Something thrown together really fast for Father's Day and me wanting more Dirk and Lloyd father and son family content.
Dirk deserves more love.
Cross-posted to A03, Tumblr and DeviantArt.
Dwarven Vow #2: Never abandon someone in need.
Fatherhood was not immediately bestowed on Dirk that fateful rainy night, when a dying woman pleaded with her last breaths to look after her son after finding out the little boy was injured, but would live. She hadn't had the life left in her to offer anything close to an explanation besides mentioning the exsphere she had on her, and giving him the little boy's name(Lloyd Irving, and her name was Anna, he'd been quick to find out). No time to mention a father(if he was around); there had not even been a mention of what the creature was that saved the child's life. It mostly resembled a dog, so for now, he'd consider it as much. Dirk wasted no time gathering the boy and the strange dog, knowing he would have to come back for the woman's body at a later time. The soldiers were something the villagers could deal with.
On the way back, it was hard not to notice how the child favored his mother in many ways already. It was going to be a long, sleepless night.
Over the next few days, Lloyd cried a lot. He shed fat, messy tears over a father that wasn't coming and a mother he had to learn at too young of an age was dead. There was no easy way to put it, and it seemed the boys only small comfort at the time was the sight of the green dog. Noishe, he'd been informed by Lloyd in a wavering voice. While the dog healed faster than Lloyd was, Dirk allowed the creature to sleep at the foot of child's makeshift bed after finding the toddler against the dog, hands clutched too tight onto the patient animals fur while Lloyd cried into it for everything they lost. Noishe would whimper and curl around the small brunet.
Those few days turned into weeks and Dirk knew he had a decision to make. He had no luck in finding someone that could take care of the tot better than he could(the villagers being no help, telling him it looked like he was a father now while some of the others weren't as kind, but had the sense to keep from saying it to his face). His dwelling was not meant for humans, let alone children, and Dirk knew he had no idea how to properly raise a child outside of his own parents lessons that were passed onto him so long ago.
Then there was being separated from his own people. Most of the villagers in Iselia weren't shy about how they felt about his kind while some of the others respected his crafting work. Without thinking, he frowned having overheard the whispers in the village; thinking a toddler was a sign of bad luck for them. That he would bring soldiers to their small village since there was a reason they were after that woman after all. The schoolteacher had casually suggested he simply leave Lloyd at a church in a town not far from them.
While paying for a large number of additional building supplies, he knew that would be going against Dwarven Vow #2 and Dirk had promised a dying woman he would take care of her son... only a bit longer than he originally thought.
You never go back on your word and that cloudless, sunshine filled day when the first nails went into the wood that would eventually be their home, the knowledge he was a father now to this boy in all but blood stuck.
The next few years went by in a blur of long days that turned into longer nights, learning the do's and do not's that came with the territory of being a new parent, patching up scrapes and attempting to bring the boy up the only way he really knew that would work best; the Dwarven Vows as a guide.
The boy could sleep half a day away if he was allowed but other days have more than his share of energy to run around and get into trouble the moment Dirk had him out of sight(he still remembered the first time Lloyd had slipped off and met with a nearby low leveled monster flower.) Then of course his boy had gone and made best friends with the chosen girl; Colette. When in town, those two were nearly inseparable.
Years went by- Lloyd's biological father becoming a faceless shadow he had watched stars with long ago, his mother's own face he could barely remember anymore either. It had helped to have her grave be nearby so the brunet could go visit her when he wanted(And Dirk did more than a few times as well, feeling as though he ought to update the woman on her son from time-to-time, and hoping he was doing a good enough job, more so once sword training became involved once it became clear he would not have been able to make the trek to the village and back everyday to drop Lloyd off for school, and that first day had been all too long for the Dwarf). During those years Lloyd had taken on a enthusiastic interest in his crafting work, asking more questions about it than he did at school, and ended up being on his way to being a good craftsman himself.
On a shelf in his workstation still sat the first thing Lloyd had carved for him when he was a child.
That night, while Lloyd slept upstairs, Dirk packed a few extra things in the boys bag. In the morning he would be taking off to on a journey that the Dwarf couldn't stop him from and could only hope he would return alive. Lloyd had since turned seventeen, and there was not a lot left he could teach the teenager.
The night after Lloyd and Noishe left, Dirk found the house unsettlingly silent and decided to go and update his mother about recent things, and only hope he had done enough.