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shivunin · 11 months

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A Story Chosen

Cullen/Salshira Lavellan | Fluff | 2,245 Words | Brief discussion of pregnancy/childbirth

I wanted to write a little follow-up on these two post-Trespasser and it got a little out of hand haha. So: here is something soft for Salshira and Cullen in their silly little house c:

“But, Papa, why would she go home?” Cullen’s daughter asked, tracing the illustration on the page. “There were so many aventures to do. Home isn’t a aventure at all.”

Cullen looked down at the storybook propped on his knee, searching for an answer. It wasn’t time for bed. Hawen refused to listen to storybooks when it was time for bed; she insisted that one of her parents tell her stories instead. Books were, of course, for the middle of the day when his hands were soapy and he’d half-finished the dishes. How could he be expected to tell her to wait when she was hopping from foot to foot, waving the book in the air? He almost wished it was time for bed, for that would save him from finding an answer when he was tired and sore.

“Sometimes,” he told her after some consideration, smoothing her copper-brown hair back from her face, “finding home is its own adventure. Maybe the princess was tired, or maybe she missed being among things that feel familiar. Don’t you have plenty of adventures here yourself?”

Hawen considered this, a frown on her small brow. Salshira had laughingly called it Hawen’s “Cullen face” just last week. Afterward, he’d spent fifteen solid minutes frowning at himself in the mirror, but he still couldn’t see it.

“Did Mama ever get tired?” she asked, turning to look at him.

Her eyes were a deep, soft brown like a doe’s and they were every inch Salshira’s eyes.

“Sometimes,” he told her. “Sometimes she grew so tired that she wanted to go home right then and leave everything else behind. Sometimes she enjoyed going adventuring. Perhaps you should ask her about it tonight.”

Hawen was quiet for a moment. Her fingertips found the outline of a distant castle on the page, tracing the drawbridge slowly. When they’d visited Denerim the year before, she’d been fascinated by the castle with all its thick walls and portcullises. She’d asked endless questions about how the gates slid down and why, who went through them and how, and so on until they’d been home in South Reach for months.

This conversation felt more serious than their usual discussions. Was this what it felt like to watch her grow older? Would she ask him other, harder questions as she grew? What could he tell her about everything they’d done with the disbanded Inquisition? It was the stuff of legends and history books, nothing for the ears of a child.

But—she wouldn’t be a child for long.

“Papa,” she said, shaking her wavy hair away from her face. Her face was so solemn—was often solemn or distant, one foot in this world and the other in dreaming. Cullen worried for her. All parents worried for their children, he supposed, but he feared that her wonder would be crushed, that her dreaming would be silenced. He had never been like that as a child; Salshira said the same was true for her. How did one raise a dreamer in a world full of monsters?

“Papa, one of the boys at the farm said something the other day.”

“Oh?”

“He told the little girl with the sheep that her mama never wanted her. Why did he say that?”

“I don’t know, dove,” he said, frowning. “It is an unkind thing to say, and it probably isn’t even true. What happened after that?”

“She kicked him,” Hawen said absently. “But Papa, did Mama want me?”

“Of course she does!” Cullen dropped the book and turned her around in his lap, looking hard at her solemn face. “She wanted to have you more than anything. Why do you think she wouldn’t want you?”

“I don’t know,” Hawen said, picking at the hem of her dress. Cullen searched her dear face, then scooped her up in a tight hug. She squeaked.

“I love you more than just about anything in the whole world,” he told her, and kissed her cheek loudly until she giggled. “Your mama feels just the same.”

“But she can’t fight dragons anymore!” she protested, squirming from his grasp and climbing down from the couch. “Doesn’t she want to go on more aventures?”

Cullen stood and offered his hand, which Hawen took without pausing. The two of them turned toward the kitchen, where the scones and jam had been packed away after breakfast. It was past time for a snack, though she’d refused to sit down for one until after he’d read the book.

“Perhaps,” he told her, “your mama does not want to fight any more dragons. She didn’t think it was very fun even when she did it often.”

“Really?” Hawen asked, and painstakingly climbed into one of the tall chairs. Cullen waited until she was done—she’d become abruptly resistant to being helped these past months—then set her plate before her.

“Really,” he said. “She thought they were beautiful and it made her sad to hurt them. If they hadn’t hurt people, she would have left them alone forever to fly and be wild.”

But that wasn’t the real question, was it?

“But,” he told her, pulling a chair out and sitting down, “she did want you. Very, very much. She is glad every day that she gets to come home to you.”

Hawen scrunched her mouth to the side, reducing a section of her scone to crumbs.

“Really?”

“Really,” Cullen said firmly. “When your mama was growing up, all she ever wanted was a family to love. After we married, one of the first things she told me was that we needed to make a family some day.”

He did not tell her the rest: that Salshira had been so happy and so terrified when she’d found out she was pregnant that she’d insisted they tell none of their friends until she was more than halfway through. She’d painted Hawen’s bedroom by hand, carefully adding Dalish designs along the doorway and corners despite her complex feelings about her clan.

The pregnancy had not been easy, but she’d taken notes every day of it, determined to remember what it felt like later. She did so even now, clipping her notebook to the little desk in their bedroom and scribbling highlights of each day before she climbed into bed with him. Cullen would watch her, hair drifting loose over her face, profile sharp in the candlelight, and wonder how he’d ever gotten so lucky.

“And,” he added, “she loves your stories. She tells me about all of them if I am not there when you share them with her.”

Hawen had a habit of telling long, rambling tales about what she’d seen in the day, how it had made her feel, and why it might have happened. Salshira listened to each of these tales with rapt attention—far more than she’d paid her own advisors as the Inquisitor—and when the weather was fine the two of them would go rambling through town and into the valleys beyond, content in each other’s company even when Cullen was not well enough to go with them. They would pick him flowers on days he was absent—daisies, violets, whatever they could get their hands on—and arrange them in extravagant handfuls in whatever dishware would fit them.

It was not how he’d been raised. Cullen suspected his daughter did not know that. But—that was well enough. Let her believe that every child in the world was so carefully attended-to. He also knew how Salshira had grown up. Since Hawen’s birth, the most important thing to her in the whole world had always been that their child knew how beloved she was.

Cullen checked the clock on the wall and rose, leaning to whisper to Hawen.

“You know,” he said, “your mother is due back any minute. Will you come with me? I think you should see something.”

Hawen dusted her small hands off on her already grass-stained skirt and slid from the chair to follow him. The two of them crept quietly around the house, tucking themselves between the bushes and the house at the far corner of the porch. They didn’t have long to wait. Soon, the rhythmic sounds of horse hooves came up the walkway, then the soft squeak of the fence, and at last the soft sounds of boots on stone.

“Now, watch,” Cullen whispered to her. “I will say hello. You wait here and watch how glad she looks when she sees you. Alright?”

“Alright,” Hawen said doubtfully, peering around the corner.

Cullen stood and rounded the corner. Salshira, who’d been looping the horse’s reins around the post, turned to look at him.

“Hello, stranger,” his wife said, smiling. “I missed you.”

She’d been gone all of four hours, but he’d missed her, too. Something in Cullen’s chest relaxed at the sight of her here. She hadn’t done anything more dangerous than riding through the market on a busy day, but even so…it was good to see her home and safe, as always.

“And I you,” he told her.

Salshira opened her mouth to answer, but instead her eyes focused just past Cullen and her face lit with joy.

“Well, hello!” she called, crouching and holding out her arm. Hawen raced past Cullen and threw herself at her mother, the impact hard enough that Salshira briefly rocked back on her heels.

“You were gone forever,” Hawen said, burying her face in her mother’s neck. Salshira squeezed her eyes shut and swayed the two of them to and fro.

“And now I shall be here forever,” Salshira said, “or a few hours more, at least. That’s close to forever, isn’t it? How’s that sound, my dearest darlingest duckling?”

“Ma,” Hawen complained, pulling back to wrinkle her nose, “I’m not a duckling anymore. I’m a dove now, like the ones in Aunt Mia’s trees. I want to fly all over, not just float.”

“My deepest apologies, milady dove,” Salshira said, half-laughing, “I shall try to remember.”

She stood carefully, winking at Cullen, and stopped when Hawen tugged on her shirt.

“Spin?” she asked.

Salshira laughed again and stooped to haul Hawen against her. Soon, her legs would be too long for this. Perhaps soon she would stop asking. For now, though, Salshira held her tightly with one arm and spun in too quick loops, Hawen’s feet kicking in the air as she flew. When Salshira set her down again, the small girl blinked and staggered to the side before sitting hard in the dust beside the walkway.

“Too much, my dove?” Salshira asked. She nodded to the saddlebags and Cullen crossed to unbuckle them from the horse. She caught him as he passed, pressed a kiss to his cheek, and smiled when he returned the gesture.

“Just enough,” Hawen said, blinking furiously. “No. One more!”

“I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I am all out of spins for the moment,” Salshira said regretfully. “Help your papa carry the bags and I will look around for more, would you, dove?”

“Alright!” Hawen said, still wandering back and forth as she made her way to Cullen again. He chose a market bag from the saddle and passed it to her with care. Hawen accepted it blithely, swinging it over one shoulder and skipping back over to her mother.

“Mama?” she said.

Salshira finished slinging a pack over her shoulder and glanced down.

“Yes?”

“Do you know any stories?” Hawen asked, hopping from foot to foot. Cullen watched the bag full of potatoes over her shoulder sway precariously far in one direction and chose not to say anything. A little dust wouldn’t hurt them. They could always clean it off later.

“Ones about maybe someone who stays home?” she went on, peering up at her mother. “And doesn’t go on any aventures at all?”

“Hmmm,” Salshira said, starting up the stairs to the door, “I might know a few like that. But—it will be quite hard to think of them, you see, because all my very favorite adventures started right here.”

“Really?” Hawen asked, turning the handle and swinging it open for them.

Salshira’s voice carried behind her as she stepped over the threshold and into their home.

“Really, really,” she said. “This is where I first met you, dove. I’ve had all the very best adventures ever since.”

Hawen bounced after her, glancing back once to see if her father was following. Cullen, who was carrying both saddlebags, smiled encouragingly. Hawen raced on, bare feet slapping the wood floor as she chased after her mother. Cullen paused in the doorway for just a moment watching the two of them.

At the end of the hallway, Hawen reached her mother at last and caught Salshira’s hand in both of hers, still bouncing. One of the potatoes fell from the bag and rolled to a stop behind them. His wife glanced back at it and then at him, smiling her wry smile.

“Mama,” Hawen was saying, pulling Salshira toward the kitchen, “you missed everything! I ran in the backyard with Dane and Papa read me a book and then we ate a snack and that isn’t even everything. First, I opened the back door—”

Cullen realized he’d been standing alone on the porch, smiling after them for several minutes even when they’d stepped out of view. He shook his head at himself, shifted the bags on his shoulders, and stepped into the house. Already, he could hear the two of them laughing in the distance.

How glad he was to have them both. How glad he was to know that this was his home.

Smiling still, Cullen turned and shut the door behind him.

(this was particularly for anyone who suffered because of the daughter scene in Katabasis haha. So: @star--nymph and @greypetrel, here is something to make it hurt less <;3)

#cullavellan #salshira lavellan #inquisitor lavellan #cullen rutherford #my writing #da fanfic #hawen is too sweet to be spoiled but she has the two of them wrapped around her finger #and they both know it #shivunin scrivening

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