Dagny: An Inheritance Cycle Fanfiction.

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*Takes place roughly twenty years after the events of Inheritance.

Dagny shoved aside the folds of faded old fabric, hunching her shoulders to walk through the doorway. Her house, for want of a better word, was a ruined, abandoned shed with rotted wooden planks over the worse holes in the crumbling stonework. It had probably been the home of a rich merchant's servants, back when this was the wealthy quarter of the city. However, the area had long been given over to slums and the formerly luxurious homes of the upper class converted into tenements.
The whole place stank of dust and damp.

"Dagny?" A small, thin figure stood up from the floor when she came in. Brigitta blinked in the daylight streaming in through the gap in the ragged curtain over the doorway.

"It's me." She smiled reassuringly at her little sister. Brigitta's long, dark hair fell knotted and unkempt down her back and she shivered in her oversized, threadbare shirt and patched leggings. Her hungry eyes shone out of her pale, grimy face.

"Did you - " She asked eagerly. Dagny held up a fat loaf of bread, grinning when Brigitta's words cut off in a delighted gasp.

"A whole loaf." Awe suffused her sister's words. "How did you -"

Dagny set the loaf down on the rickety table, taking her knife from her belt. She wiped it on the torn edge of her shirt, then busied herself slicing the loaf.

"That pretty young thing Crimley's got an eye for showed up." She explained, grinning with unconcealed amusement. Brigitta sniggered. "He wasn't exactly keeping a close eye on his wares."

She passed Brigitta a thick slice and the tiny girl tore into it with all the savagery of a hungry wolf.

"Is she...?"

Mouth still full, Brigitta jerked her head towards the back end of the shed. "She's still asleep." She added, words muffled by bread.

Dagny left her to her breakfast, moving with the quietness of a born thief towards a frail, blanket-covered form lying huddled on the floor beside the far wall. She dropped to her knees beside it.

"Mama? Wake up." She brushed sweaty, matted hair tenderly from her mother's forehead. The sleeping woman stirred, eyelids fluttering.

"Mama, you need your breakfast." Gently, gently as possible, Dagny shook her mother awake. Disorientated and bleary-eyed, she sat up, blankets pooling around her waist.

"What is it...what..?" Her mother blinked sleepily at her.

"It's time for breakfast." Dagny said patiently, holding out the hunk of bread as evidence. Her mother stared blankly at her, a crinkle appearing between her brows.

"Mother?" Mama asked, her eyes clouded with confusion and worry. Dagny's chest tightened. Mama thought she was her own grandmother, who was more than twenty years dead.

"It's time for breakfast, Alivia." She repeated, expertly suppressing her upset and switching to her mother's given name.

"I..no, Mother. I'm not hungry, I just want..want to sleep." Mama made to lie back down on her crumpled nest of blankets and Dagny grabbed her skinny arm, careful not to hurt her.

"No, Alivia." She put more force behind the words this time. "You need to eat."

Her mother stared at her with blank eyes for a moment, like she was couldn't understand what she was hearing. Then, slowly and jerkily as a marionette, she reached for the bread. Dagny stood up noiselessly, watching to make sure she ate. Mama worried at the food, tearing it into tiny, fractured pieces before delicately placing them between her lips. But she ate.

Dagny turned back to the table to find Brigitta had finished her breakfast. She was watching her mother wordlessly, with sad, fathomless eyes. Dagny cleared her throat, casting about for something to say. Brigitta looked towards her sister, away from their mother, seeming to dismiss her momentary sorrow.

"Dagny, can we go down to main square?"

Dagny was sure her face reflected her surprise. "Main square?" The central diamond of the city was not a place frequented by their kind of people. It was usually too overrun with nobles and fat, gold-laden merchants for the constabulary, Lord Risthart's men, to let anyone from the slums - anyone who looked like a pickpocket - within a stone's throw of the place. Brigitta used to love to run down and sigh at the ladies' finery but enough hard cuffs around the head from the soldiers had cured her of that.

"Not right now." Brigitta rushed out quickly. "Maybe in an hour or two, I don't know - "

She was tripping over herself trying to get the words out. For whatever reason, she was especially eager to go down to main square today.

"I promised Rowan I'd lend him a hand down at the market." Dagny pointed out, half-frowning.

"You'd get better pickings in main square." Brigitta pleaded.

Dagny snorted. "We'd be caught in a minute."

"Not today!" Brigitta corrected. She was becoming desperately agitated, Dagny saw with alarm.

"What's today?" She probed, trying to make her voice soothing, placating. Like she was dealing with Mama in one of her moods.

"The elves are coming, with the dragon eggs and I wanted..." Brigitta trailed off, flushing.

"That's today?" Dagny had known the annual visit of the dragon-egg couriers was coming. It was impossible to not notice, the entire city was a flurry of preparations. She just hadn't realised it was today.

"Of course you can go down, Bree. Of course, I just didn't realise it was today." She had to smile at the gigantic beam that lit up Brigitta's face. "I'll ask Rowan to go with you."

He would go, she was certain. Brigitta had been right earlier, today was the one day of the year when the constables would be too preoccupied to worry themselves with thieving street rats. As well as that, the square would be jostling with lords and ladies more concerned with sparkling dragon eggs than their own valuables.

Her sister's face fell slightly. "I wanted you to come with me."

"Oh." Dagny's heart sank. "I can't, Bree. She can't be left on her own."

"But, she's been so good lately!" Brigitta argued. Dagny winced at the patronising tone she used when referring to Mama. Brigitta doesn't remember Mama before, she reminded herself. She doesn't know any different.

"And she's not in a mood today! She's not using magic or anything! She's just sleepy." Brigitta turned her most pleading eyes on Dagny. "Please. She'll go back to sleep when she's done eating, you know she will."

"But Bree - " Dagny started.

"Please, Dagny." Brigitta suddenly looked close to tears. "She won't wander off. She'll hardly even move, I'd bet. We never get to do anything that's only fun."

Guilt and misgiving twisted like twin knives in her gut. She didn't want to leave Mama alone, no matter how low the chances of something happening were. But she remembered the look on Brigitta's face as she'd watched Dagny cajoling Mama to eat. This wasn't fair on her. Brigitta was the child, Brigitta was the one who deserved to be minded and taken care of.

"I'll come then." She relented, shrugging like it was no big deal.

Brigitta's mouth fell open. "Really?" She sounded disbelieving, almost suspicious, like she was hearing something too good to be true.

Dagny smiled, covering her unease. "Really. We should go have some fun."

Brigitta tackled her into a joyous, bone-crushing hug.

The picture (if I added it correctly, fingers crossed) is of Winona Ryder, as Dagny.