#'should i start hosting dinner parties like the ones your family puts on in ostwick? should i talk more about embroidery? gossip?'

[mstigergun]

OC Kiss Week, “marginalia”

OC Kiss Week, Day Five (a fluffy kiss, sort of? definitely dusty tho!)

(I don’t have any pictures of these two, since they are nerds in the University of Val Royeaux and not, you know, kicking around the Inquisition)

@enviouspride asked that I write something with Iona Trevelyan, who is the middle Trevelyan sibling. He’s mentioned in Leonid’s timeline fic, and in Alla’s, and also Leonid is really mean to Iona when he comes to visit for First Day one year. That is a formative and vicious little interaction, which makes Iona really take stock of his life and make a Big Change. Well, big for him!

So, in my little headcanon, Iona was sent off to be a Chantry archivist, but because of some ordinance about, like, y’know, not drafting the unwilling, young scholars are given the choice at some point to continue with their work for the Chantry or to go elsewhere. Most stay, because they’ve been shipped off by their families -- usually noble families with too many children and not enough coin -- and have no other means of surviving. Iona, because he is very clever and very handy with translations, gets head-hunted by the University of Orlais, who want to poach him for their own young scholars training program (tm) (also because he’s too good and clever to be an archivist; he would be wasted on the Chantry). Given the choice, Iona decides he’d rather work with the University, mostly because one time he kissed a girl in the Chantry and realized that a life of celibacy sounded pretty sad. He likes books, but not that much!

Iona would have joined the University at 18 in 9:33. This little piece is likely set around 9:39, when he’s 24. He and Sian would have met no more than a year earlier when she got her offer to study at the University. Sian is really into ancient codes used for old trade route manifests. And who knows? These two might someday come in contact with the Inquisition, who could need some translations completed of ancient letters or someone to parse out the specifics of some coded letters. No code can stand up to the intellectual fury of Sian Fields, while her tall and awkward fellow makes her tea and suggests alternate grammatical structures when it comes times to make those encoded sentences make sense... 

[~2600 words]

marginalia

He likely wouldn’t notice, except that he’s taking a break from poring over Durotti’s Anderfels manuscript because his eyes have started to burn. With his nose pressed against the paper, he can’t hear anything, like somehow reading makes him deaf. It’s a quirk that served him well when he was studying with the Chantry, where bells and songs and the distant echo of the morning service might break his concentration; it’s an even more useful oddity here in the University, where he’s certain the other young scholars in his cohort spend more time gossiping about one another than actually tending to their research.

One good thing about growing up a Trevelyan, he often muses: he’s gotten very good at ignoring unpleasantries.

But since he’s not currently lost in translating a strange dialect into a more modern incarnation, and because he is instead sipping on his cold tea and staring pointedly at nothing, even when the words dancing on the parchment before him call his name so loudly they’re practical a choir…

Well, they’re not a choir. Neither is the voice that echoes off the dusty domed roof overhead.

“Shit, you fucking bastard. I swear to the Maker and beyond I will dig up your blighted bones and set them alight, you Antivan arsehole!” The heavy sound of manuscripts being dropped furiously on tables, or else on the floor. Footfalls stomping their way up and down the narrow passageway, then, “Foremost fucking scholar on the Storm Age Drylands route, my arse.”

There’s only one young scholar in the whole of the university who swears quite like that, just as there’s only one scholar in all of Thedas who is so invested in ancient Antivan trade routes and their curious codes as to be there in the smallest and darkest hours of the night. And if anyone could use a break before she sets the library alight instead of an ancient historian’s bones, then it’s sure to be Sian Fields.

Iona picks himself up, rolling out the crick in his neck from too many hours with his nose to a manuscript, and heads off through the precarious passageway toward the curses he can still hear.

This library, crammed in a tower in one of the University’s remote eastern spires, isn’t well-frequented, which is why it’s full of dusty towers of papers long since come loose from their bindings. It is entirely unlike the orderly library that houses hundreds of years’ worth of Chantry scholarship, which is bright and sunny, with air as clean and cool as the best sort of autumn afternoon.

There, his fellow scholars breathe easily, waving down attendants for tea or cheeses or a different colour of ink for improved notation.

Here, in the dark, tangled mess of shelves and labyrinthine cataloguing systems, Iona has to be mindful that he doesn’t take too deep a breath, lest he sneeze his way through the stacks and inadvertently cause an avalanche of forgotten Antivan translations of obscure trade histories.

Which would be very, very unwise, Iona decides, as he sidles through a particularly narrow gap between Mollarch’s Treatise (the revised third draft) and Lady Fontaine’s exhaustive lists of everything she ever purchased that was, at least in part, blue. Swear as Sian might, if anything were to happen to this collection –

Well. Iona would need to write Alla, and he very much doubts she would arrive in time to save him from Sian’s wrath.

“Fucking worthless pile of dog shite. Can’t you have thought of one halfway clever thing to put to blighted parchment, or is it all piss?”

This time, it’s almost a plea. Tremulous and unsteady.

Oh dear. Iona picks up the pace, shuffling around corners and shimmying delicately past particularly precarious stacks.

Down one very narrow row, a little light glows.

Ah, that would be her. Iona pokes his head around the corner. “Hello, Sian,” he says.

He sees her, more a shadow than a woman, in the very farthest corner of the collection, hunched over a desk, her head collapsed against her arms. She doesn’t even look up, her shoulders slumping forward as she scrubs her hands hard across her face. “Iona Trevelyan,” she sighs, truly sorrowful. “I hate Antiva.”

“No you don’t,” Iona tries, wriggling his way down the aisle to try and offer some semblance of… comfort. Emotional and academic support. The like. How Sian managed to climb her way over some of these stacks when they pose a challenge even for Iona’s long legs…

He frowns, worry squirming in the depths of his stomach, slippery and familiar. “How long have you been here? You know we’re meant to take breaks at least once a day. The Proctor has been very clear…”

That gets her attention. Sian surges to her feet, whirling to face him. Her face is smudged with the distant remnants of kohl, her hair – usually coiled very neatly at the base of her neck – has come loose and makes a frizzy, red halo around her finely-formed features. And though the top of her head wouldn’t even reach Iona’s shoulder –

Still, the look she levels him with manages to make his shoulders draw to his ears. Like staring down the mouth of a lion, all golden fury.

“The Proctor can go fuck a plate of cheese, for all I care. Awhile, Iona, that’s how long I’ve been here sorting these fucking codes out,” she spits, casting an arm out at the mess around them. “Can’t you tell? Haven’t had a breath of blighted fresh air in days. And if the Proctor thinks I’ll take a break when everyone else is busy swanning their way through their parties and assisted readings and afternoon scholar teas, then he can come here and tell me himself!”

Iona swallows once, his eyes very, very wide. Wide enough that the dust swirling through the air actually makes them sting. “Right,” he says. “Well. Sian. Perhaps you’d best take… a very small break. I’ve tea over in my alcove, and it’s cold but my sister sent it from Ostwick, so it’s decent enough. And… I suspect – it must be Bianchi you’re reading, yes? He will certainly keep. What else has he to do, but be dug up and burnt?”

Sian’s jaw tightens. And though this library, all but forgotten by their peers who pursue flashier topics and whose collections are orderly and clean and well-tended by servants, is dimly-lit, particularly this late at night, Iona can still make out the glassy sheen to her eyes. The tension in her shoulders. The –

She’s going to cry, maybe. And Iona isn’t quite certain he can handle that.

“Sian,” he tries, stepping forward. He reaches and catches her ink-stained hands in his own. Smiles, even though his stomach is fluttering with a million different worries. “It will all be alright. You’re the cleverest person in the whole university. If anyone can make Bianchi fall into line –”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, voice thin. “And that was unkind of me. I’m sorry. You’re not like the rest of them, and I should – As riled as a hound come full moon, my mum likes to say. And you’re right. Tea would be good, and some time away from Bianchi, and –” Sian blinks rapidly, furiously, hands tightening against Iona’s. Her stare, sheened with barely contained tears, darts from shelf to shelf. “It’s only that there’s so much. But – yes. Yes, I’ll be fine. It’ll keep.”

Then, firm and declarative, her hands very warm and soft in Iona’s, Sian straightens her shoulders, the light from her lantern making her hair glint like burnished copper. She draws in a long, steadying breath –

Which catches in her throat. Sian’s hands leap from Iona’s and she sneezes, so violently that Iona jerks backwards.

A thud as his elbow jostles into something. He has enough time to register the fact, before he hears it: the sliding of parchment, the whispering rustle of sheafs of paper coming undone. “Oh!” cries Iona, whirling, his hands flying up to try and catch what’s begun falling, to try and right this wrong, but –

The whole tower, which soars so delicately toward the ceiling, tilts toward him. He watches it, the middle sagging forward, then the top, then the rest.

It falls, a roaring, fluttering waterfall. First the one stack, then another, then the one to his left and the one beside that. A crescendo of hissing papers, quicksand closing in over him –

Iona’s coughing and sputtering and stumbling backward, and Sian has grasped him hard by the back of his tunic and hauled him away from the imminent catastrophe. Before him, the air is rife with thousands of ancient pages, with plumes of dust and flaking mildew. And the moment the pages settle, pooling across the floor, more liquid than parchment, Iona’s heart comes to a dead standstill in his chest.

He can’t feel his fingers. He can’t feel his legs. He can’t feel anything.

Maker help him. Andraste bless and keep him and guide him to something that is not this.

Hundreds of hours worth of cataloguing, only to be undone by –

Beside him, a wheezing breath.

“Are you alright?” Iona cries, whirling once again to face Sian, because if somehow her lungs have tightened, and she can’t breath, well. He’ll have to find a mage, which means finding the Proctor, who will skin Iona alive in front of all of Val Royeaux, but he will do it so long as Sian is alright and safe and –

“Andraste’s blessed tits,” gasps Sian, tears streaking down her cheeks as she laughs and coughs and sputters, her mouth caught in a grin so very bright Iona is almost blinded. “The whole thing, Iona! All of it!”

“Oh.” He feels himself shrinking, there in the midst of the chaos. “Yes. All of it.”

“I know I was cross with Bianchi and his kin, but I didn’t need you to go ahead and destroy the whole lot!”

“Well.” His hands curl against his sides and he tries to slide them beneath the cuffs of his sleeves. “I didn’t – I would never intend to – But Sian,” as again he realizes the scope of the damage he’s done. “Your work! How will you cross-reference if it’s all –”

Sian waves a hand through the hazy air between them. The same pale hand rises, fingers threading through her dust-whitened hair. “Let’s see, shall we? As Bianchi’s contemporary Russo writes in her very poorly composed summary of the four dominant trading families of the Storm Age, published in 7:23 and available in that lump of manuscripts over there… Who’s ever going to come here to check my citations? I can put it right before the Proctor even so much as suspects a thing.”

That will hardly stand. “I’ll put it right,” says Iona, with a firmness that feels very unfamiliar, but one he feels in the marrow of his bones. To demonstrate, he stoops and picks up an armful of pages, clutching them hard against his chest. “Since it’s my fault. And you’re clearly very invested in your research!”

Sian’s stare, which is bright and unflinching and always reminds him that he must be even more diligent in his studies and even bolder in his theories, narrows, staring at the sheaf of papers he’s holding. Then, with a loose shrug as she brushes dust from the front of her dark sweater, “Well, sure, it’s interesting enough when Bianchi’s not being a total prick, but no one reads it, so I’m never in a rush. Which nobles want to read about what a turnip farmer’s daughter thinks is relevant? None of them. Don’t know why I didn’t just stick to writing about whether the Chantry used red or mauve tapestries in the spring of 8:41 like all of our esteemed colleagues…”

Someone else would point out that it’s unfair, to her own research and to the research of their peers, but –

Well. She’s not entirely wrong. Iona’s heard what people say: that the University should never have offered Sian a scholarship. That they certainly shouldn’t have given her free reign of her research. That she doesn’t belong, with her foul mouth and loud laugh and refusal to pretend work that doesn’t matter does.

Sian shrugs again and turns away, fussing with the manuscript sitting on her desk. Her notes to the side are a scrawl, as usual, as wild and unpredictable as her mind. When first they’d started classes together, their teacher had gone up one side of her and down the other about the state of her lecture notes. You are not in Ferelden any longer, the man – the world’s foremost expert on what sorts of ink were popular in Val Chevin in 7:81 – sneered. You do not make notes for dogs.

Their whole class, a handful of the best and the brightest, or else the richest and most well-connected, had been tittering and watching the strange girl, her clothes a little too well-worn, her mouth a little too quick to criticize. But instead of recoiling, Sian had straightened under the stare of their teacher, shoulders squaring up as she tilted that bright glare in his direction. They’re sensible enough to me, she’d said, even though her skin had flushed red and Iona could see her knees jittering beneath her desk, And that’s what fucking matters in the end, doesn’t it?

So Sian’s right. She doesn’t fit here, and that’s why Iona loves her.

His arms tighten around the papers, which rustle gently in his grasp, his throat tight – and not, he knows, from the dust thick in the air. “I read your work.”

Her stare, golden as a hawk’s, again lands on him. “No, you don’t.”

“I do,” he says, breathless. Iona takes a half-step forward, no doubt doing irreparable damages to very rare manuscripts, but – Well. This matters. He continues, feeling bold despite Sian’s skeptical gaze. “Your translations of the shipping manifests from the harbourmaster’s encoded diaries were breathtaking. I’ve never seen anyone work like that before, Sian, and –”

Her forehead creases, eyebrows crawling upward toward the dusty nest of her hair. “You really read my work?”

“Of course I do,” he says, certain now that he’s on the right path. That this is important. “You’re the only original scholar in this whole place, and – And –” Iona pauses and squares up his own shoulders, trying to think of Sian in those early days, or on any day since. Of all the times she’s dealt with how unfair so many of the people here are. She’s brave and beautiful and brilliant, and the very least Iona can do, Iona, whose place is never questioned, whose research isn’t called useless or boring or –

“And you remind me to be better, all of the time,” he finishes, ignoring the way his heart flutters in his chest, the way his words are too quiet and foolishly breathless and utterly beneath her notice. Onwards, he thinks, ever onwards. “So I’ll clean up, and you can keep on with your work. Or maybe – maybe you could take a break, Sian. You do seem quite frustrated, and –”

“You’re a ridiculous man,” Sian breathes, and then she surges forward, and Iona nearly trips backward again.

Except this time her hand has fastened hard on the front of his tunic and she hauls his chest downward and plants a declarative kiss, right there on his mouth.

He drops the papers, and decides – somewhere between the delighted laugh that breaks free of Sian’s throat when his hands find her waist beneath the bulk of her sweater, and the smell of dust and crumbling paper in her hair, and the feel of her mouth and the way her eyes sparkle that singular gold when he kisses the very tips of her ink-stained fingers – he just doesn’t care about the manuscripts any longer. They’ll keep until tomorrow.