#red templar fic

[abyssal-ilk]

may of just accidentally shot vivienne with a leaping shot as sera and knocked her out in the middle of a fight. uh. oops. having friendly fire on is so dangerous.

makes for fun fanfic fodder tho 👀! ...sorry viv, lol

[mneiai]

Dragon Age Fic: As a wildfire consumes plains

Ships: Raleigh Samson/Cullen Rutherford, Dagna & Cullen Rutherford

Summary: Skyhold has many vulnerabilities, especially when the Inquisition is facing an enemy with such corrupting power. People have even more vulnerabilities, especially when Cullen is facing an enemy who knew even the parts of him he always hid away.

Warnings: Mature Themes, Dark, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Lyrium Withdrawal, Non-Canonical Red Lyrium Shenanigans, Canon-Typical Bigotry, Unreliable Narrator, Mind Manipulation/Implied Mind Control, Past Torture, Not Beta Read

AO3 Link

XxX

It started with a hum.

"Do you hear something?" he asked one morning at a meeting of the advisers, glancing around as he tried to decipher the sound that he had noticed during a lull in conversation.

The others glanced at each other before Leliana gently (only increasing Cullen's mortification with her tone, as though she were speaking to a child) told him there were no noises that weren't always there. He'd ducked his head, picking up the delicate cup of tea that Josephine had prepared for him, taking another sip in lieu of speaking.

That his withdrawal was at the point of audial hallucinations was not the worst it could be, certainly not compared to the massive headache he'd had that morning--in fact, that had started to diminish and he would gladly accept such a trade. As long as he could keep from drawing anymore attention to it, of course. He'd rather pain than anyone thinking he was of unsound mind.

Nothing else in particular stuck out at him in those first few days: his dreams remained the same horrible nightmares of Kinloch Hold that they often were, he still woke up sore and exhausted, they still received updates of the Inquisitor's various exploits while he was stomping around Fereldan (Cullen received separate updates from Varric, seemingly social letters except for the embedded code they had used during the treacherous time they were rebuilding Kirkwall, just in case).

The sound seemed to increase at a steady pace. Going from humming to susurrations mixed in to more, until he could just almost make out words and found himself humming along when alone and distracted. He started to worry when he realized that was the only symptom of withdrawal he still seemed to feel, then truly panicked as he saw a few others, mostly Templars, reacting as though to a noise that was not there.

He brought some of them into his office in the evening, doing his best to seem confident. "Have any of you heard any unusual sounds? The origin of which you cannot place?" All of them stiffened and it was the only answer he needed. "I fear there may be an unauthorized supply of red lyrium somewhere in Skyhold. I believe that Templars are best suited to track it."

They were all too well-trained to panic, even the ones who had only experienced the most lenient and safe of Circles or had been new to the Order altogether at the time of the Conclave had still been among the Inquisition long enough to have adapted to imminent danger. Together, they worked out teams to go through the already established search grid for Skyhold, and he thought all of them must feel better now that they had a plan.

Once they left, he locked his doors, climbed up his ladder, took off his armor, slid into bed, and proceeded to have a very small panic attack, just to get it out of the way.

When he was done, breath steadying and trembling of his limbs and digits slowing, he finally allowed himself to think of the personal ramifications. He had not mentioned to them, who were still on regular doses of blue lyrium, that he was certain he'd been unknowingly consuming the red, they did not need to know and it would be too suspicious to explain how he knew.

"Because my withdrawal symptoms disappeared, the ones I have as a result of not consuming lyrium in over a year," would only raise more questions than necessary.

Even small amounts consumed might cause a setback (and how much more powerful must the red be, to alleviate so much of his troubles from the blue with dosages too small to notice?), but that wasn't a guarantee he was suddenly going to turn into a monster or lose what was left of his mind.

He would just have to be more careful. And vigilant. And pray that the Templars found the source of the contamination soon.

That night, his dreams were different. The sky was vast and dark overhead, for one thing, the most immediate sign he was not in Kinloch, but beyond that was the sound of waves crashing against the docks almost (drowning out the music he always heard now), the remembered smell of sea air, and an arm wrapped casually around his shoulders.

Cullen blinked down at it, then turned his head to catch Raleigh Samson's profile. He looked as he had during those first few years in Kirkwall, when they were roommates, before Meredith began to clean house of any popular dissidents even among the Templars.

"Feeling better, now?" Raleigh asked, catching his glance.

Something was not quite right, Cullen thought, though he couldn't place the origin of that uneasiness. Perhaps it was just from the music of the red lyrium, which had no place in Kirkwall until much later.

There was no singular moment in his past this might have been, for Samson had dragged him up to the roof at least once a week at some points after his nightmares had grown too dire. Being reminded of where he was and then curling up on Samson's bunk to sleep afterward had often been enough to chase away the demons for a few nights.

"Yes," he replied, and it wasn't even wrong in the waking world, as horrible as that was.

Samson gave his typical lazy grin, leaning their heads together. "Good, you needed it, you were starting to look worse than me."

"That's a blatant exaggeration."

His laugh, too, was just as Cullen remembered it, before Samson's tone settled into something far more serious, "Wish I could have done something sooner, Cull. It's bad enough they stole you to begin with, but then they starved you, too."

Cullen was confused for a moment, repeating the words in his mind as he tried to work out what he was referencing, before a cold realization crept into his thoughts. "No one has stolen me, Leigh, not recently at least."

The hand on his shoulder reached up to play with his hair, loose curls weighed down by a day in the humidity of the Gallows. "Those Chantry cunts did, we both know that. You would have never left Kirkwall, quit being a Templar, without them manipulating you, somehow."

What an odd dream, odd enough he almost wondered if this was some demon's new tactic to make him vulnerable.

"They spoke of reforming the Chantry, the Circles, the Order. It was what I wanted by that point. The only thing that seemed reasonable. Kirkwall had recovered enough I could leave it and..." he stared out at the sea before them, "the Order had only brought me suffering."

The grip on him tightened. "You don't believe that, not really. We're your brothers and sisters, it was the Chantry that failed you. They've got you all messed up in the head, probably took you off lyrium just so you'd be vulnerable, suggestible." Cullen gave a long-suffering sigh as Samson's voice took on that tone he always had while ranting. "The red will free you."

Perhaps it was a fear demon, he reasoned. "It would make sense, that you were somehow behind my poisoning."

"How can you call it that, when you can hear its song? When you must feel healthy for the first time in months?" Samson manhandled him around so that they were facing each other, both of his hands on Cullen's shoulders.

It was odd that his dream didn't know the actual length of time he had been off lyrium. He almost wondered--but no, it was ridiculous to assume, he dismissed the thought again.

"I don't even know why I'm arguing. I would like to simply enjoy a relaxing dream for once."

Samson shook his head, but pulled him closer, into a hug that was somehow familiar and not. "If that's what you want. Just relax, listen to the song. We'll talk again soon."

When Cullen awoke, well-rested, bright-eyed, not a trace of pain within him, the dream was fuzzy around the edges. He shook his head, trying to dismiss the odd feeling it had left in him and the song of the red lyrium, loud enough now that he could make out its words even though he was doing his best to ignore them.

How could he be without pain, if there was red lyrium in his system?

It was a question he asked himself again when he reached the War Room, the Inquisitor having arrived late the night before, and saw both Josephine and Leliana looking worse for wear. A lack of pain seemed to go against everything they knew of it, as he hadn’t progressed enough yet to stop feeling pain in general.

"There is red lyrium in Skyhold," he stated once they were all settled, grimacing at the expected reactions. "I have people searching for it, but I know that...some of us have consumed small amounts."

The Inquisitor's gaze went from Cullen to Leliana to Josephine, surely cataloging any difference. Cullen, too, took the time to study his fellows: both looked paler, weary, and the whites of their eyes had a pinkish tinge that could be from any number of reasons but set him on edge to see.

"Once the location is found, we can investigate how it got in here...and who is using it on others." Leliana began to pace in the open space on one side of the table, her hands clenching and unclenching, her eyes narrowed. “My agents will look into the latter.”

Josephine's grip on her quill had tightened and she leaned heavily against the table, scratching some notes down as she spoke. "I will see about...delaying those visitors who are scheduled to arrive within the next few weeks. Is there a way to be sure if someone has not been exposed? If so, perhaps we could also find reasons to send some of our current visitors home early?"

Just like the night before, the concentration necessary for the planning session took Cullen's mind off of his personal fears. It lasted until midday, the four of them dipping out of the room on occassion to send runners with notes or receive new information. Eventually, they had to return to their regular duties.

Cullen took all of his meals in private so he could study the food without potentially setting off a panic among others, concentrating through the music in his head in an effort to sense any lyrium within it. Breakfast had been clean, but lunch, while inconclusive, had set him on edge, and instead he'd skipped the meal and for dinner eaten some of the hard tack he kept in his office for emergencies. He did not feel hungry, but had grown used to keeping himself on a schedule during his withdrawal, where he had little appetite but needed food to keep up his strength.

The teams of Templars had yet to find anything conclusive, but the Inquisitor had enlisted Dagna and Cullen hoped that perhaps the next day would bring greater peace of mind.

That night his dreams were not set in Kinloch or the Gallows, but instead in what seemed to be a well-appointed, Orlesian-style room. He was lying on a soft bed, Samson against his side, holding him as he used to when they were roommates. The song was louder, filling the empty spaces of the room.

He'd once joked he wasn't much of a cuddler, but just wanted a full night's sleep. Cullen had been too embarrassed by his nightmares to realize it was a joke until Samson had taken pity on him and explained.

"Where are we?"

Samson huffed. "Nowhere important, don't worry about it. Just thought I'd treat you, considering I've been upsetting you."

It had to be a demon. Samson was no somniari and Cullen, while willing to believe someone could be slipping him lyrium, thought he'd notice a spell intensive enough to connect two minds. His senses still worked where magic was involved and had been honed to perfection in Kirkwall.

"You could simply stop...drugging me." He chose the more diplomatic phrasing as he played along, knowing "Samson" might react poorly to red lyrium being referred to as poison again.

"I'm helping you, no matter what you think of it. You're cleared out of the blue, which means the red can slide into all those places it hollowed out. No need to reform anything in you. No need to do more harm."

On the off chance that the demon did know something of red lyrium, Cullen asked, "From what we know, it doesn't matter how it is introduced, eventually it will overwhelm whoever has consumed it, twist them and harm them, taking over more and more of their body."

"For some," "Samson" allowed. "I've been given control over my Red Templars, control over the red itself. Worked it out: how best to introduce it, how careful to be. We made mistakes at first, but we've been getting better and better at it."

Cullen mind reeled to think of how many victims of red lyrium there must have been, sure that many had not consented to it anymore than he had. He would need to confer with Dagna when he awoke, have her check what it was doing to him so far, perhaps compared to a Templar who was still on blue lyrium and someone who had never taken lyrium at all. They would have to start screening people for it, regardless, to see if some groups had been more exposed than others.

"Are you nearby, then? Since you are controlling it?"

"Samson" chuckled, his breath against the back of Cullen's neck making him shiver. "I don't need to be nearby, it's all connected. I can feel you, if I want, feel it in you. Still such a small amount, not nearly enough to fill you up good."

Pushing his fear down--he would not feed the demon, if Fear was its true form--Cullen studied the room. He supposed the demon could have seen Samson's own dreams and taken the room from them, researching how best to scare Cullen using Samson's knowledge. Fear was always more intense when there was truth in it, after all. So if he could find a hint of the location, at least he'd have an operable target.

"And you mean to continue slipping me the red until I am...full of it?"

"Don't need to go that far. You'll reach a point it will grow on its own. That's when you’ll need to be careful, keep control, use it instead of letting it use you, like the blue did, like the blighted Chantry did. And I'll need to watch it, make sure it doesn't try to eat you up."

Perhaps that meant he was safe, still, that it would be filtered out of his system as blue lyrium was, eventually, as long as he had no more. "And if you're not around for that? What safeguard is there for me?"

"I won't let that happen. I know how you value yourself, Cull. I know what those fucking blood mages did to you makes you hate any change. You'll be able to just use it, push out all its energy so it doesn't have any to spare on taking you over."

He thought of the reports on the Red Templars and some of the abilities they displayed and could not help the shudder that ran through him. It made Samson sigh and cuddle closer, his body too hot for a normal human.

“What if I don’t want it?”

“You don’t know what you want.”

There was no use arguing with anyone, let alone a demon pretending to be Samson, on that front.

In the morning, he took the long way to the Undercroft so he could observe the early training for the troops. If he had not suspected what was happening, it would seem as though they had just been having a very good day, but he knew from long study of most of them that they were moving quicker, hitting harder, reacting faster, and shaking off blows with too little recovery time. Already the red lyrium was changing them, too.

There was a good chance most, if not all, of the Inquisition forces were poisoned.

When he reached Dagna, who had various instruments and samples across her workspace he tried his best not to observe, he told her of his desire for tests. Her eyes lit up at the possibility, making him second guess the offer, but she'd already called on an assistant to find other possible subjects and it was too late to hold her back.

"This is fascinating!" she breathed after doing who knew what to all of them for a good few hours, Cullen having to perform half of his duties through runners who stood anxiously on the staircase when he was distracted.

"What is?" He rubbed the bridge of his nose, the headache that was forming almost certainly a natural one from the tension.

She didn't look at him as she spoke, the two of them alone again in her section of the Undercroft, the other subjects sent away for now. "You were right to suspect a difference--it seems like those with blue lyrium in their system are having an easier time than the people who never had lyrium: their bodies knows what to do with lyrium even if the blue is making it too much. Like it's...overflowing. Better than what the red lyrium is doing to the non-Templars, though, it's forcing space to exist where there isn't any. No wonder their symptoms are the worst...."

"And for myself?"

This time she did look at him, eyes narrowed as she sized him up like a choice piece of meat. "You are the most fascinating. Your body knows exactly what to do with lyrium, but there wasn't any in you, so the red lyrium just...eased on in. No forcing anything. Your long term withdrawal makes you a perfect vessel! I should have thought of it,” she continued, mostly to herself, “but who would have? Not many people are around who have been off it as long as you have."

He was unsure if he truly was hiding the sickened, strickened way he felt or if Dagna was oblivious to his distress.

He spent the rest of his day in his office, making anyone else who wanted to talk to him trek out to the battlements (few did who weren’t utterly professional). Every thought he had was analyzed for influence--he had a short temper and a tendency to hate that which he feared, there was no denying that, and he worried over what might happen if the red lyrium heightened his emotions when he was so frightened.

The only bright spot was the appearance of one of the groups searching for the lyrium.

"We found it, Commander,” Knight-Corporeal Lysette informed him, and while the group was under the command of Knight-Lieutenant Denis, he could understand making Lysette their spokesperson.

Cullen's shoulders slumped in relief as he looked over the team. "Thank the Maker, at least this is a start. Where?"

Lysette pursed her lips. "In the soil of the garden outside of the Chantry. Where Skyhold procures much of its herbs for potions and cooking. It entered into the plants that grew in it, which in turn were used for those such the things as we consume...."

Cullen bit back a curse, turning to look out one of the arrow slits behind his deck. "How many beds was it in?"

He could hear their armor moving as they shifted on their feet. "All of them, Commander."

"That is...unfortunate. Make sure to contain the area, speak to the teams in charge of red lyrium clean up in the field about what to do. Find out everyone that uses those plants and inform them of contamination."

"Should we say what with?" Denis asked, his hesitance showing he knew what Cullen did, that Skyhold's security would suffer greatly if anyone else knew.

"...No, be vague where you can. So far, we believe if we are to stop consuming it, the effects will disappear."

There was a beat of silence where he braced himself for questions, then, "...Yes, Commander," the team murmured in unison and filed out, as uneasy as he felt.

Skyhold switched to only imported (and tested) herbs, locked away or destroyed the contaminated supplies, and had to completely dig out the garden, taking a good amount of contaminated soil away and replacing it completely.

The amount of red lyium in Cullen and Dagna's other subjects continued to increase.

"It's in the feed for the livestock," Knight-Corporal Anika informed him three days later, after their team had reached that portion of the grid.

He gave a soft groan. "Let me guess: the livestock become contaminated by eating the feed and then we are contaminated by consuming the livestock?"

"Yes, Commander."

They had far more funding than they did in those early days after the disastrous Conclave, but Cullen's mind reeled at the idea of supporting the entire keep through imported foods. The cost, the travel times, the opportunities for attack (or further contamination)--supply lines were always a weak point of any army, after all.

“I will be informing the other teams, as well, but after you take care of this situation, your orders going forward are to focus on all consumables in Skyhold. I want every source of water tested, every container of tea, every barrel of apples. I want the drinks in the Herald’s Rest tested, the wine in the cellar. You don’t have to open every single one,” he hurried to say, at their uneasy looks, because he knew what sort of fits that would cause, “random samplings should be enough.”

He sent more of his forces out into the field, where they would be easier to supply, and knew that Leliana had done much the same. Skyhold had little better than a skeleton crew and Cullen felt as though he should be constantly looking over his shoulder for the threat that must surely be waiting for this opportunity.

The amount of red lyrium in his body slowed, but still was increasing.

There was red lyrium in the water, just as he feared. They began melting snow and ice for any consumable water, a few of the mages on friendlier terms with Cullen on a rotation to come by and fill a cistern for him every morning and evening, which he continued to check for poisoning.

One of deliveries of supplies was contaminated, setting Skyhold to tighter rationing. Unrest increased. The Inquisitor finally declared they would inform everyone of what was going on, convinced it would help them buy more time to deal with it if people realized just how serious the situation was.

People were already showing signs, after all, were quarantined from view as they became unmistakably victims of red lyrium. Those who had never taken it before (just as Dagna had said they’d be at highest risk), who had eaten more, or drank more, or consumed more potions. Even a few of the mages, who had higher lyrium resistance, had to be kept sedated as healers raced to find treatments for the way it frayed their minds.

Cullen’s last few dreams with the demon had been uneventful, the stress of each day and his predicament leading to him embracing the quiet peace of the dreams.

That had to change.

"No more games, demon, what do you know about what is going on at Skyhold?" Cullen demanded, tearing himself away from "Samson's" hold.

The creature stared at him, seeming shocked, then laughed. It was a whole body laugh, "Samson" bending over and clutching at himself until he seemed to finally be able to break through the fit of humor.

"Is that why you've been so weird? You think I'm a demon?" He stood up straight, shaking his head, eyes still sparkling with humor as he met Cullen's wary gaze. "Cull, the red is connected. And I hold the keys to that connection."

"You...no."

Samson--because it may very well be Samson, because demons weren't truly all that clever and rarely lasted so long at any game--approached as though Cullen was a frightened apprentice, slow and steady, no sudden movements. "It's me. It's been me this whole time, since you had enough red for me to find you in the network." He made a sympathetic noise. "I should have expected it, I know how your dreams are, but I thought the red would let you feel the truth."

Cullen did not acknowledge how often he'd wondered, how real it had felt from the very start. "Why are you doing this? What are you trying to do?"

"I already said: free you. I'm bringing you back where you belong, back to your brothers and sisters. Back to me." There was nowhere to go when Samson finally reached him, having backed him into the wall, but all Samson did was cup Cullen's face in his hands, stroking his cheeks with his rough thumbs.

"But I'm not the only one. And you didn't go through all of this trouble just for me." He received a nod in acknowledgement. "You're compromising our forces, those who don't get ill...they fall under the song's sway, don't they?"

Not yet, but he knew it wouldn't be much longer. Already some of them were acfting more violent, after all, and less trusting. He’d overheard Leliana disciplining a few of her agents and there had been a marked increase in the duties given out for punishment among his own.

Samson–actual Samson, he did believe it, it rang true through the song–smirked. “Come on, Cull, do you think we’ve left any of them be, just because they’re not hiding away in your fortress anymore?”

Cullen forced himself to wake up, the shock and horror enough to power the aattempt. He tried shaking off the memories of Samson’s touch, ignoring the song twisting through his thoughts. The song seemed even louder, now.

Down on his desk, a vial of red lyrium had been left for him and he fell the last few rungs of his ladder as he noticed it.

For long moments he stared at it, breathing heavily, licking his lips as he imagined what it must taste like when not hiding behind other flavors, wondering how different it would feel thrumming through his body compared to a dose of the blue.

It took him far too long to stride to his desk, throw a piece of scrap parchment over the vial, wrap it up, and stalk out his door. He delivered it to a concerned Dagna before heading to the War Room, keeping his hands tucked tightly against him to hide their shaking.

The Inquisitor was in the field, closing more rifts and trying to stifle Corytheus’ reach. Josephine and Leliana remained, of course, and Cullen was upset to see they both looked just as unwell as they had been before all the sources of red lyrium poisoning were found. A large portion of his day to day work was currently spent around Templars and he had hoped that those without experience with lyrium were recovering as the Templars seemed to be.

He would not allow himself to wonder if the recovery of his Templars was as false as his own.

“I worry for our forces in the field,” he said after they went through the planned portion of their agenda, “I do not think we should assume the attempts to poison us are limited to Skyhold.” He could not bring himself to speak of the dreams, knowing that anyone who could not feel them as he did would think he was the victim of an overactive imagination, but he could still bring up what he learned from them.

Leliana looked disconcerted. “I will have my people look into it.”

He knew she felt the same as he did–they had been too distracted, should have already considered that possibility even as they were sending people away. If not for Samson, Cullen would have continued blissfully unaware. The red wanted them to ignore it, so they had. For all they knew, they had even missed catching the culprits because the red was too ingrained in their thoughts.

Despite some trepidation, he decided to try to be calmer in the dream that night, to attempt to lure more information out of Samson.

“There is no possibility that our sleep schedules match up so well,” Cullen said first thing upon realizing he was back in a dream with Samson, deciding it was an innocuous question.

Arms wrapped around him, pulling him back tighter against a hard muscled body, and with a blush Cullen realized they were both naked in bed. Back in their small room in the Gallows, tucked onto Samson’s narrow bunk, their own forms looking as they had back then.

Samson ran his lips over Cullen’s ear, teeth pulling at the lobe, before murmuring his answer, “I don’t need much sleep. And I don’t need sleep to be here with you.”

“And how does that work?”

He kept himself pliant, but as unresponsive as possible, even as his dream form reacted automatically with flushed skin and a steady rise in noticeable interest as Samson’s hands roamed. He’d had plenty of experience doing the same with Desire demons over the years.

“I’m more, with the red. Normally everyone focuses on the physical stuff--can’t say I blame them--but that’s not all any lyrium, especially not the red, is. I’m here, and I’m out there, and I’m functional in both places, holding two different conversations.”

Cullen had a hard time imagining such a thing, but didn’t bother probing deeper. “I found a vial of red lyrium awaiting me in the morning.”

Teeth bit hard enough to mark on the side of his neck as Samson let out a muffled displeased noise. “For as much good as it did you. You can’t keep wavering in between, Cull.”

“We’re working on potential methods to cleanse bodies of small amounts of red lyrium,” he took a calculated risk as he spoke, already feeling Samson tensing, “I won’t be ‘in between’ for much longer.”

Nails dug into his skin, feeling more like talons, and Samson lurched over him, pushing him down into the thin mattress below. His eyes, his very skin, glowed with unnatural red light, the Fade seeming to warp around them in the presence of such active power.

“You belong with us,” Samson hissed and his words echoed in the song, it agreed, it wanted Cullen to give in, “you belong with me. There’s no one that needs to be between us anymore.”

“Except your master,” Cullen spat out the word, “who is trying to destroy the world. That is quite an important figure keeping us apart, Leigh.”

He hadn’t meant to use the diminutive name, hadn’t meant to diffuse some of his anger with that show of intimacy. It had Samson calming, not entirely, but too much for him to make mistakes with his words and give away more than he might mean to.

Cullen turned his head away from a kiss, but Samson just kissed across his cheek and back to his neck, sucking at the bruise on his pale flesh.

“Always know how to rile a guy up. I bet it’s still hilarious, when it’s not me.” He pulled back, sat up to straddle Cullen, keeping him under him in the dream and doing something unfathomable that felt like it would keep Cullen from waking himself up again despite Cullen having no reason to discern that. “You don’t know what’s really happening, you have bits and pieces, half truths and blatant lies. There’s more going on than you know. Fuck, I know way more about it than you do and still know I’m missing information.”

Taking a deep breath, Cullen shifted to meet Samson’s heavy gaze. “What does that have to do with my taking red lyrium?”

Samson sighed, his hands starting to roam again. “It’s protection. Right now, because the Red Templars are mine. Later, because the red will keep us safe. I’m not doing all this to be a monster, Cull, I’m doing everything I can to make sure we survive. If Corypheus triumphs or,” he made a face, as though the very thought hurt him, “if he doesn’t and whatever else is out there picks up where he left off.”

“...You believe there’s some other force at work?”

While it seemed unlikely, that too felt like a truth that Cullen was just discovering. There were some inconsistencies he and the others had picked up on, little pieces that had never gone anywhere. They’d dismissed them because Corypheus was their enemy, was the threat.

If he were but a stepping stone to something worse…that was a dire thought.

“There are things I could tell you if I could trust you not to blab about them to anyone. There’s too many spies around, the red helps with that, too. Like these dreams–it keeps out anyone else who might be lurking around, trying to mess with your lovely, fucked up little head.”

Cullen narrowed his eyes, considering. “Would you stop trying to drug the others if I took it?”

As much as it pained him to admit even to himself, the idea of restarting his withdrawal from lyrium left him feeling almost as unstable as his initial withdrawal had. Sacrificing his body, and possibly mind and life, for the Inquisition while also continuing on lyrium filled him with a guilty sort of certainty. He would do it, part of him wouldn’t even mind it, wouldn’t even find it a sacrifice.

Samson made a show of considering the offer. “I’ll stop at Skyhold. Even you aren’t enough to trade one person for an army.” He kissed Cullen, who was too distracted with his mess of emotions to avoid it, and it was better than he’d remembered, intimate and fierce, alighting even more conflicting feelings. “Drink the vial, we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Despite checking again that his doors were locked and the patrols were trustworthy before going to sleep, the next morning there was once more a vial of red lyrium on his desk. Cullen sat heavily in his chair, fingers crawling over the wood until they rested on the glass. He rolled it back and forth, watching the waves of red as the thick liquid inside moved.

The song felt like a caress as he unstoppered the vial and brought it to his lips, waves of it running through him as soon as the first sip passed his lips.

At some point, he must have finished the whole thing, but he would not recall what he had done past that initial sip. All he’d felt was the red, filling up all the awful, hollow parts of him and then stretching outward from his body, his mind alight as he felt others on the edge of his perception. A few shone brightest and he knew one of those was Samson, who must have felt Cullen join them. He could almost feel his pleasure at being obeyed.

Cullen forced his mind away, as he would from his intrusive memories, and found himself hunched on the floor, half-under his desk, hands scraping at the wood as though he needed support to keep from falling upward into the ceiling.

Not the worst reaction he’d ever had to a vial of lyrium.

With deep, steady breaths, he calmed down, shifting into a more comfortable position as he studied his bare hands for visible signs of the red. Nothing, yet, but the worry had him standing and climbing back up the ladder with nary a thought, pulling out the mirror he used for shaving and styling his hair so he could meet his own eyes.

Were they pinker than before? Perhaps. It would be nothing suspicious, his withdrawal symptoms had caused that enough times that seeing him healthier-seeming the last few weeks had been the outlier for others.

His skin still looked the same, paler than it had been when he was on blue lyrium and spending time out in the Gallows courtyard, but also no different than recent shades.

As he was putting the mirror away, he noticed something else, and pulled down his collar to stare at the bruise on his neck—undeniably that which would be made by a human mouth. In the exact spot that Samson had been sucking on his neck in the dream.

If he’d had reason to doubt the legitimacy of the “meetings” they had or believe that the threads he felt in his mind were delusions, now he had physical proof.

It was low enough to be hidden under his daily attire and so he pushed it from his mind. Or, more precisely, tried to, as nearly every time he moved his head his collar rubbed at the tender spot and he thought his body would have noticeably reacted if he wasn’t generally sluggish to such things in the waking world.

Samson had promised that Skyhold would be safe now, but Cullen worried that their deal might have come too late. He could see the extra aggression in the training yard, still, had long reports of who had fallen ill and who had needed to be restrained after proving themselves a danger, and was not oblivious to the mood of the keep—it reminded him too much of Kirkwall, in those final months before Meredith’s fall: tinder waiting for a spark.

Reports came in from across Thedas, of varying degrees of seriousness and trustworthiness. The only ones he trusted were from Varric, Rylen, and a handful of others who communicated in extra layers. Leliana or Iron Bull might suspect, but Cullen didn’t think either knew, and if they didn’t it was even less likely the other spies (both for and against the Inquisition, and those playing both sides) had realized.

There were advantages to being seen as guileless, of being known for hating the Game and all renditions of it. Others forgot he had been Meredith’s second-in-command for years (something he was ashamed enough of to accept the blow to his reputation that being seen as a fool gave him).

Her paranoia had instilled practices within him that others rarely suspected. It was one reason, he acknowledged, that someone getting into his office as they have been should have been more worrying. Perhaps that he might have suspected from the beginning it was Samson behind everything had lessened his concern, because despite how much he despised the other for poisoning so many in the Order, leading to so many unnecessary deaths, Cullen knew if Samson killed him it wouldn’t be by an assassin in the night.

Yet, where he should have panicked at the sight of that first vial, called in soldiers and agents to investigate, perhaps change all of his locks and even add bars to the doors, he did not. And he hadn’t even noticed how compromised his mind was until he had compromised it completely, willingly.

Once more he acknowledged that it did not bode well for what the others might be experiencing. Leliana could be dismissing missing or doctored reports, her agents could be trusting unknown sources. In the field, their people might be welcoming their tainted food and drink without a thought.

How were they supposed to fight something so insidious?

He wished one of the inner circle mages were in Skyhold, that he could consult Solas, or Vivienne, or even Dorian. The mages left were mostly sedate scholars and agoraphobes, their experiences were being locked away in Circles and rarely leaving.

Cullen at eighteen had had more world experience than most of them and far more experience with internal threats than they could ever hope to have.

It was Dagna he found his way to, eventually, sinking down on a stool in her work area as she puttered about. There was red lyrium all around them--crystals, liquid, dust--and he could hear it singing to him in chorus.

Had the blue ever been so lovely?

“What did you do?” were the first words out of her mouth, when she finally noticed him, her eyes wide and searching.

He swallowed, mouth feeling too dry (was he already craving another dose?). “I made a deal with our poisoner,” he stated, keeping his voice as low as it could be for her to still hear.

“What sort of deal?” She did not ask how or why he’d contacted them, or even who they were, and he wished that practicality was more practiced even if it would lead to certain other problems.

“To give myself to the red in exchange for a cessation to the poisoning of Skyhold.”

Dagna set down her tools, picked up what he knew was equipment meant to measure corruption, and began the now-familiar task of studying him. “How much?”

“The same amount as was in the vial I brought you before; there was another awaiting me. I drank it approximately two hours ago.”

Silence fell between them, for a time, only the red and the sound of Harritt at work on the other side of the room to fill Cullen’s ears. He had seen enough of the study now to know what the results were from simply watching over Dagna’s shoulder and he shuddered to see them, a mix of horror and pleasure that had once been too familiar of a sensation.

“It’s still fixable,” she announced, “...as long as you aren’t exposed to much more. Another vial or two and...well.

Cullen grimaced. While he could technically play off his deal with Samson as complete, since he was told to take the vial today, that would be against the spirit of it and would no doubt lead to retaliation.

He also wasn’t entirely sure he could resist another vial, the red was far more powerful and compelling than the blue had been, its song now that he had consumed enough more a serenade than a warning.

If Dagna knew what he was thinking, she thankfully pretended otherwise, going through a few other tests before he left to speak with the other advisers. He told them of the deal, though not of the dreams, letting them believe he’d had some way to contact Samson and that he had only just reached him.

The lie felt heavy on his tongue and heavier on his soul, but any time he thought of mentioning the truth he was bombarded with imaginings of being locked away in the tower the mages had claimed, being a subject to experimentation at the whims of people who could rightfully despise him.

There was also some truth to the lie, as he did have a way to contact the Red Templars, if he were desperate enough. Not a spy in their ranks, the red lyrium had been too volatile a substance to risk even without knowing of the connection it would forge, but old Templar networks that Samson could have chosen to respond to or ignore, but would have at least seen.

"Your sacrifice shall not be in vain.” Josephine fretted around him, as though he was one of her delicate porcelain tea cups and not, in fact, healthier than he had been before the red lyrium had been in his system.

He managed a smile, rubbing at his neck and feeling the pull of his bruise. “I know. I have the utmost faith in all of you. Whatever the personal outcome is for me, the Inquisiton will persevere.”

Leliana watched him with an unreadable expression, perhaps she saw through his lie, though he doubted she would ever be able to piece together the truth. “Will you need closer monitoring of your condition?”

“No, I do not believe so. According to Dagna, I have yet to reach a point of no return. My withdrawal left me in,” he scowled, “a more or less perfect position for taking red lyrium. It may also explain why Samson seems less affected than the other Red Templars, as he may have been very low on lyrium in his own system when he started the red.”

“Not as helpful as we hoped, if that is the case and there is nothing else he has done.” Leliana sighed, playing with one of the markers on the map. “It does mean fewer Red Templars of his caliber, however, and for that I will be thankful.”

And like that, conversation turned once more to assigning tasks to their people, letters from the Inquisitor, and how to allocate their still-strained funds if they really could start providing their own food stuffs again. The monotony did nothing to lower the song in Cullen’s head, but he was growing used to it as background noise.

That night he “awoke” in the dream in bed with Samson once more and responded in kind when the first thing Samson did was kiss him. The song swelled around them, pleasant, pleased, and Cullen found himself ravenous for Samson’s touch, for his approval.

However long it took before he was able to regain control, Cullen didn’t want to know. He pulled back and Samson tried to follow, only stopping when Cullen put a firm hand against his chest.

“Why stop? I know you want it, I can feel it.”

Cullen rolled his eyes, shifting into a more comfortable position, or as much as he could since at some point he had spread his legs and allowed Samson to settle in between them. "And exactly what state will you leave me in? I had a bruise on my neck after last night.”

The surprised reaction to his words seemed real, but Samson had always been a better liar than Cullen. “The red must’ve done it.” He grinned and it was more savage and possessive than any expression Cullen had seen on his face back in Kirkwall. “Letting you know who you belong to, in case you got any bright ideas of letting someone else at you.”

“We were never exclusive,” he pointed out, wondering if it was time, trauma, or the red lyrium that made Samson like this.

“Not when the only other people you’d have touching you were our brothers and sisters. Now who knows what hands you let on you and they’d all be part of that damned Inquisition.”

That was a careful verbal play, to make it so even the Templars among the Inquisition would be “off limits” to Cullen. Not that he would do anything with a subordinate, not that this need inside him had even manifested in the waking world to want to do anything. He’d always needed to be close to someone to feel attracted to them and there were few enough within the Inquisition he let himself get so close to.

Samson was already moving on, having settled into a position hovering over Cullen as though he meant to spend the rest of the dream right there. “I’m so proud of you, you’re doing so well.” The praise sent a wave of pleasure through Cullen which Samson would suspect, given their history. “Bet they didn’t even protest, did they? Those other ‘advisers’ you work with—took you off lyrium, then don’t care what it will do to you to get on the red as long as the sacrifice is for them,” his voice grew softer, but also angrier, as he went on, until there was an undeniable rage on display.

“They didn’t--” Cullen caught himself, taking a deep breath, knowing no matter what he said Samson would make up some reason not to believe him.

If Samson thought he could turn Cullen against the Inquisition so easily, he clearly hadn’t paid attention to how long it had taken Cullen to turn against Meredith (who was actually in the wrong, he thought with no small amount of self-loathing). He had always had difficulty betraying loyalties once he had given them and it was not as though he had given the others any choice in this matter. He’d made the deal, he’d taken the lyrium, he’d told them after the fact.

“Leigh,” he sighed, trying to defuse the mood, “I’d rather talk about what to expect from the red.”

Red lyrium being one of Samson’s favorite topics, now, it was easy to get him focused on that and soon Cullen was learning far more than he wanted to about the side effects of it. Some of them they’d known about (it was fairly hard to miss crystals growing out of Red Templars and the Inquisitor’s report on that disasturous future had revealed an even fuller extent of its growth), some of them they had yet to learn.

He’d awoken and immediately rolled to the side of his bed, gagging into his chamber pot. He spent extra time getting ready to stare at the slight redness creeping into his iris, making them a little more orange than before, and looking over every inch of his skin for any marks the red might be causing.

Eventually, the siren call of the vial left on his desk (he wondered why he even bothered locking his doors, considering it was the locked drawers of his desk and the trapdoor up to his bedroom that actually mattered) dragged him to it. This time he was more aware as he drank, the thick syrup so like and unlike blue lyrium’s taste and texture. Sweet, warm where blue was cool, he could understand how someone like Samson could fall in love with it.

Cullen thought he preferred the blue, preferred the way it dulled his emotions and cooled his thoughts. The red was starting to put him on edge, making the world seem too sharp, somehow, his senses too heightened. Through the song he could make out the soft conversations of the guards and runners outside his doors, could feel every shift of the air currents in his room. He’d had something like this during the worst of his withdrawal, but it hadn’t been real, it had just felt like everything was more.

On some instinctive level, he knew the next vial would be it, that he’d be too far gone.

The fear of that had disappeared. He understand the Red Templars better, now, because he felt even more powerful than on blue lyrium, even more indestructible, and how could he then fear that the red might destroy him?

It wasn’t even as much of a lie as the blue gave, even the least changed of the Red Templars they’d encountered were a match for any fighter. As skilled as Cullen was, as he’d kept himself, he thought he’d be truly formidable now.

He would need to be so very careful not to let anyone see that. Perhaps, though, it could be a secret weapon, in the event of an attack by anyone other than Samson’s forces.

Cullen wondered if he should truly believe his thoughts or if the red lyrium was attempting to make him more accepting. Even Samson had admitted it had a way of twisting someone’s mind. It made him desire to spread it, he’d acknowledged, when without its influence he may have balked at exposing anyone else.

At least Cullen was still happy that Skyhold was free of its hold, except for himself (and whoever may voluntarily decide to continue on the red, he would not be surprised if some of their own Templars thought the benefits outweighed the costs, as inured as they were to being addicts).

He floated through the day, efficient in ways he hadn’t been in a very long time, perhaps not since he’d been under Meredith on a higher than average dosage of the blue just so he could be around mages without turning into a screaming mess.

When Josephine met his eyes, she looked like she wanted to cry. When Leliana did, she looked like she was preparing all the ways she’d have him killed once he proved a liability. His forces, though, were every bit as loyal to him as they’d been, excited to have him assisting in their training or overseeing their spars. He could feel the red in some of them and thought they could feel it in him, wondered if they knew what they were feeling.

One of them was probably Samson’s plant. Perhaps far more than one.

Poisoning so much of Skyhold would have taken multiple people, he thought, unless it was a mage. But a mage helping the Red Templars was hard to imagine, even the Venatori didn’t seem to actually get along with them, despite that many of them had been more favorable to mages than Cullen or, certainly, the rogue Templars.

He turned away from his thoughts again and went to see Dagna, confirming what he already knew.

The next day would be an ending and a beginning, of sorts.

“I told the Inquisitor,” Dagna admitted, watching him carefully. “I know you probably wanted to keep this confidential, but...someone higher up needs to know.” She didn’t suggest the other advisers, perhaps well aware of how easily Leliana could slit his throat even as a friend.

Cullen took a deep breath (a mistake, he could smell the red lyrium dust all over her workspace and it made his soul hum along with it), nodding. “I understand. I trust the Inquisitor.”

After all, Cullen hadn’t been forced back on the blue, no matter how his work may have suffered. The Inquisitor valued him, valued his mind, at least insomuch as he was Commander of the Inquisition Forces.

“I will visit tomorrow for...confirmation. If I do not, please send for me.” He was unsure what his mental state would be, but direct requests had gotten through to him even at his worst.

“Will do. You just...take care of yourself, too.”

They stared at each other for a long moment before he turned away, wondering when their arcanist of questionable morals had become his most valued acquaintance.

At least she would still work with him, no matter how infected he might become.

Samson awaited him that night somewhere new, a garden that had once been beautiful but now was overgrown. They were on a stone bench, the cool material a pleasant contrast to Samson’s high body temperature burning against even Cullen’s overheated flesh.

“Hello, beautiful.” He ignored the cringe Cullen gave and bent to remake the fading bruise on his neck.

Cullen took a deep breath (he knew, of course, that all such things were an illusion, but with such lucid dreaming he could still find comfort in the routine). “Will you continue with these dreams, once I’m...after tonight?”

Pulling back enough to look at him, Samson studied his expression. “Course I will, Cull. This is one of the best parts of my day. Maybe I’ll cut back sometimes—things are picking up out there and dividing my attention doesn’t always work out—but I’ll still be around. I’ll always be with you, somehow, as long as the red is." And from the feral grin that Samson gave at his own words, Cullen knew he meant “forever.”

“I had wondered, you never seem terribly busy,” he demurred, digging for more information.

Samson shrugged. “Corypheus’ plans have lots of moving parts. I’m his general, I’m involved with many of them.”

“Yes, I imagine destroying the world is not an easy task.” He received a flick on his nose for his sarcasm, as though he were a mabari pup. “I won’t stop, I hope you realize that. I’ll continue on with the Inquisition. I’ll fight you if I have to.”

He was gifted another shrug, Samson’s smirk not faltering. “You’ve always been a stubborn thing, I wasn’t expecting less. It will make it sweeter, when you come to me.”

“If you mean to dangle the red over--”

“Cullen,” Samson interrupted, all levity gone, “you know I would never do that. I figure they’ve collected enough for samples anyway, but I won’t starve you.”

That was, Cullen supposed, most likely the truth. That also didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it as some sort of temptation or bait.

He did not get anymore concrete information out of Samson that night, but he was distracted. The next morning, he did not hesitate to take his dose, barely glancing at himself after in the mirror he now kept in a desk drawer. Everything felt right, like this was how he was always meant to be.

As the weeks went on, the dreams continued, as did the deliveries of red lyium to his person. Dagna continued to monitor him, taking part in his attempts of burning away excess red through Templar-like abilities. He knew he was not the only one taking it in Skyhold, but when he tried to tell Leliana, often something entirely different left his mouth or found its way onto parchment.

Cullen did not go out with their forces, unsure of how compromised he might be. The security issues at Skyhold and within their ranks offered excuse enough for their allies: that while others went out, Cullen was chosen to stay behind, as the person who had first discovered the issue and as a former Knight-Commander who was well-trained for stationary assignments.

The inactivity ate away at him, every report that came back making him second-guess what they were doing. When he heard of decisions made in the field he would have never allowed, tactics used he would have immediately discounted, and the losses they suffered because of them, he almost left the walls of Skyhold, red lyium be damned.

Yet, the dreams continued, Samson never leaving him be for a single night, and Cullen had to relent each time.

Someday, one way or another, the fighting would come to an end. It was a cold comfort that no matter which side might win, he would be safe.

Notes: Title from the Canticle of Silence (that Dissonant Verse that describes the Magisters Sidereal entering the Fade and stuff and is theorized to prophecy the current world events) So, I was always kind of disappointed they didn’t lean more into the blight aspects of red lyium. They did some of the body horror, but at the end of the day it was mostly just physical changes and some violent episodes. This is sort of a mix of early thoughts I had when red lyrium was first revealed and thoughts I had while playing through DAI the first time before we ended up with the blah conclusion to the Red Templars.

Let me tell you how pissed off I am that this is the Dragon Age fic I finished. I've got like ten others half-started that I like way more lol I might post up the pieces of those, though, and see if anyone thinks I should continue any.

[skyhavens]

What began as a personal project of mine has spiraled into something way bigger and way more intense than I anticipated, so I figured I might offer it up to the Dragon Age fandom at large in case there was any interest in participating!

So, here's my idea for #VEILGUARD30:

Starting on October 1st and going day-by-day until right before Veilguard's launch on the 31st, this little event will begin! Whether you're inspired to write Dragon Age fic before the game's release or interested in developing your Rook, you're more than welcome to participate! And don't feel pressured to post every single day if that day's prompt doesn't appeal to you — this is meant to be engaged with to inspire you rather than bully you into writing every single day in October.

I posted this early to give everyone a running start, if they intend to participate or fish for curiosity and interest otherwise!

All sixty prompts are written down beneath the cut.

GENERAL WRITING PROMPTS.

Joining. Armor. Vhenadahl. Deep Roads. Bards. Carta. Dragon. Sovereigns. Potions. Orlais. Harrowing. Romance. Andraste. Campfire. Vallaslin. Lowtown. Mabari. Close Call. Elfroot. Demon or Spirit. Qunari. Templar. Halamshiral. Blood Magic. The Inquisition. Darkspawn. Dalish. Red Lyrium. Dreadwolf. The Veilguard.

ROOK DEVELOPMENT PROMPTS.

Name. Age. Race. Background. Class / Spec. Gender. Sexuality. Parentage. Siblings. Early Childhood. Adolescence. First Love. First Hate. Favorites. Injuries / Scars. Distinguishing Features Voice Type. Vices. Virtues. Homeland. Height / Build. Hair / Eye color. Personality. Aspirations. Fears. Hobbies. Views on Magic. Views on Elves.. Views on the Veilguard. Views on Solas.

[cullenssweatyballsakk]

I love angst

Cullens nightmares after meeting mage inky are mostly just nightmares of them. Every night, a new torturous dream.

An accident death. Lavellan becoming possessed and Cullen having to put them down.

And worst of all, Cullen himself putting the tranquil brand to the fire. He can see it heating up, the chantry's symbol becoming hot with Andraste's holy flame. Meredith watched from the corner approvingly.

A voice he swears he's heard before begs and pleads to spare her. Her voice is so pleasant to his ears, angelic like that of a spirit of faith, even though it begs and screams for mercy.

The brand is red now, glowing. He removes it from the ceremonial fire, pressing it into the Lyrium and steps towards her. His armor feels like solid stone, threatening to drag him directly into the fade.

The pleads get louder and louder, tears and emotions coming that she'll never feel again.

Other faceless Templars watch, their heads bent in prayer as they recite the Chant. He lines the brand up with her forehead, noting the elegant Vallaslin that would inevitably be ruined and marred by the brand.

She feels the heat, and screams as it's pressed to her head. Steam rises as her skin burns into the Eye.

He feels her magic seep from her. Her eyes go blank, all of her memories, her laughter, her smile, her anger and sadness, everything that made her HER leaving. Her screaming mouth slowly closes, the lack of screaming louder than any noise.

He presses the iron deeper, and whatever fear and dread that left her has made it's home in him now.

The iron clangs to the floor, and another Templar presses an elfroot extract drenched cloth to her forehead to prevent infection.

Cullen falls to his knees, his head in his hands. He looks up understanding what he's done, even when the Templars around him clap, Meredith included.

Why are they proud? He felt like he'd committed an unholy act, a sin no amount of repentance could forgive. He DID commit a sin in his eyes.

He looks up at her, his gauntleted hands holding hers. She looks down at him, her eyes devoid of life. She lived, but she wasn't alive.

"Knight-Captain." She says, her voice monotone. She was gone. She was Tranquil, nothing more than a body without a soul. A form of accepted necromancy in his eyes. The dead stood before him, never having died, but no longer LIVING.

Then the morning comes, the gaping hole in his roof casting a ray of sunlight on his sweat-slicked body. His chest rising and falling rapidly. His lungs required more air than they could take, and he tried to suck it all in, like a fish flipping helplessly on the docks.

He looked down, a hand across his chest and a head of dark brown locs splayed on his chest. He quickly brushed a few dreadlocks from her forehead, and saw nothing but the usual Vallaslin that decorated the dark skin of her forehead.

His movement woke her up, and she began to stir. She looks up at him, her dark brown eyes half-lidded. She rubs the sleep from her eyes, and sits up, the sheets dropping to reveal her naked form.

"Cullen? Are you alright?" She says, the tone of her voice soft.

She was alright, she was here. Alive. Living.

He breathed a sigh of relief, looking at her.

"No." He responds.

"Tell me about it Vhenan." She says, looking at him, the love in her eyes like a delicate blanket for his fears.

Lol I love angst cause it's so

Emotional

This really isn't a fic or a story, just me writing a headcanon which turned into a little blurb.

[teecupangel]

I have been violently gripped with the idea of a CODxAC Crossover, where Ghost and the 141 stumbling across an Isu facility. They spread out to search the ruins and Ghost ends up in a vast open room containing pods. There are hundreds of them in neat rows, but only one seem to contain something. Infant twins bearing the numbers 16 and 17 on their right and left shoulder respectively. On the side of the pod there is some text carved into the metal itself. '16=Clay 17=Desmond. TRUST ONLY 141'. Reading it gives Ghost a deep chill. Before he can think further on it, the pod starts to empty and open. The kids open their eyes and stare at him with eyes he swears glow, but in a blink it's gone. Must have been his imagination. The place suddenly rumbles and his radio comes to life.

"Ghost, get out of there! Think we might have activated a self destruct sequence!"

Before he can think too hard about it, Ghost grabs the kids and starts running while chunks of the ceiling falls down around him. Strangely enough the kids don't make any noise at the rough treatment or the violent shaking and noise.

---------

So yeah, thanks to Saberamane, i have gotten into reading CoD fanfics. XD I remembered your fic on it and then i was just violently gripped with the image of a baby Desmond reaching his little hands up at Ghost and when he holds Desmond up to his face, the baby just places his hands on the mask and stares at it while smiling. Anytime anyone, besides 141, tries to take Desmond or Clay they start to fuss and/or scream bloody murder, so the gangs kinda stuck baby sitting. Well, more like Ghost with Soap's help. Price is busy trying to figure out why the General(idk enough about the lore, so unnamed General it is XD) is really interested in taking the kids. They lied about them being found inside the pods and said they found the dead body of a woman with the kids, so the interest in them is strange. Plus the ominous message written in the pod seems important. Ghost hates him, gets a strange sense of... Red??? from him.

So yeah, another hyperfixation it is. XD

If this is the reboot, he started as Lieutenant General and ends up as a General. In the OG though, Shepherd was Lieutenant General until his death.

We can set it up that Desmond and Clay are testtube babies Elijah created but Abstergo was hot on his tail so he ‘tipped off’ 141 of the location and lying of its connection to a secret terrorist organization.

Well…

It wasn’t necessary a lie because 141 is trying to find the Brotherhood. In the eyes of the world, the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization and 141 is tasked with finding their operations and stopping them.

In this one, Shepherd could either be a Templar, an ally of the Templar or (use the setup of The Shadow’s Endgame) a disillusioned Assassin gone rogue.

He doesn’t immediately clocked the babies Ghost took in as Desmond and Clay. Hell, Ghost knows well enough not to officially call them Desmond and Clay, instead going nicknames like ‘D’ and ‘C’. Soap and Gaz had been calling them different names to try and find out their actual names and they haven’t hit any jackpot yet.

Shepherd is interested in taking in the kids because he learned that the facility they attacked (which was nearby the supposed village that got wiped out during the operation) was Elijah’s secret lab.

Although they all believe Elijah to be dead so the place is actually for an unknown ‘third party’.

Abstergo believed that person is the current Sage, having awakened Aita’s memories after Elijah’s death.

So the question becomes why did Elijah decide to entrust Desmond and Clay to 141?

Because he was planning to infiltrate 141 later on.

As the new recruit of 141: Gary "Roach" Sanderson

[volkoss]

Fic: Dissonance (Ch. 1 - Upbringing)

A series of non-linear vignettes exploring the life of Meredith Stannard. Written for @14dayscirclemages.

CHAPTER 1: UPBRINGING | MEREDITH & AMELIA | WORDS: 700 | RATED: T Notes: takes place in the same continuity as the rest of Symbiotes, but prior knowledge is not required for this chapter. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (AO3 LINK)

Sometimes, Meredith dreams about her childhood. Dreams about her sister, before she had become the Thing.

It had been a simpler time, before everything had gone to shit. A time before the Kirkwall docks where her father once worked had become shrouded in the shadow of the Gallows, even though logic dictated the ancient Tevinter fortress had stood for centuries, and would stand for ages more.

No. In the old dreams, Meredith can only remember the sun. The perfect summer days. The deceptively still surface of the Waking Sea reflecting the cloudless blue skies above their heads. Hers, and Amelia’s. Bare legs dangling into the water to keep cool in the heat. Amelia, jerking into Meredith’s side swearing an eel had slithered past. Meredith, clutching at her big sister’s side to keep her steady. 

It was only seaweed. Only ever seaweed.

On a good day, they’d have coppers enough to split a whole fish between them for lunch, a big juicy fat one at that. They’d cook it on a stick over one of the communal firepits, Amelia glancing around nervously worried the neighbourhood boys would pick a fight with them again and Meredith focused on her task, confident in the knowledge they wouldn’t.

Meredith had known, once upon a time, that their father had been disappointed their mother had borne him a second daughter. But it didn’t matter so much these days, not now she’d proven to him she could do everything a boy could, could do it even better.

She still remembers the first time she’d come home bloodied and bedraggled after breaking a bully’s nose for making fun of her sister. She’d expected to get a hiding but Dad had only laughed, ruffling her matted hair.

Maker’s breath, he’d said, I’ve created a monster. And yet upon noticing her swollen thumb, he’d still taught her how to throw a proper punch. For next time. It had been in that moment Meredith had been convinced of her purpose in life, her reason for being: she had been brought into this world to protect her sister, and she would never ever give up, so long as she lived.

And it had all been going so swimmingly, until Amelia’s magic had manifested. Until the already shy and reticent Amelia withdrew so deep inside her shell she had turned herself inside out instead—

—her dreaming mind refuses to dwell on what had happened after, tonight. Tonight, it still has hope. A false belief there is a chance. Something, anything, that she can do to change what actually happened.

She is chasing her sister through the winding streets of Lowtown, bare feet kicking up clouds of dust as she runs. Amelia is out of sight, but only just. Like Meredith will turn the corner and see her standing there, close enough to jab a finger in the dimple of her smile.

Meredith is not sure any of this ever actually happened.

However, what she is certain of is this: that Amelia has always been just out of her grasp. That the templars always reached her sister first. That every day, she wakes up into a nightmare.

She is sticking to her nightclothes, her sheets, perspiration rolling off her in waves. It’s summer in Kirkwall, but she is no longer eight years old, but forty-two. It’s early still, sun yet to break the sky, but she can make out the shape of the objects in her bedchamber in the red glow of her greatsword, never too far from hand.

Do you still believe you can change things? Orsino had once asked her many moons ago, and back then, she had demurred. Had told him she didn’t know. But now, as she pushes herself upright and hums the red lyrium’s haunting song under her breath, she feels it in her bones.

Certainty.

As good a name for a sword as any.

The Thing watches her out of the corner of her eye. You promised, it says. Once upon a time, Meredith had been adamant that the Thing was not her sister. These days, she sees little utility in such arbitrarily drawn lines. 

Yes, she whispers into the empty room. I did.

[sleepyfan-blog]

Floating

Author’s Note: this is the next fic in Cedric’s Adventures in the Astartes Husbandry AU! This was inspired by a chat I had with @kit-williams First. Previous. Next. 

Tagged: @egrets-not-regrets @kit-williams @bleedingichorhearts @i-am-a-dragon34 @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan

Warnings: consensual blood drinking, sub-drop, aftercare, please ask me to tag something if it bothers you/I missed something

Summary: Cedric heads to one of the training rooms to spar and encounters four very handsome Khornate Blood Angels.

Cedric made his way over to one of the training rooms. He was going to be working in the Astartes-run clinic again soon and had just been reminded about all of the rules he was supposed to follow. They emphasized verbalizing concerns that he had about a condition or an active issue that a chaos space marine had, rather than immediately escalating to physical force. Chaos marines who went to the clinic were already the sort to be more likely to cooperate with an Apothecary's orders or suggestions, as they were seeking out treatment of their own free will.

Cedric had also been interacting with a couple of Chaos Astartes and Renegade from time to time, during the time that he had been grounded from leaving the base. Primarily Apothecary Hura for Chaos Astartes, but occasionally others who were visiting the base as well. Cedric suspected that this had been done on purpose, so that he was less likely to be on the defensive when interacting with them. As for renegades… did Apothecary Zariel count? Claude was insistent that he was Teal, but the other was very good at pretending to be an Ultramarine Apothecary. 

He entered the sparring room, knowing that there were a handful of other Astartes in there already, but the room wasn't marked as do not disturb, and Cedric really wanted a spar. He nodded and waved in the direction where the other four Astartes were talking and stretching before moving to an open mat and getting limbered up.

The Apothecary hadn't registered their armor colors and heraldry until one of them stalked over to him with the lethal, languidly grace of an experienced Blood Angel. “Well, hello there, handsome~! Aren't you a treat?” 

Cedric looked up at the Blood Angel, mildly surprised at first, given that the other was probably a firstborn Astartes when he spotted the fell rune with a skull superimposed on top of it. The Khornate Blood Angel had Several scars across his face and neck, and his blood red hair was tied up in a sensible bun. He had wickedly long claws on his hands and -

Oh no. Cedric’s been staring too long without responding, hasn't he? The Black Templar took in a deep breath and managed out a “Hello sir.”

Another of the Khornate Blood Angels had come over, draping himself across Cedric's back, his blue-black eyes glittering with playful mischief. His breath was warm against Cedric's neck as he purred “Any particular reason you came into this room? You're pretty big, for a son of Dorn. And he called you sir, Samos! That's adorable.”

Cedric registered the other's warmth against his back and felt his ears go red. He ducked his head a little, having difficulties maintaining eye contact with any of them. “Should … Should I call you something else? I default to calling Astartes I don't know sir.”

“Aww, sir is fine. My name is Arkhos if you’d like to use it. You're out of your armor in a sparring room… What plans did you have coming in here with us, gorgeous?” Arkhos rumbled, grinning. He had deep brown eyes. His hair was very curly and some of it was in braids.

“... I was brought to Ancient Terra without my armor or weapons. I wanted to spar…? If you'd rather I leave, I will…” Cedric asked, feeling distinctly surrounded and very much unsure how to proceed. He didn't think that they were trying to threaten him… In fact, the way that they were crowding him reminded him of when Jophiel and his fellow Primaris Blood Angels would circle someone when they were Hungry. 

“We'd be delighted to spar with you, if you like. Though we have a different sort of physical activity in mind, if you're amenable, gorgeous.” Samos purred, one of his hands coming up to cup Cedric's cheeks.

His touch was light and warm. Cedric blinked as he found himself leaning into the other's touch. He and his fellow Primaris Marines were fairly tactile with each other, but Ramiel had been taken on some kind of Chaplain retreat-training thing by Chaplain Feldarim and wouldn't be back for weeks, Jophiel was being trained by older Blood Angel Librarians and was too busy to do more than say hello in the early mornings or late in the evening before passing out on his cot. Catius was on a training mission with a bunch of firstborn Ultramarine Scouts, and Claude had been scruffed by a terran firstborn Night Lord and hauled off for Proper Socialization and training to deal with the voices. 

He was glad that his brothers were getting the support they needed, but their absence had caused him to feel lonely. Pyrus and his brothers had wandered off with the Forgemaster they were led by. Brother Roland and his bonded wife were visiting her family in a different area of the nation-state than they usually resided in.  Cedric hadn't realized that he was feeling touch-starved until this Khornate Blood Angel decided to touch him. “What do you mean?” Cedric asked curiously. Did they want to go for a run? The nearby forest had been lovely, the handful of times he'd been in it.

Samos blinked a couple of times, before grinning again, a hint of fangs “Ah, that's fair. Sons of Dorn tend to prefer direct communication. We are Hungry, but not for rations. Are you willing to feed us?”

“I'd be honored to. Where do you prefer to feed from?” Cedric asked. Some Blood Angels had preferences, others did not. “Do you prefer to feed standing or sitting?” Considering the fact that there were four of them, he should probably be sitting at least… And maybe a vox message to a fellow Apothecary, in case these Blood Angels weren't able to control their Thirst and tried to take more than he was willing to take.

Samos grinned, grabbing one of Cedric's hands and pressing a series of kisses to his fingertips before carefully turning his hand over and pressing a kiss to the pulse point on his wrist. His lips brushed over Cedric's skin as he spoke “I enjoy drinking from the wrist, among other places, gorgeous.” With that, he kissed Cedric’s pulsepoint at the wrist before sinking his fangs into his skin.

Cedric grunted a little, having braced for the expected pain, having subtly shifted his stance so that if one of the Blood Angels got a little too eager in feeding him, he would fall backwards, which would hurt less than going splat on his face from blood loss. 

Samos drank from his wrist for several moments before withdrawing, licking the wounds he made on his wrist. “You are a delicious treat, gorgeous~!” The other's crimson eyes were hypnotizing.

Cedric felt his ears burn and he ducked his head as he realized that he'd been captivated by the Khornate Blood Angel's eyes for far too long. He manages out a mostly not-squeaky “Thank you.” 

“No, thank you. Feel up to feeding my brothers, handsome?” Samos purred, still holding one of Cedric's hands, his fingers sliding up his arm and tilted his chin so he can't help but to look at him directly. “No need to hide those pretty blue eyes from us.”

Arkhos rumbled “You have some… Interesting scars over your neck and wrist pulse points. Have you been stationed with Blood Angels before? They look familiar. This looks like an over-eager Scout scar.” He lightly tapped a scar that Alethiel had given him before either of them had earned names. 

He had no desire to explain how Primaris training had worked under the supervision of the Mechanicus, so he went with “For a time I was with a couple of squads of aspirant-aged Blood Angels. Our trainers used sanguine rations to try and get them to behave better and would take them away if they were deemed to be too unruly… But denying Blood Angels their liquid rations is a very, very bad idea, so I offered to feed them as much as I could spare. As an Apothecary, some of my training is less physically taxing… Though there was the occasional … Mishap.”

"... While I would like to have a word with whoever those fool trainers were who thought that with holding multiple Blood Angel Scouts' liquid rations in order to punish them was a good idea, the fact that you circumvented the trainers and fed who you could was a very generous and bold thing of you, Cedric. If a little dangerous, as the young ones don't always know when to pull back." One of the two Khornate Blood Angels whose names he did not know and hadn't spoken until now rumbled. 

Cedric shrugged his shoulders a little "I wasn't about to let my fellow marines be potentially driven to madness and being culled because their trainers weren't Blood Angels." The Iron Hands had very... Specific ideas on how training should go and applied it to every primaris marine from each of the geneseed lines they were put in charge of. The beliefs that the flesh was weak, and that overcoming one's fleshy weaknesses was a mark of strength meant that they targeted those who had... Unusual bodily urges disproportionately. It was part of his duties as an apothecary to tend to his fellow marines. If that meant flaunting the orders of a superior officer who wasn't taking into consideration the needs and limitations of the marines under Cedric's care... Well, that was something that the young Black Templar had swiftly learned how to handle. Not that he had advertised such a thing, nor verbalized it allowed knowing that he and those whom he had fed in such a way would be terribly punished.

"... Culling?" The final Khornate Blood Angel rumbled, grabbing his wrist that Arkhos wasn't holding, running his fingers up and down Cedric's forearm.

Cedric wasn't entirely able to stop the shiver of... Something that ran down his spine at the other's touch, fighting off the desire to lean further into their touches. They were hungry and he was feeding them. This was not time to ask for physical touch. His possible touch-starvation need not be tended to, when they were Thirsty and in need of sustenance. "Killing aspirants or Scouts who were deemed to be failures, predisposed to falling to Chaos or were too willful by the measurement of the Mechanicus."

"Why would the machine-worshippers be involved in the training of Blood Angel - or Imperial Fist as you're a son of Dorn - aspirants... Like ever?" Samos asked, a small frown creasing the brow of his handsome face as he pressed a kiss to the palm of Cedric's hand.

He could feel his ears burning and it took Cedric several seconds to formulate a response "Some of the... The geneseed tithe that all chapters of the Adeptus Astartes are required to send back to Mars are being used to create Astartes in the gene labs of the Mechanicus. I am the result of those experiments, among others." 

"... Bastards. Of course they aren't just testing and storing the geneseed. I'm Leviath, by the way. Thank you for the meal, handsome." Leviath, who was holding Cedric's other hand growled before sinking his fangs into his wrist.

Cedric grunted a little as the sting of pain and pleasure washed through him, and he gritted his teeth a little, willing away any... Embarrassing reactions, though he couldn't help the gasp that left him as Arkhos bit into his neck, fangs sliding in.

Samos rubbed the back of his palm, a small grin on his face as he murmured "Easy, handsome. No need to hide your reactions from us. You're allowed to react how you please, gorgeous."

Warmth flooded Cedric's cheeks as the fourth Blood Angel knelt down and rolled up one leg of the exercise shorts that he had been wearing, nuzzling his thigh for a moment and purring "I'm Belial, and I thank you for the meal." Before kissing his inner thigh and sinking his fangs into Cedric.

If he wasn't being held up by Arkhos and Belial, whose hands gripped his knees as the other drank, Cedric would have buckled to the floor as he moaned, feeling the treacherous flush of his ears and face spread down his neck and chest.

He was starting to feel lightheaded and the mix of pain and pleasure from the four of them feeding on him was a heady high that the young apothecary was quickly becoming overwhelmed with. His knees shook and wouldn've buckled if he weren't being held up.

Samos was the first to stop feeding and whistled, sharp and piercing. "That's enough."

"Aww, but he's so tasty..." Belial purred, a hint of fangs against Cedric's thigh as he lapped up the blood oozing from the wounds he'd inflicted. "And he hasn't asked us to stop. You're still holding strong for us, aren't you?"

"I... Uhm... Uh..." Cedric managed out, unable to form anything coherent. He was feeling floaty and it was nice not to think or worry... To be of service to these strikingly handsome Cousins "Uhh?" His knees wobbled dangerously when Belial let go briefly.

"Woah, there, handsome. Let's get you sitting down, nice and easy." Samos ordered, voice firm as Leviath and Arkhos stopped feeding on him, clearly reluctantly. 

"You are quite the treat. Was one of the things those machine-humping corpse-worshippers do was to make you extra-tasty? I'm definitely jealous of the younger Brothers who fed on you often enough to leave scars." Arkhos murmured, his voice lilting in the way that Jophiel got when he was teasing and playful. 

"I dunno sir... Maybe?" Cedric managed to say. Part of him wanted to just slur out the words, but that would mean that they would Stop and probably Leave and he didn't want to be all alone. He'd let them do anything, so long as he wasn't left all by himself. 

"... Did we take too much blood from him? Why is he-" Arkhos asked, sounding worried.

A low, anxious sound left Cedric. "I'm fine, really, sir! You don't need to worry about me. I'm fine. I'm fine!" He'd been ordered to Sit, so he couldn't stand to show he was fine without disobeying orders and - what should he do? Another low whine left him. 

"I've seen this occasionally, in Imperial Fists and other Sons of Dorn. He's -" Samos murmured, before switching to a language that the young Apothecary couldn't understand. 

Cedric watched his hand-movements with intense focus, and couldn't help but flinch when the firstborn marine gestured sharply in his direction.

He flinched again when Belial suddenly reached out to grab at him before freezing. "Why did you flinch, handsome?" He asked, voice warm and gentle but that was clearly a trap.

Oh no. He was going to be punished again. He's messed up. He shouldn't have flinched. He shouldn't have flinched. But it wasn't as if Cedric had done it on purpose, and he was learning that not all Firstborn marines could be trusted to be kind with their touches when it suited them. "S-Sorry sir. It won't happen again. I... I didn't mean to." Tears were blurring his vision and his breathing was hitching. He could feel his whole body shaking violently. Shit. He hadn't answered one of Sir's questions. "Firstborn marines can be... But not here. Not on Holy Terra." He was having difficulties speaking. He was supposed to be keeping secrets, and part of them was clinging to them fiercely. Even if a sir was asking him questions. Those questions conflicted with the Secrets he kept tight to his heart and mind. 

"Alright, no sudden movements. Do you want a couple of us to leave? Should we get someone who feels safer?" Samos asked, suddenly kneeling down in front of him. The Blood Angel was very handsome and close, but not Scary Close. 

"Please don't leave me alone, sir. I... I'm good. I'll be good... Just please tell me how, if I'm not being good..." Cedric pleaded, eyes wide and still full of treacherous tears.

"No, we wouldn't leave you all alone like this. That would be a cruelty beyond what any of us are willing to inflict. May I come closer, handsome? You're allowed to say no." Samos cooed. His worried frown looked so much like Jophi's whenever he said that Cedric had pushed himself too hard for too long. "Is there someone on base that Belial, Leviath or Arkhos could get, who would make you feel safer while you're like this?"

Cedric hesitated for a couple of moments before shaking his head "No sir. My... The others are all off-base. Training. Learning. They need to be off-base but I miss them so much... Please come closer, sir." Cedric responded, reaching out to Samos. by the Emperor he needed a hug right now. So, so badly. The idea of Captain Ash'val seeing him like this made the fluttery-bad feeling in his chest come back. Mostly because he was pretty sure the captain would blame the Blood Angels for him being Like This when he should have known better. Also, if either Big Brothers Roland or Arnault saw him like this there would be Chaos Blood Angel body parts everywhere and that would be a really big mess. Apothecary Zariel was Teal and Couldn't Be Trusted... and Apothecary Hura wasn't in this base. Pyrus is a lovely friend, but also Not In The Base and it would be... It wouldn't be right asking him to help Cedric when he was like this. the Salander didn't know. Most of them Didn't Know about this. His five brothers did, but that was because they'd snuggled him through this... Strange floatiness until it went away. Not that he usually felt this awful during the floatiness. 

Samos closed the distance between the two of them slowly, pulling Cedric into a hug, tucking the younger but larger Marine to his chest, making sure that he could hear the steady double-beat of his hearts. His grip was loose but comfortable. Light enough that Cedric knew that he could escape if he wanted to, but warm and tight enough to help make the Bad Feelings go away. Cedric closed his eyes as he counted the beating of the other's hearts, focusing on that.. And the feeling of a hand gently petting his head, fingers running through his short silvery hair. He knew that he was purring, but it felt nice, to be held and petted.

Arkhos asked, voice gentle "Do you have a room on base?"

"Yessir." Cedric responded promptly, still feeling floaty, but his chest didn't feel tight and fluttery anymore. 

"Would it help if one of us grabbed something from your room that brings you comfort? Or would you rather us stay out of that?" Arkhos continued.

Cedric pondered the question seriously for a little while before saying "Please get my weighted blanket." He tells the other which room is his and fumbles about in his pocket for the key, offering it to the Khornate Blood Angel. 

"Alright, I'll be back with it soon. You're doing very well, handsome." Arkhos praised, prompting a happy smile to appear on the Apothecary's face. 

~

Cedric didn't really notice time passing, as he cuddled into Samos, someone else still petting his hair, when Arkhos returned. He could tell by the sound of the other's hearts-beats and his footsteps as he entered the room. "I found the blanket, handsome. Someone made this with a great deal of care."

"M-hmm. S'a gift from Bruder Arnault's bonded. S'very comfy." Cedric answered, chirruping happily as his blanket was draped around him.

"... Would you want one of us to go get Brother Arnault, to help you?" Belial asked curiously. 

Cedric thought about it for maybe a second or two before shaking his head "No... I don' want him to kill you for... Me being floaty like this. He's... Very protective. And gonna be an Emperor's Champion after being sent back to... To the future. S' an honor to meet him."

"Empero... Ah. That explains the... Color scheme of your blanket and the big cross. You're a... Black Templar." There was an odd note in Leviath's voice as he said that.

Cedric cringed in Samos' arms, pulling the blanket over his head to hide. "Sorry..." He mumbled quietly.

"No, no... You haven't done anything wrong, handsome. I'm just a little surprised is all. Most of your brothers are very... Shouty and stabby, and you've been so lovely for us." Belial explained, a note of urgency but also reassurance in his voice as he spoke. 

Cedric grins from the safety of his blanket, still curled into Samos as he answered "That's true. And I can be stabby when I want to be..." Being wrapped up in the blanket while being held was starting to make Cedric sleepy. He knew that he should probably eat or drink something before he went to sleep, given that he fed four Blood Angels... But he felt so warm and safe... He yawned and closed his eyes, allowing his body to fully relax into the safe and secure hold of the Older Brother who was hugging him, sleep gently carrying him away.

[sxrensxngwrites]

Spirit Inquisitor Headcanons

This ask comes from an anonymous user who asks: "I was wondering if I could request the inner circle reaction towards finding out that their inquisitor is a spirit like Cole, like first meeting them and how'd they get along with them or how would they treat the Quizzy after finding out, maybe the inquisitor is a 'Hope' spirit since in lore it stated Hope and Faith are very rare spirits so maybe the Inquisitor was attracted to the real world due to the hope of both templar and mages in the conclave"

I absolutely ADORED this ask and had so much fun with it. I'm even entertained by the idea of an actual oneshot or fic... And for those of you that sent in other requests, I see them! Just getting to them slowly.

WARNINGS/TAGS: Inquisitor is referred to in the 3rd person with they/them pronouns as to keep it open for everyone, Hawke has a mention and uses she/her pronouns, There's a small mention on Anders and Justice/Vengence, most of this is sweet/fluffy in my opinion

The Inquisitor wasn’t always a spirit. In the grand scheme of things, the change has been fairly new–at least compared to Cole.

They went to the Conclave to watch the discussions between the mages and the templars. Unlike many others, they were hopeful for new beginnings and opportunities that would occur as a result. However, after the Conclave exploded, they were one of the many to be caught by the wreckage.

The Fade was already very thin at the site of the explosion, due to the nature of its cause. So, it’s not unreasonable for spirits to pass through. It’s not long before a spirit of Hope finds its way through one of the many rifts, it hopeful of the same thing that the Inquisitor wanted. Having similar wants, the spirit of Hope merges with the body of the would-be Inquisitor.

When they awake, they have no recollection of who they were before—only filled with a strange sense of levity despite the awful situation they’re in. They’re a bit uncoordinated, almost like a large child that isn’t quite sure what they’re supposed to do just yet. However, after the journey to the Breach alongside Cassandra, they become more in tune with the skills of who they used to be. 

In the beginning everyone is very quick to dismiss the strange behavior of the Inquisitor, chalking it up to them being shaken up from the Breach or some sort of residual magic left within them. However, as time goes on and they don’t seem to be recovering any memories, suspicions begin to arise. However, they’re such a sweet and optimistic soul, dedicated to leading the cause, that no one can stay put-off by them.

When Cole appears, there’s an immediate connection. The two are so similar it’s almost eerie. Neither seems to know exactly what they are, but they know that they are like each other. Hope and Compassion easily find a place alongside each other, and this uncanny similarity is what begins to raise Cassandra’s red flags—that it’s not just amnesia or a strange personality trait of the Inquisitor’s.

At Skyhold, the implications become far more severe. When the Inquisitor’s family writes letters and sends for them, they simply tell Josephine that they’re not quite sure who those people are or what they want. Their mother only says that the Inquisitor has the face and name of their child, but there’s a strange absence of everything else. 

It’s Hawke who points it out to Varric. From the moment she meets the Inquisitor she can identify what’s wrong. At first she could never tell when Anders was truly Anders or when Justice and Vengeance had seeped into his mind, but by this point it’s burned enough into her mind that she can see it in the Inquisitor. Of course, it’s different here: whoever the Inquisitor was before, they’re very much dead—Hope now piloting the body. Hawke is relieved that they’re not fighting over control on the inside; that has been Anders’ demise after all. Varric doesn’t want to admit the similarities, too afraid to face the same situation again.

When it becomes clear that the Inquisitor is dead and they’re actually a spirit of hope, reactions are mixed among the Inner Circle. 

Cassandra is very off-put initially. The concept scares her a great deal, but she eventually comes to terms with it. After all, she had begun to respect the Inquisitor for their devotion to the future. That respect couldn’t disappear at the mention of a spirit. The same could be said of Blackwall. Leliana and Josephine are also puzzled, but I think they’re both more open to it than Cassandra.

Cullen is admittedly very afraid. He’s still apprehensive of anything spirit-related since that night at the Circle Tower. However, he is won over by seeing the caring nature of the Inquisitor—and their hope for him on his journey to wellness.

Vivienne reacts very similarly to how she reacts to Cole. She’s ready to pull her support of the Inquisition immediately, but there is something about the Inquisitor that’s very endearing to her. I think their devotion to help her, even after she treated them so rudely, was enough to get her to stay.

The Inquisitor being a spirit makes no difference to Sera, Dorian, or The Iron Bull. They’ve certainly seen or heard of stranger things.

The relationship the Inquisitor has with Solas is very deep and profound. He seems to understand what’s happened almost immediately, and encourages the Inquisitor to touch into their spirit-side. Of course, he educates them on their origins and the Fade. They even journey there together many times.

Varric is still haunted by the image of Anders, so he’s hesitant to fall back into their friendship. However, after some encouragement from Hawke, he does his best to continue interacting with the Inquisitor again. It’s then that Varric realizes that he never knew who came before, but he does very much know he’s talking to in that moment—his friend, the Inquisitor.

And of course, Cole and the Inquisitor are virtually inseparable. They share such a strange coincidence, that it’s only natural they get along so well. They each understand the other and their own personal confusions, providing support for the other as they battle with the question of Who am I? 

It takes a while for everyone to get used to saying it out loud: that whoever the Inquisitor used to be was actually dead a long time ago and that they had been inhabited by a spirit for as long as they had known them. But after they say it out loud, they realize it doesn’t make too much of a difference. Just as Varric realizes, everyone else does too; Their friend isn’t the body, but the Hope inhabiting it.

[linka-from-captain-planet]

WIP I'll Probably Never Finish Wednesday

sometime in October, I posted a list of kinktober concepts I'd write if my brain weren't soup. I picked at a couple here and there, but none really went anywhere except "Neve and Rana once got sex pollened while working a case together and that's why they act so weird about each other." I wrote the fun part (the lead-up and Neve in full ಠ_ಠ dying mad mode over her lack of control over the situation) and don't feel like writing the boring part (actually banging) or adapting it to suit canon better (re: Brom and such; I wrote most of this pre-release) but I had fun writing it, so I'm posting what I have for funsies

Fun fact: one of Neve's codex entries about the wisps mentions they avoid her notes on "the Opal Rose case" for an unknown reason and I thought that sounded juicy, so I stole it for this fic

Somehow this managed to be a rambling and barely edited 2800 words and I would issue a warning about dubious consent because of the nature of the trope and Neve finding the arousal variably unwelcome, but there is no sex below the cut

The Opal Rose. Western fringe between Docktown and the lower market district. Well past midnight.

The reputation is good enough—but also bad enough that the rumors already seemed credible even before she began her investigation and found a few people willing to speak up. 

Unusually urgent arousal. Erratic behavior. Reckless spending, of course, in desperation to scratch the itch. Someone—something—has Docktown bewitched, and Neve is no prude, but who or whatever is taking advantage of her neighbors won’t get away with it.

Of course, she’s too well-recognized as a gumshoe to simply waltz in the front door; she wouldn’t make it past the bar before the perp wiped all the evidence. Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to track down a disgruntled former employee, who was more than happy to lead them to the back entrance of a back entrance in exchange for a little coin. 

Them, being herself and Templar Rana Savas.

She doesn’t quite buy that this place is harboring a desire demon, as the most dramatic version of the rumor holds… but she doesn’t quite not buy it, and in that case, it’d be risky for anyone to try and face it alone, let alone a mage. She needed backup, someone she could trust—and specifically, someone she could trust possessed enough self-control to resist enthrallment. 

Tightly wound as she is, as contained and orderly as her pristine braid, Rana fit the bill.

Rana left her heavy Templar plate in the barracks and instead donned her lighter—quieter—leather set; fortunately so, as the back passage of this place is so tight that her well-built shoulders already nearly scrape the walls, and she has to hold onto her sword to keep it from bouncing off her shapely ass and clattering against—

Neve stops short, abruptly aware of a sweet, heady humidity and an unnatural warmth wafting down the corridor.

Magic.

Suddenly close enough for Neve to smell the beeswax and mint of her lip balm, Rana leans in and whispers, “What’s wrong?” In the low red lamplight, the full apples of her cheeks are dusted in a far-too-pretty faux flush, and her lips look plump and rosy, as if freshly bitten and sucked by an eager lover.

Tearing herself away, Neve signals for Rana to be quiet so she can re-focus. With each step she guides them closer to the other end, the hallway only grows warmer and the air within it, more charged.

And, with each step, a small shock reverberates up Neve’s legs and settles between them, setting her lightly abuzz and her teeth on edge.

There have been few times in her life when Neve really resented being a mage, but she’ll surely chalk this up as one before it’s all over. Being attuned to the subtle thrum of magic in the air means she can feel it thrumming, all too well, while Rana remains oblivious and collected just an arm’s length away.

If there’s any luck left in her, they’ll finish soon. 

With the investigation. With luck, they’ll be finished soon, with the investigation.

Teeth grit, Neve continues to lead them forward. It’s hardly a minute before they come to a triple-padlocked door, but by the time they reach it, Neve is almost panting and definitely sweating underneath her ascot and coat.

Whatever this is, whatever’s doing this to her—it’s behind that door.

She nods at Rana, who in turn touches her gently on the waist—despite herself, Neve’s skin screams for the contact even through her thick layers—and guides her aside. She listens through the door for a few moments, then fishes a Templar skeleton key from her pocket. Enchanted to open any lock in Minrathous so long as it’s pursuant to orders, it makes quick work of it.

Rana then wraps one long-fingered, dextrous hand around the doorhandle, and the other around the hilt of her sword; her strong shoulder, she braces against the door, preparing to break through if need be. Neve blinks and readies her staff as well as she can with shaking fingers. But when the door swings in, the hardly-more-than-a-closet room is empty save for a workbench laden with jars, boxes, scales, and distillery equipment.

Alchemy, then.

“Love potions” may be the stuff of fairytale, but aphrodisiacs? Feel-good stuff that keeps the hips pumping and the inhibitions lowered far longer than the flesh—and purse—would ordinarily permit? Certainly not unheard of, and needless to say, an illegal use of magic. Neve knows no such brew offhand, but a handy sheet of paper pinned to the wall illuminates the simplicity of the scheme: the active ingredient is some kind of pollen that can be distilled into a spray. Spritz a bit into a room before the client enters, and it’s practically money in a bottle.

Neve would have preferred the demon. Now they’ll have to track down the suppliers, too.

At least they’ll probably be done here soon, and she’ll be able to abscond to her apartment and, well, blow off some steam.

Sighing, Neve steels her nerves and begins to look for a ledger while Rana barricades the door behind them.

The small room is stuffy and over-warm, far worse than the hallway with its proximity to the cookstation and lack of airflow. Dried bits of caked-on gunk on the workbench reveal the cook to be an amateur or at least a slob, and Neve internally curses their clumsy hand. Within minutes, her clothing comes to feel far too heavy and her skin, far too tight; she longs desperately to shed at least her outer layer and accessories, but she has more than a hunch that if she were to start to undress, it’d be difficult to stop at just one layer.

She resents Rana's freedom from the effect again; finished with the door, she joins Neve at the bench completely unawares, yet her close presence makes the effect even more pronounced. She reaches to examine the supplies, and Neve shivers and curses under her breath as a crystal-clear image of those sword-callused but meticulously-manicured hands gliding over her slick skin flashes across her mind’s eye.

It’s not—entirely new. It’s not that Rana isn’t attractive and Neve has never idly entertained the thought of them, well. But—she shakes her head, turning away, but catches another glimpse of Rana in the reflection of a glass flask, and her whole body shudders—there’s a big difference between checking someone out from time to time, and imagining one of their strong hands holding her down—she’d play at resisting, of course, but Rana is simply so much stronger—while the other—

As if on cue, Rana pulls a fist-sized drawstring pouch from a small chest and rolls it between her hands, hefting its fullness curiously before slipping two fingers into its tight velvet opening, stretching it wide open and—

Far too late, the alchemical symbol for volatile stamped all over the pouch registers through the haze in Neve’s mind. She doesn’t even have time to cover her mouth and nose before Rana, recoiling from the puff of fine pollen that surges out of the pouch and hits her in the face, drops it onto the bench with an ominous thunk and a white-hot, shimmering cloud overtakes the small room.

The wash of it is so intense that Neve reflexively touches her eyebrows and lashes to make sure they hadn’t been burnt off; to her relief, they’re intact, as is her skin even though it feels like it’s prickling with heat like a sunburn. 

But the heat is internal, and Neve swiftly realizes that she’s flushing intensely, and then the effects she’d already been bothered by slam over her like a wave: her skin tingles, her stomach flutters, her skin blooms over with sweat, her heart races…

And a pang of desire hits her like a brick to the gut, so hard it staggers her. 

She scrambles to catch the edge of the workbench to keep from crumpling to the floor, but a jittering hand grabs her by the elbow and steadies her first. Even through layers of leather and silk, the touch is searing; and even though it’s hardly an erogenous zone, the sheer pleasure of being touched at all when she needs so badly makes a humiliating squeak of a moan tumble through her lips before Neve can clap a hand over her mouth and stifle it.

Rana snatches her own hand back like she’d been bitten, the pupils of her wide eyes dilating so fast that they turn her cool green irises nearly black. She may not be brushed up on her alchemical symbols, but she at least seems to understand what she’s done; despite her deep flush—real this time, not a trick of light—she looks absolutely ashen, and scrambles away into the corner farthest as possible from Neve to hastily blow her nose into her sleeve and spit on the floor. 

That’s how Neve knows this job has really, truly gone shit-sideways. In anything even close to resembling her right mind, Templar Rana Savas would absolutely never. 

“It’s well into your system already, I’m afraid,” Neve warns through grit teeth, her grip on the bench white-knuckled. Nothing she’d gleaned from perusing the documentation strewn about indicates this stuff is harmful—nor would it make sense to maim the clientele, anyway—but, in its concentrated and unprocessed state… this experience is guaranteed to be unpleasant, to put it delicately, but precisely how or how much remains to be seen.

“Well, what else can we do?” Rana snaps over her shoulder, and Neve shudders as one explicit, tantalizing answer flashes across her mind immediately.

She should not entertain the thought—will only make it worse, surely—but. Standing just beyond her reach, Rana’s breathing is labored, rushing in and out of Neve’s ears just as it does her lungs, stretching her stiff leather jacket tight across her fit back. Neve can imagine the moment when even this trivial restriction becomes overwhelming, and could hardly blame Rana for clawing at it, her deft fingers working feverishly to free herself. Neve can’t actually see them with Rana’s back turned, but she can imagine them, and in turn, her cunt clenches so hard around nothing—empty, excruciating nothing—that it honest-to-the-Maker hurts.

It properly knocks the wind out of her, and for that Neve’s actually grateful, because it keeps her from even the remote possibility of opening her mouth to suggest…

Distress and arousal alike flood her system, raising her heart rate to a sickly, shallow race and filling her mind with static. With her every nerve peeled raw and her every sense aflame, Neve couldn’t miss the discontent rumble from the other side of the room, despite Rana’s apparent attempt to shrink enough to disappear. Neve risks the glance, and finds Rana nearly doubled-over, arms wrapped tightly around herself, her red face pressed against the cool block walls. Her attempts to cool off by removing her jacket, obviously, failed; she’s already sweated through her linen undershirt such that it clings to the muscles underneath and Neve can watch them roll, one by one, with her every breath and fidget.

Unable to bear it any longer—and besides, Rana started it (both, this mess—why did she have to fondle the damn bag!—and the undressing)—Neve finally lets herself whip off her fascinator, ascot, and leather gauntlets. Her overcoat, she wrenches open with such clumsy urgency that one of its studded buttons pops off and plinks across the floor, a tiny tinny sound that may as well have been a gaatlok explosion to her harried senses.

Rana’s nerves must be fried, too, or at least this situation hasn’t dampened her usual level of vigilance; she turns around briskly at the clatter, hand hovering over her sword, in just enough time to watch Neve also yank open her high collar and top buttons, exposing the slick column of her throat, the notch of her collarbone, and the hint of the swell of her breasts clinging to the plane of her chest.

Her stare is so intense that Neve can feel it needling her skin like a tattoo, following the exact path of a drop of sweat that meanders down from her throat to the underside of her breast with a hawk’s focus. Rana’s full lips lull open, panting; and then she grimaces, and her legs seem to tremble with the effort of holding herself up, or… perhaps. Back. 

It’s enough of a foothold for Neve’s overwhelming need to seize control, overriding her better judgment and shattering the remainder of her hope that she may escape this excursion with her dignity intact.

“Rana,” she breathes cautiously, her voice so thick with desire that she hardly recognizes herself. Perhaps that’s for the better. “We—,” she starts, and grimaces through another painful throb, this one even more urgent than the last, “—I think we can make this more… bearable.” 

“You can reverse it?” Rana asks, through great effort tearing her gaze off Neve’s tits to look her in the eye, her voice raspy but hopeful. She looks on the verge of collapse, leaning heavily into the wall. Fidgeting, seemingly desperate to do anything with her hands but what her own addled mind is undoubtedly suggesting, she pushes her sleeves up to the elbow, rubbing absently at her own skin. From the heat, or perhaps from how hard she’d been clutching them, the muscles and veins or her hands and forearms all have popped under her skin, glowing with a light dew of sweat.

After an embarrassingly long pause, during which Neve realizes she’d been leering—and salivating—rather than answering, Neve manages to reply, “No. Sorry.” 

Rana groans, and it’s no different than her usual complaining, but it sounds so good that Neve fears she might actually be going insane. Rushing ahead of her self-consciousness, she continues, “But, I think if we… It might be over with faster, if we… got it out of our systems.”

The roundabout suggestion isn’t lost on Rana; her jaw drops, scandalized, and crosses her arms defensively. “If we—I’m working!” 

As grave and humiliating as the overall situation feels, Neve can’t help but chuckle and, half-horrified to have said it before she’s even finished saying it, teases, “Oh, and you never think about throwing me up against a wall whenever we work together?”

Quick as a whip, Rana retorts, “Sure, Neve, and you spend half the time investigating my ass because you like my pants.”

Judging by the way her eyes widen in disbelief and her ears turn fully red, the quip slipped past her self-control just like Neve’s did hers. In any ordinary circumstance, Neve would be mortified—maybe she slightly undersold ‘checking someone out from time to time’ mentally, but surely she’s not that careless!—but in this bizarre one, she finds the callout… thrilling. 

[What would have happened next: 

Having accidentally acknowledged that they ordinarily are attracted to each other, the energy shifts slightly. 

A pang of arousal staggers Rana, and this time Neve catches her. The contact gives them both such relief + a feeling of light euphoria that becomes clear Neve was right, and that it’s the way to stop the agony.

Rana tries to rationalize everything like “they can still be professional after” and blah blah but Neve pushes her against the wall and kisses her to cut her off (classic)

They finger or grind or whatever

As soon as they’re both done, they feel weird about it but Neve can’t quite find it in her to regret it

They agree to pretend it never happened even though it's clear neither of them are quite satisfied with that conclusion (pro move) 

Back in her apartment, Neve can’t help but write up some notes on “the Opal Rose case” in her journal but tells herself it’s just any other case and pretends she doesn’t feel Some Type of Way about it]

[hrtiu]

I finally got around to writing some Solavellan fanfic! Thank you to @namedbrina for the prompt! It's not exactly what you suggested, but hopefully the spirit remains. Also sorry it took me so long to actually write 😅 You can find a link to the fic on AO3 here, or simply read below. I have a whole long story plotted out, but we'll see how much actually gets written ><

Solas has never liked necromancers and is surprised to like Lavellan. But she has always respected spirits and wisps, so perhaps it shouldn’t be as surprising. She who wears Falon’Din’s marks, who even Dorian is a bit in awe of/scared of, and who never leaves a battlefield without using the last of her mana in a Dalish ritual to soothe whatever might remain. As the only elf and perhaps mage around, she teaches this ritual to Solas so he might be able to do it if she has no mana? Idk.

Of all the titles Solas had carried in his long years, his favorite was healer.

Perhaps that was why he was enjoying his time with the Inquisition so much. To many of the folk around Haven, he was known only as the reclusive, slightly odd elf healer. There was something freeing about the many centuries of baggage his name and face carried being stripped away. Solas the healer. Mender of bones, salver of wounds, fixer of broken things. He quite liked that.

Atishal, the so-called Herald of Andraste, enjoyed no such reputation. Oh, the people of Haven respected her, and were all too willing to place their hopes on her thin shoulders. But her Dalish traditions and strange magic warded off any reputation for wholesomeness that might otherwise develop. Necromancy had a way of doing that.

There was something mesmerizing about her magic. Necromancy had always left a bitter taste in Solas’s mouth, but the Herald made it seem natural, almost elegant. Together with Varric and Cassandra, they fought through the chaos of apostate mages and rogue templars, but always his gaze was drawn to her. He was so preoccupied by the sight of spirits from the Fade willingly lending Atishal their strength that he never saw the templar’s arrow coming. 

“Ah!” He let out a pained grunt as the arrowhead buried deep into the flesh of his shoulder. He sank to one knee and grimaced, the hand not holding his staff moving to grip the shaft of the arrow.

“Solas needs help!” Atishal shouted above the fray.

Varric tossed a red bottle his way, and Solas managed to catch it with one functioning arm. Solas pulled the cork out with his teeth and drank just enough to muster the energy for a fade step. He stepped through the veil and ended up on a small hill just out of range of the still-battling templars. He caught his breath, intending to reenter the fray when he got the chance, but Varric, Cassandra, and the Herald didn’t seem to need his help any more.

“How are you doing, Chuckles?” Varric asked, hefting Bianca over his shoulder as he trudged up the hill towards Solas.

“Let’s get back to camp,” Cassandra said. “He can rest up there.”

“No need to wait until then,” Atishal said.

Her soft footfalls barely seemed to depress the grass as she made her way to Solas’s side, kneeling down to get a better look at his wounded shoulder. Ginger fingers tested the flesh around the injury, and she hissed in sympathy.

“I don’t have the strength right now to numb it, but I can heal it after the shaft is out,” she said. “Do you want me to do that now? Or should we wait until we get back to camp and we can get you some willow bark for the pain? Or a lyrium potion so you can heal it yourself?”

“Just do it now,” Solas said, not wanting to make the hike back to camp with an arrow in his shoulder. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

“Got it,” Atishal said. She gripped the arrow shaft with one hand and braced her other hand against Solas’s shoulder.

“One, two, three.”

Searing pain shot through Solas’s body, his grunt of pain pushing through gritted teeth. Then, in an instant, the pain disappeared.

Atishal’s hand against his shoulder felt warm. She was still murmuring words of healing under her breath, her eyes closed and her brow unforrowed in an expression of peace.

He blinked in confusion and surprise. Her spell had worked marvelously—he couldn’t have cast it better himself. That was… unexpected.

“Are we ready to go, Herald?” Cassandra’s no-nonsense voice broke through Solas’s daze. “It isn’t safe to stay in one place for too long.”

Solas pushed himself to his feet as elegantly as he could manage, nodding to Atishal in thanks. “Yes, Seeker. I am ready to go.”

They moved in near silence down the rough Hinterlands trail. The battle had taken a lot out of them, and with nothing but more long days of closing rifts, facing down rogue templars, bandits, or mages, and struggling to make a name for the Inquisition, nobody was in the mood for chatter.

They reached camp—a cluster of tents by a tranquil pond—and Solas gratefully took the stew Scout Harding offered him. He didn’t usually eat much, but he was famished. He pressed carefully at the place in his shoulder that had held a templar arrow only hours earlier, but the flesh was whole. A little tender, but whole.

Atishal sat next to him on a large rock by the water’s edge, a short distance from the gathering of Inquisition scouts around the campfire. Far enough away to create some sense of privacy. Solas wondered if she thought they were in some kind of Elven guild, and the thought brought a grimace to his lips. 

“How is your shoulder?” she asked, her deft fingers unbraiding her long, brown hair.

“Feeling good,” Solas said, rolling his shoulder in demonstration.

“I’m glad.” She let her hair fall in thick waves over her shoulder, still lovely despite the sweat and dirt of the day weighing it down.

The conversation lapsed, and Solas let the ambient sounds of the dusky forest fill the silence.

“You are quite a skilled healer,” Solas said eventually.

“You sound surprised.”

“I don’t think many necromancers make the effort to learn the art of healing.”

“Really?” she said, turning to him with a raised brow. “I don’t see necromancy and healing as being so different.”

“Healing the living versus drawing wisps into the vessels of the dead? What could be more different?”

She didn’t respond for a long moment. Solas looked over at her, noting the tense line of her mouth. He recognized her expression, of course. He’d grown used to offending people since waking from his long sleep.

He waited for her to leave. He knew her well enough by now to know that the Herald of Andraste tended to shut down rather than confront. But though he gave her plenty of space to make her exit, she stayed.

A mourning dove let out a plaintive cry, and the sun slipped behind the trees. Twilight transformed the woods around them, marking a boundary in time and space. 

Atishal picked a stone up from the ground and tossed it into the pond. It made a satisfying thunk as it landed in the water, and she watched the ripples slowly expand for a long moment.

“I used to be a healer,” she said quietly.

Solas raised his eyebrows. “Ah?”

“Do you think a Dalish tribe has much use for necromancy?” she asked, eyes still trained on the last remaining ripples in the pond. “For the first twenty five years of my life, it never entered my mind to practice necromancy. I soothed scrapes and bruises, mended broken bones, guided women through difficult childbirths. Easing peoples’ pain and healing their bodies was my calling.”

Was. There was pain in that word, pain that felt familiar to Solas. He, too, used to be a healer. He could no longer claim such a simple title—at least not by itself. No matter what the people in Haven thought, he knew the truth.

“What happened?” Solas asked.

“A plague. It wiped out more than half of my clan in a single year.” She said the words plainly, without sentiment. “After that, I realized among those who needed healing were the dead along with the living.”

“Healing for the dead?”

“Yes. I know… I think their souls are gone. Inviting spirits to inhabit their bodies doesn’t change that. But so many spirits clustered around our tribe, feeding off of sorrow and tragedy. I found that allowing these spirits space to act, to work through the pain… It was beneficial both to the spirits and to those loved ones who remained.”

The way she talked about spirits… Solas began to regret the condescending tone he’d struck in their earlier conversation. She clearly had a conception of spirits that was much closer to his own than he’d realized—much closer to his than most of the people in this strange half-world. And the way she interpreted necromancy was novel to him.

“I’ve never considered that,” he said. Words rarely spoken.

“I hadn’t either, before the plague. Necessity is the greatest teacher, after all.”

“True.”

Silence fell between them again, and Solas pondered her words. It made sense, in a way, that necromancy would develop new depth and meaning in this hellish world he had created. The people here were so numerous, their lives so cheap.

“You have given me much to think about, Herald,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder at him, a rare smile gracing her lips. “Somehow, from you that feels like a compliment.”

From him, it certainly was.

[broodwoof]

thinking abt. things.

things like solas not joining the inky for a given mission and discovering smth in his books that might help track the red templars so he brings the info to cullen only to find him shaky and sweaty and obv cullen tries to brush it off but look me in the eye and tell me solas wouldn't recognize withdrawal for what it is

mini fic bc I can:

He hasn't actually been to the Commander's room before, but he found something useful. He would normally bring it to the Inquisitor's attention, but they were out on the field and it seemed redundant to hand it off to someone else, especially since there were few he trusted to properly convey the intricacies of the information. Besides, there was no reason for him to fear Cullen. There had been countless opportunities for him to push back against Solas or the other mages, but he seemed truly dedicated to setting aside his past as a Templar. The role, if not the abilities.

Because of this, Solas entered the office lightly. What he found was... surprising.

Cullen looked haggard, worn, with deep circles under his eyes. He also looked absolutely shocked by Solas' presence, straightening up and trying to compose himself. Trying... and failing. A better posture couldn't hide the sweat shining on his face - inappropriate, considering they were high in the mountains, surrounded by snow and ice - nor the trembling of his hands, even though he tried to still then by laying them flat on his desk. "Solas," came his delayed, stiff greeting. He inclined his head slightly to the Commander in response, then moved nearer and set the book down on the desk. Cullen looked at it with obvious curiosity, but Solas no longer intended to discuss it. Not at the moment, anyway.

"Look at me," he said instead, voice far firmer than he ever would have thought to use with Cullen. The human seemed quite as surprised, gaze snapping up. "Focus on me. Breathe."

"What are you-"

"I said breathe," he insisted. Cullen continued to stare for a moment before doing as he said, although it was more a huff or sigh than a true breath. Solas arched a brow. "Breathe deeply."

Cullen frowned but obeyed, taking a deep, genuine breath and exhaling slowly. "Good," Solas said gently. "Feel the desk under your hands. The air against your skin." He watched a furrow grow between Cullen's brows. "Do not concern yourself with these things, just feel them." The Commander let his eyes slip shut as he focused, face relaxing slightly. "Keep breathing. Do you feel the cold air? Concentrate on how it feels in your nose, your throat, your lungs."

Slowly his trembling eased, although Solas knew it wouldn't disappear. He'd seen people go through this: in the flesh and in the Fade both. He knew deep breathing wouldn't counteract the physical effects of withdrawal - he had to assume from lyrium, distantly impressed by Cullen's willingness to undergo such a risk, to break the chains the Chantry and the Templar Order bound him in - but it would help with the feelings of panic. With the sense of being unable to possibly withstand such horrible feelings and urges.

"Good," he said again. Cullen had continued taking deep breaths, eyes still closed as he concentrated on his immediate surroundings instead of his panic. "This is normal. It hurts, I know, and your body is fighting you. But you still have control. You are stronger than this."

"Am I?" Cullen's eyes opened at last, meeting his with a strange desperation. Solas nodded.

"You are. To have gotten this far is evidence enough." Cullen snorted, then shook his head.

"So, who told you?" Cullen asked, Solas arching a brow.

"No one." Now the human frowned again.

"Then how..."

"I recognized your condition." Cullen stared for a time, searching Solas' face before eventually shaking his head and standing upright.

"You are... thoroughly unexpected, Solas." A pause, as if he was debating whether to say more. "Thank you." He inclined his head slightly.

"My pleasure, Commander."

[brood-mother]

sawbones Dragon Age Fic Masterlist

A list of all my Dragon Age fanfics (circa 2014-2018) to keep you occupied 'til Oct 31st. Mostly rarepairs, mostly smutty.

Dragon Age 2

A Little Self-Love Never Hurt Nobody Anders/Anders, E, WC: 2086; "Anders revisits a memory from his wild Circle days in a dream - and gains a whole new point of view." (selfcest, dream sex, PWP) Fructovorous Fenris/Sebastian, E, WC: 1790; "Fenris is his General on the field; behind closed doors, he’s so much more." (footplay, oral, light D/s) Pillowtalk Isabela/Bethany, T, WC: 755; "While Hawke is in the Deep Roads, a heatwave hits Kirkwall." (post-coital, cuddling, mild h/c) Rooftops Isabela/Bethany, G, WC: 931; "Bethany wants to learn how to support herself and her family." (gen, flirting) Tinpot Alley Implied Carver/Cullen, T/M, WC: 2679, "Three Templars went on patrol; one came back." (gore tw)

Dragon Age: The Last Court

Rakish, Reckless Marquis of Serault/Wayward Bard, E, WC: 3436; "The Wayward Bard takes a knife in the back to protect the Marquis. The Marquis wants to know why." (first time, angry sex, mild blood/injury)

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Many Hands Lighten the Load Dorian/m!Lavellan/Blackwall, E, WC: 7429; "All of Skyhold can see the way Blackwall looks at the Inquisitor, even if the Inquisitor himself can't. Dorian comes to realise there are better ways to handle such a situation than petty jealousy." (UST, mutual pining, friends/rivals to lovers) Rectrix Iron Bull/Zevran, E, WC: 1724; "Bull and Zevran met long before the Inquisition." (bondage, caning, forced tickling) Red Sky At Night Samson/Maddox, M, WC: 4450; "The rise of the Red General began with two men and a missed headcount; or, how Samson was lost to the Chantry and found by Corypheus." (hurt no comfort, pre-DAI) Ruby Red OFC/ OFC, E, WC: 3000; "Behemoth, they called her. Towering, terrifying. Where was Jess, under all that red? A twist of metal helm to mark where her head had been, two flat eyes that glinted in the low light. She was still there, Ruby knew it. She responded to her name, or at least to Ruby’s voice. Not any voice, just hers. Only hers." (angst, body horror, red templars)

The above works are all posted on Ao3, but there are more shorter-form fics over at my currently-defunct DA writing sideblog. Comments, kudos, asks, and suggestions for future fics are all very welcome. 🖤

[dellamortethelesser]

FIC RECS

Here are a list of the fanfictions that I have either read or are currently reading and think that should get more attention!

DRAGON AGE

“Not Another Dragon Age Fanfic (The Lone Wolf Cries)” by dork_trash94 Kieran finds himself suddenly transported to Thedas, and vows to keep a close eye on the Dread Wolf to stop him from betraying them once again. As he finds out, a ‘close eye’ unfortunately means actually being close - and it doesn’t help that the game’s timeline is changing, either. Lots of pining, sprinkle of yearning, some funky Time-bending, and a frequently flustered Solas. (via @fen-harelapologist94 on tumblr)

"none of us are going back." by @var_bellanaris "We are all going forward. None of us are going back." — Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain The Hero of Ferelden and the Hero of River Dane on surviving past the end of your myth. (via @v-arbellanaris on tumblr)

"also everything returns" by @var_bellanaris "How do I look?" "Intimidating," Viago says, without hesitation. (via @v-arbellanaris on tumblr)

“Of Diamonds and Dust” by @dragonologist_phd Marja Aeducan and Darvis Brosca lead lives as different as one could possibly imagine. Marja Aeducan, a member of the nobility and second in line for the throne, has spent her life maneuvering the dangerous political machinations of the Diamond Quarter. Meanwhile, Darvis Brosca, a Casteless dwarf rejected by society, does whatever it takes to survive on the streets of Dust Town. When a Grey Warden arrives in Orzammar, the lives of Marja and Darvis are forever changed. Driven from the city by misfortune and betrayal, the two must join the ranks of the Wardens in order to save their own lives. But the surface has far greater dangers than they realize. The noble and the thief will need to stand together if they’re going to fight against the oncoming Blight, the brewing civil war, and the strange surface malady called “sunburn”. Also, the contemporary fic to read alongside it: “And So They Burned”

"my blood runs cold" by @symphorine Daea started shivering and crossed their arms, moving closer to Lucanis. "Did you see what it showed me?" Emmrich looked stricken. Lucanis started unbuttoning his vest. "We did," he replied without looking at them. "You must know, these were just visions," Emmrich said gently. "Figments taken from our deepest nightmares. None of it is real, or will be." Daea swallowed again, trying to soothe their aching throat. It still tasted horrible. "I know. It's obvious, now that I'm not in it." Lucanis placed his vest over their back, still warm from his body, and Daea accepted it gratefully. They caught his hand as he retreated, keeping him close — warm, alive. "How do we get rid of it?" (via @symphorine on tumblr)

"At the End of Her World" by @flowersforthemachines After almost a decade of a tumultuous relationship, Rook and Lucanis made the choice to cut ties for good. Yet when Rook's time comes, Lucanis visits the Weisshaupt fortress to make good on a contract taken ten years ago — to see Rook through the end of her Calling. (via @flowersforthemachines on tumblr)

“Dead Pasts and Dread Futures” by youworeblue The Inquisitor’s heart broke after the Exalted Council when her family of friends scattered to the winds. She was emptied of hope as Solas’s power and reach grew. Left with a dead past and dreading the future, Ixchel Lavellan lay down and chose not to wake up. As the Veil began to unravel, and the fabric of reality tore apart at the seams, a desperate ally sacrificed everything to give her a second chance. And Ixchel will never forgive him. (via @dreadfutures on tumblr)

“Keepers” by AkbalKiin A necromage in the plains causes a stir to the local folk. The Inquisition investigates and recruits an elf, a former Keeper, into their rank for his knowledge on Dalish archaeology and his stealth abilities. The Inquisition tests his skills as they close in on Red Templars as part of a plan to thwart Samson and Corypheus. (via @nightmarist on tumblr)

PATHFINDER

"The Lark and the Crow" by @dujour_13 Woljif had to admit, it was a pretty sweet deal. Why not follow through and see what an honest quid pro quo felt like? A couple of days ago he had been chained up, for lack of a proper jail cell, in the moldy basement of the Defender’s Heart tavern, furiously concocting dead-end escape plots. The worst thing about it was crouching in a dark corner on a hard, cold floor and gazing up the stairs where light, laughter, the scent of food, and sometimes even music drifted down, out of his reach. Perpetually out of his reach. Until, of course, this golden-headed half-elf had come down the stairs and made him a deal. (via @dujour13 on tumblr)

LOTR

“South” by oxbridge The Grey Company rides south: Through Eregion, Dunland, and beyond.

[dreaminonao3]

Woke up to an email from AO3 stating that the person who had left a comment on every chapter of the first fic in my Templar Knight!Steve/Darcy fic and all the rest of the fics in the series has decided to write their own Knight!Steve/Darcy fic, except Steve is a woman, a lesbian, and is impregnated after being raped by the Red Skull back in the 1300s then "dies" four months pregnant.

This person didn't even tell me they were going to write this fic before they uploaded the cover and cast bios (as separate chapters and padding the chapter count like that feels like it should be a TOS violation). They did credit me and my first Templar Knight!Steve fic in the author's notes but holy fucking hell, I wish this person had asked me beforehand if it was okay to use my AU.

And it is my AU, no one else has written this.

I sure as fuck do not want to approve linking my fic to theirs.

What a shitty fucking way to start my day.

ETA: They uploaded a third "chapter" that is author's notes in the body of the chapter. I reported the fic as being non-story, so we'll see what happens.

ETA: The fic has been taken down!!!

[teecupangel]

I sent the Desmond as an eevee ask (your reply to that was v cool) but I just realized that there's a red and white pokemon that's in lore dead to throw Desmond's consciousness into the hisuan forms of zorua and zoruark they even have golden eyes and can make illusions like an apple

Here’s the Sylveon!Desmond idea for those curious.

AND here’s the actual fic that @thewolfprince is writing for the Sylveon!Desmond idea!

Ooohhhhh.

A Hisuan form of Zorua and Zoroark would be certainly be a fun idea for a Pokemon!Desmond.

For one main reason: the Hisuan Zorua/Zoroark is a Normal/Ghost type which means we can make this a reference to how Desmond died in AC3! XD

No, but in all seriousness…

Here are the pokedex entries of the Hisuan Zorua:

A once-departed soul, returned to life in Hisui. Derives power from resentment, which rises as energy atop its head and takes on the forms of foes. In this way, Zorua vents lingering malice.

And of a Hisuan Zoroark:

With its disheveled white fur, it looks like an embodiment of death. Heedless of its own safety, Zoroark attacks its nemeses with a bitter energy so intense, it lacerates Zoroark's own body.

This means if Sylveon!Desmond is a Pokemon created out of love and friendship.

Zoroark!Desmond is a Pokemon made of pain and spite.

In this scenario, the Brotherhood and the Order would have rumors of a Pokemon that haunts the Templar Order, using the shadows to stay hidden and attacking Templars when their guards are down.

No one knows what the Pokemon is but many say they see a flash of white and red… like it was bleeding.

And the Pokemon does not inflict wounds or make the Templars bleed.

No.

It weakens the Templars and their Pokemons to the point that they become easy targets for the Assassin Brotherhood.

The Pokemon does not show itself to the Brotherhood and it’s up to them and their Pokemons to investigate if any Templars are being haunted by the Pokemon of Misfortune.

.

And, in one of the many investigations that Altaïr conducted.

He sees it.

Just for a brief moment.

White and red.

With golden eyes…

That looked blank and seemingly far away…

.

So in this case, Desmond would be in a state of trance. His mind having been broken by both dying and becoming a Pokemon. He’s moving by instincts, attacking people he remembers being Templars. And it’s up to one of the main Assassins (like maybe Altaïr? Or, since Sylveon!Desmond is focused on Altaïr, Ezio or Ratonhnhaké:ton?) to snap him out of the trance by the power of friendship! Aka: capturing him and taking care of him until he starts to snap out of the trance.

Because of the trance, Desmond is only a Zorua at the moment and he’ll evolve after snapping out his trance then getting the proper care and training he needs to understand what it means to be a Pokemon.

OR!

To make it more 'dramatic'. While in a trance, Desmond is a Zoroark but when the trance wears off, he returns to being a Zorua. The trance state makes him evolve but it's a forced evolution that weakens him in general.

Because of the trance, Desmond is only able to access the following moves:

Leer

Torment

Curse

Taunt

Spite

Nasty Plot

This can also add in drama of Desmond not wanting to evolve because he's afraid that would put him in a trance stat again.

(or, if you want to go even further, the Zoroark has been ‘haunting’ much, much earlier, and there are stories of the Pokemon of Misfortune appearing as far back as the time of the Isus)

[its-jaytothemee]

Learning the Ropes

Pairings: Alistair/Fem!Warden

Word count: 3,476

Rating: Explicit 18+, Minors DNI

Read on AO3

Summary: Mirnia helps Alistair become a bit more confident in bed.

Tags: Plot what plot, porn w/o plot, smut, fluff, some humor, spanking, teasing, PiV sex,

A/N: Just a silly little one shot with my Grey Warden, Mirnia, teaching Alistair a thing or two ;) Hope you enjoy my first dragon age fic! I am absolutely obsessed with these two and may end up writing more about them.

Mirnia finally dragged herself away from the fire, the siren call of her makeshift bed becoming more irresistible by the second. Especially when she peeked inside to see Alistair already waiting for her.

“I saw you and Leliana chirping away on the other side of the fire.” He kept the smile on his face, but his eyes were rather accusatory.

“We’ve become pretty good friends,” she responded, climbing under the covers to lay next to him.

He narrowed his eyes at her, suspicion apparent in the creases of his brow and the pursing of his lips.

“What were you talking about?”

“Oh, just girl things.” She waved off the question despite the small smile trying to break out on her face.

“Hmm, can’t say I’m familiar with those topics.” He kept those squinty eyes boring into her. “What all do they entail?”

“Oh, wine, proper weapon maintenance, sex, shoes–”

“Wait, what was that last one?!” he cried out.

“Shoes?” she said with feigned innocence.

“Nia…” Alistair’s cheeks turned rosy.

“Oh! You meant sex…” She grinned back at him. “Yeah, sometimes Leli and I like to talk about the things we like to do and have done to us.”

“You just…you…sex…talk about…” Alistair stuttered wildly as he stared back at her. “Oh, Maker, is that why she kept giving me those looks?!”

“I mean, probably.” Mirnia shrugged. “It’s not like I was complaining about you, quite the opposite.”

“You talked to her about me?!” He looked mortified, like he could pass out if she said another word about it.

“All good things though, my love,” she said quickly.

“Oh no,” he shook his head, hiding his face, “does she know about the…the thing…the one you taught me to do with my tongue?”

Mirnia put on her most convincing look of ignorance, like she was trying to recall a detail that slipped her mind. “I may have told her a thing or two about it…”

Alistair’s face turned bright red.

“She was quite impressed!” she added.

“Is this a normal thing women talk about?!” His voice had gotten extra pitchy as his hands clutched the blanket around his legs.

“Women who weren’t raised in strict chantry or templar environments, sure.”

“Must be nice,” he grumbled.

She reached out and ran one of her hands down his cheek. To her relief, he leaned into the touch.

“I’m sorry, Alistair,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

He kept his petulant scowl aimed at her, though a small smirk was pulling at his lips.

“Come on,” she poked him in the side, his smile almost breaking free, “can I make it up to you?”

His little pout was so endearing. “I don’t know, I’m awfully upset.”

“Maybe I just need to be taught a lesson then,” she teased.

“I already told you my dear, I really don’t think you’ll like learning the ways of a templar. It’s quite–”

“Not that kind of lesson, silly.” Mirnia reached out to take one of his hands.

The pads of his fingers were calloused from years of wielding a sword. Yet whenever he touched her, all she could feel was his gentle warmth.

“I’m sure these strong hands of yours could leave quite the marks on my little bottom.”

“What?!” Alistair bolted upright, gawking at her. “Nia, how could you think I would ever hit you?”

Mirnia bit back a laugh. “No! Alistair, I’m saying I want you to spank me.”

“But…but you’ve done nothing wrong. Not really, I was just teasing about your talk with Leliana, honest!”

She could feel the confusion radiating off his furrowed brow. He continued staring at her, bewildered, but she gave him some time to work it out on his own. It took a minute, but finally a look of realization took over his face.

“Oh…so this is…a game?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Yes, my love, this is a game,” she giggled as he chewed on his lip in thought.

“All right,” his concerned look started to shift to the more playful one she had become so fond of, “so in this game, I take it you’ve been…naughty?”

She bit her lip and crawled over into his lap, leaning into him to breathe into his ear.

“Very.”

“Well, in that case,” Alistair spoke slowly, trying to get into character, “perhaps we should…erm…punish you. Just a bit. If that’s all right.”

Mirnia let her head fall onto his shoulder with a light sigh.

“Oh, Maker help me, I’m no good at this.” Alistair fell back onto the ground with a frustrated huff, hiding his face in his hands.

“No! No, it’s okay. It takes time.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Just try again.”

“You’re going to laugh at me,” he said, peeking out from behind his fingers.

“I’m not! I just can’t help but have this stupid smile on my face around you, my love.” She reached up to uncover his face.

“I don’t know how to do this, Nia. I just got to the point where I don’t hide under the covers when you see me fully naked.”

Mirnia pulled him back up and into her arms. The gesture seemed to relax him a bit as he buried his face in her neck and hair.

“Then we don’t have to do this tonight. It was just a suggestion.”

He sat up to look at her for a moment, tapping his fingers on the ground beside him. She kept herself distracted by admiring his muscular chest, her fingers running through the soft, light-colored hairs covering it.

“No…no I want to try,” he said decisively. “I just…I don’t really know where to start is all.”

She smiled back at him, a small jolt of excitement coming over her.

“You could start by being a little more…demanding,” she offered.

“Hm, okay…” He considered his options for a moment. “Then…take off your clothes. P–”

“Don’t you dare say please,” she fought the laugh trying to make its way past her lips.

“Right! Demanding.” He shook his head and hardened his expression a bit. “Off with your clothes. Now.” His voice was louder this time and much more forceful.

She smirked back at him as she moved her hands to the hem of her shirt.

“How was that?” Alistair dropped his voice back down to a hopeful whisper, a small grin splitting his face.

“Better.” She felt her smile grow wider. He was trying so hard, and it was absolutely adorable. “Don’t worry my love, I’ll let you know if you’ve gone too far.”

He nodded back at her, his eyes tracking every movement as she lifted her shirt over her head. His hands came up to rest on her hips, thumbs pressing small circles into her stomach. Mirnia tossed the garment to the side in a crumpled heap.

“You look so beautiful tonight,” he whispered. He started to work his way up her body, tickling her sides as he pulled her closer.

“Alistair!” She tried to scold him, but a small smile still broke through. “I’m supposed to be in trouble.”

“What?” He threw his hands up in the air. “That means you can’t be beautiful anymore?”

“I mean…no, but you can’t tell me that. I’ve been bad, so you can’t give me anymore compliments until you think I’ve learned my lesson…” She gestured her hands in front of her, rolling one over the other to try and get him to catch up and play along.

He stared at her for a moment, intensely looking into her eyes as if he was trying to read her mind.

“Just…pretend I need to earn your forgiveness before I can hear any nice things from you.” Mirnia ran a hand through his hair, watching his eyelids flutter at the touch. “Put some of that templar scolding to use.”

“Oh, the templars wouldn’t approve of this one bit, I–” He froze, realizing just a moment too late that she wasn’t asking for actual templar penance. “Oh, oh I see. Alright, let me try again…”

She bit down on her lips, trying not to giggle at his sweet attempts to play along. He cleared his throat, and his eyes darkened a little.

“I believe I asked you to disrobe, yet I still see a few articles remaining on your person.”

Mirnia shot him an impressed look, maintaining eye contact as she removed the rest of her clothing, tossing each piece aside with a defiant flick of her wrist. Although, she caught the slight change in pace of Alistair’s breathing as his eyes drank in her bare body.

“Is that better?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. He gulped, almost breaking character.

“It would be, if you would put yourself in a more suitable position for your punishment.”

A genuine look of surprise came over her face at his tone, but she recovered quickly. She crawled over closer to him, running a finger down his arm.

“Tell me what I must do for you,” she dropped her voice down to a sultry purr.

His face twisted for a moment, like he was racking his brain for the right answer. Mirnia decided to put him out of his misery.

“Perhaps you’d like me on all fours?” she suggested. “Or maybe, you’d like me draped over your lap instead?”

Alistair let out a quiet groan at her words.

“Y-yes, that sounds g-good. Erm, over my lap.”

She nodded, once again letting her hand leave a feather-light trail down his arm. He adjusted himself to a seated position so she could lay across his legs. One hand came underneath her to help hold her up, shamelessly skimming across her breasts to do so. The other started at her shoulders and rubbed all the way down to her legs, his fingers dancing along every curve they met along the way.

Finally, he let his hand rest on the swell of her ass. She arched her back slightly, starting to squirm with anticipation. Then, his touch disappeared as he brought his hand in the air. A small, eager whine left her lips at the movement.

“Erm…bad girl?” He brought his hand down to her bare skin with the lightest tap.

“That was hardly even a pat, Alistair.” Mirnia turned over her shoulder to roll her eyes at him.

“Well, I don’t want to hurt you, Nia.”

“It’s supposed to hurt a little bit. Just a little bit of sting to go with the pleasure, you know?”

“No, I don’t. That’s the problem it would seem.”

She let out a small chuckle. “It’s okay, just try again. A little harder.”

Mirnia turned back over, once again arching her back and offering up her bare skin to him. She felt a firmer pat this time, but it still had no sting to it.

“A little harder.”

Pat.

“Harder.”

Pat.

“Harder!”

Smack.

The last one caused her to cry out and dig her hands into his thighs.

“Nia!” Alistair dropped his hands from her body and tried to pull her up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, my love,” she said with a small laugh. “That last one felt good.”

“Oh!” The concern on his face shifted to excitement. “Then shall I do it again?”

She kept laughing. “That’s up to you. I’m the one in trouble, remember?”

His grin shifted again, back to the hardened look that he had been trying to maintain for the night.

Smack.

Mirnia let out a moan at the touch.

The next time his hand met with her ass, his other hand came up to pinch her nipple at the same time, causing her to cry out even louder. He kept going, keeping up a steady pace of spanks and teasing her nipples.

Before she knew it, she was begging for his forgiveness, begging for him to let her make it up to him in any lewd way she could think of. She offered to suck his cock until she couldn’t breathe, she offered to ride him for hours – only stopping when he was satisfied with his own pleasure. She offered to let him bend her over and fuck her into the ground.

“Anything,” she mewled as she felt another smack. “Anything to get you inside of me, please.”

Alistair rubbed his hand soothingly over the small area he had been spanking before leaning over to plant kisses around her shoulders.

“Come here, Nia dear.”

As he pulled her up into his lap, his fingers trailed up her neck until they landed on the pointed tips of her ears. Alistair rolled the soft cartilage between his thumb and forefinger, a fond smile on his lips. Ever since their first night together he had been utterly fascinated with her ears. His eyes came back to meet hers, the affection she saw there enough to make her dizzy.

“No need for anything so drastic,” he murmured. “I’d quite like to just take care of you now.”

How is he even real? No one is this sweet.

Mirnia pulled him closer, letting their lips meet in a soft, languid kiss. They slowly fell onto the small pile of blankets together.

Their game had all but fallen apart as Alistair fell back into his typical sweet and doting demeanor. The deliriously happy look on his face told her she wouldn’t be pulling him back into character this evening.

She didn’t mind. Every time he kissed her, it was like he worried it would be the last time – not out of the question considering their current predicament. When he gripped her back so tightly with each thrust, she could almost feel their bodies becoming one. But when he pulled back just a moment to stare into her eyes there was a tenderness to his gaze that turned her to putty in his arms. Nothing but a soft pile of malleable flesh just waiting for him to sculpt her.

She let herself lay back and enjoy his gentle movements. His hands wandered all over her body as his hips rolled against hers. He whispered little praises in her ear as one hand made its way down to where their bodies met. His fingers rubbed her clit in little circles, sending a shock of pleasure through her body.

“My sweet Nia…” he whispered, his breath coming in pants as he sped up his movements.

Her hands dug into his back, the gentle flicking of his fingers bringing her closer and closer to that blissful release. His long, slow kisses covered every inch of her neck as she gasped and cried out his name.

“Please, Alistair, please,” she mewled under his touch, her hands moving up to find hold in his hair.

“Nia, I’m close,” he breathed back, his hips snapping harder against her own.

“Let go, my love,” she urged him.

He did just that, burying his face in her neck as he came inside of her. His hips switched to short, desperate thrusts as his loud moans were absorbed into her hair. Mirnia held him close, letting him spill every drop, letting him go as long as his body would allow. When he finally collapsed on top of her, she turned to kiss his cheek, the small, prickly hairs growing there scratched her lips.

After a few moments of using him as a weighted blanket, Mirnia let Alistair roll onto his side. His arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close so her back was flat against his chest.

“Have I served my penance?” she teased.

“You’re forgiven,” he whispered before leaving a soft kiss behind her ear.

Mirnia smiled as she felt the stubbly hairs on his face nuzzle into her neck just before they drifted off to sleep.

*

Alistair had already left the tent by the time she woke. He was anxious to get back to Denerim, so he was undoubtedly bounding around the camp, chirping at everyone else to get a move on.

After getting dressed, she slipped outside to stretch a bit.

“Good morning, my favorite adventuring companion.” Zevran bounced up to her side, a furtive grin on his face.

Mirnia returned the smile cautiously. “Morning, Zev. You seem awfully chipper considering it’s so early.”

“Oh, I couldn’t help but notice that subtle glow gracing your skin this morning and had to come pay you a compliment.”

“Mm-hmm,” she raised an eyebrow, “and what compliment would that be?”

“I am more than familiar with the content smile that only comes after a night of good sex. Given your choice of partner, I can only assume you are the one deserving the majority of the praise.”

She laughed, a small snort coming out at the end from being caught off guard by his forward comment. Usually, he’d at least try to hide it under symbolism of some kind.

“Just getting right to the point this morning, I see.” She bumped their shoulders together. “And besides, a lady never tells.”

“Then you should have no qualms with giving me the details,” he shot back with a grin.

Cheeky bastard.

“I can be quite modest when I wish to be.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “If you must know, Alistair and I had a very lovely night together,” she said coyly.

“Oh? He has learned a new trick or two?”

“I’ve been told I’m an excellent teacher.” She shot him another sweet smile. Zev just laughed.

“Ah yes, but someone like you, such an impeccable Dalish beauty, is truly happy teaching a young human the ropes of lovemaking?” He nudged her arm as he watched Alistair try, and fail, to hook a new collar onto Ritz. The mabari took off across camp with him running to catch up.

“I really am, Zev.” She smiled as Alistair finally caught his mark and pinned Ritz between his legs to hold him still.

“Besides,” she continued, “I prefer to see it as an opportunity.”

“Oh? Do enlighten me, my friend.” Zev’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.

“Think about it. He’s never been with anyone else. He doesn’t have any strange or annoying habits to break. Whatever he’s learning, he learns from me. Which means he should end up exceptionally skilled at pleasing me, wouldn’t you say?”

“And devious too? Oh, my friend, I fear you have made such a mistake not sharing my bed.”

Mirnia let out a light laugh as everyone packed up their belongings for the day. Her and Zev joined Alistair and Wynne as they started their walk back to Denerim.

“Alistair, my good friend!” Zev ran to catch up with him. “I hear you are quite a fast learner when it comes to pleasing your lovely woman. Perhaps you could learn even faster if you would allow me to–”

“No! No, I don’t want to know where his is going, Zevran.”

“Oh, my friend, I only meant to–”

Alistair shoved a finger in each ear and ran away.

“Alalalalalalalala…” His inarticulate trilling quieted with each step he took away from them, ears and cheeks flushing a bright shade of red.

Zev turned back toward her, giving an exasperated shrug. Wynne had a hand pressed to her temple as she shook her head.

“Well, I tried, sweet Mirnia. The boy is simply not willing to see reason. My poor heart weeps at being so shunned.” He waited for her to reach his side before looping his arm around hers. The fake pout pursing his lips was his usual response to being ignored.

“Tell you what, Zev,” she said, patting his arm, “why don’t you give me your notes and I’ll pass them along.”

He let out a wicked chuckle, promising to write extensive notes, joking that she could incorporate it into one of her “lessons.” She indulged Zevran’s teasing for a while before jogging up to walk with Alistair.

When she took his hand in hers, he brought her gloved knuckles up to give them a soft kiss.

“You know,” he started, keeping his voice low, “it seems a bit silly to give such a chaste little kiss after our night.”

“Oh?” she teased back. “You’d rather me drop the clothes now so we can pick up where we left off?”

“No!” He waved his hands in front of him. “Definitely not, I just meant…ah, Nia I seem to forget what I was going to say–”

Mirnia stood on her toes to kiss his cheek, causing a light blush.

“It’s not silly at all, my love.”

As they reached the city gates, she felt Alistair’s hand brush ever so slightly over the back of her pants, grazing the spot where they both knew a small red mark remained from their little lesson the night before.

Maybe she could even convince him to make a matching one on the other side tonight.