Chapter Text
Evie Lavellan is eleven years old, and her baby sister is asleep in her arms.
She’s all bundled up, swaddled in two blankets to shield her from the cool night breeze rolling off the sea. Evie closes the door to their little home behind her and pauses a moment, looking down towards the little Rivaini fishing village—down a winding path, seaside grasses swaying in the wind. She can see torches being lit as the sun slips behind the cliffs at her back.
Mamae and Papae had discussed where to have the baby for months—nearly as soon as they told her they were having one—and it seems like Mamae won in the end, since they settled in some place by the sea. Remote enough for Solas to feel comfortable, still—Evie doesn’t think anyone in the fishing village suspects for a minute who either of her parents are, or wonders why they’re so content to live up a hill from the village instead of inside it.
There’s a little path that doesn’t lead to the village, but away—and it’s new enough that the grass is only flattened, not worn to earth by the treading of many feet. Evie turns away from the little village and takes that path now, calling a little wisp of veilfire to hover in the air before her, so she can carry her sister with both hands.
Support the head, she repeats to herself, even though she’s heard it a hundred times.
She watches where she steps very carefully—sometimes the wind blows unexpected things on the path, and she doesn’t want to step on one accidentally. She doesn’t want to jostle the baby.
The path leads to a cave, well hidden by an outcropping in the sheer cliffs that rise above their little home. Hidden better still by spells and wards, but they pass over Evie and her little sister with little more than the air trembling on their skin, ever so slightly.
The moment she passes through them, she can hear Papae talking.
“—to be certain, we must establish a baseline.”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” Dorian replies, his voice muffled slightly.
“It will be tucked in the far corner, under the statue of Ghilan’nain. The one—”
“The one with the horns, yes, Solas.”
“And when you find it, you’re not to activate it, only to secure it—”
Dorian sighs, exasperated. “Solas,” he says, dryly, “do I need to promise for the five hundredth time that I will not attempt to take the Veil down without you present?”
Evie rounds the corner in the cave’s entranceway, and by the light of Solas’s veilfire she can see the cave open up, wide and high. They’ve cleaned it out a little in the month since they arrived, getting rid of all the bat droppings and some bones that Mamae is still teaching her to identify. There are still bats in the cave, but Solas cast a spell that keeps their droppings away—or burns them, Evie can’t remember.
There are boxes of supplies stored in the cave—not many things, really, but mostly things Solas needs for his work. Old things Evie’s not allowed to touch, usually, though some are just boxes of blankets, and bags of things to take with them if they need to run without notice.
On one wall, Solas and Evie are working on a fresco together—and their supplies are stowed there too, plaster and pigments ready for mixing. The fresco itself is only a red outline on the rough underlayer, now—several adult figures, one child, and one infant.
Evie hadn’t wanted to start it until the baby was born, so it would look like her. Turns out babies are a lot of work, so they haven’t even started yet.
On the farthest wall, there’s an eluvian—the biggest thing in the cave—and that’s where Papae is standing, with Dorian and Bull.
Solas has his arms crossed over his chest, and Dorian is throwing a bag over his shoulder. “Perhaps,” he says, but he’s smiling a little. “Please be careful,” he adds, when Dorian gives him a look. “I don’t believe my wife should be running off to rescue you so shortly after giving birth.”
“That wouldn’t stop her,” Dorian retorts.
“We’ll be careful,” Bull promises, with a chiding look at Dorian. He looks back at Solas. “You get some rest. Have you slept at all?”
“Of course not,” Dorian says before Solas can reply, “he’s trying to make up for missing out on Evie being so small. How is that going for you, pray tell?”
“He burned himself making breakfast,” Evie interrupts, picking her way carefully through the stowed boxes.
Everyone turns to look at her at the same time. Solas nearly jumps in place when he sees the baby, and immediately rushes forward to take her from Evie. Already forgetting, it seems, about her tattling on him—but then, giving him the baby seems to have that effect, she’s noticed.
“It’s too cold to have her outside,” he chides, but only half-heartedly. He is smiling as he looks down at his second child, holding her close. His eyes all soft and full of wonder—as if he doesn’t get to hold her enough. Even though this is the first time in the few short days she’s even been alive that he’s apart from her.
“She wanted to say goodbye,” Evie says, shaking out her arms—babies are surprisingly heavy. “Cole told me so.”
Even Dorian is not immune to the magic of bringing an infant into the room—he has a rather dopey smile on his face as he says, “Going to miss her favourite uncle? She has excellent taste.”
“I’d be my favourite, too,” Bull agrees, giving Evie a knowing look.
Evie can’t help a giggle.
Dorian rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible,” he protests, fondly. “And you,” he adds, pausing to bend down and press a kiss to Evie’s forehead, “you need to make sure your idiot father gets some sleep. You might have guessed it by now, but he gets rather irritable when he’s not loping around on all fours in the Fade every night.”
“I do no such thing,” Solas protests.
The baby jerks in her sleep, suddenly, and whatever else Solas is about to say is gone as he peers down at her in his arms, then shifts her in his grip so he can check her temperature with the back of his hand.
Cole told her that the baby is just surprised, when she does that. That she’s just used to her whole world being Mamae—everything else is new, and sometimes frightening.
Sometimes, Evie wakes up expecting the aravel, so she understands.
Bull and Dorian linger as they say proper goodbyes—Bull teases, Dorian frets, and Solas chides and complains and fusses over the baby, so by the time Bull and Dorian have passed through the eluvian Evie’s toes feel numb on the cave’s stone floor.
“What colours do you think we will need to start?” Solas asks, turning to examine the supplies lined up against the wall with a critical eye.
Evie sticks her hands in her armpits to warm them. She knows it’s not just a question—he’s testing to see if she’s remembering the correct order—so it takes her a moment to consider, scrunching up her nose as she does.
“Let’s do all the background,” she suggests. Solas blocked out some trees, her old aravel, and a winding river. She suspects he’s going to add frogs in when she’s not looking because he’s—how did Mamae put it—hopelessly sentimental.
He quirks a brow at her. “Around the figures?”
Evie shifts from one foot to the other, huffing impatiently. But she squints at his sketch again, and in the light of his veilfire she sees the lines that break up the piece, neatly separating the figures all lined up in the foreground into different segments.
“Oh!” she says, remembering. “Varric and Cole! We’re painting them first!”
“Well remembered,” he praises, finally straightening. “Best to start with the smallest section, on your first try.”
As his light shifts with him, she can see the city of Kirkwall towering over Varric. She remembers the big statues a little—though Solas and she had opted to paint the city as they’d seen it from the road, when the statues were in shadow, so they won’t be in the fresco. She had been so overwhelmed by the number of people there—she’d never seen so many in one place in her life. But Varric’s friend Merrill had shown her the vhenadahl, and she’d gotten to play with some of the children in the alienage.
“Are we going to get it all done before it dries up?” she wonders, following Solas out of the cave.
He hums, turning the baby’s head towards his chest as they exit to the cold night air. “You’ll find out. Tomorrow, I believe.”
Evie gapes up at him, but he’s only smiling. “Tomorrow? Really?”
He nods.
“But—I thought—you’re not kidding, right?”
Still smiling, Solas shifts the baby in his arms so he can lean down, cup Evie’s cheek in his hand, and kiss her forehead. “I will always have time for you too, da’assan,” he says.
Whatever reply Evie might think of making is interrupted by the baby sniffling, and then beginning to cry.
Solas winces as he straightens—shifting his grip to better protect the baby from the breeze blowing off the ocean. “I suspect she’s hungry,” he says. “Let’s go wake up Mamae together, shall we?”
It isn’t that long of a walk, but the baby has worked herself into a ridiculous wail by the time they get to their little cottage. Evie opens the door so Solas doesn’t have to, and as she follows him through she can hear Cole speaking softly in Mamae and Papae’s bedroom, and Mamae muttering sleepily in response.
When Solas pushes open the bedroom door, Mamae is already sitting up, pulling off the shirt she wears while sleeping, but not looking particularly awake.
“Time is it?” she mumbles.
“Bull and Dorian have just left,” Solas says, sitting next to her on the bed.
She hums in acknowledgement, and then, having finally untangled herself from her shirt, lets Solas put the crying baby on a pillow on her lap. She hushes her, gently, and winces once the baby finds her nipple, and stops crying.
“Yeah, still hurts,” she grumbles, and Solas laughs, low and soft, before leaning in to kiss her cheek.
Mamae spots her lingering in the doorway, then, and smiles, sleepy and warm. “Evie,” she says, “I feel like I haven’t seen you all day. Come here, da’vhenan.”
Evie joins her parents on the bed—more than a little happy to get the invitation—sitting on her mother’s other side while Cole looks over her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Evie says as her mother slings her arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. “You’re resting—I understand.”
Mamae hums thoughtfully before pressing a kiss to Evie’s hair. “That’s no excuse at all,” she says, mostly to herself.
She knows that Mamae is pretending to feel better than she is—Evie can see the dark circles under her eyes, and the fingers that run through Evie’s hair move slower than normal.
So she says, “Papae and I are going to start the fresco tomorrow.”
“Really?” She looks over at Solas.
“I believe we’ve waited long enough,” he replies. “Cole has promised to watch the baby while you sleep.”
Mamae lets out a little huff of a laugh. “The baby,” she parrots, teasing.
He gives her a sheepish smile in return. “I… still have not decided on a name.”
“I gathered.”
“It is… difficult.”
“Mn-hm. Evie, should we give your father a deadline, or see how long we can drag this out?”
Evie tries to hide her grin from Solas in her Mamae’s shoulder. “Varric has a betting pool going,” she whispers.
To her delight, her Mamae rolls back her head and laughs, so loud that the baby loses her breast and starts to cry again. And then everyone’s distracted until she’s settled again, though Mamae’s shoulders are still shaking.
Solas is clearly trying, and failing, to look unamused.
“Two days isn’t that long,” he protests, but his lips are twitching upwards into a smile as he glances down at Evie, who can’t hide her grin.
“You have had months to figure this out,” Mamae teases.
“Longer than that,” he mutters, like he’s confessing something.
Mamae laughs a little, again—softer, this time, and impossibly fond.
They talk for a while, after that, in low, soft voices. Everyone shifts when they switch the baby to the other breast, but after that Evie leans on her Mamae’s shoulder, and listens to her parents speak. Of nothing, mostly—the fresco, the repairs Solas made on the roof. What colour they think the baby’s eyes will be, who she takes after.
Evie doesn’t even realise she’s dozed off until she wakes—Solas is coming back into the room, the baby in his arms, and the door creaks as he nudges it with his shoulder.
“I have done this before,” Mamae is saying. “And I’m not actually bedridden.”
“I know,” he replies, softly, as he crosses the room.
“You don’t have to do everything, Solas.”
He places the baby in her crib—the one Thom made—and lingers there, his hands resting on the rail, his back to them, looking down at the sleeping baby.
“Indulge me, vhenan,” he says, glancing over his shoulder.
His eyes are suspiciously shiny in the candlelight.
Mamae hums. “Well,” she says, wiggling the shoulder Evie’s resting her head on, “I think it’s time we sent this one off to bed.”
“I’m in a bed,” Evie mumbles.
“Yes, but your door has a soundproofing spell on it,” Mamae reminds her, “and your little sister is going to be hungry again in a few hours.”
Evie makes a face, but allows herself to be coerced out of the bed. She unsuccessfully stifles a yawn as her Mamae kisses her on the cheek and bids her goodnight.
When she’s changed her clothes and washed her face, Solas knocks on her door.
“Da’assan?” he calls, softly. “May I come in?”
“Mm-hm,” she replies, crawling under her pile of blankets and furs—some of the few things they kept when they gave up the aravel for the cottage.
He slips inside and closes the door behind him, and then sits at the foot of her bed.
“Newborns are… hectic,” he says, after a long moment. “And I… do not want you to feel left out.”
“Cole would probably just tell you if I did.” She tilts her head to the side, trying to figure out what he’s thinking. It’s a little hard to read his face with only the moonlight through her window to go through, but she thinks…
His brows are furrowed, his gaze cast to the floor.
Evie leans over and pinches the skin on his hand.
He jumps, startled. “What—what was that—”
“See?” She leans back, trying not to smirk. “You’re not dreaming, Papae.”
His expression softens, his lips twitching into a reluctant smile, and Evie can’t help but grin back in return.
“Thank you,” he says, softly.
She nudges his leg with her toes from under the blankets. “So pick a name already! Oh, but don’t tell anyone until Tuesday.”
He raises a brow. “Tuesday?”
“Because then I win, and Bull does our laundry for a week, and Sera our dishes for two…”
He laughs, then. Shaking his head and smiling at her long after he’s done, his eyes warm, the worries from when he sat down thoroughly chased away.
“I forget sometimes, how clever you are.” He leans forward, and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Goodnight, da’assan.”
“Goodnight, Papae.” As he stands, and she settles down into her furs, she asks, “Papae?”
He hovers in her doorway. “Yes?”
“Will I see you in the Fade tonight?”
He smiles. “Of course.”
He closes the door behind him once more, and Evie settles into her blankets. Warm, exhausted, and content, she closes her eyes and as feels the pull of the Fade with every slow, steady breath, she wonders what she and Solas are going to find there, together, with a smile on her face that lingers long after she’s fallen asleep.