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smartass_captainIt's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. Masterpost for Dragon Age Veilguard AU overflow + psls
smartass_captainIt's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. Masterpost for Dragon Age Veilguard AU overflow + psls
smartass_captainIt's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. Masterpost for Dragon Age Veilguard AU overflow + psls
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Jim Kirk
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Active Entries
- 1: Veilguarding - an open post for DAV AU shenanigans
- 2: Balder's Gate 3 PSLs/Overflow
- 3: Permissions
- 4: The Academy AU for sensors
- 5: Shedding Light Part 3 - Demons in the Dark [Ongoing Post with conjuredskies]
- 6: 3. Burying the Hatchet - A First Step
- 7: A Very Nexus Reception
- 8: Rematches and Requests (for boldygoing)
- 9: Of Warnings and Tactical Retreats ( For mr_enterprise, primelogic )
- 10: Want to meet at the Library?
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Date: 2025-05-25 10:41 am (UTC)Cecilia, for her part, looks between the so-called sword, back to Jim, and then to Illario, and seems to want to say that's not a sword but thinks better of it. Any knife is a weapon, and she seems to decide she'd rather have it than not. With dirty hands - mud, nothing worse- she reaches out to take it solemnly, holding onto it tightly.
"My Pa told me about the Hero of Fereldan. He was a Warden, and his husband was from Ant-ee-va. Did he send you?"
"No bambina, Jim sent himself. He's like the hero of Ferelden, getting rid of the darkspawn and helping the Inquisitor. You've heard of the Inquisitor, haven't you?" Illario says, scooping up the child again and continuing to talk to her, distracting her from the climb down and the corpses of darkspawn that litter the ruined tower. Stories of Jim and the Inquisitor's adventures seem to work for that purpose, and Illario, despite his exhaustion, looks a little surprised at how well the attempt to distract Cecilia has gone.
But once they're out of the worst of it, and he can feel his legs wobbling, he has to stop, lean against the wall and look at Jim, eyes full of apology. The potion helped, but he's still struggling. That's not right, he knows that much, but it's not the focus right now.
"I think Warden Jim can tell you the rest of that story. You go with him bambina."
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Date: 2025-05-26 08:43 pm (UTC)"We've got a bag all packed for you, just until we find your family." Jim says with a smile he doesn't feel. His gaze keeps drifting to Illario, and he knows he's not the only one worrying. Lace tries to see if there's anything to triage, but Neve purses her lips and looks away. She hasn't been able to utilize her magic to heal since Minrathous fell. When it did, she lost a part of herself she may never get back.
"Here, my turn to carry you home, bello." Jim gestures for Harding to handle the girl so he can kneel down and gesture for the Crow to climb onto his back. "Come on. You've earned a break."
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Date: 2025-05-26 09:16 pm (UTC)Up to a point, of course. Today has been a bit of a shambles. He's lucky, so lucky, that Jim is as stubborn as they come, or he's not sure he'd have been able to get the little girl out alive. With Jim, Neve and Harding, their chances are much better. The bambina's chances are better.
He laughs a little shakily when Jim tries to get him to climb on his back. His fingers move to stroke over the other man's side and tug a little for his attention, and once Jim looks back at him, Illario's voice drops so the others don't hear.
"You could barely carry me to bed that first time, amore moi, do you remember?" He says, voice full of fondness, and wraps an arm around Jim's shoulders instead. "You certainly can't carry me across the whole of the Heartlands. Just let me lean on you a bit."
It will help. He can do this. He's sure he can. He just hurts, inside more than out, a sickness filling him that freezes him to the core and sets fire in his veins all at once. He doesn't even need to look at the cuts in the leather of his armour to see the darkening of his veins beneath his skin.
"Head for the Eluvian, then once we reach the Cross Roads, you will have to- you will have to remind me which is the one for Lavendel."
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Date: 2025-05-28 02:59 pm (UTC)Unavoidable, really. Given the battlefield. But it still feels like there's more close by. Living in whatever capacity that Darkspawn do.
"Be ready for another wave." Jim murmurs to Harding and Neve when he goes to get Illario. He's not expecting the Crow to refuse him. He scowls up at his love.
"I was exhausted, then. I can do it." Whatever Illario needs. Jim will drag himself through a field of broken glass for the other if that's what it takes. He huffs as he's tugged back to his feet, but steadies the Crow leaning against him. "Yeah. Don't worry. We're going to take you both out of here. Get you treated. It'll be..."
Lavendel.
Where the Wardens have taken up base. Jim slows to a stop. If he breathes deeply, he knows why Illario wants to go. Tears well up in his eyes. He swallows.
"Bello...Maker, no."
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Date: 2025-05-28 03:47 pm (UTC)But he'd always hoped... whoever he might end up with a family would be a possibility. Now it seems a ridiculous thing to think about as Wardens like Jim can't have children, in the middle of the world ending. All he can do is his best to look after the children that are already here.
Or ask Jim to, at least for the moment.
But all that goes out of his head when he sees water build in those sapphire eyes. It's all he can do to lean in and rest his forehead against Jim's, trying his best not to wobble and lose his balance. He needs to look like he's not hurting, he needs to keep this together. Jim and Cecilia need that.
"It's alright, amore moi. I'm alright. No tears," he explains, trying to give some comfort, running his hands over Jim's face, into his hair, marvelling at how soft and warm he feels. "I know a handsome, strong, beautiful Warden and he is the best man in the world, he'll get me where I need to go. I trust him. And maybe we'll both be Wardens, hm?"
Then if Jim does one day hear the Calling, he won't go down to the Deep Roads along. Not that Illario wasn't about to go with him. But now? It seems like fate.
"I'm alright. It just hurts. And we can't stay here. Lets get the bambina to the Lighthouse at least. Then you can find her people."
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Date: 2025-06-01 12:25 am (UTC)Now Illario too. Because once again, Jim was too slow. He'd known sending Illario out here would be dangerous. And now. Because of Him....
His ears are ringing. The color has all but left his face, leaving him thin lipped and a little ill looking where he stands supporting the Crow. The women are looking at him and Jim doesn't even see them in the moment.
"Come on. I'm taking you now." Jim mumbles. He feels numb. Like everything is slipping away from him. There's only that ringing in his ears and the smell in his lungs whispering that Darkspawn are close by. He wants to throw up. The girl and his friends may as well not exist. Jim turns toward the Eluvian and starts walking, dragging Illario along with him one step at a time.
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Date: 2025-06-01 08:14 am (UTC)Perhaps that's because they've never had to deal with anything like this.
He tries to keep pace with Jim, Jim, who is used to moving quickly through this sort of terrain, learned how to do it in this very place, in fact. For Illario, between the growing pains in his limbs and the worry for the others, it's hard going. The three others at least keep pace, Cecila being carried once more, until they reach the Eluvian.
By that point, Illario is fighting to keep on his feet. Head swimming, vision hazy at the edges, he only barely feels the strange sensation of going through the mirror. The rest passes in a blur. At some point, he knows he's carried. At some point, there's another mirror. Jim's voice, a cooler, wetter wind blows against his face. It feels so good against his skin.
And then there's talking. So much talking, voices he doesn't know, and Jim. Jim is there, the shape of him indistinct but he would know his man anywhere, and he curls his fingers in with Jim's own, holding as tight as he can as another wave of pain courses through him. He can hear Jim's distress, and he hates being the cause of it.
"Amore, I-" He tries, but his voice is hoarse, and the words don't come out after a point.
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Date: 2025-06-01 08:53 pm (UTC)"Do I have to do funking everything around here..?" He at least mutters this quiet enough that Maybe only Illario hears it. Harding reaches out and taps Neve on the shoulder to lead her and Cecilia back to the Lighthouse rather than trying to get in Jim's way. He'll be tripping over himself to apologize later, but now isn't the time to ask the man to be a leader.
Jim shifts to put Ilario onto his back like he'd tried before and resumes his dogged march to the Eluvian that will take him where he needs to go.
"Evka! Antoine..!!" Kirk's voice bellows through the stonework the moment he's through the mirror. By now he's tipped every potion he had left down Illario's throat but he knows it's only dampening the side effects. It can't cure this kind of blood sickness. Antoine doesn't have to ask who this Crow is to Jim. One look at the expression on the human's face and the elf knows all too well. He has two fellow recruits fetch a cot they lay Illario out on. Get a damp cloth to lay over his head to help stave off the worst of his fever.
"There's no guarantee he'll survive this, Jim." Evka cautions. "And he might not want--"
"He's the one who told me to bring him here. I don't know how he found out but he Knows what he's asking for." Jim counters. He hasn't left Illario's side once. His hand grips tight to cold fingers. "Please. I. I can't lose him...I have to try."
Antoine takes to one knee by Illario's cot and cuts away the shredded leather so they can see the infection beneath discolouring his veins.
"It is in his blood, Darling. Desolee...we do not have much time to argue. Shall I...?"
"Yes!" Jim nearly shouts. But behind him Evka purses her lips and then nods.
"We'll try, Jim. But you need to be prepared for the worst."
Jim bares his teeth as though he could defy the gods themselves with his grief alone. But then he shakes his head and settles by Illario's cot. Wraps the man up in a nearby blanket despite how filthy Illario is right now.
"Hey...hey. It's going to be okay. I've got you. Just hold on for me, Bello."
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Date: 2025-06-01 10:07 pm (UTC)The one thing that reassures him is that Jim is there. He can feel their fingers tangled together and hear Jim's voice.
Illario's eyes close and open again, trying to focus on the bright blond man sitting with him, and he squeezes his hand. Common seems a very difficult language to get his head around right now. The words are too cumbersome in his mouth, and his lips are too dry for the strange shapes. He slips into Antivan, words hardly more than a whisper.
"Don't be angry at them, sole moi. They're doing their best." He murmurs before a sharp stab of pain in his chest has him gasping and curling tightly onto his side. It takes a moment for him to recover and breathe through it. When he can speak again, his eyes find Jim's.
"I'll do the Joining. We'll be Wardens together. All I want is to be with you."
There's activity somewhere off to the side, people moving but his vision swims too much to focus on them, so he keeps it focused on Jim.
"Tell me what I need to do."
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Date: 2025-06-02 02:59 pm (UTC)Jim's crying through the words, tripping over them here and there while he cradles Illario close to him. Sure, he's divulging Warden secrets, but Illario's going to die either way if he doesn't take it or the Joining kills him. He sniffles around a stuffy nose and bends to cradle the man as close to his chest as he can.
"It's the only chance you've got to live. They're preparing it now."
There's often a ceremony that accompanies this. Meant to help ease potential recruits into going along with the traditions of their hopefully new order. But for people like Jim. People like Illario. Too weak to partake. Too ill to Wait. The concoction is mixed and brought over to the cot within the hour by Antoine and Evka. Jim's hardly moved the whole time, save to drag over a basin of water so he can gently wipe Illario clean one swipe of the cloth at a time. It's kept his hands busy and helped ease the pain of the former-Crow's fever.
It's not a chalice handed off to Jim. Just a small metal bowl that won't react or absorb any of its contents into itself. He sits Illario up, propped up against Jim's side.
"You need to drink this, bello. I know it's going to taste foul but drink it all." Jim murmurs in Antivan.
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Date: 2025-06-02 04:12 pm (UTC)"Sounds disgusting amore. Worse than Ferelden acorn coffee." He jokes, trying to blink away the shadows around his vision and properly look at Jim, at the beautiful blue eyes tinged with red and the streaks of salt water in his face through the dirt of their fight through Ferelden. He can't let his man down. He can't die and leave his man hurting.
He shifts in Jim's arms fighting against the lead weight of his limbs and tries to curl closer to Jim.
"I want to live, Jim. I want to live and be with you. You let me see there could be more- a future. You are the reason I said to being me here."
He doesn't know the full story of what happened to Jim, but he knows after the Inquisition the Wardens saved him. And if they saved him, maybe Illario can be saved. He has so much more work to do, proving he can change. Unsoing the damage he's caused.
When the toxic looking mix is brought to him, when Jim props him up against his chest, Illario feels the world slip away a little more, but his heart still beat against the poison in his chest and if Fate has any sense of humour she'll let him live. He's spent too long taking the easy way out.
So he drinks. Almost retching, the foul taste and smell far worse than anything he's ever endured before but his hand is against Jim's, and he tells himself drink it, stupido.
And then the pain starts. If he thought he was hurting before, it was nothing in comparison to the fresh wave that spasms through him, through stomach and lungs, heart and head, making his fingers clench and relax and his bones feel like they're melting. Convulsing and cursing, it takes all of a few seconds for his body to simply shut down, overwhelmed and exhausted.
Then suddenly he's awake again, gasping for breath like a man half-drowned, the convulsions less intense but still rocking his body on the small cot, his fingers grasping to hold onto something.
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Date: 2025-06-04 06:32 am (UTC)By this point Jim's hit his limit. He sinks down onto the stone next to Illario's cot and just stares off into some middle distance while his body struggles to catch its breath and calm down from the adrenaline crash he's experiencing. The headache and full body exhaustion that comes after Jim barely notices.
He doesn't move to so much as drink from the water skin Evka brings him. She leaves it in his lap. At some point when one of the pair comes back Jim's passed out leaning against his lover's cot. Chin tipped down with his head lolled to one side, he dozes at Illario's side and doesn't wake when they drape a blanket over his front.
But he's up like a shot when cold fingers close round the back of the collar of his leathers. Whirling to find the threat only to see Illario awake.
"Bello..." Jim's voice is hoarse. "It's okay. You're doing so well..."
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Date: 2025-06-04 07:39 am (UTC)"Up here, with me." He murmurs, his own voice cracking and breaking, but all he wants is Jim close to him.
As soon as he can he's curling into Jim's side and breathing a little easier for the familiar smell of Jim- armour, sweat, coffee, soap. It helps. Close surrounded by his love, it helps and Illario manages to work up the strength to nuzzle in.
"You did all the work, amore." He says, arms curling around Jim's middle. You rest."
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Date: 2025-06-04 07:51 pm (UTC)"I've got you. I'll keep holding onto you until it's passed. Try to sleep....it'll make this part go easier."
Of course, when he sleeps he'll dream. Jim knows that all too well.
"Whatever nightmares you're shown, know that I'm right here. I...I've got you."
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Date: 2025-06-04 08:32 pm (UTC)"Will you sleep?" He asks, eyelids already drooping again, words slurring as Antivan vowels try to slip into Common words and he has to force himself to open his eyes at Jim and wait for an answer.
"I have nightmares already, amore moi." He mutters, but once more his eyes are sliding closed and he's struggling to keep his head up, sleep closing in like a winter storm around him, dragging him down into darkness.
The nightmares are horrofic. They start the same way as always. Total darkness, the only noise is screaming and then the creak as he pries the lid of the chest up a merest fraction to peer at the world beyond his hiding place. That's normally when he sees his parents deaths and the blood soaking the cot his sister slept in. Not this time. This time the dream is interupted, flashes of monsters in the darkness and the whispering of something terrible in his mind. Beyond that there is something else, something huge and incomprehensible, calling out to him, singing for his blood.
This time when he wakes, it's crying out in panic.
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Date: 2025-06-06 01:46 am (UTC)A hand wrapping round Illario's side, splaying out full palm over the Antivan's chest. Fingers callused from years of archery, from rock climbing, from late nights spent with a quill scratching against his journals. Jim hasn't left Illario's side no matter how cramped the space. His voice is thick from exhausted sleep.
"They can't hurt you, bello. We're safe here for now." Jim nuzzles into the back of Illario's neck. "Have a drink of water if you need. But then lay back down and Rest."
Come morning Jim will celebrate his lover still being alive. In the moment it feels too raw yet. What he's had the Antivan do. What it will mean for all of them.
"The pain should be easing soon..."
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Date: 2025-06-06 06:21 am (UTC)Nightmares linger, the voice that whispers to him seems so loud in his head, seems to know him, but he doesn't wake in a panic now.
What wales him is a smell. Elicious, a littl rustic, but its frying eggs and meat and mushrooms. Not the sprt of breakfast an Antivan ever eats but suddenly he's starving, his stomach growling louder than a wolf.
Jim still seems exhausted, dozing with hollow cheeks and dirty clothes on- although Illario realises he's just the same. Food first, coffee if they have it, and if he can mamage it a wash.
"Bello mio," he murmurs into Jim's ear. "I'm going to see if they have coffee. You sleep a little longer."
He sits up gingerly then, sheds the ruined shirt that had been under his armour and fingers a spare wool blanket to wrap around his shoulders and heads out in search of coffee.
Evka seems surprised to see him up, but smiles broadly and expressively.
"Hungry? I know I was after the Joining." She asks, as her husband moves things around in the pan.
"Yes but... do you have coffee? For Jim?" He asks and the couple exchange glances, and Antoine speaks up.
"Just a little, I think. Do you want to make it for him?"
Illario feels a slight heat travel up his face but he manages to confirm that, and a few minutes later he's carefully carrying two chipped cups back to their makeshift bed.