#fwbu

[asaara-writes]

For What Binds Us got its 300th kudos! This was a wonderful milestone to wake up to and I wanted to celebrate a bit! <3

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started writing it. I’d planned for three parts of 5K each, but soon it grew its own legs and turned into a novel-length story (I know 65K is not that long by fanfic standards, but still!). It’s the first novel-length story I’ve completed, and after a pretty bad creative burnout, it felt good to know that I can do this.

It wasn’t easy by any means, but I discovered so much about myself and my process, and I really feel like I leveled up and found my voice as a writer. There are definitely things I’d do differently with it now, but in the end I think it accomplishes what I meant it to. It’s a mess, but it’s a mess with heart!

And most of all, it was a strange and beautiful journey to write from Fenris’s perspective, and one that I ended up relating to myself much more than I anticipated. I didn’t set out to write a story of healing and love and forgiveness, but in the end I think that’s what it grew into.

It’s still a very important story to me, for the reasons above, and I’m touched that it resonated with so many people. It really seems unbelievable that 300 people read and liked it enough to kudos it. Thank you all so much! <3

[asaara-writes]

@badpriestessofbuttsburgh replied to your post “About the character”

Hooooly shit. It took me a second to rememer who Quentin was and then I was like... fuck. Shit.

Sorry, I’m about to ramble at you a whole lot because I love the Amells, and I’ve given this theory quite a lot of thought while writing For What Binds Us. :D I know it’s pretty contentious, and I have no idea if that’s what the writers intended, but I strongly subscribe to the idea that the woman Quentin tries to bring back to life was Revka Amell (the mother of an Amell Warden) and no one can convince me otherwise:

All of Revka’s five children were mages, hinting at a strong magical bloodline on their father’s side as well;

After Revka’s disappearance, her husband left Kirkwall with their remaining children and was supposedly never heard from again;

Quentin’s wife is implied to have been a noble;

Leandra was chosen as a victim specifically because she looked very similar to her (Revka and Leandra were cousins);

There’s a shield with the Amell crest in a chest right next to Quentin’s bed under the foundry.

I know it’s not a perfect theory (could an apostate really marry into one of Kirkwall’s most prominent families and never get found out?), but nothing outright contradicts it either. We know Quentin escaped the Circle of Starkhaven after it burned down, so it’s entirely possible he was found out after leaving Kirkwall with his children, and then as his sanity eroded he had access to a ton of books and volumes about magic, and somehow met Orsino who enabled him.

I wish I’d explored this more in FWBU, and I admit I realized pretty late into that fic what the implications were for an Amell Warden, haha. I know “propensity to becoming a blood mage” is probably not a genetic trait, but there’s a darkness to Fliss Amell that I think fits well with all this thematically, so that also contributed to shaping her character.

Thank you for giving me a reason to ramble about my favourite disaster dynasty! <3

[asaara-writes]

For What Binds Us (5/5: Amabel)

Pairing: Fenris/f!Hawke (Dragon Age II)

Rating: Mature

Summary: My love letter to the Amell family and a study of the intervening years between Fenris and Hawke’s breakup and reunion.

After that strange lucid dream he had on Sundermount, Fenris finally tells Hawke everything his dreams have revealed about the Amell family. Thanks to Varric, he has also managed to get in touch with his sister. Things seem to be falling into place at last …

Warnings: Graphic violence, graphic injury, body horror, minor character death, mentions of suicide and slavery/sexual abuse, and explicit sexual content. As always, my ask box is open if you have any questions!

Notes: Thank you all so much for sticking with me, and I really hope the conclusion delivers! As always, many, many thanks to @sasskarian and @theherocomplex for their invaluable insight and support, and to @blondepomeranian and @myrddinderwydd for all their help. ♥

Revka Amell’s funeral—if it can be called such—is a brief, quiet affair: the Amells are few, and those who remember her, even fewer, which leaves Fenris to accompany Hawke, as out of place as he is.

Upon his return from Sundermount, he told her everything the dreams had revealed about the Amells; Hawke listened, then took notes, then made inquiries, just as he knew she would. Never one to let sleeping mabaris lie, Hawke, as she says herself. Once he told her about the dreams, he knew they would be mere dreams no longer. Now they flow forth like a river undammed, sweeping things and people in their swell, as real as any other force of the waking world.

Few things matter to her more than family, after all, even when all that makes it so is a name harking back to the Fourth Blight. At her behest, Aveline unearthed the files of Damion Amell’s suspicious arrest and lifelong imprisonment, and Varric knew just which strings (and purse-strings) to pull to dig past the official story: Fausten Amell ruined himself trying to exonerate his son, emptying his coffers into Kirkwall’s underbelly before dying tangled up in a web of silent connections, slippery with the grease of so many palms. All to favour the ascension of Marlowe Dumar—whose weak rule would benefit the underworld—to the throne of the Viscount, and keep the Amells as far away from it. In the end, evidence supporting Damion’s suspected smuggling activities was scant at best, and as provisional viscount, Bran was only too eager to extend him a posthumous pardon if it meant getting Hawke out of his office and avoiding a scandal.

In the wax and wane of a single moon, she did what Fausten could not in a lifetime, and cleared both the son’s name and the father’s debts.

Reaching out to Revka’s children took her the entire summer and then some, however, in a slow dance of unanswered letters and disinterested replies: the eldest died years ago, the Circle of Ostwick regrettably informed her; one of the twins is now a wanted apostate, and the other, not allowed to leave Cumberland under any circumstances; and nothing is known of the youngest, whose trace was long lost in the constant shuffle of papers on a careless cleric’s desk.

For her part, Warden-Commander Solona Amell has mourned her life before Kinloch Hold aeons ago, her letter says, and so much more since, she has no need to revisit old wounds.

A strange funeral, then, without a body or ashes, without anyone even left to remember a woman long become froth on the cresting waves that break upon the cliffs. Had her memory not surfaced to wash ashore in a stranger’s dream, years later, Revka Amell would have gone unmourned.

Watching the white lilies on the altar, gilded with candlelight, Fenris is glad for this one belated kindness, at least.

But Hawke is not mourning Revka. Face set in the hard lines of grief, she holds one hand closed around her mother’s locket, thumbing the little songbird on its seashell branch, while Sebastian intones the Canticle of Trials in his pleasant Starkhaven brogue. Fenris does what little he can, and keeps his hand twined with hers as they sit side by side in the Chantry, letting his thoughts drift away in the warm gold of Sebastian’s voice.

When Fenris steals another look at Hawke, her lashes are wet but her brow is smooth again, something like forgiveness slowly sliding out of her grief’s tight fist. She only lets go of his hand afterwards, once they stand before the bronze of Andraste presiding over the steepled hall of the Chantry. For an instant he thinks Hawke will drop to her knees in prayer, but instead she tightens her hold around her mother’s locket and brings it to her brow. The sight of her mouthing in silence, one pale hand emerging from the folds of her lace shawl, is almost disconcerting in its intimacy, and Fenris lets his gaze wander away, leaving her to her contemplation. Above them, the prophet’s sculpted visage shines in the quivering flame of the hundred candles at her feet, melted wax pooling scarlet around the stumps. The stained-glass windows clad the listing light of dusk in blues, purples, and reds, threading gentle colours into Hawke’s hair and the freshwater pearls beading her shawl.

It is easy to rummage in his pockets for a handful of coppers and drop them in the donation box by the candles; even easier to join his hands together and bend his forehead to his fingertips. What comes next, however, is not so easy, and his mind gropes for a prayer. He thinks of his sister, toiling in a workshop somewhere in Qarinus, but words fail him, and in the end he settles for the few lines from Sebastian’s canticle that still linger in his mind:

I am not alone. Even As I stumble on the path With my eyes closed, yet I see The Light is here.

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[asaara-writes]

For What Binds Us (4/5: Solona)

Pairing: Fenris/f!Hawke (Dragon Age II)

Rating: Mature

Summary: My love letter to the Amell family and a study of the intervening years between Fenris and Hawke’s breakup and reunion.

Fenris now knows what has been causing his dreams of the Amell family, but instead of bringing him solace, it only reawakens some of the old ghosts still haunting him. At a loss for answers, he seeks help outside the city.

Warnings: Graphic violence, death (including non-graphic animal death), slavery, and abuse (physical, psychological, and sexual). My ask box is open if you have any questions!

Notes: Argh, I’m so, so sorry for the long wait! This chapter took me way out of my comfort zone, and wrangling it into submission was very much a challenge. Many, many thanks to @sasskarian, @blondepomeranian, @myrddinderwydd and @theherocomplex for their invaluable help. ♥

Two years dead, yet Hadriana lives on in his dreams with such merciless clarity Fenris might as well still be in Tevinter, grovelling at her feet. “Clean this mess, slave,” she commands, but there is nothing to clean—though he does not dare say it—at least until she opens her hand around the stem of her wine glass.

It shatters against the floor, splashing the marble crimson.

“Beautiful,” someone says under their breath as Fenris starts picking up the glass shards. The iron-wrought chains and clasps of the saarebas collar bite across the lyrium etched into his skin, and its weight is such that he strains to keep his balance. “How did it not kill him?”

He relegates their conversation to a dark buzz at the edge of his awareness as he cleans up, but manages little more than wiping red arches across the marble. Dark rivulets ooze between the tiles and drip down his fingers to patter against the floor.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder blade, and Fenris flinches despite himself. “Now, now, my pet,” his master says, breath hot on his ear. “Don’t be shy. Let them admire you.”

He has no choice but to let them touch the brands and stroke his hair, take his chin between two fingers to turn his head this way and that, stifle laughs as one brazen magister inquires just how low the markings go. The searing heat of their breaths and fingertips slithers along their skin; someone’s tongue slides up the shell of his ear, wet and warm, and Fenris forces his face to remain blank over the pressing urge to pull away. His hands are full of broken glass.

No one seems to mind the red spill on the floor, even as it splashes at their feet to seep into their slippers and splatter the hem of their robes.

No one except Hadriana.

He would much rather face her anger than his master’s, but he will pay for disobeying her command, he knows, when she flashes her blue eyes at him and grabs him by the arm. “You don’t need to leave, Fenris,” she says, and it’s not Hadriana’s voice but it’s too late; he already has her pressed up against the wall, his hand clenched around her heart, and she gives one short gasp before crumbling into his arms, lifeless.

Fenris starts awake, his room awash in the pale, pulsing light of his brands. He kicks the damp tangle of sheets off his legs as the lyrium goes dormant again before stumbling through the dark to fiddle with the latch of the window, bile burning up his throat. A crisp, earthy breeze slips into the room, and he welcomes its cold touch on his sweaty, feverish skin. Beyond the droplets beading the glass panes, the overgrown garden glimmers in the haze of a peeking, pearlescent moon, leaves and branches shivering under the soft sigh of a drizzle.

No blood on his hand, of course, when his eyes adjust to the darkness: just the lyrium striating his hand like the veins of a leaf, gathering at his wrist where he wore Hawke’s favour for so long. He can still feel the slippery weight of her heart in his palm before it burst inside his fist, see the last gleam of blue fade between her lashes.

In the night, the scarlet silk is just an innocuous slash darker than the dark. Fenris has left it on the table where he found it earlier that day, folded around a note: Almost as good as new, it read in the unmistakable, confident loops of Hawke’s hand. Sorry I missed you.

The ripped-out threads of the embroidered crest have been pulled back in, the worst of the stains cleaned, and the tears stitched back together, albeit unevenly. It even smells like her again, Summerday flowers masking the magic that thrums inside her fingertips, and Fenris chokes on a hot, bitter surge of anger at the memory of it. Hadriana is dead, and Danarius hasn’t shown himself in more than five years, but even with Tevinter half a world away, magic always dogs him, always taints him, and now the stain has even spread to his dreams. How can he be surprised, then, that Hawke too would claim some part of him for herself, given half a chance? How could he not see that her magic would come between them and fester?

And of course—of course he only sees it far too late: he has gotten so used to the sticky-sweet smell of rot in his every breath that he only ever notices it once everything lies dead and wilted around him.

No longer. He will cut out the infection at the root if he must.

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[asaara-writes]

In FWBU news, because that’s a thing:

the final chapter continues the trend of being the Longest Part Yet (honestly, thank god it’s the last one)

I have NSFW art to go with the long-awaited FenHawke reunion :D

I’ve had the perfect song playing at the perfect moment twice, which has reduced me to tears both times and sort of really makes me want to create a mix for it?

barring any last-minute meltdown, the update should be tomorrow night

somebody hold me I’m kind of freAKING OUT ABOUT THIS

[asaara-writes]

Fenris feels it, then, familiar, beloved: a mote of Hawke’s magic woven into scarlet silk, a fleck of gold like the sun shining through a pinprick in the fluttering gossamer of the Veil, wreathing dreams and memories around his wrist. The lyrium branded into his skin stirs awake at their touch, soft as a bird’s wing, to catch them in flight: the heady fragrance of white lilies on a windowsill, bright cherries hanging off twin sets of ears, dizzying turns on a glittering ballroom floor, chestnut curls coming loose after a long day, laughing lips stained purple with Aggregio Pavali.

The Veil shakes loose, welcoming, wide open like Hawke’s arms, and all Fenris has to do is step into her embrace.

This ... probably makes very little sense without context, but The Wolf and the Swallow came on while I was writing it and I started tearing up, so I’ll take it as a good sign. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[asaara-writes]

For What Binds Us (3/5: Mara)

Pairing: Fenris/f!Hawke (Dragon Age II)

Rating: Mature

Summary: My love letter to the Amell family and a study of the intervening years between Fenris and Hawke’s breakup and reunion.

A still-grieving Hawke fends off the Qunari invasion, but not without great cost to herself. In the welcome reprieve that follows, a chance encounter or two allow Fenris to uncover a great deal about the Amells as well as about Hawke herself.

Notes: Many thanks to @sasskarian and @blondepomeranian for reading this over on such short notice! Also, this fic now has music to go with it! I was lucky enough to win @bettydice’s recent piano giveaway, and she came up with this utterly gorgeous theme for the Amell family, so please give it a listen!

Thank you all for sticking with me, and I hope this is worth the wait. ♥

Hawke means to die at the Arishok’s hands.

No one sees it then, of course. Not even Fenris. Every thin-lipped face ringing the Keep, the glint of gold leaf on the accursed Tome of Koslun, the dent left on Aveline’s breastplate by a Qunari spearhead—Fenris sees all that and more, but Hawke means to die at the Arishok’s hands, and Fenris does not see it.

Strange that he does not, when moonlight falls dead and pale on her brow, etched with that dark thought. Instead he sees Dumar staring back at him, eyes empty in the middle of his severed head, and in their glassy reflection he catches a glimpse of another reality: had Leandra not disgraced the Amell name, had she not left Kirkwall with the father of her unborn child, it’s the head of her own father, Lord Aristide, that would have rolled down the stone steps of the Keep that night, crowned with the iron circlet of the Viscount. Leandra’s daughter would have been whisked away to the Gallows upon coming into her magic, never to know her true father or bear his name. Would she have been the same woman, then, without twenty Fereldan winters to make her heart twice as warm? Without her freedom and her family to fight for all her life?

In that split second, Fenris knows otherwise. Had she been an Amell in name as well as blood, Hawke would be just one more corpse littering the city while her family was herded into the Keep and slaughtered like cattle by the Qunari—and after setting sails in the blood sheeting the streets, Isabela would never have returned to Kirkwall to stand up to the Arishok. “If you’re going to duel anyone, duel me,” she spits now, clutching the spear shafts slanted crosswise in front of her.

The Arishok darts a mere glance in her direction. “You are not basalit-an,” he answers, upper lip twisted in contempt. “You are unworthy.”

Fenris finds himself wishing—hateful, wretched thought—that Hawke would leave Isabela to face her comeuppance in Par Vollen, but Hawke wouldn’t be Hawke if she did, and he expects no less than the answer she gives. “Let’s dance,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a well-timed smile.

If he even notices the shadow that flits across her face then, he gives it no more thought than a scud of clouds before the moon. But it is the same as any other shadow, stretching as the night deepens to cover his dreams like a black film.

In his dreams, the Arishok towers over Hawke, and in the shadow he casts over her, Fenris sees the ogre that crushed her sister’s skull under its enormous hand, a slab of veiny dark skin and lank hair. He sees the squirming mass of the darkspawn clawing their way out of the ground, the corruption sticking to every blade of grass in Lothering and defiling the memory of everything she’s ever loved: the cellar where her father taught her her first spells, the orchard where she played hide-and-seek with the twins, the thatched roof of the barn where she kissed the milkmaid once. In that shadow he sees the disease that took her father, the madman that sewed her mother’s head onto another woman’s neck, he sees the slope of his own shoulders as he left her room that night, he sees hunger and despair and every other fear that lurks in the pit of her stomach now set free—

In his dreams, Fenris sees what Hawke saw that night in the Keep: the Arishok, moonlight silvering the tines of his horns, and a way out.

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[asaara-writes]

FWBU, because of course, and 3, 4, 14, and 15. *chinhands*

3. What’s your favorite line of narration?

Ooh. I think this line from part 4:

Magic is a wish come true, he hears again, and at last he understands: what binds them is far more than the slash of red at his wrist—it ripples eternal in the secret rivers of the Fade, borne on swift, silent streams like lilies turned to seafoam, a silken scarf become smoke upon Mara’s pyre, and beyond the Hunterhorns, beyond the ramparts of the Warden fortress at Weisshaupt, the fragrance of a red rose kept ever blooming by magic.

4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

Probably this line that Hawke tells Fenris in part 2 after her mother was murdered:

“Maybe you’re the lucky one after all, not remembering who you left behind,” Hawke says, and the words sink into his stomach like a blade.

She knows that Fenris can’t be considered lucky by any stretch of the imagination, so to me the fact that she tells him this and probably believes it at the time shows how Leandra’s death has wounded something vital inside her. At this point Fenris and Hawke have seen the worst out of each other and can begin healing as individuals and also mending their relationship.

… And as silly and inconsequential as it is, I’m still laughing about this exchange between Gamlen and Hawke from part 3:

Hawke looks up at Gamlen just as he snatches the note out of her hand. “Where did your wallop mallet come from?”

He gives a shrug. “How in blazes would I know?”

“Let me guess. When a mommy wallop mallet and a daddy wallop mallet love each other very much—”

“Spare us your juvenile wit,” Gamlen grumbles while Fenris attempts to disguise his laughter as a cough. “And for the last time, girl, stay out of my damned business.”

14. Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

Not on purpose, since the themes only became apparent to me fairly late in the process, but I think if there’s anything to take away from this story it’s to always be kind and patient with yourself. It’s something that I struggle with every day – I constantly feel that I’m lagging behind and that I should be a much better and more prolific writer by now, but sometimes things just need to happen in their own time and I think that FWBU illustrates that. Even as Fenris mourns the three years he could have spent with Hawke, he’s also aware that he needed to heal and become his own person; that time wasn’t wasted by any means, and I like that he forgives himself and that it all works out for him in the end.

15. What did you learn from writing this fic?

WHERE TO START. I got to try my hand at plenty of things with this story: I’d never really written fight scenes before, and I got to play around with the sort of amorphous dream sequences I love. I also learned to take risks instead of the easy way out, and for someone who always saw herself as a hardened outliner, I learned that there’s something to be said for letting the story take you where it will.

I love really lush, crisp, and evocative prose -- it’s definitely something I aim for in my writing, and I feel that I've gotten a lot closer to it with this fic ... but rereading the last part I also feel that I’ve been overdoing it at times, to the point where Fenris’s character voice suffers a lot because of it. I hope that I’ll be able to better dose it moving forward and come out of it with a better awareness of what I'm trying to say and how to say it.

And lastly, I learned what happens when I try to push myself past my limits. I hope that I’ll be able to better recognise the warning signs in the future so that I know when to take a break and take better care of myself.

Ask me questions about my fics!