I am not your slave.

                 ‘ The World Needs Good Cops. Like You.’ 

He was free. Oh, Maker he was finally free. It didn’t matter that the Templars would still be looking for him. It didn’t matter that they could catch him and drag him back anytime. He was free, and he would revel in that freedom for however long it lasted. The moment he got on the shore in Lowtown, Neil ditched his robes and even his staff for more common clothing. Night had fallen, making it easy to sneak through the streets. However, that didn’t mean Hawke had any idea where he was going. He was lost in only a few minutes and wound up in Hightown soon after. If he remembered right, though, there was a road from Hightown leading out of the city. If he could find that, he could be out of this cursed place before sunrise. 

He sensed an intruder, twitched at the sound of feet on the ground; the walk of someone who was trying to walk carefully, but Fenris heard. Too many years of paranoia and time as a guard made him sensitive to the sounds of unwanted entry. He pressed himself to the wall, shifting to peer over the edge of a doorway and catching sight of Neil’s back. Thin, but might have hidden weapons-- might be a mage. He didn’t have the look of someone of Tevinter, but he had been wrong before. Moving silently, swiftly, the only warning Neil got was the clank of metal shifting as Fenris drew his blade, tip of it resting against Neil’s back. 

“Not your Master,” He muttered, too quiet, laying a hand over Anders’ eyes; the low, singing hum of lyrium tingling into his skin. “Go to sleep, mage.”

Unfair. Entirely, unbelievably, unfair. He knows Fenris is trying. He knows the poor man is doing his best, given the hand life has played him. Orsino does not know his entire story, only the fragments of what he trusted him with, but just the pieces he was granted was enough to weave enough patience and sympathy to give him more of a chance. But it was running out. He was risking so much for such little progress and repressed fear was manifesting itself as anger and exhaustion. 

“How do you-- how do you normally suggest your students find balance, when they are struggling with--” He swallowed the bitterness that started to rise into his throat, drawing his fingers into a tight fist. “Magic?” The word held so much heaviness for him; came out strained, as if he spoke through a great deal of difficulty.

                          Twice my age and from SCOTLAND

I’ve reached 5000 followers! I have no idea how that happened! Thank you so much TvT

Here you have a combination of three of my favorite things: Fenris, profiles, and long wavy hair. As a little thank you <3

He is trying to remain calm – it is a mistake. A slip up. Fenris has never used his magic before. Ah, but he doesn’t call it his magic! He refuses to name it! The amount of times the tattoo’d elf had argued over the use of that word went all the way back to the first night he even came to help. No, it’s not magic, it’s some beastly and hateful thing that he doesn’t want to be associated with. The lyrium in his skin makes it hard for him to regulate his mana. It has to. It shouldn’t be this hard.

Magic isn’t needed to soothe the pain in his hip, but he uses it anyway as he lays there, pinching the bridge of his nose and regulating his breathing and composure. Maker, he feels so old. Of all the things to be in pain, it’s his hip. When the pain subsides, Orsino sits up, rubbing his face and ignoring the painful numbness that tingles up his spine and through, not around, his hips.

His breathing was rough, his brow shining with sweat. He could feel the lyrium in his skin like a pulsing all the way down to his bones.

                                  How you turned my world

You are going to break your promise. I understand.

You’re lonely too.

It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be.

I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable.

I am your servant. 

I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased.

For you alone I will be weak.

I belong here, and you will not deny me.

I say these things, and the world listens.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried.

In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories.

I moved the earth and the water for you.

You will always run away with her.

You will always lose her.

You will always be a fool.

You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear.

You have already done all of this and will do it again.

No one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying.

What we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

There need never be any rules between us.

Let us be greedy together; let us hoard.

Do not leave me, swear that you will never leave me.

I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I.

Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.

I can’t abide a poor liar.

You look like a winter’s night. I could sleep inside the cold of you.

Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.

Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.

Bad luck relies on absolutely perfect timing.

In his own country, Death can be kind.

What is the world but a boxing ring where fools and devils put up their fists?

Men die. It’s practically what they’re for.

I am no one; I am nothing. 

Nothing in me was not made by you.

A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.

Just tell yourself a story that’ll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

Forever isn’t bright; it isn’t like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.

I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.

If you want to kill yourself, do not use us as your knife.

What did I do wrong? Was I boring? Did I ignore you?

Don’t you dare speak to me like that.

I have worn nothing but blood and death for years.

I have fought all your battles for you, just as you asked me.

I have learned not to cry when I strangle a man.

I have learned to watch everything die.

I am not a little girl anymore, dazzled by your magic. It is my magic, now, too.

Are we not devils?

No one is now what they were before the war. 

I have not seen you without your skin on.

Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.

We obsess. It’s in our nature.

I’ve a devil of a habit for being right.

In war you must always choose sides.

If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.

We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive.

My old bones will follow yours soon enough.

It is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair.

I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.

After love, no one is what they were before.

I have survived, but I have not been spared.

In the space of one heartbeat to another I loved you and I was lost to you.

Frighten me, make me cry, only come back.

It’s not so bad, my darling. Being dead. It’s like being alive, only colder.

You’ll think it’s love, while he dines on your heart.

You will be so beautiful when you are old.

I cannot keep you and I cannot let you go.

You will live as you live in any world…with difficulty, and grief.

I look at you and it is like my throat being cut.

She said you’d come and I swore to eat your heart.

I still want to kiss you.

My heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it.

What happens to anything beautiful?

“A-One moment!” He called, quickly throwing on his lab coat and crocs.

He drew in a slow, deep inhale. He thought back, on his experiences with ice -- with winter.  The way the wind had stolen the feeling out of his fingers, until they felt stiff with it. He had always thought of that little thing inside him as a flame. 

What if it had been something else?

He thought about the cold. About how it leeched the life out of his fingertips. He thought about it expanding; coming up and out of him from that place deep inside. Frozen. Like ice.