#dread moon

@midnightprelude and @whatsherfacewrites tagged me last night! w00t!

Here’s the thing I’m working on right now for In Deep...

Gotta rein these two in, and it’s hard...cuz they keep teasing each other and cracking each other up.

Anders waved his hand, dismissing her lurid implications with a little smirk. “That’s all just lies Wardens tell themselves and others to justify their wanton promiscuity…”

“Oh, wow...when did you become such a prudish Chantry sister?” Solona laughed.

“YOU MARRIED A CHANTRY SISTER!” he shouted indignantly, trying not to give her the satisfaction of his own laughter. 

“Certainly not a prudish one!”

Tagged by @kita-lavellan and @lostinfantasies38! Thank you, friends!

Here's more than six sentences of almost entirely dialogue from the next chapter of In Deep, because I imagine when Solona runs into people in the Deep Roads, she talks a lot and super fast...just trying to keep up with her galaxy brain. Oh, and also, she spends a lot of time crawling around underground as a spider...

“And what are you good at?” Solona fixed her eyes on Alarion. 

She had two, he checked, just like she should have, but it still felt like she had so many more. 

“If I’m to claim a fugitive for the rebel ‘Eastern’ Wardens, I’ll need a better reason than just 'Anders thinks he’s cute' to get the Inquisition off our backs.”

Anders blushed and Alarion glanced over at him with a satisfied grin, but neither of them had much of a chance to respond.

“You must know my wife is still acting as their spymaster, even though she’s working out of Orlais now. And she’s always liked you, for some reason...” She smiled fondly at Anders in spite of herself before continuing, “But I’ve already got more muscle and tragic backstories and repentant war criminals and endearingly touchy younger brothers of wayward Champions trying to prove themselves than I know what to do with down here. So...what can this former ‘Agent of Fen’Harel’ offer us?”

Oh wow. Okay. I should’ve seen this one coming. Well, first of all, I shamelessly pick and choose what works for me from canon, and subscribe (conveniently) to the whole “Varric probably got some things wrong...” when it comes to this, and a whole lot of other things. I head canon that he definitely exaggerated their rivalry, or misrepresented it in some ways, for his own reasons (to show how both sides were super extra at times? IDK...he did enough of that with Meredith and Orsino, I guess, but Varric strikes me as someone who loves to troll morality discoursers). I find it really hard to imagine two people willingly working side-by-side, experiencing everything that they have together, for so many years and not realizing that they have so many things in common (a passionate desire for J/justice, both having been abused/enslaved/imprisoned/held against their will, both with experience as fugitives/being hunted, etc).

That being said, I still write Fenris as initially very defensive/fearful/untrusting of everyone, but especially mages, for good reason! I also think Anders is kind of a little shit (also, for reasons!), and he enjoys poking and prodding him on this (because he feels safe enough to do it...). In one world state, Fenris develops a sort of crush on both Anders and Hawke, and he doesn’t know what to do about that, either (until he does, like, a decade later). I head canon that Justice actually intervenes a few times (and Hawke certainly tries). I haven’t really published very many of my silly drabbles on this (oh, maybe I should?), but there’s a moment (it’s totally cliche, and I know it’s not very original), where Fenris really needs healing magic, but is terrified and refuses to let Anders help him, and Anders refuses to treat him without his consent (they are both very stubborn, aren’t they?), and so Justice takes over and promises Fenris he won’t let Anders harm him. And this is sort of a turning point in their friendship.

By the time Anders blows up the Chantry, Fenris has become very close with his found family and he is far more loyal to them than to any “side” of some big political debate. He’s seen that the Templars (in Kirkwall, at least) are just as abusive and corrupt as the Magisters in Tevinter, that the Chantry has done nothing about it, that not all mages are out to enslave him (again, in this house, we ignore Anders approving of Hawke giving him back to Danarius because THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN in my playthroughs), and he’s just kinda like, “kaffas...I guess I have a friend who’s a mage now (two, actually, because he and Merrill become quite close friends and have weekly tea, too, in my head canon!), and I’m certainly not on team ‘lyrium-crazed ranting bitch,’ so I’m gonna fight along with my idiot friends...”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20748680/chapters/53681485

Anders and Alarion finally head back into the Deep Roads. And run right into some familiar faces...and tentacles.

I sneezed and this fluffy sappy stuff just came out...gonna hopefully find its way into the next chapter of my boyfriends-on-the-run fluff piece In Deep on AO3.

...

“For a healer, you are surprisingly good at killing things…” Alarion mused, after Anders had beaten him to incinerating a giant spider crouching in the shadows in front of them, ready to pounce before he could even finish stringing his bow.

Anders laughed. “I wasn’t always a healer. I used to just fling fireballs at everything that upset me or got in my way. I chose to study healing as a means to…” He stared down at his hands. The same hands that could bring comfort, ease pain, and stitch together flesh from the inside out. “I guess to help me...control those destructive impulses.”

“I think it’s the other way around…”

“What do you mean?”

“I think you were probably always a healer.”

“No.” Anders shook his head. “The first thing I did with my magic was burn down a barn.”

“Maybe the first noticeable thing. But it is in your very nature to be a healer, magical or not. It’s the cruelty of the world that forced you to use your magic for other purposes.”

“I…” Anders began, but he was speechless.

He had never thought of it quite like this. How had he never thought of it like this?! It was the basis of his Manifesto, of the entire revolution, that magic wasn’t inherently bad, not the curse that the Chantry had tried to make it out to be, anyway, and that all the reasons given to oppress mages and ‘control magic’ were borne out of fear and misunderstandings about its nature. Yet, somehow, he had never really internalized these ideas personally, as they applied to his own complicated relationship with his magic and his abilities.

“Anders?”

“Yes. I...well, thank you,” he stumbled through the words, fighting back a sudden tightness in his throat. “For saying that.”

“For saying what? That you weren’t just born to be some kind of destructive fire-flinging monster?”

@serial-chillr tagged me in another fun thing and I finally have a few minutes to exercise my writer brain (it's been an overwhelmed and sick gift-buying, card-sending, cookie-making, travel-planning, toddler-moming, job-applying brain most of the week)...

I'm doing this for Anders and Alarion, the OC I stole from @figgypudz in our Dread Moon AU so Anders could have the nice cute boyfriend he deserves in that universe and so Alarion could be spared whatever the Inquisition grumpies had in mind for him (he did a thing...). And I’m stealing @pikapeppa‘s idea of doing it as an interview/dialogue between them, because that’s just real fun.

My real-life actual will-defend-until-my-death OTP is more of an OT3 (*cough* fenhanders!) and all my other favorite ships are between canon characters I didn't create and their responses to these questions would be sort of already known...or something? I know that’s the fun of fan fic, to get to write those things out the way you want them to go, but I choose these two cuz they’re my fun, almost angst-free, fluffy pairing.

1. How did they first meet?

“He saved my life in the Fade. And then again out of it...and then he rescued me!”

“I did not!” Anders blushes. “And I had help.”

“Uh-huh...you were the only one I saw burning through a pack of nightmare wolves in the Fade to get to us.”

“They weren’t wolves...” Anders’ gaze goes a little distant as he recalls how the Fearlings appeared to him. Best not to mention that in this kind of interview.

“Well, that’s what they looked like to me, anyway. And the bite I got that you healed was very...wolf-like.”

Anders shakes himself out of his reverie and looks at Alarion’s forearm. “Yeah...that was weird. But again, if Cole hadn’t been there to help...”

“Do you see how he is?” Alarion looks directly at the interviewer with a falsely-exasperated expression as Anders pretends to notice something on the sleeve of his robe. “He also orchestrated a rescue mission across the Waking Sea to bust me out of the Inquisition dungeons during an attack by the Venatori, which I may or may not have accidentally been the cause of, but I’m sure he’ll refuse to take any credit for that, too!”

2. What did they think of each other at first?

“I was in awe of his magical abilities. His intensity. His compassion...” Alarion smiles fondly at him.

“But Cole...”

“And I kinda loved his big long pointy nose.”

“It’s not that big!”

“And when I first saw him, he had this ridiculously long, shaggy, unkempt beard!” Alarion laughs. “Oh my gosh! And your hair! It was like...a bird’s nest!”

“I had been living in exile alone for five years! I didn’t have a mirror...”

“Yes, that was obvious, amatus!” Alarion leans forward, placing his hand next to his face and whispers “...but I still thought he was hot,” to the interviewer.

Anders rolls his eyes, but he can’t hide his embarrassed grin. “Well, when I first saw you, everyone had been talking about what a big, bad, scary elven spy you were. How much danger you’d put their precious friend Dorian in...and then all I saw was your warmth. A little bit of relief, maybe, at being found? And your wound, of course...”

“Were you disappointed?”

“Ha! Not at all...more like, intrigued, I guess, But you were so open and kind and...well, hurt.”

“Yes, yes...please go on about how weak I am. It’s not embarrassing at all.”

“Not weak. You’d literally been bitten by a demon, and then immediately told you were under arrest. But you still flirted relentlessly with me while I was stewing over Maker-knows-what. I guess we were both sort of the least liked people in our little group, weren’t we?”

“Personae non gratae...definitely,” Alarion nods proudly. “Who else did I have to flirt with? The Inquisition Commander?”

Anders makes a disgusted face, and they both laugh.

3. Were they immediately interested / attracted or did that come later?

“Yes. Obviously. Look at him!”

“You were my patient...”

Alarion’s face falls a little.

“...and I was an idiot for trying to push you away.” Anders turns and reaches for Alarion’s hand, warm healing magic always radiating from him. “Thank you for being patient with me.”

“Thanks for rescuing me...” Alarion beams back at him.

...And they just stare at each other with heart eyes for like five minutes before realizing the interviewer is still there.

<333

Agent of Fen’Harel, Bodyguard to the Pavus family, Wanted for Spying and Kidnapping an Inquisition Ambassador, Totally In Love with Anders <3

Here’s something fun I just wrote for my post-Inquisition, Anders-takes-his-new-boyfriend-to-hide-out-with-the-HoF-and-her-rogue-group-of-Wardens-in-the-Deep-Roads fluffy fic (it’s called In Deep and I am being really slow about uploading it to AO3, but it’s coming along). 

Solona Amell is sending the boyfriends out to collect samples of tainted blood for her experiments...

...

“This sounds...complicated,” Alarion murmured skeptically.

“It’s for the ‘cure’...so...yeah.” She was due to meet with Dagna in a couple of hours and didn’t have time for these two and all their tortured glances at one another. “Unless you want your boyfriend here disappearing even further into the Deep Roads when he starts to hear another Archdemon singing…?”

Alarion looked to Anders with a horrified expression. Anders looked down at the ground. Doomed man, remember?

“Just...get me the samples, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay…”

“And then maybe fuck each other? You’re driving all of us crazy.”

Anders gave her a questioning look.

“Hive mind, remember?! SHARED DREAMS! You really have forgotten what it’s like, haven’t you?”

...