Malta Vestrit In The Elderlings City

Malta Vestrit in the Elderlings city 🤍

The seminar devolves into Shadowheart and Lae’zel finding acceptable ways to insult each other while Karlach laughs them off and Wyll wonders why we can’t all be nice.

Forever going to be annoyed at our society's obsession with the pushup as a marker of strength. Like, um yeah, I find a full pushup hard because I'm bench pressing like 55kg. Fuck you I'm not going to feel bad about going onto my knees or doing an even easier version

The End and the Beginning: Prologue

"After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass." -Wislawa Szymborska

Ghilara Lavellan has nothing left to loose when she arrives to stop Solas’ ritual. But in that moment she finds an opportunity for them both to live. Faking both their deaths, she flees with a near dead Solas to a small cottage in the middle of nowhere. But a return to peace is not as easy as she thought it would be. With Solas on the verge of death and her friends mourning her death, she has thrown everything at this one chance. And even if Solas wakes, they cannot go back to how things were. They have to move forwards.

A canon divergent solavellan fix-it fic!

Updated weekly

READ HERE

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Ahhh I'm so excited to be sharing this y'all. I was planning on getting ahead a bit more but I crave external validation too much lmao. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have been :D

Note: there are very minor spoilers from the first veilguard gameplay trailer from back in June, but nothing else. I'm staying away from spoilers myself.

How about “ why is it so difficult for you to believe that you deserve to be protected? " for Tabris/Zevran

ty for the prompt Jacs!! some angst for @dadrunkwriting

wc: 602

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Ariya sat on the floor of Valendrian's painfully empty apartment, determinedly failing to wrap a bandage around her dominant hand. Her off hand was dexterous enough with a dagger--it shouldn't be any harder to tie off a bandage. But it slipped through her fingers anyway, and a frustrated sigh through her gritted teeth.

The door creaked open, briefly shattering the suffocation of her self-imposed solitude. When it thudded shut, Zevran's fingers had replaced hers and deftly cinched the bandage around her knuckles. Ariya looked away as the heat of shame flooded her face.

"I just about had it," she muttered.

Zevran brushed a kiss over his handiwork, then tipped her face back toward his with a knuckle on her chin.

"I know," he said simply, allowing her that lie. "But you know I would not see your suffering extended if I could end it a moment sooner."

"That's better than I deserve." Ariya made to pull her hand from his, but Zevran tightened his grip and frowned.

"It's not."

Ariya sighed. Not this again. "We should--"

"There is an entire community out there that has their lives thanks to you."

"And just as many who don't!" Ariya snapped. She gestured angrily around Valendrian's cabin. "Our hahren is gone, along with Maker knows how many others. Taken, killed, enslaved--because I didn't get here sooner. I don't even know who's missing, because it gives me an excuse to be a coward who can't look at their families and apologize."

She yanked her hand away from Zevran and began packing away the medicine kit with harsh, jerky movements. He, of all people, was in no place to fight her on this. "I just--we need to go. Eamon is waiting."

"He can wait a moment longer." Zevran caught her by the shoulders, hands still warm from the sun outside. It seeped through the fabric gabs in her leathers as he slid them up to cup her face. "Why should the pain they suffered at the fault of another mean that you do not deserve help? It was not your doing."

"Wasn't it? I could have come here first. I should have come here first," Ariya bit out, "shem politics be damned. How many more could I have saved--"

Her voice broke and the tension that held her stiff fled with it; she let Zevran crush her against his chest.

"Not enough to satisfy you, I think," he murmured.

That was true, of course. Ariya pulled away from his gentle comforts, wiping at the corners of her eyes.

"And now I'm going to leave again. Walk away to deal with more noble shem problems when the people who need me are here." She clenched her uninjured fist. "How many more will suffer--how many more will die--because of that?"

She slung the med pack over her shoulder, just another weight atop the responsibilities she'd acquired over the past year. They bowed her back, and yet what choice did she have? The world, and time, and the Blight pressed on.

Zevran tailed her to the door, putting a hand on the latch before she could open it.

"That might weigh heavy on your heart," he said quietly, "but you should not punish yourself for failing to bear a burden you could not have known about."

Ariya's smile was brittle. She knew what he meant--but knowing, and accepting it, feeling it in her heart...those were separate things.

It was her injured fist that she clenched this time, around the strap of the med pack. The broken skin pulled painfully around her knuckles and her guilty conscience.

"Let's go," she said.

Thanks, Anon!

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