The night that Elgar’nan fell, Minrathous was quiet.
Post-Elgar'nan's defeat, after nearly losing each other, Tarquin and Ashur's relationship changes; they find their footing together in the aftermath.
Posted for the @dragonagebigbang, art done by the wonderful and incredibly skilled @gwinaesfer, Through The Dark is now live!
This entire event has been so much fun and so wonderful, and I'm so glad to see our hard work be sent out!! Writing this fic, seeing the art come to life just like I envisioned the scene, sharing angst with Gwin and giggling about it, has all been absolutely fantastic SDFJDBF. I've never been so glad to have signed up for something. I hope people enjoy this like I've enjoyed seeing everyone else's amazing works these last few weeks.
Image Description: a gray background with pink and blue blobs, a photo of Tarquin from Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and text. The text is separated into two separate parts, the titles and the body. The titles are; in pink, "Written for." In blue, "Trans Thedas Fest." In white with a blue outline, "Prompt: Tarquin has a bad day." The body of the text reads:
"A part of him just wanted to come right out and admit the issue—to say that he felt like the shame of losing like that was trying to eat straight through him from the inside out. To admit that it had brought back out all the fears his father had drilled into his head about him proving himself as a man. To tell Ashur he needed someone to tell him he was being an idiot.
But whatever Ashur said wouldn't feel as real if he did. Then it would just be Ashur reassuring him, not him speaking his mind. No matter how much Tarquin knew in his head that Ashur would never lie to him to make him feel better, that Ashur would never feed him false hope, his heart couldn't help but sink at the thought of prodding him to say it.
Fortunately, after years of working together, Ashur already knew how his mind twisted around itself. He could trace Tarquin’s thoughts almost as well as he could the line of Tarquin’s jaw.
He leaned in, their breath mingling, and murmured softly, “you’re too hard on yourself.”
The Archives were quiet when Tarquin finally left his desk.
They always were, this time of night. When the few others working in the cellar with him had already left, when the boots stomping about on the floors above became few and far between, and it was only his little collection of candles still flickering away in the darkness.
Usually, he'd take a few minutes to sit in it before grabbing his things and heading out. His head and his eyes had needed rest for two decades, something him running all over the city at all hours didn't do shit to help with, so he'd long-since learned to take advantage of a moment of peace when he could.
But usually, the only place he had to be after the Archives was his apartment, where he'd sit around twiddling his thumbs until it was time for him to head for the hideout to start his real work.
Tonight, he had a more important goal, one that drove him into the depths of the cellar with a lone candle and purpose to his step.
He passed hundreds of books and papers and maps on the way, interspersed with the occasional artifact crammed in where it probably didn't belong. Here and there, magic-fueled lanterns hung from cobweb-covered chains, inactive because nobody had given enough of a fuck about the report he'd sent in about them nearly a week back.
Ignoring it all, he took a right at the end of one row, boots scuffing against the old stone. There wasn't any reason for him to pay any of it any mind when he knew precisely where he was going, having had already poked around and found what he was looking for. It was amazing what he could get away with down here, especially under the guise of shelving some old file that a Magister had requested to be dug out for him, looked at for all of about five seconds, then promptly sent back without so much as a word.
But it still took another full minute for him to reach the right aisle, even knowing where it was. He slowed his pace as he started down it, not wanting to miss the giant volume of some crumbling Ventus history book that he'd used as a landmark.
Then, halfway down—
"There you are." He muttered, setting his chamberstick on one of the shelves between the book and two crates.
Below it, right where he'd left them, was the stack of papers he'd carefully tucked away hours before.
He didn't need to flip back through to know what he was holding, but he did anyway, glancing over scrawled handwriting to confirm it was the right stack.
And it was, even if it still wasn't anything fancy. Hardly anything novel or particularly important in the grand scheme of things. Just old plans regarding the catacombs from someone who had once tried to map them, sketched illustrations of the passages, notes about where they let out or where they cut off abruptly.
But put into the hands of the Shadow Dragons, it could mean the difference between them succeeding or failing in more missions than Tarquin could ever personally help run.
The thought of how much it could do for them had been more than enough for Tarquin to decide to steal it out from under his bosses' noses.
He stood, mission complete, tucking the papers under his arm and grabbing his candle with a huffed chuckle.
All the pointless work he did for the Templars, all the hours he spent down in the cellar working with old papers and artifacts and the rest of the shit the others didn't want to deal with themselves—it would've been worth it just to be able to keep a bloody roof over his head, but he couldn't deny that there was a specific kind of glee he took from finding something that would help the Shadows.
Every time he did, it felt like shoving a middle finger directly into the face of the old bastards the Shadows were working against. If they were gonna be so high up in their floating towers that they couldn't even see the little people like him, then it was more than his right to take advantage of it, yeah?
And that had never been the sort of effort he'd thought he'd be making when he came to Minrathous, he had to admit, but anything was still better than nothing. Even if all his efforts only managed to pull one brick from the whole fucked up structure, that was still progress.
Besides, he wasn't working alone. Despite everything, he'd found people like him, people who understood him and what he wanted for the world. People who wanted to help him get it.
With all of them tearing at the wall, each digging their nails into a brick until it came loose, then suddenly, the whole bloody thing looked a whole lot weaker.
Especially when he got the opportunity to give them extra tools to help them along.
A smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he turned, starting back towards his desk. Back when he'd first been shoved into the cellar, it'd been because of his attitude. Because he was difficult.
Poor bastards hadn't realized what they were doing, handing him the key to their kingdom all nice and neat, telling him to be sure to lock up when he was done.
They still didn't. Even now, they thought they were getting away with something by tucking him out of sight, where they didn't have to deal with him.
He figured they'd learn soon enough, though he doubted they'd be able to do shit about it by then.
Lifting the chamberstick higher, Tarquin's footsteps echoed off stone, his candle cutting through the dark as he whistled his way across the silent cellar.
