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cruelangelstheses · 5 years

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something lonesome

fandom: dragon age rating: G characters: fenris/m!hawke, original child character, anders words: 3k additional tags: canon compliant, kid fic, some implied past violence description: when fenris finds an orphaned elven child in the kirkwall alienage, all he knows is that he has to help her somehow. a/n: hello everyone!! i wrote this fic for the @fenriszine and now that the orders have been shipped out i can finally post it!! :D i’m thinking about writing more fics in this ‘verse as well :0 title is from “from eden” by hozier

read it on ao3

—

The alienage is so busy, Fenris almost doesn’t hear the cries—almost.

It’s not rare to hear an infant wailing, but this is different. It’s plaintive, almost mournful, the howl of someone crushed under the weight of a terrible loss. Intrigued, Fenris stops in his tracks and listens closely, furrowing his brow. Some elves bump into him or brush past him, shaking their heads or muttering something under their breath. After a few seconds of standing in the middle of the street like a fool, he hears it again: tiny, high-pitched sobs.

Fenris had planned on just dropping off the food for Merrill and then leaving the alienage before he could get roped into anything. Too late for that now, it seems.

Turning his head to the side, he quickly pinpoints the probable source of the sound: an alleyway partially hidden by barrels and the shadows of buildings. When he takes a few steps forward, his suspicions are confirmed—the cries get louder the closer he gets.

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the alley. Fenris peers behind one of the barrels, and there he spots the perpetrator, huddled in the dirt and the darkness: an elven child, probably no older than four, curled up in the fetal position.

The child must have heard his footsteps, or otherwise sensed his presence, because she lifts her head up abruptly, revealing a reddened and tear-streaked face. Her skin is only a shade or two lighter than his, and her pointed ears protrude from underneath a mess of long, tangled black hair. Upon seeing Fenris towering over her, the girl gasps, her bright green eyes widening in fear.

Fenris isn’t quite sure what to do, so he holds his hands up in a universal gesture of surrender. “Hold on,” he says, his voice steady. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

The girl sniffles and wipes at her eyes, her lip trembling. She doesn’t seem all that convinced.

Fenris kneels down in front of her. “What happened?” he asks softly, trying his best to adopt a less threatening demeanor, a difficult task when he looks quite...well, threatening.

Unexpectedly, the girl stands up and points toward the alienage, her expression suddenly solemn. Without a word, she steps out into the street, gesturing for him to follow her. Fenris raises a confused eyebrow and rises to his feet.

The girl scurries halfway across the alienage, darting in between groups of elves and ducking underneath their hands. Fenris, being much larger than her, almost crashes into a few of them in his effort to keep track of her. Finally he finds her standing in front of a little home similar to Merrill’s, only Merrill’s front door has never been knocked off its hinges (as far as he knows). It lies broken against the wall, a signifier to all who enter that the rest of the place will probably be in a similar state.

“Is this your house?” Fenris asks the girl. She nods.

When he steps into the main room, he catches the distinct scent of corpses and burnt flesh. He doesn’t even need to see the bodies to get an idea of what may have happened—one glance at the broken furniture, bloodstains, charred wood, and half-frozen weapons is enough.

The first body he finds is that of a templar, badly burned, lying near the entrance to the back room. Fenris already knows what he’ll find on the other side, but he forces himself to take a look.

The smell of death is worse in this room, where pools of blood surround two dead elves on the floor. Though neither wear mage robes, the woman holds a staff in her hand; the man seems to have fought with daggers.

“They came for Mama.”

Fenris jumps at the sound of the voice and spins around to see the young girl standing in front of him, speaking to him for the first time. “They wanted to...to take her away,” she continues. “She didn’t want to. And Papa didn’t want her to. And things got scary. So I ran.”

“I...I see,” Fenris says slowly. Templars sometimes take children of mages away, to be raised by the Chantry—perhaps they never found her after she fled the house. “And you have no other family that could take you in?”

The girl shakes her head.

It doesn’t take long for Fenris to come to a decision. He can’t just leave her here. With an awkward half-smile, an attempt at comfort, he says, “Well, I suppose you will just have to come with me for the moment.”

The girl narrows her eyes in confusion. “Huh?”

“I can help you find somewhere to stay,” he explains. “Will that be alright?”

Some part of his mind wonders if it’s silly to negotiate with a child. He hasn’t had much experience with them; he wouldn’t know. But the way the girl looks at him—with trust and possibly even respect—makes him think that it isn’t, or it shouldn’t be.

“Yes,” the girl says finally. “Thank you, messere.”

For a moment, Fenris wonders if he heard her correctly. Messere—the title one uses when speaking to someone of greater social status in the Free Marches. It’s a title he never expected anyone to be able to use for him, not even a four-year-old. Clearly her parents taught her to be polite. Caught off guard, he says, clearing his throat awkwardly, “I—yes, well—you’re welcome. But, ah, feel free to call me Fenris instead.”

“Okay,” the girl says. “Um...I’m Lyra.”

“Lyra,” Fenris repeats. He likes the way it feels on his tongue. “Well, then, Lyra. Let’s find a place for you, shall we?”

—

“Finding a place” for Lyra turns out to be a much more difficult task than Fenris expected. The Kirkwall Chantry isn’t willing to take in the elven daughter of a mage, so he couldn’t give her to them even if he wanted to. The elves in the alienage are already struggling under the weight of poverty, so none of them can afford another mouth to feed, and none of the other humans want an elven child.

Lyra, for her part, doesn’t seem to want human parents, either. Already naturally shy and skittish, she shrinks in fear whenever Fenris tries to introduce her to a human acquaintance, even Hawke, who has always been popular with children. Hawke offers to take her in—says the estate feels too big and empty without his mother in it—but when Fenris mentions this to Lyra, she simply shakes her head furiously. It doesn’t matter that two dwarves and an elven servant also live there; all that matters is that there is a human.

That just leaves Varric and Merrill, and Varric respectfully declines. “The Hanged Man is no place for a child,” he says, and Fenris is inclined to agree. Merrill offers, but she can barely take care of herself at the moment, so focused on her mirror that she forgets to eat—that’s the whole reason Fenris was even in the alienage that day. It very rapidly becomes clear that Lyra will probably have to stay at his place for a little while, a prospect that alarms him far more than it should for reasons he can’t quite describe.

It’s not that he’s embarrassed about the mansion; it’s as good as anywhere else, and he likes the idea of destroying things that Danarius considers “his,” of letting a symbol of depravity crumble around him. Still, he feels the need to warn Lyra about its deterioration so that she isn’t surprised by the stark contrast between it and the surrounding mansions.

Lyra, however, is in awe of the place, her eyes wide with wonder as she takes in the double staircases, the statues, the high ceiling. As he leads her up the stairs, she asks timidly, “How come you don’t live in the alienage?”

“It’s a long story,” Fenris replies. “Let’s just say I got lucky.”

The irony of that phrase isn’t lost on him. Having been a slave isn’t exactly something to be envious of.

—

Days turn into weeks with Lyra living in Fenris’s mansion. He doesn’t mind, necessarily, and he has enough coin to feed them both, but Aveline is getting antsy. It’s been hard enough for her to hide an elven adult squatting in a deteriorating Hightown manor; adding a child to the mix has only made the neighbors more suspicious. No one has contacted her about actually taking Lyra, though, even temporarily, so there’s nowhere else for the poor kid to go.

Besides, Fenris realizes that he actually rather likes her. She’s quick and clever, but he soon discovers that she can also be playful once she gets comfortable. Sometimes she asks him to tell her a story, only for her to argue with him the whole way through. Occasionally, he’ll find her trying to lift one of his weapons or playing with kitchen knives. She’ll sneak up on him to startle him or climb onto his back while he’s sitting and demand a piggyback ride—but she also listens when he speaks seriously and comes to him when she gets upset.

Fenris can’t watch her all the time, obviously, since Hawke is always bringing him on some sketchy mission or another, but that’s where Bodahn comes in. Lyra takes to him and Sandal immediately, and she seems to see Orana as almost an older sister figure. When he and Hawke return, though, she shrinks behind one of them at the sight of a human, a pitiful transformation from vibrant and animated to the terrified girl she was when Fenris found her.

Eventually she does warm up to Hawke, who still insists on visiting the mansion for reading lessons, but it takes some time. At first, she just sits on the other side of the room, watching them carefully without a word. It isn’t until Hawke’s third visit that she actually speaks to him, asking questions and making comments. Hawke, of course, takes it all in stride, and slowly but surely, Lyra starts to look at him not with fear but with awe.

After close to three years, the sessions aren’t so much “lessons” as “Fenris reading books to Hawke and occasionally stumbling over a word or two.” Fenris constantly reminds him that he doesn’t have to do this anymore, but still Hawke visits once a week, a grin on his face and a book in hand. “He’s just using it as an excuse to visit you,” Isabela said about it once, smirking, but Fenris didn’t quite believe it. He still doesn’t.

It’s during one of these sessions that Fenris notices something different about Lyra. She seems more subdued than usual—at this point, she’s gotten comfortable enough to make comments about the story they’re reading from underneath the desk, where she likes to sit and listen (while playing with Fenris’s toes). Today, though, she doesn’t say much of anything, not even at a major plot twist that nearly makes Fenris toss the novel across the room. He tries to engage her by asking what she thinks, but the most he gets out of her is a noncommittal grunt or a one-word answer.

At first, he figures she’s probably just grumpy. After Hawke leaves, though, Fenris hears her coughing.

“Lyra?” he says, peering underneath the desk. He finds her lying on the ground, cheeks flushed, breathing labored, forehead beading with sweat. At the sound of his voice, she gazes up at him with heavy-lidded eyes.

Fenris tries not to immediately launch into a panic. “Lyra, how long have you been feeling like this?”

“Since...yesterday,” she says weakly. “Got worse...today.”

Fenris groans and runs a hand through his hair, mentally kicking himself. He noticed that she seemed drowsier than usual this morning, but other than that, she showed no outward signs of sickness. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t want...to worry you,” Lyra says, closing her eyes and coughing again.

Fenris’s mind races, and the solution comes to him almost instantly. Breathing deeply and trying to sound calm, he says, “Listen. I’m going to take you to a human in Darktown. He is good at what he does. Nothing bad will happen to you.”

Lyra doesn’t protest. When he picks her up, her head lies limp on his shoulder.

—

The sun is almost below the horizon by the time Fenris reaches the clinic and shoves the door open.

Anders is the only one there, in the process of cleaning a bloody cot when he looks up and registers Fenris’s presence. “What—?” he starts, narrowing his eyes in confusion, before his gaze drops to the now-unconscious child in Fenris’s arms. “Oh, no.”

“Do something,” Fenris says, almost pleading.

Anders doesn’t hesitate. Gesturing to a clean cot nearby, he says, “Lay her down over there.”

Fenris spends most of his time in the clinic pacing back and forth, agitated, his focus always on Anders and Lyra. He should have noticed sooner. He should have paid closer attention to her. He should have made sure she knew to come to him. He should have—

“Fenris.” Anders’s voice breaks through his panicked thoughts. Fenris glances over at him, at the way his hands glow with bright blue light as they hover over Lyra. Without looking up from her, Anders says, “She’ll be alright.”

Automatically, Fenris breathes a sigh of relief and sits down on the next cot over, watching them. “It’s a pretty common illness,” Anders continues. “Children just aren’t as resistant to it because their bodies haven’t built up immunity yet. She’ll have to stay here overnight so I can keep an eye on her, but after that she should be fine.”

Fenris nods slowly. He’ll admit, Lyra already looks a bit better. “I...thank you,” he says, somewhat awkwardly.

“It’s nothing.”

For a moment, neither of them say anything. Then Anders finally looks up at him with the faintest smile and says, not unkindly, “You’ve gotten quite attached to her, haven’t you?”

That catches Fenris off-guard. He opens his mouth to deny it, but he can’t come up with any plausible excuse. It’s only been about a month and a half, but in that time he’s come to enjoy Lyra’s presence in his life. He hates to think of anything bad happening to her, and he’ll be sad to see her go with another family.

“I...suppose,” he mutters, but now that someone has actually said it, it can’t be ignored. He has gotten attached. It’s almost pathetic.

—

About two weeks later, Fenris learns that Varania is in Kirkwall.

When he returns from the Hanged Man that fateful day, Lyra bombards him with questions. “How did it go? What did she look like? Was she nice? What did you talk about? Am I gonna get to meet her?”

Fenris only answers the last one. “No,” he says brusquely as he opens the door to the mansion. “You will not get to meet her.”

Lyra frowns. “Why not?”

Fenris sighs. “Because sometimes there is a difference between being linked by blood and being family.”

He says it offhandedly, a statement filled with bitterness and loneliness, but as the words leave his mouth, he glances down at the child he’s been caring for and realizes that perhaps it’s true in more ways than one.

—

The next day, things start to fall into place.

Danarius is dead. He is free to do whatever he wishes. More importantly, though, Hawke is still there. Hawke wants to be there. As they talk, Fenris wonders if perhaps Isabela was on to something. He’s never felt such longing in his life, never allowed himself to—but Hawke has proven to be an exception more times than Fenris can count.

When they finally, finally kiss, Fenris feels his chest brim with something akin to hope. He can still have a future. He can still have a family.

As if on cue, Lyra waltzes into the room about four seconds later. “Ewww!” she groans, sticking her tongue out and immediately walking away. “I knew it! I knew you were like Mama and Papa! I knew it!”

Hawke and Fenris separate almost instantly. Fenris can feel his cheeks heating up. Hawke mutters, “How much tension must we have had, for even a four-year-old to figure it out?”

“Don’t underestimate her,” Fenris replies. “She is quite clever.”

Hawke nods and scratches his beard in thought. “You know, speaking of the future,” he says slowly, “what are you planning to do about her?”

Fenris pauses before finally speaking the ludicrous idea that’s been bouncing around in his head. “I’ve...been considering...keeping her. Raising her.”

He waits for Hawke to call him crazy, but it never happens. Instead, Hawke grins and says, “Two can play at that game.”

Fenris just smiles and kisses him again.

—

It happens a week later, at the estate.

One minute, Lyra is running around the house with Sandal. The next, she’s sobbing on the floor, despite not being visibly injured. Fenris and Hawke both rush over to her and kneel down to see her better. Sniffling, she says, “I can tell you anything, right?”

“Of course,” Fenris replies immediately.

“Okay,” Lyra says, wiping at her eyes. “I was...just playing with Sandal, but then…”

She holds her palms out. Almost immediately, a tiny flame starts to form at her fingertips. Fenris thinks back to Lyra’s mother, dead on the floor with a staff in hand.

Lyra buries her head into Fenris’s shoulder. “Don’t let them take me,” she pleads.

Hawke and Fenris exchange glances, but if he’s being completely honest with himself, there was never any doubt. Hawke is a strong mage, a skilled mage, raised by an apostate. If anyone can teach Lyra to control her powers, it’s him.

“We won’t,” Fenris says softly, pulling her into an embrace. “They will not take you from us. Nothing bad will happen to you.”

#fenriszine #fenris zine #fenris #fenhawke #hawke #male hawke #dragon age 2 #da2 #dragon age #dragon age ii #papa fenris #my fics #this is my 'fenris inadvertently becomes a dad' fic and i love it to pieces

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