Did these during Duncan Fan Week on Tumblr. Did them rather later in the week than I normally do though, and got very few prompts that actually involved Duncan.
Duncan and female Cousland, on the road to Ostagar
She didn't speak for three days. Not a word, not even as much as a grunt or hiss or moan. Just silence, as she walked by his side, eyes staring sightlessly at some far horizon that he could not see. She ate, she walked, she kept herself and her weapons clean and neat, but she never looked at him, never spoke, never gave any sign – other than following in his footsteps, walking when he walked, stopping when he stopped – that she was even really aware that he was there.
He kept his own silence, though others, he supposed, would have talked, trying to reassure her, to comfort her, or to draw some reaction from her. Some acknowledgement of presence. But he allowed her the silence, knowing that either she would recover from this or that she would not, and feeling that there was little he could do or say either way to change things. So he walked, he cooked their simple meals and whatever camp chores were necessary, and he waited.
Late afternoon of the third day, as they crossed a wide meadow on the gently rolling hills at the edge of the Bannorn, overlooking Lake Calenhad, she stopped walking. He stopped, and turned to look at her. Her eyes were widening, hands slowly curling into fists, her breath gone suddenly uneven, laboured. She was shaking, a bone-deep spasmodic tremor.
"Elissa?" he said quietly, the first word he'd spoken in days himself.
She screamed. A shrill, throat-tearing sound, more of rage than of grief. Not once, but over and over again, falling to her knees in the road, fisted hands pounding against her thighs, then against the ground around her, with bruising force. He stood frozen, watching worriedly, as her angry screams changed, to a keening sound, a wail of grief, as she curled in on herself.
He moved, then, lowering himself carefully to one knee beside her. He hesitated before finally touching her, bringing his hand to rest on her shoulder. She lunged, twisting herself around and sideways, throwing herself against him. Almost enough to knock him over, but he braced himself in time.
She cried then, clinging on to him and weeping bitterly, heart-brokenly. He knelt there, in the dust of the road, and gave her what little comfort he could, which consisted mostly of just holding on and letting her cry herself out.
He didn't know how long it was before she finally quieted, going limp in his arms.
"They're dead," she said, voice flat and empty, raw from her screams, thick from her tears. "All of them."
"Yes," he said, quietly.
She stayed silent a while, face still buried against his shoulder, then, "I'll kill him," she said, voice still empty. And pushed herself back from him, to kneel upright. She looked at his face for a moment, then looked away, up at the sky, face still and composed, eyes dark with memory. She sniffled loudly, then picked up the corner of her cloak, giving it a fastidious shake to clean it of the dust of the road before using it to carefully wipe her face clean. She moved with all the grace and calm demeanour one might expect of Eleanor Cousland's daughter.
He rose to his feet, and offered her his hand. She glanced at it, then rose to her feet without his help. She scraped her hair back from her face, twisting the curly mass of it into a knot at the back of her neck, and stood there a moment, drawing in a single very long breath. "Ostagar," she said quietly, hands dropping back down to her side.
"Yes," he said, and resumed walking.
She fell into step beside him, there now, aware and looking around at their surroundings. "I will kill him," she said quietly after a while, hand moving to touch the hilt of her dagger. An oath, to herself, to her dead.
He said nothing to that, merely continued walking. He had heard such oaths before.
Sometimes, they were even fulfilled.
For now, he was merely relieved that it gave her something to live for.
Alistair and Zevran rivalry, specifically over F!Mahariel
Alistair scowled at the elf. He just didn't trust him, especially around her. He was too... too... too flirty. And an admitted assassin. And dangerous. And he knew far too much about subjects that Alistair knew he himself didn't know enough about.
Zevran was amused by the warrior's obvious attempts at interference. It made him try all the harder to attract the lovely elf's attention. Something he would have done in any case – she was, after all, both very beautiful and very dangerous, things he was attracted to in a potential partner – but Alistair's reactions to his flattery of her were often even more entertaining than hers. He could tell the man had little knowledge of how to attract the fairer sex, and his blushing reaction to even the merest suggestion of innuendo – especially innuendo centred on him instead of her – were oddly endearing. And he liked that he had an appreciative audience for his banter in the bard and the mage of the magnificent bosom.
The woman in question was amused by their rivalry. She had worried about it a little, at first, and had taken the step of cautioning Zevran about his behaviour; teasing of Alistair she would tolerate. Cruelty towards him, she would not. Rather to her surprise she liked the big shem, liked his openness and the innocence he seemed to have somehow managed to preserve. An innocence she sometimes envied. And she liked the assassin, too. Liked his independent attitude and his joking and his easy friendliness with everyone; a skill she wished she herself was better at.
She kept it to herself that their rivalry over her was pointless; her heart had been given away to another long ago. She did not think she would love again; not even if she chanced to live the long years that the Dalish had once known as a matter of course. Whatever had happened to Tamlen, wherever he had gone, he held her heart still.
Karl, Duncan. The most attractive beard in the history of ever!
He couldn't sleep. He had tried, but nightmares had promptly seized him; twisted memories of the battle the day before. Genevieve's final moments, in particular... he shuddered, and rose from his bed. He couldn't just lie there; that invited the too-recent memories to haunt him even more strongly. No. He would, he decided, take a walk. He quickly drew on his well-worn leathers, sighing in quiet relief as he did up the familiar buckles and ties. He fastened on the final belt, smiling slightly at the familiar weight of the paired silverite daggers, the smile changing to a frown as he remembered their absence and later recovery. He stood a moment, hands absently caressing the handles of them, then turned and left the room.
This part of the tower was dimly lit and silent, though he knew elsewhere the templars would be walking their patrols in the more brightly lit main corridors, especially anywhere the mages were. Teryn Loghain's men were patrolling the tower as well, the Teryn being unwilling to trust the King's safety to mere templars, especially ones whose loyalty was to the Orlesian-based chantry, not to any local power. Most especially given recent events here in the tower. Still, it was easy enough for Duncan to avoid the patrollers, and work his way further down in the tower. He wished he could go outside, but the tower was locked up tight at night, the doors heavily guarded. He settled on making his way to one of the larger rooms, the library, where at least he'd have room to pace and was unlikely to be disturbed.
He spent some time just wandering silently up and down the rows of bookshelves, sometimes stopping to look at the books, to reach out and lightly touch their spines. He'd never seen so many books all in one place before; he couldn't even begin to calculate their collective value. He could read – barely – the titles written on some of them, but others were in scripts that were too ornate for him to puzzle out, some so strangely shaped he was sure they must be other languages – Dalish, perhaps, or Arcanum, the tongue of the Tevinter Empire.
It was only when he turned into a wider aisle, one with a lengthy table piled with books occupying much of the space between the shelves, that he realized he was not there alone after all. A man stood beside the table – a mage, judging by his robes – studying a book held open in his hands. He looked up at Duncan, unperturbed by his sudden appearance. "Hello. May I help you?" he asked calmly.
Duncan hesitated before answering, quickly studying the other man. Tall and thin, his back straight and shoulders unbent – his carriage was almost regal, so self-assured did he seem. His hair was evenly barbered, the glossy brown beard that decorated his chin neatly shaped, making Duncan feel all the more aware of his own shaggy, unkempt appearance after weeks in the Deep Roads, hair untrimmed and loose about his shoulders, a thick growth of whiskers covering his lower face that he had not yet had time to shave off since his return.
"Sorry, I didn't think anyone was here... I was just stretching my legs," he said after a moment.
The mage raised an eyebrow, running his eye rather pointedly over Duncan's dark leathers and matched daggers. To his surprise, Duncan found himself flushing slightly. "I'm not here to steal anything," he said, a touch sharply.
The man smiled slightly. "I didn't think you were," he said, then tilted his head slightly to one side. "You're welcome to stay. I'm just taking advantage of the quiet to get some research done."
Duncan frowned. "I thought the mages were kept locked up in their rooms at night?"
The man shrugged. "Usually, yes. But there are ways to avoid the guards, if one is careful, as I'm sure you know."
That drew a soft laugh from Duncan. "Dangerous though, isn't it? If I get caught, the worst I likely face is a talking-to. While you face... what?"
He shrugged again. "Depends on who catches me. First Enchanter Remille is rather stri..." he broke off, and frowned. "Well, I suppose I don't have to worry about him any more, at least."
"No, I suppose not," Duncan agreed, then on impulse dipped a shallow bow to the man. "Duncan. Grey Warden."
The man smiled, and returned the bow. "Karl Thekla. Enchanter."
The smile seemed to take years off his apparent age. Duncan was startled to realize the man was only a few years older then himself, if that – the beard made him seem much more imposing and mature, especially in combination with his upright stance. An effect he'd have to remember, he thought, reaching up to scratch at his own unshaven cheeks.
Maybe he'd keep it after all; he might look good in a beard.
Fenris/F!Hawke, finding out their child is a mage
"I suppose we should have expected it," she said quietly, watching her youngest daughter laughing as she waved an ice-coated flower around. "Both our sisters were mages, after all."
Fenris grunted. He, too, was watching their daughter, his expression inscrutable.
"Fenris?" she said, a little worriedly.
He turned and looked at her. "She's still our daughter," he said, face impassive. "This changes nothing."
And yet, she was coldly certain, it did.
Anders teaching Fenris to read
He pretended to dislike taking time out of his busy schedule to teach Fenris, but in truth it was an activity he enjoyed. It was one of the few times the elf was too busy snarling over something else – words, and the difficulty of reading them – that he was not snapping at Anders instead. It was almost restful, lounging in a chair by the fire in Fenris' ruined mansion, hands wrapped around a thick clay mug of piping hot tea, legs swathed in a dusty old comforter to keep them warm It was certainly warmer than his clinic in Darktown; there was nothing down there to keep out the bitter winter winds, and even in the smaller, more easily enclosed rooms deeper in, the cold stone walls leached away whatever heat people could manage to coax out of whatever small fires they could manage. Fires that were sometimes more dangerous than the cold itself, between people managing to set things on fire and the smoke.
Not that Fenris' mansion was all that significantly more weather-proof than the Darktown tunnels were. Worse then them, actually, when it came to things like rain. But at least here most of the holes were in the ceiling, not the walls, so the wind whistled over them, not through them, and Fenris had real fireplaces and a seemingly endless supply of well-seasoned firewood in the form of room upon room of old wooden furniture.
Besides, he quite liked listening to Fenris' voice as the elf picked his way through the thicket of words like a nervous halla, with plenty of pauses and careful study, nervous glances around, and the occasional sudden rush. He was careful to never let the elf know that he enjoyed listening to his voice's deep rumbling timbre. Doubtless the warrior would decide he had some ulterior motive – which he did, just not the one the elf was most likely to assume – and make a fuss, and his cozy afternoons all bundled up in the warm would vanish.
He did sometimes wonder why he, of all people, had ended up with the task. Hawke had said something – or had it been that prig Sebastian? – and Varric had immediately made it clear that he didn't have time for it, nor did Aveline of course. Isabela was willing, but with her that ulterior motives thing had all too clearly come into play. Merrill... well, she was too involved in her own work, she said, to spend time helping Fenris with his letters. Fenris had seemed quite frankly relieved... given a choice between a blood mage and an abomination – which Anders wasn't, no matter what the elf might believe – he'd apparently felt that the healer was the lesser of two evils.
Which was fine with Anders. At least as long as this blighted cold snap lasted!
