Emily. 36. I needed a place to put the Mass Effect and Dragon Age headcanon because it was coming out the sides. profile picture is @tempestrune's rendering of me as a Quarian working on my next fanfiction and I think it's perfect.
Emily. 36. Just a place to obsess about Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
I'm new to writing fanfiction, but I have two fshenko oneshots and an in-progress slow-burn enemies-to-lovers longfic about Elissa Cousland and Nathaniel Howe up on AO3 here.
OCs:
Erin Shepard (x Kaidan)
Elissa Cousland, Machiavellian edition (x Alistair)(but also x Nathaniel Howe in an AU of my canon worldstate)
Laurel Hawke (x I shan't say in case I decide to write it!)
Alana Trevelyan (x Cullen, don’t @ me I played Inquisition first)
Yaryna Aldwir (x Bellara)(... x Davrin?)
There’s a curious way about them, Miranda thinks, watching both Shepard and Vakarian. They bicker, quick, easy banter ladened with barbs with no real edges; she’s heard them on the field, remembers their first interactions in Archangel’s base, the barely perceptible slant to Shepard's shoulders she saw only because she was looking. Since the onset of their rather tenuous partnership Shepard had been wound tight, her words clipped and edged by exhaustion, and since her first interaction with him she’s begun to sound more like the woman she read exhaustive reports on.
Miranda watches the two of them at the other end of the bar, a small scattering of glasses in front of them. She hadn’t noticed before how often Shepard talks with her hands, and beside her, Vakarian is nodding along as she sets two glasses aside and then points at the one he’s holding. Her brow furrows she pauses mid-sip, inhaling the aroma of what the bartender promised with a dry white but is a shade too sweet for her preferences. Dark Star is at least a touch more dignified than Afterlife, though she can't say the same for the music. She glances to her glass, warming in her hand from the bartender before he’d moved on to pouring Shepard a glass of something green that had her balking while Vakarian—she believes that particular spread of his mandibles is a grin, if the context clues are any indication.
Shepard plucks his drink out of his hand, setting it beside another, and Miranda lowers hers. Of course, she’s reviewing their last mission, and she watches as Shepard points at his glass before he’s shaking his head and sliding it down the bar in the opposite direction. Shepard says something she can’t quite make out from this distance, hands in the air while Vakarian finishes his drink and and she smacks her palms on the lip of the bar. Her posture is looser, the space between them smaller. She studies them both in a way she'd spent hours sifting through formerly redacted mission reports and other logs pertaining to SHEPARD, COMMANDER, J.
One track bleeds into the next, the tempo changing, and he seems to be in the middle of flagging down the bartender for another round when her hand shoots out to grab his arm instead. As he lowers it, her hand slips down his forearm, to his wrist, and as he meets her eye, Miranda watches the way her fingers encircle it.
For a moment she can’t decipher his expression, but then he shakes his head with something that could be a laugh, something that has Shepard rolling her eyes and her mouth rounding out the sound of a protest as he pulls her from the bar. Neither of them acknowledge Miranda where sits on the opposite side, watching them like they’ve forgotten about her, about the mission, about the array of prying eyes in this club, and her stance shifts to keep hers on them as Vakarian tugs her onto the dance floor spread across the better half of the lounge. She squints, keeping an eye out for the shock of red hair and his—what did turians call that, fringe?—between the haze of smoke and lights and tangle of limbs.
She’s watched human and asari flirt with her, or the occasional pass from a turian, and watched her diplomatically shut them down. Polite but firm, but no less disinterested. It had been ideal, in its own way: there was little room for any distractions now. Her previous interactions with Garrus Vakarian only ever showed her they were familiar with one another. Comfortable. But then Miranda watches as they cross over the dance floor, lost in a throng of bodies.
Interesting, she thinks, given Shepard’s inclination to avoid anything to do with dancing. The way the gap between them compresses until his arm slips around her waist and pulls her today him when she pantomimes preparing to flee.
Interesting, she decides, when she spots how close the two stand together. At glance, from what she can make of it, Shepard’s expression is puckered, hesitance and nerves playing across her face. But secure, too. A measure of trust following in the way her spine straightens, much in the same manner as when she gives the ground team one last nod before the shuttle doors open. His hands are on her shoulders, head bent toward her ear, and she shakes her head, but she does not step away.
He starts out trying to adjust her limbs, and Miranda almost snickers into her drink when he has to duck from getting elbowed. There were notes made in files about Shepard’s lack of coordination on the dance floor—interesting, too, given her prowess on the field. But those had been old chat logs amongst the ground crew, followed by debates over who owed what over tabs at Flux. One of his hands settles on her hip, familiar but close, and Miranda watches over the lip of her glass, curious.
The crowd shifts and she loses track of them for a moment—doesn’t see the way Shepard leans back into him, the concave of her spine following the convex of his keel. How she tilts her head, lip brushing the prong of a mandible as she murmurs to him about his dance moves. The hand low on her hip that pulls her too him before retreating up her side.
The crowd parts and they’re back in Miranda’s field of view, still close together and Shepard’s lips parted in a laugh she can’t hear over the music as he gets her to sway. Her arms raise, maybe under his encouragement, fingers glancing over his crest and fringe.
A peculiar development, she thinks, a sip of wine followed by the tilt of her head as he moves her. Shepard, this human—first human Spectre, the Hero of the Citadel and the Alliance’s golden goose, beguiled by a turian, of all species. All the sharp edges and points, all the remnants of the First Contact War and here she’s got one wound around her finger, even as his adjust an elbow and she leans into him.
Of course she would be contradictory, she thinks. Of course she would opt to go against the grain, flirting with the notion of—Miranda swallows another mouthful of wine. The way Shepard smiles is not one she’s seen before, even if some of her movements still have an edge of nervousness to them that she hasn’t seen on her before, either. Between the smoke and illicit substances, the pulse of the music that will have embedded itself in her eardrums even long after they’ve left the dock, and under the lights that cycle through a multitude of colors, Shepard looks alive.
Vakarian side steps an errant feet as she laughs, following a beat just a moment off, and his hand curls over her ribs. Lost somewhere in the haze of being part of a crowd, Miranda watches them, considers whether they were just two people out for the evening, and decides their mission is too critical for passing fancies that will likely end up with someone dead or distracted.
She finishes her wine and stands from the bar. She won’t say anything for now, she concludes; won’t pass anything along to the Illusive Man, but her memory can be long and their time can be short.
people hate it when i say "black people getting cancer is racist" but im literally fucking right because systemic racism has led to chemical dumping being acceptable in black/brown neighborhoods and black people have higher rates of cancer as a result
Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.
I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.
attempting to create my ideal castle cousland from pieces of existing castles before the hubris of trying to draw it. for the castle itself and its immediate terrain I'm pulling from st. michael's mount (cornwall), it's just got a really good balance of mountain and coast
but then i also want it to be on the mainland, not an island. and much higher up, so it's more defensible from the sea. so castle culzean (scotland)
or i could instead pull from castle dunluce (ireland). with it jutting out on a rock, that could justify cousland's odd, modular layout. and i love it possibly having an old dwarven sea port. but it feels too much like redcliffe castle
