#servidon

[fleshwerks]

;)

[fleshwerks]

Eat your heart out, Pavus. Dirt lip forever!

[fleshwerks]

And this absolute eyesore’s going to get graded my ‘final work’ for the vector graphix class.

[fleshwerks]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯    ¯\_(:c)_ 

[fleshwerks]

@luciferesque tagged me. My DA characters and their LIs.

/shrug i only play elves because they’re pretty and I’m shallow. Like, that’s it.

Through here.

[fleshwerks]

9 and/or 12 for the DAI romance asks?

9. How did your Inquisitor react to the gossip about their relationship, if there was any?

If there was one thing that the Inquisitor Spiridon Lavellan knew immediately, it was that starting this fling was a very bad idea, impossible to hide for long, and some of the juiciest gossip fodder around. Even accepting Dorian Pavus into the Inquisition set the tongues wagging, eyebrows raising and paranoia and disapproval from the Inquisition's people loose like a birdshot. Now do all that, but the lover is not just Tevinter, but also a mercenary who, until very recently, was working for the Venatori and Corypheus himself. The fact he used to counter some of the more venomous rumours, that Servis was working with the Venatori on behalf of a third party of a goal not aligned with that of the Venatori did nothing but sow further distrust. This new Tevinter snake had no loyalty. It's easier to trust a loyal enemy than a disloyal one. Spiridon knows and maintains that it was a bad decision, one he does regret making, but isn't planning to unmake. He has since adopted the stance of "and what about it?" Ignore, ignore, ignore. Gossip stops when people grow bored with the spectacle, and he intended to make his on-off situationship with Servis as boring as possible to the outsiders. They never could be open, Servis never fell in with the rest of the Inquisitor's associates outside professional capacity.

On Servis' side, he loved the scandal his becoming the 'plaything' of that Southern rabbit bastard Inquisitor caused. His own colleagues from the Circle of Minrathous outwardly turned their nose up at him, but in private, just about damned every colleague of his that wasn't an open rival would suddenly try to use him as an access point to the Inquisition and the magical research and accumulation of artifacts and magical sites it was doing. In the end though, he was of prestigious pedigree, but he was also the third son, and he simply wasn't important enough for the gossip to be devastating. Not to the degree Dorian Pavus would've faced if he had romanced the Inquisitor, because Dorian was a firstborn, bred and groomed to become Archon, while Servis was largely free and forgotten by his own family to go and be useful 'somewhere else'. In the end, Servis goes where the silver goes, he follows money and moonlight, and to him the gossip is just part and parcel of what he does in life.

[fleshwerks]

1, 4, 8 for the romance asks!

1. What was your Inquisitor’s first impression of their partner? What was their partner’s first impression of them?

Spiridon "I'll give him that, when he and his goons saw us coming over the wall, I watched those shoulders slouch, and that head roll backwards. You know, the 'look' one gives when the neighbourhood stray hound pisses on your finely manicured roses again. Then he set the stairs on fire. I like it when they fight back when they don't have to. Especially those poncy types, the ones with the good handwriting."

Servis: "If a man can't make a timely exit, he needs to show some strength, but only some. Give them a fight, and surrender when the dog feel it's gotten its pound of flesh. Stoke and sate the prey drive, and tire it out. It is easy to take the Inquisitor for nothing more than an attack dog at first, and I had nowhere left to run."

4. How did your Inquisitor’s relationship begin with their partner? A casual fling? Tentative commitment?

Spiridon: "I don't know when it became a commitment. It's difficult to even call it a fling. After his trial, we didn't put Servis back in his cell. We arranged him a miserable little room tucked away in the walls of the Skyhold garden and he was free to roam the grounds of the castle grounds, though no further, not until he was set loose on his mission. And where was he going to go? If Skyhold is good for anything, it's imprisonment without the iron bars. Which means, the man found ways to ambush me with conversation when the rest of the castle conked out, and I cannot be seen with conversing with a Venatori captive, his release and recruitment had already been unpopular decisions. So, the man insists and insists one night, and so I walk him to the only place in the castle where privacy is guaranteed as long as the stone Andraste is alone in her damp little chapel. We don't station guards there, the supplicants deserve their prayers to stay private. Either way, after a brief argument over the supplying of his mission to the West, he made his move on me. Hand to heart, his initiative. I believe his words immediately after were something like "...unless I've dramatically misread the situation." And I am weak that way, you know. I've always been weak for the meat. I like it when they come on strong. It escalated from there, and then he overstepped, and I sent him on his way with some choice words. I didn't hear much from him after except missives with updates. Then the missives stopped coming at all, and I forgot he even existed. Until months later he shows up in Emprise du Lion, at the Suledin, and tells me something I had suspected about one of my advisors for a long time. And I said it, I'm weak that way, and he knows how to play on it, and I know that he knows how to play on it, and so I let it unfold. I think less for him and more for myself. By that point, I wanted to let it happen, no, needed to. I've never really understood where he stands, but I'm not sure I ever cared. I don't know what we are, how it began, or when."

8. What is your Inquisitor and their partner’s favorite way to spend time together?

Servis: "A shared bath. It's hard to hate a man when you bathe with him. A bath is a civil thing. Cannot raise voice, it'll echo unpleasantly, cannot thrash around without ruining the floors and making a fool of oneself. It is where you go to become clean, not just the body, but mind and soul as well. And it is private. Whoever has words with the Inquisitor will have to wait at the door until the Inquisitor is done, and so it is perhaps the only place where we can speak truly candidly, not as Inquisitor and Agent, but Spiridon and Crassius, ordinary men."

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14.

Codex entry: A confession

I cannot say I shared or share the Inquisitor's idealism. It was idealism that made him a weak man, this faith in the Law and the predictability of Man. It is why he surrounded himself with people who could be strong where he could not. I also cannot say that I could, or ever wanted to be a leader of men, but retain flexibility and freedom to not be drawn taut and immobile by the wills and wishes of thousands. For the admirable quality of knowing my place and the opportunities it furnishes, he sanctioned me to curl myself into his fist. A generous hand, when needed. An accusing finger. I seize now the title, and form it to suit the needs of this world, and myself, for I am a part of it. I have no ambition to rule or lift myself up as king or god, but like my predecessor, to assure that there is a world left to live and die in at all.

I want to confess how the Inquisitor died. He was ailing, but I was set to leave on his orders. I would like to say I had begged to stay, I am a practical man, and the world does not stop turning and burning, waiting for the Inquisitor to pass. I did offer, however, and he offered to have me thrown out of the camp in return. I offered then to break something very small within him, to make it quick. It wasn't painless, but it was fast. Something that would break anyway in the body of an old and fragile man. I said I'd like to watch him die, and I didn't wait for consent. He died right where he belonged, in the low morning sun, in my own arms, and I laid his naked body in the tall grasses of the Wycome plains for the vultures and worms. It didn't seem right to do otherwise. He said once that a known grave is like a crowded room that the dead can neither sleep in nor leave. Don't go looking. He belonged to everyone in life, his last breath and bleached bones belong to me, and those I simply will not share.

Servis

9:50 Dragon