#(she has already made an even bigger commitment by following solas into the fade) (she is not self aware about this)

[fadedsweater]

First Line Challenge

@mel-0n-earth tagged me in this a couple weeks ago (thank you for the tag! 😊💛)

Rules: post the first line of your wip, the first line you worked on today, or any other “first line!”

I'm cheating because this is more than one sentence, but it's technically one line of dialogue so 😤

Anyway, post-Veilguard solavellan be upon ye:

"Is that what we are?" Solas asked, with no trace of derision. He spoke softly, plainly, as if he were asking her opinion on the weather. "Married?"

Tagging @darethshirl, @broodwolf221, @luzial, and anyone else who wants to join in 💛

[fantaseagal]

so I have uh... been playing a lot of dragon age the past few months

good games. had fun :) extended spoilery ramblings about my time under the cut.

I started with Inquisition cause I knew people liked it and it ran well (unlike what I saw from Origins' steam page and would VERY much experience later). I then went back to play Origins and then 2 and am currently replaying Inquisition now that I know all the lore (Sera x Qunari Inquisitor is going great). I really like how even though I played mage through all 3, each of my girls ended up being very different characters.

Inquisition

To start with, Evira was my belligerently Dalish girlie. She fucking hated Solas and the way he acted like he knew so much more about magic than she did. Idk why, but his approval gain for asking him about his interest in the fade and magic ticked me, the player, off so I held a grudge against him for like 2/3rds of the playthrough.

Evira flirted with most of the girls, especially Vivienne, but ended up dating Josephine. Love that you get to have a whole duel for your girl's honor with her old fiancé. I did that in a heartbeat. I also flirted ONCE with Cullen in the chess scene cause it sounded funny and the game gave me the option to commit to dating him immediately after and I almost panicked.

Gameplay-wise, Inquisition felt a bit long. A lot of the areas felt way bigger than they needed to be. To be fair I did not use the horse as much as I maybe should have, and I feel it's been going a lot faster on my replay but there's still a lot of world to traverse even just to get between main story points. I still had fun, and Tresspasser's much smaller loop was nice after dealing with the giant scale of the main game before it.

I also stumbled into the deep roads dlc immediately after getting to Skyhold which was a very bad idea in retrospect. It was terrifying.

Origins

For Origins, I fully leaned into what I'd learned of the lore in Inquisition and played Ceres as a super devout Andrastian (picked up from her time in the Circle). She was very much a quiet little rules follower who just wanted to rat on Jowan and got pressured into helping him by the first enchanter. I also played her as having some real issues with her elven identity: hiding her ears with her hair and putting off going to Denerim or the Dalish as much as possible.

I dated Leliana (not that I had much choice as a Lesbian) and it was very sweet. Loved giving her Schmooples the nug. Best gift interaction in the game :)

As a story, Origins was great. Ceres definitely went through a whole self acceptance journey while also saving the world from the blight. It made me feel for the stakes as the end game really pushes hard choice after hard choice at you (I am so sorry Alistair for forcing you to be king and marry your dead brother's wife and have sex with the woman who has been bullying you the entire journey)

As a game, man does Origins crash so much. I didn't realise just how stressful it was just to play the game and try to not have it crash until I went to go play DA2 and had a weight lifted off my shoulders. Also, the game could've done with 10% less Morrigan bullying Alistair and 90% less Oghren sexually harassing the girls (I so regret taking him, Leliana, and Morrigan as my deep roads party, just for the girls' sake)

Awakening was a fun change from the high pressure of Origins. It was a fresh start with new companions (aside from Oghren, yipee... (I do totally get why he was the one Origins character to stay for Awakening, I just don't like him)). Anders and Justice were particular standouts for me (and I was SO glad to see their evolution in DA2)

DA2

Man I love this game. Varric the unreliable narrator my beloved. Any narrative inconsistency can just be explained as Varric gooffing. It's already just his telling of the events and just as accurate as anybody's fanfic if you think about it. You died? Just a goof. Interrior maps are all the same? Yeah they sure look that way bud.

I love the way the game immediately gives you stakes in the mage templar conflict and keeps pulling at those stakes with Hawke's family. I kinda love how Carver just wants Hawke to keep her head down as a mage but you as the player just can't keep your nose out of anyone's business. I made Carver stay home during the deep roads expedition cause, ya know, he isn't a mage that's going to constantly be in danger from the templars and mom doesn't want both her kids to die down there.

The messy conversation when getting back from the deep roads to see Carver joining the templars stuck in my head for so long because I know that I picked a dialogue choice I really shouldn't have. And even though I know it's a game and I could've just reloaded to pick something better, I let that sour realness stay because it absolutely was something Avery would've said.

I played Avery as funny girl who cannot shut up to save her life (while trying to be kind and respectful when needed). She was only going to be able to keep her head down around the templars for so long. She would have always taken the mages side from her own experience, but getting intimate with Anders definitely radicalized her. He was also definitely the one to teach her how to use healing magic cause girl would not have just picked that up on her own.

Going into DA2 having already played both Origins and Inquisition, it felt super clear that this was the exact midpoint between the 2 games and I honestly love it for that. It's very much a sequel to Origins, but in retrospect, so much of it directly flows into Inquisition al well. While I missed getting to share armor loot with my companions, I can see how this led to the character specific armor designs in Inquisition. And on Hawke's side of things, I know a bunch of the mage robes were definitely just lifted from Origns cause those models were crunchy as hell.

I loved the writing in DA2. It was funny. It was heart wrenching. The Hawke family was messy, but deep down they all really cared for one another, and I cared about them. The companions quests, even if sometimes super short, did a lot to flesh them out as complex players in the even bigger mess that is Kirkwall.

DA2 was definitely a lot shorter than Origins or Inquisition (by half according to my playtime) but it was just so tightly packed with story. This game has been living in my head rent free even as I'm 20 hrs into my 2nd playthrough of Inquisition. I'm still thinking about the little interstitial moments that would've happened to the characters, what they did when everything fell apart, where they went.

I did get pretty pissed that Inquisition won't let me put the same tattoos from DA2 on Hawke! What's the point of me recreating my girl in your new character creator if 2/3rds of the tattoo options are being wasted by transparency!!!!! >:( She looks so close but she's not the same without her tattoos :(

TLDR: I love my girls. Love playing mage. Love the time I spent with them. All three games were fun but DA2 hit way harder in all the right ways

[aria-i-adagio]

Fandom: Dragon Age

Ship: Dorian x m!Trevelyan

Rating: T

read on A03 or below

(title from REM, 'Imitation of Life')

Meanwhile, in Haven.

Rhys has a list of sights he does not want to see as he’s dying. At the top (and a recent addition) are hurlocks - those are some ugly motherfuckers, and he suspects that they enjoy making death hurt. Most varieties of demons; although, perhaps a desire demon might not be too bad. Granted, he doesn’t know if the illusions they cast last up to the point of death, or if those are only good while being possessed. That might change the calculus a bit. One of the red lyrium crystal monsters the Templars were turning themselves into. A bear. He definitely does not want to see a bear while he’s dying.

As final sights go, the implosion of the Breach as the thing in his hand stitches the Veil back together isn’t a bad one. The outer edges turn magenta, then blue-violet. The cooler colors rush to the center, swirl together, drawing inward until there’s just a speck of black, more liquid than the darkest night. Then bright, morning sunlight pulses like a heartbeat from that center.

Rhys lets go of the breath he was holding. He thinks it worked, thinks the Breach is closed. It feels powerful enough - a wave of magic like fire and lightning pouring through him, in and out, like breathing in harsh, herbal smoke that messes with his head and makes the world swim, and at least, in his case, despite many promises to the contrary never makes him as sleepy as it just makes him keyed up and in want a good fuck.

The shockwave following the pulse of white light picks him up off his feet and sends him hurtling through the air and slamming him like a ragdoll into rocks and ice around Haven.

Still, the light is damned pretty. Until it fades.

He hears Dorian's voice through the ringing in his ears. “Rhys! Thank the Maker.”

Rhys hopes that he isn’t dead because if he is that implies that Dorian is dead too, and that would rather sad. The world needs Dorian smiling and making catty jokes. There’s been too much melancholy and death over the past few months. Rhys is getting tired of all the omens of doom and gloom.

There’s another little gap in time before his head recovers enough to remember how to open his eyes. When he does, Cassandra’s upside-down face greets him. Dorian's would have been a prettier sight, but there's something comfortingly familiar about seeing Cassie first thing after realizing that - despite there being every reason for him to be - he is not, in fact, dead.

Rhys's vision still spins, and his left arm feels like it’s burning from the inside out. Yes, he’s been here before. Best just to let go, disconnect from it, float a little bit. “Are you going to yell at me again?”

“What?” Cassie’s dark brows pull low over her eyes. “No!”

“Too bad. You’re kinda attractive when you look like you’re about to commit murder.”

“Herald!”

Cassie sounds scandalized. Rhys manages a grin. Not that scandalizing Cassie actually takes that much effort. Makes her easy to tease. Something to distract him from how much he’s hurting at the moment because pretending that the waves of pain radiating from his arm are the ocean doesn’t actually work very well. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t been in the ocean since he was a small child. The memory of floating in warm waves until they send you tumbling into rough sand isn’t fresh enough.

“Keep talking like that, Lucky, and you might yet manage to die tonight.”

“Hey, Varric.” Rhys tries to lift his head and the bastard offspring of fire and electricity shoots from his shoulder to neck and then down his spine. The muscles in his back spasm and his head hits the ground beneath him, blacking out his vision for another moment and sending the ringing in his ears a pitch higher. “Did it work?” he asks groggily.

“You did good, kid.”

“So it -”

“The Breach is sealed, Rhys.” Solas’s calm voice is reassuring to hear. “Try not to move, this will hurt more before it hurts less.”

“That story -” He means to say ‘again,’ but Cassandra grabs his shoulders very firmly and maybe he shouldn't waste breath on quips.

“Dorian, be ready.” Solas does something, and that something rips the fire out of his left arm, which is - as promised - worse than just letting it settle in like some magical, fatal addition to the marrow.

“Motherfucking, son of a bitch, what in the name of Andraste's flaming arse -”

“Language.” Cassie lets go of his shoulders and reprimands him with a light cuff on the side of his head. “Oh let the kid blaspheme a bit, Seeker. He's earned it.”

Rhys sits up and rubs his hand. Above him, the sky is still marked by a line of bright green, but it’s a seam in the darkness, not a whirling, pulsating storm. His arm doesn't hurt now, but there's the same fuzzy numb wrongness in his wrist and palm that he's gotten used to over the past few months. That's on a good day.

Solas arches his eyebrows and looks amused. “You know I do very little in the name of Andraste's arse, flaming or not.”

“Whatever your reason -” Rhys experimentally stretches out his left arm and reaches across his chest to rub his shoulder. It’s still aching, but just the banal ache of falling a bit too hard. “Thank you."

Nearby Dorian finishes casting with an elegant - and probably unnecessary - flourish of his elegant hands. One of the trees beside the Chantry behind to glow with the green of a Veil Rift, then warming to a color closer to chartreuse.

“What is that?”

“You absorbed a lot of energy while closing the Breach. I siphoned off what I could at the time. But still, far more than a human body is supposed can contain and remain alive.”

“Right.” Movement of energy had been his theory for some time. Massive amounts of magic were required to open or close a rift in the Veil, and something had to serve as a conduit. Whatever happened at the Conclave had left him as that conduit, but each time he felt the power come closer to burning through the bonds that held him together, made him human. Which was precisely why there was a stack of farewell letters sitting on the desk in Rhys's quarters. He hadn’t expected to live through whatever it took to close the Breach.

“Dorian and I pulled off some of what remained and redirected it. It's a rather beautiful effect, albeit transient.”

The tree turns to a brilliant brilliant gold and then quivers and collapses into a pile of shimmering dust. Rhys swallows hard. Not expecting to live isn’t quite the same as getting a glimpse of how you would have died. Or maybe a human body was messier than a tree. Typically were less graceful than plants. “I see.”

“Right then. Let's get you freshened up and then get some liquor in you.” Dorian grabs his forearms and hauls him to his feet. Face to face with the other mage, Rhys feels transparent. Like a plane of glass that can't hide fears and flaws. It's terrifying. Electrifying. “Everyone else has already started the party.”

Even nearly nose to nose with Dorian, Rhys still can't tame the small voice in the back of his head that says he's reading Dorian all wrong, that the man is just friendly, that there's certainly no way someone so beautiful and refined would be interested in a mudlark.

He hopes that voice is just being stupid.

Dorian slips him a flask of brandy as they walk away. Rhys flips the cap off and sips gratefully from it. His legs feel loose, off-balance, like he’s drunk already, and he suspects he would be staggering but for Dorian’s arm around his waist. The linen undergarments beneath his leather coat and woolen sweater are soaked with sweat and chilly even beneath the layers; he’s content enough to let Dorian drag him to the small cabin he’d been given. Really, actually, it is too much for a single person, much bigger than the room he had at Ostwick. And frankly, far too cold with only a single person’s body heat in the space at night.

He stumbles past the partition to the room in the back, trying to decide if he’d rather fall face-first onto the bed, or dig out a new base layer and go enjoy the party he can hear the rest of the Inquisition beginning outside. Leliana and Josephine will probably show up if he chooses the latter and drag him back out with a lecture on keeping up appearances and rallying the people. They might even be right.

Maker, he hopes his part in all this is over. Let Cassandra and Leliana continue trying to remake all of Thedas. He just wants to go home. If he has a home to go to.

“Oh look at this!” Dorian exclaims from the front. “Antivan red. And a halfway decent vintage. You’ve been holding out on me, Rhys.”

“Talk to Josie.” Rhys undoes the buttons down the front of his coat. Too many buttons, especially with hands that are stiff from the cold and shaking from an overdose of magic. He tosses it over the foot of the bed and takes off his sweater. He’s rather fond of the sweater actually, it’s nice and warm and the good kind of scratchy. The kind that kept you in the present place and time. “She’s not lying about her family connections.”

“Not sure she likes me. Yet. She’ll come around.”

“I’m sure she will.” Rhys smiles a little and cautiously - sometimes he has to recalibrate just how much magic to use after closing a Rift - casts a spell to melt the ice on the pitcher of water. Closing the Breach hadn’t done anything to improve Haven’s climate. Maker, why do people choose to live here? He splashes still chilly water over his face and leans his hands against the table, trying not to yawn so hard that his jaw cracks off.

His linen shirt is soaked to his skin; he has to virtually peel it off. It gets tossed to the floor, something that can be dealt with later and by someone else. He soaks a bit of toweling at rubs it over his chest and shoulders, glancing behind him, at least somewhat hoping that Dorian is surreptitiously peering around the partition.

He isn't. He’s turned away from the opening in the partition - polite, Rhys supposes - holding the stack of letters in his hands and shuffling through them. “Rhys. What are these?”

“Just... I need to burn those. They were just in case, well, you know, this wasn't exactly the guaranteed outcome.” He didn’t even know if half the people he had addressed them to were still alive, much less where to find them, but he assumed that Leliana would be able to figure that out if she needed to.

“How late were you up writing them?”

All night. “A while.”

“You were sitting here last night, by yourself, writing these because you thought you might die - Rhys, why didn't you say anything? You didn't have to sit in here drinking and contemplating death alone.”

“I thought the chance closing the Breach would kill was generally understood.” Just the kind of thing that no one talks about in polite society. Rhys combs his fingers through his hair and tries to put it into something akin to order and not just hanging unattractively lank around his face. Kind. Dorian might have a vicious tongue in his head, but he’s also kind when he wants to be. “Open the bottle if you want. If I was saving it for a special occasion, I think this qualifies.”

Rhys sits on the edge of the bed and undoes the buckles down the sides of his boots, tugging them off and rolling down the first of three pairs of socks. The other two are tucked under his trousers. Clean socks will be nice. He gets his trousers off - tight leather is really annoying. Decent armor. A good look on him too - even he can recognize that. But annoying to get on and off.

He finishes washing up quickly and dresses again, listening as Dorian pops the cork out of the bottle and the sound of wine being poured. Hopefully, it’s a decent vintage. He’d hate to disappoint.

Dorian is sitting in one of the chairs with his feet propped up on the desk. Rhys does it all the time himself; it’s a bizarrely satisfying act of delayed rebellion against the librarians who scolded him for doing the same thing in the Circle. The letters have been set aside in a much tidier stack than the one in which he had left them. He pulls the second chair out from the desk, sits down, and picks up the wine glass that Dorian isn’t twirling in his elegant hands.

Dorian stops him as he raises the glass to his lips. “Don’t drink it yet, silly. A red needs to breathe.”

“Right. Yes. Anyway, thanks. For saving my life back there. What is that, like the fiftieth time.”

Dorian raises his eyebrows, smiling over the cup in his hand. “Bad form to let someone die. Especially someone you rather -”

Bells begin clanging outside, interrupting whatever Dorian was about to say. He swings his feet from the desk to the floor and sets the cup violently down on the table. “Oh, Andraste’s quaking quim, what now?”

Rhys grins. “You’re getting as bad as a Ferelden.” Even if the bells are unlikely to signify anything good, he can enjoy a little humor.

“Worse, I think.” Dorian throws back the cup of wine as he gets up from the table, and Rhys follows suit. Yes. It is a more than decent vintage even without enough time to breathe, and he grabs the bottle as Dorian pushes the door open because whatever is about to happen will probably merit alcohol. Cullen is standing outside, still in full armor and fur and with the grim expression that Haven seems to have frozen on his features.

“We’re under attack. Grab your staves. Meet me at the gate.”

“Void take it.” Dorian takes the bottle from him and drinks. “Come on, Rhys. Looks like fate hasn’t given up fucking with us yet.”

Well, fuck.