* LEGACY.

“That so?” He can’t help the outward hostility he displays; it comes naturally to him in every meaning of the word. He’s always been this way, really. “I don’t know if I’d like to be called a fool, by friends or no.” Ah, yes, there goes the point, right over his head. He cracks his knuckles. “What’re you trying to say?”

His hands are shaking with the familiar sensation of anger. He tries to count backwards from ten, like father taught him before he died, but it does no good. So he whirls on her, on BETHANY, eyes alight with unjustified irritation and anger. 

“Why is it everyone thinks I have a personal vendetta against them?” He knows the answer, already: because he’s being an asshole, because that’s the only way he knows how to act. How to be. “Maybe I can’t be nice to everyone like you can, Bethany. Maybe I don’t even have a bad side.”

“Yes,” the Warden says. “If only you didn’t complain about it every time someone told you to do something.”

“Forgive me for not bending at the knee to kiss your boots, Inquisitor,” he says. The sarcasm is practically dripping from his words. “But what you did to my sibling isn’t something I’m going to forget.”

“No.” Ah, wonderful answer, Carver. “I learned a long time ago what being curious about affairs that aren’t theirs gets them.”

“You remind me of my father. Couldn’t tell you why, but...” He snorts. “You don’t look much alike, but he was a good man. You are too, I’m willing to bet.” And that’s a miracle; Carver doesn’t make bets often.

“I’m hoping this expedition will change things for us,” he says -- if only because silence from his sister is... uncanny. If he worries, the notion is wrapped up and put away for good. “It’d be nice not to have to go to the rings in Darktown to fight for dinner money, for once.”

“Andraste’s fucking tits, Marian, would you shut up? I can’t even hear myself think?” He’s got a raging headache from drinking too much last night, and she’s talking about something not entirely crucial -- at least, not to him.

“What’s the strongest thing you’ve got?” Whatever it is, he’s willing to pay for it -- as long as it isn’t watered down like the shit they served in the Hanged Man.