IT'S A SAD SIGHT COME TO GREET THE LADY, a sad sound, one lonely set of footsteps, one pulse, where there should be two. One for himself, another for the Champion he has become. Standing here, on the threshold of personhood, something wells up in him, anger already made tired, blood in a cut. The man here, bereft of gentility, he's an animal caught in a trap. And despite blunt molars he's prepared to chew his own leg off to escape the jaws. Sure, somewhere in the pulsing red heart of him that one day he will be more than the champion. He will be less, whittled down into the barest sliver of himself. A man standing obscured before the mirror, the impression of a face seen through the fog, distorted by the waving of a hand - his poor skin, his aching muscles, crying out for some relief. bowed at the feet of andraste, or his own holy relic, his sacred woman. kirkwall herself, her hems dirty from the docks, from his scrabbling bloody hands beseeching her for some kernel of mercy. something he hopes can still sprout despite the winters.
He's not yet used to the veneer that covers her, wants to peel it back from the corners like turning the pages of a journal. To hold the mask in his hands and see, finally, what's truly hiding beneath. Sure, too, that underneath that porcelain facade there lies a woman, trembling and holy, her dark circles, her worn hands, the white knuckled grip with which she holds onto that she cares for. What are you running from? What are you running toward? Or, like the champion are you merely standing your ground and calling that living?
Hawke, and he's never been questioning, never been curious, content to be dragged along in the tide, until now. Until a moment months ago, his heart, made for running made to stop, overworked and tired, eligible to burst forth. Say Lady, he thinks, Say Lady, do you too have an anger so worn down it's been made soft from constant creases? Like paper balled in a fist? Or are you carrying it around, a blade designed to cut, a scalpel to carve out the rot? Lady, do you have a rage that is killing you, or have you learned to hold yours like a babe in arms? ( I haven't, some quiet unsung part of him whispers, like hooves in the tall grass, like the hush of antlers through leaves, I haven't but I'm trying to. )
“You, and many others. One can only be so stern lest they break.”
A smile meets the words as they tangle on his tongue, yes, she has has never been stern, yes, he has always been this, a jester dressed in armor, a strong sword arm, a fool, losing all the things he's holding tightest to. They are, both, wearing masks, they are, both incapable of removing them, no seams to be found, a shell covering lacking in any means to pry themselves free. She is, as ever, despite the exhaustion wilting at her edges a shining mother of pearl, and he is nothing so grand, an oyster, good only for it's usefulness, copper a dozen.
He offers his arm with something close to a gallant bow, with something quicksilver and teasing, a knife in the light for how it glints before it disappears.
"Oh, but I am rarely in need of reason...How is she?"
As if his very being is perched to fall with those words, as if he's not hanging with bated breath and screaming muscles for an answer. A deer in the yard, kicking up a fuss, trampling the fresh growth of spring barely peeking from the winter hardened earth. A deer in the brush asking a predator at their door for some pale blue hope. Are you, too, out in the cold looking for yourself the way I am?
Do you still have hope Lady? And is there hope enough for me too?
