Chapter Text
The first time he holds her the unbearable smallness of her shape is such a staggering fact, he forgets how to breathe.
Ten fingers, ten toes, and nose scrunched up in disagreement, she’s placed into the crook of his arm with a promptness that feels too sudden, too brusque, but there is no room to complain, or to slow time down long enough to catch his breath. And his hands are a healer’s hands, bloodied but gentle, and sure in all his gestures, but they’re shaking now, a tremble that is half-fear, half-relief, and he has never been more aware of himself, from the strength in his grip down to his every, starved breath.
“All accounted for?” the midwife asks, half-joking, brow slick with sweat and her eyes hard and tired, and Solas knows her relief for what it is but doesn’t mention it – doesn’t allow his gaze to linger on how her own hands shake, fisting in her bloodied frock.
Ten fingers, ten toes, and lungs that yield breaths and lively, honest wails. A small, beating heart, and, “Yes,” he rasps, an answer too simple for the truth he holds in his grip; a truth that’s too grand for that unbearably small form. But she lives, and she breathes, and she screams, and that is, he thinks, not knowing whether to laugh or cry along with her, the simplest and by far the most important truth of all.
“Look at you,” Ellana murmurs, laughter thick with exhaustion, and a fondness that makes him smile past the worry that still crawls in his gut. Bedridden still, and her pallid complexion makes him pause, but every new day her eyes are a little bit brighter, her breaths a little less heavy. “Traded in your rucksack at long last.”
The sling was a gift – the deep green silk too fine for its purpose, he would argue, but too-fine fabric notwithstanding, its purpose is fulfilled, and he wears it with an ease he no longer questions. Resting his palm over the swaddled bundle strapped to his chest, Solas watches Ellana’s eyes follow the gesture, and the smile that blooms, chasing some of the exhaustion from her expression.
“I never had a reason to, before now,” he says, the words deceptively light, and he doubts anyone else would hear more than a quiet humour returned.
She hums softly, eyes crinkling. “Well I’m glad,” she declares, and with more meaning than her own, simple words suggest; eyes glassy but her gaze fixed firmly on the little shape snug in the sling resting against his heart –
“I think this suits you better.”
When the soft dusting of hair starts to curl, he finds himself smiling. An inconsequential feature, perhaps, insofar as yours and mine go, and there will be years yet before they can see the whole picture. But he can admit to himself at least, that he is happy for this one small thing, imagining little bare feet, ten toes and soles dark and dirty, and a whole garden’s worth of weeds caught in bright red ringlets.
Apple-round cheeks. A dimple in her chin. Ears that are endearingly large and jutting at an angle – not his, but not Ellana’s, either. Something in between, and he presses his nose to the curve, unduly pleased at the small, delighted giggle that pulls from the toothless grin he can’t see but knows already.
So many small things, so many small features to discover and learn, and her, at once the smallest and grandest of them all.
“It’s a herb.”
“It’s a plant. Plants wilt,” Bull argues. “What about ‘Dragon’?”
“I slay dragons,” Ellana counters breezily. “Plants are resilient. If you don’t pick them, they might outlast most living things.” She looks at Solas where he sits, their daughter in the curve of his arm, and – “Sage,” she repeats, her smile growing, stretching wide along that single, lovely syllable.
And it’s decided.
He lies with his back in the grass, his daughter a small weight on his chest, sleeping soundly. Above them the sky stretches, a perfect, cloudless blue, and on the edge of his hearing sings the clash of blades from the practice yard; the bustle of the Skyhold market. But this spot in the cold sun is his, and hers, and it’s the perfect quiet in which to steal an hour or two of undisturbed sleep – to wander beyond the waking world, and he would, usually, but –
But his palm is large enough to span the entire width of her back. And for all that she can’t speak a single word yet, and won’t be shaken from her slumber even by the courtyard chatter, he can’t take his eyes off the top of her head, and the soft dusting of hair peeking out of her knitted hat. That chubby cheek, pressed to his tunic, and her slightly parted mouth. He feels the hard realness of this world in the ground beneath him; feels the glare of the winter sun, bright and cold. But his daughter is soft, impossibly so – a living reminder of the potential that lies beneath that hard earth.
And so, quietly enraptured, he stays awake watching – etching every detail into his memory, every small noise and movement. No ancient battlefields or crystal spires to beckon a nostalgic mind, only the newness of her being, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest beneath his palm.
The crib is rarely left unattended.
“You didn’t have the best soil,” Cole says. “But you grew anyway. I can feel you, growing. Your thoughts, too bright for words. Colours and sounds, it’s all a little too bright for you, but you will get there.”
A pause, then – “Sprouting, smiling, stubborn, but you’re not a weed,” he adds, not an observation, but a statement that falls with quiet determination, though there is no one around to hear.
“Weeds are unwelcome, unwanted. You never were.”