Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There was a storm on the horizon.

He could feel the promise of electricity in the air. It made the hairs on his arms stand up, a rash of gooseflesh creeping over his skin. A cold wind blew, driving his robes against his legs. Strands of hair lifted about his face as they were pulled from his sloppily tied queue.

Maker, it felt good.

He loved lightning most of all. It called to him, the way none of the other elements did, sizzling over skin and bones with a touch that was almost sexual. It had been a long time since they’d seen a proper storm. The summer had been dry, and hot, fields wilting under the burning sun. The arl had let most of his hired hands go as money grew tight and food grew scarce. It was only by sheer luck and Leandra’s charm that the young Hawke family had been allowed to stay.

And now, on the heels of summer, came the first of the fall’s great storms. Within too few weeks, snow would blanket the rolling hills of Redcliffe.

Ah, Ferelden, Malcolm thought dryly, sighing at the cool touch of wind against his perpetually sunburned cheeks. You piss on us again and again and yet we still stick around for more. What a bloody lot of masochists we are.

There was a familiar step behind him and he tilted his head in welcome. His wide slash of a mouth twisted into a smile. “It’s going to rain tonight, love,” he said. “We’d better batten down the hatches and get the twins in bed or Carver’ll be squalling louder than the storm.”

When Leandra didn’t respond, Malcolm turned, curious. Her arms were crossed under her ample bosom and her brows were drawn together in a frown. Now that he was focusing, Malcolm could feel the discordant buzz of her anxiety through the bond they shared.

Uh-oh, he thought. “Whatever I did, I can assure you that I am terribly sorry,” Malcolm said with his best charming grin, hoping to cut her off at the pass.

Her lips tightened in response. That was not a good sign.

Leandra glanced over her shoulder toward the tiny cottage the five of them shared. She reached out to close the slatted gate behind her, then moved to his side. The wind picked up her dark, homespun skirts, making them billow and furl like a canvas sail about the straight line of her body. She was beautiful even after the birth of three children—of course, Malcolm was certain he’d find her beautiful after the birth of thirty—with long curling brown hair and eyes the color of the stormclouds he loved.

He hated the feel of her worry, though. He hated the thought that he may have had a hand in it. Malcolm reached out impulsively to cup her soft cheeks, calloused thumbs brushing at the crows feet already creasing her skin. Too young, he thought. You’re too young to carry so much worry. “Leandra,” he murmured, dropping his forehead against hers. He tried to soothe away the insistent thrum of her anxiety, closing his eyes and brushing his emotions over hers.

Her delicate hands closed over his wrists. “I found the lyrium,” Leandra said.

Malcolm froze, and guilt flashed between them before he could squash it.

“Two bottles,” she continued. She pulled back to watch him with lifted brows. He could practically taste her anger. “Hidden in your bag. When were you going to tell me?”

“Tonight,” he said, then, because she’d be able to feel his lie, “I don’t know. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Soon, though.”

Leandra made a low, furious noise. She reached up to shove back her hair, but loose curls continued to coil about her delicate features, lifted by the breeze. The dark brown had streaks of silver that hadn’t been there just a year or two before. Malcolm knew his own black hair was going gray at the temples. Neither of them was old, but life on the run had a way of making them feel their years.

“Look, Leandra,” Malcolm began, but she flung up a hand to cut him off.

“No. No, you look. You didn’t have the right to take this step without speaking with me first. Aidan is my son, and he is too young to follow you into the Fade.”

Malcolm set his jaw. “Aidan is eight years old,” he began.

“Exactly. If he were in the Circle—”

He clenched his fists against an unexpected surge of power. Leandra pulled back in alarm as lightning forked between them before quickly dying away. Her eyes flew up to his, shock and worry clear on her face; it wasn’t like him to lose control. “If he were in the Circle,” Malcolm said, struggling to keep his emotions in check, “they would do everything in their power to keep him from his Voice. The way they tried to keep me from finding you.”

The memory of that was…difficult. Too difficult to let himself dwell on it now. Malcolm swallowed as he tried to reel in his emotions, willing his powers to unruffle, his heart to slow. If he let himself think about what the Circle had tried to do to him, he’d… Well, it didn’t bear thinking about. And Leandra certainly didn’t deserve to be at the center of it.

They’d been through so much together already, and with the first stirring of their son’s nascent powers, the promise of many more troubles to come stood on the horizon. Before they’d had the children, he’d never realized how scared fatherhood could make him. Now, it was an inescapable part of life. He was scared of taking his oldest son into the Fade before Aidan was ready, and risk losing him forever. Scared of not taking him soon enough and losing him just the same. Scared of letting him live his entire life without the chance to find his own Voice. Scared of Aidan being taken by the Chantry.

Malcolm blew out an unsteady breath and reached out to cup his wife’s cheeks again, deliberately opening the bond between them as wide as their bodies could stand to let her feel his conflicting emotions. To let her pour herself into him and him into her, no walls, no barriers.

She had to understand how important it was to not keep this from their son.

“He is eight years old,” Malcolm murmured. “He has shown potential for nearly a full year. If he is old enough to be stolen by the thrice-damned Circle, he is old enough to be taken into the Fade and shown exactly why he has to fight so hard to remain free.”

Leandra tipped her head toward his. In the far distance, he could feel the first crack of lightning. It pulled at his blood, made his body thrum. “I wish,” she murmured, gently capitulating.

Malcolm pressed his lips to her brow. “I know. And I’m sorry.”

They stayed like that for several endless minutes, coiled together body and mind. Her skirt buffeted around his legs as the wind gusted and her long curls flew about their faces. Malcolm strained to feel the next streak of lightning forking through the sky. He pressed his lips to his wife’s full mouth and let her taste the tang of ozone.

He didn’t pull away at the sound of the front door creaking open, but he cracked open an eye. Leandra’s lips curved into a bemused smile against his own.

Standing on the threshold, one hand curled around the knob, the other hanging tight to his tiny sister’s fingers, Aidan Hawke was a riot of messy curls and chubby cheeks and eyes as open and guileless as the summer sea. A few paces behind the two, sitting on a pile of furs and already squalling, bless, Carver waved his arms and shrieked.

“Hush,” Aidan said over his shoulder. “They’re being gross. We’re not supposed to interrupt when they’re being gross.”

Malcolm swallowed Leandra’s breathless laugh, letting the kiss linger before he pulled away. He tucked back her hair, sensing her fears fading to a manageable murmur. She didn’t like it, but she’d follow his lead in this. “Scar the children or go back inside?” he murmured.

She made a show of pretending to consider. “We can scar them later,” Leandra finally decided. “I know that particular cry. Thumb wrestle you for who gets to change Carver?”

He quickly stepped back, spreading his arms wide. “Oh, I would be honored, but I’m really busy sensing the weather and planning my Fadewalk and being all…magey and…” He sighed at her narrowed gaze and shot a look toward his eldest. Aidan’s nose was wrinkled—though whether that was because of his parents or because his brother was beginning to stink up the main room, Malcolm couldn’t say—but he grinned when Malcolm waggled his brows at him.

“Come on, Bethy,” he said, stooping to pick up his sister. He slid two fingers into her mouth and gamely let her gum on them. “I guess we’re on our own.” Aidan suddenly brightened. “Plus side, that means we can make Carver into stew.”

“We have the strangest children,” Leandra mused. “I blame you.”

“I blame me too,” Malcolm agreed. He grinned, sudden and broad, not giving Leandra time to do more than sputter, “Oh, no, no, I know that look, Malcolm Hawke!” before he swooped in with a whoop and lifted his bondmate, his Voice in the dark, his everything over his shoulder. She shrieked a laugh, struggling, and he slapped a broad hand over her rump as he carried her back into the house.

The heady coils of her happiness threaded through him, as intoxicating as any storm.