Last year this month I drew this based on Francine River’s book Unafraid which is about mother Mary. There was a scene that involved Jesus as a toddler and I thought it was the coolest thing! It was the first time I had ever seen someone try to imagine what that part of Jesus’s life might have been like. Meanwhile the Chosen Christmas special came out in theaters so I thought I’d draw toddler Jesus with young mother Mary and Joseph from the Chosen! And NOW it being a year later, the Chosen season 3 episode 3 is airing on Christmas Day and will show Jesus as a toddler! I feel ahead of the art game this time! I’m so excited to see what the Chosen is gonna do!
"Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing and not all of those things are good." For DADWC - Handers...
you want angst, you get angst. fhanders for @dadrunkwriting, set just before Anders does the thing that he does.
CW for blood
M.
I don’t know how to tell you what I have done. What I will do.
Only that I cannot be forgiven.
The note is a small thing. It lies on the desk, lit by cold moonlight that slithers in through the curtainless window. It has three straight edges, one ripped and torn. It has been folded in half what looks like a half dozen times; it has been read over, thought over, in agony. But the print is clear and cold. No restarts. No mistakes. Faultless.
A feather lays beside it, perfect in its loneliness. Black as death. Black as whatever comes after death.
“No,” Hawke murmurs. Or, she thinks she murmurs: no sound escapes her mouth, no no, until she realises that she’s keening like an animal trapped in the jaws of a snare. The sound twists and wails through her empty estate, pulled thinner as it sings its dissonant hum until it is more twine than noise, and until she can’t breathe.
One moment she is stood, barely—a hand gripping the chair slotted under her writing desk so tightly that she might render the wood in two, the other trying to cover her mouth, trying to swallow the noise, as if silence will stop time.
The next, she screams again, until there is no other noise, and violently sweeps everything from the desk. The sound of glass shattering makes her want to laugh, but then her knees are buckling and she’s on the ground. Curled in on herself in an unholy genuflection, the sacraments of her worship—note, feather, smashed bottles of ink, blank reams of paper—scattered around her.
“No,” Hawke tries, again. This time, the sound is nothing more than a whisper.
Slowly, silently, she straightens. She does not know what she is doing when she reaches for the note once more, and the feather. She does not know what she is doing when she forces herself to read the final lines, the feather clutched tight between shaking fingers. It is as though she is a marionette, played by unknown forces above.
Let me tell you what I do know.
Hawke grips the feather tighter and tighter, until the sharp tip of its quill has rendered her flesh and the pain is magnificent.
I love you.
Blood trickles down the soft curve of her palm, spilling onto the note like tears.
I am more than one thing and not all of those things are good.
“What the fuck did you do to all of my clothes?!” For DADWC Please handers please 🙏
Mo thank you for this, have some domestic handers fluff for @dadrunkwriting because they’re in love your honour
fhawke x anders, 1k
When Anders wakes up, the world smells like roses. Which is strange, because down in the Undercity, the world usually faintly smells of shit and despair.
Scowling against the gentle attack of the morning light where it sifts in through the windows high above, Anders lays there half-covered in his thin, bobbling bedsheets and drinks in the heady perfume, delights in it. It must be love, he reasons, because he’s very in love with Hawke. Love-drunk, a poet might have called it. Sick off it. It’s that hideous, mushy kind of love that balladeers sing about, where you can’t help but think their laugh is made of moonlight and everything they touch is blessed by the Maker himself.
Justice hates it, though Justice likes Hawke, occasionally.
A smile dances at the edge of Anders’ lips at the thought of her. Slowly, quietly, he shifts onto his side, expecting to see her curled up with most of his sheets wound around her and a silvered trail of drool staining her cheek, like usual.
When he finds the other half of his narrow, creaky bed empty, sheets thrown aside, he frowns.
“Masha?”
No response.
Strange, again, because Marian is most ardently not an early riser. Usually, he’s up hours before her: “Does Justice never fucking sleep?” she always mutters, when he nudges her awake and hands her the cup of mellow Antivan coffee that he makes her every time they share a bed.
“Ri?” he tries as he kicks the covers off him and swings his legs to the edge of the bed, wondering whether she’s not in the mood for niceties. “Hawke?”
No answer.
With a sigh, he reaches down into the modest chest beside his bed for some pants. If she’s already left, that’s fine; she’s her own woman, although he feels an ache in his chest at the thought. He’s just a sentimental bastard, though, he knows. After years in the Circle, years of not being able to wake up beside someone and do something so mundane as ask them how they slept—
Anders’ hand hits the thin base of the chest, his knuckles scraping against wood.
“What?”
His clothes have vanished. Every single piece—from his smalls to the feathered coat he’d thrown across the chair by his desk the evening before.
Fuck. Heart dropping to his stomach, Anders jerks to his feet, then instantly remembers that he’s stark naked and grabs his bedsheets to wrap around his waist in a panic. For a moment, he just stands there, wondering how in Andraste’s blesséd name he managed to sleep through someone stealing a very specific set of his belongings.
And then he realises that, distantly, someone’s humming an old Ferelden folk-song. Poorly and very out of tune, but he recognises it all the same: it’s a nonsense-song his mother used to sing when he was young, about wandering round the moors and getting eaten by ducks because you forgot to bring a hat. It’s the kind of song that Marian would like, he thinks. Marian likes nonsense. Marian is nonsense, half the time, and it makes him love her even more fiercely.
Something clicks. Letting out a sigh of realisation, Anders holds the sheets around him and heads straight for the clinic’s main hall.
“What the fuck,” he calls, as he stops in the middle of the vast, sun-lit chamber, “did you do to all of my clothes?”
Caught in the act, Hawke freezes and lets out a small oh, shit.
Dressed only a loose, billow-sleeved shirt that barely reaches her mid-thigh, she’s balanced on one leg, reaching up to hang some of his smallclothes over a makeshift drying line she’s tied around a couple of wooden pillars. By her side is a steaming vat of water—his bath, now commandeered for other uses—in which floats even more of his things. At her feet, too, are little heaps of clothes, divided by type. His coat, in all its anting crow’s glory, has been delicately laid on a hand-carved stool beside her.
There’s not much, because he doesn’t have much. But somehow she’s managed to spirit every single piece of his clothing away without so much as waking him, and Anders can’t help but be impressed.
And cold, because he’s stood with only his bedsheets protecting his dignity. “Marian, I need—”
“Before you ask,” Hawke interrupts, her cheeks ruddying slightly, “you don’t smell. At least, no worse than anyone else I’ve slept with.”
Ah, her token charm. Anders snorts. “Thank the Maker. That’s…reassuring. So you’re doing this why, exactly?”
“To be nice,” she replies, frowning. “Or is this not nice? I can stop—you can be sweaty if you’d like—”
“No, by all means,” Anders breaks in, bridging the gap between the two of them. As he approaches, she looks distinctly uncomfortable, as though she hadn’t wanted him to know, and also tired—her eyes are a bit puffy, and she’s making that face she makes when she would much rather be in bed.
How long has she been up, doing this, for him?
At the thought, Anders has to stop himself from grinning like an idiot. He gestures to the piles. “This is the most work I think I’ve ever seen you do.”
“How dare you,” she retorts, snatching the last of his three shirts from the floor and dunking it into the hot water, rather theatrically. “I have a job that I am in fact very good at.”
“Extorting money and information from unfortunate and usually bad people via the use of violence is not a job, Masha,” he replies. “Although you are indeed good at it.”
Scarily good. Terrifyingly good. As if she was born to be the scourge of Kirkwall. Sometimes, he wonders whether he should be worried that this is the woman he loves.
As she stands in front of him with her damp hands on her hips, tired-eyed and smiling softly, he knows he never will be.
“Well, you’ve ruined your own surprise,” she notes.
“That doesn’t matter,” he replies. “This is…”
“Wonderful? Heartwarming? The kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?”
“Something like that,” he murmurs, and when he kisses her, the world smells like roses.
If Magnolia is responsible for naming an animal it will 100% of the time be named after food.
Her Mabari was named Macaroni, she later gets another named Toffee, and while visiting the Inquisition after the Redcliffe debacle with her husband she names a Hart Cinnamon.
aaa I LOVE this! those names are perfect, Mags’ mind
funnily enough, Ri also has a habit of naming her pets after food - the Hawke family mabari is called Pork, and she and Anders adopt a very spoilt and plump cat called Pierogi after DA2. (Anders tries to train him to be a useful healer’s cat like Pounce, but Pierogi is far more interested in getting his kisses and cuddles from mummy and spends most of his time screaming when she can’t smother him in love).
Grateful for both the rain and the one sunny day this week. Mo put on his natural sunglasses and caught some rays. 😎☀️ #mightymomistletoe #moseph #mopotato #muffinmo #momo #fastestpiginthewest #pugstagram #friendsnotfood (at Blackberry Creek Farm Animal Sanctuary) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm95oPDS_7z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
🎶 For the music game I would like one Handers and one Ri song 👀
I’ve probs yelled at you about these songs before but your wish is my command mo <3
for handers: What You Want - Bombay Bicycle Club, more for the vibe than anything else
and for Ri, we all know it’s a 10-hour loop of Fabulous from HSM2 but if you want some variation: My Lover Cindy - Marika Hackman, because the lyrics slap
Cause I'm a greedy pig
I'm gonna get my fill
I'm gonna keep my eyes on the prize
And I'll suck you dry, I will
I'm no pariah, but I'll try to pretend
I hope you keep your distance now and then
Same prognosis, it was fated from the start
We could be together, take my heart
But I'm a lousy lover, even if I try
I can go for a couple of weeks and the feeling's calcified
send me one of my characters or ships and I’ll give you their song(s)!
For the relationship questions for Ri and Anders, I wanna ask one of each category ❤️:
7. What would their lives be like if they had never met?
8. Who gets jealous easier?
13. Who remembers the little things?
10. Who’s the better cook?
these questions are amazing! thanks for enabling my obsession Mo <3
what would their lives be like if they’d never met
Ri would’ve managed to dig her family name out of the dirt by some nefarious means or other, so would probably have set her mum up in Kirkwall and would have pissed off back to Ferelden to find the cousin she didn’t know she had. she’d be living a pretty simple life, roaming with her mabari.
and oh man, not to be a pessimist but there’s a high chance Anders might be dead??? that, back with the Wardens, or running around Thedas emancipating mages and slaves and fucking the system like the king he is
who gets jealous easier
neither of them are jealous per sé? although Ri definitely says she’s chill but also slightly hates herself, so gets very stressed when Anders laughs at anyone else’s jokes, because how dare someone else also be funny and does that mean he finds them funnier than her and is this the start of the slow death of their relationship etc. etc.
who remembers the little things
Anders, for sure. After everything he’s gone through and losing a lot of those most important to him, he holds onto memories as tightly as he can, so his brain is full of little notes about things like Hawke’s favourite type of croissant, or the flowers she points out most often when they’re wandering around the Wounded Coast, or her favourite time of day (dusk, definitely).
Not that Ri doesn’t know/remember little things related to him, either - just that for him, the smallest, most mundane things are the most important.
who’s the better cook
Ri can cook, but every meal somehow comes out tasting the same no matter what she makes, and it’s always a bit more charred than intended. Anders is the soup king but is terrified of any recipe that has more than three steps and doesn’t involve some form of ‘leave it to simmer’. basically, they’re both a bit shit?
