#i already love varric but holy shit i love him MORE now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

emerald-amidst-gold · 3 years

Note

13 or 21 for the affection prompts? :3

*gasp* Hulloooo! I didn't forget about youuuuu! >:3 Mainly, I had to sit on this because there was no idea within my head, but I got one finally~! So, let me WRITE IT!

Anybody ever wanted to see how Fane gets when he actually gets drunk? OH YES. Pair that with Solas getting slightly drunk and we have two fools being MORE foolish than ever before! AHAHAH! >:D

***

21. laughing at their jokes - (aka Fane likes puns)

"The ceiling is..", Fane trailed off as he laid on the floor in the suite that had been afforded to him and Solas in the Winter Palace. Each of the members of Inquisition had been given a room as 'thanks' for saving Orlais, as well as endless, endless access to the cellars and he had indulged, staring at the posh ceiling above and tracing patterns he could see shifting like the sky did on occasion. It was disorienting, but he felt too warm, too relaxed to really care.

As did one other, who was no better than he was, having been goaded by Fane to indulge as well, but they were situated on the silk covered bed, on their stomach, gazing down at him with a pleased, amused smirk and a lightly flushed visage. However, Fane was so preoccupied watching the dancing wall that he didn't have time to admire the sky, but he could hear it and it was a lovely, lovely sound.

"The ceiling is..?", Solas prompted, speech slow, but still oddly in control, just more relaxed, more light.

Fane blinked a few times, mind trying to piece together what was spinning before him. The ceiling was... He didn't know, actually. It was hot. He was hot. Why was he hot? Why was the ceiling shifting? Why did he feel like he could fly? Ohhh, he drank too much, but didn't care, so he just spewed out the first thing to pop up into his liquor addled brain.

"...Orlesian.", Fane finally said, pointing with a flailing arm to the entire expanse at the ornate detailing that was so painfully, painfully grotesque in its opulence. "Orlesiiian. Ugh.", he reiterated, making a face at the word. He hated Orlais. Had he mentioned that before? No? Well, he did. Icky lions and...machinations that were what the shitty elves of Arlathan had played with.

And one of them was now laughing, but they weren't shitty. Never. Never, never, never. They were the sky, free and beautiful, and he had to look at it. Fane turned his head towards the laughter tickling his heart to gaze upon his sky, a smirk working its way onto his face as he took in the carefree appearance of Solas, cheeks flushed, sky-like eyes bright, and once prim and proper attire loose and wild as a wolf should be. Guess he wasn't the only one to have drank a bit too much. Not that he was complaining. He liked this view of the sky.

"Careful, vhenan.", Solas warned between chuckles, reaching down to where Fane was laying to poke at his nose and smirking when he elicited a tiny growl. "Say 'Orlesian' one too many times and you will sum..", he paused, looking up for a moment as if to think before pale blue shone with wisdom, continuing. "..summon the Empress, or rather, Emperor, I suppose."

Fane snorted. "Ohhh, no, no, no. Gashhh..Gas..pard..Gaspard! That's the name! I got it!", he exclaimed with a wave of hand, watching with bubbling amusement as Solas bit into his bottom lip, snorting a bit. "Gaspard is a Empress because of Briala. I made that happen. I'm clever. Big dragon brain." The words becoming more slurred, more haphazard as more warmth numbed his mind into a pleasant lull. How many bottles of wine did he have again? Fifteen?

...Twenty? He had to have a very high tolerance because that shit had been weak, not kicking in until he and Solas had retired, or well, closed the door. They weren't sleeping any time soon with the way his sky was snorting and chuckling like a fool, but he was a beautiful, beautiful fool. A premium one. A majestic one.

Solas let out another snort, face occasionally scrunching from mirth. "Ma'isenatha, I believe you are drunk~", he teased, scooting along the bed to actually ruffle at Fane's hair with a carefree smirk. Fane let out a literal groan of happiness at that touch, staring up at that the pair of eyes staring down at him, albeit upside down. The sky was perfect either way.

"Uh-uh.", Fane denied, shaking his head but stopped when the world spun more than it was already. "You're drunk. You're cheeks are all...eh." He reached up with a hand of his own to poke at a flush cheek, snorting loudly as Solas let out a snort of his own before it dissolved into quiet giggling. The sound had Fane's mouth going agape. "Holy shit, he's a giggler! The legends a true! And Varric owes me fifty sovereigns! Yesh!" Why did that make him so happy? He was loaded already, but hah! He won!

"I..I am not..pfft!", Solas tried to deny but only went back to drunkenly snorting and giggling, head going limp to rest against the foot of the bed's frame.

Fane felt a smile burst forward onto his face, actively springing up into a sitting position to point triumphantly at...well, he didn't know! He was just incredibly rallied by his victory!

"My treasure hoard grows!", Fane exclaimed as he rolled over onto his stomach, pushing himself up onto his knees with both arms and scooting to where Solas was still chortling like a literal child, pointed ears as flushed as his face.

The sight of such tempting triangles had Fane smirking like a fool as he leaned down to nip at one, growling playfully. This night was finally proving to be worth all the bullshit as Solas let out a choked gasp, head snapping up to look at him, eyes bright with blue and grey and mouth split into a wide smirk of confidence and just as much playful abandon.

Fane leaned in more, resting their foreheads together with a smirk. "See?", he inquired, quickly nipping at a pointed nose and smirking even more when a growl left his sky like thunder. "Oooo, the wolf has deigned me with his presence~"

Solas chuckled, deep and oh so dangerously, but it only made Fane want to draw them out more, pressing their foreheads together more, delving into eyes that spoke a thousand words of a thousand lifetimes. Solas' hands came up to hold him in place, propping himself up on his elbows to bring himself even closer to where Fane was now leaning against the foot of the bed, casual as can be, relaxed due to the essence flowing through his blood. One day, he hoped that this was how it could always be, alcohol or no.

...Especially if he could witness more smiles from the one who had brought one back to his own face. Though, right now, it was a smirk, a lovely, lovely smirk of youth and shamelessness. And the words that spilled from those wolfish lips had Fane dying.

"You could say this one is...dreadful, hm?", Solas drawled, but hints of lavender were laughing within pale blue and hazy grey.

"Pffft!", Fane snorted before actively beginning to laugh, giggling in his own right and disconnecting their foreheads to let his head fall into his arms against the ornate bed frame. "Ahahah! D..Dreadful! I..I get it because..pfffft!"

He heard Solas let out a fond chuckle, seemingly trying not to let the infection of his laughter send him spiraling into his own again. Dreadful! Why was that so funny?! Dreadful, hah!

...Oh, he was drunk. Yes, yes he was, but he didn't care!

A light, but sharp nip to his own pointed ear had Fane's laughter stuttering with a low snarl, picking his head up a bit with a smirk to glare with heated embers into the sky smirking back at him, eyes alight with the same fire he could feel coursing through his veins. The wolf wanted to play, did he? Oh, they would play, but as the dragons did, untamed and uncut.

"Hmm, it would appear the dragon has deigned me with his presence this eve.", Solas practically purred, a few fingers ghosting along Fane's jawline, making him shiver with a chuckling sigh. "Should I be leery of its gaze?"

Fane hummed, leaning forward and snarling low as Solas teasingly leaned back, smirking like the wolf he embodied. So that's how the sky wished to play? To make its reach unattainable? That wouldn't do because dragons were meant to fly within its expanse.

..And he would be in his sky by the top of the hour, so deep as to shatter its own Veil between the real and the imaginable.

"Not at all.", Fane drawled, slowly and surprisingly, steadily rising to his full height to practically rip into black velvet and gold silk that was his personal attire with one hand, undoing buttons and buckles with deftness despite his drunken state. His gaze sharpened with acute awareness as Solas only rested his chin into one of his hands, knees bent, elbows resting upon them as he watched him perform.

"Should I be leery of its strength, then?", Solas inquired, eyes glued to him, unashamed, enraptured with each layer of finery that was discarded with patience, as if they had all the time in the world once again. "Its tenacity? Its passion?" Every question uttered stoked the fires, made them blaze as Fane shrugged of his jacket, having opted not to wear his wraps as the formal attire had down a good job of covering him, but he had brought them for battle.

Fane shook his head, smirking even as his body was on full display, scars and all. He felt no pain, no wariness as liquid courage numbed both his mind and physical form. And it helped when his sky only reflected interest and no judgement, blue-grey orbs slowly roaming up and down his body, legs shifting against the silken sheets with anticipation, but trying to keep it subtle for a shred of propriety. He tsked, meandering his way around to the side where Solas was closest. Now, that wouldn't do. Guess he would have to...

...intervene.

"No to all of those questions, my sky.", Fane growled as he brought one knee up to rest upon the bed, reaching down with one hand to flick the clasp on his belt, unlocking it, but not unraveling it just yet. He growled once more as Solas continued to watch him, calmly, playfully, goading him with the blue that harnessed those emotions.

Solas hummed. "Then what should I be leery of, my dragon?", he asked casually before Fane struck, tackling the man onto the mattress with a snarl and a smirk. His sky let out a grunt of surprise, but easily fell into this familiar beat, reaching up to run his hands lightly along his bare arms, shivers rising in their wake, pain of scars forgotten due to the heat building between them.

Fane gazed down with hooded eyes, pleased and pleasant. "You should be leery of...", he began, leaning down to nip at an exposed neck, sliding a hand up to delicately run it down the side he was not beginning to kiss. A new heat was infecting his mind now. It was heady. It was hotter than any blazing flame. It was incandescent as Solas bore himself to him, tilting his head to allow him more access, even as words hung in the air.

Fane continued his ministrations, kissing, stroking, and teasing with his lips and hand upon a fluttering neck, but something else fluttered and it was within him that it did. It was light, airy, and...ridiculous, but he found himself saying it nonetheless. The wine was still in effect after all. He pulled back a bit, one of Solas' hands digging into a forearm, blue eyes hazy, but curious as to why he stopped.

"Fane?", his sky questioned, but Fane only snorted as he nuzzled into the neck he had just been assaulting with passion and fire. "Fane, what--"

"You know, I just had a thought.", Fane said, humming happily into the crook of Solas' neck; his sky only letting out a disbelieving chuckle and a content sigh at his shift.

"Just the one?"

"Ass.", Fane bit with no venom, but snorted as the thought popped back in like a curious spirit. "You want to hear it or not?"

"Go on.", Solas said around a hum, hand beginning to hum through his hair slowly, tenderly, the other tracing light patterns along his back, following the path of a few scars he knew were there, but that didn't bother Fane as he started to giggle like an idiot.

"Well...", Fane started, lifting his head a bit to gaze down into curious, amused orbs, a smile greeting him with equal lightness embedded in its curves. "I just realized, I'm a dragon..."

Solas nodded. "You are, and...?", he prompted, quirking an eyebrow with that same smirk.

"I'm getting there! Sheesh..", Fane said with a slight pout before snorting again. "I'm a dragon and you're the sky to me. Guess what that means?" He waggled his eyebrows a bit, biting into his bottom lip at his brilliant revelation! He was, indeed, a clever dragon! Decider of empires! Gazer of mankind!

Solas blinked, eyebrows drawing together before blue widened and a good natured, but exasperated groan left his smirking lips.

"Vhenan, do not--"

"Ready for a dragon to be inside of you, my sky?", Fane asked with giddiness, snorting and chuckling like the fool that he was. He was so smart! So smart!

"You are dreadful.", Solas quipped back between his own chuckling and snorts, face twisting with mirth before it broke; the two of them busting out into drunken, light laughter at the terrible, terrible humor they both possessed.

They were both dreadful, dreadful, and dreadful, but they didn't care when the world seemed small and their problems smaller amid echoes of empires and twinkling gold.

***

They're idiots, Your Honor. This is a fact that cannot be denied nor rejected. However, it can be acquitted for they are in LOVE!! *dinosaur screech of LOVE*

I hope you enjoyed it! <3

#asks #drabbles #prompts #oc: fane lavellan #my writing #solas #solavellan #i have so many thoughts about Halamshiral and these two XD #Fane tried to jump off the balconies because he didn't want to deal with the mask and the nobles #Solas had to ward said balconies and that's why he went in early in my head pffft!#they both stood in the corner after the Duchess was dealt with and indulged in the wine but avoided the ham that tasted of despair #slightly spicy before i remembered it was 'casual' HAHA #dragon age #fane and his fucking puns *shakes my head with a sigh*#Solas: Dread Wolf #Fane: *dies of laughter*#Solas: *sighs* Too easy.#thank you for the prompt and I hope you like it! Sorry it took so long! :D #cw alcohol

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veorlian · 3 years

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happy Friday! 16 from the OTP advent calendar for Hawke/Varric would be amazing!!

16. You’re robbing the bank on Christmas eve and I’m a hostage but you’re actually really nice from this list

ish ily this was SO fun to write <3 thank you for the prompt!!

(i won’t have any time to write during the holidays, so i’m hoping to get all the christmas-themed prompts up this weekend!)

It was one of those rare occasions when Varric couldn’t avoid being at the Merchant’s Guild. Andraste alone knew why his brother insisted on checking the vault on the night before Satinalia, but here they were. The imposing stone halls of the Guild were empty, save for the scratching of quill on parchment and the clacking of coins. It was only him and Bartrand, given that everyone with a brain was with their families.

“Hands in the air everyone! This is a stick up.” The voice was clear and carrying, but surprisingly cheerful. It was like they were announcing the winner of the office raffle, rather than threatening violence. Varric was so caught off guard by the tone that he almost missed the meaning of the words. Almost.

“Sister, no one actually says that.” The second voice was decidedly less upbeat. Younger sibling energy if Varric had ever heard it, and he would know.

“C’mon, where’s your flair for the dramatic?” The third voice was deeper, but strikingly similar to the first. “Excuse me, Mr. Magnificent Chest Hair, hands in the air thanks.”

Damn. Varric raised his hands above his head from where they’d been inching towards Bianca. He looked in the direction of the robbers. Their faces were hidden, and they wore cloaks to cover any distinguishing features. They were all at least 6 feet tall, and the first two carried swords that were easily Varric’s height. The third was carrying a staff.

Varric heard a familiar, disapproving cough and he sighed inwardly.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Bartrand asked. Varric glanced over at his brother, and sure enough, he had his hands defiantly planted on his hips.

“I’d do what they say,” Varric suggested.

“See, now there’s a man with some sense,” the first figure said. “We really don’t want any trouble, we’d just like to inspect the inside of your lovely vault there. I see you’ve already gotten it open for us, how thoughtful.” She leaned nonchalantly on the biggest sword that Varric had ever seen. He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel the shit-eating grin in his soul. It was firmly at odds with the wicked-sharp edges of her blade.

“Security!” Bartrand yelled. His next words were stopped cold with a wave of the third figure’s hand. Well, his mouth was opening and closing, but no sound appeared. The first figure clicked her tongue.

“Now now, that’s not very nice,” she murmured. “How about, to make it up to us, both of you nice folks gather in the corner over here?” She motioned towards where Varric was sitting.

Bartrand firmly crossed his arms and remained where he was. The third figure tutted and easily lifted Bartrand off the ground, carrying him over to Varric and setting him down. He patted Bartrand on the head and Varric had to hold back a laugh.

“My associates will go relieve you of your excess stock, and I’ll stay here with you two,” the first figure said cheerfully. The others moved away. Under different circumstances, Varric might have thought that that evened his odds a little bit. But he had the sneaking suspicion that trying anything wouldn’t go particularly well for him.

Ah, well, it was only money. Besides, the look of incandescent rage on his brother’s face was honestly an early Satinalia gift for him.

The figure pulled up a chair next to him, her sword still in her hands. Varric leaned back and rested his hands behind his head nonchalantly.

“How’d you know now would be a good time for a hit?” he asked casually. He caught the faint flash of teeth from a smile beneath the hood.

“Aw c’mon, that’d be telling,” she said.

“Worth a shot. Can I ask what you’re planning to do with the money?” he asked.

“You know, no one’s ever asked that before,” she said. “Granted, most people aren’t in a particularly conversational mood when they’re being robbed.” Varric arched an eyebrow. So they’d done this before. Maybe there’d be a record somewhere.

“I’m a writer, I love a good story,” he replied. She shrugged and leaned back.

“Alright then, Mr. Chest Hair the Writer. There’s a whole hell of a lot of refugees that are going to be going hungry during the holidays. What’s the point of having all this gold sitting in a vault gathering dust when it could be buying food and gifts?” she explained.

“How very noble of you, if it’s true,” he said, genuinely surprised.

“Why would I lie?”

“Oh, any number of reasons. It’s usually more fun than the truth, for one thing,” he replied. She chuckled, the sound like music to his ears.

“A man after my own heart. Okay, how about I’m planning to commission an erotic statue of Andraste to ship off to the Chantry in Val Royeaux? Then the extra cash will be for a massive sword in the shape of a dragon,” she said.

“Now see, that’s more like it,” he said, unable to stop the grin from spreading across his face.

“Oi, we’re ready to go,” the second figure called. The woman nodded and stood up, her hand still on the hilt of her comically large sword.

“I suppose you won’t tell me your name?” Varric asked quickly. The figure hoisted a massive bag of gold over her shoulder and glanced back.

“We’ve only just met,” she said, “at least buy me a drink first.”

In the days after, Varric reached out to every contact he had, going through reports of crime sprees in Kirkwall. It was no easy feat. Kirkwall had just so much crime, holy shit, no one should live there.

In the end, he found her entirely by chance. He was working late in his suite in the Hanged Man, and he caught the distant sound of the voice that had been echoing through his head at every hour. Dwarves didn’t dream, but if they did his sleeping hours would have been filled with the sound of that damn voice.

He picked up the bottle of whiskey he set aside for special occasions and made his way down to the common room. She was sitting in a corner towards the back, with two dark-haired men that had to be related to her. Their voices were familiar too.

Varric caught her eye and raised an eyebrow. A grin spread across her face and she motioned him over.

“I see you’ve brought me a drink. Good man,” she said cheerfully. The taller of her brothers stiffened and frowned at him, his hand moving for his weapon.

“So I have,” Varric said. He sat down next to her, about as far from the man as he could.

“Boys, why don’t you go get us some more ale?” she asked. The one with the sword glared at her, but the other one flashed an easy grin and shrugged. He looked enough like the woman that he might have been her twin.

“C’mon little brother, let’s see how many shots we can do before we pass out,” he said. They left, leaving Varric alone with the woman. There was a distinctive red stripe of what looked like blood across her nose, and something bewitching about her dark brown eyes.

“The name’s Marian Hawke,” she said, “and yours?”

“Varric Tethras.”

“Well, Varric Tethras, now that you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?”

#thank you again ish!!#hawkeish #i am physically incapable of not making everything hawke twins au #da2 #hawke #varric tethras #varric x hawke #finished prompts

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edda-grenade · 4 years

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yes hullo i'd like to hear more about feral verse it sounds G R E A T

@lesquatrechevrons replied to your photoset “when you’ve just awoken from millennia of slumber and trying to figure…”

I am Delighted by this (as per usual, that art, her glee his ‘oh fuck but also cute but also no’ also she’s so Strok. gold a++++) and I’d love to know more! Take this as a formal and kind request to see how you see All The Evens play out in this universe, plz *chinhands with starry eyes*

STRAP IN :DDD

the basic conceit of feral verse is, as mentioned, that a) solas wakes up like 16 years earlier than in canon, and b) saar’s family wasn’t attacked by an arvaarad troop when she was 17-ish, so she’s still with them by the time she’s 21

and then she finds this strange forest sprite of an elf who is capital W Weird but also A MAGE HOLY SHIT YES TEACH ME

(fun fact, solas goes from WHAT NO ABSOLUTELY NOT to ASK ME ANYTHING in the span of like 3 days. saar’s persistent. and, lbr, he’s drowning on his own)

so these are the big inciting incident changes, and everything else basically flows from there. solas gets progressively pulled into saar’s life despite his best efforts, her vashoth community, the dalish clans with whom they trade and on occasion travel with, mercenaries and surface dwarves and the list goes on. and, like the world and its people do in canon during da:i, it gets under his skin

he teaches her magic and she teaches him whatever random shit he for some reason doesn’t know. it’s very much a give and take, with him being knowledgable about magic, spirits, the fade, and her being knowledgable about this new world that he’s only seen through fragmentary memories (yeah, ngl this verse is also fueled in part by me being grossed out by how often solavellan gets written into a creepy teacher/student dynamic all like, ohhh hahren, ohh da’len BUT I DIGRESS)

far more importantly, saar keeps a running list in her head, ‘reasons solas is most likely not an elf but a sprit/elf hybrid, demon/elf hybrid, some kind of abyssal creature taken physical form, abyssal creature Forced into physical form, escaped blood magic experiment, etc.’ to the point where when she eventually Does find out who & what he really is it’s almost a letdown?

solas: i am fen’harel, ancient not-god of rebellionsaar: fuck, really? my bet was on escaped tevene blood magic experiment, now i owe my mom a new knifesolas: …………excuse me, what

there’s still a looot of stuff where i’m working out the details of how and when but the trajectory then is that saar eventually finds out basically everything the inq also knows by the end of trespasser, MEANWHILE solas goes through his usual crisis re: His Duty but the point is. the point is. eventually, they end up on the same page: the veil needs to come down—but slowly.

bit by bit they want to let magic bleed back into the world to some day end up in a future that isn’t arlathan restored exactly as it was, but a better version of it, with magic and spirits but without the godkings and the slavery and all the terrible shit solas tried to seal away the first time

that’s the plan, anyway.

and they set out to make that happen, scraping at the veil, finding places where spirits get twisted into demons and, idk, cleansing them or smth, this part is still very vague in my head (though i’m def gonna incorporate that live-action thing with the mask of fen’harel somehow)

and then, one day, they figure out where solas’s fucking focus is. the orb.

EXCEPT they’re not the only ones after it—corypheus gets his hands on it, meanwhile the mage-templar war is happening and it’s all a big fucking mess and they barely manage to track him to the conclave to try and get it back before he does something terrible and we all know how that goes

the conclave goes up in flames, the breach appears, saar wakes up with the anchor in her hand. and then, when cassandra takes her to the temple and they meet varric and cullen and solas, solas introduces himself

and saar is like WAIT WHAT.

and she gets him alone at the first opportunity to be like, why the fuck are we pretending we don’t know each other??

and he admits that he panicked, maybe, a little bit, in the aftermath of the explosion? but the thing is: they’re both mages, neither of them human, which already puts them at a disadvantage. second, cass & co think saar murdered the divine, she’s the one with the mark and solas is the only one who seems to know anything about the mark, if it was known they came here as a unit it’d make them look GUILTY AS ALL HELL

also, like. technically. they are planning to bring the veil down. just not all at once

tl;dr: da:i happens, but saar and solas are in cahoots and have to pretend they didn’t know each other beforehand, cue shenanigans (& PINING, pls, these two fuckers trying to pretend they’re not in love? hilarious)

and like, obviously this set-up changes A Lot of the character dynamics, i’m working on that, but also pls imagine every fucking instance of solas dropping Hints and Clues bc he can’t fucking help himself and meanwhile saar knows and has to maintain pokerface

vivienne: solas has basically no history and i find that just a tad suspicious, don’t you agree?saar, knowing full well why his backstory is paper-thin and wouldn’t hold up to proper scrutiny for a second: UHHHHHHhave you considered maybe he really is just a feral little forest man, they don’t tend to feature prominently in. like. history.solas, later that day: ‘feral little forest man’, REALLYsaar: you ate a raw rabbit once with your bare handssolas: vhenan, we shared that rabbit

#euxiom #lesquatrechevrons #saar gets her own tag #adaar #solas #feral verse #asks #replies #the ramble edda #dragon age #god there's so much more but it's very incoherent/fragmentary still #i'm sitting on like 3.5k of semi-finished drabbles already #gotta figure out the best way to post em #but yeah feel free to ask about specific things i undoubtedly have FEELINGS about it

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in-arlathan · 4 years

Text

Eyes Wide Open

Back in the writing game with a new Solavellan story. When I started writing, I was convinced it would be this short fluffy thing. Oh boy, I was so wrong. It turned rather dark towards the end and I love it. I hope you do, too.

A want to give a big shoutout to @serial-chillr who beta’d this for me and help me really polish this piece. Your advice was amazingly insightful. I can’t thank you enough ♥︎

This is available on AO3, too.

___

One of the first things her father had taught her about hunting was to watch out for the green light.

“When you’re in the forest and see the faintest glimmer of green, promise me to run. When the Fade opens, terrible things are bound to happen.”

She remembered his words with such clarity it was as if he was standing right next to her. A flicker of emotion danced on her skin, making the small hairs on her arms and neck stand up.

“Don’t let the patches of sunlight in the underbrush distract you,” she heard him say. “Your eyes won’t know where the Fade is thin and where it’s not. In some places, it quivers and if you’re not careful, you will attract attention from the other side.”

His words carried all the grief and sadness of a man who had lost a brother to the temptations of the Fade and even without an ounce of magical talent, Elenara could see the trauma it had caused him. She had wanted nothing more than to reach out to him and hold him close.

She wondered what he might think of her now that she bore the mark upon her hand. Would he be afraid of her? Would he run? Or would he hate her for what she had become?

Elenara leaned closer to her own reflection in the mirror, tracing the fine lines around her eyes with her fingers. At 32, age had already begun to mark her and the blood writing of Dirthamen was slowly fading. But that was not what set her teeth on edge…

With two fingers, she pulled open one eyelid. Her eyes had always been as green as the leaves of a birch tree. Her mother’s eyes, as her father often reminded her. Another cause for grief he never learned to let go. Another loss she would rather not remember. A wave of guilt washed over her.

The dead never leave us, do they?

Pushing her feelings aside, she focused on the color variations in her iris – the fine lines of dark green intertwined with strands of lighter green and yellowish-brown that reminded her of the woods near Wycome. And flecked across it all, new sparks of ghostly green that gleamed like stars in the vast and endless sea of the night sky. Green as the rifts that had been torn open all over Thedas. Green as the Breach that threatened the world.

She let her hand sink, resting it on the washbasin below the mirror. It hadn’t been an illusion then. Her eyes had changed since getting the mark.

When the Fade opens, terrible things are bound to happen.

The demon that had tempted and consumed her uncle had come from a rift that barely deserved the name. More like a fissure, as her aunt, Irileth, had told her. And yet it had been powerful enough to let Desire slip through, possess Tere’lan Lavellan and claim his life.

Oh, how she wished her aunt were here. Her father, too. But one was with their clan on the other side of the Waking Sea, and the other rested forever in a burial site in the Vimmark Mountains.

Elenara sighed. Since the keeper had graced her face with the blood-red vallaslin that declared her an adult among her people, she had known so many things – her place in the world most of all. And she had known what she was capable of. Now, she was not so sure. The explosion at the Temple of Sacred Ashes had changed everything, and now she walked among humans to fight in the name of a god she didn’t even believe in.

“Creators, I have no idea what to do”, she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away and sniffled, pushing back her feelings once more.

Outside her cabin, Haven was slowly awakening. The talk of townsfolk mingled with the bells of the Chantry ringing in the distance. Not long until her party would set off to Val Royeaux. Surely, Cassandra was already saddling their horses.

Elenara splashed a few drops of water from the wash-basin on her face, then turned to the bed and grabbed the boots standing next to it. They were sturdy and warm and not nearly as uncomfortable as she had expected them to be. Still, she hated those boots with a burning passion. She missed her foot wrappings and the feeling of grass between her toes as she stalked the open plains of the Free Marches, looking for a ram she could hunt down for dinner.

Someone came knocking on her door while she was still struggling to tie the laces.

“Lavellan, are you still in there?”

That was Varric’s voice.

She coughed, then said: “Yeah, I’m here. Come in.”

A second later, the door swung open and Varric walked in. But he wasn’t alone. Solas was beside him, carrying his staff as if it was a holy relic.

“Andraste’s ass,” the dwarf said. “You look like shit, Lavellan.”

Elenara forced herself to smile. “You’re a real charmer, Varric. Has anyone ever told you that?”

If he took offense, he did a perfect job of not showing it. “Did you even sleep last night?” he asked. “Or any night since we returned from the Hinterlands? Because you sure don’t look like it.”

“Not a wink,” she said and sighed deeply.

“Well, shit.” Varric scratched his head. “Is it because of the Chantry folk in Val Royeaux? I know they can be a bit intimidating, but Cassandra and Chuckles and I will be there to have your back. If they so much as point a finger at you, we’ll be glad to chop it off.”

Elenara smiled again. Genuinely, this time. “Thanks, Varric.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Solas pursing his lips. Was he pitying her?

“What are you looking at?” she asked, more bitterly than she had intended.

Solas blinked and his chin jolted upwards as if she had awoken him from a pleasant dream. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He raised a hand. “I was just… wondering…”

Her brows furrowed. “Wondering? About what?”

“Have you noticed any… changes since you stopped the Breach from growing?” he asked.

She cast a curious side-glance at Varric, but the dwarf just shrugged.

How can he possibly know …

The thought perished as she remembered what Varric had told her about Solas. How he had stopped the mark from killing her while she lay unconscious. The apostate clearly knew what kind of magic they were dealing with. Or he had a decent grasp of the situation, at least, and that was more than Elenara could say about herself.

Once more, her father’s voice echoed in her mind. “Promise me to run”, he’d said to her. But she couldn’t, not any longer. All those cautionary tales about the dangers of magic were utterly useless to her now. Maybe her best option was to give herself to magic and have a skilled mage help her deal with the problem at hand.

“There is something,” she said slowly. “My eyes… they’re…”

Solas didn’t let her finish her sentence. He bridged the distance between them with three quick strides and kneeled before her. Then he placed the staff beside him on the stone floor and took her face into his hands, his fingers resting lightly on her cheeks. “Look at me,” he said and his voice carried a sense of urgency.

Despite herself, Elenara held her breath and stared at him.

She had never noticed the true color of his eyes before. From a distance, they looked grey, like a storm cloud on an autumn day in the Free Marches. Now, she saw the hues of blue and violet mixed in there.

“Fascinating,” she breathed.

“Indeed,” Solas said, lost in thought while examining her eyes. “It seems your body is responding to the magic that has placed the mark upon your hand. An uncommon occurrence but not completely unheard of. Most mages undergo a process of change when their talents make themselves known.”

“And that’s supposed to reassure me?”

Solas offered a smile, his gaze still locked with hers. He brushed her cheek with one thumb.

“I would not worry if I were you. As long as the Breach remains stable, you are safe. Still, if you find any other changes or feel pain of any kind, let me know. I will look into it and help as best I can.”

Elenara felt her hand twitch with the urge to reach out and touch his face to trace the lines of his chin and mouth. She licked her lips and wondered what it might feel like to kiss him.

Don’t be foolish, she told herself. This must be the worst of all the bad ideas you had in your life. For all you know, he’s an apostate who has no love for the Dalish. Creators, he might leave as soon as the Breach is sealed, just like you.

And yet, there was a fluttering feeling that had settled in her stomach and refused to leave – like some kind of premonition.

“Thank you, Solas,” she whispered breathlessly.

“It’s okay.” He chuckled. “I came to help after all.”

“Yes, you did,” she replied.

Varric coughed as noisily as possible.

“Great,” the dwarf boomed. “So, we’re done here, right? We should get going before the seeker sends a search party to look for us.”

Solas pushed back and let go of her face. She, in turn, rubbed her cheeks to cover up the blush that bloomed there. “Yeah,” she murmured and hurried to collect her travel bag. Solas, however, took his time to pick up his staff and get back on his feet again.

“It doesn’t seem like a good idea to keep Cassandra waiting,” he said.

Elenara shouldered her bag, casting a sidelong glance at Solas. He cradled his staff with one arm and watched her intently while she readied herself for the journey, a soft smile tugging at his lips. It almost seemed like he was enjoying himself. To say she was confused by this would have been an understatement.

“Tell me about it,” Varric said to Solas, then turned to Elenara as she grabbed her bow and quiver. “You’re good to go?”

“Yes,” she told Varric and nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Lead the way, Lavellan. We’re right behind you.”

********

Solas cupped her cheek with one gloved hand. She wished she could feel the warmth of his skin on hers as she stared into his eyes, searching for the man she loved so deeply.

Two years had gone by since she had been this close to him. Two years wondering where he had gone, why he had left her. And now she knew.

His name was Fen’Harel and he was about to shatter her world.

“My love,” he breathed.

The magic of the anchor flared and sent a wave of agony through her body. She bit her lip and forced herself not to cry out in pain. In this moment, she wanted to pretend that everything was back to normal and that nothing had changed between them.

She wondered if he could still see the light in her eyes. It had spread more and more with every passing day since the Exalted Council began. The green glimmer flickered and flared just like the anchor and the pain almost blinded her. Still, she kept her eyes fixed on Solas while he leaned closer, caressing her cheek with his gloved hand.

She had promised him that their love would endure. There was nothing in this world or the Fade that she wanted more. And yet, as the magic drained her life, she couldn’t help but wonder if her father had been right after all. Maybe she should have run when she still had the chance. If not from her duty as Inquisitor, at least from the elven mage that she had come to care about so deeply, despite knowing so little about him. When he had left her in Crestwood, she should have seen it as an opportunity to begin again and find someone new. She could have been happy, for a while.

And still, when he brushed his lips against hers, the world began to make sense again. He was her destiny and her duty and she would hold on to him as long as she could. He was hers again and that was all that mattered, even if it was only for a moment.

Elenara focused on the delicate movements of his mouth and pushed aside the pain that seared through her left arm. She remembered the day when she thought about kissing him for the first time. Back then, she had brushed the impulse off as just that: a terrible idea that had crossed her mind. Now, she felt incapable of going on without him.

Tears filled her eyes, as he withdrew from her and got back on his feet. She didn’t even dare to look at her left arm. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on Solas. He gazed at her with a stricken expression on his face.

“I will never forget you,” he whispered.

She saw him turn away ever so slowly as if walking away from her caused him physical pain.

And with that, it was over.

Light erupted behind her closed eyelids, rendering her blind within seconds. She leaned forward, clasping her healthy hand around her left upper arm. The magic of the anchor went wild, roaring inside her body and soul one last time. She cried out in pain as her left hand and arm dissolved into nothingness.

Overwhelmed by agony, she barely heard Solas slipping away through the eluvian. All she could think about were the words of warning her father had spoken to her all these years long ago that she had completely failed to follow.

When you see the faintest glimmer of green, promise me to run.

“You were right,” she hissed, repressing another wild cry. “You were always right.”

She had failed her father, just like she had failed her clan. Maybe she should have turned her back on all of this when she still had the chance to flee back to the Free Marches. She might not have been able to save her clan from the treacherous dealings of the Venatori in Wycome, but at least she would have died knowing she had honored her father’s teachings. Instead, she had chosen to run into her own misery with her eyes wide open.

What was she supposed to do? she asked herself, hoping secretly that a voice from beyond the Fade would answer her call. The world was in grave danger. And it still was.

I’m sorry, father.

Elenara inhaled sharply, still blinded by the green light that reached across the Veil, and focussed on the low thrum of her own heartbeat. Steadying her breath, she waited until the pain in her arm slowly faded away.

Carefully, she let her right hand slide down her arm. A dry sob escaped her when her trembling fingers reached her elbow–or what was left of it. Through the remains of the chainmail that had protected her arm, she could feel the cauterized wound. And then… nothing…

She let out a long, controlled breath. To stop the mark from spreading, Solas had taken a part of her with his ancient magic. Maybe she should be thankful. Without the anchor, she had one less burden to carry. If only her heart did not feel as heavy as if it was made of pure lead.

When she opened her eyes, the world remained a bright haze of light. She blinked and new tears streamed down her cheeks. Slowly, the shadows came back. Blurry shapes of rocks and foliage surrounded her as she drew herself upright. Her knees shook violently as she made her way back to the mirror she had come through, passing by the frozen shape of the Viddassala. Elenara paused and pushed back the urge to touch the stone statue’s arm. You had no idea what you’d gotten yourself into, she thought. Just like me.

As she walked over to the eluvian, the shapes sharpened around her and the world regained its vibrant color. She saw bushes and trees swaying in the wind and the golden streaks of sunlight dancing on their leaves. “Creators help me,” she whispered with a bitter taste in her mouth. The words had never felt so hollow before. With all that she had uncovered at the Temple of Mythal, her faith in the elven gods had faltered. Now, it was all but shattered.

Maybe I should evoke the Maker instead. Or even Andraste. They haven’t had their chance to let me down yet.

The eluvian was still dormant when she finally reached it. Weakened from the fight against the qunari, exhausted from the truths she had learned that day, she leaned against the silvery surface of the mirror and closed her eyes.

She had come so far only to realize that she had been set up to fail right from the start. Oh, how stupid she had been. All her meddling in politics to steer the world onto a safer path had ultimately amounted to nothing. Maybe the hunters had been right to mock her for her interest in history and shemlen politics. She should have run like her father told her to.

When the Fade opens, terrible things are bound to happen.

But in truth she had known there’d be no going back ever since she had seen the terror of the Breach with her own eyes. With a threat that dark and powerful, there was nowhere safe to run to. And so she’d done the only thing that had seemed plausible at the time–she had joined forces with Cassandra and the others to heal the sky. And along the way, she had come to know the world so much more intimately than she could have imagined as a young girl devouring books about faraway lands and long-forgotten kingdoms. She had her companions to thank for that. With their love and friendship, their ambition and folly, their victories and failures, they had shown her what Thedas truly was and what it might be. It had kept her going despite all the fear and darkness she faced.

And while she thought of Varric, and Cassandra, and Cole, and Dorian, and Blackwall and all the others, she knew she had to take at least one more step. Because all these years of fighting would have been for nothing if she gave up now.

“I have to get back”, she whispered and her breath fogged the mirror’s surface. “Please.”

She could feel a ripple as her naked hand touched the eluvian. A moment later, the portal unlocked itself, its surface warping into a cascade of violet light.

Elenara breathed a sigh of relief and stepped through.

“She’s back.”

“Inquisitor!”

Before she knew it, Dorian was by her side, slinging an arm around her waist to help her stand. Varric and Cassandra, who had been standing by the corpse of the enormous Saarebas they had been fighting before, rushed to meet them. The Divine hissed as she beheld Elenara’s missing arm.

“Holy shit, Lavellan.” Varric looked more miserable than she had ever seen him. “What happened over there?”

“I found him...”

Her knees gave out and she would have sunk to the ground if it wasn’t for Dorian. “Careful,” he whispered soothingly.

Cassandra swore under her breath, brows furrowed. “Solas did this to you? Why would he do such a thing? I thought he and you were… ”

The former seeker let her sentence trail off

“I’ll explain later, I promise,” Elenara replied wearily. “We have to get back and warn the others.”

Dorian cast a quick glance at the dead qunari that lay scattered among the old elven ruins, then cocked his head in disbelief. “Warn them? About what?”

She gave him a sad smile. “This is not over yet.”

____

Thanks for reading. <3

#dragon age #da #dai #dragon age inquisition #fanfiction #solas #lavellan #female lavellan #solas x lavellan #solas x female lavellan #solavellan #elenara lavellan #cameo: varric #cameo: cassandra #cameo: dorian #fluff and angst #pre-relationship #post-relationship

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annakie · 4 years

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An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Seven

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Wherein we... talk to the crew. I didn’t quite make it off the ship.

Still, a lot of words.

Aka the nearly All-Gif update.

Didn’t get a chance to play ME at all this week, so I’m going to spend a few hours this weekend (double-checking to make sure screenshotting works :p) and have some real updates later.

So making it back to the ship from Therum, it’s time to talk to the crew. I maybe could have gone and talked to them after getting on the ship after the Citadel, but they don’t really have any unique lines then so, I usually wait til now to go chat.

First, let’s talk to Liara.

The thing that sucks about talking to Liara (or Kaidan, or Ashley, if you don’t want to romance them) is, you know, the accidental romance. Making “picking the Paragon-place choices = romance by default with NO WARNING” design was very Not Good. They fixed this in later games, well moreso in Dragon Age games than ME, (and Andromeda is done very well for this) but still. In ME3, the BackOff mod does a great job of making romance dialog more obvious and intentional.

Liara’s dialog choices I feel like are even LESS obviously flirting I feel like than Ash and Kaidan’s. Honestly with Liara’s most of the lines can be read and even said aloud as friendship then BOOM, all of a sudden she wants a threesome. I choose middle dialog options whenever possible with Liara just to avoid this. I’m not interested, never have been, don’t want Kaidan to think he has any competition. But seriously, it’s poor game design here that you literally have to be a jerk to a companion at some points to avoid having them think you want to bang. God, half of the reason I’d love a remaster would be to hopefully fix shit like this to avoid some of the pitfalls.

I hate that some people use this as a reason to dislike these characters more. And I’ll admit, in my early days as a ME fan, I held it against Liara, too, until I realized how dumb that is. I especially hate it when you get to the “confrontation scene” and people use Kaidan not wanting to be in a threesome as a reason to dislike him more? It’s not a bad thing to want to be monogamous? (And of course, it’s not a bad thing to NOT want to be, assuming everyone is open and OK about it.)

I just prefer to not get that scene at all now, and to avoid “leading anyone on” accidentally etc. My Shepard knows early on what she wants, and sticks with him all the way through.

I was going to talk more here about my feelings about Liara in general but uh, I guess I’ll do that later. This is already really long.

Here’s a great post about how to avoid romancing Kaidan while being rude as little as possible to him.

Well since he’s right outside the medbay anyway, let’s go talk to the LT.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the orange glow?

So anyway, I thought maybe I’d talk here a little bit about Why Kaidan?

I will point out here that I am mostly a hetero woman, so my choices in video game romances lean towards men first, though I’m also very cool with doing non-m/f romances in games, and often do on subsequent playthroughs of games I love, but that’s almost never gonna be my primary romance.

I’d already mentioned my love for Carth Onasi, one of the most hated companions in video games, If You’re A Guy.

By today’s standards, even the Carth romance isn’t that great. But at the time, it was the greatest romance I’d experienced in video games. There were a few others that were really good -- Valen Shadowbreath in Neverwinter Nights: Horde of the Underdark was the other really great one, but we also got nightmare fuel like Anomen in Baldur’s Gate (though that gets better with mods + the final BG expansion) or just under-written characters or romances like Casavir in NWN2 (who was much better with mods) or hell, either of your choices in KotOR2 imho. But I used to play KotOR over and over for many reasons, such as holy shit a Star Wars game(!!) and one where you can actually be a female main character AND has that great Bioware storytelling... but a big reason was Carth.

A funny thing about Carth Onasi... if you play a male main character, you have a very different experience with Carth than if you play a woman. And even I can agree that hoo boy Carth gets tiresome quick if you play a male, as a female you at least get to flirt and that calms him down and evens him out a lot. But the one time I tried playing as a male, I didn’t make it off Taris because.. yeouch I could actually see what the guys playing were so mad about.

But hey, that voice. Raphael Sbarge, I love that voice. So like I said early on in these posts, I immediately knew I was going to romance Kaidan the very second I confirmed he was romancable, before I even ran back into the ship and met anyone on the crew aside from Joker and Kaidan.

And... that only got confirmed more and more as I went through ME for the first time. The character is smart, and capable, and respected you, and never questioned your command, but made his feelings pretty clear along the way. He could be a little doofy but in an adorable way with some of the things he said, honestly there was almost never anything I didn’t love about this character.

I realized some time ago that I have a thing for the Paladin archetype personally.

This is Casavir, from Neverwinter Nights 2, and in NWN2, there are two romance options for women. An under-written Lawful Good Paladin in his late 30′s who is willing to buck his superiors to do what he thinks is right but also places you on a pedestal and holds back all his emotions. He’s a romance option. Or....

Bishop, a chaotic evil ranger who insults you a lot, threatens to rape an NPC under your protection, and ultimately betrays you.

Most people who played NWN2 seemed to prefer the CE Ranger. I loved the paladin so much I wrote fix-it fic that I never have gotten around to publishing anywhere to retcon his terrible dumb ending.

There’s a fan-made romance mod that helps with the romances in this game, though I dislike a lot of what they did, ultimately I always use it.

In Dragon Age?

Ah yeah, the Templar-Warden. Love him. He does have that “Oh I’m so young and experienced tee-hee” thing going on that isn’t my favorite, (at this point mostly because I’m actually in my mid-40′s so uh, I’m just Old) but otherwise, yeah, love Alistair.

Dragon Age 2, I mean I usually romance Anders but... I’m not real excited about either him or Fenris, or even either of the ladies, though I have done Isabella’s romance (as well as Fenris’) and enjoyed it. I’d probably romance Avaline (or Varric!), if she were an option. But yeah, Anders mostly because he IS trying to do what’s right, even if he... well. You know.

But Dragon Age Inquisition?

Give me that Blackwall-angst. That stoic guy trying to be a Warden who comes undone for you. You’d think I’d go for Cullen, but hey this game gave us two paladin archetypes, though one is merely pretending, he still atones and becomes what he was trying to be, one way or another, if you let him. I picked this paladin archtype first because I did not like Cullen based on interactions with him in DA1 & 2. I like him well enough in DA:I but Blackwall is my guy here.

Out of all the many, many companions in SWTOR, who’s my fave?

If Aric Jorgan isn’t a Paladin-type I don’t know who is, especially since any romanceable Jedi are uh, all your female padawans (don’t get me started) until Lana (also female) comes along.

Hell, in a very long-running 4e D&D game I played from around 2009 to 2014 where my character fell in love with our party leader’s son, married him and fought the final boss 4 months pregnant with our twins. That character’s husband... was a paladin. I mean look at this art my friend picked out for his character’s son:

I mean dang, who (of those who are attracted to men of this type) wouldn’t?

I always pick the Paladin. The guy who is gonna Do What’s Right no matter what it costs him, the guy who’s gonna be loyal, the guy who may bottle up his emotions or keep them under control all the time but ultimately does what it takes to get the girl... that’s my fave. And that’s Kaidan.

I will also say my second fave archetype is rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold, and that’s more of a Garrus or Varric (if only he were a choice!!! :( ) type.. aka my second choice in these games.

Well that was a lot more words on that subject than I meant to do, so I’m going to just say real quick here that what I love about this first conversation with Kaidan is that he’s already no dummy, he knows something is up, and warns you about it.

We’ll save talk about his backstory for another day.

Let’s head downstairs.

Yay for sped-up elevators! What used to take like 20 seconds now takes like, four.

URDNOT WREX.

This another place where Shepard starts out just sticking their foot in their mouths completely. I feel like this is something the game definitely has problems with here. Shepard should know a lot more about the Genophage, like they should have about say, Spectres, even if the player doesn’t. So basically every response you can give to Wrex about the genophage and what his people are going through sounds really insensitive. Comparing the relatively minor First Contact War with the entire galaxy more or less uniting to keep the Krogan from taking over after the Rachni war seems pretty dumb, and also like something Shepard should already know.

Loredumping on the Krogans a bunch with Wrex is necessary, but I think it could have been done better. Though I think there are a lot of questions about the Krogan and the Genophage that ultimately are important but go unanswered. I’m going to be honest, because generally I want my companions to be happy and ultimately I want the happiest ending I can get, I usually cure the genophage and leave Wrex in charge. But also I don’t think that ends up with the happiest ending for the galaxy. Everything about the genophage is terrible, how it works, how it was administered, what it’s done to the Krogan as a people, but let’s be honest, the galaxy will also be in huge trouble just from a resources perspective if each krogan woman can have hundreds (or even just dozens) of babies a year, who are gonna all live a thousand years. There’s got to be a compromise that, eventually, hopefully Wrex works out if he’s alive at the end of ME3 or the council figures out with Wreav or whoever.

It is kinda funny though that here, I basically met Wrex at C-Sec, told him I’d help him with Fist, sent him to my ship, and basically just kidnapped him to go help with the rest of the mission. He wanted to be here, right? I can only assume I’m paying him a lot.

Ashley!

I do love Ashley Williams.

I’m not going to turn this into a “Is Ashley Racist” thinkpiece. I’ve read a lot of both sides of this argument and no, I don’t think she is. Some pieces of her attitude do need to be kicked up a bit, for sure. She’s got about the same issues with aliens as most of the species of the galaxy have with each other, which sometimes isn’t great, but she’s far from supporting Terra Firma.

She’s smart, she’s funny, a hell of a shot, she’s being held back due to her family name. I would love for if someday a Wilshenko OT3 were possible. I’d do that in an instant. I despise the fact that you can only keep Kaidan forever if you lose Ashley forever, though I don’t see that changing even in a remaster. Please Bioware, for the super ultra remaster?

I know I need to do another run through the game with Ashley alive. I don’t remember too much of what happens in ME3 when she’s there.

I also love that her story is so much one of family. From her stories of her sisters, to the point that it’s her own grandfather’s legacy that’s holding her back. She’s so grounded, she reminds us that there are civilians out there we’re keeping safe, a whole world we rarely see, up in space and in the middle of so much military conflict.

GARRUS.

First of all, whew Garrus looks amazing in the lighting and with the textures with ALOT/MEUITM. Very handsome.

Interestingly, Garrus does not really loredump on the turians. We absorb a lot of what we find out about the turians more naturally. Garrus is more all about C-Sec and the general politics of the Council, of Spectres, of C-Sec. Gonna be honest, I expected C-sec to play into the game as a whole a lot more than it did based on Garrus’ talks about it. I mean it was always there, but Bailey ends up being the face of C-Sec

Garrus’ Law vs. I Do What I Want attitude is a nice way to do a non-goody-two-shoes companion story without having to go evil. I love that Garrus’ story kinda mirrors our own as players, how are we going to get things done? Shove a blaster in people’s faces, accept collateral damage, and do whatever it takes to get it done? OR play by the rules, compromise, and see if that fixes things.

The thing is though, Mass Effect actually is great at giving us the illusion of choice without making a huge difference in the end. Like I mentioned before... not bringing Garrus to ME1 makes little difference in how he acts in ME2 outside of a few lines of dialog. Lots of things are like that, like pick Ash or Kaidan on Virmire, and yes one is always gone, but 80% of the content is basically the same from there on out for either character.

There are games out now that do that choice better. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is one I can think of. Or Tyranny. Things you choose can alter the endings of those games drastically, locking entire paths out of the game.

I used to think that was what I wanted. Until I played Kingmaker and locked myself out of things I really wanted without realizing it. I stopped playing the game, sad that my LI dumped me and wouldn’t come back without reloading many, many hours worth of game. Despite enjoying the game overall, I still haven’t gone back. When I do play again, I’ll probably keep a lot of tabs open of walkthroughs and tips on how to keep things going how I want. Kind of defeating the purpose of the game.

Anyway, I got super off track again. The point is, Garrus is the companion that gives us the most Choice in who he is. Which is cool. He illustrates our Paragon vs Renegade dilemma. And it’s neat that it does make changes in some of the things he says in the future, but overall, his story doesn’t change much no matter what you do (Unless you, ya know, get him killed in ME2).

And therein lies a problem with Mass Effect, and video games as a whole. It’s neat to see the little changes, but it’s rare for anything to be an actual Big Change, because... that’s a loooot of work for a developer and how much more money is all that going to cost him.

At some point in the future I’ll point out how lucky we are for what we did get, though.

Heeeey it’s Chief Engineer Greg Adams! I wonder how many people don’t even know he has a first name? Anyway, thank you for your one short conversation in which you explain how the Normandy works (honestly, great job with explaining this, Bioware, even if the science is ???) and like three sentences on who you are. Wasted opportunity to give you an actual character. Glad you like Tali, though! See you in ME3.

TALI!

Okay, I will totally accept that Shepard doesn’t know much past the basics of quarian society. That makes a lot more sense than Shepards not knowing much about asari.

The quarians are so much more of an original creation I feel like than a lot of what we’ve seen in the galaxy so far. Krogan? Basically Klingons. Turians? Space Romans. Asari? Twilek/Space Elves but ALL Hot Ladies. Qarians feel like something new though.

I mean, I guess before they had to live in suits they were pretty normal, but their entire culture doesn’t feel like something we’ve seen everyplace before. I mean I’ve seen space (g-slur) but, eh not really.

And Tali herself is such a good character. I mean, she does suffer a little from being Very Important with her father being one of five admirals in a population of six million people but, I’ll allow it. Nobody else on the crew has Very Important Parents. I mean Garrus’ father is a little high up in the ranks but that’s a non-factor, Ash’s grandfather was but he’s dead and never seen, Wrex’s father is a chieftan but none of those is central to their current story or as big as this one. I mean, Spacer Shep’s own mother is a captain of a ship. Tali herself in-game isn’t that sexualized -- most of that was the fandom’s doing. She’s young but also confident and has her shit together.

She shoulda been a same-sex romance in ME2/3 though, damnit!

Joker. Is. Amazing. And uh, also shoulda been a romance option.

Hey first of all, how great was it that they put in disabled representation in this game. I have read a few posts on how it could have been better, and definitely agree, but it’s also been so important to have say, Geordi LaForge as chief engineer of the Enterprise and also Joker here, in space, being awesome on spaceships. And he really earns his the right to his bravado in calling himself the best pilot in the galaxy.

Also? Casting Seth Green was such a great choice. I couldn’t imagine Joker as anyone else. I mean this is Bioware so we expect, and definitely got, great voice acting (except for... ugh you know, we’ll get there in ME3) but honestly Seth Green was a particularly good choice. I don’t care that he’s covered with sixteen layers of plot armor, he deserves it.

He’s the companion that we don’t ever get to take in the squad. (I mean, except for that brief amazing moment in ME2)

I only wish in ME1 he had as much to say as in ME2/3. At least he gets cool snarky lines after all the major missions.

One last thing before we get off the ship for awhile, I love that the crew is actually comprised of both men AND women in ME1. With different hairstyles and faces, and even skin tones. It’s nice to see they didn’t just reuse the same guy over and over for the nameless NPCs.

Well, I guess they get names in ME2. :v

Anyway, I would like to point out, that there are seventeen nameless NPCs on the Normandy.

Then there’s Adams, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley, Kaidan, Chakwas, Liara, Pressley, and Joker.

That’s twenty-seven people and eight sleep pods. Let’s remove the aliens, who couldn’t fit in a sleep pod (Garrus and Wrex), twenty-five people. Are there people sleeping in the sleep pods now? There must be, right? Everyone can’t be awake when we’re on the ship just because we’re there? How does that math add up? Who is sleeping where, HOW DOES IT WORK!?

Well, that’s their problem. I got my own bed. Kaidan can share.

Also just... don’t get me started on how stupid this is. I mean it’s nice having a shop on the ship but... the justification is terrible. We all know it. He was counted as one of the 17 nameless, btw.

Okay well, I was going to get off the ship this update but this is already stupid long and honestly I don’t have too much more content to post so, I’m gonna go actually play this game!

#mass effect #kaidan alenko #garrus vakarian #urdnot wrex #liara t'soni #tali'zorah #ashley williams #jeff joker moreau #joker #annakie's mass effect stuff

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happywitch416 · 5 years

Note

More because I can: Dorian, Solas, Dennet, Varric, and Sten.

Got Dorian already! Also, Solas is last and under a cut because I am Solas Critical and I know that’s a touchy subject for some. I think its cool other people enjoy his character so much! But I don’t and while I am a happy witch, I don’t want to be subjected to a witch hunt. Again.

Dennet

How I feel about this character

The man with the horses. He's blunt but most horse folks are. I like how his coming to Skyhold is basically you children don't know horses ill save them from you. And he just rolls with the nugs and dracolisks? That's a funny-looking horse? I guess? I like him.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

His wife of course! They are a good team, he ie the horses and she is more the farming and its a good match.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Blackwall. They are stable buddies.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don't have one?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Hm. More reactions to the strange rides. I want to know how he reacts to feeding differences. How does he hire stablehands? Stablehands needed, must be good with raw sheep.

Varric

How I feel about this character

Varric is the worst. Terrible awful.

I love Varric. I love how he tells Hawke's story, never mind it's his story, he would never admit that. And not just Hawkes but the stories of each of these ragtag nightmares he wrangles to a table for drinking and wicked grace. I like how he is a good person, that does bad things. He lies, but is honest about his lying. I dig that he's with the merchants guild and just doesn't do any of it. And I love that he's a storyteller. Anything and everything is a story. Also, I find his arms, shoulders, and back to be aesthetically pleasing. Holy shit. Just stand there and flex pls ill die happy.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Hawke, with him and Rose being the otp. Admittedly when I read other Varric Hawke pairings I go this is good followed by sticking my nose in the air and going but mine is better. I am that person, but I think everyone is allowed to love their version of their OTP best.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Cole, I dig that whole found family thing. I dig his and Bull's distrusting trust too. Like they get along but definitely give each other the suspicious look. And Viv! He's gonna write a book about her!

My unpopular opinion about this character

LET US ROMANCE HIM BIOWARE. Also the relationship with Bianca, the dwarf, sucks. Like. Thats not his or hers fault but it is so bad at this point. I also don't dig the ship with Cassandra. I just….its got problems for me.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Ending it with Bianca, its no longer good for either of them. Romance him. Cowards. More games of wicked grace. The inquisitor gets to hug him if Hawke dies, why can't we hug him more. More hugs.

Sten

How I feel about this character

Sten. My murder child. You become friends over a sword. He's sarcastic as shit. You have found a wastebin. He's just the best.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I don't. I just. I cant. He does not strike me as romanceable. He's gotta job to do and it ain't you.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Friend Warden and Shale. Team snark. And how many of your friends would rip someone's arms off for you. (If you are my friend, you can name one.)

My unpopular opinion about this character

Don't think I have one?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

More Sten! All the time. He's Arishok in dai yeah? Interaction! Delegation! Get me the hell out of Ferelden!

Solas- FYI This is Solas Critical, if thats a prob, feel free to skip! No hard feelings from me.

How I feel about this character

Immediate dislike. He's arrogant and a know it all. The Dalish were mean to me once. Well with that attitude I wouldn't take you seriously either. And the I don't like how things are so I'm going to destroy the world is just. Wtf dude. Fucking chill. Maybe. Take a normal nap and have a cookie. Extremes don't fix shit, which you should have already learned by now, the King of Mistakes. Also, he was my first Bioware Romance. I am Bitter. Especially since my next romance was King Alistair, as a dwarf. He dumped me too. Throw them into the fire.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

...no one. The lying, about where he's from why he's there who he is. The absolute ripping he does on the Dalish. Oh yeah, your culturally important face tattoo is a sign of slaves and I'm dumping you. Like. Sigh. It's not healthy. And I will leave it at that.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Varric. In their conversations, the man at the end of the world to be specific, they have two very different perspectives. Solas is pessimistic to his core. Varric is the one who sees someone surviving in spite of the odds and sees that survival as something worthy in of itself, as winning against the dark. Solas needs more influences that arent so doom and gloom. Flemeth/Mythal is the other. I think if she actually knew his end goal she wouldn't have handed over her power like what appears to have happened. She's spent how many years subtly guiding the hands that save the world? Why would she do that to let him destroy it? Unless of course, she knows things we don't. Or her spirit is laying in wait to possess him. Which I'm cool with.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Look, I dislike Solas and that's a dangerous opinion to have in fandom. My entire opinion is unpopular. Lol the one thing that probably irritates me the most is his treatment of Cole. Its all about what he thinks is best, not about what Cole wants. An important distinction. Cole wants to grow and do better and he's no its a spirit. While yelling that spirits need better treatment. Mmkay buddy

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

For someone who bitches about the black and white ideologies of the world, he's awful black and white himself. I would like someone to point it out. And I want the option to make him actually listen to the elves of the current time, the Dalish and the Alienages. Moping about in the past is good for exactly zero things. I mean apparently, he does in the books at some point? Masked Empire I think is what I have heard, I haven't read it yet. And we know he has this massive spy network. But does he actually pay attention to what his people are saying or is he so caught up in a million years ago? If you friend him, you see hints of it. But I want more damn it.

I understand why some folks love Solas, I however can’t. Its all good.

#the witch speaks

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musingmycelium · 5 years

Text

da 20 questions

i was tagged by @goblin-deity thanks dear <3 and i’ll tag @lyrium-lovesong @raymurata @pegaeae @veridium-bye and @crystal-grace <3 no obligations of course <3

01) Favourite game of the series?

ooooghghghghghgh Origins is my Favorite, the Story........

02) How did you discover Dragon Age?

i recieved a copy of inquisition as a gift, became immediately immursed but i didn’t dig more into the series for a good half a year or so? at which point i discovered the other two games and went Oh Fuck

03) How many times you’ve played the games?

oh, uHHHHHHH, Far Too Many. i’ve sunk over 1k hours into dai alone, origins and da2 probably have about 1k combined?

04) Favourite race to play as?

i’m always a slut for elves

05) Favourite class?

me, a staff wielding bisexual: i’m Mage, all the way. though i don’t mind rogue if i mix things up [which is like, i think i have three or four rogue play throughs out of all of them?] i NEVER play warrior bc i’m a bottom i’m not about that life

06) Do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time?

i play in character! so i’ve got some Wildly different world states depending on which playthrough/oc i’m on

07) Go-to adventuring group?

for my Canon world states i’ve got origins gang: sten, zevran, morrigan. da2 gang: fenris/aveline, anders/merrill, varric. dai gang: dorian, bull, solas/sera i sense a theme......

08) Which of your characters did you put the most thought into?

oh god, ellanis and noure are my most fleshed out origins kids, wren and galahad are less fleshed out, sorta, but i Love them, idrilla and da’ean are pretty fleshed out as well -though linayel and mithra are also fairly fleshed out i just never write about them

09) Favourite romance?

ZEVRAN -god i love him so much hhhhhHHHHHHHH he’s got Everything, everytime i play ellanis and he goes ‘the grey wardens die here’ i’m Fucking Lost Already man. hhhhhoooohhghghghghghgh i’d go on but i’m running on cough syrup and midol so it would be even less coherent than ususal

10) Have you read any of the comics/books?

lmao i own all the books but i haven’t been able to finish them because My God are they poorly written. LIKE good Characters, good characters, shit prose.

11) If you read them, which was your favourite book?

the one i’m furthest along in rn is stolen throne so i’ll go with that one

12) Favourite DLCs?

jaws of hakon -holy shit as an archaeologist grad student i cannot tell you how much i Fucking Loved the lore dump in site form that was jaws of hakon JUST OH MY GOD it was AMAZING the first time you talk to professor what’shisface with the hot accent and he starts talking about chronologies via buckles i was fucking lost in nerd heaven

13) Things that annoy you.

homophobia and transphobia and racism. the games are Rife with bad correlations between real people and grey morality and poor handling of sensitive contents, though i don’t know if it was all done for ‘woke’ points or if some came from legitimate good intentions, most of my problems lie in those areas. fandom also hits a lot of my annoyances but that’s what block is for

14) Orlais or Ferelden?

antiva bitch

15) Templars or mages?

mages

16) If you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one?

same one! ellanis is my canon hof but noure is a part of his backstory and they meet during the blight [ellanis frees noure from a sentence of tranquility and conscripts them, uh, temporarily] noure leaves the group after like a week?ish and goes to nevarra. wren and galahad are twins, wren being the older one and the main rabble-rouser hawke. da’ean is the only quizzy but idrilla, linayel, mithra and a handful of other lavellan ocs all exist within the clan -idrilla and linayel and a few others come to skyhold after clan lavellan handles the unrest in wycome with da’ean’s help [my canon there is a bit wonky as of yet as i’m still working out the kinks]

17) What did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc)

this is the part i suck at, i think ellanis named the mabari something after the flower that saved him? but i don’t remember tbh, and that’s the only one i cna think of rn too lkjlkjlkjklj

18) Have you installed any mods?

oh yes. ohhh yes i have an extense amount of mods on all three games, mostly cosmetic ones but a few gameplay ones

19) Did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden?

ellanis didn’t no, he thought warden’s were a bit of reality mixed with myth. when duncan shows up he’s more skeptical and curious than anything else, and his joining is less than enthusiastic but he makes the most of it for a good five years, before he fucks off to do his own research in antiva in seclusion -he just leaves, with an encripted note for nate making him warden-commander of ferelden while he’s gone and tells him not to tell anyone where he’s gone. only nate and velanna know where he is in the wardens

20) Hawke’s personality?

wren is a purple hawke! she knows what she wants and she is not afraid to go after it, although she does care deeply and shows her affections loudly. she’s a fucking chaotic stupid mess and i love her.

galahad is blue throughout. a natural big brother, super loving and patient and caring. he’s always looking to help, though when things go wrong he tends to blame himself only, he’s more together than wren though.

21) Did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquisition?

....yes....... my inquisition is a fashion disaster, everyone has a palatte but i do complimentary colors for my parties and lis Of Course

22) If your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change?

yes, ellanis would go back and kill the shems before they could crash the wedding -to prevent shianni from ever having to live through what she did. he would still have probably been conscripted by duncan soooo not too big a change for him but, for shianni it would be huge.

ellanis has another but it’s tied up with noure’s: noure would go back and ambush the templars before being captured and then run for their life. without ever having lived in the circle i don’t, know exactly how noure would come out -probably happier, less jagged, less terrified and paranoid. but probably not by much if they had to live their life constantly looking over their shoulder. they may have ended up in nevarra this way too, but they wouldn’t have ever made it to kirkwall and they never would have met anders or karl, they may have never fallen out of love with ellanis via distance/assumed death, it would be far different than what happened.

wren and galahad both would go back and save bethany. doesn’t matter how, or what the cost to themselves would have been that’s their little sister and they would do anything to save her if they could.

da’ean’s is much the same. his biggest regret, the thing which haunts him the most is ashalle’s [not dao ashalle lmao] death. he was supposed to protect her and after what happens in that field and that month, da’ean blames himself for how his sister died. though he isn’t the one to blame, and later [far, far later] he is able to come to terms with what happened. though he never Truly shakes the guilt.

linayel would probably try to save his mother’s sight. he would tell her to stay with him by the fire, or would try and find a cure faster for her. the illness wasn’t his fault and he knows it wasn’t but given the chance he would save her sight if he could.

23) Do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon?

lmao canon? never heard of her, a shitton of what i write is either me taking canon and making it Good/Useable or me shitting on it and saying this is My Castle Now

24) Who did you leave in the Fade?

this choiice always pissed me off, or it did after i knew who they were. when i first played i had no idea who hawke was or who the grey warden contact was [stroud for my first couple of play throughs] at all. so i would flip flop between them without care really.

now, in my canon alistair stays behind while hawke physically drags da’ean out because he was going to stay and fight or find a different way out. i still think its shit and a naratively piss-poor meta punch though

25) Favourite mount?

i’m a dirty gatherer so i don’t actually use any mount. the only time i Have used a mount was the royal 16 for screenshot purposes, which i lost when my harddrive crashed a couple months ago D:

#thanks for the tag!#<3 #uwu this was fun and good bless you owen

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thrandilf · 6 years

Text

So Distracting Ch 7

The DA2 crew on an adventure

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15000896/chapters/35367981

Qunari pirates were the problem of the week. Hawke led his rogues plus Merrill, Anders, and Fenris to The Wounded Coast. It was a full day cross country trek, but traveling with Hawke and the company he kept was never boring.

"You gotta give me SOMETHING," pressed Varric, trailing behind Anders and Fenris. The wild coast was a pleasant walk filled with trees and sunshine when not overrun with bandits and slave traders and one could almost pretend they were out for a picnic if it wasn't for all the heavy armor and weaponry. "Hawke has his romantic comedy going on with his fish out of water over there, but you two? You hated each other! You're angsty! It's what people want."

Merrill wrinkled her nose. "I'm not a fish!"

Anders was used to having a reputation for sexual trysts and tricks, but it hadn't mattered before. And now, with someone like Fenris? "I'm not saying a thing. You'll have better luck getting details on Prince Charming's quite dead love life."

"Don't need 'em!" Varric grinned, teasing. "He's handsome, pure hearted, fierce, faithful, probably good with kids- and completely unattainable. Someone has to stay single for the ladies and a few gentlemen to guiltlessly pine for. He's perfect."

Prince Sebastian laughed, a blush creeping over his face. "I'm a mere chantry brother, Varric. Nothing so high and divine as you say."

"Humble too. Maker, you do it on purpose or what?"

"If only you'd come into my life before I swore my love to Andraste, Varric!" Sebastian playfully pretended to swoon. "In a different life-"

"Oh if only- my rogue in shining armor-"

"Good GOD you two!" exclaimed Hawke over a few giggles. "Varric, aren't you straight?"

"I like to keep people guessing."

Fenris rolled his eyes at the bantering and teasing, but a smile threatened to appear on his face. Never before Kirkwall had his companions been so filterless and free with affection and insults. He watched as Hawke led the group like an exasperated mother hen, as if their verbal entertainment wasn't at least half the reason he brought them anywhere. Merrill and Isabela followed him with arms around each other's waists, Merrill laughing often and Isabela smirking. He wondered if Hawke knew his girlfriend had a crush on Isabela, but then again anyone having a crush on Isabela was nothing new.

"Okay but really, Blondie. You weren't so shy about Isabela putting your electricity trick out there on the table."

Anders sighed. "Drop it, dwarf! Fenris and I-"

"He's loud," stated Fenris. Anders choked and Sebastian suddenly looked away and rubbed his neck while Isabela tuned in with grin. Fenris took Anders's hand in his and shrugged. "You all know we're together. Just stating the obvious."

Varric snorted. "Yes, Broody, I definitely knew that one. Who swept who off their feet?"

Isabela hung back to elbow Varric. "No one sweeps anyone off their feet for hate sex!"

"Correct," said Anders with relief. "No sweeping at all."

"The real question is who said 'shut up' and who said 'make me'!"

Fenris and Anders's silence was telling. Anders squeezed Fenris's hand and flashed a smile. Fenris wished he didn't think that grin was so light and beautiful. "Whatever this is between us, consider yourselves lucky we know how to behave in a camping tent with other people, since there's only two tents," said Anders. "Unlike some people I know."

Merrill giggled and Hawke's ears turned red.

"I wanna be in the shenanigans tent!" declared Isabela, looking at Hawke and Merrill.

"Pass," said Sebastian.

"Pass," said Anders.

"Pass," said Fenris.

"Pass," finished Varric. He looked at his three temporary roommates. "Great, I'm sleeping with a bunch of glow-sticks."

Sebastian shrugged, the metal on his armor glinting particularly bright in the sun. "Just the blessing of the light of the Maker."

The Maker also blessed them with an ogre to fight. The group sprang into action, rogues diving in all directions to confuse it while the mages hung out in the back. Fenris rushed in front alone, swinging his sword with deadly strength and phasing partially into the Fade when the beast swung at him. Isabela took the ogre from behind (ew) and her blades thrust in deep before she sprang back with lightning reflexes. Actual lighting crackled past Fenris's head alongside arrows and crossbow bolts. The ogre roared.

Fenris was the only one it could directly attack- and so it did. He couldn't phase entirely out of a blow and groaned as the ogre's fist collided with his shoulder as he cut into it's thigh. "THIS IS A VERY UNBALANCED TEAM!" he shouted in pain.

Anders's healing magic immediately mended his wound as Isabela took a backhanded hit. "I need healing!" she yelled.

"I need healing!" said Hawke.

"I need healing!" shouted Varric with a smirk.

"I need healing!" Merrill laughed.

"I need healing!" roared Fenris in genuine need as the ogre dislocated his wrist.

"ANDRASTE'S LIPS ON SHARTAN'S COCK!" bellowed Anders, drawing on Justice to heal Fenris first and to instill a stream of healing energy inside the elf. Perhaps Fenris should've taken the healer to bed long ago if this is how he showed his affection. He sank his blade deep into the ogre's chest as Isabela stabbed its neck, killing the beast.

"Ha!" Isabela exclaimed. "Dead!"

Anders scowled and healed her wound, suddenly angling his head up. "My darkspawn senses are tingling!"

A group of darkspawn rushed the party and Fenris charged back, lyrium glowing bright. Darkspawn fell around him from magical blasts and arrows as Fenris ripped through darkspawn in front of him with a snarl. His sword and gauntlets tore and sprayed blood all over his armor and skin as he relished in the gore he could so easily inflict. Anders kept him shielded and healed and Fenris was almost invincible, drunk off the unnaturally murky blood that gushed at his command, the final living head of a darkspawn exploding as he thrust his fist inside the Fade and then caused it to materialize inside the monster's skull, yanking with dark pleasure as it died.

"Holy shit." Hawke stared at Fenris in the center of his blood hurricane. "Remind me to never ever get on your bad side."

They cleaned up and checked for serious wounds- one of which being Sebastian's ears. "Maker, Anders! Could you have said anything more offensive? Andraste's- no I can't even repeat it?"

Anders shrugged. Being both Andrastian and a mage, he danced between devout belief and mandatory blasphemy. "I probably could if you gave me time to brainstorm."

Isabela laughed. "I suspect that particular exclamation came from personal experience?" She eyed Fenris. "Recent experience, perhaps?"

"Oh shut it Isabela!" groaned Anders, albeit without venom. "The priest doesn't need to know how much I like being on my knees!"

"Maker no." Sebastian sighed deeply. "Maker forgive your children..."

Fenris eyed Varric. "Everything you say can and will be used against you, Anders. The dwarf will remember that."

Varric feigned innocence. "Remember what?"

-~-

They set up camp a ways from where they were to make their attack on the pirates before dawn. Isabela, Hawke, and Merrill retired remarkably hastily to their tent and the other four exchanged looks.

"I'll take watch," volunteered Sebastian.

Varric shrugged. "I'm not sleeping yet. I've got fish to fry, quite literally."

"Ew." Fenris moved upwind of the cooking fire Varric was starting and sat by Sebastian. The chantry brother smiled at Fenris and opened his copy of the Chant of Light. It was a wordless invitation and he simply started speaking, not missing how Fenris's eyes followed his voice across the words of the page.

"'Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing,

An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown.

You have forgotten, spear-maid of Alamarr.

Within My creation, none are alone...'"

Sebastian might've irked everyone with his faith or appear too righteous for the likes of their company, but Fenris couldn't help a wave of appreciation for Sebastian wash over him as he let Fenris read alongside him without pushing his beliefs or making a scene of teaching him. Didn't matter that he was an elf, uncertain in his faith, a killer, or anything else.

Fenris was a person, and Sebastian seemed to be one of the few who made him feel just that.

Varric cooked him and Anders dinner in a small frying pan Anders imagined doubled as armor when against his back. "So, Blondie. Justice will let you both eat AND sleep in one evening?"

"Surprisingly, yes." Anders stretched out by the fire, basking in the warmth like a cat and ignoring a high pitched sigh from Hawke's tent. "Possessing a dead body when we first met meant he wasn't prepared for a living one. It's taken time for him to understand my needs beyond activism, but he gets it. Mostly."

Anders flickered blue and Varric huffed. "Seems like he disagrees."

"No, sorry about that." Anders sighed and inhaled the aroma of cooking fish. "I think he still longs to interact with this world more. He appreciates beauty, but feels torn whenever he's distracted from his purpose. A life is going to be many things. Justice, funny as it may be for something usually represented by scales, has no sense of balance."

"So you're trying to teach a Fade spirit to change? What would he be then, a spirit of Freedom?"

Anders paused. He grinned and a flicker appeared on his skin again. "More like indecision is how it feels like. Justice has already changed since joining with me and is confused. Perhaps you're not far off- don't we fight for Justice so others may have freedom?"

Varric served them both their fish and sat back, happy to not have to share his ale with Anders. "I've got characters who talk in my head all the time- call it overactive imagination. I can't imagine a spirit."

"Ha! A lot is direct conversation, but even more so are impulsive and intrusive thoughts." Anders sighed. "Sometimes we really do agree and have the same mind on things, other times it's confusing. My organic impulses tend to be 'run after the stray kitty cat' or 'oh wow, what a good butt', while Justice's impulsive thoughts tend to be 'that's a starving child and I should dump out my pockets for them' and 'gravity is boring outside the Fade'. It's a bit crowded in here."

"Ever think of letting him out to say hello to more people?"

Anders snorted and covered his mouth. "Justice and Sebastian together. Just imagine it."

"Point taken."

"He also has no filter."

"Are you implying YOU do?"

Anders finished his fish and lounged back. Varric took in every word and book ammunition or not, Anders needed someone to listen. "In all fairness, I'm pretty sure Justice has saved my life. He doesn't sleep. Sure my body does and I do, but he's in the back of my mind in case anything happens. He's something of a guardian to me."

"You sound attached- literally."

Anders's grin faded. "Friends are more important than anything, Varric. Maybe I've finally made one no one can ever take away from me."

Varric put a hand on Anders's shoulder. "Look around. You can count more than one, Blondie."

Anders wished he had Varric's certainty.

-~-

Sebastian took first watch as promised as Varric, Fenris, and Anders went to bed. Varric apparently had the dwarvish gift of heavy sleeping and slept almost immediately after unfurling his sleeping mat. Fenris unrolled his sleeping bag and Anders blanched as he looked inside his backpack.

Well, shit. Anders curled up on the ground and rested his head on his hand. Justice sent a small wave of apologetic guilt through Anders. Anders had been tired and rushed to get the clinic together and had been distracted by Fenris- so while Fenris got to go back to his mansion and grab a pre packed bag, Anders and Justice had enough Lyrium potions thrown in their backpack to put on a fireworks show while healing everyone Anders had ever met, but no sleeping bag. Figures.

"Mage?" Fenris propped himself up on his elbow, under his bedding. "What are you doing?"

"I was in a hurry to pack when Hawke showed up and uh, um. Justice forgot too so I don't have a bedroll." Anders squirmed. The evening sea breeze wasn't particularly warm, but he'd live. "I've slept on rocks before, the grass is fine."

"Stupid forgetful idiot!" Fenris's scolding might've sounded more threatening if he wasn't trying to tug Anders into his sleeping bag. "Be useful and get in here."

Anders's heart leapt but he still felt sheepish. "I don't want to impose-"

"Cuddle me." Fenris gave an order rather than a request and Anders grinned. Fenris rolled over and sighed with satisfaction as Anders spooned him and held him close in their bedding, bodies pressed together so Fenris only felt warmth and softness. "Good. This shall compensate for having to share."

Anders's height helped him be a good snuggler, Fenris's head tucked under his and their legs twined together. He kissed Fenris's hair and pet his chest, nuzzling him and pushing up Fenris's tunic to rub his abdomen. It was tactfully under their blanket and facing away from Varric, but not an available route after already teasing Hawke for his displays of affection (made relevant by another moan from the other tent).

"If you arouse me-" growled Fenris under his breath, turning his head back to hiss near Anders's ear, "I'll have you crying and screaming your throat raw over whatever I damm well feel like the next time we set foot in my house."

It occurred to Fenris after Anders shivered and bit hit his lip that maybe growling and threatening a man who liked his growls and threats was not a good way to diffuse the situation. "If I behave myself, can you promise to do that anyway?" murmured Anders. Fenris hoped he was only imagining Anders being turned on behind him.

"If you behave, I'll be open to a great many things. Requests, if you will."

Fenris could hear Anders smirking. "Oooooooh, I could definitely give you ideas." Anders stopped his petting but still cuddled Fenris close. "Alright, lets sleep then."

Fenris, who was generally a horrible insomniac without his alcohol, passed out within minutes of being snuggled in Anders's arms. Anders wished he could sleep as easily, his body eager at the idea of showing Fenris what Anders could do on his knees, or kissing every single line of lyrium and making Fenris's nerves sing with pleasure. He wondered if Fenris would enjoy tying him up-

'Sleep,' rumbled Justice inside Anders's head.

'I can't. You know why. You can feel it too.'

Justice took over partial control of Anders and tuned him into Sebastian reading softly under his breath outside, the words of Andraste and the Maker quelling both Anders's desire and his will to stay awake. Justice also started reciting historical timeline events of the Blights and Anders was gone. 'I'm impressed but not surprised by your capability to kill boners,' thought Anders at Justice before he slipped into the embrace of deep sleep with Fenris.

#fenders #fenris dragon age #anders dragon age #da2 fic #fanfic #this is 60% banter oh well #my writing

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fanfoolishness · 6 years

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no words for heaven or for earth (1/?)

The aftermath of the assault on Adamant Fortress for Min Hawke and Varric Tethras. Part 1 of ? ANGST ahead. Min and Varric have seen a lot of shit together, but nothing like this.

(If you want to read more of their courtship and story, you can find it all here or at AO3.)

Part 1: Where’s Hawke?

Adamant was a jumbled mess of flaring magic, the practiced, familiar kick of Bianca against his shoulder, the shouts and sounds of battle. Varric knew they had a job to do: stop the Wardens, kill the demons, kick Corypheus right where it hurt.

But it was a little hard to remember that when he saw her, red armor a dark silhouette against the swollen desert moons. Min Hawke was a force unto herself, twin daggers flashing in the moonlight, and when he saw her, his heart did all that stupid shit he tried to write about but had never quite captured.

It felt damn good. New, and strange, but good.

Bianca loosed a bolt that sent a pride demon to its end. He watched it disintegrate, panting as the battle paused for just a moment. There’d be more demons any second, no doubt, but this was a minute he was going to take.

He drew up himself up in front of her, trying to look casual as he caught his breath. “Sparrow.”

Min Hawke appeared to be fighting a goofy, full-fledged grin. A fight she lost spectacularly. She beamed at him. “Hallo there, Varric. Fancy running into my favorite dwarf up here.”

“Oh, you know. This is textbook for a traditional dwarven courtship. You’re supposed to slay demons with your beloved in a crumbling Warden fortress in one of the sandiest places in Thedas. Sand in your junk is romantic, they say.”

Hawke arched an eyebrow at him. “First, ‘beloved’? I quite like the way that sounds! That’s delightful, you old softy. Second, you and I now know very well that sand in one’s junk is hardly romantic.” Her cheeks went pink and he chuckled at the memory of last night in her tent. Maybe it hadn’t been romantic, but it had been worth it, anyway. He took her hand in his and gave it a quick squeeze.

A shout behind them made him drop her hand and reach again for Bianca. “Suppose it’s time to kick some more demon ass.”

“Don’t worry, love,” she said, and his brain had just a moment to register the love before she drew her daggers and gutted a lesser shade that had appeared from nowhere. “I’ve got your back.”

He fell, they were all falling, falling --

He gasped for air, braced for the impact, his mind an empty blank --

And he got to his feet, water soaking his boots and the bottom of his trousers. Where the fuck were they? “Hawke?” he called uncertainly. “Doodles?” He looked around for Namira Lavellan, and spotted her standing a little ways ahead, looking aghast.

“Varric. There you are,” said Hawke from somewhere above him. He glanced up and nearly tripped over himself in shock. Hawke was standing on a rock above him, sticking out horizontally into the air. She managed to look both scared and annoyed, which somehow made him feel a surge of affection for her. He blinked, and for the first time fully took in their surroundings.

Shallow puddles dotted the landscape, which was awash with a sick green light and -- his heart sank -- floating rocks. There were only two places he knew of where shit floated like that. One was the Breach, and Namira had closed that months ago. The other was the Fade.

He glanced over and saw Solas with his hands on his staff, his face lit up like some kind of gleeful bonfire. Shit. Definitely the Fade.

Behind Solas Dorian blinked disbelievingly. The Warden Alistair popped up from another floating rock, upside down as if it was perfectly natural.

“Well, shit,” said Hawke, jumping down from her floating rock, and Varric shook his head.

“You said it.”

The Fade was not going well.

Varric supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. When did the Fade ever go well? He tried to stay focused on getting out, but he couldn’t help but think of the last time he’d been anywhere Fade-adjacent. Hawke had been trying to help that kid Feynriel -- she’d always had such a soft spot for mages, despite not being one -- and Merrill’s Keeper had found a ritual to get their heads into the Fade. Even his stubborn dwarf mind had wound up there.

And of course, he’d promptly jumped at the chance to show up Bartrand, to become the favored son of parents who’d been dead for years. He’d said yes to the demon like a fool and turned on Hawke. It made him feel ashamed to think about it, so he didn’t usually -- but it was hard not to with the Fade’s rotten green light all around him and spirits wafting past.

“How are you?” he muttered to Hawke, the others pushing forward. He hadn’t wanted to say much in front of the rest of the group. He still hadn’t told them he and Hawke had finally figured their shit out, and this certainly wasn’t the moment for it.

She brushed a hand against his shoulder, then let it drop as they climbed a set of crumbling stairs lined by floating candles. “I’m trying not to be frightened. That’s what the demon wants, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I hear,” he tried to say in a joking tone, but the words fell flat. He swallowed. “Hey. I’m sorry about what happened the last time we were in the Fade. Also, I hate that there have been multiple times we’ve been in the Fade.”

“I know,” Hawke said. “You apologized already, Varric. Years ago. I’ve never held it against you, of course.” She managed an anxious smile. “You have to remember, the Fade responds to your will. So if you try to think happy thoughts --” her expression looked as if she was trying to be cheery while eating broken glass -- “then the Fade can’t be so frightening.”

“Right,” he said. “I’ll give that a try.”

Of course, he’d no sooner said it than he was put to the test. The voice of the Nightmare, sonorous, surrounding, rumbled down at them. It made Varric’s skin crawl. Especially when it said his name.

“Once again, Hawke is in danger because of you, Varric,” the voice intoned. “You found the red lyrium. You brought Hawke here.”

Her hand on his shoulder again, gripping it hard this time. “Don’t listen.”

“Sure,” he muttered. “Keep talking, Smiley,” he said loudly. Namira gave him an approving nod, as did Solas and Dorian.

“There’s the spirit,” said Hawke, then laughed at her own terrible pun, wheezing with the effort. “Sorry, I know that was wretched.”

The Nightmare’s voice shut up, but Varric was sweating.

Varric swore, flinging a dagger into a dwarf who was so encrusted in red lyrium that it was hard to believe they could move at all. The dwarf gasped, their red eyes winking out of existence as their body disintegrated.

Varric picked up his dagger and washed it off in a pond of stagnant water, shuddering. On the whole he’d take Hawke’s spiders instead of these red lyrium mutants any day. Stupid deepest fears. He was no stranger to fighting dirty, but this? This was too much.

“Really not a fan of these fear demons,” he grumbled. He shook the water off his dagger, and the only color shining in its blade was green, not red. Well. That was something, wasn’t it?

They took a moment to rest up in what appeared to be a tiny cemetery on the water’s edge. Varric slugged back a potion of elfroot and spindleweed, grimacing at the taste. He’d never liked the stuff.

He leaned against one of the tombstones, wiping his mouth and waiting for the potion to kick in. He felt a little better, a little stronger. The rift they had come in through swirled above them, baleful but nearer than before. Maybe they were going to get through this, after all. He tried to smile at Hawke, but she looked stricken.

“Varric,” she hissed. “That one’s got your name on it.”

“Riiiiight,” he said, but holy shit, it really did.

Varric -- Became his parents.

He wondered if a despair demon had snuck up on them, because what else would explain the sudden, icy terror in his gut? He pushed himself off the tombstone and caught glimpses of names etched on the others. “Don’t look at them,” he warned. But Dorian just gave him a twisted smile.

“Too late,” said Dorian, his eyes shadowed. “Charming, isn’t it?”

“Ahh, fuck this place,” said Varric.

Shit shit shit shit shit

The Nightmare looked to him a monstrous living mountain of red lyrium, its joints shuddering with every movement. Its gaping mouth ground a shrieking, scraping howl as it rose above them, a song that shattered in his ears. Varric scrambled behind Dorian and Solas towards the waiting rift, running up the jagged slope as fast as he could, Bianca banging painfully against his back, his rough breaths sharp in his lungs. They were almost there -- Hawke was just behind him, wasn’t she? -- he leapt --

Namira was white-faced, wide-eyed. Alistair was hunched over a wound in his side. The sky beyond them was clear starlight, no Fade, no lyrium dragon, no rift. They were back in Adamant Fortress. But --

The world was utterly still. Except for the icy terror, back again, this time in his gut, his chest, his mouth. His hands were frozen. Words tripped out of his mouth, simple ones, the hardest he’d ever said.

“Where’s Hawke?”

Why were they so quiet? Why did Namira look like she was about to cry? He tried again. He hoped, he hoped, he hoped --

“...Where’s Hawke?”

#hawke x varric #varric x hawke #varric tethras #varric #hawke #min hawke #dragon age: inquisition #da:i #here lies the abyss #adamant #the fade #shit's about to get reeeeeeeeeal #but i gotta write it first #ehehehehe #if you read the first bit i posted in this series #i'll repost it soon #and eventually do a masterpost once i finish this out #if tumblr is doing that weird glitch with the apostrophes just click through to the full story #it looks fine once you see the whole thing

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makercursed-a · 6 years

Text

A more comprehensive overview of Hawke’s dai companion verse. It’s mostly used in AUs where the Inquisitor is someone Hawke cares about (i.e. @vigilflight‘s bethquisitor au) but if other Inquisitors want to use it, then we’ll say Hawke came out of hiding early because she heard Varric had been kidnapped by Cassandra and was near the Temple when it exploded. She tracked rumours of him to Haven, and decided getting herself arrested or killed would probably be worth it to find out if Varric was safe/rescue him if need be.

RECRUITMENT

Not long after the start of the game, a cutscene plays when the Inquisitor returns to Haven from whatever quests they’ve been doing. There’s a huge commotion happening by the gates. Upon investigating, the Inquisitor will find Hawke flanked by Inquisition soldiers, yelling at Cullen and demanding to see Varric/the Inquisitor.

The Inquisitor can then attempt to calm Hawke down. If they’re someone she cares about then she’ll instantly relax and tell them how glad she is that they’re alive, and ask if they need help getting away from all this shit. If they’re not one of her friends, she’ll demand to see Varric and ask bluntly if he’s being kept prisoner. The Inquisitor can choose to get Varric, in which case he and Hawke will embrace, and he’ll call her an idiot for putting her life on the line to come find him.

Hawke, once calmed down, can either be recruited into the Inquisition (you’re here now, and we could use your help) sent away (you’re too dangerous to be here) or arrested (it’s time you answered for what you did in Kirkwall). If arrested she’ll be sent to Orlais for trial, but a war table mission will later say that she murdered the soldiers accompanying her, escaped and has not been seen since. Josie will ask allies to look out for her, Cullen will send forces after her, and Leliana will send her spies. None of the agents sent to look for her will return to the Inquisition. Varric will not bring her to Skyhold for Here Lies the Abyss, and instead the Inquisitor has to meet her at a hiding spot on the Wounded Coast. She agrees to help, but threatens the Inquisitor not to try any shit.

If recruited, at Haven she can be found on the training ground, and at Skyhold on the rampart/towery bit she’s usually found at pre-Here Lies the Abyss

APPROVAL/DISAPPROVAL

Allying the mages will cause Hawke to greatly approve, conscripting them will cause her to slightly disapprove. Likewise allying the Templars will cause her to greatly disapprove, and disbanding them will cause slight approval.

In Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts she approves of Briala and Celene ruling together, or Briala ruling through Gaspard. She disproves of a truce between the three of them, celene ruling alone, or Gaspard ruling alone. She approves of stabbing Florianna right there on the dance floor

Her opinion on who drinks from the well depends on her relationship with the Inquisitor. For a high approval inquisitor she will approve of Morigan drinking from the well, otherwise there will be no approval change

Generally speaking she approves of pro-mage, anti-circle and anti-chantry sentiments. She approves of blunt honesty, aggressive or violent dialogue to people threatening the Inquisition or generally being idiots, she also approves of helping ordinary people, and dealings with criminals such as lyrium smugglers.

Generally speaking she dislikes of anti-mage, pro-circle, pro-templar or pro-chantry sentiments. She also dislikes lying, being too diplomatic rather than dealing with problems head on, being too lawful good, and being flirted with by a male Inquisitor.

During the Inquisitor being named, she will approve of the “I will lead to do what’s right” “a mage/qunari/dwarf/elf will lead us all” options, and disagree with the “for personal power” or “holy calling” options

Dialogue options asking her about Anders, or Kirkwall may cause approval or disapproval depending on what exactly the Inquisitor says about it all

If Hawke’s approval reaches low enough she will leave. After a final argument with the Inquisitor in a cutscene, the Inquisitor can then go to her usual spot to find a note saying that while she wants Corephyeus dead as much as the next person, she will not and cannot support the Inquisitor. She will warn that she will not hesitate to lead forces against the Inquisition if it comes to that, and that if the Inquisitor dares hurt Varric then she’ll find out about it, and she’ll come for them

SMALL PERSONAL QUEST: FAMILY BUSINESS

The “Family Business” war table missions will concern Hawke’s cousin Charade Amell and her work with the Red Jenny’s. Charade is in need of supplies and allies to help keep the little people of Kirkwall safe. If Charade is helped Hawke will approve, and Sera will also slightly approve.

MAIN PERSONAL QUEST: CITY OF CHAINS

After the first “Annexing Kirkwall” mission comes through on the war table the Inquisitor can talk to Hawke about it in a cutscene. Hawke will say some very unflattering thing about Sebastian, before asking the Inquisitor to help her put an end to this once and for all

The Inquisitor then has the option to send a letter to Sebastian saying that The Champion of Kirkwall wishes to meet him personally to discuss the future of Kirkwall, and hopefully put an end to the fighting there. Sebastian will send a letter back agreeing to the meeting.

A location will then open on the map for the Inquisitor to accompany Hawke to meet Sebastian for a “diplomatic meeting to settle their differences.”

Once they travel to the location they will be attacked by soldiers from Starkhaven. Once the soliders were dead, Sebastian will come forward after a few minutes and say that he did not order the soldiers to attack, and regrets that there has already been bloodshed, Hawke will say quite frankly that she doesn’t believe him. The Inquisitor then has the option to talk to Sebastian about his point of view, the destruction of Kirkwall Chantry, and the role Anders played in it. Sebastian will then ask Hawke to tell him Ander’s location in return for him leaving Kirkwall alone. Hawke will tell him to fuck off

The Inquisitor can then:

persuade Hawke to tell Sebastian where she last saw Anders in order to save the lives of people in Kirkwall, causing Hawke to greatly disapprove.

Allow Hawke to hide Anders’ location, but allow Sebastian to continue with the annex of kirkwall, in which case Hawke will greatly disapprove

Convince Sebastian that it’s more important for the Inquisition to be an ally of Starkhaven, and offer him the Inquisition's aid in Starkhaven if he leaves Kirkwall alone. Sebastian will agree to leave Kirwall, but vows to continue his search for Anders. Hawke will disapprove

Tell Sebastian that neither the Inquisition nor Hawke will help him, and that the Inquisition will do everything in it’s power to protect Kirkwall from him. Hawke will approve.

Allow Hawke to threaten Sebastian, and duel him there and then. While she will not kill him, Sebastian will leave wounded and threatening to bring the Inquisition down. Hawke will greatly approve.

BLOOD MAGIC

A little while after coming to Skyhold, the Inquisitor will be able to confront Hawke about her use of blood magic. Much like softening Leliana or taken Cullen off lyrium, from this point on the Inquisitor will be able to stop Hawke using blood magic.

A high approval Inquisitor will eventually be able to persuade her that blood magic isn’t worth the risk on her health and those around her. This is also easier to do if the Inquisitor did not allow her to fight Sebastian. Eventually Hawke will stop using it. At the end of Trespasser, if Mary is softened and persuaded to give up blood magic, it is shown that she has moved back to Kirkwall to aid in rebuilding the city, help Varric, and is working closely with the new college of enchanters.

On the other hand a low approval Inquisitor and one who encouraged her to fight Sebastian will now be able to convince her to stop using blood magic. After Trespasser she is believed to have moved to Ferelden, but everyone other than Varric soon loses contact with her as she shuts herself away from the rest of Thedas.

SPECIALISATION

Hawke’s specialisation is “Force of Nature” which combines elemental and force magic with devastating effects, as well as some physical damage from her staff. I can’t be arsed to come up with a whole skill tree, but one of the moves would be force punching the ground while pulling up shards of ice at the same time. Another would involve imbuing her staff with fire before using it to physically hit people, that kind of thing.

Force of Nature is actually a nod to some Bela dialogue in Mark of the Assassin because I love her

TAROT CARDS

Initial tarot card: The Tower, a card that represents immense change that shakes the foundations of one’s very life. The card depicts a tall Kirkwall building burning behind Hawke, who stands with her head bowed

High approval/blood magic given up tarot: Strength. Representing inner strength and the power of an individual to overcome obstacles in their life with a compassionate approach. The card depicts Hawke with her head held high, and her hand on a mabari at her side.

Low approval/blood magic continues tarot: The Devil. This card represents addiction, negativity, fear, and harmful impulses. The card depicts Hawke facing forward, with two Kirkwall slaver statues chained at her feet.

#&&. v; once we were not afraid of the night (companion)#{this took way too long rip #im so proud of the tarots tho #and lowkey want comissions of them all}#&&. meta

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barbex · 7 years

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Varric and the aliens

For the @daficswap, special scifi round. My contribution for my swapbuddy @aliveria.

It’s crossover time, Dragon Age and Star Trek Voyager. Featuring my Hawke, who is a warrior but has some mage abilities that she has hidden successfully until the fight with the Arishok.

6800 words. (I know! Why can’t I write short?)

Prompt: "The ruins were hidden, covered over by hundreds of years of plant growth. And what was inside had remained untouched."

"Are you sure it's around here?" Hawke has one foot on a patch of solid ground and her other foot hovers above the mud as she searches for a place to stand on.

Varric carefully steps in her footsteps behind her through the swamp. "Got a map with a mark, what more could you want?"

"A description of how to get there would have been nice."

"There is one: it says 'follow the path through the forest of the dying elves'. Serah Annabella is sure that that means the Planasene Forest."

Hawke jumps over a rather large streamlet, and spits out a curse when her foot gets wet. "She is sure? And why does this Serah Annabella know so much about the Planasene Forest but doesn't look for the thing herself?"

Varric sighs, and doesn't even attempt to make the long jump. His boots are already wet anyway. "She can't really walk, not for long at least. She's more for reading and deciphering books."

"Sounds boring." Hawke sits down on a rock and pulls off her boot to change the wet socks for dry ones.

"Some people like reading books, you know." He sits down next to her and also dries his feet. The path from here on out looks overgrown but dry at least. He takes a sip of cold tea from his bottle and ties his shoes again.

Varric goes back on the path, hearing Hawke stomping behind him. Hawke is many things; but graceful and quiet she is not. "Annabella helps me occasionally with research for my books,” he continues, picking his way carefully through the weeds and bushes. The path leads up a steep hill and obviously has not been used in years; it looks more like an animal trail, and they almost have to crawl up on their hands and feet. “She's got a great library in her house."

"Do you think this was a Dalish path once?" Hawke wonders, hefting her sword on her back.

Varric is about to answer when the path snakes through a gap between the rocks and the area opens up, revealing ruins, overgrown with ivy and moss, that look vaguely familiar and foreign at the same time.

"The ruins were hidden, covered over by hundreds of years of plant growth,” he eventually murmurs. “And what was inside had remained untouched for thousands of years."

Hawke looks at him as she catches her breath. "What?"

"Just how I'm going to describe it in the book."

She smiles and he is relieved to see that. Since the fight with the Arishok, Hawke hasn't smiled much. Which isn't either the Arishok's fault or her new title of “Champion of Kirkwall”, it has more to do with a certain elf and his inability to show her how much he loves her. Their dance gives Varric endless inspiration for his stories -- but for the sake of his friend's heart, he wishes Fenris would finally admit to his feelings.

The inside of the ruins are pretty, but nothing special when it comes to elvhen ruins. "Once you've seen one, you've seen them all," Varric mutters to himself. This one looks like it has been thoroughly searched and looted a long time ago; nothing in here is small enough to be carried out.

"Are you sure your friend meant this ruin?" Hawke calls over from the end of the hall at what could have been a place of worship once, or a cooking area by the looks of it. There is a table-like arrangement of solid rock slabs in front of an arching window, and the sun shines on it in shimmering rays through gaps in the overgrown vegetation. Varric half expects to see ghostly figures rise from the table to yell at them for disturbing this holy place.

But nothing happens. The ruin is deserted and so very quiet. It makes Varric's neck itch.

Hawke stands with her back to the table with her eyes closed and holds out her hands.

Varric walks up to her. "What are you doing?"

"I think there's something here."

"Naw, this place has been picked clean." He scratches his neck and changes his grip on Bianca. "It's giving me the creeps, that's for sure. Let's find somewhere close to camp for tonight."

"So you feel it too," Hawke says with a grin. "There's magic here, to hide something and scare people away."

"That's what's making my skin crawl?"

"I bet it is." She turns a bit, her hands still outstretched with the palms up and her fingers seem to try to pinch at something.

Varric waits. But patience is not his best virtue. "No offence Hawke, but you're not the most powerful mage there is. Maybe you got this wrong."

Hawke is a warrior to everyone who sees her and her giant sword, and only a handful of people know of her magical abilities that she has hidden since she was a child. As an untrained apostate, her magic won't win her any tournaments. She opens her eyes and glares at him. "I got this."

She pinches the air again, twists her hands as if to wrap a thread around it and pulls back hard. A sound like the tap of a knife on a glass rings through the inside of their heads and the very air in front of them vibrates and shatters.

"Told you," Hawke says with a self-satisfied grin as they look at a door that hasn't been there before. It doesn't have a handle but when she pushes against it with her hand, it opens easily for her and reveals a hallway sloped downwards into darkness. She lets her head hang and sighs. "Did your friend happen to mention anything about the Deep Roads?"

"She may have said something about an underground cavern..."

Hawke points to the angular design on the expertly cut pillars and the giant figures that seem to hold the ceiling up. "You can't tell me that that isn't dwarven, and if it's dwarven and goes underground, it's the Deep Roads."

"Andraste's ass, I hate this," Varric growls to himself. The last time he was in the Deep Roads was with Hawke and his thrice-cursed brother, and he doesn't like thinking about it. It's not that he loved his brother much, but killing him himself had certainly not been his plan.

"We can still just leave," Hawke says, her voice unusually warm. "We don't have to go down there if you don't want to."

"And come back empty-handed?" Varric shakes his head and steps through the door. Hawke follows him and the door makes a sucking sound as it closes behind them.

"Oh no." Hawke turns back and tries to open the door again. It doesn't budge. "Looks like that's not our way out."

"Knowing this crap, we need a special key to open it." Varric already has enough of this and it hasn't even been a minute.

They follow the quickly descending hallway, the red light of glowing lava in narrow moats on the sides guiding them along. Bright blue lyrium grows like veins out of the walls and snakes up into the ground above them. It is cold here and way too quiet.

"I hate the underground," Varric mutters. He wipes a spiderweb off his head and kicks against something with his foot that looks suspiciously like a bone; but down here you better not look too closely at shit.

Hawke snorts. "That's funny, wasn't it you who dragged me down here?"

"Doesn't mean I have to love it."

They arrive in a huge hall, the ceiling higher than some mansion in Kirkwall. Lyrium veins grow around the pillars, most of them blue, but some are bright red. They make a wide berth around the red lyrium as they cross the hall. It is partially caved in on one side, but still looks impressive. Several doors lead from it, most of them closed.

"Well, Varric, before we decide where to go next, what is our plan now? Do we still look for this artifact, or are we looking for an exit?"

It is very un-dwarven of him but the artifact has already slipped his mind. He just wants to get out of this cavern of dead history and rotting dwarven glory. "Exit, exit is our priority."

Hawke looks at him with her typical infuriating grin. "Come on, not so fast. Just think of all the details you can put in your stories from this."

"As if you know about the level of detail in my stories."

Hawke shrugs and walks up to the first door in the hall. "I've read your books, the most recent one too; I liked it. The details you put in are one of the things I like best."

"Huh." Not the most eloquent reaction from him but he is truly surprised to learn that Hawke reads his books.

"I thought about giving it to Fenris... but I think we'll keep that for later," Hawke says, as she pushes the first door open and hefts her sword higher. There is another empty hallway behind the door and the lava seems to glow brighter as they walk in. "I must say, by now I'd welcome some spiders or baby darkspawn. It's too quiet."

Varric holds his crossbow at the ready, as he has from the moment they entered these caves. His arms are beginning to tire. An archer needs to rest sometimes, even with a custom-made crossbow like Bianca. But there is nothing around to shoot a bolt into... and if that isn't unnerving as fuck by now.

He is about to complain about that, because what else can you spend your time on in this dreadful cavern of death and decay, when a noise makes him halt in his steps. Hawke has heard it too, standing frozen like him before slowly stepping forward. For all her lack of grace in normal situations, when needed, Hawke can be light on her feet like a cat — and surprisingly fast.

She flits over to a broken down wall and peers over the edge. Varric waits for her to signal him to join her and tries his best to be as quiet as her as he walks over. They look into a large room with pillars, wrapped in lyrium vines stretching up high to a red ceiling. The lyrium here is blue, untainted at least; it still makes Varric nervous.

A movement on the far side draws his attention away from the blue glow to two people in strange clothing peering at something in their hands.

"They look weird," Hawke whispers. "Are those nightgowns they're wearing?"

"Doesn't look like armor at least."

"I've never seen colors like that, that red is redder than anything. And the fabric seems to stretch. I wonder how they did that."

"Since when do you know so much about fabric?"

"Since I had to make my own and my siblings clothes as soon as I could hold a needle because mother was terrible at it?"

Varric shakes his head, trying to align the image of this terrifying warrior woman, who is also secretly a mage and almost twice as tall as him, with delicate fabrics and needlework. He can't quite make it work.

They watch the two people for a bit when a familiar noise makes them draw their weapons.

"Spiders," Hawke says and jumps easily over the rubble to aid the two strangers.

Varric is a bit slower in climbing over, but he watches the strangers more suspiciously than Hawke does. It is endearing that Kirkwall has not managed to stamp out the trust and willingness to help total strangers in Hawke, but it does cost Varric some nerves sometimes.

The giant spiders have almost reached the two strangers and Hawke jumps behind the largest and brings her sword down in a devastating blow. The screech of the dying creature draws the attention of the strangers, who pull out short little sticks from their sides. Varric aims at the spider closest to them, but before he can let his bolt fly, the woman points her stick at it and golden lightning comes out in a straight line. It hits the spider and it glows for a moment and then disappears.

Varric aims his bolt at the next spider and Hawke takes out two more, while the man and the woman in the red and black clothing make short work of the rest of the spiders. When silence returns to the hall, Varric allows himself to reflect what he just saw.

"Andraste's dirty knickers, what kind of weapon is that?"

The two strangers exchange a look. They won't tell him, he knows. There is still a bolt in Bianca and he keeps holding her up.

The woman wipes sweat from her brows and puts the weapon in a pocket at her side. "We are not from around here. Our weapons must look foreign to you." She tidies her hair in a bun and comes up to him with a friendly smile.

"Lady, I've been around a lot and I'm sure I've never seen this kind of magic anywhere." Varric lowers his crossbow a bit, but he is not yet convinced that these people are trustworthy.

Hawke has no such reservations — typical, Varric thinks — and steps in front of the woman to take her hand in hers. "Hello, my name is Hawke, currently living in Kirkwall. Where are you from and what are you doing down here? And what is that?" She points towards the magic sticks in their pockets.

The woman exchanges a look with the man sitting on the floor. He has a pattern on the side of his face, kind of like the dalish have but not symmetrical like theirs. And he very much doesn't look dalish, they both look human, if a bit smaller than Hawke. The look that passes between them shows a strong familiarity. These two know each other well.

The man stands up with some trouble — he seems to be in pain — and sweat drips from his forehead. He favors his right leg. "My name is Chakotay, we'd like to thank you for your help." He bows his head towards them and looks towards the woman as if he waits for her to say something.

The woman looks from one to the other. Varric is pretty certain that she is debating whether to tell the truth or to make up a story.

Finally she steps forward. "My name is Captain Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay is my second in command. We’ve been accidentally stranded in this place and we need help to get outside. Quickly."

Hawke has an amused smirk on her lips as she looks the two strange people up and down. "Captain of what?"

"A ship."

"Water is pretty far away from here," states Hawke, still smirking.

The woman sighs. "Not that kind of ship."

Hawke turns to Varric. "Too bad that Isabela isn't here, she would have loved to see this special ship."

Varric stores Bianca on his back; these two seem to pose no danger. As a matter of fact, they both look very ill; and the man, Chakotay, seems to have injured his leg. "I've never seen clothing like yours and I've seen a lot."

"We're not from around here."

"I figured as much," he says. "And don't try to tell me that you're from Orlais cause I'm not buying it." The man and the woman stay silent, and Varric is growing increasingly curious about what these two could be holding out on.

Hawke kneels down next to the man Chakotay and looks at his foot. "You're injured," she states.

Chakotay makes a grimace and nods. "Yes, I tripped when we... when we got here."

"The one time we didn't take Anders with us." Hawke shakes her head and rummages through her bag.

"Who is Anders?" Chakotay asks.

"A healer. He could fix your foot in no time. I'm — " she hesitates, telling someone you're a mage is always a risk and they don't know these people. Then again, all of Kirkwall knows it by now. "I'm not much of a healer but I could set it and spell some ice on it? And I have a healing potion here." She holds out the bottle to Chakotay but Captain Janeway takes it from her and points tool at it that makes little chirping noises.

The woman shakes her head and hands the bottle back to Hawke. "I'm afraid it would not be safe for him to drink that."

Hawke stares at the small bottle in her hand. "Why? This is just herbs and bit of spellwork?"

Captain Janeway fidgets, and it looks so much out of place on her that Varric is sure that indecisiveness is not a typical character trait for her. She is about to say something but hesitates, and to her luck in this moment another group of spiders and a few baby dragonlings decide to attack.

Varric and the foreigners start shooting from what little protection the boulders around Chakotay's resting place offer, and Hawke gets to work. She rushes through the enemies, occasionally freezing an attacker in an ice cone, while hacking and slashing with her giant sword. It looks almost graceful.

When the final monster falls and Hawke returns to them, covered in blood and dragonling intestines, Chakotay gives Captain Janeway a look.

Hawke uses her sleeve to clean her face. "Well, that was fun, but I think it's time to get going." She drinks one of her own special potions, laced with lyrium for her mage abilities. "Let me see that foot of yours again as long as I can still do an ice spell." She kneels down and touches Chakotay's ankle. For a moment there is a soft glow on her hands and Chakotay hisses in pain, but then ice begins to spread around his ankle and his face relaxes again.

"That's all I can do for your foot, but you also seem to run a fever?" She looks up to Captain Janeway. "The potion could help with that."

Again, a look passes between Chakotay and Janeway. The captain sighs. "I'm afraid not. I'm running a fever as well and our sickness will get worse the longer we stay close to these crystals."

"What, the lyrium?" Varric looks around at the crystal vines sprouted all around them. It's not that he loves them exactly, but they are quite beautiful and useful too. "This blue stuff is not tainted, it should be fine. Just stay away from the red stuff over there."

Chakotay takes out the little box again and points it Varric. He eyes it suspiciously as it chirps but it seems to be harmless. Next he points it at Hawke and stares at it while it chirps some more.

"What is that?" Hawke asks.

"It's a piece of technology that gives me information about your and your physiology," Chakotay says and for a moment it looks like Janeway wants to stop him but then she just sighs and lets it happen.

"I hate it when Anders uses big words like that and now you start," Hawke says with a grin as she holds out her hand to help Chakotay up. "We should get going. This place will soon be crawling with nasty stuff and you can tell me all about your... thing while we walk."

Hawke leads them to the other side of the dungeon as if she knows the way out. Which she doesn't, Varric is sure of it. But she has a gut instinct that hardly ever strays her wrong, so once again, he trusts her to find a way out this.

"So what does your apparatus say?" Hawke asks, her eyes taking in every nook, every corner of the empty hallway they've entered.

"It tells me that we are more different than I first thought," Chakotay says. "Your bodies protect you against the radiation from the crystals, and you," he points the apparatus at Hawke again, shaking his head as he looks at it, "you can even convert some of the energy into other things."

"You mean magic."

"If you want to call it that."

Hawke grins, readying her sword as they approach another closed door. "I'm not even very good at it. But I have another question," she turns and the tip of her sword is at Chakotay's throat, "you don't know what magic is, you get sick from just being around lyrium and that stuff is everywhere in Thedas, so — where are you really from?"

Captain Janeway has her shooting-stick raised, but she holds it low and less threateningly. "Let him go please. I'll explain where we are from."

Hawke lowers her sword and Janeway puts her shooting-stick away. The two women look at each other in a quiet staring contest until Janeway sighs and says, "From the stars."

"You come from the stars." Hawke looks up even though they are underground, far away from the starry skies right now. "The stars in the sky?"

"Yes."

A scraping sound from the door makes Hawke ready her sword. "Hold that thought." The door opens and a group of darkspawn spill into the hallway. Hawke carves through them with determination and the others hurry to follow her through the door as she cuts down the first wave. The second wave gets shot down quickly by Varric's bolts and the golden fire from the shooting-sticks, leaving only one especially strong darkspawn for Hawke's ice-spells and sword.

The thing falls, and it is quiet again in the hall. Chakotay sinks down against a wall with a groan and Janeway settles down next to him. They lean against each other in an intimate familiarity.

Hawke comes back to them. "Where were we? Oh right, the stars from whence you came."

Janeway coughs and wipes her brows. "Every star you see is a system of worlds. Many of them even populated. Our ship travels between the stars, we are trying to get home to our own system."

"You're lost?"

"Not really, we know where we have to go but we are so far away from our home that it will take us half a lifetime to get back home."

Hawke holds out her hand to help her up. "Looking at you, that lifetime gets shorter the longer you stay down here." She pulls up Chakotay too and puts his arm over her shoulder to support him. They walk, slowly but steady and Varric and Janeway follow them at a small distance.

Janeway looks at her technology apparatus again. "We were searching for Dilithium crystals when the transporter got hit with interference from these corrupted crystals and dropped us underground instead of on the surface."

"I only understood half of that," Varric says, "but this blue lyrium isn't corrupted, the red stuff is."

"It's not visible yet but it has already started, see." She holds out the apparatus in front of them and he can see an image of the lyrium vine on the thing but in different colors. The tips are still bright blue but towards the bottom, thin red tendrils grow through the crystal.

"Huh, something like this would be really handy," he says.

"I'm afraid I can't give it to you. The charge would eventually run out and it would be useless." She points at the shooting-stick at her side. "Same goes for our phasers. There is no point in giving you technology that you have not developed yourself, as much as I would like to pay you for your efforts." A violent cough rips through her.

"Our efforts won't be good for much if we don't get you out of here soon." Varric takes her arm and pulls her along. In front of them, Chakotay trips but Hawke catches him.

Janeway makes a soft sound in her throat. "You have to save him, he is important." Her face is already red from the fever but now it's even redder. "For the crew, he's important for morale."

Varric grins. "Yeah, sure. Morale, of course." You can't be a writer of romance if you don't have an eye for romance, and he can tell from how Janeway looks at her second in command that there is more to her feelings than just protecting a friend.

Their conversation gets interrupted by another darkspawn attack, and while Varric protects the foreigners, Hawke fights through the monsters again with deadly precision. Janeway and Chakotay help as best as they can with their shooting-sticks but their aim suffers from their illness.

Hawke comes back, pulls up Chakotay again and hurries forward, clearly sensing the urgency. Janeway struggles to keep up and Varric takes her hand and places it on his shoulder.

"You can lean on me like that, I don't mind."

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to be disrespectful towards your height."

"I'm a dwarf, I'm used to being closer to the ground than others. Don't you have dwarves where you're from?"

"On our home planet? No, humans are the only humanoid species native on Earth. But aliens come in all sizes." She coughs again and leans more heavily on him. "We have to go faster, once we're outside we can contact our doctor and he can help."

"We're going as fast as possible."

"These creatures..."

"The darkspawn?"

"Yes, you fight them often?"

Varric nods. "Down here, yes, quite often."

"Don't let them get him."

Varric pats her hand on his shoulder. "We're doing our best." He grins. "I knew you love him."

"Maybe, but it wouldn't be appropriate. I'm his commanding officer."

"Yeah, and I'm the princess of all darkspawn, what does that have to do with anything? Didn't you say you're decades away from home? Is anybody gonna yell at you for finding some happiness along the way?"

Janeway laughs which leads into another coughing attack. "You're a romantic!" she says when she can breathe again.

"Well, I write novels, I kind of have to."

"A writer, how wonderful." Janeway looks back to Hawke and Chakotay and then to Varric again. "What about you and Hawke? Do you love her?"

"Of course, she's my best friend. But romantic love? No, her heart belongs to another." He sighs, for a moment wondering about something that could never be. "Honestly, I think I couldn't handle being loved by her. You have seen her fight, she loves like she fights — absolute, full hearted, pure force. She would burn me up."

"And the one who has her heart?"

"Burns just as bright for her, but is afraid to let it happen." He gives her a pointed look. "Sometimes I'm afraid that they'll wait too long and never dare to be what they could be."

Another coughing fit shakes the woman, and up front they see Chakotay suffer in the same way. Janeway looks at him as she wipes her mouth. "It does feel a bit silly. But I'm the Captain, they all look to me for guidance."

"And you think they won't understand that you'd want companionship too? Do you think Chakotay would not respect you as Captain anymore?"

"No, he would never do that. He's a good man."

Varric walks a bit faster, partly to bring Janeway closer to Chakotay (and if he has to throw her into his arms he will), but also because there is a light at the end of the hallway that looks like sunlight.

Hawke's gut instinct has once again proven to be the safest bet. They break into a hobbling run, as best as they can with two people who can barely stand anymore. However, the closer they get, the smaller the speck of light appears — until they stand in front of a wall rubble and big construction blocks. The ceiling is caved in with lava licking at the sides, and sunlight peeks through a small gap in the rocks.

Hawke gently removes Chakotay's arm from her shoulder, and the man more or less crumbles to the floor. Janeway hobbles to his side, barely aware of her own fever, and holds him. They both look frighteningly pale, even in the golden glow of the lava, and both of them are shivering.

"I'll look if we can move some rocks at the top," Hawke offers, but Varric can hear in her voice that she's not convinced herself. The two of them can find another exit, but the two strangers in their stretchy pants don't have time for that.

"We could shoot a tunnel through," Chakotay manages to say between harsh coughs.

Janeway tiredly shakes her head. "Then it will all just crash down, burying us when we go through."

"Wait," Hawke says, "you could shoot a tunnel through the rocks?"

Janeway looks at her shooting stick and little gems light up in red and green on top of it. "Yes, the charge should be enough for it. But it won't hold, too much pressure — "

The sounds of many footsteps approaching behind them bring a determined frown to Hawke's face. "I'm afraid this is it. Here's what we'll do. I’ll cast ice over the sides, to hold the wall in its shape, and you shoot that tunnel."

Varric sighs and points Bianca towards the back. He doesn't need to ask if this crazy plan can work, because trusting Hawke's gut is once again their only option. "You better get to it," he snarls over his shoulder "We'll have company soon and by Andraste's dirty knickers, it sounds like I would need a whole lot more arrows for this."

Hawke is already twisting her hand, muttering a spell under her breath and a stream of coldness springs from her palm. It crashes against the rubble, crawling through the gaps and forming a hard sheet of ice. At the same time, Janeway and Chakotay hold up their shooting sticks in shaking hands and aim the golden light towards the lower middle. The rocks heat up, glow, and turn to smoke. Varric is fascinated but he has to tear his eyes away from the process.

The first darkspawn comes around the corner, just a few paces away from them and falls from his arrow. The next one goes down as well, and the third in the same way — and if these creatures had any sense, they would have fallen back and been more careful in their approach; but, unfortunately, darkspawn have no sense of self-preservation.

"I could use some help here," he calls back. Someone grabs his shoulder and hauls him back.

"We're through, let's go," Hawke says, casting a wall of ice towards the approaching darkspawn before she pushes him to the narrow tunnel. They have to crawl on their hands and knees. The rocks are searing hot under their hands, and from above, melting ice drenches them in cold water. The skin on their hands burns but they have to keep going, keep going forward towards the light. The rocks begin to creak, and pebbles fall in a rising staccato of decay as the ice cracks under the pressure of dwarven construction blocks.

Varric crawls as fast as he can, the tunnels seems to be endless. He hears Hawke shuffling behind him. Bianca scrapes against the rock and he just knows he's going to get stuck. Hawke keeps pushing, while he crawls as fast as he can... but it's not enough, he won't make it, he's too slow and he will take Hawke to her death with his.

Suddenly, hands grab his arms hard and pull him forward. He lands face first in sun-dried dirt as Hawke gets pulled out in the same way. Her feet leave the tunnel just as it collapses with a loud crack, covering them with ice-cold dust.

Two people in the same kind of stretchy pants that go up to their shoulders tend to the foreigners, waving strange tools over their bodies and talking to a box on the side. They give them something to drink and some color returns to their faces. Janeway sits up and asks for a report, and people answer her calm and efficiently. Even sweating and sitting on the ground of some sunny hillside, she is still clearly in command of these people.

Varric observes that Hawke is the same to their group as Janeway — but you wouldn't know if you looked at her now, sprawled in the dirt like a lazy dog. She rolls on her side, coughing and laughing at the same time.

"Guess what, Varric."

"What?"

"We forgot to look for the artifact."

"Andraste's ass, I almost got you killed back there."

"Naw, the Deep Roads love me," she says, smirking at him. "I've never seen your ass move so fast, Varric, that's enough of a treasure for me."

"I had to, I'm sure Fenris would have hunted me through the Fade and back if I had gotten you killed."

The grin turns into a soft smile, something like hope glittering in her eyes. "You think so?"

Varric rolls his eyes. "You can't possibly be this clueless, woman."

He looks over to the foreigners, where Janeway is helping Chakotay sitting up, cradling him in her arms. She holds his hand in hers, looking at him warmly. Chakotay seems to be surprised at first, but then smiles at her.

"See? Even those two have figured it out," Varric says.

A woman with grooves on her forehead comes over to them and brings the box with them. On the box is a moving picture of a human with little hair who seems to be rather annoyed at being locked in that box. "I could work much better if my projection was down there, if you would just install the local emitters..."

"Doctor," the woman says with an exasperated sigh, "the emitters don't work here with all the radiation and I'm sure I can apply some band-aids just as well."

"Oh, that is my job description now? 'Hands out band-aids?'"

"Sorry, doctor," the woman says. The way her jaw tenses and the vein on her neck stands out, she reminds Varric of Hawke when she speaks to someone from the Chantry. "I'm scanning them now."

The head in the box shakes huffs in disapproval. "Not human like we know. Adapted very well to the constant background radiation. Some extra nerve clusters for something like PSI powers if I had to make a guess. They seem to be fine, apart from some contamination by corrupted crystal radiation. Use the dermal regenerator on their hands."

A shimmer appears on top of the box. Golden glitter swirls in circles and a cup appears out of nowhere. The doctor in the box grumbles something about how they should drink that to be immune against the more dangerous radiation and then his head disappears from the box.

Hawke hesitates for a bit but then drinks from the cup. Varric copies her. It tastes much better than the potions Anders makes. He certainly doesn't miss the bitter tang of elfroot.

Hawke gets up and follows the woman with the grooves on her forehead drawn in a scowl, looking over her shoulder as she works with the tool. There is a short conversation, some angry growling from the foreign woman and somehow Hawke manages to charm her anyway. The woman hands her the tool and Hawke starts pointing it at everything around her.

Janeway gets up, giving Chakotay's arm a calming stroke and calls the woman over. "B'Elanna, a word." She murmurs something to her, and B'Elanna nods. After some fiddling with her apparatus, the golden swirls appear again on top of the box and leave something behind that Varric has never seen before.

Janeway takes the shiny things in her hand and comes over to him. Hawke darts to his side, curious as to what the foreign woman holds in her hands. Janeway gently takes the tool from her hand; Hawke seems to be very sorry to let go of it.

"As I said, we can't leave our technology here," Janeway explains, "but these glasses will filter out most light while enhancing the infectious strains in the crystals. They adapt to outside light, so you can use them both in sunlight and underground. In the sun they will be dark, and underground they will be transparent; but the poisoned parts of the crystals will stand out bright red." She hands them to Varric and Hawke, and helps them to set the glasses on their noses. "I hope you will accept these as payment for our rescue. You didn't have to, but you saved our lives."

"It's what we do," Hawke says, looking around her through the darkened glass. "This is great!" She turns to Janeway. "How does it look?"

The foreign woman smirks. "It looks good. A bit mysterious."

Hawke grins wide. "I like being mysterious. Thank you, this is a great gift."

"And useful too," Varric adds. "I can see red lines over there in that patch of lyrium but to the naked eye it looks just fine."

B'Elanna comes back to them. "Word of advice: don't look directly at the sun." She points the apparatus in her hand at the patch of lyrium. "Yes, the infection has already started. You should have some of your scientists look into this, if you prefer the blue crystals to the red ones."

Hawke stares at the woman for a moment and then shakes her head. "Your world and my world are very different. A scientist? Only place I would think to look for one is the Chantry and I prefer not to go close to that place."

Janeway comes up to them and smiles. Color has returned to her skin and she has fixed her hair into a clean bun. "A scientist just has to be curious about the world, be observant and take notes."

"We can do that, can't we, Varric?"

"Yes, Hawke, you'll hit things and I'll write down how they fell. Sounds like every other day."

Hawke laughs, and turns back to Janeway. “Thank you, again, for this wonderful gift,” she begins, playing with the glasses in her hands for a bit before taking a deep breath; and something that seems to have been sitting heavy on her mind tumbles out. "I hope you make it home soon, but, please, don't just wait until coming home to find friends and family because you can find those on the way and they are most important, you know?"

"Is that what you found?" Janeway asks, with a slight blush on her cheeks.

Hawke nods and Janeway takes her hand. There is a quiet, wordless exchange between the two women and then they part with a smile. Janeway returns to her group, ordering someone to bring them up. As the air around them begins to shimmer, she takes Chakotay's hand, to his surprise, and waves at them with the other. Varric and Hawke stare in wonder as the foreigners disappear in golden swirls.

The trek around the mountain is quiet, both of them deep in thought. Hawke looks through the glasses while they walk and when she discovers a tendril of corruption in a cliff or under the ground, she marks the locations on her map, taking her new assignment as a scientist seriously.

When the sun begins to sink, they have made it back to one of the main roads in the Planasene Forest. It's almost time to find a place to rest but Varric notices someone running towards them, someone very familiar.

Hawke sees him too, a smile on her lips as she observes him through the glasses. "Fenris," she says quietly. "I see no corruption in the lyrium in his lines, do you?"

Varric looks and shakes his head. "No, he looks fine. Did you think he wasn’t?"

"That's the first thing I thought when Janeway and her team said that the lyrium is corrupted even if we can't see it yet. What if he got infected when we were in the Deep Roads?" She sounds so frightened that Varric has to look twice to make sure that this is still Hawke, terrifying warrior and secret mage.

He puts a hand on her arm. "He's fine and obviously looking for you. Go to him."

She gives him a faint smile and starts running. They run towards each other, coming to halt just a hand-width apart, staring at each other. Varric wonders if he should go over to them to smack some sense into them when, at last, they both lean forward and their lips meet in a careful kiss.

"Finally, thank the Maker," Varric mumbles to himself. He sees the kiss growing more passionate and turns away, looking for a place to set up camp for the night. Once the glasses show no corrupted lyrium anywhere around them, he puts them away in a pocket and sets up a campfire. His friends are still wrapped in a passionate embrace, still kissing, and he just smiles and settles down besides the flames.

He pulls out a piece of parchment and his favorite quill, dips it in ink and looks ahead towards the setting sun. A few stars become visible and something moves fast across the sky before disappearing. "This has been a strange day," he says, and starts writing.

#dragon age fanfiction #daficswap #Varric Tethras #my writing #barbex writes #Varric the writer

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heartslogos · 7 years

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newfragile yellows [31]

“So this is what it’s like to be a man,” Solas’ face grimaces, and the oddly emotive and open fluctuations of expressions on his normally mild ice makes everyone - in everyone else’s bodies - stare in bafflement. “It’s really over rated, how do you pee?”

Bull’s body laughs, “I like this.”

Dorian’s body wrinkles his nose, “Da’len speak to me later.”

“Don’t you touch your body using mine,” Cassandra’s body says, turning to glare at Solas in Dorian’s body, “Don’t.”

“This is all very eerie,” Cole says looking between all of them, “You all feel strange. I know how you feel but I don’t expect it from the direction you are in and when I look at you it is like I am not looking right. You are still you except for how it’s not you and it feels wrong.”

“Now you can really call me tiny,” Varric’s body says, hitting Vivienne’s knee.

“I feel like I am going to get killed,” Vivienne’s body says.

“Why, have you done something wrong to my body?” Vivienne asks from Blackwall’s mouth.

Sera, in Bull’s body, waves her arms, “Holy shit, your dick is huge.”

“It’s proportional,” Bull says from Varric’s mouth.

“No, it isn’t possible to sleep off,” Solas says from Dorian’s mouth at Cassandra in Sera’s body and Blackwall in Lavellan’s.

“So, what’s it feel like to be the Inquisitor of Thedas, aside from short?” Varric asks.

“Wet,” Blackwall says, awkwardly standing with Lavellan’s legs apart.

Lavellan laughs, holding Solas’ sides as she doubles over in his body, “I’m missing my time of the month for this. I love it! I absolutely love it! Bull, Bull in Varric’s body, not Sera in Bull’s, look!” Lavellan spins on Solas’ heel. “I’m a hahren now. Does that mean people who do what I say instead of just pretending to do what I say and then going to find someone they think has more authority? Like Cullen or Leliana?”

“Joke’s on Cullen, they just go around him to Rylen,” Bull says, “Yeah, I see you. It’s weird having two eyes again.”

On cue, Sera in Bull’s body violently windmills his arms. Everyone attempts to duck - awkwardly, unused to each other in their new bodies.

“How the hell do you swing around a giant metal sword when you can’t see shit?”

“Practice,” Bull shrugs, reaching around to unholster Bianca.

“Oh no you don’t,” Varric grabs Bianca from Bull’s hands, “Bianca is a finely tuned machine. You aren’t touching her.”

“Don’t touch that dirty crossbow with my hands, I won’t tolerate the smell of oil,” Vivienne snaps, pulling Bianca into Blackwall’s hands. “Varric, as much as I do respect your adequacy at socializing I’m going to have to tell you to keep your mouth shut as soon as we leave this room. I absolutely cannot have you ruining my reputation.”

“I want to die a little every time you move in my body,” Dorian says, “You don’t know how to work my angles at all.”

Dorian’s body pointedly looks away from Dorian in Cassandra’s body.

Solas’s body bounds up to Varric, quickly crouching down to be at eye level, “I’m a little jealous I didn’t get to be Varric because maybe then I could have found Varric’s notes on his next book for Cassandra much easier. Hahren, your body feels creaky, did you know that?”

“I am well aware of my age, Lavellan.”

“Yeah, be gentle with my body Sera,” Bull says, “I have plans for that body.”

“Gross,” Sera says.

“Bull looks, I have freckles,” Lavellan laughs, pointing at Solas’ face.

“I can see it, boss, I’m really weirded out by it, but I can see it fine.”

“You can’t give cats milk,” Cullen quickly bends down, picking Lavellan up off the floor before she can drink out of the saucer Dorian put down. Lavellen makes a quiet oop sound as he adjusts his hold on her. Lavellan immediately twists in his arms and starts climbing onto his shoulders, settling into the collar of his coat.

“Since when?” Dorian asks.

“Since always,” Cullen says, moving his neck to allow Lavellan a little more room. “Kittens can drink milk; fully grown cats get sick when they do.”

“Spoken like a true farmer,” Bull says, entering the room, “Hey boss, still a cat?”

Lavellan meows loudly into Cullen’s ear, going easily when Bull reaches for her and picks up her up.

She’s been a cat for the past week, some sort of elven ritual that she underwent without telling anybody about it. From what Cullen understands, it’s meant to give her new insight or some sort of awareness. He’s not particularly sure about it, all he knows is that it’s possibly botched considering how Solas reacted when Lavellan went up to him and started to kneed at his foot.

(“Figure it out, da’len,” Solas had said, bemused as he looked down at her, “You started the ritual, now you finish it.”

Lavellan let out a loud and unhappy meow, tail flicking up before she haughtily pranced away to begin to mew and whine and generally make herself look quite sorry at Cullen; he apparently acted appropriately in looking upset about Lavellan’s predicament because now she’s been going to him for sympathy whenever someone else rebuffs her and tells her its her own mess.

Cullen privately agrees, but he isn’t going to say anything because he still is concerned.)

Lavellan curls up in the crook of Bull’s elbow and begins to purr.

“Still a cat,” Bull confirms, “So, any progress?”

“Before or after Lavellan started to meow at me for an unknown reason?” Dorian asks.

For the most part Lavellan has proven herself to be quite clever at making her wishes known. When she really, really wants to. Or has to.

Otherwise, it’s anyone’s guess what she means whenever she meows, yowls, purrs, chirps, hisses, snarls, and such. So far the only one who seems to be having no trouble understanding her - aside from Cole, who just cryptically repeats her sounds back when asked to translate - is the Iron Bull.

Cullen is mostly just here to make sure they don’t poison her by accident. In example - he had to bodily lunge across the table the other night to make sure she didn’t eat an orange slice.

Lavellan looked cross at him.

(“She misses healthy food,” Bull said.

“She’ll miss living more,” Cullen replied. And then he gave Lavellan a firm shake by the scruff of the neck when she kept trying to reach for the plate of cut fruit with her outstretched paws and chided, “Stop.”)

Lavellan reaches up and smacks Bull’s chest with her paw, meowing for attention.

“Yeah?” Bull looks down at her. Lavellan twists in his arms, flicks her tail and sneezes, “Alright, yeah. Sure.”

“What did she say?” Dorian asks.

“She wants to go to the barn,” Bull says, already walking towards the nearest exit to the courtyard, “Stop catching mice, you always feel bad for them when you do catch them.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

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athena1138 · 6 years

Text

Dragon age inquisition first playthrough #3 (skipped A LOT of storyline between these)

Vivenne can go fuck herself right on over that balcony if she keeps fighting me about freeing the mages. I dont care how hot she is.

Actually no just fuck vivienne. Like we move in and not even one trip later she has someone moving my shit around to "see how far i can be pushed"? Ugh. She's gorgeous and strong and powerful but fuck if she ain't gonna get punched. I hope she's sitting in my game wondering why i never take her anywhere.

Oh and of course she hates cole, aka the light of my fucking life and my son for whom i would die

Solas is such a prat. I can't figure him out. Like. I say one thing he approves. I say the same thing he disapproves. I can't. He has no direct line and ugh.

I support solas's interest in cole but he has to chill, man. I appreciate the hell out of varric for cole's quest. Solas doesn't care about cole, just about studying him.

The fade. Oh my god the fade. I love it.

But forreal

FUCK THESE SPIDERS MAN. I was in this cave right and they just DROPPED OUT OF NOWHERE. Like i actually screamed and scared a guy outside my window walking his dog. I had to take like a 15 minute break holy shit.

I fucked up and did all of iron bull's romance scenes in one go so now i'm bored but i locked it in so i'm stuck with that lame scene where they walk out of the bar and he smacks my ass and we kiss. Ugh. I've done it like 30 times already. So bored.

Oh and also i found out if you dont romance him (or dorian, but my inky is fem so it doesnt matter,) then he and dorian end up together??? So now i feel bad. This is garrus and tali all over again man

I think blackwall is pissed i flirted with him so much and then chose ib. (I know it doesnt matter but damn he got cranky fast.)

Sera's constant fucking up of coryphesus's name. Bless. I cant even spell it.

I dont really get cassandra but i respect the shit out of her.

Dorian. All of dorian. I fucking love him. I want to be his best friend forever. Like. Shit. I fucking love him. 13/10 good character. I almost want to make a male inky to romance him. Almost.

I dont fucking trust leliana and she is way too damn aggro

Josephine is still hot

The winter palace though. Im not even sure i understand what all was going on there. Wish i could go back and finish collecting all the shit. Would die for celene's dress.

The height mechanisms for dwarf relationships are bullshit. Like. Somehow my tiny ass is face to face with iron bull? And all it takes for him to kiss me is to slightly bend his head? Or there was a scene with cassandra where we lean on a railing together. My inky is literally a foot off the ground. And then at dinner with cole my head is barely above the table like what? Lazy man. Lazy.

I can definitively say i prefer fighting skyrim dragons much more. Ive killed 3 high dragons so far (hinterlands, western approach, crestwood) and each one took me like a solid 15 minutes. Shits ridiculous man.

It took me halfway through the game to realize i can just invisi-powder my way past enemies i dont wanna fight. Bruh. Life changing.

Im already planning my next inky but im so torn on my class because like. I want to do something different. But i also REALLY like being able to invisi-powder my way past enemies i dont wanna fight. And mages are hella impossible to find good weapons for. Ffs. All my other people have like 250dps but my mages are all still barely breaking 100 because this bitch cant find a powerful staff to save her life (literally.)

Merchants, other than the dude in crossroads with infinite elfroot, are pretty much completely useless in this game.

Seriously though cole is a fucking ray of sunshine.

Im still pissed i cant romance varric, but having met bianca i understand. When she threatened me i literally said out loud, "im in love"

These enemy respawn rates are really getting on my nerve. I just BARELY got that area and you're telling me there's already 6 new guys there?

What the hell is going on with cadash's tits?

I wish there were more light armor options. 6/9 of my people (and me) are in shokra-tars or the other one

Im really regretting saving flissa instead of someone more useful. (I didnt realize it was a choice. Dammit.)

Why are all my mounts black and white? Can i change that somewhere?

I liked the bard a lot more before she started talking. That sounds sexist and horrible i know but i cant stand her voice or attitude. I dont think her speaking voice and singing voice match up at all.

I no longer dont like cullen. Hes delightful.

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heartslogos · 7 years

Text

newfragile yellow [9]

“Bull and Lavellan have a kitten,” Cullen blurts out into the phone and Josephine’s side is silent for a moment before she slowly answers -

“I thought you had Lavellan fixed.” Josephine had Bull fixed as soon as she got him.

Cullen belatedly remembers that her time zone is three hours behind and the he has a habit of waking up rather early for someone who works from home.

“I’m sorry - I woke you,” Cullen doesn’t ask if he did because he knows it must be true. It’s three in the morning where Josephine is and as dedicated a worker she is, even she doesn’t keep those kind of hours. “And I did. I - I’m sorry, I should clarify. Lavellan was not pregnant, the kitten is not from either of them that I know of, and there is only one not a litter so it definitely can’t be theirs. Good morning, Josephine.”

Cullen is entirely certain that he would have noticed if Lavellan was pregnant, or if his two cats were having relations with each other.

“What do you mean they have a kitten?”

“They have a kitten, singular. One kitten,” Cullen says, “I’m not ready for another cat. I’ve had Lavellan for three months and I’m just getting used to her.”

Lavellan, apparently, didn’t need to get used to him. It’s a stark difference from how Blackwall and the Iron Bull entered his home.

“Start from the beginning, Cullen,” Josephine says, calm and incredibly kind in that unlike Leilana she isn’t laughing at him or hung up already, “Walk me through this.”

“I woke up to Lavellan scratching at the back door,” Cullen says, “I thought she wanted to get out. But when I opened the door Bull was on the other side carrying a kitten. No - well. All cats look like kittens compared to Bull, this one is probably around Lavellan’s age.”

“And now?”

“And I let them in and now Bull is mothering the thing while Lavellan is treating it like a playmate. Blackwall doesn’t seem to care either way on the matter.”

Josephine ponders this for a moment before asking the question that’s been tying Cullen’s brain in knots for the past half hour.

“Where did the cat come from?”

“I don’t know!” Cullen bursts out and then quickly lowers his voice when both Bull and Lavellan give him disapproving looks, “No collar - I’ll have to take it to the vet to see if there’s a chip, but if it does have an owner how do I explain that my cat kidnapped their cat and has now adopted it as a surrogate child?”

Josephine sighs, “Cullen your nearest neighbor is fifteen minutes away. It’s probably a stray.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then you explain the situation as you did with me and all will be well. I doubt you’ll be arrested because of your cats affectionate tendencies.”

“Holy shit, Curly, I thought you had one cat, not fifty.”

Blackwall turns and gives Cullen a flat look. Cullen gives the dog a firm pet on the head and Blackwall’s tail thumps a few moments before he goes back to waiting by the porch. Cullen isn’t even sure if Blackwall sleeps. He’s always guarding something.

“Varric,” Cullen says, stepping aside to let Varric and Hawke through, “I didn’t know you were coming by. With guests.”

Hawke grins at him, “Varric said you had cats. I had to see it for myself, Rutherford. Just be happy it isn’t Marian.”

Cullen sighs as Varric bends down to inspect Bull who’s curled up on the window facing the porch.

“This can’t be a cat,” Varric says.

“Bull’s bulked up since you last saw him,” Cullen says, “Who told you I have a new cat?”

“Leliana,” Hawke says, “Where is she?”

That’s actually what Cullen is trying to figure out. He hasn’t seen Lavellan in three hours and he’s concerned.

Either she’s going to spring out any second to give him a stroke or she’s gone missing.

“I think your cat ate your kitten,” Varric says. The tip of Bull’s tail gives a lazy twitch.

And then -

“Prmew!”

All eyes turn onto Bull who just serenely stares back of them, oblivious to the fact that they’re all baffled by the fact that he just let out the highest pitched meow that they’ve ever heard from something so big.

Seconds later Lavellan’s head pops out from underneath Bull’s massive chest of fur and she shakes her head, blinking at them before twisting her head to nuzzle at Bull’s chin.

Bull’s eye closes and he starts up his rumbling jet engine of a purr.

“Your cat,” Garrett says going closer and pulling out his phone, “Is like one of those tiny clown cars with the infinite clowns. I love it.”

Even as Garrett speaks, more cats start to pop out from underneath Bull, climbing off the ledge to investigate their guests.

“They multiplied,” Cullen whispers with slight horror because he doesn’t recognize at least three of them.

“Only you,” Varric says, “You are a literal gold mine of shit, Rutherford. I need to visit more.”

Lavellan and Krem are the last to leave Bull’s mysterious vortex of cats, most of the kittens congregating around Garrett and his phone as he films them.

Lavellan goes up to Varric and starts curling herself around his legs for attention.

“Hey beautiful,” Varric lets her butt her head against his hand, “You look better and better every time I see you. Country life must suit you, huh?”

Cullen forgets that Lavellan was brought to Leliana by Varric after he found her in one of the trashed work sites outside of Kirkwall. Lavellan purrs.

“So this is the famous Lavellan,” Hawke turns his attention onto her.

Lavellan stops purring and looks at Hawke, tip of her tail curling.

Hawke holds out his hand to her. Lavellan leans forward as if to sniff it, then abruptly bristles and dashes towards Cullen, twisting through his legs and hiding behind him, ears flat and low to the ground.

Following Lavellan’s lead, all the other kittens and cats suddenly scatter.

Krem jumps up and hides on the top of Cullen’s bookshelf, peering out from behind a box. Two of the kittens skid underneath the sofa. Another one flees the room entirely. One runs back to the Iron Bull and jumps up to dart underneath him again. And the last one squeezes itself behind the bookshelf and disappears from view entirely. Cullen does not look forward to fishing it out.

“Huh,” Garrett blinks.

“Funny,” Varric says, “Lavellan’s not normally shy.”

Cullen bends down to pick Lavellan up. She doesn’t go easy, her legs are stiff and her tail bristled, but once he has her up she easily melts and climbs over his shoulders and curls around his head.

“Leliana please,” Cullen says, “I think Lavellan is going to die.”

“What?”

“She’s taken after Bull except she doesn’t adopt other cats - Leliana there is a wolf in my back yard and I think it’s half a moment away from eating my cat.”

Cullen woke up to the sound of Bull growling and Blackwall snarling.

Both are unusual in that both animals are normally rather quiet. Bull’s gotten into scuffles with other animals before but it’s quite rare, and Blackwall’s normally one for barking and getting Cullen first.

He had gone downstairs and gotten the poker from the fireplace, and then went to the back door where both Bull and Blackwall were. Bull’s ears were flat against his head and he was one giant ball of bristling fur. Blackwall looked ready to break down the door.

And when Cullen looked through the screen he saw why.

There was a wolf sitting in the middle of the yard, right next to the vegetable patch, while Lavellan was trying to goad it into playing.

Cullen immediately called Leliana because if he gets sued for killing or injuring a wolf on his property he wants it on record with his favorite lawyer that he did it in defense of his cat who really, really, ought to have known better.

(Bull would fight a wolf, but that’s a different story.)

“What do you mean she’s adopted a wolf?”

“I mean there’s a wolf in my back yard and she’s trying to play with it.”

Lavellan appears to be jumping and pouncing about at the taller grass and after a second she seems to -

“Oh god,” Cullen blanches, “Wolf pup.”

Lavellan’s pounced on a wolf pup and now the two are tousling about while the larger wolf looks on.

Cullen opens the screen door to possibly do something stupid. Bull and Blackwall immediately push past him and run out into the yard. The wolf looks up at them and tenses, ears flicking forward between Lavellan and Bull and Blackwall.

“Are you sure it’s a wolf and not one of those fox coyote hybrids in cities?” Leliana asks.

“The nearest traffic light is twenty minutes away, Leliana,” Cullen snorts, “This is a wolf.”

“I’m sending one of my people down,” Leliana says, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Please tell that to my cat.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

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