FIC: Awake, Awake Children Bold

[glitteringstars]

Title: Awake, Awake Children Bold

Fandom: Dragon Age (series)

Characters: Original Spirit Characters, Original Surana Warden, Solas

Prompts: “Relative values: Families” for genprompt_bingo on Dreamwidth, “Lyric with "sleep" or "awake"” from Lyric Titles Bingo on Dreamwidth, Lyrics from “Welly Boots” by The Amazing Devil

AO3 link

Author’s Notes: This was at first inspired by expanding on my Warden’s background, but it’s taken a life of its own as I played through Awakening, Dragon Age 2, and parts of Inquisition as we got a deeper look at spirits. An alternative take on the Warden’s section of the Fade during the Broken Circle quest.

 

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There are times when a memory sticks into the spirit’s thoughts like a burr in a wolf’s paw. With time, as all things do for spirits, these fixations are replaced by other memories and the compulsion to sooth their ills. Spirits are used to memories full of fear or longing or sorrow—children waiting for parents who will never return, slaves cowering from the rage of their masters, the dying clinging to life—but these never linger when the memories’ owner wakes.

 

This one, however, does linger. The details come and go like the lapping of ocean waves, but the lack of fear or longing or sorrow makes the spirit uneasy.

 

“Compassion?” asks their companion. He stands at the roots of a fallen tree. It’s boughs still sigh with the last breath of hanged men.

 

The name he uses is typical of lucid dreamers: if he does not know what lies before them, he comes up with descriptors. If giving them a name helps him tell friend from foe, then the spirit named Compassion accepts the designation.

 

“There’s a little girl,” Compassion says after several moments, “but she isn’t scared or sad. She looks a bit like you, Solas.”

 

The lucid dreamer’s face twists into uncertainty, as if he’s trying to remember something from the waking world. It is not uncommon for dreamers to lose memories if they are in the Fade for too long. After some time of contemplation, Solas encourages, “Tell me more.”

 

But it’s hard to form the words, even as Compassion concentrates on the memory. So, from the center out, they unfold the corners of the memory.

 

The Fade shifts around them, and Solas startles audibly. Thin walls and a shallow ceiling fence them in, shadows of furniture and figures scatter into corners, and sound and smell echo from a long distance. It’s all patchwork from memories of other dreamers, and where it’s fit together, the gray-green of the Fade peaks through. Much of the colors are muted, but the girl stands out in vivid contrast.

 

Solas recovers himself and investigates the girl; Compassion follows.

 

She’s as still as the rest of the scene. With proper comparison between her and Solas, the two look nothing alike save for their pointed ears. Where Solas is tall and pale and dressed in neat clothing, she is small and olive-skinned and drowned in a patchwork cloak. Her cheeks are ruddy from the cold, and forlornness is etched into her down-turned eyes. Compassion has never been good at distinguishing the ages of dreamers, but they automatically know she’s no more than four-and-a-half.

 

Solas hums, picking at the thick, rolled hem of the cloak. It brushes the girl’s ankles.

 

 

“To grow into.” The words fall absently from Compassion’s mouth.

 

“Do you know her name?”

 

Compassion blinks and stares at the back of her head. Her thin hair is pulled into twin tails, tied off with leftover string. Another memory of tying someone’s hair—silky, smooth; they wonder how long before her hair is long enough for a proper braid. Their baby’s hair grows so slowly.

 

Then it’s gone.

 

The scene fades, leaving the two at the foot of the tree’s gnarled roots. Solas’s face is pinched in concentration. He opens his mouth, but then closes it. The dreamer grabs his staff from where he had left it, and starts venturing further into the sighing forest.

 

They speak nothing more of it.

 

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The knowledge of the girl comes and goes, and how quickly it disappears leaves Compassion with endless frustrations.

 

“It is not natural for a spirit to feel the intensity of waking emotions,” Solas cautions. They sit by an echo of an old elven village. The memories that shape this place is soothing to both Solas and Compassion. There is no strong feelings of hurt or resentment, just the idle tranquility of a village morning—they are late with the morning milk, and why does she think he’ll give her extra sweet bread?--it allows Compassion to think and notice things about their companion.

 

Solas is as typical as any other dreamer: his voice is solid as packed earth, his effect on the Fade at times is unpredictable, and his presence is a bright star in the gloom of the Fade. It draws spirits like Compassion close thanks to his fount of emotions and memories, but there is much Compassion does not know about him. Maybe it’s by design. He says many things to the dreamers he awakens, always with pinched brows and a smoldering emotion more complex than fear and more intense than loneliness.

 

Here, staring out at the gray water and watching the shadows of elves living quietly, the heaviness of Solas’ expression falls away. The creases are gone, making Solas look much younger than he sounds. Compassion idly wonders how old he is or how long he’s been wandering the Fade.

 

The thought is gone a moment later.

 

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The pull is too great to ignore.

 

It’s not uncommon for the places where the Veil is thin to attract spirits like Compassion. Sometimes, it’s a natural occurrence. Others, it’s a tear created by the living.

 

This is something worse.

 

Solas’ expression deforms into a wolfish snarl. “A snare built by a selfish mage with a sloth demon at its center.”

 

Compassion examines the trap. Runes are strung together by twisting hemp twine and covered in black poppy flowers. Each node sparks with blue and red energy, likely from those caught within. When Compassion brushes their hand over a node, choking smoke overwhelms their senses. They stumble back.

 

“Careful,” Solas says. He keeps his distance as he circles the snare. He pokes at the flowers, the strands, the stone etchings with the butt of his staff. Everything spurts out flashes of scents and emotions—the smell of fresh bread, groans of the dying, the wails of the burning.

 

Compassion’s attention catches on one particular one: it’s a quieter sensation than the others, filled with pine needles and stone where even ghosts have stopped wandering.

 

They slip closer, brushing the tips of their fingers over the rune.

 

The memory of the little girl in the overlarge cloak seizes them like a rabid dog and refuses to let go. They have seen sorrow, but it only wash over and through them. This surges up from a place older than their existence, overwhelms them with something cold and warm all at once.

 

“My little girl,” they sob. Compassion presses their hand onto the rune, and lets the snare drag them in.

 

Entering into a dreamer’s influence always alters a spirit’s form. Compassion lets the changes come, taking the form of an older man who meant something to the dreamer. A mentor or a father, perhaps. It doesn’t matter to Compassion.

 

As they step into the octagonal ruin, Compassion’s attention narrows onto the young woman’s back. She is far from nondescript in comparison to the four humans on either side of her. Even ignoring the fact she was a dreamer and more solid than the shadows around her, she is the sole elf. She exchanges glances with a red-haired girl and a man barely a year older than her. Her smile sharp and conspiratorial.

 

She’s older than the little girl in the cloak, but it is her.

 

How much she had grown. How powerful was she to catch the Order of the Grey Wardens’ attention.

 

The man at the head of the new recruits gives them a speech, the words almost indistinct to Compassion’s ears. The boy and girl on either side of her jitter with nervous energy, but Compassion’s little girl keeps her back straight and hands firmly on her staff.

 

“Thais,” Compassion calls.

 

Her head jerks before she slowly turns to Compassion. Her dark eyes lights up in recognition and confusion.

 

“Master Irving?”

 

Something aches. It twists the Fade around them. Poppies grow where Thais breaks away from her comrades.

 

Compassion meets her halfway, catching her shoulders in their hands. “This is not real.”

 

“Not real? How…?” Thais blinks.

 

Her emotions flow into where they touch her, and it’s almost too much. Loss, betrayal, blood, pain—it’s a storm with her at its nexus. It tears at Compassion’s insides, threatening to consume them.

 

Behind her, the boy and girl call to her. The words only come to Compassion in the form of breaking glass and soft crying. The grizzled man behind them says something else, and it’s the wheeze of a dying man. The snare threatening to close tighter around them.

 

Compassion follows their instincts, taking Thais’ head in their hands and pressing a kiss to where her brows knit together in pain. Live. Remember.

 

The Fade around them roars. The string snaps.

 

She breaks away from Compassion, eyes wildly darting around at the shadows closing in. The fear tastes acrid in Compassion’s mouth.

 

“This is the Fade. Andraste, smite me--!” Thais screams, and a bolt of arcane magic erupts from her staff, crashing into the forms of her friends. They burst into smoke and black petals. The other recruits rush her but fall into a paralysis trap. Just as the grizzled man draws his sword, Thais shoots a bolt of cold magic at him, and he shatters like glass.

 

When the last shadows are dispatched, Thais turns to Compassion. She holds her staff, ready to attack.

 

“You’re not Master Irving. Are you a demon?”

 

Compassion shakes their head. “The one who has you here is further in. Your friends need you.”

 

Thais blinks. For a long time, she does not move, but slowly, she starts backing away. Compassion watches her until she bumps into the pedestal at the center of the ruin. She fumbles blindly with some kind of mechanism until it shimmers.

 

This pocket of the Fade begins to cave in, and in its last moments, something passes over Thais’s expression.

 

Then, all is quiet and dark.

 

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Solas stays, rubbing his temples. He had warned Compassion. Reasoning with a spirit is no easier than reasoning with a dreamer, so it shouldn’t be too surprising to see Compassion disappear into the trap. Maybe I should go after them.

 

But that would just be giving the demon another meal, and a powerful one at that.

 

So, Solas waits, and in a place where time is meaningless, it’s easy to do. For an eternity, nothing happens. Then, ever so slowly, the flowers wilt. The hemp lines slacken or snap. All at once, the runes melt into sand. Warmth permeates the thin air of the Fade.

 

Solas takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales it.

 

“I warned you,” he whispered.