#He went from disgusted to ironic to angry to furious to disdainful to worried to loving and I think about it a lot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

loquaciousquark · 7 years

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Bloomingtide, date? ?

awake! and they l eft me alone, it all is pain

skewered like

like a sausage on a spit, right through and then

up so high high I could see all their faces, little moons and thousand gleaming silent starry eyes

hurts like vodi void itself tearing apart inside my ribs

lived anyway, A has me on cocktail so sotrong ste st

keep falling asleep

fuck you Kirkwall fuck you won’t kill me no matter how har hard you try, can’t save anyone else but I refuse I will not die i swear it

Bloomingtaid

head splitting so bad I can’t stop tearing up, side effect of skewer or anodyne ?

Fenris sent O for A, not here yet

said maybe this would distract me but I can’t think st

straight

iron spike through my skull, crack me in two maker maker

bloom

back on cockta il

f is alseep sleep in chair next to me

looks v tired

i do love him

late

nightmares are so muc h worse on laudanum

dumar

his head bow bounced like one of tob’s balls down the st airs

the crown fell & rolled & stopped at m

my feet as if i wanted it

F is taking my pen no I’ll bite y

11th Bloomingtide

Carver was there with the Wardens

my little brother, grown even taller than last I saw him. He looked so tired and pale and strong and stern and if it hadn’t been for Mother’s eyes I wouldn’t have known him.

He couldn’t stay. I wanted him to so badly, so much to tell him, and I think he had things to tell me too, but the city burned and his commander called him away. Could have killed the man despite his glorious mustache

I think they’ve killed something in Carver, the Wardens. But they saved him, too, and continue to save him even now. Can I hate that? I want to. I want him here

He was wearing the gloves Mother and I sent him so long ago. They fit him perfectly

Too tired for more now

13th Bloomingtide. Sky’s clear through the window, which is the only exposure to weather I’ve had for over a week

I’m lucid today and capable of holding the pen, which is so marked an improvement I think I deserve a cake. According to Anders, this is also the day he’s at last become convinced I’m thoroughly out of danger--admittedly less impressive considering I was either unconscious or on the violent side of raving for the last two weeks, and therefore quite unable to enjoy the fuss.

Doesn’t mean my gut doesn’t still hurt like the Void from navel to breastbone, even when I’m not moving a muscle. It’s as much as I can manage to remain propped upon my numerous and fluffy pillows. Ugh. I might as well be one of those fools from Mother’s stories, holding court from my bedcovers and gazing down imperiously upon all those come to supplicate at my feet.

I won’t lie, I can still feel some of Anders’s anodyne. My head’s remarkably loose ‘pon my shoulders, and I keep catching myself giving Fenris the stupidest looks.

Do I talk about him here? I feel like I should, and I also feel like the way he looked when I woke the few times during these last weeks is something so private I don’t want to share it, even with these pages.

His eyes hurt. Exhaustion and fear and a terrible worry and a banked, impotent anger that made my skin burn when I looked at him. He held my hand when the pain was worst, when my skull was trying to split itself apart and Anders wasn’t here yet, and again later when Anders had to re-mend parts of me that hadn’t knit right the first time.

He was there every time I woke, even when I wasn’t really awake. I don’t remember much, but... I remember that. Sometimes he was asleep, and sometimes he only spoke to tell me he was leaving for a while, but even when the nightmares twisted Dumar and my mother into one clear horror, I never woke alone.

A remarkable and dangerous thing, I think, to be the sole focus of that man.

He’s out, now, eating lunch with Sebastian and Donnic. Aveline is here instead, busily rearranging my sloppy bureau drawers and tutting every time I breathe wrong. I appreciate the mothering, but I am glad she’s not decided to hover. Donnic’s influence, I think. They are so sweet together despite themselves. I like him very much. I like his flatbread more. If you read this, Aveline, I demand assorted pastries posthaste. I also demand a place in the wedding, which is less negotiable. Hint.

Flames, I have all the stamina of wet paper. Only a half-hour and I’m already flagging...and here comes Fenris, home from the wars, to silently scold me with his eyebrows and take my weapon of choice from me again.

Except he’s brought me food from wherever they ate, and I can see at least two loaves of brown bread peeking out of that basket. If he’s got butter in there as well I swear I’ll kiss him.

Well. Perhaps I won’t, but I’ll wish quite hard and settle for hoping he gets the hint.

15th Bloomingtide. Slow rain with patches of weak sunshine

I had a memory this morning, or a dream of a memory. Somewhere in the first few days where I had no mind except for the pain, and all I could do was writhe about and swallow the screams as Anders tried to put my insides back together.

It was warm and sunlit...mid-afternoon, maybe, right after Anders had given me that absolutely disgusting potion for pain and healing. He’d left to get more thread for stitches, and I was lolling about in a cloud, and then Fenris came in and sat down in the chair beside the bed and took my hand.

It’s all very smeared when I try to think of it. I know he said he was sorry--for what I haven’t the faintest idea--and that he wished he could have thought of something to say to the Arishok. That he knew I’d respected the man and must have been sorry to kill him, even after everything.

I was. I hadn’t realized he’d known. It was so hard to stay awake...

I remember pulling his hand up next to my face. I remember him cupping my cheek in his other hand and closing his eyes, and at the very blurry edges I remember him leaning down close, like the parts of a dream right before you wake up.

If he did really kiss me, though, I can’t remember a damned lick about it. Clearly he should repeat

Toby’s flopping over everything and has upset the inkwell twice. I suppose I’m done for now.

17th Bloomingtide. Stormy, overcast, threat of lightning. I wish

Scare of my life today. (Aside from all the other scares, I mean.) Over two weeks confined to this bed and it never once occurred to me I might have difficulty walking by myself after. Although--to be fair, it wasn’t the collapse two steps in that frightened me so much as the excruciating pain that rocketed from my spine down both legs, followed by the tingling and then total numbness from the waist down.

For my part, I think I handled it very admirably. I did not scream, not even at the thousand flashes of my life never standing or walking on my own again, and I only very slightly hyperventilated at the thought of never again feeling Fenris’s hand on my knee. Part of me recognized that as ludicrous, but for the rest of me it remains a very real concern

Anyway, I laid there for a few minutes next to the bed getting my life in order, all the way to my last will and testament for when Anders told me I’d ruined my only chance of survival, and then the door opened and in came my shining elvhen knight who went from distracted to panicked to flat-out furious with me in a matter of about four seconds.

It turns out some people have no understanding and even less sympathy for someone about to die without a privy. Ass. Don’t put the pot halfway across the room, then, you lyrium-riddled potato.

Spent a good ten minutes afterwards arguing about my level of invalidity. Felt good to shout--won’t pretend otherwise. He didn’t, this time, but in its place he leveled that cold disdain that can freeze right down to the bones if you care for his opinion. Never have I ever felt so small as when he’s truly angry with me for doing something hideously reckless. Still, I was hot enough it rolled off me like a duck’s back, and if nothing else it made me forget how sharp the pain running down my legs was.

To make a long story less long, by the time Anders found us I was red as a beet and Fenris was wound so tightly he might have been one of Orana’s dishrags after brisket night. He listened, remained sadly unimpressed by either of us, popped me face-down on the bed and spent about twenty minutes undoing whatever it was I’d done to myself in the fall.

I’d like to pretend I was stalwart and steady throughout his work, but when Anders said it wasn’t serious I just about went to jelly in relief. Something had pinched off something else and had swelled to thunder, but nothing he couldn’t touch up given enough time. Honesty also compels me to mention my pillow may have ended up a little damp by the end of his healing, though everyone was tactful enough not to mention it.

More bitter was I to hear I’m not to even try standing for another four days without supervision. Supervision, he says. I’ve been standing on my own for almost thirty years, you pile of unsympathetic feathers. I hardly need someone holding my hand now that I know what to watch for.

I will say Fenris did make the effort to hide his vindication the moment he saw the tears I was trying to hide. A room full of stifled emotion, and none of us happy about it.

I’m so sick of this bed.

19th Bloomingtide, storming again

Two dozen steps today, Anders hovering the whole time. Still, progress.

Heard from Carver--short letter, but good. He likes Stroud as a commander. Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t set him afire for taking Carver away so quickly.

Varric offered to host cards here instead of the Hanged Man since I’m housebound for the foreseeable future. Turned him down, though--with Isabela still off who-knows-where it already feels different enough. I can only handle so much change at one time.

28th Bloomingtide. Sunny, warming at last

I just realized I missed Summerday. Bethany’s favorite, naturally. I’ll go to the Chantry next week for her candles.

She’s been gone six years already. How in the world did that happen?

I wonder if Carver remembers that time she got us all in trouble for stealing pears, then innocent-eyed her way out of punishment after, leaving the two of us to do the milking before dawn for a month. I’ll write him tomorrow and ask.

3rd Justinian. Getting quite hot, I’m still mostly indoors and already wilting

Had a letter from Seneschal Bran today. Thought it was going to be a bill for damages--turns out they’re giving me a title and official recognition for the Arishok slaughter. Champion of Kirkwall, he’s calling it. As if advertising my apostitudity (?) to the entire noble caste of the city wasn’t bad enough, flaunting it in the Knight-Commander’s face will have me thrown in the Gallows’s bowels by Tuesday.

She already can’t stand people like me--unshackled and unapologetic--and this is going to make it so much worse. She looked upon me twice during the invasion and both times I thought I was going to shrivel into a husk from the animosity. Of course, the second time I was well on my way to dying, so it didn’t seem nearly as important, but still. Title aside, I was powerless enough before not to warrant her attention, even with Mother’s title. If this--Champion--thing goes through, I’ll be a threat. Not so easy to ignore that, even if I’d prefer to remain beneath her lofty notice. And yet...

There’s to be a ceremony in a month if I’m strong enough to stand for it. They underestimate me There’s also, according to the letter, going to be a ball with dancing and music afterwards. This whole thing sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but I don’t see how I can turn it down without scorning the...I don’t know the word. Protection, maybe--the protection that the title will provide--not just for me, but for Carver and my friends. Especially Anders and Merrill, the more I think about it. Sheltering apostates is still a crime. Sebastian and Aveline skirt the edge of catastrophe close enough as it is. If Aveline lost the guard because Meredith took out her grudge against me, I think I’d walk right off one of the bluffs of the Wounded Coast into the sea and be done with it.

I don’t know what to do. I need to decide soon. I need to talk to Varric, I think.

In other less-distressing news, Merrill and I went out for tea together yesterday. We didn’t go far--there’s a tiny cafe that sells little biscuits right around the corner, and she made a surprisingly sturdy crutch for how slight she is. We had tea and cakes and these very hard little chunks of spiced bread you’re supposed to dip in your tea to soften first, but I didn’t discover that until I’d just about broken a tooth on the crust.

She’s been working on that mirror desperately. She sounds desperate when she speaks of it. Still, she’s willing to come out to things like this and she still goes to the Hanged Man every week, so I suppose I can’t worry too much. She certainly doesn’t like it when I do, anyway.

She did say one of the other families in the alienage let her help them with the vhenadahl last week. A little bit of paint touch-up and trimming some of the dead branches. Sometimes I’m overcome with wonder that something so lovely has lived so well in the city, despite everything working against survival.

The tree’s awfully pretty, too.

9th Justinian. Stormed again last night, rained so hard it knocked two of the Chantry’s trees over

Told Fenris he didn’t have to keep coming every day now that I’m well on my way to mending. He covered it well, but I saw the stark hurt that flashed across his face when I said it.

He doesn’t realize how much it’s killing me to have him here so often. I know what I wrote when I was incoherent on Anders’s potion. I meant it. I mean it now, as much as I wish I didn’t.

I was doing all right. I was, right up until today when he helped me stand from the sofa and let his arm linger around my waist, then snatched himself away with a grimace the instant I met his eyes. He moved so fast I almost fell.

I need time. That’s all. Just enough I can get a handle on this and stuff it back where it came from, where it doesn’t ache like a fist in my heart every time he moves just out of reach. We made it back into friendship before; I can conquer this and keep us there, I know it.

I will. I have to. His friendship is too important to me to lose over this. I just need time. Just a little more time, and then we’ll be back to where we were and he won’t have to flinch every time I come too close.

16th Justinian. Clear, stifling

He hasn’t come even once. I miss him so much I can’t stand myself.

22nd Justinian. Drizzling rain, lots of wind. Branches keep knocking against my window and startling me

Told him to come for weekly reading lessons if he wanted. It’s been over eight months since the last time we met.

I don’t think he needs much more help, and I don’t think that fact has escaped him either. He’s still coming day after tomorrow.

Maker, but I wish Isabela were here. I don’t know what I’m doing.

25th Justinian. Cool for the season, which means it’s still damned hot

Enough pining. I swear, that brew of Anders has made me more gloomy than Toby on bath day. I’m alive! That’s more than enough to be glad about. I faced a man four times my size in single combat and bested him with magic alone. Got run through like a spike nail through a pincushion, but I won with magic against a man-sized sword and shoulders made of mountains and the city saw it, and I, a mage, still walk free in Kirkwall despite the fact that the entire noble caste knows what I am.

I have friends here. Isn’t that glorious? A healer willing to work himself to the bone for the sake of my kidneys--a beautiful guardswoman who refuses to be ashamed of all this degenerate company. Sebastian, who understands when I need to hear the Chant and doesn’t mind the doing. Merrill, who brought me three hawk feathers just this morning because she said they made her think of me.

Dear Varric. He always remembers for me when it’s too hard to do myself. And Isabela, wherever she is--who else knows how to laugh in the worst of it? And--

And Fenris. Because I never woke alone.

I’m the luckiest apostate in Thedas. I won’t forget that again.

Later

Anders says I only have one kidney now. Hm. Good to know!

#fenris #hawke #fenris/hawke #dragon age #quark writes #hawke's journal tag #oh my goodness it's another one #what's happened to me who am i where did i go

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