riverviewlogs | (open) memory share

Entry tags:

(open) memory share

who: Marian Hawke + y'all unfortunate enough to catch these memories
what: mmmmmmemories
when: October
where: in her head. in YOUR head. (feel free to have experienced them as they happened or watched as a bystander, whatever works!)
warnings: violence, death, murder, grief, second-person perspective, longass rambling, adorable doomed children. a puppy! just the one.

You are 24. Carver is tall and eighteen and a grown man by most respects and still your baby brother in all others, he lifts his sword, he snarls at the ogre that towers over him and your mother, he charges, and the ogre catches him easily, slams his suddenly-small body to the rocky ground with a deafening roar. You can't move, your sword is frozen in your hand, Carver’s head is all bloody, his ribs crumpled, his eyes wide and unblinking and your mother is screaming. The ogre is turning, you can’t move, it lowers its head, horns pointed straight at you, your baby sister is rushing in front of you, magic sparking at her fingers and over her staff, she looks so fragile now with her own twin a wreck of limbs in the dirt, and you can move again, your gloved hand bruising-hard in her side as you shove her away,

not her too

Then the ogre is dead, your sword is covered in its black ichor-blood, and your mother is still screaming Carver's name. He doesn't answer. Your home is in flames only ten miles behind you, and the back of your baby brother's head is caved in, and your mother is sobbing, and your baby sister is stiff with terror and grief. There are strangers muttering prayers to a god you never believed in, your sword is loose in your numb fingers, and

this is your fault

What kind of sister are you? It’s your job to keep them safe. Keep them safe, Mary-bear, keep them safe for Father. Mother’s voice like glass shards in your ears,

How could you let him run off like that?

How could you? How could you let this happen, Marian?

-

You are 14. There’s a Templar at the door, a man all the way from Redcliffe, asking if anyone in the village has seen an apostate,

very dangerous

he assures you soberly, while Mother continues to chop carrots and nods with a tense frown,

a few years older than you, dear, blond hair, tall,

and you’re good enough now not to let the relief show on your face. Couldn’t be describing anyone less like Father or Bethany if he tried! Then Bethany comes running from the back room, snowflakes dusting off her pink little fingers, bare feet slipping on the carpet,

Mother! Look what Father taught me!

and the entire room freezes over as sharply as if she had cast a blizzard from the ceiling. The man with the Blade of Mercy on his armor looks between you and Bethany, her face gone sheet-white, snow still falling from her cupped hands.

In one motion, you snatch the blade from Mother’s hand and plunge it into the Templar’s exposed throat, wrenching it through with all your strength. Blood bursts in a hot spray over your face, his body collapsing on the floor with a clatter of armor, and Mother scoops Bethany in her arms and dashes to the back of the house.

You wipe the knife on your skirt. Your hands are steady.

-

You are 5. The twins are still safe inside Mother’s belly, and you lay your head on it to listen, whispering, “Kick!” Mother strokes your hair and hushes you, but you’re so bored in the back of the mule cart, hiding in a crate with a canvas over it. You shift closer to Mother, trying to get comfortable when there’s so little room between you and her and the only bag of things she took from the house.

Why did we have to move again?

Because Father put out the neighbor’s barn fire with magic and even if it was nice of him, the Templars won’t care, so we have to leave. Never tell anyone about Father’s magic, Mary-bear. They’ll take him away, and they’ll put that mark on his head, and make it so he doesn’t love you anymore. They won’t ever let him see us again. He’ll never meet the babies. He won’t laugh or tell stories or kiss you goodnight, so you must keep this secret. You nod solemnly, because Mother sounds so serious every time she says this, and she cups your face in her hands and pulls you close, kisses your nose to make you smile again.

(You see people with the brand on their foreheads in the market sometimes, and you always cling to Father a little harder. Did they have Mary-bears they used to love? Did they have babies who never got to hear them laugh? You want to ask them sometimes, but Mother pulls you away, and Father just looks sad when he stops at their stalls.)

-

You are 24. Your little brother is ashes, wrapped carefully in Bethany’s kerchief and tucked into the only bag Mother took from Lothering. The dragon-woman sees you to the coastline safely, as she swore, and the amulet she gave you feels like fire against your chest where it rests under your armor, and the ship captain is sneering at the four of you, you three Hawkes and the Vallen woman, his hand extended pointedly. “Kirkwall’s a popular place, and space’s goin’ fast,” he says, oil in his hair and his eyes and his voice, gaze skipping past your sweaty face and lingering on Bethany’s bare, tense shoulders, “and I dunno if eight gold’s really enough for all’s you. If you had somethin’ else…”

For a heartbeat’s moment, you wonder how difficult sailing a ship would really be without a captain, and if you could get away with slitting his throat and taking the crew for yourself without a drop of experience, because if he keeps licking his lips you’re going to carve them off, and Mother reaches into the folds of her skirt and pulls out a second coin purse. Carver’s commission. “Twenty sovereigns,” she says, voice flat as the plains you crossed to get here.

“Welcome aboard,” says the captain, snatching it away. “Hold’s the hatch to yer right.”

Your head spins a little, your throat clenched dry, and Bethany’s hand is hot and stiff in yours. He saved us again, you hear her murmur, saying aloud the same thought that drifted through your throbbing head.

-

You are 17. Bethany’s yelling, and you roll out of bed with one hand on your knife, already snarling, before you realize Carver is hooting with laughter, and Bethany is laying on the bed with a nail sticking out of her long braid, pinning it to the post, screeching words you later swear to Mother she did not learn from you. When you’ve used the hammer to pry the nail out, you hand it to Bethany, who fixes Carver with a blood-curdling glare. Carver goes pale and bolts out into the field, Bethany hot on his heels, and Father is laughing as loud as you are until Mother throws a sock at him and he goes to chase them both down and make them each apologize.

-

You are 15. You follow Carver to the Chantry, rough wooden swords in hand, to pester the Templars for training tips and practice. A few of them ignore you, but two of the younger ones think it’s cute, tell you how admirable you are for wanting to learn to protect people like they do. Carver glows with the praise, but you say nothing, and when you cross your blade with theirs, you wonder how many mages have been run through with them. Someone else’s father. Someone else’s Bethany.

As you follow their patterns, you make notes of where their own weaknesses are. One of them favors his left side. One of them is still slow with his shield. Another is slow against feints. If they ever come for your family, you’ll know how to strike them down.

It will never be your father. It will never be your Bethany.

-

You are 21. Father’s hand is weak and dry in yours, too pale by far, and his rich voice is hoarse and hollow now when he says softly, “Don’t cry, Mary-bear. I know you’ll look after your mother. Keep the twins safe.” There’s a horrible rasp in his lungs when he breathes, and the healer Mother contacted through the Collective had only shaken her head and closed her bag of herbs with a sigh when she heard it. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. Your sword is useless by the door. You would kill to protect your family, you have killed to protect them, but all your violence can’t do a thing to heal the sickness coursing through Father’s body, and what good are you? What good is magic, is your sword, is anything?

“You’re such a strong girl,” he murmurs, and you want to be good and not cry but you can’t help it, your vision blurs with tears so suddenly they spill in a flood before you can blink.

Not strong enough.

-

You are 18. Biscuit barrels right into your knees, a potato-shaped lump of skittering paws and sloppy kisses, but he’s still a mabari and they’re huge even when they’re babies, only destined to get bigger, and he knocks you right over. Father got him to be a guard dog, to keep an eye out for Templars when you aren’t around, but now he’s just a wriggling puppy with his paws on your shoulders, licking over your face and panting. “I think he’s chosen Marian,” Father laughs, and Bethany claps her hands together with delight. Carver scuffs his toes on the grass, scowling again.

Mother sighs. “I already have three children tracking half the mud in the country through my doorstep, and now a dog?”

“He’s a mabari, my dove! They’re more than just dogs!”

“Indeed. Is he going to scrub the floors himself?”

-

You are 24. Ostagar is a massacre. Monsters snarl on all sides, razor teeth and filthy, twisted blades, screams and roars and blood-curdling hisses, and the royal colors fall — The Warden blue falls – there was supposed to be a flanking charge, and it never comes, and you and Carver grind through the wall of darkspawn with your squad at your backs, even as it presses inexorably against you. One step forward, six steps back, and the men and women around you are dropping at a hideous pace, and Carver is screaming, voice hoarse, We have to win! as if by will alone he could stop them all. We have to keep our families safe!

You’re going to die here. You’re both going to die here. All of you, abandoned, alone, you’re going to die, and the horde will wash over you like the swell of a black, toxic sea, and Lothering will be swallowed under it. Your body is screaming with exhaustion and adrenaline, blade swinging in wide arcs, knocking down every monster that tries to pass you and reach your brother, but how much longer can you keep this up?

There’s a yank on the neck of your armor, pulling you from the path of a hissing arrow, and the captain shouts, Retreat! We cannot stand!

Carver yells wordlessly, and three of the other soldiers knock him to the ground and drag him away, and he fights them as hard as if they were ‘spawn themselves until the captain strikes him sensible across the jaw, and Carver falls silent, tears streaking pale through the filth and sweat of his cheeks under glassy wide eyes, and you hit your knees at his side only long enough to pull him to his own feet. You want t'protect yer family? the captain yells, while the surviving handful of the standard hauls backward, Go get 'em safe, boy!

He still moves to struggle forward, and you croak, if we die here, they’ll get Bethany, they’ll get Mother, and the words seem to strike him through the heart as much as any blade, and with a snarl, he turns his back on the horde and follows you all out.

-

You are 25. For a month underground, your breath comes hard through the damp cloth tied around your face, the sharp green smell of elfroot in your nose, kept there to keep the darkspawn blood from splashing into your mouth and tainting you. The monsters around you snarl and screech and spit venom, blighted flesh stretched tight over misshapen bones, rusted metal twisting around their limbs in a mockery of armor. Even when the tunnel around you is clear, you think you can feel them, their poison clawing at you from the pressing walls and low ceiling, and you understand Anders’ hatred of the place with an acidic certainty.

With the thaig door locked behind you, there’s no choice but to move forward and hope for an escape somewhere in the void-black warrens of darkspawn, and you think

Maker

at least Bethany is safe at home.

Then you drag your sore body to Lowtown, and Gamlen’s door is open, and Templars have trespassed upon your home, and Bethany looks as small and fragile trapped between them as she did when she tried to stand between you and that ogre. Their armor is silver and gleaming, their faces clean and serious, and they are more monstrous than the mindless creatures you just slaughtered your way through. You reach for the hilt of your sword, muscles screaming in exhaustion even as you do, and hiss

Over my dead body!

Bethany’s voice is the only thing that stops your advance, and she says

Please, sister. Don’t make it worse

with empty surrender in her eyes. As if there could be anything worse than letting them take her. It’s a war, between obeying your sister because you would do anything, anything she asked of you, and pulling out your sword and driving it between the Knight-Captain’s eyes, because you have long prepared for the moment you would die to protect her. Biscuit is growling low in his throat, ears flat against his skull, teeth bared at the intruders laying hands on one of his people. All you have to do is give her a moment to escape. All you have to do is distract them long enough to let her run.

The moment passes, sickeningly slow and heartbeat-fast. Mother sobs. The Knight-Captain tightens his hateful grip on Bethany’s slim shoulder, and leads her out of the hovel. They take her away. How could you let this happen, Marian? You failed her, just like you failed Carver, and you failed Father. Not strong enough, again. Not fast enough

Not enough.

-

You are 24. A coin purse sails across the room and lands with a surprisingly loud clatter on the kitchen table, the king’s seal burned into the leather, and Carver is standing in the doorway with his head lifted as if in pride, while his jaw clenches and arms cross stiff in defiance. Recruiters for the royal army have been passing through, making noises about Blight and battle, and you haven’t had a scrap of interest, but it seems Carver has been swayed by the promise of glory and honor. Neither of you have fought worse than bandits on the road, and he thinks he can follow the king into war?

Mother, near hysterics, knocks the coin purse off the table and begs him to take it back, tell the officers he changed his mind, he won’t go. “Tell them you have to stay for your family, Carver.”

“This is for my family,” Carver says shortly, mulish and stubborn, bitter with pride and years of bruising at the perimeter you keep around Bethany for safety. Where you see a wall, tall and guarded to keep anything from harming your family, Carver sees nothing but a cage, and you have never understood why he thinks there’s anything in the world worth bothering with beyond it. “The king says there’s darkspawn coming, and I’m going to fight them before they get here.”

Desperately, Mother turns to you. “Marian, you can’t let him do this!” and Carver huffs, snaps, “Marian can’t tell me what to do, I’m a grown man,” and Mother covers her face with her hands.

Anything you say, Carver will go and do the opposite, just to spite you, so in a moment of reckless optimism, you say, “I’ll keep an eye on him, Mother,” thinking he will twist a scowl and change his mind, but he throws a second coin purse on the table beside his own and says, “Knew you’d say that, sister. There’s your commission. We leave for field training in two weeks.”

Before you set out, armed and armored, you give Bethany a hug and kiss Mother on the tear-streaked cheek. “Don’t worry, Mother. Grey Wardens will be there, and we’re just infantry. We won’t even be close enough to see any darkspawn before it’s over, and Carver will complain about it when we get home.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(Lucretia experiences this memory in strange little bursts through the day, which is both disorientating and annoying: the later only because she enjoys a good story, and it's frustrating being unsure of what she's seeing, or of what is coming next. The memory cuts out again around midday and leaves Lucretia feeling haunted by the mental image of the little girl with the cupped hands full of snow. Something is dreadfully wrong, but she can't tell what.

The memory leaves her alone for the next few hours even though the feeling of wrongness sits with her; she completes her day's work and leaves to return to her apartment and it's while she's walking across Quarantine that Marian passes her going by the city center and the memory comes rushing back in full force. The knife; the blood; the body of the man hitting the ground with a wet thump. Lucretia stops dead in place, her hands shaking madly in ironic contrast to the steadiness of her hands in the memory, which are methodically wiping the blade off on her skirt.

When she comes back to herself, she realises she's grabbed the arm of the woman she had just passed and lets go immediately.)

I'm so sorry–

[ The immediate reaction to being grabbed is to reach for a blade, but Hawke's reflexes are such that she doesn't actually complete the motion of pulling a knife on the startled older woman who catches her. Experience tells her better than to underestimate anyone, no matter how seemingly harmless, and that this city seems calm only serves to make her more suspicious. Especially the last few days, with people behaving strangely around one another.

Rather like this, in fact. ]

What's wrong with you?

[ The demand itself is shamelessly rude, but her mother did not raise a complete barbarian, and rather than shrugging off the collision and stalking away, Hawke remains in place, expression both irritated and concerned. ]

(That's fine, she did grab her arm out of nowhere. Lucretia tries to gather herself, but she's still a little shaken from the memory. That spurt of blood is still a bright, almost comical red on the backs of her eyes when she blinks.)

I saw something, (she ventures, linking her hands contemplatively together.) I– have you been experiencing visions at all, lately? Shared dreams... it's confusing. I just had another one now, and it startled me; I'm sorry, for grabbing you.

[ So that's what everyone's been fussing over. It fits with the odd, unsettling feeling Hawke woke up with, thinking she recalled a language she'd never heard before. ]

... Something like that. Do you know what it is?

I have no idea. Another trial, I suppose.

(Considering the ghosts that have been milling across the city, she can't say she's particularly surprised about it.)

The memories I have seen up until now have never been violent before. (She hopes that makes this recent one an outlier.)

[ How fortunate (Hawke assumes,) to live unaccustomed to violence.

... Alright, her curiosity gets the better of her: ]

Are they all the same person's, then?

[ Might as well figure out what she's in for, if this is spreading. ]

No, they can't be... I've experienced them both from my friends, and from people I don't know so well.

(Lucretia's brow furrows, her voice dropping low: she's thinking out loud, now.) I've recognised each point of view I have experienced thus far though, save this one. A mother... and a little girl with snow in her hands.

(What does it mean?)

[ Hawke's attention, drifting away with the apparent lack of real information, snaps back to the other woman, and she frowns sharply. That sounds familiar. ]

Violent, you said.

[ It's... less of a question. ]

(She doesn't take Hawke's sudden interest for anything other than that– interest.)

Yes. A man came to the door, and I killed him.

(Lucretia has her own memories of killing a man already: as if she needs somebody else's, too.)

[ It was only memorable for being her first. Not even the most violent. Just the first. ]

I killed him. With Mother's knife. How could you possibly —

[ She isn't ashamed of it, because she went on to do it countless more times, but it's hardly something she offers up on a plate to anyone who passes by. But it's not like Lucretia stole it, so Hawke's bristling dismay is more of a generally directed thing than a targeted one.

Shortly: ] Well. If that bothered you, let's hope you don't see any more of mine.

(Lucretia looks at her sharply, surprised.)

It was yours? (If she takes a moment to think, there had been a small clue to this: the last of the memory triggering the moment she had spotted Hawke walking through the streets. How interesting. She has a lot of questions.)

Why did you kill him? (It isn't judgemental at all, simply curious.)

[ The question isn't exactly surprising, though even a judgmental approach would have hardly dented Hawke's casual outlook. ]

He was a Templar. He would have taken my sister.

[ Hawke thinks of it now for the first time in years, a memory she hardly ever has reason to dwell on. One of the few times Bethany had tried to follow Father's encouragement of enjoying her magic, and then for her effort been immediately confronted with the threat they all so greatly fear. ]

Edited 2017-10-12 07:54 (UTC)

(Oh, she's heard that word before.)

The templars... (she echoes, mind racing. That's right: Anders had mentioned them with jaw set and eyes blazing; the heat of his anger had been palpable enough to make her lean away from the conversation.)

They lock people away, for knowing magic. (No wonder Hawke had attacked the man at the door.)

[ Hah. The way she mulls that over, it sounds like she's met Anders. ]

Yes. At their least. So killing them is easy.

Sure.

(She gets that. If somebody tried to take away somebody she loved, she'd do everything in her power to stop them.)

Why do they do that? What is so wrong with magic?

[ Hawke barks a laugh, desert-dry. ] Do you want the theological excuse, the historical excuse, or the economic excuse?

[ Then she shakes her head, rubs her temple. Standing in the middle of the street providing context for her childhood is not what she had intended when she walked out of the commune today, but now that her memories are in someone else's head... ]

I mean, Maker, do you actually want to know? It doesn't even apply here.

All three, if you have the time.

(She knows she's blatantly intruding upon this woman's time now; she hasn't even supplied her with her name. Lucretia forces herself to backtrack.)

Sorry– I am genuinely interested, but not if speaking on the subject makes you uncomfortable. Could I perhaps get you a drink? To apologise, for the intrusion.

[ It's not discomfort but suspicion, and confusion, that has Hawke frowning at her. Maybe she assumed wrong and the woman hasn't met Anders, given that Hawke would otherwise have thought he'd offer that opinion already. ]

Why?

(Lucretia shrugs a shoulder, unsure of what part of this she's questioning. Probably all of it.)

Because I want to talk to you more, and I'd like to compensate you for both your time and inconveniencing you? As for my interest in the templars: I'm a curious person. That's all. (Sue her.)

[ Given that Hawke has done her own share of intrusively interrogating people when she's curious, it's not exactly unwarranted. So she's still wary, but she nods once, sharp. ]

Fine.

(Lucretia raises an eyebrow, but she's smiling all the same.)

Yeah? You don't have to agree just for my sake.

( Had this memory been anything other than the bittersweet moment that it was, Anders would have felt bad for being a spectator to it. He doesn't want to pry into anything Hawke would not feel comfortable talking about, after all — especially when they're still trying to get to know one another. Though that was mostly Anders' fault for knowing a Hawke that wasn't like her.

That doesn't stop him from smiling, though, when he watches the scene unfold before him, in a way that was not unlike the movies that his floormates play on the screen in the living room. He recognizes Carver, Leandra, and Marian on sight — then Bethany and Malcolm a little while later. Hawke never spoke about either of them much, so seeing them here in the proverbial flesh, was a privilege that Anders felt a little unworthy to have. )

You look happy. ( He says, without breaking his gaze from the memory. ) I'm glad you were able to live with your father and sister for as long as you did.

[ It takes a few moments for Hawke to even acknowledge Anders, caught up as she is in her own memory. She never remembers her dreams with such a clarity, not the way Bethany once described being aware in the Fade, so seeing it is almost new again for her too. There's piercing shrieks and hollers from the outside, Mother pressing her hand against her mouth to smother a smile while she turns back to the stove, and a coltish teenage Marian tucking her stolen knife back under her pillow. ]

I was happy.

[ And it's easy to admit, even with how this Anders should be a stranger. ]

We were lucky. I knew it then, of course, but now...

It's not your fault.

( He wants to assure her of that, even if the assurance itself is quite hollow, given that he doesn't know what happened to Bethany and Carver or even Malcolm. But he knows that Hawke cares deeply for her family — just the same as the Hawke that he had known — so it's not a far stretch for him to say, )

I'm sure you did everything that you could for them.

[ But that's not true, is it? Some different version of her succeeded where she failed, and kept Carver safe, and she didn't. Knowing she should have been able to better protect him was difficult enough, but the fact that Anders knew him as a living boy while Bethany burned him and Hawke scattered his ashes on the Waking Sea is worse. What else did his Hawke do that she couldn't? Were they not stupid enough to leave Bethany alone in a city crawling with Templars?

It's kind of him to say regardless, considering he doesn't need to be. ]

Maybe.

[ In front of them, Father herds the twins back into the house, hammer tucked safely away in his belt. They're still looking a little mutinous, both covered with grass, Bethany missing a sock and Carver with icicles dangling from his nose, but they shake hands theatrically for Mother's sake to indicate their successful truce. ]

Is he happy, in Kirkwall?

[ Hah. Maker, Carver in Hightown. He probably unnerves the neighbors with his scowling as much as Hawke herself does. At least Bethany is sweet enough to soothe any offended snobs. ]

Carver? Are you joking?

( Anders certainly acts she had, with the way he's chuckling. Not because it's funny, of course, but because he's trying his best to cover up the sorrow that fills him every time they get too close to talking about what happened to Carver. Or even to Bethany.

Maker, did this Hawke really end up losing the both of them? Anders looks at her, his lips tilting into a purposeful smile, hoping that those thoughts don't end up coloring his expression. )

All he ever did was complain. About the templars, about his brother, about not being able to get a job with the guard. If he ever had anything good to say about Kirkwall, I certainly wasn't around to hear it.

His brother...

[ That's so odd to hear. Mother never had another son.

Either way, the look on Anders' face makes no impact on Hawke, because she still can't bring herself to look away from her family. Mother's hair hasn't been so dark in years. Father seems somehow taller than Hawke remembers him, his smile wide under his bristly beard. And Carver has a growth spurt coming, if Hawke remembers right, the next few months waking up elbows and knees all over, getting his own cot instead of sharing the bed with his sisters. ]

Carver was never happy unless he was complaining, really. Kirkwall could have been a paradise and I bet he'd have hated the weather.

[ It's the most she's talked about Carver at all since Ferelden, and grief claws its way up her throat like it's still fresh and waiting for her. ]

And Bethany? Is she safe?

( Anders doesn't give much of a thought to his family anymore. He's never had much of a reason to, not since the first time he ran away from the Circle. Back when he only wanted to get out to see his parents, not to get out for good and live free from the constant scrutiny and abuse he suffered at the hands of the templars.

He's glad Hawke has all these memories of her sister. She seemed like an extraordinary and charming girl, from what little Anders has heard of her. )

She's... ( No, he can't say it like that. Anders looks away from her, from the memory playing out before them, because he couldn't bear to watch the carefree girl with her long dark braid and her kind smile while he confessed, ) She never made it to Kirkwall.

I'm sorry. ( For having to tell her this, and for what happened to Bethany. )

No. No, that's — no, that can't be true.

[ It's soft, hushed, as if she's afraid raising her voice will startle the memory when she turns away from it to stare at him, raw with shock. The grief in her turns to acid, a burn that clenches around her ribs at the foreign, unwelcome thought of failing to protect her family yet again. That it wouldn't have been, strictly speaking, her Bethany is no comfort, because Bethany is always hers, is always her responsibility as much as Carver, and could she really have failed her like that too?

Of course she could. She did, after all. Foolish of her to think it might have been better another way.

For a moment, Hawke swells with a wave of anger, with hatred — for this stranger, looking like Anders and telling her this, for herself, being stupid enough to ask when she could have left well enough alone, for the other Hawke, letting Bethany die — but it recedes as abruptly as it came in an instant, leaving her with only guilt. As if she's any better. She turns away again, to watch Carver stab at his eggs, to watch Bethany delicately cut her ham into little bites. ]

Maker, I can't do anything right for them, can I?

Don't be so hard on yourself.

( Easy for him to say. He wasn't there when that ogre attacked Hawke's family, he couldn't say whether Hawke had done enough to save either of them. But he believes in Hawke, know that they are good and they have their heart in the right place. Some of that may be residual feelings for the Hawke that he had known but her — Marian — she's never given him any reason to believe that she was any less good than the one that he had known. )

You couldn't have foreseen what could have happened, to either of them. I really wish I could have met her... Was she able to escape from Ferelden with you?

( The way she reacted suggests that she did. It's a relief to know that, at least. He couldn't imagine what they would be like, to lose the both of her siblings to Blight. )

[ Hawke's scoff is hollow and sharp-edged as it leaves her mouth, and she can't look back at him again. Kind, still, but spoken like someone who wasn't the eldest, who couldn't possibly know that blame comes with the territory.

No, that's not a fair thought. It isn't his fault. ]

For all the good it did. The Templars still...

[ The memory is almost a taunt now. The twins are happy, despite the dirt stains on Bethany's nightgown and bits of grass sticking out of Carver's shirt from their scuffle, and Hawke could almost reach out and touch them, ruffle their hair and promise to make sure they could always fight each other and no one else. But Carver is dead, and Bethany takes her meals in a cage, and Hawke may as well have put them both there herself. ]

You were her friend. [ Well. The Anders she knew, but it goes without saying. ] She said you remind her of Father.

[ Which is not a connection Hawke would have made herself for a number of reasons, but she can tell where Bethany sees it. ]

( He doesn't take offense to the scoffing, at least, because it's true. He doesn't know what she's going through, doesn't know what it's like to have someone other than himself to look out for. Even with Justice in his head, pushing him to free the mages from their jailers, to stick his neck out and tend to the refugees, it's always been his life that he's had to be worried about.

If she wanted to take some of that anger out on him, he can't say he'd mind that either, if it would make her feel better. He certainly doesn't, after hearing how close the Anders that she remembers was to her sister. A look of remorse passes over his features before he answers, )

She thinks too highly of me. ( Or Anders just thinks too lowly of himself. Either way, he's humbled to hear that. ) I never knew much about her, other than the fact that she was a mage and she had a kind heart. Carver never spoke much about her.

( Not to him, anyway. )

It was good for her to have you to talk to, I think. There's only so much I could ever... [ and she trails off with an aborted, helpless little shrug. Magic. What does she know? Hawke could step into their father's shoes on the farm, in the house, keeping her family fed and sheltered, but the best she could do for Bethany was buy her books through the Collective and keep burying Templars out in the woods.

It was nice, actually, to hear them talk of spells and spirits and things Hawke couldn't understand. Almost normal, the way things could have been for Bethany if the Circle hadn't always followed them like a hunter with a net. Maybe for both of them. ]

... And Carver didn't like you much at all, did he?

[ Not that not speaking of Bethany would be the only suggestion. They never spoke about her to anyone, not really. It was safer not to, for her sake, less frightening for her to simply be the shy, reserved Hawke girl who only came out for Chantry services. Whatever the divergence, Hawke knew her brother, even if she can't have ever known the Carver who made it to Kirkwall, the Carver that had been one blade in a house of mages, and she knows the shape his bitterness made him. Anders would surely have been fingers in a bruise, just by being there.

If anything, it actually brings the ghost of a smile to Hawke's thinned lips, thinking of Carver going around Kirkwall with a sulk like a wet cat. ]

[Osomatsu's been having dreams. Really bad dreams. Most of them are fleeting moments, of a world he's never seen, people he's never known. At first, he chalks it up to his mind playing tricks on him. But then he has such a vivid dream that it feels almost like a memory.

A boy... his brother? Crushed by a beast, and he's standing there, powerless, to stop it.

It hurts. He's racked with guilt, so much that it makes him sick. He wonders if his other brothers are all right, if the ones who aren't in Riverview are still alive. These visions eat away at his thoughts, and he's walking back to the communal house from his place of work in a daze.

He accidentally bumps into someone, spilling his iced coffee on them] Aw, shit! [what a bad day. Where's a napkin?] S-sorry!

[how could you not keep them safe?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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#2!

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the one where carver's a little shit

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#1 because older sibling feels