#zenstrike

Just a short one but I hope you enjoy it, thank you for the prompt!

(If you’d like me to write you a da2 fic, send me a prompt from here!)

@dadrunkwriting

Pairing: HawkeBela

Characters: Marian Hawke, Isabela

Tags: Deeps Roads, Yearning, pre-relationship

Rating: Teen and Up

They’ve been in The Deep Roads for three weeks now, and Isabela still isn’t sure what in the demon-infested abscesses of the Maker-blighted Fade possessed her to agree to this. She is a woman built for fresh air and wide, salt-soaked blue horizons. She is absolutely not designed to be trapped into neverending bloody tunnels, cleaning darkspawn piss off her tunic and hoping it doesn’t somehow infect her. 

On her shoulder, Hawke snores softly, her mouth half-open. Isabela pauses in her scrubbing to look down at her. In sleep, Marian looks almost gentle. Her pale skin is suited to these macabre surroundings, almost luminescent in the shadowed dark. Her long, thick eyelashes are brushstrokes of black ink, and her haphazard birds’ nest of hair is a pile of raven’s feathers, bending gently where she’s resting against Isabela’s shoulder. 

It would be so easy to kill her now, Isabela muses. The rest of the camp is asleep - even Varric, ever watchful of his prized bird, possessive with the love of deep and certain friendship. The embers of the fire have burned low, smudging some long since forgotten dwarven flagstones. The dark smells acrid and sulfurous, creeping around them like something alive. Isabela could slip a knife into her belly and claim it was a hurlock. It would hardly be difficult to find one. All she had to do was toss a pebble and they’d come running. Such a shame, they caught her in the night, at least she didn’t feel any pain.

Protectively, Isabela’s fingers curl around Marian’s wiry arm. She’s like a child, like this. Hardly the one-woman tornado who had so easily and so routinely upended her life. 

Something screeches in the distance, and Isabela tenses. On her shoulder, Hawke snorts a little, and a chuckle escapes Isabela like a butterfly, flying free of her lips without conscious thought. Bartrand and his mercenaries mutter and sniff farther off, and closer-by Varric half sleeps with measured, quiet, shallow breaths. 

Hawke frowns a little as a lock of dark hair falls down her forehead, tickling at her eyelids. Her nose wrinkles, and her lips press shut. Isabela curls, and moves the offending cowlick, careful as a forger with a priceless Orlesian masterpiece. Her fingertips trail over Hawke’s warm, soft cheek. When she speaks, it’s barely a murmur, “You’re going to be the death of me.”

But Hawke doesn’t hear the meaning of the words, just the sound of her voice. A sleep-softened smile curls around her rose-pink lips, and she presses closer to Isabela, breathing her in with a deep, happy sigh. Isabela ferociously ignores the stabbing pain in her chest, and lets her. For a moment she just sits there, one arm around the strong shoulders of the woman she - of her friend, listening to the cricket’s chorus of their company snoring in the night, and the distant, terrible cacophony of howling monsters.

Sort of an indirect follow up to this comic since it seems to be going around again <3

oh man....there are a lot of songs that make me think of him but first one that comes to mind is “carry me home” by the killers :’’) 

The morning dove sings with two broken wingsCarry me home, I'm not afraidThe stars in my eyes with shimmering lightsCarry me home, don't let me fade away

   …so they decided to spread out a bit, right there on the floor of the non-fiction section. Keith, with his notebook in his lap, and an array of papers scattered by his feet. And Lance, with his anthology of poems, and his head leaned to rest on Keith’s shoulder. Just the tangle of their legs, the flutter of pages, and the warm whisper of Lance’s breath as he would occasionally recite his favorite lines into Keith’s ear like a secret meant only for themselves.

   “If I should think of love,” he read slowly. “I’d think only of you.”

   “You’re a sap,” Keith told him with a curling grin. 

   “’Scuse you. Shakespeare is a sap.”   

   The soft rumble of his chuckle vibrated against Lance’s temple as he left a kiss there. 

   “Keep going.” 

LMAO 

Well, you don't have to tell me twice! I am avoiding being social so excuse me while I ramble

Currently the only actually-D&D game we have been playing is the one with my aboleth tiefling sorcerer, Caerellia, and she's been going through it. She has kinda been in denial about all of the huge changes that have been happening to her (finding out her dad is an archdevil/great old one, mostly, and that leading to literally her entire life being turned upside down), but it's all starting to catch up to her and it's been really interesting to play.

Recently her father had her fetch one of his artifacts, a scepter that was so evil and dangerous that it was being guarded by a troop of angels. She assumed that it would be fine and that he would never lead her to something that would hurt her or try to change her, but every time she used it... it felt wrong. She felt wrong, less good and less herself, even if she was using it on people who wholeheartedly deserved the terrible things it does. She just kinda overlooked it because she wants so fucking badly for her father to love and approve of her because of how much the one she grew up with hated her and how good it has felt to not have to hide from who she is. But her wife started noticing how bad it was getting and convinced her to put the scepter away until they could figure out what exactly it was doing to her.

Caerellia thought it was just a precaution and didn't fully believe that it could be cursed, but when she tried to put it down she had to make a save against it and it filled her with the urge to strike her wife with it??? So uh yeah definitely cursed and she's in a really bad place about it.

Keith plans a sleepover in this fic preview from @zenstrike

This is a companion piece to @caelestee‘s art, which is previewed here.