#'you are the one bright light in kirkwall'

[saintofrevelation]

still can't believe bioware tried to say veilguard was their most romantic game ever when anders is right there?????

[riddleturner]

he's an apostate. he's a grey warden. he's on the run from the law. he's bonded body mind and soul to a spirit of the fade. he practices one of the rarest and most taxing magical diciplines known to mages. he's a cat dad. he was put in solitary confinement for a full year. he saves lives daily and asks for no payment. he's a massive bitch. he's personal friends with the hero of ferelden. he hates the church. he's hopelessly in love with you. he writes and distributes his own manifesto. he was forced to kill his own ex boyfriend. he doesn't see a way out. he's fucking blonde.

[vaguely-concerned]

just going about my day idly contemplating how some of the ways hawke can interact with a romanced anders are not at all unlike how they interact with leandra (and a bit of carver too, especially with a purple hawke), and then thought about my hawke in the timeline where he romances anders and was hit straight in the face with 'was he ever actually in love, or was he just desperately trying to renegotiate with his mother's ghost in any way he could' and now i need to lie down. this is the power of dragon age 2

[tianlavellan]

"you are the one bright light in kirkwall" says the guy who, at great risk to his own safety and freedom (and probably health), runs an illegal free clinic for the poor and refugees which people are literally told to find by "looking for the lit lantern" I'm so ill. he doesn't even see his own light.

[sailorpurr]

“You are the one bright light in Kirkwall.”

[justcallmecappy]

The Andersmance as a narrative of hope

One thing I've noticed while in the Dragon Age fandom is the prevalent interpretation of the Anders romance as a tragedy, or a romance that's inherently tragic. Anders acts behind Hawke's back, destroys the Kirkwall Chantry no matter what choices the player makes, the player sees this as a huge betrayal, and — despite having romanced Anders, and/or being mage-sympathetic — they decide to execute or banish Anders as punishment for his 'crime'. Tears are shed; it's all dramatic and tragic and angsty.

While I sometimes appreciate tragedies, I would like to posit a different perspective: The romance with Anders is a story of hope; a story of standing up to insurmountable odds and overcoming them. The romance with Anders can be approached as one with a happier ending, where Hawke and Anders are the heroes.

Before I elaborate, a disclaimer: These are my own opinions. I understand some players prefer the Andersmance as a tragic romance, and to each player their own. I am not here to dictate the choices you should make in-game or how you approach your playthroughs, merely to present a different perspective to one I've seen very often.

Also, this post is critical of the rivalmance with Anders — more on that later.

The Andersmance as a narrative of hope relies on two perspectives:

Firstly, the Chantry is an authoritarian institution who are the antagonistic force that the heroes need to oppose and take down. There is plenty of meta that explores and supports this.

Secondly, Anders is a heroic character:

He is a healer who set up a clinic providing free healthcare for the marginalized and downtrodden people of Kirkwall who otherwise have gone overlooked by their own Chantry.

He let a Spirit of Justice into his body, simply to help Justice continue to exist in the physical world when he would have otherwise disappeared into the Fade.

He regularly risks his safety and security by helping mages escape abuse in the Gallows and have a chance at freedom via the Mage Underground.

These are all acts of someone who is kind and compassionate, and, yes, heroic.

He is not a villain who needs to be stopped. He is the hero of the story who needs help and support as he challenges systematic oppression. He's Katniss Everdeen standing up to the Capitol; he's Luke Skywalker opposing the Galactic Empire.

Hawke is that supportive pillar, that safe harbor, that source of unconditional love for Anders in his times of struggle. "The one bright light in Kirkwall" who stands by Anders' side as they face insurmountable odds together.

In World States where Leliana becomes Divine Victoria, this means Hawke and Anders' struggles were not in vain. Through their actions, they sparked a series of events that culminated in the abolition of the Circles.

Anders' prophetic speech about how, "Ten years, a hundred years from now, someone like me will love someone like you, and there will be no Templars to tear them apart" carries so much more weight, because loving Hawke gave him hope for a better future that Anders actually gets to witness in his lifetime.

Do you know how powerful such a love story is?

Their love literally changed the world for the better.

They loved each other, that love gave them courage, and now future generations of mages are free to find a love as strong and precious as the one Hawke and Anders share.

Of course, the condition of this is that Hawke loves and supports Anders wholeheartedly, meaning that this obviously takes the Friendship route for the romance. The rivalmance where Hawke downplays Anders' struggles, breaks Anders' spirit, undermines Anders' confidence, and tries to convince Anders that his cause is needless has no part in this narrative of hope; in fact, I would go so far to say that Hawke is the villain in that version of the story.

Personally, stories of hope have always strongly resonated with me. I gravitate towards stories where our protagonists are presented with challenging obstacles (whether they be internal, external, or both), and things may seem bleak at first, but they bravely carry on, and by the end of the story the characters have made themselves better people, and/or made the world a better place.

Anders and Hawke had many chances to turn away and ignore the plight of mages and just get their own happy ending, but they didn't — they carried on, because they were the heroes, and they knew all mages deserved to be free as they were.

[lottiesnotebook]

hey, happy friday! "Pick a sin we can both live with, is what I ask." - from the horror prompt list, for isabela/merrill? :>

Happy Friday! Sorry I didn't get to this last week, but I hope you like it! I've taken this prompt before, but these characters lend themselves to a completely different take on it, so I'm repeating it anyway. It's my first attempt at Isabela/Merrill, so hopefully I got our favourite Dragon Age 2 girlies right.

Isabela/Merril, angst, hurt/comfort, post A New Path

@dadrunkwriting

where my demons hide

It's not in Isabela's nature to fuss or fret over others. Not that she doesn't care, exactly - she's not a sadist, she doesn't enjoy seeing people suffer, but she's no bleeding heart, to go out of her way to check on every broken-winged sparrow within Kirkwall's uncaring walls. Between Anders and Hawke, their little on-off crew has more than enough bleeding hearts to drown the city in grief and sympathy. Better to seek out life's pleasures and joys, to treasure her friends' smiles and remember them laughing and waving from the dockside when she bids them goodbye. She hates seeing or thinking of them in pain, unhappy. She'd rather drown memories like that in rum or ale than face them in the unforgiving light of day.

It's not in her nature, but still, she's here on her knees at the door to Merrill's rooms, picking a lock she could more easily barge through if it wouldn't affect her friend's rent. Of course, this would all be easier if Merrill would simply answer her knocks, or better yet, come out to the Hanged Man so she could drown her sorrows until she was pink-cheeked and giggly and clumsy as the kitten Isabela had named her for.

But since they came back from the Wounded Coast, since her mage-friend - Marethari - died, Merrill hasn't been to the Hanged Man, or to the port, or even curled up by the fire in Hawke's too-big house. As far as Isabela can tell, she's been shut up in her dark little corner of the alienage, and if anyone's checked on her, they haven't been ruthless enough to get a sign of life.

Hence, Isabela, here, on her knees, jimmying the lock of her front door open in broad daylight, and hoping nobody takes her for an enterprising shem and stabs her before she can get inside. At least in the alienage, there's no risk of anyone calling the guard. Aveline's lot are even less welcome in this corner of Lowtown than they are in the rest of it, not that any of them would be quick enough to catch her if called.

It's more work to keep the lock in one piece than it is to crack it, but the door pops open with a disgruntled creak, and she nudges it with a boot to put it in its place and steps into the shadows of Merrill's room.

"Morning, Kitten!" she calls, with all the forced cheer she can manage. "Ready to come out and play again yet?"

There is a muffled, unhappy sound from the other room, and it sends a spike of fear through her, because if she's hurt- if the reason she hasn't answered the door is because she can't, and nobody checked on her-

But the dim room does not hold the stench of sickness, or of a wound gone bad. Mostly it holds the too-familiar smells of stale food and staler sweat, which are disgusting but hardly unfamiliar from her time at sea. It's too dark for her to make sense of much, but the undyed linens of the bed in the corner gather what light there is into their pale folds, and she thinks she can just about make out a lump in the middle of it.

She picks her way across the room, curses as something sharp - broken glass? - slices through the stitching of her boot, but comes to perch on the end of the narrow bed regardless. She gropes blindly in the dark until she finds the warmth of the blanketed lump-that-is-Merrill, and squeezes what she thinks is a foot until the lump squeaks and confirms her suspicions.

"You shouldn't be here." Merrill's voice usually sparkles as bright and glittering as her magic, or as a precious jewel Isabela might covet for her own. Now though, it is dull, hollow, empty - cut glass where a diamond had once been. "I'm- I'm a wilful, stubborn idiot. I ruin everything I touch, and I don't even know I'm doing it!"

"Not sure that's entirely true." Isabela squeezes her foot again, fights the urge to run and find someone better at the messy parts of friendship and feelings. If she leaves now, who knows where Merrill will be when she gets back? It takes a bolter to know a bolter, and Isabela has been running half her life now. "I'm touching you right now, and I don't think I look ruined. It's a little early in the day for that, even for me."

"You're not ruined yet," Merrill corrects, rolling upright to pull her knees into her chest. "It's- it's only a matter of time. You saw what I did to Marethari, what I did to my clan. I can never go back there. I can never go home."

"Well, that makes two of us." Isabela sits back on the bed and stretches out until her hand rests on Merrill's knee, until she can stretch just a little further to bury it in her hair. It's longer than she usually keeps it, stuck up in short spikes, but she cards her fingers through it anyway. "Hurts, doesn't it?" She feels Merrill nod beneath her hand, and it emboldens her - she wriggles closer. "There's only one way it'll stop, you know."

"I know," she says, and it's half a sob, "but I can't- I'm not brave enough-"

"Not that," she says, quick, bracing, nipping that line of thought in the bud before it can grow to strangle her. "It'll stop hurting when you realise what they had was never built for you, or you'd still be there." If she'd been meant to remain her mother's daughter, her husband's wife, she'd still be in her childhood bedroom, or an old man's bed. She wouldn't have carved her way out with her teeth and come away bloody and free.

"It isn't their fault," Merrill says, head snapping up, suddenly fierce in their defence (not that they deserve it. "They're just- they did what they thought was best, and maybe they were right to. It's my fault they lost their Keeper, and a clan without a Keeper…"

"Will survive without her," she says, which perhaps is harsh or clumsy, but soothing tempers and wiping away tears has never come easily to her. That's always been Merrill's domain more than hers. "This can't be the first time in Dalish history this has happened, right?"

"No, there are traditions, but- everything she knew, all the history of Clan Sabrae… I wiped it out, didn't I?"

"She wiped it out," Isabela corrects, "when she chose to let the demon in rather than telling you the truth or asking for help sooner, or, Maker, even working with the fucker - if Anders can manage it, it can't be that hard!"

Merrill almost laughs at that, but cuts herself off too quickly, as if her laughter is indecent rather than the sweetest sound in the world. Isabela would kill Marethari all over again for making her believe that, if she could.

"That's not- that isn't how these things work," she says, soft and sad. "I'm sure- I'm certain she did the best she could with the information she had."

"And so did you!" Isabela reminds her. "You wanted to give your people something important, you took risks and made sacrifices for something I'll never be selfless enough to understand-"

"That's just it!" Merrill bursts out, "It wasn't selfless! I pretended- I said it was for the clan, but really it was for me. I wanted to know the secrets. I wanted to prove I knew better than the Keeper-"

"And to prove she knew better than you, she let out the demon she wants you to blame yourself for!" Isabela kneels, takes the other woman's face in her hands, forces her to meet her eyes. Merrill's gleam eerie reflective green, flashing with what little light the room still holds, but she can see the tears that overspill from them. "Sure, maybe everything she said was true, or maybe she wanted to blame you rather than admit she made her own mistakes. Plenty of people, even people you like or trust, even people with power- especially people with power will do things like that, if they can get away with it."

She thinks of the Arishok, then, of the Qunari who ravaged the city only a few years ago. Sure, maybe she shouldn't have taken their book, but they had the choice to leave, to do anything other than what they did, and at the end of things, it wasn't like returning it had fixed anything at all. They'd still burned half the city. They'd still wanted to kill her.

"You can't let people like that tell you who you are," she finishes, lamely, and wonders if the words are more for Merrill or for herself. If she allowed herself to believe what the Arishok would make of her… She can't think of that. Even she isn't quite selfish enough to live with that reflection.

Merrill peeks out at her, over her knees. "Even if they're right?"

"They're not right," she says, with all the certainty she can muster. "If you need someone to tell you who you are, Kitten, listen to me, not them."

She unfurls, then, like one of her flowers creeping from its bud, and leans her head against her shoulder. "It could still happen," she cautions her. "What happened to Marethari… that could still be me, one day. I'm still a mage. Even if I gave up on the eluvian, there will still be spirits and demons out there. I'll still want to talk to them, to know what they know…"

She doesn't want to think about that, to think about something else wearing Merrill's skin, but she knows in her gut that this would be the wrong thing to say.

"If you're going to play games with demons again," she says, instead, "pick a sin we can both live with, is all I ask. Justice- Vengeance- whatever he's going by today, that would be too much for me, but Avarice?" She pauses, presses a kiss to her cheek as chastely as she can, "Desire? Those I think I can handle. I deal with those every day."

"Demons are different, though. Abominations are different."

"Hawke makes it work."

"She's Hawke. She and Anders are-"

"Insane, I know." She cups Merrill's face in her hands, kisses the corner of her mouth with careful, deliberate affection, "But for you, I think, I could be a little crazy. Just- pick your sins carefully, alright?"

"I will," Merrill says, and flings her arms around Isabela with such intensity that she ends up half in her lap. "I promise."

[brocflowers]

I must confess, I still believe.

“Do you believe I’m the Herald?” Slowly, carefully, Varric lays down his quill.

[AO3]

Tags: Inquisitor!Anders AU. Varric POV. Vanders. Religious themes. UST. Men exhibiting various behaviors.

Title from Baby One More Time by famed 20th century poet Britney Spears.

Word count: 3267

-

“Good, you’re awake.”

Varric looks up from the paper as Anders approaches, stops directly in front of him, just the low table between them. His hair is loose, clean but clearly slept in. It falls in his face, pools a little at his shoulders, casts funny shadows against his features even as it catches the red-orange of the firelight at the same time.

His eyes are bright. Not quite wild, but getting there. It’s nostalgic in a way that Varric really does not like. Keeps him bound up and tight, waiting for danger, for bad news.

“Something I can do for you, Inquisitor?”

Anders opens his mouth, closes it again. Varric thinks that it throws him off sometimes, being addressed by the title. It's part of the reason he keeps using it.

“What are you writing?”

“It’s-”

“Do you believe I’m the Herald?”

Slowly, carefully, Varric lays down his quill.

“I might’ve heard something about that.”

“That’s not-” he sounds frustrated, then seems to swallow it, “I’m not asking what other people are saying, Varric, I’m asking you. Do you believe I’m Andraste’s Herald?”

Varric can’t begin to explain how little he wants to answer that question.

“Anders-”

“Don’t dodge the question, just answer.”

“You’re really putting me on the spot here. I mean, it’s kind of an awkward question to just-”

“Varric.”

He should just lie. He lies all the time. It’s easy for him, like writing, like breathing. There’s no benefit, that he can see, to telling the truth here.

He wonders why he isn’t lying, even as the words are coming out of his mouth, he wonders what in the world is compelling him to be honest.

“Yes?”

Anders blinks slowly, as if he can’t believe what Varric’s saying either.

“Ah, maybe. Probably.” He sighs, shifts in his seat. He feels terribly… watched. As there are a lot more eyes on him than there really are. Why isn’t he lying? “I mean, shit. Either you’re the Herald or you have impossibly bad luck.”

Anders gives a short, skeptical, humorless laugh.

“What? Think about it. After everything that happened in Kirkwall, everything that happened before Kirkwall, you end up at the Conclave, you survive the Breach, an Archdemon, Corypheus, for a second time, you’ve got that fucking thing in your ha-”

“So that’s your argument? I must be Her Herald, because it’s not reasonable for me to be this unlucky otherwise?”

“Yeah, yeah I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

His expression is unreadable, the lighting makes his eyes seem unusually dark, and it makes Varric want to squirm. Crawl out of his skin. Run a mile. Something.

After a moment, Anders pulls a nearby chair closer, then falls into it heavily. He sits loosely, leaning back with his hands joined behind his head, knees open. He doesn’t say anything, but looks at the tabletop between them, thinking. 

It’s like Varric isn’t even there.

He picks his quill back up, but he doesn’t do anything with it. Just watches Anders watch the table. It reminds him of the old days, the two of them across the table from each other, not talking, deep in separate thoughts. 

Except the Hanged Man was always loud, even upstairs you could always hear people, always feel them nearby. Took a lot of the pressure off of one-on-one conversations and non-conversations alike. The great main hall of Skyhold, in comparison, is dead quiet, empty except for the two of them and the wooden scaffolding, and thousands of pounds of rock. Stone hewn straight from the mountain it sits on

Varric swallows. The stuff that Skyhold is built of is old. Really, really old. He pretends he doesn’t notice, can’t feel it, but he does. It's like a humming, almost, but silent. A noise that isn't a noise. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, fills him up with restless energy and makes him want to pace, to press his hands against the stone walls or- or, to lick them or something. Fuck if he knows. It’s weird for his stone sense to bug him like this. Practically unheard of. Other dwarves got the itch, the feelings you just can’t shake, the Call of the Stone, but not Varric. He figured that, because he grew up on the surface, because he wasn’t religious in the dwarven sense, he never would. And now he doesn’t know what to do with it, how to cope, how to make it stop.

Anders’ shirt hangs loose in the front, open enough that Varric can see the scar low down on his ribcage. The length and width of a broadsword blade, it parts him down the middle, carves his body into a symmetrical right and left half. Varric’s seen the matching exit wound on his back. It’s higher up, closer to his shoulders. Evidence of the blade’s angle, that the blow started low and was then thrust upwards into him, scrambling his organs, barely missing his spine.

It always makes Varric feel a little sick, if he thinks about it too long, and he tries not to, tries to keep his eyes up but they keep getting drawn back down to that thick, faded line of scar tissue. It’s not something you’re supposed to survive, being cut open like that, split nearly in half. Anders shouldn’t have made it long enough to tell him about it, shouldn’t have lived long enough even to see the wound close, let alone heal and scar.

Anders has a lot of stories like that. Things he shouldn’t have survived. Sure deaths that could be prevented only by a miracle. But he did survive them, every single one, and here he is, alive and warm and breathing, eyes bright as he watches the fire, hair disheveled and falling in his face. Varric wants that to mean nothing, wants all of it to just be a- a funny series of coincidences. But deep down, he just can’t convince himself of it. 

Anders drops his hands into his lap, turns his head from the fire to Varric. He looks tired.

“I didn’t let you finish,” he says, softly, “what are you writing?”

“I’m not, it’s paperwork.”

“Yours or the Inquisition’s?”

“Mine. Ruffles is doing all that other stuff.”

Anders hums, leans foreward to put his elbows on the table, chin resting on one hand.

“Right,” he says, then sighs, “I suppose I should’ve known that.”

“Big organizations have learning curves, especially if you’ve never actually been part of one. You’ll get there.”

“It does change everything, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“Me being- everything that happened before, who I was, what I did in Kirkwall, it means something different now. If I’m the Herald, that changes everything.”

“I mean, not everything.”

“A lot, though.”

“It does change a lot.”

Anders heaves a big sigh, runs both hands through his hair, pushing it out of his face, holding it there behind his head.

“You want a tie?”

“I’m fine,” he says, dropping his hands and letting his hair fall loose against the back of his neck, his shoulders. It’s longer than it was in Kirkwall, Varric wonders if that was intentional or just something that just happened, because he forgot to keep up with it, “now what?”

“For you?”

“Yeah. What do I do now?”

It seems like a genuine question. Like if Varric told him what to do, right now, Anders would actually do it.

Varric throws his hands up, lets them fall heavily back into his lap.

“Fuck if I know. Anders, I don’t even know what I’m doing still here.” Deep breath. “I never, I mean I never officially joined the Inquisition. I don’t know how to do this… disciplehood thing. I’m a businessman, I’ve never really followed a chosen one before.”

He meant it to be… comforting, almost. Camraderie-building. You and me, Anders, we’re in the same boat. Out of our element, figuring it out as we go. But Anders just stares at him for a moment, expression blank, eyes slightly wide, as if Varric had just reached out and smacked him.

“Disciplehood,” he says, as if he’s choking on it, “Maker, Varric.”

“What?”

“Is anyone- no one else is calling it that. Varric, I haven’t heard anyone else- are people saying that?”

“That they’re disciples?” 

Anders nods. 

“I mean, no.” Varric admits, “Not in those exact words, but that is what’s going on, isn’t it? I don’t think there’s any other word for that.”

And he knows a lot of words. And he’s tried on a lot of them, but none of them seem to really fit and that’s- that’s the one he keeps coming back to. Maybe Anders is right, maybe that’s not what it is for anyone else. But its starting to feel like it has to be that way for him. If he’s really going to do it, really going to join the Inquisition, really going to commit then, well…

And he is committed, now. The letter went out this morning, Mal should get it within the week. Should be back in Ferelden less than a week after that, assuming she is where he thinks she is. The fact that he even considered bringing her into this is a mark of, something. Something more than he's usually willing to give. The fact that he actually told her to come and that she will actually likely be here in two weeks' time is…

He hopes he’s doing the right thing. Fuck. He hopes that he’s not making a mistake with this one. That he isn’t in over his head. Because this isn’t something he can backtrack, something he can escape easily. Once you say that someone is divinely touched, the very first time you follow along with them on that basis, put the lives of people that trust you in their hands on that basis…there’s no taking that back.

“I wasn’t expecting this from you.” Anders says, quiet and serious, eyes on the table, “That’s why- I was just laying upstairs, I was trying to sleep and it just hit me all of a sudden. I believe it. I actually believe it. I mean I still don’t- I still don’t remember anything, but I believe that- that it’s possible. That that could really be what happened. That I’m- and that’s why I came here. I needed to be talked down or- or something. To be told I wasn’t that special,” he laughs a little, in a half-hysterical way that Varric wishes wasn’t so familiar, “and I figured… I figured that if anyone was going to do that it would be you. You were always good at talking me down, you- I thought I’d come here and ask you and you’d say “no, no. Really Anders, Andraste’s Herald? You? Be serious.””

He looks up.

“But you believe it. You think it too.”

It’s not a question. Varric’s mouth is dry when he swallows. He goes over a couple of responses in his head, dismisses most of them, settles on his fifth choice. It’s the most dismissive, it’s barely even a response at all, but it’s also the least… earnest, choice. The least incriminating.

“Was that voice supposed to be me?”

“It was.”

“Anders, that was terrible.”

Nothing for a second, a beat, then Anders’ face splits into a closed-mouth grin, like flesh parting under a blade, like something soft making room for something sharp.

“Sorry,” he says, sarcastic, almost fond, “It’s been a while, I’m out of practice.”

His eyes crease around the edges when he smiles. They always did that, but it’s more pronounced now that he’s older. The lines are deeper.

He wonders if it was like this with Andraste. If the people traveling and fighting with her ever looked over and thought- and had it hit them how human she was. How flesh and nature her body is. If they ever thought: here is fire in too small of a bottle. In his mind’s eye he imagines Ealisay or Brona, Maferath even, sitting by the savior’s side and looking over and thinking: this is a woman. I have known her for many years. Mortal years. I see the places on her face where she is aging, I remember when they were young.

Maybe it wasn’t as hard for them as it is for him. Because they doubted less or, because She had never done something so big it couldn’t be fully forgiven. Maybe the weight of history did not hang so heavy on them.

Then again, Maferath clearly had his opinions.

“You should go back to bed,” he says, in the same nudging, coaxing, quiet voice he used to use on him back in Kirkwall, when he would keep himself up late into the night or for days at a time. Head too full of the nightmares he never talked about, or else his whole body too full of light and sparks and frantic energy for him to rest, “it’s been a long couple of days.”

Anders makes an odd face. Varric supposes you could call it smiling.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Varric has always suspected that he’s maybe not quite as subtle as he thinks he is, but he hates being reminded of it nonetheless. He wonders if Anders ever resented it, his poking and prodding and mother-henning. The sideways manipulations. He never said anything, and Anders has historically been the sort to not keep quiet if he felt condescended to, but that's no guarantee of anything. There were other factors involved, things that would understandably affect what Anders would and would not say. Money, to pick one example. And-

Varric shakes his head. The only way to know would be to ask. And he doesn't intend on asking.

Anders sighs deeply, like he's about to stand, and Varric, assuming that's the end of it, reaches again for his quill. There's a relief, in knowing the conversation is over now. That it will just fade out of both their memories, at least in a functional sense, and they'll never speak of it again. Just like so many other late-night conversations that came before.

"I missed you."

The pointed tip of his quill punches straight through the cheap parchment, splitting the numbers beneath it.

"What?"

"I missed you," he says, and it's just as baffling to hear the second time.

Varric realizes that he was hoping that Anders would say something different, if Varric made him repeat himself. And the look on Anders' face suggests that he can tell.

 "I know how it sounds but, in a way, I'm glad that things worked out the way they did. The idea that we would never see each other again it… weighed on me."

“Weighed on you.”

“It made me sad.”

Varric doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels like he’s losing control of the situation, like he’s standing on uneven ground. What do you say to someone who you only half-believe to be a prophet? What do you say to someone who can’t be forgiven, when he says that he missed card nights in your room? What do you say to fire in too small of a bottle?

What does it say about Varric that he almost said it back?

It’s all just so absurd. He wishes that Anders had chosen to say nothing at all, and left him out of it. Kept it to himself. He wishes Anders hadn’t forced him to think.

“Maybe I’m pushing my luck here,” Anders says, “maybe this isn’t fair for me to ask but- I don’t need disciples, Varric.” 

(Don’t say it, Varric thinks, please don’t say it.) 

“But I could use a friend.”

Varric is losing control of the situation. He is in over his head. Maker-sent, god-touched, herald, that’s one thing. Friend is quite another.

And what does it say about him that he can half-believe both, but only the second one is hard to say? That only one of them makes him ashamed, makes him feel guilty? That he’s so much more disappointed in himself for one than the other? 

Anders’ hand rests on the table, palm-up, long fingers slightly curled in a way that’s almost inviting. He doubts that Anders had done it on purpose, but that doesn’t change the fact that his instinct is to reach across the table and grab it. Squeeze his fingers tight until it almost hurts them both and say of course, of course we’re friends. Blondie, when have we never not been friends?

Because that’s what he would’ve done in the old days. Because for reasons he doesn’t understand and doesn’t think he’d like about himself if he did, some part of him really wants to just forget. That it all happened, that it was real, that he’s angry for a reason. If he doesn’t remind himself not too, he forgets, his head slips back into the good years and stays there. If he doesn’t constantly remind himself, it all just slips away.

He stares at the open palm in front of him, the small pale scars and the calluses. It would be easier to forget. To stop fighting his instincts and let it happen. He resents Mal, for half a second. Resents that spending all these years with her has forced him to think about what is right, and not just what is easy. What he doesn’t have to repress or handwave to be able to live with.

The Inquisitor’s hand closes.

“Nevermind,” he says, “no hard feelings.”

He stands, looks almost embarrassed.

“Goodnight, Varric.”

“Goodnight.”

Anders leaves him, finally, and for some time after he’s out of sight Varric just stares vaguely in the direction he walked off in. He’d say he was thinking but the truth is, there’s not a single thought in his head. All empty, dark, ringing with the non-sound of ages-old mountain rock.

He tries to finish his paperwork and fails. He’s tired, and the words bleed together, the figures melt into meaningless piles of numbers. He forces himself to bed eventually, tosses and turns there for a while because, despite the ache in his eyes and the heaviness of his limbs, he just can’t get comfortable.

And then, right before finally drifting off, he has what he can only describe as an epiphany. A moment of wild clarity.

And because he’s a much more polite man than Anders is, he decides that it can wait until morning.

                                                     *

“I’m your friend, and I’m in this with you for as long as it takes to finish it. All in, one hundred percent,” he takes a deep breath, “and I don’t forgive you. And I never will.”

Anders sort of… relaxes. He honestly seems more relieved by the addendum than the original statement. 

Varric is never going to understand how his head works.

“That’s good to hear.”

For you maybe, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

Hawke’s coming, he thinks, but he doesn’t say that either.

He’ll tell Cassandra first. Get that out of the way and Maker knows she’ll tell Anders for him. Two nugs with one stone.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Inquisitor, I have to go give the Seeker some bad news.”

Anders raises a wary eyebrow at him. He looks more put together now, a little tired, but very sheveled. Fully dressed, for one thing, hair pulled back and up, features catching the sunlight and casting a completely different set of shadows than they were by the fire.

Different and the same.

“Bad how?”

Varric grimaces.

“I mean she isn’t going to be very happy about it.”

[sulky-valkyrie]

Val! Can I get "there’s nothing you could have done." for Fenris/Anders?

You know it 💜 Honorable mention to @shardsof-stars because she'd requested a wee bit of Fenders on the run after the boom, and these two ideas ended up all tangled and muddied together and it doesn't quite use the dialogue and it doesn't quite have them on the run, but I'd like to think it fits the spirit (heh, Jsutice pun) of both thoughts

for @dadrunkwriting

Kirkwall was burning, and Meredith had gone mad.  Or maybe Meredith's madness was why Kirkwall was burning.

It wasn't supposed to end like this.  No, that wasn't right.  It hadn't been supposed to keep going after this.  No, that wasn't right either.  He wasn't supposed to keep going.  

Boom, Justice and I are free.

It was supposed to be a symbol, a spark to light the fires of the world, to force Thedas to confront its prejudices, and to remind mages they could fight back.  And fight back they had, but Anders had never expected it like this.  A summary execution should’ve been his fate, or a show trial and a chance for him to make his case for the end of the Circles before being sentenced to death.

He hadn't accounted for Meredith's paranoia.  Well, he hadn't accounted for it enough.  Or her hatred.  Bloody knickerweasels, he'd confessed to her damn face, and she'd still blamed the whole of the Gallows and called for an Annulment.

Granted, he might still die today.  Orsino had nearly turned himself into a fucking abomination in a futile act of defiance and despair.  He shuddered.  If not for Merrill and her own demon, things would've been so much worse.  And it was bad enough already.

Meredith's sword sang with an oily discordant wrongness, jangling at his nerves and setting Justice on edge as she cut down her own people.  Even half an hour ago, the sight of Templars losing their guts and screaming would’ve given him grim satisfaction, but now, it was simply grim.  They fought against her as fiercely as they'd fought with her, and died just as easily.

He threw every spell he could, even healing fucking Cullen when the statues came to life and one batted him across the courtyard, but it still wasn't enough.  Over a dozen people stood against her, but they were starting to tire, and Meredith seemed unstoppable.  At least the rest of the Gallows mages made it out through the tunnels.

A whistle caught his attention, bright and piercing as it cut through the clatter of battle.  A whistle that sounded like -

"Ancestors balls, we can't leave you alone for one minute, can we?"

He glanced down and smiled, even as his heart clenched in fear.  "Siggy, babe, you're in the wrong place."

"Nah, we've been tracking that shit –" she waved a dagger toward Meredith "– for years. Good job making her show it."

"Is that what I did?" Anders asked sarcastically.  "Jolly good for me then."

A volley of fiery boulders rained down from the sky, battering Meredith to the ground. Velanna's work, no doubt.  

The new threat was apparently enough to send Meredith over the edge.  She looked as deranged as a blood mage as she climbed to her feet and shouted, “I will not be defeated!”

As she thrust her sword in the air, the horrible jangling feeling ramped up, like it was trying to crush his skull and burst it open from the inside at the same time, Sigrun winced and gritted her teeth. Interesting.  He'd assumed it had something to do with being a mage, or Justice's sensitivity to lyrium, but Sigrun was neither mage nor possessed.  

Interesting, but a question for a later time.  Even if he’d had the time to think about it, the pressure on his mind made everything blank with pain, as bad as what he remembered of the Joining, and when he started to worry that it might actually kill him, the damn sword exploded.

Shards of red lyrium flew out, but, for once, Templars actually came in handy.  What they didn’t block with their shields they blocked with their bodies, however unintentionally, leaving Hawke and the rest of Anders’ former-comrades unscathed.  At least they’ll be alive to hate me.

"Come on, we need to get you out of here."  Sigrun's hand caught his and she started to pull him away.  

Not how any of this was supposed to happen.  He resisted on reflex, but she was a Warden too, and built like bronto.  A small one, but a bronto nonetheless, full of densely packed muscle and maddening persistence.  

"Mage!"  Suddenly Fenris was there, tearing him from Sigrun's grasp and snarling, "You won't take him!"

His vehemence was a shock.  Fenris had barely spoken two sentences to him since the Chantry had exploded, but here he was, defending him again. Fruitlessly.  Anders had always known death would be the only escape from the Wardens.  "Fenris, there's nothing you can do," he sighed.

"Venhedis!”  He put his arm across Anders’ chest and glared at Sigrun.  “You won’t take him,” he repeated.

Sigrun held up her hands, not quite in surrender, but an obvious gesture of goodwill and grinned.  “Stones, Anders, you’ve been making friends again, haven’t you?”

“Er… in a way?”  He pushed Fenris’ arm down gently.  “What do you want with me?”

Before she could answer the paving stones shattered as a tangled mass of roots forced its way up next to her and Velanna stepped out, face pinched in even more irritation than usual.  “What are you standing around for, let’s go!”

Fenris reached for his sword.  “He goes nowhere he doesn’t wish to.”

“Oh for the Maker’s sake, Fenris, please,” Anders said before turning back to Velanna.  “Where are we going?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Where do you think?  The Chantry will be baying for your blood any moment now!  You know as well as I do that the Deep Roads are the safest place for you.”

He shuddered at the suggestion, but couldn’t find a fault in her logic.  I should’ve planned for this better.  He glanced back at Hawke, still arguing with Varric.  Probably about him.  He inhaled slowly and rubbed at his face.  “Let’s go.”

Sigrun and Velanna nodded, then headed toward the docks.  As Anders moved to follow them, Fenris fell in step behind him.  “You may be a fool, but you're my fool.”  His voice was soft, but challenging.  Daring Anders to argue with him, just like old times, yet nothing like them at all.

Debate wouldn’t solve this.  He was a fool.  Foolish to believe Meredith would blame the right man.

“I’m sorry.”  Once the apology fell from his mouth, the words wouldn’t stop, a rush of everything he’d wanted to say since he’d started planning this.  “I should’ve - I’m not sorry I did it, but I wish it hadn’t come to it, and I’m sorry she made it worse, but there was nothing you could’ve done.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, or Hawke - sorry that I used you, that I lied about –”

Fenris pushed him to the wall and cupped his chin.  “Hush, mage.  You think there was nothing I could’ve done?  You asked for explosives: saltpeter and flammable stone.  You asked for help distracting the Grand Cleric.  Nothing I could’ve done?”  He kissed him softly.  “Anders, I did everything, not nothing, and I’m not leaving you for this or anything else, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”

[skyheld]

   "You were a friend of Anders, right?" Émilie asks though even the question feels too sharp. She had worn it around her tongue as long as she could have and with each turn in her mouth she had only felt the blood pool further in her mouth. The question did not become any less jagged, always breaking at different places "If... If you do not wish to speak about him, I'm..."

It was fine. This was likely a mistake. Émilie realised that she had no right to not only prod but even ask about such things. She could only imagine how frequently that question might have been thrown her way. It was an awful thing, this curiosity. Knowing that she traveled with someone that had inspired her to break her chains. To have finally have been able to walk free, despite the cost "I just..."

The rebellion often spoke about him, and she would simply listen. Some adolised him, wondering where he was, others were fearful, wondering if the world now would all see them as maniacs that would burn it all down for the wrong that had been done to them. Some nights, during those terrible nights, Émilie wondered if they shouldn't. When she woke up from the thought that she had heard templar's armour, only to realise she had been dreaming. She lowers her eyes from the other woman, bowing her head and pushing aside her braid behind her non scarred ear "If you could tell me about him, who he was. As a person. Sometime, I'd be... I'd be thankful."

unprompted & always accepting | @mercysought

When—if—people find out she knew Anders, their eyes do one of two things.

Sometimes they go dark. It's like shutters pulled closed in front of a window with a definitive bang, glass rattling with hatred for the mad apostate who blew up a Chantry and killed so many people. She can still see it—she can see anger, hatred, contempt—but she knows they can't see out. They never will. They don't want to. But this isn't the worst.

The worst is when people's eyes light up. When they widen with excitement and curiosity, when the eyebrows go up in anticipation, the moment before they ask: what was he like? Did you ever think he would do something like that?

Was he as crazy as they say?

Merrill doesn't tell them anything. She knows that though their eyes are open, they, too, will never see. Whatever she says, they'll hear only the truth they've made for themselves.

She studies the woman in front of her, green gaze as bright as sunlight through leaves. She's never spoken about Anders to many mages of the rebellion. The ones she's spoken to, At Skyhold—she's not sure if they were honest, or if they just held their opinions close to heart. Why wouldn't they, given who they were working with? Who they were working under? Merrill wouldn't expect them to be any more forthcoming than she is. What was Anders like? What did you think of what happened in Kirkwall?

I'm sorry, Seeker Pentaghast, I really wouldn't know, I mostly noticed the kittens.

But Émilie de Clair isn't Cassandra and she doesn't ask like Cassandra would. Her eyes—her eyes are so wide and so bright.

"I was a friend of his, yes." She speaks softly, voice falling into the lowest notes of her register, like a flute dipping towards the end of a song. "He loved cats. He always spoke of the one he'd had, Ser Pounce-a-Lot... It was one of few things that made him happy, I think. Or it was before they took it. None of us were very happy, but we tried to keep our heads up, all of us." Her chest tightens a little. "He was my friend. He loved cats. He made jokes to keep us happy. And he begged Hawke to kill him in the end. I'm sorry—" She turns away. "There's more, but it's hard to speak of."

[midmorninggrey]

Happy Friday!!

How about ‘ [ intertwine & kiss ]  –  for the sender’s muse to intertwine their finger’s the receiver’s muse and kiss the back of their hand. ‘ for whichever pairing you’re feeling tonight!

Alright! Tonight you get an incredibly short and sappy slice of domesticity for Fenris x Cal. Omg it's like marshmallow fluff.

For @dadrunkwriting

WC: ~700

From his bed, Fenris looked up into an Antivan sunset. Ships of all sizes were crowded into the city harbor, standing black against the falling orange light, and the water was aglow. A pair of seabirds circled above.

The painter of the scene had been talented. Fenris wondered if they had ever imagined their work would end up patching the ceiling of a decrepit manor in Kirkwall. Perhaps it would be of some comfort if they knew he admired the painting more in its current location than he ever had when it had hung in the downstairs hall.

Just then, Cal, the man responsible for nailing the canvas into Fenris’ roof called, from the next room.

“Fenris?”

“Yes,” he answered, although he never understood why Cal always said his name that way, as if he expected someone else in the great empty house to answer.

“Fenris, have you got that copy of The Adventures of the Black Fox? I want to take it to class tomorrow.”

Fenris turned his head on the pillow to look at the stack of books growing by the bedside. He supposed he should feel some embarrassment that he still shared books with children, but Cal brought them back to the manor without prompting.

“Yes,” he said again, reaching to pull the book from the bottom of the pile.

“Thank you,” Cal sang quietly as he came into the bedroom. He’d had a bath that left his cheeks pink, and his blond hair was having a difficult time deciding what direction to dry in.

“What are you thinking about?” He asked after he took the book from Fenris’ hand, peering at him with some playful suspicion. “You have a very serious look on your face.”

“I was thinking about when you fell off my roof.”

“I didn’t fall off your roof,” Cal corrected. “I mean, your roof collapsed.”

“And you fell.”

“The roof and I fell at the same time.” Cal held up his hands level to one another and then dropped them to his hips. “Is this what you do? You lie in bed making serious faces about the time I almost died?”

“You didn’t die.”

“I could have died.”

Fenris hummed. “Yes, you did bleed a lot.”

“I did! I have the scar.”

“I don’t recall a scar,” Fenris said, although he did.

“It’s right here,” Cal said, marching over to Fenris’ side of the bed. He unceremoniously lifted up his shirt and pointed to a raised line of skin above his hip. “I mean, that’s a scar.”

“Ah. So it is.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No.” Fenris couldn’t stop the slow smile that spread across face. “Yes.”

Cal laughed and pulled his shirt up to his neck so he could list the other, darker scars that marked his body. “Darkspawn, Darkspawn, Darkspawn – Qunari! – Darkspawn.” His finger returned to the smallest scar. “Your roof.”

With that, to Fenris’ mild disappointment, he dropped his shirt. “I could have died.”

Cal had a point. Death would have been a likely outcome for any non-mage who fell three stories onto stone. Fenris, when he had scrambled to look over the edge after Cal, had been sure he was going to see the man’s broken body lying below.

He swallowed. He had been afraid.

“I believe that was the night I became fond of you.”

For a moment, Cal wore a crooked, uncertain smile as his only answer. “Fond? Really?”

“Uh. Yes.” Under those bright blue eyes, Fenris felt his cheeks begin to flush.

“Because I fell off a roof?” Cal sat down on the bed and leaned over him, curious.

“Yes. You did it so…” Fenris waved a hand. “Freely.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Cal said, taking Fenris’ hand and threading their mismatched fingers together. “I wouldn’t have climbed up on your roof in the middle of a rainstorm, you know, with a bunch of paintings, if I wasn’t already pretty fond of you.”

He kissed the back of Fenris’ hand with warm exaggeration, and then again, after a moment’s hesitation, with the soft sincerity that still left Fenris speechless.

“Really, I was very, very fond of you.”

[rimbaudthursday]

you are the one bright

light in kirkwall

[sha-brytols]

Throwing the questions back your way! 7, 10 and 12 for Esther <3

character ask game

7. What is an aspect of their appearance that you like the most?

Esther was actually my first time being able to play modded DA2 (Xbox 360 girlie 💔) so immediately. I was like. I Will Make A Freckled Hawke If It Kills Me. I think her freckles and her eyes are overall my favorite parts of her appearance. I especially really like how her eyes look in the right light, like they're almost bright ass orange.

I basically wanted to make her look as, like, clearly and distinctly "Hawke" as possible while still being custom and original. I've always been a little proud of how it turned out, like she still has the iconic Champion of Kirkwall feel to her but she's also uniquely my OC. Teehee.

10. What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?

It was half intentional and half organic, but I really leaned into the element of Malcolm Hawke "haunting" the narrative. @fadeling and I talked before about how Legacy kind of gives you the impression that Malcolm's life probably could have been a video game in its own right, like he was obviously involved in something big and dramatic and we never really are fully let in on just who Malcolm is, what he's done, and what happened to him to make him the man that raised Hawke. I ended up kind of deconstructing that by accident.

To Esther, her father was a legend, always poised with the right answer for whatever he was facing and always prepared to protect his own. He was a hero who faced impossible odds time and time again and always came out victorious. He was a pillar of strength and resilience that never wavered. He was a symbol of hope for the people around him and he never once lost faith in himself or what he stood for. Kind of like a storybook ^_^ Haha. You know. Like Hawke.

I always wanted to make Esther a reflection of Malcolm, so that was always intentional, but what ended up coming through more than that and even being the main conflict of her character arc is the fact that the more she falls into her father's footsteps, the more she struggles, and fails, and loses. Malcolm wasn't the infallible guardian angel she believed him to be, and Esther will never truly be the Champion that Kirkwall expected her to be. The truth was neither of them are epic heroes with grand destinies; they were both incredibly flawed and broken and deeply troubled people who stumbled blindly forward, doing what they could to survive and clinging to their loved ones for dear life, because that's all they really had left.

Esther gets a. bittersweet(?) ending. I haven't really worked out the details on how it gets there but Esther does end up finally finding peace after someone please god anyone rescues her from the La Brea tar pits (<— my normal way of saying the Fade). It's just not the kind of happily ever after you see in fairy tales or whatnot. "It's not a good story unless the hero dies" well fuck you Varric because this story was shit from start to finish and the bitch is still kicking ok?

12. Do you have a playlist for the character? What songs do you associate with them and why?

Why yes I do 😏 Ignore how tonally jarring some of these are LOL. I might do my own write-up on how each one of these relates to her at some point but for now here are the most prominent ones that I think summarize her pretty well:

- Wild Horses — Grace Power

 Safety's an illusion

 Fate is all chance

 "It's a miracle, " the crowd all screams

 Everyone's so proud of me

 But I'm a graveyard

- Wonder. Wander. — The Arcadian Wild

 Half awake, I wander through this house

 Lost in a labyrinth and left with no way out

 I built this hall of mirrors all myself

 The faces staring back at me look like somebody else

- Hai Yorokonde — Kocchi no Kento (yeah sorry .)

 Adjust yourself to the city of disease we're on

 Better not care of the others' opinion

 Now you gotta leave the justice and hero

[curioushappenstance]

fic title: do you like my dress? it's got pockets [chapter 3]

[previous chapter]

[next chapter]

[ao3 link]

Summary: 9:19 Dragon – Varric Tethras loses his virginity to a pretty dwarf girl at the bar. 9:41 Dragon - The consequence walks through the gates of Skyhold. - In my childish fantasies, I used to dream of being the Champion; going places, meeting people, loving them and being loved in return, never discarded nor kicked nor beaten; love, in perpetuity, the likes of which a girl under the heavy and forceful hand of a mother could not begin to dream of, because she could not dream at all. - aka, the fic where varric has a daughter that he didn't know about until five minutes ago.

It was early morning when the gates of Skyhold opened and soldiers poured into the courtyard.

I watched them from my window, my arm on the windowsill and bleary from waking, only barely able to make out the vague silhouettes of their glinting metal uniforms through the dense, grainy fog that had descended upon Skyhold overnight. Groggily, I dressed, gathered my pack, and descended the tower to watch them alongside everyone else.

The normally still and peaceful courtyard was overcome by shouts, cries, and the clanking of metal. Horses, hounds, the grinding of chains as the elevators ascended to the bridge, all coalesced together into one cacophony that drowned out my thoughts.

A widow collapsed to her knees in the mud. A father swung his child into the air. Outside the infirmary, the bald elf, with blood on his hands and a rag over his shoulder, shook his head and turned away. A sihadow fell over me, and I looked and saw Harding, her lips pressed thin line as, through the fog, she gazed upon the soldiers with one sweeping movement.

I shuffled up next to her. She acknowledged me with a tired smile. Twigs and bits of snow stuck to frazzled, unkempt hair, and the bags under her eyes made them look somehow wider.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked.

“Oh. No one. I was just––” She rubbed at some dirt on her chin. “Just thinking, you know.”

A tall blond human with a fur mantle and a booming voice issued commands to his soldiers, his lieutenants, and the few healers who rushed in for aid on the field.

“What happened?”

Harding patted down her hair. “A lot of us just got back from the Western Approach. The soldiers have been trickling in for weeks, but I think this is the last of them.”

It wasn’t an answer. “How do you know?”

“There, see?” She gestured into the crowd. I followed her hand until I found who she was pointing at. “The Inquisitor. She’s always the last one to get back.”

Gossip travelled quickly among the dwarven families of Kirkwall. When word got out that the eldest daughter of the Cadash family fell through a hole in the Fade, I shook my head and rolled my eyes. But by the Ancestors, to truly see her now, her dark skin plastered with mud and dried blood, innocuous and unremarkable if not for the bright green glowing mark that branded her left hand…

“And in the Approach,” I tried again, “what happened there?”

“...I guess word didn’t reach far, huh?” She visibly hesitated. “Maybe you should ask Varric.”

“What are we asking me?”

I yelped. Varric smiled an apology as Harding faced him, her back to the sunrise, the light shining through wisps of her hair.

“Oh, nothing! We were just––”

“The soldiers in the Approach,” I interrupted.

Harding’s hard look told me what she’d really meant; ask Varric away from me, because I don’t want to be anywhere near him when you do. But whatever she was fearing didn’t happen, and he dismissed me.

“You don’t wanna hear about it, kid. Trust me.”

Harding cut me off. “How you feeling, Varric?”

“Hm?” The question was redundant. His hair, falling out of a haphazard bun, was just as much a mess as hers. A fresh dressing had replaced the old one. “Oh, you know. Just barely escaped Chuckles in the infirmary. It’s a miracle he still has the time to sigh at me between all the limbs he’s amputating.”

Two soldiers raced past us, each carrying one end of an unconscious friend. “It’s that bad?” I asked.

“...Eh. Probably not, but I––I tried not to look too hard.” He poked at the dressing. “Anyway. Got time, kid?”

“For what?”

He shrugged, a little half-heartedly. “A walk. I gotta talk to you.”

Harding looked between us and said nothing.

“No more stairs,” I told him. He chuckled, and said he wouldn’t make any promises he couldn’t keep.

-

“...Sleep okay?”

Varric’s legs dangled pathetically off the edge of the battlements that overlooked the gardens. They’d been done up for some kind of event, and were mostly empty, save for some Chantry Sisters who gathered large quantities of elfroot into baskets. Varric kicked his heels against the wall.

I didn’t have the energy for this.

“I slept fine,” I said, and it was true. In fact, I’d never slept better. “What did you want to talk about?”

He raised his chin and breathed deep through his nose. The outward sigh made a small cloud that dissipated on the wind. His brow and the corner of his mouth twitched downward before he spoke. “I sent a letter to one of my Carta contacts. Should get a reply in about a week, maybe.”

A week. That wasn’t too long, but how much could I afford to wait? I needed to be home in time for mother to be returned to the Stone. “They must be close by.”

“Eh.”

“You can’t tell me?”

“Yeah. Listen, kid…” He pivoted and faced me full-on, one leg propped on the wall, the other still off the edge. For a dwarf, he wasn’t very afraid of falling. “Shit like this doesn’t get solved over a few letters. He’s gonna wanna meet up.”

I wrung my hands. The back of my neck itched now he was facing me properly. I wished I’d brought my blanket. “Is he dangerous?”

“He won’t hurt you.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Varric looked into my eyes. “He won’t hurt you.”

I tore myself from his gaze and peered over the edge of the wall. “Fine.”

Satisfied, he leaned away. “Also, I’ve got a thing going on tonight. So, if you need anything, uh, find Harding.”

“A ‘thing’.”

He cleared his throat. It sounded dry and painful. “A thing.”

“Alright. Is that it, then?”

“Mm?”

“Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

He was quiet. In that moment, his tapping stopped. 

“Yep.”

It was a lie. It was always a lie.

-

I asked Varric where I could find work. In a grumbly, quiet voice, he told me he could just give me the coin, then backed off when I scowled at him. To that end, he directed me to the tavern.

(“Cabot’s gonna have his hands full with the soldiers. Shit’ll be overrun tonight. But, uh, kid, you don’t have to…”)

I was still scowling when I shoved open that door again, and struggled to smooth it over in time to meet Cabot at the counter. Also a dwarf, I realised, now that he wasn’t standing on a crate behind the bar, and I was actually paying attention. A few quiet, contemplative soldiers already occupied the space, and I imagined they would leave before their rowdy, drunken brethren arrived.

“I’m looking for work,” I said.

Cabot raised an eyebrow. “Good for you.”

“...I was told you’re hiring.”

“Could be. Could not be.”

For a bartender, he wasn’t very talkative. For a dwarf… just the right amount. I could work with that.

“I’ll clean the tables,” I declared. “The glasses. The floors. The walls.”

He squinted. “Didn’t you clock Tethras with a mug?”

My cheeks warmed. The scrutiny of his stare reminded me more of a librarian than a bartender; he was only lacking in little round spectacles, by which he would pass his judgement over. A funny thing, to imagine for a bald, rough-and-tumble dwarf.

“...Yes?” I squeaked.

“Hm.”

“He startled me, I––I would never attack ––”

“Three silvers an hour.”

“Huh?”

I stared. He stared back, and shrugged. “Keep the soldiers in line and I’ll pay double.”

I fumbled a half-formed sentence which fell pathetically into gibberish. I could only just comprehend three silvers all on their own, let alone in multiples, and the prospect of double that wage had my knees weak.

Three silvers an hour, twenty-one a day––by the end of the month, six sovereigns with a bit on a side. I could buy warm clothes, a chemise, new boots!

Cabot squinted again. “You look like someone shat in your meal.”

“Oh, I––” had never worked a day in my life. Mind, not for lack of trying, but when you couldn’t reach the high shelves, most employers turned a blind eye to you. It didn’t matter how smart or talented you were. “I’m fine. I’m fine. When do I start?”

Cabot ran most of the tavern all on his own after the previous owner died. I had heard of what happened in Haven, and I wanted to ask more, but he didn’t seem interested in talking about it, so I didn’t.

He introduced me to the other barmaid, a skittish young elf––Iowen––with a wide face and wider ears. Needed someone with more backbone, Cabot said, and Iowen blushed, but said nothing. He assigned me alongside her; delivering drinks, hauling small crates, and cleaning messes. Everything else, he said, he would handle.

It was something to do. More than that, it was a schedule, something worthwhile, something with a purpose.

Harding found me again when the tavern started to fill.

“Arms aching yet?” she teased, leaning against the table I’d just wiped down.

“More my legs,” I admitted. “I’m not used to standing around like this.”

“Aha, you get used to it. I’ve had to spend hours in the same spot when I’m out scouting, and Maker, my legs…”

I moved on to the next table, not because it was dirty, but because I needed something to do. A soldier told a raunchy joke that had a nearby table burst into raucous laughter. “Is that what you were doing this morning?” I asked over the noise.

“Huh? Oh!” She laughed. “Yeah. I was out really late clearing the path on the road. I think I got less sleep than Cullen did!”

“Cullen?”

“Our Commander.”

I remembered the blond human yelling at the gate, and resolved to avoid him. I adjusted a chair and moved on again; Harding followed like a lost puppy, narrowly avoiding tripping over the outstretched leg of an oblivious human.

“So… how do you know Varric?”

“Oh. Um…”

“I guess I thought you didn’t know him. It’s a small world, huh?”

A woman waved me over and ordered a beer, which I fetched from a low shelf in the back. Harding was still waiting for me when I emerged.

“I only met him yesterday,” I said. The woman took the bottle from me with a cheers.

“But…” Harding sat against the bar. “You talk like you’ve known each other forever. ”

I shrugged. 

“He knew your name,” she said. “Was he the one you were delivering that message to?” When I turned away, she chased me around a table. Iowen looked at us strangely from across the room. “He was! He was, wasn’t he?”

I pulled out a chair, stared at it, and pushed it back in again. My head felt light. “It’s not very interesting.”

“Now I want to know even more. ”

Her expectant gaze bore into my skull. So happy, so excited, so full of energy, light, and warmth. She waited, and I hesitated again, and again, and again. 

“He’s––”

A soldier banged his mug against a table, and silence fell upon the tavern. He clambered upon the table, and stood on it with a wooden prosthetic carved with dozens upon dozens of names and dates.

I'd never been to an Andrastian funeral, but I had seen Kirkwall. There were mourners on the streets, in bars, or hidden away in the darkest dark of Darktown. There were more bodies in alleys than in the graveyards, and more funerals in the streets than in the Chantry.

I knew mourners, the way their eyes shimmered whether they cried or not. The eyes of the soldiers glinted in the torchlight as they watched their brother raise his mug to the ceiling, his legs shaking but his arms steady, as he spoke.

To those we have lost, and those we will lose.

Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker’s right hand, and be forgiven.

-

I left in the late evening with a heavier purse. Before the market closed, I bought a chemise, a woollen kirtle, and a pair of snow boots. The relief of coin and clothes didn’t lift the heaviness in my legs or from my eyes––nor the memory of the soldier’s bloodshot eyes in the torchlight.

It was bad luck that I ran headlong into Varric. It was funny that he fell ass-first into the mud, and the mockery of nearby recruits echoed off the stone walls.

“Andraste’s––fucking––” He cradled his head with his eyes scrunched tight. You have a real fucking knack––!”

“I’m not sorry.”

He glared. “Kid, you wound me, literally and metaphorically.”

“Apparently I can’t help it.”

“You’re in a good mood.” He stumbled to his feet, and groaned at the mud splattered all over his coat and trousers. A deep black shirt replaced his vibrant red one. “I just washed these damn things.”

“I’m in a mood. Not sure if it’s good or not.”

“You have a sense of humour after all, maybe you really are my––” He hissed and pressed a palm to his forehead. “Shit. That hurt more than the mug.”

“I have a thick skull.”

“Take after me, I guess.” Swaying, he blinked away watery eyes. “Uh, went fine at the tavern?”

I didn’t tell him about the impromptu funeral. “None of the soldiers groped me.”

He blinked, squinted, then frowned. “Huh?”

“I said none of the––”

“That’s a really low bar. You were worried about that?”

I stared.

He was still, at the core of it all, a sheltered silverspoon rich boy.

“I’m very small,” I said.

“You’re taller than me.”

“I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you’re also very small.”

He shook off his coat and draped it over one arm. “No need to rub it in, kid. Damnit, I have to go change…”

“Where were you going?”

“Oh, you know.”

I waited. And I waited. Varric kicked a stray rock and watched it splat into the mud.

“You know, my thing. The thing. There’s––in the gardens.”

“For a writer, I expected you to be better with words.”

He looked up at me with a flat, placid face, his true thoughts betrayed only by the smallest flinch in the corner of his mouth. His voice was even.

“Inquisitor’s holding a funeral.”

“Oh.” I shuffled my feet. For the soldiers? “Is everyone going?”

“Just the inner circle.”

“Ah.” That didn’t seem fair.

“Yeah. So. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Which was code for no, sorry, you’re not invited either, which didn’t surprise me after I’d just insulted him. And it was fine, of course––but watching him leave, muddy, lumbering, and shivering…

I retired to my quarters and packed away my new clothes. It was ten minutes I sat at the edge of my bed, draped in my chemise, staring out the window and watching the clouds cross the sky as the sun set behind the mountains. A further ten I spent meticulously plaiting my hair, and when I was done, I gathered my blanket into my arms.

Hawke’s blanket. Hawke’s quarters. Hawke in the air that I breathed, as warm and comforting as his smile when I was a child. 

I gazed into the mirror. The shattered reflection marred my tired face.

Where was Hawke?

I climbed under my sheets. The weight of my blanket, like the weight of the ocean, pulled me down into a restless unconscious.

Loud swearing and a heavy thud woke me again with a jolt. All was dark, except for the light of the moon, which bathed the otherwise warm room in a dull greyness. I listened, one ear to my pillow, to another series of thuds getting progressively louder, and louder, as someone stumbled up the stairs.

Unsteady footfalls approached then stopped outside my door.

I waited, wide-eyed, for the rattle of the handle that never came. Instead, there was a thump, then a slide, and, in the softest of tones, the unmistakable sound of weeping.

My blanket around my shoulders, I tiptoed from my bed and pressed my ear to the door. I held my breath, waiting for them to stop, or leave, but soon my legs started to ache again, and I sat with my back to the wall.

“You’re very loud,” I said.

There was a cold silence. Then the shuffle of fabric.

“Sorry,” Varric rasped, muffled by the door.

“It’s very late.”

“Sorry.”

I pulled my blanket closer around my shoulders, like a warm hug from behind. The shattered mirror glimmered in the moonlight.

“It was for Hawke, wasn’t it? The funeral?”

There was no answer, and I didn’t need one.

“I met him once,” I said. “I was much younger, um, twelve, I think.”

Varric sniffled. “Yeah?”

“He was very kind. He––” I didn’t know him, he was never my friend, so Maker, why was my throat so tight? “He gave me a blanket. I remember thinking he was very pretty.”

A chuckle, then a low hum. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

I heard a heavy sigh. At least he wasn’t crying anymore. “It was him or me.”

I remembered the torn parchment on Varric’s desk, his ink-stained hands, and his bloodshot eyes as he looked at me for the first time.

“In the Western Approach?”

“Yeah. I thought… I thought he was gonna come through. I waited for him.”

“And then he didn’t?”

“Don’t even have a damn body to burn.” His voice cracked. “He’d like you.”

“I’m not very likeable.”

He grunted. “Me neither.”

[happywitch416]

For Rose and Varric: “You know I’d do anything to have you stay by my side, right? Anything.”  

Rose stared at what had been the portal back home and fell to her knees, a scream trying to claw its way from her gut.

They really left her.

It had been a spur of the moment, bravado in the face of their fear, anything to rally them and get them home. But she didn’t think they’d actually leave her.

That Varric would leave her.

She started to shiver, gaze darting, this was the Fade and Fear? There was no truly defeating fear, she had been stronger for a moment, but she wasn’t now. Her gaze dropped to her hand that was pressed to a wound in her side, peeling it away a touch to reveal the bright red blood trickling through the clawed holes in her armor. It didn’t feel like a death blow, but she wished it was. It was better to die quick then to face the Fade alone.

Her daggers were in reach, but she didn’t reach for them. She was the Champion of Kirkwall, she’d find a way, she always had.

But they had left her.

Varric left her.

A strangled sob escaped her throat, tears burning down her cheeks and her chin fell to her chest as she realized for the first time in her life she was truly alone.

A crack rent the air, but she didn’t look up, almost welcoming death until a familiar hand appeared in her vision before brushing back her hair. "Rose?"

Varric pulled her to her feet and into his arms. "Come on, boss." The Iron Bull muttered. "Let’s go home." She stumbled then and the last thing she remembered was glowing green light and the grim smiles of the Chargers.

The stars were barely visible through the tent flap, and she wondered if one could dream in the Fade, and what nightmare waited for when she woke. Instead, there was a rustle, the sound of a quill dropping and then Varric filled her vision. "Are you alright?" He asked hoarsely.

"If I’m dead why are there no bosoms."

He laughed then, relief sagging his shoulders. "You’re not dead, menace."

She reached up, fingers smoothing along his stubbled cheek as he took her other hand in both of his. "You didn’t really leave me."

"No." He shook his head, voice cracking. "Cassandra shoved me through the tear before I could argue but Tiny and the Chargers were waiting when the Inquisitor and Alistair popped out without you."

"You bullied the Inquisitor." Her brows arched a moment. “But even I would think three times before taking on you, Bull and the Chargers.”

"I threatened more than that, sweetheart." He brushed back her hair searching her face. "I will do whatever it takes to stay by your side, Inquisition be damned."

"Varric."

"No, I let you be the crazy one, but I get this. I will do anything to keep you safe." His voice graveled low. “I watched you die once; I won’t do it again.”

A soft smile appeared. "I need coffee and chocolate or I will never recover from my grievous wounds."

"If I can find them, they are yours."

"Ugh." She groaned as she sat up. "But they’d be full of sand."

"Maybe now you won’t mock me for hating the outdoors."

She leaned close and kissed him gently. "Not a chance, storyteller." 

[flashhwing]

Anders: You are the one bright light in Kirkwall. I'd rather die than have that monster strip away my feelings for you.

obsessed with these two faces back to back. i can be your angle. or yuor devil