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so a while ago there’s a prompt about bautista’s music in the chat and as established, i can’t do anything but angst. a take on self-comfort and pathetic unrequited feelings heehooheehoo. implied mc/f!bautista. @greenwarden-cog

trigger warnings for: depiction/discussion of self-harm, suicide ideation, description of dissociation, one tracker straight up not having a good time

You wake up already crying. Hollow, and your belly aches, so much so it feels like being full. Like the air has snuck in and wrung blood from your insides, curing all the crevices.

#greenwarden #greenwarden cog #fan warden #kim nguyen #maggieswrite

@greenwarden-cog | trace/mc. minor warnings for: mention of blood, gross semi-monster-snogging

The taste of iron is familiar. So is the burn, like dragging fire through your nostrils, and in place of smoke more blood oozes out, dripping down the bow of your lips to your mouth, your chin. You mutter a quiet curse, only to grimace as what little red gathering in the corners of your lips immediately finds their way inside, flooding your tongue with new salt.

So the meeting with the tree didn’t go quite as planned.

You go with what you know and tilt your head forward- exhaling gingerly for good measure- trying to empty the excess blood, then wipe away the rest on the back of your hand. Your less-than-medically-trained company is helpfully silent throughout the whole process; suspiciously so, in fact.

You look up to see Trace watching you, absolutely captivated, and narrow your eyes in doubt. There is a show of teeth, an approximation of a smirk you don’t appreciate, and the corpse-pale glint in their gaze promises nothing but chaos. If they realize you noticed them at all, they make no show of it.

“What?” You finally snap, more embarrassed than furious, frustrated with the unnatural stillness of their posture and the way they seem to pin you in place. Their eyes flicker from- oh, from your nose- to you.

Their pupils expand. You know with absolute certainty what that look means.

They don’t give you any time to escape. In one long stride, they are right in front of you, so close they force you to stumble back against your woody assailant. The smirk is still there, inquisitive, and they fist their hand into the fabric at your waist, keeping you tethered. You think they are trying to make you squirm, or at least move you in a certain way.

Of course, you being you, simply refuse to budge an inch. A civ, even an inexperienced operative, might fold from fear. You don’t, even as Trace presses closer. Even as the disconcerting chill of their flesh raises goosebumps on your arms, your stomach, where their fist is near. Cool dread wars with anticipation in your sternum as their head dips, their mouth opens. They do it slowly, like how an animal is slow to tear into prey it knows for sure can’t flee, only-

Their tongue is cold. It is cold, and you face is throbbing, nosebleed not quite quelled, dripping bright red anew. They drag the flat of it across your chin, over the stubborn purse of your mouth, then your cheek. You shudder to think the absence of heat actually feels comforting over your burning flesh, and when you growl deep in your throat, disturbed, they lean back, laughing.

That doesn’t keep them for long; they rush in when you begin to curse at them, sandpaper tongue on the smears on your jaws, the stray drops down your neck. The vibrations of your expletives are swallowed up with relish. The hand not currently bunching up your shirt closes around your wrist, lifting it. You see little use in fighting, but you resist on principle, pulling shy of straining in their grasp. Trace just grins, worrying at your knuckles with their teeth, and when they lap at the blood there you aren’t even surprised.

Done, a strange mellowness suddenly takes over their expression. There is no other way to describe it- this close you can spot the nuances clear as day. It isn’t soft, not in any sense of the word. More like light bending once it hits the water; more fluid, more honest. Lowered eyelids, a relaxed mouth. You might even call the curve of it a smile, if you are generous.

Which changes nothing about the fact you still have slobber all over your face.

“You’re so gross!” You pull free of their grip and scrub at the slimy residue with vengeance. All you get for your trouble is another laugh. “You fucking asshole!”

#greenwarden #greenwarden cog #greenwarden trace #fan warden #maggieswrite #now on tumblr w minor edits!#fellas is it romantic to let your monster boo slober all over your face in the sake of fluid consumption that leads to you both being sick #this was originally going to be worse but the sheer idea gave me a headache so have something vanilla instead

More often than you can say, you do not think about what your next move is gonna be until you already have Bautista in your grasp. Coiled tight, observant. And your hands are always numb, nail-beds purpling, always bruised to tender, as much for her benefit as it is for yours.

(She burns and you feel like a raw writhing thing, enticed and repulsed all at once, twisting right out of your skin at a single thought but wanting it all the same. Some kind of wretched unwilling ouroboros.

But there is no room for compromise, no safe greys for you to tread upon. Only varying degrees of scalded wherever you move.)

#greenwarden #greenwarden cog #greenwarden bautista #fan warden #maggieswrite #kim nguyen #LOOK wlw got me SOFT and WEAK and you're gonna have to pry sentimental wlw from my COLD DEAD HANDS #sort of established relationship in the sense that kim has moved on from ‘cant taint her too’ to ‘look if shes this much of an idiot #i might as well try my best to bother her into leaving’#also i cant wrap things up to save my life so like. yeah.#i cant do your flavor of intense fiddles all i do is gay and feral

Warning: Mentions of self harm

———

When Jack was nine, one of the boys threw a cat in the river.

She’d wanted to jump after it, but the water ran muddy with froth, so instead she descended upon the kid with her fists. His brothers pulled her away after they got to the cat.

When she was twenty-four Jack fished a runt out of the river. The slaver boat was sinking- little was as efficient in halting a vessel as blowing a hole in the bottom- and the human kid was handed right to her by an elf in the water.

“Protect.” Came the first word. “Please.” Chased the last, and then the elf slipped beyond Jack’s hands.

The kid was more bones than human. Gaze like something haunted, hideous as anything and mute like a breath. She stared at Sìomon the entire time he spoke and Jack thought of the near-drowned cat and the bruised boy in her village, wondering if drowning your past made it come back and haunt you.

When she was fifty Jack came to terms with the knowledge she’d outlived her best friend.

The quarter behind the door dawned on her like a vision unknown, and in the eye of the wreckage her daughter hunched over the hands in her lap, smudged green at the tips and purpling wherever skin stretched over bones. She stared at them like Jack stared at her: half tincture and half bile, a little horrified, a swimming sea of something bruised soft and aching.

“We tried so fucking hard, didn’t we?” Tears ran down her face like river water. It was that evening in Tevinter for Jack again, watching the kid drip all over deck. “It’s not right.”

Every now and then, Jack wished Linh hadn’t taken so much after Sìomon. The anger, she didn’t inherit, but the doomed affection, that tendency for vain struggles. And maybe she’d taken that from Jack, too. Glimpsed her memory of falling fists by the frothy river somewhere along the line, and welcomed it.

Jack dragged something flat and quasi-intact out of the corner of the room and sat facing the window. That her knees came right next to Linh’s head was less intentional and more a gut-deep pull for comfort. They sat until the lanterns were up and the bleeding stopped. Only then Jack wiped at her own face, patted the head by her knees, and stood.

“You need to grow out of this.”

That would flame the anger, she knew. Part of it was punishment, that ever-burning fury, that screaming, howling blindness. There was a reason why Linh shut the rest of them out to break her hands on furniture. Repentance for letting go, Jack supposed. She never learned how to bow out with grace.

But what was grace for the likes of them? What was the point?

When Jack was thirty-two Sìomon broke his leg battling the Scourges. Doc said he’s going to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. That night he burned the letter confirming the dead drop and sent out another to expose the site. Then he told her to teach the girl how to fight.

“She can’t fight her way out of this,” Jack had said, “She’s a loose end. Wasted investment. Let her go, ‘Mon.”

The moment before, he was the loose-tooth youth whom she trusted enough to let shear her hair to the skin; the one after, he was Steelheart, who took a knife to his chest, Steelheart, who called the terrible Tadeus his “teacher”, Steelheart, who ruled over men with a fist that was also a blade, who did not hesitate to dispense discipline as he saw fit.

But she was always the one who knocked his tooth loose.

“You can’t adopt bounties, Sìomon.”

“It was wrong to accept this one to begin with.” His hands clenched and unclenched over his knees. The creak of salt-worn skin was crisp. Graceless.

“Linh is staying with us from now on.”

That was the first time he said the kid’s name. No more was the moniker made in cruel jest, the alias that refused to stick. No more Plains Rose.

“They will never touch my little girl again.”

And now, no more Sìomon.

Jack busied herself righting the overturned furniture in the quarter. Some had been so bent out of shape, so thoroughly deconstructed, that the hands that unmade them left prints in their newly-laid-out insides. A red-flecked specter studying the corpses.

Linh couldn’t dry her eyes with her fingers, so she dug the heels of her palms into her sockets instead. His last memo laid across her lap, a testament and accusation both.

In a just world, there would be no need for secrets. In a just world, they would find him when all was said and done, and they would put the past where it belonged and left it to rot like her elven surrogate in the desert.

But the world was not just. And so Linh continued to bleed.

Jack put glass where glass could be put, put wood where there should be wood. Her daughter had a medical satchel open over her knees.

“Help me,” Linh said, plain, too exhausted for anything. Even pride. Even pain.

And Jack did, like she always had. Like she always would.

“I am still here,” Jack said to the ugly trembling bruises. And the ghosts she loved beneath.

A deep breath.

“I will always stay with you.”

When she put Linh back together for the last time, Jack decided:

Enough was enough.

#maggieswrite #dragon age #dragon age ocs #jack the quartermaster #gia linh of mac eanraig #more oc exposition piece! this one more emotional and explores what happened when linh has to accept her father is dead #collection: cast one last look behind?

The irony of the situation was, of course, that 'Rose', having come to Sìomon twenty-something years after Jack, became his left hand instead of his right.

That the Quartermaster lacked both the subtlety and endurance for the job did not surprise him. What took him unaware was the fact his spitfire daughter had it in her to fill that pair of shoes.

His former left-hand was a clean-shaven dwarf by the name of Bekel, though he commonly went by Cadash. It was him who taught the girl how to read and write, then later on found someone to teach her the stars and how to read maps. By fifteen, 'Rose' was drawing her own aerocartography.

Sìomon's original plans were disintergrating by then, undone by age or a well-buried desire for a family, or whatever else Jack had accused him of. All he knew was when the Scourges came to steal her away he decided that he would move Heavens and Seas if anyone touched a single hair on her head. By the time they were gone, she was family.

The other letters came later. He arranged for her higher studies- masked in crude terms and gross simplifications, of course, but that did not change their nature. He found she loved proses and so he gave her ample opportunities to cultivate that in secret. He noticed she went starry-eyed, observing a Tempest in battle, so he got an alchemist to teach her their craft.

He supposed that was where it started: the observation. 'Rose' watched, but 'Linh' observed. She stared others down with her odd eyes sharp as a blade and she remembered. It made her an excellent left hand. Jack noticed things from her experience, but his daughter also deduced, made connections. She deferred to him, out of love, but he saw in her suggestions the ability to lead the Fleet. It put him at ease.

The longer the Game wore on, the harder it bore down on him.

"We should tell her," Jack once said. Sìomon had brushed her off with jokes. Tell her what? What's even left to tell her, at this point? That her family lived still? That apparently she took after her mother, who was renowned and feared in certain circles for her service to the Imperium?

One of these days the secrets would come to light. Here lay the second bit of irony: he had to keep these secrets out of his secret-keeper's reach.

Cadash thought the same as Jack when Linh was concerned. "You've prepared her long enough," He'd said, shortly before they dropped him off at Redscliffe. Sìomon bid him farewell without further comment.

The truth wasn't that he thought her ill-prepared. Far from it; he'd watched her for years as she grew from the scrawny kid they fished out the river to the fearsome young woman who took on the Amaranthine Scourge. Even his teacher would have been impressed by her.

But when he looked into her eyes for the first time- when he knelt before he to offer her her choices, he had seen what she wanted most. Beyond survival, beyond fury and grief…

More than anything, his daughter deserved freedom. Free from her past, from her roots, from the very things that drove her into the desert and then on their ship. She deserved to live.

Once she knew, there would be no going back. Once they knew she was alive, she would be drawn into the Game once more. And Sìomon? Sìomon couldn’t rest, knowing that.

And he would be damned if he let them lay hands on his daughter again.

#dragon age #dragon age ocs #maggieswrite #sìomon mac eanraig #jack the quartermaster #gia linh of mac eanraig #collection: cast one last look behind?

The looking glass collapses easily in her hands as Linh finishes scanning the horizon. Still not another ship in sight, which is fortunate. They have been enjoying a slow night since undocking, with not much going on but the odd flickers of stars and the gentle undulations of a calm sea. The wooden hull hardly even creaks underfoot, and the winds fill their sails with such delicate care, it is as if they are standing on land. Even the moons have hidden themselves for the time being.

Linh jots down in her logs the calculations and makes notes for tomorrow. Tonight, however, everything is perfect.

#dragon age #araceli morandi #gia linh of mac eanraig #being a soft gay #maggieswrite #this is slightly under-edited but........ yeah #edit: got rid of the links because i forgot links - evil in staff speech now

Cold, like the syrupy darkness of wet caverns and hungry little hands; like a lover’s touch sought and never found. That’s what it feels like at the Palace.

A part of her folds and curls up to hide in these gilded walls. She walks on all night without feeling the burn, nods and answers and sips quietly from crystal flutes. Cullen spares a concerned glance from across the room before his attention is diverted again by the simpering noblemen crowding into his space. She has thought about walking over and- standing there, or stealing him away, or decking the next wandering hand, she doesn’t know. The very thought of it sickens her.

Instead she has met the Spymaster’s eyes, acknowledged her warning, and walked away.

Later that night finds her leaning against the balcony furthest from the merrymaking, drinking from a mug Bull has confiscated, an untouched plate of finger foods at her elbow. She dangles the mug in her fingers, staring at the moons.

The feeling of being watch precedes careful footsteps coming closer. The Inquisitor replaces the plate at her elbow with their own drink. A hint of a smile tugs at their lips when they look at her.

“Long day, isn’t it?”

She glances at them then. And there it is again: the cold, settling like fine silk behind her rib cage, bleaching her bones ashy. She takes a brief moment to school her features.

“Sorry.” The word is out too fast for her to lose her head feeling guilty over. Yet it is the only one that would come.

“What for?”

That you had to decide the fate of a country that hates us. Hates you. That I did not ask if you’re alright first. That I’m piss-poor about all of this. “I spaced out.”

Their chuckle is smooth, jealously coveted between the two of them. They talk for a while more as the hour goes by; about the party, about Celene, and how she thinks about their decision regarding Briala overall.

Half-hidden behind their drink, they peer at her as if gauging. “Changed your mind about that dance yet?”

She looks into her empty mug for too long to avoid their tentative question. Shared drinks, a few stories, those send a different message than a dance under thousands of candle-lit crystals. Standing close, holding hands- she is not sure if she wishes to do that. Not yet.

When she tells them the answer, their reassurance is tinted with lighthearted humor, a fond look on their face. That look normally grates on her for all the ways it brings into sharp focus the lines of their eyes, their warmth, the way they stand just this side of too close whenever they talk.

It settles gentle and warm over her shoulders now. An easy breed of acceptance. She curls into it instinctively. For once, there is no urge to fight the softness that spreads from within.

#enabel lavellan #enabel companion au #FORGOT TO ADD this is NOT cullen/lavellan btw she isn't pan for that noodle head #maggieswrite

How did she choose her vallaslin?

The human stroke her face and followed the lines. How did she choose?

She wanted to say it was what the Creators had told her to choose. That it was not choosing at all; that they had come and whispered and placed on her shoulders the shroud of their chosen, the skin of wolves and dragons and the scent of burning blood.

But it was not like that either. It wasn’t the dreams of fire, nor the remnants of a carcass on the floor, nor the silvery lines pulling taut and thin over her forearms, like dragonfly’s veins. It wasn’t the fast, nor the herbal tea, nor the muted days spent under her father’s watchful gaze.

She closed her hand around theirs. Their thumb dragged, pressing against the curved thorn tattoo on her chin.

“I chose because I could.”

“Because I wanted Them.”

“I chose my own God because everything that I am needs to be mine and mine alone. Either it is my choice or not mine at all.”

#dragon age #enabel lavellan #enabel companion au #i cant remember when i wrote this but i dont hate it so here have a quickie #maggieswrite