the bathroom window

It started out as pity.

The coldness of Skyrim extended to its people, and even in the crowded city of Windhelm she felt alone. Her entrance had been inauspicious: she’d interrupted a shake-down of sorts; two men intimidating a woman, who’d stood her ground despite the abuse. Things hadn’t improved from there. She walked from the slums to the estates and back through again, pausing at the graveyard, then warming her hands at the blacksmith’s fire.

There was a beggar there, a woman in rags who coughed and shivered, and nearly wept when Inswe fished a septim from her pouch. The guards walked by them like they were invisible.

She found Wylandriah’s soul gem and left the White Phial quickly, pulling her hood up and crossing her arms tight over her chest. Somehow it was colder than Winterhold, even without the snow and wind, and she made her way down the icy stone streets as swiftly as she could, ready to retreat back to the sun-dappled Riften. At the gates was another beggar and when she came closer she recognized him: one of the pair who’d harassed Suvaris.

He thanked her when he took her coin, giving no indication of recognition. But perhaps he couldn’t see her face under her hood. “I could be an elf,” she said, and he frowned down at her.

“Are you?”

She pulled the hood down, exposing her round ears. “Breton. But you couldn’t have known that.”

“No,” he said and stared at the septim lying flat in his wide palm. “Do you want this back?”

It was cold and it was dark, and Inswe was tired of the city and of Nords in general. “No, keep it. Go to the inn, get a warm meal.”

The guards pulled the gates banging closed behind her and Inswe didn’t look back until she’d passed Kynesgrove and all she could see off the city was its walls.

It was nearly a vacation, and she laughed a bit of the irony of that realization. The Republic certainly knew how to build their prisons - another hallmark of their ineffectiveness.

She searched through the corpse of one of the unlucky guards, rifling through bloody pockets until she found the woman's passcodes. They moved out of the sunlight, back to the relative protection that the large coiling trees gave, and as she leaned against the cool wood, she compared it again to the massive prison the Empire had built to contain it's secrets. If Watcher X had been sent to Belsavis instead of Nar Shaddaa -

It was pointless to extrapolate on the past. Az dusted off her gloves and checked her map. All she could do was keeping moving forward.

She lit the fire with the taper and they stood there a the flames rose. Alistair warmed his hands, then caught himself, blushed, and clasped them behind his back. It seemed sacrilegious to use Her holy brazier as a campfire.

Though he was cold. He shivered in his armor, the sweat from the last fight turning to ice on his skin. Wind wailed through shattered gaps in the snow that roofed the temple, and the weak sunlight that crept through the windows was a pale blue, sickly and diluted. He shivered again and moved closer to Mairen, who was studying the massive door that locked them from the back of the shrine and whatever bloody secrets the cultists were hiding in the ice.

She stayed their wedding night - of course she did, what kinda bride would go runnin' off when the hall was still filled with guests? - but it didn't take long for her to stop smilin' at him and start spendin' all her hours in her lab. Laboratory like she was some sort of topsider mage or somethin', with her inventions to keep her company. Course it wasn't just her tools keepin' her occupied. Heh, though maybe she and Hespith used a few of those tools...

Everyone said she's done with him, but that didn't mean that Oghren was done with her. When she stopped comin' to bed at all, not even when it was his birthday or their blighted anniversary, he found himself a bottle instead of another wife and drank and drank and drank until it got easier to convince himself that all was all right in their house and that she'd come crawlin' back, beggin' and moanin' for him again.

They weren't dreams, since dwarves didn't mess with the Fade like surfacers, but sometimes he'd get in one of these dazes from all the beer and the echoes in their empty home that his sword made scraping against the stone sounded like her voice sayin' his name.

---

The marriage wasn't a farce, not exactly, not from the beginning. Oghren's charm was like a whetstone, rough and grinding, but it made her sharper, and she left their "battles" with grins and flushes, and sometimes beard-burns on her chest that itched under her armor.

The invention - Ancestor's take it, it was perfect and was worthy of a Paragon's title - filled a void that once had been filled by Oghren. He was always there getting in the way, upsetting her notes and knocking over experiments. When she lay in bed her head whirred with new ideas, new trials to start, and her hands twitched like they were moving for her tools, even when they ached for rest. She snapped and him, shoved him out of the way before her burnt down her bench, the whole blighted house. He whined when she didn't want to stop for a blighted dinner, threatened when she wouldn't leave for some blighted Proving. It got easier to just ignore him, and Branka got good enough that his presence didn't interrupt her studies, not even when he started to plead.

When she read about the Anvil, there was a click in her like a lever being pulled into place. Hespith stayed with her in the Shaperate, holding up candles for her to read the ancient tomes, bringing ink for her to finish her notes, rubbing her shoulders when Branka cracked them hard enough to dislocate them. And she listened. And she learned. And, unlike Oghren, Hespith believed.

It was no question, then, what Branka chose to take with her into the Deep Roads and what Branka left behind.

Avernus/Ser Thrask - Stand Up
The Knight-Commander had overstepped her bounds again, sending Thrask to Ferelden to investigate a maleficar. She had said the mage was too close to the Free Marches, too dangerous to be ignored, too powerful for the weaker Fereldan templars to handle. She had done it to get rid of him, he suspected. Thrask had accepted for his own reasons, surviving the sail across the Waking Sea and the march through the mountains by prayer and stubbornness.

Getting past the traders who'd made camp at the decaying castle had been difficult, his armor and joints creaking in the freezing wind. He'd found the mage, as tainted at Meredith had promised, but too smart, too human to be a true abomination. Avernus talked, Avernus reasoned, Thrask was tired, Thrask was cold. He drew his sword and cleansed the magic miasma from the room, but Avernus in Warden colors instead of a robe continued wielding his quill, ignoring the staff collecting dust in the shadows and Thrask's arm aching under the weight of his shield shivering in his armor.

That night Avernus lit candles and tossed Thrask a bottle that was more vinegar than wine. The mage didn't sleep but lay beside the templar with a wheezing laugh. In the morning, Thrask woke up and stood up alone, then walked past the surprised traders and back down to where a ship waited to take him home.

Cailan Theirin/Finn - no one else to turn to
"I don't know," Finn said as he pulled another robe from the cabinet. "I think this is a bad idea. And by bad, I mean terrible."

"Stop worrying. No, this one doesn't fit either." Cailan yanked the robe down his arms and tossed it into the rapidly growing pile on Finn's bed. "Maker's breath, you mages are almost pathetically puny. I don't see why the templars are so afraid of you."

Finn glared over his shoulder, but Cailan's smile softened the insult. Finn sniffed disdainfully; the man had no right to make unkind remarks when he needed Finn's help to impersonate a mage to play a trick on the visiting, unforgiving Mother Perpetua. He was also stripped down to his smalls, which should have made him feel at least a smidgen ridiculous.

Not that he looked ridiculous. In fact, he looked rather marvelous.

Mistaking Finn's silence for a sulk, Cailan clamped his massive hand on Finn's shoulder (possibly breaking a bone or to there; maybe he really was puny). "Come on, old boy. I didn't mean to offend. You're the only one I could turn to. Imagine if I'd asked your enchanter Wynne? Or that one who looks like he's swallowed a lemon... Torrin."

"Try this one," Finn mumbled as he flung another robe over Cailan's thick arm. The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently and Finn could feel the warmth of it through the thick velvet of his own robe.

Anders: So you were a templar?
Alistair: Not really; I never took the vows.
Anders: It's not just the vows that make a templar.
Alistair: Skipped out on the lyrium addiction, too.
Anders: Mages don't have that advantage. We can never simply walk away.
Alistair: Would you, if you were able?
Anders: Never.

Alistair: Were you at the Tower when... you know. Abominations and demons and grrr.
Anders: Uldred's rebellion, you mean? Yes, I was. To a degree - I was in solitary confinement.
Alistair: That was lucky.
Anders: Was it? Seemed more like cruelty to me.

Cousland: You love her/him. Hawke.
Anders: I do. Why?
Cousland: I'm glad for you. And proud.
Anders: Thanks, Mother.

Hawke: Traveling with the King and Queen of Ferelden. Varric will never believe me.
Alistair: I don't believe it, half the time.
Anders: I don't know if that's endearing or horrifying.

Anders: Alistair isn't what I expected, for a templar or for a king.
Cousland: Choose your next words carefully, Anders.
Anders: I meant that in a good way!
Cousland: Well?
Anders: He's sort of adorable, isn't he?

Hawke: You aren't a Warden anymore - Why do are you doing this?
Alistair: For the fresh air?
Hawke: I can't imagine you prefer sleeping on the ground in the rain, eating burnt frogs, picking bugs out of your hair.
Alistair: It isn't easy...
Hawke: You can say that again.
Alistair: ...But Ferelden doesn't need me to do what is easy. It needs me to do what is right.

Title: Take Away the Lonely Days
Fandom: Dragon Age 2
Rating: PGish?
Warnings: Nope
Author's note: Oh god Anders why won't you love me. Title comes from "Cats and Dogs" by the amazing band Head and the Heart.

She woke up in phases, the red cloudy world clearing slowly and that awful banging in her head like a ogre in a a room full of bells gradually quieting. "Andraste's flaming tits," she swore as she struggled up into a sitting, leaning, tilting position. She touched her head gingerly then frowned at the flakes of dried blood on her fingers.

( Read more... )

"Right," said Garrett, and his merry gang of miscreants turned as one to look at their fearless leader, breaths inhaled expectantly. On the run for four days already, it was beginning to become obvious even to Merril that a new plan for survival was necessary. "Right," he said again and some of his merry gang of miscreants exhaled sighs, "Anders, let's get married."

The collective stares turned toward Anders, who stopped shoveling stew into his mouth and gawked back. In the few moments it took him to not choke to death and swallow half-chewed dinner, his mind came up with the ingenious response of, "What?"

"And that allows us to escape the army from Starkhaven how exactly?" Aveline rolled up the map of the Free Marches and tucked it into her armor. "But, well, I suppose congratulations are in order."

"What?" said Anders.

Varric pounded the Warden on the back. "Make an honest man out of him, Anders. If that's possible. Not sure where you'll find a Chantry willing to let you in the door, let along hitch you, but we can worry about that later."

"What?" said Anders.

"Ooh, think about how handsome you'll be in marriage robes." Merril squeaked happily. "And clean! I've always though that you look much better when you're not covered in mud."

Anders pondered that observation and nodded in serious agreement, adding to the conversation his own ideas on the subject, "What?"

"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one," Isabela said as she and Varric hauled the mage to his feet. "Oh, don't give me your wounded-kitten face. Just kiss him already and we can get a move on."

He slid down her, his fingers scrabbling wetly as they tried to grasp hold her armor. With every curse he gurgled up more blood, smearing her chest, her arms, her legs as he fell. She stood silent, her hands in white fists around her daggers, but shuddered when his weight finally left her and he dropped wheezing at her feet.

She could have saved him then. Could have ordered Morrigan, could have found a potion. She could have made it easier, quicker, with a merciful jab at the heart or throat. Instead Mairen watched as Howe writhed in agony before her. She stood and watched and watched and watched as his blood stained her boots and seeped inside, as his skin grew ashen, as his eyes rolled and grew bleary.

Blood and ash - the Cousland estate collapsing as she fled. Duncan had to pull her, then carry her through the woods; she kept trying to turn back to get to her parents, or get their bodies. She had wept for them that night and then not again for months, though pain was a blade in her, cutting constantly.

"Mairen," said a voice a thousand miles away. "Mairen, my love."

She looked down dumbly at the hand on her arm. Alistair was touching her, pulling her away from the corpse.

"He's dead, Mairen. You've killed him. It's over."

When she came back he was smiling for once and the tension in his shoulders was gone. She leaned against of the lesser-stained cots and watched him watch her.

She could feel him cracking and she itched to get her fingers into him and undo him completely - undo all those buckles and get under the robe and Maker how'd the clinic get so hot all of a sudden? But he'd always been able to sidestep her teasing, avoiding her as smoothly as if he were the rogue instead.

When he reached for her any semblance of thought was instantly snuffed out, burned away by the heat, the force of his kiss. He grabbed her and held on desperately, and she opened her mouth and dug her fingers into his arms, his shoulders. It was hard to stand when he let her go again; Hawke's usually so sturdy legs wobbled under her weight and it took all of her pride and resolve and realization that they still had an audience to keep from pulling him back into her embrace.

Tonight.

Hawke managed to turn her stumble into a swagger. At the door Isabela grinned and cooed something inappropriate, and they looped arms and sauntered into the dingy shadows of Darktown. Of the Hawke children she'd always been the most impulsive, and it didn't occur to her that what she heard as promise, Anders may have said as a warning.

Or a threat.