Author's note: I have no idea why I'm ressurecting this story after one year and a half and I don't even care. I'm just glad the inspiration hit.

In this chapter: Children know far more than everyone thinks.

011.

She dresses casually as always but there is no armor nearby for once. As she promised Teagan, the days spent in Rainesfere are for the elf and woman, not for the Warden. That one sleeps by her bed, in the armor stand which keeps her second skin and the swords which are her fangs. And if in Redcliffe she plays the part of the noble she wasn't born as, – the one she doesn't wish to be – in Rainesfere, there is a home to which she actually belongs to. Her husband makes sure of it.

There is one thing Tasha knows she will never be able to give Teagan. She sees it in his eyes when he wakes, senses it in his hand against her wrist during meals, listens in the undertone of his voice when he leaves her to join the younger soldiers in training. Poor man, he chose a Warden and Wardens live in endings, they are not good at beginnings. What they have is a continuation of the elf she was, the Warden has overtaken everything else. It has killed her children.

He wants them. He wants them so much that it's a constant nagging thought in the back of her mind. It wasn't like in the Alienage in which she saw it as a duty, a necessity of the community. Now that she can't, that she knows herself to barren and a dying desert, Tasha wishes more than anything that she could harbor what her husband wants so much. Not for her – she wouldn't be a good mother, all of her blunt and sharp, lacking the sweetness any child needs – but for him. It would make him happy. After all he has given her, Tasha wishes to gift him whatever she can.

Teagan looks up from the boy he is now teaching and waves at her, never mind his audience which seems to think their Bann endearing instead of foolish. Feeling a little foolish herself – because being suddenly cast into the role of a princess is still odd and unexpected – she raises a hand and waves back. His answering smile is the visual definition of the word 'care'.

"Aunt Tasha."

The elf doesn't react to the strange name, at first. She blinks slowly, confused, connects A with B, her brow furrowed in thin lines as she tries to make sense of a word which never bound to her name. It's a good thing the boy isn't pay her that much attention or her hesitation would have seemed ridiculous.

Connor takes a place by her side, small arms resting on the window shield and eyes on the same performance she has been watching.

"You're very quiet," Tasha knows nothing else to stay.

There had been an argument about Connor's presence in Rainesfere for longer than the marriage and a bigger one about how he didn't wish to stay in Redcliffe. It had colored each wall and filled every hallway with his father's voice and his mother's high pitch until he left with his uncle. Tasha could have explained everything to the couple – the things a stranger can see – but it's not her place. She already did enough for them and they wouldn't listen anyway. She isn't the Warden to them anymore. She is the elf who is suddenly part of their family; the odd piece to the puzzle, alien and unsuitable.

Which is funny, of course. There wouldn't be a family to speak of without her and Teagan's effort.

The reason behind Connor's actions is obvious to her. Redcliffe holds the rest of his innocence in its claws; it makes him remember the nightmares he keeps at night and the gazes he escapes from when in the Tower. He doesn't want either. Around his uncle – and aunt, she supposes with a grimace – he doesn't have to. They fought the same nightmares and know better than to force an issue which for all of them is still an open wound.

"You're staring," she comments blandly, resisting the odd instinct to rest a hand on that dark hair which is so much like hers. It's hard to control though. The boy – he is just a boy, never mind the age she reads peeking behind those blue eyes – doesn't move, he barely breathes as his eyes play over the same scenery she had been watching. Just because she is playing a normal woman for a few days, it doesn't mean Teagan is doing anything but being himself.

Slightly hypocritical.

Still, it is rather relaxing to leave the fighting to another, even if it consists solely of teaching young soldiers to hold their swords upright.

"You can fight better than him, can't you?"

Modesty aside and if she wants to be completely honest… well, yes. Before she realizes, Tasha is smiling, a little impish, the sort of reaction Shianni would get out of her. The boy looks serious, he is being serious, waiting patiently – foot tapping against the floor – for her reply. So she, seriously, spends the next minutes pointing out little flaws that someone such as her – such as them, while he remains lithe and fast and not a mirror image of the males in his family – would be able to exploit.

Not everything in her is about taint related strength or more resistance built into her organism. She was a warrior (sort of one) long before she was a Warden. That she can teach.

Connor's eyes shine when he understands. Little by little, he gets excited, he asks more, grips her arm and suggests, points and gets involved and forgets he's a mage. Connor is a young boy, she observes, watching the dark haired boy speak a mile a minute. He deserves things like this, a break from reality and a dream in which he is a hero.

Without warning, she turns from the window and into her room. Her bed is unmade – no maid has tried entering her room, just in case their new lady takes too nicely to power and forces them to run around. She isn't someone to care about something like this. Kneeling by the bed, she palms the floor in search. Boots, a belt – she may be messy but Teagan is hardly better – and an item carefully hidden cradled in fabric.

It might be hidden but it's never far away from her. The silvery green surface winks at her when it flees its scabbard; it laughs with pure magic as soon as it touches her own skin.

Connor's eyes open wide, a little kid in front of an unexpected treat.

"It won't bite you. Hold it tightly. You're not strong enough for a one-handed grip just yet."

She places Greenfang into his hands, closes his fingers gently around the large handle until it feels comfortable. All the while, the elf reads him. In his eyes, she there is something which reminds her of Alistair. That nameless fear of doing something or learning and becoming more than society taught them and the wish to do it nevertheless. She was like this too.

Especially as he stares at the blade in his hands. She would look at it in the exact same way if it wasn't hers.

"This is useless," he mumbles, trying to push it back to its owner.

"Is it? Why?"

Explain so he, himself, can understand the flaws in his judgment.

"I'm a mage. I won't be able to use it. I'm not supposed to know."

Alistair in every undertone. I wasn't raised as a noble, I won't be a good King, I am not supposed to rule. Maker help her, what Isolde and Eamon have done to their children. Her parents were always poor but never, never was she shackled by their ideals. Marry, of course, be part of the community and yet, aim where you want to walk, my girl, things fall in the exact place when the time comes.

Her hands release the sword and touch his shoulders, her body lowered to look in his eyes. Soon enough, she won't have to.

"One of my friends is the best mage I have ever seen. You have seen her before." Black hair, white skin, soulful eyes, stronger than many Tasha has met. "You should see her with a sword in her hands."

And like his uncle, Connor's stubborn. Her words are barely over and he's already ready to complain. Tasha silences him with a look.

"I'm a city elf."

"I know. I'm not stupid." There's the noble brat she first saw, down to the childish frown and crossed arms. "So what?"

But that boy would have never added those last words, not before Redcliffe's fall and especially not before the Fade.

"I wasn't supposed to learn either," she explains, tweaking his nose with a finger. Her hand is slapped away with a glare in the background. "And never would have if not for one person, someone very important to me. She thought I should learn and know it well. We don't know what tomorrow brings or how we can be tested."

Connor looks up in that serious manner, traces of the child he still is fading into nothing, even of the usual act he plays in front of others. This is the man trapped in the Fade, yelling loudly that he will save his father, never mind what anyone says against it.

"Do you want to learn or not?"

He smiles and she has her answer.

xxxXXXxxx

Teagan stops his task as soon as they enter the training ring. Without words, in that tilt of his eyebrow and shadow of a smile she reads the question. What is she doing when he told her to forget the Warden but for a moment?

"I am not working," she states immediately.

"I am not asking anything."

It is just heavily implied in his every gesture.

She'll explain everything to him later. She's not playing the Warden. She's playing herself, the girl who learned to hold a sword from someone none would expect, a woman who was so many things that, even now that Tasha occupies a place she never thought possible, she still believes Adaia was more. More special, more capable, more breathtaking. And she's emulating that. She plays a mother, her mother.

"I'm playing mother."

Teagan gives her a wry smile as he moves to her side, arm comfortable around her waist. "You're playing favorite older sister. And I, for one, will not to be the one to explain this to Eamon."

Eamon already dislikes her. This is merely one reason to replace his imaginary ones.

With a little smile on her lips, Tasha settles against her husband, letting the boys marvel at the sword her nephew carries. He's not a mage then, he's one of them, one of the future soldiers who will take their place, future warriors and wardens. All in all, their future.

"Teagan?"

He hums an affirmative reply into her hair.

"We're having children."

"Already? I thought we would need a couple more attempts before," he slows down and decides perhaps joking can be done at a later date. His arm holds tighter, more comforting as his hand finds hers. "Yes. Yes, we are. They will have your eyes."

"They? As in more than one?"

"You did say children, my wife, not child."

He has been dreaming of this, he has been hoping and thinking and drawing his hopes in his dreams. Tasha knows the man she has married. And while she has no idea if her body will fight the taint long enough to give these dreams solid form, it is no reason to despair yet.

"Fine. But you won't be able to teach them sword fighting. The best of the two of us should have the honors."

"Excuse me?"

In the field, Connor looks back at them, catching little of their banter or reasons for laughter. He does know that he is partly to blame for the smiles on his uncle and aunt's faces and that is cause for celebration. For pride. He smiles also as he turns to the shining blade on his hands, trying to mimic the grip Tasha taught him.

The metal is warm beneath his touch.