Disclaimer: I own absolutely and completely nothing. Bioware has that particular pleasure.
Summary: A City-Elf/Bann Teagan collection of drabbles and one-shots based on a prompt table from an LJ-community. These will be more or less in chronological order with the faintest traces of added plot here and there. Will vary from drabble length to one-shot.
Author's note: I seriously think this sucks big time x.x but considering my writer's block, I think my brain denied writing anything else for this time period. The next one should be better. Hopefully.
In this chapter: This is no longer his place in the world.
038.
She doesn't get it. No, she doesn't, Connor thinks, knows, staring at her while cups and forks click against the wooden table. He loves her. Loves, loves, loves this much and more but she cannot see what she doesn't wish to see.
Mage. He's a mage and that's all he'll ever be. And he likes it – even if she's scared stiff of it, of him. He likes the power he begins, just begins to feel on his body. The way the storms make him smile without a reason. How the earth seems to hum under his feet and it might make no sense to others. But it does to him. It is magic. And magic is everywhere. He doesn't just like it, he adores it and no demon, no man – including those, including that one who called him a monster, the one who spat on him, the other who watched and said nothing – will make him think otherwise. He's better than that – them. Much better than them.
It is why the boy doesn't reply and leaves, dragging the knight before he intervenes, before his father knows about it. Of course, he would be defended but that's the thing. He would be defended because of who his parents are and not for himself. Defending him in this manner won't change anything. He will still be a foolish boy with too much power on his hands - a caged monster which can turn against them at any given moment. He cannot be a boy anymore. Just like they aren't.
Without searching for Eamon, Connor slips to the rooms upstairs and begins packing. Every wooden sword is thrown out. Every imitation of armor, every piece of the future he won't have. All of those belonged to the boy he was, not the man he wants to become. He will have robes and a staff, he will have pride like the mage who took him from the Fade. Stronger than all of them. He will be like her, able to turn into a bear and a spider and eagle, able to fly, able to put them all in their place. Just. Better. You'll all see.
Connor packs with a grin on his face and a spring on his step.
His parents want him to be sad by leaving. They want him to miss Redcliffe and its cliffs, the waterfall and the Castle. They want him to miss his nightmare and the places where the demon dwelled. They don't get it that he doesn't want this anymore, they don't get that sometimes, you need to leave home to find a better place, a proper one, they don't get that the Arling matters little - matters nothing. In here, he can only grow to be a warrior, an Arl's son. Not a mage. And they don't get he wants to be a mage just like his father had once wanted his home back.
Ser Perth slips unannounced into his room, light eyes as tense as seldom he has seen them, and sits on his bed, avoiding crates and bags. For a while, he says nothing, all thoughts clouded. Maybe Connor should apologize. Perhaps yes. He did try to help the boy. The knight says nothing until.
"You are happy to go," he speaks.
It is not recrimination nor is it a question. It is simply a statement, speaking what Connor does not wish to. It is what they don't see. There is a stare directed at his hands, fists tightly closed on his lap and never at the knight just in case his answer hurts him. The boy's so tired of hurting people. But he nods, nods silently, nods even if his reply is ever so obvious but it needs to be shown for the farewell to be truthful. To this man, he can say these things as this is a confession and he's a warrior from the Chantry. He won't tell but someone will know and that's enough.
The next day, Ser Perth is close when his bags are being taken from his room and near the entrance. He's there saying he will help the boy reach the Tower and protect him on the way. He is there telling his mother not to cry, because her son is strong and will be stronger. That crying will harm him. He is there to protect him in a manner that makes sense and stops harm, not patches it carelessly.
And the mages in the Tower will always always stare at him like he's mad every time he says he admires a knight in Redcliffe, a man of the Chantry.
He won't care. He will be better than all of them.