#somethinglikehome

[softeasun]

Almost done all my little guys! Anyways, here’s Garrett from the fic I’m working on right now, Something Like Home. Gregarious, kind, and definitely totally fine doing great don’t worry about it!!

Edited to add - i think these little WIP clips do a decent job of summing this guy up.

[dolphininwater-8]

I wrote this line for one of my characters today.

It's from a fantasy about forgotten identities and impossible choices.

Somehow this tiny line ended up explaining him better than pages of dialogue.

I'd love to know what it makes you think of.

I felt like it talked to me. What about you?

You can check out Something Like Home here on Wattpad.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/412885689-something-like-home

Also availabe on Inkitt, Royal Road under the same name.

[softeasun]

Anneliese Amell - non-Warden Amell, springs a whole ass child on a very distressed late-DA2 Anders, falls for a certain Dalish blood mage. Just wants to talk about magical theory with you over a glass of red wine, ok?

[softeasun]

Thanks for the tag @thequeenofthewinter and there is my exceedingly belated

Wip Whatever

Did a bit of writing on one of my intended longer fics as a pallette cleanser. This is continuing off of this post.

Please enjoy some Anders having a very bad time for your Saturday.

Anders turned to the boys mother, giving her poultices to finish the healing he had started and instructing her to return in two days to assess his progress.

Thirty minutes and one lyrium potion later, he was washing up in the small basin at the back of this empty clinic, sighing internally at the state of the place and dreading the clean up in the morning.

Garrett slid up behind him, snaking his arms around his waist and planting a kiss to the back of his head.

"Ready to go?"

Anders turned, but before he could answer there was a rap at the door.

Garrett groaned, and looked over his shoulder to shout at the closed door.

"Nope! Absolutely not! Closed for the evening come back tomorrow I have plans for the healer!"

"… Anders?" A tentative and distantly familiar voice.

He stepped forward, struggling off Garrett's grasp on his arm and pleading look of frustration. He was pretty sure this wasn't a patient.

The woman behind the door looked different than he recalled - a little older, a little more worn - but he wasn't likely to forget those eyes - vibrant and blue as the Waking Sea.

"Mell?" He says, a little breathlessly.

"Anders." Her face carries open relief as she pulled him into a tight embrace.

He waved her into the clinic, and only then did he register the presence of a small child clinging to her leg.

A small child with blond hair and brown eyes. A small child that looked to be around 5 years of age.

Fuck.

"Huh. Well, this is interesting." Garrett laughed.

-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-

Mell was here. Mell had a child. Mell had a child that looked like him. Mell was here. Mell was in Kirkwall. Mell wasn't safe. Mell had a child. Mell had a child that looked like him.

Maddening. He felt struck like a bell, ringing and reverberating on the same panicked thoughts, repeating in an ever narrowing circle until they landed on a single point- "I can't do this."

It hadn't taken Garrett long to realize that Mell was Anneliese Amell, and that they were, in fact, cousins. When Mell had matter-of-factly told him that the little girl clinging to her leg was named Leandra - "a family name, I believe" she had said, oblivious to the impact of her words - Garrett had, in a voice choked with emotions that Anders wasnt sure anyone else would hear, extended an invitation for them to stay the night at the Estate.

The invitation probably would have come anyways - Garrett being the gregarious and outgoing man that he was. But Anders was sure this felt too like providence for Garrett. He had so little family left.

"It seems we all have some catching up to do!" He had loudly proclaimed, that big, goofy smile of his plastered across his jovial face. Despute this, his gaze met Anders meaningfully.

Now alone in the sitting room while Garrett went to speak to Bodhan and Orana about their two unexpected guests, Anders had watched the girl that looked so like him. She had taken quickly to Maric, speaking to the mabari in a steady, babbling stream. Telling him some story, it seemed, about. … a cat that turned unto a dragon? Or perhaps a dragon that turned into a cat. It was hard to follow over his churning thoughts.

"Is she mine?" He asked quietly, his eyes not leaving the girl in front of him, dreading the answer he already knew was coming.

"Do you need to ask, Anders? Look at her."

"Maker," Anders scrubbed his hands over his face. "I just… how? It only happened once."

Mell laughed.

"It only takes once. You know that."

Anders felt sick.

That period of his life had been a blur of bad decisions - emerging from a year of solitary with only the barest hold on his own sanity.

His emotions had always had a tidal quality - prone to bouts of melancholy, to periods of near manic activity. He was known for his impulsiveness for a reason and you didn't escape the Circle (and get caught) six times without it.

But that period following solitary could best be described as a frenzy. He couldn't stop moving - speaking in a near continuous ramble, ignoring the looks of confusion the faces of the people around him as he spoke; fucking his way through what seemed like half the Circle, mages and templars alike, before his last escape attempt. And not always with the caution he usually employed.

He recalled feeling, at the time, that if he stopped - if he let himself sit for even a moment with the experience of that last year - he would never move again.

Mell was his friend. A good friend. And she had come to him with such tenderness and he had broken in her arms, impulsive declarations of love on his lips as they met.

And, in another selfish act in a seemingly endless list of selfish acts that he felt defined his life to date, he was gone the next day. His seventh, and final, escape attempt.

He had never known if Mell had survived the events at the tower, though he had thought of her as he listened to his Warden- Commander tell him of them, an anxious dread twisting in his stomach. Still, he had never thought to seek her out. What would be the point? She was in the Circle. He couldn't reach her even if she was alive.

And now here she was. And there was her child.

(My daughter, he thought testing the words in his mind and feeling the flood of panic - and confusion - that accompanied them.)

And they were here - in Kirkwall.

A rumble in the back of his mind. A twisting of anxiety and guilt and dread in his guts. They had much to do here. And he had to see it through.

"I can't do this." He said, simply, before leaving the room.

-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-♡-

Anders had intended to stay the night at the clinic, burying himself in his writing, in cleaning, in making potions and salves - anything to distract himself from the steady pulse of shame he felt at having fled. At least there, he could avoid having to face Garrett.

A stupid thought, in retrospect. When had Garrett ever let a sleeping dog lie?

[softeasun]

Decided to finish Anneliese Amell anyways because I am unwell (literally! cause I am off sick today 🥲)

So here she is, my non-Warden Amell who escaped Kinloch Hold so she could keep her baby and then went to Kirkwall to find hee baby's dad 5 years later only to fall for a Dalish nerd because hearing her talk about magical theory and ancient Elvhen history and bickering with her shitty-but-trying coparent just really did it for her. 😌

[softeasun]

Thanks for the tag @capricornwholovesdanger!

Wip Wednesday

I am working on the third chapter for Something Like Home. Another one from Anneliese perspective. Its very very rough and hasn't even been reread yet so uh, here it is anyways!

It was hard not to feel directionless, Anneliese thought, in a place like this. In every sense one could mean it. Her days lacked the structure they had once held in the village; As they had they had the Circle; Even as they had on the run. The streets themselves seemed to mirror her disorientation - a winding labyrinth of dirt and stone and light and shadow, wholly unlike anything in her admittedly narrow experience. Kinloch had hared the hard stone, and she recalls the maze like feeling that its circular halls held when she first arrived in a distant way - she was so very young, afterall. And, by the time she had ran, she had known every dust heaped corner of that tower. Familiarity had eroded at the hard corners and edges, left it so clearly mapped in her mind that even now she could trace her footsteps through it - down the stairs and to the right to the library, up and up and up and up to the harrowing chamber. The way the thin shafts of light from the upper windows caught the gentle motes of dust as they fell. And anyways, the architecture itself shared little in common with the sharp lines and jagged edges of Kirkwall. The weeks on the run from Kinloch had seen her in cities, true, but Kirkwall made her doubt the accuracy of the term. What was Denerim, with its dirt roads and wood structures, its rambling central square with stalls selling cheese and cloth and other sundries? And her, so fresh from the Circle, her hands resting on the swollen curve of her belly, head whipping around like the nervous cats that skulked the back alleys of that city, eyes wide as saucers. Haminbryn had been little more than a Chantry, a green, a mill, and a handful of cottages scattered along a hillside - the horizon cut short by the dense Brecialian forest and laying out the boundaries of her little life there. The first week she had barely left the Estate - itself a rambling old space, far too big for the bodies that occupied it. a strange thought that in another life this might have been home. That she might have grown up under these vaulted ceiling - that she had, in fact, been born under this very roof. Perhaps the extra space was there to house the many ghosts that seemed to haunt the place.

Gentle tags for @barbex @mylosingdogs @fiberpunk027 @thequeenofthewinter @atiya-nagrano @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul @armoredinmoonlight uhhhh anyone else! I am bad at tags 😅❤️

[softeasun]

Another

Wip Wednesday

Gentle tags for @thequeenofthewinter, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul, @mylosingdogs, @atiya-nagrano, @fiberpunk027, @serjory, @the-cryptographer and anyone else that wants to participate because i instantly forget everyone once i start tagging 🥲

This is just the next bit from my Handers & Amell/Merrill story, which I am tentatively titling Something Like Home. Continuing off of this post.

Im getting close to 4 written chapters ao may start posting to ao3 soon...

Anyways please enjoy my big dumb m!Hawke - I love Marian but I am so enjoying writing this loveable idiot.

Anders had intended to stay the night at the clinic, burying himself in his writing, in cleaning, in making potions and salves - anything to distract himself from the steady pulse of shame he felt at having fled. At least there, he could avoid having to face Garrett.

A stupid thought, in retrospect, given Garrett had never once in his life let a sleeping dog lie.

A few hours after he departed, he heard a tentative rap on his locked clinic door. Their knock — developed between then when they were still denying the degree to which they had intertwined their lives and their selves with each other.

"This way, you know it's me," Hawke had said, "and that you're safe."

He had felt something then - a flood of warmth, because damn if this man wasn't about the only place he felt safe in this Maker-forsaken city - and he felt it now, despite himself.

Still, he sighed, dropping his head to his arms folded before him on his desk, until he head a Hawke's rumbling voice on the other side,

"Come on, Anders. I know you're there."

Anders stood, opening the door and standing shame-faced before the man he loved - the kind, generous, open man that had for some reason chosen him.

"Anders." He said, as he followed Anders into the empty space of the clinic. There was a note of hesitancy in his voice. He wasn't a man who often tread lightly, but he seemed to be doing so here. "You left…"

Anders sighed. "I did."

He braced for the recriminations that would surely followed, but Hawke simple asked, "Are you okay?"

He looked up, met his eyes. His brows were knitted, concern apparent in his face. Anders felt a flood of guilt, self loathing at the sight - why do I have to make everything so difficult?

"Yes. Of course -" he shook his head, "I mean, I don't know, Hawke. Look at me. I can't do this. I am a mess. What could I possibly offer that little girl but more hardship?"

Hawke paused. He thread his arms under his heavy coat, around his waist, and nestled his head in the crook of his Anders neck before speaking.

"A father?" He said, "It means something, knowing where you came from"

A sob choked unbidden from Anders throat, "You say that like it's so simple."

Another hesitation.

"Maybe it is." He said, "Maybe it doesn't have to be complicated."

Frustrated, Anders pulled away, and went back over to his alchemy bench. He needed to move his hands and steady his thoughts.

"What could I know about being a father, Hawke? I haven't had a parent since I was 12 years old - I barely remember what it was to be parented. What in my life could possibly have prepared me for this?" He felt the echo of Justice in his voice. "Just another thing the blighted Chantry took from me."

"Hey - fatherhood suits you - you're glowing!" Garrett quipped. Inappropriately.

Anders felt a stab of annoyance - His own or Justice's he wasn't sure.

"It's easier for you - you had parents." He snapped.

Garret looked stricken at this. Anders raked his hands through his hair again.

"Maker, I'm making a mess of things" he mumbled, before continuing: "what I mean is… I don't have any guide for this. I don't know what to do. To say."

There was a long silence, before Garrett asked, "Did Anneliese have a guide?"

Anders learned forward over the tall counter, resting his forehead on his hands. He didn't reply. What was there to say. Selfish selfish selfish.

Garrett sighed this time.

"What I mean is, you'll take it day by day. Like Anneliese has done. Like my father did, I suppose."

After another minute of heavy silence, "Look-" he said, "just come to bed."

Pouting, he added, pulled Anders too him by the waist, "It's cold without my honeybear"

Anders laughed, as he always did - the incongruity of this big, hairy, hulk of a warrior and his sappy, pleading voice catching him off guard - and accepted his kiss before resting his head on the man's broad shoulder.

"It'll be right as rain tomorrow, love" Garrett added, "You'll see."

-♡-

The next morning came upon them quickly, finding Anders still awake. He lay on his back, with Hawke tucked against him. In his sleep, he looked untroubled. Unburdened. A little more like the man he had met 5 years ago now. The man he was before Bethany had gone to the Wardens. The man he was before Leandra's death.

When Anders thought about the burden he would add to his life in the future, he felt sick. He didnt know yet where this cause of his would lead him, but he knew that peaceful methods were failing. Every day, the templars got more brazen. More extreme in their actions. Sanctioned by the Chantry, untouched by the Guard.

He knew whatever the solution was, he wasn't likely to survive it.

He had laid awake most of the night, drifting into a sort of almost sleep for only short periods before he jolted awake once more with the shock of the previous nights revelation.

His mind was spinning, struggling for purchase. It felt like trying to run through deep and shifting sand.

He knows there was a time when he longed for parenthood- in the abstract, at least. The idea that it was denied him for who he was chaffed.

Had had delivered many babies in the Circle. Placed many infants in the waiting arms of templars or Chantry sisters over the anguished cries of their mothers, or, worse, their mother's stone-faced silence, their bitter and resolved detachment. He had granted countless more the simpler and less painful path of termination — illegal for mages, and performed in secret; only possible if they learned of their pregnancy before it was discovered by the templars.

It had left him with a burning and simmering but ultimately impotent rage. But he had long since accepted his reality.

To have that upended was disorienting. To have it upended here, in Kirkwall, and now, when they knew how this would likely end — it was all too much.

The light was streaming though the window in a way that indicated early morning - the warm light of sunrise painting the room in soft yellow light. He watched Garrett for a moment longer - the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the soft curve of his lips. The pressed a kiss to his dark, messy hair and, with a sigh, rose.

There would be patients in the clinic soon. He hardly thought this was a day he would make it through without coffee.

He pulled on his house pants and robe, sliding his feet into the soft plush slippers that had been waiting for him when he moved in - purchased for him in a fit of romanticism by Garrett before they had even kissed. ("I just wanted you to be comfy…" he had said, looking very much like a little boy in his abashed demeanour, when Anders had asked him about it, when presented with them on their first morning together.)

He padded down the stairs to the kitchen, pausing for a moment when he saw Anneliese already sitting at the table, a mug of tea clutched between her hands.

Circle mage habits, he thought. He wondering if they were all like this - early risers, keyed to routine. He had always woken with the dawn, no matter how little sleep he had had.

She looked up, and Anders felt a clench of shame once more at the weariness his found in her face.

"Morning Anders" she said, a false brightness in her voice.

"Morning" he mumbled, shuffling over to the stove in the corner to set the fire.

"Will you sit with me a bit? I could use some adult time. Andi will be up in about an hour and it'll be chaos from there on." She laughed, that high clear laugh of hers, and he felt like time collapsed. He couldn't help but look up at her round, smiling face and meet it with her own.

"Of course." He said, "Let me just get the coffee on. It was a long night."

"Coffee?" She laughed, "Look at you, fancy britches, with your coffee and your Hightown Estate."

He felt Justice grumble at this, his own discomfort with the privilege of their life here surfacing momentarily. You know I love you. But shove it.

He laughed instead. "It's new to me too. But the coffee is addictive. Sadly cant function without it some days. Do you want me to make you a cup?"

"Hmm" she said, "I'll try a sip of your first."

This seemed like a strangely intimate proposal, but he nodded.

Once his coffee was made, he settled at the table with her.

"So…" she said, "last night…"

"I know," he sighed, finding himself unable to meet her eyes, "I know. It was just…a shock."

She was silent for a moment, before reaching out and picking up his mug, taking a sip of the coffee. She screwed her face. "Maker, that's bitter. You like this?"

"Well, you know me" he quipped. "Bitter but sweet, right?" He added, reflexively falling into flirting and cringing at the directness. Old habits.

She laughed, but didn't respond. They sat in silence for a moment.

It was Anders who broke it.

"Why now?" He asked.

"Hmm?"

"Why now? Why did you seek me out now?"

She tapped her finger on the rim of her mug, looking at his appraisingly for a moment, before answering.

"She's a mage, Anders. Her magic manifested and we had to flee. I didn't… i didn't know where else to go. And I was.. tired of doing this alone." Her voice was matter of fact, as if her words hadn't made the bottom of his own life fall out - and peaked Justice's attention too. "Anyways, I had no idea where you were, if you were still alive."

"She's a mage." His voice was undercut by some combination of awe and dread.

"You're surprised? Both her parents are. Strong ones too."

"Still, it doesn't always…." he paused, "Maker, and you brought her here. Do you know how bad things are in Kirkwall."

"Things are bad everywhere, Anders," she said, "surely you know that. Fereldan just came out of a blight. Food is scarce, people are desperate. Magic is a good scapegoat."

"Kirkwall is different, Mell. Things are —"

He felt Justice rise within him again, quickly shoving his hand under the table. Too late.

Mell eyed him wearily. "Hawke told me about that… About.. your 'spirit.'"

Fucking. Garrett. The man had the discretion of a drunken school girl.

"Ah." He said. Stupidly.

"Is he truly safe?" She asked.

"Yes" he said, a little too quickly. "I mean, no. Its complicated. He wouldn't hurt you though. Or Andi." He was certain of this.

She nodded.

"Does she know?" Anders asked, "About me?"

Mell responded slowly. Her caution brought to mind a person speaking to a frightened cat, afraid they might bolt.

"She is a bright girl. She probably has figured it out. But I wanted to be sure I would find you before I told her. I had hoped we might tell her last night but…"

Anders stared down at his hands for a moment, massaging his thumb into his palm - a habit he had developed in recent years as his communication with Justice became easier. It had started as a short hand - an affectionate gesture meant to soothe; to say "it's okay". The world could be a lot for Justice, despite his love for it. But the world could be a lot for him too.

"Could we… try that again?"

Mell's smile was bright as the sun as she smiled

[softeasun]

Its not WIP Wednesday, but I had so much fun writing this scene that I wanted to share anyways 🥰

"You're still smoking?" Anders sat with Anneliese on the ledge outside his clinic, legs danging over the long drop to the Waking Sea below. Anneliese was resting her head in her arms crossed on the rickety-looking board in front of her. He fought the instinct to pull her back, like he would when she was just a kid sat too close to the open window in their little library perch. Don't think about it. It had been a long day. The boy had lived, though he would be staying at the clinic overnight for observation. Which meant Anders would be staying at the clinic overnight to observe him. Which meant that he would have to send a runner to let Garrett know he was staying at the clinic overnight. Which meant that Garrett would invariably come down to the clinic to fuss over him and tell him to he needed to rest. Not the worst thing, in the grand scheme, he figured. His hands were washed, of course, but there was still blood under his fingernails. His clothes were still soaked with it. He was sure it was in his hair. Maybe he would ask Merrill to watch over the boy for long enough for him to go to Garrett's for a bath. He took a drag from the cigarette, inhaling the smell of elfroot and tobacco. It steadied his nerves. Kept him calm and Justice a little quieter. He had been getting so loud lately and the guilt of it gnawed. "When I can get it." He smiled at her, then added, "Don't tell Hawke." Anneliese laughed, taking the cigarette from his fingers to take a drag. "Our little secret." Her smirk was so confident it took him a little off-guard. She'd grown so much since the Circle. She seemed so brazen now, by comparison. Their silences had always been companionable, and he was glad to find they still were. For a while, he just watched the light play off of the water. "She's a blood mage you know." He drew a long pull on the smoke, s single brow raised. "Who? Not Merrill?" Anneliese gasped, her eyes so round and innocent he had to suppress the urge to laugh. "Made a deal with a demon and everything. Just thought you should know, with those eyes you were making." She scoffed and pushed him - playfully, gently. "Shut up. There were no 'eyes', you prig!" "Hmm. If you say so." He would know — he had been on the receiving end of those eyes for years. "Maker. A blood mage." She murmured.

(Don't worry - she's gonna get into a big fight with Anders immediately after this and then go make eyes at Merrill again)