Back on my bullshit

Spoiler: ft. Where The Heart Is/Desire

"Oh, I know this." Curiosity cupped their hands around (the part of contentment-comfort-Desire shaped like) serrated fourfold leaves, closed their eyes to let the (memory of the) scent flow into their essence and curl around their core. "Calms and stifles the stomach, eases itching, settles the gut, chases away biting insects. How..." Well, no, some things Curiosity just knew; they didn't need to ask how they knew them.
Desire smiled just a little, rolling a wave of affection through the very edges of Curiosity. (Not the whole truth, not the whole feeling-- not a lie, but not all.) "I had a feeling you would. It's a very common plant, really, grows like anything. You probably picked it up somewhere and didn't realise." Which wasn't the question Curiosity had meant to ask at all (well, not after that first moment), but to be fair they hadn't asked Desire anything. And Desire was a very polite host, and anyways questions and the answering thereof weren't really Desire's domain, it would be rude to expect them to pick up on the real question. "Would you like me to show you a different plant, then, since you already knew that one?"
"Yes, please. Do you know anything else with purple flowers?"
"I do." Desire twisted just a bit, and Curiosity let go of the mint to watch it bloom upwards into a much larger plant with much larger flowers, heavy sprawling things with long powdery stamens. As promised, the petals were indeed purple.

 

this makes me so happy you have no idea

 

Spoiler: inq!Curiosity

Skyhold's walls are always humming-- they sing, silent and soaring, and here most of all, where Solas sings back. It is comforting and distracting all at once. The Inquisitor joins him on the scaffold, humming quietly along. Solas shakes his head faintly, but there's a smile just as faint, and the press of his aura against the walls never flickers. The paint is a conduit and an anchor both, and a visible expression to the mortals who occasionally drift in, but it is Solas' own impressions that linger here. It feels the closest to a demesne that they've found since the binding.
"Your body does still need sleep, lethallanen," Solas says in the breath between waves of subtle magic. "It's late."
The Inquisitor pulls their feet up and lays down on the platform, then picks their head back up to pull their braid out of the way. (They keep forgetting it won't just go where they want it to, even after so long together.) "It's lonely in the room they gave us. Too quiet to be comfortable."
"It is defensible." But Solas pushes his aura out to such an extent that even the Inquisitor can feel it, a smooth slide across their own before he withdraws again. The Inquisitor follows, their conjoined essence flowing out alongside his ebb, the Anchor a fine humming conduit between them that makes it easier even shrouded in flesh. He smiles again, plucks that string and gently folds them back into their body. "You may stay here if you wish, but I would prefer this to remain my project alone. Rest a while."
"Alright. Join us?" They look up at him, make their eyes big and round the way they know he finds charming despite himself (da'len - pup - cunning little one), and he doesn't even bother to look down. Rude.
"If you are still in the Fade when I've finished this section, yes, I will come walk it with you."
"Alright," they repeat, and wait until his brush is off the wall to shift again to a position that won't leave their neck and shoulders twinging when they wake. "See you there."
"Perhaps." But he doesn't bother to shroud his aura as he continues his work bringing Skyhold to color, and the Inquisitor drifts off to the comforting song twined through their own.

 

returns eighty years later with a proper transcription

Spoiler: long

Vector Prime, of all of us, believed most in the supremacy of ideals. He had at the core of his being an understanding of the immutability of natural law, the essence of time and space and existence. He held us Thirteen together-- it now, so many cycles later, seems to me-- by the sheer force of his belief.
But no belief survives forever. The passage of time destroys all things. Even, if we are to believe the scientists who theorize on the nature of our universe and others, time itself. The great creator, the great destroyer, time annihilates even the idea of time in the end. First, however, it gradually erodes the memories of even the greatest of ideas. And ideals.
Vector Prime saw this happening in the aftermath of the wars we fought among ourselves. When the Fallen murdered Solus Prime and another conflict erupted around the ambitions of Liege Maximo, Vector Prime saw that he could no longer act as our exemplar because we had lost our ability to follow any example. We had become too enamored of ourselves as the Thirteen, the might avatars of all bots who were to follow; we no longer knew how to view ourselves honestly or speak to each other without the hostility and condescension that comes from thinking that only you-- only I-- am really worthy.
More even than Solus Prime's death, it was the revelation of Liege Maximo's treachery that ended Vector Prime's desire to be part of us. He could understand a moment of fury such as overtook the Fallen when he killed Solus Prime. But Vector Prime was unable to tolerate living in a universe where bot could plot against bot.
He was ready to escape to his own universe, and so he did.

 

so for shits and giggles we asked her runestones why these cards hate roomie (I gave her the deck bc she does more cards than I do, but it only ever gives her really ominous or bitchy answers), and it spat out "inheritance"
so I guess these my cards regardless of what I want to do with them

 

some decks are like that
the first deck i ever got tends to be Difficult and every time i ask it why it gives me something to do with marriage, so i'm pretty sure it's either really mad that I own more than one deck or it dislikes that its former owner sold it at a car boot sale, lmao

 

whispers
prompt me

 

Gess and ghosts

 

Spoiler: pre-DT, disconnected short scenes

don't-don't-don't-o-oo-o-on't-on't-t-t-t a quiet voice stutters while Gess is elbow-deep in the guts of a control panel; she freezes, looks carefully at the circuitry again, but no, this is the part she needs. (The part her own ship needs, the part this shot-down husk can't use anymore.) She disconnects another wire. The room's temperature drops a few degrees, but nothing terrible happens. Gess shakes her head and continues her work.

There are flickers, sometimes, around the edges of her vision. Home, she might have taken them seriously. Out here, when she knows damn well she's the only living thing on her ship- the only living thing for light-years- it's serious for a different reason. It was bound to happen eventually. Half a million years is a good run for a swampstalker. (Is she still a swampstalker if she hasn't been in the swamps for millennia?) (Spacestalker. Starstalker. Oh, that's a delightful rhythm, she likes that one. Starstalker. Yes.) It doesn't matter what you call it, a dry voice not her own adds, the effects of processor degradation among de-linked subjects rem-
"Shut up," she hisses, vox crackling static-sharp when she swipes through the splintered shadow. Silverburst-- not-Silverburst-- vanishes.
There are flickers, sometimes, just behind her or just out of reach.
She starts setting traps in the walls. There's no reason to assume an intruder would have to use a door. Dodging them herself will keep her sharp.

Fascinating. There is a hand on her pauldron-- there is not a hand on her pauldron. No one came down here with her. The vaults are cursed. (The vaults are trapped.) See here-- a four-pronged claw gestures down the wall, and Gess feels her attention pulled with it. Swordbearers, again. Requiem's right: the same glyphs, the same figures as they've (she's) found interspersed in the longer records. If this is another damn copy of the same story... Well, it'll still be useful, but it's not what she wants. She follows the fivefold lines anyway, just to be sure, and does not shake her head to clear the ghosts. It would disturb the recording. Here the flier, yes, wings spread wide, long sentences spilling down beneath them, repetitions of the glyph she's almost certain means 'death' spiralling around their fists; here the two swordsmen, blades raised high, the words here strictly vertical to match; here the prayer-ring, circle upon circle upon circle of tiny little symbols. Requiem pauses in front of that one, the larger camera in her chest whirring slightly as it focuses. The third line's changed. Gess steps through her and suppresses a shudder, bends down smoothly to inspect the rings anyway.
She's right. (They're right.) The third line is different in this etching, an entirely new sentence. Gess holds herself steady for a long moment-- the more footage she has, the better chance of a clear, uncorrupted shot when she goes through it later.

Venorox hisses static at her as she passes, long broken body draped in the dangling wires. She ignores him, keeps walking. He never has anything useful to say. Something flickers just ahead-- the tip of a tail vanishing around a corner, black and scarlet-- ugh. Gess hisses back under her breath and aggressively ignores that branch of the path.
Two kliks later, she scrambles back down the hallway and throws herself around the turn; the security drone isn't quite as nimble and blows past it, alarm blaring as it desperately tries to turn around. Yellow eyes gleam at her from the ceiling, damage-sparks crackling out between ruined thoracic plating (between cut and twisted wires). Told-told-o-o-o-o-told you- told you- Gess hisses again, forces herself to keep moving. Idiot sparkling. Now isn't the time for talk.

 

conjoined Legacy party: onyx, canthy, varric, fenris (And Dog, who is... probably named Chela, bc I cannot for the life of me remember what I named canthy's dog)
malcolm is required by plot to be a blood mage, so the key would've been both plausible deniability (it's a Sword, Ser, and I am but a Perfectly Mundane Swordsman) and bleeder, the 2h sword 1) doesn't suit onyx and 2) isn't nearly gnarly enough in the pommel to really bleed on

 

they come back from burning the shit out of corypheus and just get fantastically fucking drunk, because no one in 2 knows how to deal with their emotions in a healthy manner and they're all andrastean to some degree or another

 

what an absolute power move of a line

 

o for the days of DLDR

 

anyway I'm gonna reread Xenogenesis out of spite now, gimme them nonbinary poly aliens

 

kinda wanna make pride masks since it's becoming clear we'll be in the shit at least through june
kinda don't wanna blow money on fabric since all we have are prints not conducive to color-blocking
hrrrrrrrrm

 

"I still want to do a one-shot off-shoot AU kind of thing, because I learned too much about deep vein thrombosis to NOT put it to use" and other Big Hats found in author notes

 

same character
les is a delight

 

misread anglo-american as argonian and honestly this is just my life

 

want to do..... Something™