Prompt Fest Roundup
Decided to collect all the drabbles I did for the dragon_age Tuesday Prompt fest, plus a few from previous weeks. I was quite inspired this morning. Which was bad for me, because I had a paper to write and kept getting distracted.
Prompt: You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means
He keeps using that word: love.
At first, it was a joy to be in love. To be loved. In the wake of her mother's death, having someone there with a ready whisper of love on their lips was a blessing. Someone to hold her, to comfort her, to laugh with.
And she had needed someone to make her laugh.
But he has said it so many times now, and all the meaning has seeped out of it. And she doubts, often, if he even knows that he says it anymore, if it has just become part of the more human image he tries to show the world, even while he looses more and more of himself to that spirit in his head with each passing moment. Says it while he lies to her, hides things from her, and when he finally tells her that there never was a potion to separate him and that spirit she knows that he has taken one of her deepest wishes and used it for his own means.
And yet. And yet, she loves him, even while the word itself warps between them.
So when he sits there with the ruins of the Chantry still smoking behind him, waiting for her to kill him, she thinks of love, love, love, and everything that it means to him, to her, to them.
And she makes her decision. Because he might not understand what that word means anymore, but she does.
Prompt: "It's eyes are following me. Creepy"
Hawke hasn't really had time to fully examine the decorations in the study before the first time that he invites Fenris over for drinks. He figures that the elf likes wine and Hawke sort-of-kind-of likes Fenris, so it should be great for everyone. Plus, even though it's been used by slavers for years, the estate doesn't have mushrooms growing from the floors.
So they have a few drinks, talk for awhile, and that's when Hawke notices that there is a rather large...mask, or something like it, over the fireplace. And he can't stop staring at it, because he would swear that it keeps staring back at him.
Eventually, he looks back at Fenris, who is giving him a very odd look. And not the good sort of odd look, either.
"What? That thing," and he points in the general direction of the fireplace, "is creepy."
And Fenris turns to look up at it and blinks several times, before leaning drunkenly one way or the other.
"So it is," he says, before Hawke can ask him what he is doing. "It's eyes were following me. We should burn it."
"I think that is an excellent plan."
Prompt: Alistair's Rose
She thinks about throwing it away, so many times. It's a reminder of happy days that are long since gone, a reminder that hurts to look at. The pressed and dried petals have long since gone dark like dried blood, and bits of it have cracked and fallen away over time.
It helps that she is no longer in Denerim, that the journey between there and Amaranthine is far enough that she can avoid him for as long as she wishes, barring a royal visit.
Still, she thinks about him more than she should, cries over him more than she wants to, but eventually those days lessen, grow fewer in number. She stops dwelling on him every time that Anders and Oghren get her drunk, and her smiles grow more genuine once more.
And, eventually, her thoughts no longer turn to him, instead to those of the brooding archer that shadows her, who is so very unlike him. Eventually, she is able to hold the memory of Alistair in her heart and it no longer hurts anymore.
Still, Tabris keeps the rose, carefully tucked away with her letters and trinkets from her old companions, and one day she is able to pull it out and look at it without crying.
She is glad she never rid herself of it. His is a memory that she does not want to forget.
Prompt: Bethany - First Kiss
When she first comes to the Gallows, she does not expect to be happy. She expects the Templars to be cruel, the mages to be lifeless, expects all the happiness to drain out of her life.
But it doesn't. It is not good, exactly, and the Gallows are filled with fear that lingers just beneath the surface.
But not all Templars are bad, she discovers, and some of them stumble and stutter on words when they try to talk to her, and it's somehow the most endearing thing - and the smiles are genuine, enough that she can almost look past the armor.
They know each other for two years before she catches Cullen's hand one day when passing him in an empty hall and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. Just a touch, the smallest brush of her lips over his.
He looks at her as though he has just been shocked by a lightening spell, speechless and wide-eyed.
She just smiles at him, briefly, before her nerves get the better of her and she darts away, face gone quite red.
But the next time she sees him, he smiles at her, a small, sweet smile just for her.
Prompt: Day at the Market
"We need more cheese," Alistair points out helpfully. "Oooo, look, exotic cheeses! Qunari cheese! Sten, look!"
That earns him a glare from the much larger man. Alistair darts behind the form of their tinier elven companion.
"Hide me," he tells Kiva, who rolls her eyes and concentrates on picking out non-cheese related food items. "Oh, and buy some cheese. That one, please."
"Alistair, stop hiding behind the warden. Tis unmanly."
"Morrigan, don't taunt him," Kiva says. The merchant is looking at them all very oddly, and they should probably get out of there soon. "Sten, stop glowering. Alistair, if you want cheese, you're paying for it this time."
Prompt: Green
"How-" Irving starts to say, but decides that he doesn't want to know. He just...doesn't want to know. Leave it to those particular apprentices to figure out how to work this sort of spell.
"Na'im found a book," says the little elf girl, her face practically glowing, and Irving realizes that, yes, he's going to hear the story about how this happened anyway. To be fair, the young Amell boy looks rather mortified about this entire situation. Anders, on the other hand, looks positively thrilled by it. Ren Surana just looks...well, she looks green. Completely and utterly green. "And then Anders said that we should try a spell and-"
Anders is making little shushing motions with his hands.
"-and my skin turned green! It was amazing!"
Irving can feel a headache forming. On the bright side, at least it wasn't another dragonling incident.
Prompt: Turtles!
"It's so cute! Look, it's got a little house on its back!" Merrill's lying on the ground, head propped up in her hands, looking at the tiny creature before. "I think it's a baby. Do they get much bigger? I've never seen one before. I've seen frogs, though. Did you know, there's a merchant down the street who sells little frog-shaped charms? They're adorable."
"Merrill, where did that come from?" Hawke asks, a little wary. She's seen turtles before, yes, but Merrill and small animals sometimes result in disaster, and that disaster is normally for a bystander.
"Oh, Isabela and I found it in the stream! I was looking for fish - did you know, they're terribly hard to catch. Isabela's teaching me, though. Fish-stalking, I think she called it."
Hawke looks over to where the other woman sits. "Isabela."
"What? It's a perfectly valid way of catching fish."
Hawke just shakes her head.
Prompt: Dancing
"It's a royal ball. You have to dance," Nathaniel tells her.
"Stupid courtly protocol," Kiva mumbles into her wine, feeling decidedly out of place in her far too constricting dress. That, and even though she's the Warden Commander and Arlessa of Amaranthine, her ears keep getting stares, and she's pretty sure more than one noble has made unkind comments behind her back. "Can I please just knife them all?"
"I don't think the King would be pleased with that," replies the archer. There's a long bout of silence in which Kiva drinks the rest of her wine, hoping that it might help her not feel so terribly uncomfortable.
"I could dance with you, if you like," Nathaniel says, and it catches her completely off guard. She blinks up at him.
"What?"
"I said I could dance with you." It might just be her imagination, but she would swear that his cheeks were tinged red.
She looks down at the remains of her wine, then up at him and smiles. "I would like that," she says. "At least I'll be tripping over the feet of someone I know rather than some unknown noble's."
Prompt: Taking Care of Hawke after Mother dies
They all make sure to check in on Hawke after Leandra's death. Even Fenris leaves his derelict mansion to visit - although that didn't end up too well as Anders had still been at Hawke's and getting those two in the same room was really just asking for trouble.
Isabela, though, she's just not entirely sure what to do. Hawke isn't her first friend, but she is her dearest, and Isabela isn't always the most tactful when it comes to dealing with death. She can be bawdy, loud - she can be a distraction, but a comforting presence? That she's not so good at.
"Rivani, just be there for her," Varric tells her one evening when most of them are at Hawke's estate. Sebastian and Fenris are in the kitchen making something that smells delicious, and Merrill has Hawke up and out of bed for once, sitting with her and the mabari before the fireplace. The girl is getting her to laugh, just a little, and Isabela thinks that is a good thing.
"I'm not really so good at the whole 'being there' thing," she says. "I'm really quite bad at it, actually." She glances around the room then, noting who is missing. "Though, it seems Aveline and Anders are worse at it than me."
"Blondie's got some emergency at the clinic," Varric says, which does not surprise her because Varric knows everything - or, at least, close to everything. "Aveline is doing her captain-y things."
"Mmm."
At the fireplace, Hawke laughs again, a little louder, and Isabela thinks that is good.
The door to the kitchen finally opens and the two exceptionally pretty men who have been sequestered in there for far too long come out, Sebastian bearing a plate piled high with - were those -
"We made waffles," Sebastian says, and Hawke looks up with suddenly wide eyes.
"You made waffles?" she asks. "Waffles?" Isabela can't help but think that the woman is about to cry.
"I told you waffles were a mistake," Fenris murmurs, and he's close enough that Isabela can't help but here him.
"You are all wonderful," Hawke says, more than a little teary now. "All of you."
Prompt: Kill it! Kill it with fire!
"Run away! Maker, it's going to eat you! Run!"
"I am running!" And, indeed, Varric is running just about as fast as he can, a rather curious dragonling following closely on his heel.
"You could always just kill it, you know," says Isabela, who is being absolutely no help. She's found a rather tall boulder and scurried up it, away from the dragonling that has been, if Merrill is to be believed, following them for the better part of the hour.
"Oh, don't kill it, Hawke! It's adorable!"
"Merrill, it's trying to set Varric on fire."
"I prefer to not be on fire!" The dwarf manages to make it to Isabela, who reaches down and helps him to scramble up the rock. "Throw a dagger at it, or something."
"Why not use Bianca?"
Varric mumbles something about the dragonling having managed to get hold of all his extra crossbow bolts, and Isabela laughs even while the dragonling attempts to claw its way to their position.
"Hawke, can you fry it?"
Hawke shrugs from her vantage point in a nearby tree. "Sure. One fried dragonling, coming up."
Prompt: My Mother was so Proud of Me
"She wasn't even angry," Hawke says, drained and wrung out, eyes red from crying too long and hard. "I don't know how she did it - I've heard all these stories about what happens to mage children after they show their magic, how sometimes their parents...can't deal with it. But mother...she...she just held me and told me that it was okay, and that someday I'd be just like my father." She presses her face against Anders shoulder, hiding her tears against his feathered coat.
"She was proud of my magic," she whispers. "I don't know why, but she was proud."
Anders tightens his hold around her shaking body. "She was a good woman, your mother," he says.
"I know." And then, even more quietly, "I want her back."
Prompt: You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means
He keeps using that word: love.
At first, it was a joy to be in love. To be loved. In the wake of her mother's death, having someone there with a ready whisper of love on their lips was a blessing. Someone to hold her, to comfort her, to laugh with.
And she had needed someone to make her laugh.
But he has said it so many times now, and all the meaning has seeped out of it. And she doubts, often, if he even knows that he says it anymore, if it has just become part of the more human image he tries to show the world, even while he looses more and more of himself to that spirit in his head with each passing moment. Says it while he lies to her, hides things from her, and when he finally tells her that there never was a potion to separate him and that spirit she knows that he has taken one of her deepest wishes and used it for his own means.
And yet. And yet, she loves him, even while the word itself warps between them.
So when he sits there with the ruins of the Chantry still smoking behind him, waiting for her to kill him, she thinks of love, love, love, and everything that it means to him, to her, to them.
And she makes her decision. Because he might not understand what that word means anymore, but she does.
Prompt: "It's eyes are following me. Creepy"
Hawke hasn't really had time to fully examine the decorations in the study before the first time that he invites Fenris over for drinks. He figures that the elf likes wine and Hawke sort-of-kind-of likes Fenris, so it should be great for everyone. Plus, even though it's been used by slavers for years, the estate doesn't have mushrooms growing from the floors.
So they have a few drinks, talk for awhile, and that's when Hawke notices that there is a rather large...mask, or something like it, over the fireplace. And he can't stop staring at it, because he would swear that it keeps staring back at him.
Eventually, he looks back at Fenris, who is giving him a very odd look. And not the good sort of odd look, either.
"What? That thing," and he points in the general direction of the fireplace, "is creepy."
And Fenris turns to look up at it and blinks several times, before leaning drunkenly one way or the other.
"So it is," he says, before Hawke can ask him what he is doing. "It's eyes were following me. We should burn it."
"I think that is an excellent plan."
Prompt: Alistair's Rose
She thinks about throwing it away, so many times. It's a reminder of happy days that are long since gone, a reminder that hurts to look at. The pressed and dried petals have long since gone dark like dried blood, and bits of it have cracked and fallen away over time.
It helps that she is no longer in Denerim, that the journey between there and Amaranthine is far enough that she can avoid him for as long as she wishes, barring a royal visit.
Still, she thinks about him more than she should, cries over him more than she wants to, but eventually those days lessen, grow fewer in number. She stops dwelling on him every time that Anders and Oghren get her drunk, and her smiles grow more genuine once more.
And, eventually, her thoughts no longer turn to him, instead to those of the brooding archer that shadows her, who is so very unlike him. Eventually, she is able to hold the memory of Alistair in her heart and it no longer hurts anymore.
Still, Tabris keeps the rose, carefully tucked away with her letters and trinkets from her old companions, and one day she is able to pull it out and look at it without crying.
She is glad she never rid herself of it. His is a memory that she does not want to forget.
Prompt: Bethany - First Kiss
When she first comes to the Gallows, she does not expect to be happy. She expects the Templars to be cruel, the mages to be lifeless, expects all the happiness to drain out of her life.
But it doesn't. It is not good, exactly, and the Gallows are filled with fear that lingers just beneath the surface.
But not all Templars are bad, she discovers, and some of them stumble and stutter on words when they try to talk to her, and it's somehow the most endearing thing - and the smiles are genuine, enough that she can almost look past the armor.
They know each other for two years before she catches Cullen's hand one day when passing him in an empty hall and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. Just a touch, the smallest brush of her lips over his.
He looks at her as though he has just been shocked by a lightening spell, speechless and wide-eyed.
She just smiles at him, briefly, before her nerves get the better of her and she darts away, face gone quite red.
But the next time she sees him, he smiles at her, a small, sweet smile just for her.
Prompt: Day at the Market
"We need more cheese," Alistair points out helpfully. "Oooo, look, exotic cheeses! Qunari cheese! Sten, look!"
That earns him a glare from the much larger man. Alistair darts behind the form of their tinier elven companion.
"Hide me," he tells Kiva, who rolls her eyes and concentrates on picking out non-cheese related food items. "Oh, and buy some cheese. That one, please."
"Alistair, stop hiding behind the warden. Tis unmanly."
"Morrigan, don't taunt him," Kiva says. The merchant is looking at them all very oddly, and they should probably get out of there soon. "Sten, stop glowering. Alistair, if you want cheese, you're paying for it this time."
Prompt: Green
"How-" Irving starts to say, but decides that he doesn't want to know. He just...doesn't want to know. Leave it to those particular apprentices to figure out how to work this sort of spell.
"Na'im found a book," says the little elf girl, her face practically glowing, and Irving realizes that, yes, he's going to hear the story about how this happened anyway. To be fair, the young Amell boy looks rather mortified about this entire situation. Anders, on the other hand, looks positively thrilled by it. Ren Surana just looks...well, she looks green. Completely and utterly green. "And then Anders said that we should try a spell and-"
Anders is making little shushing motions with his hands.
"-and my skin turned green! It was amazing!"
Irving can feel a headache forming. On the bright side, at least it wasn't another dragonling incident.
Prompt: Turtles!
"It's so cute! Look, it's got a little house on its back!" Merrill's lying on the ground, head propped up in her hands, looking at the tiny creature before. "I think it's a baby. Do they get much bigger? I've never seen one before. I've seen frogs, though. Did you know, there's a merchant down the street who sells little frog-shaped charms? They're adorable."
"Merrill, where did that come from?" Hawke asks, a little wary. She's seen turtles before, yes, but Merrill and small animals sometimes result in disaster, and that disaster is normally for a bystander.
"Oh, Isabela and I found it in the stream! I was looking for fish - did you know, they're terribly hard to catch. Isabela's teaching me, though. Fish-stalking, I think she called it."
Hawke looks over to where the other woman sits. "Isabela."
"What? It's a perfectly valid way of catching fish."
Hawke just shakes her head.
Prompt: Dancing
"It's a royal ball. You have to dance," Nathaniel tells her.
"Stupid courtly protocol," Kiva mumbles into her wine, feeling decidedly out of place in her far too constricting dress. That, and even though she's the Warden Commander and Arlessa of Amaranthine, her ears keep getting stares, and she's pretty sure more than one noble has made unkind comments behind her back. "Can I please just knife them all?"
"I don't think the King would be pleased with that," replies the archer. There's a long bout of silence in which Kiva drinks the rest of her wine, hoping that it might help her not feel so terribly uncomfortable.
"I could dance with you, if you like," Nathaniel says, and it catches her completely off guard. She blinks up at him.
"What?"
"I said I could dance with you." It might just be her imagination, but she would swear that his cheeks were tinged red.
She looks down at the remains of her wine, then up at him and smiles. "I would like that," she says. "At least I'll be tripping over the feet of someone I know rather than some unknown noble's."
Prompt: Taking Care of Hawke after Mother dies
They all make sure to check in on Hawke after Leandra's death. Even Fenris leaves his derelict mansion to visit - although that didn't end up too well as Anders had still been at Hawke's and getting those two in the same room was really just asking for trouble.
Isabela, though, she's just not entirely sure what to do. Hawke isn't her first friend, but she is her dearest, and Isabela isn't always the most tactful when it comes to dealing with death. She can be bawdy, loud - she can be a distraction, but a comforting presence? That she's not so good at.
"Rivani, just be there for her," Varric tells her one evening when most of them are at Hawke's estate. Sebastian and Fenris are in the kitchen making something that smells delicious, and Merrill has Hawke up and out of bed for once, sitting with her and the mabari before the fireplace. The girl is getting her to laugh, just a little, and Isabela thinks that is a good thing.
"I'm not really so good at the whole 'being there' thing," she says. "I'm really quite bad at it, actually." She glances around the room then, noting who is missing. "Though, it seems Aveline and Anders are worse at it than me."
"Blondie's got some emergency at the clinic," Varric says, which does not surprise her because Varric knows everything - or, at least, close to everything. "Aveline is doing her captain-y things."
"Mmm."
At the fireplace, Hawke laughs again, a little louder, and Isabela thinks that is good.
The door to the kitchen finally opens and the two exceptionally pretty men who have been sequestered in there for far too long come out, Sebastian bearing a plate piled high with - were those -
"We made waffles," Sebastian says, and Hawke looks up with suddenly wide eyes.
"You made waffles?" she asks. "Waffles?" Isabela can't help but think that the woman is about to cry.
"I told you waffles were a mistake," Fenris murmurs, and he's close enough that Isabela can't help but here him.
"You are all wonderful," Hawke says, more than a little teary now. "All of you."
Prompt: Kill it! Kill it with fire!
"Run away! Maker, it's going to eat you! Run!"
"I am running!" And, indeed, Varric is running just about as fast as he can, a rather curious dragonling following closely on his heel.
"You could always just kill it, you know," says Isabela, who is being absolutely no help. She's found a rather tall boulder and scurried up it, away from the dragonling that has been, if Merrill is to be believed, following them for the better part of the hour.
"Oh, don't kill it, Hawke! It's adorable!"
"Merrill, it's trying to set Varric on fire."
"I prefer to not be on fire!" The dwarf manages to make it to Isabela, who reaches down and helps him to scramble up the rock. "Throw a dagger at it, or something."
"Why not use Bianca?"
Varric mumbles something about the dragonling having managed to get hold of all his extra crossbow bolts, and Isabela laughs even while the dragonling attempts to claw its way to their position.
"Hawke, can you fry it?"
Hawke shrugs from her vantage point in a nearby tree. "Sure. One fried dragonling, coming up."
Prompt: My Mother was so Proud of Me
"She wasn't even angry," Hawke says, drained and wrung out, eyes red from crying too long and hard. "I don't know how she did it - I've heard all these stories about what happens to mage children after they show their magic, how sometimes their parents...can't deal with it. But mother...she...she just held me and told me that it was okay, and that someday I'd be just like my father." She presses her face against Anders shoulder, hiding her tears against his feathered coat.
"She was proud of my magic," she whispers. "I don't know why, but she was proud."
Anders tightens his hold around her shaking body. "She was a good woman, your mother," he says.
"I know." And then, even more quietly, "I want her back."