AN: This is an old, old fic that I wrote way back in May of 2011 (and man, it's so crazy to think I've been writing for DA2 that long). It was inspired in part by the spate of Fenris kidfic requests on the kmeme at the time, although it is not based on any prompt in particular; I recently rediscovered it misfiled in my documents, and although it could certainly stand another draft or two, I felt it could hold its own with a little polishing. Besides, even after all this time I'm still ridiculously fond of Leda and her insistence on getting into everything.
I'd never written anything like this before—I didn't even like kidfic, much less coma!flavored kidfic, before Fenris and the influence of my best friend Jade Sabre—but it ended up being a trial run of sorts for The Broken Binding when I realized how much I loved the idea of Fenris trying to wrangle a six-year-old into behaving. It's just too bad it took me this long to find it again.
I sincerely hope you enjoy this. I think, even with all the dust on it, it's one of my favorites.
-.-
On Waking
-.-
My name is Leda and I am six years old. I live with my mama and my father in a wooden house on the very outskirts of Wilhaven, which is a tiny village a little south of Wildervale and a lot north of Kirkwall. Mama says it's a two-day ride to Kirkwall, although it's dangerous and I've never been there since I can remember. I have been to Wildervale, though, twice, for the last two Summerday festivals. Mama took me while Uncle Varric watched my father for her.
I like Uncle Varric a lot. He's wide and warm and funny and he brings me storybooks from Kirkwall when he comes, which isn't often. He says he likes me because I'm shorter than him, but he winks when he says it and I think he'll like me even when I'm as tall as Mama. She is very tall, like the aspen trees behind our house, although Uncle Varric says my father is even taller than her. I'm not sure I believe him, but one day when my father wakes up I'll be able to see for myself.
My father has been sleeping for two years, since I was four. It seems like a very long time for anyone to sleep, in my opinion, but Mama says he can't help it and that he'll wake up as soon as he can. I think that he might sleep forever, but the one time I told Uncle Varric that he gave me a very stern look and told me not to say that in front of my mama. I don't think she'd be angry if I told her that—Mama laughs at everything, even me—but Uncle Varric doesn't give me stern looks very often, so I never said it again.
I go to lessons at the Chantry four days a week. Wilhaven is a tiny sleepy town, so there are only ten other children around my age, but my friend Marrin says it's better than the huge Chantry school up in Wildervale. When I'm done in the afternoons, I take the twisty-snake road that runs through the center of Wilhaven to the farthest lane where my house is and I tell my father everything I've learned. My parents' room is in the very back of the house, and when we moved here to Wilhaven my mama set up two beds side by side, so she can sleep in the same room where my father does and still not bother him. I don't think he can hear me when I talk to him, since he never moves or opens his eyes or changes his breathing, but Mama says it's good for him to hear my voice, and besides, I like to look at him.
My father doesn't look like anyone else in the village, or even anyone that I've ever seen. He has dark skin and very white hair and a lot of curling grey tattoos, and Mama says that I have his green eyes, but I can't really remember them much because his eyes are always closed now. I pried them open once to see, but it looked too scary with one eye open and one eye closed when I knew he was asleep, so I didn't try again.
There's a huge window in this room that looks out on the hill behind our house and two smaller ones that point to the front yard, all made of glass, and the afternoon sunlight makes my father's tattoos glow silver. Sometimes, when Mama tells me stories before I go to bed, I think I see his face smiling at me in my head, but I don't know if it's real or if I'm making it up. It's very hard to picture his face doing anything but lying there and breathing.
I have his ears, too, sort of. They're just a little bit pointed at the ends, not round like Mama's, but I like them and my short square fingernails because they're my father's and everything else I have isn't. I have very dark hair, like my mama, though she wears hers in a low tail and mine is always braided, and my skin is pale enough that I have burned the last two Summerdays, like her too. My mama has one thing I don't, though, and that's magic. She says it's a good thing that I don't have to worry about it, and once she smiled her sad half-smile and she said, "Your father would be thrilled."
I wish I had magic, even if he wouldn't be.
After I tell my father everything I've learned in the afternoons, I go to the kitchen to help my mother. She has a tremendous amount of books stacked all over the tables there, and hardly any of them are cookbooks. Most of them are books of magic and spells that she uses to try to wake up my father, and although nothing has worked yet, she doesn't ever get discouraged. I help her make notes on things she can try, and then I pick out the dinners for the week so she can make up a list for the grocer in town. Then, at night, when Mama and I have eaten and she has fed my father, she helps me with my lessons and tells me a bedtime story. Mostly I pick stories about her and my father, which I think makes Mama happy, but they're more interesting than the storybooks Uncle Varric gives me even though those books have pictures.
Tonight I've picked the story of how my parents got married. It's one of my favorites because it's a grown-up story, with wine and gambling, and even though my mama frowns when she tells those parts, I can see her eyes laughing, and that makes me laugh too.
"Once upon a time," she starts, correctly, setting the candle on the nightstand and turning down the coverlet, "there was a handsome elf and a sarcastic young lady who happened to fall in love."
I scramble under the sheets and she pulls the coverlet under my chin. "A beautiful young lady," I say, and Mama laughs.
"Flattery won't get you up any later than usual, my girl," she says as she sits down on the edge of the bed. Her weight makes the mattress dip a little, and I let myself roll over towards her as she continues. "They happened to fall in love, and though there were many obstacles to their happiness over the years, eventually they managed to make some sort of life together in the very grand city where they lived."
"Kirkwall."
"A very grand city that may or may not have been Kirkwall. Now, in this city, there was a tavern where the young lady's friends all liked to meet and talk and certainly not have too much liquor." She puts a finger to her nose, pretending to be serious, but I can see the smile on her face. "One night, when the young lady was having a very good time with her elf and her friends at the tavern drinking—very responsibly, my girl, make a note—her friend the pirate queen made a bet with her. 'If you win,' she said, 'then you—'"
"You're not doing the voice." I like how my mother makes Aunt Isabela sound, when she drops her voice all throaty and deep. It makes me think of blue skies and the open sea.
Mama winks and does the voice. "'If you win, then you may have your pick of any of the great treasures I keep on my ship.' Now, the sarcastic young lady was perhaps a bit of a magpie," she says, and the face she pulls makes me giggle. "She knew that the pirate queen had an absolutely enormous heap of treasure on her ship, including some of the young lady's own things, and she very much wanted to get them back. But she also knew that it is very dangerous to enter a bet without full terms disclosed, and she asked what would happen if she lost. 'If you lose,' said the pirate queen with a positively devilish grin, 'then you must let me, as a ship's captain, officiate your marriage ceremony.'"
"And you said yes."
"And the young lady was perhaps very deep in her cups and thought that was a splendid idea."
"What did F—the elf think?"
"He was having a conversation with one of the young lady's friends and didn't even notice, which was probably for the best for both of them. So the young lady began to play Wicked Grace with the pirate queen, and at first she did quite well and even began thinking of what treasure she would choose to reclaim. But because the pirate queen is an absolutely rapacious cheat at Wicked Grace, the tables soon turned and in very short order, the young lady found herself two Swords and a Shield shy of a full hand, and the pirate queen sat victorious."
This is my favorite part. "So she married you right then and there."
Mama bends over and kisses my forehead. "So she married them right then and there, much to the two's consternation. At first, the handsome elf rather thought they ought not go through with it, but because the young lady was so, ah—"
"Drunk?"
She tweaks my nose. "Happy. She ended up being absolutely enchanted with the idea and managed to persuade the elf, who had perhaps had one too many glasses of wine himself, to say yes. And so they were married, and very surprised to hear of it the next morning. The end."
The candle is guttering on the nightstand and my mother leans over to blow it out. I yawn into the darkness as Mama stands up, and my eyes follow her shadowy shape as she moves to the door. "I hope I fall in love like you and Father," I say.
Mama stops right in the doorway and I see her head turn back towards me. "Oh, my darling," she says, and I think if I could see her face it would be sad. "I hope you don't."
I don't understand, but she is already closing the door behind her. I hear her call "good night," and I roll over, but my eyes won't close. It takes me a long time to fall asleep.
-.-
I hear Mama's voice from her bedroom when I come home. She is talking to my father, and I drop my schoolbooks on the kitchen table with a thud before I go to find her. I stick my head around the corner of the door and see her sitting on the side of my father's bed, his hand in her lap. His fingers look very dark and very big around hers.
"—and you should see her, Fenris!" My mama's voice is tinged with laughter, and it makes me smile to hear it. "Sometimes she'll get this mulish set to her mouth that's you all over. Her eyes even do that flashing thing when she gets particularly peevish at my parenting." She's talking about me, I realize, and I step fully into the doorway. Mama sees me and winks and pats my father's hand. "And now she's come to fetch me, so I'm going to allow myself to be fetched. I'll be back with dinner. It's shepherd's pie tonight, which I know you hate, but you until you wake up to complain about it you'll just have to take your lumps. Or eat them, I suppose."
She bends over and kisses him, not on the forehead like she does me but right on the mouth, and then she stands up and dusts off her trousers. My mama's the only woman I know who almost always wears trousers. "What comes, darling?"
"Hello, Father," I say, and then Mama follows me out of the room and closes the door behind her. I don't know quite how to ask what I want to, but Mama takes my hand as we head to the kitchen and the words just come out. "Rami called me a bastard today."
Mama raises an eyebrow and for a second her hand tightens around mine. "Rami did, hm? Is this the same Rami that persuaded you to use your braid as a paintbrush last Kingsway?"
My hair is still not as long as before Mama had to cut it. "Yes, him. He said that I don't have a papa."
"You have a papa. He's right there in the other room." Mama hefts me up and sits me on a counter in the kitchen. There's a little bowl of apples she has been slicing and she pops a piece in my mouth. "Rami doesn't know what he's talking about."
"But Rami's right," I say around the apple. I've thought about it all the way home and it's made me anxious and upset. "I don't have a papa."
"Flames, Leda, what are you talking about?" Mama turns away from me to pick up another apple, and the distraction in her voice makes me angry more than anything else.
I shove off the counter, little pieces of fruit flying everywhere. "I don't have a papa! All I have is a father!"
Now I have her attention, and she drops the paring knife and grabs me by the shoulders to stop me running. "What do you mean? They're the same thing."
"They're not the same thing. They're not." I swipe at angry tears with the back of my hand and it comes away snotty. "Rami's papa takes him fishing in the river and Marrin's papa puts a note in her book every day. All my father does is sleep."
"Oh," says my mama, and her hands fall away from my shoulders. "I see."
She looks at me hard for a few moments, letting my sniffles sound very loud in the room, and then she crouches down in front of me. "Your father," she says with no smile in her face, "your papa loves you very much. He protected you ever since you were born, just like he protected me. If he could be awake right now to do all those things with you, please trust me when I say that he would without a second thought."
I know he would, probably, but that still won't stop me crying. Eventually, Mama gathers me into her chest and picks me up and takes me to the front room with the big armchair in it, and she sits down with me in her lap like I am very little again. Her hand strokes over my hair and my shoulders in slow soothing strokes, and she hums a song from Ferelden until I can calm down. Her arms are warm and strong and soft and better than any quilt in the house right now.
Finally, when my hiccups have slowed and I'm almost asleep, my mama stirs. "Have you," she starts, hesitates, and starts again. "Would you like to know why your father is always sleeping?"
If I was sleepy before, I'm wide awake now. I have always wanted to know this story and I have always been afraid to ask. "Yes! Yes, please."
Mama looks off into the middle distance like she does when she's telling me a story, but this time, she doesn't bother to pretend it's about somebody else. "Your father and I were living in Kirkwall at the time. You were just about to turn four; Isabela's ship had come into port, and she and Varric were going to throw you an enormous party. I…" She looks down at me, and though she smiles, her eyes are tight at the corners, like a drumskin pulled too thin. "A long time ago, I did something that made a lot of people very angry with me, and with my friends."
"What did you do?"
Mama shakes her head. "That's a story for another day. All you need to know right now is that the people who were angry with me looked for me for a long time. We stayed in Kirkwall at your grandma's house when it was safe and visited Sundermount and the Wounded Coast when it wasn't. Do you know where those are?"
I nod. Uncle Varric has shown me those places on his maps. "Good," she says, and continues. "For a long time, we did not see the people chasing me, and after a while we started to think that maybe they'd given up. We grew complacent—or at least, I did. I stopped worrying, stopped watching at the windows for naked blades."
She shakes her head, and suddenly I'm not sure she's really talking to me anymore. "Then, just after your nameday, they came for us in the middle of the night. Isabela was there, and Varric and Merrill, but the attack was sudden and swift and we were completely unprepared. We couldn't even fight back, there were so many of them—I picked you up and fled, and your father followed behind us with his sword, swinging away like the Dread Wolf himself." She smiles at the memory, as if she has seen him swing a sword many times and is fond of the sight. "Isabela told us to go to her ship—it was a fast little thing and ready to set sail, and we could flee the templars easily in open water."
Her hand stops on my back like she has forgotten about it, and her voice is very quiet now. "We were almost there, and that's what kills me. We were so close. But they'd brought Circle mages from another city with them to back them up, in case we proved to be a serious threat. Your father was behind us to protect our flanks, and he looked…ha." She snorts a laugh that isn't funny. "He looked more dangerous than the Champ—than a woman carrying a toddler."
I don't understand some of the things she's saying, but I'm afraid to interrupt in case it will make her stop talking. "All of them launched a different spell at him at the same time. There was a tremendous explosion, and when I looked back, he was on the ground like a sack of potatoes." Mama puts her fingertips to her forehead and leans back against the chair. For a second I think she might start crying, and that scares me more than anything because I've never seen her cry before. "Isabela had to drag him onto the ship while her men covered her. She bought us time and brought us as far north upriver as she could, and then Varric helped me get Fenris here, to Wilhaven. We needed somewhere small and quiet and enough out of the way that we could be overlooked, but close enough to a major city that we could get news if we needed it. And care for your father, if I needed it."
Mama lets out a very long breath, and then she opens her eyes and the smile she gives me is more water than warmth. "And that's how your father ended up sleeping. Because he was protecting you and me."
I don't know what to say. I don't understand a lot of things, like why people are chasing my parents or how my mama could do anything bad enough to make people want to kill her, but I do understand that my father is sleeping because he loves my mama and he loves me, and I think that can be enough for me for now. I wrap my arms around Mama's neck and squeeze, and she squeezes back. I still feel a little empty inside, like a stone rattling down a deep well, but it's not as bad as before, and I think at least I might be able to see the bottom now.
That night, I dream about my mother shouting Fenris! into the dark, and how my father's back moves when he swings a sword as tall as he is, and of the sharp salty smell of the sea.
-.-
There's a man in the village named Aron. He works at the smithy and he's very, very tall, with very dark hair and a full beard that's pointy at the chin, and he always smells like hot metal and leather. He lets me and Marrin throw horseshoes in the yard behind the smithy if we're careful to keep them away from the ponies, and sometimes Mama takes him vegetables from her garden for taking care of us after lessons. I used to want him to marry Mama before she told me about my father, but now I just want him to teach me how to ride a horse.
We've only ever had a few visitors at the house besides my mama's friends, and Aron is one of them. Once, when my mama was very sick, I went and got him from the village and he came over with the Chantry healer and took care of me until she was better. Both of them seemed very upset by my father sleeping in the same room, but once the Chantry healer said that Mama wasn't contagious, he made Aron leave my father alone and play in the front room with me. I thought he was angry with me at first, because he kept muttering things and glaring at the bedroom door where my parents sleep, but now I think maybe he was just worried instead.
He comes over once a week, now, to do odd jobs around the house and bring back our baskets. There's a hole in the roof where a storm tore off the shingles last spring, and he's been patching it with spare lumber from the yard. I know Mama has a lot of money stored somewhere—Uncle Varric always brings her fat jingling sacks when he comes—but Aron won't ever take anything more than dinner and another vegetable basket as payment.
One night, I am woken up by the sound of a fist pounding on our door. I hear my mama in the front room say something she would never have said if she knew I was awake, and then the front door creaks open.
"Who the flames is it at this—Aron? What's wrong?"
I hear a harsh breath and heavy footsteps thudding on the wooden floor, and then suddenly there's a crash on the opposite wall like someone has fallen against it. I get out of bed, my heart suddenly pounding right through my nightdress, and creep across the floor in bare feet. I avoid all the noisy floorboards and then I get down on my stomach so I can see through the crack under the door.
Aron is in our house, and he is pressing Mama against the wall with his arms. I should—I should go for help, I should scream or something—but Mama doesn't look very concerned and the person I would go to for help is the one who's holding Mama against the wall in the first place, so I don't know what to do. Aron dips his head into my mama's neck and breathes in, and then he mumbles something I can't hear.
Mama shakes her head and puts her hand on Aron's shoulders and pushes. He lets himself be backed up, although he doesn't let go of her shoulders. "I'm married," Mama says sternly. "And you are drunk out of your mind."
"Married," Aron says, and his words slide into each other like they've been oiled. "Married, to what. To'n elf? An elf who might as well be a body on the bed instead of a living breathing man. He'd never know." His voice is a dark sort of happy and very rough, and he rolls his head on his shoulders like it's too loose. "Never even know."
Mama looks absolutely furious, though she doesn't shout. I remember that I'm supposed to be asleep. "You shame yourself, Aron, and you insult me. Go home."
Aron ducks his head and tries to kiss Mama, but she jerks her face out of the way and I see a spark of electric light between them—and then Aron is backing up, clutching one hand in the other, and I catch a whiff of alcohol stronger than I have ever smelled. "I live, Serah Hawke," he hisses. "I breathe and move and I can love you like that elf'll never be able to again." He shakes his hand like it's been burnt and his face is sweating with pain and drink, and then he moves forward again and Mama steps sideways to put the settee between them. There's a smile on Aron's face that scares me, suddenly. "You could call his name if you want. I don't care."
Mama's face goes very calm, but there's a feeling like a storm growing behind it, and I wonder if the whole house will fall down when she blows up. "Get out of my house, Aron."
He shifts his weight onto his toes, and for a second I think he's about to jump over the settee and I will scream if that happens, so I take a big breath—and then he is angry and he spits, "I know who you are, Champion."
My mother only cocks an eyebrow, and then she holds up a hand in front of her that suddenly bursts into flames. I shriek, I know I do, but it's lost in the bang of Aron stumbling backwards into the wall. "Then," she says, her voice quiet and terrible, "I wonder you came at all."
His eyes are huge in the light of the flames and fearful even through the glaze of liquor, but it looks like the fire has shocked him out of his darkness, and he shakes his head in confusion. "Serah Hawke," he says as if he's not sure. Mama doesn't move at all, just stands there with her hand on fire, and he blinks like a surprised owl before covering his face with his hands. "I'm—I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"I know, Aron," she sighs, and lets the flames drop away from her hand. The floor is hard under my stomach, but I can't make myself move.
"I'd never—I'd never—I just…ever since I met you but you knew that, but Garth bet me I wouldn't ever be able to say anything and I—I'm sorry—"
"Go home," Mama says, not unkindly, but she stays on that side of the settee until he has slunk out the door with shame on his face. She locks the door and deadbolts it, and then she stands with her forehead resting on the wood for a very long time. Then she straightens, very slowly, and walks away from the door. Her footsteps pause a moment outside my room and I try to stop breathing so she won't suspect, but she passes on back to the room she shares with my father.
I wait until I hear the bed creak as she settles onto it, and then I turn the doorknob and creep out of my room, quiet like a cat on the hunt. I sneak all the way down the hall to my parents' room where the door is open and peek around the jamb, but the soft noise I hear from inside stops me before I enter. My mother is sitting on my father's bed, bent over him with her head on his chest that doesn't move, that doesn't ever change its breathing.
"Fenris," my mother whispers. Her voice makes me think of the little winding creek in our back yard and the shiver of clear water over stones. "Fenris, please. I need you—" she chokes and her shoulders stutter and I realize she is crying, very quietly, swallowing down all her sobs so she won't wake me up. "I need you to wake up. I need you to be here, damn it." She shudders and I see her fingers clenched in his shirt. "Fenris," she breathes so soft I can barely hear it. "I need you."
My father doesn't move, just as he hasn't moved in two years, and I sit down on the floor outside the door, pulling my knees up to my chin. My mama cries into his chest for a very long time.
-.-
The leaves of the forest outside Wilhaven are just golding at the edges when the templars come at last.
I have no lessons this day, so I am writing my father a story on the floor of his room to go in the treasure box I'm making for him when I hear a woman's voice calling outside the house. I scramble to my feet and to the smaller window that overlooks the front yard—there are five people standing out there, men and women all in shining silver armor and carrying naked swords. I think of the story Mama told me about the templars coming for them in the night, and for some reason I am glad that they chose the day this time.
Mama throws open the door behind me with a bang. "Stay here, Leda," she says, and I have never in my life heard her voice so fierce and stern and strong. "Lock the door behind me. Stay away from the window."
I nod, wide-eyed, and she closes the door. I race over and lock it, and even though I don't want to disobey Mama, I need to know what is happening, so I run back to the window but keep my head low on the sill behind the curtains.
"Come out, Champion!" shouts the templar in charge, a tan woman with a scarlet plume on her helmet and a sword twice the size of the others. She wears no shield. "Or we will come in and take you!"
This is the second time I have heard someone call my mother the Champion, but before I can figure out what it means the front door is opening and she is stalking out in her trousers and her soft grey shirt and carrying her silver staff in one hand, and though the templars wield swords taller than me, she somehow looks like the most dangerous person in our yard. She stops halfway between them and the house and plants her staff in the grass. It sizzles where it hits and I see a faint puff of smoke spiraling up from its base. "I'm giving you fair warning," my mama says, "because I'm kind like that, and because I know you don't want to be here anymore than I want you here, but know this: if you come closer, I will kill every last one of you."
Her words ring out over the hills like the Chantry bells on Firstday, but the commander does not seem impressed. "Marian Hawke, you are under arrest for vandalism, conspiracy, and murder."
Mama leans on her staff. "Ooh, vandalism. That's a new one. Do tell: defacing public property? Littering? I know Meredith was always very concerned about littering."
"Submit, or we will take you in by force," the commander says, her lip curling. She makes a sharp gesture with one hand, and the four soldiers behind her fan out around my mother in a loose half-circle. "This is your last chance, Champion. Turn yourself in and we will spare your child."
"How magnanimous." Mama sounds amused, but I can see her knuckles whitening on her staff. My throat is dry. "And my husband, too, I suppose, out of sheer generosity."
There's a ripple in the ranks and the commander takes a sudden step forward. "The elf is here?"
Mama straightens and swings her staff down in a crisp arc between the commander and the house. "I warned you to stay back."
The commander doesn't seem to care anymore. "They're both here," she snaps to her soldiers. "Take them and torch the house."
Light flickers in my mother's hands. "You may try," she says, a thin gleaming smile on her face, and then the light swells so bright I cannot look at her, and she attacks.
I don't know my own mother. The woman who dances through the flames in our front yard is a stranger to me, and when her staff sweeps to the ground in a wild curving scream and ice bursts out in a solid wall to freeze the soldiers, I feel my breath freeze with them. My mother—my mother, who feeds me apple slices and tells me stories about her friends—slams the base of her staff into a man's frozen forehead and he tips clean over like a field cow, and then she flings out her left hand at the three soldiers who charge her and a great flame blooms in a horrifying roar to swallow them whole.
I hear a man screaming as he burns alive. My mother doesn't even notice. She turns on her heel and the commander's great sword thuds down into the grass where she'd been standing. I can't stop my gasp but Mama looks completely calm, as if she were sweeping the kitchen rather than killing people right in front of me, and then she shoves the heel of her hand under a man's chin and lightning blows out through his nose. He staggers back as if Mama has stabbed him and goes to a knee, and Mama uses the distraction to carry the lightning over to the hearts of the two soldiers on the ground.
I can smell them burning, so I move away from the window, and that is why I miss seeing which one of them makes Mama scream. It's a high, thready sound that shoots right through my stomach and I race back only to see my mother hanging in midair, white light pooling around her feet and the commander's hands outstretched. Her helmet is gone and she looks very young and very angry, and then for a split-second she looks past my mama and right into my eyes.
My face goes white—I can feel the blood draining out of it—and her face suddenly looks less angry, and then I spin away from the window so I can't see her anymore. Instead, I see my father. He's lying there like he has for two years, but Mama has suddenly stopped screaming outside and I don't know what that means. I run over to him and shake his shoulder, and even though part of me knows that it won't do anything, that I can't do anything, there's still a larger part that says that he has to wake up now because Mama needs him. Because I need him.
"Wake up, Father," I say, softly at first, but he just lies there with his eyes closed and breathes. I grab at his tattooed wrist with my fingers that look like his fingers and tug, trying to pull him off the bed, trying to pull him towards Mama outside. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" By the end of it I'm shouting and screaming and crying, probably loud enough that everyone outside can hear me, and still he doesn't open his eyes.
Feet suddenly pound in the hallway outside and for a second my heart lifts because Mama must be all right—but the door slams open with a thick loud crunch like the lock was never there and it's the commander standing in the doorway instead. She stomps into the room and steps on the story I was drawing for Father, tearing it with her clanking metal boot. Her sword is as big as the room and terrifying, and I clutch my father's arm with both hands even though he can't protect me now.
"What is this?" she says, as if she's confused. "What is this?"
I can't speak through the tears in my throat.
Her shoulder moves and the sword moves with it and I shrink back against my father on the bed—and then the silver tip of my mother's staff is digging into the commander's neck and my mother is putting a hand that sputters lightning over the commander's heart. "I will kill you if you touch them," my mother says, and a spark jumps up between their faces.
"What is this, Champion?" snaps the commander without moving.
My mother snorts, though I can still see the sharp sparking light under her hand. "Come on, Ruvena. It's not that hard."
"It's Captain now." The woman looks angry. "Hawke. You can't possibly expect me to believe that all this time you've been caring for a child and a comatose elf."
Mama slides around the commander until she's between her and me without lifting her staff away from its place under the woman's chin. Her voice is hard. "My child. My comatose elf. Comatose because of your bloody templar order, by the way. Thanks for that."
The tip of Mama's staff slides up and down the woman's throat as she swallows. "I heard of what happened. That…was not done well," she says, and she doesn't sound quite as angry as before. Now she sounds almost…embarrassed. "The officers who led that mission were—relieved."
"It wasn't a mission, Ruvena! It was a damned midnight raid! You know as well as I do that Cullen never ordered that hunt—those were your lyrium-addled fanatics trying to curry favor with their Meredith-worshipping superiors. All you did—" she jabs the woman with her staff, and I see a little blue spark spit out onto her neck, "—was stand aside and let it happen."
The woman's hand tightens on her sword. "I know they treated you unjustly then, but what would you have me do now, Hawke? You want me to flee to my commanding officer and tell him, 'oh, I apologize, sir, the Champion slaughtered all my men, but it's all right, sir, because she's got a little girl and a very sleepy lover to occupy her time now, so it'll probably be fine, sir'?"
Mama snorts. "Oh, come on. Cullen—and it is Cullen, isn't it—sent you with four green soldiers. Four. He didn't expect to find anything here but another empty rumor, and neither did you. Just tell him I'm dead."
"So the next time you show up in Kirkwall toting a child on one hip and revolution on the other, I can be proved a liar to my superior officers. I don't think so, Hawke." I had hoped the woman had forgotten I was there, but her eyes flick to me over Mama's shoulder before Mama shifts to block the woman's gaze.
"Then tell them we bested you and fled before you awoke, if that'll make it easier for you. Or tell them the lead was a dead end altogether, I don't care. Whatever's easier on your ego."
The woman looks like she's about to say something, but Mama pushes her weight onto the staff and the commander backs up into the doorway. "This is not negotiable, Ruvena."
I can see the woman thinking furiously as her eyes go to me, to my father lying on the bed, and then to my mother, and I can also see the moment when she comes to a decision at last, because her arm relaxes at her side and the point of her sword drops. "Fine," she says tiredly. "For the mercy you showed Keran, if for nothing else. But they may not take my word, Hawke. They know my opinions in this matter may be…colored."
Mama hesitates a moment, and then she drops the staff away from the woman's throat. I think this is a terrible idea, but the woman only puts her hand to the place where the staff was and rubs. "I can live with that," Mama says. Her back is still stiff and her staff is still upright and ready. "Say hello to Keran for me. And—take your men home with you. I don't need injured templars cluttering my doorstep."
"Injured—" says the woman, her eyes going wide, and then she turns on her heel and runs back towards the front door. Mama goes after her and after a glance at my father, I follow. Mama stops in the shadows of the open doorway at the front of our house and I grab her hand. Her fingers tighten around mine and I can feel them shaking, though her face is very calm. I wonder if she was as scared as I was.
All of the templars are alive in our front yard. Three of them are lying down on the ground and one of the women is stuck to a tree with ice, but they're all moving and shouting and making faces. The ones who were burned smell like the cool magic Mama uses when I've scraped my knees, and even from our front door I can see that their skin is not scarred at all. The commander turns to my mother and me, standing in the doorway, but I cannot make out the look on her face. Eventually, she nods and helps her soldiers to their feet one by one, and they all get onto their horses with so much grumbling that Mama would have sent me to my room if it were me doing it. We stand at the doorway until they are out of sight over the hills towards Wildervale.
Mama's staff drops to the floor with an empty clank. I look back, surprised, but then my mother is on her knees and hugging me to her so tight I can barely breathe. "Thank the Maker," she whispers. Her face feels wet against mine and I wonder guiltily if she's crying again because of me. "Thank Andraste, thank Keran, thank every flaming letter Varric ever brought me about those thrice-damned templars."
Mama has sworn a lot in front of me, today. In the end, though, I don't really mind. She lets me sleep in her bed that night, and even though I am still a little angry at my father for not helping Mama fight, the sound of his unchanging breathing comforts me to sleep.
-.-
Marrin calls goodbye to me as she turns off the lane, and I wave after her. Marrin lives the closest to our house, just over the little hill with the trees on top, and she and I walk home together after lessons. Sometimes I stay to play with her when Mama is busy, but today I choose to go straight home, and I've just made it over the hill when I realize that there are two horses picketed outside our house. Well, it's more like a horse and a big pony, but I know what that means: Uncle Varric is here.
I run the last bit of the lane and burst into the house, dropping my books by the door with loud wooden thumps. "Uncle Varric!" I shout, already smiling, and then I hear voices in the kitchen. I poke my head around the door, ready to jump on Uncle Varric's back like usual, but I stop instead and pull back a little. Uncle Varric is here, sitting with my mother at the kitchen table and Bianca on the wall behind him, but there's another person in there leaning over my mother's shoulders to read an open letter she's holding, a tall woman with dark skin and black hair and a blue bandanna, and I don't think I know her.
They all glance up when I appear, but Mama looks very serious and I'm not sure if I should interrupt them. Still, Uncle Varric smiles warmly and holds out his arm, and I go and give him a hug. "Hey, Sparrow," he says, and he drops a sweet in my pocket so my mother won't see. Uncle Varric is just as wide and nice as always. "Do you remember Isabela?"
"Well, well," says the woman behind my mother, one eyebrow arching up into her bandanna. Her voice is throaty and deep and just like how Mama has always done it in the stories, and that's how I know it's Aunt Isabela after all. "All grown up and breaking hearts already. Are you sure this lovely little girl is the fruit of Fenris's—"
"Isabela." Mama covers a smile. "You remember my daughter, I see. Darling, say hi."
I duck my head into a bow like I see people do to the sisters at the Chantry. When I look up again, Aunt Isabela is smiling at me. It's a very warm smile, and even though I'm still a little worried, I feel myself smiling too. Mama winks at me, and then she turns back to the letter in her hand. Aunt Isabela bends to look over my mother's shoulder again, and I feel the unhappiness slipping back into the kitchen. "So Anders can't help, then," Mama says, her eyes moving fast over the paper.
Uncle Varric crosses his arms and leans back in his creaking chair. "Blondie…" he starts, and then sighs. "He's not doing great, Hawke. I don't know if you kept him grounded or if he really used to be that good at keeping his glowing half under wraps, but that spirit in his head is coming out more and more since you left. He stops by The Hanged Man when he's in town—I think I told you last letter he last came by a couple months ago—and half the time I wasn't sure which of them was actually losing to me at diamondback."
Mama's lips twist with an emotion I can't figure out. "All I ever did was let him know when he was crazy, and I think he's aware of that by now. For all the good it did us both. Does Justice really not have any ideas?"
Uncle Varric shakes his head. "He said that everything he could think of you've already tried, and he doesn't know enough about Daisy's suggestion to not end up killing you both by accident. He said he's sorry."
"Hmph." Mama's hand twitches on the letter like she's about to crumple it up, but at the last moment she folds it carefully instead and puts it back in the envelope and picks up a second, still-sealed letter from the table. "Nothing good from Merrill either, I take it."
Isabela shakes her head behind Mama. "I didn't understand most of it, if we're insisting on being candid. She said you'd know what she meant. Mage-y things, I guess." She makes little wiggly magic fingers at me over Mama's head and I giggle. "Has Fenris fathered his very own adorable apostate, Hawke?"
Mama rolls her eyes as she tears open the other letter with her finger. "She hasn't got a drop of magic, so far as I can tell. I think it's a good thing."
"I wish I had magic," I say, forgetting I wanted to keep quiet so they wouldn't make me go to my room. "Mama has a lot of it, but she didn't give me any."
Uncle Varric laughs, which is one of my favorite sounds in the world. "Hawke's always been selfish like that, Sparrow. Don't worry, you'll get used to it."
I don't think Mama's selfish at all, but before I can say anything, she's sitting up straight with the unfolded letter from Aunt Merrill in her hand. Her face is almost white, but she doesn't look surprised. "It's the brands," she says, and then she looks at me. "Go to your room, Leda."
"I don't want to. I want to know." I can feel my eyebrows pulling together in a frown, but this has to do with my father, and I want to know.
"Oh, there he is," murmurs Aunt Isabela, and she reaches down and cups my cheek in a cool hand that smells like the sea. I don't understand what she means and I shake off her hand, irritated. "Go on, girl," she says, but the smile she gives me this time isn't very happy at all. "I'll come and tell you a story in a little bit, all right? Maybe something about my ship?"
It's not what I want, but the look on my mother's face tells me I don't have the slightest choice, so I stomp out of the room and all the way down the hall. I make sure to slam the door extra-loud, just so they know I don't like being sent away, and I wait a few seconds until I hear their voices start up again. Then, very carefully and very, very quietly, I crack the door back open and pad down the hallway toe-heel toe-heel, pretending I'm made of air just like Uncle Varric showed me, and I stop just at the point where I can make out what they're saying.
"They're feeding the spells? I don't understand."
There's a tapping noise, and then my mother's voice, sounding tired. "Merrill thinks—and I agree with her, to be honest—that the combination of all the different spells and his lyrium firing up at the same time ended up just making some kind of…I don't know. Some kind of recursive loop. The tattoos kept the spells from killing him, but the magic stuck to the lyrium and—merged with it, I guess. The lyrium's keeping him alive, but it's also keeping the spells alive too." Mama sighs, and her next words are muffled, as if she's talking through her hands. "That explains why I couldn't ever dispel anything, though. I mean, as far as his body's concerned, the sleeping effects—and Maker knows whatever else in there—those might as well be part of his skin."
"So, what," Aunt Isabela says. "It took you two years to figure this out?"
Uncle Varric's chair thumps to the floor. "That's not fair, Rivaini."
"It's fine." Mama doesn't sound fine, though. "I didn't even know something like that was possible, Isabela. He never let me study those stupid tattoos long enough to figure out how they worked, and frankly, I'm not sure I wanted to know. Danarius did…he did terrible things to him. I didn't want to get any closer to that than I had to."
I don't know Danarius, but the way my mother says his name makes me hate him. "Merrill was the one who suggested it early this summer. A Tevinter brand of magic that Danarius would have known well, some kind of distant relation to some blood magicky thing-or-other—not my area of expertise. I started to look into it and then I spent the rest of the summer hoping she was dead wrong, because the way to get rid of it is dangerous and creepy and disgusting and I didn't want to have to do it."
The letter rustles in someone's hand. "Everything we've been through and you still think it's disgusting? Why?"
"Because I have to drain his marks completely. It should force them to start using their natural magic again if I take what those mages left in there into me instead; then I can disperse it into something else, something harmless like the sky. The problem for me is that I'm going to get soaked through with Danarius's magic and all the rest of the magic that those mages left in him two years ago, and if it doesn't turn me into an abomination at the touch of it, it's going to at least take me weeks to wash it off, and the very idea of that makes my skin crawl. The problem for him is that it'll sap him dry as a bone in the process." Mama sighs. "Basically, to wake him up, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to kill him first."
Someone makes a scared noise. I can't figure who it is at first, and then when Uncle Varric suddenly appears around the corner I realize it was me. "Aha," he says, and picks me up by my collar, marching me into the kitchen. "Sparrow with wolf ears."
"Leda."
I am in big, big trouble.
Mama is absolutely furious. Her jaw is popping the way it did when I used the pages of her spellbooks to make paper boats for the river, and I spent two weeks in my room after that. I don't know what she's going to do now, but it can't be any kind of good. I set my chin stubbornly, worried about my punishment and angry I've been caught, but not willing to show either.
Except—she doesn't say anything at all. She just…looks at me, and the anger seeps out of her face like a drying spring. "Come here, darling," she says at last, and even though I'm still a little afraid and a lot confused, I walk around the table to her chair. Then Mama hugs me. She just slides right out the chair to her knees and hugs me, and her hand slides through my hair like she's trying to memorize how it feels. "You know I love you, my girl," says Mama, and I nod into her shoulder.
"Me too," I say, except I feel like I'm saying goodbye instead.
She squeezes me very tight, and then she lets go and stands up. "Varric, can you take her outside? Isabela, I need you for this."
Uncle Varric stands up too, and he looks surprised. "You—wait. You want to do this right now, Hawke?"
Mama smiles a thin little smile. "No time like the present, my dear dwarfy friend. I studied the theory all summer, remember, and the practical side's nothing more than a very long cantrip. I just need my daughter away from the house and kept there."
"You sure you don't want to wait for Daisy or Blondie? It hurts me to admit it, but I think they'd be a mite more helpful here than us."
The smile changes into something sad and almost painful. "It's rather simple. This will work and he'll live, or it won't and nothing will change in the slightest. Merrill or Anders being here wouldn't make a difference, honestly, and I can't…I can't wait any longer, Varric."
He nods, but Mama's already turning towards Aunt Isabela. It's like this is familiar to her, ordering people around. It explains why's she's so good at telling me what to do. "Isabela, I need you to be my—" Mama hesitates, looking at me, and then chooses her next words carefully. "—helper, if things go wrong."
Aunt Isabela's hand twitches, like she wants to reach for something, but she only gives my mother a hard smile. "Thanks for giving me the easy job, Hawke." Mama gives her the same smile back, and I feel as though they've said something else instead.
Things start happening very quickly, then.
Uncle Varric bundles me outside to the little sloping hill in our backyard and sits me down on the grass. He throws me a look that says I'm free as long as I'm good, but I can see through the great glass window into my parents' bedroom from this spot on the grass, and I have no intention of making trouble so long as I can watch what's going on. It's a cooling day just at the beginning of autumn, and the trees are turning all the colors of fire. Somewhere behind us the crows are calling back and forth in the aspens, and a chilly breeze picks up to tease my hair out of its braid.
I see movement behind the window-glass and shade my eyes. Mama and Aunt Isabela are standing by my father's bed where he's been sleeping for two years. Mama is unbuttoning his shirt—Isabela says something and they both laugh, a tiny sound I can barely hear from the hill—and then Aunt Isabela lifts his shoulders and Mama pulls the shirt off, and the lyrium tattoos glitter so I can see them even from here. Aunt Isabela steps out of sight for a moment and Mama bends over my father and kisses him, and then she drops her mouth to his ear where his white hair hangs the longest and whispers for a long time. After several minutes, she straightens up and Aunt Isabela comes back into the room. She carries two daggers in her hands and the blades flash in the sunlight through the window. I start chewing on my lip, nervous, but Varric puts a wide warm hand around my shoulders as my mother picks one of the daggers with a smile and Aunt Isabela puts the other away.
My mother rolls up her sleeves and puts her hands flat on my father's bare chest. There's a sudden fluttering motion behind the window as Aunt Isabela steps forward and hugs my mother around the neck and says something to my father, and then she backs out of the room with a salute. Mama looks at the door that closes behind her, and then she looks out the window where I sit with my knees drawn to my chest, and she gives me a smile, and then she turns away.
My father begins to glow where my mother's palms rest on his chest. All the lines of his tattoos light up like they're catching fire, slowly at first, and then spreading faster and faster over his shoulders and arms and up his neck and across his stomach until he looks like he is wrapped in vines made of white light. Mama twitches and turns her head as if it is too bright, but her hands don't move off my father's chest and she doesn't make him stop glowing.
Then her hands start glowing, too. I don't realize it at first, because my father's tattoos are already so bright, but it slowly starts creeping up her fingers and her wrists like she is catching on fire, too. The light crawls up her elbows towards her shoulders and she shakes like it itches, and then in one quick rushing movement it slips up her neck and chin and into her mouth like the way water does when you're under the surface too long. My mama tips her head back to the ceiling, her eyes screwed shut and her mouth open, and then she screams and I scream and my father's body arches off the bed like a line is pulling him away.
The sky splits open with a boom that thunders in my chest, and a pillar of lightning bursts upward from my mother's hands. It explodes through the roof and sends shingles scattering everywhere, and then it snaps all the way up to the clouds with a crickling crackling shriek that makes all the hair on my arms stand on end. Varric shouts something but all the air in the field is pressing down on my ears and I can't hear anything but my heart beating fast like a bird's.
I don't know how long the lightning hangs in the sky. It feels like forever.
Then, all at once, it is over.
The pillar of light breaks free of my mother's hands and hisses up into the clouds with a smell like fresh water. The pressure in the air pops back to normal and beside me, Uncle Varric doubles over with a gasp, and I should check on him and make sure he's okay, only I'm gasping too. The crows in the aspens are cawing out as annoyed as anything and any other day the sound would make me laugh, but right now my ears are ringing and my heart is pounding and the second I can breathe again, I'm running right back down the hill towards the house without even worrying about what Uncle Varric thinks. The glass is all blown out of the big window and for a moment I think I'll just go in that way, but there's jaggedy edges still in the frame and I can't get through without cutting myself, so I run around to the front of the house. The front door's hanging off one hinge and I slide under it and race down the hallway to skid around the corner and Aunt Isabela's standing there, outside my parents' room, with one hand over her eyes and her other hand holding her dagger so tight the tip of it shakes.
I don't know what this means, but my heart drops into my stomach. All the same, I have to find out—I run right past her and into my parents' room where the hole in the roof is letting in a round circle of light to fall on my father's bed. My mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, bent over my father's chest with her arms around his neck, and she is crying. Really crying, too, so hard her shoulders are shaking and the sobs she's letting out sound like they're tearing her up to get free.
I can't move out of the doorway. My feet are stuck to the ground like roots and my voice is stuck in my throat like dry twigs. My mind says over and over again: it didn't work, it didn't work, it didn't work.
Then she lifts her head, the tears dripping over her mouth and her mouth is smiling and her hair falls away and then I can see my father's face—
—and my father's eyes are open.
Green eyes, like my eyes, and open wide to see.
My heart skips, hard, and then it speeds up into a pounding beat that makes me want to run and jump and scream and laugh all at the same time. My father's eyes are open. He is looking at my mother like she is Andraste herself with his green eyes like my eyes and she is crying and smiling and looking back down at him, and then her pale shaking hands cup his tan face and she bends over and kisses him, and for the first time in two years he kisses her back. They both keep their eyes open like they can't stop looking at each other, even though Mama has to keep blinking tears out of the way, and then he lifts his hands with fingers like my fingers and pulls Mama down flat on top of him.
She laughs like she could laugh forever and buries her head in his neck, and my father turns his head into her cheek and says, "Hawke."
His voice is low and raspy and deep and something in me shivers in remembering it. I see my mother's shoulders shiver too and she says, muffled in his neck, "Again, Fenris."
"Hawke," he repeats, louder, and then he smiles like her name itself is enough to make him happy. "Marian."
"Damn right," says my mother, and she kisses him again through her tears.
I feel like I should look away, but my father is awake and I have dreamed of this for too long to not look. Suddenly he breaks away from Mama and tries to sit up, but he is too weak from sleeping for so long and he only manages to push himself to one elbow. "Leda—" he says, and the sound of my name in my father's voice makes my skin prickle all over, like he's dropped smooth stones onto a frozen pond and cracked it.
Mama's head jerks up towards the door and then she sees me standing there, and her face softens even more. My father's eyes follow hers and he sees me too, and without looking away from me, he sits up in his bed with my mama's help and swings his legs over to the side where I am.
I should be happy. I should be across the room and hugging him already, but I am suddenly so horribly afraid. I know my father from everything Mama's told me—or at least, I know the stories of him, the stories Mama told me of him reading picture books to me in the evenings, of the time I sneaked into his room and cut his hair to make a doll with his face, of me riding on his shoulders in the evenings when I was tired. But those were stories, and now my father is awake and I am older than I was and I have only a treasure-box and words to fill in the missing minutes, and I am so afraid that he will not like the me that I am now.
His hair looks very white in the light from the hole in the roof, and the tattoos all over his shoulders and chest look like they're somehow moving all on their own, but his green, green eyes are very still and very calm as he looks only at me. I am still afraid and my heart still beats too fast and I still want to cry and scream and shout, but more than that, suddenly, I want to move forward to where my parents sit on the edge of their bed, so I take one step and then another, and then I am walking all the way up to my father's knees. I stop there because as soon as I get within arm's reach, he puts his hands like my hands on my cheeks and smoothes his thumbs under my eyes like his eyes. His thumbs come away wet. I didn't even realize I was crying.
He smiles at me, then, with a crooked kind of smile meant just for me, just for his daughter, and I remember that smile in the very middle of myself. He leans over, still holding my face, and kisses my forehead very gently. I sniffle once because I can't help it, and then, like his touch has knocked out the last peg holding me all together, I start crying as hard as Mama ever did. I scramble up into his lap and hug his neck as hard as I can and I feel his arms wrap around my back and I remember this, too, and Mama pets my hair and hums her old Fereldan lullaby song, smiling so wide her face might break.
"Hello, daughter," says my father right into my ear, rough as a callus and warm as the summer sun.
I lean back just enough to give him a soggy kiss on his nose, and I smile like Mama.
"Papa," I say. "Welcome home."