Work Text:
Marian looked up from her book, the scent of something cooking reaching her all the way from the kitchens. Considering the size of the Amell estate, that was saying something. She thought about letting it go, but it could be that Sandal had gotten in to something, or that Bodhan was about to inflict some horrifying dwarven delicacy on her come morning.
"Talk about a way to put one of breakfast," she commented to herself. There was nothing for it but to go investigate. Levering herself out of her chair, she set Varric's most recent story to the side and headed for the servant's stairs. As she neared the kitchens, she could smell the sugar, and then heard something she hadn't since the twins had been little.
Her mother was singing.
Keeping to the shadowed entryway, she watched as her mother sung under her breath, some old lullaby or another, and crimped the edges of a pie together. Marian had never thought to ask her mother how she learned to cook after running away with Malcolm Hawke, but she must have learned, because Marian remembered her mother insisting on family dinners and despairing at Marian's own inability to cook anything at all.
Mother, still singing, slid the pie in to the oven and then turned to begin to clean up the flour and other baking debris. However, when she saw Marian, she jumped, momentarily startled.
"Maker's breath, Marian, you surprised me. What are you doing there, skulking in shadows? Isn't that what your friend Isabela does?" Mother asked sharply, and Marian resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The woman had never really warmed to any of the friends she had made in Kirkwall, save perhaps Varric, and then only because of the woman adored his stories.
“As it’s rather late for pie baking, I didn’t want to ruin your concentration. You could have dropped it, which would have been a tragedy,” she drawled, stepping out of the doorway and leaning her elbows on the kitchen worktable.
“Of course, you would say that’s the tragedy,” Mother snipped, and Marian bristled. The sarcastic reply was at the tip of her tongue: Well, should I have taken Beth in to the Deep Roads, then? What choice was right, Mother, because you can’t have it both ways.
But she didn’t say it. It took a supreme effort of will, but she held back. For once.
“Honestly? I heard you singing. I… didn’t want to interrupt. You haven’t sung in a long time.” Marian didn’t look at her mother, didn’t watch her Mother’s face for her expression. They had never really understood each other, and she wasn’t sure they were going to start. But maybe there could be a truce. Her mother said nothing, and Marian spoke to fill the silence, “I miss them, too, you know.”
“Sometimes, daughter, it is difficult to tell,” Mother said, but her tone carried not reproach or recrimination, just weariness. “But never mind that. I’m sure you have things to do tomorrow, and I shall see you off with something warm and good in your stomach. You don’t eat enough.”
“Yes, Mother.” Marian did roll her eyes then. It was an old quibble between them, which now that she thought of it, they all were. Marian ate plenty, she had to if she was going to keep up in her armor and with a greatsword on her back, it just so happened that doing so kept her trim. The trim figure being interpreted as being too skinny by her mother, of course.
“Very well, I shall see you in the morning. Try not to burn down the estate making pie. We only just unpacked the last crate,” she said, heading up the stairs.
“Sleep well, Marian,” her mother said quietly as she left, almost too softly to hear, and Marian wondered with Carver dead and Beth in the Circle, if she and her mother might find common ground at last.
Probably not, she knew, but it was a nice thought regardless.