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#skitterfics
skiitter · 1 year
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@simplifiedemotions commissioned @avendell to make me a piece for A Darker Blue and anyway it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. iuoshsfiul;hgid look at it. i’m crying. gonna hang it above my mantle.
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cuteasamuntin · 1 year
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Reading through @skiitter’s Silvermerc ficlets on here has me truly experiencing the shrimp colors of emotion
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skiitter · 8 months
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for prompts: astarion's first day (or night) of freedom after killing cazador
Astarion lays quietly in his bedroll and watches the sun come to life. It's a novel thing, the sunrise. Something nearly everyone takes for granted at one time or another. He surely did, back before he died. It's so common, it's forgettable. Every evening the sun sets and every morning it rises again. Even in the rain, or the snow, it's there. Even in the Shadow-cursed Lands, the sun still rose, it was just imperceptible behind the cloying darkness. He used to hate it, fear it, loathe it for the control it had over his life. The sun was his mortal enemy, the glint of weakness in his vampiric nature.
He loves it now, he thinks. Loves it for it's simplicity, for it's reliability. For all the reasons he used to detest it, tried to curse it from the sky, Astarion now cherishes as though it is fragile, as though it is priceless. He envies everyone alive who has never known what it is to fear the sun, to fear it's warming touch. Every morning he wakes with the dawn, pale face turned boldly towards its ascent, just to drink it all in. He has two hundred years of darkness to drown out, to burn from him, and the window within which to do that is rapidly closing.
How profoundly mundane it is, he muses, to know that it is the sun he will miss the most. Not the freedom to walk into wherever he chooses, to take dips in cold streams and not feel the searing burn as the water rushes by him. Just the sun, and it's warmth, and the way he tracks it through the sky everyday. It was a heavy thing to give up, heavier still to do it willingly.
And yet, for the first time since he stumbled onto that beach, blinking blindly into the sun all those weeks ago, there is no spectre there, at the edges of the light. There is no vile thing haunting his thoughts, though the irony of the tadpole literally haunting his thoughts is enough to bring a small smile to his lips. It softens though, as his mind wanders on.
Cazador is dead. Astarion is free.
Six words, six impossibly simple, impossibly unbelievable words.
Cazador is dead. Astarion is free.
Truly free. Properly, utterly, wholly free. The ritual would have given him the sun back permanently, given him an endless litany of days spent basking in it's light, but it would have stolen from him the very last thing he had left of himself. He would have become Cazador's, even as the wretched monster lay bloodied and still at his feet. Seven thousand souls, souls he damned a long, long time ago, would litter the edges of his unending existence. For all that he tried and yearned to be heartless, Astarion wasn't. He could have been, would have eventually become, had the ritual been completed.
But it wasn't and he's not, and so he let's that little bit of sunlight take root in his empty body, let's it spread through him like winding summer vines. Just nine hours ago, he was screaming, agony and hatred rolling forth from him like an unstoppable tide. Now he is quiet, and he is calm, and though he has yet to fully understand the echoing ramifications of the choices he has just made, Astarion finds that this moment in the sun, this perfect stillness of warmth and companionship, is worth it. Totally, easily, perfectly worth it.
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skiitter · 8 months
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It’s a slow descent, all things considered. He’s certainly no stranger to the concept of falling, of being irreparably changed against his will. At least Cazador did him the courtesy of making it swift, of ruining him quick and clean. The breaking was over in an instant, even if the insidious corruption would continue on for centuries. What’d he’d do now, here in this cursed black land, for a faster agony.
Astarion finds it difficult to blame her, which is so wholly outside of his character he wonders at the depths of the tadpole’s interference. There are few things as treasured to him as a scapegoat and by the hells, that’s all he expected her to be. A scapegoat and a victim, every bit the insipid, naive tool he needed to come out the other side of this macabre little adventure intact and improved.
The obnoxious bards that plague his tavern hunting grounds would say that love is an improvement, no matter the form. That to desire something so earnestly is the most divine way to be changed. Up until this moment, watching her sweet talk her way through the damned Moonrise Towers with the ease of a child at play, Astarion would have laughed himself sick in their hideous little faces. His heart wrenches now though, as it stares at him across a dwindling campfire. So much of himself stolen for the twisted amusement of Cazador left him presumably empty, and yet there the core of him sits, torn from his empty ribs and placed writhing in her wanting hand.
How it is that he’s tasted the slick of her, the copper and the sweet, and still feels as though he could never know the depths of her body, of her—gods above what is he doing—soul. The sins of the flesh were something to be wielded like a dagger in the dark. Now he wishes to feel the warm pressure of her hand on his, like a love struck puppy, all bright eyes and innocence. Her affection she gives so freely; Astarion knows that she would hug him, if he asked.
But he can’t ask, can he? Not while the deception still festers. Fucking nine fucking hells how much simpler things were on high, up above these idiot mortals, manipulating her kindness without a care in the world. He wanted her to fall, expected fully that she would. Never, in a thousand lifetimes and across a hundred worlds, could he have guessed it would be him that breaks apart.
And worse than this bitter realization is the horrid understanding that he has to tell her. He has to be honest because it’s beyond his nature not to crave, not to need, and with how surely she’s become the object of all his wretched, loving desires, Astarion must know how this will end.
If she spurns him, it’s not as though he can leave. The breadth of their survival is tangled together like gossamer threads. They need each other now, something that often makes him feel comfort where he once would have harbored acerbic disgust. This dependency, this willingness to give himself away when all he’s ever longed to be was free, it’s a slow death, a writhing crawl toward the end. He’s falling slowly, but it’s a steady thing, and he is selfish enough to want her to catch him when he lands.
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skiitter · 11 months
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Chapter Twenty-Eight: Epilogue.
And so we've come to the end.
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skiitter · 6 months
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Chapter Seven.
And so we’ve come to the end.
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skiitter · 7 months
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Just letting u know im patiently waiting for that underdark fic bc im sure it's gonna slap 💯💅💅
dfgdfkjlhfd this makes my day <3 i will give a snippet below the cut since i desperately need someone else to look at this and also you're so kind im cry.
“The fledglings need feeding but they’re all completely useless at the hunt. And, thanks to this annoying hero-type I know, I can’t just let them grab people off the streets anymore.”
“I'm so proud,” she says with dramatic sincerity.
He glares at her. “This is worse, actually. You see how this is worse, right?”
“Technically, as you keep insisting, you helped save the world so you know what that makes you?”
“Nope. Absolutely not.”
She gives him her very best shit-eating grin. “A hero.”
“Actually I’ve changed my mind, you can leave.”
“Nah, I’m okay. Think I’ll stay and see what other heroics you get up to.”
“Anyway,” he says pointedly. “They need blood. And clothing. And, fuck, bedrolls.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Dalyria couldn’t keep a stuffed bear alive, I swear to the fucking gods.”
“Sounds like you’re about to open the very first ‘Astarion’s Home For Wayward Vampire Spawn’.” It’s a testament to their friendship that he doesn’t kill her immediately.
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skiitter · 7 months
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WIP Wednesday
Tagged by: @flymmcargo
Tagging: @sexyapostate @inkberrry @heyjude19-writing @simplifiedemotions and anyone else!
here's a rough sneak peak of the next chapter of Carving Through The Dark!
“When is dear heart arriving?” Gale asks. Wren looks up from the ostentatious purple gown she’s pulled out to see that they are alone. 
“I don’t know. I only asked him last night.” Her heart clenches at the thought of actually seeing him in person. It feels like a lifetime. “Presumably whenever the sun sets.”
Gale hums thoughtfully. “You should probably coordinate with him, yes? It would be mighty awkward should he choose to activate that ring of yours in the middle of a bath.” He makes a peculiar face. “Well, maybe not awkward. Have you reconsidered—“
“No,” she says tersely, cutting him off. “I haven’t and I won’t.”
His mouth slants downward. “You shouldn’t deny yourself the option to be truthful about your feelings, Wren. He has a right to know.”
“He absolutely does not. My every action comes from a place of respect, not desire.” Indignation rises like a tide within her. “He has been treated like an object for two centuries. I refuse to make him feel like that again.”
“You love him,” he insists. “Surely you realize how different that is from pure physical attraction?”
“I—I do,” she says with obvious trepidation.
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skiitter · 7 months
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WIP WEDNESDAY
I was tagged by @flymmcargo! thank u <3 (everyone go read her gortash/tav fic it is 10/10)
tagging: @meowstarion @snail-eggs @simplifiedemotions @sumbul @vos-videmus and the other 500 people i've forgotten that i know for sure write fics.
This is for the upcoming chapter for Carving Through The Dark. It's from Astarion's POV :) tw: references to sexual trauma/ongoing adjacent self-harm.
But Wren is gone. And has left him a facsimile of the man she’d been helping him to become struggling in her wake. She’d be so disappointed in him, probably disgusted. It’s for the best that she's with Gale. Gale, simple Gale, easy and lovable and friendly fucking Gale. He is good for Wren. He can touch her and it won’t bring with it a flood of serrated history, of ugly trauma. She won’t hate him for the way he’d used her. The way Astarion had used her. Even in this state, he knows she probably doesn’t hate him either, but she should and that’s the anchor Astarion is using to drown himself. Maybe Gale will tell her that he loves her, the way Astarion cannot seem to do, and then she will stay with him in his hideous tower and kiss Gale the way she once wanted to kiss him.
A heart is a horrible thing to carry and an even worse thing to miss. Wren’s got his like a noose around her neck, his affection like a shadow of the wretched way he wants her. He should have told her that he loved her, in those seconds before she left. Maybe it would have been enough to make her stay. Maybe it would have been enough to convince her he is still worthy of whatever she’d be willing to give. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend the drow on top of him, whose blood still lingers on his tongue, is really Wren. Maybe that’s the way to get through this. Maybe that’s the way he bludgeons and claws himself back to normalcy.
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skiitter · 2 years
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"I love you, Garrus Vakarian."
It echoed like a gunshot in her head. The words were honeyed oil, viscous, insistent, easy. She'd said it because, high above the Presidium with the galaxy burning and the scent of ozone in the air, it was the only thing left to say. She loved him. It was a fact, a veritable force of nature; relentless and seemingly without end. The soft, vulnerable, beating center of her was wholly removed from the cavity of her chest and placed with ironclad trust into the palm of his three-fingered hand.
And Garrus Vakarian, sole anchor of her heart and absolute arbiter of her desires, did not say it back.
At first, she assumed it was a cultural miscommunication. Lord knows they'd had their fair share of those in the time they had spent together. Shepard didn't even think to question it, attributing his lack of reciprocation to the failures of their translators.
And then he said he loved Tali's omni-tool mod, and Liara's quick thinking, and Joker's sharp tongue, and the forceful way Javik demanded success. Without provocation, without restraint, the declaration so banal it was unnoticeable to anyone else. Suddenly, Shepard realized that Garrus knew exactly what it meant to love something. He understood with blatant clarity the human definition of the act and had chosen not to say it back.
Immediately, she wanted to ask him, to find out the objective truth of the matter. Only, between the war and the reapers and the waves of violent destruction, Shepard lacked the energy and conviction to do it. So instead, every bit the mechanical soldier she'd trained to be, Jane Shepard ate her feelings whole and let them fester with rot in total silence.
It worked surprisingly well, at least for a time. Despite the way it poisoned the well of her thoughts, it was still easy to speak to him. Garrus was her best friend, the person she relied upon most. He had her six, her back, and her best interests in mind. So what if he didn't say "I love you" back? She was a big girl. She was Commander fucking Shepard. The feather soft touch of his hand at her spine was enough.
And it was, all the way up until it wasn't.
An endless wave of Cerberus agents had them pinned against a crumbling wall, somewhere in the heart of a human colony. She is out of ammo, save for the last two rounds in her SMG and the situation is bleak no matter how you looked at it. All in all, a familiar if unwelcomed scenario.
"Not a great situation here, Shepard," Garrus said.
"Is it ever?"
His laugh strikes at the small, vulnerable points in her armor. Ever the marksman. "No, I guess not." The flanking engineer drops when Garrus shoots him between the eyes. "You never take me anywhere nice. And here I was, thinking you loved me."
Shepard pops around the corner to lob a stream of biotic energy at the approaching centurion. "Maybe I just got tired of waiting to hear it back."
Garrus frowns but the firefight overtakes them, and Shepard let's the topic drop.
He waits until they're safely back aboard the Normandy to respond. Guns clunk heavily into their containers as she offloads the small armory she carries around. Vega is chatting with Cortez nearby, arguing over the value of titanium vs. steel bullet casings. Shepard focuses on their conversation to shake the weight of Garrus' eyes on her.
Unfortunately for her, the two men leave before she can finish unloading her weaponry and the moment the elevator door slides shut, he attacks.
With a speed wholly incompatible with the bulk of his body, Garrus crowds her into the wall. "What was that back there?" he asks.
"What was what?" Shepard plays coy because the opportunity never presents itself and she's otherwise too direct not to seize the twisted reprieve. "Just the usual gunfight between us and the enemy, Garrus."
He growls, subvocals a low reminder of the predator he's descended from. "We both know that's not what I'm talking about."
She stares up at him, defiant in the face of his demand. "Well I can't imagine--"
"Did I miscommunicate something here, Shepard? Have I not made myself clear?"
Heat, drawn from a myriad of sources, burns her face. "You've made yourself perfectly clear, Garrus."
His hands clutch at the cloth of her uniform, threatening to pull her apart at the seams. "Then what's wrong? Because something is wrong. I know you, Shepard. I know you better than I know myself and something is bothering you. Something I did."
"You didn't do anything," she snaps. "That's the whole fucking problem." Feelings and the blatant declaration of them have never been her strong suit and in the face of discomfort, Shepard grows indignant. "You played it too easy, Vakarian, just like you always do."
He recoils like a poorly maintained pistol. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means--" she shouts, only to lower her tone when a passing officer glances their way. "It means that I don't like being toyed with. I made my--my feelings known. And enough time has past that I was hoping you'd finally do the same." Shepard pulls away. "I guess you have."
When she goes to leave, though, he holds tight, pressing her into the wall. "What feelings? What are you even talking about?"
"I love you, okay? And I know you know what it fucking means, Garrus. You seem to have no problem throwing the word around otherwise." The foolishness is too much, and her indignation dies an ugly death. "I just thought you'd have said it back by now."
The gauntlet of understanding plays out on his features. "Shepard, do you think--"
"Keep your pity, Garrus, I'm a big girl. I'll get over it. The war will make sure of that."
He tries once more to speak, assuredly to apologize for her gross display of misconstrued affection, but Shepard cannot bear the rejection and she wrests free from his grasp to disappear gracelessly into her cabin.
Not even a full minute passes before he chases after her.
The fish all seem to look expectantly at her when she stalks into the room and she punches the 'feed' button almost hard enough to break it. Shitty, autotuned dance music plays mutely in the background.
Shepard takes one full step towards the inviting expanse of her bed when Garrus marches in.
"Garrus, I said--"
"I love you. Is that what this is about? Spirits, Shepard, how was I supposed to know you cared about that? Of course I love you! I'd burn this entire stupid galaxy down for you. I'd happily march into certain annihilation at your side, just as I have time and again." His mandibles flare with emotion. "I never said it back because I thought it was obvious. Apparent, even. I love you so much you stubborn, difficult, foolish woman."
She doesn't quite know what to say first and so she settles for a scowl. "I don't need some hallmark card of devotions, Garrus. It was just--in the moment you didn't say it back and--well--I mean you say you love your stupid rifle! What was I supposed to think?"
He closes the gap between them, satiating the mutual need to touch. "That I'm actually not the cool, suave, sophisticated badass that I pretend to be and telling the woman of my dreams--who happens to be the savior of all sapient life in the galaxy--that I love her is just a wee bit intimidating?"
"But I said it first!"
"And I was too tongue tied to say it back." His forehead is cool against her own. "I'm sorry. I know--I know how hard it is, being vulnerable. And the fact that you thought, even for a second, let alone two standard weeks, that I didn't love you back is a crime I cannot bear to commit again."
"Garrus--"
He presses his cheek to hers, flaring the plates of his mouth in his own interpretation of a kiss. "Shut up. I love you. I'll say it everyday. All the time. To anyone who will listen. I love you."
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skiitter · 2 months
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So the incredibly talented @curies_curiosities on instagram made a bookbind of A Darker Blue for personal use and sent me an author’s copy and it is, without a doubt, the coolest thing I own. Every little detail is so perfectly executed, I adore it. Truly, truly so beautiful and I love it so much! 💙
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skiitter · 7 months
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Carving Through The Dark
Astarion/Tav journey into the Underdark in search of a purpose and find something far more precious along the way.
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skiitter · 7 months
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Chapter Five
Wren makes a difficult choice and shares some trauma to cope.
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skiitter · 7 months
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Chapter Three
The complications of the spawn are rapidly evolving, so our intrepid heroes go on a field trip to blow off some steam.
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skiitter · 10 months
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skitter why did you sign up for a fic fest when you've never written for one of the characters SKITTER WHY DID YOU SIGN UP FOR A FIC FEST WHEN YOU'VE NEVER WRITTEN FOR ONE OF THE CHARACTERS.
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skiitter · 7 months
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Chapter Six.
Astarion, alone. Mistakes are remade, and cheap wine does little to soothe the sufferings of the heart.
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