resolve.

Finally doing what I’ve needed to do for a long time. I will be cleaning out my followers, threads, and rewriting my rules. I appreciate those who have remained and I urge anyone who is still interested in pursuing a current thread to drop me a line. I’m focusing on making this place happy for me again and I urge everyone else to do the same. 

They have known each other such a little time, as these things are reckoned. Barely a year between the Breach’s cataclysmic opening and its final sealing, and Blackwall himself not recruited to her side until some little time after it all began. She has wondered, at times, if they had fallen in love too quickly; their lives for that unreal year were things of extreme emotion, everything compressed and concentrated and over-bright. Had they only loved each other because it had felt like their last chance to do so? Had they only loved each other because each day they were in danger, each day they might die? Could such a thing, a love beaten into its shape under such circumstances and quenched in blood, ever remain strong when the forge’s heat cooled at last?

Perhaps, if they had been younger than they were, the answer to that question would have been a very different one. But they were not children and they were not inexperienced and they understood their own hearts far better than a stripling might. They were not getting any younger, and perhaps it had taken all those long years to show each of them what it was they truly wanted. They’d found it in each other.

          “I don’t care about the dressing gown; it’s nothing, it can be cleaned and            I have others. You’re here. That’s all I care about, Thom, love, beloved.”

To her own surprise, Beata found herself shuddering against his chest almost helplessly, a sudden violent reaction as all her own worries and fears and private sorrows, all those things which she’d been unable to share with anyone in the months of their separation, began fighting for release. There was such relief in having him here, and knowing that she did not have to be strong alone anymore. She would never blame him for leaving; he’d had a mission and a calling and it had been important and needful. She’d not blame him… but she was so glad that he was back.

He was acting oddly, or so it seemed to her, but it was an odd sort of moment, this unlooked-for reunion in a strange place. The chambers she’d been allotted in the Winter Palace were luxurious ones, to be sure, but they were not hers. Not the ones they’d shared together so many nights, where they’d begun to build something like a home. Not that a keep like Skyhold could ever be thought of as homey; but she had come to learn that home was in people, not in places.

With that in mind, perhaps these impersonal chambers were home after all, now that he was in them.

She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes and cupped his cheek with one hand, the right one, as if assuring herself he was really there. Drawing in a deep, shaky breath, Beata felt some sense of rightness click back into place. He was here, and nothing looked quite so difficult anymore, knowing he was at her back. She smiled.

          “My champion.”

Thom inhales sharply at this, if only to ease the sudden, swelling pressure in his chest. He has forgotten how easily her words strike at him, how easily her favor proves to be the only one he has ever truly needed to fill that lingering void of validation he had spent his life plugging up and plugging up. Where there had been tension and fear, where there had been that stiffness in his back and shoulders that she might now recognize each time they passed through Orlais, there is first a warm, bubbling sensation traveling like lightning down each limb. There is second some modicum of peace. 

          “My lady.”

Perhaps this is where he is meant to sweep her off her feet and carry her to the bed that is not their bed, but still one they could share and christen with their love. She had taught him well that it was the company that mattered far more than the locale and he would still have her in the grandest palaces as he would the most meager hovels. Pride was of no bearing in love, regardless of how much he prickles, sometimes involuntarily, at facing shades of an old life he has sought to strip himself from for nearly a decade. 

But he is, of course, still a man--still human--and can’t help the way his mouth moistens with the thought of the bowl of fresh fruit sitting on a far end table. 

Perhaps this is where he is meant to sweep her off her feet, but he does not. They are not young, fleeting lovers facing the world, always in a hurry to love as if time is running out. It is running out, more than they could ever be aware of, but it does not hasten his steps all the same. She is there in her nightclothes, ethereal in the low light, and he stands before her like some great, hulking shadow, clad thickly in all but his plate armor. It is nothing but a matter of stripping himself of his layers, despite how numerous his buckles and laces remain, first of his belts, his padded gambeson. Belts and buckles more, to his undershirt--stained from overuse--to his trousers, fraying and patched and fraying again. He would need more than his simple linen braies to equal her flowing, silken garments, but he is more like himself, more humble. 

It’s late, he’s urged a million times, you need your rest. There is a line of clothing discarded from the doorway to the edge of the bed as he draws her to it alongside him. We’ll talk more in the morning, is added once or twice, but he would be foolish to believe he had any hope of sleeping. Indeed, as he folds back her bedsheets that they both might be welcomed between them, he feels his heart begin to race again as she slots ever so neatly into the crook of his arm against his chest. Is the mark on her hand brighter now than it used to be or is it merely a trick of the light? Is it only his worry distorting his memory? Yet Leliana did not much like him, so he thinks, certainly not enough to fetch him with so grave a warning. Surely she must feel how unyieldingly hot he has become as the wheels in his head start to turn, at once attempting to remain calm as at once failing miserably at doing anything close to avoiding the subject. 

          “Beata, I can’t--I can’t pretend this is some convenient social call. I’m           not a good liar and I never was and nothing’s going to change that now.           I think my heart might burst if I tried to keep it in. I don’t know enough to           not think the worst of it but I know. I know about your hand--the mark.           Scouts found me out in the countryside. I came as soon as I could. I           would have come sooner if my horse could ride any harder.”

Inhale. Exhale. A few strong breaths to steady himself. He is far softer when he speaks. 

Alright. I feel like I owe a little bit of an explanation. 

Without getting into the gory details, I wound up with so much anxiety about being here that not being here was the only way to find relief. I remember at the highs of this blog feeling the exact opposite. The longer I was away, the harder it became to return and subsequently the more I felt like vomiting every time I logged in. This isn’t healthy about anything in life. 

I’ve made some half-ditch attempts at activity without ever truly fixing the problems at the root of all this mess, and that’s my fault. But there are people out there, in particular @armsxmaster, who I have always immensely respected on the topic, who made changes to make themselves safe and happy. I want to be that kind person, too. I don’t want to give up on something that was so incredibly important to me because of the people, the mistakes, minor disasters, disagreements, or anything negative. 

I need a little bit of time (read: a few days) to reconstitute myself and figure out what I’ve lost and gained in the interim. I’m sorry to everyone I’ve not replied to or followed back yet. Sometimes you just have to stop. I stopped. Now I’m trying to start again. 

THERE IS A RHYTHMIC, MECHANICAL CADENCE TO HIS GAIT, a comforting grinding sound that precedes him most everywhere he goes. Like a cattlebell, his entrance is impossible to miss in any capacity, though; already a heavily built man, his footfalls alone are enough of a racket. On these obscenely shiny tiled floors, walls scaled up and up and up in white, his metallic feet click with each step in his haste, the papers clutched tightly in his equally metallic hands fluttering angrily. 

He is not usually late turning in the week’s paperwork--certainly not his favored highlight of the job--but at the same time he is not want to run clients through his workshop like an assembly line. Few would agree with his careful, warm appreciation of omnics--most of whom knew little themselves as to how to handle a human already partially mechanical, though his kindness had always been appreciated. He’s no medical professional and he keeps his head down. He does his work. He turns his paperwork on time. 

          “I apologize, Dr. Ziegler--” 

Surely she has heard his clicking, whirring approach, surely this apology is hardly necessary now. Thom casts it out in spite of himself, papers again rattling as his grip tightens on them. To some end, he is surprised that she’s not elsewhere (thought why isn’t he, himself, out in the field?). 

Apologies. Some unexpected things came up in my personal life that required my full attention. I appreciate your continued follows and messages. I’ll be responding to everyone tomorrow, but wanted to at least make a point to communicate where I’d been before getting some rest. 

          [But] his eyes were still fixed somewhere past the dooryard; past the           mountains, and the distant clouds. [...]  “When the day shall come,           that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last           words are not ‘I love you’--ye’ll  ken it was because I didna have time.”

                                  ---Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross | @makerbound

I apologize--I’m actually not entirely certain when you sent this because I never seemed to get a ping on it, but I hope I’ve not kept you waiting terribly long. Regardless of my technical difficulty, I’m still kind of warmed up by this. It’s rare to receive so lovely and genuine of a message and I honestly am deeply appreciative of it. I had to leave for a lot of reasons and I realize my activity is still not up to standard, in part because I struggle still with the same issues, but it’s interactions with people like you that I’m doing my best to focus on. I’m grateful for you, for my friends, and it’s those things that deserve to win out over any bad feelings that might linger. I’m not perfect, but I’m trying. 

          He paused, fluttering his wings against the wind, and added           conversationally, “Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart.           I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.”

                                                    ---Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn