A/N: Drabbles where cities have souls, and Kirkwall chooses Hawke to personify it
Cities have souls, and Kirkwall has been without one for far too long.
It needed someone with the pragmatism of the magisters that founded it, with the overwhelming need to survive of the slaves working the mines, with the determination that built it from mud and wood.
It needed someone, and it didn’t have them until Hawke arrived.
The mage is a contained fire, a leashed storm, a natural disaster in human form.
The mage has power-so much power, power like the magisters of old-but she keeps it close.
She waits to unleash it, waits until the right moment, and then she explodes.
Her power tastes of the blood on magister’s hands, tastes of the corpses of slaves.
And, oh, Hawke is determined.
Hawke fled the blight with a smile, Hawke watched her father slowly suffer, her sister bleed out, her brother condemned to a life of exile, and Hawke still went on.
Hawke is the magister and the slave in one.
The mages in gallows love Hawke fiercely, but fear her all the same.
Hawke is free but still cares for them. Hawke is gentle but still has blood on her hands, blood that anyone with half a mind can see.
They think she is still human, still able to die or be branded by the templars, until an apprentice sees shackles on her wrists.
They blink and the shackles are gone, the slave brand on her neck has disappeared, but they know, they know, the marks still echo in the fade.
The apprentice whispers to another and that apprentice whispers to another, and soon even the first enchanter has heard.
The first enchanter knows the stories, knows Kirkwall has spent ages searching for a vessel, and he shivers.
Varric knows he is Kirkwall’s.
He can’t claim a city like this is his, he knows it’s impossible to tame a being built on blood and magic and death.
But he loves it all the same, loves what it means, what it gives him.
Hawke is nothing to his beloved city, Hawke is just a refuge, and that’s what he thinks until he looks at her one night.
There is a crown on her head, a crown made of golden snakes, a crown with blood dripping from its spires.
He blinks once and it is gone.
Varric wants to forget but he can’t, he knows the stories.
He watches as Hawke walks the streets, watches as she always ends up where she needs to be, watches as she meets the cruelty of the city with a harshness of her own.
Varric knows what it means.
Hawke is a monster. She’s a monster with a pretty smile and a gentle heart, but a monster all the same.
Hawke is a monster, and the city he loves is a monster too.
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