Prompt Fest Roundup
Prompt: Anders' crush on Karl
Anders and Amell are scribbling in the books again, giggling over the newest drawing that drawing that Anders has dubbed 'Templar getting eaten by dragonlings' - the latest in a long line of Templars being eaten sketches - when Anders looks up and absolutely freezes.
"You're blushing," Amell says, poking him in the ribs. Anders bats the other boy's hand away. "Who - ooooooh. He's a lot old that you, you know."
Anders tears his eyes away from where Karl has just come in to the library. "What? Who? I have no idea what you're talking about."
Amell just shakes his head. "You are a terrible liar."
*
Prompt: Anders' Spicy Shimmy
"You dance?" She says it in such an incredulous way that he almost feels hurt.
"I shimmy," he corrects. "There's a very important distinction." She is making a face at him.
"A distinction?"
He nods enthusiastically. "Right. You can call it spicy and it sounds good. 'Spicy shimmy'. Sounds much better than Anders' spicy dance, doesn't it?"
She raises an eyebrow. "Um, yes? Right, then, show me your shimmying."
"With pleasure, my dear lady."
*
Prompt: Tea
"What is that?" Kiva asks him as Sten prepares something what looks like dried leaves. "It looks like...well, it looks really unpleasant. And brown."
"Ferelden is brown," he says, in his low, rumbling voice. "And this is not 'unpleasant'. This is tea from my homeland."
She's tempted to poke at it, but she's rather certain that she would burn her finger in the hot water. "We didn't have tea in the alienage," she says. "Too expensive. I thought it would look less...brown."
Sten gives her a look, and since it's the qunari it is hard to decipher, but she is rather sure that it's his version of shock. "You are welcome to try this tea, Kadan," he finally says. She grins at him.
And, when she tries it, she burns her tongue. Stupid tea.
*
Prompt: All you are is mean, and a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life and mean
She burns every copy of his manifesto that she can find, books scattered across the ground as she tries to find each and every one that's been stuffed between their pages. There are too many of them, hidden vases and behind the furniture and there are at least seven copies in the pantry under the largest of the cheese wheels.
"Stupid, lying, bastard of a man!" she says between grit teeth as she dumps them all into the fireplace and sets them on fire.
"Hawke..."
"Go away, Anders," she says. "I'm not talking to you right now. I'm burning your stupid, stupid manifestos."
"I didn't -"
"Shut up! I'm angry! And burning things. Go jump in the sea." She rips up one of the remaining manifestos before throwing the pieces into the fire. "You and your stupid potion. If you're just going to lie to me, at least make it a good one."
"I'm sorry," he tells her.
They are empty words, and not good enough. Not for her. Not anymore.
*
Prompt: Your Best Wasn't Good Enough
Hawke sits on the bottom bunk, head in hands. She failed. Again. Carver is gone, and it doesn't matter how much money that damned expedition brought it - her brother isgone. It almost doesn't matter that he is with the Wardens now, almost doesn't matter that he is still alive, because she failed. She couldn't protect him.
The blame piles up, all her failures, one on top of another. Father, Bethany, now Carver. What next, her dog? Gamlen? Her mother?
She's already failed mother, though, she already knows this. She sees it every day, in the listless expression on her face, at how she cries over her lost family at night. Hawke would do anything to make her mother smile again, and she does not think a new home will do much to help.
But it is a start.
*
Prompt: Weep
Hawke does not cry; Fenris knows this. The man laughs often, smiles even more, but his face goes turns practically to stone, eyes to ice, when something goes wrong.
But as they flee Kirkwall together, Hawke's hand tight around his, he looks at the man's face - the man who had watched his best friend destroy the fragile peace in the city and then been betrayed by Sebastian, who had lost his home of so many years, lost everything - and sees the long tracks of tears that trace his cheeks. It is that, more than anything else, which tells him just how truly bad things are.
*
Prompt: Corpse Writing
He does not die.
Well, perhaps he does. It is not Anders who sits in the small room in the Viscount's Keep, mechanically scratching a quill upon heavy paper. When he runs out of paper, he continues onto the table; when he runs out of ink, he uses his blood.
They keep him there, unsure of what to do. Of why he is still alive - or, if not alive, then still animate. Hawke had killed him, they all saw it. Saw him die on the streets after the Chantry had burned.
But he still moves, though he does not talk, and he sits in a small room that Hawke keeps locked at all times, and he scratches his manifesto into every surface that he can.
*
Prompt: Years Go By
Twenty years from now, he takes her hand and kisses her once before he leaves, descending down into the depths of the earth to meet his end at the hands of the darkspawn.
Sixteen years from now, the small village they call home is attacked and he stands for all of them as she helps evacuate the villagers into the hills, burning himself out in a final blaze, and it is a sword to his chest that takes him.
Twelve years from now, Sebastian finds them and they run, and this time it is her that falls before him, the Prince's arrow catching her in the throat as she throws herself between them.
Ten years from now, the Templars come for their daughter and he cannot stop himself from tearing them to pieces, and when Vengeance comes loose there is no stopping him, not until she stands over his still body.
Three years from now, they are caught by Templars as they hide in a barn, and he dies trying to keep them from her and their newborn daughter.
Now, she holds a knife in her hand and presses it against his back, and she cannot watch as his blood spills over the ground.
*
Prompt: Happily Ever After; What is it, really?
He meets her shortly after Stroud leaves him under the command of the Warden Commander of Amaranthine. She's a elf, a woman so very different from Merrill (who he had never admitted openly to having a crush on, no matter how much his sister would pry), with blonde hair and sharp eyes, and a tongue so much sharper than them.
They bicker like crazy, until the Commander rolls her eyes and tells them both to shut up. Carver calls her names and Velanna responds in kind, and behind their backs the Wardens make bets about when they'll finally jump in bed together.
Years pass, Kirkwall burns, and the secrets of the Deep Roads become all the more dangerous. Their bickering, by then, no longer has the same edge, and he sometimes catches her hand in his when he thinks so one else is watching.
Everyone knows, of course.
And, one day, the Deep Roads call to them, but by then the world has changed and they answer their Calling hand in hand.
*
Prompt: Can I have this dance?
Ismat has come to dread her birthday over the years, particularly because they're normally on the run and don't have time to celebrate. But also because it was on her birthday, all those years ago, that they had learned that Malcolm was ill, the sort of thing that you don't get better from, even with magic.
So she doesn't expect anything for her birthday, just a normal night at the Hanged Man with everyone - who she hasn't told, she doesn't want the disappointment of friends knowing about her birthday and doing nothing.
And yet, they know.
Carver, she thinks, glaring at the boy, and he just smirks at her.
But it gets better, the sort of better that comes about with having a bit too much to drink, a lot of tavern music, and the revelation that Anders knows how to dance. To dance. And, of course, she insists that he prove it, and he's just tipsy enough to grab her hand and tug her out into the empty space between the tables, and he spins her before pulling her close. He has a hand to the small of her back and he is close enough that her chest presses against his.
"See?" he says, leading her through steps that she is unfamiliar with, ones that she trips slightly over until she figures them out. "Dancing. I do have talents other than healing, you know."
*
Prompt: Bethany doesn't mind being a virgin
"Bethany?" Hawke asks her, looking quite apprehensive. "I have a question. A super secret, very important question."
"Yes, sister?" The last time Bethany had seen her sister this agitated, it was after the incident where she and Carver had accidentally let a fox loose in Barlin's field.
"Um," says Hawke, shuffling rather uncomfortably. "DoyouknowhowtofixoneofthosediseasesthatImighthavemaybepickedupfromaboy?"
Bethany blinks. "I'm sorry, sister. Diseases?"
Hawke flushes scarlet. "Right. Um. I might have...and I know father could fix it, but then he'd ask me where I picked it up, and then he'd have to go kill Allan, and that would be terribly unpleasant."
Bethany's mouth drops open as she realizes what her sister is talking about. "Sister! See, now this is why I'm still a virgin."
*
Prompt: Carver has second thoughts
"Wait," he says, just as Stroud and the other Wardens begin to take him away. "Wait, please, just a moment."
"We must go now," says Stroud. "We have already wasted enough time."
"I need to say goodbye," he insists. "I have to tell her -"
"The time for that has passed," says the Warden. "We must go."
Carver looks over his shoulder as he stumbles - held up only by Stroud - away from his sister. He will not see her again for many years.
*
Prompt: Shoe Shopping
"Oooh, look at the bows on that pair!" Leliana says, dragging Kiva Tabris by the arm to look at yet another pair of shoes.
"They're impractical!" she insists. "I would never be able to run in them!"
Leliana gives a long suffering sigh. "You're not supposed to run in them. Now, dance in them?"
"I don't dance," Kiva says, pulling her arm from Leliana's grasp and crossing both over her chest. "I stab things and make them bleed."
"All right. Then look at these. You could stab someone with their heel." Leliana gives her a small, mischievous smile. "In fact, they are quite good for stabbing people with."
Anders and Amell are scribbling in the books again, giggling over the newest drawing that drawing that Anders has dubbed 'Templar getting eaten by dragonlings' - the latest in a long line of Templars being eaten sketches - when Anders looks up and absolutely freezes.
"You're blushing," Amell says, poking him in the ribs. Anders bats the other boy's hand away. "Who - ooooooh. He's a lot old that you, you know."
Anders tears his eyes away from where Karl has just come in to the library. "What? Who? I have no idea what you're talking about."
Amell just shakes his head. "You are a terrible liar."
*
Prompt: Anders' Spicy Shimmy
"You dance?" She says it in such an incredulous way that he almost feels hurt.
"I shimmy," he corrects. "There's a very important distinction." She is making a face at him.
"A distinction?"
He nods enthusiastically. "Right. You can call it spicy and it sounds good. 'Spicy shimmy'. Sounds much better than Anders' spicy dance, doesn't it?"
She raises an eyebrow. "Um, yes? Right, then, show me your shimmying."
"With pleasure, my dear lady."
*
Prompt: Tea
"What is that?" Kiva asks him as Sten prepares something what looks like dried leaves. "It looks like...well, it looks really unpleasant. And brown."
"Ferelden is brown," he says, in his low, rumbling voice. "And this is not 'unpleasant'. This is tea from my homeland."
She's tempted to poke at it, but she's rather certain that she would burn her finger in the hot water. "We didn't have tea in the alienage," she says. "Too expensive. I thought it would look less...brown."
Sten gives her a look, and since it's the qunari it is hard to decipher, but she is rather sure that it's his version of shock. "You are welcome to try this tea, Kadan," he finally says. She grins at him.
And, when she tries it, she burns her tongue. Stupid tea.
*
Prompt: All you are is mean, and a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life and mean
She burns every copy of his manifesto that she can find, books scattered across the ground as she tries to find each and every one that's been stuffed between their pages. There are too many of them, hidden vases and behind the furniture and there are at least seven copies in the pantry under the largest of the cheese wheels.
"Stupid, lying, bastard of a man!" she says between grit teeth as she dumps them all into the fireplace and sets them on fire.
"Hawke..."
"Go away, Anders," she says. "I'm not talking to you right now. I'm burning your stupid, stupid manifestos."
"I didn't -"
"Shut up! I'm angry! And burning things. Go jump in the sea." She rips up one of the remaining manifestos before throwing the pieces into the fire. "You and your stupid potion. If you're just going to lie to me, at least make it a good one."
"I'm sorry," he tells her.
They are empty words, and not good enough. Not for her. Not anymore.
*
Prompt: Your Best Wasn't Good Enough
Hawke sits on the bottom bunk, head in hands. She failed. Again. Carver is gone, and it doesn't matter how much money that damned expedition brought it - her brother isgone. It almost doesn't matter that he is with the Wardens now, almost doesn't matter that he is still alive, because she failed. She couldn't protect him.
The blame piles up, all her failures, one on top of another. Father, Bethany, now Carver. What next, her dog? Gamlen? Her mother?
She's already failed mother, though, she already knows this. She sees it every day, in the listless expression on her face, at how she cries over her lost family at night. Hawke would do anything to make her mother smile again, and she does not think a new home will do much to help.
But it is a start.
*
Prompt: Weep
Hawke does not cry; Fenris knows this. The man laughs often, smiles even more, but his face goes turns practically to stone, eyes to ice, when something goes wrong.
But as they flee Kirkwall together, Hawke's hand tight around his, he looks at the man's face - the man who had watched his best friend destroy the fragile peace in the city and then been betrayed by Sebastian, who had lost his home of so many years, lost everything - and sees the long tracks of tears that trace his cheeks. It is that, more than anything else, which tells him just how truly bad things are.
*
Prompt: Corpse Writing
He does not die.
Well, perhaps he does. It is not Anders who sits in the small room in the Viscount's Keep, mechanically scratching a quill upon heavy paper. When he runs out of paper, he continues onto the table; when he runs out of ink, he uses his blood.
They keep him there, unsure of what to do. Of why he is still alive - or, if not alive, then still animate. Hawke had killed him, they all saw it. Saw him die on the streets after the Chantry had burned.
But he still moves, though he does not talk, and he sits in a small room that Hawke keeps locked at all times, and he scratches his manifesto into every surface that he can.
*
Prompt: Years Go By
Twenty years from now, he takes her hand and kisses her once before he leaves, descending down into the depths of the earth to meet his end at the hands of the darkspawn.
Sixteen years from now, the small village they call home is attacked and he stands for all of them as she helps evacuate the villagers into the hills, burning himself out in a final blaze, and it is a sword to his chest that takes him.
Twelve years from now, Sebastian finds them and they run, and this time it is her that falls before him, the Prince's arrow catching her in the throat as she throws herself between them.
Ten years from now, the Templars come for their daughter and he cannot stop himself from tearing them to pieces, and when Vengeance comes loose there is no stopping him, not until she stands over his still body.
Three years from now, they are caught by Templars as they hide in a barn, and he dies trying to keep them from her and their newborn daughter.
Now, she holds a knife in her hand and presses it against his back, and she cannot watch as his blood spills over the ground.
*
Prompt: Happily Ever After; What is it, really?
He meets her shortly after Stroud leaves him under the command of the Warden Commander of Amaranthine. She's a elf, a woman so very different from Merrill (who he had never admitted openly to having a crush on, no matter how much his sister would pry), with blonde hair and sharp eyes, and a tongue so much sharper than them.
They bicker like crazy, until the Commander rolls her eyes and tells them both to shut up. Carver calls her names and Velanna responds in kind, and behind their backs the Wardens make bets about when they'll finally jump in bed together.
Years pass, Kirkwall burns, and the secrets of the Deep Roads become all the more dangerous. Their bickering, by then, no longer has the same edge, and he sometimes catches her hand in his when he thinks so one else is watching.
Everyone knows, of course.
And, one day, the Deep Roads call to them, but by then the world has changed and they answer their Calling hand in hand.
*
Prompt: Can I have this dance?
Ismat has come to dread her birthday over the years, particularly because they're normally on the run and don't have time to celebrate. But also because it was on her birthday, all those years ago, that they had learned that Malcolm was ill, the sort of thing that you don't get better from, even with magic.
So she doesn't expect anything for her birthday, just a normal night at the Hanged Man with everyone - who she hasn't told, she doesn't want the disappointment of friends knowing about her birthday and doing nothing.
And yet, they know.
Carver, she thinks, glaring at the boy, and he just smirks at her.
But it gets better, the sort of better that comes about with having a bit too much to drink, a lot of tavern music, and the revelation that Anders knows how to dance. To dance. And, of course, she insists that he prove it, and he's just tipsy enough to grab her hand and tug her out into the empty space between the tables, and he spins her before pulling her close. He has a hand to the small of her back and he is close enough that her chest presses against his.
"See?" he says, leading her through steps that she is unfamiliar with, ones that she trips slightly over until she figures them out. "Dancing. I do have talents other than healing, you know."
*
Prompt: Bethany doesn't mind being a virgin
"Bethany?" Hawke asks her, looking quite apprehensive. "I have a question. A super secret, very important question."
"Yes, sister?" The last time Bethany had seen her sister this agitated, it was after the incident where she and Carver had accidentally let a fox loose in Barlin's field.
"Um," says Hawke, shuffling rather uncomfortably. "DoyouknowhowtofixoneofthosediseasesthatImighthavemaybepickedupfromaboy?"
Bethany blinks. "I'm sorry, sister. Diseases?"
Hawke flushes scarlet. "Right. Um. I might have...and I know father could fix it, but then he'd ask me where I picked it up, and then he'd have to go kill Allan, and that would be terribly unpleasant."
Bethany's mouth drops open as she realizes what her sister is talking about. "Sister! See, now this is why I'm still a virgin."
*
Prompt: Carver has second thoughts
"Wait," he says, just as Stroud and the other Wardens begin to take him away. "Wait, please, just a moment."
"We must go now," says Stroud. "We have already wasted enough time."
"I need to say goodbye," he insists. "I have to tell her -"
"The time for that has passed," says the Warden. "We must go."
Carver looks over his shoulder as he stumbles - held up only by Stroud - away from his sister. He will not see her again for many years.
*
Prompt: Shoe Shopping
"Oooh, look at the bows on that pair!" Leliana says, dragging Kiva Tabris by the arm to look at yet another pair of shoes.
"They're impractical!" she insists. "I would never be able to run in them!"
Leliana gives a long suffering sigh. "You're not supposed to run in them. Now, dance in them?"
"I don't dance," Kiva says, pulling her arm from Leliana's grasp and crossing both over her chest. "I stab things and make them bleed."
"All right. Then look at these. You could stab someone with their heel." Leliana gives her a small, mischievous smile. "In fact, they are quite good for stabbing people with."