#shivunin scrivening

[shivunin]

"I know that wicked shape to your smile." - Where Is Your Rider // for Maria :3

Thank you, Mary! <3

Here is some post-Arishok recovery and some very messy feelings:

(Fenris/Hawke | 1,257 Words | CW: Injury/recovery)

To Languish in Repose

“See, your face wasn’t quite as I remembered, but I know that wicked shape to your smile.” —The Oh Hellos, “Where is your Rider”

When Hawke woke near dawn, Fenris was not overly concerned.

The first few times Hawke had woken from her magically-assisted slumber, there’d mostly been the basic necessities to contend with: discerning if she could stand, helping her get clean, fetching her clothing or water or food. 

Every other time, Fenris had stood silently on the periphery, pouring a glass of water and handing it off to Merrill to administer or opening the cabinet for Varric to retrieve a nightgown for their friend. He’d found little to say, even if most of the others had joked or told stories until Maria—until Hawke fell asleep again. The woman herself had said only a handful of words since her near-death at the Arishok’s hands. It was to be expected; Fenris was certain that she had, for a moment, actually been dead. 

And just before she had, she’d said—

Nevermind. It mattered little what she’d said. 

Fenris was not concerned when she woke that morning, nearly three full days since she’d taken her wound. He need not worry what to say to her when she was unlikely to speak, after all. It wouldn’t be a concern that the only other person in the room was Aveline, still half in her guardsman armor and snoring loudly on the settee they’d dragged over to the fireplace. 

When she stirred, he did not move from the wall, but watched and waited. Perhaps Hawke would ask for water or another pillow and then fall asleep again. She’d done as much a dozen times since he’d carried her here through the burning city. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve—any idea of the time,” she said instead, words disjointed where she stopped to catch her breath. 

Fenris, hand already half-reaching for the pitcher on her desk, looked at her. 

“It is nearly morning,” he said, and cast a glance in Aveline’s direction. The other woman did not stir. 

“Oh,” Hawke said. She shifted on the bed, buoyed by a small fortune of pillows, and grimaced. 

“Need something?” he asked. 

“Meredith is awfully—” she began at the same time and sighed. 

“No,” she took a slow breath, grimacing again. 

Fenris had half a thought to retrieve Anders from wherever he’d tucked himself away downstairs. If she was in pain—but she went on again before he could make the decision.

“She’s awfully late,” Hawke finished. 

Fenris frowned at her for a moment, trying to puzzle the words into something that made sense.

“What do you mean?” he said finally, at a loss. His hand had found the handle of the pitcher and he grasped it now, more for something to hold onto than for any actual assistance it might provide. 

“I thought she’d—” Hawke drew in a slow breath, “have me locked in the Circle by now. If I didn’t—die, that is. I thought I…thought I would be...”

For a moment, he could see the outcome of such a thing so clearly that the idea of it filled his bones with ice. He had not even considered—if Meredith had come for Hawke after she’d been wounded, they would have been hard-pressed to fight off the Templars. All of them had been forced to battle their way through the city in the wake of the attack. They had not been at their best. The Templars, comparatively untouched, would have easily cut their way through the lot of them and Hawke—

“No,” Fenris said. “No. She did not come.”

“Well, I did suppose—not,” she said. 

Someone—Merrill, he thought—had braided her hair into a crown. It had more or less stayed in place for the last few days, but a few curls had crept loose overnight. They clung to her forehead with sweat now—it occurred to him that this conversation must be a strain after days of recovery. She should not be speaking like this; not now.

“I would be elsewhere—if she had,” she closed her eyes for a moment. 

The room filled with the sound of her breathing, labored as it was, and Fenris turned away to pour the cup of water she hadn’t asked for. 

“Wouldn’t want you fools,” she sighed, “to get hurt on—my account.”

Fenris snorted. 

“I like you too much,” she went on, “to see you knocked about for me—when I can’t even hit back.”

When you were dying, you said—Fenris thought, and watched the water swirl wildly in the cup before slowly coming to a dizzy halt.

“Drink this,” he said when the water had drawn away from the mouth of the cup, and crossed to her bed to hold it out to her. Hawke didn’t take it. She stared at it instead, as if she didn’t recognize what it was. Her hand half-lifted from the sheets but fell again almost at once. 

“Would that I could,” she said, and the pained half-laugh she managed was cut off by another grimace. 

The next few moments were taken up by Fenris attempting to help her drink without looking too long at her—sallow and exhausted and still breathing too hard. When she drew away, her mouth brushed against the second knuckle of his forefinger and his chest gave a sick lurch. He could not do this, could not be here, but what choice had he? It was nothing; it was nothing.

I did love you, she’d said three days ago, thoughtful—as if she was remembering something she’d forgotten from an earlier conversation. Said it and then stopped breathing, half-smiling at the ceiling as if trying to remember the name of an acquaintance she’d forgotten. I did love you, she’d said, and Fenris was certain she’d died for a moment with the words still clinging to her lips. 

He doubted she would ever remember saying so, but he—how could he forget it? He could more easily wrench his own heart through his chest. It felt as if he already had. 

Fenris waited until she was done and he’d drawn away again to speak again.

“She will not take you now,” he said, and cleared the gravel from his throat. “You’ve been named Champion of Kirkwall. Or—you will be.”

“I—what?” 

Hawke didn’t go on. Fenris turned to look at her, somewhat alarmed, and found that her mouth had fallen open in shock. 

“Yes,” he said. “The letter arrived while you slept.”

“Oh!” she said, and went on. “Ohoho—oh, that must really gall her. That must—”

She paused for a moment, closing her eyes tightly, and went on when her breathing had steadied again. 

“Champion,” she said. “Of Kirkwall.”

“So the letter said,” Fenris told her. 

“Oh,” she said, and the laugh she was repressing curled the corners of her mouth. “Just wait until—Carver hears. Oh, he’s—going to be so annoyed.” 

Fenris might have said something then, but Maria smiled and he entirely forgot whatever he’d been thinking. She smiled like she had before her mother had been taken, before the months of blankness had taken her in turn, smiled like he hadn’t seen since before they’d—

“I think,” she said after a moment, that same pained laugh hiding between her words, “I am going to sleep more. But oh—what a relief!” 

Fenris had little to say to that. He nodded instead and tucked himself against the wall again in his silent vigil. She fell asleep almost at once, wrinkles of pain smoothing out again, but the curve of her smile stayed with him long after the sun rose.

[shivunin]

Hey, this is mine!

This story was inspired by the Fade level of Origins. After I played it, I started thinking about what something like that might have looked like in Inquisition, and, well---here it is!

I am proud of how this turned out. This was my first Big Bang and it was such an interesting experience. If you check the fic out, I hope you enjoy c:

It's time for the sixteenth post of the Dragon Age Big Bang 2023! Let's give it up for author Mortonsspoon and artist HellerHound; they did fantastic work! Go check out their efforts over on Archive of Our Own.

Enjoy!

Rating: Mature

Summary:

After the Inquisitor is poisoned, she finds herself trapped in a version of the Fade woven from her own worst nightmares. It is up to her Commander to track her through the shifting landscape of her fears and retrieve her before time runs out—and she is utterly consumed by the demon who hunts her.

[shivunin]

Two Apace

(Cullen/Elowen Lavellan pre-relationship | 1,297 Words | No warnings)

"For I am bound with fleshly bands, Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope; I strain my heart, I stretch my hands, And catch at hope." -Christina Rossetti, "De Profundis"

Cullen paced around the training ring, pausing to demonstrate the proper way to hold one’s shield before pacing away again. 

This practice session was much like others he’d held over these past months. The ones who’d volunteered for the mixed units had improved drastically, their troop cohesion strengthening as they learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The impact of simply understanding how a non-mage unit worked had improved the tactics of the mages drastically. Before, it had never occurred to Cullen that they might not know much about the composition and strategy of non-magical military units. Now that they did…

Well. He was proud of them; that was all. 

So this session was much like others had been, complete with its requisite crowd of observers. There was no need for nerves; no need for the catch in his breath, the tingle at the back of his neck. There was certainly no need for him to keep glancing at the far corner of the ring where the Inquisitor stood, watching. 

She’d been quiet since the previous morning. He hadn’t seen her at dinner later, and when he’d briefly stopped by Herald’s Rest (not to look for her!) she’d been absent there as well. He’d assumed that she must have forgotten about this practice, but when he’d commenced the first practice bout for warmups she’d been standing right there, a calm expression on her lo—on her face. 

Cullen had been struggling to regain his composure ever since. He wasn’t sure how successful he’d been, but at least his soldiers hadn’t seemed to notice. 

“Last bout,” he shouted over the clang of steel, and the mass of soldiers reformed itself into two groups, each composed by a mixture of archers, swordsmen, and mages. He snuck a glance at the Inquisitor, who’d climbed onto the bottom rung of the fence and steadied herself on the vertical post to her left. Her eyes were focused on the groups, who’d begun to send blunted arrows and quarter-strength magic at each other, and not on him at all. 

He reminded himself of that firmly when the corner of her mouth arched up, reshaping her generous mouth into a rare expression of happiness. Maker, he was a fool. 

She wasn’t looking at him. 

Cullen cleared his throat and turned his attention away again, striding behind the rearmost line of the soldiers on his right and ordering them about until the gap at their flank closed, and then repeating the process on the other side when one of the mages slammed the butt of her staff into an archer’s ear. There was plenty to focus on that wasn’t the shape of their leader standing heads above most of their watchers; Cullen exerted his formidable control to manage just that for the rest of the bout. 

Even so, he couldn’t help but wander in her direction when the groups broke up and began to drift away again. 

“Inquisitor?” he said. Lavellan blinked at the ring before turning her attention to him. 

There was something about her eyes, he decided; something about her stare that made one feel uncomfortably seen, as if the perception in them cut through the layers of steel and cloth and arrowed to the heart of him instead. 

He cleared his throat and went on:

“What are your thoughts?”

“Hmm,” she said, pursing her lips, and went on after a moment. “I think it’s inspired.”

“I know the mages still need some practice in working as part of a group,” Cullen rushed to say, so quickly that he hardly heard her. “Half the time, the soldiers stationed next to them need redirection to keep from shying back from certain types of spells, but—what?”

She was smiling again, but this time she was looking right at him. 

“I think it’s inspired, Cullen,” she repeated. “It’s a brilliant idea. Truly. I couldn’t have imagined it when I left; it is heartening to see them work together like that now. I can’t think of a single group of enemies who fights quite like that, and I can see how the tactics you’ve taught them here will counter other units in battle.”

The Inquisitor paused, cocking her head so a lock of brown hair drifted loose from the rest. Cullen curled his hands into fists to resist the immediate temptation to brush it back. It wasn’t his place; it wasn’t his business. He shouldn’t even be wanting to…

“You should be proud,” she told him, tilting her chin up in that way she had. “I would be. It was a great deal of work, I imagine, and you’ve accomplished a great deal in a short span of time. I can’t wait to see what you manage next.”

“I—thank you, Inquisitor,” Cullen said, taking a step closer and leaning against the other side of the fence. “I appreciate…well. I am glad you approve.”

“I do more than approve,” she said. When she paused, her stomach made a soft noise and she pressed a hand to it. 

“Forgive me,” she laughed. “It would seem I’m due for breakfast.”

“Ah—yes,” Cullen said, echoing the laugh. “I suppose I ought to do the same.”

“I’ll see you later?” she asked, and Cullen blinked. “Our sword practice? This evening?”

“Ah—of course!” Cullen said, straightening; it was Wednesday, so of course— “I will see you here.”

“See you here,” she echoed, and took several steps back toward the stairway to the great hall. She didn’t look away, and Cullen found that he couldn’t, either. He braced his hands on the fence instead and watched her go. 

“Yes,” he said, for lack of anything else to see.

“Yes,” she echoed, and turned to walk away when her heel bumped into the stone of the staircase. 

Cullen ruffled a hand through his hair when she vanished through the doors, exhaling slowly. 

What…did that mean? He’d no idea. Perhaps he was imagining things. But it had seemed like…

He shook his head at himself as he retrieved his armor and mantle, then stepped through the opening in the ring to trudge back up the stairs. 

Obviously, he was imagining things. 

|

She wasn’t imagining it.

Elowen stood with her back against the stone wall for a moment, taking deep breaths. Her heart thundered in her chest, such that she fancied she could feel it to her very fingertips. 

She’d watched carefully. Not once had he looked at one of the people he’d taught the way he looked at her when they practiced together. Not once had he flushed or dropped his eyes. 

How did she feel about that?

She didn’t know. 

No—she did. Because that feeling in her stomach wasn’t dread at all, wasn’t sick discomfort or disappointment. There was fear there, yes. She knew fear all too well. But—she wasn’t afraid of Cullen. 

It was strange, because she had been afraid of him once—that first day on the mountain. Now, the memory of it seemed so strange to her now, as if it had been someone else’s memory, someone else’s feelings. She couldn’t imagine being afraid of him now. Cullen would no more hurt her than he would…

Elowen realized, with precisely the sort of dawning comprehension she’d been trying to avoid, that she couldn’t even think of a proper comparison. It was just…something she knew. He wouldn’t hurt her if he could help it. That was all. He was—he was as true and honest as a drawn blade, as concretely himself as a piece on the chess board. There was no artifice to him; nothing to doubt. 

That is, she decided, gathering herself to go on into the hall, where she could hear people speaking, the clink of metal on stoneware, what scares me the most.

[shivunin]

Absolutely gnashing my teeth bc there are too many really wonderful Arianwen prompts on that list, however I must go with: "When I saw my demons I knew them well and welcomed them." - The Lament of Eustace Scrubb

Thank you for this!! This one was lovely to write c: I've been meaning to write Wen going home again for ages, and this fit so perfectly <3

(OhHellos Prompts)

A Lament

(1,632 Words | CW: References to grief/parent death | Warden Tabris & Cyrion Tabris)

“We both know I’m the one to blame 'Cus when I saw my demons,  I knew them well and welcomed them.” —The Oh Hellos, “The Lament of Eustace Scrubb”

Her father’s house hadn’t changed at all. 

It shouldn’t have surprised Tabris that this was the case. There was no reason for the place to change, after all. The Blight hadn’t made its way here yet. The illness that had stricken the alienage, the slavers that had followed…all had done little to mar this place.

The clothing she’d removed so she could don her wedding gown was still folded at the foot of her bed. Arianwen, who’d stopped just inside the doorway, looked at the mass of it while her father welcomed her in.

Truly, there was little to see: just a threadbare gown in dull colors, patched neatly by her own hands or those of her cousins. The dress probably still covered the stockings with a hole she’d meant to darn after all the wedding nonsense was over with. Below that would be underthings she’d only worn a handful of times before she’d…left. They’d been an indulgence, purchased with money she’d saved by bartering harder with the traveling merchants in the courtyard outside. When she’d bought them, she’d felt embarrassed, ashamed, as if such a simple indulgence were a transgression her father would see right away, as if—

“You haven’t changed at all,” her father said, cutting through the unending ocean-wave rush in her ears, and Wen’s attention snapped at once to him. Greyer hair, tired lines around his eyes, new scars at his cheek and his throat—all this, yes, but in the end he had changed as little as the house had. 

He flinched, just a little, when her eyes met his. Tabris saw that, too. 

“You wear your hair the same,” he went on. His hands might have been shaking when he tucked them away in his pockets. It was difficult to tell. Neither of them stepped away from the door, and a cool, sticky breeze eased over the back of Wen’s neck. 

“You never listened to me prattling on before you left, either.”

It was meant to be a joke. She was sure of it. Neither of them laughed. 

“You’re well?” she managed after the silence had gone on far too long, heavy between them with all the things she’d done since she’d left this place.

“You seemed—” her father began at the same time. 

Both of them grimaced and looked away again. 

Her mother’s things were still here, too. Had been since before she’d died, always in the same place. His clothing was kept tucked carefully beneath the bed, organized into neat rows inside three wooden crates. Her mother’s things, though—they were preserved always as they had been when she’d stepped out of their house the last time. Wen knew because she’d made the mistake of opening the trunk once, lifetimes ago. She couldn’t remember now what she’d been looking for. She knew only that the lid had been too light by far, flying open at the slightest touch, and that she’d sat for eons staring down into it and breathing in the faint, sweet scent of her mother’s soap mixed with dust. The things on top were still folded the way her mother had folded things—messy, loose, without a great deal of care to the look of them, only the function—and Wen had only worked up the courage to touch them just before her father’d come home from Chantry services. 

He’d told her she was engaged less than a week later. Somehow, this had blotted out the explosive fight they’d had over the trunk and its hallowed contents. 

“I am well enough,” he said at last, and Wen realized that she’d walked into the room without realizing it, one hand outstretched for the clothing draped over the end of her former bed. 

“I cannot say I am well,” he added, voice quieter. 

The door clicked quietly shut behind her. She didn’t turn to look.

“No, not well. But I’ll do.”

“Alright,” Arianwen said. 

The bedspread was the same, thick with every blanket that had been sewn into the mass of all the other blankets that had come before. They were all there still, layers and layers of winter and harsh spring and flooding in the streets. Through the holes, she could see shades of red and pink and girlish childhood pale blue, the color of the blanket she’d slept under in her earliest memories. The uppermost layer was a deep brown, nearly the color of her hair. The second to last gown she’d worn in this house lay slack as a corpse across it. Dull as the cloth was, it was almost shockingly pale by contrast. 

Her hand, still outstretched toward the fabric, was darker with sun than it ever had been when she’d lived here. The world had been so frightening for so long—the shadows full of mocking laughter, the alleys full of fists, this house filled with ghosts that waited hunched in the dark to consume her dreaming. The back of her hand was crosshatched with scars now, the nails clean-cut and short, the forearm corded with muscle. 

How many times had she huddled into the corner of this bed, shrouding blanket tight around her shoulders, faced pressed into the itchy wool? How many times had she wished she could be anybody else in the world, anybody but the Tabris girl that everyone despised, anybody but the motherless fool in the house near the end of the block? 

“And you,” her father went on behind her. “Well. I suppose you aren’t quite the same.” 

Wen couldn’t tell if the chuckle that followed was nervous or sad. She’d always had a difficult time telling the difference. 

“The, ah…the armor suits you. Thought I was looking at your mother when you stormed through those doors.”

Tabris passed a hand over her damp face and turned from the bed, from the limp pelt of a gown there. Her father’s mouth was pursed when she turned, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes deeper than they had been a moment ago. 

The armor suits you, he’d said. 

Any armor suited her fine. Even loose and wrought for someone else, it had all fit her like a second skin. Her blades, too—they had been more fingers, longer arms, an extension of her sight and her will. Taking the first set from the body of a guard had felt like becoming whole for the first time in her life. And the blood on her teeth—it had tasted as fine as wine, as pure as the cold clear water that fell from the clouds in winter. 

“Yes,” she agreed. 

Had he always been so short? She couldn’t remember. 

“It does. I…am well too.” 

He hadn’t asked. She realized as much the moment she opened her mouth. 

“No, not well,” The words wouldn’t come correctly. They always fouled themselves in the net of her teeth, had always gotten caught in the same, even when she’d called this place her home. “I am…good. At what I do, I mean. I’m very good at it. Fighting.”

“I saw.” 

The scrape of wooden chair legs over uneven wood floors. The soft sound of her father settling into it, the soft creak of bone on bone when he settled in. Outside, the clouds parted. Light filtered through the dust-streaked window and settled on the trunk away in the corner. It gleamed on the steel bands over the old wood, on the new lock fastened to the front. She could have it open in a moment now, if she really wanted to. She’d had enough practice these past months, had enough calluses from the training the bard had given her at it that popping it open now wouldn’t even hurt. 

The wood of the chair’s back felt just as it had a thousand times before, but she thought her fingers felt it differently now. The same calluses, perhaps, or maybe it was just her own perception of it that’d changed. When she sat, her father looked at her and the Warden looked back. 

She had her mother’s hair, her mother’s eyes, and she certainly had her mother’s long, tapered fingers. Adaia had been a fighter—that was what almost everyone said first about her. A fighter of rare caliber, they would say, and then, usually, she loved you very much. 

Wen still carried parts of her mother in her body. Always would. Eyes, agility, fingers, grace, hair, always braided sharply back and out of her way. Little as she liked to admit, she also had her father’s nose, his stubbornness, his ears…Once, she might have wondered how much of her was hers at all.

Now, she did not have to wonder. Her strength was hers. Her steel was, too, and her hands, and her dogged determination. The joy she took in battle was her own, and her love of tearing her foes to shreds, and the thrill of victory—those were hers, too.

So were her friends, lost and broken and deadly as they were. Wen carried them inside her just as she carried her blood and bone. 

If she’d lived in this room for a hundred years, she would never have learned that for herself. 

“I’m not the same,” she said, and took the cup from the table. Her father watched while she took a drink and set it back on the table again. “But…I am glad to be here.”

His fingers lifted from the table, as if he thought to reach for her. The motion lasted less than a second, but she saw it. Saw, too, when his worn fingertips lowered again to the old wood. 

“I am, too, my Wen,” he said. “I am, too.”

[shivunin]

A To-Do List

For the prompt "writing found in your OC's trash can" for Hawke:

(133 Words | No warnings)

A grimy list, stained with a red fingerprint in one corner. Each item is crossed off except the last:

The girl on the corner—locket, belonging to her mother. Near the encampment?

Prayer book of some sort. Initials on the inside leaf. Check w/Seb?

Those sticky buns Orana likes in the marketplace

Leftover salve at the clinic (left cabinet, lower shelf–remember this time!)

Check dead drop

That flea wash for Miser (and ask why he keeps licking his paws!!)

Varric’s manuscript–don’t forget!!

Ask Merrill about that spell from last week. How force distributed across full surface area? Still doesn’t make sense. Bring pencil this time. 

Av. wedding gift from the brazier (hide w/Norah if necessary)

Check dead drop

Docs off to lawyer (tell him to stop calling at house; poor O)

Tell Fenris

[shivunin]

Six Sentence Sunday(ish)

Tagged by @greypetrel and @dreadfutures -thank you both for the tag!

I have been working on my haunted house AU and having a great time c: Here is a little bit of it:

“I love this place,” Hawke said, and her voice crawled down the hallway in echoes, “I do. Look at how beautiful it is; anyone would want to live here.” Some burden resting on both shoulders, some presence which had been looming over her and adding pressure ounce by ounce, eased away so suddenly that Hawke was giddy with it. She laughed, sharp and thready, and half-stumbled down the stairs in her nightgown. The sound; there had been some great sound, some horrible dragging noise. Something in the house had been damaged, surely. She would walk down the stairs and she would see…

Tagging (no pressure, I know it's coming late): @zencetera @star--nymph @elfroot-and-laurels @bitchesofostwick

[shivunin]

👀👀👀 ship prompts you say???

Could I ask for the lovers, the devil or the moon for Wen and Rev? Pleeeeease?

Well, only if it's you asking <3

For "the devil (unrequited love)," in which Revka hems Arianwen's wedding dress:

Forget Me Not

(F!Warden x F!Warden | 1,114 Words | No Warnings)

"Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest? May I take your hand in mine? Mere friends are we, – well, friends the merest Keep much that I resign:" -Robert Browning, "The Lost Mistress"

It had been a fine enough wedding gown by Cyrion’s estimation, for all that it was an inch and a half too short. 

It was a far sight nicer than the ones Arianwen had seen mothers and brothers and grandmothers working on through other windows in the alienage. None of the embroidery was very detailed, but it was just fine for a dress she didn’t want to wear. A dress she wouldn’t wear, if she had the choice. 

She hadn’t had choices for a very long time. 

“Ah!” Revka said at her feet. 

Wen held very still in response when she otherwise might have flinched. 

“Alright?” she asked. Revka peered down at her fingertip, where a bead of red blood bloomed. 

“Fine,” she muttered. 

For her part, Wen’s dearest friend seemed as enthused about the wedding as Wen was. It was difficult to see why. It wasn’t as if anything would really change afterward. Nothing ever changed here, and it never would. They both knew that. 

“You don’t have to—” Wen began for the hundredth time, but Revka cut her off.

“Course I do,” she muttered. “Think I won’t help fix this mess?”

Below, the soft snap of breaking thread. Revka popped her finger into her mouth and unrolled the hem of the dress with her other hand. 

“Let you go ‘fore everyone with your ankles bare?” she went on several moments later. “Won’t do it. Turn.” 

Wen turned carefully on the chair, slowing when it wobbled. Revka sniffled. 

“Is your finger alright?” Wen asked. 

“Quit moving,” Revka snapped. Her voice sounded thick. Wen, who’d half-turned to look at her, faced forward again. 

“Finger’s fine.”

“Alright,” Wen said. Her fingers curled in on themselves, but loosened before they could make a fist.

“Can fix it,” Revka said, and sniffled again. Her fingertips brushed against Wen’s ankle, warm and then gone. “I can.” 

“Alright,” Wen said. She wanted to climb off the chair and take off the stupid dress and go back to their little hiding place. She wanted to have never heard of this dreadful arranged marriage. She wanted to fix whatever hurt had been done to Revka. 

But—Wen knew—she’d always been better at breaking things than she’d ever been at fixing them. That task had always fallen to Rev.

Instead of doing any of the things she’d rather do, she stood very still with her hands loose at her sides and pretended she didn’t notice the tears her friend refused to cry. 

|

In the lamplight hours later, Revka bent over pale cream fabric and felt the ache in her wounded finger every time she passed the needle through the thick, fine cloth. 

Sewing was her trade. These days, it as mostly fine embroidery—she’d shown her talent for it enough that the simpler work was usually handed off to others. Her own clothes bore little signs of this: forget-me-nots (always forget-me-nots, bright blue as the sky and twice as kind) obscuring tears and holes in the worn fabric, thin lines of whatever color she’d had on hand joining worn sections of her socks. 

If she checked Arianwen’s tunic (Arianwen slept on the bed behind her, where she’d dozed off halfway through a sentence; Revka couldn’t bear to look at her now and certainly wouldn’t be checking her tunic anytime soon), she would have found her own handiwork there, too. Wen favored thistles. Always had, sharp girl with her sharp teeth and her bloody knuckles. It had never surprised Revka that she liked a sharp flower, too. A wounding thing, however pretty it was, that pricked you back for picking it.

There was a little row of silk thistles embroidered around the collar of the tunic Wen wore now. Revka had put them there last winter as a Satinalia gift. It had taken weeks of bending over the cloth just like she was now, stealing hours after she left the tailor’s shop and before she was forced to bed or fell asleep on her work. Every morning, she’d woken with sore fingertips and a proud thrill in her chest whenever she’d looked at them. 

Wen would never know, she supposed (would never know now, surely; would be marrying someone else within the week), but she’d set every stitch into the fabric with her whole heart in her fingertips. She’d long since been forced to admit that what she felt had grown into something far wilder and messier than simple, unburdened friendship. It had burst through its bounds and grown into something that stung and hurt her when she stretched her hands for it. 

Like thistle, she thought, and made another stitch into the hem of the wedding gown. Her forefinger still ached. There was a little red dot where she’d stabbed it before. A visible wound, that, but the rest of the mess was as hidden as she could make it. The room was already beginning to lighten with dawn. Red-rimmed eyes could be called tiredness, could be from working late over a candle.  Surely even Arianwen would think so, and nobody knew her better in the world. 

It was almost done now. Hemming the gown had been easy as anything, but the embroidery had taken far longer. Only a half hour more and it would be—would be finished. 

Revka paused then, stretching her aching hands. A neat line of thistle wove in and out of itself along the hem, hiding the faint line where the old hem had been. It was pretty. Wen would like it, probably. She wouldn’t climb the dais to her wedding in an unadorned gown. If she’d been able to bring herself to stop there, Revka could have been proud of the work. 

The front hem of the dress was not facing her now. She’d been done with that for hours, actually. She ran an aching fingertip over the line of embroidery she held instead, tracing the flower petal by petal. 

There was a line of thistle carefully embroidered on the hem of Arianwen’s wedding gown. Below, inside the fabric where it would brush against Wen’s ankles, was a mirrored line of flowers. If they’d been lined up on the same face of the fabric, the flowers would have twined around each other without end. Instead, forget-me-nots made lonely loops on the inside of the hem. 

A droplet fell to the fabric, darkening the blue. Revka sniffled, dashed the tears away with the back of her hand, and turned the fabric in her hands once more. 

Almost done. Three flowers more, maybe four. And then—and then it would be finished. 

She lifted her needle to the candlelight, blinked until she could see clearly again, and turned back to her task.

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday Thursday

Thank you for the tag @bitchesofostwick! c: Tagging (for whenever!): @greypetrel @ndostairlyrium @inquisimer @dreadfutures @layalu @daggerbean I've started really working on the Zev/Wen/Isabela piece I've been talking about for ages! I am having fun with it so far, in the time I have between everything else, so here's this:

(500 words, no warnings)

Desire was an odd, clinging thing. 

Sometimes, it reminded Tabris of the caress of some fabric too fine for her to have felt with her own callused hands—so very slick, but catching on her rough palms. Other times, it was like the itch of not quite hitting her mark the way she’d hoped; like something fine and sweet and pretty held out of her reach.

Mostly, desire was like a knife. 

Wen liked knives. Lots more than she liked people, actually. They warmed to her hands, they moved in ways that pleased her, and there was little that made her mind focus like running her fingertips along the sharp edges, her touch just barely too light to cut. More, she liked the warning of it: touch too much, too hard and one would get hurt. But, oh—to trace the very edge of it and play the odds. 

In truth, she still didn’t understand the feeling. She’d been a stranger to desire for too much of her life. The various courting rituals the others in the alienage had engaged in had always felt rather incomprehensible to her. Like—like a language spoken by someone from a country she’d never heard of and had no desire to visit. 

“You were right,” Zevran said behind her. “It is a fine ship.”

The backs of his half-curled knuckles brushed against hers. If she’d had an ounce less self-control, she might have shivered at the touch. His skin was always so warm against hers, his scarred hands always slightly rough in a way that she’d come to crave. More tempting than that, she’d seen the way he reacted to her when she showed him how much she felt for him. 

If she had never met him, perhaps she never would have wanted to make sense of the strangeness of wanting. Maybe she would have held it at arm’s length forever. It would have been a terrible loss if she had never known Zevran, she thought, and let her own hand press against his.

“Much finer than the one I found you on,” he went on, glancing at the woman before them. Isabela, she’d said when she introduced herself, a self-satisfied little smile curling against her cheek, and Wen had wanted badly to taste the syllables on her own tongue. 

Desire was like a knife, yes; cool and smooth, edges sweet on Wen’s skin. She’d felt little but its insistent touch ever since she’d watched the woman cut down the last of her attackers at the Pearl. There was something about watching Isabela straighten from her efforts, breathing slightly harder, splattered with blood, and smiling, that’d made it impossible to think of anything but, well—this. 

“Finest on the sea,” Isabela said fondly, gliding up the gangway and caressing the nearest part of the railing. Wen watched her hand fixedly and pressed the tip of her tongue hard against the inside ridge of her teeth. 

“Well?” the captain went on, turning to look down at the two of them. “Coming aboard?”

[shivunin]

In Confidence

( Arianwen Tabris/Zevran Arainai | 2,392 Words | AO3 Link | CW: Fantasy racism, past parent death, emotional hurt/comfort)

“Where are you taking me?” Zevran asked, keeping pace with his Warden as they scaled the side of a building in the alienage. It was not a difficult task, though the state of the scaffolding they were climbing did give him pause. 

“You’ll see,” she told him, grunting slightly when she caught the board over her head and pulled herself up. 

Only fifteen feet separated them from the top—or so he hoped. Meeting her family had been trial enough on its own. He had not anticipated this sort of exertion afterward or he would have eaten far less at her father’s table. 

“Almost there,” she added, and there was the faintest note of an apology tucked beneath her usual impassive tone. If he had not known her so well, Zevran might not have heard it at all. 

“I am in no particular hurry,” he told her, and she stopped climbing to cast him a skeptical look. 

“Well,” Zevran amended, glancing below. “I must admit this is not how I thought we would be spending our evening.” 

Below, the vhenadahl swayed in the evening air off the Drakon River. People stood in clusters, their voices ringing off the stone, and food peddlers had staked out rival ends of the courtyard. It surprised him even now to see the condition of the alienage; he supposed that it explained something of his Arianwen that she had grown up in such a place. And yet—these people had built something here, among the ruins. He could see the bright hair of Tabris’s cousin bob through the crowd, pausing near one cluster of people and speaking for a time. They opened to her reluctantly, but even from this distance Zevran could see some of them begin to nod. Perhaps they would yet rebuild their community, even after what the slavers had done to them. 

“Are you coming?” Arianwen called down, and he realized that she’d made her way to the top while he’d looked below. Zevran climbed instead of answering, and reached for her hand at the top when she offered it. 

“We used to play here,” she told him, bracing to pull him over the edge and onto a wooden platform. “Shianni and I. Before and after it burned. It was our secret place, just the two of us. Poor Soris was never one for heights. He’d wait until he heard us climb down and then we’d all wander together. When his parents still lived, he’d grown up in the building next door. I used to hear his mother singing while she made dinner, back when I used to wander the streets looking for strays.”

“Ah—I see,” Zevran said, glancing around. 

The two of them stood in the burned shell of a house three stories from the ground. He had thought that they’d reached a platform at the top of the scaffolding, but he saw now that he’d been wrong. They stood on all that was left of a wooden floor, the edges blackened and crumbled away. Arianwen stood to the empty doorway, patting the wall beside it fondly. There was little else to see here—only the remnants of a bed, piles of fabric in the corners of the room that might once have been blankets or clothing, holes in the floor where the structure below had given way. He did not struggle to imagine two young girls finding this place out of curiosity, for he had done much the same when he’d been a boy. 

“Ready?” she asked while he was still considering this. She vanished through the darkness of the doorway before he could answer, so Zevran had little choice but to follow her into the hallway beyond. 

“How did this place burn?” Zevran asked, ducking a fallen beam and testing the floor before he went on down the hall. 

“Humans,” Wen said, and her face was shadowed when she glanced back at him. “It burned the night Soris’s parents died.”

There was a heavy silence then. She stopped long enough for him to catch up and caught his hand in hers. This was still new—Arianwen reaching for him, for comfort. Zevran did not know quite what to make of it yet. 

“She tried to escape the building after they set it aflame. One of them kicked her back inside. The man who—oh, nevermind. You don’t need the details,” she took a sharp breath, her hand squeezing Zevran’s, and went on down the dark hall. “A few days later, my ma was gone all night long. They found his body washed up on the river, cut to ribbons and bloodless. I didn’t realize until far later what that meant.”

“She was a fighter, your mother?” Zevran asked, for it seemed the safer topic of conversation. Tabris dropped his hand to climb under more debris. 

“She taught me everything I know,” she sighed, “I tried to forget it after she died. My body remembered for me. I’m grateful to it. But—here. Look.” 

They’d found the end of the hallway at last. Arianwen pushed the door open and revealed—

A closet. 

Zevran looked at her, brows arched high in question. To his surprise, she laughed. That was new, too—hearing her laugh when they weren’t in the heat of battle. It was a tired laugh, but that mattered very little in the run of things. 

“Watch,” she said, and turned the coat hook on the back wall. The wall fell away at the pressure of her hand, swinging open into the room beyond. 

“However did you find this?” Zevran asked, stepping into the room behind her. This room was lit by the lone window on the far wall, through which moonlight poured. In the cool light, he could see her clearly enough to read her face. Wistful—yes. She seemed wistful. 

“You know—I don’t remember,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know which one of us opened the door, or even when it happened. I only remember it being our place, Shianni’s and mine. Here.”

She lit a candle and held it up to the wall. Messy colors snaked up the crumbling plaster, handprints followed by rough drawings and holes in a familiar shape. 

“Throwing knives?” he asked, making his way to her side. Arianwen nodded silently, her lips parting and pressing tightly together again. 

Zevran knew that look. She was fighting some battle with herself, weighing what she ought to say to him. They would both be better served if he gave her space. 

“May I…?” he asked, gesturing to the room at large. Tabris nodded again, stepping closer to the marks on the wall, and Zevran slipped away. 

The corners held stacks of books here and there, all adventures set in distant lands or histories of Ferelden. He found only two that he supposed must have belonged to his Warden: a book about animal physiology and one about the care and keeping of various household pets. Zevran smiled at the sight of them, leaving a streak in the dust covering each volume, and moved on. 

Most of the wooden walls bore the marks of her blades. Many of the marks had been thrown wide from their fingerpainted targets. He could follow the progress of her skill by those holes, could trace the time spent in this room by the neatness of the circles they fell within. 

When he had met the Wardens on the road all those months ago, he had met a blade of a woman. She was hard and quick and sharp, flashing through the crowd of Crows like light through a fast-running river. There had been nothing of fear or weakness in her. She had seemed—impervious, somehow. As if nothing in the world could touch her, as if she had sprung into existence precisely as he saw her in that moment. 

Zevran knew better now, of course. He had seen her at her most vulnerable in the mornings when she slept, had watched her uncertainty upon seeing her father again. Two days ago, she had wept over Zevran’s body when she’d thought him dead by Taliesen’s hand. Today, standing in the dusty remnants of her childhood, he knew her better than he might have thought possible even a month ago.

Even so—it was surprising and endearing, somehow, to know that she had not leapt from her mother with blades in hand. Once, many years ago, she had learned her craft just as he had. Maker’s teeth, but sometimes Zevran wished they had known each other then, before the softness had been carved from them both. Who had she been? Who might he have been, in that other life that neither of them would ever live? 

“Here—this is what I actually meant to show you,” Arianwen said. 

Zevran blinked and found her beside him, though he had not heard her approach. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together, and pulled him with her to another door. When she opened it to the night beyond, cool air brushed over his cheeks. They had only been in the room for ten or fifteen minutes, hardly long enough to notice how still the air was. Even so, it was a relief to step into a fresher breeze.

“You can sit,” she told him, but leaned forward against a flimsy railing. 

They’d stepped out onto a narrow balcony of sorts. A broken pulley hung from the wall to their left and an alleyway stretched into the darkness of the alienage beneath them. It was wide enough for two chairs and little else, though the gleam of glass bottles beneath them suggested what this space had been used for most recently. 

“This was—” she sighed, and one fist thudded lightly against the wood of the railing. “I was last here on the night before my…before the wedding.”

Arianwen leaned forward until her shoulders hunched.  Her hands were joined into one fist, knuckles pale against the brown of her skin. Zevran breathed sweet night air and watched her. It was still difficult—to wait, to allow her to unspool whatever she’d been fighting. It would be easier to make some joke. Already, one stood waiting on his tongue. But—no. 

No, he found he rather wanted to know what she’d brought him here to say.

“Shianni was too drunk to climb down. I was too scared to try on my own. We dozed off here and dragged ourselves back home at dawn. I remember thinking that it would be the last time I ever came up here. I knew…I knew I would never want to share this place with a stranger. How could I?” 

Zevran nudged one of the chairs aside, wincing when he heard the bottles beneath tipping against each other. He found a spot beside her at the rail and rested his arms against it. Arianwen did not look at him.

“The night my mother died, I was here. I came home late because I’d argued with my father and I knew he would worry if I was out for too long. I was…punishing him. By the time I came back, she was already gone.”

A breeze brushed small, loose hairs over her forehead. Tabris reached up and pushed them back, frowning slightly. Zevran edged closer and leaned his shoulder against hers. After a moment, she bent to lean her head against his shoulder. 

“I don’t blame myself. It wasn’t my fault. This isn’t about that. This is—ugh.”

Zevran wrapped an arm around her waist, thinking hard, but there was little he could say. He had come to trust her slowly, had given himself over one careful piece at a time before he’d realized that he was doing so. It did not often pain him to tell her the hard things now. For her part, Arianwen had opened her arms to him readily enough once she’d begun to care, but it had taken longer to offer pieces of her heart to him in turn. Even now, he could feel her cutting them free for his perusal. 

“There is nothing that you must tell me. Yes?” he said, resting his shoulder against hers. “It can wait. A different night, some other place.” 

“No,” she said sharply. “I want to say—I’m glad you’re here. You should be here. I love this place and I hate this place and I miss it all the time. It was my secret, but now it’s yours, too. And that’s all.” 

Her eyes flicked up and away again, focusing on the dark alley below. 

“I’m glad you’re here, Zev,” she repeated quietly. “That’s all.” 

What could he say to this? Wen could be harsh and difficult and wore the intensity of her feelings like armor. Even so—she had brought him to this, the most vulnerable of places, the tenderest of wounds. She had brought him here and no other. 

Zevran swallowed around the thickness in his throat and nudged her hip with his. She looked up at him, the moonlight snared in her eyes, and what could he say? 

“Do you suppose any of these bottles still have wine in them? Some wine, a fine whiskey, perhaps?” 

Arianwen snorted, shoulders loosening slightly. 

“None that I’d chance drinking,” she said, but tugged a slim, dented flask from her pocket. “Here—I’ll share. But only because you asked.”

“You have my most sincere thanks, dearest Warden,” Zevran told her, voice smooth and dripping with charm. She snorted again, tapping his chest with the flask, and he took it. It was warm, held tight against her side all this time. He treasured the feeling of it as he unscrewed the cap. 

When they walked back to Eamon’s estate later, all but alone on the street, he sought better words. It was easier when she wasn’t watching him. It was easier when they were away from the place that had hurt and raised her. 

“I am glad I am here, too, mi vida,” he told her, watching the ragged road ahead. “Thank you.” 

Her hand slipped into his, palm warm and rough. Zevran wondered if she knew that the words were meant for more than just tonight. He wondered if she understood how far back the sentiment could stretch, that he was grateful for more than a secret shared and glad for his continued existence in a broader sense than glad could encompass. 

“Thank you,” she echoed quietly, and held on tight.

(For Zevwarden Week Day 2: Secrets, Kept and Told. Thanks @zevraholics for organizing this!)

[shivunin]

the high priestess for elowen c:

Thank you so much for asking! For "the high priestess" (magic, dreams, knowledge):

A Storm, Reaching

(Elowen Lavellan/Cullen | 674 Words | CW: References to lyrium addiction)

“What does it feel like?” Cullen asked. 

Elowen’s hand was cupped in his. It was more pleasant, more soothing than she’d thought it would be to hold someone’s hand. Grounding, she supposed. She wouldn’t tell him so, she decided. The words would all come out wrong, like as not. 

“Hmm?” she asked, watching the mist from the lake curl around their feet. She could not say how long they’d been here, sitting on the dock outside of Honnleath. It felt like it had been hours. Not long enough, of course. It could never be long enough for the two of them. Soon, they would have to turn back to find their mounts and ride for Skyhold. There would be responsibilities and patrols and paperwork and neverending rifts to seal, and—

“Magic,” he said after a moment. Her thoughts had wandered so far that Elowen scrambled for a moment before she remembered what he was talking about. 

“I have often wondered,” he went on when she said nothing in response, “what it might feel like. For you.” 

“Oh,” she said, tilting her head back to think. “I’ve—I suppose I’ve never really thought of it before.” 

“You haven’t?” he asked. His profile was lit by the reflection of the moon on the water, a silvery line along his face. “When…I began taking lyrium, I felt the change at once. There are ways to practice how to use it before taking the first draught, of course, but afterward…”

His mouth shaped the next word before he said it, and his mouth twisted into a grimace. 

“What did it feel like?” Elowen asked, and turned her hand until their palms were pressed together. He’d taken off his gloves at some point and his hands were cool to the touch. She wrapped her other hand around his, too, and squeezed lightly until his skin began to warm. 

“I’m not one for—descriptions of…” he hesitated. “It felt strong. Sure. Like it was the answer. When I took it, everything felt clear—but it was never my own clarity. Perhaps that doesn’t make any sense, I don’t—”

“I understand,” Elowen said before he could take the words back. “The Anchor feels the same way sometimes. When I use it, it’s like speaking a language I’ve never learned. Was it like that?”

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose it was.”

They sat in relative silence for a time, accompanied only by the water lapping against the dock and the distant croaking of the frogs. When his hand warmed, Elowen loosened her grip on it and took the other.

“Magic doesn’t feel like that,” she said after a time. “When I used it the first time, it was as easy as breathing. I almost scared the life out of my poor mother. I had climbed to the top of a tree in a storm—”

“Really?” Cullen asked, and she smiled. 

“Really. And they couldn’t find me anywhere in the camp. It was truly a frightening one, winds bending trees to and fro, rain soaking me to the skin. It’s why I hadn’t tried to climb down. In my fear, I reached for the storm. I can’t say what I was trying to do or what I thought would happen. I was so young—but in any case, I reached for the storm and it reached back. I felt the lightning race across my skin, but it didn’t hurt. It felt right, natural. I don’t think I can explain it in any other way, though I wish there were better words.”

She laughed, shaking her head. Cullen’s fingers tangled with hers. 

“I’m sure that doesn’t help,” she said. “It’s all dreadfully vague.” 

“No, no,” Cullen said, squeezing her hand. “Thank you for telling me. When I’d considered it in the past, I thought it would be the same.”

After a moment, voice quieter, he added:

“I am glad to know it’s not the same.” So am I, Elowen thought. She squeezed his hand, still warming to hers, and brought the knuckles to her lips one by one.

[shivunin]

for the oc codex prompts: a note/letter found in your OC's pocket, for Arianwen?

Ooooh absolutely chewing on this, thank you!!

(Codex Prompts)

For "a note/letter found in your OC's pocket" (377 Words | No warnings)

A handspan of paper, marked with stains and retrieved from a Warden’s pocket after the death of the Archdemon. Its corners are grey with handling, its creases deep, and it is dated only a month previous. The letter reads:

Wen, I know you’ll never listen to me say it aloud, so I’ve written this down in advance. I did what I had to do, and I guess you did, too. If I were to do it all over, I never would have pushed you like I did. For what it’s worth now, I didn’t know what would happen because of it. Maybe you would never have had to become what you are now. Maybe you would have been taken away to Tevinter like so many of the others. I guess we’ll never know, will we? I am proud of who you’ve become. You won’t believe that, I think, but I am proud of you. I wish I could tell you properly how I felt the first time I held you. Your ma wouldn’t let you go for the first day—couldn’t stand to set you down. Couldn’t bear to stop looking at you. She wanted you more than anything else in the world. When she fell asleep at last, I picked you up and took you to the window where the light was brightest. Your head didn’t even fill the palm of my hand, my Wen. I thought—you could do anything in the world, nothing decided for you yet. There’s so much I would change if I could, but I have always loved you. Whatever you think of me now, I want you to know that. Maybe you still can do anything in the world. If anybody can save us from what’s coming, I think it must be you. I saw the way you fought before. I’m proud of you. Maybe I said so already, but I mean it. I’ve already written more here than you’ll ever read, I know. You have been one of the greatest joys in my life. Maybe you’ll allow an old man this one foolishness. I will not tell you to be strong; you always have been, even without my encouragement. Be well, then, my dear, even if you cannot be safe. -Pa

[shivunin]

Lend a Hand

(Maria Hawke/Fenris | 965 Words | no warnings)

They’d been wandering through Sundermount for what felt like hours before Fenris noticed the change in Hawke’s spellcasting. 

He didn’t want to notice. For his own reasons, Fenris tried not to watch Hawke too closely, even if his efforts were usually in vain. In the end, he couldn’t help noticing the change; during their fight against a particularly tenacious group of spiders, one of them carved a line across his chest and Fenris called out for help. Usually, this would be the point at which Hawke turned and threw fire at whatever he was fighting. Instead, she just hissed and hit it with a lackluster burst of sparks. 

Fenris cast a disgruntled look over his shoulder, but had little time to object to her lack of assistance. Three crossbow bolts thudded into the spider, felling it at last, and he paused to down a health potion before turning to the next. 

Several minutes later, when they were the only ones left alive, the others set about searching the cavern and Hawke went back to the stairs, frowning down at her hand. She set her staff aside with little care, and it hit several steps before rolling to the floor with a dull thud.

Odd, that. Much as Fenris tried not to watch her, he knew that she was meticulously careful with her staff. He paused, crouched over a dead explorer, and watched her warily. 

Hawke sat stiffly on a splintering step and bent over her hand. A lock of curly black hair drifted back over her face and she blew it out of the way, annoyed. 

That—that was precisely why he kept his eyes to himself. 

Despite her occasional hints, Fenris had been careful to hedge his bets. She was, above and beyond anything else she did, still a mage. Not to be trusted; he’d had a lifetime to learn that, even if he didn’t remember much of it. So—he hadn’t responded to her attempts at flirting, but he hadn’t turned her down outright, either. 

He could not explain to himself why he was crossing the cavern to her now, when it would be so much smarter to stay where he was.

“What is it?” he asked when he got close, “A wound?” 

Hawke grimaced, then looked up at him. 

“Hand cramp,” she said, “Foolish. I should have done something when it started hurting hours ago, but here we are. I’m sorry about earlier, by the way—dropped the damned thing and had to improvise without the staff. Nothing ever works right without the staff.”

She mumbled this last sentence, and glared down at the staff in question. It went on lying on the cavern floor, faintly muddy now, and Fenris peered down at it.

This was a bad idea. 

It was a very bad idea. 

“Let me see,” he said, carefully holding out one hand. 

Hawke’s eyebrows shot up, but she offered her hand after a moment. Her fingers were curled in, the thumb extended past what must be comfortable, and there were red marks on her palm from where she’d been rubbing it. 

Don’t do it, he told himself firmly, she can manage it for herself. She’s a healer; let her heal it herself.

Fenris crouched before her and took her hand in his, running a thumb over the swell of her palm. There was a knot in the muscle there; he could feel it even without pressing hard, and the hiss between her teeth confirmed it for what it was. 

“Stretch more often,” he told her stiffly, and ran both thumbs down either side of the cramped muscle.

“Are you a healer now?” she asked, and he wasn’t looking at her (he wasn’t!), but he could see the quirk in her full lips when she said it, as if she was laughing at her own joke.

“No,” Fenris said stiffly, but went on after a moment, “There was a woman—an old slave—who did this for the swordsmen when I lived in Danarius’s household. It helped with the pain.”

“Oh!” Hawke said, and hissed between her teeth when he hit a particularly bad spot. Fenris ignored this and moved on to the skin beneath her knuckles. 

Her hands were callused here, which made sense. His hands were callused in the same places, for a staff and a greatsword were gripped in a similar enough manner. He’d not accounted for the warmth of her, though, nor the way her breath stirred his hair when she craned her neck to see what he was doing. 

Fenris had known this was a bad idea, but here he was nonetheless. Getting closer to her could only end badly for both of them. And yet…

“You should be more careful,” he told her sternly, to banish the odd fluttering in his chest. It had begun when he’d watched her blow her hair out of her face. Ignoring it had not yet forced the sensation to dissipate. 

Good enough; he ought to let go and move away quickly, before anything else—

Her fingers clung to his when he drew away—not very much, only for a breath or two longer than he’d held onto her, but it was enough. 

Enough—ha! Too much by far. 

Fenris stood quickly, sidestepping her fallen staff without needing to look for it.

“Thank you,” Hawke told him, flexing and curling her fingers before bending to reach for her staff. 

Fenris turned away, willing the heat and tingling to vanish from his ears. At his side, his hands flexed, as if by doing so he could shake off the feeling of her skin against his.  

It was...the first time they'd touched each other that didn't involve healing.

“It was nothing.”

He wondered if Hawke could hear the lie in his voice as plainly as he did.

(At @jtownnn's request for the prompt "6. Massage, either full-body or partial (hand, shoulder, etc.)" from this list. This was fun! I don't think I've written them this early in the game yet c:)

[shivunin]

In Good Time {1/3}

Thank you as always to the lovely @scribbledquillz for letting me borrow her Warden Revka for @ockissweek. She and Wen are such utter disasters together that I couldn't help but go a bit overboard. (I have broken this into three smaller parts to post while I get comfortable with the editing on the other pieces for this week.)

(Part 2 | Part 3)

(Female Warden/Female Warden | 2,101 Words | No warnings)

"For a chance to make your little much, To gain a lover and lose a friend, Venture the tree and a myriad such, When nothing you mar but the year can mend: But a last leaf---fear to touch!" --Robert Browning, "By the Fire-Side"

Somewhere in the alienage, a bell rang. 

It was not the bell of a clocktower, nor the bell of some stalwart city watch. The alienage was afforded neither luxury. It might have been someone’s musical instrument, or perhaps the little bell over the general store in the central courtyard. From this distance, echoing through the fall fog and the alleyways in between, it was difficult to tell much about it. 

Arianwen, who’d already been lying awake, held her breath until she was sure nobody had roused from their sleep at the sound. Around her, her cousins and father went on sleeping, snores rising above the faint ringing. 

Good. Now must be the time.

She slipped from her bed, careful to avoid putting too much weight on the floorboard that creaked the loudest. She slipped her feet into her worn shoes, took her threadbare cloak from the hook beside the door, and slipped soundlessly into the mists of night. 

Somewhere behind her, the bell chimed. Wen found her feet matching its cadence without intending to as she dodged the puddles waiting in the center of the road. It was never a long walk to her dearest friend’s house, but it seemed longer in the mist with the lonely ringing behind her. She passed the burnt-out wreck of a house, a lean-to with a lamp burning inside, and one of the little nests she’d assembled for the stray cats in the neighborhood. She paused there a moment, fishing a cloth from her pocket and shaking her dinner scraps out before the little den. The street seemed less lonely when the tabby crept from within and butted her head against Wen’s fingers. 

“Shh,” Wen told her, trailing her fingertips over the cat’s back. The cat made a soft noise, twining around Arianwen’s ankles before taking her spoils and darting back into her little den. 

Wen waited a moment, listening, and heard the soft sounds of satisfaction from within. There’d been a night much like this, years ago now, when the fog had clung to the banks of the Drakon and she’d slipped through alleyways with her best friend in hand. This very cat had been a newborn kitten then, her little eyes unopened. Wen had fed her mother all through the pregnancy, had watched the kittens be born herself, and she’d been so punch-drunk with happiness that it had seemed the most obvious possible thing to track down Revka and show her, too. 

The tabby was, incidentally, also named Revka. Only her favorite people ever got to share their names with the animals she cared for. 

Wen deposited other scraps as she went, leaving trimmings of fat on this wall or along that gutter. She could hear the stray dogs and cats making their way from the shadows, and the occasional skitter in the refuse of the street that told her the rats had found it, too. Fine enough. Her other creatures could hunt the rats if they were quick enough—and if they were not, she made this trip every night. She would leave more for them later. 

The fire was still lit inside Revka’s house. Wen sighed in relief (she always felt bad climbing through the window, even if nobody here minded) and rapped her knuckles against the door. 

“C’min,” a drowsy voice murmured beyond. Wen turned the knob and slipped through the open door into the golden-lit room beyond. 

Rev was slumped over the table, her mending strewn over the surface before her. There were creases on her cheek that suggested she’d recently fallen asleep on the uppermost piece, and she blinked owlishly at Wen when she shut the door behind her. 

“You should be asleep,” Wen whispered. She slid the latch home and paused to Revka’s left. Rev fought a yawn, pressing her hand to her mouth, and fussed with the things on the table for a moment. 

“Would be, if you’d been earlier,” Revka said, but there was no accusation in her voice. Wen shrugged and offered a hand, which Revka took readily to stand. There were calluses and welts across her fingers, a sign that she’d been long at her mending and the sewing needle had taken its toll. Her fingers were stiff, too, and Wen ran her thumbs over the swell at the base of Rev’s thumb until her joints loosened slightly. 

“Shianni couldn’t sleep.”

“Course not,” Rev said absently, her eyes on their hands. Wen dropped the first and took the second, pressing into the palm until Revka sighed and her shoulders relaxed. 

“Come on,” Wen said, slipping out of her shoes and shrugging her coat loose. “You never lie down unless I make you.”

“’S not true,” Revka yawned, but obligingly unbuttoned her stiff vest and set it aside. 

The two of them fit neatly on Revka’s bed as long as they were both lying on their sides. This was fortunate, because they’d been sleeping precisely like that for a very long time—before Revka had lost her parents, even. Wen slept with her back to the wall because she was never at ease with her back to an open room. Revka, for her part, slept huddled against Wen’s chest. The blanket wasn’t really enough to warm both of them otherwise, as they’d found out many winters ago. Rev had patched it with scraps from the tailor’s shop she worked for, so it was far thicker than it had once been. Even so, they had their routines—both liked their routines very much, in fact, and this was one of the most important. 

“Your day?” Wen asked when they were both amply covered by the blanket. 

“Fine,” Rev said, but the corner of her mouth turned down. 

“Hmm,” Wen said. 

“Was awful.”

“Thought so.”

“Bastards all day,” Rev said, tucking her face into the crook of Arianwen’s neck. “Didn’t get a thing finished.”

“Mm,” Wen said, smoothing a hand over her friend’s hair. Revka sighed, and it was a weary thing. 

“Couldn’t leave at the end,” Revka went on, her breath heating Wen’s throat, “were people against the door—nevermind.”

“What?” Wen asked, pulling back slightly. Revka wrinkled her nose. There were dark circles under her eyes. No matter how early she crept through the streets to Rev’s door, the circles never seemed to get any lighter. 

“Kissing,” Rev said, and her voice was odd around the word. Hesitant—no. Something else. Something strange. “Had to leave through the back.”

“Oh,” Wen frowned. “I don’t know why people do that.”

“Block the door?”

“Kiss.”

“You…?” 

Even in the shadows, Wen could see the faint flush against her friend’s cheeks. She shrugged, then pulled the blanket back over her exposed shoulder. 

“You know I haven’t. I would have told you,” she paused, considering, and went on: “It doesn’t look as interesting as people make it seem.”

“You’re not—” Revka swallowed audibly and shifted on the bed against Wen. Their knees knocked against each other. “Not curious?”

Arianwen considered this seriously. She was curious about very little, actually, and kissing was one of those odd marks of growing up that had seemed irrelevant to her. That sort of landmark only seemed to apply to other people, just like having lots of friends and feeling comfortable in conversations. Rev was more knowledgeable about this sort of thing. She always seemed to know more about which of these questionable necessities Wen actually ought to care about. 

“Should I be?” she asked. 

Revka squirmed under the blanket. Her cold feet brushed against Wen’s calf. 

“Dunno,” Revka said, but she was dodging Wen’s eyes. Arianwen frowned. 

“Who would kiss me?” she asked, because this was clearly some important thing she’d been missing. All the years she’d been alive and it hadn’t come up until now; perhaps this was some threshold she’d been meant to cross before tonight. How odd that nobody’d told her so. 

Revka made a strangled noise. 

“What?”

Rev didn’t answer. 

“Rev. What?”

“I’d,” Rev cleared her throat. “I’d do it.”

“Oh,” Wen said, sinking further into the blankets. “Why?”

“Well. If you’re curious.”

Was she curious? She couldn’t tell. But Revka was the sort of person who always knew what to do, and even when she didn’t she usually had an idea of what ought to happen. If she thought Arianwen needed to be kissed, it was probably for a very good reason. She’d never steered Wen wrong before. 

“Alright,” Wen said. She propped herself up on her elbow, thick braid slipping from the pillow to rest against her arm. 

“I—really?”

“Why not?” 

Revka’s eyes were dark and warm in the firelight. Wen watched them, looking for some second meaning. This seemed like one of those conversations that was happening twice, and she only understood one half of it. A pity; Rev was usually one of the few who told her precisely what she meant. 

“’f you’re sure,” Rev said, licking her bottom lip and shifting on the thin mattress. 

Wen shrugged and leaned forward, pressing her mouth to Revka’s. The air had cooled her lips, especially the lower one, but they warmed against Arianwen’s. Rev made a small sound—surprised—and moved her lips in turn. It was slow at first, then slightly faster. She could feel the ridge of Revka’s teeth beneath her skin, and the small but noticeable scar where her lip had once been split defending Wen in an alleyway. 

Her lungs ached. Wen leaned back, taking a sharp breath, and lay back against the pillow again.

When she felt steadier, Arianwen blinked at Revka. Revka pressed her hands over her cheeks, then rested one palm over her eyes. Wen eyed her hands for a moment, resolving to steal some hand cream from somewhere. The colder it got, the harder the weather was on poor Rev’s hands. Someone ought to do something about it. 

“Well?” Rev asked after several silent moments. 

A bell chimed somewhere in the alienage, the rhythm uneven and halting. 

“Guess it’s nice,” Wen said. “Don’t understand why people are always doing it, though.”

Rev squeaked and rolled over, burrowing under the covers. It was awfully chilly in here, Wen supposed. She found Revka’s hip under the blanket and pulled her closer, looping an arm over her stomach. 

“Thank you,” she added belatedly, and Revka made another indistinct noise. 

The bell went on ringing somewhere in the distance. Wen pulled the blanket up and over her pointed ear, wishing that everyone else in the world would just go away. Hesitantly, pausing halfway through, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Revka’s hair. She didn’t know why. Seemed like the thing to do, maybe. 

“Go to sleep, Rev,” she said, already comfortable enough to feel the pull of slumber. She never slept better than she did tucked into Revka’s cramped bed. She might even go so far as to say that this was her favorite place to be in all the world—the fire flickering past the kitchen table, Revka’s brother breathing softly in the other room, and Rev herself held tightly in Wen’s arms. 

Maybe she’d try to find something else for Revka, Wen thought, yawning slightly and nestling into Rev’s shoulder. A thicker blanket, maybe. Rev was shivering against her, so she must still be cold, and true winter would come very soon. 

Yes, she decided. A thicker blanket would be just the thing. 

Long after Wen fell asleep at last, Revka lay awake. The pillow was damp under her cheek and her hand was pressed hard against her traitorous mouth. It wasn’t even worth wondering what she could possibly have been thinking. She hadn’t been thinking. Obviously. 

What a fool she was—let me show you what a kiss feels like—an utter fool. How close she’d come to giving it all away. If she ever did—if she ever let on how crucial Wen’s company was to her—she would surely lose this closeness forever. Ruin it, and for what? Because she couldn’t help but wonder what Wen’s touch would feel like against something other than her palms? 

Because kissing her had felt like liquid fire running under her skin? Because she had, for a moment, thought that Wen might feel the same? 

Ridiculous—stupid, to think that the hope of something beyond their friendship could ever be worth more than what she already had. 

When they woke in the morning, when Arianwen asked why she looked so tired, Revka told her only that some fool with a bell had kept her awake all night. 

What else could she possibly say? The truth was beyond consideration. She would just—hold it inside forever, and Wen would never, ever have to know.

[shivunin]

Like Constellations

Happy OC Kiss Week! Kicking off with my dear @star--nymph's Eurydice and my Emmaera. Thank you for letting me borrow her, friend!

(721 Words | No Warnings)

The rain had left the ramparts of Skyhold slick and glistening. Here, near the lights of the Great Hall, they shimmered like tiny stars caught inexplicably in stone. It was a mirror to the stars the two elves discussed now, perhaps, but these were more touchable by far than the ones cast away in the sky.

“It shouldn’t be possible,” Emmaera murmured thoughtfully, looking behind them at the tiny lights. “The rain, I mean. By all rights, we should have snow on this side of the wall, too. This place and its seasons…it’s never made sense to me.” 

“Stop moving,” Eurydice said behind her. “I’m not finished.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

The clouds above parted, slowly revealing a narrow slice of the heavens above. Early evening stars peered through the break in clouds.

“Falon’Din walked,” Eurydice prompted behind her. 

Emmaera had no idea what her dear friend was doing behind her, but she wasn’t especially concerned. They’d grown used to spending time tucked between crenellations, Eury’s fingers quick and clever in Emma’s long hair while Emmaera told stories. What a relief it was to sit here just like this, where she need think of nothing more than whatever tale she’d been telling. 

“Falon’Din walked the woods,” Emma went on, “but most of the time he flew. He wore the shape of a great owl, its feathers cast with dark spots. An owl has fine eyes for little things, hidden things, and one by one he found all of the lost souls wandering alone there.”

The soft smell of lavender began to eclipse the scent of falling rain. Emma smiled and tilted her head back when Eurydice adjusted her grip. 

“He tucked each of them safely amongst the feathers of his wings, for the journey to the Beyond is a long and dangerous one. It would have been very easy indeed to lose some of them along the way. After all, it is not so simple a thing for a mortal creature to leave behind everything it knows.” 

She paused, trying to remember what came next. Eurydice’s hands gave one last, decisive tug on her hair. Stretching slightly, for she’d been sitting very still for quite some time, Emma turned and let her feet dangle over the long drop to the valley below. She began to reach for her hair, but her friend caught her hand before she could feel what had been done to it. 

“Keep going,” Eurydice said. 

Obligingly, Emmaera went on talking, unspooling a story beat by beat: a soul lost to the woods, a daring rescue, a home among the stars. It was one she had told before, and one she never minded telling again. It was difficult to mind when she had such a a captivated audience. Still speaking, Emmaera watched as her hand was turned upright. Eurydice's cool, green-stained fingertips traced the lines there with care. 

“Falon'Din is gone now, as are all the gods,” she said at last. “Even so, perhaps his dark wings stretch across the sky even now, the way to the Beyond lit like a beacon between his feathers. Even on this very night, we can use them to show us where we are and where we ought to go. The Chantry calls them by another name, but elves know his stars nonetheless.”

“Hmm,” Eurydice said. Her eyes had drifted closed during the telling of the story, but her pale lashes fluttered open again when Emma stopped speaking. Emma turned her hand over and lifted Eury's to her mouth. She kissed each knuckle very carefully, neither too firm nor too soft. Eury allowed this, though not without a faint quiver at her ears. 

“Thank you,” Emmaera said when she’d finished. “Can you remind me where it is? I'm still turned around now that we've finally found this place, and the clouds…”

“There,” Eurydice said, pointing with her free hand. As if by magic, the clouds drifted apart in the direction she pointed and a familiar cluster of stars was revealed. 

Emmaera scooted closer and leaned her shoulder against Eurydice’s. As one, their palms pressed together, the two of them watched the stars. They thought of words long since past, words yet to come, and tried valiantly not to think at all about the faint green tint the sky had given to the distant stars.

[shivunin]

A Good Fight

(Arianwen Tabris/Zevran Arainai | 2,440 Words | AO3 Link | CW: Mild sexual references/sexual tension)

Summary: Things that annoy Tabris: frivolous conversation and being the butt of a joke. Why, then, can she not get the insufferable Crow out of her mind?

“May I rest my head on your bosom?” the Crow asked somewhere behind Tabris. “I might cry.”

Tabris grimaced, casting a look at Alistair. He echoed her glance, nose wrinkled. It galled her to agree with him, but plainly they were in accord when it came to this.

“You can cry well away from my bosom, I’m certain,” the mage said severely. 

“Reconsidering keeping him around yet?” Alistair asked in a low voice, bending closer. 

Wen pressed her lips together, eyes narrowed, and glanced behind her at the other two. Zevran gazed at Wynne soulfully, one hand pressed to his chest. Wynne was grimacing, staff thumping into the dust of the road as they climbed the hill. 

“Did I tell you I was an orphan?” the former Crow went on, his voice sorrowful. “I never knew my mother.”

“Egad,” Wynne said, disgust as plain in her voice as it was in the lines of her body. “I give up.” 

She sped up, outstripping Zevran and both Wardens. Arianwen watched the mage go, shaking her head, and glanced behind her again. 

Zevran caught her eyes at once and winked. Wen stared back, lips still pressed into a tight line. 

“Maybe I am,” she told Alistair, and turned away again. 

Before them, the harried mage left small clouds of dust above the road. The late afternoon light diffused there, giving the road an odd sort of dreamlike quality. 

“Could still give killing him a shot,” Alistair muttered. 

“What was that? I could not hear you over the sound of all that armor,” Zevran said, abruptly behind them. Arianwen took a large step to the left and carried on. 

“Oh, nothing,” Alistair said. Wen could feel him looking at her, but she ignored the desperate glance. “We, ah…thought your conversation was interesting. That’s all.”

“Ah—so I suppose you also have an opinion about murder, then?” 

There was something under the words. Some sort of…double meaning, hidden undercurrent. Ugh. Wen hated plenty of things, but trying to understand what someone meant when it wasn’t what they actually said ranked highly on the list. 

“Let’s not,” she said. 

“Not what? I am afraid I do not understand you.”

If he started talking about her bosom, she’d just stab him, Wen decided. When she sped up, the assassin matched her. 

“Talk.”

“Pardon? I did not catch what you said.”

“I, ah—wouldn’t push your luck, there,” Alistair said, jogging for several steps until he drew even with the pair of them. “She’s got a short temper.”

“Yes, I had determined as much,” Zevran said. “And how lovely she looks when she is thinking of death.”

Wen stepped directly into his path and stopped moving, forcing the assassin to stop in his tracks or dodge to the side. He chose the former, still smiling broadly, though he stopped only an inch or two away. Arianwen met his eyes squarely, thinking. 

She didn’t think she wanted to kill him. The man was decent enough at what he did. Fighting him had been the best part of fighting any of the Crows. Actually, he’d been her favorite person to fight since they’d left Ostagar. There was something fluid about the way he moved that—well. Fascinated her, actually. She liked watching him. 

No—no, she didn’t want to kill him. What would be the point now? It certainly wasn’t as if she cared that Wynne, of all people, was annoyed. Actually, she should be thanking him. For once, the mage hadn’t been hovering over her shoulder and asking questions. 

“I don’t think so,” she said, to the dust in the air as much as she was speaking to either man, and turned to continue up the hill without any additional elaboration. 

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Zevran said behind her. 

“We aren’t friends, assassin,” Alistair said stiffly, but added in a quieter voice: “Best to avoid prodding at her when she’s already tired.”

“Mmm,” Zevran allowed. Wen gritted her teeth, irritated again, but he went on a moment later. “I shall take your advice very seriously, Warden.” 

Wen glanced behind her one more time, expecting the same cocky grin or perhaps another wink. Instead, she found a flash of something she didn’t expect: 

Exhaustion. Hiding in the corner of his eyes, in the subtle roll of his shoulders.

Ah. That was harder to ignore. 

Wen closed her eyes, willing herself to keep walking. It would be easy. It would be better. He was so annoying; maybe he’d stop talking if he was too tired to manage. 

As soon as she reached the top of the hill, she swung her pack from her shoulder and sat back against a fence. 

Not for him. Obviously not. 

But—maybe it was time for a break. That was all. Redcliffe was almost in sight and they’d probably be busy as soon as they got there. Best they sit and rest now before they no longer had the choice. 

She certainly, pointedly did not breathe easier when the Crow sat to her left with an audible sigh of relief. 

|

“Are you quite certain you are ready for this?” the assassin asked. 

Wen, who’d deposited the last of her armor to the side of the clearing, nodded curtly. She’d have to be a fool to think he had nothing to teach her. Whenever possible, she did try not to be a fool.

“I need to know all I can. Show me, if you want to.”

The outskirts of the Brecilian rose around them, trees already towering higher than she’d ever seen them before. This place was odd and old, breaking the monotony of carefully planted fields and abandoned villages. She didn’t feel like herself here. It was as if she’d slipped off her skin and found it ill-fitting upon its return. Or—perhaps something hung watching in the air here. Something that saw her, that waited and knew. 

She couldn’t say she liked it. 

“If I want to?” Zevran flipped the knife in his hand once, neatly. “And here you have been asking so politely, Warden. How could I say no?”

“You’ve just said it,” Wen replied, taking a slow, smooth step to the side. “Obviously you know how.” 

“Tch,” he began to circle with her—taking her measure, she thought. Some of the glossy humor fell away, baring the steel beneath. “So literal.”

Wen huffed, refusing to be dragged into a conversation. She’d get distracted by talking and then he’d strike. She knew exactly how this worked. 

“First and foremost,” he said, “I have seen you fight. You are very skilled, yes? But you are not careful.”

Wen felt her eyebrows climb. Zevran feinted, she sidestepped, and they resumed pacing each other. 

“Are you suggesting I get thicker armor?” she asked. 

He laughed, a deeper thing than his usual chuckle. Wen narrowed her eyes. 

“You have been spending too much time with Alistair. No—I am suggesting you learn to be quieter,” he said, and moved—it was like his body had become liquid for a moment, flowing so close that she was forced onto her back foot. A blow in the right spot and she was stumbling back, struggling to halt her momentum enough to guard herself. 

To her surprise, he did not press his advantage. He took a step back instead, watching her with an odd look on his face. Wen scowled and rolled her shoulders, loosening the muscles that had gone taut. 

“I’m plenty quiet.”

“Not quiet enough to be an assassin—and that is what you asked me to teach you, yes?”

Wen pursed her lips. She had asked him. She’d wanted to know how he moved the way he did, but she certainly couldn’t ask him for that. It had been plenty easy to imagine what he’d say in response. 

“Fight me, then,” she said, and dropped her knife. It sank into the soft earth point-down, which meant she’d have to be very thorough when she cleaned and oiled it later. At the moment, she didn’t really care. 

Zevran cocked an eyebrow at her, but stepped back to set his knife aside. 

“Are you quite certain? Surely you would like some sort of explanation first.”

“No,” she told him. “I’m too literal for that.”

Zevran tipped his head back and laughed. 

As soon as his eyes were closed, she struck. It ought to have been a glancing blow, only a soft slap to his shoulder to get his attention. The strike never landed. Instead, he flowed away from her and spun, planting a hand on her back and pushing. Wen was ready for it this time. Her weight shifted hard to her back foot, but she did not waver.  

“Good,” he said from behind her, but when she reached back to grasp his arm Zevran was already gone. 

Arianwen spun slowly, listening. He must have gone up; there was nothing closer than the branches to hide behind. Her heart thudded in her ears, distracting her. Where was he? That rustle in the bushes had the rhythm of a squirrel, the scratching at the bark to her right was certainly a bird, and the crunch in the leaves behind her—

Zevran dropped from above and locked her into his arms before she had a chance to strike back. 

“As I was saying,” he told her. “Not very careful.”

Arianwen tried to kick him to little avail. Zevran laughed into her ear, his mouth briefly brushing against the point of it. An odd tingling sensation spread from that point to her cheeks, burning as it went. What was this? Some sort of poison?

Arianwen planted her feet, gripped his arms where they wrapped around her, and flipped Zevran over her head. His eyes were wide when she straddled his chest, a knife already pressed against the hollow of his throat. She could feel his pulse against her knuckles, could feel his breath whenever his ribs expanded between her thighs, and—what was this? 

“What did you just do?” she snarled. Zevran’s brows lifted. 

“I caught you,” he said. 

“Not that. You—” 

She pressed her lips together all at once, her face hot, and climbed off of him. If there had been some way for Arianwen to scratch the sensation from her skin with bared nails, she would have done it immediately. It lived somewhere deeper than her skin, entirely beyond the reach of fingertips or knives. 

Had he ever touched her skin to skin before? She could not think. 

“Well? Teach me,” she demanded, taking several steps away from him. The distance, such as it was, did not help.

Zevran rose more slowly, dusting himself off. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. It was—speculative. Like he was weighing her against something in his mind. 

“Or was that it?” she asked. 

“No, no—I was merely thinking how best to show you what I mean,” he said. There was some hidden meaning to his words. She could feel it. 

Wen frowned at him, eyes narrowing. What was he actually saying? 

“Let us begin again,” he said, spreading his arms. Wen took a deep breath, wishing away the odd burning at the back of her neck and the tips of her ears. 

“Let’s,” she gritted out, her heart beating curiously fast, and raised her fists.

|

“Are you awake yet?” Zevran murmured. 

“No,” Wen told him, hand skimming over his loose, night-rumpled hair. Zevran grunted and pressed his face more firmly against her bare chest. 

“It should not surprise me when you make jokes,” he said. His lips pressed against the skin over her heart. “And yet…”

“Oh, ha ha,” Wen said, rolling her eyes. “If you’re going to be a pest, you can get off.”

“Oh?” he angled his head until he could look at her, morning light glinting across one golden eye. “Can I?” 

“Andraste’s tits,” she muttered, squirming without any real effort to dislodge him. 

“Yours are finer by far, I assure you,” he informed her solemnly, pressing a kiss to the nearest of them. 

Arianwen rolled her eyes, but threaded her hand through his hair again. Some of the tangles smoothed under her touch, but not enough. He’d still need to comb it when he rose for the day. 

She tried very, very hard to pretend that she couldn’t hear the army moving outside their tent. 

“Zevran,” she began, her voice soft, and he lifted his head to look at her. 

What could she tell him? That there were even odds she would die today? That she was grateful? What more could she possibly tell him now? 

“It will be a very good fight, yes?” he said, as if he knew what she was thinking. “Your favorite thing.”

Tabris pressed her mouth closed, searching his face for meaning. She found none. There was only the warmth of his eyes, the comfort of his body pressed to hers. The clamor of steel rose beyond their flimsy canvas walls. Time was almost up. It would be a good fight, yes. If there was anything she loved, it was a good fight. 

Arianwen loved Zevran more.

She’d planned to leave him behind, where the fighting was less heavy, but she already knew she wouldn’t be able to bear it. How could she fight through the city, never knowing if he’d been struck by a stray arrow or felled by an ogre? She could not protect him and seek the archdemon both. At least if they were together—at least they would both know. At least neither of them would have to wonder.

Until the end, then, and perhaps whatever came next. At least she knew she wouldn’t be alone. 

“Yes,” she said, passing her fingers through his hair one last time. Her hand fell to a stop at his cheek, thumb tracing the bottom point of his tattoo. 

“You will remember what I taught you, yes?” 

He lifted himself onto an elbow and leaned forward to kiss her. It had been meant as a glancing thing, she thought. It ran deeper than that in the end, desperate hands on shoulders and teeth and tongues and heat. She didn’t want to lose him. She raged at the world, for giving them to each other right on the doorstep of ruin. 

“Always,” Wen told Zevran, and clutched him to her when he would have risen to go. He endured this for several moments longer, his breathing uneven, before he pressed a kiss to her cheek and moved away. 

When she pushed the blankets aside to stand, his was the hand that pulled her to her feet.

(For Zevwarden Week Day 6: Favorite Things and Pet Peeves. Thanks again @zevraholics!)

[shivunin]

14 / 38 / 48 for the Florence asks! ✨

Oooh, thank you so much! I will answer one here and do the other(s) in separate posts c: This gave me a push to finally finish fleshing out an idea that's been sitting for over a year, so double thank you for that! 💗

(Florence + the Machine Writing Prompts)

Hold Me Down

Summary: In the aftermath of Here Lies the Abyss, Cullen finds the Inquisitor alone at the edge of the camp.

(Elowen Lavellan/Cullen | 1,206 Words | CW: Blood, descriptions of shock/panic attack)

“Hold me down, I'm so tired now Aim your arrow at the sky Take me down, I'm too tired now Leave me where I lie.” —Florence + the Machine, “Sky Full of Song”

“—foremost priority should be seeking out and destroying any remaining demons who might have escaped the battle,” Cullen was saying to a scout as they walked, “take a group and scour the fortress for any signs, and then relay the information to Commander Rylen. He’s kept a troop in reserve for cleanup duty.”

“Yes, Commander,” the scout said, peeling off. Cullen paused as he saw an odd shape tucked between two tents and a stack of crates. 

He knew the shape of that staff. 

“Inquisitor?” he called, peering over the stack of crates. The shape shifted, turned slightly, and lifted its head. 

Behind the cowl, her face was still spattered with blood; it was almost enough to obscure the pale lines of her vallaslin entirely, and what the blood didn’t smear was peppered with ash and dust. Her hands were set on her lap, just as filthy as her face, half-curled and limp. And her eyes…

“Lavellan?” he said, and she blinked, blood-clogged eyelashes sticking for a moment to her cheek. Her eyes did not come into focus. 

Ah—he’d seen this before. 

Cullen sidestepped the crates and crouched several inches away, leaving her room on the other side to get away from him if necessary. 

“Can you hear me, Inquisitor?” he murmured quietly, and her bitten lips cracked open. 

“I am fine.”

“That isn’t what I asked,” he said quietly, glancing over his shoulder when he heard movement in the camp. Just a pair of sentries wandering past. He returned his attention to the Inquisitor, whose attention remained fixed somewhere over Cullen’s left shoulder. 

“Can you hear me?” he asked. “Do you know what I am saying?”

There was a long pause. He noted the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the way her blood-soaked hands trembled in her lap. 

“...yes,” she said at last, her voice faint and flat. 

“What do you hear?” 

A soft gasp and her hands twitched in her lap. 

“You.” 

“And what else?” 

She was still breathing too quickly. Cullen eased himself down until he was kneeling between her and the rest of the camp. If nothing else, he could shield her from their speculation. A meager enough offering, but it was one he would give her without hesitation.

“The…the tents in the wind.”

“And?” 

“Metal on stone. People talking.”

“Good. What do you see?”

A frown collected between her brows and she slowly glanced at him to frown. That was good, too. 

“Sand. Tents. The stars.”

“And?” 

“Why?”

“Answer the question.”

She sighed, but her breath had slowed slightly. 

“The crates. My…my hands,” her voice shook on the last word. “You.”

“Alright,” he paused, “Are you with me?”

“Yes, I…yes,” she moved to set her face in her hands and flinched when she saw them clearly. “I—it was…The Fade was…”

“We needn’t discuss it,” Cullen murmured, shifting onto his knees to tug the tail end of his cloak loose. “You don’t have to say anything now. May I see your hand?”

Lavellan extended one hand silently and Cullen pulled the cork from his waterskin to wet the crimson fabric of his cloak. He could not properly clean her skin here; he hadn’t carried soap with him, and the cloth of the cloak was not especially absorbent. Maker, he was covered in his fair share of grime after the battle. Even so, he could get the worst of the blood off. He knew all too well what it meant to have to deal with such aftereffects of a fight. 

To be confronted with the concrete proof of what had happened. 

Her hands shook in his grip, and they were cold even through the barrier of leather. Cullen pressed his lips together, trying to decide if he ought to offer his gloves. Would she take them from him? He could not guess either way. 

“Is that any better?” he asked when he was done. Lavellan took her hand from him and peered at it in the flickering torchlight of the camp, curling and uncurling her fingers. 

“Yes, I—thank you,” she said. She lifted the other hand slightly and froze with it there, hung halfway into the air. Cullen carefully reached out to take it, selecting a different section of fabric to clean the skin with. 

Someone ought to be helping her properly. Someone needed to make sure she found a bath, food, somewhere soft to lay her head. After all he had seen of her, all he knew she had done, Cullen knew better than to think she was fragile. Even so—it tugged at him, to see her so shattered now. 

“It had so many legs,” she whispered hoarsely after a moment. “Too many. I—I couldn’t—I should have—”

Her voice broke at the end, and when the Commander glanced at her he saw that tears had begun to clear some of the muck from her cheeks in clear, straight lines. They dripped from her cheeks black and red-brown, leaving tiny, damp circles on her coat. 

“You’re here now,” he told her, holding her hand for a moment longer than necessary once it was clean. “You aren’t there anymore. It is done.”

“I let him die,” she said quietly, searching his eyes. “I—I told him to stay behind. It’s my fault. And the Divine—it’s my fault, Commander. All of it is.”

Cullen waited for her to continue, but she didn’t go on. She bit her lip again, staring at him. Ah—but what could he say to her now? There was nothing to be done about one’s past mistakes. He knew better than most what it meant to live with regret at one’s back. What to say? All he had was the words he gave his own soldiers when they’d made a mistake, and the words seemed ill-fitting here.  

“Whatever has happened,” he told her, “I’ve no doubt that you made the best decision you could with the resources available to you.”

Lavellan withdrew her hand. Cullen let it go without protest. 

“I…” slowly, the Inquisitor pulled her cowl down and away from her face. She ran her hands over the relatively clean plait beneath. “Thank you.”

It was recognition, but a dismissal as well. Not “thank you for thinking so,” but “please go away.”

Cullen tucked the soiled end of the cloak away and stood, careful not to move too close. 

“If there is anything you need, Inquisitor,” he said softly. “Please—do not hesitate to ask.”

Lavellan inclined her head, but she’d turned away to stare out at the vastness of the dunes and stars beyond. Cullen exhaled slowly and moved to step around the crates. He halted when she spoke again. 

“Cullen?” Elowen said; not Commander, for once, but his name. He turned to look at her and found her eyes, full of tears but clear and focused on his. “Thank you. Really.”

 “Of course,” he said, and cleared his throat. “It was…my honor.” 

Her eyes slipped away again, but her hands were clasped softly in her lap. Cullen straightened, gathered himself, and strode back into the camp beyond.