It was almost time to leave, and Fenris was scrubbing at a jam stain on the knee of Marcus' breeches. Raspberry. A stubborn splotch of purplish red against blue everknit wool. Fenris had swiftly decided that this would be the last time his son was allowed to wear his best clothes to breakfast. He would make himself immune to wheedling. He would not allow himself to be melted by enormous, hopeful eyes.

"Leave it, Fen. You're just going to grind the stain in further." Hawke was standing behind him, adjusting her braids for the tenth time. She'd said her mother used to style and pin them up in this way, but she couldn't remember whether this one went over, that one went under, or how in the Maker's name she'd gotten them all to stay in place.

Fenris shook his head and stood up again, then dropped the soapy kitchen towel he'd been using onto the back of the desk chair. "He'll be wearing a long cloak. That will have to suffice."

Meanwhile, Marcus had climbed down from the chair and onto the rug, where, for reasons beyond Fenris' comprehension, he began hopping about on all fours. He ribbitted as his father gathered him into his lap to tie on his snow boots.

"Are you Marcus, or a frog?" asked Fenris, already tired of this game.

"Frog." He stuck out his tongue.

"Then I suppose you'll be staying in the garden and going for a swim in the fountain."

"No! I'm Marcus!" Then, as if he were giving some actual consideration to his father's offhand comment, he added: "I'm not a frog until later."

A sigh of despair came from behind them, followed by a series of tiny plinks. Fenris turned and saw Hawke dropping pins into a ceramic case on the desk as her braids fell from her head one by one. She combed her hair out with her fingers and began to redo it at a furious pace. By the time Fenris had finished lacing up Marcus' boots, set him on his feet, and told him to go finish getting ready, Hawke's hair hung in a single loose braid. Her face was still creased with irritation as she eased on her heavy, hooded cloak.

Marcus pulled his own hood down so that it covered his eyes and began to swivel to and fro. His cloak did, thankfully, hide the jam stain.

"Mum-my. Are we going yet?" he whined.

"Patience, little bee." Hawke pinned her cloak with a circle of twisted silverite inlaid with amber-gold glass. She exchanged a look with Fenris, who had been fastening his own boots. He slipped a small drawstring bag from the desk into his pocket, then stepped forward and adjusted Hawke's ornament before touching his forehead to hers. With his eyes closed, there was nothing else in his world but the slow rhythm of their breath and the scent of her perfume.

The moment was broken by Marcus tugging insistently at Hawke's cloak.

"You have to be on your best behavior," said Fenris, as they descended the stairs, with Hawke holding Marcus' hand. "Your grandmother has traveled a long way and is meeting a lot of new people. She will be very tired. You must not overwhelm her."

"Uh-huh."

"Do you hear me, Marcus?"

"Yes, Daddy," he replied, in a tone that suggested the opposite. He pulled away and jumped down the last few steps, then skipped across the courtyard so he would be the first one to the portcullis.

Keeping his eyes trained on his son up ahead, Fenris fiddled with his burgundy knit hat. A Wintersend gift from Varric that, according to more than a few people here, very much suited him. He wanted to look his best today. Perhaps it would quell his nerves.


On the rocky banks of the river, outside one of the round, thatched houses that had begun to replace the scattering of army tents over the past year, a young dwarven man sat with a grey-muzzled mabari. The man appeared to be feeding his dog leftovers from a tin plate. A muffled squawking came from the chicken coop out back.

"Edgar!" Fenris called out.

He looked up and waved. Fenris picked up Marcus as he and Hawke crossed the bridge that spanned a narrow stretch of the river. The water that flowed beneath it was a translucent blue and bore chunks of ice even in the marginal warmth of summer.

"It's a fine morning, isn't it?" Edgar smiled and pointed his thumb toward the edge of camp. "She's that way. Go on, we can visit later. Go on!"

The camp smelled of cooking fires and heavy, savory fare. As they headed in the direction Edgar had indicated, weaving their way between sheepskin tents and wooden cabins painted with swirling designs of horses, bears, and great spike-backed fish, Fenris realized that Marcus had gone silent after chattering almost the entire way down the mountain. He adjusted his son so that he sat higher in his arms and kissed his red, wind-chapped cheek.

"Look, there's Dervla's house," said Fenris. "Would you like to come back tomorrow and play with her?"

Marcus nodded, more solemn than he should have been at the mention of his friend.

Someone gripped Fenris' other arm as they passed a house painted with a teal and white ram. It was Hawke, and she was staring at the fire pit near the door. Or, more accurately, at the people gathered around it. Fenris followed her line of sight as a sudden tightness took hold of his chest. He set Marcus down and led him forward.

Three elven women sat on benches around the fire, eating bowls of pottage with vegetables and meat. Two of them were conversing with each other in accents that suggested they were from Halamshiral. From their ages, Fenris guessed that they were craftspeople or merchants, or relatives of new volunteers. The third sat on the next bench over, by herself, staring at an unknown point beyond the house as she ate. Maybe sixty years old, and wrapped in a dark cloak and a bulky, moss-colored scarf. Her straight hair was drawn back in a braided knot, black and streaked with gray. Skin a shade darker than Fenris', with the same underlying hue. The same nose, mouth, and chin; a similar tilt and shape of her ears. Eyes that were large and green, like his own, and Marcus'. Hawke would remark to him later that the resemblance made her heart stop.

"Mother."

The word came out far quieter than he'd intended.

The woman in the dark cloak turned her head in their direction. Her eyes traveled from Fenris, to Marcus, to Hawke.

For a long moment, she was completely still.

Then, after setting her bowl and spoon down on the bench, she stood and approached. She stopped three paces from them and spoke in a voice that Fenris strained to recognize. There was a warmth to it that rendered her words less sharp and more affectionate.

"You must be my son. You've always had such a slouch. Look at those stooped shoulders."

Upon saying this, she took another step forward and reached up as if meaning to adjust his posture, but then halted. There may have been a tremble on one side of her face; Fenris may have imagined it.

Hawke glanced between her and Fenris with an awkward grin. "I've been telling him the same thing for years."

He straightened up slightly, squaring his shoulders. This was not lost on either of the women. They exchanged looks of amusement and wary interest.

As the two other women at the fire pit excused themselves, hiding their smiles, Lusia took another step closer. Marcus stared at her while holding tight to his father's hand.

"Hello. Are you Marcus?" She did not crouch down to his level. Fenris had noticed a stiffness to her gait.

"Say hello to your grandmother." From the corner of his eye, Fenris saw his mother shift, a flicker of response to the last word.

Inexplicably, Marcus squirmed away and hid behind his leg, peeking out at her. He said nothing.

Something in Lusia's expression faltered. A slipping of her brows, a fold appearing between them.

"I'm sorry," said Fenris, as his heart dropped into his stomach. He reached back to gently take hold of Marcus and tousle his curls. "He was excited earlier this morning. He almost ran down the mountain to meet you."

That seemed to reassure her somewhat. "Not to worry," she replied.

"Uh…" Fenris searched for his shirt pocket, inside the folds of his cloak. He held out the drawstring bag to her in the palm of his hand. "This is for you. From us."

"Oh. Thank you." She took the bag and examined the dotted grey samite and yellow ribbon before she tugged it open and tipped the contents into her other hand.

It was—they were—three combs, meant to be worn as ornaments. Each was carved from the same sliver of dragonbone but inlaid with a different material along the oblong edge. Glittering drops of dawnstone; rich, murky shards of phoenix scale; flowing malachite, glossy and shot through with dark stripes.

The way his mother inspected them made Fenris recall a recent day when Marcus had brought him a flower made of split peas, glued to a square plank of wood with porridge that must have been scraped from the breakfast cauldron. He knew the comparison was absurd. A grown man's craftwork and a child's playtime. But he wondered if he had been appreciative enough. If he had ever been, throughout the flood of drawings and babbled stories that Marcus had been presenting his parents with since he'd been given his first stick of chalk as a baby. It was not in Fenris' nature to be as effusive as Hawke. He knew that was not a fault, per se, but he resolved to try harder. In case Marcus needed him to.

"Where did you find these?" his mother asked.

Fenris suppressed the urge to fiddle with his hat again. "There are slow days at the forge."

At this, her mouth formed a silent oh and the line between her brows reappeared. She slid the combs back into the bag, which she then stored somewhere inside her cloak. Her voice was much softer when she met her son's eyes and said, "I've never seen anything like them."

Hawke grasped Fenris' gloved hand in hers and gave it a light squeeze.

"Well. You've been standing there long enough," said Lusia. She motioned for them to sit down with her. "Would you like something to eat? It must have been a long walk from Skyhold."

Fenris considered the irony of that statement coming from the woman who had just traveled across the length of Thedas. That is, until he saw her reach for Hawke's elbow as she lowered herself onto the bench next to hers. Hawke placed her hands on her belly and hip and closed her eyes in the way that she did when she was granted a short, blissful reprieve from the strain of carrying eight months' weight.

Fenris rubbed her back in small circles while they spoke with Lusia. For his part, Marcus was distracted by a mug of hot cider, fragrant with spices. He accepted it from his grandmother with a wide-eyed expression that, Fenris thought, was less timid than even a few minutes ago.

"You're the one who helped my son kill Danarius."

"Oh—ah, yes, that was me."

"How much longer?"

"Just a few weeks now. Marcus was early, though, so we'll see."

A pause.

"May I ask what to call you?"

"Mother, I should think."

"Right, ah, if you want, I mean…"

A wry smile.

"Just Lusia will be fine."

Fenris was content to listen and not participate as they discussed her journey. In truth, he found his eyes sliding away every time he tried to focus on his mother, to examine her features. She asked him no questions. Not directly.

Once she had finished eating while Hawke described their arrangement at Skyhold, Lusia stood and made her way over to the house, briefly disappearing into the dark interior. She returned to the fire pit with a canvas pack slung over her shoulder.

"I'm ready to leave when you are."

Fenris washed her bowl and spoon and Marcus' empty mug in a pail near the far bench. He had assumed his mother was continuing her curious rapprochement with Marcus, considering the lack of conversation with Hawke, but when he stood up again, he saw that Hawke was fixing a toggle on Marcus' cloak, and his mother was standing off to his side.

There was no chance for him to move away. Lusia stepped closer and took hold of him, concentrating on his face as if she were searching for something, someone. Her fingers touched the edge of his white hair, which was nearly hidden by his hat. Then she tightened her lips into a taut line and pulled him into an embrace. He returned it after an instant's hesitation. She was more delicate than she looked, beneath the outerwear that protected her from the cold southern wind. He thought of the joint pain she had mentioned in their correspondence, the stiffness he had just seen, and what Hawke and the other medics had said about brittle bones, hot water bottles, poultices applied with a cooling touch.

His mother stood back and patted his arm, and gazed out somewhere into the forest of buildings and tents, or perhaps farther. Then she picked up her pack from the frozen ground and started walking.


Note: To anyone who's rereading (in which case, yay!): I edited "avia" to "grandmother" because it seemed more respectful for Fenris to wait for Lusia to choose what she wanted to be called, rather than assume she'd use the Tevene word he remembered.