spicyshimmy:

juncta juvant on ao3, fenris and anders, au, 21,000 words, with some fenris/anders setup, for naiadestricolor. there was this “witch-hunter fenris” prompt floating around on the kinkmeme a great many months ago, and it never let me go, and anyway, this is what came of that. i found myself in a mood and spent way too much time with naiadestricolor’s fenris/anders art, and this is for her, for the winter instead of the summer, as much her fault as these things are generally her fault in some way or another. in a kirkwall under templar rule, fenris is one of the knight-commander’s favored apostate hunters. he’s sent to find a dangerous mage on the run, and instead finds dragonlings, snow-storms, and an idiot who does’t know how to make a proper escape. 

Juncta Juvant

There was pain.

This was usually the case, a dull ache that ran parallel to his bones, from the smallest knuckle-joints in his fingers to the arc of his ribs with each swell of fresh breath. Fenris was aware of it all in a way that others—he had learned this—were not always aware, but that did not mean he noticed it any less when the pain altered, or when the pain grew. It was an extension of his body in the same ways a trusted weapon also became an extension of his body. He knew every nock and notch in his sword and when the balance shifted—and so treated his limbs with the same sensibility, in order to be aware of them.

So: the pain had changed. There was more of it now, and focused, above the distant throb and thrum that accompanied blood as it flowed and the flow of other things: what coursed yet hotter than blood, the pain’s most intimate and consistent cause.

Pain had no distinctions other than ‘more’ or ‘less’ and Fenris did not allow healers. The tranquil with their dim gazes did not affix poultices to his injuries or ask their questions—is it sharp, is it steady, does it come and go, all words and none of them accurate.

But Fenris remembered the source of the pain. He needed no burning, no throbbing, no poisonous ache to recall the cause or the meaning, the pain that came from all things—while all led to the same end.

Dragonlings. Sundermount was riddled with them. The caves they guarded were also infested with other beasts—not just the giant spiders of legend, the arcane monsters lurking reanimated in the deep, but ghosts of lost souls and starved slaves, of murdered slavers and now of trapped apostates, fleeing rebels whose flesh would fester just the same as any other. Their corpses fed the rock and soil. Their bones awaited no honor, no burial. One could not tell the skulls apart, but it was not the long-dead or even the freshly dead that Fenris had been sent to seek.

It was not the dragonlings, either.

Yet dragonlings there had been—and far too many of them. Against one fighter, despite his bare talents, there was only one plausible outcome.

Pain—or that which came at pain’s final conclusion, that which was also pain’s opposite: no feeling left at all, nor a body left to feel it.

READ MORE @ AO3!

This was my Christmas gift from Shimmy (along with a lovely ugly sweater card!).  I still remember the moment I opened the package and saw what I received, this thick ream of paper folded and crammed into a small envelope, and whatever I was expecting certainly wasn’t that, I had to take a moment to collect myself and ensure I hadn’t cracked a rib trying to withhold my laughter.  (For whatever reason, for a moment, I thought she’d sent me various copies of Ander’s manifesto, why else would it be so thick, I don’t know, but I’m still smiling from the memory.)

But anyways.

It pains me that I haven’t managed to do some sketches from this piece.  It’s not an easy piece.  It’s a quiet, contemplative piece, befitting of the winter season.  Winter has always been my favorite time of year, for showing the contrasts in life, for throwing things in stark juxtapositions.  The cold and crispness of the air, the softness of the snow that blankets the ground.  How the draw of frozen air cuts you to the very bone, yet your breathe that clouds in front of your is still warm as it moistens your lips.  The sound of snow falling in the silent forest.  To be so close to sleeping things, to death, but it all serves to remind you how alive you are.  That’s what I love most about winter. 

And it’s what I love about this piece.  It captures the sense of contrast so well, revels in it even, and yet for all that it shows the differences among things it never loses sight of the similarities.  It’s a genius piece.  And I thank you, Shimmy, sincerely for giving me such a gift!