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kirkwallguy · 4 days

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can i get your mary having Realizations. maybe at the day of her wedding?

omg TY for this prompt i love talking about mary but very rarely actually write about her. this stumped me for a little while because everything that happens at her wedding requires SOO much context that i had no idea how to start, and it felt ooc to just have cullen suddenly do something so terrible. so here's him and mary just kind of sucking in unique and strange ways. this takes place juust before the wedding when everyone is beginning to gather at the winter palace.

mild tw for vomit mention and templar ptsd-esque nightmares (???).

Mary awoke in Cullen's arms. Their bed at the Winter Palace was bigger and softer than any she'd ever slept in - she and Cullen gravitated towards the middle of the feather mattress together, leaving a large indent that would inevitably linger after they crawled out of it in the morning, waiting for their return later that evening.

Cullen never looked more like a Templar than when he was sleeping. It was strange - Mary had heard (and, she was ashamed to admit, read in Varric's romance novels) that people were supposed to look innocent in sleep. Haunted heroes became innocent boys, creased foreheads smoothed, racing thoughts slowed.

But Cullen's brow remained creased as he dreamed. He muttered to himself, kicked, scratched, growled like a dog. Sometimes, he frightened Mary. She'd cling to him in the dark, heart pounding, as he whispered cruel words at some imagined threat that taunted him behind his eyelids.

Were all Templars like this? Were there thousands of people all across Thedas just like her? People who lay awake with their palms flat against their lovers' sweaty backs, thanking the Maker that they weren't born a mage? Was she just unlucky? Or was this, as Hawke had darkly insinuated that final time they'd spoken, exactly what she deserved?

According to Varric's stories, Mary had a duty here. She was Cullen's reward at the end of a difficult road, a symbol of all he had lost and gained. She was supposed to comfort him, to soothe and fix his troubled soul - her arms designed to wrap around him like bandages, her kiss the perfect antivenom.

But on nights like this, when she pressed her lips to his twitching cheek, the taste of stale sweat always made her draw back with disgust.

One night early in their relationship, Cullen had drunk far too much and vomited all down himself. Shuddering and crying, he'd reached out for comfort. The smell of his breath, beer and vomit mingling together, had made Mary turn and run, leaving him alone on the floor in his own filth. The next morning, he'd kissed her chastely on the cheek at breakfast and his breath had smelled of peppermint.

It was easy to resent him for drinking like that. Many women resented their men for drink.

"Drink doesn't make men into beasts," her mother had whispered to her one night before bed, not loud enough to cover her father's heavy snores in the next room, "it just tells us which ones have beasts hiding inside them."

After that, she'd spent years of her childhood trying to see who did and didn't have a beast inside of them. She wasn't sure about her father - if he was a beast, he was nothing but an old bear, loud but too tired and lazy to do any harm. A few of the Chantry Mothers, the ones who would rap her on the knuckles when she giggled during the Chant, seemed to have dragons inside of them. The men who fought outside the taverns late at night were wolves, howling at the moon with their hackles up. And the girl in the portrait that hung above the fireplace in Mary's bedroom stared at her with the eyes of a songbird.

Cullen had something inside of him as well, but Mary wasn't sure if it was a beast. A beast, after all, could be killed.

As his dreams became more violent, so did his body. He writhed in her arms, as if a demon was taking over him. Mary held him tighter.

"She'll regret it," he muttered, "she'll be sorry soon."

Mary shuddered. Trying to distract herself, she traced the muscles in his back with a morbid fascination, feeling as they shifted and bulged unnaturally. If she'd been a healer, she might have understood how muscles worked - the violent snap and pull of them beneath her fingers might have been cause for gentle concern rather than a sensation that revolted her. But the inner workings of the human body were as good as witchcraft.

Cullen groaned, "kill it," he said, so loud that Mary squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that nobody else could hear, "kill it now!"

Whatever he was dreaming of terrified him. He cried out and twitched, kicking Mary hard enough in the shin that she yelped and pushed him away roughly enough to wake him up.

Cullen's eyes flew open. He stared directly at Mary, panting.

"Oh, thank the Maker," he whispered.

Mary stared back at him, keeping her eyes half closed as if she'd just woken up, "hmm?"

He looked like was going to cry. To Mary's horror, his trembling lips embarrassed her; she edged away from him a little, hoping he wouldn't notice.

"I was dreaming," Cullen said, "it was just a dream. A terrible dream."

Mary didn't respond. This was exactly how this scene played out in every single one of Varric's stories. She swallowed her disgust and reached out to brush Cullen's hair from his sweaty forehead, almost gagging as her fingers met his wet skin.

"Just a nightmare." She agreed, hoping Cullen didn't notice how flat her voice was.

Cullen, Maker help him, closed his eyes at Mary's touch. He lay there and shook as she stroked his hair, tense shoulders beginning to relax. That innocence he lacked in sleep was plain on his face now - he looked like someone Mary had never met before, someone she wasn't sure she would ever meet again.

"What was the dream about?" She tried.

Opening his eyes, Cullen stared at her for a long moment. His gaze passed over her face, lingering on each detail for so long that she almost found herself blushing.

Only when Mary was sure that he'd forgotten she'd asked him a question did he answer her:

"You." He said.

It should have been a shock, should have made her blood freeze, but in that moment his answer seemed like the most logical thing in the world.

Mary continued to stroke his hair, "what happened to me?"

"You were possessed," Cullen closed his eyes again, sleepy, "an abomination."

"Did you kill me?"

He was halfway back asleep now. He leaned in closer and wrapped an arm around Mary's waist, "I did," he whispered, "I killed it."

And then he stuck his face into Mary's neck, his hair brushing her collarbone, and fell straight back asleep.

Mary didn't sleep again. She stayed awake, palms against Cullen's sweaty back, and thanked the Maker that she wasn't born a mage until the sun was high in the sky.

#iceta #ask #oh mary.... i mean this is on cullen too but i think she's disgusted by vulnerability beyond the templar stuff #i ALMOST just said fuck it and started planning a 10k thing about her wedding day but it STILL didnt do the context justice #maybe one day ill do something about the trevelyan siblings. idk how though. i like the idea of a bunch of concurrent short stories #anyway i hope you find this a fun insight into mary's twisted mind sorry it took like 2 weeks and is short #also a little purple prose-y. but when its under 1k it doesnt count ok i just wanted flowery mary being terrible..#also aware i am on the piss on the poor website and anyone can see this... this is just mary's pov i dont think addiction #or violent nightmares make you a bad person. its just terrible circumstances.#fanfic

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lttleghost · 1 year

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literally the people in the BrBa fandom who like think its super important to focus somewhat on the bad things Jesse's done instead of just acknowledging those things tend to have misunderstandings on either how selling drugs increase harm (which while there's other complexities to parts of the drug trade, simply making and providing drugs alone does not increase the harm those drugs cause) or they have misremembered some of his actual actions as being more in his control than they actually were, and with some people it really feels like it comes from the stigma against addicts even if they think they're not falling into that

and like again this lack of understanding around everything relating to drugs and addiction especially, even from people that mean well, is the whole reason it's more important to focus on the good in Jesse and how he's the victim rather than acting like there's no one acknowledges his flaws and the bad things he's done, cause a huge fucking swath of people outside our little tumblr circles do and act like every single bad thing in his life as entirely his responsibility without aknowledging any way that the world worked against him or the abuse he faced and see him as less of a person because he's an addict

and like I do think if Jesse wasn't the type of person that sees his own flaws and ultimately tries to do his best to change and learn even in the terrible situation he's in that doesn't want that change to happen, and instead needed people to like... constantly tell him to be better, then yeah it'd definitely be much more important to focus on those flaws and the bad things he did... but that's not the case, even the one thing he plans to do that was awful AND fully his choice (trying to sell drugs to the rehab group) was something he snapped himself out of when he was able to concretely see a consequence he hadn't considered before, this doesn't negate that trying to sell drugs to the rehab group was wrong, but it does add complexity to how we judge that action playing into Jesse as a whole

like you can't just sit there and act like ur so smart for aknowledging a character written like a real person is complex without thinking about the greater social commentary you're getting across when you insist we can't simply aknowledge the bad things a character does and have to still really judge them on those things or say calling them a "good person" erases the bad they've done and not consider if what you're saying is like... useful on a wider scale in combating the stigmatization of characters like Jesse (especially surrounding drug selling/making/using drugs) or if you're just refering to "woobification" bullshit that isn't particularly prevalent in the wider world

#okay I'm not that great with words but i hope this is understandable #jesse pinkman #jesse brba #jesse breaking bad #jesse pinkman brba #breaking bad #el camino #brba #like okay i may not have given this one person time ebough to respond to the last few things I've said but #im so blown away by like me trying to be like hey with Jesse as a character for wider commentary its not a good stance #to focus on his flaws #even if you are ultimately presenting a complex picture of him #because of the stigmatization and demonization of addicts #and when i asked for examples of Jesse CHOOSING to do things wrong outside of se3 #a) i got the selling drugs to the rehab group which like YEAH DUH THATS HIS 'im the bad guy' bullshit im alrady aware of that and agree #but i also was presented with 'while the war on drugs is bad meth is also bad and he chose to make and sell meth'#which.... demonstrates a misunderstanding on how that works #AMD THEN..... THEN I GOT 'Jesse talked about and used drugs around Jane and was responsible for her relapse'#and... EXCUSE ME? did we watch the same show? maybe Jesse was naive to think he could keep Jane away from all that stuff but #HE TRIED HE TRIED TO PROTECT HER #like in that case it just feels like... ur blaming him for being an addict wether or not he tries to keep it away #from someone else at risk #which like goes into its stupid to simplify people into obly good and bad actions #and I'm just #fucking furious #meat.txt #this is my girlfriend don't touch him

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