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greypetrel · 1 year

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Hey hey! From the prompts, maybe 'one laughing out loud in the dark after the other randomly blurts out a thought they had before going to sleep', for blorbos of your choice! :3

Hello there, Laya! <3

Thanks for asking as usual!

Since you gave me freedom of choice… We're back to DadWolf AU, still pretty early this time. Malcolm died (RIP), the situation in Kirkwall became to be... Not exceptional for mages (voices started to run about opening the Circle again), so with 4 mage children Varric, Solas and Leandra decided to move to Ferelden. Not everyone took it in stride.

Tis the prompt list.

A way to get back home (🎶)

'one laughing out loud in the dark after the other randomly blurts out a thought they had before going to sleep'

Moving to Redcliffe was proving to be more difficult than they initially thought.

Sure, the logistic had not been easy: not with two kids of five (“And a half!”), and Leandra with her own four children to help, the eldest of only ten. Looking for a house whilst staying in a cramped motel room had been a nightmare, everyone was constantly on everyone’s feet. And then, they finally found something that could suit the needs of both Varric and Solas, two people with wildly different tastes and needs and ideas even if time proved they could share a house, and at the same time be suitable for the most recent additions to their rag-tag household. Except, Aisling stopped talking and went from happy and cheerful to gloomy and detached.

She was always shy outside the household, and even inside it had taken a while for her to warm up fully and be at ease, even if Dorian’s arrival had helped considerably. She kept being shy with strangers, not talking much more than what little politeness they insisted on, but she made progresses, and she was laughing around them and she called Solas “papae”. And despite this, now she was stepping back.

It started with little things that passed as her being shy: needing to be coaxed into doing many things, not trusting the estate agent that had been helping them to the point of not speaking, not even a hello, and hiding behind Solas’ legs, clutching on the cloth of his trousers, whenever the woman tried to talk to her. She never expressed one single opinion on any of the houses they visited, no matter how much they all tried to involve her and Dorian in the choice (as much as possible, since Dorian was pretty sure he wanted a cellar coated in pure lead so he could build a nuclear reactor there). She stood silent, wasn’t interested at best or simply told them, very seriously, that she didn’t care, and they could choose whatever.

If at first Varric -who had his fair share of hurt and mourning to swallow after Malcolm’s death- said it was all Solas being overly worried ever since she started to call him “papae” (partially true), when they first entered in the house they bought, keys in hand to take measurements and have a definitive look about spaces, and Aisling sat by the entrance door, took a book out of her backpack and refused to move from there, it became impossible not to notice.

“I’m fine, thank you, I do not care for the colours of the walls and I hate the rooms up the stairs.”

It was all she had to say, before submerging in the adventures of Fantastic Mr. Fox, which she couldn’t read by herself save some few words here and there, but was putting a lot of effort to, or just looking at the pictures. They went around the house with a luckily more enthusiastic Dorian -he needed some diversion to leave his sister alone and not try to drag her around forcibly- and did what they had to in a tenser atmosphere than they thought it would have been. They roamed the empty house, both two floors, all the rooms up above, let Dorian choose his room. Aisling never moved, and stayed crouched on her book, following letters and drawings with her finger, a concentrated frown on her little face, cheeks puffed up as she formed the words she could understand slowly.

“Don’t you want to choose your room, Pikachu?” Varric tried to coax her, after a couple of hours.

“No, thank you.” She just replied, without even looking at him, and that was all she had to say on the matter. Any further question was just met with her asking what this or that word was read.

As the dwarf made his way up the staircase again, where Solas was lying on the bannister, looking at the child with a worried frown, he finally got to reason.

“There’s something wrong.”

“Oh look, it’s not me being an overworrier?”

“It’s not wise being sarcastic with the person bringing you cocoa in a coffee cup in the morning, Chuckles… You may even find yourself that it’s actually coffee.”

Sarcasm apart, they agreed that something must be done, at least to pinpoint what exactly was the problem. She was fine, health-wise (Solas checked): she ate plenty, didn’t throw one single tantrum, slept regularly. It was just as she was detached from everything else, and closed herself up, for unknown reasons that not even Dorian could shake her out to by constantly prodding at her more and more insistently and more and more vainly and showing he was anxious about it too.

So, one day, when Varric was at the new house with Dorian as the kitchen was being installed, Solas took Aisling and told her they would have gone to explore the neighbourhood, just the two of them. Nothing more, nothing less, just a long walk. She nodded and took his hand, and together they went, on foot, without a precise direction.

The house was in a residential neighbourhood on the outskirts of Redcliffe: as they walked the lane, they saw other houses, similar to theirs, with gardens and trees, and children playing in the warm September sun. Not too far, the town began properly, with a commercial street full of shops and people. Solas brought her to a library, just to check what was in store -it was a very small shop, but it sold more second-hand books than new ones, and it had something interesting- and in a place that made ice-cream, where Aisling could be coaxed in having a grown-up cone - ice cream always, always worked with her. And as the child trodded on, one hand in Solas’, the other clutched on a big cone she couldn’t lick faster than it melted, they found a park, at a reasonable distance. It was quiet, full of big tall trees and decently-kept lanes dotted with wood benches. Larger and wider than anything there was in Kirkwall, people walking there or jogging all seemed to agree not to speak too loudly, bothering the quiet of the late summer afternoon, as the light turned golden and speckled the lawns and lanes.

Aisling finally seemed to relax a little, moving a little away from Solas’ leg and looking around with more curiosity: there were considerably more people with dogs, big animals with short fur, huge round heads and keenly intelligent eyes. Solas had read of mabari hounds, but never really saw one himself: they were bigger than other dogs, the air about them more intelligent, making them look as if they were more than ready to break a neck, or lick your face and fetch a stick at the same time. They stopped, Solas asked if they could pet her dog to the owner of one that had stopped on his track to look at Aisling with ears up and his tongue lolling out of his muzzle in an expression that could as well have been a smile. He crouched down, hugged the child’s shoulders and coaxed her to walk back to his side, and offer her hand, palm up, for the dog to inspect. The animal sniffed it once and licked it, wiggling his tail with enthusiasm, and let the child pet his head (“Delicately, da’len, yes, like this.”), huffing happily.

After the meeting with the dog, Aisling was finally in a better mood. Enough that she smiled and finally accepted to speak, as they sat down on a bench to rest a little after the long walk.

“I hate the new house.” She grumbled, raising her legs on the bench and hugging her thighs, face hidden between her knees.

“I know, you don’t like the dark… But we can put all the fairy lights we got for the motel in your room, what about it?

“I don’t want a room.” She declared, with all the offense a child of six can muster.

“I see.” Solas considered, tentatively placing a hand on the shoulder opposite to his side. She didn’t move away, which was a success by itself.

“I liked our home in Kirkwall. Why couldn’t we stay there?” She whined.

“Because since Raina’s papa died, it’s not safe for mages there. You and Dorian would have been brought back to the orphanage.” He explained, as calmly as he could.

“The orphanage was better than the new house.” She declared.

This stopped the elf: bringing her home had been an impromptu decision, exactly because he saw her in said chantry-orphanage. She looked so out of place, so scared and helpless that he couldn’t bring himself to leave her there, a lonely elf with magic in the middle of other older children who pulled her hair and tried to elicit her to use magic to defend herself, with that awful Chantry Sister already talking of sending her to another facility for mages, labelling the clearly distressed child come from a destroyed Dalish clan as “dangerous”. He knew she had comprehensibly hated the orphanage, she had told him so one of the rare times she talked about it.

“Why so, da’len? I’m sorry we chose something that you don’t like, we had no idea.”

“It’s too big. I don’t want to sleep there. I don’t want a room, I hate it.”

“Why do you hate it? Is it too dark?”

“No.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, da’len.”

She groaned, shaking her head and scuddling closer, hugging his midsection, face disappearing in his sweater. In the brief moment she went from hiding in her knees to hiding in his side, he could see tears and a flush.

“We can paint the walls in whatever colour you like. I could paint you hallas and unicorns, if it made you feel better.”

“No.”

He let her be, caressing her hair and back, trying to soothe her a little as she cries. After a couple of minutes, she slowly crawled from his side to his lap, hugging his neck and crying some more. He let her: as such things went, she just needed to vent it out, and who knew since when. Leaving the Free Marches had not been an easy choice for no one of them, after all: it meant cutting all ties or possibly so with whatever life they had before; Varric was just the one more visibly hit by the blow, and the one to express it more openly. Solas had to come to a peace with the fact that whatever he had planned or hoped… Was now on an indefinite delay. Until the children would have grown, he sometimes told himself, until they would have been big enough to fend for themselves and… And, he had more doubts each day it passed, each day they grew more attached to him, and him to them, and they didn’t feel like fever dreams anymore. Sure, the child in his arm was real and living and with emotions of her own. After ten minutes, ten minutes of Solas thanking people stopping by to ask him if everything is all right with the child, Aisling finally turns, and sniffing loudly whispers in his ear.

“I don’t want to be all alone. It’s scary if I’m all alone. I wanna go back to Kirkwall in my room with Dorian. Or in the motel where we are all together. I was never alone with my mamae, before.”

Oh. So that was the issue. Indeed, they started to chant about how they would have a room of their own, like big children, ever since they told them they would have moved south, and promoted the thing as if it was something to look forward to, something good and exciting to keep them enthused about the moving. Apparently with her it just caused more anxiety than necessary.

“I see. Didn’t you feel alone in the orphanage, tho?”

“No.” She shook her head, bumping against his in the process. “There was a girl who snored like Varric. The room was dark and scary but she snored, and it didn’t feel alone.” She explained.

“I understand.”

“Can we go back?”

“We can’t, Aisling, I’m sorry.”

“Pretty please?”

“I’m afraid it’s really not possible… But we can find another solution.”

Slowly and shily, Aisling let him go, sitting back on his thigh and looking at him with red puffy eyes, hair a mess and snot on her upper lip, still pouting. Solas fished a tissue from one of his pockets and cleaned her up, helping her in the end to blow her nose. He waited for her to finish, before explaining his plan to her and, this time, asking for her input and her agreement.

He got the first real smile after they had closed the house in Kirkwall for the last time, and he decided he would have worn that smile as a trophy, if nothing else worked.

---

The first night in the new house ran smoother than expected. In the rooms on the upper floor there were beds, perfectly comfy beds with clean sheets tucked clean and tight. Big, grown-up kid beds for the two children, so they could still share a room when they liked (“That’s a good idea” Varric had said “We’ll have also less laundry to take care of, it’s a win/win.”).

But in that first night, the upper floor was absolutely silent and uninhabited, none of the occupants was there even if there was all they would need to start inhabiting the place.

Instead, all the new occupants were camping on the floor in what would be the living room, once the furniture would be delivered, with inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags, empty pizza cardboards left on the kitchen counter - they were suggested the place by the neighbours and it was good, even if not good as the pizza in Kirkwall, according to Varric.

The lights were out, save for a couple of strings of fairy lights -one shaped like unicorns, the other like bats. Everyone was asleep.

Or, apparently was asleep, because the human kid was still looking at the roof, intently, a furrow on his little brows still visible even if he tucked the sleeping bag up to his nose. He turned his head towards his left, looking at the blonde hair of his sister, curled up in a ball facing him, eyes closed and thumb firmly stuck in her mouth.

“Aisling.” He called.

No answer.

“Aisling!” He called again, turning on his side and snaking one arm out to shake the shoulder of the girl enough to wake her.

“Mmmmmmh.” She mumbled groggily, rubbing her eyes with both little fists as she woke up. “What is it?”

“Is the first floor cursed?” The boy asked, snaking closer to her, a very serious expression on his face.

“Whaaat?” The girl drawled, green eyes opening wide and voice raising.

“Sssht!” The boy stopped her, closing her mouth with one of his palms. “Why are we sleeping here on the floor? Solas and you were gone and then you all decided to sleep on the floor. Has he told you that there’s a ghost up?”

Aisling blinked in recognition and shook her head in denial. She mumbled something against Dorian’s hand, drooling on his palm enough for him to take it away with a “Bleah!” and rub it on the sleeping bag.

“No, if there’s a ghost papae didn’t tell me. I told him I don’t want a room.” Aisling explained, seriously and keeping whispering not to wake the adults up. “I told him I wanted to get back to Kirkwall and to our room.”

“Why?”

“I hate this house. Don’t you? It’s big and scary and now there’s a ghost on the upper floor.”

Dorian stopped to think about it.

“I like the garden. I had a garden with my mater and pater, but I wasn’t allowed to it. Varric told me we are more than allowed to it, he’s gonna build us a swing of our own.”

Aisling considered it, and nodded, frowning a little thinking that it was very sad that he was kept out of the garden. She scuddled closer to him, patting his cheek with sympathy.

“I like the garden too. The tree is not as tall as the ones in the forest where my mamae and I lived, but it’s nice.”

They agreed, nodding solemnly.

“Dorian?”

“Mh?”

“Can we still be friends even if we’re in all separated rooms?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t we be?”

“Because you’ll be aaaaaaaall the way there… You’ll forget about me come morning.”

“But we’re not that far…”

“We are!” Aisling insists, pouting. “It’s all the way past the bathroom door, you’ll be like at least a mile away!”

Dorian considered the distance. Indeed, they had to walk all the way down the long corridor, which had just one window at the end and it was dark in the evening. It wasn’t even the first door: their rooms were separated by the bathroom, and it was a big bathroom with two sinks. It was, indeed, considerably far: in Kirkwall, all they had to do was cross the room to reach the other and tuck in the same bed when one had a nightmare. Or enter the door in front of theirs to get an adult. A mile seemed, to Dorian as well, a good definition for all that distance, and he nodded solemnly.

“I promise we’ll be friends forever.” He says, proposing her his left pinky finger: pinky finger promises were the most solemn and true, the ones you can’t ever break, Varric told them.

“I promise too.” Aisling says, smiling and crossing her pinky with his. They swayed their hand this way and that, pinkies still crossed together, as a definitive seal of the pact.

Done that, still huddled close together, they sighed. Aisling closed her eyes, content, and Dorian did too, finally happy with knowing what was going on. It wasn’t long before Aisling spoke again, tho.

“Dorian?”

“Yes?”

“Can we invent a signal to communicate between the rooms?”

“Sure. What kind?”

“I don’t know, but it must be something that can reach through a mile…”

“Mmmmmh.”

Five minutes later, the adults were abruptly woken up by two things, forcing them to jump sitting and believing there was someone in the house, someone who somehow found them and possibly with not so good intentions.

The first was a thunder booming in the room, echoing loudly in the big and still void of furniture space.

Varric jumped up, cursing the Maker and Andraste, and Solas did too, avoiding the cursing but instinctively evoking a barrier over them all, blue and shiny.

The second thing was the shrill laughter of both children, cuddled together between them and covering their mouths with their hands, faces scrunched up as they were most evidently having a good time.

“… Da’len, was that you?” Solas asked, between the desperate and the resigned, heart still pounding too fast.

All his answer was the children laughing louder and starting to kick their feet, and Varric flopping back down on his back and laughing too, hysterically. They all laughed, there on the floor, silly as it was to hear thunder inside the house at 2am.

The faint burnt mark that the not-so-secret signal created on the wooden floor was never cleaned out, the plank never substituted. It stayed a secret under the carpet, but it brought a smile on the face of everyone in the household who saw it, in cleaning or when a corner of the rug was kicked backward.

The house was very loved.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dadwolf au #solas #varric tethras #modern au #dragon age fic #da fic #ficlet #writing petrel #aisling lavellan #dorian pavus

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