#morriganders

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

elissaromildecousland replied to your post:All

(Some of these broke my heart but the chastising Justice one made me laugh so hard it evened out!!)

>.>

#mother hen Morrigan

Morri:  *glares balefully at mun*

^_______^

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

All

Send ✆ for a morning text

This is your requested reminder to call your contact in Starkhaven.

Send ✉ for a text that wasn’t sent

They found m

Send ☎ for a rushed text

just saw a patrol too close to eigth st safehouse for comfort.  Taking the air to watch, will keep you informed.

Send ☏ for a loving text

If I have not rejoined you by sunrise, go, and know that I have loved you as no other.

Send ⁇ for a drunk text

Whyyyyyy are you notton tetris.  too tirde for nything else.

Send ø for a late night text

Just finished, much easier to show you here, have had FAR too much coffee to sleep.  Come over?

Send ✘ for a hateful text

Justice, if you are reading this, get back in bed.  So help me, if I find you up when I get in, things will be unpleasant.

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

4, 11, 21, 33

4 - Our muses are the only two survivors in a plane crash on a deserted island.

“Well that was… unpleasant,” Morrigan observed. 

Anders winced, gingerly flexing the shoulder whose torn cartilage had just been repaired by magic.  “Understatement of the month.  Where do you think we are?”

“Judging by the time that had elapsed before the malfunction…” she pursed her lips, considering.  “Not far off Highever.  ‘Twould be a simple enough matter to get back to Kirkwall; certainly easier than continuing on to Denerim.”

“Sounds like a plan, then.  I didn’t want to go to Denerim that badly, anyway.”

Twenty minutes later, after the aircraft’s food compartments – or what was left of them – had been thoroughly raided, a pair of albatrosses launched themselves into the sky, heading northwest.

11 - An earthquake has ravaged Kirkwall, our muses are trapped in a collapsed building together until rescue comes.

After several attempts to shift the massive slabs of concrete overhead had required swift termination, lest they bring even more of the building than the two of them could hold off crashing down upon their heads, Morrigan and Anders at last resigned themselves to wait, at least until a better option presented itself. 

“I’ve got a vague idea that this should be embarrassing,” Anders said with a tired chuckle as they re-stabilized their most recent abortive attempt.  “Two most concentrated sources of magical firepower in the city, and here we are, stuck under a building.” 

“I am more concerned with the sorts of people we shall have to deal with when we are dug out of here,” the witch answered, sliding to the cracked, basement-level floor and stretching one booted leg out in front of her.  There was a tear in her favorite leather pants, she noted sourly. 

He dropped down beside her, his presence as always more reassuring to Morrigan than she was ever apt to admit aloud.  “We’ll just put on our best ‘scared, harmless civilian’ faces when they find us.”

Morrigan snorted a laugh, taking up his hand almost without hesitation.  She was still getting used to initiating contact in situations that were unlikely to lead to sex, but it was… rather nice.  Particularly since she was still trying to clear the dregs of the adrenaline that had flooded her body as the building had been collapsing.  “I do not believe I possess such a thing.”

“Nonsense,” he smirked, squeezing her hand.  “Do you not remember that night at the Hanged Man, when you were tipsy and bragging to Elissa about how you dealt with nosy police in college?  Because I definitely do.”

Morrigan muttered under her breath, the only clear word being ‘undignified,’ which brought another chuckle from Anders, who of course knew that any true objections to such a thing on her behalf were minimal. 

“Regardless, there isn’t much we can do about it until they actually get to the business of digging.”

“On that, we are agreed,” she sighed, idly tracing at the ink that marked the skin of his arm, through a tear in the sleeve.  “You promised me the long version of this tale, once, you know.  Is now an acceptable time to collect?”

21 - A romantic camping trip turns deadly when something in the woods starts hunting our muses.

On the second day of their backpacking trip through the Korcari Wilds, Morrigan began to get the sense that they were being watched. 

Or rather, that they were being watched by something other than the magpies that had been eyeing the shinier parts of their gear, the small pack of timber wolves whose territory was nearby, and the impressively grizzled stray tomcat who was waiting for them to leave food unattended.  The forest had more eyes than even paranoid city dwellers usually gave it credit for, and most of them were hardly a matter for concern. 

On the third day, she was sure of it, and resigned herself to the necessity for dealing with the watcher, when it eventually decided to show itself.  In the meantime, however, she was showing Anders her childhood home; they were on vacation, damnit, and she was determined to enjoy it.  For his part, he had been meeting what she showed him with interest, and with an unfettered delight that she had not seen in this degree since she had first taught him to shapeshift.  It was more gratifying than she had ever imagined such a thing could be. 

On the evening of the fourth day, they lay entwined, half-unclothed and rapidly becoming moreso, beside the coals of their campfire, and it was then, of course, that a dragon’s nearby wingbeats shook leaves from the trees in a flurry like sudden snowfall. 

“Is that…?” Anders whispered, frowning, the haze of arousal rapidly retreating from his eyes.

“Yes,” Morrigan growled.  “Indeed it is.  My mother has profoundly impolite timing.”

33 - Our muses get into a fist fight, and it turns to hot, passionate sex.

Most things between Anders and Morrigan tended to escalate rather precipitously.

They had been having a friendly – if rather spirited – argument, and then he had zapped her teasingly with a spark of electricity, one thing led to another, and before they knew it, they were a pair of 300-pound wildcats grappling in the central underground chamber beneath the clinic.  It was fortunate, Morrigan fleetingly supposed as she reared up on her hind legs to clash forepaws to forepaws with her adversary, that they had not yet begun to furnish it.  Anders suddenly threw his weight to the side, nearly toppling her before she could disengage, and she growled as she arched her body to connect her front legs solidly with the ground.  With a feline hiss that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, he nipped at her exposed flank, prompting her to swat his ear.  Anders dodged the blow and sprung at her fully, the pair rolling across the floor until he managed to mostly pin her with his slightly greater weight, sharp teeth bared in a grin that rapidly shrank in size as he shifted back to his own form at last. 

The shift showed a great deal of trust, both for her benevolence as well as her reflexes, that she would dampen the force of the kick she had been aiming at his belly at the last moment before it connected.  Which of course she did, shifting back to human herself… but using the last moments of her size advantage to roll them, so that by the time she was fully human, she was on top, eyes wild and burning into his. 

“You know, it’s an incredibly interesting feeling to have you shifting as – “ Anders began to observe, but cut off abruptly as she descended to cover his mouth with hers, meeting the kiss with fervent enthusiasm.  Then his fingers were in her hair and her nails were scoring into the skin of his shoulders, his now-human teeth finding the soft skin of her throat… and neither of them could have counted the number of times their positions were reversed over the course of the hour that followed had they tried, but the resulting bruises indicated that the answer was ‘many.’

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

2, 7, 9, 11, 15

9 - Who taught my muse how to fight?

“Flemeth taught me battle magic,” she said, tilting her head in consideration.  “But ‘twas the wolves, in truth, who taught me to fight.  The physicality of it, the sense of timing, and the cunning that has nothing to do with magical prowess, but simply focuses on defeating one’s opponent by any means necessary.”

2 - Fighting with Anders

“So this is a Grey Warden’s weekend jaunt,” Morrigan muttered just before releasing a blast of cold from her palms that snap-froze three darkspawn in front of her. 

“More or less,” came Anders’s answer with a snorted laugh from just behind her as a shield materialized around them both to halt the sickly green fire flung by a shouting hurlock mage.  “Could you…?”

“Of course.”  The hurlock emissary promptly fell to the ground, clutching its gruesome head and shrieking, while the witch was already turning to her next target.

7, 11 (Soundtrack for this drabble, because my playlist is trying to kill me with feels: “Illusion,” by VNV Nation)

[Readmore’d for length]

She did not know what had finally eroded Anders’s control beyond the final point of endurance; she only knew that the creature who now dominated the battlefield was Justice. 

Or perhaps Vengeance is truly the better name, Morrigan thought bitterly as she tossed back another bright blue vial of lyrium, its electric effervescence searing its way down her throat, which was far too raw from yelling.  The spirit was past the point of reason, for she had tried, increasingly frantic, to calm him, but now… even the immunity she once had enjoyed (if such a word could be used for it) to Justice’s ire seemed to be gone.  He was berserk, and not even Morrigan would be left standing if he was allowed to do as he willed. 

“With me, Feynriel,” she grated out, the words painful as they emerged.  The young man was even paler than usual, his face streaked with sweat and dust and blood from a nick at his temple, but he nodded wordlessly, composed.  She and Anders had taken the fearful boy and taught him together, and they had taught him well. 

That thought brought a bone-deep spasm of pain, as did almost every place her mind had alighted since she had assessed the situation, but Morrigan ruthlessly squelched it.  Failure now was not an option.  It had never been an option. 

They had done this before, though never with Justice raging so destructively – entropy and spirit magic woven together in an intricate mesh to slow, mire, and imprison. 

“I WILL NOT BE CAGED!  NOT EVEN BY YOU, WITCH WHO BETRAYS HER VERY NATURE.”

The Fade spirit had realized what was happening before they were finished, and it was all Morrigan could do to shield the two of them in time to mitigate the retaliatory blast from fatal strength to merely painful.  Morrigan gasped as the wave of it broke over her, setting overtaxed nerves afire.

“IT IS AS I TOLD YOU.  THE VESSEL HAS MADE YOU WEAK, PATHETIC.”

Feynriel staggered beside her, crying out, but he maintained the link, as determined as the witch herself to see this done.  To see Justice contained, and the weary but warm amber gaze of the man they both knew so well return.

If it returned. 

Ignoring Justice’s taunts, Morrigan redoubled her efforts, pouring the last of her reserves into the weaving, and finally… finally, the blue-white glow receded, and Anders’s body crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.  Morrigan never even registered her own legs’ movement; finding herself watching his body fall the one moment, and kneeling beside him the next, assessing the damage that had been done, mentally triaging injuries with unalloyed desperation. 

Some part of her knew that it was too much, that Justice had not cared enough to leave a body that his host could still inhabit, but still she dredged up resources she had scarcely even known she possessed, channeling restorative energy into her fallen lover.  Then there was a hand on her face, and she opened eyes she did not recall closing to see at once both her heart’s most fervent desire and the end of all hope.  His aura was frayed and fading; the gravest damage had been done not to body, but to spirit, which her magic could not rescue even if his body had had the strength to hold him.  The man she loved beyond even her ironclad reason was slipping from her as mist burns away in the sun.

But his eyes were open, and for that too-brief and too-final span of heartbeats, he knew her. 

15

There were bodies everywhere.  Some remote part of Morrigan’s mind knew that she should be smelling scorched flesh and hair, and spilled blood, and soot, but taking large quantities of lyrium, as she had done, tended to leave nothing but that brightly-burning not-scent of pure magic in one’s nostrils, and so it was for her now.  All she smelled was lyrium, and all she felt was cold, despite the flames she had only just stopped channeling at the last of her enemies. 

Flames, for anger, and for Anders.  Let the city itself be his pyre, for all she cared.

It was not that simple, of course.  She had promises to keep, and she would keep them.  A protégé to guide, where once that had been a shared endeavor.  Work to do, because that had always been enough for her, before.

‘Before’ seemed a very long time ago, now. 

Cold and silence prevailed, in her mind if not the world around her, until she stopped, dully realizing that her path was blocked by a pair of boots.  Familiar boots; long, familiar legs; familiar hands hesitantly outstretched; familiar curls framing a familiar face and familiar eyes filled with unbearable sympathy.  Morrigan fled that sight in the only direction that made sense, crashing into the embrace, and only when her face was safely buried in Elissa’s shoulder did she allow the racking sobs to come.  

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

Playlist - Morriganders post-Tranquility

"The Race" - Thirty Seconds to Mars

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

Playlist - Revolution

"Streamline" - VNV Nation

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

Playlist: Mage Underground

"We Want Revolution" - Covenant

We want revolution

Kill your television Steal the satellites Download all the codes Catch the public eye

Shout your manifesto Bring your megaphone Stay below the radar Join the underground

I wanna car, skid and crash Into the brave new world I wanna ride, ride

We want revolution We want revolution Constant evolution Constant evolution

Start your engines, blow your fuses Burn the bridges for the future This is our solution This is our solution

We want revolution We want revolution Constant evolution Constant evolution

Start your engines, blow your fuses Burn the bridges for the future This is our solution

We want revolution We want revolution We want revolution

Time Time

Time for retribution Bring your target down Beat the jungle drums Flaunt your decadence

Underground Resistance Keeps you entertained Feed your hungry mind Shape the things to come

I wanna car, skid and crash Into the brave new world I wanna ride, ride, I wanna ride, ride

We want revolution We want revolution Constant evolution Constant evolution

Start your engines, blow your fuses Burn the bridges for the future This is our solution This is our solution

We want revolution We want revolution Constant evolution Constant evolution

Start your engines, blow your fuses Burn the bridges for the future This is our solution This is our solution

We want revolution We want revolution Constant evolution Constant evolution

Start your engines, blow your fuses Burn the bridges for the future This is our solution This is our solution

We want revolution We want revolution Constant evolution Constant evolution

We want revolution We want revolution This is our solution This is our solution

[witch-of-the-urban-wilds-blog]

Command: Cross a line, any line, and don't question it, Question: If I asked to meet your mother, would you arrange it? +ALL

Command

Morrigan was seized by a sudden, ridiculously giddy notion that she followed before she could give herself too much time to think on it.  It was easy, almost too easy, as she smirked and gave him a slight nod.  “Very well.  I love you, Anders.”

Question

“I…”  Morrigan blinked at him, surprised.  “I do not know how wise that would be,” she answered carefully.  “But ‘twould be… interesting, there can be no doubt of that.  Yes.  I would do this if you asked it of me.”

Attractive

She found herself fascinated, sometimes, by his hands.  Whether carrying the glow of power, gesticulating as he spoke (moving with as much animation as his face), or rising to run terrifyingly gentle fingers through her hair, they seemed to underscore and punctuate everything Anders was. 

Flirt, Intoxicated

As any self-respecting programmer knew, alcohol and code had a curious sort of synergy, the one facilitating the growth and coherency of the other… for a while, at least.  Morrigan had left that point behind at least an hour ago, and she finally accepted that if she kept trying to work on the project tonight, she would most likely end up scrapping the whole blighted thing in the morning. 

That wisdom, however, did not extend to avoiding text messages. 

<You are my loop condition – I keep cming back toyou.>

In the morning, she wasn’t sure whether she was more disgusted that she had been drunk enough to find that ridiculous list of ‘programmer pick-up lines’ from her departmental email list amusing, or horrified that as drunk as she’d been, she had managed to reproduce them coherently. 

Anders was never going to let her live this down. 

Compliment

“You make me think,” she said, quietly.  “Evaluate the way I see things and find better ways.  I have… always liked to think I am reasonably adept at that, myself, but it is seldom that another person can drive me to do so.  I am… most grateful for that.  For you.”

Insult

“Why you persist in thinking that such jests are funny, I will never know,” Morrigan muttered, rubbing at bloodshot eyes as she set her bag down on Anders’s desk.  It had been a very long night. 

“I persist in thinking they’re funny because they are punny.  Funny,” Anders chuckled, good humor unfazed by the witch’s morning crabbiness.  “And because you usually think so, too, when you’re actually awake.  Have some coffee.”

Hug, Kiss

Morrigan had followed Anders back to the clinic despite his admonitions to the group to split up, slipping in the door just after he did.  He acknowledged her presence, but quiet reigned for several long minutes as they both went through the mechanical tasks of cleaning and dressing the assortment of minor wounds they had collected, and healing a few that weren’t so minor.  When that was done, though, he was just sitting there on the side of the desk, shoulders hunched, and she had to do or say something. 

Anders was a tactile creature.  Eventually, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and simply stood there, letting her presence speak for her in place of words that she would surely fumble if she attempted to speak then.  The kiss, when it came, was not lacking in passion, but it was a far more gentle, careful thing than what they had shared in the recent past, and there was comfort in it that – she very much hoped – went both ways. 

Grope

They had come out of the fight exhilarated and relatively unharmed, but Anders suggested that she take the chance to practice healing with their assorted cuts, and she had readily agreed.  As she tugged at the waistband of his pants to get a better view of a shallow cut on the back of his hip, Anders let out a low chuckle, looking back at her over his shoulder. 

“If this is what it takes to get you to feel me up, remind me to get myself sliced up more often,” he said with a smirk. 

Morrigan rolled her eyes, but swatted at his rear somewhat playfully and returned the smirk.  “You know ‘tis not, but if you are looking for an excuse to exercise certain types of creativity, you need only ask.” 

Gift, Marriage Proposal

“This is enchanted,” Anders said, raising his eyebrows curiously at the simple tiger’s eye band where it now rested in his palm. 

“Yes, quite,” Morrigan replied with a small nod, eyes roving uncertainly over his face.  “ ‘Tis a tracking spell, keyed to its twin.”  She held up a smaller, but otherwise identical band for him to see, her mouth going dry as she approached the necessity of explaining. 

“I… “  She cleared her throat and tried again.  “The world is about to change, quite precipitously.  I do not wish to be without you.  I… do not know how much stock you place in formal… arrangements, but either way…” 

Anders grinned at her, though it was a gentler expression than she was used to, and drew a slight, answering smile from her own lips.  “The world’s about to end, so let’s get married?” he translated glibly, raising his eyebrows. 

“If… you wish to put it that way, then yes.  That is what I am asking,” she replied, the slight breath of exasperation carrying her through the rest of the words.  Her eyes never left his.