#ty again for the prompts!

[blackjackkent]

Another answer for one of @astreamofstars 's prompts from this ask for this ask meme: Kiss Roulette.

"33. A kiss to a scar, birthmark, injury, or other marking - Lae'zel/character of your choice"

Some context-less Shadowzel from Act 3 after the House of Grief, bc I haven't fully figured out how to include them in Rakha's playthrough yet. XD This is my first attempt at writing this pairing; hopefully it scans well! :D

-----

“Do you wish me to call you Jenevelle?”

Shadowheart peers out from her tent at Lae’zel sitting by the fire. “Why would you ask that?” she snaps irritably.

It’s not a fair response, and she knows it as soon as the words are out of her mouth. To her credit, Lae’zel doesn’t flinch from the moment’s sharpness, but answers in kind. “A thing true across all planes, I find, istik, is that most prefer to be called by their names.”

“It’s not my name. My name is Shadowheart.”

“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.” Lae’zel looks over her shoulder to meet Shadowheart’s eyes. A slight pause. “I am not your enemy… Shadowheart.”

Shadowheart lets out a heavy breath and her head ducks. “No,” she says. “No, you aren’t.”

She should know better, really. They certainly began as enemies, but so much has changed. They have suffered so much together. They have stood side by side, watching their religions burn to cinders in front of them, and found each other amidst the ashes.

It was meaningless sex at first, half-desire and half-anger, driven by a need for some kind of nameless forgetful oblivion where they could forget that their worlds had fallen apart. Gradually, though, it has become more than that. She has been allowed to see gentleness in the gith, and Lae’zel has been allowed to see her vulnerability in turn - and both things have been hard-won knowledge indeed, secrets held between the two of them, shown to no one else. 

Zhak vo'n'ash duj, Lae’zel called her once in a moment of passion. She hasn’t explained what it means, but Shadowheart can guess the implications.

And here she is, lashing out yet again anyway, as if it were still their first few days on the road, when preemptive strikes felt like the only way to survive. Gods, she’s so scared. Gods… it hurts.

“I’m… sorry,” she mutters, hunching her shoulders - as if still in expectation of mocking after all these months. “That wasn’t fair.”

“Chk. You owe no apologies,” Lae’zel says - still curt but quieter. “I am no yank to be felled with a harsh word. And it is not the first I have had from you, nor will it be the last.” She turns back to the fire and prods carefully at the meat roasting there, turning it carefully. “Nor would I wish otherwise.”

Shadowheart finds herself mesmerized by watching the other woman's fingers, surprisingly dexterous in counterpoint to her battering-ram combat style. “Do you know your parents?” she asks abruptly. “Did you leave family behind, in Kliir?” 

“The yanki are raised together in creche.” With quick, efficient motions, Lae'zel pulls the meat from the fire and lays it out on a platter nearby. “A cadre of nestmates is our first and only family.” She frowns. “Still, I am not blind to what you have lost.”

Shadowheart nods silently. Lae'zel's experiences are so alien at times that it is hard to imagine the places where they overlap. But they are both alone in a world full of shadowy uncertainty. 

“You're all I have left, you know.” The words emerge in a sudden rush; she looks down at her hands, ashamed without knowing why. 

And then Lae'zel's hands close over hers, calloused and rough from a life of swordwork, but gentle in their touch on her skin. 

“I am not blind to that either,” she says, her voice low. “You will not be alone while I am here.” She considers for a moment before going on, “In creche we are taught ra'quith vlaak - the frail perish. To cover for another's weakness is to open your own flank.” Her eyes lift to meet Shadowheart's, intent and serious and sad. “Perhaps once I found wisdom in this, but no more. You shall find me guarding the scarred places in you, and you shall guard mine.”

Slowly, with scrupulous care, she lifts Shadowheart's hand and presses her lips over the heavy black scar, the last mark of Shar's torments, that lingers on her skin.

Blood rushes to Shadowheart's face. She feels acutely conscious of the fact that Lae'zel has never before showed her any gesture of warmth in view of the rest of the camp. And she can see the flicker of anxiety that goes through the gith's cat's-pupil eyes with the action. 

But Lae'zel has been afraid a long time. She has never let it drive her actions - never before and not now. 

And Shadowheart feels her own courage rise in answer to it. “Yes,” she agrees softly. “As long as you'll let me.”

“Chk,” Lae'zel mutters. “You speak as if you think such promises come with endings.”

Shadowheart doesn't answer for a long while. “I have suffered many broken ones,” she finally says softly. “But not from you.”

Lae'zel's eyes brighten, and she kisses Shadowheart again, this time cupping a palm to her cheek. Like all of their kisses, it is fierce and rough, commanding, unrelenting, but it carries certainty in it that Shadowheart desperately needs. “Nor shall you,” she murmurs. “Zhak vo'n'ash duj.”

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

Jason (maybe on a dare, maybe because he’s loopy etc.) calls Bruce (or any of the Bats, really) to tell him he loves him.

Bruce is convinced Jason is either dying or about to.

[reegis]

“When are you coming back?”

“Probably won’t.”

(commission for @deadcaptainn!)

[mintjeru]

i'm team haravatat ⚾🖤 thank you @/bubblelaine for your donation to @hkvthm-action!! (this gotcha is accepting donations until august 9! your support is appreciated 🍉)

open for better quality | no reposts

[bringmemyqueen]

soumako prompts for college, pt, roommates, wedding 💖

[choco-1601]

Imagine John forces Arthur to escape with him. John being by his side always..dressing his wounds from the gun fights earlier..making warm soup and feeding him..slowly but surely nursing Arthur back to health. Arthur’s super thankful for everything john has done for him despite the warning (and the scolding).

Since Arthur cant do much except (forced) bedrest, he picks up his journal and draws..most of his subjects being john doing mundane tasks around the cabin. John knows but never says anything.

[nyoomerr]

okay, i think that's going to be all the fic drabbles this time around! i did my best to get to as many of them as i could, but in the end, for as many that i answered, there was at least one other that i didn't ;w;

i'm keeping the unanswered prompts in my inbox, though - if inspiration strikes in the future and/or i have some free time, i'll try to get to them then! there's also one prompt i got that i actually like enough i'd really just like to write it out properly instead of a drabble, so 👀

in the mean time, thank you all so much for playing with me! it's been a fun part of my vacation ehehe.

all of the prompts i did (i managed 11 of them this time!!!) can be found here, if you want to check that you didn't miss any!

[bechloesupercorp]

She doesn't know how she got up here. Alone, in the operating room theatre, watching Beatrice, chest splayed open on the table. A deep sea of endless red against the muted blue of the scrubs and hospital gowns.

For such a beautiful heart Beatrice has, no one ever told Ava that in reality, hearts are fugly looking things, nothing like the cartoons.

She can see the bright blue shards, Halo searing in her back. She's the reason Bea's fighting for her life on a cold operating table. It's her fault. This wretched thing that pulses with every heartbeat. Keeping her alive the same way that it's killing Beatrice right now, divinium shard moving closer to the arteries with each and every pulse.

It's her fault. Stuck with a glowing ring that can heal everything but that. She can still see it, the blur that was Beatrice leaping in front of her, divinium scattering, collapsing to a heap on the floor. Blood already pooling on Ava's shoes. She was struck by a wave of shock and fear, staring into Bea's kind eyes as she whispered, "In the next."

Beatrice may have saved her heart from that knife, but another knife drove deeper at her sacrifice. Beatrice offered herself so Ava can live, like a lamb to the slaughter.

Ava doesn't know if she can survive without her.

[hourcat]

Model and Designer for piarles 😘🙏

20. model and designer

Pierre can't sleep.

It's becoming a habit, which is not boding well for his stomach lining considering how much more coffee he's been drinking because of that fact. Pierre just...can't sleep. There's not much he can really attribute it to, except for maybe the fact that he's a few months out from the big debut of his whole new fashion line--the latest Louis offshoot he'd been fortunate enough to helm. This is years of his life at stake: all that school and groundwork, all the bleeding and pricking and crying he'd done to find himself here, surrounded by fabric swatches laid out haphazardly at the desk kitty-cornered in his bedroom. There are stacks of photos and torn-up magazines out on his kitchen counter. His whole apartment is now a perfect parallel to his workplace: covered in ideas, wall-to-wall.

Hm. Maybe that's why he's becoming an insomniac.

Instead of paying the thought any more attention, though, Pierre slips out of bed and pads over to his desk chair, grabs the nearest sketchbook of his and flips to a blank page. It's not quite dawn, but there's more light than there was a few hours ago--enough to see what he'd left behind.

Charles is out cold. Completely asleep, drool and all. He looks innocent in ways that no photographer would ever be able to capture: forehead smoothed out with sleep, body curled in on itself slightly in the absence of someone next to him. Pierre gazes at him, sketchbook heavy in his hands, and feels the guilt in his stomach like a knife. He'd only invited his lead model over tonight for a review of their plans for the first walk-through with the clothes. (They have to move right, after all: Pierre needs to see his work from all angles in motion before he can be comfortable putting it on stage, even for a dress rehearsal.)

He hadn't planned for two bottles of wine. He certainly hadn't planned for Charles in his lap, warm and pliant and so, so easy as Pierre had given him direction: take this off and open your mouth and hands and knees. The memory of it makes Pierre's throat tight. So good for me, he'd mumbled after, mouth pressing just under Charles' ear, and the yes sir he'd gotten back had thrown him right out of his own mind.

He grips the sketchbook tighter. There's no way this can ever happen again, he knows--once is a mistake and he'll keep it that way.

From the bed, Charles snores lightly. It's a soft sound: sweet, almost. Pierre's chest is so tight he swears he must've forgotten how to breathe.

"Oh, Charlie," he whispers to the quiet of the room, "what have I done?" Nothing good, he's certain. Pencil in hand, Pierre tries to redirect his thoughts to the work laid out on the desk behind him--dresses with angular cuts, wide-arm sleeves, the jagged lines of a belt that's been nagging at the back of his mind since he'd axed the last round of the designs from his main book.

What he ends up with is this: Charles, in charcoal, curled up in his expensive sheets. The most damning evidence of his lapse in judgment, and he can't even bring himself to rip the sketch to shreds because it feels like a waste--a waste of beauty, even if it's a beauty he can't have.

[birgittesilverbae]

21. "This isn't what it looks like." for beloved disaster Lilith Warriornun and whoever would make her feel the most guilty about her latest crimes? 👀

fic: dads

//

Lilith busies herself with her shirt as the shed door clicks shut behind Mary. She focuses on the rhythm of aligning the buttons, slotting them through the buttonholes, tries desperately not to think about the ache of bruising at her throat, her shoulder. She'd lost the familiarity of it somewhere in the past few months, the pattern of Beatrice's mouth across her skin, and she longs to press her fingertips to the marks, to press firmly into them as she'd only just pressed firmly into–

"You'll go speak to her." It's nowhere in the realm of question, Beatrice's voice hard in her chest. "You'll explain that this isn't what it looks like."

Lilith secures the last button, tucks her shirt tails into her jeans and moves to rebutton them as well. "What would you like me to say, you were helping me with a stain and something slipped, one thing led to another, oh no? She's not stupid."

"I don't know!" A hitch, now, a slide, a crack in the foundation she's been trying to build for herself with Lilith's back turned. "I don't– We shouldn't have done this. It was a–"

"Don't." 

"Lilith, we–"

She turns on her heel to find Beatrice leaning back against the workbench. Her shirt's still rucked up above her breasts, but Lilith can't seem to drag her gaze away from the smear of lipstick sitting just above the waistband of Beatrice's khakis. She addresses it, too cowardly to lift her head to meet Beatrice's gaze. "We shouldn't have done this, but don't you dare say it was a mistake. I have never been anything but intentional about this. About you." She jerks her head towards the door, her throat tight with rising sorrow. "I'll tell her it was my fault, if that's–"

Beatrice sniffs once, loud, hands rising from her sides to scrub at her face. Lilith's gaze rises with them. Beatrice's lower lip trembles as their eyes meet. "If there's blame to assign here," she mumbles, rubbing again at her tear-streaked cheeks, "it should be mine."

"No, it's…" Lilith bites back a curse. "We're going to keep going in circles if we carry on like this, Beatrice. The blame is equal, the fault is equal, we shouldn't have done this. All of that is true. Agreed?"

Beatrice nods, the heave of her chest slowing. "Agreed." She touches a hand to her breastbone, startles at the bare skin, and drags her shirt back down, her cheeks burning. "I'm sorry," she begins.

Lilith just smiles at her, crooked and tired. "Nothing I haven't seen before, darling." She winces at the pet name, but Beatrice interrupts her before she can work her way up to an apology. 

"No," she sighs, tugging at the collar of her shirt as though starved for air, "I suppose it's not. Could you go talk to Mary, please?"

Lilith nods and turns to the door, the near-rote response of anything for you, Beatrice turning to ashes in her mouth.

[the-penguinspy]

28. “How long has it been since you’ve slept?” ava x lilith

ty for the prompt, em!! hope i do these two justice :)

//

Ava makes her way up the driveway while juggling the groceries in both arms, swearing as the bulky combo of winter coat, gloves, and heavy grocery bags lead to keys slipping from her grasp and colliding with a dull clink against the welcome mat. She does eventually manage to get in without further incident (zero grocery casualties this time!) and does a big internal fist-pump to celebrate. 

It’s dark inside, and she toes her shoes off and lines them up by the shoe rack as neatly as she can before heading into the kitchen. “Hello? Anyone home?” The bags are deposited on the countertop, Ava letting out a groan of relief as she shakes out her arms.

“Lil?” She flicks the lights on and the living room is washed in a warm glow, illuminating the empty couch and neatly stacked pile of reports left on the coffee table. Beatrice must have already left to drop off Libby for hockey practice. 

The door to the den is shut almost all the way but not firmly closed, and she sees how the light from inside makes its way out. Ah – still working then. The devil works hard, but Lilith on a mission works harder and is way scarier. Way hotter, too. 

Ava knocks on the door softly. A clearing of the throat and a raspy “come in” and she makes her way into the room at the invitation. Lilith’s focused on her laptop screen, papers askew on the desk and occupying every available space, and Ava spies the empty #1 Dad mug precariously close to the edge. Ava’s socks muffle her footsteps on the hardwood floor and she collects the mug before it gets swept off. 

“Hey, babe.” She bends and kisses Lilith on her cheek, Lilith turning her head for a brief peck before focusing once more on the screen in front of her. 

Ava squints at the page count on the screen. “How’s work going?” Lilith lets out a groan immediately, her immaculate posture collapsing as she slouches down in the seat and brings a hand up to rub at her eyes.

“I think I’m done. Goddamned clients keep changing the scope of the project on the fly, leaving me to pick up the pieces on an already-tight deadline.” Lilith’s free hand automatically reaches for her coffee – eyes still trained on the document in front of her – hand grasping at the air a few times before finally looking over and noticing that it’s gone. Her head jerks as she scans the desk for the mug and does a double-take once she notices its relocation to Ava’s hand.

It’s not often that Lilith is caught so off-kilter, and Ava is worried. Sure, Lilith’s used to a hectic work schedule, constant travel, and delicate meetings with clients and colleagues both, and yes she can handle herself well, has been handling it well for years, and Ava knows that Lilith knows her own limits. But Ava also knows that Lilith caught a red-eye the night before and came in early this morning, just barely greeting Ava and Beatrice with a kiss hello and a kiss on Libby’s cheek, one hand already loosening the knot of the tie at her neck before shutting herself into the den for work. 

“–final check before sending it off.” Ava blinks, coming back to the present and seeing Lilith straighten her back to start typing up a new email. Ava’s alarm bells ring all the louder when she witnesses the amount of words underlined in red, the computer’s auto-correct working overtime to bring the page back into grayscale. 

She rests a hand on Lilith’s shoulder and squeezes gently, grimacing as her thumb presses into an obvious knot at the junction where neck meets shoulder, and she mentally notes to give Lilith a back massage later. “Hey, Lil? When’s the last time you slept?” 

“Thirty-five hours ago,” Lilith replies without missing a beat, fingers flying over the keyboard as fast as the mistakes are popping up. Ava feels her eyes widen at that and – what the fuck. Yeah, this isn’t going to fly. She opens her mouth to say something but is beaten to the punch. “Don’t worry,” Lilith reassures, badly, “I took a one-hour nap on the flight home.”

Ava places the mug down on the floor near the wall and brings both hands to Lilith’s shoulders, kneading gently at the tight muscle there. Lilith continues working but eventually her typing slows, shoulders sagging and head hanging low as she sighs and mumbles, “Ava.”

“Yes?” Ava continues with the pressure, and a hiss escapes Lilith as Ava’s thumb presses into a particularly stubborn knot. “I have to get this out by tonight, Ava,” Lilith insists, but her voice sounds strained. The exhaustion finally seeps through her words, carried on the gentle wind of an exhale. 

Ava hums. “What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?” Lilith takes a moment to think, head still bowed. “Not much. Final once-over of my notes for my Monday meetings–” a quiet groan – “and then quality time with the family. But this has to go out by tonight so that the clients can look it over and give me the feedback in case they want to fucking change anything again–”

“Woah, hey, Lil! Let’s slow down for a sec.” Ava drops to a kneel, spins the chair around so that Lilith’s gaze is focused on her and away from the computer. “Your clients probably got off work–” Ava glances at the clock on the desk, winces– “two hours ago. It’s Friday night! They’re probably spending time with their family, or chillin’ by the TV, or going out getting wasted.” She smiles, reaches a hand for Lilith’s and swipes her thumb over Lilith’s knuckles. Lilith’s brows furrow, lips downturned, frown making its presence known. 

“Point is, it’s the weekend. Your colleagues and clients are most likely taking the weekend off to de-stress and focus on themselves. Their work is important and they’ll go back to work on Monday, check their emails and attend their meetings like the good little worker bees that they are–” Lilith chuckles weakly at this– “but until then, you’ve got time to relax.” The bags under Lilith’s eyes are prominent and Ava swallows hard past the lump in her throat. “Please, Lil,” she whispers. Maintains eye contact, brings Lilith’s hands to her lips, kisses the back of each. “For me?”

A slow exhale from Lilith, but the corner of her lips turn up the slightest bit. Ava smiles in response. Score. “You make a compelling argument, Silva,” Lilith says, an unscheduled yawn butting its way in between their conversation. Her hand comes up half a second too late to cover her mouth, exhaustion overriding even muscle memory. Cute, Ava thinks, as she stands and retrieves the mug for washing, placing a lingering kiss on the crown of Lilith’s head. “Go wash up, I’ll have dinner ready in a bit,” she says.

Ava makes to leave but feels Lilith’s arms wrap loosely around her thighs, feels Lilith’s forehead rest against her stomach, and she brings a hand up to the back of Lilith’s head as they hold each other. The pause only lasts a few seconds, but in that amount of time volcanoes could have erupted, tectonic plates could have shifted, galaxies could have collided, but all Ava would have noticed was the feel of Lilith’s soft breaths on her thin cotton t-shirt, the way the fabric fluttered against every shaky draw of breath, against every stuttered exhale. Fingers interlock behind Ava’s thighs to complete the circuit and send across the silent request for company. Difficult for Lilith to voice out loud, to let the words scrape their way out of her throat, but – this type of honesty is alright, too. 

Ava strokes her hand over Lilith's hair and kisses the top of her head once more for good measure. She’s just going to the kitchen, but a parting kiss for her departure nonetheless. For luck, for love, for everything in between. 

They’ll part eventually; two earphones finally untangled through patient fingers. Ava will leave to make the shepherd’s pie that Lilith so loves, and Lilith will come out of the shower, towel wrapped around herself with hair still dripping wet over the floor to kiss Ava in the kitchen, and Ava will laugh and pretend to be annoyed, these potatoes won’t mash themselves, Lil, but she’ll wrap her arms around Lilith’s neck and they’ll kiss for a fair bit before Lilith’s stomach grumbles as a reminder.

But for now, they stay in the moment, leaning against each other. A question and a reassurance in one. 

[blackjackkent]

Fic request, BG3: Karlach/fem Tav, where Tav has died. After the reserection scroll is used, Karlach goes to pieces. Hurt/comfort.

Eyyyy, ty for the prompt! Sorry this took me a little while to turn around. :D Was fun to write, though; I do love me some Karlach romance and some hurt/comfort. <3 I hope you like!

-----

“You hear that?” Tav asks. The half-elf’s eyes narrow, glinting in the pale light of the moonlantern that is all that protects them from the cursed shadows. “Hold on a sec.”

Karlach halts obediently with the others and listens intently. Her head tips slowly to one side like a dog pricking up its ears, and her eyes drift half-closed in focus. But there's nothing. 

The shadow-cursed lands are, in fact, eerily quiet. The place is not only devoid of civilization but life - there's no sound of birdsong, no creatures creeping through underbrush, no leaves or plants of any kind. There's not even a stirring of breeze to knock together the dried branches of the long-dead trees. 

Karlach hates it. It reminds her too fucking much of the desolation of the Hells, dead and dry and full of dangers. Not nearly as hot as Avernus, she'll say that much for it, and dark as the inside of her boot. But still a little too close for comfort. 

“Don't hear anything, Soldier,” she says in a low voice. Astarion and Shadowheart both shake their heads as well. Then Karlach grins, an automatic reaction to the brief moment of tension. “Must've been my heart pounding, eh?” 

Astarion rolls his eyes. “Ugh. Gods,” he murmurs tauntingly. “Is that what passes for smooth in Zariel's army?”

Tav grins. “Shut up, Astarion,” she says, giving him a casual punch in the shoulder. 

“I'm just saying,” Astarion quips, “if we're going to have to watch the two of you give each other cow eyes every day of the week, you're going to have to come up with some better material.”

Karlach sticks her tongue out at him. “No one asked you, Fangs,” she shoots back. But she's laughing. It's really hard not to laugh these days, in spite of all the terrible shit happening to them. Astarion can mock all he wants - but she's in love, real love, for the first time in ten years. The first time maybe ever, truth told, because she can't remember any quick fuck back in the Gate that ever made her feel like Tav does. 

Tav is… gentle. Kind. When she touches Karlach it feels like the whole world is opening up to her, a feeling of hope like everything is gonna be okay. So yeah, Astarion can laugh all he wants, if it makes him feel better. Karlach really couldn't give less of a shit. 

She's happy. 

Too happy, as it turns out, because she's so lost in thinking these thoughts and watching the way Tav's smile looks in the lanternlight that she doesn't notice the first arrow coming in. 

-----

Tav’s scream is like a knife. Blood spatters across the dark ground as the arrow punctures her shoulder. 

A lithe, pale figure darts out of the shadows with a high-pitched giggle and throws something around Tav’s neck. Then in an instant she’s gone, vanished with the creature into thin air.

“Tav!” Karlach starts to shout - but it's choked off as another garrote bites sharply under her jaw and she's yanked backwards into the dark. 

It’s a horrific battle, one of the worst they’ve faced since the nautiloid. The meazels - little shits, every one of them - are quick and cunning, separating the party out into the searing darkness, silencing spells, bleeding them dry. Karlach doesn’t need spells, though, and her usual battle-rage is bolstered by a stunning degree of pain and an entirely unexpected violent panic. 

She wrenches her axe from the corpse of the meazel that grabbed her and tears off through the dark. Unheeding of both the blood pouring from her neck and the necrotic energy chewing into her skin, uncaring of what other enemies might hear her, she bellows at the top of her lungs. “Tav! TAV!”

“She’s here!” That’s Shadowheart, her voice weak. “Karlach, over here!”

Karlach almost trips, so quickly does she change direction towards the cleric’s call. Like a rothe maddened with fear, she leaves the path and crashes directly through the desiccated underbrush, dead plants shattering apart around her with every step.

Tav is dead when she gets there. 

Shadowheart is crouched over her, a useless healing spell in the process of drifting off her fingers. Astarion, blood dripping from his lips, crawls from the darkness opposite her. But Karlach’s eyes are locked on the form of Tav’s body in the dim light from her torch, the eyes blank and staring, the garrote wound flowing freely.

“Oh, no,” she whispers. “No, no, no, no--”

“It’s all right.” Shadowheart’s voice feels oddly far away. “I have a scroll, I’ll revive her-- Karlach, for gods’ sake, breathe!”

She is breathing - too fast, too shallow. The cut at her own throat throbs with each pulse of her heart. She drops the axe with a clang onto the ground and she falls on her knees at Tav’s side, grabbing the smaller woman’s hand and holding it between both of hers. “No, darling, no…” she mumbles. “Gods, don’t-- don’t look at me like that…”

How many dead people has she seen in her life? Could fill a library writing all their names down… But none of them have been her… those blank eyes are so wrong in her face which is always so full of life and humor and warmth… nothing like Karlach’s inferno heat but warmth and safety and home…

“Bring her back…” she rasps out desperately. “Please…”

The magic of the revivify scroll swirls around them as Shadowheart murmurs the words. There’s an achingly long pause during which Karlach finds herself reviewing every single moment of their brief time together and passing through every stage of grief in order; she’s just about reached “depression” when Tav’s eyes flicker open.

“K-Karlach?” she whispers, and then her body spasms around a sudden fit of coughing as she gasps for breath. 

“Oh, gods.” Karlach’s whole body sags with a relief as overwhelming as the grief was. Without thinking, she reaches out and pulls Tav up and into her arms, tight against the heat of her chest. “Oh, fuck… Soldier… Tav… shit…”

The words tumble out, one after the other, and she’s startled to realize that each of them is a sob, raggedly dragging out of her throat between hiccuped, jerky breaths. She’s alive. It’s not over. It’s not over. Oh, thank the gods…

“Hey. Ow. Hey…” Tav mumbles. It’s muffled from how Karlach has her pulled close; her face is sort of squished into Karlach’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Darling, it’s all right, but I can’t breathe.”

“Oh. Right.” She forces herself to loosen her embrace enough for Tav to draw her head back. “You-- sorry. Fuck. You scared me. I thought… I thought…” She can’t say it out loud. The words don’t come out.

“You’re hurt.” Tav gently touches the garotte wound in Karlach’s neck, wiping at the blood there.

“You died!” Karlach says with a sudden, hysterical laugh, flinching backwards. “Don’t worry about me! Just… you just sit there and… and breathe, or whatever, and… oh gods…” The tears blind her.

“Karlach…” Tav sits up in her lap. She’s unsteady, of course, because revivification is a brutal process at the best of times, but her eyes are clear. That hideous blankness is gone from them and they’re full again with the light that drew Karlach to her first. “Shhh.” She cups Karlach’s face gently with both hands and kisses her. “It’s all right… I promise. I’m here. All limbs attached, everything accounted for. And heart very much beating.”

Karlach gives her a watery smile, tries and fails to quiet her choked breathing into something manageable. “I just-- I saw you there… like that… and I suddenly realized… how much shit has gone wrong in my life… how it all changes so fast… but you’ve been good… you’ve been so fucking good, Tav…”

“I’m here. I’m here…” Tav presses her forehead to Karlach’s and draws a slow, shaky breath. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I promise…”

Slowly Karlach begins to settle again, feeling the gentle brush of Tav’s breath on her lips. It’s not over. “You’d better not,” she mumbles.

She realizes suddenly that they’re alone. Shadowheart has taken one of the torches and bodily dragged Astarion off some distance away, leaving them more or less in private. Karlach’s grateful for that; she’s not sure she could handle Astarion’s acerbic wit right at this moment.

“Fuck,” she whispers after a short pause, a little more calmly now. “Sorry, I--”

“Hey. Don’t you ever apologize for anything,” Tav says softly. “Least of all for loving me. You don’t get to say sorry for that.” She kisses Karlach again gently. “You ready to get Shadowheart to clean up that cut?”

“I… yeah. Yeah.” But it takes her a moment to loosen her arms and let Tav out of her embrace. “I do love you,” she says quietly. “So much. And I just got scared as shit about it.”

Tav smiles. “Best kind of scared I know,” she says. 

[daisychainsandbowties]

bea - eviscerate + stitch

this dark is everywhere, we said (and called it light)

a percy jackson au

///

Lilith wakes to the latent heat of volcanic glass seeping up through the palms of her hands, lacing along the blade of her cheekbone, drinking down the tears that scatter out of her lashes as she lurches awake, gasping.

She’s lying spreadeagled on hard, garish black rock, glittering with the reflection of enormous stalactites – a ceiling of sharp ends diving down out of the gloom. Her hair, distinguishable only as a more greyish shade of black, is stuck in clumpy patches to the ground and it peels away as Lilith forces her leaden arms to move, pushing away from the ground that always seems like it wants to eat her.

A tremor of white pain travels from her breastbone to the hook of her floating ribs, and she groans as she glances down at blood-sticky rock. It is shiny, glassy like a dead black eye – and Lilith sees her sword lying in the manner of a crooked smile underneath her upraised body. The hilt is shaped like a fishhook, the blade concave near the hilt and pitching out into a broad convex near the tip.

There’s a chain of soft gold running from the hook of the handle to the blade, and it shines strangely in the wet reflective surface of the volcanic stone that runs up to the high walls of hell itself.

Lilith knows, without looking, that there is a very specifically-shaped bruise running from just underneath one of her breasts down the rungs of her ribs, terminating just above her hip. Others too, splashed across her jaw and the socket of her right eye. There is dried blood crusted in her hairline and on her lips, cuts beneath her clothes that have bled into the fabric.

The last thing she remembers is fighting, knee-deep in snow somewhere in the Himalayas. Red spotted in the drifts and an old oil lantern trying vainly to scoop the darkness up off the snow, throwing reflections onto white-capped stone. She was following a fresh trail of blood and gore up a switchback that couldn’t really be described as a path when a great shape came crashing out of the night.

She recalls being swept aside by a massive paw, or maybe a hand, and landing dazed in the snow. Rolling aside just in time to avoid a sharp-seeming downstroke. Might have been claws, or a blade, or a set of enormous teeth. Her lantern rolled away, and Lilith heard the ringing in her ears that announced death. She scrambled to her feet and saw where her light had been tossed away, where it came to rest by a shape lying limp in the snow, surrounded by a halo of blood.

Lilith didn’t need to roll the corpse over – didn’t have time, as snow swirled and a shape stalked her. There, with snow and ice muddling the feeling of stone beneath her feet, she felt powerless. She couldn’t reach out and rend the earth, couldn’t call fire up from the mantle of the planet. Too much interference, too much fear.

There was a crumpled polaroid in the back pocket of her jeans, showing a smiling woman in a puffy green jacket, pretending to blow on her hands for warmth, though she stood next to a bonfire and underneath a clear, starry sky.

There was no need to roll the corpse over because the jacket lay in pieces around the body, rent by claw or blade or teeth, and Lilith felt anger surge up inside her as she tore her sword out of its sheathe and turned in a wary circle, trying to pierce the blizzard with the tip.

But then she heard a flurry of movement behind her and something rammed into her back, tossing her forward and face-first into snow. A phantom voice in her head whispered through the wind as Lilith reached vainly, dizzily, for invisibility, for her god-given power over not being. Coming up, as usual, against the wall of her own scattered focus.

A voice in her head saying, shut the fuck up and fucking Travel, or so help me I’ll come back to life and murder you.

And so she Traveled. Reaching out to gather up the shadows into a soft blanket, into a blade she pressed willingly through her own body, carrying it away from the blood in the snow and the monster in the dark. And there was nothing and no one and nowhere to think of but home, wretched though it is.

Hades.

Lilith stands, dragging the sword with her so that it dangles with the tip almost touching the ground, resting the blade flush against the curve of her boot. It has a soft black glow, down here in such proximity to the waters where Lilith stood, stripped to the waist and running with cold sweat. Where she dipped the fresh-forged blade into the polluted waters of the Styx.

She’s wearing her black aviator jacket, sunglasses sticking out of the pocket, over a somewhat threadbare t-shirt with a weird, shadowy creature on the front. She keeps meaning to Google what it is, but a giant snake ate her phone last month.

And, anyway, there’s no one left to call.

As ever, a pall of ghoulish green light sits over the gateway to the underworld, seeping along the riverbank in both directions. It’s a little like dry ice, but this isn’t a stage or a theatre. It’s just where she lives.

Lilith frowns down at herself, at the spots where her jacket has frayed, where the black leather has cracked or been scraped away by claws, the chill sitting barely above her bones from weeks of sleeping rough up on the surface. The golden chain on her sword settles against her knuckles – a faint, weird warmth – and Lilith lets a small sigh escape from inside her mouth as the greenish mist rolls past her.

There’s something about the mist that feels animate, today. It almost seems to cup her cheek, to flow over her cheekbone like a cold thumb, taking a little heat out of the bruises. Though, there’s a pressure to it – almost a reprimand.

Lilith stares towards the gates and the looming canine shape that sits squarely inside, worrying the inside of her lip. Is it her imagination, the slightly-chiding care that runs through the green light, the cool river mist?

She doesn’t speak to her father – not more than a handful of times in her life. He didn’t save her mother from the bombs or her sister from starvation, and he tucked her away in a dreamless sleep until he had a use for her. So what does she owe him?

Nothing.

Certainly not conversation, or whatever paltry imitation of love he can scrimmage out of his rotten heart. Fuck you, she thinks. There’s no benefit in saying it aloud, but Lilith lifts her middle finger, pointing it towards the mammoth walls, toward Cerberus and the stupid, banal bureaucracy of death.

The ghost in her head chuckles, low, and Lilith feels the golden chain brush her fingers again though there is no wind here to move it.

A wave of dizziness wash over her – a wild urge to lift the hilt of the sword up to her mouth and kiss the chain, but all she does is stand there in the shadow of her father’s kingdom, aching down to the marrow of her bones.

Then, from behind, from down in the direction of the ferry, she hears the scrape of wood over stone. Here, on the parallel shore of the Styx where nothing moves or walks or breathes but Lilith.

She whirls, sweeping her sword around so that she stands – unsteadily – with her body held sidelong in a narrow target, blade parallel with her raised arm, tip pointed towards whatever foul thing has crawled up out of the river.

Then she freezes, blinks, feels all the moisture in her mouth turn coppery and sour, because it’s not a monster.

It’s a girl.

Shorter than Lilith, with a pair of dark eyes pooled above a grim little mouth. Lilith realises – with a sense of disquiet – that she is beautiful. There’s a dust of freckles sitting like an afterthought on her nose, her cheeks, drawing out the dark shadows beneath her eyes. Her mouth is pulled tight, grimacing, but it hardly upsets the softness of her jaw.

She’s wearing a dark blue shirt over what looks like a thermal base layer. It’s cold down here, though it has never truly bothered Lilith. She’s built for it, or just used to it. Despite the extra protection, there is still a faint tremor sweeping through the girl as she stands, black rock glittering underneath her.

It’s easy to see why.

She is drenched in blood, leaning heavily on a spear made of bronze, decorated with tiny winged shapes. Lilith can’t make out what flying creature it is, but she makes a guess. There is, indeed, an owlishness to the girl as she stands, blinking through the gloom at Lilith, making no move to defend herself as blood spills out from where her palm is pressed into her stomach. Lilith can see the pink glisten of unearthed viscera beneath it, can see that her fingers are pressed inside to the knuckles.

A half-blood, then.

Lilith’s fingers tighten around the hilt of her sword. It’s Stygian iron – a substance that can only be forged in the waters of the Styx, capable of absorbing the essence of monsters, ripping them even out of Tartarus. Monsters and mortals and gods fear it, but the girl only blinks down the curve of the sword as Lilith holds it aloft.

Her voice, when it drifts out of her mouth, rolling into the mist, is clipped and precise and soft. All by itself it makes a crack in Lilith’s resolve.

‘You’re the daughter of Hades?’

It is, Lilith thinks, mostly a statement. In her bruises and her battered black clothes, with the life-eating pall of a Stygian sword in her hand, Lilith looks like the bastard child of death.

The stranger is a hazy shadow, cut to the quick by the perpetual drain of this place; the sewer of the Styx washing by with a sound like a hundred thousand muttering voices.

Blood patters softly onto the stone at her feet, but it scarcely has a chance to pool before the stone swallows it. The girl, hair half-unbound around her shoulders, strands falling down around her face to complicate it with shadows, stares at her own boots for an instant, wobbling. Lilith understands what she is feeling; it took weeks for the rock of this place to feel solid, to stop warbling underneath her with the threat of turning to liquid, to blood, to ink.

Lilith has dreamed of the bottom of hell, and this is not it. This is only the threshold.

‘Who’s asking?’ she growls, taking a careful half-step forward. It’s more of a shuffle, really – a habit born from fencing lessons held deep inside the walls of the Underworld, in a garden full of soft fruits and the promise of spring. The place she learned to fight.

The girl straightens, stiffening under Lilith’s scrutiny. There’s a sort of raw-boned intensity to her, like she’s holding herself very precisely in check. Her fingers, too, have tightened around the haft of her spear.

She’s shaking, blood now flowing down to drip from the tip of her elbow where it’s clamped tight against her body. Lilith wonders what it took for Charon to ferry a dying girl across the river.

The tip of her sword is only a foot from the girl’s throat as it bobs, as she raises her chin to expose the bumpy layers of cartilage sitting in a line; the very slight bulge above her windpipe.

There’s no point in asking who sent her. If she’s a half-blood, there’s only one place she could have crawled from.

Softly, again, the girl speaks. Backlit as she is by the green glow on the shore, she carries the countenance of a ghost. Lilith might mistake her for one, if she didn’t know better.

‘My name is Beatrice,’ she says, in a voice like cold water and warm milk, ‘I am a daughter of Athena.’

There’s blood on her lips, Lilith realises, as they pull into a grimace. They shiver as Beatrice pulls her fingers out of the slit in her stomach, holding them out in wry invitation.

It’s utterly bizarre, but Lilith finds herself lowering her sword, leaving it to sit against the leg of her jeans. Beatrice has proffered her right hand, so Lilith is forced to juggle the sword into her left so that she can reach out, tentative, to wrap her fingers into the sticky, blood-stained cup of Beatrice’s hand.

‘Lilith,’ she says. Somehow, it feels like an admission, like giving something away.

The daughter of Athena smiles. Pink-tinted saliva dribbles down her chin. It’s ghastly, but Lilith finds that she is somewhere on the opposite end of disgusted, wherever that might be.

There are, after all, no destinations along the river Styx but one. Death.

Beatrice squeezes her hand. She takes a ragged breath, her dark eyes heavy-lidded and hazy, boring into Lilith’s. ‘Pleasure,’ she says, a little giddily. ‘I thought I would have to go deeper into hell to find you.’

‘Well, here I am.’

A tightening around her hand, not quite a squeeze. ‘Here you are,’ Beatrice says. She lists forward, catches herself, ‘I’m here-‘

She coughs, and the redness of it floats weirdly in the mist. Beatrice stares, shakes her head like she’s trying to banish a ghost.

Her voice is very faint. ‘We need your help… daughter of Hades.’

Then the daughter of Athena, her skin like dark gold even in the bad light of the Underworld, falls forward. It happens slowly, at first, like she’s just taking a step, but then Lilith sees her knees buckle, watches the spear slip through her fingers.

And without thinking she steps forward, capturing Beatrice’s warm body in her arms.

...

Ten minutes later Lilith crouches next to a limp figure she has propped up against the pitted, high stone wall, feeling like a thief as she unbuttons Beatrice’s blue shirt and peels her black base-layer away from the slice in her lower abdomen.

Her sword is on the ground next to her, at a right angle to her body, the hilt in easy reach. Beatrice’s spear is propped up against the wall. It is, indeed, covered in tiny filigreed owls.

Beatrice does not stir as Lilith raises her hand, ignoring the unhappy shiver of the mist against her back as she draws on the power in her blood, summoning up a sliver of bone from a tiny vial of bone dust she keeps tucked inside her boot. It forms in the air, turning from powder to liquid to solid bone in the span of a moment, before settling down into Lilith’s red-painted palm.

It’s not ideal, but she can hardly wash her hands in the river. It’s full of plastic and rot and blood. Instead, she makes do with the little wadge of bandage and thread she keeps in the pocket of her jacket.

Beatrice continues to breathe as Lilith carefully threads her bone needle. There’s a voice in the back of her head spouting stupid facts about the history of needles and sutures, but Lilith hisses at it to shut up before dipping the sharp end of the bone through Beatrice’s flesh. The thread turns red as it passes in and out, but it’s proper surgical suture, so it also tugs the flesh back towards itself. It makes whole.

Distracted by her work, it takes Lilith too long to notice the change in Beatrice’s breathing. She finishes her row of stitches – they’re thick and lumpy and as elegant as she can make them, but there is no ringing in Lilith’s ears to ordain death, so it must be enough.

At a loss for any other implement, Lilith picks up her sword and carefully cuts the thread, leaving a little curl of it to sit against the taut muscle of Beatrice’s stomach. She has, of course, attempted not to notice the ripple of honed, hard muscle that runs the whole length of what necessity has forced Lilith to unearth; the evidence of a life spent fighting.

She has attempted to ignore it.

When Lilith looks up, sword resting on her knees where she’s crouched, balancing effortlessly on her heels, she finds that Beatrice’s eyes are open. Hazy with pain, but alert underneath it all.

A tentative smile flutters across her lips, ‘You saved my life.’

She dumps the sentence at Lilith’s feet like it means something.

Lilith shrugs, ‘I’m a freak, not a monster.’

The freckled skin on Beatrice’s cheeks wrinkles in tandem with her frown, ‘Wh-‘

‘You said you needed my help?’ Lilith interrupts before the question can come out and make everything awkward.

Beatrice’s stomach is still laid bare, covered in fingerprint marks where Lilith has touched her – in every single place Lilith has touched her.

Mercifully, the daughter of Athena lets her question fall away. Her bronze spear shines off of some strange reflection in the volcanic rock.

‘Yes,’ Beatrice says. There’s some depth to the word that Lilith doesn’t look down into, in the same way she doesn’t peer into the waters of the Styx as the ferry glides over it. Some mysteries are not fit for consumption.

‘Alright.’ Lilith nods, ignoring the way that the gold chain on her sword tightens against her hand, like a warm tongue, ‘Tell me what you need.’

[arisenreborn]

For the not-so-nice oc ask game: future and midnight for emrys :3c

Thank you so much Vale!! :D (OC asks: not-so-nice edition)

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

ooh boy, almost definitely the Bad Ending in unmoored world where he goes plaguedragon mode and fuses Olivia's (mostly) lifeless husk into his heart and is basically a mostly-mindless beast compelled by grief, regret, and a desire to 'fix it'. :'D But he definitely can't predict or imagine it, let alone try to avoid it.

On the other hand, as he gradually grows attached to Olivia (even from the earliest point of this begrudging transition) he is well aware of the manner of fates that await many Arisen - and he... doesn't want that for her. Either she dies a miserable death and he's left in the world without her - now worse than ever for having known her, or she becomes Sovran and their bond will more or less be severed as she lives out her days and he's called upon by other Arisen.

He tries all manner of little things to nudge her off of the chosen path. Earlier on even subtly attempting to sabotage her attempts to help people to dissuade and dishearten her, or sometimes withholding information that would point her in the 'right' direction, and also not above resorting to distracting her in other ways 😏 (Needless to say he gets uh... an earful for this when she realizes.)

Unfortunately, it eventually becomes clear she's too strong-willed and stubborn to stop, so he has to simply... work harder to make sure those outcomes don't become reality. 😅

(In one Verse, however, he actually does rather desperately beseech her to stop (after they got fucked up during a certain mission) and she gives in to simply run off with him, becoming one of the former Arisen.)

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

Emrys has a number of chronic aches and pains that can keep him up at night, and he often suffers nightmares that he can never quite remember with clarity, just impressions: writhing darkness, people screaming and running, the smell of blood, the sounds of flesh and bone being torn asunder, and an overall feeling of... wrongness. Fear, hatred, elation, ecstasy, a complete loss of selfhood.

When he's out in the wilds, the sounds of nature or the stars overhead often soothe him, though he'll also occasionally consume or smoke herbal blends to take the edge off if he's feeling a flare up - albeit rarely in the company of strangers. When staying in the city, he likes to have a few drinks in him to soften the edges.

If it's a nightmare sort of night, he'll more often than not just get up and abandon any attempt to sleep again to fletch arrows, tend to gear, or clean out and organize their packs. (If he's in bed with Olivia, he'll just watch her and listen to her breathing, sometimes even soothed back into slumber.)

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

Hello! ✨

For the poses prompts... I have to ask Ari and June in 2F... But Josie is the purple one, maybe?

[prompts]

This was a fun one hehe ~

Ari's a little confused, but he's charmed, so it looks like it worked xD Though he has to hunch very awkwardly for her to even remotely reach him lmao

[inafieldofdaisies]

a lil' off script but hey! why not 🤭 [ 📲 • sms from: Isabel to: Oakley] Girl, who does that loser think he is?? Need me to roll up in the middle of the night and help you bury him? I know a spot😏

Prompt from this post.