet crowd.

“Freydis!” yelled Nara, lurching forward. She caught the maiden before her body could hit the ground. Druig was right beside her, brows strewn together with concern.

“M-my lady…” Freydis whimpered. An arrow had pierced her abdomen, blood gushing from the wound.

“Shh, it’s alright, don’t move too much…” Soothed Nara, helplessly watching her eyes glaze over.

“Come, we must go!” Ajak’s command pulled Nara back to the situation at hand. The Prime Eternal had immediately taken charge, motioning for the other Eternals to gather around her. Druig helped Nara up, guilt twisting in his heart at her unwillingness to abandon her human companion. Sprite cast a well-practiced slew of illusions, rendering them virtually invisible to the eyes of mortals as they retreated out of the building.

Saxon cavalrymen emerged from the dark, carrying torches. The slaughter was soon taken to the streets. A cacophony of screams and metal slashing through flesh disturbed the chilly early October air. Teams of Saxon soldiers went from house to house, barricading the doors. Effectively sealing innocent women and children inside while they splattered oil all over the earthen walls. Homes lit up like gigantic bonfires. 

No one was spared––not even the little boy who’d momentarily slipped out and made a desperate sprint towards the surrounding woods.

No, his attempt at survival earned him two arrows squarely in the back.

“Let me go!” Cried Nara, kicking and thrashing against Ikarus’s armored torso. He’d lifted her up as soon as he’d spotted her trying to redirect the flames back at the Saxons. The rest of the Eternals had withdrawn further towards their starship. Only Ajak remained at the top of the hill, keeping a watchful eye on the stragglers.

“No! We must not intervene!” Ikarus roared, tightening his grip.

“Fuck that!” Nara retorted. With all of her strength, she twisted out of his arms and lugged a fist his way. “They’re being massacred in there!”

Ikarus dodged the punch and raised his palm to fight back, but Druig jumped to her defense. “Try it, see what happens,” the telepath challenged, placing a protective arm in front of Nara.

“At least just let me stop the fire! We don’t even have to fight anyone. I-I–“ she entreated, her voice cracking.

“You know as well as I do that we can not,” Ikarus argued, celestial energy flaring up in his eyes. Patience wearing dangerously thin.

Nara looked past him at Ajak, holding out one last shred of hope.

To no avail. The Prime Eternal grimly shook her head.

It stung. Something between disillusionment and betrayal. There was no choice but to back down.

Ikarus, satisfied, took off flying towards the Domo. Nara stayed rooted to her spot. Hot, frustrated tears streaming down her face.

Gingerly, Druig reached out and laced his fingers with hers. Rubbing his thumb across her knuckles, offering whatever comfort he could. “Let’s go, m’darling.”

火

It takes a couple of minutes for Nara to get a hold on the compound’s layout, and another two to locate where Druig’s stormed off to. An empty yard, secluded near the edge of the compound. Now littered with splintered wood.

She does not recall Druig being so involved in manual labor. Yet here he is, jacket off, splitting logs of timber in two with firm swings of an axe. And she’s relieved that he doesn’t seem to mind her presence.

“What did those poor logs ever do to you?” She breaks the ice, keeping her voice light and breezy.

“You’re right,” Druig grunts, still focused on the task at hand. An upswing, and he brings the axe down on a new log with a vengeance. “I should be doing this on Ikarus’s face.”

Nara stifles a laugh. “He means well, you know. They all do.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What?”

“The way you just forgive them.”

“It’s been a long time, Dru. Things change.”

Now it’s Druig’s turn to laugh. A breathless, joyless laugh. “Sure. You’re just like them at this point.”

His statement is meant to hurt, and it’s worked. Scrunching up her nose, Nara takes a step closer to where he’s viciously hacking away. “How so?” She counters.

“Well, last time I checked,” Druig shrugs off the annoyance in her tone. “You were having fun out there in the world. Like you haven’t a care about us being stranded on this damn planet. But why should I give a shit about the Emergence or whatever Sersi’s calling it?”

“Wait, ‘last time you checked’?” Nara’s jaw drops in utter surprise. “I haven’t seen you in 500 years! If I’m not mistaken, I was always the one reaching out to the rest of you.”

“Whatever,” says Druig with a huff, lowering the axe. “You just seemed… Content, that’s all. S’ppose I can see why you’re throwing your lot in with them.”

His accusations stun Nara into momentary silence. When he still refuses to look at her, however, she can’t help blurting out exactly what’s on her mind. “What was I supposed to tell you? Huh? That I was literally there in Nagasaki when the second bomb hit? Or that the image of children with third degree burns from napalms is forever seared into my brain? I didn’t want to put all that on you, or anyone else!”

When he doesn’t respond, she presses on, in a quivering whisper. “You stopped one war. One. Out of thousands that have happened since and thousands to come. At this point, I’m just trying to prevent more suffering. So, tell me, Druig, what did you expect me to do?”

“I–" He opens his mouth, but she’s stepped away, wiping hurriedly at her eyes. Withdrawing to a stone bench tugged between two tall trees.

“You stopped writing,” Druig finally admits, lodging the axe deep into a tree stump. Running a hand through his mussed hair, he joins her where she’s seated. “You stopped writing, and I thought I’d come see you in person, but…”

“I guess I shouldn’t have told you to not worry,” she chuckles ruefully. “I was hoping you’d start a conversation, for once."

“Look––” Druig starts, his handsome features marred by a deep scowl. She tilts her head towards him, a sign that she’s listening.

But before he can think through what he wants to say, he’s interrupted by the sound of commotion and frantic screams coming from the compound.

[rosella-writes]

Hi and welcome to DADWC! From the poetry prompt list, how about "36. I know time will not forgive me" for Sten & f!Mahariel?

Thanks so much!! I love this one for them aaaaaaaa

Rhiannon and Sten have a very close friendship that leans towards a partnership. If their positions and religions allowed, they would be platonic life partners, but as it is, circumstance and duty separate them.

for @dadrunkwriting

Vhenan,

I can't believe what Alistair has told me, so I write you. Did you really do all those things? Imprison and duel and subjugate? This is beneath the man I call my friend, ara lath. You are more than that mantle the Qun placed on your shoulders.

I'm not writing to tell you how to rule your lands alongside the others in your triumvirate. I simply ask you to remember who your friends are, and who loves you. It only stands to reason.

Dareth shiral,

Warden Commander Rhiannon Mahariel

━━

Kadan,

Why not believe what King Alistair has told you? He fought with honor and defeated me in fair combat. Thus he is free. I even told him of his father, as is his due. Why do you doubt me and my intentions? I do as I must in as just a way as I can. Maraas shokra, my friend. This you know as well as I.

[There is no signature, only the seal of the Arishok]

━━

There is an island off the coast of Seheron. Once a year, Rhiannon Mahariel hires a boat. Once a year, her Sten is waiting there for her.

Nine years after the Blight ends, Rhiannon's bare feet hit the sand of their island. The sun has browned her already dark skin, and her carved vallaslin almost disappears into the freckled lines of her face. She adjusts her simple clothes, her back bare of its usual twin daggers, and summits the sandy copse in her approach of their cabin.

Blade-leafed trees wave gently on either side of the door, moved by the breeze wafting off the ocean. Rhiannon knows he's already here by the massive hammock hung in the shade, as well as his boots beside the door. She pauses, smiling, before knocking thrice.

The door swings wide, and she registers a boomed "Kadan," before she is scooped into a spine-crackling hug. She laughs, giddy, and hugs back as tightly as her short, wiry arms allow.

"Vhenan," she grunts. "Let me see you."

He pulls away, and she reaches up to cup his cheeks. There are new lines at the corners of his eyes, new creases in the downturn of his mouth, but his face is still dear and familiar. His loose white locs swing free around his shoulders, longer than ever, and his eyes seem tired, yet fond. His heavy hands fall on her shoulders.

"Tell me of your days," she says, giving his cheek a final pat before attempting to move past him into the cabin. Her packed rucksack is heavy in the crook of her arm.

He stops her with a tight grasp of her upper arm. "I do not wish to speak of them," he says tersely. "Here is where we leave our titles behind. You are not Warden Commander. I am merely Sten."

She glances up at him, feeling worry crease her brow. "I don't like the sound of that. I know our rules, but we talk anyway. What's going on?"

He grunts, but allows her to retreat into the cool darkness of their shared home. He sits at the table on his wicker chair, watching with sharp, glinting eyes as she unpacks her things.

"To tell you would be to give you an unfair advantage," he says finally. He sounds choked. "You must guess instead."

She glances at him, brow furrowed. She slowly sets aside a bar of soap. "You don't have Alistair or anyone else squirreled away in a cell on Seheron, do you?"

He grunts. "No."

She wracks her brain, piecing over their letters and conversations from years past. Rhiannon sifts through them as if her guesses are limited, as if Sten would not humor her with question after answered question. He has always been this way ― so long as she could think of the questions, he would gladly answer them all. He would not volunteer information. She just had to be clever enough to ask.

"This is bad for me personally?" she finally says.

He grunts an affirmation.

She picks up a jar of embrium-scented oil and rolls it between her hands. "Does this have anything to do with something you once told me?"

He grunts again in the affirmative.

"How long ago?"

He blinks slowly, a tiny smile stretching his mouth. "Nine years ago."

Her face falls as she thinks. "You will not look for me on the battlefield, will you Sten?"

Sten stands, his knees popping and crackling. He crosses the floor to her side and gathers her up in his arms again.

"They push once more towards the south," he murmurs into her hair, voice hushed and urgent. "It is my lot to lead them, and lead I will."

Her arms dart around him and hold tight. She is a steel wire around his waist.

"When?"

He shakes his head. His body is enormous and warm and scented of smoke and leather and dried sweat. She leans into him.

"I can't let you," she hisses. "I won't forgive you if you do."

"I know, kadan," he says, pressing a kiss into her hair. "I know."

[quantumlocked310]

In the Bed of Love - Chapter 2

Moodboard by the incredible @flowers-in-your-hayr!!

It’s Chapter 2! This one switches POV to Hvitty’s favorite Gorgon.

Summary: Our intrepid Hero Hvitserk, burdened with glorious purpose to prove his godhood, takes the epic journey to slaughter the Gorgons, but stumbles in love along the way.

Warnings (so far): greek mythology inaccuracies, slow burn 

Ratings + Word Count: [General - 1,765w]

Series Masterlist (contains extra notes about Greek words and some of the Gods mentioned) Now with more Gods!

Extra Relevant Note: Malakas means Asshole in Greek (according to Google Translate)

++++++++++++

The early dawn is quiet, with dew glistening off the statues in the garden, and you’re the first awake in the house. As usual you walk quietly to the dresser where you get the silk robe gifted to you from Dionysus. Enrobed you walk down to the kitchen where you take a small cup of wine and yesterday’s bread out to the garden for breakfast.

There are a few stumps scattered amongst the statues, and you sit on the one closest to one of your favorite statues. Malakas the goose, who thought himself brave one day as he bit the ankles of your sister, Sten. You and Marmor had collapsed together laughing at the swiftest of you being chased at length by the ornery goose. Sten had yelled and screamed at it, to no avail, before finally giving in and glaring it to stone, and proclaiming his name Malakas.

“Good morning, friend.” You greet the goose and pat it on the head, but notice there’s something different about him today. Inside its mouth is a piece of paper, slightly crumpled, with ink on it. You look at it puzzled, then look around the garden a little, but see no one. After dipping your bread in the wine and taking a bite, you put the cup on the stump and grab the paper. Only to immediately start coughing.

It’s a crude drawing of you standing in offense with your shield. Clearly, the artist has no skill, but it’s obvious the figure is yours both in size and you’re the only one of your sisters who can carry a shield as big as this one. You’re a little flattered, and a little suspicious. The gorgons train together every evening, but this paper wasn’t in the goose’s mouth yesterday.

After finishing the bread and wine, while staring at the drawing, a million thoughts run through your head. Foremost concern for your security, and who could be watching. The gorgons were fearsome creatures, and that attracted idiots who wished to prove themselves against a mighty foe. Hence the many armored statues around you. Then curiosity, and why this person would focus on you. Once your foes reached your gates, they usually focussed on the muscular strength of Marmor, or the svelt speed of Sten, not the chunky bulk of your body made for sturdy defence. It was useful in battle, being underestimated. But it was never an advantage for love.

Sten didn’t care about copulation or partnership, and Marmor had a sometimes-something going on with Haphaestus. You loved your sisters, and you loved your life in the Oikos, but there were days when you wanted what Aphrodite and Eros talked about or what you saw at gatherings with Dionysus. Pleasures within and beyond your dreams were always just out of reach, because you were a gorgon, a monster. The risk of loving you was too great.

Why would anyone find you beautiful enough to put on paper?

The feelings well up inside you, and burst. You crumple the drawing in your fist, a few tears escaping your eyes, and immediately regret what you’ve done. Slowly you stand and smooth the paper back out, then go back inside to place it in the drawer of your bedside table.

You put on your clothes for the day, then put on a chestplate and greaves. It’s decided, you will check the perimeter and see if you can find whoever is spying on the Oikos. On the way out you run into Sten who is weaving in the inner garden.

“I’m doing a perimeter check.”

“Would you like company?” Sten responds absentmindedly.

“I’ll be okay. Keep half an ear out in case another one of Philoctetes’ useless heroes is lurking about.”

“I dunno. The last one was cute. Maybe it’s time we had a mortal as a pet.”

You roll your eyes and counter, “I’ll be sure to mention that if I find one. I’m sure they would be willing to live under threat of getting chopped into tiny bits and fed to our snakes.”

Sten turns her head and raises an eyebrow, “You might be surprised.”

You scoff and turn to go, “I’m never surprised anymore.”

As you walk through the garden to the north side of the Oikos, you try to shake off this strange mood that the drawing has put you in. The edge of the cliff is your first stop, and you center yourself listening to the rushing waters of the Styx below. You see Charon in his ferry and raise a hand. As usual you get the most minute nod in return, and you make your way east along the forest border, taking light steps as Artemis taught you, and tuning into your snakes scenting the air.

Over halfway done, and you haven’t found anything of note. A few of the traps Sten maintains have caught small game, and you cut some of the excess string to tie them together and drape the catch over your shoulders before resetting the traps.

On the last leg of your check your snakes perk up. They sway further West and you follow, keeping your light hunting step, and making sure to draw your sword. You go further into the forest until you can no longer see the bright signal of the Oikos, and then you find it. There is a patch of disturbed leaves and earth where a small fire had been. The ashes are almost completely brushed away, and the leaves spread over to make it blend into the ground. If you did not have your snakes to guide you to the scent you would not have found it. Whoever had camped here knew how to cover their tracks.

Unfortunately, your snakes couldn’t help you track any further. They knew if something was prey, or different, but they didn’t have the skills of hunting dogs. Once you found the spot they had scented, they would not know where to track from there, and your meticulous circles around the ashes yielded no more results.

You huff to yourself and when you finally stop, your stomach gives a mighty growel and you observe the sky. You’ve missed the mid-day meal, and it was past time to start daily training. Marmor is going to be insufferable. In your haste to sate your hunger and get to training you neglect the last leg of the perimeter, much to the luck of the prowling Hvitserk who had no idea how close he came to being discovered.

When you reach the edge of the forest there’s a twang and a zing, and you twist behind the nearest tree, shield on your back, pressed against the bark. You watch the arrow dig into the wood of the tree in front of you.

“What the fuck, Sten?” You shout.

“You’re late!” Replies Marmor.

You groan to yourself then shrug the shield off your back and use its shiny metal to see where your sisters are. Slowly, you pull off your catch for dinner from around your neck, and get ready to throw them at your sisters. Raising your shield in front of your body to deflect Sten’s arrows, you launch the strung together animals over your barrier, then shove forward to put your whole weight behind your shield, in hopes that you will shock Marmor and throw her off her feet.

It works. Marmor’s annoyance has her getting thrown off briefly, and the training session really begins. You block and parry, attacking when you can, but mainly trying to cover your open spots when Sten shoots arrows toward you. You’re late, so they’re both going harder on only you.

But your head isn’t in it. The moves are harder to come into your mind than usual, your footwork not as instinctive as yesterday. An off day all because of some faceless enemy stalking in the trees. Who are you kidding, it could just be a traveller. But the way the ashes were buried has you nervous.

And the drawing. Marmor’s sword clangs against your shield just in time. How could you forget? Were they connected? Could you get away with telling your sisters about the perimeter check but not the drawing? You didn’t think so. Your gut is screaming that they’re connected.

But now your gut is screaming, because Marmor kicked you.

“Fuck you!”

“Focus up! What if an idiot hero comes here? You’re not going to win fighting them like this.”

“Oh. My. God. I know!” Your snakes start hissing as they pick up on your anger, and you keep hacking and slashing toward your sister, trying to disarm her even though you know it won’t get you anywhere.

All you want to do is stop and think for a few minutes. Plan your next moves. Figure out who is watching you and why. And why would they draw you? That’s the part that’s gnawing at you the most. There’s a weird fluttery feeling in your chest and you absolutely hate it.

You use your anger to back up your power. Attacking furiously where you would usually stay back and block. You’re reckless and Marmor gets in a few close calls with her sword. You’re trying to block a particularly vicious swing of the sword when you hear Sten call your name, the duck seems to happen in slow motion where you watch the arrow fly just past your brow, and feel the sting of a sword on your thigh. Marmor has pulled her sword down across the top of your shield and you hadn’t pulled your leg back in time.

“First blood!” Sten yells, and Marmor pulls up and stops, only looking a little apologetic.

The wound is just a scratch for you. It stings, and will heal in a few days, but first blood stops the fight.

You rest the edge of your shield on the ground and lean on it just slightly, staring at your sisters. “We have to talk. Inside. It’s not safe out here in sight of the woods.”

“You found something.” Sten remarks. You glare at her. If you’re being watched, you definitely don’t want to be heard.

“Then let’s go eat. You must be hungry, Y/N. You’ve been out all day.” Marmor says, her eyes narrowing and trying to covertly scan the treeline. She walks over and grabs the game you had thrown as a distraction earlier.

Together, you walk back to the Oikos. Quiet and a little sullen. Your sisters don’t like off days any more than you do, and they are anxious to hear what you’ve found.

++++++++++++

If you want to read other stuff I write here’s my masterlist

Taglist: @deans-ch-ch-cherrypie @punkrocknpearls @solinarimoon @artemiseamoon @alexhandersen-marcoilsoe-fandom @southernbe @vikingstrash @ritual-unions-gotme @pomegranates-and-blood @mrsalwayswrite @jadelynlace​

[grimxswathe]

I come bearing quite belated Moonfire Faire fluff with Estinien and Katsu! Special tanks to Sten and Siren on Twitter for letting me borrow their character briefly and coming up with a pet name, respectively. 

The word count is 1,378 and starts under the cut. Beware of mild spoilers in the first paragraph for the second part of Death Unto Dawn.

I’m gonna tag @snow-covered-moon, since she likes these two. (If anyone wants to be tagged for writing, pls let me know.)

It was the final night of the Moonfire Faire in Costa del Sol. Estinien was relaxing on the water’s edge with Katsu nestled into his side, his arm draped around her waist. The water had become a little chilly for his liking once the sun set, but he wasn’t about to deprive Katsu of this time with him. Ever since the battle against the Telophoroi at Carteneau, things had become quite tumultuous and something had been bothering him as of late. Between the twins now sharing their Ishgardian home and assisting the Scions with the occasional mission, it seemed like Katsu couldn’t make time for him anymore. It was making him worried that she, for some unbeknownst reason, was no longer happy with their relationship. 

Despite the anxiety gnawing at his insides, he couldn’t take his eyes off Katsu. She was so tiny, especially compared to his broad frame, and looked far too delicate to carry the weight of two separate worlds on her shoulders. All the same, Estinien knew full well that looks were deceiving. At the moment however, tucked safely into his side, she looked surprisingly vulnerable. He absently started tracing his calloused fingertips in circles against her hip, causing her to sigh happily and snuggle against him. Estinien’s heart melted at her response and he gave her an affectionate squeeze. Halone be praised, he loved this woman. Which was why he had to voice his concerns forthwith. 

“Something’s been weighing on my mind recently,” he said.

Katsu rested her chin against his chest and gazed up at him. “What is it? Is aught amiss?” 

As soon as he noticed the way she was looking at him, Estinien’s train of thought fizzled away. She was looking at him like he meant infinitely more to her than the sun and moon. She was looking at him like he was worth more to her than those damned plushies she loved so much. Like he was worth it. The sheer amount of love on her face was overwhelming and Estinien felt tears welling up in his eyes. He couldn’t help but wonder if she had been looking at him like this all along and his insecurities had prevented him from noticing.

Katsu’s loving expression turned to one of alarm when she saw the tears rolling down Estinien’s cheeks, but he wrapped her tightly in his arms and held her close to him. He buried his nose into her hair and inhaled deeply, breathing in her scent.

“I’m okay,” he assured her. “It’s just...gods, I love you. So much.”

Estinien felt Katsu freeze in his arms and for good reason. He had only ever uttered those words before when he was reciprocating her sentiments. After allowing a moment for the weight of his words to settle, she acknowledged him in a small voice.

“Can you say it again?”

“As often as you’d like to hear it, my dear,” Estinien breathed. “I love you.” 

“And I love you.”

Even though he’d heard those three little words countless times from Katsu, this time they caused Estinien’s tears to fall harder. 

“Oh, Estinien,” Katsu mumbled, wrapping her arms protectively around his torso. “What is all of this about?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he choked out through his tears. And it didn’t. 

Being careful not to break from his embrace, Katsu maneuvered into Estinien’s lap and started to gently kiss his tears away. Once she was sure she had gotten them all, she touched her forehead to his and cupped his face in her hands.

“My handsome dragoon,” she told him.

A stupid, lovestricken grin spread across Estinien’s face and he placed a tiny kiss to her nose. “And you’re my beautiful moon flower,” he told her. 

Katsu’s eyes widened slightly at the new nickname and she hastily buried her face into Estinien’s chest, no doubt trying to hide her blush. A soft chuckle rumbled in his throat and he leaned down to gently kiss her hair. She pressed a tender kiss in response to the deep scar that had once been his left nipple, causing a shiver to go down his spine that had nothing to do with the crisp water.

“Careful, lest you want to miss the fireworks.”

Katsu giggled lightly. “Nay, we wouldn’t want that. They are belike to start any minute, afterall.” 

As if on cue, a firework exploded in the night sky, prompting the couple to turn their attention upwards. Katsu reclined her head against Estinien’s collarbone so she could watch the fireworks comfortably.

“I’ve always loved fireworks,” she told him. “They’re so colorful and pretty.”

Estinien hummed quietly in acknowledgement and rested his chin on her head. While pretty and colorful things weren’t exactly his cup of tea, he couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing Katsu by telling her that. He knew how badly she had been wanting to watch the festival fireworks with him. Besides, they were clearly making Katsu happy and that was enough for him. When he didn’t respond after a minute or two, she frowned the slightest bit before realization crossed her features and she reached up to gently run her fingertips against one of his pointed ears.

“They aren’t hurting your ears, are they? I forgot your kind has sensitive hearing.”

Even though he found her concern touching, Estinien grunted as he softly batted her hand away. “Please. I’ve heard many a dragon’s roar in the past. I think I can handle a few fireworks. Besides,” he brushed his knuckles against the curve of Katsu’s horn, “I’m more concerned about you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t your horns use vibrations to hear? These sharp noises can’t be pleasant.” 

Katsu looked surprised for a brief moment, but she then grinned broadly. “You’re such a sweetheart.”

Estinien felt his cheeks flush deeply. “Oh, shush,” he grumbled.

“You’ll have to-mmpf!”

Katsu’s retort dissolved into a muffled sound of surprise when Estinien pressed their lips together. He took a moment to savor the kiss before addressing her, their lips still touching.

“You were saying?”

“Mmm, I can’t say I was quite expecting that,” she mumbled, pausing to lightly kiss his lips, “but I shan’t complain.”

Estinien’s lips curled into a satisfied smirk. “Good,” he muttered before placing another small kiss on her lips.

Katsu grinned against his lips and gave him one last kiss. She then pulled back slightly and twirled some strands of his hair around her finger that had worked themselves free of the loose bun he had tied it in that morning.

“You’re absolutely right and certes, the vibrations they cause are irritating. But, it’s completely worth it to be able to share them with you.”

Estinien smiled at Katsu softly and gently moved her off his lap, disregarding her puzzled expression. He then repositioned himself so he was laying on his back with his head across her thighs and folded his hands on his stomach. 

“Mayhap we should watch some fireworks, then,” he told her.

“Aye, you’re right,” she said quietly. 

The disappointment in Katsu’s voice was palpable, which caused Estinien to frown quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just a shame that we have to leave tomorrow,” she told him glumly. 

Her statement triggered Estinien’s recollection of some advice G’raha had given him prior to the faire’s commencement.

“If I may offer some advice, don’t rush back here as soon as the festival is done. You needn’t worry about the twins. Sten and I can keep an eye on them, though we both know they really don’t need it. But, you really need this time with Katsu.” 

“If you’d like,” Estinien said uncertainly, fidgeting his thumbs, “we can certainly stay in Costa del Sol a while longer.”

The way Katsu’s expression completely lit up at his suggestion was a sight far more captivating to Estinien than any firework and it made him feel incredibly stupid for ever doubting that she loved him.

“I’d like that very much,” she gushed. 

“As would I, my dear,” Estinien told her. “I love you.”

Katsu positively beamed down at him, tracing her fingertips against his lips. “I love you, too.”

Estinien lightly kissed her fingers before nodding toward the sky. “We’d best dispense with the chatter for now. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re missing the fireworks.”

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

Favorite Passages of 2020

thought I’d start a new tag for writers for the end of the year--favorite lines/ passages written. There might be a tag like this already but hey I felt like taking a trip down memory lane. I feel like this year has seen me grow a lot. I finished 3 WIPs from 3 different fandoms and decided to make a part 2 of a previously finished fic. What a year, what a year, am I right? Fic writing has certainly made the days easier, made me happy and taken my mind off of situations. 

Obviously the year isn’t over yet maybe something will overtake this, but I felt like taking a trip through memory lane. Also, number five has some light smut.

tagging @laraslandlockedblues @ma-sulevin @kemvee @galadrieljones @thevikingwoman @jentrevellan @wardenari @roguelioness @idrelle @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold @queen-kass-the-writer @ellenembee

1. Only Lovers, Resident Evil, Leon S. Kennedy x Ada Wong

She laughs to herself. One moment, they told each other last night. And this is it. They were fools. They’re still fools. Happy, sated, blissful fools. And lovers.

And yet, it’d be cruel not to tell him, to let him live in an illusion. 

“You don’t love me,” she whispers. “you love the me you think about when you’re lonely.” 

“Not lonely now.” 

He glances at her with a mischievous, knowing look. “Neither am I,” she tells him, and she even plays the part, tells him she loves him too. They’re only lovers now, after all. 

“You didn’t have to say that,” he says. “I know what’s true.”

“Then what’s true?” 

He rises, faces her. He cups her cheek, caresses her face. He follows with a gentle kiss.

“Now,” he whispers. “Us.”

***This is from my one shot of Leon and Ada from the Resident Evil games. I played the game over quarantine and my twelve year old feels for the femme fatale and hot agent reignited, so I wanted to tribute that. Now I like Leon and Ada vastly more than Leon and Claire because I just find it more interesting--but beyond that I really wanted to explore an enemies to lovers relationship. They’re on two different sides of a war but they can’t help that attraction and pull, and I just like the idea they kind of see each other sometimes and release some tension, though both skirt around the idea of love. I like this passage because it encapsulates their tense yet dynamic and even romantic pull. Plus when I wrote “you don’t love me, you love the me you think about when you’re lonely” I just felt really powerful and badass, and I collect badass lines that come to my head for future wham lines in my writing, and I am 90 percent sure this was one such line. Either that or it came to me as I was writing, but I honestly don’t remember. 

2.  Love Song on Sapphire Isle, GOT, Jaime x Brienne

From the palace, there’s a strum of a lute, the sound intermingling with the crash of the waves that’s melodic and lulling. They stand side by side, listening to the song—a love song, though Jaime says she is his love song, his greatest adventure.  And she wraps her arms around him, and tells him he is her love song, and her later. Though now, she thinks her later has turned into an always.

***This is from my Jaime and Brienne longfic, a pseudo fix it that really just made me feel better after how disappointed I was with where they took Jaime and Brienne’s arc in the show. Come on George make them each other’s true love in the books I know you are prove those people who can’t read subtext wrong In the fic the term “later,” is part of their romantic dynamic, Jaime and Brienne always telling each other there will be time for romance later before the battle. then they get their later and and they’re stuck in a rut, not knowing what exactly to do. The last chapter, a snap shot of their “later,” years after the penultimate fic chapter, shows the life they’ve built. I tell my kids in my class that their final lines in a paper should pack a punch, and I think with everything that happened in the fic and the idea of later, it was the perfect final line. 

3.The Sweetest Sorrow, RDR2. Arthur Morgan x Charlotte Balfour

Come back, she said to him, sitting by their favorite spot in the clearing by the water. I know what you said, and I accepted it, but it is not easy to be the one that waits. It’s not fair that I am always the one that waits. These men in old stories, men like Arthur who masqueraded as an outlaw but were also knights, thought they had the harder duties. Charlotte, though she would always sing for Arthur and the good man underneath that always won over the evil bad man he claimed to be, was tired of singing songs of those men. She sung praises for Penelope and other women like her, the waiters. She sung for herself and her strength, and waited for the day when she could show him again just how strong she was, as strong as him. If only he would come back, one more time. She made sure to pour longings and promises in their parting kiss after he said that she gave him his dream. She kissed him to woo him back.

“Come back,” she said, and she hoped the wind carried her prayers. Come back to me Arthur, she wrote on her journal in her lap. She prayed that her longing, tangible in the words she wrote and spoke would make him stronger, beat that vile thing that had made it’s way into her once proud man and withering him. If he came back and it turned that he had given her his ailment, they could be brave together. She was tired of being brave alone. She was good at being alone, but that didn’t mean she had to endure it.

Come back.

Arthur was made to believe he was alone, and he had to be alone with his ailment. She couldn’t rely on their last conversation, her last kiss to him. Once he was away from her she knew his duty and self-sacrifice would win. Why, why did she not go with him, why did she allow herself to think she had to be the one that stayed? If she was his equal, she would have showed him.

Come back.

He wasn’t alone. He could find a way back to her once everything was fixed, but nothing could ever become truly fixed. Would he remain and remain, hopelessly fixing until he became too frail and withered? She knew him. He would. He was too much of a good man, especially now.

Come back.

It wasn’t that she wanted him to be selfish. She wanted him to be true to himself. But that man was wrestling with a giant called doubt.

Come back.

The wind blew her journal to the last few dozen pages. She hadn’t realized how worn it was before, how the binding was tearing and the pages weren’t sticking to the spine as they used to. Come back, she wrote. Come back to me Arthur. Again and again, she wrote, more furious than the last, her hand flying through her remaining blank pages. The wind was strong, and before she could catch one of the pages that ripped out, she could only watch as the wind ripped it’s away across the stream. More pages began to fly from her journal with all the same messages, come back, come back, Arthur come back, don’t leave me in this dark, cruel place where I can’t find you. Some fell in the river, some were carried to the clearing behind her.

She lost all her blank pages. She didn’t mourn.

“Come back,” she said once more, for the final time. “Come back.”

***So I stopped updating this fic in 2019 because I lost the muse. Frankly too I spent the bulk of writing this story in an unhappy mood, and I associated a lot of my feelings of the time when I thought about going back. however, wanting to replay RDR2 made me fall for Arthur all over again, and made me want to come back to this world, so I reread it and tidied it up and went back. I found I no longer associated the fic with my mood at the time and could appreciate it as it’s own thing. The meta of this section and why I’m found of it is that the idea of blank pages is associated with Arthur and Charlotte’s relationship.  they want to write a story together and fill up their blank pages together. Plus I am just very attached to the image of Charlotte writing in a journal and the pages getting lost in the wind. Also love the literary references and allusions in this fic, and you can see that here. Truth to be told i think this is one of my technically best fics for it’s consistency and build. Also, Arthur lives.   

4. Memoirs of a Long, Long Time, Morrigan x Warden

Rowan had no shame. Once outside the blacksmith’s, he took Morrigan’s hand, leading her out by the water. He held up his hand to Alistair, Leliana and Sten, promising it would be one moment, and one moment only.

“Yes?” she asked, with a dollop of sugary sweetness

He didn’t play games. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Why are you?” she fired back. “We are here for the Arl, not to save the entire village."

“Look around,” he told her. “Who will help these people if I do not?”

“Yet to accept a kiss? From that woman? Shall we keep our list? Leliana, that girl in the chantry, the tavern wench…me….”

He didn’t care if Alistair, Leliana, and Sten were all watching. “You know what I feel for you is different,” he muttered.

“Oh? Is it?”

“Shall I kiss you now to prove it?”

“But I do wonder if you would, gallant knight from a story book? You—”

He took her hand and pulled their bodies closer together, her words disappearing. “Am I a knight, or rogue?” he asked her. “No. I’m a Grey Warden.”

She bit her lip, mesmerized by his. Oh, to have done it then before battle, in front of his companions.

It was a nice thought, but it wasn’t what he wanted.

“I won’t kiss you now,” he said, “though a kiss before battle is what the bards sing of. I’d rather wait to kiss you when you aren’t so…salty. Kisses taste better that way.”

The temptress, Witch of the Wilds smiled, both agreeing with him, and knowing he did indeed want her lips and her lips alone. She stood by his side in battle, and then stood by his side come morning when the village remained. When Bella thanked him again after they came to the tavern with for complimentary glass of mead—a small reprieve before they would head to Castle Redcliffe— Morrigan said nothing and merely stood by his side, her arm pressed against his. When his mead sat untouched on the counter after a few sips, she took his glass and took a sip.

“I suppose I am to wait till after we storm the castle?” she asked.

“If I find a small grotto to take you. I hear kisses happen only in beautiful places.”

“Then we should do it anywhere you are.”

He flushed with vanity. He knew he looked tired, with dark, purplish circles under his eyes and scraggly hair that was growing out, though at least it had some wave to it. He lost weight as well, as his cheeks were hollower. His beard was growing as well, and he knew soon he would need to trim it. Frankly, he looked like what he was: a tired man who slept in the woods and was forced to settle every squabble in Redcliffe Village. And yet the Witch of the Wilds, who looked at radiant as she did when he first met her, would have him anywhere. She liked him as he was: tired and frankly annoyed.

He took one last sip of mead before suggesting they meet Teagan. After that, he would be one step closer to his kiss.

Or, not.

***I always wanted to write Morrigan x Warden. I was so close to making the Warden in In Waking Dreams a male that romanced Morrigan and had Kieran with her, but I chickened out and went with what I was most familiar with, a female Cousland who romanced Alistair. Well, 2020. Time to do the creative things that once scared me lol. If I had the will I’d rewrite IWD just to stick in Morrigan and Rowan, but that would be too hard and mess with the timeline, of Cullen and Lyd’s relationship, because the hero of Ferelden is Hawke’s Warden contact in this fic, and there’s no way Rowan wouldn’t visit his wife and son....I mean maybe I can do it but I don’t have the energy, I’d rather just keep IWD as it is, and I do like the Warden in that fic.

Anyway this fic reminds me a lot of a play---fitting because Rowan was once an actor. I really enjoy their dialogue and banter and I think Rowan’s knightish, charming ways come across in his dialogue. Also I’m proud of the way the story is told. It’s his memories, interspersed with the current time, also switches to Morrigan at Skyhold. ****

5. In Waking Dreams: Dragon Age, Cullen x Quiz

Lydia knew it immediately before he handed it to her, the book of Ferelden myths and legends, with the story of Cliodna, the Avvar priestess who roamed the world looking for her lover nestled within the pages. Lydia had a copy before, though different than the one Cullen handed to her. This was the one his mother held in her hands as she read to her children, the one that survived the Blight to be held in Cullen’s hands again, to be given to his lover.

“Cliodna and Concohbar,” Lydia said thumbing through the pages, captivated by the drawing of the long, dark-haired woman, reunited and swimming in the constellations with the man she loved, the final illustration of the book. Her gaze fell back to Cullen, his expression soft.

“Us,” she said.

“We’re us,” he said. “But they do remind of a certain couple I know.” He caressed her face. “We’re in the same constellation, you and I.”

They couldn’t wait. They made love upstairs in his room, the book safely tucked away on his dresser. He sat on the edge of the bed, peeling off her clothes one by one, slowly and savoring each new patch of revealed skin. He pressed a kiss to her belly as she stood fully nude and himself still clothed—though she helped him rid himself of his shirt as he kicked off his boots and pushed down his trousers and smalls. She sat on his thighs, slid her hands down his body, filled herself with him to the brim. He wrote love letters of a happy birthday on her body, made her come against his hand as she thrust herself down and back upon him, riding his thighs as his calloused hands dug into her hips. Moonlight spilled through the gap in his roof, creating her favorite painting—one of a reverent, loving Cullen—a slight Commander to him in the way he whispered how good she felt, how her want was leaking on him, but unquestionably he was her Cullen.

She spoke his name, a chant and prayer stronger than one she ever prayed to the Maker, his arms wrapping around her and grasping as he shuddered and came, pouring inside of her, resting his head against her beating heart.

“My darling,” she said, covered in both their sweats. “My love.”

“Be honest,” he said against her breasts, peering at her. “Would you have preferred our secret place, something else today? You said you wanted quiet.”

She stroked his bearded face, tousled his hair. “What you all did was perfect. And you coordinated it?”

“Mostly Josephine. But I had some ideas.”

She grinned. “Darling. You have given me the happiest of days.”

***Well, I always wanted to continue IWD, just got caught up in other fandoms. Plus I didn’t think I was ready yet. Believe me I tried but I had no clue where to start. Well, I finally learned: Lydia’s birthday, Cullen throwing her a party. Actually I do enjoy this whole chapter--it’s Lydia and Cullen being romantic and fun and throwing out their pet names, the two just enjoying each other as they are. It’s so refreshing to see them happy and not uptight in a canon fic, because oooh boy rereading the fic and getting back into the world made me realize just how damn dramatic they are, lol. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, we high drama here or we go home. Anyway, really happy to be back, like over the moon even, and I had a reader tell me my writing has improved since I finished in 2018. So, it was quite nice to hear, quite affirming.******

Part of me has never gotten rid of my innate flowy language, but I do think I have improved with just saying what I need to say with no embellishment at certain points. 

[pikapeppa]

Sten/f!Mahariel: Asala-ataar

 Chapter 5 of Sten x Yara Mahariel’s ocean adventures is up on AO3!

In which Yara has a nightmare, and Sten introduces the concept of asala-ataar, or ‘soul sickness’. 

~5300 words; read on AO3 instead.

********************

Lethallan.

Yara patted Tamlen’s twisted and rotting face. “It’s all right,” she insisted. “You’ll be all right. You can be a Warden.”

No. Too late for me. Too far gone.

She shook her head vehemently. “Don’t give up. Just drink this, and you can be a Warden like me.” She gave him a cup of blood – her own blood, freshly collected from the pulsing wound in her side that Tamlen had inflicted. 

She held her blood to his lips, but it poured back down over her own hands and into the burning battlements of Ostagar, and Tamlen was gone. 

“Tamlen!” she shouted. “Lethallin, come back!” He couldn’t be far. She would just run along the battlements and climb over the mountain of corpses to find him, and then he could be a Warden too. 

He didn’t need to die. He could be a Grey Warden too.

Boulders and bodies smashed into the crumbling battlements as she ran toward the mirror. She wiped the mirror to clear its hazy surface, but instead of her reflection, she saw his face: skin mottled and stretched over a mouthful of rotting teeth, hairless and ghastly. The only recognizable features were his distinctive green eyes. 

“Tamlen,” she gasped. She slammed her bloody palms against the mirror. “Tamlen, get out of there! I can save you!”

You already did. I’m dead already.

“No,” she snapped. “No, you’re – Alistair, quick, we have to get him out!”

“Alistair is gone,” Alistair said.

She looked at him. He had Jory’s face, but that didn’t matter. “Come on, Alistair, we need to get him out,” she said urgently. “He can be a Warden like us!”

“Alistair is dead,” Jory-faced-Alistair said. “He’s dead where you left him.”

“Stop making jokes, will you?” she yelled. “This is serious!” She slammed her fists on the golem’s huge stone chest, but it was no use: Tamlen was stuck inside the golem’s body, fused inside of it with no escape, and she couldn’t get him out. 

But she had to get him out. She couldn’t just leave him to die. She turned to Morrigan. “Please,” she said. “Please, help me get him out.” 

“Of course, my friend,” she said, and she shoved a dagger deep into her own gut. 

“No!” Yara cried. “Morrigan, stop!” 

The dagger plunged into Morrigan’s belly again, and Tamlen spoke to her from inside the mirror-golem-mirror. I always loved you.

Yara sobbed. He was so close. The corpse-filled swamp was filling up with Morrigan’s blood, and it was lighting on fire everywhere that it touched, and Tamlen was so close, just on the other side of the mirror. “Please,” she begged. “I just wanted to save you.”

I always loved you, lethallan.

“Tamlen, please,” she cried. “Come back! Tamlen!”

“Kadan.”

She flinched and yelped. A hand was grasping her shoulder, and it was pitch-dark. 

“Tamlen!” she blurted. “Where–” She sat up and flailed in the dark, and her fingers found an arm, the arm that was grasping her shoulder: warm skin over hard muscle–

Sten. It was Sten. She was with Sten, and they were in their cabin on the Rivaini ship. 

She forced out a breath and pressed her trembling hands to her face. A moment later, the flickering golden light of the oil lamp leaked through her closed eyelids.

“You had a nightmare,” Sten said. 

She gulped in a shaky breath and looked up at him. He was standing over her, and his face was drawn in a deep frown. 

“Yes,” she rasped. “But it’s – I’m all right now.” Her heart was pounding in her ears, and her hands were still shaking, but if she lay down and breathed quietly, the shaking would stop.  

Sten was gazing silently at her, and she couldn’t bear the weight of his gaze. She briskly wiped her sweaty forehead. “I… you can go back to sleep, Sten. I’m fine, really.” 

“This is not fine,” he said.

She met his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“These nightmares,” he said. “You had them at times during our travels. I was not aware that they were this severe.”

She blinked at him quizzically. “The…? Oh. No, those were archdemon nightmares,” she explained. “That was different. Alistair had those too. This was just a normal nightmare.”

“It is not normal to scream in your sleep,” he said flatly.

She gaped at him in horror. She’d been screaming in her sleep?

She scraped her fingers through her hair. “Fenedhis. Sten, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It won’t…” She faltered. She was about to tell him that it wouldn’t happen again, but how could she promise such a thing when she couldn’t control what she dreamt about?

“What were you dreaming of?” he asked.

Tamlen, she thought. I left him to die. She swallowed hard. “Why do you want to know?”

“Such nightmares can be a sign of illness,” Sten said. “We call it asala-ataar: ‘soul sickness’, in your tongue. It is a common affliction in Seheron.”

She looked at him with fresh worry. “Soul sickness? Is that like being possessed?”

“No. It happens when a constant stream of death and destruction makes a soldier question his purpose in the Qun,” he explained. “Such questioning causes the soldier to struggle with himself, and with this struggle comes suffering. This is asala-ataar.”

She nodded slowly. She could see how that made sense, in a qunari sort of way. “And… and nightmares are a sign of that?”

“For some,” Sten said. “Other soldiers with asala-ataar cannot sleep.”

She nibbled worriedly at the inside of her cheek. Was it possible that she had this asala-ataar?

“What are some other signs?” she asked.

Sten sat down on his bedroll. “They startle easily. They can be quick to anger or to cry. There can be repetitive behaviours, such as scratching or nail-biting. In the worst cases, they lash out and harm their brothers or other innocents.”

Scratching? she thought in dismay. She folded her arms to hide her raw left wrist. “How… if someone has asala-ataar, how do they get better?”

“The first recourse is for your brothers to help you,” Sten replied. “We have a way to divert suffering from the mind into the body, and then to expel it.”

Yara raised her eyebrows. “Really? What way is that?”

“We strike the afflicted soldier repeatedly,” he said. “Usually with a pole or a sturdy stick so as not to harm our own hands.”

Yara eyed him suspiciously. Was he joking? He didn’t look like he was joking. His mouth didn’t have that subtle little twist that meant he was having her on. 

“Wait,” she said slowly. “You… your solution is to hit the sick person with a stick?”

“Or a pole, yes,” he said. 

She stared at him. “How in Mythal’s name does that help?”

He gave her a patient look. “It is as I said: their suffering is diverted from the mind to the body. It helps clear the mind so the soldier can recall their purpose.”

Yara gaped at him. Of all the strange qunari things that Sten had told her, this had to be the absolute strangest. 

She struggled to come up with something to say. “I… don’t think it would help me to be hit with a stick right now,” she finally said. 

He shrugged. “It does not help every soldier with asala-ataar, either. If it does not work, the soldier goes to the tamassrans for help. Many of them do not return to the antaam.” He scratched his chin. “I believe the tamassrans find new roles for them if the sickness progresses to that point.”

Yara nodded thoughtfully. Then she gave him a curious look. “How do you know so much about this? Did you have asala-ataar?”

“No,” he said. “But many of my brothers did. I struck many of them with sticks. You would be surprised how effective it can be.”

 Yara blurted out a little laugh. “That really does surprise me.”

He gave her a faint smile. She smiled back at him, and they sat quietly for a time as she considered his words. Maybe she did have asala-ataar. She was feeling pretty uncertain about her purpose, after all, and she had more than one of the signs that Sten had mentioned: she had nightmares, and she’d been scratching at her skin in her sleep. 

Then something occurred to her. One of the signs that Sten had mentioned was lashing out and harming innocent people. 

That was something that Sten had done. It was what had landed him in that cage in Lothering.

She licked her lips nervously. “Sten… are you sure you’ve never had this illness?”

He raised his eyebrows, so she pressed on. “In… in Lothering. You said you lashed out at that family after your beresaad got killed by darkspawn and you woke up in the barn. Could that have… didn’t that make you question your purpose at all? Did…” She trailed off as she realized how well the description of asala-ataar fit with Sten’s behaviour. Sten had suffered the unexpected loss of his entire squad, then he’d violently killed that family in Lothering. She knew he’d had nightmares; she’d witnessed one of them when they were trapped in the Fade while trying to free the Tower Circle from demons. And from the sounds of it, he’d made himself suffer by letting himself be caged – a sign that he was questioning his purpose, by his own logic.

She studied his face, and a pang of sympathy pulled at her heart; his expression was stonier than usual. “You did, didn't you?” she said softly. “You had soul sickness. That’s really why you attacked that family.”

He grunted. “How could I have soul sickness when I had lost my soul? My sword was gone. I was as good as dead already.”

“But weren’t you suffering in that cage?” she said. She had asked him this yesterday, and he hadn’t really answered.

His frowned deepened. “I was not questioning my purpose. I was attempting to lessen my failure. I had failed the Arishok, and I had failed the Qun. If I had not submitted to that cage, I would have suffered the greatest failing of all: I would have become a Tal-Vashoth. That cage was my only recourse to honour my duty to the Qun.”

She studied him with a painful feeling in her chest. Despite his constant deflection, Yara was certain that Sten must have been suffering during twenty days of captivity with little to no water or food. He’d certainly looked miserable when she’d met him.

“If you were back home and feeling that way, would you have gone to the tamassrans?” she asked.

“It would not have happened if I were home,” he said sharply. Then he pursed his lips. “But… yes. In a hypothetical situation, if I had… behaved that way in Seheron, I would have been sent to the tamassrans for help.” He shot her a wry look. “In case you did not notice, however, there are no tamassrans in Ferelden.”

Yara widened her eyes. “Are you sure about that? I thought I might have spotted one in Orzammar.”

Sten huffed. “Amusing.”

Yara smiled at him, and they fell quiet once more. Then he sighed. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I did have asala-ataar.” He looked her in the eye. “But you fixed that. I will fulfill my mission to the Arishok in less than two weeks, and this is only possible because of you.”

Her belly fluttered with nerves. He was giving her one of those special piercing looks, and her pulse was kicking up again for reasons other than her nightmare. 

She looked away and let out a nervous little laugh. “Don’t give me all the credit. We wouldn’t be here if you weren’t strong in your own right.”

“Your humility is admirable, but I mean what I said,” he said. “I would have died a failure if not for your… strange but effective leadership. You recovered my purpose. If I could do the same for you, I would.”

She met his eye. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I appreciate that.”

He nodded, and another calm silence fell between them. Then Sten rested his back against the bed. 

“What do your people do when they suffer ailments of the soul?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I… I don’t know, really. I didn’t know anyone with anything like asala-ataar before my clan – before I left my clan. But when I had nightmares as a child, I talked about it with Ashalle.”

Sten nodded slowly. A minute later, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Do you wish to speak of your nightmares to me?”

She blinked. “Really? You’re willing to do something that bas do?”

“You have done things that my people do,” he said. “You found my asala. Consider this a return of the favour.” Then he shrugged. “Or I could try striking you with a stick.”

She smiled at his deadpan tone. “You’re saying if I don’t tell you about my dream, you’ll beat me up with a stick?”

“Those appear to be your choices at this time,” he replied.

She chuckled and wrapped her arms around her knees. “All right, since you insist. It was…” She ran a hand over her braid. The details were already fuzzy now that she was awake, but the feeling – and the most prominent person – were clear.

She took a deep breath. “Sten, do you remember that time that our camp was attacked by darkspawn? And one of them, um, spoke to me?”

He turned to look at her more fully. “Yes. The clanmate you called Tamlen.”

She nodded. “The dream was about him. I was… trying to save him. He was… I wanted Alistair to help me make him a Warden, but I… I couldn’t. And he kept – he kept saying, um…”

I’ve always loved you, lethallan. That was what dream-Tamlen had said. It was what the real blighted Tamlen had said before he attacked her at their camp. His voice was so hoarse and corrupted, twisting the words and making them ugly despite their intent, and… 

And then he was dead, cut down by Zevran’s throwing knives and Sten’s greatsword, leaving his agonized words of love and apology to dissipate in the air.

Her chest felt tight. She dragged in a breath and rubbed her face, then ran her hands over her hair. “Look, we don’t need to talk about this. We should go back to sleep.”

Sten shifted on the bedroll so he was facing her once more. “You said that talking is how your people clear their minds.”

“It’s… yes, it’s one way,” she said grudgingly.

“But you did not talk about this during our convoluted pursuit of the archdemon over the past year.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t need to. There was no time. Other things were more important.” Furthermore, shunting the pain aside to deal with it later had been working just fine until tonight.

He nodded slowly. “You were focused on your mission. This is understandable. But there is no mission now. It is the middle of the night. There is nothing more important for you to focus on.”

She offered him a weak smile. “You could focus on getting a good night’s sleep. I might beat you tomorrow in our training if you’re not careful.”

He gave her a chiding look. “Speak, kadan. This is the time. I would help you with your soul sickness, as you helped me.”

She sighed and rubbed her face again, then gave him a frank look. “Did you know that I never saw battle before I became a Warden?” 

His eyebrows rose at this, and Yara shrugged ruefully. “I’d never killed anyone before… before all of this. I hunted animals, and I’d wounded a few shems here and there when they tried to attack my clan, but I’d never killed anyone. But the ruin where Tamlen and I…” She paused and took another bracing breath. “I never told you how I became a Warden, did I?”

He shook his head. “You speak little of yourself.”

She gave him a tiny smile. “I could say the same about you.” 

“Hm,” he murmured. “Perhaps it is part of my… charm.”

Yara looked at him in surprise, then laughed at the wry quirk of his eyebrows. “That was almost a flirt!” she said. “Maybe you are learning something from The Rose of Orlais after all.”

Sten huffed. “Tell me how you became a Grey Warden, kadan.”

She smiled at him, then sighed. “All right. I… Tamlen and I were monitoring the forest. Keeping an eye on the perimeter of our camp to make sure no humans were going to sneak up on us. But Tamlen found this… this old ruin. He wanted to explore it. I told him it was a bad idea, but he…” She paused and ran her fingers through her hair. “The only time I ever got into any mischief was when I was with him. Which was… not uncommon, if I’m honest,” she added with a tiny smile. 

Sten nodded an acknowledgement. He was studying her with his usual brand of steady patience, and Yara took another calming breath before going on. “Anyway. We… we went into the ruin, and… I should have known better than to go any deeper, because there were monsters inside. Walking corpses…” A rash of goosebumps spilled down the back of her neck at the memory, and she restlessly shifted her shoulders. “It’s nothing now, compared to the darkspawn — ogres and shrieks and all that. But at the time, it was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen.”

“You were unprepared for your first brush with death,” he said.

“Of course I wasn’t prepared,” she retorted. “I was not prepared at all. I mean, who… no one could – who could be prepared to find dead bodies brought back to life in some old ruin in the woods?”

Sten grunted. “You make a good point.” 

She exhaled heavily. “So we killed the dead bodies. And we kept going deeper into the ruin because… Creators, I don’t know why. I wish — anyway.” She ran a trembling hand over her hair. “And then we found the mirror.”

Sten’s eyebrows rose. “A mirror?”

She nodded. “Yes, a huge ornate mirror. It was… it whispered.” She swallowed hard. “This cold, horrible voice, but I… I wanted to know what it said, and so did Tamlen. But I was… Sten, I was so scared. I told Tamlen we should go back to tell Marethari – our clan leader. But he insisted on touching the mirror.” She dragged in another breath. “He touched it, and something… I don’t know what happened. But when I woke up, I was back with my clan and sick with the Blight, and Tamlen was gone.”

“The Blight took him,” Sten said.

“I know that now,” Yara said, more sharply than she intended. “But at the time, we had no idea what had happened. I went looking for him with Fenarel and Merrill, but we didn’t find him. And when we came back to camp, Duncan was there, and he made me join the Wardens.” She frowned. “Actually, no. It wasn’t him who made me join. It was Marethari. She…” Yara pressed her lips together hard. The agitation in her chest was thrumming more strongly as she spoke about this, and it was starting to feel like a heated pulse behind her eyes and in her ears. 

She scratched her wrist. “Marethari told Duncan to conscript me. She forced me to go with Duncan, and then they left the Brecilian Forest even though they didn’t know what had become of Tamlen.”

Sten nodded. “You were given a new purpose,” he said. “You were sick, and the Wardens helped you. That was good for you.”

Yara stared at him. Had he not been listening at all? “I didn’t want to leave my clan,” she said harshly. “I didn’t want to leave without knowing what happened to Tamlen. I had no choice about it. And I know you think choice doesn’t matter, all right?” she snapped. “I know that. I just… I wasn’t raised that way, Sten. I loved my clan, and I loved Tamlen. He was my brother, just like your brothers in your beresaad. He disappeared, and the clan didn’t bother to look for him. And I had to leave them and follow Duncan to Ostagar that same day.” She hunched her shoulders. “I didn’t even get time to say goodbye to everyone. I just… left. They… they made me leave.” 

She had been so miserable during the entire trek to Ostagar. She’d hidden it from Duncan as best she could, but every morning when she’d woken up, her left wrist was more raw and painful than the day before. She’d eventually started wearing long-sleeved shirts to sleep to prevent her sleeping nails from breaking the skin.

Sten suddenly grasped her left wrist. Startled by his touch, she jolted and looked at him. 

His face was serious, and his grip on her wrist was firm. When he released her, she looked at her wrist. 

It was marked with angry red score lines. Fenedhis, she thought impatiently. She folded her arms defensively across her chest.

Then Sten spoke again. “Are you angry that you are a Grey Warden?”

She took a deep breath to calm herself. “It’s not that. I’m… it is what it is. I’m a Warden now, and that’s just the way it is. And I get why they made me join. If I hadn’t become a Warden, I’d be dead. I’m just…” She tugged restlessly at her braid. “I’m angry about how it happened. It was so sudden, and they just… my clan just cast me off. They cast Tamlen off, too.” She shot Sten a resentful look. “I lost everything that day. Can’t you see that? I lost everything but my life, and I didn’t know how long that was even going to last.”

“You were questioning your purpose,” Sten said.

“Of course I was,” she snapped. “I had a purpose! I was a hunter for my clan! Then that was gone, along with Tamlen and my clan and my whole life.” 

“But you gained a new purpose,” he said. “And you accepted it. You fulfilled your mission.”

“Yes, I did. I finished my mission, all right?” she snapped. “I did my duty and I killed the archdemon, so I should be happy. Is that what you want me to say?”

Sten raised his eyebrows knowingly. “‘Happy’ does not mean the same thing to you and I.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Yara said bitterly. “Because you don’t love anyone.” 

Her cruel words hung heavily between them. Her heartbeat was loud and angry in her ears, but as the silence stretched between them, her anger faded into a horrible wracking guilt.

She sighed and rubbed her face. “Sten, I’m sorry. I’m… I’m really sorry. That was uncalled for. I know you loved your friends in your beresaad. That was… I shouldn’t have said that.”

He nodded an acknowledgement, but his frown was thoughtful rather than angry. To her mild surprise, he changed the subject. “The battle at Ostagar. The one where you and Alistair were the sole survivors,” he said. “That happened the same day you arrived at Ostagar? The same day you became a Warden?”

She nodded cautiously. “That same night, yes.”

“And the next day, you set out to stop the civil war and the Blight,” he said.

She nodded and exhaled heavily. “Everything happened pretty quickly, yes.”

Sten tilted his head and didn’t reply, and Yara watched him nervously. “What are you thinking?” she finally asked.

He continued to study her with a curious frown. “You barely spoke of this before.”

She shrugged and dropped her eyes to her lap. “There was no reason to.”

“It is unusual for you bas to not speak of your pasts,” he said. “The others spoke of their pasts. Alistair would not stop talking about the senior Warden who died at Ostagar.”

“That’s fine,” Yara said. “They can talk about themselves. I don’t mind. I like knowing their stories. But I don’t like to… I just…” She shrugged irritably and waved at herself. “Nobody wants to know about this. Everyone has something horrible going on. It’s bad enough to carry their own problems without carrying mine too.”

“But you carried their problems,” Sten said. “I observed your behaviour during our travels. You and the other bas. You carried their problems. And you carried mine.”

She frowned. “Yes, but that’s… it was my job to help them — to help you with your problems.” She gave him a slightly sarcastic look. “I was the alleged leader, remember?”

“There is nothing ‘alleged’ about it,” Sten said. “You led us, and you did it well. And you carried our problems without complaint. This is what a good leader does.”

She scowled and tucked a stray strand of hair over her ear. “So what’s the problem, then? If I was doing my job well? Isn’t that what qunari think is the most important thing?”

“It is important,” Sten said. “I am simply remarking that it is a heavy weight for a small woman to carry.”

Yara scoffed. “You and this ‘small woman’ stuff. I get it, all right? You think I’m small and weak and that I shouldn’t fight–”

“Parshaara,” Sten interrupted firmly. “I do not think you are weak. You have more strength than men who are twice your size.” He leaned toward her. “But you have asala-ataar, and I do not want to see it break you.”

Yara stared at him, stunned into silence by the look on his face. His expression was so serious and so earnest, and the look in his violet eyes was more sympathetic than she’d expected.

She swallowed hard. Tears were suddenly throbbing in her throat and pounding at the backs of her eyes. She forced her lips into a semblance of a smile. “Maybe we should try that beating-with-a-stick thing after all,” she quipped.

Sten didn’t smile. He continued to pin her with that steady and penetrating stare that made her feel more exposed and raw than the scratched-up skin on her left wrist. He was just sitting there on the floor gazing silently at her: a big strong wall of muscle with his soft amethyst eyes… 

Yara opened her mouth, and a sob came out. A second later, tears were pouring down her face.

Fenedhis, She hastily wiped her face with the bedsheet, then sobbed again. “S-sorry,” she choked out. “You don’t – I’m sorry. This is– I’m not usually…” She sobbed again, then gave up and buried her face in her arms. 

“Kadan,” Sten said quietly.

She hiccuped and wiped her runny nose on her arm. “Mm?” she mumbled. 

There was a pause before he spoke again. “Sten of the beresaad do not cry,” he said.

She let out a wet little laugh. “Thanks. That’s helpful.”

“I want to help,” Sten replied. “Tell me what your people would do when one is crying.”

She shrugged listlessly and wiped her face. “Hold each other’s hands, I guess,” she muttered. “Or hug.”

“Hug?” he said.

She drew another hiccup-y breath. “It’s when two people put their arms around each–”

“I know what a hug is,” Sten said dryly. “I am not an idiot.”

She grimaced. “Sorry.”

Sten shifted slightly on the bedroll. “Hugging is how the tamassrans comfort imekari.”

Yara huffed. “Well, some adults like it too,” she mumbled.

Sten was quiet for a moment. Then he stood up. “I will hug you if this will help.”

Yara gaped at him, then let out an incredulous little laugh. “You’ll hug me? You’ll…” She hiccupped, and more tears rolled down her face. “You’ll actually h-hug…?” She broke off again; she was crying too hard to talk. 

She hid her face in her knees and clutched her hair, humiliated that Sten was seeing her like this. A moment later, the mattress shifted as his weight settled beside her. 

“Come, kadan,” he said, and he squeezed her shoulder. 

She sobbed again, then pushed the blankets off of her legs and shuffled toward him on the bed. He draped his arm around her, and the next thing she knew, she was curled up in Sten’s lap and bawling against his bare chest. 

His thickly muscled arms encircled her in a somewhat awkward embrace, and Yara sobbed even harder and pressed her face against his chest. He was so warm and sturdy and big, and he smelled like the sweetness of sleep and a faint hint of sweat, and she couldn't remember the last time she had felt this safe. 

She clutched his arm and sobbed unabashedly. By the time her tears had died down to the odd weak hiccup, she felt both emptier and more relaxed than she had in months. 

She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. She was completely exhausted. Her head was aching and her eyes felt grossly swollen, and she couldn’t imagine that she looked at all attractive. Then she berated herself for even worrying about being attractive to Sten, given the situation.

“Is your mind clear?” Sten asked quietly. 

She sniffed hard and nodded. “Yes,” she murmured. “I feel much better now.” 

Sten didn’t reply, and Yara simply breathed and savoured the warm wall of his chest and the solid comfort of his arms around her. Some time later – she wasn’t sure how long exactly – he spoke again. “Should I release you?” 

She took a deep breath. She should probably say yes. She could tell from his slightly stiff posture that hugging wasn’t natural to him, and she really was feeling much better than she had all night. She actually felt better now than she had when this entire journey had begun, despite her puffy eyes and the residual ache in her chest. 

In fact, she felt better now than she had in a very, very long time. 

“Can you hug me for a little longer?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“Yes,” he said. His arms tightened slightly, and Yara’s heart fluttered. 

She heaved a heavy, tremulous sigh, then pressed her cheek more snugly against his chest. “Thank you, Sten,” she whispered.

“You are welcome, kadan,” he replied.

She smiled faintly. A few minutes later, lulled by exhaustion and the safety of Sten’s embrace, Yara fell asleep. 

[johaerys-writes]

Dorian Pavus/Trevelyan

A World With You, Chapter 29: In Water Waist Deep

Peace is found when you least expect it. In the midst of chaos, there is quiet. In the darkest of places, the light shines the brightest. The wind moves the slowest in the eye of the storm.

Read here or on AO3! [Read from the beginning]

*****************

“I see you’ve found your way back home.”

Tristan returned his mother’s scrutinizing gaze levelly, straightening where he stood. Her dark brown hair, streaked with grey at the temples, was already brushed and pinned up, the blue dress she was wearing crisp, freshly pressed. Her lips a straight line, her features placid, as if carved in stone. Nelly was dressed in her usual grey dress, her white apron fastened around her waist, head bent over the stove. She averted her eyes as soon as their gazes mate, returning to stirring tea leaves in the pot. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

Tristan forced a nonchalant spring to his step as he peeled off his damp coat and tossed it on a chair before him. “I’d say I’m glad I’m back, but I’d be lying.” He walked around the table, and only then did he notice the three fully armed guards standing by the door. His steps faltered just a hair. Why the Void were there guards at the door? Inside the kitchen? What was -

No. He wouldn’t give his mother the satisfaction of seeing his confusion. He made his way to the cupboards, studiously avoiding glancing at the guards as he rummaged through them.

“You’ve been gone for two days. Two days of debauchery, I’m sure, and Maker knows what else.” Mother waited for a moment, tongue held tightly behind her teeth as she studied him. “You were supposed to be at the Trenwith estate yesterday evening.”

Tristan winced inwardly. He’d entirely forgotten about that. He opened a dark brown jar, sniffing its content. Raisins. “Evidently, I had better things to do.” He placed the jar back in the cupboard and reached for another. “Debauching one’s self requires a great deal of dedication, you know.”

Mother huffed in contempt. “Have you any idea how humiliating it was, waiting for you for hours, having to make up excuse after excuse only for you to never show up? Lady Trenwith and her daughter were appalled. You made a mockery of both myself and your sister. And yourself, of course, yet I hardly believe you care about that anymore.”

Tristan didn’t doubt he had brought them to an uncomfortable position. Mother had done her best to arrange that blasted meeting. The Trenwiths were far lower in the social ladder than the Trevelyans- Blight, they had only started being invited to the Teyrn’s Grand Ball but a decade before- but after the fiascos with the Carruthers and the Cardews, most other houses had withdrawn their proposals. He was far from an eligible bachelor now, if he ever was. That was all well, as far as Tristan was concerned, yet he still regretted not going to the meeting. He had no intention of making a good impression on the Trenwiths or anyone else, of course, but opportunities to embarrass his mother were becoming harder and harder to come by. Oh, well. He would have to settle for petty jabs, then.

“You don’t say,” he drawled in an uninterested tone. “Must have been devastating for you.”

He sensed her bridling at his mocking tone, her eyes gliding over him in contempt. “Have you even bothered to glance at yourself in a mirror?”

Tristan let out a huff as he reached for another jar. He opened it slowly, fishing out a biscuit. “No. Have you? You look terrible. Perhaps a drink or two might do you some good.”

Mother’s nostrils flared. “Have you nothing at all to say for yourself?”

“Oh, I have plenty.” He leaned against the counter, chewing, the large jar nestled under his arm. Her glare was so sharp it might have flayed him on the spot, but he refused to lower his eyes. He flashed her a tight smile. “I am hungry, tired, and in dire need of a bath. Thirsty, too. Nelly, fetch me a cup of tea, will you?”

Nelly, who was pouring tea in Mother’s cup, froze where she was. She glanced uneasily at the other woman, whose hands were balled into fists at her sides. “My lord,” she muttered, turning around for a new cup, when Mother’s voice stopped her.

“Ellen, stay where you are.”

Tristan rolled his eyes, reaching for another biscuit. “What does one have to do to get a cup of tea in his own house?”

“Your insolence, Tristan, knows no bounds,” Mother uttered tightly, weariness creeping into her voice. “I’ve had enough of you humiliating yourself and dragging our family name through the mud.”

“If someone is humiliating themselves, Mother, that would be you. Denying your son a cup of tea. What’s next? Are you going to make me brew my own tea? Whatever will good society say?” He shot her a perplexed frown, popping the last of his biscuit in his mouth.

Mother’s lips were pinched bloodless when she glanced at the guards by the door. She took in a deep breath, straightening up even more. Stark and stiff under the stark and stiff fabric of her dress. “I have spoken with Revered Mother Adalene in the Wildervale monastery. You are to be taken there today. As soon as you arrive, you’ll start training as a Templar.”

Tristan’s blood froze in his veins. He blinked, blinked again, his breath growing shallow. He must have misheard. Surely, that was it. “The Templars? Are you mad?” he said, letting out a short, incredulous laugh. “Don’t you think I’m a little too old for that?”

Mother’s lips tightened. “The Revered Mother agreed to make an exception for you. On account of your circumstances.”

His gaze flicked to the guards, who had now shifted into position. “I- is this a joke? Are you joking?” “I have tried to talk with you, Tristan. Reason with you. You refuse to listen.” She shook her head slowly, a frown darkening her features. She almost managed to look remorseful. “Perhaps the Templars will succeed where I have failed.”

“Reason?” he hissed, his eyes narrowing to slits. Anger rushed like an avalanche past his numbing disbelief. “When have you ever tried to reason with anyone? Ordering people about, you mean - that’s more like it. Is there anybody whose life you haven’t tried to exert your power upon? Something you haven’t tried to control?”

“Is that what you think this is about? Control?”

“You’re about to ship me off to the Templars simply because I refuse to do your bidding,” Tristan spat, setting the jar back on the counter with a thud. “Is that my punishment for wanting to live my life as I see fit? For not wanting to be mated off like- like cattle?”

“Tristan Remy Trevelyan,” she enunciated, fixing him with a hard glare, “it is your duty to behave in a way that befits your station and your name. It is all of our duty to do what we must to preserve the status of this family. You should know this, better than anyone.”

“So my options are, what- either do as you say, or go to the Templars?”

“If you put it this way, then yes. These are precisely your options.”

“In that case, then,” he replied, dusting crumbs off his fingers as he pushed himself upright, “fuck my duty. And, most importantly, fuck this family.”

A stunned silence fell in the wide room. Nelly’s mouth fell slightly agape before she brought her hand over it. Mother flinched visibly only for a quick moment before she regained her composure. “How dare you use that sort of language in this-”

“I’ll use whatever language I damn well please,” he snarled. “It’s not like I belong here anymore, eh? I think I stopped belonging a long time ago. in fact, I’ve been wondering what took you so long to finally show me the door. That seems to be your specialty with anybody that displeases you.”

“Tristan.” Just that. His name. A warning. Tristan could see the tendons in her neck tensing as she watched him, her jaw clenching.

“Yes, that’s what you’re good at,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Kicking out anybody that dares to cross you. Tossing people in the street once you’ve decided they’re not worth your gold. That’s what you do best, isn’t it?” Tristan's nails dug deep into his palms. Mother kept watching him, unblinking. They both knew what he was about to say, but she made no move to stop him. The challenge in her gaze was unmistakable. Tristan took a shaky breath. “It’s what you did to Sten Kaylen and his family. Isn’t it? And for what?” His throat was burning, rage and grief choking him until he could scarcely breathe. “Just because their son was unfortunate enough to get involved with me?”

Mother’s eyes widened, an idea of a flush creeping up her cheeks. Her eyes darted to the guards before settling on him again. “Tristan,” she started, “for the last time-”

“Abel,” Tristan turned to one of the guards behind him, “you remember Podrick, don’t you? Tall, black hair, worked at the stables? He trained that brown gelding you always take when you go to town on errands. And you, Hans. You’ve been to the Crandock estate. You’ve met Sten Kaylen and his wife. Good people. Honest people. Hard working. And now- Void knows where they’ve ended up now. All because Pod and I-”

“Stop this,” his mother hissed. “Stop this at once. Do not speak that name in my-”

“I loved him.” The sudden declaration startled even him. He could feel all eyes in the room piercing him like arrows, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was way beyond caring. He stood tall, holding his ground, meeting his mother's gaze levelly even as his eyes filled and overflowed. Maker, one year. One entire year since he’d seen him last, and the pain was as astringent now as it had been then. All the brandy and whisky in the world wasn’t enough to numb it, and Void take him if he hadn’t tried. Tried to drown himself in that makeshift oblivion, day after day, hoping that when he got washed up on the other side, it would all be gone. That he would somehow wake up one morning and everything would be but a distant dream.

So much for hoping.

He angrily scrubbed at his tears, glaring at her. “I loved him,” he said again, “and you punished him for it. Punished us both. Wasn't it enough for you to know that you have the power to ruin my own life? Did you really have to ruin his as well?”

“You forced my hand.” His mother looked back at him defiantly. She didn’t seem to care about the guards behind them anymore. Everyone had known about it all along, but now that it was finally out in the open, she clearly saw no reason to dance around it. Never one to mince words, Esme Trevelyan. “You can play the victim all you like, but don’t you ever deny your part in this. Consorting with a commoner? A stable hand?” She scoffed, shaking her head. “It could never lead anywhere, and you knew it. Yet you kept at it. The scandal your actions have procured is enough to last us a lifetime. If you ever thought of anybody but yourself, you could see how your antics reflect on the reputation of our family, that of your own sister-”

“I’m the one who thinks only of myself? Me? When have you ever thought about anybody but yourself and your bloody reputation?” He wiped his nose on his shoulder, fixing her with a narrowed eyed glare. “You can’t stand anybody to be happy, can you?”

“Happiness has nothing to do with one being loyal to their family and their duty,” Mother said sharply, proudly. “I never let that influence my actions, and neither should you.”

“As if everything you’ve done has been for duty and loyalty,” he spat, packing as much derision as he could into the words. “You know nothing about loyalty. You’re just hateful and miserable and alone, and you want everybody else to be miserable and alone as well-”

“That is enough.” His mother’s voice was cold and harsh. “I have had enough. This stops now.”

With a quick nod from her, the guards pounced on him, quick, grabbing him by the arms. Tristan blinked, stunned for a moment before he fought back. “Hey! Let go!” He tried to yank his arm away, but it was no use. The more he writhed, the firmer the hold of the guards on him grew. Their strong fingers dug into his muscles through the fabric of his doublet, keeping him in place. He grunted and swore under his breath, twisting and writhing. “Let go of me, Maker damn you-”

Nelly took a tentative step towards his mother. “My lady, please,” she said, holding the edges of her apron in a white-knuckled grip. “They’re hurting the boy.”

“He isn’t a boy.” Her gaze on him was steel gliding over ice, stone grinding against iron; cold. Unrelenting. “He’s a man grown. And soon he will learn to act as one.”

“For fuck’s sake-” He scowled at his mother, his face twisted in outrage, sweat gathering underneath his collar. “If Father were still alive, he’d never have let this come to pass. He would have stopped it. He would have stopped you-”

“I’m glad Eric isn’t here.” Mother’s lips were pressed in a line, her voice barely above a whisper. Tristan thought he saw her fingers trembling only slightly before she gripped the back of her chair. “I am glad. He would have died of shame if he saw what has become of you.”

Her words stabbed him like a dagger in the gut. “Father would never have been ashamed of me,” he growled, although it sounded like a strained sob to his ears. He clung to that statement, as if it were a lifeline. Someone, he told himself, there must be someone in his life other than Tilly that didn't see him as a disappointment. Even if that someone had been gone for so many years, Tristan could barely bring his countenance to mind.

He brushed the hurt away, focused on the anger. Anger was easier. He grabbed it, held it, let it flood him to the brim.“Father would have understood. He wasn't like you. He was better than you, far better-”

"What's going on?"

Tilly was standing at the threshold of the kitchen, staring at them all in confusion. She was still in her nightdress, her long, flaxen hair caught in a braid, her brows gathered in a frown that creased her high forehead. "Mother, what is going on?"

"Ottilie," Mother said slowly, "go back to your room."

"I most certainly will not. Not until someone tells me what is happening."

Hope fluttered in Tristan’s chest. If anyone could bring their mother back to her senses, that was Tilly. "Mother wants to send me to the Templars," he grunted, panting as he tested the grip of the guards on him and found it unyielding.

"She what?" Tilly's eyes widened in shock. When she fixed them on Mother, they were molten steel. "You cannot be serious."

"Ellen, escort Ottilie back to her room."

"Are you not listening to me? I said I'm not going anywhere!" She stepped towards the guards, standing before Tristan like a protective barrier. “Let him go. Let go of him at once.”

“Ottilie,” their mother started, “this doesn’t concern you.”

Tilly spun on her heels, her chin squared and tilted high, pride and fire and ice in the flesh. She crossed her arms before her chest, regarding the other woman levelly. "If he goes to the Templars, I go with him."

Mother stayed silent for a long moment. Her mouth tightened before she spoke. "Hart, take Ottilie back to her room. Abel, Paul. You know what to do."

"Don't you dare move!" Tilly commanded, putting all her authority into her voice. She raised her hand.

The air thickened, snow and ice engulfing the room like a thick blanket. He could hear the guards yelling, Nelly screaming as she grabbed and pulled Mother out of the room, but couldn’t see. Couldn’t discern a single form amidst the tumult. A strong wind whirled and howled, like they were all standing at the top of a mountain. Shards of ice crushed against the glass windows, shattered, covering the ground in a million glittering particles.

When he blinked his eyes open again, ice covered every inch of the space. Snow glittered on the wide work table, the boiling water in the pot on the stove had turned to ice, stalagmites had formed on the edges of the counter. The guards were lying on the floor behind him, unmoving. Nelly and Mother were still huddled outside the room, trembling. Tilly was standing in the middle of the room, pale as a sheet. Swaying lightly, like a flag in the center of open space.

Tristan’s breath misted before his lips as he pushed himself upright, staggering towards her. It was cold, so cold- freezing. He shivered as he stood before her. She glanced at her hands, then at the men lying on the floor before her gaze met his. At that moment, they both knew.

“Tris,” she whispered, voice raw and hoarse before it cracked.

I’m sorry, his mind screamed. Forgive me, he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. He reached out to her, gathering her in his arms. “It’s alright. It's alright.” He smoothed his palm down her hair, patted her back, spoke soothing words to her, like he used to do when they were children. “It’s going to be alright, Till. I promise. I promise.”

He held her close as she trembled. Closer still as the ground tilted and shifted underneath him once more, as the memory faded, soft and fuzzy around the edges, like fresh cotton and frayed linen. He finally let his arms fall when he was holding nothing but emptying air.

“The Templars took her after,” Cole said softly, his voice barely a whisper. It should have felt like an accusation, but it didn’t. It was merely a statement, a simple acknowledgement of a turn of events.

“They did,” Tristan replied, just as simply. The memory still clung to his skin like ash on his fingertips. No matter how hard he’d tried to brush it off, it refused to go away. It was part of him, as surely as his beating heart was. “They didn’t waste a moment.”

Damn them. Maker damn them all. So often had he said those words, whispered them under his breath, that they felt etched on his tongue. The Templars standing tall before her, placing the shackles on her wrists, as if she were a criminal. At the door of the carriage, she had turned to look at him. Not the manor, not their mother, not Nelly. Him. Her eyes red and darkened by weariness, her features bereft of all colour, awash in the harsh light of an unforgiving dawn.

“They all blamed me,” he said, to no one in particular. “They all talked, the way people do. Said I'd attacked her, forced her to use magic to protect herself. Never to my face, oh, no, not even Mother, but I could see it still.” He could still remember the stray looks his way when they saw him in the street after Tilly had been taken, the gossip that inevitably reached his ears. No one had forgotten his blunders or that one drunken outburst of his at Lord Penwith’s dinner party, the reason to which entirely eluded him right then. Or that other time, at Lady Bolitho’s Wintersend Ball, where he’d had that heated argument with his mother in front of Count Angove and his daughters, and Tilly had had to drag him away and put him in a carriage back home. Or that other time...

He scrubbed at his eyes, sniffing, pushing the memories back, further back. A drunken fool. A disgrace. Ostwick’s laughing stock. “That’s why I wanted to get her out,” he whispered, bitterness carving a hole in his stomach. “For her, yes, but for me as well. So that I could prove, once and for all, to myself, to her, to the world that I was more. More than what they thought of me. More than what I thought of myself. That there was still-” he paused, clearing his throat when his voice cracked “-still hope for me. For her, too.”

Hope. What a ridiculous notion it had seemed to him, after. After they’d received that letter, with the Ostwick Circle sign embossed on the front of the envelope. A compassionate note claiming that after a difficult battle with a demon, his sister had finally succumbed to possession, and her Templar guardian had been obligated to take action. Mother had had to pull all strings remaining to her for the Chantry to allow for a proper burial. He could still see the suspicious glances at the funeral, hear the words spoken through tight lights and behind spread fans. A mean and violent drunk, many would say when they thought he was out of earshot. Pushed her down the stairs, he did, some would whisper, sipping on their wine. Poor Esme, all would sigh. To lose one child to magic and another to his own vices. All of them, watching with keen interest, waiting for the Trevelyan bloodline to crumble and expire with him.

“Whispers, winding, whirling, white-winged winter wrens,” Cole said quietly beside him. “Words hurt as much as stones. More.”

Tristan took a deep breath, pressing his eyes shut when he felt them burning. “I told you there would be no peace to be found here,” he told Cole, not quite able to keep the harshness from his voice. “This has been-” he brushed the corners of his eyes between forefinger and thumb, “- a waste of time.” A waste. Maker. All his life, all of it- why the hell was he still there? Why was he not waking up?

“There’s more to the thread.” Cole’s voice was soft, like an early morning breeze. “It’s not over yet. It’s only just begun.”

Tristan let out a long sigh, stealing himself. He didn’t want to continue- anything but, anything at all- yet there was no other way. He knew it. He had to leave this place somehow. The silence that had fallen around him was deafening. Enough to make his ears bleed. He took a few steps forward, slowly, with effort, like wading through water waist deep. Watched as the last of the light dimmed and faded.

The memories were cold like the sea in midwinter when he dove in headfirst.

“I left soon after,” he said, talking his way past the initial shivers. “There was nothing for me here, not anymore. Not with her gone.” A change of clothes, Tilly’s small looking glass, Tristan de Lydes, as much gold and jewellery as he could safely carry. A handful of dried figs and roasted walnuts for the road. Nelly’s hushed sobs as they said their last farewells by the kitchen door.

“Hwegen,” she wept over and over. “Oh, hwegen.” There was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do.

****

Time rushed past him, a blur. A drunken haze. Markham, Wycome, Hercinia, Ansburg, an estate a few miles south of Starkhaven that he could barely recollect how he’d found himself in. Always one step ahead of the bounty hunters his mother sent after him. Pub after pub, cup after cup, Wicked Grace tables sticky with dried ale. Emptiness. That vast, unending emptiness. The absence that was soon filled with bitterness and rage. That same scorching fire turning to ice. Whisky, ale and brandy to make it thaw and melt, more to keep him under. Drowning, sinking, deeper, faster. More. No thoughts. No memories. They had to be culled, severed, burnt at the stake. Ripped from him. No home, no name, nothing to call his own. No one. He was no one. No one at all.

*******

The smell of fish and ship tar from the docks nearby wafted through the half open window of the tavern. A haggard elven waitress was wiping down a table, while the only other patron was sleeping with his head resting on the bar counter. He had the right idea, Tristan thought. His own head was so heavy, he could have easily done the same. Just to rest his eyes for a bit. He hadn’t slept in a proper bed in days, and that cheap, acidic brew that passed for brandy around these parts was not helping.

He downed his drink, wincing with the sour aftertaste. Kirkwallers wouldn’t know proper brandy if it kicked them right between the eyes.

“Barkeep,” he croaked, raising his mug. “More brandy.”

The man eyed him warily as he wiped down a mug with a cloth second in grime only to the floor. “I’ll need to see some coin from you first.”

Tristan scoffed and rolled his eyes, reaching in his coat for his coin purse. Cursed under his breath when he found it missing. Someone must have snatched it off him at that dice table in Lowtown. Maker damned Kirkwall and those thrice damned street urchins-

He carefully withdrew his arm from his pocket and flashed the barkeep a smile he hoped was winning. “How about a very small cup, then?”

The night air stank of murky sea water and rotting fish guts when he was thrown out into the street by the bar’s guard. At least the stocky Rivaini had had the courtesy of letting him go with a blow to the side of the head and a warning instead of trying to stick a knife between his ribs. He glanced at the muddy streets that extended beyond the bar, and that would likely serve as his bed for the night, and let out a soft sigh. His back wouldn’t thank him for it come the morrow, that was certain.

He raised his coat collar as he walked down the crowded, dimly lit streets, his gaze flicking past the deals that were taking place at every corner. Drugs, weapons, poisons; whatever it was you were looking for, you could probably find it at one of the Docks’ corners. At good prices, too, all things considered.

He leaned against a wall, fishing in his inner pocket for his pipe. Lit it with his flint and dagger, took a long draught. Sighed when he felt the tension slowly melting off his shoulders, his headache subsiding somewhat. The moldac was hot and sweet as it glided down his throat. Smoking leaf laced with the barest hints of opium, smuggled from the Anderfels; he’d won it off a sour-faced Starkhavener at Wicked Grace a while back and had soon taken a liking to it. His head was still heavy from the blow and the cheap liquor, but at least it was in the right place now.

“Five sovs,” he heard a man saying at a nearby corner.

“Five?” the other asked incredulously. “It was only four last time!”

The first man shrugged. “Mage war’s bad for trade. Got to make ends meet.”

“Andraste’s holy knickers.” A short huff, the scruff of fabric as hands dug into pockets for the required amount. “Is it decent this time, at least? The last one you gave me was diluted. Don’t even try to deny it.”

“Listen, mate,” the dealer snapped, “my stuff’s the best in Kirkwall, straight from the dwarves in Kal-Sharok. You don’t like it, you can go back to Ostwick and beg outside the Chantry for a dose, for all I care.”

Ostwick? Kal-Sharok? Tristan’s ears pricked up. What was the man buying? Drugs? Poison? But what did the Chantry have to do with it? Unless...

The light blue vial that shone momentarily in the man’s palm before he shoved it in his pocket could only be one thing. Lyrium. A Templar. From the Ostwick Circle, possibly. Tristan’s hackles rose in a flash, his pulse quickening. Could it be? Was it a sign?

Before he could rightly say what he was doing, he had pushed off the wall, doggedly following the man through the dark, twisting alleys.

With his cheek pressed firmly against the wall and Tristan's dagger at his throat, the Templar made a pretty sight.

"I don't know anything more," the man whimpered. "I swear I've told you everything I know-"

“So. Let me get this straight. There was an uprising in the Ostwick Circle and your Knight Captain decided to simply execute the mages he thought had started it. No imprisonment, no trials, no intervention from the Chantry. You expect me to believe that?” The man nodded, trembling.

Tristan’s stomach tightened. If what the Templar had said was true, it changed everything he’d known about Tilly’s death. Everything the Chantry had told them. She hadn’t been possessed by a demon, she hadn’t failed to pass a bloody test, she hadn’t been tested by the Knight Captain and a Revered Mother and found to be “beyond hope of recovery”. She was cut down, slaughtered like- like an animal. His hand holding the dagger was trembling, nicking the Templar’s neck where the blade touched him.

"The Circle was a shambles," the man said, wincing. "There was no way of knowing who was possessed. Templars were being killed left and right. The mages were looking for every opportunity to attack us-"

Tristan clicked his tongue, twisting the man's arm behind his back. "None of that," he growled. "What about the Trevelyan girl? She was there, wasn’t she?"

"The Trev-" the man dared a sideways glance at him over his shoulder, swallowing thickly. His face was ashen and haggard, his hands cold, his fingers twitching lightly. All signs of lyrium withdrawal. "She was thought to be among the instigators. The Knight Captain executed her himself."

Tristan's blood bubbled in his veins, his pulse pounding with rage. Damned Templars. Maker damn them all. He pressed his blade against the pulse point in the man's throat. "Was she proven guilty? Was anyone?"

"I-" the man paused, wetting his lips. "She-" He whimpered again when Tristan twisted his arm tighter. "I don't know, I don't know, the Captain said she was, we never questioned him-" He pressed his eyes shut, his face twisting in agony. "Please. I just want to leave that life behind me. Please."

"At least you have a life to leave behind," he hissed, twisting the man's arm enough to break it. "The mages you killed don't have that luxury." Maker, but he felt sick. He forced down the bile that was rising up in his throat as he asked, "Where's your Captain now?"

"Last I heard he would be at the Conclave. That's all I know. Please-"

The Conclave. Void take him. That was but a week away. The man slumped to his knees when Tristan brought the hilt of his dagger down on his temples. He walked away, sheathing his blade, then turned back with a disgusted sound. The ship for Jader would be leaving at dawn, and he had no coin for passage. He rummaged the Templar’s pockets for his coin purse. The lyrium bottle shone iridescent in his palm when he fished it out. He took that, too. Allowed himself a moment to watch it sink beneath the murky waters of the docks after he’d tossed it over. Let the bastard scramble for that lyrium he so needed, he thought, spitting on the ground before he turned away.

The Conclave. Yes. That's where he would go. His life was forfeit, but her death didn’t have to be. He would unveil the man's crimes for everyone to see, if it was the last thing he did. Or he would kill him with his own bare hands. Either way, one of them would be lying face down in a shallow ditch come next week. With some luck, it would be both.

****

“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.”

Tristan blinked blearily at the snarling woman that had dragged him out of his cell, only to toss him in the middle of the dank dungeon. She held herself straight and stiff, circling him like a vulture. A Chantric. Every one of her movements told him she’d interrogated countless people before him. A Templar? No. The Watchful Eye carved on her breastplate. A Seeker?

Chantrics, Templars, Seekers- same dogs, different coats. His temper flared when his gaze met hers. “If you mean to kill me, go ahead and be done with it,” he snarled right back at her. “Spare me the drivel.”

She bent down, her eyes on a level with his. “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Everyone but you.”

“Everyone?” It was hard to hide his blatant disbelief. Every single person attending- everyone? But there had been dozens, hundreds of people. Including Divine Justinia. All the high and mighty Knight Commanders, most First Enchanters from across Thedas, representatives from all the powerful families. And now they were all gone? All but he? Even Knight Captain-

“Maker.” The bastard was dead. Tristan could have wept for joy.

If the woman noticed his confoundment, she gave no sign. “Who are you? What business did you have at the Conclave?”

Tristan simply gaped at her for a long moment. “You think I did it?” he asked, barely suppressing the mad laughter that threatened to rise to his lips. If he started laughing now, he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop. Him, destroying the Conclave- he couldn’t even begin to explain to her how absurd the notion was. He was barely capable of lacing up his own shirt most days, let alone organise a mass assassination.

The woman grabbed his hand, green light sputtering from the mark in his palm. “Explain this.”

Rage jolted through him suddenly, like a shockwave, with the feel of her gauntleted hand around his shackled wrist- shackles that she and hers had put him in. He yanked his hand back, out of her grasp. “Touch me again and see what happens,” he growled, his mouth twisting in a scowl. It was an empty threat, bound as he was, but he spat it at her anyway. He’d had more than his fill of people pushing and pulling and prodding him since the moment he’d opened his eyes in that blasted prison, and he hadn’t had a drink since the day before and his hands were already starting to shake, and if one more person tested his patience that day he swore to the Maker he would-

The woman scowled, her hand straying to her sword hilt. The redhead that had been observing all that while held her friend back. “Cassandra,” she said in a voice that was surprisingly gentle. “We need him.”

They both turned to look at him. He returned their look with a confused frown. What need could anyone have of someone such as he?

****

Rifts. So that was what the Herald of Andraste was supposed to do. Fight demons and close rifts. Simple enough. The bloody mark on his hand ached abominably at times, and his sleep was all the worse for it; still, he slept in a bed. A bed of his very own, for the first time in… months, Maker, years- and food. Morning, noon and night, no questions asked. He was getting stronger, there was meat back on his bones, his duties kept him off the bottle most of the time. Servants. He had servants again. He’d forgotten what a luxury it was to have someone building his fire for him, mending his clothes, making his bed. If it weren’t for the people pestering him all day, it would have been the best deal he could have gotten for himself- save for the glowing mark on his palm that was trying to kill him, of course, but that was only a minor inconvenience.

And yet.

His mother would soon find out where he was. It wouldn’t be long before word of the Herald of Andraste being a Trevelyan reached her ears. And then she’d send for him. Everyone would know, know about him, what was said of him, what he’d done, where he’d been. Including his advisors, who didn’t think very highly of him as it was. If she promised them enough gold, they wouldn’t hesitate to hand him over, Tristan was sure of that.

Right.

Close the damned Breach so the mark stopped spreading, was what he should do. Get the mages to help, like Leliana had suggested- she seemed reasonable enough, and he would sooner gnaw his own left arm off and toss that at the Breach rather than aid the Templars- and then get out of that place. Slip away in the night, and none would be the wiser. Just get. The hell. Away.

*****

The walls of the Redcliffe Village chapel shook with the force of the blast from the rift that had opened in its center. Tristan didn’t remember ever seeing such a small space packed so full of demons. He paused at the door, blinking, his hands flying to his daggers by instinct. The man hurling spell after spell at a screaming despair demon didn’t seem half as fazed as he was.

“Good! You’re finally here! Now help me close this, will you?”

It took Tristan a couple of seconds to snap his mouth that had fallen slightly agape shut and raise his hand. The rift crackled and writhed as it collapsed in on itself, dousing the chapel in green light, a shower of iridescent particles that rained over the, unarguably, most handsome man Tristan had seen. In a while. A long while. Perhaps ever. He shook his head gently. Was he seeing things? How much wine had he had to drink the previous night? He could have sworn it was only two cups. Maybe three. Four, if he stretched it.

The mage dusted his robes, straightening. Piercing grey eyes, almond shaped and heavy lidded, fixed themselves on him. Tall, dark haired, bronze skinned, voice rich and smooth like softened caramel. And his robes; Tristan had never before seen the like. Swaths of fabric arranged in intricate patterns, flowing as he moved like there was a light breeze blowing when he walked, even though not a window was open. And the richness of the colours themselves, the details- dark blue silk, soft brown leather, the thread of gold embroidery on his collar shining as he moved, the jewelled rings on his long fingers catching the light.

“How do you do that, exactly?”

Tristan hadn’t realised he’d been staring until the man spoke again. “How do I do what?” he asked dumbly, and almost kicked himself. His eloquence would be his own undoing one of those days.

The man’s brows gathered in confusion for a moment before he laughed- laughed! Blight, there were dead demons all around them, their mangled corpses still unclaimed by the Fade, Chantry sisters just a few paces beyond the chapel door, not to mention the threat of mass hysteria should anyone in the village realise what was going on in there, and that man was laughing. Void and ashes, who was he? Where had he come from?

The man tilted his head to the side, studying him. “You don’t even know, do you? You just wiggle your fingers and boom! Rift closes. Thought it would take a little bit more work than that, if I may be frank.”

Suspicion made Tristan narrow his eyes. Was that mage… mocking him? Trying to make him look like a fool before his companions? He must have been. Tristan sniffed, straightening his back, assuming his most stern expression. “It’s much more complicated than you make it sound,” he said indignantly. “Of that, I can assure you.” An outright lie. He hadn’t the first notion how the blasted thing worked.

Tristan’s bluntness had the exact opposite effect on the man than he had expected. The mage studied him thoughtfully for another breath, as if he hadn’t even heard Tristan’s curt response, then advanced confidently towards him. ‘Advanced’ wasn’t the right word. Strode. Glided. Swayed- yes, that was more like it. “May I?” he asked, glancing at Tristan’s palm.

Tristan tensed. He didn’t like it when strangers touched him. Too many times in the last few years of his life he’d been beaten up, spat on, sworn at, threatened at dagger point, pushed and shoved about, manhandled. Many more, ever since becoming the Herald, that people had touched him in awe or fascination, disgust or mistrust, prodded at the mark to uncover its secrets, tested it, half-yanked it off him. No. Suffice to say he did not like people touching him.

His arm moved before he could stop it.

The man’s fingers, when he took his palm in his, were warm, petal-soft, careful. The trickle of magic he poured into the mark was light as a feather, warm like a caress. His eyes met Tristan’s, holding his gaze by the sheer brightness of their intent. He looked at him, straight at him, not at the mark, not at his followers, not at the mess all around them. Him.

“Fascinating,” he said softly.

*****

“What is?”

Tristan lifted his eyes from the book he’d been reading. “Have you heard about the lost city of Barindur? It’s said that Dumat destroyed it after their king lost his favour. It's supposed to be one of the world's greatest mysteries.”

“Of course I’ve heard about it,” Dorian scoffed. “I fact, I’ve more than heard about it. I wrote an essay on the legends surrounding the city when I was eleven. The lack of knowledge on Tevinter history in the South never fails to surprise me.”

“Oh, yes. I’d almost forgotten how rudimental Southern education is compared to Tevinter.” Tristan closed his book and set it atop the other tomes on the book stall, drawing close enough to Dorian to place his arm on his waist, but Dorian smoothly edged back. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re not alone,” Dorian whispered, looking around him before letting his gaze drop back to the book he was holding.

Tristan glanced at the half empty square. Montsimmard was one of the few towns still standing that side of Orlais, and he, Dorian, Cassandra and Varric had stopped there on their way back to Skyhold from the Emerald Graves to replenish their food stores and rest the horses for a bit. It was little after dawn, so the town was about as quiet as a graveyard. Cassandra had soon left them to visit the nearest smithy, and Varric… Maker knew where Varric had disappeared to -the nearest tavern, probably. That left Dorian and Tristan enough time to browse the solitary book stall in the wide market square. It was a pitiful thing, with only a couple poetry collections and more Chantry books than anyone could have a need for, but it was something.

“There’s no one here,” he said, returning to Dorian. Instead of a response, Dorian nodded towards the book merchant who was dozing off on his chair with his hat over his face. “Ah. I see," Tristan replied, letting his arm fall. "Well, I’d better just go back to reading then.” He picked up a book at random, idly flipping through it. He brushed his chin with his knuckle, sneaking a glance at Dorian who seemed engrossed in his own reading. Tristan discreetly cleared his throat, taking a small step towards him.

“The fountains mingle with the river,” he started quietly, pretending to read from the page, “and the rivers with the ocean, the winds of Heaven mix for ever with a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single, all things by a law divine, in one spirit meet and mingle - why not I with thine?"

Dorian let out a quiet harrumph, not looking up from his book. “Why indeed. Anyone who spouts such nonsense is probably doomed to eternal solitude.”

“Are they?” Tristan put the book back down, next to a vase of yellow roses that the merchant had set on his stall. He picked up one flower, then held it before Dorian with a bow and a flourish. “I beg to differ.”

Dorian glanced at the blossom, then at him. “What on earth are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m courting you.”

“You what?” Dorian’s eyes widened, his cheeks darkening. “You’re joking, yes? Did you hit your head?”

Tristan rolled his eyes. “Just take the thing, will you?” Dorian gingerly plucked the rose from his fingers, a curious frown creasing his brow. He glanced warily about them as Tristan straightened and cleared his throat once more. "See the mountains kiss high Heaven, and the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven if it disdained its brother-"

“Oh, Maker,” Dorian murmured, his blush growing even hotter as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “He was not, in fact, joking.”

“And the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea-”

"Mad. The man's gone mad.”

Tristan moved behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him close. “What are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?” He perched his chin on Dorian’s shoulder, smiling up at him. “Hm?”

“You are-” Dorian huffed in amusement. “The worst. The absolute worst. Whatever did I see in you.”

“I thought that’s what you liked about me," he said, quirking a brow. “My wit and charm, remember?”

"Of course. How could I forget." Dorian let out a soft, throaty chuckle as he leaned in for a kiss. His lips were warm, tender, soft like velvet, parting readily under his, the subtle taste of his morning tea still lingering on his tongue. “No more poetry, now," he whispered with a smile. "Or I might change my mind.”

Tristan smirked against his lips, his pulse fluttering as he hugged him tighter. “Can’t make any promises.”

***

The world grew soft and quiet, warm and fuzzy around the edges.

Tristan’s heart thumped in a smooth, steady rhythm, his gaze fixed on the memory before him that refused to dissipate. He could still remember the light sting of the rose’s thorns on his fingertips, the rich scent of the blossom mingled with Dorian’s heady cologne, the shape of Dorian’s smile as it pressed against his lips. He remembered, like he was still there, like time hadn’t moved since that day, that moment. Like it refused to.

All this while, while swimming through the ocean of his memories, through the highs and unfathomable lows, he was constantly being tugged forward, ever forward, a race for survival and self destruction at the same time. Yet now, the tugging had suddenly stopped. That merciless pull had somehow lessened. Slackened. The noose around his throat relaxing. In that memory, he realised, he wasn’t simply surviving, or pushing his luck and his limits to see when he would finally snap. He could just… be.

“Peace is found when you least expect it,” Cole whispered beside him. He was standing close, his face obscured by the shadow of his hat. “In the midst of chaos, there is quiet. In the darkest of places, the light shines the brightest. The wind moves the slowest in the eye of the storm.”

“But… how?” Tristan whispered, his throat clenching. “After everything I've done? After everything… ”

If he knew everything, would he want me still?

It was a familiar thought, yet it stung all the same. Cole gazed at him for a moment, thoughtfully, as if he were asking whether the sky was blue. “You’re fond of your guilt," he said softly. "It reminds you you're still there. Still sane. “Monsters and madmen can't be guilty, can they?”" He cocked his head slightly to the side, like an inquisitive bird. "You hold it so close, it’s become a part of you. To keep the suffering alive, it has metamorphosed into you. But you don’t need it. You don’t need it anymore.” Cole laid his palm upon his forearm, his touch gentle and calming. “It wasn’t your fault. You tried to change things, but it didn’t matter. Nothing you did mattered. Let go. Let go of the hurt. I can help.”

It’s not that simple, Tristan thought. It can’t be that simple. It shouldn’t. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was suddenly being tugged forward again, pulled away. Sharply, violently. Forward, forward and down.

The book stall disappeared, the edges of the buildings around them bled swiftly into nothingness just as a heavy darkness fell. “What’s going on?” Tristan glanced about him. “What is this?”

“Not yours,” Cole replied, his fingers on Tristan’s forearm tightening. “Let it go. It’s not yours.”

“What isn’t? What-” He gasped as the ground melted beneath his feet. He caught Cole’s hand, fighting while he was being drawn into a bottomless abyss. Cole caught his hands in both of his, but no matter how firm his hold, Tristan’s fingers kept sliding out of his, one by one.

“I can’t,” Tristan grunted. “I can’t- hold on-”

Cole held his gaze from the precipice, cornflower blue eyes gleaming in the dark like stars. “Be steadfast,” he whispered.

The last of his fingers slipped from Cole’s grasp, and then he was falling.

****

hwegen = my dear, pet, darling 

The poem Tristan recited is Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

[lavenderhyrdrangea]

Angel or Serpent

For the first time in his life, Zevran was ridiculously lucky. He had been spared a bloody fate and met a beguiling woman who offered him a hiatus from The Crows—She’d given him a second chance. Where was this sense of foreboding coming from then?

Ao3 link here or go continue to read below

Zevran had crows laying in wait for  a taste of his flesh, and a siren in hot pursuit of his beating heart. Of the two, the latter kept him up at night the most.  Her eyes playful yet her bearing strong-willed and hard-boiled, she was a force that never ceased. Every action she took was done so with purpose. For every question he asked she always had an answer. For every answer he gave she followed up with wave after wave of even more pressing questions. He tried to keep a steady footing around her but he failed each time.

Eventually he surrendered; he’d offered Ione the earring.

It was another evening  beneath the stars for their party, huddled around a flame for warmth, food and conversation. Sten and the witch tucked themselves in early. Shale didn’t sleep but sought out the solitude of a tent nonetheless. Wynne wanted to sleep,  however, her motherly nature had put her in charge of making sure Oghren didn’t finally impair his liver. Leliana and Alistair  were deep in a game of Wicked Grace and Ione watched for the bard’s tricky hand.

“Stealing from a babe should  surely give you some type of guilt,” she teased.

“Ah, now this is fascinating.  You feel sorry for the young fellow?  Toughen up. You’ll have to do a lot worse than pickpocket from a child’s coin purse if you intend to survive in house Arainai.”

Zevran always had to shove the distinct voice of Leonel, one of his mentors, back into a little box only for him to spring out, twisted grin upon his lips, like a child’s  crude toy. Made sense. He was a joking man until the end. He’d been extra loud since Kinloch Hold.

“A babe? Well, you’ve got to have a little more confidence in me than that. Only a moron would strike out in Wicked Grace.” Alistair said as  he gave his set of cards a thorough look over.

Leliana giggled. “See? No need to worry. Straight from the babe’s mouth himself. If it  makes you feel any better I don’t intend on keeping any coin I earn here. I’m petty not cruel.”

“Right, this babe—wait! Stop it you two. I’m a perfectly grown man.”

Ignoring her fussy fellow warden, she addressed Leliana once more. “ It would be better for you play our resident assassin. He offers more of a challenge.”

Their eyes were on him then.  He was  laid out on the  right side of his body,  head propped up on his  palm and  the aforementioned piece of jewelry hot in  the pouch on his left hip. His forefinger drummed along his thigh. While he had been waiting for her attention, this was not how he expected it to be given to him. The games could wait for another time.

“Ah, yes, but if I swoop in to serve as a distraction how will our dear babe ever learn how to play properly?

“You didn’t follow through. Should’ve known you wouldn’t. You are but a child yourself. A weak one at that.”

“Not. A. Babe.”

“I’m sure you are to someone,” Leliana commented much to Alistair’s discomfiture.

“He’ll manage. Why don’t you play a few rounds, Zev?” She stared at him as if she could will whatever  she thought he was hiding out from his head. “You look awful bored.”

“Not bored, no. Restless. Perhaps I can walk you back to your tent, my dear warden.”

“Walk me to my...“ She turned around to make sure her tent was in the same place she’d set it minutes ago. “ I don’t intend on getting Oghren levels of intoxicated this eve. Why would I need to be escorted to my tent? More importantly how would that help you with your restlessness? Is there something in my tent that you desire?”

Sudden failure to call upon his sliver tongue rendered him a hedging mess. “ You never know. You can waltz in, ready to lay your head upon your bed roll only to find a treacherous snake resting there instead. I only wish to see that your are protected.  Uh, that is only if you allow it.”

“Come come, where’s your nerve?  I hear you’re suppose to be good at this type of thing.”

Leliana’s lips spread into a slow grin. “What is this? The mighty Zevran fumbling for words? You perform miracles not even the Maker is capable of my friend.”

Ione took this as sign of trouble and though she’d misread the situation he overflowed with thanks and an undying need to cling to her. She lead them away with the excuse  of needing to give him a dagger that  Leliana didn’t want.  On the way in he noticed that the healer had taken a break from watching over a blabbering Oghren to throw them an admonishing glare. She would get over it eventually.

“Are you well?” Ione asked once she sat him down on a bedroll. “You’re free to speak about whatever here.”

“Are you in trouble? That’s entirely up to you. Come, I would like to play a game of Wicked grace but with a little more fun. Let’s ask the young barmaid to join us.”

The close quarters intensified the delightful aroma of  the rosewater she used to sweeten her skin. Under normal circumstances, the scent would’ve drawn him to his knees, had him singing her praises and making promise after promise. Here, it only made him hyper aware of the weight of his words. One error would’ve caused him to sink. Or was that his nerves?

“Instead of betting something boring like gold, you’ll be betting your welfare. Five rounds. You’re options are to bet a game of Pinfinger, where you’ll lay your hand along the table and stab between your fingers in a rhythm like so. Or take the less unpredictable choice. Choose which part your least afraid of scaring and have at it. Obviously the losing hand is the one that follows through. If they get cold feet the winning hand does it for them.”

He opened the pouch and spoke of sentimentality and the dues he owed her. There had been no eager reaching for the earring on her part. Rather, with a tilt of her head she asked what it meant.

“You mean to ask what use it will provide? I’m sure it’s worth a small fortune. You may sell it if you like. Or  if you find it looks  beautiful on you—and I’m certain it will, my darling— wear it.”

“ You pay your debt with your blade and your time. Why give me your treasure? And why so out of the blue?” She tapped her temple. “There’s more going on in here.”

“There is one exception. If you’re able to achieve an Angel Suit Flush then all bets are off. No one has to be harmed. It doesn’t matter how many rounds deep your in. The winning hand is simply victorious.”

“To you, perhaps. There’s a need to repay you. Not just for sparing me and giving me brief respite from the Crows but for the boots and the gloves as well.”

She placed her hands on his shoulders and leaned in close enough for her lips to brush against his, for her to ensnare  him yet again. Those carnelian eyes could convince him of anything.

“You let her win that round didn’t you? For what? What has she done for you that you would risk pain?”

“Give me more than your pretenses, Zevran.”

More, more, more. She was just being greedy, impossible even. Every other thing they came across in their travels was taken, no question asked, yet  his gift was met with suspicion. Perhaps in the back of her mind, she still believed he was out for her blood.

He  attempted a genuine laugh despite the angry twinge in his chest. “ Everything is a puzzle to be solved with you.”

Try as he might, Ione heard the bitter undertone. She whipped her head to the side  as if she’d been slapped but recovered and refixed her attention upon him. This time she cupped his face.

“This is our last real breather before we battle the Archdemon. If there’s something you mean to say you must say it now. There’s no guarantee that we’ll make it out alive.”

“Demonstrative gestures at the very last second are pointless; they will mean nothing.”

“You don’t believe that!” Realization settled over her features for a split second. Too loud. "You wouldn’t be trying to give me that earring if you did.” she hissed.

“ Tsk, tsk, tsk. You’re three and 0, boy. The game is about lies and deceit. What assassin do you know is incapable of lying?”

A sigh left his lips. She was a current pushing him further away from land.

“You say we are pressed for time, yes? Turn in for the night. Clear your mind. There are other things for you to focus on besides me, I am  certain...Do those.”

He moved to get up and then—

“—Zevran, I’m not long for this world.”

Her usually powerful voice nothing but caricature of itself, she told him everything that only been recently dumped upon her. Slaying the Archdemon required a warden sacrifice to prevent it’s essence from possessing another tainted creature. There was no way Ione would place Alistair on to the chopping block thus she stepped up instead. It was a small wonder this Duncan fellow hadn’t told her  all of this before she drank the Darkspawn blood.

Silence smothered all sound.  Every muscle in his body tensed.  This wasn’t true. It was just a card plucked from her sleeve to push him to confess to whatever inane thing she wanted.  It had to be. The special tenderness in her eyes told him otherwise. It chilled him to the bone.  

“I am sorry.” He rasped.

“For what?”

“Take your pick.”

Feeling as if the ground beneath him had begun to crumble, he escaped the tent before she could get a word in edgewise.  

In his own tent,  he laid, arms behind his head, and wondered whether her presence in his life was  some form of divine retribution. He lured in so many, played with their emotions and cut them down. Now, he was at the mercy of a woman who could make a gaping hole appear in his chest and not need to plunge her halberd in to do so.   It would be the perfect execution of poetic justice. But he had done what he did for the sake of a target. Duty. What was she doing it for? Cruelty? Even he wasn’t so cold.

“What good has your soft heart brought you? Nothing! You’re a mess. Cut deep. Bleeding everywhere.”

And yet that need to hold her came rising again.  The key to freedom from the inescapable pit within his mind was to have her in his arms and he in hers, it seemed. The ‘why’ was just something he  couldn’t place his finger on.

“You’re addicted to it aren’t you? Such a masochist.”

When he first met her, he expected  the tip of her halberd to pierce through his jaw. Instead, she spared his life and gave it purpose and even had done so for those around her and those they encountered.  This alarmed him. While he hadn’t wished it, he expected  her  to buckle under the pressure of  royal intrigue and Archdemon slaying heaped upon her shoulders. Rather than that, she persisted through tears and frustration and even had the nerve to burden herself with more. She didn’t need to seek out those Dalish gloves  for him but she did and that was frightening. She wasn’t purposely going out the way to harm—in fact she acted in the manner of someone who wished to avoid such a thing—yet that  made her all the more dangerous somehow.  Even now with death around the corner she chose  not to spend her night encapsulated by fear but by mingling with her companions and cajoling him to admit…  

“Having another being in charge of your fate is nauseating isn’t it? You could want one thing and they could want another. Life could push you in one direction and the other person in the opposite. You’ll never know until it’s too late. That hesitation you feel is your sense of self-preservation. Don’t mar yourself for such a simple woman. For someone who sees you as nothing more than some sorry assassin.”

Everything crashed over him like a wave.  The true fear wasn’t in that she wanted his heart. It was in that he would give it. He was a fool in love and in spite of her imminent demise he just wanted to be with her for as long a she’d have him.

“ Angel of Charity, Angel of Death, Angel of Fortitude, Angel of Temerity and Angel of Truth. You lucky dog.”

*                                                     *                                                              *

Like seeing someone’s heart broken into a thousand pieces? Don’t worry, I don’t judge. But you might be interested in my DC Comics story, Kandor, starring, Superman and an intruder in his Fortress of Solitude.

[imagine-silk]

Days Recovering: Day 21; I hate the tubes

“When can I get this stupid tube out of my nose?” Daylen asked, pinching the bridge of his nose in discomfort. It felt like his nose led to his brain and the tube made the lightness worse.

Sten didn’t lift his gaze from the book he was reading. “When the doctors decide your lungs won’t collapse.”

“I feel fine.” Daylen let go and wiggled his nose with a sharp breath promptly followed by a cough.

“You sound fine.” Sten’s sarcasm was usually hard to spot, usually. “Just lay back and let the medicine run its course.”

About two days ago Sten let up on asking Daylen to use the pen and paper. Daylen was nothing if not brazen. The man would rather drink seven cups of water an hour and make the trek to the bathroom than slowly write out his message to save his raspy voice. He knew Daylen felt embarrassed when he dropped the pen, repeatedly. He knew it was uncomfortable for him to not use his throat for anything but coughing. His voice was still raspy no matter how much water he drank. But if speaking would ease the time spent here he would afford it to him.

“I know, I know.” Daylen said, defeated he plopped back on the pillows. “Read it to me.”

“I can’t read pictures.”

“What are you reading?”

“I will tell you when it is important.”

Daylen stared at him to assert his insistence but Sten didn’t look up. He knew Sten knew he was staring at him, it was just a matter of will, something they both had in spades. But Daylen never liked pushing him for too long. “Okay, but I’m going to hold you to that.”

“I know you will.”

-

“You know, I thought being married would involve a lot more.” Daylen said. He was building a house of cards, focusing intensely.

“I wouldn’t know.”

The cards fell and Daylen huffed, “I guess I wouldn’t know either.”

“Why not? It is a tradition in your country.”

Daylen pointed at the paper cup out of his reach and Sten handed it to him. He takes a drink and just looks into the cup. “Mages weren’t allowed to get married and grey wardens are supposed to abandon all ties and spend their lives fighting, our lives. That was the idea anyway. I guess I could now but…” He trailed off before looking up at Sten flashing his award winning smile. It was bright like the morning sun waking you up. “It wasn’t expected for people like me at all. In the circle, the only books we had were to study. So sometimes someone would sneak in fiction books and we’d all hide them. Jowan loved the comic books. He told me he wanted to be a superhero and I told him he already had superpowers.” 

He didn’t know why he was saying all of this. It was something he never spoke about. But Maker, now that he started he didn’t know how to stop it. It fell from his mind onto his tongue. “But me, I loved the romance ones. I would dream about living outside and meeting someone. That I could- that I could have that.”

He didn’t let his face drop. No matter how bad the tears built up in his eyes he wouldn’t let them drop, even if he couldn’t see. He knew it must have looked weird, smiling while almost crying, about something Sten probably didn’t understand. But he handled it. 

Until he tipped his water too far and it spilled in his lap. 

The cool sensation startled him and his facade shattered. In his panic he tried to grab the water and fumbled it. A gray hand swiped for the cup but it fell all the same, soaking the blanket. Daylen scrambled, trying to move away from the water. The sound of beeping and flailing contributed to the agitation, especially when the beeping sped up.

“Stop.” Sten tried to hold Daylen still but he continued to move. “Stop it. You’re going to hurt yourself.” 

Sten could only get a hold of him by pulling him against his stomach, a weird angle but it got Daylen to stop. But in the absence of movement came noise. A phrase repeated over and over. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He does nothing to feed the chanting. When he’s sure he won’t move he undoes the cords tangled from Daylen’s flailing. And when he’s done he doesn’t let go.

-

The doctor since then has not uttered a word about their confrontation. Daylen seemed to not know about the whole affair and as far as Sten was concerned he didn’t need to know. He still referred to Sten exclusively as ‘your husband’ in front of Daylen. Sten could only assume it was to make him uncomfortable or just to tease, however he didn’t care.

“Are outbursts a side effect of the medicine he is taking?” Sten made it a habit to check in with Dr. Mullins away from Daylen.

“Not that I am aware of. What is he experiencing?”

“His mood is fickle and quickly subject to change. It sometimes ends in him panicking.”

“Okay. And is this not normal for him?”

Thoughts of being on the front lines with strangers, one deciding action and never faltering against pressure. No matter how bloodied and broken he was he moved forward. How he would lure enemies in with his sloppy fighting only to unleash force he had never seen. An unyielding sentinel. “No.”

“Well, it can be many things. It could be the change of environment. It could be creeping PTSD. It could be the medicine handling his blood differently. Hell, it could be he’s finally relaxing for once. Not something you can diagnose but work as long as I have and it’s something you’ll have to know.”

“Nothing can be done?”

“We’ll keep an eye on him but to be honest I haven’t seen what you mean. I think it would be best if you documented these outbursts because he hasn’t done it with us.”

[kirkwallgremlin]

prompt 51 of any pairing you'd like!

Thank you for the prompt! It helped break me out of my cycle of picking a prompt, writing a couple of paragraphs, changing the pairing, writing a few more paragraphs, picking a prompt...and so on 😂 I chose to write about my Brosca Frankie x Alistair in Orzammar, partly because I I love them and partly because I’ve found Alistair really challenging to write every time I’ve tried and I want to get better at writing him!

Prompt 51: Public Kiss

The Tapster’s Tavern hadn’t been Frankie’s first choice of establishment. It was familiar, true, but very few positive memories had been formed there. But the others had wanted a warm, safe place to sit, drink, forget all their responsibilities, at least for a little while. The Orzammar pub fit most of those requirements - it was a warm place to sit and drink at the very least, and so that was where they had ended up.

The novelty of sitting at chairs and tables finally the right size for her while her companions shifted awkwardly on their smaller chairs - Sten had abandoned his completely and sat directly on the ground - wasn’t enough to offset the discomfort and Frankie resolved to not stay long regardless of how long her companions lingered.

Alistair sat beside her, his presence both a comfort and a curse. The tattoo on her face had a meaning here and her warden status did little to counteract it.

On the surface, being a Grey Warden earned respect from some, fear, or danger from others, but regardless of exactly what it meant to each individual, it carried a certain level of status. But here? She was still a brand, worthless. As they had entered, she had seen the desire to be known as the tavern chosen by the Grey Wardens and their surfacer companions warring with the distaste of serving her.

“You’ll need to order for me,” she’d muttered to Alistair when they arrived. Warden or not, she’d doubted they’d be any less reluctant to serve her than they’d have been before she joined the Wardens.

“What, don’t have any coin left in that pouch?” Alistair had joked. “I knew you kept me around for a reason.”

The twitch of her hand towards her cheek had been involuntary but it happened nonetheless, and Alistair had clearly noticed.

“I’ve put my foot in it again, haven’t I?” he’d said, a reassuring hand coming to rest on her shoulder. “Sorry. I’ll take care of it.”

It was still unclear if he’d noticed her flinch at the additional contact.

He’d made good on his promise though, supplying her with the minimal drinks she’d consumed. Throughout the night so far, he had stuck close to her side as Frankie’s eyes darted around the room, watching, waiting for trouble that seemed inevitable. The sun had faded her brand as they travelled, but the mark still remained, ink spreading across her cheek like an awful shadow and highlighting that she wasn’t welcome.

Beside her, Alistair laughed at whatever story Leliana was telling and Frankie shifted, positioning her body even further away from him. Orzammar may not respect her, never would, but there was no reason that he should suffer the indignity of being publicly involved with her.

A fight broke out across the room, drawing Frankie’s attention as she assessed the level of threat. Before Duncan, before the Wardens, she had been involved in a number of such fights, and a significant factor in the instigation of many of them but now it was hardly worth a second thought.

In fact, the fight only served to distract her long enough that she didn’t notice Alistair leaning down level with her ear.

“You know you don’t have to stay here with me if you’re uncomfortable,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, loud enough for her alone to hear in the rowdy tavern. “I get it, why you don’t want to be seen with me.”

“You do?” Blood rushed to Frankie’s cheeks, pink spreading across her pale skin. Of course he had noticed. He was too perceptive not to have, and she just hoped she hadn’t made him feel bad.

“A big ugly guy like me? Absolutely.” His cheerful laugh didn’t help ease her anxiety. “But I mean it, I do. I don’t want you to be subject to all of the rumours and gossip and whatever else spreads around these places. Assuming Orzammar gossip is the same as Redcliffe gossip, anyway, I’m not exactly an expert. But if you don’t want to be seen to be involved with a human, I get it. Really.”

Frankie just blinked at him as he rubbed his neck nervously, unsure what to say to that. He thought she was embarrassed to be seen with him?

“That’s not it at all,” she said finally, wincing when the words came out much more dismissive than intended.

“No? Oh, I just assumed then. Wrongly, obviously. They do say to avoid assumptions, ass out of you and me and all that.”

“Alistair I’m casteless,” she interrupted. “I’m completely worthless here. Less than worthless.”

“You’re not worthless! You’re very worth...ful. Full of worth.” One of Alistair’s large hands rested over her own. Her face, still pink from before, grew even hotter as her heart skipped a beat and she tried to subdue the flight response the action triggered within her.

“I know I’m not worthless, not now that I’m a warden.” Alistair opened his mouth, presumably to argue that being a warden didn’t have any impact on her worth but Frankie didn’t give him the chance. “But here, you’ll lose any credibility if they think you’re lowering yourself to a… to me.”

“Frankie Brosca, I don’t think I’ve ever been considered credible in my life,” Alistair objected. “What have I got to lose?”

She didn’t answer, eyes averted. Alistair cupped her face with a hand, a single calloused finger tracing over the ugly brand, drawing her face up to look at him.

“I don’t care what they think,” he said. “I just care about you.”

“But what if…”

“No matter what,” he interrupted firmly, and Frankie felt a shy smile start to creep across her face.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “I don’t care what some old fashioned dwarfs who aren’t even smart enough to appreciate you think of me.”

“Thank you Alistair,” she said, pressing return kiss to his lips. His words meant a great deal to her, more than she could find the words to express, but she hoped he understood.

“We can leave if you want to,” Alistair said as she nestled closer against his side, trying to relax as she pushed feelings of insecurity away. “Right now, I don’t even need to finish my drink. Or I could finish it very quickly. Up to you really.”

“We can stay.” The anxiety hadn’t fully subsided but it had eased knowing that Alistair truly didn’t care about her status, about what everyone around them would think of her, of him for being with her. “At least for a little bit.”

“I’ll stay with you.” Alistair beamed at her, the smile lighting up his whole face. “I don’t care what they think. I care what you think. That’s it.”

With Alistair by her side, her body snug against his as she stole the occasional kiss, the Tapster’s Tavern suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

Prompt from this post

[renegade-skywalker]

i want to read your da revenge fic plz

The Rains of Highever    

Summary: The party happens upon a tavern, keen on having a warm meal and a good night’s to rest before hitting the road again, until the Warden spots a few men she finds uncomfortably familiar in the inn’s tavern.

Morrigan had never been more relieved to come upon a tavern. A tavern, of all places. Bustling with all sorts, likely the unfavorable kind of folk (which was, so it happened, quite literally anyone), she tried to hide how pleased she was with a half-hearted snarl once the dumb Warden suggest they pull off the road for the night and try to secure a few rooms. 

Their things had grown damp and cold in the recent rains, so the idea of making camp before nightfall was a dismal one, and with the amount of people on the road Morrigan didn’t quite feel safe using magic out in the open with so many potential witnesses. Not for her own sake, like she could give a damn. She could hold her own and then some. But she was doing it for her, the pretty Warden, the one who saw her as a sister now even if Morrigan didn’t want to admit it. At least, not yet. 

Given what they had all been through at Redcliffe, they could all use the rest, Morrigan included. She didn’t want to admit it, but the battle had sapped her of much of her energy. Not just in the fighting, but in the healing afterward, and in maintaining her mask of indifference she kept up despite it all.

They filed into the inn, each one dripping wet and soaked cold to the bone, instantly warmed by the hearth that greeted them upon entering. The inn keeper immediately waved them over, eager for customers with coin to spare. With an easy smile, Arden offered the gold needed for two rooms, a few meals and ale. Morrigan could faintly hear the innkeeper ask if wine was alright with them, and Morrigan tried not to smirk, happy with the change of menu since ale never felt quite her drink. Arden looked over at Morrigan after affirming that it was, as if reading her mind, a slight smile on her girlish face. Morrigan held her gaze but did not smile, still too guarded, though touched that someone would remember her preference. 

The inn was bustling otherwise, as Morrigan had feared, but there was a table nestled against the wall that was free for all of them to set their things down while their rooms were prepared, and Morrigan was thankful for the sparest of spaces to call her own for the time being. Taking a spot in the corner, farthest from everyone, she set herself down and wrapped her hands around her mug of wine, thankful the barman had enough sense to warm it first, given the weather. 

The others hadn’t started talking yet, still recovering from a long day on the road. Morrigan preferred this, despite the activity that flurried around them. In the silence, Alistair had already begun polishing his bracers, Leliana restringing her bow, and Arden sat silently, sipping her wine, while Sten stood at the far corner of the room with Arden’s mabari Duke at his side, far more comfortable with the warrior beast than with humans, few of which had taken notice of him yet. Morrigan knew it was only a matter of time. 

“What are you thinking about?” Arden asked, a sly smile crossing her face as she nudged Morrigan in the arm. It was meant as a friendly gesture, but Morrigan internally flinched at the contact, still so unused to it, and unsure whether she desired this sort of well-meaning intimacy.

“Oh, the usual,” Morrigan sighed, back straight as she scanned the room, lest she appear at ease or give the impression that she was, “People watching, taking note.”

In the few moments since they’d arrived, Morrigan had already spotted a couple in the corner arguing, their conflict clear despite the passive expressions on their faces. Their bodies were rigid, talking in hushed tones without making eye contact, their smiles harsh and unfeeling, meant for the onlookers rather than one another. And in another corner was a thief, making his way round a group of thugs’ unattended pockets as they played a loud game of cards near the hearth. And beside them were refugees, ravenously slurping up whatever slop they served at this place, Morrigan knowing full well they’d all receive a helping in a few moments.

“Oh? Anyone I should know about?” Arden was trying to be coy, cute even, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Morrigan wasn’t keen on Arden getting any more physically friendly than she already was, but part of her wanted to keep talking, realizing she actually liked when the girl sauntered up to her in camp and asked her questions about both everything and nothing.

“I’ve learned everything I need to know from looking, from watching. Go on, try it.” 

Morrigan always preferred to watch than to participate, always having felt that participating, that interacting, was playing into some made-up social ideal of human experience that felt somewhat fabricated and false, even if the mere idea of talking to someone was supposed to be the authentic part. She’d had a desire to learn about other people from a young age, and that curiosity persisted, but she had no desire whatsoever to fit herself into their narrow expectations of what a person should or should not be, tacking on useless titles and identifiers that only served to somehow label you as other no matter what you did. For Morrigan, she would always be a witch, an apostate, chasind, wild, and even if she was none of those things she would still be a woman - and somehow even her basest sense of being was a strike against her. So instead of playing the game, she extracted herself from it completely. She played the part of Other and relished in it, wondering all the while what Arden, a girl of noble birth and everything that sort of thing carried, thought about that. 

Arden furrowed her brow, but took up Morrigan’s challenge, examining the inn with her chin held between her thumb and forefinger in mock scholarly observation. Morrigan smiled at that, quickly before swallowing her expression - but Arden noticed, glad to have gotten something out of Morrigan at all. But just as quickly as she smiled, she assumed an air of utter seriousness, taking Morrigan’s suggestion to heart.

After a moment, Arden leaned closer, her bronze braid glistening gold in the hearth-light, though careful not to touch Morrigan this time, as if privy to her earlier distaste, and whispered, “The man at the end of the bar is eyeing Sten, for one.”

Arden gestured with her cup towards the door, the man she referenced glancing over his shoulder after every few moments at both Sten and Duke, both hulking figures  on guard in the corner by the door. Sten, with his usual stoic facade bereft of emotion, and Duke, all eager smiles and drooling fangs.

“And I fear that man over there is about to sing,” she said, wincing as she pointed to a table closer to the center of the room. 

Morrigan’s eyes fell on the figure Arden pointed out, huffing a laugh at the sight.

“I’d hardly call him a man, more like a boy,” Morrigan said, noting his lack of facial hair and abundance of baby fat. “This should certainly be interesting.”

At this Morrigan smirked, intrigued though afraid that they would all be in for an earful just as the boy pulled out a lute and began tuning it, the frills on his sleeves catching on the strings every few moments. Arden chuckled at her side, taking another sip as they waited with baited breath for the minstrel to start singing or something.

“Hey, have either of you seen my-” Alistair butted in, but Morrigan hushed him before he could finish speaking, resulting in the man souring on the other side of the table and asking his question again to Leliana, in a hushed voice this time.

Just as the chantry sister shook her head, the minstrel took up his instrument, Leliana’s startling blue eyes glancing in his direction, rolling them as the realization came upon her as well.

“What, is he competition or something?” Alistair joked, noticing the disaster about to happen as well. “Despite no longer being a bard, I mean.”

“Not exactly, but if he even attempts to play Empress of Fire, which he’s using to tune up, he will have every swordpoint in this inn pointed at his pretty little face.”

Arden turned to look at Leliana at this, and Morrigan as well, the surprise at her words washing over them at the same time. Even Alistair looked at her wide-eyed before coughing purposefully, and adding, “Well, it is Ferelden after all. If there was one way to get Loghain’s attention it would be doing anything remotely Orlesian within our borders.”

“That, or killing the-” Morrigan almost said ‘the king‘ before Arden nudged her over the table, sharply in the ribs, “Ow!”

“Can you please stop joking about that?!” Alistair said through gritted teeth now, leaning over the table and nearly topping Morrigan’s cup over. “I know the politics of it all are just some big joke to you but-”

“Hush, I think the poor fool’s about to start,” Leliana interrupted. Everyone grew quiet, as did the rest of the inn, having taken a wary notice of the minstrel and lowering their conversations to a murmur not out of politeness but out of curiosity.

For a moment, Morrigan wondered if this is what it was like to grow up with siblings, having seen enough children chase and quarrel with one another in her travels. She cast her eyes about the inn once more as the quiet conversation settled into a rhythm to see if anyone watched them or sent suspicious glances their way, used to being labeled an outsider on principle but careful to make sure they went unnoticed now that they were tasked with saving the world out from under the King(Lord) Regent’s nose. Was this what it was like having siblings? Arguing with them one minute but growing defensive if anyone else dared the same.

Before she could ponder, the minstrel began playing, and…

“It’s… surprisingly pleasant,” Morrigan found herself saying after a moment, the rest of the table nodding in sober agreement. The minstrel sang no words, instead humming a countermelody along to the tune he began playing (which was probably for the best), careful to leave an upturned hat on his table in case any present felt so inclined to leave a copper or two.

“I don’t think I know this song,” Leliana mused, trying not to appear too engrossed in the performance, though Morrigan could tell just by the look on her face that she was trying to pick out the notes as they wafted over them in the murmuring din while she continued tending to her bow. 

“I’d be rather surprised if you knew every song,” Morrigan mused. “Such a thing is impossible.”

Leliana pursed her lips, looking at Morrigan pointedly and looked as if she might roll her eyes in response though she managed to refrain.

“Of course I can’t know every song,” Leliana countered, her voice its usual Orlesian-tinged sing-song, “Yet most original songs tend to sound like something else, no?”

“I think I know what you mean,” Alistair said, looking back at the shine in his bracers still set on the table, angling them just so to see how shoddy his work was in the nearby candlelight, “Like how so many travel songs take after Calenhad’s Call.”

“Exactly,” Leliana answered, “Melodies so often resemble one another out of merely having memorized them. As a bard, it’s hard not to call on what you know even when you are trying to write something new.”

Morrigan scoffed, rolling her eyes where Leliana refused to more than once, and crossed her arms as she turned back to the whole of the tavern hall again, trying to follow Arden’s gaze as she sat quiet, taking the room in.

“So, notice anything new, or-?” Morrigan began, but Arden cut her off before she could finish.

“It’s Amaranthine On High.”

Arden’s voice was cold, her posture suddenly stiff at her side, her gaze unblinking.

“Amaranthine?” Morrigan said, finding herself wary of breaking the sudden tension, “On the Storm Coast?”

But this time Arden did not answer. Leliana and Alistair did not notice, having gone back to their menial tasks while their food was still being prepared, but Morrigan sat wondering, apprehensive, as Arden sat beside her without another word, watching on as the men across the hall continued their gambling, unaware of Arden’s staring. She’d never seen her like this, her eyes fixated, her limbs rigid, but with poise somehow. She was thinking, Morrigan could tell, but for what she was not sure.

Arden had been watching the minstrel, but Morrigan now saw that he was accompanying the men playing cards across the room, likely playing a song in their favor to earn more of their coin. The scene was not unusual for Morrigan, having stepped into a tavern or two in her time, trailing behind caravans that dared near the Wilds when the opportunity arose. But why this interested the Warden and changed her countenance so? She could not guess.

Morrigan sipped her wine quietly, no longer expecting any further response from Arden beside her. The girl continued staring, now with arms crossed, eyes mere slits as she angled herself carefully towards the bar, as if not to arouse too much suspicion. The song changed, and suddenly Arden stood, a smile on her face, her gait easy, almost lazy, lusty if Morrigan were being generous. 

Morrigan’s eyes darted across the table to Leliana, who also noted Arden’s sudden change, exchanging glances as they shrugged in shared confusion. It took a moment for Alistair to notice as well, and when he did Leliana hit his arm with a hurried “Hush!” as she turned in her seat to see just what it was that Arden was doing.

Holding her cup in a vice grip, Morrigan drank the last of her wine and found her mouth dry, hungry for more, unexpectedly finding herself… afraid. Arden was always so level-headed, diplomatic, prudish even as she teased Alistair about his sexual experiences or lack thereof when the two of them thought the others weren’t listening in and snickering all the while. 

With an unusually lofty air, Arden meandered over to the mens’ table, smiling at them, almost seductively - her eyes heavy-lidded and her lips purposefully plump as she smirked. From across the tavern Morrigan could hear her ask, “Mind if I join?”

The closest of the men balked, blinking up at her at a loss for words. Arden took his silence for compliance and pulled up a chair. The two men closest to her exchanged glances while the others looked on interestedly, sharing a quiet word or two between their cards. None seemed displeased, though a spot confused, though judging by their faces none seemed to mind. Arden waited, smiling at each of them, a sharp look in her eye as she made direct contact with every one. Whatever response she was anticipating, she did not receive it, for Morrigan saw a glimmer of disappointment (or perhaps it was surprise?) flicker across the Warden’s face once she’d looked every man sat around the table before her, none with a word to say for her presence other than a leering grin that she might go to bed with one of them, should they be so lucky.

The rest of the conversation Morrigan could hardly hear, but Leliana was leaning just as closely and just as careful not to appear too obvious while Alistair kept leaning over the table and nearly toppling all their drinks over every few moments to get a better look, clearly uncomfortable with whatever show Arden was putting on and the attention it was getting. But the man stayed put, to Morrigan’s surprise, either too eager to see how this all played out or just as willing to trust Arden with this charade as Morrigan was.

But truth be told, Morrigan had no idea what the girl was getting at, or what sort of game she was playing. They had only known each other for a relatively short amount of time, just outside a month if Morrigan was correct, but this was just… so unlike her, so unusual, that even Morrigan was rendered speechless. It might have been something she would do, just to test men’s mettle, if she’d had the patience, or perhaps if she’d wanted something. But what exactly did Arden want?

Eventually the men dealt Arden into their little card game, the Warden peering over her hand of cards with a devilish look on her face the men easily mistook for friendliness - such as men are. After a while, Arden throws the game and wins not but a penny, but she smiles nonetheless. The inn grows quieter as some of the other patrons move outdoors or to their secured rooms upstairs, and the barkeep’s wife finally comes round with their suppers, but Arden remains playing cards with the men across the room without so much as a backward glance.

“Where did you say she was from again?” Leliana asked after a while, her voice quiet, almost solemn as she sipped from her second cup of wine, just as nervous as Morrigan though Morrigan would never admit it.

“Highever, I think,” she responded, thinking back to Arden’s questions about the Flemeth myth, about her mother, testing the tales she was told as a babe against the story Morrigan told her by their camp’s firelight. “Why?”

Leliana’s face paled.

“You haven’t heard the rumors? I wasn’t sure if they were true, but-” she said, spinning around to see if Alistair had an answer. But the young man only looked back at her, his gaze dark - and that was enough of an answer for Leliana it seemed, though she was in no mood to ask him to elaborate.

“Can I buy you another drink?” said one of the men across the room, his face red as he gazed at Arden, part blushing and part heavy with wine. Arden smiled, wicked, and nodded.

“Maybe we should-?” Alistair started, but Leliana only hushed him again before looking to Arden, eager to see how this all unfolded, Morrigan included, though she did not indicate as much. 

“What, exactly, is she doing I wonder?” Morrigan queried into her cup.

“I’m afraid I might already know,” Alistair groaned, head held in his hands. “I’m not sure this is such a-”

“She can handle herself,” Leliana interrupted in an urgent whisper.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Alistair said, slumping into the table now, surrendered.

Morrigan wanted to agree with Leliana - let the girl sort out her affairs on her own, whatever her intentions may be - but there was something about her air, Arden’s entire demeanor, that was just so entirely off that it left Morrigan with a horrible unease she could not shake as she watched on with rapt attention, for once sharing in Alistair’s sentiment and detesting every moment of it.

The barkeep replenished their drinks and collected their silver, paying extra mind to the men across the room. Morrigan noted that Arden was careful enough to barter not one, but two drinks on her behalf. The two men that flanked her balked as she downed one cup in a single go and start on the other, never breaking eye contact all the while. Leliana glanced at Morrigan, raising her eyebrows, clearly impressed but unsure nonetheless. Morrigan echoed her gesture, watching as a few more patrons left the inn’s main room, leaving them alone with the men across the room and the minstrel playing for their benefit alone, it seemed. Even two of the men from the card game recused themselves, leaving only three.

A few stragglers remained in the outskirts if the inn’s greatroom, gravitating towards the shadows, minding their business, and only the Wardens’ ragtag group of misfits seemed interested at all in what was unfolding near the room’s hearth, at least everyone but Sten - even Duke was on alert now, his hears low and back, his posture stiff as if ready to pounce, but patient nonetheless. 

Quieter now, Morrigan heard more of Arden’s words as she spoke half-way across the room, her eyes still uncharacteristically lidded, her voice almost rasp - a bit like her own, if she thought about it.

“What say you to a game of five finger fillet?” Arden asked once half of her second drink was consumed as the three remaining men only watched, wide-eyed, their expressions stuck somewhere between intimidation and arousal.

No one responded to her query, though there was a round of nervous laughter. Arden did not flinch. With that wicked half-smirk now a permanent fixture of her expression, a sharp glint in her eye, she reached back around for the dagger safely tucked into her belt. With a flip of her wrist, Arden twirled the blade - it’s sharp edge glinting in the firelight - and splayed her other hand on the table, immediately darting the point betwixt her fingers without even looking, her gaze still fixed on the men beside her.

Eyes wide, they watched on, suddenly afraid to speak.

“Seen any good fights lately?” she asked, easing into her smile.

The man beside her said something incoherent about a fight near Denerim, some spat between a noble upstart and the local alienage. The other one laughed weakly. But Arden shook her head.

“Did you happen upon the Highever Tourney this past summer?” she said, her blade moving quicker now, her aim impeccable.

The three men exchanged glances, one excusing himself to speak with the barkeep about drinks while the other two took their time in agreeing to shake their heads with a resounding ‘no’ their expressions unconvincing. Morrigan knew they were lying the moment Arden asked the question, having decided to spin the lie as soon as she spoke, noting: the dark looks, the sudden hunching of the shoulders, as if to shield themselves from something unseen, their shifting gazes before they dared meet Arden’s sharp eyes again. They no longer looked eager for her to continue, whatever it was she was doing, yet the presence of a pretty girl in their midst stayed their hands, working against their judgement, Morrigan could tell - otherwise, why would they stay despite their discomfort? With only two of them present now, she was bound to sleep with one of them, right? Or so Morrigan suspected they believed…

“I hear it was a lad from the Bannorn who won the melee,” one of them said eventually, attempting a smile as he also attempted friendly conversation, giving Arden the benefit of the doubt.

“Oh?” she said, her fingers still unscathed, the blade never stopping. “Did you happen to catch his name?”

“Er, dun’think so,” he answered, slurring as he took another swig of drink instead of elaborating. 

“Bannorn, huh?” she confirmed, feigning interest, as if she didn’t know the answer already. “Any word on who bested Ser Barristan in the joust?”

“Aye, none can best that man,” the other perked up, clearly a fan of whoever this was, “That Wiscard from Killarney is an upstart and a cheat, and I’ll be damned if-”

“Is that so?” Arden said, pleased to see the men ease up around her again, the other one joining in now.

“No offense, but Barristan is a bit old now, ain’t he Merrick? He’s about, I dunno, fifty now.”

“Sure, but man’s a legend,” the man called Merrick said, suddenly confident with drink. He inclined his head towards Arden and asked, “May I?”

He extended a hand towards her dagger, patient as he awaited her reply. She raised her brows, surprised, before surrendering the blade hilt first. Without as much as a thanks, the man began trying his hand (pun not intended) at five finger fillet.

“He didn’t notice the hilt,” Leliana muttered, almost imperceptibly, but she wanted Morrigan to hear. She was catching on, and she wanted to see if Morrigan followed as well. Under any other circumstances, Morrigan might have shot the chantry sister a glare, but in this instance… she was right, and Morrigan knew it. When Arden held out her dagger, she held it crest-up, on purpose, hoping one of the men would catch the image of twin laurels engraved in the mother of pearl glinting in the firelight… but neither of them did. 

The other man was piss poor at this game, his fingers slow and fumbling, but Arden smirked despite it, glad he was falling into whatever trap she had set and happy to know he was too drunk to use the dagger with any accuracy. Morrigan wanted to laugh, unsurprised by men of this sort and whatever ilk they bore, but kept her mouth shut for she wanted to know what it was the Warden had up her sleeve exactly…

“What about that archer, eh?” the other man joined in after a moment, gathering his courage the more he drank, no longer intimidated by Arden but happy to be in her company. The fool, Morrigan thought.

“Heard it was a woman,” the other one said, “But that’s just rumors.”

“No rumors,” Arden chimed in, “I met her, actually.”

“Oh really?” the man with the dagger said, smiling over the hilt fumbling in his fat fingers, inelegantly stabbing the table every few moments, barely missing the skin of his hands.

“It’s true,” she said, almost growing solemn, “All of it.”

Just at that moment, the minstrel picked up his song again, as if sensing the mood in the room and seeking to lighten it with his lute. Morrigan rolled her eyes and waved at the barkeep for another mug of wine, placing a copper on the table for whatever that would buy her. Glancing at Alistair, Morrigan noticed the man was still hunched over his bracers, as if shining them into a mirror… he knew. He knew whatever it was Arden was doing, whatever her motive, and whatever that was scared him. He’d tried to stop her, but backed down the moment Leliana asked. Morrigan wanted to chalk it up to the man’s cowardice, but judging by the look on his face, she knew it was more than that. It was… earned, somehow, whatever it was that Arden was doing. He understood it, on some level, though he may have feared the outcome. The barkeep came round with Morrigan’s wine, and with a nod she sipped at the rest quickly, faster than she intended, eager to outdrink her dread as the feeling crept over her.

“Aye?” one of them laughed into his ale, the foam spilling over the edge, “How’d you know?”

“Because that girl was me.”

The men paused and Arden only smiled wanly at them. The one with the knife froze, the blade teetering as the edge now pierced the scrubbed wooden table that separated them from Arden. She plucked it from the wood and admired its glittering gleam in the hearth-light.

“It’s interesting that you both know so much for not having been there,” she said, her voice barely audible over the lute, now strumming a sweet melody as if in a reverie, “Ser Wiscard was actually the famous Ser Barristan’s squire once, so I’d say his victory is still Barristan’s. The man’s a good teacher,” she laughed before pausing in thought, her voice hollow, “And it was the captain of the Highever guard that won the melee, one Ser Gilmore, I’ll have you know.”

At this, the man on the left’s face drained of all color, skin as pale as paper as he watched Arden continue without another word.

“I saw you talking to him in the stables the following day, as I recall. Chatting about the mares,” she looked him in the eye now, the blade held firmly in her hands. “Funny, how I saw one of the very same mares tied up outside. I didn’t think so at first, but…”

Arden angled the dagger so the two men could see the sigil etched into its side now. 

“I’m surprised, y’know. I really am - that Rendon didn’t make you memorize my face,” she said slowly, grinning eerily now, her eyes alight, “I would have hoped you’d recognize the daughter of Bryce Cousland if you saw her.”

Just as the men’s eyes fell on the blade’s laurel sigil, Arden stabbed the dagger into the man’s still outstretched hand on the table, staking it to the wood in a slow-growing pool of blood.

The minstrel stopped playing, mid-song, the remainder of the tavern’s inhabitants turning to watch. Morrigan stood stock still, her muscles tense as Leliana unconsciously grabbed her arm in a vice grip. Alistair had his bracers affixed to his forearms again beside them, gleaming in the tavern light as he sat with his pack ready to go, already realizing that they were never meant to stay here. His somber, amber eyes met Morrigan’s for a moment, and as if in confirmation, nodded his head with a glance at her stuff, beckoning that she, too, get her things ready before this got ugly. Duke barked from across the hall, nearly bursting out of his leash under Sten’s grip. Morrigan faltered, eyes wide, as she watched between all of them, Leliana at her side, also realizing, now gathering up her bow in case she had need of it. 

Morrigan reached for her staff as she turned back to Arden, her face ghostly and garish in the firelight, her eyes wide and pale, her features manic as she looked the man in the eyes while she held his bloody palm to the wood, screwing the blade in deeper as she awaited a response.

The man beside him jumped up, scrambling for a scabbard that was no longer attached to his now-drunk hip, but just as he did, Arden produced another blade from the back of her belt and shot it, the blade catching the flesh of his ear and pinning it to the column of wood behind him. 

“Especially if you were supposed to kill her, no?”

Without another word, Arden leaned across the table, never breaking eye contact, and grabbed both their drinks, not blinking once as she drowned them both, an eye on each of them as they scrambled in drunken shock and disbelief. 

“Best tell Rendon Howe that Arden Cousland sends her regards,” she sneered once she slammed the last of the mugs back down on the table, foam spattering out of it and onto the men’s faces. “Because he’s next.”

Arden turned her heel and walked back to their table, her expression blank, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She finished her wine and spooned a few mouthfuls of stew between her teeth before slinging her pack back onto her shoulder. 

“Are we done here?” she said to the lot of them, as if disinterested. Morrigan and Leliana shot up, as if they were reprimanded soldiers being called to attention. Alistair was already on his feet, looking grim, eager to leave. Duke, beside the bar, struggled against the Qunari’s firm but gentle grip, teeth lashing at open air as he snapped at the men across the room, the minstrel looking on in horror. Before awaiting her party’s response, Arden tossed a coin at him, laughing loudly when the boy caught it with his teeth.

“Good dog,” she said, winking, before patting Duke on the head as Sten surrendered him, his face grim, and leading the mabari out of the tavern and into the night.

No one asked any questions. No one said anything at all. Morrigan had seen her fair share of human spats in her time observing their behavior from afar, but nothing like this. The night air was a sharp slap to the face once they left the warmth of the inn, the rain coming down as more of an annoying mist than a downpour. Morrigan, for once, mourned the loss of a warm bed as Arden meandered over to the stable beside the inn.

“I say it’s about time we had some horses, no?” the Warden said, untying the three Storm Coast Coursers from their posts, rubbing the neck of the mare in the middle’s affectionately. As if she knew her and was making up for not recognizing her earlier.

Leliana took one of the horse’s leads uncertainly, but not unsurely. She would follow Arden into hellfire, Morrigan knew, but she could tell Leliana was hesitant about asking after what exactly had just transpired. Glancing at Morrigan and locking eyes, her piercing blue to Morrigan’s honeyed yellow… Morrigan knew she felt the same. 

Arden passed the last horse’s rein to Morrigan, which she took with a wavering hand. She met Arden’s gaze, hard and sharp, like she’d never seen it before - and there, that was when Morrigan saw it - the bit of Flemeth in her, like the tales. The avenging woman, tempered yet unkempt with rage. She’d laughed when Arden had recalled what she knew of the Flemeth myth, of what ghost stories were told at Highever castle and of the woman who once lived there. But if there was ever any truth to those stories, there was truth to them now, and Morrigan witnessed it, alive in Arden’s sea-blue eyes. An avenging angel, righteous with fury. 

And keen on saving the world despite it. 

[ventisquear]

Help with the Zevran’s toast

I have finished Failed to Fail last year. And I wanted to add an epilogue. And it’s written - except for the VERY LAST SENTENCE!!! For months now, I’ve been stuck. I tried to rework it into a prologue of the book 2... still stuck.

What I want is the toast a Zev could say, that would be funny, tease Alistair, and at the same time somehow reflects the epilogue. So you know. No problemo. >.>

So I thought, maybe other Zev’s fans can think of something. If I get something better than my lame attempts, I will add it to the story - of course, I’d give you credit. :)

Arrivederci, Amici

“I can’t believe it’s all over. These three months, where did they go? And now you’re all leaving.” Alistair frowned at the thick foam of his beer as if it was all its fault. “Feels like only yesterday we were joking about it at that inn in Orzammar.”

“And Air got drunk after a single beer.” Leliana giggled. “After a single ale!”

“Four, in fact,” Zevran corrected her. “But drunk in record time.”

“And then he called Sten –”

“Yes, yes,” Airam grumbled, “we all remember it. No need to repeat it.”

“No,” Sten agreed, and they all laughed.

It was the last night they would all be together. Tomorrow morning Morrigan would fly away. Where she would go, she refused to say. Why she had even stayed these last three months, Zevran couldn’t say. She looked bitter and barely talked to any of them, disappearing each morning and only returning late at night; most of the palace servants were terrified of her. But she had accepted the invitation to join them for a ‘last night out’… maybe she did feel something for them after all.

Sten would sail for Seheron just a few hours later to share his findings about the nature of the Blight with the Aarishok. What he would report, he refused to say. Airam teased him that what he truly wanted to share were the recipes for Fereldan peanut butter cookies. Sten smiled at that… but he didn’t say no, Zevran noticed.

Wynne and Shale would be next; contrary to common expectation, Wynne had decided not to return to the Tower just yet. Zevran smiled into his goblet; he’d never forget the confused shock on Greagoir’s face, and the silent triumph on Irving’s, when she calmly informed them she was taking Shale to Miranthous to search for a way to turn her back into a dwarf. And to take care of some personal business along the way. Both men obviously understood what she meant, but didn’t dare to protest.

Oghren and Felsi would be leaving in two days, though they weren’t going very far: they wanted to return to Redcliffe to start brewing ‘genuine dwarven ale’ and breeding nugs for steaks. Leliana thought it was a horrible idea, but the surfacer dwarves outvoted her.

Besides, she wouldn’t be staying long enough to taste the first steak. All last week she had been suspiciously quiet, wandering around the palace with an absent-minded look on her face, or sitting in the chapel (refurbished, but not yet back to its former glory) for long hours, whispering prayers under her breath. Yesterday she’d finally informed them that Dorothea had been promoted to the Right Hand of the Divine and wanted Leliana by her side to help her start the much needed Chantry reforms. And that she was going to accept. She had carefully avoided Alistair’s eyes, his lips narrowed into a barely visible line, although he sounded cheerful when he congratulated her.

The last ones to leave would be the soon-to-be Warden Commander of Orzammar and his young wife. Faren wanted to recruit more surfacers and former casteless as Wardens, and Dagna wanted more time with the Mages… although both Airam and Erwin had tried to warn her it wasn’t the best of times for that.

The Grand Cleric was determined to redeem the Chantry from what she perceived as failures. She couldn’t touch the Suranas, Erwin, or Jowan, at least not right now… but Irving had no such luck. For the past two months, he had been officially ‘under Templar supervision, for the duration of the investigation of Uldred’s rebellion’ – which meant he was in prison and being questioned – and Zevran wouldn’t be too surprised if it included some torture as well.

Ah, but that was none of his business, no? The world was saved, it could turn on its own now. Airam would be leaving for Vigil’s Keep, an old fortress that used to belong to Howe, but that Alistair had graciously granted to the Wardens of Ferelden. Zevran would go with him, naturally. He had no intention of letting his crazy mage out of his sight again. Maker knew what he would get himself into without supervision. And when he remembered the fear and pain in Airam’s eyes when Faren had taken a sip from the Joining Cup and fallen to the ground…

(Strictly speaking, he hadn’t been invited to the Joining ceremony – in fact, he’d been forbidden to participate. But he was his Warden’s warden, and standing vigilant in the shadows was his specialty. He wouldn’t let Airam bear the whole burden by himself. Not again, not ever.)

But first they would visit the graves of Airam’s family in the Brecilian forest. Shwara had promised to meet them there three weeks from now. Airam wanted to go, Zevran knew, but he was also terrified. If he were alone, he probably wouldn’t find the courage to do so, not after all that had happened, as he himself had admitted. Zevran had let it pass without comment, but he was determined not to let Airam brood about his past anymore and to focus on the now instead. Thirty years wasn’t that long, after all.

“Zev? Are you listening?” Airam nudged him.

“Of course he isn’t. Look at how his eyes are shining.” Leliana winked. “I bet he’s thinking about the scented oils he’ll use for tonight's massage.”

“Tsk… you should stop underestimating me, my dear woman. To think of it only now – do you think me an amateur? Everything was arranged hours ago.”

“What… oh. Maker.” Alistair rolled his eyes. “How can you endure it without strangling him, Air?”

“I will straddle him later – oh, you said strangle? No… I don’t think I’m into it that much,” Airam said, turning Alistair’s mild blush into the real thing. Embarrassing the Chantry-Boy-cum-King was one thing Zevran would miss… Thankfully, Vigil’s Keep was a mere two days by foot from Denerim.

He smiled and raised his goblet. “To the

[eyeofmud]

a prompt fill for @will-and-her-fandoms  ”We’re in the middle of a thunderstorm and you wanna stop and feel the rain?”

- i took a bit of a liberty with the quote just to make it fit a little better-

The rain on their skin feels like a new beginning. It turns the world hazy and hot, dimming the sun until it filters down in muted flaxen rays. Kisses the top of their head and flows down their hair to drip down their neck. Wet like the tears on their cheeks. 

Noure stands in the center of the road and tilts their head up towards the sky. It isn't separated by a cathedral of glass or stone and it isn't a dream. No demon lurks in the corner of their eyes, no nightmare could ever tempt them like this. Road stretching ahead into nothing but haze and thunderstorms and Noure breathes in the air thick with ozone and wonders if they’ve forgotten the feeling of thunder.

Raising cupped hands in front of them Noure lets the water pool in their palms. Dribble through their fingers before they raise it to their mouth and drink. Clear and crisp and clenching a thirst Noure's throat has burned with for seven full years. 

Mismatched eyes closing in an answered prayer. Noure stands with their hands held chest high and their head tilted back and tries to count each raindrop as it hits their skin. The first crack of lightning streaks by overhead and Noure can see it through their eyelids. Glowing white and blue. 

Thunder follows after a heartbeat of still silence. It rumbles across Lake Calenhad and over the fields of wheat to settle inside Noure’s chest like it belongs there. The storm fitting neatly into the space between their ribs. They can taste the freedom of it on their tongue and it stings with the salt already on their lips. Noure’s never tasted anything sweeter. 

Rusty gold light under grey clouds greets their opening eyes. Rain continues to pour in thin sheets in the afternoon and between Noure’s shoulder blades itches the weight of a stranger’s gaze. Something they’ve become used to bearing. Noure doesn’t acknowledge it, simply stands in the rain in the middle of the road and waits for the inevitable. 

“We are in the middle of a thunderstorm and you wish to stop and feel the rain?” It’s a heavy voice Noure is only just becoming accustomed to hearing. Sten’s voice, if they remember his name correctly. 

Noure isn’t sure how they feel about Sten. Living your life in a shadow cast entirely by your own fear tends to lend itself to learning enemies quickly and Sten doesn’t quite fit into enemy. But Noure is wary. Sten watches them as if they’re one step away from falling into madness and maybe he isn’t wrong. Lips twitching upwards Noure wonders if they’d met under better circumstances would Sten still think of them as dangerous. Maybe then he’d be wrong. 

But Ellanis trusts him, speaks fondly of him, and that is enough for Noure. “The last time it rained, the last time I felt it on my skin, was the last time I wasn’t a prisoner. I could stand in this rain until the sun breaks between the clouds and still not rid myself of the sins of that place.” 

Silence, it turns out, can be heavier than wasted words. 

The weight of Sten’s eyes lifts from Noure’s shoulders, or maybe it falls with the rain. It won’t last for long, this quiet, between the thunder and the shuffle of steps Sten will find the way to word whatever it is caught in his thoughts and Noure will answer in kind. But that is later, further down the road.

Right now Noure is going to stand in the rain and let the storm find its home in their heart.