cadash x josephine is so underrated.... not just because cadash/brosca/aeducan x anyone is generally slept on (though that's also true). not just because 'i'm hoping you like bad girls/bad boys' as the dwarf-exclusive pickup line is hilarious. there are Layers.
house cadash - warrior caste, once. something else now, but it still tastes like blood in their mouth, feels like steel in their hands, the carta gets its cut - "surely you can't miss that life."
josephine's hands are soft but for small calluses courtesy of her pen. her pen! her heart is aching for a young man who tried to end her life years ago. meanwhile there isn't enough space in skyhold for the blood cadash has spilled. if they wept for every purposeful death they'd caused, much less accidental ones, all of orlais would be under water.
josephine does her best to keep the rumours of their carta past from spreading like wildfire - or at least spin them in such a way that makes protection rackets and blood feuds sound charmingly roguish - but her faith is plain to see and she's placed it in someone whose name belongs to the past, which pursues them doggedly in the present.
lady montilyet holds her family crest in her hands like a fragile, precious thing. because it is. cadash knows. you live and die according to your family's reputation and whatever piecemeal fortune the ancestors permit. but the ancestors made their minds up about house cadash long ago, didn't they? or so the shaperate says.
casteless, surfacer, sun-touched. 'shall i compare you to the sun?' josephine, josephine - 'i'll handle the subject of your past carefully, herald' - there is blood on my hands, josephine - 'i hope you'll find life more peaceful here' - i've had to fight for every scrap of peace i've ever had, josephine - 'my dearest one, i love you precisely the way you are.'
