Work Text:
After all his twenty years spent in Kwen, Thomil knew that adjusting to Tiran would be painful. What he didn’t know, however, was that it would be the most painful experience of his life. More excruciating than his father’s death, more than watching his tribe grow smaller and skinnier by the year, more than Maeva’s heart-piercing screams at the crossing.
No, that was all child’s play compared to his four-year-old niece’s cries. Of pain, of sorrow, of hunger. Gods, Thomil thought he knew devastation, but none of it even came close to the struggle of trying to care for a child within unnerving isolation, unwavering humiliation, and steady mechanical churning of Tiran. The stabbing hunger he felt was made almost unbearable after a long day of being treated worse than an animal, and by the absence of his tribe to distract him.
Carra was a few years too young to work, and while Thomil had nearly sobbed in relief when he was told that his sweet, baby niece wouldn’t need to be exposed to dangerous working conditions or the constant dehumanization, he was also acutely aware of how much she would suffer through the silence of their small living quarters, alone and hurting. Imagining his small red-haired girl sitting in the middle of their dark, one-room apartment, waiting for Thomil to come back shattered whatever was left of his zest for life, reducing him to a husk of a man as hollow as a snake’s shedded skin.
This husk had only one reason for getting up in the mornings, for making breakfast while trying to console his crying niece (“I’ll be back soon, Carra, okay? Please don’t cry. Please. I’ll be back before you know it, I swear to the Gods. Oh Carra, please!”). He had only one motivator for enduring day upon day of non-stop, grating work and even more non-stop, grating harassment from his Tiranish employers, who commented on his broken Tiranish, his accent, his hair, the state of his clothes, how he smelled, how he worked (Thomil had come to learn, among other things, that nothing about him was above ridicule).
The man was resolved to continue living, not for himself, but for the child that would burrow her face into his chest while sleeping. Whose unruly copper hair behaved as a sentient being and actively fought against the comb. For the girl who still cried out for her parents whenever she had a nightmare, but was otherwise bringing them up less and less. Thomil didn’t know which was worse, that Maeva and Arras’ memory faded from their daughter’s mind, leaving Thomil to carry the weight of their entire family’s death, or that their memory persisted, with the subsequent grief.
All he knew was that Carra deserved to know her parents as they were; loving, spirited, tender, and not just as they are now; dead. She deserved to grow up running with her father through green meadows, learning to weave from her mother, hunting with a happier, less battle-scarred Thomil, surrounded by a whole tribe of people who loved and cared for her. And while realistically knew he’d never be able to give her that, he couldn’t help but imagine a future where she got her own happiness. A future where there was no shadow of Blight hanging over them, one where Carra was surrounded by loved ones, though they weren’t related by blood. A future where she didn’t shrink herself, where she was both known and loved.
Thomil would never be able to hand her any of that, but maybe she’d succeed where he failed. Maybe she’d take her happiness, live as fulfilling a life you can live in this heartless city. Or maybe, one day, Carra would even go back home to the Kwen, living the life of every Caldonnae before her. However it turned out, Thomil would accompany her for as long as she needed him, while imagining a future worthy of the last member of the Caldonnae tribe. And more importantly, Maeva's daughter.