AN: The following dozen or so ficlets were written very late in an evening following a really excellent party. I have nothing else to say in my defense.
Characters/Pairing: Leda, F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 440
Prompt: from anonymous: "I miss your kidfics! How about Fenris with a teenaged Leda (or any other child OC) ?"
—
"No."
Her father is not pleased. Leda knows he's not pleased; the furrow between his brows is sharper than ever, his arms crossed across his chest. Mama, in the chair behind him, looks no less unhappy.
"It's only for a little while," she tries. "A month. Maybe two."
"Orlais is too far," her father says. "Too dangerous."
"I've been looking after myself long enough."
"You're sixteen," says Mama, standing now, coming to stand by Papa in a surprisingly effective show of unity. "And you know the risks of your name."
Leda draws in a sharp breath through her nose, struggling to keep her calm, irritated by her own frustration. "Your name. It's not my fault I'm stuck with it!"
Her father glances over at her mother, one black eyebrow lifting in something she thinks might be amusement. Even worse—she hates it when they have these silent conversations, when a hundred words pass between them in the space of a mouth twitching, or one quick glance to the side.
Parents.
Her father looks at her, green eyes so like her eyes stern and steady and blastedly uncompromising. "The answer is no."
"I promised Marrin I'd be able to go with her!" She's whining now and she knows it, but she's sixteen, and her father is perfectly content to sit here in the little cottage in Wilhaven with her mother for a thousand years and die and he doesn't understand this wanderlust that wakes her in the night, this need to get anywhere but here. "Please, Papa? Please."
His dark brows come together again, though it's not the flat denial it was before. He steps closer without speaking, his mouth turning down; Leda waits patiently as he brushes his hand down her cheek, smooths a bit of dark hair out of her face where it's fallen in her eyes. He cups her cheek; she leans into it despite herself, quirking an annoyed sort of smile at her father, aware of his too-lined face softening, aware of his fingers so like her fingers at her temple.
He says, absently, "You've grown so tall." Then he looks to Mama where she stands, and they have one of those wordless conversations that lasts a moment and a lifetime at once, and she looks at him and smiles and he sighs, one of those delightful irritated resigned sighs that tells Leda she might have cause to hope.
"Fine," Papa says at last, and adds with more of a smile than she expects, "One of us will go with you."
Her heart leaps. "I'm all right with that," she says a little breathlessly, and Mama laughs.
Characters/Pairing: Varania, Leto
Rating: G
Word Count: 440
Prompt: from servantofclio: "Leto and Varania as squabbling kids"
—
His sister. Stupid stubborn Varania who won't mind her own business and won't keep her mouth shut when she should. He hisses, "This is your fault!"
"Isn't!" Varania snaps back, her eyes bright with angry tears, her mouth drawn down in an unhappy frown. "Mother told you to share it with me!"
"After chores!" he retorts, though not as loudly as he'd like. His mother stands with the overseer at his little desk on the other side of the room; he's not shouting, which is good, but his mother's eyes are down to the ground and the little toy ball that'd started everything is held too tightly in her hands. Stupid Varania, who wouldn't wait—
"Just keep them out of the master's sight," the overseer sighs at last, handing back the ball, and their mother dips a swift bow before hurrying both of them out of the man's little clay house, even though he's nearly nine years old and too old to be holding his mother's hand.
He holds Varania's hand in his other. Even as mad as he might be, he knows that Varania needs to be protected. Even as weak—
"Mother," Varania says, wheedling and pouting as they clear the bare-sand yard before the overseer's house. "Mother, he wouldn't share—"
"Oh, children," their mother sighs, and abruptly turns and drops to her knees before both of them. "How much danger will you seek before you realize? Take this—" and she presses the ball into Varania's hand, and Leto frowns hard because it is his, and yet his mother's voice is so stern— "Do not bring this out again. Not where anyone can see. Only when you are alone and your chores are finished and there is no one to bring you in to work again. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Leto says slowly, because—he thinks he does, though Varania's mouth is still pulled down hard at the corners. "Yes, Mother."
"Good," she says, and strokes his hair in a way that makes him sad. "Go play while you can."
He takes Varania's hand again, pulls her to one of the side yards where the master does not walk and his guards will not see. It's a good, long alley, perfect for throwing balls, and while Varania runs down to the other end Leto glances back, just once, at the place where his mother stands.
She lifts her hand once, smiles, and turns away.
Varania shouts at him to throw the ball, and he does, but—there is a cold chill behind his heart, and no matter how he tries he cannot forget the grief in his mother's eyes.
Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 470
Prompt: from maybethings: "Hawke, Fenris, herbs"
Original Notes: My mother had a lemon verbena plant for years and years and years. I loved that plant; it smelled so good, and when I went to college my mom said she'd give me a houseplant, and I asked for lemon verbena. I killed it immediately, of course, but it's one of my favorite plants because of her.
—
He does not understand this fascination Hawke has with dirt.
Perhaps it is a Fereldan thing, he thinks in his more charitable moments, when she is charmingly tousled and her cheeks bright with sunlight. At other times, when she is streaked with dirt in every crevice and she insists on sliming sweat across his forehead, he is not so inclined to amusement. She is so easily entertained—
"Why?" he asks her, one afternoon when the sun is hot and the shadows hotter and she kneels in the middle of a dirty patch of earth in the shade of the yew tree behind her estate. He knows the heat well enough—even Kirkwall's hottest days win nothing against Tevinter summers—but she is Fereldan and made for colder climes, and he knows she does not take this warmth well.
"Oh," she says, sitting back on her heels, looking pensively at the trowel across one knee. "I don't know. I mean, I know I could buy most of them well enough, or Orana could do this, but…" She looks up at him, purses her lips, looks further to the summer-blue sky. "My parents used to keep an herb garden in Lothering. My father was better at it than my mother, though they both spent hours in there, and sometimes when we'd have soup or stew and they'd bring in these plants from the yard just bursting with sunlight and smell and…I don't know. I think of them. It makes me think of them."
Fenris does not know how to answer that. He has no memories of herb gardens, no fond thoughts of a mother to bring this conversation to perspective. He has only perfectly-cooked meals seen only from a distance, gardens passed only in pursuit of another slave at his master's command—
"Here," Hawke says, and plucks some plant-blade or another from its stalk. "Smell this."
He does. It smells of something—crisp, and sharp, and vaguely citrus, and all at once he remembers in the dimmest shadow of a flash a woman's voice—
"Lemon verbena," Hawke says, smiling a lopsided smile. "My mother used to keep little pots of it around the house. Bethany and I used to sneak leaves of it into our pillows at night."
He remembers—
"I like this," he says, the words drawing out of him slow and reluctant as wire through a forge, stronger all at once from the fire. Hawke watches him without speaking as he breaks the leaf in two, lifting one waxy piece to better smell the sharp scent bursting free. He cannot quite—but somehow, it seems right. He suggests, knowing the smirk it will provoke, "Plant more of this."
He wakes three mornings later to a little pot of verbena on his windowsill instead, but he finds that an acceptable substitute.