He knows he’s supposed to have a certain opinion on the matter. That is to say, they are places that a Templar should never visit, that going in a brothel taints the reputation of the Order and his own. That indulging in such pleasures distracts a Templar from his duty, that it’s very close to the type of temptations employed by desire demons from time to time, whose chosen appearance is often that of attractive women or men.
He knows he should be ashamed and, honestly, he was the first time he set foot in the Blooming Rose. He was a fresh and innocent 22-year-old man.
But Thrask has come to know the people who worked there (to be clear, he knows only Ambra. The others are acquaintances.) Sometimes, with years passing, he also thought that people who worked there were in fact much better individuals than some of his brethren in the Gallows. For some of the women and men at the Rose it’s just a job. For some of them is even a choice. Most of them are also good company for a chat. And he fell in love with Ambra, who loved him back, so the two things, being a sex worker and being in love, aren’t even mutually exclusive (something that he might not have imagined before.) Granted, the Blooming Rose is a high class place and Thrask retains some negative and/or prejudiced opinions on brothels that aren’t as “good” to workers and clients. But it’s very easy for him now to see the person before he sees the sex worker, because of his experience in the Rose.
So he might not want it to be known that he sometimes visits a brothel, they might not be exactly respectable places, or not the most respectable in the city anyway, but… they exist, and will always exist. As someone who enjoyed Ambra’s company quite often when younger, and sometimes still when older… he can’t really be too sanctimonious, nor does he want to be. Even though he’ll probably still lie through his teeth and say that he never entered in a brothel once in his life.
whispers 'beard burn on the inner thighs, hot damn'
|| So I wrote a full drabble. Whops?
« Slower, slower… Yes, just like that. Lick me. Openyour mouth. »
He did. Hegave her a full kiss, parted his lips and lapped, slowly just as she requested.She was juicy, and salty, and wet with his own saliva; her thighs on hisshoulders brushed against his cheeks as he held them in his hands.
With his kneeson the floor, he looked up. Over the bridge of his nose, pressed against thecurve of her pubes, Ambra lay on the armchair, languid and quivering; she’dbunched up her soft, transparent robe and he could follow the line of her hips,the curve of her breasts, and observe the seesaw of her breath, quivering andheavy.
And herlips, Maker, her lips, she curled them up into a tremulous smile as he suckedbetween her thighs; as if he were kissing her mouth, he tilted his neck andchanged angle, watching her arch her back, roll her hips and widen her eyes.
« Ah, fuck…you’ve learnt… », she murmured.
He had, asmuch as he could. Licking and kissing, pressing around her plump lips with twofingers and spreading her open, he’d learnt. Flushing and shivering himself,sometimes incredulous, sometimes nearly ashamed, scratching red marks with hisbeard on the skin of her inner thighs, he’d learnt.
And Ambrawas such a good teacher, too.
« Yes »,she hissed. « Right there. Move your fingers. Right there. »
He steadiedher legs and no matter how firmly he grabbed her flesh, a hand still slipped towardhis own lap where blood pulsated rhythmically and heat grew; the tightness ofhis pants was nearly painful, and he ached to satisfy his need to grab himselfand give pleasure to his warm body.
She seizedhis wrist and then his hand, clutching it.
« No, no,not yet, don’t touch yourself, that’s for me later— ah, Maker— »
His facegrew hot as her order ran down his spine like a shiver. Ambra’s hips wererolling and pushing against his face. He heard her whimper and curse as hemoved his neck and watched how the climax grew on her face and in the tensionof her muscles.
She came,Andraste’s grace, she shuddered, soaked against his mouth and the movement ofhis tongue.
The ecstasyof her face filled his chest with warmth, with stupor, dazed him and quiveredthrough him, made his cock harder and his kisses more eager.
She seemedsurprised, even, in the way she stared at the ceiling of her room and gasped.
She’d toldhim, once, that she had never thought that any of it could truly be sopleasurable.
The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.
Thrask is delivered the letter from his daughter and informed of her death. He must, in turn, inform her mother in the Blooming Rose. Many thanks to @spiritmark for the proofread she gave me some time ago.
Ser Thrask wore civilian clothes. That, however, was mostly unnecessary inside the Blooming Rose. Madam Lusine knew him (she’d known him for a long time), Quintus knew him and always served him his favourite liquor. Even some of the customers knew him, as he knew them, but the unwritten rule of keeping quiet about the identity of The Blooming Rose’s customers kept everyone’s mouth shut.
Although this time he did check for Ser Emeric. His usual table in the corner was clearly empty, and Thrask sighed; sighed, but felt no relief as he approached the proprietor.
Madam Lusine saw him and smiled. « Oh. I thought you wouldn’t take up the habit of visiting us again, my dear. Here for Ambra, I imagine. »
« Yes. Is she upstairs? » He pulled his pouch out of his pocket and handed it over in full.
« Of course. Would you wait here a moment while we change the sheets? » She accepted the coins and raised a hand with varnished nails, elegantly offering him a seat at the bar.
Thrask was about to open his mouth and ask if she still took clients, but Lusine’s manners had something inviting that made you accept whatever she proposed. And he was not in the mood to be assertive in any way. Of course she still took clients. Ambra, after all, was still beautiful.
He sat on the stool and Quintus stood in front of him, polishing a glass. « Want to drink something? »
Thrask answered with a dim smile. « No, thank you. »
« No need to look proper here. »
He didn’t want to look proper, but he wanted to look fully sober when he met her, without relying on how well he handled his alcohol.
The Blooming Rose was efficient in its service, and he did not have to wait for more than ten minutes. Madame Lusine notified him that the room was ready, so he stood up with heavy legs and heavy heart and headed toward the stairs. He checked again for familiar faces among the other customers sitting at the tables, but only recognized Jethann entertaining a lady. None of his Order was in sight.
He reached the room and turned the doorknob with the familiarity of habit that he also felt when entering the Templars’ barracks.
Ambra was sitting before the window, with crossed legs, and was wearing her fine muslin robe, the one that in backlight looked like nothing more than a thin veil of colour over her body. She looked outside, toward the buildings of Hightown that were visible from there, the back of one hand and her knuckles barely brushing her chin. She still used the same presentation. It had made quite an impression on his twenty-two-year-old self.
She turned just as he was closing the door behind him and Thrask saw the exact moment in which she widened her half-closed eyes and lost her languid posture to spring up on her feet.
« Iachob! Viveka didn’t tell me it was you. »
Ambra nearly ran to him and clutched his shoulders; she must have read something in his expression, because she frowned and her eyes, for how much make-up she had put on her face, showed all the wrinkles that came with fear.
« Did you find her? »
« —No . »
« Has she been found? »
Thrask nodded and Ambra’s gaze dropped, her grip softened, surely not because she felt relieved. But she still could not feel half as defeated as he.
« So she’s in the Gallows… », she whispered.
The words that he had to say died in his throat for a long moment, so he raised both his hands and touched her neck and her nape; he caressed her hair, closed his eyes and then opened them to look toward that window through which sunlight illuminated the room, and for a moment thought of his youth and his enamoured, naïve self. He didn’t even need to go that far back in time. It was enough to think of Olivia during her first nine years of life, when he only had a daughter, and not a daughter who was also a mage.
« She isn’t. » His voice sounded too firm for what he was about to say. It made Ambra look up, but regardless of his tone he knew that his face could not look more hopeful than he was a moment ago. « She’s been found, but not by Templars. It was a… »
A dwarf had approached him, just the day after the disastrous retrieval of the apostates of Starkhaven (or lack thereof), with a wallet full of shining sovereigns and a few friendly words about forgetting ever having seen his friend Hawke use magic. He tried to refuse the coins, but the dwarf shoved them in his hand and took his word on the matter. (Denouncing his helper would have been ridiculous regardless.)
« It was a Fereldan woman who collaborates with us. She found Olivia while she was trying to leave Kirkwall, cornered by… slavers, I think. »
« Oh, Maker. »
Ambra slipped away from his attempt at an embrace and retreated toward the bed, where she sat sinking down in the mattress. Her large eyes were aghast as she waited for the rest of it.
Thrask swallowed again and opened a button on his doublet, pulling a letter out of the internal pocket on his chest. « She had this on… her body. » He handed over the letter, placed it in her shaking hands. The weight of what he had just said did not seem to have sunk in just yet.
He watched her unfold the sheet of paper and read their daughter’s words. It didn’t take much time, the text was not long, and when she raised her gaze it seemed to him that she was still waiting for some kind of reassurance, for some twist in the story. « She wrote this for you. »
He sighed, deeply, and nodded as he turned to reach the armchair she occupied when he entered. He felt all the heaviness of his body like he never did, not even when he wore full armour. Olivia had thought herself adult enough to deal with the curse of magic on her own, far from Kirkwall; she had thought herself adult enough to protect him, instead of the other way around.
Not finding the strength to tell Ambra the whole truth, he kept the information of how exactly Olivia had died to himself. Her mother would remember her as a mage, not as an Abomination.
It was then that the sound of broken sobs filled his head and the room.
Shame made his cheeks burn just as if he had drank too much. Shame and guilt. He owed her at least a part of the truth, so he placed an elbow on the little carved table in front of him and covered his eyes with his hand. Rubbing his eyelids made him see splinters of colour and light.
« I… lied. I did find her. »
He glanced at Ambra only briefly, to make sure that he had her attention even amongst her tears. She was bent on herself with the letter on her thighs, her make-up already blurred and melted by the tears that reddened her eyes; but she was looking at him, her pupils still so wide.
Thrask took in a shaking breath. « I tracked her down, she was in a warehouse by the docks. I think she was waiting for a ship. I… tried to convince her to come back. She begged me to let her go. » In the end, the clarity of his voice abandoned him and a knot in his throat forced him to stop and swallow. « And I did. I let her go. I should have forced her to come back with me and brought her to the Circle. I am to blame for this, and if you will do it, I will not object. »
Resolution should have come to his aid and strengthened his heart. If Olivia didn’t want to hide anymore, either for her sake or his, then she belonged in the Circle. He shouldn’t have let the crack of desperation in her voice affect him and move his heart; he shouldn’t—
« To the Circle! »
Thrask looked up, only to meet Ambra’s inflamed eyes.
« To the Gallows! », she repeated, clenching the letter and her light robe in her fists. « You said that she couldn’t be brought there, that it was too terrible, even with you watching over her. You said it! »
« She could have learnt there, she could have been protected… » Thrask hissed the words through his teeth, but that didn’t prevent a lamenting note from cracking his voice. The tears he wasn’t crying yet were all stuck in the sound of his voice.
« I hear things about the Gallows, Iachob… about the Knight-Commander and everyone else in there. I’ve been hearing things since I can remember, and they only got worse. You did the impossible to keep her hidden and safe and now, now you tell me that you wanted to drag her in there! Of course she begged you not to! Of course! »
He covered his face with his hands, his calluses rubbing against his cheeks, then he dragged them down to his chin and stroked his beard between his joined hands, joined as if he were praying. « I should have brought her there as a child. It would have spared her this. » It would have avoided her terror in front of being captured and sold into slavery; the terror that a demon undoubtedly smelt and took advantage of. Such a common story of possession, it sounded like something out of a manual.
« Don’t say such bullshit! »
Ambra’s voice sounded like a shriek. She did not want to yell, but was livid and pale in the face.
Thrask frowned and did not find the will to stand up just yet. « It would have saved her. »
« You saved her, by keeping her here. »
« And condemned her too, because she left, because of me, without even knowing what she was going to face! Listen, Ambra, mages need protection. From themselves, and from people who are not like them. » He inhaled, tried to regain control of himself enough for his breath not to shake. « People fear them and for good reason, but they should fear people too. An untrained mage among people who don’t know magic is a walking disaster. It goes both ways and… a Circle is necessary to teach them, to keep them safe. It’s not a prison. »
« This one is! » She stood up all of a sudden, threw the letter on the bed and tried to wipe away her tears, smearing her cheekbones with the dark colour around her eyes. « You said so! » Turning toward her wardrobe, she bunched her robe up her thighs and pulled it above her head, standing naked. « It’s called the Gallows. You know how it is better than I do. » Wrenching a heavier and more covering dressing gown over her limbs, she turned again and faced him.
It was not unlike a brick placed inside his stomach and left there with all its weight.
Those words had indeed left his lips, but in retrospect… in hindsight, perhaps he could have brought Olivia there, and watched over her carefully…
Shaking his head, he grabbed the armrests and pushed himself on his feet. It was harder to do it now than it ever been early in the morning, when his duties began. He retrieved the letter just as Ambra let herself fall on the bed again. He should leave and let her grieve as she wanted; paying for the whole afternoon, evening and night meant that no one would disturb her, whether he was there or not. He should leave, wear his armour again, and grieve in his own way.
« I blame you for something », she said, and looked so bereft of the angry energy that had guided her looks and movements until then, that he stopped on the spot and turned, waiting for the next blow.
« When Olivia begged you to let her go, you didn’t drop everything else and didn’t leave with her. Because that would have saved her. I blame you for that. »
Thrask stared at the door and gritted his teeth, nearly closed his eyes, and taking another step in that direction became something unbearable. He turned on his heels, as quickly as if he had been harpooned, and knelt before her just like he'd do in front of the statue of Andraste herself, hugging her legs. She didn’t protest, so he hid his face in her lap and cried at last.
She cried with him; he could hear the dull sound of her weeping.
But his tears were visceral and born not only from loss but also from failure, a kind of failure that he could not identify.
« I could have been Knight-Commander, at this point », he murmured between his sobs. « Had Meredith not taken control… I could have been so much more. » Thrask choked on a bitter laughter at the thought that he could have climbed up the ranks enough to ask again the Order for permission to marry what they had once called “a harlot of the Blooming Rose”. « How can I leave? How can I forsake the Circle? If I leave… If all those like me leave— » Those like Samson, reduced to a lyrium-addicted derelict in Lowtown. « Then only those like Ser Karras and Ser Alrik are left. »
He pressed his cheek against her thigh and eventually felt her fingers in his hair.
« I have a duty in the Circle. But I should have done more. Oh, I wish I could have brought her there and entrusted her to teachers and… and friends. »
Ambra sobbed again, and made him stand up with gentler touches, slower gestures. Made him take off his boots, and Thrask lay down next to her and embraced her, all in the exhausted maze of crying. He was glad for the weight of her head on his arm, the only physical sensation that fought against the certainty of having just been hollowed out.
