#culloway

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Butch Anna culpepper

[warpedlegacy]

Fluffuary Day 3 - Trust

This one goes out to the lovely @a11sha11fade, who graciously allowed me to borrow her Elloway Lavellan for this one! 

She leaves often. When it is part of her role as Inquisitor, he worries - of course he worries - but he understands it is inevitable. Necessary. When it is of her own volition, however… Those days are harder. 

It took many fraught conversations, and - admittedly - more reassurances than he was due, for her to convince him that it was not a reflection on him or anyone else. Simply a necessity of a different kind. One she must pursue from time to time. 

To be alone. To meditate. To find her peace. 

And yet every time he watches her disappear into the horizon, he can’t help the dark thoughts that rise like bile in the back of his mind - this time she’s not coming back. It’s foolish. It’s selfish. It’s based in no evidence - except the constant ebb and flow of tragedy his sins have brought upon him. 

Still he worries. Of course he worries. It is perhaps the one thing he knows best. A lifetime trapped within shackles of his own creation–No! Stop that! How many times has Elloway smoothed away those fears? Held his face in the warmth of her gaze and her hands and whispered love to shrink away the doubt. Endlessly patient. 

He can be patient for her. He can trust. For her, he can do that much, at least. Would that he could do more… 

It’s that thought that finally spurs him to action, after she has gone on one such peace-seeking sojourn. He can do more, and so he does. He has any mail not specifically marked for “Inquisitor’s eyes only” redirected to his desk. He ensures the gardeners have the resources they need. He swallows his guilt and does his best to get enough sleep each night, despite his whole body twitching with uncertainty. 

So that she can trust him enough to leave. Leave, and return, knowing it will all be waiting for her. He will be waiting. 

“Welcome back,” he says when she does, strolling into his office with her calm smile that seems to hold a secret. “I trust your journey was peaceful?”

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do you have any more hc about the grace & anna dynamic. I love the idea of the two of them so much you're so big brained for that

I can’t say too much without spoiling a WIP of mine, but here are a few of my Grace and Anna headcanons!

They met because Anna wanted a vocalist for a song she was working on and someone brought up Grace as a possibility

That’s what initially brought them together, but their shared status as women in Sander Cohen’s arts scene led to them remaining close

(I’ve never believed that Sander Cohen would have been a particularly big Grace Holloway stan, and I believe that feeling was mutual. If Grace didn’t like Ryan or Fontaine, then there’s no way she thought very highly of Cohen)

After that initial collab, the two popped up in each other’s songs over and over again, to the point that “Anna and Grace” could almost be its own entity separate from both their solo work

Their partnership wasn’t conducive to either of them achieving broad success (again largely because of Cohen), but it did net them a devoted cult following in Rapture’s anti-establishment scene

Grace was always adamant about not using Anna’s connections to further her own career, and Anna did her best to respect that wish, even if a part of her wanted to help her friend achieve the success she deserved

They frequently attended each other’s performances

Anna was fond of putting on variety concerts that showcased artists who hadn’t earned Cohen’s stamp of approval. When she wasn’t performing in them (and sometimes when she was) Grace would often help organize these events

It was during these concerts that Grace met Jasmine and Anna met James. The four of them would go out for drinks after a show sometimes, but they never ended up becoming a tight-knit friend group

After James was kidnapped, Grace abruptly cut contact with Anna, both for her friend’s sake (she didn’t want Anna in trouble for associating with her while Ryan and Sullivan were still on her case) and her own (because Anna was number one on Sander Cohen’s hit list). Anna worried she’d been taken too until she heard about Grace doing concerts at the Limbo room again

They got in touch again through letters and radio calls, so Grace invited her to one of these concerts

The invitation was partially Lamb’s idea, because she was angling to get Anna on the family’s side through her connection to Grace

It didn’t work. Anna thought the family was Saturnine levels of fucked-up freaks when she met them and she had no problem telling Grace that

When she heard Anna was criticizing the family to one of its most loyal disciples, Lamb pressured Grace to cut Anna off for good

After that, they never saw each other again. Grace stopped going to Anna’s shows or inviting her to her own and stopped sending letters, care packages, or radio messages

Despite Lamb’s insistence that Anna was out to weaken the family, Grace couldn’t totally ice her friend out of her life. She’d still listen to Anna’s songs on the radio, and she treasured every letter, package, and radio message she got from her even if she no longer responded to them

But Grace had been out of touch with Anna for almost two years by the time Eleanor came to live with her

She only found out about Anna’s murder over the radio, and couldn’t even mourn her publicly for a decade

Years later, when the girls are home and she’s had a moment to breathe, Grace sets up a little memorial in her garden for all the friends she lost in Rapture who never received a proper funeral.

Anna’s got her own dedicated stone in that garden, decorated with the notes of the first song they worked on together

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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter two of What A Little Moonlight Can Do is now up!

[journey-tothesurface]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

culloway is real now!

[president-homewrecker]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Anna Culpepper/Grace Holloway Characters: Anna Culpepper, Grace Holloway (BioShock) Additional Tags: Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Situationships Summary:

Every Friday night, Anna Culpepper visits Grace Holloway's apartment. What happens next is never certain, never the same.

Never enough.