#‘you can get your thrills in hightown if you know where to look’ and all that

[vigilskeep]

have a slightly stressful thing to do today so i am going to be exclusively thinking about whatever gender fhawke has going on to distract myself and oh boy is it working

[sinsbymanka]

Female Hawke/Varric Tethras + kiss prompt 'on a scar' and it's one of Hawke's scars? :3

Thank you for the prompt @serphena!! For @dadrunkwriting and in honor of my Varricmance March Madness...

The Crossbow Goes or I Do

Words: 2,104 Rating: Teen Chapter 1/1 Additional Tags: Pre-Relationship, They did their pining, ten years of it apparently, Mutual Pining, Idiots in Love, Mutually Unrequited, Friends to Lovers, Past Bianca Davri/Varric Tethras, Hawke is a menace, Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), Flirting, Banter, POV Varric Tethras, Varric Tethras' Chest Hair, Hurt/Comfort

Summary: Elodie Hawke is a menace that fits just right into Varric's life and keeps him on his toes. After The Incident with misfiring Bianca, Varric knows he'll let her get away with anything....

...except it's hard to let her get away with leaving.

Read on AO3

Varric doesn’t know how The Incident happened.

Well, that’s not strictly accurate. He knows Hawke the way he knows the best ways to sneak around the Guild Hall, where to purchase the good ink, and how much it’ll cost to bribe Corf when Rivaini gets carried away. He’s well aware of what she gets up to when she’s unsupervised.

Hell, usually when she’s supervised too. The woman is a force of nature and they’re just along for the ride.

What does surprise him about The Incident, as it’s known forever after, is how quickly it happened. He swears up and down every time it comes up in conversation afterward he only looks away from Hawke for a moment. One second, he’s peering down at the short story that eventually became his bestselling Hard in Hightown series, the next…

The sound of a bolt rattling into Bianca’s chamber, the whoosh of another flying through the air, followed quickly by his large, ornate, absolutely atrocious dressing mirror shattering into a million pieces.

He’s better off without it. Honestly, the most upsetting part of the whole sequence of events is that he isn’t holding Bianca.

Varric doesn’t look up from his papers. The room is completely quiet.

“Hawke.”

“Varric.”

He appreciates the deadpan delivery of his name. He really does. Odd how quickly Hawke wormed her way into that special, stupid part of his heart that forgives almost anything. She’s barely off the boat at this moment, fresh faced and lively if a bit too hungry looking.

He’s known her for a few months. And, bizarrely, he feels like he’s known her all his life.

“That sounded like Bianca,” he observes, as if he wouldn’t know the way Bianca sounds anywhere.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Hawke chirps. “Somebody told me that Bianca is a delicate, complicated lady who can only be fired by one specific dwarf who was trained in her secrets by an Antivan Crow whose life the dwarf saved.”

He finally looks up to take in the damage. Mirror shattered, bolt in the wall behind it, and Hawke standing shamelessly in the middle of the room cradling his crossbow.

“Somebody also told you not to touch her,” he adds pointedly.

Hawke grins from ear to ear. “We’ve already established somebody is full of shit.”

He discards his journal and glides back across the room, arms out and a carefully maintained disgruntled look on his features. “Come here, beautiful. What’d she do to you?”

Hawke takes a step back, eyes widening in clear afront. “What did I do to her? Varric, she’s drawn blood!”

“I told you she’s a sensitive lady. Difficult to handle. Little rough around the edges.”

“She’s a menace Varric.” Hawke relinquishes the crossbow and examines her fingers with a wrinkled nose. On her left ring finger is a nice cut, blood welling and dripping down her palm. “Look what she did!”

There’s a smear of crimson on the trigger. He wipes it away with his shirt sleeve. “You got your fingers stuck in the gears. She taught you a lesson about respecting other people’s property.”

“It’s going to scar!”

“Let me send an urgent note down to Darktown for Blondie. He’ll be thrilled to come stitch together your papercut.”

She laughs and puts one palm on the curve of her hip, leaning into his space. “I’m telling you Varric, the crossbow goes or I do.”

Something lurches in his stomach, a hint of fear he doesn’t quite have a name for, a bit of knee jerk panic at the thought of losing the last bit of her he truly has. But Hawke’s joking, Hawke is always joking, he can see the sparkle in her blue eyes and the twitch at the corner of her lips.

He lets his own tip up in the same playfulness. “You better clean up this mess before you go.”

She sighs in defeat and plops her finger between her pink lips, sucking on it thoughtfully while she looks at the chaos she’s caused. Varric spends a second too long examining the way her cheeks hollow around her finger.

He’s only a man, after all, no matter how taken he is.

“How much bad luck is it to break a mirror again?” she asks.

Varric doesn’t believe in human superstitions, or much of anything beyond the worth of his coin or the power of a well-loved lie, but he answers her. “Seven years at least. And just in time for our expedition too.”

Another moment of silence. Then one single, elegant curse. “Bollocks.”

xx

Somehow, Varric gets stuck with the job of keeping Hawke in bed.

Privately, he thinks Blondie must be out to get him for humiliating the mage in more than one card game. Otherwise Varric wouldn’t get saddled with the most impossible job in Kirkwall. Their newly crowned Champion, and what a laugh that is, sits in her opulent bed wearing nothing but the rattiest shirt he’s ever seen. It’s so large it hangs off one freckled shoulder.

Varric wonders if it isn’t one of Carver’s old hand-me-downs. It’s better than thinking Hawke was plucking her nightclothes out of some moldy trunk in Lowtown, anyway.

Her icy eyes glare daggers into him from where she’s propped against the headboard. “Varric, if you don’t help me out of this bed I will chop Bianca into firewood.”

“Remember what happened the last time you got into a tussle with Bianca?” Varric asks, raising his eyebrows.

“I still have the scar!” she protests, trying weakly to push herself up off the bed. The covers slip, revealing the bandages wrapped around Hawke’s waist. Before Anders got his hands on her, bandages like those were the only thing holding Hawke’s guts inside her.

Varric knows. He put them on.

“You’re gonna have a better one now. Comes with a heroic story and everything.” A story where Varric stands, clutching his crossbow, helpless and afraid as a sword pierces Hawke’s body and hoists her off her feet. A story where she summons a fistful of fire to smother the Arishok as she’s impaled on his blade.

Varric’s still covered in a cold sweat and it’s been four days. Andraste’s ass, what would he have done if…?

But it’s not worth thinking about. He can’t face it in this bright bedroom, with Hawke and the mutinous gleam in her eyes. She swings them from his face to the window, her expression wistful.

It tugs at his heartstrings, it really does. Hawke has barely spent a night in this mansion in Hightown since they dragged Leandra’s body from the monster’s pit and held a quiet, solemn funeral at the Chantry. She bunks at a spare cot in Anders’ clinic, crashes on the moldy old chaise in Fenris’ mansion, falls asleep in Merrill’s bed while Daisy sits in front of her damned mirror all night.

But, more often than not, she’s in Varric’s bed and he’s in his armchair. Or she falls asleep in the armchair and refuses to be moved. Varric should complain, it’s ridiculous that he’s sharing one suite of rooms while she’s got a whole damn house, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

He knows what it’s like to live in a mausoleum to the dead.

In truth, Hawke has not come home to stay since it stopped being a home, and now she’s trapped there with her guts shoved back in and a title she could care less for.

“Play a game of Diamondback with me,” he cajoles. “You win, I’ll risk my chest hair and get you into the garden against the doctor’s orders.”

Hawke bites her lip and considers his offer, narrowing her eyes. “You cheat.”

“And if you pay attention, you may learn something to improve your own lackluster technique.” He pulls the cards from his pocket and hops up, in a painfully undignified fashion, onto her ridiculously high bed. The action brings a spark of humor to her gaze.

“I won’t be distracted by your ridiculous cleavage today, serah,” she teases, watching him shuffle the cards. In the brief moment of silence, Varric catches the way she runs her thumb over her finger, tracing the small silver scar Bianca left all those years ago. It’s a habit he’s noticed with fondness when she’s plotting, and it should worry him to see her scheming…

But honestly, he’d rather have her scarred and scheming than not have her at all.

xx

They stand on the docks with the world on fire around them when Varric finally runs out of things to say.

There’s a joke here... somewhere. He struggles to find it while Hawke stares over his head at the ruined landscape of Kirkwall. He could say something about how she sure knows how to make an exit, but the thought of her exit sticks in his throat, deep in his chest.

Kirkwall without Hawke makes no sense. Varric without Hawke makes no sense, and when did that happen?

She’s leaving and he’s staying. It’s what they need to do. She’ll be free as a bird to ignite the revolution she’s become the figurehead of, thanks to Blondie, and he’ll be here to confuse and confound the authorities while he tries to put his home back together.

But, somehow, it feels like his home is about to get on Isabela’s ship.

“Look on the bright side, Varric.” He looks up into Hawke’s face. She’s got her best Champion smile plastered on, the one that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’ve almost burned through those seven years of bad luck, right?”

The mirror. Her face without the wrinkles of worry at the corner of her eyes, on her forehead, Bianca in her arms and a smile on her face. Varric’s chest constricts painfully.

The Hanged Man is gone. Hawke is leaving. All he’s got is Bianca on his back and a pile of trouble again.

“You’ll always have the scar though,” he jokes weakly.

She looks down at her hands. Varric wonders if she can see blood on them, even though she’s done everything she could have. The scar from her run in from Bianca is merely a thin white line across her finger, but his eyes go there immediately.

He doesn’t know what possesses him, but it feels right to snatch that hand out of the air. Long fingers curl immediately over his leather gloves and her blue eyes flick to his face.

It’s a bad idea, but he’s too committed to stop now. He brings her knuckles to his lips like she’s a fairytale princess instead of the biggest menace he’s ever known, like he’s a knight instead of a cheating scoundrel. His lips brush over that thin scar softly before he pulls away, looking up into Hawke’s eyes.

She swallows, hard, and Varric swears he sees tears in her eyes behind a watery smile. Varric’s words are still missing, lost somewhere in the rubble around them, but he has to try. “Hawke-”

She pulls her hand from his and drops it to the side. “Well Varric,” she begins behind her brittle smile. “I’ve been telling you for years. That crossbow goes or I do.”

For a brief, insane moment Varric considers slinging his beloved Bianca over his shoulder and into the harbor. It passes just as Hawke stoops to envelop him in her too long arms. He just catches her whisper. “I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah,” Varric swallows his own bitter emotion. “Me too, Elodie.”

That makes her laugh and lightly punch his shoulder as she withdraws. He barely gets a look at her tearstained face before she flees up the gangplank and onto the boat, leaving him bereft.

“If you were waiting for an opportune moment, you have missed it,” Fenris remarks acidicly behind him.

Varric ignores the remark and the ridiculous insinuation behind it as Fenris appears in his line of sight. His love life is complicated enough, after all. “I can afford to let her go, she doesn’t owe me five sovereigns.”

The familiar, immediate refrain is almost comforting. “I’m good for it.”

Varric huffs a small, broken laugh. “No you’re not.”

“You are not incorrect,” Fenris finally admits. The elf casts a look behind him for a moment before adjusting the pack over his shoulder. “I wish you well, my friend.”

The bastard has enough decency not to add Varric will need it. “Watch her back, Broody.”

“I will attempt to do so,” Fenris murmurs, shoving past him. “Although nobody does it as well as you.”

Varric watches him go with a heavy weight in his stomach.

That is exactly what he’s afraid of.

[dacompanionreactions]

How would cast of Da:I react to sweet Cinnamon roll Inky to be a Writer of most dark popular psychological-thrills and horror books (they read them and was also surprised to find a official permission of Chantry Divine to publish there books with controversial religious motives)? Like, he/they/she is Thedos version of Ito Junji, Stevan King and Tarantino.

Cassandra is utterly shocked. First at The Divine for allowing such controversial, dark and thrilling books to be published, and second at the Inquisitor. "You... wrote these?" She can't fathom how someone with such a tender and gentle personality can write such gory books. One time, she asks them to write a short romance story for her. They did not disappoint.

Varric loses it. He loves it! His friend, the softest person he knows (apart from Daisy of course), the author of the most gripping and graphic novel he's ever read. "Andraste's ass, this is the best news I've had all week." He'll ask them to collaborate, and the two of them write a book that could rival Hard In Hightown. It's gory. The illustrations are nightmare inducing. It's perfect.

Solas is surprised that the Chantry allowed the books to be published. Some of the Inquisitor's books contain very controversial religious views. Essentially, it's blasphemy. But they're brilliant. He finds himself hooked on their books as much as he'd hate to admit it. Solas accidentally reveals this when he asks when the next book is coming out.

Dorian almost spills his wine on himself. "Vishante kaffas! I did not see that coming." He's an avid reader of their books, partly for the fact that they're really good, but mostly for the fact that they're banned in Tevinter. Dorian is surprised that they're not banned in Ferelden too. Southerners always continue to surprise him.

Sera laughs so hard she's doubled over and her stomach hurts. "You wrote...? You? OH MY-" She explains that she got into them when she stole a noble's collection as a prank. Sera looks the Inquisitor up and down. "You really don't seem the sort to be writing this kinda stuff."

Blackwall starts wheezing until he's almost on the floor. The irony of it is hilarious. The Inquisitor is probably the nicest person he knows... he's finding it hard to see them writing such controversial and graphic books. Not to mention that The Divine approved of them. He's getting a headache from laughing about it.

Cole doesn't really get all of the fuss. He's read the books. Some of them confuse him. In other books, he can see clearly what the Inquisitor was thinking while they were writing them. "Your books bring joy to people, sometimes fear and disgust, but mostly joy. It makes you happy."

The Iron Bull is elated. He's had this sneaky feeling for a long while that the Inquisitor was hiding something. "I just knew, Boss. Ben-Hassrath training." He regrets getting Krem into the books because Krem shared them with Dalish, Dalish shared them with Rocky, Rocky with Stitches and the list goes on. The Chargers want signed copies, so Bull is the one that has to ask. "Not my idea, Boss."

Vivienne finds this absolutely priceless. Her favourite is definitely the book where mages resided in the Chantry. Naturally, there's a rampaging monster that kills half the characters by the end, but Vivienne appreciates the concept. Still, the Inquisitor? "I had no idea, darling."

Cullen found out after the Inquisitor accidentally left a signed copy on the war table after a meeting. He picked the book up and couldn't put it down, which is saying something for a Commander who gets no free time. "You wrote this?" Cullen's impressed. There isn't much able to distract him from work. The ability to write such gory literature is slightly concerning, however.

Leliana knew. Don't ask how, she just knew. She's read every single book. At some point Leliana got her hands on scrapped drafts and unfinished illustrations. She loves the books, the twists, the religious controversy, the bloody illustrations, all of it.

Josephine is a bit wary at first. She hasn't read the books by the time the Inquisitor tells her, but she has definitely heard of them. Josie decides to finally read one and she was hooked. The books are so well loved that she managed to form at least ten alliances based on them.

[hightownesidences]

Silverglades Hightown Residences – Your Luxurious Paradise!

We hate to receive unwanted notifications & spam calls on our phones because these notifications & calls distract us while driving, working, or sleeping. On the other hand, in our free time, we unnecessarily use our smartphones, just scrolling the screen without any reason.

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So, in this blog, we are providing some important tips to deal with your smartphone addiction.

 Check your screen time and limit it to less than 2 hours/day. You can check your screen time in Digital Well being inside the setting.

 Every night put your phone on silent or flight mode, so you will wake up with better sleep and a fresh morning.

 If possible then switch off your phone for a full day one per week and give time to other important things in life.

 Try other ways to divert your time & attention, which can be your interest or hobbies.

 Enjoy your surroundings and amenities in your neighborhood.

For the last point, it is very important that you live in a peaceful & secure neighborhood. If you are looking for such a kind of neighborhood then Silverglades Hightown Residences at Sector 28, Sushant Lok 1 Gurgaon is the best option for you.

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Living in this residential community, say goodbye to your mundane and boring days, as you will have a lot of things to do every day. The community is equipped with exciting and thrilling activities you can be a part of, some of them are:-

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The project boasts 3 & 4 BHK premium apartments, where every unit comes with ultra-modern amenities & specifications. There is much more to explore here, come visit the site now.

[ladydracarysao3]

Nemesis of Neglect: A Dragon Age & Jack the Ripper Tale

Chapter One

Disclaimer This is a canon divergent Dragon Age and True Crime mash-up of Kirkwall, and London’s notorious Jack the Ripper. It is a tale not for the faint of heart, but rather for the reader who wishes to ride a thrilling mystery of sex, deception, and murder.

[Read Chapter One on AO3]  or  [Start with the Prologue]

Chapter 1

As the sun peeks through the curtains of Jethann’s room, Ian blearily cracks open her eyes. She lets out a tiny groan and covers her face from the accosting streams of bright light. The warm breath of Jethann then tickles the back of her neck, and he tightens the hold he has around her middle. A hum dipped deliciously in seduction rumbles from his throat as his hand then slides up Ian’s stomach to clutch and knead softly at her breast.

“Has my lady risen from her heavenly slumber?” his voice whispers into her skin, followed closely by tempting kisses peppered on the back of her neck and shoulders.

“Mmm yes,” she says. The coarseness of her sleep-laden throat causes her voice to rasp and crack. “I thought it a sour thing, but you now remind me of all the possibilities the day could bring.”

Jethann pinches her nipple sharply, and she hisses breath through her teeth. Amused, he hums and glides his tongue along to slope of her neck to her ear. “You paid for the entire night, love. No reason why the early morning cannot be consumed by it.”

Ian moans and turns her naked body through the sheets to face him. “You make an excellent point, Jethann.” She smirks into the hooded, pearlescent eyes of the elven man beside her. His promiscuous hand trails back down from her breast to find purchase between her thighs and effectively stops Ian’s breath. He takes her mouth with his, lightly drawing in her lower lip, sucking it as they giggle low, wicked sounds.

Unfortunately for them, a loud banging rattles the door to the room with the muffled sounds of her name being summoned from the other side.

“Fuck off!” Ian yells at the door. “I’ve paid and will continue to pay as I like!”

But the door’s lock betrays the couple when keys jingle within it, giving way to Madame Lusine as she storms inside the room. “Miss Hawke, you know I do not allow disruption in my halls and your brother is loudly disrupting everything!”

Ian sits upright in the plush bed, holding its covers modestly to her chest. “Carver? Here? What in hell for?”

“I am the Madame here, Hawke, not your servant. If you have questions, I suggest you see to him immediately. He is in the mezzanine screaming your name.” Lusine turns to leave. “Get him out of here,” added before she slams the door behind her.

Silence befalls the room. Ian sits befuddled for a brief moment before evacuating the serenity she once cherished in the sheets. Quickly storming across the lush carpets, anger steadily rising in her chest with each step, she reaches for her undergarments, trousers, and boots.

“Oh, but Ian, what about us, love?” Jethann sweetly whines. He sounds almost miles away. His soft voice tries to tempt her back to him, but at first, she ignores him.

“I’m sorry, Jethann,” she finally says while buttoning her shirt and tucking it into her trousers. “If that pain in my arse is here, he must have something idiotic to slam in my lap. It’s sure to destroy my entire day, if not my entire week.” She ties her tie quickly, and slips on her vest. Running her fingers through her short, shaggy black locks, she reaches and drapes her coat over her arm and snatches her bowler. Marching for the door, she sends the briefest of smiles to the elf in the bed and swipes a gold coin from her pocket. Flicking it onto a tabletop she says, “For your trouble and well intentions. Until next time,” then flies out the door.

Ian races through the ornate and dreamy halls of the brothel, where decadent red silk and golden thread cascade from damask papered walls. She soon finds her brother angrily tapping his foot near the front door. Two large doormen and a furious Madame Lusine stand between him and the brothel proper.

When Carver spots Ian approaching, he crosses his arms. “About time you showed up!”

Ian nods a sharp gesture at Lusine as she roughly grabs Carver’s arm and yanks him outside. “How dare you. How did you know I was here?” she asks once in the courtyard.

“It’s you, Ian. I knew you’d either be at The Blooming Rose or The Hanged Man. Seemed a bit early to be getting pissed, even for you.”

“Bugger off. Who do you even think you are, wearing that thing while you speak to me?” Ian points to a pin on Carver’s lapel, a metal piece of heraldry depicting a flaming sword. “I should punch you square in the jaw just for that.”

“The Knights Templar is a just organization, Sister. They are the few that actually care to bring true order to this fleabag city.”

Ian steps into Carver’s face and glares into his blue eyes. As far as she is concerned, their eye color is the only thing they have in common. He was no brother to her as soon as he joined the Templars. “You are all self-righteous thugs. Father would be ashamed of you.”

An infinitesimal flinch runs through Carver’s face as saliva from Ian’s distaste speckles across his skin. But mostly, Carver stands firm and reciprocates the hate emanating off her and her stare. “Shut up for one second, Marian. I’m not here for you, or for me. This is for Bethany.”

A chill spikes in Ian’s spine and she immediately stands back on her heels. “Bethany? Why?”

“I don’t know. We received word from Aveline this morning, but she was looking for you. She needs us to come at once.”

“Come where?”

“She sent you an address in Lowtown. I brought the carriage.”

Carver gestures to the black carriage nearby with Ian’s slow but trusted driver, Sandal, sitting atop it. Without a word she marches forward and tips her bowler at the young man before climbing inside. “Enchanted,” Sandal replies. It is the only word Ian has ever heard the young man say.

As they ride through Hightown and enter the lower depths of Kirkwall’s slums, Ian stares out the small window of her carriage. She feels weighted, guilty, for flaunting her wealth in the streets she so recently called home. If not for the urgency and mystery pertaining to her sister, she would have walked. Instead, her eyes comb the muddy passages of Lowtown from her perch on high. Her horse is surely adding to the shit and filth of the avenues and alleyways in which the least fortunate huddle and fight to survive.

There is a foul pit in her chest. She wonders what would bring Bethany back to these streets. What could Bethany have been involved with down here? Honestly, Ian never paid her sister much mind. She just assumed the girl had taken to high-society living as their mother had taught her to aspire to, as a child.

While they were not the richest of families in Ferelden, they were certainly not paupers. But Leandra had been raised in the highest homes of Kirkwall. Her family had long been regarded as one of the richest and grandest in the then illustrious city. It was not until Leandra ran off to Ferelden for love that she lost any status, and it was not until they attempted to return to her home that she hit the bottom.

However, in the rolling hills of Ferelden, Leandra always taught her children to strive for greatness - and for her daughters to grow to be proper ladies. But all of her teachings about the accomplishments of delicate females fell on deaf ears with Ian.

Even as a young girl, Ian preferred the clothing, manners, and even names of men to women. To this end, she spent everyday in constant battle with her mother over her misguided choices. But Bethany was different. Bethany took to the role of ladies sans complaint. She enjoyed the lovely dresses and hobbies that society dictated were fit for female sensibilities.

Bethany is the pride of her mother’s eye.

So when Ian managed to fight and drag her family back out of the gutter, she easily assumed that with the finery her sister began to wear, and the tea times she held in the solarium, that she was the epitome of everything Leandra always had wished. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to question in regards to Bethany’s interests. And in that case, why on Andraste’s flaming wet crotch would she ever have reason to come back to Lowtown?

Bethany was never involved in Ian’s affairs. Ian saw to that. If anyone were to bear the weight of the Hawke family, it would be Ian. Her father had long passed, and her brother was a useless baffoun. That left only Ian to bring her mother’s dreams to reality. There were far too many things she did, far too many things she had to do, to ever dream of involving her sister. The only tarnish Ian ever gave Bethany or her mother was their association to her. But even the society in Kirkwall can only snub their noses for so long against rags-to-riches foreigners. Ian withholds too many secrets on the lot of them to keep to their snobbery. Fragile information that they know Ian would not hesitate to exploit for the sake of her family.

Since moving into Hightown, Ian and her mother have learned to casually ignore each other. Leandra is grateful to be back in a place of comfort, and if that means her eldest defies the very meaning of decency to keep her there, she has proven that she is willing to look the other way. Especially if that means she can play dress-up with her doll of a younger daughter in the way she has always dreamed.

But riding now, through these streets of Lowtown, Ian wonders if her neglectful attention on her sister’s affairs has ultimately brought her harm. No matter what she has assumed or expected of Bethany, from this point on, Ian will pay closer mind to her sister’s dealings, and with whom she is associating.

The carriage pulls to a jockeyed stop outside a dingy narrow alleyway. Too narrow for the carriage to enter. Ian and Carver step out into the dirt, the rank smell of decay and garbage quickly filling Ian’s lungs.

“Thank you, Sandal. Go on home now,” Ian says. The dwarf boy smiles, says his famous one word, and steers the horse back toward Hightown.

Turning to the alley, Ian notices many members of the Kirkwall Guard meandering the tight space. Her heart races. A cold sweat drips down her back. What could Bethany possibly have been involved in that requires so many guardsmen?

Her shoulders slam into guards as she walks forward. She bumps and digs into wet, dirty brick as she pushes past. Her pace hastening, she trips and stumbles over garbage and broken bottles. The sounds of angry men miss her ears, for her attention is glued on a doorway ahead. Before she reaches that doorway, however, the one to the hovel in which most of the men file in and out, the red headed Guard Captain Aveline Vallen appears.

Aveline is about the only other established woman in Kirkwall who managed to put the opinions of men - like where the proper place for a woman resides - firmly up their arses. Aveline is a long time friend and associate of Ian’s. Together, they had fought their way through the destruction of Ferelden, traveled against the currents to Kirkwall, and then by the skin of their teeth, made names for themselves within the city’s wicked and impossible walls. Much like Ian, Aveline is the type of woman who stands taller than her male counterparts due to more than the heel of her shoe.

But now, as she pushes her men from her way, Aveline is not standing tall. She is not confident. Her green eyes are fraught with worry and dread. If Ian were any lesser a woman of physical and mental strength, she may have buckled under that gaze of Aveline’s.

“Hawke,” she says, a bit too sullenly, as she raises her hand to stop Ian from walking any farther. “I don’t want you to see this, but I fear what you would do to me if I hadn’t called on you.”

“Where is our sister, Aveline?” Carver asks.

Aveline’s eyes dash over to Carver before falling to the grime at their feet. She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry.”

That’s all Ian needs to hear. Without thinking, she shoves the woman out of her way and runs to the doorway. The sounds of herself screaming her sister's name echo softly as if from a far away land. Ian faintly hears Aveline order men to leave the scene, when she stops dead in her tracks.

Shimmering blue velvet is crumpled and wet on a dirty wooden floor.

Ian swallows hard and steps fully into the room. She feels nothing. The scene is so grotesque, so unimaginable, that she cannot believe it. And she stands there, motionless, staring at the bloody body sprawled across the floor. Brown hair in loose ringlets splayed and matted and soaked in red like a horrific halo of what was stolen from the world.

Carver shoves past. He is screaming. She knows he is screaming. But she cannot hear it. All Ian can hear is a high-pitched ringing. Everything sounds and feels like she has been submerged underwater. She cannot breathe. She cannot hear. She can barely even think, except out of desperation for reality to be something other than what she is seeing.

Her brother’s body falls on its knees. His hands desperately try to find something to touch, something to grab onto that is Bethany, but instead, they hang helplessly in the air. Tears stream down his cheeks as if his tear ducts are tossing buckets of the salty, wounded liquid. He turns his head to Ian and shouts angry words. Accusatory fingers wag in her direction. But all Ian can do is stand there. Staring.

The body looks like Bethany. It is wearing her clothing. However, the disfigurement and carnage prohibits Ian’s brain from believing that this pile of mutilated blood and flesh belongs to her little sister.

Her throat, cut. Her gut, open. Her eyes, wide. The unique golden color of her iris stares vacantly at the ceiling.

“Why are you just standing there?!” she hears Carver yell, and at that moment, Ian discovers the knot in her stomach is shooting upwards. She rushes to the edge of the room and vomits on the floor. All of her shock, all of her horror, erupts from her body and splashes and mixes into her sister’s blood. The realization of everything slams into her mind like a steam engine. Her sister is dead. Murdered. And her sick is splashing into the blood.

Bethany’s blood.

Her body convulses harder.

Ian is no stranger to blood or the dead. She is no stranger to the horrors of men. In fact, she has taken part when the need required. But none of those bodies, none of those foul creatures she has cut down...were her little sister. Her little sister whom Ian loved dearly, but to whom she never expressed the depths of her affection.

Ian braces herself with one hand against the brick wall beside her as she expels the final contents of her stomach. Final dry heaves that feel like her insides are being wrung through a laundry press. Coughing, she attempts to right herself and wipe the sick from her mouth. As she straightens, she notices red words painted on the wall above her sister’s body.

DEATH TO CONJURERS.

She stares at the words. Painted in blood, no doubt. Bethany’s blood. The blood of a sweet, kind young woman. A woman who never brought harm to a single living creature. That woman’s blood now painted in hate on the walls of a disgusting, rat infested hovel.

Soon she feels Aveline’s arm wrap around her shoulders, and her friend ushers her out of the room. At the same time, a guardsman helps Carver from his knees.

She’s ushered, and she stares blankly, and so many questions swirl in her mind. Questions that she cannot find the breath needed to produce the sounds. Instead, her lips move slowly, forming syllables in shape alone.

Eventually emerging from the dark confines of the alleyway, she blinks and strains her eyes in the sudden light flowing from open sky.

“Go home, Hawke,” Aveline says, her freckled face appearing in Ian’s view. The Guard Captain snaps her fingers at one of her men. “Guardsman Donnic will make sure your journey back to Hightown happens safely. Go home and be with your family. Mourn. And I promise you, I will find the monster who did this.” She squeezes Ian’s shoulders. “When you are ready, find me in my office, and I will tell you anything I can.”

A single tear escapes Ian’s eye as she is handed into the care of Donnic. Her feet move, but only out of habit, and her mind swims in the questions she has yet the strength to ask.

A quick note: 

Thank you for coming aboard my steam train of horror, lies, and death. If you are reading this as I post, I will do my best to post the remaining chapters every Tuesday and Wednesday - until a finale week in early November where I will post on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

[dishonoredrpg]

Congratulations, BECKY! You’ve been accepted for the role of THE EMPRESS with the faceclaim of ZHANG ZIYI. I cannot express to you how outright excited I was upon starting the app, and how much my adrenaline rose throughout. I could highlight everything in this app and it would be justified, but the resignation in being wed to Septimus and the distance she put between her daughter and herself and the repeated motif of sing me a song really just... floored me. I’m not even kidding when I say my jaw dropped a few times throughout the app. You have a true skill in weaving words, and I fully believe that Calliope will capture the hearts of her subjects as Queen-Consort on the dashboard with absolutely no reservations or hesitation in her. I’m thrilled!

Please review the CHECKLIST and send your blog in within 24 hours.

OUT OF CHARACTER.

NAME: Becky

PRONOUNS: she/her

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE, ACTIVITY LEVEL: PST, and I would rate my dash activity at about 4-6, meaning I’m more or less on dash around half the time. However, I’m applying to/preparing for graduate school, so my activity might take a hit from that (and also dealing with home renovation so twinsies??), but I’m definitely always on discord!

ANYTHING ELSE?: Thanks for reading and considering my application! I just want to say that you did a great job with Dishonored, so I seriously wish it the best of luck moving forward! Also, I took some liberties with NPC’s (amongst some other things, i.e. guessing at court politics, informed by different media and historical influences) for the background portion of the application, so if anything doesn’t line up with your vision please consider it canon adjacent and that I’d be happy to change anything accordingly if I were accepted!

IN CHARACTER.

SKELETON: THE EMPRESS.

NAME: CALLIOPE. From Greek kallos, meaning beauty, and ops, meaning voice. Chief of all muses, mother of sirens: a historied name heralds greatness, which is exactly what is expected of her, from birth to now — and who is she to deny her name? Strictly speaking, her name means beautiful-voiced, and never one to disappoint, singing is one of many things she spent her youth cultivating, though hardly a line of melody has been heard from her since she’s become queen consort; even so, her voice finds good use today in making hard to hear truths sound that much sweeter. Diplomacy by itself is hard, and even harder if one cannot even bear to listen.

EVELYN. Derived from Eve, meaning to live, to breathe. Left with the decision to live, eyes closed in intentional ignorance, to endure that which she’s lived with thus far, or take a bite of the forbidden fruit, unsure what might be wrought by it. Pose the question to anyone, and everyone’s answer shall differ, from their motivations to their goals.

VALMONT. Even after 26 years, the name feels ill-settled. Perhaps it’s a symptom of not loving the man the name comes with, not even liking him — but either way, it is hers now, as much as Altaire is not. It belongs to her, and she, it; a cruel reminder of how she is but equivalent to her husband in all the simple ways that matter to the majority of people.

(née ALTAIRE.) A call to the star altair, from the constellation of aquila. This is the name that she turns to, though she’s spent more years of her life a Valmont than she has an Altaire. ( Further elaboration kept in the extras section. )

FACECLAIM: I’d love to use (1) Zhang Ziyi or (2) Michelle Yeoh!

AGE: 46 years old.

DETAILS: I’m running out of time a little (was a tad overzealous in the background portion, oops), but I was drawn to the restraint and the duty that the Empress’ skeleton shows. It teems, a bit, with her raw power: she is regal and brilliant, but she is never consumed by it, always holding back, be it with her daughter, with her anger, or with herself.

She builds her own cage, stipulates her own conditions, calls that duty, and sees things through.

BACKGROUND: [ tw: blood mentions, violence ]

You are born with a tightly closed bud for a heart; you remember the feeling distinctly: how curiously stuffy and closed it felt in the cage of your chest as a child, roaming the echoing halls of the Altaire estate alone, with no equal. Nannies, maidservants, and tutors alike would chase you down those halls, all the way into the doorway of your father’s study, where they would skid to a halt, even as you brazenly pitter-pattered your way in.

Sometimes you’d turn your head around and watch them as they stumbled through a stammering apology to your father, and you wouldn’t feel a single thing, observing as blankly and uncannily as a doll on a shelf.

Your father is the eldest son of his father, and head of the family in his own right, and you are his first daughter.

There are certain dues and certain duties that come with such coveted title, and even as he scooped you into his arms and waved off the hesitant apology, he impressed the importance of it upon you.

He would stride to the window behind his desk, look out of it, over the grand view of your family’s ancestral estate.

“The hedges,” he would say. “They look nice, do they not?”

And they do.

“But they would fall into disarray if someone did not take care of them. Perhaps they would wither and die with no water, or grow too wild with no trimming, or maybe, they would get trampled by those who don’t care.”

You blink at him.

“Our groundskeeper must tend to that, and in turn, I, him. Do you understand, Calliope?” He asks, setting you back down.

You walk over to the window and set your hands on the sill, getting up on your tiptoes to peer out over the edge.

He smiles at this, running a fond hand over the crown of your head and smoothing it over your head. “Perhaps not,” he says, resting his heavy hand on your shoulder, and your knees lock with the effort to keep you standing firm for it to rest comfortably there. “But you will. You’ll understand what it is that we owe to each other.”

.

You don’t understand, because, really, how could you?

You eat from polished silver plates and with fine cutlery, wear silks woven from the sheerest threads; this all, you’ve never worked a day in your life for -- it’s simply something that just is, and no one seems to question it. So what could you possibly owe?

But the solemnity still weighs on you, your father’s expectant hand, as if still on your shoulder. The bud of your heart begins to bloom with the prospect of a future where you do understand.

The tutors work hard to impart their knowledge on you: as varied as recounts of historical battles, to fencing, and then painting; they work for you endlessly, and you realize, in turn, you must work tirelessly. Otherwise, what is the point?

You begin to excel, outstripping your cousins, companions, shattering the lofty ceiling of expectations over your head that, once upon a time, you mistook for shelter.

The bloom of your heart is nurtured to blossom through all this careful cultivation.

.

You always attend feasts and banquets and soirée’s, but you, rarely, if ever, host them. You pick at the food in front of you, loathe to take too much on your plate, unsettled by the idea of eating overmuch and owing thus in turn.

“Why don’t we host anything?” You ask your father one day.

“We don’t need to,” he says simply. “We do not buy anything we can make.”

“What are they buying?” You ask, frowning. “It’s a feast, not a market.”

“Loyalty, good will, perhaps love,” he answers. “These, daughter, are never wares that you can buy. You can have the initial illusion of them, but they will one day shimmer and fade. If you should speak, they should listen. If you should cry, they should mourn. And if you should bare all your fanged teeth and smile, they should tremble. These are not things that gold can ever buy.”

You practice a smile in the mirror that night.

You look a doll, and you go to sleep disappointed.

.

You sharpen your focus on your studies; your mind is made into a knife, your tongue honed to match, whet upon the leatherbound volumes tucked in the deepest crevices of the library. You hope these will show in the lines of your smile.

At the end of your 17th winter, you know three different instruments, from the zither to the lute, the quickest way to disarm and kill a man, and the battlefield strategies employed in three of Tyrholm’s greatest victories. But perhaps most importantly, you know how to hide all of this and play pacific diplomat.

.

You step into Septimus’ court for the first time when you’re 18, making your first, most notable debut, though most of Hightown knows you and your family already, but there are suitors to ensnare, traditions that must be followed. You flit and flitter between different people in the reception hall of the grand Castle Tyrholm, taking care to cover your laughs with a demure hand, to smile with your lips closed, neither teeth nor ambitions bared.

You catch the notice of many pleasingly well-matched prospectives, and you continue to nurture those fledglings into flights of fancy.

It takes time, of course, but after a full year, potentials, prospectives, all the likes turn into official declarations; to say you are pleased is to understate it.

You’ve worked hard for it.

.

Perhaps too hard.

You’re invited back to court while your family meets with all of those dedicated suitors, for reasons unspecified except that the King should wish to host you.

You make your way into the reception hall, make your rounds of formal greetings, all too wary of the way his eye follows your path, and the way his sixth wife tracks his venomously. Her family has never been too warmly disposed to yours.

He greets you in as grandiose a manner possible, his voice booming and carrying over the general noise of the gathering some ways away in the hall, jovial enough to almost make you forget the whispers of what he has done in the shadows.

“You’re from the Altaire family, correct, my dear girl?” He asks, clearing his throat. “Good family,” he says, as if to himself. “Always been good to the Valmonts.”

“We have only been the crown’s humble servants in the same way any other noble family has,” you say, dipping your head in acknowledgement and smiling.

“Nonsense,” he says, grinning and waving a grand, ringed hand. “Your father has held the south quite firm. Orderly. I have thought to reward him, but it is hard to find anything fitting. Except for one thing. How about you stay in the court?”

“Your majesty,” you start, mind racing, trying to find the most subtle way to bring up the matches your family is currently discussing.

“Your majesty,” his wife cuts in, looking at you. “As your wife, and out of the love I bear you, I think we should be careful of the dogs that we bring into court, to save ourselves the pain of being bit when we find out later that they are wolves.”

You dip your head again, trying your best to smile. “My queen,” you say, making yourself as soft and sweet as you can. “Family Altaire has always had the phoenix as our sigil. We are naught but the crown’s loyal songbird.”

“Phoenixes burn, do they not?” She insists, cold.

“They simply rise from the flames, my queen,” you respond.

“Songbird, you say,” Septimus cuts in, clearly having tuned out everything you and the queen consort has just said. “Do you sing?”

“If it pleases you,” you say, dismay sinking in your stomach, though you’re careful not to let it show on your face.

“It does,” he responds.

.

You return home soon after, and recount the happenings back to your father over dinner.

Neither of you are surprised when the queen consort dies a couple weeks later, in what is announced to be an unfortunate carriage accident, but your hands still tremble when you open the King’s gold stamped letter.

.

You wear a red veil in your wedding, a morbid carmine that you explain to be the olde colors of Altaire, and you steel yourself when he lifts it from your face.

Plans change, but duty does not.

You will do this well, as you have done everything, as you will do everything.

.

How Septimus can be twice your age but half as mature is beyond you.

“My darling songbird,” he often says when he calls on you. “Won’t you sing me a song?”

You bite the side of your tongue, meeting the eye of an advisor across the room, and refrain from saying, don’t you have court to hold? Things to do? “If it would please you,” you echo, bound to this role you must play.

“It would,” he responds, lounging back, contented.

.

“My little nightingale,” he says one day, sauntering into your quarters, once again before he must hold court, evidently putting it off. “I long to hear one of your melodies.”

You look up from the tome you are reading on Tyrholm’s laws.

“My king,” you say, injecting some amount of falsified surprise into your voice, though you have been preparing for this. “Is it not time for the court to meet?”

He grumbles and huffs and scoffs like a child told to do chores; you’ve upset him with this mention.

“How about I sing you a song after?” You offer gently. “I shall even keep you company through the whole thing.”

He thinks on this for a second, and acquiesces, sighing largely, as he turns to head out of your quarters, and you stand to follow. You grin, teeth flashing at his back.

.

It is an anomaly, at first, your presence. And then it is a pattern, and lastly, a habit.  

He hardly pays attention, usually looking at odd corners of the room while people address him before an advisor prompts him with a suggestion, and he waves at them to carry it out, everything going in one ear and out the other.

You watch this happen several times before you start chiming in with your own quiet suggestions. The first time you do, he is stunned into being the most attentive he’s been all afternoon. But you simply tilt your head and widen your eyes and offer the mild upturn of your lips, as guileless as can be. But he seems to come to much the same conclusion he always does: as long as it is not something he has to do, it’s all fine.

And so it continues.

.

“I would like some peaches,” he says one day at breakfast, pushing his heaping plate away from him. “It is well into season, and we have not seen any. Where are they?”

“The harvest hasn’t been kind in the Norfolk region,” you remind him, cutting a bite sized portion off his abandoned plate, loathe for it to be squandered like such. “The duke told us as much two weeks back. They haven’t sent any as of yet.”

“They will not send us any?” he asks, now enraged.

You look up in alarm, wondering what exactly has set him off.

“Send summons to him,” he says, grimly. “We will see if he still does not have any to send.”

.

The poor duke looks rather more haggard as compared to when you last saw him, bleary-eyed, no doubt, from the hard ride from his region to the castle.

“Your majesty,” he says, bowing deep before waving people forward with a slipshod looking crate. “The few peaches we have from this year’s poor harvest.”

Septimus peers into it.

“They are bruised,” he notes.

“Yes, your majesty,” the duke responds. “From the ride. My most sincere apologies.”

“Just this crate?” He asks dubiously.

“We have no more to spare,” the duke responds, looking desperate and cornered.

You sit forward, your stomach churning, worried that this is taking a turn for the worse. “Those will go well in a pastry,” you say, as evenly as possible. “They need to be soft. My hopes for you to see a better harvest soon, right, my dear?” You rush out, looking over at your husband.

“If you had this now, then where were they two weeks ago?” Septimus presses on, red rising in his face.

“We must eat too, my king,” the duke yells.

Septimus turns to an advisor. “I want every peach seized from Norfolk,” he says. “Send men now!”

You realize fairly quickly that this is not headed in any good direction, but when you stand to try and appease Septimus, the speed at which you do leaves you lightheaded, and you stumble lightly, gripping onto your seat weakly. He looks to you, alerted by your movement in his peripheral, and concerned by the way you sway. The nearby guards are momentarily distracted by this as well.

In that moment, the duke springs forward, brandishing a small knife as he leaps toward Septimus, and your tongue feels glued to the roof of your mouth, a wave nausea forcing your mouth shut as you watch helplessly as everything begins to unfold.

“You can’t,” he snarls, as he comes in closer, fearful and wild. There’s a scuffle, and you stumble back, a hand pressed to your chest as you dodge the brunt of guards rushing in, and Septimus yelling, and the duke fighting.

When the din quiets down, you peer around the crowd of Kingsguards to the duke, where he kneels, knife slipping from his numb fingers, impaled several times by Septimus’ wary guards’ swords.

You struggle to catch your breath.

“I want every man’s head from the Norfolk region who is here today,” Septimus says, cold. “Bring them in.”

“Who’s blood is that?” You ask, looking at the front of his silks, where an accusatory patch of blood sits. “Are you hurt? You should rest before you bring the men in.” You amend.

“It’s just a stain,” he says, curling his lip in disgust as he looks down at the duke.

You clap a hand to your mouth, and stumble away, stomach heaving out its contents.

Everyone looks at you in concern.

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

You turn back, wide-eyed, mouth sour and still trying to catch your breath. “I’m pregnant,” you say quietly, and are quickly escorted out of the room before the Norfolk men are marched in.

.

He comes in your quarters that night, freshly changed. “A song, my dear?” he asks.

“My voice cannot,” you say, looking out your window, purposefully making it hoarser; it’s easy, bile-seared as it is. “Perhaps we should hire a bard.”

.

You’re not allowed to sit in on court anymore, for the sake of your safety and your unborn child’s safety, and you try not to harbor a seed of resentment towards it for this reason.

Your absence is both noted and felt, and you try to keep that from watering the anger that takes root in you.

.

You distract yourself with whatever you can, though your freedoms are more and more restricted the further along you are, and it eats away at your heart, shedding petals with every passing day.

You push your way out of your rooms one day, announcing that you intend to go see what is in the cards for your child to Septimus, so you can at least have a reason to step outside.

You survey the faces of everyone you pass by, wondering what they’re thinking as you brush through the echoing halls.

.

The mage rests a hand on your belly before she draws it back quickly, snatching it away as if burned.

“What is it?” You ask, eyes narrowing.

“The end of all things,” the mage answers as your breath stills in your lungs. “Or,” she amends, closing her eyes and turning her face to the sun. “The beginning of them.” She opens her eyes. “You are an Altaire, are you not?”

“I am a Valmont now,” you say, devoid of everything.

“With the sigil phoenix,” the mage continues. “It’s so beautiful. Cycles on cycles, life and death, ashes and embers.”

“Don’t,” you hiss, thinking about what your predecessor once said.

.

You try to ignore the mage’s words, but as more things begin to happen, you grow increasingly more worried about the kind of child that a man like Septimus can sire paired with your own ability to excel.

If he were more capable, would his reign truly be prosperous? Or would it simply be more effectively terrible?

.

Several things become clear in pain; as all with disasters, there is only striking clarity on how to move forward: one step at a time.

You writhe in your bed, hair plastered to your temples with sweat; you push and scream and tear at your silk sheets and your mind races.

First, your child can never see the throne.

Second, you must be bolstered where Septimus falters.

Third, you were queen to Tyrholm first, and a mother second, and your priorities must reflect that.

It is what you owe.

.

“It is a girl,” the midwife says. “Congratulations, your majesty. Would you like to hold her?”

“Not yet, thank you,” you say, looking at your reflection in mirror at the corner of your room and grinning slow and sure, watching as your teeth show themselves, pearly inch by pearly inch.

You look feral, and you tremble.

PLOT IDEAS: ⇢ I think that it almost goes without needing to be said, but I would be excited to see which way she turns, if she turns. In her skeleton, it felt like there was almost an undercurrent of ruthlessness that ran through it, from keeping her own daughter at arm’s length, to being just angry enough to consider what might become of her husband in that moment, and in deciding if there was a need to see one successor, ah, handled, shall we say, to ensure the other’s success — and that shows me that not only her options are open and flexible, she’s willing to see them through. She, in my opinion, is at a crossroads between the slow condemning certainty of stagnation versus the unknowable risks of advancement. One way or the other, the winds of change are blowing, and they are oftentimes a fatal breeze for those on the wrong side of it. And while I do think she would be content to have died for the betterment of Tyrholm as a whole, pointlessness is hardly on her bucket list. ↳ A small, secondary point to say I especially am curious about who may cultivate her, bend her ear, try to influence her. Whether that’s to convince her of the efficacy of someone else (her included, if perhaps Justice is swayed) taking power, to keep her convinced to consolidate behind her husband, or push another successor’s agenda — no doubt all of the back and forth as people try to figure out her stance will be interesting.

⇢ The flavor behind their 👏 family 👏 drama 👏! With Septimus more and more unfit to rule, and not getting any younger, the race for a proper successor (her own daughter exempted, of course, for the good of their people) is on, coup or no coup. I’d like to see how a family dinner - or any family event, really - goes, with all those complex relationships at play, every single relationship taut as the strings on a zither, and oh, how the tension must strum between them. Everyone must seem like children to her, playing at politics, each too caught up in their own wants and needs, forgetting about the big picture: the people of Tyrholm. Her interests and obligations lie in the betterment of Tyrholm’s general welfare, and who are her options? A fifty-fifty gamble with her own daughter, an heir apparent too desperate for admiration (which a steadfast ruler does not make), and a groomed successor too caught up with the ghosts in their own vision to see the bigger picture a monarch needs to see. I wonder who she’ll cast her lot behind, if at all any, and what ends she will go to if her own daughter decides the other two no more fit to rule than themself. After all, the people do love her - and if the World were to ask, would the people not follow?

⇢ There’s a core of loneliness in her that’s masked by layers of regalia and obligation: stuck with a husband she does not love, a daughter she cannot love, and a lover she has determined she must not love. But on that, she doesn’t dwell, cannot dwell — there’s always something to be done, after all. There’s always something to oversee, a city to govern, people to placate, and in the end, there is little of herself left for her. The thing about monarchs being peerless is, well, they’re peerless. Her husband finds ways around it: going through wives like wine, interesting people all brought to court, cast into the role of entertainment, balls and feasts and revelry galore; in which she always takes part but does not partake, and I wonder if there will be someone who sees the queen in her high tower, and if they’ll bother to knock - and if they do, what it might mean to her.

CHARACTER DEATH: I’m comfortable with it!

WRITING SAMPLE.

She wonders if the courtiers think her vain, with the amount of time she spends looking into the mirror. Certainly, she can understand that if one was simply to only look and not see, her behavior appears vain. But it’s with a profound lack of admiration that she looks at her reflection with, and more an examination of what others may see when they look at her. She has spent so much time studying the quirks of her husband’s quick changing moods: the way that it so obsequiously darkens in anger, upturns in joy, scrunches in pain, slants in mockery. As such, she needs to know: does her face tell of the anger that roots itself so insidiously in the hollows of her chest? Does it speak of the way she wishes to live, but lives to serve?

It does not.

At least, it does not when she goes looking for it, and she cannot say whether or not she is well pleased by this. It is, at the very least, a small victory in the way she tries to differentiate herself from her husband, entwined as they are through simple affiliation.

Calliope has found, recently, that she has a desolate sort of beauty. Time has been a kind master to her in a way that it hasn’t been to her husband; as he grows in width and wrinkles, only the subtle tells of lines are present in her. But with all things that are too passed by the ravages of time, it is, admittedly, a little eerie. Things too well preserved tend to tell of an absence of life; such is the only way it can stand untouched, a beautiful spectre of a testament.

She turns away from her vanity, walking over to the map she has splayed out over her desk, the rolled corners of it weighed down by various books. She traces the area she knows the troops are being led to with a careful finger; the parchment is wearing thin, and one wrong move may split the map in two. Victory is not what is in question, only the aftermath.

She’s torn from her thoughts rather abruptly, as a sharp knock sounds at her door, and it opens without her beckon.

“The Emperor is back,” comes the harried response, before she can even ask what’s wrong.

“And the troops?” She asks, striding to exit her room.

“Mostly unharmed, they say.”

“Good,” she says briskly, though her furrowed brow hardly mirrors the sentiment, and sweeps out of her room without another word. No one stops her on her way to the reception hall, though the halls buzz with movement and whispers. They conveniently quiet when she comes near; the silence is more worrying than anger could ever be, but she doesn’t slow until she reaches the entrance to the reception hall. The Emperor is not there, but Septimus is, and he looks at her before he turns from her, and she does the same.

It happens often these days, but she has spent years making herself indispensable, cultivating a small following in his inner circle, enough that she mostly need not worry for her own head yet.

The makeshift Koldam crown greets her from its display box when she finds her way to the entrance hall, the bark of its twined twigs flaking with week-old blood; the Emperor’s blank stare greets her as well.

He is not warmly disposed towards her, but it’s hardly about her now, both of them focused on that little nest they’ve taken to calling a crown.

“Well fought,” she says, but the slant of her tongue means what have you wrought upon us?

He doesn’t respond, still looking at the crown, and for the first time in years, she doesn’t see a petulant child when she looks at him. She leaves the hall, heart dry and withering, the petals of hope for any amount of normalcy shredding.

EXTRAS.

⇢ I drew the house banner for the Altaire family before I realized that there was a slight overlap (the color gold) with Valmont colors, but here it is! (x)

⇢ HEADCANONS. ↳ ALTAIRE. They were not always the wealthiest family in Hightown, as her father is wont to remind her. Never forget that, he says. But never let anyone else remember, either. It is hard for most families, preoccupied as they are with their own going-ons, to remember a time that the Altaire’s were not at the forefront of the noble houses. But trace the thread back far enough, and it will show that which their family has worked so hard to cover: that before they were everything, they were nothing.

It is a long story that no one dares tell; to tell it is to give life to it, and that is dangerous for a family that would sooner people forget it. Calliope only knows the gist of it: an old name hence forgotten, covered with a new one picked to match the place they chose to live in, a fortune amassed through taking advantage of circumstances not unlike what threatens on the horizon now, made unfathomably bigger still by cultivating the right people, and then proceeding to grow until their roots choked out the husks of their competition, so naturally integrated that one might mistake them for having always been there.

There are subtle changes one can spot if one looks closely. Much like the rings left behind by the years in tree trunks, they cannot hide growth completely. Old banners still have the color red instead of their more recently adopted secondary, even though new ones are emblazoned with their covetous phoenix in grand gold filigree, like it’s always been that way, with only hints of their old colors left as a subtle reminder to themselves. But it never does to forget oneself completely, and the house motto remains, as it has, an idiom in an old tongue: 一叶知秋. A single leaf heralds the coming of Autumn. Know that which will come from a single sign.

↳ BEHOLDEN. On her seventh birthday, her parents give her a finely worked bangle that resembles one she’s seen her mother wear constantly, and she puts it on immediately. It is too big for her at the time, and periodically it falls off, but her parents remind her without fail about it. Much of her youth is spent picking it up and putting it back on, until she needs no more reminders to put it back on, and it becomes a habit, a comfort, even, to wear. Eventually, almost without her notice through the years, she grows around it, its ever-presence; as it forms to the curve of her wrist, her hand grows enough that it stops falling off.

She tries pulling it off once, when she’s 16 and just noticed it never falls off anymore, but it catches on the bones of her hand painfully and leaves her with naught but a welt for her efforts. The bangle has a name, her parents tell her the next day, when they see the red around her knuckles, and it is duty. It will come off in two ways: if she breaks herself to rip herself free of it, or if she breaks it to escape. She does not try it again, and it glints and jangles on her wrist as she walks the halls of Castle Tyrholm now.

↳ LIKE MOTHER... like daughter. It was harder than she expected, sometimes, holding herself away from her daughter. Even now, there is an affability to the World, a multifaceted, unnameable quality that is inherently lovable. But she cannot love her like that, cannot be a mother to her first without forgetting her responsibilities. To love singularly is to favor above all else; to love consumingly is to declare you hate all other things. With a prophecy weighing on her daughter’s shoulders, it would be asking her to choose a single life over the lives of all people of Tyrholm.

She doesn’t know how to love them without having to eventually make that choice, and chooses to abstain from it completely. For all that they are similar, hasn’t it been nurtured to bloom by anyone but her?

↳ SILKS. Dresses are to a queen as armor is to a soldier. When she was younger, she wore the most current fashion, in usually Valmont colors; back then, she had been ushered in hastily to a court that had known six other queens, and she had to make some sort of statement. These days, her dresses are, more often than not, in her own family’s colors and adorned with more metallic accents, reminiscent of armor.

↳ I’m out of time but thank you for reading to this point!! I know it was long and A Lot In General, so take care and good luck with the rest of the applications and acceptances

[dragonagecompanions]

DA:I companions (plus advisors) meeting the Hero of Ferelden (kudos if Leliana is in a romance with the Warden)

Cassandra: It's an honor, of course. She might not have been anywhere near Denerim during the Blight but she knows what they managed to prevent-- anyone who doesn't just needs to look at the Hissing Wastes. They are a hero- as the name suggests- and she'll treat them as such. But on a whole different level she is also Lelianna's lover, and after years of serving the Divine together the Seeker knows more about the famous Warden than she is perhaps comfortable with. But its good to see their spymaster so happy, and theres a part of her that wants to see if this distant and almost legendary figure lives up to the sweet stories that Lelianna can be convinced to tell about her beloved.

Solas: Having seen spirits play out several aspects of the blight, from Ostagar to Denerim, the rift mage is curious to see the hero behind so many of those moments. If they're a city elf and he hears about their experience before Duncan recruited them it confirms some suspicions in his head of how their race has fared among humans, but for the most part Solas enjoys listening to stories of their travels and observing the jovial mood amongst the Inner Circe and most of Skyhold.

Varric: Its a check off of his list of famous heros to have drinks with, and the dwarf is happy to set aside the role of racanteur to listen to the warden's stories. When they mention Lothering he can't help but be reminded of Hawke, and between bouts of note taking reminds himself to pen a letter to his friend in Kirkwall. Its been enough time since the blight that a warden character might go over well, and he needs something new after the Hard in Hightown 2 fiasco. Best to take notes from the source.

Blackwall: If it's before Revelations he avoids them like the Blight itself. He has no way of knowing if they knew the true Blackwall and if they are going to reveal his secret to those people who trust him. Despite numerous invitations to join in on evenings in the tavern he stays apart in the barn and waits until they are gone. After Revelations sees him cautious around the Warden, ready with an apology if the Warden calls him out for his actions. But a good warden died in the beginning of their adventure too, and before long the two are at least comfortabe around each other.

Sera: The Red Jenny was young when the full terror of the Blight struck Denerim, but she remembers peeking out of the cracks in the cellar door where they sheltered and watching the Wardens take on darkspawn. If they are Cousland or Aeducan she's wary of them, but otherwise she's willing to sit down to a drink with them and- if the conversation goes well- to embark on a few pranks together.

Vivienne: If the Warden is from the Circle the Grand Enchanter will be quick to inquire after their politics, but otherwise shes polite and somewhat aloof. By the time news of the defeat at Ostagar had finally reached them the Hero and their party were well on the way to havig things handled, and the Battle of Denerim and fall of the Arch Demon happened too quickly for most circles to pass a vote on whether or not they should send people. Their stories are entertaining though, and its worth it enough to watch Sister Nightengales masks fall a bit as the bard relishes being around her inamorata.

Dorian: The Blight wasn't given too much attention in Tevinter, mostly due to its relatively short time span. And if it hadn't been for Felix Dorian might not have known anything at all about the Wardens or the Hero of Ferelden. But while he was still an apprentice he and Alexius had poured over every scrap of literature the could find regarding the taint, and he'd spent a very informative morning talking to a Ferelden merchant who'd been stuck in Denerim. Felix is gone by then of course, but Dorian still pokes at his old research from time to time and the offer to donate it to the wardens search- if they are not yet successful- spawns a few evenings of camaraderie and the beginnings of a friendship.

Iron Bull: Its a thrill to hear stories of the Arishok when he was till a Sten, and having read extensve Ben-Hassrath reports from both the former soldier and others who observed the chaos of the blight he's eager to share drinks with the person behind the legends. If they recovered Sten's sword for him his respect for them grows even higher but he is most keen on hearing descriptions of the arch demon. By the time they are done he is slightly envious of them-- what a hell of a fight!

Cole: "Whispers not your own, nightmares and old gods and black in the blood. You are't you anymore, but you make people happy. Happier than honey in wine or shoes."

Cullen: The commander will be extremely tempted to hide out in his office until they are gone. Their last meeting was spectacularly awful and he has no wish to face their anger or disapproval, and if they are a mage those feelings are a thousand times worse. But eventually the warden drags them out -with a smile and the assurance that they understand why he said what he said so many years ago- and he is convinced to join the group for drinks and stories even if he has nothing to share himself.

Josephine: By the time she gets the proper quarters set up, deals with the nobles who want to meet the Hero and pries Lelianna away from her love long enough to help her get everything squared away the ambassador is exhuasted. But diplomacy rarely sleeps and besides she is too happy to see her friend happy to miss spending at least a few moments in the tavern. ONce shes there and has a drink or two she relaxes further and settles in to enjoy the wardens stories.

Lelianna: Her happiness is complete. For too long she and her love have been completely seperated, with only a rare letter to ensure the other that all was well. For the first hour or so that the hero is there she refuses to let go, and they hold each other in the alcoves of the aviary and just soak in each others presence. After that there are people to meet and the spmaster insists that her warden gets some rest, but that night they take their seats in the tavern and the story telling begins. In time she is convinced to grace them with a song or two, and for a moment it feels so much like the camps of old that she has to wipe a surreptious tear from her eye. Its been a long time since she was so happy, and nothing can take it away.

[amarmeme]

The Shelved Works of Varric Tethras: CH 17 -- All Business

Pairing: Cassandra Pentaghast/ Varric Tethras Synopsis:  Varric Tethras’ literary cast-offs, abandoned for various reasons. Until a certain determined Seeker discovers the lot. Chapter Synopsis: Varric convinces Cassandra to rest and they finally have a chance to start real talking. On AO3

Dashed on a torn page from Hard in Hightown 3: The Re-Punchening

Story idea -- Gang leader is sole survivor of an ambush. Heads back to Ferelden in search of his her long lost family. Gets sucked into defending village from fade rift. Joins the Inquisition. Finds redemption?

If hard pressed, Cassandra couldn’t recount how long she’d been sitting in the sickened Seeker’s quarters. Judging by Varric’s considering gaze, the man could no doubt fill her in with absolute precision. For what seemed like the hundredth time, he petitioned her to abandoned the post.

“Come to bed, Cass.”

“Cole had said--”

“--I know what he said, but I don’t even think he even understands what sleeping is.”

She sighed, unable to form a coherent argument. Although Cole had said her presence was helpful, she’d be of little use to anyone else in her current state. A constant stream of jarring, jumbled thoughts flew through her mind, flashes of Varric’s embrace swimming in tandem with Daniel’s red streaked face and subsequent strike of mercy. Everything sweet became tainted, coated in a red haze. Perhaps it was time to sleep, in a proper bed.

“Alright.”

Varric wasted no time. Cassandra was dragged out of her wooden chair, lower back crying in protest. He spirited her out of the dark room, ushering her down the hall past the garden with the tight grip of a hand. The fresh  air was revitalizing, the morning chill nipping her senses and granting a sense of clarity. Several onlookers stood stock still with wide, worried eyes as the pair passed. Had it really been that long since their return to Skyhold with Seeker Taubert? Each person held the expression of someone spotting a ghost.

“Has something happened, Varric?”

He swung open the door to his room, sweeping her inside before shutting it with a shoulder. Leaning against the wood, he sighed sharply.

“Just the usual. The Inquisitor jumped through a magic mirror, our resident witch’s almost frolicking through the gardens after figuring how to turn into a -- I shit you not -- dragon. And you’re guarding a ticking lyrium bomb.” He shook his head. “How we’re not dead yet I don’t understand.”

“A dragon?!” Cassandra slumped against Varric’s bedpost. Apparently a lot had happened in a short amount of time.

“Oh, and I told you this last night.” She began to protest, not remembering the discussion. “I can see your gears working there, Seeker, and I’m gonna stop you. Just get in the damn bed.”

She scoffed, but let herself be shooed from the post. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she pried off her boots. They tumbled to the floor. The sound rang in her thoughts, stirring up ideas of undressing before Varric. She was not in her quarters, of course.

“Why am I here?” Cassandra threw back the covers and crawled onto the soft mattress. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she realized she didn’t much care.

“Because my bed’s somehow bigger than yours. Scoot over, I’m coming in too.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you are expecting anything, don’t.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t figured out how this works yet, Cass. When you’re worried, I’m worried. When you’re losing shut-eye. So am I.”

Her heart pattered in double time. It was such a Varric thing to say, to be wrapped up in her issues like they were his too. The thought stilled her. Were they his issues now too? He’d said he loved her, they’d had relations twice. She believe she loved him, or at least was fairly certain that was the feeling. It’d been so long she wasn’t sure how to declare the emotion beating against her breast.

Cassandra reclined stiffly on her allotted, imaginary side until Varric settled. The dwarf pulled her against his chest and dispelled the tension without a word. It seemed, above all else, entirely right. She breathed in the mixture of him, ink and oil with a tinge of something like the scent stirred up in the air after a hard rain. Perhaps it was so for all dwarves, unable to shake the connection to the ground despite being above it. It was pleasant, and soothing, a familiar smell for a man who had become quite familiar himself. A few deep breaths and she sank into the state before slumber where all edges became soft. Any worries could wait for later. He kissed her forehead and they soon tumbled off into much needed sleep.

Blades had given him a day and he was damn well taking it. Luckily Cass hadn’t fought him on the sleep, too tired to think straight. She napped still, wrapped up in his blanket. It was starting to become familiar, the straight-laced Seeker all loose and unraveled within his reach. To think, a few weeks ago they’d been snapping at one another in the Rest. Life had been crazy since Hawke entered it, but this was completely unexpected. There was no use in questioning it. Varric was galloping at full tilt, willing to see how the story unfurled. Hopefully with a leggy, raven-haired Seeker at his side.

Suddenly Cass shifted and came back down from her dreams with a soft smile. Maker’s balls he wanted to kiss her until she couldn’t breath.

“Better?”

The woman’s exaggerated stretch, arms above her head and back arched like a cat’s, was answer enough. He envied the blanket wrapped around her waist, her legs. That’s where he desperately wanted to be ever since she’d let him between her thighs a few nights ago.  So far they’d been going at it fast and hot. That morning in the tent was enough to stoke his imagination for years to come, Cass bent over for his taking. Varric had to clear his throat at the conjured image, his cock waking up at the idea of trying that again. It was a lost cause though, he wasn’t going to push it after all the shit she’d been dealing with. But damn him to the void he wanted to worship her.

Cass turned to her side, one hand beneath her cheek. She studied him with a quiet certainty, lips pressed into a line as if she knew exactly how he was pieced together and could see all the fault lines.  And maybe she did know. There’d been enough confessing on his side in the last few days. It didn’t escape him for a second that she’d not professed her feelings with the same amount of fervor.

“Varric.” She practically purred.

“Yeah, Seeker?”

“Oh, are we all business?”

He laughed. It was hard to imagine that. Looking back, there hadn’t been a point where’d they acted at all like neutral parties. There’d always been an undercurrent, a spark of tension even if she’d been oblivious to it.

“Cassandra,” he amended. She scooted closer, her lips deliciously close.

“I like when you call me Cass.” She ran a hand down his shoulder, over his outreached arm. “No one calls me that.”

Everything became warm quick. Her fingers moved to his chest, tracing the line of his tunic, playing with the hair there. Legs were entwined, hips pressed achingly close. Her dark brown eyes lit up with wicked delight as she felt his arousal. He didn't move against her, rather let the Seeker do all the seducing.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to expect anything?”

“Is it not better to defy expectations? I was of the impression you specialized in such dealings.”

“Oh, I’m corrupting you aren’t I?”

She licked her lips and rolled her hips once more, and Varric was done for.

They stripped themselves efficiently, less like passionate lovers and more so seasoned soldiers. It wasn’t for lack of want, rather a blessed lack of urgency. Breeches and tunics were tossed off the bed and the blankets pulled up, shrouding them. The makeshift tent provided a sense of intimacy that a bare mattress just couldn’t do. He rolled on top, hands near her head, hips cradled between her legs, cock throbbing at the prospect of being inside her again. He continued to let her set the pace, enjoying the coiling up in the pit of his stomach that came with prolonging the slide.

Cassandra’s strong, dexterous fingers were everywhere. In his hair, on his jaw, pulling his chin towards her sultry lips. She kissed him slowly, her other hand discovering the curvature of his back, smoothing the muscles there then nails lightly scouring warm skin. All in all, it was a damn fine place to be. Her tongue skirted the seam of his mouth and he had to reward the deed, pressing heavily against her hips as he sucked on a thick, pouty lip. She practically arched off the bed once he cupped a breast, brushing a pert nipple with a thumb. The low, quick gasp against his mouth filled his chest with the sort of masculine gratification that women always rolled their eyes at with one another, but secretly thrilled for. Cass wasn’t arguing the finer points of his thirst and renewed fervor, roughened hands sinking into her hips and urging her up and open.

Being a dwarf had its disadvantages when sleeping with humans, shortness the worst of it, but not where it really mattered. He was thick everywhere, Ancestors be fucking praised for something. Her lips parted on a stuttered breath as he pushed slowly, reverently into her heat, stretching the tight grip of her body. Her stomach clenched in response to the forced intake of air, and the reaction shook him unexpectedly. She'd hooked his heart and tugged it with each small detail, the soft skin at her collarbone, the of tilt of her chin, the pulse at the base of her throat. For a moment Varric forgot her overwhelming strength and sought to keep her safe. It was infernally hot under the covers, but in no way would he expose her bare to anything. Even himself.

There was a shift somewhere along the line and they were no longer fucking, but the alternative, a dangerous combination of sweetness and sin. Maker he hadn’t had this kind of intimacy for so long and there was no dam that could keep his feelings from flooding over. Varric grabbed a strong thigh and raised it up to his side, hand lingering, stroking down to an ankle. Due to his height he had to lean over, doubling her at the waist, in order to kiss her properly. The angle was almost punishing, sending him deeper and wrenching a hiss out of her.

“That okay?” The intensity in her eyes, the line of jaw, her furrowed brows said otherwise, but as he retreated she caught him in her grasp. Like a spider with its prey, she pulled him in, dangerously close, winding and weaving a net around him. “Let me adjust.” Her thickly accented voice was magnetic, especially at a whisper, and everything about her drew him deeper. Varric rested his forehead against the beautiful creature’s beneath him. Her soft, panted breaths accompanied the barest of nods and his gut clenched with another tug of his heart as she inadvertently tied him into knots.

He couldn’t stop himself.

“I really do love you, Cass.”

In a move that was probably cruel, he took the opportunity to pull out almost entirely. Her eyelids fluttered as he rested at the precipice and he thought of a thousand sonnets. Thrusting back in with an exaggerated slowness, he came up with a thousand more. This woman was all the inspiration he’d ever need. He continued to drive in and out of her with an unfair amount of finesse, an unspoken question lingering between them.

But do you love me? He said something else entirely.

“What do you need? Tell me.” Varric tried to lean back, let her unfurl, but she shook her head.

“Stay close.” She quirked her upper lip before adding, “You won’t break me.”

He wedged another leg against his chest, calf resting in the crook of his arm. She gripped his shoulders, tipping back her head after a few deep seated thrusts. Her exposed throat beckoned, and he sucked and soothed the sensitive skin there. A shiver ran through her as he murmured praise against her neck. The tight, wet grip of her was intoxicating. His blood pumped with incredible desire, an urgent need to see her come and spend himself there.  

Varric dropped her leg in order to cup a heavy breast, pink tip straining for his touch. Bowing as if in prayer, or more like making amends, he sucked and teased until she forced him back to her mouth. Begging to be kissed, he obeyed, then pulled out of her swiftly, seating himself just as quick. A groan ripped through them both at the sensation, breath mingling between open mouths. A stream of pleas fell off her usually sharp and demanding tongue, each more impassioned than the last.

Her skin was slick with sweat, her ankles locked at his back and fingers in his hair. He was going to come at this rate, sweat on his brow, a rising tide in his groin. Each cry and shake and moan filled him impossibly close to the brim, and he worried about spilling over before she could. Sliding a hand between them, he found her perfectly, indecently wet. He rubbed a thumb against the little bundle of nerves there and she arched against him, breasts pressed against his chest. If there was anything better than making a beautiful woman come, Varric hadn’t found it yet.

The tide rose and crashed over them both. She pulled on his wrist between them as the sensation became too much, wrapping their fingers together instead. Their joined hands were pushed above her head and he chased the last few ripples of pleasure before they disappeared. And so -- it was the best sex he'd ever had.

“Fuck,” he sighed, pulling out reluctantly. “That was incredible.”

She didn't appear to hear him. Cassandra drew the back of his broad hand to her lips and kissed there, a promise. She murmured his name against calloused knuckles and stared at a darkening corner of the room. “I do,” she said, unfocused eyes blinking at nothing. “That is yes. I-- do care for you.” It was forced, hard, and came across as if she was trying to make him feel better.

“That sounds pretty convincing.”

He scratched at his shoulder for the lack of a better distraction. She sure as shit didn't seem enthusiastic about the concept of caring for him. Then Cassandra pierced his thick, stubborn chest with sudden focus, brown eyes glistening and lip quavering in frustration. The slight movement could have been a figment of his imagination; he didn't think it was possible for her to cry. Was that awful to believe or a compliment? Before he could pull his head out of his ass, she sat up, scooting him off her lap.

“I may not be as silver tongued as you, but that does not make it any less real.”

He was an idiot. The only person she really loved had been killed in front of her when she was just a child. The only man she’d been intimate with died in a fucking explosion and directly thereafter she'd been saddled with a smart ass dwarf who apparently knew nothing. Of course she had problems saying it. Maferath’s balls he was a prick at times.

“I'm sorry.” He offered her a small smile. “Cass, I’m a terrible man. Ah, shit, don't cry.”

“I'm not,” she hissed, batting away his hand.

“Fine, don’t water the bed.”

She scoffed, but relaxed a little, shoulders softening. “It's not easy for me to tell you I love you, Varric. I have been alone for so long. Now with our responsibilities here coming to an end, it seems I must decide what is next.”

The unspoken words there were unpleasant at best. Did she move on without him? Was this just an ill-fated romance? Would she have been better off coming across a locked trunk all those months ago, his drafts and innermost thoughts hidden to her forever? He swallowed down a hard lump in his throat. He was better off for it, no matter the long-term effects. Cassandra fiddled with the sheet, pulling it taut between fingers, letting it fall loose. Varric stilled her hands before she frayed the damn thing.

“I wish to rebuild the Seekers.”

“I know that.”

“And you will return to Kirkwall.”

Varric simply nodded. He could see the writing on the wall. This was not the type of conversation he wished to have. Ever. He was the master of compartmentalizing -- of pushing the personal shit aside for as long as possible, hoping if he could downplay it in front of everyone else then maybe he’d believe it himself. The Seeker was the opposite -- a force of nature that had problems and dealt with them, sword first. Neither continued, sitting in silence for the moment, each contemplating what the future held in their mind.

“We have a bit of time,” she sighed. “Unfortunately Corypheus still lives.”

“Yeah, never thought I’d wish for his health.” She shook her head, but smiled anyway. “We’re not being irresponsible if we talk about this later, Cass. There’s still a world to save.”

Thankfully before she could press the issue, her stomach growled from neglect. Cassandra frowned as if to scare her hunger away, and Varric wanted to kiss her for it.

She groaned. “I have never said this before, but I would give anything to stay in bed.”

“And as much as I’d like to lie here and feed you, people need to see you’re still sane," he said. "Not a raving lunatic with red eyes frothing at the mouth.”

“Ugh.”

Cass rolled to her feet, gathering up her clothing and staring at them as if they were Dorian’s and had not a clue as how to start. He felt the same way, head in a fog. His thoughts were a mess, his heart was a mess. It seemed Cassandra knew just how to unsettle his relative state of calm. Varric felt like a love-sick kid again. And that was when mistakes got made.

They didn’t have time for mistakes.

Thanks for reading!

[sinsbymanka]

Thank you so much @zuendwinkel​ for donating! I am SO GLAD to add this lovely Hawke x Fenris to the collection, writing them was a joy! I’m also SO EXCITED to share the artwork you created that goes along with it! Thank you so much for blessing us with something so soft, beautiful, and detailed!! 

I’m not longer accepting RAINN Commissions but you can see the ones that are already finished in this series on AO3. Thank you to everyone who has supported me!

Title: A Flock of Trouble Pairing: Male Hawke x Fenris Rating: T Content Warnings: Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Post-Dragon Age II, Fluff and Angst, Reunions

Read on AO3

Broody,

Listen. We got into a bit of a situation in the Western Approach. Fell tits over ass right into the Fade. I wish I was shitting you. Do you remember those giant spiders outside Kirkwall? They’ve got nothing on fade demon spiders. I have had enough of the whole thing for the rest of my life. Hawke took off with the Wardens to tell Weisshaupt that their whole fighting force is at risk of being controlled like finger puppets by an ancient magister. I got the worse job of telling you where the fuck he was going (Remember, don’t murder the messenger. Who else would get you that wine you like from Tevinter?)

He said not to follow him. Doesn’t want your Broody arse that close to Tevinter, I expect. I’m fully aware you’ll be going anyway. Take the note attached to my solicitor and get some coin to tide you over. Don’t get captured by slavers. Try to lie low.

When you see Hawke - ask him what happened in the Fade. Somebody needs to kick some sense into his ass. You’re the best person for it.

Sincerely, Varric Tethras

P.S. I’m adding the money Hawke lost to me to your gambling debts. Wicked Grace soon?

Weisshaupt appeared as foreboding and desolate as Fenris had expected. 

Sun-bleached stone soared into a clear, burning sky. Walls meant for defense rather than appeal ringed a fortress that looked as if it could withstand an archdemon itself. If Fenris remembered correctly, it had survived at least two. Perhaps three. 

Of course, if Garrett Hawke were there currently, it may soon fall into the blighted land surrounding it. That did seem to be the man’s luck.  And if Garrett Hawke wasn’t there, Fenris would hunt him down, if only to give the man the tongue lashing he richly deserved. 

In truth, Fenris felt uneasy. The Tevinter border at his back reminded him of the last time he’d been so far north. He’d been running then, as fast as he could go, a desperate chase that led to Kirkwall, an empty box, an abandoned mansion and…

And Garrett Hawke. 

Fenris remembered clearly everything that happened after he met Garrett. He had spent hours examining the path he took with a cynic’s wary gaze, looking for the moment it had all changed, the second he stopped running and made a choice. 

A choice that led him here, to the edge of the world, chasing instead of being chased. 

“What business do you have here?” A rough voice barked. It belonged to a woman, old for a Warden, her long brown hair braided neatly down her back. Her hand rested easily on the hilt of the sword on her hip with a warrior’s preparedness. But her stance was casual. Eyes alert and pleasant. There was no whiff of danger here, not for him at any rate. It did not quite reassure him, but there was no reason to reach for the blade on his back. Yet.

“I am here for the Champion of Kirkwall.” He informed the guard politely, wrapping the reins around his fist while he smoothly dismounted. 

The woman rocked back on her heels, a started, humorless laugh slipping from her lips. “The Champion of Kirkwall?” 

Fenris’s heart sunk, but he kept his face impassive. He could not help the way his gauntlets tightened on the leather bridle. “He is not here.” 

“Oh no! The blighted fool is still here. Are you here to take him back to wherever he came from? Cause I’d be grateful, Serah. May even slip some coin in your pocket.” 

Something broke inside him, a fever finally easing. Fenris had been traveling for longer than he wished to recount, and had not allowed himself to consider the end of the journey or who he wished to find there. 

“Where may I find him?” 

The woman opened her mouth to reply, but whatever response she meant to give was cut off by an unholy clatter and what sounded like a small explosion. Her expression darkened and she jerked her thumb to a thin trail of smoke rising above the walls. 

“Wherever there’s trouble, typically.” She sighed. 

Fenris knew Garrett far too well to disagree with that statement. 

The smoke smelled of herbs Fenris recognized, elfroot chief among them, and it was billowing from within a stable of all things. Soldiers, Fenris assumed they were Grey Wardens, stood with various expressions of shock, dismay, and annoyance. 

The nobles in Kirkwall wore the same looks the day Garrett knocked over six of the merchant’s stalls in Hightown. He’d been chasing a dog, who was chasing a street urchin, who was trying to catch a nug with a kitten in it’s mouth. 

Maker only knew how Garrett had gotten roped into the whole thing. 

Fenris simply remembered the chaos unspooling below him from his perch on the steps and that bubble of emotion that rose up in his chest while he chuckled ruefully and Isabela cheered. He hadn’t known what to call that feeling, not then, not watching Garrett retrieve the kitten and present it to the street urchin while the rich nobility stared in bewilderment. 

But when he saw Garrett in the stable doors, waving his arms like a windmill to disperse the smoke, Fenris felt it again. This time he knew its name.  

Joy. 

Knots loosened in his chest. Only to be replaced by a sharp spike of annoyance more than a match for the cloud of irritation hovering around Garrett. 

Except, of course, Garrett was impervious to the mood. He cast his dark eyes around the courtyard, flitting right over Fenris in his search for something. Then, a half second later, sliding back to where he stood. 

“Fen!” Garrett shouted, a joyful grin splitting his face. “You’re here!” 

Garrett bounded away from the smoking door, arms swinging. He wasn’t in armor, wasn’t armed, and a part of that struck a chord that made Fenris both wary and wistful. When was the last time Garrett had abandoned his armor around strangers? 

Garrett stumbled to a stop in front of him, arms out, waiting while his eyes dragged themselves over every inch of Fenris’s lyrium lined face. 

“You’re really here.” Garrett whispered. 

Almost as if he thought he’d never see him again. 

“Yes.” Fenris snapped instead, jerking his chin at the ancient fortress. “I have, once again, followed you to the edge of civilization.” 

At least Garrett had the good grace to look contrite. “I mean. They do have that wine here you like.” 

“It is more easily obtainable this close to Tevinter.” 

Garrett winced. “I told Varric to tell you-” 

“It was too much trouble to write to me with your own hand?” 

That made his lover recoil. Garrett did not grab for him, although he lifted his arm, fingers outstretched in silent plea. “Fen that… that wasn’t it at all. There was an army of demons. Giant spider. Marching across the blighted desert. Griffon eggs…” 

“Griffon eggs?” Fenris repeated, incredulous. 

Garrett’s whole face brightened. “Griffon eggs! I swear on the Maker’s hairy asscheeks, Fen, you won’t believe-” 

Fenris swallowed his anger and shook his head. In one movement, he turned on his heel and stomped away from the human with his beaming smile, warm eyes, and new wrinkles from sorrow on his forehead. 

It was always safest to walk away when he did not know whether to slap Garrett or kiss him, after all. 

Garrett found Fenris on the battlements while the sun was dipping below the western horizon. He stood, awkward and yet endearing, cradling a large white object gently in his arms. On second look, it was indeed the largest egg Fenris had ever seen. 

“I should have written.” Garrett murmured. “I… wasn’t thinking clearly.” 

Fenris did not pull his eyes from the pink and orange sky. “That is hardly unusual.” 

Garrett chuckled to himself, shifting his weight from side to side. “Fair. But… it was bad, Fen.” 

He knew it must have been. Varric would not have mentioned it otherwise. “Do you wish to tell me about it?”

“Yes.” Garrett sighed, placing the egg tenderly on top of a crate. He rested one large hand over it before casting a baleful look at Fenris. “But not tonight. Tonight I’m just… I’m just fucking thrilled to see you. Even if you’re fuming.” 

“I am not fuming.” Fenris stated on instinct. 

Garrett grinned. “Ah. Is this brooding then?” 

Fenris’s lips twitched. “I do not brood.” 

“Not even a little bit.” Garrett stepped closer, holding his arms out with a shy, uncertain tip of his lips. “I missed you.” 

Fenris pushed himself away from the warm stone. For a breathless second, the two men looked at each other. Garrett’s eyes shimmered with emotion, an expression torn between longing and hope. 

Fenris stepped into the man’s embrace and allowed himself to be tugged towards his broad chest. His sword rough fingers yanked on Hawke’s hair immediately, scowling into the grinning face. 

“You are a fool, and I am a worse one for loving you.” 

Garrett laughed, ducking down to press an eager kiss to Fenris’s lips. Fenris closed his eyes, drifting on the sparking heat between them, the way the world settled back into place. Garrett smelled of home, of warm hay, leather, salt and sun. 

They broke the kiss, but clung to each other as Garrett pressed his forehead to Fenris’s. 

“Griffon eggs?” Fenris finally asked.

Garrett smiled. “My newest adventure, Fenris. Much better than the last one, I assure you.” 

Fenris simply sighed and melted into his lover’s embrace under the burning sun. As with most of Garrett’s adventures, it would be nothing but trouble.

Fenris found he did not mind much at all.