"Never thought I'd see the day I'd find you playing Tamassran," Bull says smoothly. Krem rolls his eyes, biting back whatever return quip is clearly on the tip of his tongue. It was no truly difficult task for him to keep a child entertained for half an hour because Eris asked him to; he likes her. And the job reminds him fondly of the younger siblings he hasn't seen in years. He glances up at Bull, wondering if his boss is at all nervous about this first meeting with Eris' child. If he is, he shows no sign; not that Krem expected any.
"What's a Tamassran?" Rafe asks.
The boy's dark eyes are just like his mother's, and his mind is just as sharp. The Qunari settles onto the bench just beside the small table in the corner of the barn. The air is dim and smoky, familiar and pleasant to him. To Eris too, he knows. He waves in the general direction of the bar where she stands waiting for their drinks, then returns his attention to the little boy on Krem's lap.
"A Tamassran is someone in charge of all the little Qunari kids," he answers, seeing no reason not to respond to the kid's curiosity. "Made sure we all minded our manners and did our chores."
"Like a mother, but not," Krem says.
"Like a Chantry sister."
Bull chuckles, knowing how his Tama would've despised the comparison. But to Rafe, of course it makes perfect sense. "Like a Chantry sister," he agrees.
Rafe nods. Bull wonders idly how much of that religious order's indoctrination has stuck with the boy. It doesn't bother him, of course, but he wonders what the future will bring. It's obvious, even to a man like him with almost no faith to speak of, that the Chantry as it used to be is crumbling irreversibly now. This isn't the Qun, where children are carefully evaluated and instructed for the role that will fulfill them. But that doesn't mean Bull can't make a few well-informed guesses. Maybe he's more of a Tamassran than he likes to think.
Krem smiles, turning away from the game he's been letting Rafe win, drawing the child's attention toward Eris, who approaches the table, mugs of ale in hand.
Rafe glances nervously between the mother he barely knows and the towering Qunari who meets his hesitant gaze with a single eye and a wide grin. "You're big," the child announces. He can't hide the awe in his voice, and the Iron Bull chuckles appreciatively. Krem doesn't bother to suppress his snicker. Bull shoots his lieutenant a warning glance, but both men are still smiling.
Eris shrugs apologetically. She reaches out for her son, but he twists away from her grip, and she lets him. "Bull is my friend," she says simply.
"Mine too," Krem points out, as he slips away from the table. He has no further part in this, and there are other people he has promised to see. "He'll keep you safe."
"I don't have any friends," Rafe insists.
A flicker of worry dances over Eris' features, and Bull notices immediately.
He settles back against the wall, freeing up some space on the large bench for Rafe to sit, if he wants to. He does his best to seem a bit less scary, hoping that he can gain Rafe's trust. He wants this to go well. "It took me a long time to find any friends worth having," he tells the boy.
Rafe notices the way the Qunari reaches out and takes his mother's hand. Rafe crosses his arms over his chest and sucks on his lower lip. He isn't used to talking to grownups. He isn't used to talking to anybody, really. The adults ignore him unless he's done something they don't like, and the older kids are mean. The little kids are only babies; most of them can't even talk. "Can you teach me how to fight?" he finally blurts out.
Bull glances at Eris, and the fact that he thinks it's a bad idea is clear enough to Rafe. Finally, the Qunari sighs. "When your mother agrees," he says pointedly. "Not before."
"That's not fair!" Rafe demands, stamping his foot. He's never had a mother, not for his whole life, and now that he has one it's just another person to tell him what he can't do.
"I can teach you one thing right now," Bull offers. "Fighters? They only fight when they have to."
"But if somebody fights you, you have to know how to fight them, right?" This is obviously very important to him. Eris hovers, watching. Desperately grasping every detail of everything Rafe says and doesn't say.
"You do," Bull concedes. He leans in close to the boy, nodding his head. His heavy horns are nearly parallel to the ground, and it takes care not to accidentally spear Rafe. It's hard to make eye contact with someone as small as a human child. "But not all fighting is with your fists, or with weapons." Rafe takes a step back, and Bull glances up at Eris quickly, taking advantage of the space the boy offers. "Sometimes it's about listening. Watching. Finding weakness in their defenses. Confusing them. Doing something that they don't expect."
Eris shakes her head. "He's not like us, Bull!" she snaps. "I don't want..." She trails off before she finishes the sentence. She doesn't want her child's life to be fucked up by hers. That has always been the point.
But Rafe is listening, and he doesn't know enough to fill in the things she doesn't say. All he hears is that she doesn't want him.
He runs away, with the speed and fury of youth. Eris doesn't go after him. Bull could catch him, but he stays with her instead, wrapping her up in his arms. Neither of them are concerned about Rafe's physical safety; Haven remains true to its name, the people here protect each other.
"You're quiet," he observes, after several long moments when she's said nothing at all, giving her no indication of her thoughts. It's a short sentence that manages to convey all kinds of concern. He wishes he could help her, but with this, he is just as unprepared as she is. Probably even more so.
Eris sighs, wishing more than ever that Bull could give her an order. Always before, he has been the one that makes it easy for her to know what she is supposed to do, when she is spinning out and needs direction. His simple certainty has always made her feel safe. He won't let her fuck up. "What am I supposed to say to him?" she asks softly.
"Tell him the truth," the Qunari suggests. "Where you come from. Why you left."
"How can I?"
"You told me," he reminds her. Slowly, in fits and starts, but Eris usually doesn't lie once she feels comfortable enough to talk.
"You're a mercenary, not a six-year-old child. And besides, you knew before I told you."
He chuckles, that familiar grin spreading across his face. "He can't be that fragile," he muses. "He's yours. Start simple, but tell him the truth."
Eris nods, then glares at Bull, comprehension dawning. "This is just another one of your tricks to get me to talk, isn't it?" she asks, only half-teasing.
Bull squeezes her shoulder, kneading away the tension there. Does she have any idea how much energy she exhausts each day keeping up walls? "Like you said," he murmurs. "I knew before you told me." He leaves it at that, he will never force her to do anything she doesn't want to do. But he can tell by the shift her muscles that she's already given up this fight. "Come on," he says. "Let me buy you something to drink. Tomorrow is another day. You'll try again."
She nods, and lets him lead her. Tomorrow comes sooner than she'd wanted.
Eris barely sleeps that night, and the morning finds her pacing the worn paths of the village. The rising sun tints the clear sky, and she finds herself scanning for a jagged green gash in that horizon, still. It surprises her how quickly she'd adjusted to its presence, how she has to remind herself now each time she does not see it that it was never supposed to be there at all.
Eris has discovered that the people of Haven generally have one of two opposite responses to the recent, apparently successful, closing of the Breach. They either stare at the sky looking for something that is no longer there, or they pointedly avoid looking at the sky, as though fearing that calling attention to the space will reveal a temporary illusion of normalcy that can be wiped away as easily now as it was at the original Conclave.
The bald elven man pacing the small patch of ground just below where the Breach used to be displays neither of these common reactions. He murmurs a few soft words to himself, in the Dalish language Eris has never learned. She stops a few paces away from him, curious but unwilling to intrude. He radiates the confident power that comes from being able to command a great deal of magic. She hasn't seen anyone with such a demeanor anywhere outside of Tevinter, and there she had learned to avoid such men whenever possible.
"Join me," Solas says simply. It is an invitation phrased as a command, yet Eris responds to it. "A remarkable thing," the older elf announces. He speaks to the sky, though he has obviously switched to the common tongue for her benefit.
"The Breach?" Eris asks, uncertain what specifically he's talking about. The man nods.
"Trevelyan's gamble does appear to have succeeded. Yet I am unsettled, still. There may be consequences to this act, for which we are unprepared." He studies her, with piercing gray eyes that do not appear to blink. "Do you not feel the... wound?" He appears genuinely curious, perhaps even worried. He frowns, as he fumbles for a mundane word that can describe everything that is wrong with the Fade, here in this place.
Eris stares at Solas, casting about for some hint of the danger he obviously feels. But after a moment, all she can do is shake her head. "I don't feel anything," she admits.
Solas sighs, a mournful sound. He stares into the distance. "That is what I fear."
A cold shadow seems to pass over Eris as she stands there looking into the empty sky. Closing the Breach is a good thing, and she tells the other man so. He only shakes his head, as though she's missing something obvious and important that's right in front of her. The stirring of activity around the camp as the day begins in earnest seems to frighten Solas back into the private study where he spends most of his time. Eris feels no need to chase after him. She sets aside their encounter as an odd, random interaction, nothing more or less concerning than that.
Bull finds her for just long enough to tell her that he, along with most of the Chargers, will set out for the Storm Coast with Trevelyan in an attempt to secure the Inquisition an alliance with the Qunari. She suddenly appreciates his desperate ferocity in bed the previous night with new clarity. It's not the kind of thing that should upset her, but it grates on her, being left behind.
At Leliana's urging, she takes a private room within the Chantry proper. Arrangements are made for her to share the space with Rafe. A second bed is brought in, and space is cleared for the personal belongings that neither she nor her son possess. Everyone seems to expect that she'll know what to do with him, how to be a mother. But she doesn't.
Rafe spends most of his time running wild through the camp, getting into mischief. Every now and then, though, he clings to her, as though afraid to let her out of his sight. He fires non-stop questions at her, not even stopping to wait for the answers she isn't sure how to give. She tells herself she loves him, but his incessant chatter and whining and neediness dig into her brain like sharp needles. He won't sleep. He refuses to eat when she puts food in front of him, and cries when she tries to take the plate away. He bounces up and down on her bed and picks up everything, carelessly, without asking for permission and without even seeming to care whether the belongings are hers or someone elses, if they are important or not.
A sudden crash of glass shocks them both. Tears well up in Rafe's eyes as one of the sharp shards slices open his finger. Red blood spills into his hand, onto the floor.
Eris looks from his tear-streaked face to the broken vase on the floor. "I thought I told you to leave that stuff alone!" She grabs his arm, pulling his hurt hand toward her face, trying to get a look at the injury. Her fingers dig into the child's soft skin, and he cries without restraint.
"I didn't do anything!" he yells, stamping his feet. His fists clench in futile anger, and his bald-faced lie only infuriates Eris further. She slaps him, hard. The red imprint lingers even on Rafe's sun-darkened skin. The impact of the blow sends him staggering, but Eris' grip on his arm stops him from falling.
"I hate you!" he yells, lashing out to kick her. His foot connects with her leg, hard enough to hurt. Eris lets go of him, and slams her fist into the wall instead. Tears are falling from both of their eyes now as their wild and directionless fury rapidly dissolves into its component pieces: guilt, and fear. Her stomach constricts into a tight ball. She wants to take it back. She wants to apologize, or explain. But how can she? There is too much hurt. It's easier to simply let him hate her.
He lingers though, pulled close to her by some need he can't articulate. He's still crying, though softly, almost silently. He watches her, pleading desperately for some kind of absolution. He doesn't want to go back to the Chantry, just another unwanted knife-ear's brat.
The look on his face makes Eris remember things she wishes she didn't - a long time ago, a world away. "I'm sorry, Mama!" Rafe cries. "I didn't mean to!" The fragments of shattered glass still litter the ground beneath them.
"Pick it up," Eris growls. She's not angry at the broken object, not really. She's angry at him for bringing up the past she can't afford to remember. The earliest memories she has are of painful warnings to shut up and do as she's told.
Rafe does as he's bid, dejected and beaten. "I'm sorry," he whispers again, as he dumps the slivers of glass into a nearby pot. He doesn't look at her, and as soon as the last of the pieces have been picked up, he runs away, slamming the door behind him.
Eris tells herself he's better off without her. But the next morning, she cannot stay away. She goes looking for him, knowing she doesn't deserve her claim on him but unwilling to give him up. It is a fight she has never stopped having with herself.
She's on guard, waiting for the Chantry priests to treat her with the same passive-aggressive hosility she remembers from visiting Rafe in Orlais, years ago, when he was too young to remember her and she could leave again without fighting nearly overwhelming guilt. She'd thought that was the worst he could ever make her feel, but having him close is just as dangerous.
Preparing for a fight gives her some sense of control, though it collapses like sand in the face of Mother Giselle's calm faith. The woman defers to the will of the Maker in a way that Eris can't even comprehend. She looks at Eris with obvious disappointment, yet she does not lauch into a lecture nor attempt to remind Eris of her sins or induce any more guilt than the elven scout already feels. Far from making Eris feel relieved, it only confuses her. She doesn't physically squirm, but inside, she feels like a child again, afraid to overstep unspoken rules without understanding the consequences.
"You are looking for your son, I take it?" Giselle asks softly. Eris doesn't reply – it hardly seems necessary. She simply nods, keeping her head bowed and her eyes down. Somehow she's not shocked to find him here, in the chapel where the only caretakers he's ever known have taught him to find comfort. "Look at me, child. We are all of us equal in the sight of the Maker."
"I'm not your child!" Eris spits, without thinking.
The smile she gets in return is warm and genuine, shockingly so. But it doesn't mean Giselle approves of Eris' words, or her behavior. Still, she gains nothing from keeping a mother from her son. It's not her place. She nods toward the statue of Andraste, where Rafe plays with a few small candle stubs, hidden in the shadows.
Eris steps silently into the chapel, more uncertain now than ever. When Rafe looks up, it's with a sullen glare. The mark left behind by her hit is still visible.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs. It goes against everything she's ever learned – apologizing takes away any power she's managed to gather for herself. But these aren't the streets of Minrathous, or Halamshiral, and the only threat she's really afraid of is one that only she is capable of diffusing. She has to let Rafe see her as vulnerable. Bull is right; she has to tell him the truth.
Rafe says nothing, and his quietness disturbs Eris. Her silence reminds her too much of herself, of the life she never wanted him to have. He glances toward the sunlight streaming in through the colored windows, and moves closer to it almost unconsciously. But he doesn't run from her, even though she'd let him if he wanted to. He may not realize it, but there is something in him that is caught between safety and desire, and Eris suddenly can't let him go. He belongs to her because he comes from her.
She reaches up, playing with the Chantry amulet he'd given her when he was just a toddler, still dangling from it's worn cord around her neck. He smiles when he sees it, and scrambles closer to her. Even when he's cautious and hesitant, he moves with sudden motion; no child can stay guarded for long. It comforts Eris that Rafe doesn't think he has to. "You should have it back," she tells him, slipping the necklace into his hand. "I don't need it anymore."
"Are you gonna send me back?"
"I thought you hated me," she points out softly. He'd said it, hadn't he? He must've meant it, at least a part of him. And it would make things easier for both of them if they could just confirm that this experiment in parenthood isn't working.
But Rafe only shrugs, neither arguing nor confirming his earlier accusation. Instead, he simply sits there in the silence, working through complex concepts, and the reality of the world. "I don't hate you," he finally says, as simple as that.
Eris sighs. "Rafe, when I was your age... breaking something the way you did, even by accident... I got hurt. And I hurt you when you did something wrong because... I don't know. It seemed like something that was supposed to happen."
"Kids get the cane all the time at the Chantry. I don't hate you," he repeats. It's the closest he's come to telling her anything at all about the day-to-day reality of how he grew up, and though it's nothing that surprises her, she still feels an involuntary instinct to protect him, to somehow find a way to undo all the damage that's already been done.
She plays with his hair, its brown color just a shade lighter than hers, falling into his eyes, unkempt and beginning to curl at the ends. She ought to cut it. Instead, for now, she tucks a few of the longer strands behind his ear, and studies his face. "I'm not going to send you back," she promises. "But I can't stay here forever."
"You could if you wanted to," he demands stubbornly. The simple certainty of his statement freezes her. You could if you wanted to. Could she? Does she want to?
Rafe holds her gaze, demanding an explanation. She owes him at least that much. She owes him so much more.
"I could," she finally admits. "But I can do things out there that I can't do here. People are counting on me." She prays desperately, as she says it, that she is right. That she can still serve some sort of purpose, that she will not forever be stuck here, aimless and uncertain.
"You mean like fight?" Rafe asks, leaning his head back to stare up at her. "Like the Chargers?"
"Not exactly like the Chargers. But yes... the Inquistion... it needs fighters. Soldiers who can protect people. I won't abandon them."
"That's what Krem said you'd say. He likes you, Mama."
"He's a good friend. I'm glad he's looking out for you."
"He said I have to show you how to be a good mama, because you didn't have anybody to teach you. And it's not your fault, but that's just what it's like where you're from."
Eris' breath catches in her throat. Where you're from. She sighs. There's no shaking Tevinter, not for either of them. She makes a note to buy Krem a drink. Probably several drinks. She owes him. "Krem's a smart man," she tells Rafe, as she kisses the top of his head. He squirms away from her hold, feeling safe enough now to react in the way that a six-year-old boy ought to. He scrambles up to the base of the statue of Andraste, heedless of danger or any fear of reprimand. And Eris lets out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. His simple joy is radiant, and she lets it wash over her.
"I'm gonna be baptized, Mama!" he announces. He leans his head back to stare up into the smooth marble face of the statue looming high above him. "That's good, right?" His brow furrows as he tracks her movement, seeking her approval.
She nods. It's good. Of course it is. The pride on his face alone is worth it. So why does it feel like just another trick the Chantry will use to keep him away from her?
She schools her features, keeping her conflicted feelings buried deep. "I just want you to be happy," she tells him honestly. And there are other truths as well, hopes for him that come from others. "The Chantry is changing," she says carefully, uncertain of how much he knows, unwilling to frighten him. "Leliana once told me that she hoped you would be among the many who could make it something better than it is now."
It's a heavy weight to lay on a young child, but Rafe seems to glow under that vote of confidence. "I will," he announces, jumping down from the statue. "I'm smart," he tells her. "And Krem says I can be a soldier just like him."
"You can be whatever you want."
The simplicity of the reply, something that had just slipped out without her thinking clearly enough to censor it, shocks her. A twinge of jealousy makes her ashamed of herself. She has given up almost everything to give him that opportunity. And she'd do it again, even knowing how difficult it would be. She fights to strangle down a memory, her mother's fierce whispers and rough, callused hands, holding too tightly in the dark. Had her mother done that too – had she pushed her child away to save her? Tears sting Eris' eyes sharply before she can stop them from forming. What would her mother think of her now? Would she be proud, or disappointed?
"Why're you crying, Mama?" Rafe asks. He tugs urgently at her hand. She doesn't know how to answer him. "Are you sad?"
She finally nods. "I'm just remembering some bad things that happened a long time ago."
"Oh." Her tears seem to subdue him.
Eris shakes her head, and smiles down at him. "Come on," she insists. "Let's go for a walk. We can do whatever you want."