Thank you for the tag @dogot 🥰 and probably @elfyroot too at some point lol 😘
Today I have a piece of Chapter 101 of In the Shattering of Things to prove that I am, in fact, working on it (amid a LOT of words for early chapter reworks). For those reading hopefully this will get you going HOW DID THEY GET THERE.
It’s the kiss of the tide that wakes me, a warm tickle against my toe hardly fitting its earlier violence. I choke on a lingering mouthful of saltwater and spit sand while the horror of it all thunders back in. Cullen’s dead weight fighting its way down, the failure of my strokes, the relentlessness of the wind-whipped swells.
My eyes crack open. It’s too overcast to tell the time, but it’s past sunup. The beach is a hard, sober grey beneath my outstretched arm.
“Cullen.” I whisper it at first. Then try again louder— not too loud. They must be looking for us. I glance over my shoulder behind me.
I’m alone.
I struggle to my feet in my soggy clothes, surprised to find myself whole, then scan the beach for him, pulse hammering. Amid mounds of seaweed Cullen lies face down, washed by the coming flood tide to his chest. My legs move, my eyes sting. I stagger toward him through the froth and throw myself down, clumsily maneuvering his slack body to his back.
“No no no no,” I mutter. “Shit.” I swipe at his face and then pat it, waiting for a response then jab my fingers beneath his jaw while I hold my breath. No no no.
His pulse comes, as limp as the rest of him, but that’s no guarantee.
“Cullen, wake up,” I beg, shaking his shoulders until his eyelids twitch, his eyes rolling beneath them. A ragged sigh leaves me.
I hunker down beside him in the lapping surf, inside the crook of his arm and let everything roll out of me, hot tears on cold skin. The same strange nightmare that took me a week ago persists. Madness makes an earnest appeal, a silent, haunting chorus of all the choices I might have made in this other place I could just go to. I could just go there. I could give in.
A fresh sheet of water and foam rushes up past our hips, calling me back from the abyss. Cullen looks starkly different from the man I’d seen last night— his eyes blown dark and wild on stolen lyrium, spattered with the blood of our captors, desperation raging through him.
I lay my hand over his sandy cheek, specks of mica glittering in the anchor glow.
I’m not alone. Not yet.
“Wake up,” I whisper. An old instinct flutters free as I lurch forward to press my lips to his salt-damp forehead. “Wake up. I need you.”
Tagginggg @nirikeehan @pickelda @greypetrel @agentkatie and @shivunin politely asking for your WIPs plz
DA Hero Week Run Up DAY 2 a few days late @daheroweek
Answering for my girl, my sole Inquisitor, Rose Trevelyan!
day 2 of @daheroweek lead up to Inquisitor Appreciation Week! Do they believe in Andraste and the Maker? Are they religious or are they not? What do they think about Andrastianism?
On a scale from atheist (0) to Sebastian (10), I'd probably put Rose at about 7.
She was raised Andrastian, she believes firmly in the Maker and Andraste and genuinely struggles to square with how she fits in with the narrative of the Chant, especially as the people around her begin to develop new narratives. (I do a whole bit about this in my long fic In the Shattering of Things with my friend @monocytogenes' OC Brother Nicaise, who is something of an expert on Andrastian folk movements through the ages). She takes comfort in her faith whenever she can.
Rose is able to mentally separate the institution of the Chantry from her own faith. She prefers to pray in her own spaces most of the time and is quite private about it, but she'll find a shrine when she feels like she needs to break out the Big Guns. Her faith aligns with Cullen's (her eventual partner), though she was not as studious as he was. Cullen remembers passages better than she and applies Andrastian theory more readily than she does. He is also more ritualistic about it than she is.
Despite the narratives cropping up around her (first the Herald, then later the Lady Alone), Rose remains faithful through the end of canon and non-canonical events and attributes new information not as evidence that the Maker isn't real, but as mortal misinterpretation by onlookers and authors (since she's seen plenty of that).
Rose was explicitly not built for the journey she finds herself on.
She's led a life of comfort tucked away in the coastal countryside outside of Ostwick, mostly unchallenged by the realities of Thedas save for one detail: her brother Jaime, a mage, was lost due to Templars malfeasance when he was being collected for the Circle.
Her fierce opinions have been ginned up from a potent brew of intense personal loss and relative ignorance. She fancies herself a bit of rebel, though it doesn't take much given the strictures of her world. Every act is one she can get away with. She longs to participate in the world, but has no idea how to access it without sacrificing safety. She spoils her engagement to the heir to the Tantervale throne when she reveals the secret of her mage brother. Shortly after, she takes up hunting with her father and brother as a way to avoid her mother's intensifying scrutiny.
She is soft and brattish. Untested and idealistic. She doesn't understand the full scope of her ignorance until she's thrown in the midst of things. But she tries.
Rose accompanies her father and elder brother to the Conclave as a diversion from one of two impending fates: taking Chantry vows or settling for whatever political marriage she can find. Fate, of course, has other plans for her.
It's her own curiosity that first gets her into hot water and then her impulsiveness seals it.
More below cut!
Stumbling into the Inquisition is a little like stumbling into a surreal, deadly summer camp for her. On some level she's just happy to be there, on another she finds ways to butt heads with people who have equally strong opinions (and vastly more experience than her). She copes with her inadequacies with a robust, self-deprecating sense of humor and what can only be described as pluck (perhaps too much pluck).
She's headstrong in her idealism (much to her detriment) and amidst some of her luckier wins are a lot of embarrassing pitfalls. Pragmatism is forced upon her. Losses mount. Her greatest champion (LOL) is Garrett Hawke, her lover, then partner, who she loses catastrophically. And then she's left to pick up the pieces and soldier on as Inquisitor even while suffering the loss of her beloved.
Because of her loss, a new moniker for her crops up alongside the Herald of Andraste: The Lady Alone. The woman who gave up her love to fix the world. While it's applied reverently (and let's be real the people love a good love story), Rose hates it. She worries this is what she's meant to become. She begins to harden. But ultimately she finds healing and peace in a new relationship with Cullen.
Thatttt's about all I can say without divulging major MAJOR spoilers yet to be revealed in long fic. If you are still here HERE IS A GOLD STAR. I love you. You can read her journey here in In the Shattering of Things
I'm about to shove off for a camping trip without electricity so I've been trying to wrap up my dramatic rework of Chapters 21 and 22 of In the Shattering of Things which comprise the entire Dark Future quest. Unlike the first time I wrote them, very very early in my fan fiction writing career, I'm now unafraid to rewrite moments from scratch so they might resonate across the fic. This scene in particular carries a lot of weight for how Rose suffers in Chapter 100.
So this is the grandeur of The Elder One. A throne room suspended in time. The only indication that a year has passed at all are the cobweb-strung Fereldan banners that dangle from the vaulted rafters, like painted soldiers all lined up for a death march.
At the far end of the hall, lit by a lonely, inadequate candelabra, a man hunches over paperwork, quill scratching. He doesn’t flinch at our arrival or look up, though the iron-clad clunk of Redcliffe’s doors are unmistakable.
Dorian advances first, striding in long but cautious steps toward his former mentor. He hesitates halfway.
“Gereon.”
“You’re here.” His tired voice crackles like it’s been an age since it was last used. “ I didn’t where you had gone, only that you had. But I always knew you’d be back. I knew.”
“Then you already know what I’m going to ask you to do,” says Dorian softly, approaching further. “There was a time I thought you wanted something better for Tevinter, that you would not be so easily swayed with thin promises of a return to the glories of yesteryear.” Dorian huffs, amazed all over again. But his steps falter as he turns to regard a slumped figure in the shadows.
“Maker, is that Felix? What have you done to him? What have you—”
Felix doesn’t stir. The glitter of candle light in his eyes remains fixed as he stares at unblinking at nothing at all.
“What any father would do if they had the means,” answers Alexius.
“Felix,” breathes Dorian, gaping at his friend. “Look at him. He’s a husk. This can’t be what you wanted.”
Alexius looks up at last. “He’s my boy.”
The candle flames shudder as if in response. A fresh snarl binds up my throat as I remember how Father had curled over himself at Jaime’s shrine, suffering, helpless against the savagery of the world, against the Maker’s designs. I paw at tears that never really cleared.
“This can’t be the world you imagined, Gereon. It can’t.”
Alexius stares through the floor and shakes his head. “Imagine that everything you ever loved was cursed to die but you had a chance to stop it.”
Dorian leans in and speaks, his voice stretched to breaking. “I would do the difficult thing and accept that life is cruel, that there is life after tragedy. Maybe not the life you wanted, but life.”
I think Rose should remember this last line in an upcoming chapter 😭
I'm real torn up about the Rose and Alexius bonding I have planned.
happy THWEE!! how about "Offering a hand in polite invitation" with rose/cullen?
thank youuuu! I also incorporated this prompt from @devaigh 🥰
For @thedasweekend
Pairing: Rose Trevelyan x Cullen Rutherford
AU: In the Shattering of Things
CW: alcohol use, mentions of MCD, bit handsy spicy near the end
WC: 2,174
It had been a gamble to come here in plain clothes. He hoped it meant that people wouldn’t recognize him— that he was more mantle than man most of the time, that he could take it all off for a blessed moment and disappear amongst the rank and file. After all the years being sought for his uniform alone in Kirkwall and even the isolated little village outside Kinloch, there’s comfort in a degree of anonymity.
He’d rather hoped that some distraction might present itself. Being tethered to Rose by necessity and further by a promise to Hawke, has done nothing to diminish the intensity of his attachment, but perhaps the attentions of another might. Rylen suggested it might, anyway. Cullen huffs. He’s not sure why he listened to him— Rylen’s advice is for a different kind of man all together.
But then Rose is there against the far wall, dragged in on Dorian’s insistence, on Bethany’s. She’s snuffed like a candle despite the raucous sawing of the fiddle, the tremors rolling through the floor boards as everyone dances and dances and dances. He ought to feel more ashamed of the tenacity of his desires, but the only thing he can think of now is her hand hot and claggy in his and her foot stomping his into the mud.
She catches him looking across the chaos, a familiar jolt of indigo blue spiking his blood, pulling him in.
Everyone knows about her affairs. They’ll glom onto any development like a pack of hunger demons. They’ll talk.
Perhaps there are worse things to be accused of than the truth.
By the time he works up the nerve to will his feet across the room and invite Rose to part from the wall, Cullen is snatched into a reel by a flushed young thing, a cloud of brown frizz breaking from her sweat-dampened hair. He’s able to set aside his near-panic enough to follow her feverish steps, but can do little about the chagrin on his face.
Her eyes widen. “Oh shit you’re the commander!”
Cullen hasn’t the gall to deny it. “I was hoping no one would notice.”
“Fat chance of that.” Her bluster is uniquely north Fereldan. If only his rank could save him from this trapped-rat sensation. “You don’t want to dance with me.” Mercy, please. “But you didn’t have the sense to skirt around the dance floor, so now you’re stuck.”
“It would seem so.” He blushes violently. The woman smirks. “I did not mean—” Cullen tries again after another turn. “I only meant—”
“Were you off to see her, then?”
“Sorry?”
“Our holy savior, Milady Inquisitor.” He can’t tell if the edge is mockery or envy. “Don’t give me that look. Everyone already knows about you two.”
“You forget yourself,” he warns her. The woman is unfazed.
“I thought you didn’t want to be Commander for an evening.” Pinioned by her brown stare, he searches for a response. Rylen would argue that she could easily be the solution to his problems, but he’s convinced he’d never be rid of her were he foolish enough to capitulate.
“I did mean to ask her,” he admits.
“Was that so hard? So why aren’t you dancing with her then?”
“Because you—” Cullen reconsiders as she lifts her brow. “It’s inappropriate. Me and her.” Cabot’s applejack must be kicking in.
She leans in, her voice low and conspiratorial. “You think the ghost of the Champion will come and knock your head in?” Cullen exhales a laugh.
“Not quite.”
She lowers her voice again. “Got a thing for self-denial?”
“What? I— no.”
“It’s just that I figured you were a man of action, not one to dither about waiting for a sign or the right time or whatever twaddle people tell themselves.”
Well. Perhaps this is a pattern of behavior.
The corned-rat sensation persists. He certainly hadn’t come out tonight to be dissected. In the absence of an adequate response, he focuses on his steps, watching them bungle across the sauced floorboards.
“Well if you’re not going to shag me, you’d better shag her,” she says, mock innocence all over her face. “Put a smile or something on her face.”
“Andraste pre—”
“Come off it, there’s no need to bring her into things.”
A hand on his bicep disrupts them.
“I need him.” Bethany. The frizzy woman looks unhappy about defeat but concedes.
As Bethany drags him to the side of the room, Cullen spots Rylen hiding his Maker-damned smirk behind his tankard at the bar. The floorboards still jump beneath his boots, the tavern air thickens as dancers throw heat. What could she possibly want with him?
“I’m only going to say this once,” she says. “You need to go to her.” There’s no battling this blush, and when Bethany’s Senior Enchanter Stare pins him, his own gaze grasps helplessly for Rose.
“What do you—”
“Stupid doesn’t become you, Cullen.”
He exhales through his nose. “I promised your brother—”
“Well he’s not here, is he?” she says. “Nor would he want Rose to be miserable.”
“Speak plainly,” he begs.
“You should be happy together,” she says. Cullen huffs.
“Then why does this feel like a trap?”
Bethany’s head slumps to one side. “Only you would see happiness as trap, Cullen.”
“Well I—”
Her brow jumps sympathetically, her voice grows quiet and steely. He’d heard entreaties pass her lips this way a hundred times before, but this time it’s a a soft command. “Listen. Nothing will diminish her love for him. But something new can grow. It has to. Go to her.”
His stomach does an unruly, adolescent flip. He’s a man damn it.
And if everyone had just let him be, he might have asked her already.
Cullen searches through the staggering, twirling masses and finds her unmoved, cradled by the cracked plaster wall, her listing mug of ale about to make another submission to the slop of the floor. Some far away thought has her prisoner as usual. Bethany gives him a shove.
“Go on.”
He shoulders past people toward Rose, swiping at the sweat dampening his hairline, feeling the plow behind him more than the pull. Worst case scenarios spark and fade as he approaches, the fiddles and lutes receding into mud, then a boyish, lost hope wells in his stomach as her gaze finds him. If it were spring already he could invite her away from the chaos, but with the Guardian winds rattling the shutters, he commits himself.
Standing over her, bumped in the back by a passing celebrant, his senses make for safer harbor. He searches for a Maker-damned invitation with a slack mouth.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says, rescuing him.
He clears his throat. “I’m questioning my sanity myself. Rylen’s doing.”
Her focus finds the frizzy one on the dance floor behind him. “And have you found good company?”
Envy shouldn’t become her so well. Well he’d like to believe it’s envy.
“I have,” he says, extending a polite, trembling hand. “If you’d do me the honor.”
Just put me out of my misery.
Instead she brightens, staring at his hand, the makings of a smile forming.
“Have your toes agreed to this arrangement?” she asks, plunking her hand in his. Cullen smiles himself.
“Reluctantly.” A dozen people look on, measuring them. Cullen lowers his voice. “Are you sure? People will talk. They don’t understand we’re friends.”
“Friends.” The word sticks to her tongue. Rose shrugs. “Gossip is good for morale.”
He hasn’t improved since their last go. But he’ll try for her.
When the song breaks they claim a spot.
“I haven’t danced since—” A little sigh leaves her.
“Griffon Wing,” Cullen fills in. She nods.
She’s been hiding behind that new Inquisition circlet Josephine commissioned so long now that her bare, freckled forehead feels like a revelation. Unlike other revelers, Rose wears her russet-colored leathers as if it’s any other occasion and then covers it all up under her violet cowl, the same thing she’d been wearing in Haven when affection for her first awakened. She flaunts nothing yet captivates him entirely.
Her favorite sonnets had once struck him as cloying and insincere, but really it was their insistence on his inadequacy. Generally, he could only name what he felt and observed in the crudest terms. All the compliments that lie dormant on his tongue stir, ones he’d once engineered while flat on his back when sleep wouldn’t come. Stupid ones. Your hair is like freshly scrubbed copper. Desperate ones. I still dream of your lips against mine. While he silently berates himself, she positions his hand on her waist.
“A reel,” she says. “Do you remember the steps?”
“I can pretend,” he answers.
They must crash into a half dozen other couples. His steps remain clumsy and crude. But she smiles so fully and so genuinely, he can’t help his own giddy grin. They break for drinks and dance another and another, until his pinky toes are smarting and it seems nearly everyone must be forming an opinion about them. Rose has decided not to care.
Beneath his fingers, turning under his arm, she recovers a bit of what was lost. Her braid whips against his doublet, her hand sweats against his. He forgets to care himself.
Eventually they stagger from the dance floor on jellied limbs
“I’ll walk you back,” she declares, dragging him toward the stairs. Their senses have been carried off by all the ale. He’d like nothing more than to tuck her into his bed, but he finds his manners.
“It’s cold on the battlements.”
Rose tosses her braid back over her shoulder and fans herself with a floppy hand. “I’m hot.”
═════ ✧ ═════
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this cold?”
He scolds her but laughs, hustling her along to the yet-to-be renovated guard house as sleet bites at their exposed skin. The door is snatched out of his hand by a gust of wind, setting it banging against the stone wall. He jerks it closed and shakes the ice pallets from his curls in the darkness. Rose tugs off her glove to illuminate her path through the clutter— fallen timbers and decaying banners. When he trips over something and catches himself on his hands, Rose turns back to rescue him, pulling him to his feet.
“I must have used up all my sure footing,” he chuckles. She lingers, too close, as if they’re still bashing across the tavern floor, as if her intent dovetails with his need. Her fingertips dawdle against his palm and then catch his. “We should probably keep going,” he says, inexplicably. “Or maybe—”
Something yields in her expression. That unreachable bit of her he’s been hunting taunts him like a mirage. But it isn’t an invention of his own hopes; this time, it’s real. The gap between them shrinks though he’s sure he isn’t leaning in. There’s a tug on his jacket, then her nose brushes his, then her breath fans over his lips.
“We should probably keep going,” she says, so close her lip grazes his. Cullen swallows his heart from his throat, his blood wild in his veins.
Rose turns to lead him to the opposite exit.
The collapse of his foolish hopes still washes him in a sense of relief.
Halfway out the far door, she stops.
“No, wait.”
Then she reels him close by handfuls of his jacket until her warm mouth meets his. It’s a stout, sloppy kiss, as brave and insistent as it had been those other times. Alcohol pierces their breath, sharpens the taste of each other’s tongues as he fumbles to close the door. When it bangs shut behind her, Rose backs into it, tugging him to her by his cheeks.
He drinks what he can, expecting it all to come crashing to a halt, even as desire buckles his knees, even as she hikes a thigh over his hip.
“Oh Rose,” he breathes, as they search wildly through all their infernal layers, closer and closer, finding a rhythm against one another that sends pleasure hurtling through his fingertips, cresting over him. If he doesn’t get a grip, he’ll lose himself right here.
“Wait—” He falls against his arm over her, catching his breath, his sense of decency protesting loudly. “We are not ourselves.”
She nods in the thin green light, and then wipes her lips on the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No— the dancing. The drink.”
“Cullen…”
“I know.”
“Fuck.”
“I know.”
She walks him to his office then he keeps walking her on through to the rotunda. In the torch light, her glossy, kiss-swollen lips beckon him again.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I have to think.” Cullen reaches up and pushes a single strand of hair off her cheek, an excuse to touch her really. She sighs, her look pitying and apologetic in equal measure. “Find me tomorrow.”
11 and 14 for Garrett, 16 for Rose (from the soft asks!) 💗
Thank you for asking, Mo! From these Soft OC Asks
11. What's their favorite thing that their partner (if they have one) has ever said to them? (Garrett Hawke)
I already gave a different answer for this here, but I will go with another answer because there are so many things. But simply put:
His name.
Very few people call him Garrett, mainly his family. And finally he asks her to call her Garrett but is it makes no sense that she still calls him Hawke and it's this last little wall of vulnerability.
I gotta drop the snippet because it's one of my favorite moments
On the inside cover there’s a note.
To make you snort-laugh when you need it most. -G
Blood floods into my cheeks. “G,” I note, my eyes lifting inquiringly.
Hawke gazes at me, his brow knit while some soft machinery works behind his eyes. He opens his mouth and bites it closed. And then again like he’s working up courage. “Could you call me Garrett?”
Overcome, I crush my lips against the question, like my kiss might be answer enough.
“Of course I will,” I answer, before our hunger for one another gets away from us. “Though… I might not remember all the time. At least at first. You can expect a lot of Harretts and Gawkes. Garnabus. Barnabett.”
He beams. “I’ll take it.”
“I’ll get there eventually,” I say, attempting to extricate myself from his amorous attentions. “I have to go.” Climbing off of him, I bend for one last kiss. “Take a bath. Garrett.”
14. What's something they unashamedly adore? (for Garrett Hawke)
Since this question is kind of like some of the others ones I already answered, I will make it romantic. Rose does this thing where she hides behind her braid (and sometimes she'll hide behind cups, books, etc, or sink really low in her chair) and it just makes him want to burst with affection. She did it a lot when she first met him, completely undone by a mix of his celebrity and his obvious interest in her.
16. Do they have a "lucky" item? (for Rose Trevelyan)
Yes! In In the Shattering of Things, Rose has a crudely carved fox figurine that an orphan boy Tom makes her before she goes to close the Breach. Eventually she has blackwall carve a notch for it for Cullen's coin, which he insists on her having in a not super romantic way sldfkjsldfkjsdf (the coin drama is really kind of funny).
Rose for soft OC asks, #13, 23 (I feel like nic would lowkey want to know lollll), 27
Thank you for askinggg. From these Soft OC Asks
#13 What's the most memorable compliment they've ever been given?
This is from In the Shattering of Things (DA:I Cullen x Trevelyan, Hawke x Trevelyan). It's actually from Varric, and for the first time in maybe her whole life she's starting to believe that maybe she's right where she's meant to be.
“For all intents and purposes you present like a pretty ordinary woman. But for some reason I have this urge to confess secrets so deep they’re gathering cobwebs. To follow you blithely into some kind of madness. There’s only one other person that has that effect. And if it weren’t for his letters, I’d think I conjured him up for a story.”
from Kiss Me Moonstruck verse (DA2, Hawke x Trevelyan) and it's an exchange between her and Garrett. Being told by someone such as him that she's actually cut out for a life of adventure and shenanigans is incredibly important to her 🥹
“I’m still trying to decide if I’m made for this kind of excitement,” she says.
“You hit a bandit with a bucket of rats . Perhaps I’m biased, but I suspect you’re better suited to it than you think. If— that is— if—” Fuck . Smooth like a box. “I just mean you should give yourself more credit. I’m rather impressed.”
#23 Do they like having their hair played with?
Fuck yes. Not only does she love it but she likes to give it too. I think she always liked having her hair done beginning in childhood, the personal attention made her feel less lonely!
#27 What's their favorite childhood memory?
Oof you know it might have been her and her big brother playing games with his nascent magical abilities in secret, but of course that went very, very sideways, so I feel like it's vague memories of playing in the forest with him, building stick forts and LARPing around together.
She also really loved being taken into Ostwick with her dad. She was little more than a tagalong, but she loved how grown up and exotic everything felt compared to her quiet country life!
