Dragon Age One Shots

Daddy Anders

Only the cluck of the asshole rooster and the three hens who wanted nothing to do with him hustled across their small farm. There wasn't anyone for miles, which was how Anders liked it. He glanced across the falling-down fence to a single pile of straw bales he'd set up.

An old templar helmet perched on the top, and a grotesque, crude face was painted upon the side facing him. "Okay," Anders declared, trying to reassure himself, "you can do this. Hand up, palm flat–"

"I know, Dad!" The tongue sliced through him in a second. This twelve-year-old monster that inhabited his once sweet son rolled his eyes and flared his fingers out.

"Well," Anders folded his arms and leaned back against the less-rickety side of the fence. "Since you seem to already know everything, then you don't need me."

His son's face knotted up, those once chubby cheeks pulling tighter to his closed eyes. A dribble of veilfire tumbled from the extended fingers as sweat gushed from the boy. With a great gasp, his son released the force inside himself and glanced at the undisturbed bale.

"Damn it!"

"Language," Anders reprimanded without thought.

Those same snarling eyes burned through him, but the boy's newfound vocabulary remained unspoken at least. "This is so stupid!" his son shouted, a foot lashing out at the injustice of the world. "I can't do it! I'm not a...I'm not..." Tears rose in those sparkling eyes and Anders crumbled both inside and out.

On his knees, nearly eye to eye with Anders' growing weed, he took the boy's hand that'd shown signs of sparking fire for days. "You can do it," Anders said. His son glared at him, trying to hunt out the lies. "Here," he opened the clenched fist of his son and aimed it for the flammable straw. "What are you thinking about when you try to call the fade?"

"I dunno. Fire stuff, I guess."

"You're trying too hard. Think of the fire traveling from your palm, the great flames flying through the air, and knocking that ugly helmet off."

"Fine," the boy rolled his eyes for the seventh time that day, but he shut his smart-ass lip at least. Anders stepped back, watching as the crunched-up force of his son gave way to gentle guidance. Blue flame licked around his palm, spurts darting off the tips. With a flex of his hand, a ball of firey lightning shot clean off and struck the templar-bale's face.

"I did it? I did it!" his son cried as Anders grabbed the water bucket to douse the flames. The macabre face of the old enemy vanished from his son's first use of magic. "Sweet Maker," the boy shouted to the world, "I'm a mage!"

There was no fear in his voice. No worry of what that would mean to him or his future. No concern of hiding it from the world. No hate.

He was happy, joyfully pumping a fist in the air at this sentence written at his birth. At the fact that magic touched him. He wanted it in a way no other mage before him could. How every mage wished they could.

"Dad?" the triumphant voice faded as he stared across the grounds. "Are you crying?"

"No," Anders lied, wiping the tears from his cheeks. "It's the smoke from your fire, which you made."

"I did!" his son giddily danced in a circle of joy. The baby he got to hold in his hands, to teach to walk, to change a million diapers for. To watch the child grow into a man, to not have to look over his shoulder forever worrying that his only baby could be taken from him. To stand in the light of the Maker and teach his son the glories of what it is to be a mage.

"Dad," the stern visage glared at the aging man who'd stared off into the past, "I wanna do it again."

"Of course," Anders smiled. "And this time, try for two fireballs."

"Can I do that?"

"You can do anything you want."