Heyy, so this is a fic I've been posting on my AO3, and FFN is my first home, so I figured I'd start uploading it here too. It's essentially my own fluffy wish-fulfillment domestic circle tower fanfic. There will be a few OCs, including my own Amell and Surana. There isn't really a plot but some chapters might be linked.
The circle tower doesn't change: old stone walls illuminated by lanterns, shadows dancing along the carpet, apprentice feet wearing out their boots. The same faces buried in books and gossiping, as they find ways to pass the endless stretches of time.
Anya twirls a long strand of her coiled black hair between two fingers as she absentmindedly sketches spirals and flowers in the margin of her notes -anything to make the material more interesting.
"Hey, Annie, what's the difference between Salubirous Embrium and Dark Embrium again?"
Jowan's bony spine pushes into Anya's back as he leans into her. She turns her head to meet his gaze, her eyes poking through her curls.
With a sigh, Anya pages through the pile of vellum on her lap, searching for a particular page. "I don't think I have that. I must have missed it."
She hears a groan as he slumps over his notes. "I was afraid you'd say that. You know Enchanter Wynne is going to skin my hide if I don't come up with better scores on my herbalism exam this month. I think she's still bitter about that time we snuck into the wine cabinet in the senior mage quarters."
"'We'?" she repeats with a scoff. "That one was all you and Anders. I was actually telling you all how much of a bad idea it was."
Jowan snorts. "Yeah, isn't that what you told Wynne when she found you passed out and curled into a ball in the chapel? You were sprawled over a pew, sobbing uncontrollably because you thought Andraste was mad at you."
With a huff, she pushes all her notes off of her lap and turns around, climbing up Jowan's back until she was slumped over his shoulder. "Hey!" he cries out. "What in Andraste's name are you doing?"
Anya reaches down and grabs his notes while he's preoccupied and swiftly sits back down, flipping through the pages. "We were talking about Embrium for two periods. Surely one of us has something on it." She furrows her eyes as she scans the looping ink on the parchment. A fundamental difference between her notes and Jowan's is how absolutely filthy the Jowan's are. Anything from ink blots to scorch marks could be found on the margins and between the lines. His handwriting, if indeed it even could be considered writing, is a mess of what she can only assume are abbreviations and illegible squiggles that must at one point in Jowan's mind have resembled actual words.
Slowly, the expression on Anya's face darkens, almost as though a stormcloud had manifested itself right above her head. Her hands tremble as they hand the notes back to Jowan. "You… You live like this?" she asks him, her tone dripping in a heavy blend of horror and melancholy.
With a scowl, he snatches his pages from her. "Ha ha, Annie."
She cackles, her face disappearing in her torrent of hair as she doubles over. "We're both going to fail," she remarks, still grinning in amusement.
"Both?" He eyes her suspiciously, raising an inquisitive bushy brow. "You always say that right before you get the highest score in class."
Jowan is right of course. He always is when it comes to predicting tragedies. He'd be bitter, but Anya doesn't wave her successes in his face, and he appreciates it.
It's late and the library in the apprentice quarters is near vacant, save for a pair of young templars who are sending each other pleading glances from opposite sides of the chamber. While the presence of the steel clad soldiers makes Jowan uncomfortable, he has to admit that standing at attention watching mages run amok in their gilded cage doesn't sound very appealing. It looks rather boring. With all the power templars are given, they're in a cage, too; a bigger cage, but still a cage.
He raises his brow at the templar standing nearest to them, looking like he's suffocating in his helmet. The templar tries to remain motionless, but cocks their head to the side nonetheless, acknowledging Jowan's acknowledgement in a way.
His attention turns to Anya, who's sitting crosslegged on the ground by his side, hiking up her robes so she's not as restricted. Underneath the robes, her legs are bare, aside from dark knee-length stockings. Her fingers deftly weave through her hair, creating small and intricate braids as she rambles aimlessly.
Jowan eyes the templar again. If he didn't know any better, he could have sworn that the guard was desperately trying not to look at them, while also guarding them. The mage smirks at the thought.
"Jay, are you even listening?" Anya scolds.
"No," he replies without thinking, earning a sharp slap at the back of his neck. "Wh- Hey!" he cries out.
Anya purses her lips in a way that very much makes her look like a kitten. It doesn't help that she has a giant cloud of curly hair framing her thin face -not to mention the fact that her hair, Maker knows how, ends up covering every surface, provided she's near it for longer than a minute.
"I was saying Amell just passed her Harrowing," she tells him.
"Who? Miriam? Seriously?" he replies. "Doesn't she come from a family of mages or something?"
She shrugs. "She hasn't shut up about it, though. I saw her today parading around the apprentice quarters in her shiny new mage robes. I think she's doing it to annoy the templars."
Jowan let out a snort of laughter. "She would do that."
"It's annoying me , though," she grumbles. "At least she's moving up to the senior mage quarters so I never have to see her smug face again."
He yawns and leans back against the wall, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. "Until you get Harrowed. Then you'll have to see her everyday."
Anya huffs and drops her head on Jowan's shoulder. "Ew."
He laughs again and absentmindedly rubs her arm. "Can you imagine us as full mages though? We might even get to leave the tower."
She finishes another braid, moving onto the next. "I don't want to leave, though. It's cozy here." Her voice reveals a hint of drowsiness as she shuts her eyes.
"Then I'll leave," he replies, "Maybe I'll open one of those magical shops. Maybe in Amaranthine… I'd live in a little cottage by the coast."
"With your templar housemate," Anya adds with a dark laugh.
Jowan groans. "Oh, we'd loathe each other at first, but slowly we'd both come around."
"It would be the greatest love story of this age," she gushes. "One day, you'd make breakfast for them, and it tastes just like their mother's food."
"I'd walk out to the garden and find them training in their smallclothes by the light of the dawn, and I'd try to deny the attraction, but it would be there."
"Then on a late night, you're sitting at the dining table reading a book in the candlelight, and you'd ask them to come sit with you."
"And I'd find out about how they were bullied by the other templar recruits, but with me, they feel like they have a sense of purpose."
"You have to ask them, would they truly kill you if it came down to it, and your templar hesitates."
"We share our first kiss that night, in the light of the candle."
"You both don't know what to make of it. It's so sudden and so new, but by the Maker, it feels so right!"
"But alas! I'd accidentally let the book touch the candle!"
"And in typical Jowan fashion, you drop the book on your wooden table, which ignites a flame that catches both you and your templar off-guard!"
"We try to escape, but the doors and windows have been blocked by flames at this point."
"You both start to accept your fate. You gaze wistfully at each other, knowing that if you die on this night, you're dying with the person you love."
"I rather like that! Death by flames, just like Andraste."
"Didn't Andraste die by Hessarian's blade, though?"
"Shut up! I knew that!"
Anya snorts. "No, you didn't!"
"Did too!"
At this point, their voices are getting louder and louder, as they struggle to stifle their own laughter. Anya has given up on her braids and succumbed to her fatigue, leaning against Jowan's shoulder.
"Y'know, Jay, if you ever left the tower, I'd feel so lonely," she finally says, still catching her breath.
"I'd be pretty lonely, too, if I ever had to leave you," he admits, tightening his grip on her.
His gaze travels to that templar again, who has crossed their arms now, but is still watching them. There aren't many other mages in the library at this time of night anyway. He wonders if they had been paying attention to his and Anya's conversation. It's hard to remember that these formidable warriors weren't just inanimate, faceless statues.
He feels Anya shift against his side, snuggling up against him. She's clearly falling asleep, and knowing that the templars would throw a fit if they sleep anywhere but the sleeping quarters, he nudges her gently.
"Do you wanna get to bed?"
"Can't we just sleep here?" she grumbles, her arm draping itself around his front, like she's clutching a pillow. "It's already warm here, and my bed's cold."
Jowan begrudgingly pries her arms off of his body and got to his feet, dragging Anya up as well. "You'll break your neck sleeping here," he tells her. "C'mon, Annie, let's go."
Anya glares at him through narrow eyes. She pushes him weakly and lurches forward like a living corpse. "Fine. You're boring anyway."
At that, Jowan shares another look with the silent templar, and for just a moment, he sees the steel shoulder pauldrons rise and fall in a shrug. The mage shakes his head dismissively, jogging to catch up with Anya, who has made her way halfway through the library and already collided with two tables.
The templar sighs, watching the rowdy duo finally exit. He has to admit, the two of them have made his watch slightly more interesting. He hasn't been stationed at Kinloch Hold for more than a week, though he doubts the apprentices would even notice whenever a new templar showed up. They must all seem like identical steel soldiers to them.
He feels a tap on his shoulder as his replacement shows up. "Slow day, eh?" the second templar tells him. "Thank the Maker Jowan didn't blow anything up today."
The first templar grins tentatively under his helmet. "Does that happen often?"
The second let out a hearty laugh. "Oh, you don't even know." Slapping the first templar's shoulder again, he adds, "Good work today, Cullen. Now go get some sleep."