Disclaimer- I don't own Dragon Age 2 or anything else, for that matter.
My first Dragon Age fic, added to my many other fandoms on here! :) My friend Calumniator has spent the last few weeks whining about the lack of Fenbaby fics out there, so I thought I'd add one to the mix. :)
By the time Leandra, daughter of the Champion of Kirkwall, was grown, she had many titles. Some were slung at her like insults, for she was her mother's daughter and had become trained in both fighting and meddling in other people's business, while some were spoken in reverent tones that made her shuffle her feet in embarrassment. There was one, however, she cherished above the rest, one that she held close to her heart; daddy's girl.
When she was young and still an only child, she adored her father. That was not to say, of course, she didn't love her mother, who was funny and sarcastic and nice and often brought Leandra along on quests to deliver amulets or slay dragons. Her mother made sense; she knew what to expect when she talked and moved and smiled.
Her father was different. He looked different, and Leandra would spent many hours staring at her hands and wondering why she didn't have the stark white tattoos, why she didn't have the pretty patterns crisscrossing her skin. When she finally heard her father speak of the pain, of the agony of the carving, she felt sickened and betrayed. How could something so pretty be so awful?
It wasn't just the scars. Her father was small and lithe and quiet, so unlike the men of the village they lived in, who valued strength and a barrel chest more than anything else. Not to say her father wasn't strong; he was, in ways that Leandra, as an adult, would never understand.
When she was small, her father would break out of his silence to pick her up and twirl her around, nimble hands holding her safe in the air. He would kiss her on the cheek before leaving the house and always bring back a souvenir, whether it was a well-shaped rock or a new dagger. When they sat in front of the fire, her parents sharing bottles of wine that held a significance beyond her, he would pull her into his lap and comb her long black hair, and when her mother passed out in her armchair he would carry her to bed and tuck her in and read her a story. He was a slow reader, but that was okay, because Leandra liked to cherish every word.
When her brother was born, she would look over the crib and cry because Leto had gotten her father's white hair and she hadn't. She hadn't anything to prove she was his, she'd thought, until her mother had understood and told her, in soft tones the Champion was unaccustomed to, that she had her father's eyes.
Her father's last name was Hawke, the same as her mother's. When she asked him why he didn't have a last name of his own, he looked at her with the eyes they shared and told her the truth, that he had been a slave, that he had not known his family. He did not tell her with words how horrible it had been, how he had been starved and beaten and violated, because he knew his daughter was smart enough to figure it out on her own. He only pulled her in for a hug, smiling against her hair when he realized she was now taller than him.
When she was grown with a family and quests of her own, her mother died in a blaze of glory, laughing and jesting and leaving behind an unshakable legacy. Leandra was grief-stricken but unsurprised, arranging a bouquet of one of every flower (except white lilies, for her mother had grown ashen-faced at the very sight of them) as her she had wanted and saying her final farewells.
He father had been with her, and blamed himself in a quiet, resigned way. He moved in with Leandra then, his body and mind weakened from decades of lyrium, his soul unstable from the loss of his beloved. But he was still her father, and he still had the same eyes as her, bright and clear.
Her father's last words, as quiet and flat as usual, were not nearly as important as the way he squeezed her hand as he lay on his deathbed, but still, she cherished every word.
Reviews are love! :)