TOO HAWKE, HAWKE DAMN

    There should be some sense of understanding there, he guesses, knowing her own brother’s ties to the order. He’s partially evasive, but he knows it won’t do him much good – and the invasiveness of this Calling, artificially induced or no, certainly doesn’t make matters better. They’re in this together, for the time being. He rubs at his forehead with the back of his hand, wiping the accumulating sweat away with a sigh. Maker, do they ever have a lot to deal with. Nothing they can’t handle, he supposes, with a half-hearted grin.

  She wouldn’t have asked a dumb question had she known, but even despite her relatively close relationship with her younger brother, there had been an unknown secrecy, something she hadn’t had the time nor the words to prod at him for. She sighs as the wind picks up again, and Hawke’s gauntlet arm covers her face briefly until it passes. Maker, she never wants to see desert again, much less trudge through it without a horse.

since I miss my Hawke I’m gonna talk about this big mage nerd here because it’s who I usually default to in my head.

Desdemona is an Entropy / Force mage, and spends hours at night reading tomes about magic. Sometimes, she gets so into it with her fingers fiddling off to the side that she’ll accidentally cast a spell. One time, it happened to the dog, hitting him with a minor nightmare cloud. She felt guilty for months after.

she’s 6′1″, and while not super buff, she trained enough to be able to wear a full set of armour in the days of being a smuggler with Carver. Just to prevent suspicions but also to make things easier in case they got rough. Her build is something like Gwendoline Christie. 

she despises blood magic long before Leandra died, but considering how nasty entropy can get, it’s more than a little hypocritical on her end.

she actually really seemed to click and befriend Fenris, and out of the companions save for Isabela (the gf) and Varric of course, he’s her closest friend. 

She sided mages of course, but there was a time she tried to talk to Meredith to see what she wanted and used the ‘flirt’(purple) option just to try and butter her up to the best of her ability. It didn’t work, but she made good coin on that bet.

She’s actually really close to Carver, as in she would fight the entirety of Kirkwall for him - exemplified in that quest in Act 3 when they kidnap him. You don’t mess with her family. 

How long had it been? Because it felt like ages.

Kirkwall seemed like a dream now, and her time with the Dalish another dream within that dream. Yet sitting here with Hawke now felt so normal, in spite of all the time that had passed. She slid until her bum hit the stone, folding her legs until her knees were almost beneath his chin. Bare feet pressed into stone that had already begun to miss the sun, she allowed herself to simply exist for a moment in the other woman’s presence.

“I was beginning to think it would come to nothing,” she admitted. Merrill kept her eyes trained upon the ground, where crimson coloured nails made fine white lines on the ground. “I’m glad I was wrong. I have a feeling that we’ll need the eluvian soon… Corypheus seems determined to use what my People left behind against us. I won’t let him have this, as well.” Her hand balled into a small fist, a determined look in her eye which melted away as she lifted her gaze to meet Hawke’s.

  Thinking back upon the past had come to Hawke at night when unable to sleep. A decade had come and gone, and far more happened than she had ever anticipated fleeing to Kirkwall would entail. At least, she had been given the means to provide, to care, to help despite the cost of losing many along the way. Even now, it hardly felt the same, with only Varric and Merrill here at Skyhold. She’d sent Anders away, Isabela was still at sea, her brother among the Wardens, Aveline in Kirkwall, and her mother buried beneath the ground. 

“From what I’ve been told, there’s more to them than what it seemed.” Hawke answered quietly, breeze ruffling the fur of her mantle, and the taller woman drew her long legs up in the same fashion as Merrill had done. Her fingers traced along the sharp edges of her greaves, not caring for the small scratches they left behind in her skin. 

“You do not exactly keep a low profile,” he agrees. In truth, he’d begun forgoing his usual practices of hiding his markings, and sometimes even his ears. There seemed little reason to hide any longer, and the woman sitting across from him was a large part of that reason. He wasn’t alone, and it was a strange sensation.

With her final comment, he smiles and raises his own drink in turn. “You’ve quite a collection of company now. How else would such a band work and travel together? The only common variable is you. Be careful, or you’ll collect half of Lowtown.”

   “No, though believe me, it wasn’t necessarily intentional. Circumstances, am i right?” Desdemona nearly chuckles then. She’d always donned full armour, despite limiting her motions in battle if only to protect herself when working for Athenril. Even now, it’s still her preference rather than the obvious robes that’d mark her a mage for miles. 

She offers a lopsided smile in return, peering down at her glass a moment, debating if she requires more. “I do have some limits, you know.” She jests, of course. Hand her a baby and she might just adopt the poor child out of the goodness of her heart. A merry band of misfits is nearly no different, save for their lack of dependency for survival. 

A small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You certainly have given her reason to take notice, haven’t you?” The thoughts are troubling, and before he’d met her, he never would have had them. “But that fortune should keep you safe from the Templars unless you blatantly use blood magic on the steps of the Chantry. Granted, if you did that, I’d hand you over myself. In any event, you’ve nothing to fear from the Knight Commander at present. You have your companions to guard you.”

You have me, he thinks, unsettled that he believes it. She would have him if needed. He would defend a mage against Templars if it came to that, and it felt… wrong. The simple yes and no of taking orders was no longer an option available to him, and while he relished it, he was also left wary and drained at the end of each day from the sheer weight of questioning himself and making decisions.

  “One part was my own doing, sure - but the rest was by sheer circumstance. Though, I’d peg her to be quite observant over any possible threat looming about the city.” Hawke has certainly spent time pondering, especially when overhearing the words that depict the Gallows as the worst place in all of the city - even more so than Darktown. “No, you needn’t worry about blood magic. I despise it and the principles surrounding it all. Far too messy beyond that.”

Of course, her own specialty within the art of entropy speaks little to no higher than that of the maleficarum, but she keeps quiet upon her art. The mention of her companions brings another smile to her lips - and a hand to put her plate and fork to the side to be taken away.

After all, her time here has been spent doing Maker knows what all across Kirkwall, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything, truly. It’s the beginning of making a life for herself with friendships along the way.