Characters/Pairing: Varania, Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 1555
Prompt: from anonymous: "Hey, I was wondering if you have any headcanons about Leda and Carver? Or what kind of uncle do you think Carver would be? Also, for some reason the thought of Carver and Varania in the same room amuses me greatly. Family get togethers would be interesting lol. I also just wanted to drop by and say that I love your works! Have an awesome week!"

Notes: This just in: I still love Varania. Like, a lot.

—

Varania answers the door.

Carver pauses, his hand still raised from the knock. Then he takes two steps back down the cottage's worn, tiny porch into the crisp winter air, shades his eyes, and double-checks the lane for any other isolated homes at the edge of the woods he might have missed.

Nothing. And now Varania's mouth has thinned, one pointed eyebrow raised as he looks back to her again. The wind catches hollowly in his cloak, and Carver says, "Ah."

There's a loud slam from somewhere deep in the house, a distant, muffled curse, and then the tramping of tiny feet growing quickly louder, accompanied by one of the most ominous giggles he's ever heard. A chaotic flash of green shirt and a short black braid skids around the corner; a moment later Leda careens into her aunt's knees, laughing wildly, and buries her face in Varania's skirts.

The severity gives way all at once in Varania's face. She doesn't smile, not quite, but there's a softening there Carver can't quite believe as one hand drops gently to Leda's head. "I suppose you might as well—" she says at last, but before she can finish a taller figure comes to the end of the hallway as well, still sputtering something between half-oaths and barely stifled laughter.

His sister. More precisely, his sister with an infant in one arm and what appears to be two solid pounds of dirt cascading down the rest of her, caught in dry clods in her hair and on her shoulders, a dark spill trailing behind her into the hall. "Carver!" she says without preamble, her eyes alight. "Thank the Maker, another set of arms."

"What—" he manages, right before she thrusts the infant into his hands and stalks out past them all into the cold air of the yard, bending at the waist and shaking her fingers vigorously through her hair. Earth sprays free in enthusiastic showers over the thin snow; when she's at last shed the worst of it, his sister straightens, ties her hair into a tight knot at the back of her head, and stares directly at her daughter.

"Well."

Leda sidles further behind Varania, one green eye peeking out from behind her skirts. "Mama."

"What did I say about that shelf?"

"Don't reach for it while you're planting," Leda repeats dutifully, though she takes another half-step behind her aunt.

"What else?"

"Don't pull on the nail."

"And what did you do?"

Now she glances at Carver, no trace of even the faintest remorse in her expression. "Pulled out the nail. Hi, Uncle Carver!"

"Little troublemaker," he says instead, grinning, and adjusts the baby's weight better against his chest. Only four months old, still new, and blinking sleepily into the pale, clear sunlight in vague protest. "Look what you did to your mother. Even by my standards, it's impressive."

"Don't you encourage her," his sister warns, though even he can see the humor twinkling behind the sternness as she stalks towards her wayward daughter. "Inside. Now. Straight to your room, and don't you dare give me that look, you little pest—"

They're gone around the corner again in short order, Leda's protests whining faintly through the house, Hawke's lower answers even-toned, without yield. Carver grins again, his eyes flicking up to meet Varania's own stifled smile; then the strangeness of the moment settles around them again, and after a stilted silence, she shrugs both shoulders and turns again into the warmth of the house.

"Lunch is nearly ready," she says, leading him to the sitting room and pausing there before the merry fireplace, ungainly in her uncertainty, still as pale as he remembers from so many years ago. "My brother is—should be—he should return from town soon."

"Of course," Carver says, just as graceless, and sits awkwardly with his nephew on the edge of the couch. At least he hadn't traveled in armor; as it is, the Warden-issue cloak stifles once out of the winter winds, and it takes some doing to free himself of it without jostling the infant beginning to doze against his chest. "You, uh—have you been here long?"

"Since last week." A pause as she adjusts some small, carved statue on the mantel. "I was invited. For the season."

"Of course," he says again. "My sister asked me to come, too. Just for a week or so. Warden business, you know. Can't…can't leave it for too long."

"Of course," Varania echoes, and for a moment Carver seriously considers wheeling his horse right back towards Amaranthine if it will free him from this conversation. Then Varania shifts, an odd ripple to her shoulders as if shaking off a weight, and she nods to the baby in Carver's arms. "Have you met him before?"

"No," he says, grateful for the offering, and looks down at the tiny fists clenched at his own throat, the straight nose, the dark hair. "He looks more like Fenris than Leda does."

"I thought so, also."

The baby shifts, blinks, and gives an enormous yawn. "You've got that right, boyo," he tells him softly. "Turn out half like your sister and this house'll be burnt to cinders by your fifth birthday."

Varania makes an odd, curious sound, and he looks up in time to see her brow furrow, then clear. "Oh," she adds, obviously embarrassed by his scrutiny, and waves a hand in dismissal. "I remembered. Once, with Leto…"

Carver lifts an eyebrow despite himself, and when the baby yawns again, he settles back into the couch and crosses one booted foot over his knee. "Share away. If you like, I mean. Not that I'm looking for blackmail material, but if blackmail material happens to find me…"

"You sound like your sister," Varania says, tucking a bit of escaped red hair back into her bun, but there's no rancor in it. "Once, when we were young, we were sent to wash linens in a stream that ran alongside our master's estate. Slaves' things, of no import," she adds, misinterpreting his grimace, and continues. "Neither of us wished to work. I found some–rocks, or some such thing, and played with those, but Leto had recently watched the master's hunters in the yard and decided he would make a fire from sticks as they had."

Now she smiles, caught in the memory, and Carver's own amusement dims at the difference of it. Too hard to see the weight she carries until it is wholly forgotten, if only for a moment. He shakes his head, shakes off the despondency. "Don't tell me he succeeded."

"He has always learned quickly. He learned this too, to his own surprise, and in short order had set fire to the stick, the dry leaves surrounding the stick, and his own shirt."

His mind rejects the image of Fenris as a child; instead it provides a brief but vivid glimpse of Fenris as he is, only half as tall, beating wildly at his own chest. He can't suppress the guffaw. "No."

"Oh, yes. I pushed him into the stream. To save him, of course."

"Of course," Fenris says dryly from the doorway, pulling the scarf from his neck.

Varania lifts her chin, humor still playing at her mouth. "You question my memory?"

"Only your motivation," he retorts, and barely drops the market bag out of the way before Leda flings herself bodily into his arms. "What have you done? Why are you covered in dirt?"

"I pulled out the nail, Papa," Leda states, and points with the hand not wrapped around her father's neck to the kitchen. "Mama says lunch is ready!"

He laughs—still such an odd sound after all these years—and when Varania goes to the kitchen to help lay the table Fenris comes to where Carver still sits on the couch, his daughter's arms tangled in the collar of his half-clasped cloak, his infant son still asleep against Carver's chest. "Carver. It's good to see you."

"Fenris," he says, standing, and manages to free a hand to clasp the one Fenris offers. "Didn't know your sister was coming."

Sudden, faint wariness, not enough to cast a shadow. "Hawke suggested a family gathering for the holiday. She was…insistent."

"Don't worry about it," he says abruptly. "Glad she could make it. For Leda's sake, if nothing else."

"For my sake," Leda agrees staunchly, a streak of dirt across one cheek, and Fenris laughs again.

It's a good sound, he decides, following them into the kitchen where Varania sets the glasses at the table, where his sister stands over a cheerful, bubbling stew—his sister, who has gathered together this impossible patchwork family for the holidays despite all the odds against them. Despite the history, too.

His nephew stirs, grabs vaguely for his chin, and gives his uncle a toothless, delighted smile.

Carver grins. He's glad she did.