through hawkeâs eyes || accepting
When did she first realize that she loved him? Maybe when she realized that she did not understand him, but that she wanted to.
He is such a contradiction, it seems. A Warden and a noble â and his accent is so familiar, too, those northern Fereldan tones she remembers from her childhood near Amaranthine. He is refined, with tastes and manners that would suit the highest table nicely; she could imagine him in black brocade and rich silk to set off the grey flash of his eye and the charcoal of his hair. But he looks at home in armor, moves in it easily; she has seen him fight, and he fights well, but there is a refinement to it, even so. An elegance, an economy of motion, an easy grace. He fights like another man might dance.
She wonders, sometimes, if he dances. Maybe one day, sheâll find out.
Or maybe she wonât. He comes and he goes, and every time they meet, she gathers a few more crumbs of knowledge about him. The way he looks when heâs happy. The way he laughs when she tells a joke timed just so to catch him off guard. The way the thin dark braid woven into his locks lays across the column of his throat until he shakes it back impatiently. The way his fingertips caress the fletching of his arrows with a surprising delicacy before he bends back the bow and his shoulders and arms flex and twist with corded muscle. The things he likes â duty, respect, intelligence â and the things he doesnât â flightiness, insolence, ignorance.
Probably, he shouldnât much like Hawke, who is, after all, a frivolous girl prone to foolish jokes and reckless behavior. But she thinks that he does. She wants him to, and if she modulates her sometimes strident tones around him, if she treats him with a gentle care that retreats at once from any sign of strict boundaries, if she is a little quieter and more collected because of his influence â well, surely no one would notice but her. And maybe him.Â
