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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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- 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: 2025-05-28 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.
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Date: 2025-06-06 08:28 pm (UTC)He continues sleeping without fighting Illario in the least.
"We can talk about...all of this. Once you and Jim get a chance to catch up." Evka says kindly while Illario works on preparing the coffee. He's even fussier about it than Antoine gets when they get access to the good stuff. It's endearing. Cute. And telling that even more than his gnawing stomach the Antivan is much more concerned with Jim. Maybe it wasn't so out of place for Jim to have been so out of sorts the day before.
New. Definitely new, for their friend. But it's something of a relief that the (former) Crow has pulled through the night.
The couple goes back to preparing a hearty breakfast for them while Illario returns to the cot. Jim has curled up protectively around the bundle of blanket but doesn't appear to have risen any in Illario's absence.
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Date: 2025-06-06 08:55 pm (UTC)He knows, in a distant way, that their relationship is probably painfully obvious to everyone that has helped them. But rather than be concerned about that he's simply glad no one has forced them apart. Jim was allowed to stay at his side. If he had passed, and Jim had been forced to be away from him, Illario is certain he would come back as some sort of avenging spirit.
But he didn't pass. Jim is still where he left him, curled up so beautifully that Illario's heart swells in his chest. He pauses for a moment just to smile at the sleeping Marcher, and then slides back to settle with him on the cot. The coffees are set down of the stone floor, and Illario wiggles under the blankets woth him.
"Bello amore, beautiful beloved, do you want some coffee? I made it fresh." He murmurs, voice gentle. If Jim is sleeping too deeply to stir, then Illario won't force him. He deserves to rest. He needs to rest.
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Date: 2025-06-07 06:40 pm (UTC)"..'m Up..." Wait. Jim jolts upright. "You??? Made coffee? You're alright!"
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Date: 2025-06-07 06:59 pm (UTC)"Amore, I would make coffee for you even if my legs came off." He promises, before he leans in to steal a kiss. "But I am... alright. I think? Whole. Alive. With you so I suppose better than simply alright."
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Date: 2025-06-09 06:06 pm (UTC)Jim pulls back just enough to turn the rogue's arm over to where they cut the shirt away to look at the healing cut that had infected him in the first place. His bottom lip trembles.
"Avrei dovuto proteggerti...."
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Date: 2025-06-09 06:34 pm (UTC)He lets Jim study his arm despite the urge to pull back and hide the proof that he'd turned to blood magic again, that when the going got tough, he chose an easy way out instead of using his brain or his Crow training. He takes a deeper breath, steadying, and keeps his head tipped to Jim's, trying to take as much comfort as possible from Jim's presence.
"I didn't suffer like you did. I had the man I love watching over me. I'm not saying it did not hurt, but I wasn't alone. I was with you. Anything is bearable when I am with you." He offers, his own hands reaching up and gently touching Jim's jaw, the scruff of a day or more without shaving, the hair that stands in every direction. They probably both look terrible.
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Date: 2025-06-11 08:36 pm (UTC)No. That is self cruelty. He trusted Neve and Lace to take care of her. But he was more concerned with Illario than what to do with her in the immediate. That much is true.
"The good news is it shouldn't give you pain like that again." Another nuzzle and Jim kisses at the corner of the Antivan's mouth. "You're. Well. Mostly immune to the taint now."
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Date: 2025-06-11 08:58 pm (UTC)The bambina will be alright. Illario is certain of it. Right now the man wrapped up in blankets with him needs comfort too. So he smiles against that little kiss and pulls away only for as long as it takes him to grab the tin mugs of coffee.
"Immmune to the taint but still weak to the smile and blue eyes of Marcher Wardens." He laments with a smile, and warms his fingers against the sides of his mug.
"I owe you my life again. This must be... the third time." Illario says softly between them. "I'm going to start getting the impression you like me."