iii.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

And so it went. The niggling pain and anger, the last traces of awkwardness eventually left, but the reading lessons continued, until they had become semiweekly appointments between Kaycee and Fenris—evenings after supper, but before evening had turned too late, because things had changed. More often than not they did end up meeting at Kaycee's estate. Neither of them said as much, but Kaycee suspected meeting in Fenris's bedroom was rather too much for him as well. So they met in her library, or, when the seasons rounded, in the courtyard behind the house.

Fenris was a fast learner, Kaycee found. Before a month had gone he was reading all the signs and notices around town, asking to read the papers they found out doing favors for the citizenry after she'd done with them herself. Before two months had gone, he was borrowing books from her library every time he left, returning them finished for the most part when he came back for the next lesson, with only a few difficult passages marked for clarification. At first he took the simple books, collections of children's stories and nursery rhymes, but then he took harder books of mythology and history. Poetry.

Their 'reading lessons' involved less and less reading, and more and more debate about what he was reading. The Chant of Light. Books of law and philosophy Kaycee's father had first introduced to her years ago on quiet mornings in the Lothering Chantry, after bargaining with scholars there willing to glance the other way for an hour or two for a bottle of fine wine or a rare herbal ingredient, or even a long, spirited intellectual discussion.

Kaycee had to read more and more herself to keep up with Fenris. It was wonderful getting back to the books, the questions and answers she had loved to explore so much with her father, and exploring them again with Fenris, getting to know how he thought as he learned it himself.

His outlook on life was far grimmer than her own, darkened by all he had been through, but Kaycee found Fenris surprisingly ready to accept her alternate experiences, how her father had helped and served the people around him all his life and taught her and Bethany to do the same, how their magic should serve that which was best in them, not that which was most base. She explained how he had trained them in self-discipline even more rigid than that which was practiced in the Circles of Magic—because he believed that a monitored child will never learn to monitor herself. Kaycee pointed out how the power of law or religion could corrupt as thoroughly as magic, how it often did. And if Fenris did not always come to agree with her, he always listened respectfully and considered what she said.

Their debates were involved, intense—both thoughtful and thought-provoking. The nights Fenris would come to exchange books and ideas soon became the highlight of Kaycee's week. After four months, they were only briefly working on his spelling and penmanship at the beginning of the evening—he had a natural feel for grammar, and his eloquence in speech carried over to his writing, but his hand still resembled chicken scrawl.

Her mother was always gracious when Fenris was in the house, but she made her disapproval known when he left. "He's a fugitive slave, dear, squatting in that mansion. An elf who makes his living as a sword for hire," she said when he had gone one night. "All this time you're spending with him you could be spending getting to know people . . ." Leandra hesitated. "Well, more on your level. The Starlings have a party next week—"

Kaycee laughed. "It's adorable how you think I'm on the level of the Starlings, Mama. I love you for it, but it's ridiculous."

"You are the granddaughter of Lord and Lady Amell," Leandra began.

Kaycee laughed again. "A house lousy with mages that only scraped by as noble because they were obscenely wealthy, before Gamlen squandered it all." Kaycee leaned in and kissed her mother's cheek. "Even before you eloped with an apostate and produced an apostate heir. It's useless, Mama. We may be obscenely wealthy again, but I will never be respectable, and I won all that obscene wealth back for us doing almost precisely what Fenris is doing now. Except, you know, with a staff and not a sword. He even helped me do it."

Leandra sighed. "You're a grown woman. You know I don't try to tell you who your friends should be, and it's true that if I started objecting, I'd start with the woman who goes around with her chest hanging out of her shirt, can't even be bothered to put on a pair of trousers, lives at the seediest tavern in town, and frequents the brothel more than seasoned soldiers, or so they tell me." Leandra took in a breath. Isabela was a recurring grievance for her.

Kaycee smiled. "But you'd never try to tell me who my friends should be."

Leandra glared at her. "It's true that in comparison," she persisted, "this strange young man may not seem so bad, but you have to know what people are saying, darling."

Kaycee waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry, I'm not sleeping with him anymore."

She immediately regretted being so intentionally provocative when all the blood drained from her mother's face. Her knees went weak, and she sat on the chair at the desk, gripping the edge so tightly her knuckles went white. "Tell me that's one of your jokes, darling," she pleaded, searching Kaycee's face. "Tell me you haven't actually—it's true?"

Kaycee wrapped her arms around herself and turned away. It was one thing to make a joke of it herself. To have her mother state it like that, though—it made it all seem so real. So real and . . . irrevocable. "It was just the once," she said, trying to sound off-handed about it and failing utterly. "I don't understand why it's such a big deal. You never fussed like this in Lothering." She despised how defensive she sounded.

"Things were different in Lothering," Leandra pressed. "Here you had a chance to start over, to be somebody, make the future better for our family, your children. But it's all over town about you and this el—Fenris," she corrected herself at the last minute, her better self conquering her highborn prejudices, if only for a moment. "And if it's true—it matters, Kaycee," Leandra said. She stood now, reached for Kaycee's shoulder. "You may not like it. It may not be fair or right, but that's the world we live in."

Kaycee shook off her mother, angry now. "A world where one man is less than another because his ears are pointy and he hails from the one place Andraste never liberated?" she demanded. "I want no part in that world, Mother! Fenris is smarter than half the nobles in Kirkwall combined! He speaks three different languages. Fluently! He can fell a dozen men singlehanded, but the very people who would be tripping over themselves to honor him for it, for everything he is if he were human, won't pass him in the street as an elf. I don't care what you think! That's wrong!"

Leandra gazed at her, and then, incredibly, she smiled—helplessly and a bit sadly. She took Kaycee's face in her hands and brushed her cheeks with thumbs that were calloused from all the cooking and cleaning she still helped Orana with herself. "Oh, my brave, beautiful girl," she said. "You were never one to make things easy on yourself. You're so much like your father that way. But falling in love with a fugitive foreigner? I'm afraid that comes from me."

Kaycee made a face. "Who said anything about love? I said I slept with him. Once. He's my friend, and I don't like the way people talk or think about him, and I won't give up our reading lessons just to satisfy the prudery of a bunch of noble busybodies who would never really accept me anyway. That doesn't mean I love him."

Leandra kissed her forehead, hugged her briefly, and let her go. "Don't you?" she asked. "I've watched you together, you know. I've seen the way you light up in those 'reading lessons' of yours where the two of you talk for hours and maybe look at a book twice in all that time. And just now. My cool and witty daughter doesn't flare up like that for just anyone. But I've seen the way he looks at you, too. Like you hung the moon and stars. That scarf he wears around his wrist. It belonged to you, didn't it?"

This time, Kaycee's laugh came out sounding forced. "You're such a romantic, Mama. Trust me: it's all over between Fenris and me. We're friends, nothing more."


A/N: Okay, so DA2 has three characters that are so intelligent it's amazing they find each other in one section of Kirkwall. Varric Tethras-who really probably is a genius; Snarky!Hawke-you could make an argument for Heroic!Hawke or Mean!Hawke as well, but it's clearest for Snarky!Hawke, who is definitely amusing themselves most of the game because they are otherwise bored out of their mind; and Fenris. The other characters have their strengths and talents, but as Kaycee notes here, Fenris really is quite remarkable. All you have to do is listen to the way he thinks and take a look at what he's managed to do. And because Malcolm Hawke was almost certainly a genius as well, I imagine Hawke and siblings were very thoroughly home-schooled.

So this is the part of the story where my thoroughly home-schooled Kaycee helps Fenris become a self-educated polymath (he already was a polyglot). One of those things that I don't think necessarily has to happen in-game but very certainly could.

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LMS