thinking about the ending of dragon age 2 as a mage hawke who sided with the mages
at the end of the fifth blight, the warden defeats the archdemon and saves ferelden. they are paraded through denerim to the sounds of cheering crowds. if they don't survive, their memory lives on in a tale of great heroism and sacrifice for years to come. the inquisitor celebrates at skyhold with the rest of their companions after they beat corypheus, the threat finally ended, the inquisition a success.
but not hawke. you can fight with everything you have to support the mages, but there is no grand fanfare when it is over. the villain succumbs to corruption and dies unceremoniously - you don’t even get the satisfaction of striking the killing blow. you can’t get a round at the hanged man to celebrate. it’s time to go. you and your friends can never sit around your table at the hanged man again. you can’t be seen here when the templars come to clean up the mess. nothing will be the same. you have given seven years of your life trying to hold kirkwall together, accepted your accolades and played the part of champion, and you watch it fall apart anyway. and how much of that is your fault? this city has been stained in your blood since before you could remember, since before the blood was your own.
you lost your sister when you lost your first home. even so, you tried to live by the advice you gave fenris - when you stop running, you build a life. the estate that you clawed your family back into stands looming and empty. it is the last place you saw your mother alive, and you still can't bear to touch her things, and you will never even see her room again. bodahn and sandal are making preparations to leave for orlais, orana will find other work with the skills she's learned, and the house will remain, a hollow testament to your family's legacy. gamlen will hear only the stories. your brother fought by your side when it mattered, despite everything. even so, he will stay behind, and you might never see him again.
no, there is no time for a celebration. instead you get a cautious acknowledgement from the templars, a tense goodbye, and then you can never go home again. for the second time. you thought you could build a life, and you tried. you held on as long as you could, you made friends, you fell in love, you clung to the last vestiges of your family, but most of them will be forced to leave your side anyway. you won, but even that wasn't enough.
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WOW this has been ROUGH in the Life Events category of things, but. slowly crawling out of that. hopefully
this was the opening scene for a something I started writing after watching the Manben inverview with Nishi Keiko and thinking back to all the classic shoujo manga I stayed up reading back in the day, like damn that's so true Urasawa Naoki
it's partially a love letter to all the greats of the genre that I read, and also to the late night teleseryses that captivated me over the years lmao. it'd be nice to find the time to tackle it properly as a comic, but I'm having fun working on it recreationally :)
✨but since it's recreational, some character info✨
the first character seen is lawrence 'law' valenciano (late 30s), the one with the glasses is cris volante (mid-later 20s). law works at a karinderya, cris is an extremely broke university student.
⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta / tip jar!
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it's lowkey crazy how stucky will have me entertaining about a dozen contradictory headcanons all at once, like
they explored each other's bodies in their old shoebox apartment in brooklyn, two young things learning how to love in each other's arms. they never even kissed before wakanda. they were lovers during the war, stealing secret caresses and breathless i love you's in the darkness whenever they could. they first confessed their feelings post-catws, each thinking their love was unrequited - and surprised to learn that they were, in fact, loved back. they finally tied the knot in wakanda, after bucky got out of cryo, and lived happily ever after in the most unexpected of places: a farm - their farm. cacw never happened at all; one day, bucky showed up on steve's doorstep, with a few fragile memories and only one certainty he was holding onto (steve was everything to him), and now they're living in brooklyn, close to their old neighborhood, building a life together in the most unexpected of places: the future.
and they're all rotating in the blorbo microwave, all together, all the time
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he can't be gentle. how could he possibly be something that was beaten out of him so cruelly at such a young age?
you don't get soft fingers dancing lightly along your hairline as you sleep on his lap, no, you get a large, calloused paw brushing back your hair so he can see your pretty, pretty features better cos it was annoying him. he can't hold your hand don't be daft he'll crack your smaller bones in half... is the reasoning that he hopes will convince himself to stop fucking thinking about playing with your pretty fingers and pressing soft kisses to them. he's not soft! he's a killing machine! he knows nothing but anger and rage and numbness. so what is this strange fuzzy sensation in the hollow hole in his chest that's bothering him? why does it feel good? why is it making him fucking smile?
when he curls his mass around your sleeping body, don't be mistaken. he doesn't want to feel the way you fit perfectly against him. he's just.. trying to swallow you whole. he's not trying to get closer to you no no he's actually attempting to steal your joy. it's not as if you lessen the, thus far, endless and overwhelming burden of his corporeal blight oh no he's just using you.
everytime he presses his mouth against you and doesn't suck your blood out, he reasons that he's practising self-control and instead forcing himself to leave featherlight kisses that make you giggle oh so sweetly even when he knows deep down that he'd pluck out every one of his own teeth if even one dared puncture your skin. simon's not a soft man. he's not a gentle man. he's killed countless with the very hands that you play with. he tells himself you mean nothing to him, that he could walk away and forget you whenever he felt like it but everytime he wishes that his fingers were softer so that they may be more pleasant upon your skin and everytime he wishes that his lips were less chapped so that you may kiss him more, he knows he's fighting a losing battle.
simon riley will become a soft and gentle man in your embrace and there's not one thing he can do to prevent it.
masterlist
pls comment i have so many thoughts about this man that need to be talked about xx
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