Cover I doodled for my Story Of the Relative Correlation Between One Person’s Elbows And Another’s Happiness on AO3

Final Cover finished for the Daisy Chains Series! This is for my story Fool Me Once on AO3!

The signs as fanfiction tropes

Shield and Solemn, a doodle for my  In The Spirit Of Love story on AO3.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Female Inquisitor/Solas Characters: Solas, Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Cole (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Trespasser therapy, still sad, Spirit!Cole, Solas being angsty, Lavellan clan death Summary:

They are separated by all of Thedas, every person living and breathing, and every person she needs to save that he will cause to end. They are separated by the ages past, years upon years that stretch out between them, an old wolf and a new rabbit. They are separated by faith and fate, but for one moment -

Smirking

Despair doesn’t smirk.

There are lights in his eyes, but they are glossy and sharp at the edges. He is a mirror, reflecting the poorest, most mindless, most unchangeable qualities within ourselves. Unmoved. Un-judging.

Indifferent.

Despair doesn’t smirk.

Despair doesn’t smile, though he can try to lift the separate ends of his mouth, this fleshy thing. Despair doesn’t laugh - he doesn’t cry either. Doesn’t howl.

There is mourning, and misery, and grief.

Despair is none of those things - once, perhaps.

Once, when the hurt was fresh and new. But it festered, and raged and bloomed bitter. And when vengeance could no longer sustain it, it died - or it tried to.

But of course, Spirits don’t die the same way we do.

So it became despair instead.

It can scowl - scorn, scald, even scream.

But it doesn’t smirk.

Despair is the emptiness of a thousand unwitting ends to hopeful beginnings, the stale air that brings gooseflesh but not shivers, the bleached bones of dreams, the echoes of anguish long burnt out to mere wisps.

Where faith and hope and compassion die, despair grows anew. In its complete power it found no joy - there is no satisfaction in it’s inevitability - no triumph in its victory.

So no.

Despair doesn’t smirk.

Lathbora Viran

“Did you think it was that easy?” She says, and Solas has little time to acknowledge his shock before she has turned to face him, a smile on her face. It is not a happy smile, however, perhaps partly pained, partly smug, as if she is remembering something bittersweet. No doubt she is, as the last time they were here together was kinder to them both.

Up here the air is cold, thin, some faint snow carried in along the violent winds, howling, yet it feels to Solas as if all is silent.

She had caught him mid stride - and too late he stepped closer only to stop himself. His throat is dry - would she offer tea, smiling with such dead eyes? She might, he thinks, but does not say. There stands before him a woman scorned, perhaps feeling his own heart is as cold as the weather. He prefers her hatred to the alternative.

“I have long gotten used to things being the opposite of easy.” He says, worn, of all his obstacles, the hardest would rise up again, press their mighty weight against him like some raging, malevolent sea, like these great and terrible snow winds. Though she does not know it, she offers him both salvation and temptation, a blessing and a curse, great joy defined by great pain.

Something flickers across her face - a small joy, a greater pain, as if his words wound her in more ways than one, so familiar to a time when she could have kissed away his pain rather than increase it.

“Then why does it surprise you to find me here?” She says quietly, tilting her head, some quiet challenge, partly anger. She is hurting from him and him alone, his words with give her no comfort, offer no relief, grant her no healing. He is trapped, knowing all actions will wound her, only daring to hope he can choose the path that hurts her least.

He takes her question only to deflect, he has learned in the past that accepting another’s anger is like accepting a blow from a sword - better to let them wear out theirs rather than draw upon his own. His supply had long been depleted in the face of his trials.

“I am only surprised that it did not occur to me that you would.” Solas murmurs, a heavy weight on his heart, on his shoulders, that he should have been ready for this, for something. He should know her well enough to know she would not so quickly let go, that her stubbornness saved as much as it wasted. But they were not something that could be salvaged, even if he could not tell her so.

“What do you want, Solas?” She says softly, and all of her has changed - the gauze of anger, some viper ready to strike - slips off, pools around her feet, with the false smile, she is mournful again, stepping towards him, as if no longer venom but balm, ready to apply herself to his tattered soul, as if the marking on her hand could just as likely heal him as it could the sky.

In tandem with her, a twisted dance, he steps away, hands up to ward her off, “I, Ir abelas.” But the answers he could are too many, and reveal too much, “I cannot say, forgive me.”

She stops, a smaller smile, such hurt showing beneath the surface, and he can see she had thought of this, of her boundaries, of where he would let her meet him, that she had forgotten for one moment what they were now. She turns to look away, eyes closed, voice lost.

He had seen that face before, once, knew now that when there were tears at her threshold she did not squeeze her eyes shut, had learned from too many experiences that it furthered their appearance rather than hid them. “Of course,” She said, voice low to try and hide the tears in her voice, “Abelas, ma v-“ She took a deep and sudden breath, shaking her head slightly as if to shake the wrong words from her lips. Then she straightened, some small agony in her smile as she said, “Falon.“

“We cannot be.” He said quietly, “Please, leave this place behind you, seek a better life, a happier one. I cannot give -”

Perhaps he has forgotten how to speak to her, for each word he speaks now seems to cause her more pain than the last. She laughs, a quick and virulent sound, a double edged blade that cuts her as it cuts him, and even when it ends their wounds do not go. “You will not let me go with you, not even to help you! How can -“ She begins to pace even as her words fall away, such life within her, such energy. He has grown so tired, worn as thin as the veil, feeling every victory is just less a loss than usual.

“There is no happiness for me, Solas.” She says finally, “It is too late, too late to say that.” Quietly, more to herself, a stolen thought that flies on the errant winds, “Perhaps since first we met.”

She shakes her head again, the icy winds frantic at her face. She turns to gaze out over the expanse of white, then, with a blank face, turns and walks past him, conceding to his request, “Ma nuvenin.” She says and then she is gone.

It is gently, when she thinks he is too far away, surrounded by the lonely winter winds where he cannot hear, that a soft and sad voice whispers to his ear along the falling snow, "Dareth shiral, ma vhenan.”

Choir of one

Sam played the violin as a child. He didn’t do it because of it’s beauty as an instrument. He needed something that moved, that became alive with him, like a piano, but was transportable, like a flute. He needed it because he had a music in him that wanted to get out. He was not skilled like a composer, but alive, the shriek as much a part of his song as the hum. His music was visceral, never serene, never at peace, it was ebony and omniscient, or it was meant to be. Even when it was slow, it was dark, the cry of the earth, reaching out into the void for something unnamed, not knowing what it was that played itself out through his small body. He was blind to the tempest that consumed him. If John had known, he would have hated it, would have stopped it. But he was too often out, either hunting or drinking, and Dean would leave if it got too strong for him, too much, two brothers locked together at arms length. Other than that, Sam practiced as often as he could manage, without sheet music to guide him or a soft hand to steady his work. He was alone, trapped inbetween the bowstrings, playing for the silence he chased away. Gabriel would listen, would watch, let the music draw him up and pull him apart. It was a discomfort to human ears, but Sam was deaf to it as much as blind, had always focused inwards for that spark that bled out of him. The music was not human, was not meant to play upon human voices or human instruments, but it wanted to be played, and it used to Sam for that purpose. Lucifer echoed along the insides of Sam’s soul, his grace trying to sing again. But the angels of heaven had long ago stopped singing, and Gabriel listen with half an ache and half a hatred, he craved something it only half satisfied within him, a longing for the family Lucifer had torn apart. Eventually it became too bittersweet in his ears, on his tongue, and he decided to take it away from Sam, some part of him malevolent, malicious, because Sam had been stringing himself out and all it did was hurt Gabriel, Gabriel the ghost, the phantom no one knew, Gabriel the shadow to the Winchesters’ light, the trinity before it would tear itself apart. So he used John to come back to the motel early one night, and John to yell, breath of spit and alcohol setting flame to words, and John to pull the smooth wood from Sam’s small fingers. But it was Gabriel who cracked it’s little spindly frame, and Gabriel who watched Sam crumple, the bowstrings his puppet strings, his own bones broken. Gabriel who hated himself as much as Sam. Gabriel who couldn’t forgive it or regret it.

Sam didn’t play the violin again. And Gabriel didn’t see him until he was leaning on a mop to stare up at Sam, eyes that were quiet now, no longer blinded. But there was nothing left to see. Sam didn’t have any music in him anymore.

Dean sold his soul. Dean died. Sam adapts.