Home

He carried her over the threshold of this house, once, even as the twins giggled and their eldest rolled her eyes and groaned that Maker's breath, couldn't her parents keep off each other even for a moment at their age, it was an embarrassment- and Leandra didn't care one bit, because finally, finally, after years of wandering and running and seasick voyages and ramshackle huts this would be their home.

She still loves their house.

She thought they'd live here for years, long after their children were grown and married, a horde of grandchildren and mabari pups tumbling over each other at her feet. She thought they would be safe here, safe from the Circle that had once locked Malcolm away and still threatened her children, from the Templars that loomed with sword and shield in hand.

Lothering was everything they'd dreamed- quiet, peaceful, safe- but despite all of that Malcolm is dying.

They had planned to leave through the window.

The window would have been sensible. Malcolm could slip through it easily, as he'd proven on more than one occasion, and he was far taller and broader-shouldered than she. It would have avoided the staircase and the foyer, where they'd surely be seen- if not by Mother or Father, at least by one of the servants.

When it comes to it, though, she seals the letter and set it carefully on her pillow, shouldered the little satchel (when she started packing a trunk he laughed- are you planning to carry it yourself, Leandra?- and handed her a leather bag) and steps up onto the sill.

Malcolm stands in the alley below and holds his arms up toward her. "Toss the bag down, then just hang off the ledge and let go. I'll catch you."

She looks over the edge, the ground suddenly terribly far away, and swallows. "I can't." Her toes curl; a loose pebble goes tumbling down and clatters on the cobblestones below. Light fills one of the ground-floor windows, casting shadows over Malcolm's face.

"I won't let you fall, Leandra. I promise."

"I know," she says, clinging to the window. "It's just- the dress, Malcolm, and the-" and then someone pounds on her bedroom door, hard enough to rattle the figurines on her dressing-table. "Oh, Maker, someone's found us out."

He waves her back. As she steps down into the room he scales the wall again, fingers clutching at now-familiar gaps in the masonry, gives her a swift kiss and turns to face the door. (It was years later when Leandra understood why, when Father finally burst into the room, Malcolm looked somehow relieved.)

And so, as Father threatens and Mother weeps, she stands in her ballgown and a makeshift veil made of scraps from an old lace nightdress, holding hands with Malcolm Hawke.

The window would have been the sensible thing, but in those days Leandra did very little that was sensible; the two of them walked through the front door hand in hand and ran all the way to the Chantry.

He's wandering again, his mind a hundred miles away, and she coaxes him back again and again until she is weary.

"Mama?"

She dozes, and wakes to Bethany nudging her shoulder; her knees ache from long hours spent beside the cot.

"Mama, please come eat something."

When she moves to stand Malcolm stirs, restless, and squeezes her hand. Shaking her head, she tucks her legs beneath her once again. "Later."

The days fold into each other, made distinct only by the growing swell of her belly.

She hadn't thought to be back in Kirkwall so soon, but their little house was far away from anything- good for hiding but likely lethal if the child had come in Malcolm's absence. It was better, she supposes, to return to the city for a time, though she has a feeling it was only nominally a choice.

At least the Wardens' safehouse wasn't her parents' estate; she couldn't call the estate home anymore, not really, because home now was where Malcolm was. Father had learned of her return, though, and sent soldiers twice to try to fetch her back. Her watchdog (she debated for a week about what sort of animal the man guarding her reminded her of- she thought of a wolf, initially, but the man wasn't clever enough, all obedience and sharp teeth) sent them packing, on Warden-Commander Larius' orders.

He's been gone nearly two months on "Warden business," as they called it, so emphatic she could hear the capital letter slipping off the tips of their tongues. Warden or not, it was mage business for certain and Leandra knows just enough of magic to be afraid of it. Malcolm wouldn't ever tell her what he did or where he'd gone, even when she asked- "it's better if you don't know, just in case," he said, but wouldn't even say just in case of what.

She raged at him, then, but after a few days she stopped asking, and then he was gone.

So she sits, and practices her knitting (socks and blankets for the baby, mostly), and thinks of all the things she'll say when he comes back, and waits for him to return. He will return, of course. He must; it was never a question. When she was a child she'd dreamed of marrying a comte, or perhaps a duke. The idea of it now makes her skin crawl, makes her recall the claustrophobic feeling she hadn't known was there until the moment it lifted, when little Leandra with her clipped wings in her gilded cage learned that she could fly away after all. She's grown too much, now, to fit into her cage again.

It takes another two weeks, but one day the door opens and he is there, thinner than she remembers and his skin ash-grey. Her Malcolm would never be pale, even after months away from sunlight, but he seems drained and tired, his eyes glassed-over; when he wraps his arms around her shoulders she sees rough blood-spattered bandages peeking out from beneath his sleeves. She looks to him, concerned, and he shakes his head- one more thing, then, to add to the list of topics never to be discussed.

Leandra leans against his chest, the curve of her stomach pressed along his; the baby, usually so quiet, flips and spins and dances inside her so wildly that she flinches.

"I think someone wants to say hello."

Malcolm smiles at that, and bends to press his lips to her belly. The movements subside a little, not so much gone as oddly focused- she imagines she feels, for a fleeting second, a tiny hand pushing outward towards him- as his face brightens, some of the shadows lifting from around his eyes. He nods to the guard and the Warden-Commander looming at the door, and in the next moment they are gone.

"Fetch your things, Leandra," he says, "we're going home."

She laces her fingers through his, just as she did when they danced at the Empress' masque so many years ago, and rests her head on his chest.

Malcolm breathes, the rise and fall bringing back a dozen old memories of ships on the sea until, as she knew it eventually would, the tide goes out and stays. He is still, and quiet, and gone, and she holds his hands until his grip relaxes and all the warmth fades.

"It's alright, love," she whispers, and calls for the children, "you're home."