Regrading the WIP fic title things, can you tell me about, and give me a snippet for the fenhawke college radio AU?
🥰
This one is ANCIENT, like 2015 levels of ancient, so it might be bad!
The host’s voice is a handsome baritone, like a stream of melodious velvet as he introduces song after song. The sound of it is more captivating than the music, which already has a hold on him. Having nothing else to do, Hawke’s imagination wanders to what this radio host might look like. Is he a human or an elf? A dwarf, or void, even a qunari?
“Remember,” the enrapturing voice reminds him just after a song so catchy that it has Hawke whistling its tune. “Callers may submit requests using the radio call line.”
The next song is just as fantastic as its predecessors, and so is every song that follows. Whoever is choosing the music, be it the host or otherwise, is doing a damn fine job.
“Welcome back,” the host says in a tone more deep and formal than previous song introductions, “It is now two in the morning. This has been Fenris with Late Night Beat on KWDL, Kirkwall University’s own campus radio station. Thank you and goodnight.”
Apparently, just having pages in the header doesn't work? So here's all the stuff:
Growing old disgracefully. Angry engineer. German. Not recommended for under 18. I'm not responsible for parenting other people's offspring. Adult conversations will not be filtered for children.
barbex everywhere, she/her.
Dragon Age (Forever stuck in Kirkwall. Mage Rights! Anders was right! Fuck the Chantry! Also if you don't like fenders, I can't help you), Mass Effect, The Witcher, pretty art.
Fanfiction, gaming, feminism, lefty politics.
Let writers write what they want! Let people be cringe! Always FIGHT FASCISM!
All my fics on AO3: AO3/barbex.
(if you need an AO3 invite, let me know)
All my fics on this tumblr: /tagged/my writing
Prompts: https://barbex.tumblr.com/prompts
Other sites: https://www.instagram.com/barbarabecc/, https://twitter.com/barbarabarbex, https://bsky.app/profile/barbex.bsky.social, https://www.threads.net/@barbarabecc
I run the960writers, the-wip-project, fictober-event, the-smut-cafe, startrekhasalwaysbeen, audiobarbex.
Header image by kemvee (post). Icon made with this picrew.
Oh, and just that you're warned:
and another
There you have it.
An explanation for those who don't know:
proshipping does not stand for "problematic shipping", it stands for being pro, in favor of, shipping.
learn your words.
proshipping means: ship and let ship
proshipping means: not harassing people over their choices of fictional pairings
proshipping means: not trying to apply arbitrary christian morality guidelines to what creators are allowed to depict in art and writing
proshipping means: not judging people for their kinks
proshipping means: expecting people to tag their content correctly and to avoid tags I don't enjoy
proshipping means: not forgetting what censorship in fandom leads to
proshipping means: enjoying fandom in all facets and curating my own online experience
That's why I'm a proshipper. This a stupid conversation. Fiction is not reality. Go out into the world and deal with real problems.
Tagged by @barbex for this; I haven't written in years but I figure it might get me in a dragon age mood to go through my old stuff. All but A Warden's Duty was a prompt of some kind or another, but most still fall in my canon world state.
Rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.
Most hits: my BlightFic, A Warden's Duty. It's 41 chapters, and it's the first thing I uploaded, so it's kind of an automatic winner on every way of searching my fics
2nd most kudos: Take One For The Team, a silly Isabela/Aveline "bromance" prompt
3rd most comments: The Wedding Planner, Elissa, well, planning her wedding. Or rather, it being planned for her.
4th most bookmarks: Have We Met? Elissa Guerrin meets a Grey Warden. Please go read this one and cry.
5th most words: Character Windows #4: Anora at Thirteen, the first meeting between two future queens
For DADWC: from the Florence + The Machine Prompt List list > "And the heart is hard to translate, it speaks a language of its own". You're my favorite fenders writer 💙, so fenders fic, pretty please!
Aaaaaaaah so I got this twice and I love it SO much so thank you both! @contreparry - I really hope you enjoy it!
(If you’d like me to write you a dragon age fic, send me a prompt from here!)
@dadrunkwriting
Pairing: Fenders
Characters: Fenris, Anders
Tags: canon-typical graphic depictions of violence, Anders was right, anti-chantry, fluff
Rating: Mature
“And the heart is hard to translate
It has a language of it's own
It talks in tongues and quiet sighs
And prayers and proclamations in the grand days
Of great men and the smallest of gestures
In short shallow gasps”
- All This and Heaven Too, Florence + The Machine
It started on a beach in 9:30 Dragon. It was raining, and Fenris, Hawke and the rest of their companions were hot and sticky with blood when the clouds had burst. They’d left a litter of broken slaver bodies in the sand dunes behind them, stumbling down to the grey waves of the Waking Sea beneath a cloudy sky.
And then it had begun to rain, and the mage: a foolish, willful man utterly ignorant of his own privilege, had yelped and begun to take his clothes off. Fenris can still remember the way the sand had felt between his toes, and hear the buzz of insects in his ears as he’d stared at the tall, blonde man, and the sand between them had grown dark with water.
Anders had stripped down to his smalls, blood streaked up his forearms in long vivid slashes, and dropped his staff carelessly into the long, stiff silver reeds. Admittedly, it was a cheap thing: clearly scavenged or stolen, and nothing that any self-respecting magister would have been seen dead with. Still. Fenris had never seen a mage just drop their staff like that before. Just to the right of Anders’ chest, half hidden by thick red-blonde hair, was a deep and jagged scar directly above his heart. His belly was almost concave, hip bones jutting in a way that could only be unhealthy. There were more scars, but Fenris barely had a chance to see them before Anders was running at the freezing sea.
From behind, Fenris saw that his long back was latticed with more scars than he had previously imagined. The mage yelped as he got into the waves, feet hopping as if the water were burning hot, not freezing cold. And then he got past the shallows, and dove in beneath the cresting waves. Behind him, somewhere between the beach and the horizon, seabirds leapt squawking into the grey sky. Anders had burst up out of the blue water, laughing, tossing his hair back from his face in a whip of antique gold, tipping his long, crooked nose back and shutting his eyes as he raised his face to the watery grey sunlight.
And then Isabela and Hawke, laughing, had pulled each other’s clothes off and followed him, and Fenris had been left standing uncertainly on the beach, watching them, unable to decipher the ache in his chest as he waited for them to rejoin him on the shore.
*
It started in the Alienage in 9:30 on Wintersend. Anders had just delivered triplets, which was a labour that was exactly as harrowing and arduous as he had worried it would be. He hadn’t slept in 48 hours, and for weeks after he’d ascribed the events of that night to a waking dream. The elvhen women whose children he’d delivered had attempted to press what silver they had into his hands, and Anders had pressed it back into the mother’s wife’s hands, dizzy with the expenditure of his magic and the sheer weight of fatigue. Then he’d taken his staff, more as a cane than anything, and slowly left the narrow confines of their home.
His knee had been blistering with pain: and he’d known before the first kiss of snow that the weather had changed. His worst scars always warned him before the sky broke. Still, the coat he’d armoured over the years with reinforced leather and what other supplies he could scavenge provided little warmth against the night, so Anders was shivering as his breath fell in white clouds into the dark. Around the Vhenadahl, candles flickered against the wind in a way that only magical fire could, and Anders sent a silent half-hearted prayer to the Maker that the templars would stay inside their barracks tonight, and not make any midnight excursions into Lowtown.
The last person he had expected to see leaving Merrill’s home was Fenris, and he certainly hadn’t expected to see the elf wrapped in a mossy green, knitted woolen scarf. For a second the pair of them stared at each other, caught like apprentices out of bed past curfew. Then Fenris had flushed, ruddy against his dark skin, and marched past him. Anders had expected it to end there, but when Fenris got to the foot of the steps to the alienage he stopped, greatsword strapped like steel lightning to his back.
He turned on the steps, and frowned at Anders. “Are you coming?”
Anders had followed. Fenris said nothing for the whole journey, but he walked Anders to the door of his clinic, and when Anders swayed as he tried to heave open the heavy doors, Fenris had caught his elbow. Anders had stared at him, more startled by the unexpected gesture than he would have been by the Darktown floor, and Fenris jerked his hand back like he’d been burned. In one of the undercity taverns, a chorus of festival goers were singing. Fenris gave him a short, sharp nod. “Good night, mage.”
Anders nodded back, speechless. Through the broken walls of Darktown, snow drifted in silent clouds and disappeared into the blue ink of the Waking Sea. Anders was convinced for years that he imagined it when Fenris stopped again, on the staircase outside the clinic, and spoke in a murmur. “Happy Wintersend.”
*
It started on Sundermount in 9:33 Dragon. Fenris had fallen, feet slipping in the mud, right calf failing him thanks to a slice to his leg that felt like it had split a ligament. His leg was a screaming burn and the rest of him was little better. The fog on the mountain was thick and white as dragon’s breath, and much colder, seeping through his armour and into his skin, and making the lyrium sewn into his flesh numb the veins around it in a bruising ache. Fenris couldn’t see Hawke, or Isabela, and he did not trust the mage to be anywhere than at Hawke’s side, for all that she had clearly long since promised her heart to Isabela. It was with a grim certainty that Fenris had looked up into the bloody, snarling face of his would-be killer, even as his mind ran through every formal strategy and dirty tricky he could think of. His fingers scrabbled in the dirt for mud to throw into his eyes, but his fingers were weak and stiff with the cold. The slaver’s sword fell.
Which was when six feet two of mage tackled him. Fenris stared as Anders charged at the slaver who would have killed him, throwing him down into the dirt. The mage’s staff was nowhere to be seen, and his hair was almost brown with the rain. His pale face was streaked with blood, and his coat and shirt were torn and scorched in places, exposing his bare, newly healed skin. Fenris stared as Anders tackled the slaver down into the mud and then reared back and punched him, hard, breaking his nose before punching him again, and again, and then taking a dagger from his belt and slitting his throat with brutal efficiency.
When the act was done, Anders dropped the knife into the dirt and scrambled to his feet, long legs skidding in the wet mud like a newborn colt. Fenris almost laughed, but in the absence of mortal peril his injuries were attempting to set his nerve endings on fire. His efforts to sit ended in him collapsing back onto the hill and praying to a Maker he struggled to believe in that Hawke and Isabela had dealt with the rest. And then Anders was there, face covered in blood and mud, hair clinging like kelp to his newly freckled and faintly sunburned cheeks. “Oh no you don’t.”
Magic fell over Fenris’ ruined leg like holy fire, and Fenris’ pain evaporated, washing away from one heartbeat to the next until it was merely a distant, terrible memory. Slowly, stiffly, Fenris managed to sit up, and for the first time in three years, Anders gave him a warm, honest smile. “There you are.”
Then he’d stood, and Fenris had been dizzily reminded exactly how tall he was. And then there was a long, calloused hand, red with blood, fingers crooked with breaking, thrust into the foggy air between them. Despite himself, Fenris took it.
*
It started on the Wounded Coast in 9:33 Dragon. Aveline was attempting to woo her soon to be husband, Donnic, and Anders was struggling to understand exactly why that required Hawke and her friends to put their lives on the line. But the summer was late and hot, and the days were long, and Marian’s eyes were very blue. So he’d found himself in the shifting, midge-ridden dunes of the Coast, killing slavers and Tal-Vashoth, and only occasionally cringing with second hand embarrassment at Aveline’s attempts at flirtation.
They’d dispatched most the ne’er-do-wells stupid enough to show their faces between the sand dunes, and were waiting for Aveline and Donnic to catch up in an appropriately concealed spot beneath the hissing reeds. Soon enough, their voices came down the path, not quite smothered by the close crash of the ocean and the whistle of the wind.
“So I think it’s always best to start with a quick downward slash, and then follow up with a parry. It’s predictable, sure, but I think it’s good to get recruits started on what’s tried and trusted.”
Fenris had laughed, and for a second Anders thought the wind dropped. The elf’s voice was rough and low, and his laugh was too. He’d curled his lyrium-twined fingers at Isabela, and Isabela had rolled her eyes and presses a silver into his waiting palm. Fenris had pocketed it. Then he’d caught Anders staring, and cleared his throat, colour rising to his high cheekbones. Isabela had leaned across him, and Fenris’ flush had risen up the back of his neck and into the tips of his ears. Anders had tried very hard not to stare at it.
“Do you want in? Fenris thinks it won’t be until the third path.”
Anders had spoken, as he so often did, without stopping to think. “I wouldn’t have figured you for the romantic type.”
Fenris had met his eyes, then, and the elf’s were deep and green and beautiful. “There is a great deal that you do not know about me, mage.”
Anders had not been able to think of anything else for the rest of the night.
*
It started in 9:37 Dragon. They were in The Hanged Man, and Fenris was staring at the monster that wore the face of his nightmares. Corff was nowhere to be seen, nor were Maraas or any of the tavern’s other regulars. Fenris was trying to beat back the tide of cynicism in his mind telling him that he should have known they would betray him, all of them. That he should never have trusted anyone but himself.
His sister stepped back, and his blood roared so loudly in his ears that he barely heard what Hawke said. But he heard his domi - Danarius - talking about his affection and his skills. It took everything Fenris had not to vomit on the tavern floor, and his mind revolted in a dizzy kind of horror as the impulse conflicted with memories of merrier disasters on these same stained floorboards. Then there were demons, and his mouth was thick with sulphur, and Fenris was fighting for his life.
It was like being back in the Provings again. Danarius had found his way onto the wooden staircase of The Hanged Man: the staircase that led up to Varric’s rooms, the staircase on which Fenris had once kissed Isabela and been pleasantly surprised by her response, the staircase where he’d found her kissing Hawke and told them it didn’t matter. Danarius had desecrated this place that despite the best efforts of Fenris’ anxieties had become like a home to him. Danarius had stood there, and watched, and Fenris had heard his friends’ screams as his master’s demons had ripped into their flesh.
Fenris had lost track of time, arms burning with the searing remnants of dismembered spirits, hands slippery with sweat and blood. But at some point the familiar relief of healing had disappeared, and he had belatedly looked up through sweat-stinging eyes to see Anders’ body arched in a translucent prison of blue light. Danarius had been watching the mage with an expression of terrible curiosity that Fenris knew well and feared more. His expression had been almost impassive as the mage shuddered and spasmed, blood oozing from his ears and flowing from his nose and down over his chin.
Isabela was clutching a gash in her side that was turning her white canvas tunic cherry red, and Hawke was dragging a mangled leg through the broken furniture as she made her way towards her. Fenris stood frozen in the smouldering wreckage, trapped like the butterflies his master liked to collect on pinned boards in his study. Anders had collapsed in a heap at Danarius’ feet, and Danarius had stepped forward. Fenris’ heart lurched.
But then Anders had surged abruptly to his feet and punched Danarius in the balls.
Fenris laughed, a shocked bark that was too loud in the tavern following the battle, and Danarius had wheezed, and blood had spun about his fingers, and Anders had grabbed the back of his head with one hand and slammed his knee into Danarius’ nose with a jarring crunch, chest heaving as he panted.
Then he’d picked up Danarius with all the strength promised by his tall, muscular frame, his training as a Grey Warden and the hearty meals Varric had spent nine years coaxing him into. Anders hurled Danarius down the stairs, where he landed in a heap at Fenris’ feet. Anders had looked at him, beard red with blood, body trembling with fury or pain or both.
“He’s all yours.”
And just like that, Fenris was free.
*
It started in 9:37 Dragon. Hawke and Isabela had fled across the sea, and Anders didn’t blame them. The Chantry was gone, and he was still getting used to the idea that he was meant to survive this. He still wasn’t entirely sure that he should, and Justice had been all too silent on the subject. So he spent his days in a waking dream, trekking for days and then weeks into the Vimmark mountains in the vague direction of Nevarra.
He hadn’t seen another living person for three weeks when an elf emerged from the fog, wreathed in white light like a ghost. Anders had stopped. His body and mind had long since become stretched too thin with hunger, horror and grief. Fenris’ countenance, for all its grim finality, came as an abrupt relief. At least he could stop running, now.
He’d dropped his staff, slowly, and held up his hands. “If you’re here to kill me, I won’t stop you.”
Fenris had not drawn his sword, but he hadn’t let the light die in his lyrium, either. When he stepped closer, he didn’t make sound, and for a moment Anders thought perhaps he really was a ghost, summoned by his imagination and too many nights in a decade spent longing for a man he couldn’t have.
Around them, birds had sung in the early morning, and not far off a stream made its laughing way down the cliffs. “Why did you run?”
Fenris asked the question as if it held the secret to the restoration of the Golden City itself. Anders laughed, stepping forward and stumbling over his own feet and the thick mass of pain that was his long since ruined knee. Fenris moved toward him through the long, dew-soaked grass, but didn’t quite breach the space between them. Anders swayed into a mostly intentional sitting position on a moss-covered boulder. “Does it matter?”
Fenris had met his eyes, and his own were dark and green and beautiful. “It does.”
Anders shrugged, and shut his eyes, leaning his head back and up into the fog. Water kissed his cheeks, and he thought: it would have been worth it, for this. It would have been worth it, to feel the weather again.
Something skittered in the bushes, and Anders opened his eyes and watched Fenris turn, bristling, to scan the trees. After a moment Fenris’ shoulders lowered, fractionally, and he turned back to Anders. He’d asked the question again, patiently, persistently. “Why did you run?”
Anders shook his head. “Because I didn’t want to bring you down with me.” Fenris’ eyes had widened a little, and Anders hurried on. “Any of you. I knew what I was doing, but the consequences were mine alone. I wasn’t going to subject you to them.”
Fenris had tilted his head, and the lyrium in his skin had sent shimmering refractions of light dancing iridescently through the fog. “I did not think you bore me so much good will.”
“More like I didn’t bear you so much ill.” Anders had corrected, before sitting forwards, feeling abruptly the weight of too many decades of exhaustion lying heavy on his aching shoulders. “It’s alright. I think killing me is the best decision, too.”
The glass had rustled, then, and Anders thought it must have been deliberate. But then Fenris’ feet were in front of him, stained green with the grass, and the light of his lyrium faded, leaving them both wreathed only in the sunlit fog. Anders looked up at Fenris, and he looked like some ancient king, backlit by the bright sky, skin dark and olive against the shimmering silver of his lyrium. “I’m not going to kill you, mage.”
And then there was a dark, calloused hand, silver with lyrium, fingers slender and elegant, thrust into the misty air between them. Anders stared at Fenris, and Fenris’ poker face cracked as he gave him a small, crooked smile. Despite himself, Anders took his hand, letting Fenris pull him easily to his feet.
“I’m going to help.”
*
It started in 9:40 Dragon, when the Circle of Dairsmuid was annulled, and over five hundred mages between the ages of six and seventy were murdered because they were allowed to see their families. It started in 9:40 Dragon, with the rebellion of the White Spire. It started in 9:40 Dragon, when Lord Seeker Lambert declared an end to the Circle of Magi.
It started in a tavern in Nevarra, at a meeting of former slaves and runaway mages. It started with elves, and second-hand weapons, and an apostate with a Fereldan accent who looked like an Ander. It started with an elf from Tevinter with white tattoos that looked like Vallaslin.
It started with rebellion. But that isn’t where it ended.
*
“No, words are a language
It doesn't deserve such treatment
And all my stumbling phrases
Never amounted to anything worth this feeling
All this heaven never could describe
Such a feeling as I'm healing, words were never so useful
So I was screaming out a language
That I never knew existed before.”
wingfic came about after two pictures of anders with wings from different artists which i think i’ve already reblogged? (One and two)
I’m a sucker for wingfic in general and so i dashed together a vague outline for a da2 AU where mages are born with bird wings because why not amirite, but before i could get to the good stuff (the h/c handers) two things happened:
1) as always, my love of worldbuilding took over and i realised hawke’s whole backstory would need to change to justify why a mage hawke (and malcolm and bethany) never got caught prior to da2, and so i wrote a small fic exploring that background which i never republished to AO3, and;
2) @mikkeneko, who is and forever will be the good twin to my evil, wrote the handers h/c fic before i’d gotten more than two paragraphs down and they were infinitely better than anything i could write. it’s on ao3 here if you’re interested: Flight Feathers
For the sake of completeness and for all you wingfic fanatics out there I’ve copypasted the fic mentioned in 1) below. viva the hawke fam feels, i guess!
untitled wingfic
because i’m great at this author stuff
By the time the worst of it was over, the sun had long passed below the horizon, and Malcolm felt as though he had aged another thirty years.
Everything ached from the shoulders down, hours of sitting in one position catching up with him. He had begun at noon, and now his head was clouded and muzzy, his mana slow and sluggish, and he threaded the needle with the last of the catgut and told himself just a few minutes longer. His world was his work, the task at hand the only thing that mattered; he pushed away the ache and the pain and the fear and went back to the healer's mindset, the only one he could rely on. He'd drunk two of the three lyrium potions the Collective had been able to provide him, but he would hold out as long as he could before draining the third.
His patient slept deeply, paler now than at the start. Malcolm set the needlepoint to one edge of the incision, raised his elbow, and shoved; it was blunter now than it had been, used already for the incision on the other side, and the skin layer provided a greater challenge. Eventually it pierced the flesh and he pulled it through, and then it was a simple matter of routine. He could almost have been back in the Gallows, practicing stitch-ups on pigskin under the eye of Enchanter Petrine. Double loop and knot, test for tension, send a pulse of healing magic into the knot to help the healing process, then pass the needle through the flesh again...
The hesitant knock on the door came as he tied the final knot. He cut the thread, set his hand over the wound, and sent the dregs of his mana through it before calling out permission to enter, and by the time the door swung open he was putting his instruments on the unwrapped bit of oilskin, ready for cleaning.
Leandra looked scared, the whites of her eyes wide around her iris, pupils small and shrunken; but she had brought with her a washbasin, wisps of steam curling off the water inside along with the pungent smell of elfroot, and Malcolm felt a wash of fondness for her, his practical gentlewoman.
"I brought some more water," Leandra said, hefting the basin as illustration, her voice cracking and quivering. Malcolm could remember saying those words himself in that same tome, around a decade ago, as Leandra screamed and the midwife unveiled her own instruments. They'd been near Amaranthine at the time, waiting for their child to join them. He glanced at the sweat-and-blood stained figure on the bed. A decade ago, and here they were again, Malcolm, Leandra, and their oldest son, pale and still.
"Thank you, my love," he said, as she set the basin on the night table at the head of the bed, and plunged his hands into its welcoming warmth. The elfroot sent a tingle lacing through his skin as the blood streaked off in great clouds of pink. Maker, everything ached, and how had the gore gotten so far up past his elbows? He drew his hand over his skin, allowing the water to cascade down his arms. "How are the twins?"
Her mouth moved. "Frightened," she said. Her eyes flicked to their son, then to the sheet on the floor, stiff with blood and laden with lumps and pieces of flesh and feathers and bone. "I think Bethany is going to be having nightmares for a while."
"You know I had to," Malcolm said quietly. He rolled his shoulder and winced, partly at the ache in the muscle there and partly for the lightness in the joint. "We talked about this, my love."
"I know," she said, and tried to smile. "We wouldn't've gotten very far if you still had yours. I know that, Malcolm. It doesn't make it any easier to see your child like this."
He could have said *how do you think it feels to be responsible for the butchery?* Or *I endured this myself, and the Warden healer was not half as sympathetic.* Or even *would you rather have the first peasant who caught a glimpse of him go running to the templars?*
But he didn't. He was Malcolm Hawke, apostate, father, and healer. He was not a cruel man. He squeezed out the sponge Leandra had provided, bobbing around on top of the bucket, and set to gently cleansing away the worst of the blood smeared over his son's bare back.
"How long until the sleep spell... wears off?" Leandra reached out to touch the back of their son's neck, her fingertips soft and cautious. "Will there be pain?"
"An hour, and yes," Malcolm said. "No amputation is ever painless, Leandra. But no apostate ever kept their wings and stayed free."
"This could be Carver next, or Bethany," Leandra said. "Or both." She ran a hand over her face. "If only -"
*If only I were not a mage,* Malcolm thought. He couldn't blame her for the thought; he'd had it often enough himself. If only he hadn't passed the curse of magic on down in his blood, if only he'd been born other than he was, if only... but he knew that he would never have met her if not for the magic; he would have stayed in the Free Marches, sowing seeds on his father's farm. He would never have held his children, all three of them, nor laced his fingers with Leandra's as they were pronounced man and wife.
He had feared this from the moment the midwife had passed him the squalling baby, but now that it had arrived, he would survive. They both would. He missed his own wings every day, but he'd had them from the moment of his magic's manifestation through to his escape; Garrett had had them for only a few months. He would adapt, and he would grow up free. That was the best gift he could give his children, all of them.
"Is there anything left for you to do?" Leandra asked, and he glanced down at his hands. His instruments needed to be cleaned and dried, before the blood could rust the bone saw or the blade. He'd agreed with Garrett that they'd bury the wings beneath the rose bush outside; after the Warden-healer had cut his own off she'd thrown them in the campfire like offal. *Part of our deal,* she'd said flatly. You want to be free of the Circles? Can't do that with a huge pair of look-at-me-I'm-a-mage banners stuck to your back.
His stitching was neater than hers, at least. The wounds should heal cleanly, with only two lines of scar tissue to mark where his son's wings should have been, had they lived in the world without Circles or Templars.
"I just need to clean up," he said. "Are you going to stay here, my love?"
Leandra nodded, combing her fingers through Garrett's hair; it stuck out in an unruly mop, dampened with sweat. Garrett had taken after himself, with his wild dark hair and light brown eyes. Malcolm pulled gently at one eyelid, noting the shape of the pupil. Any minute now he'd be back with them, muzzy and hurting but hopefully safer. Leandra bent to press a kiss to a forehead damp with perspiration. "Should I do anything?"
Malcolm slid the last lyrium potion toward her together with a health potion, and watched her eyes widen. "These will help," he said. "The health potion first. The lyrium will make him sick on an empty stomach, so I'll come back with some soup."
He pushed his instruments into the centre of the oilskin and folded it, tying the bundle together with twine. The blade and saw would need to be cleaned and the needles sharpened. The gory hunks of Garrett's wings he wrapped up in the sheet, soaked through; the room stank of blood even though the window stood open. No matter; they'd be moving soon - they'd paused only long enough for this procedure. They were forty-seven miles away from the village in which Garrett had inadvertently manifested his magic by freezing the village duck pond, and that was forty-seven miles too close for Malcolm's comfort.
"Love," Leandra said as he pushed the door open with a boot, and he turned wearily toward her, trying to smile. He always tried to give Leandra his best. He'd've run away from the Circle no matter what, but she'd chosen to give up everything to follow him, and coated in the blood of their eldest child he stood there fully conscious of that fact. Her eyes were wet and glassy, and she stood, squeezing the sponge out. "You have blood on your face. You can't... the twins can't see you like that, Malcolm."
She leaned up and wiped at the bridge of his nose, where he must have scratched an itch at some point during the surgery. The sponge came away red, and Malcolm stooped to kiss her forehead, and she didn't move away. For a moment they stood like that, pressed together, the light from the single oil lamp playing over the pair of them and their son's bedroom stinking like an abattoir. He'd always been told healing was truly the messiest of the schools.
On the bed, Garrett stirred, and Leandra hurried to his side. Malcolm hefted the bloodied remains of his son's wings and thought - not for the first time, and certainly not the last - of his own, the wide brown feathers barred with black. Garrett's had been grey and scruffy; juvenile feathers, and he'd never know his adult plumage, but Malcolm could only hope that without the wings to give him away he'd stay safe, and secret, and live his life in peace.
He thought briefly of Bethany, and Carver, and shivered. Perhaps by the time they had their own children the world would be different. Perhaps mages might be allowed lives outside the walls of the Circle, watched over by templars. Perhaps his children would not have to continue what he had started here, a legacy of butchery in the name of safety.
Malcolm let the door close quietly behind him, leaving Garrett to the tenderness of his mother. This was a far cry from the amputations he'd performed in the Circle, on Tranquil mages passive and newly-branded. It had been a cruelty performed out of love, and not the first of its kind, either. The Maker would forgive him, Malcolm hoped, and perhaps Garrett would too.
They'd move on, sooner rather than later, and leave Garrett's wings buried behind them, under a rosebush. They paid a bloody price for their freedom, but it was kinder by far than the Circles.
Someday he could only hope the entire world would see that.
WIP Ask Game: I want to know what "Ferelden is a mess" is about.
Hah. This was meant to a very silly fic in which Bethany pokes fun at what a fucking mess Ferelden is.
Regardless of who you have on the throne at the start of DAI, Ferelden is full of abandoned fortresses. The thieves take over that one in Crestwood (bad), cultists take over a fortress in Cassandra’s personal question (very bad), and a fucking foreign army AKA the templars take over Theirinfall Redoubt (extremely bad).
Why are there so many abandoned fortresses? Why hasn’t the monarch appointed people to run those parts of the country? Why did the monarch tell the mages they could stay in Redcliffe and then not mobilize the Fereldan Army to block templars from invading their lands and waging war and pillaging the countryside?
What the fuck happened in Ferelden?
Anyway this was going to be a TEOS offshoot, where Alistair, the very depressed and not all that useful king, had not appointed enough people to fill the positions left empty from the Blight, and Bethany, the new Queen, is like, yeah we can and will fix that, these are strategic fortresses that need guarding/governance, let’s go ahead and get our government working again, shall we?
for the WIP ask game: please tell me that "A crying mage in my mansion" is a fenders fic and I also want to know who the "the little mermage" is
Thanks for asking! Yep, it very much is a fenders fic. Fenris runs into a distraught Anders on his way home and ends up taking him with him – he may not be his biggest fan but if Anders keeps wailing and bawling in the middle of Hightown, at night, it’s only a matter of time until he attracts attention, and that wouldn’t be good for any of them. Once there, Anders still won’t calm down and Fenris has no idea how to deal with the crying mage in his mansion.
The little mermage is another fenders fic, in which merprince Fenris is kidnapped as a child, only to return ten years later with silvery lines all over his body and no memory of his past. Mermage Anders is tasked with helping him recover and adapt to his new/old life. Being the only one who has no qualms speaking his mind around him, he quickly becomes Fenris’ only friend… and falls in love with him. But Fenris only has eyes for the shiny prince from the world up there, a world which he is convinced must hold all the answers he cannot find in this supposed home of his.
