#m!tabris

[artofmisi]

my newest warden, cyran tabris! a serious, responsible lad who is very worried about leaving his dad alone

[manatobi]

Fish Chowder

*Revised

まさかこれが料理本にピックアップされるなんて思わなんだ。

[baejax-the-great]

Zevran x Tabris (T)

Read on AO3

~

“This will break him.”

Zevran was waiting in their suite, a concerned look on his face. Of course he already knew what Darrian had decided. He’d spoken of it to no one, spent the day gathering information, smiling at nobles who would have kicked him into the mud not six months ago, lied his face off, and Zevran knew. It was the only decision, really. No other options worked.

Darrian sighed, pulling at the buckles of his chest plate. “He will rise to the occasion.”

“Will he?”

The plate clanged as it hit the stone floor. “Fuck, Zevran, my decisions cannot always reflect the wellbeing of Alistair.”

Zevran picked up his chest plate, brushing it off with feigned indifference. “It is his future.” He hung it over the armor rack with a pointed look.

His and everyone else’s. Darrian sighed. “He’ll be safer here than as a Warden. Warm bed, good food, as much as he likes whenever he likes. Cushy, really. Better than what most get in life.” He knew he was only trying to convince himself, because it wasn’t what Zevran meant at all, and it wasn’t even working. Darrian wasn’t convinced. “It’s the fucking Blight, and I need someone on the throne I can trust.”

Zevran hopped on their bed and leveled him with a skeptical stare. “I understand Anora has indicated a willingness to support you. Maybe even to support him.”

Yes, he’d spoken to her at length. She was willing to marry Alistair as long as it kept her head on her shoulders and crown on her head. But Darrian had seen what good her rule did for the country. Grew up in the alienage just down the road from Her Royal Majesty and Her Majesty’s court. If the rumors were true and she was the power behind the throne, Darrian was less than impressed.

“Anora is either evil or incompetent.”

“That seems a little simplistic. She’s a politician. She can be both simultaneously.”

Darrian was in no mood. “Her father was selling my family from the alienage right under her perfect little nose. Either she allowed this to happen, didn’t know about it, or couldn’t stop it. Evil incompetence as you say.” He scoffed. Like he’d let someone like that influence Alistair. Like he would throw away a chance to make it better. “Either she allowed the attack on Highever, or she couldn’t stop it. Either she allowed Vaughan to—” He took a breath. What would that asshole say if he knew where Darrian was now? His foul actions set him on the path that had him choosing the new monarch of Ferelden.

Still, it was no reason to shout at Zevran. He wasn’t angry at him. Darrian swallowed. “So either she made the choice to let it happen and she’s just as wicked as her father, or she was too incompetent to stop any of it, and she’s no better than Alistair in that regard.”

Zevran nodded, and at least here he seemed to agree. But he wasn’t done advocating for Alistair. “And the army? The Freemen of Ferelden are picky about their leaders. Who is to say they will follow him?”

“You think anyone who has seen Alistair on the battlefield will find him lacking? He doesn’t need those armies when has mine.” Darrian waved a hand in the air. “Anyway, Anora’s own army helped put her under house arrest. They don’t answer to her, but to Loghain, and he’ll die for his crimes regardless. And she is on even footing with Alistair, and I am certain Alistair would never sell my father to a magister.”  

“You have thought about this thoroughly,” Zevran hedged. He patted the empty spot on the bed next to him, and Darrian kicked off his boots before climbing up. “You are right, of course. Or at least, I am convinced. But I cannot help but think of Alistair. After all this time together, I know this is not what he wants.”

“Did you want to be born destitute?” Darrian asked, settling Zevran against his chest. “Did I want to be born in an alienage? I think I would have made a great farmhand.” Zevran snorted, and Darrian ran his fingers through his hair until he settled. “We play the hand we’re dealt. That’s all. He’ll rise to the occasion,” Darrian repeated. He has to. There was no other choice.

[pigeontheoneandonly]

The Birthday

The Birthday

So here is a bittersweet little thing I wrote because Dragon Age won’t leave me alone this week.

NB: It is the year after the Kirkwall rebellion.  Anders and Briar Hawke are hiding out in Amaranthine, and Dae Tabris has, of course, put Anders to work, as if nothing at all amiss has occurred. Not having played either of those games in many years, I’m sure I’ve borked Anders’ voice.  Also, do not ask me about the early timeline; I think we all just do our best trying to reconcile Awakenings and DA2.

“We’re stopping here a moment.”  Daeroavain Tabris, Warden-Commander of Ferelden, Hero of the Fifth Blight, and Arl of Amaranthine, pushed into the small shop just off the main square.  

Warden Anders trailed after him, lowering his hood as the door shut and cut off the steaming cold. Weak winter light filtered through the windows where the snow accumulation softened its edges.  “A toy shop?”

“It’s Wintermarch,” he said, as if that explained it.  He picked up a wooden soldier and scrutinized it, before setting it down and reaching for a bag of marbles.  

Anders glanced around the wares, awkward, and wishing they’d just get on with their errand, which was meeting with the city watch about some odd cattle killings they thought could be darkspawn.  “You have a nephew, or something?”

“Or something.” Distracted.  “You were a kid when they took you to the tower, right?”

“What?”  He blinked.  “Yes.  I was twelve.”

“Fuck.  I thought you were younger.  When did you know you were a mage?”

“That’s blunt.”

The look Dae gave him was pure exasperation.  “Two months underground, no baths and eating shit I don’t want to think about too hard, looking for that damn dwarf, and this is what you balk at?”

The Warden-Commander was one of the very few people in Thedas who could make Anders feel even slightly sheepish.  He stuffed his hands in his pockets.  “Eight.”

“Eight. That’s perfect.”  He held up a box emblazoned with an illustration of topsy-turvy glassware.  “Would you have liked an alchemy kit?”

Anders simply stared.  Dae looked at the box.  “No?”

“What are you on about?” he asked, patience running dry.

“I’m trying to buy a birthday gift for an eight-year-old mage.”  He tilted his head.  “Well, overwhelmingly likely a mage, in any case.”

“What, some kid trapped in the Circle?” It wasn’t that he thought child mages were undeserving. It was that he couldn’t imagine Dae knowing one well enough to undertake this errand.  The Circles were a mess these days, anyway.  Breaking down right and left.  It was what he’d wanted, but at the same time, somehow not.  Hawke had been right about that—nothing ever fell out the way you planned.  It just kept going.

Dae scoffed at that idea.  “You clearly haven’t met his mother, if you think she’d let him end up there.  She grew up luring templars to their deaths for kicks.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never introduced me to to this charming lady.”

“I would, if I had the faintest idea where she is.  You’d like her but she’d surely hate you.  You shouldn’t feel badly, though.  She hates everyone.”  He turned towards a shelf stacked with games, each piece carefully stained or painted. “A chess set is boring, right?”

“If she hates you, why are you buying her kid a gift?”

He smiled, to himself more than anything.  “Because she was one of my dearest friends.”

His brow furrowed. Verbal fencing wasn’t much like him, either.  “Come to think of it, how are you going to deliver this gift, if you don’t know where she is?”

“I’m not.”  

“That makes no sense.”

He shifted his weight, picking up a chess piece, contemplating it without really seeing it. “I’ve never met him.  His birthday would be sometime this month, so I just… get him something every year.”

“I don’t—”  Then he really saw Dae, staring down at the rook.  Oh.  Oh.

He put the piece back.  “Don’t think I don’t know how stupid it is.  There’s… simply not anything else I can do.”

Standing in the middle of the shop, comparing various toys and hunched in on himself with a feigned nonchalance so unlike him, Dae didn’t look so much like any of the things he actually was.  Just a shorter than average elf in worn armor and mud on his boots, staring down a hopeless task.

Dae backed him against the templars when they first met.  Barely knew him, no questions asked, just handed him a permanent way out. Like it was nothing.  He mentioned the dumb story about Mr. Wiggums, exceptionally careful to not make a big deal of how he was his only real friend and how hard it was to lose him, and the next thing he knew Dae somehow found a kitten and told him to take care of it, as if it were a big favor.  Come to that, he never saw him angrier than when he got back from being frog-marched to Weisshaupt after years of avoiding it, only to find the stand-in they sent had made Anders give him up.

When he and Briar fled Kirkwall, not a friend left in the world and and any number of people wanting them dead, Dae welcomed him back like he’d never left, greeted Hawke like an old friend, and stated flat out that the templars hadn’t managed to take the Keep yet but they were welcome to try.

“Here,” he said, pulling down something from an adjacent display.  “It’s a whirligig.  Stomp on the pedal, here, and some kind of clockwork makes it fly.  I think he’d like that.”

[jewish-gay-elves]

Doomed Love 2/?

AO3 Link

Zevran and Daolin have an odd relationship. These documents were collected to try to understand what exactly they were doing after the Fifth Blight and the destruction of Amaranthine.

Words: 3431, Chapters: 2/?, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of the Daolin Tabris: The Family You Don't Choose

Fandoms: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Zevran Arainai, Male Tabris, Male Warden, Anders Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Warden, Zevran Arainai/Tabris, Zevran Arainai/Male Warden, Zevran Arainai/Male Tabris Additional Tags: this is a bunch of like letters or just documentation following my warden post-blight, and post amaranthine, idk how long it's going to be, Dialogue Drabble, talking about the Taint

[Overheard conversation between the Hero of Ferelden, Daolin Tabris, and Antivan Crow Master, Zevran Arainai, Skyhold Keep, 9:41 Dragon]

“Zev you just don’t understand okay?!? It’s different!” “Are you hoping that death will finally take you away from me?” “Zevran please I didn’t mean it like that, I just-” “Then how did you mean it, hmm? Because hearing one’s lover say ‘my life should not matter’ is not something that they desire hearing,”

“Zev no I just meant. It doesn’t matter, you’re right, I won’t say it again. You just scared me,” “Oh no, my Warden, I know when you are avoiding something and you are not going to avoid this. I scared you? What makes your life so indispensable? What makes you inconsequential to me?” “Love, please, let us drop this. I don’t want to fight with you,” “We have been dropping these since we arrived at Skyhold. Brasca mi amor no puedes esconder este. Tell me, my Warden, what are you so afraid of?” “I’m afraid of the Taint!” “Lo siento.¿Qué?” “The Taint, Zevran. This is what I am so afraid of. This is why you cannot throw your life away for mine for I already threw it away for a cause I didn’t believe in,” “Explain, now,” “I’ve told you of how I received my Warden abilities,” “The blood of darkspawn, you are immune to it now,” “Not quite,” “What do you mean not quite, amor, you cannot stop like that. You’ve been hiding this from me so just, explain!” “The Taint, it eventually, I have learned, eats at us from the inside out. From the moment we ingest it, it settles into our system and starts destroying us. Alistair told me not long before I’d met you, after we had already been on the run. He said I had about thirty years, give or take. Thirty years until finally the corruption has eaten away at my insides until the Blight is the only thing left in me. Then, once it is my time, I am to go to the Deep Roads for my last battle against the darkspawn. ‘In death, sacrifice,’” “Amor, I-” “So that, is why you cannot throw your life for mine, Zevran. If I were to lose you and live my last twenty years alone, I would kill myself before I hit the thirty year mark,” “No, there has to be another way, amor-” “That is why I asked you to come with me to Skyhold, because after the start of the Mage-Templar War, a mage who had previously been counted amongst the Wardens, called this place her home,” “What? She found a cure of some sort? How do you know? Does it actually work? Who is she-,” “It doesn’t matter Zev, she’s gone. Gone with the mages to rebuild somewhere in secret until they can prove they are self-sustaining, as the Inquisitor asked,” “No, I refuse to sit by, not now. How could the Inquisitor just not tell you their location? Surely he knows,” “If he does, he refuses to tell, said I need to show a proficiency for the arcane before I can know the location,” “Brasca! Él es un burro! Nosotros necesitamos encontrar un camino! Por favor, yo puedo no mirarse tu fallecerse,” “I’m sorry Zevran I’ve been trying I swear, I promise. I even thought about finding Avernus’ notes I just, I don’t know what to do anymore,” “Shh shh no no amor, I am not angry with you. That is a lie, I am angry you did not tell me sooner but, I understand why. I have not exactly told you every dirty secret of the Crows now have I? We need a way to find this Warden who is no longer a Warden. We need a mage,” “Shame that Wynne isn’t kicking us around any longer,” “Hush, I am thinking amor, where did Morrigan disappear to?” “She and Kieran disappeared into the eluvians I imagine. I wish I could have talked to him some more,” “You will amor, I promise, we just need a mage who would understand what we are doing and why,” “Well I know Velanna’s still at Vigil’s Keep, but I doubt she’d want to help her runaway knife-ear commander,” “Wait, wait, wait, wasn’t there another mage at Vigil’s Keep you spoke of to me? What was his name? The salaciously cheeky one with all the glittery jewelry he could have been a crow himself? The one who originally took care of the obnoxiously adorable kitten left with the grumpy looking man” “You mean Anders? Love, I have no idea where he is, especially after the mess we heard about Kirkwall,” “You trained him did you not? I remember him to be a creature of habit, he can’t have changed that much since,” “It’s been ten years, I-I don’t know Zev,” “We have to try, perhaps Leliana might have something for us,” “It can’t hurt to ask, no,” “I swear, I am not letting this Taint take you. We will find a cure,” “Just like that, we’re going to find the most wanted man in Thedas?” “Ten years ago, just like that we were going to stop a Blight, I believe this will be a bit easier,” “I love you,” “I know,”

[The agent who had been merely passing by at the time of the conversation promptly saw it best to report to Nightingale and leave it to his superior]

[lyrium-lavellan]

S A V I O R

Falon Tabris - Grimy City Boy™, in love with a bog witch and they have a kid together. A “Glass Half Empty” kinda guy, but still charming in his own antisocial, pessimistic way. Floofy! ~ 🌌

[bloodwrit]

Some nights are worse than others, pulling up old fears and mixing them with new ones. But they have each other, and that’s enough. 

(Zevran x River Tabris) 

[tallmansions]

They Make a Mean Old-Fashioned Here Chapter 2: Anticipation

Fandom: Dragon Age

Rating: T, but somewhere between T and M

Pairing: M!Tabris x Alistair

Word Count: 4323

How had he ever managed to look Mr. Tabris in the eye without stuttering when he was shiny black shade-free?

The office offered its usual clicks and taps and beeps when the elevator spat Alistair onto his floor. He glared at its clunky shutting doors before slinging his raincoat over his shoulder and stomping as quietly he could to his cubicle.

A building full of programmers, engineers, security specialists, industrial designers, and bosses of each of those departments, and no one could make the main elevator run even a tad smoother.

Not that Alistair had filed a work request, himself. One of these days, though…

“Alistair,” a warm voice greeted him. Alistair, for his credit, did not jump back into attention, but he did startle a few dripping raindrops off his coat.

“Duncan,” Alistair smiled back. It was a lot easier to call his boss by his first name than it was to call Mr. Tabris. At the thought of his unlikely bar companion—once and once only—he managed to keep his features schooled and eyes on the man. Well, the man’s beard, at least.

“We missed you at the party last week,” Duncan noted with genuine sadness, rubbing the salt-and-pepper beard on his chin.

It really was an impressive beard. Alistair would grow one himself if he could manage just a little more of a chinstrap, but he knew he’d never look complete without an earring of his own. Only Duncan could pull off a beard and an earring and a careful ponytail effortlessly.

“Well, duty calls,” Alistair laughed, hoping that answered all. Maker, he couldn’t remember what his excuses had been. Better not to get tripped up in forgotten lies. “You know how it is.”

Duncan nodded somberly. “You’ve got a good work-life balance going on, Alistair,” he agreed. “A hard-working employee to us, and a fantastic father to your son.”

Alistair’s smile twitched. Shit. Had that been his excuse? Kieran went to his mother’s every weekend. Every. Single. Weekend.

From this moment on, Alistair could never mention his son, his son’s schedule, or his own hobbies while in the office.

Read the rest of the chapter here on AO3!