this is it this is the thing that will kill me

“...another unicorn, is it?”

For a man as burly and barrel-chested as he was, Blackwall was quick with a sword, and quicker with his shield. Before she could blink, or even react to the templar arrow hurtling towards her, the Orlesian rondache cast a protective shadow over her, and she heard a loud, sharp thud as the arrowhead splintered against and shattered along with the shaft.

And, just as quick as it came, he lowered the shield with an angry grunt, bashing it into the archer’s face to stun him. His blade was quick to follow, finding the gaps between the leather with ease; the red templar crumpled lifeless to the earth.

Blackwall’s eyes found her, and they were hard as agates at first; they softened then, when they found her own, and he relaxed his furrowed brow, the tension melting from his face.

“Are you alright, love?” he asked, as he wiped his blade clean.

Khedira nodded, as much in thanks as to reassure him. “I misjudged the enemy. Thank you.”

His lips curved into one of his slight smiles, framed just so by his thick, silvery black beard, the manner of smile that made Khedira’s knees quiver. “There’s no need to thank me, my lady. No harm will ever come to you so long as I draw breath,” he said softly.

“You’ve gotta stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Saying things that make me want to kiss you,” Khedira said.

Blackwall grinned, and with shield still in hand, took Khedira by his free one, pulling her close to him; warm leather against cool steel. “I’ll stop when it quits working,” he said.

🤞 Khedira is hopelessly in love with Blackwall, in a way she didn’t think she’d ever feel again. Even more than a lover, he’s her best friend. Where Solas engages her esoteric/metaphysical side, Blackwall keeps her feet firmly on the ground. It’s something she deeply appreciates. They have so much in common. The dark past obviously but even personality wise. They’re similar in that they both keep to themselves a lot. He’s really easy for her to talk to, and he’s like her in that he doesn’t feel the need to fill up silence with small talk and meaningless words, so they got on well from the beginning. Khedira is perfectly content reading while sitting in a room with him while he’s working on some craft project. Just being near him makes her feel safe and content. She can relax that constant guard she has. 

“Comfort” is what she thinks of, when she thinks of him. Ofc she finds him incredibly handsome and v. sexy (she jokes that he had her at “save the fucking world, if pressed”, even if she came to realize later on that it was a bit of false bravado; it only endeared him to her that much more) but he also makes her laugh a lot, nearly as much as Bull, and she just enjoys being with him. It’s a deep kind of love she feels for him, the sort that develops over time as you get to know someone and just feel comfortable with them. But she developed it for him pretty quickly. And it’s part of why it was so easy to forgive him, even beyond their shared history. Khedira never thought she’d have a partner walking the road of atonement, and she didn’t realize how badly she needed one until Blackwall confessed to her and she suddenly had one. His near-zealous (almost desperate tbh) belief in the Wardens and loyalty to them is something she can relate to, because it reminds her of how wholly she threw herself into the seer’s arts even though she still didn’t really believe she was worthy of Seydanka’s faith in her. She places the sisterhood on a similar pedestal.

More than anything she understands him on an intrinsic level because she sees so much of herself in him in general, particularly when she was recovering on Vatar and taking baby steps in turning over a new leaf. She’s further along on the journey than him and she badly wants to help him along it. And on the flipside his presence in her life is just as healing for her as the reverse. Khedira has never been cherished by anyone the way Blackwall does. He obviously respects her agency and her strength but he wants to protect her, in every sense of the word. She sees him physically putting his body on the line to keep her safe, standing up to various Andrastians when they act ugly and disrespectful towards her about her beliefs, and like, bringing her food and water after ritual and holding her after nightmares--all without ever being asked!--simply because that’s how much he loves her. Khedira is floored by that, when she stops to think about it, the fact that someone sees her as worthy of being treated that way. For a woman who was abandoned by her own parents as a child, it’s incredible. 

tl;dr Blackwall is everything to Khedira, he’s a true lover/partner/friend and she has no idea how she ever lived without him and never wants to find out

👻 Cole’s like a son to her, she adores him. Khedira generally doesn’t feel very maternal towards people. That’s not to say that she can’t be very nurturing, because she is at times just by nature of her calling as a seeress. But Cole tugs at these feelings inside her she didn’t even realize were there, this maternal kind of instinct. It’s not that she infantilizes him or anything, she understands that he’s capable, but she’s very protective of him because she understands better than anyone but Solas the mindset of spirits and how very Not Mortal they are and how that influences how they see and engage with the mortal world. Frankly more than Solas, given that she gets possessed by them on a regular basis and thus has an extremely intimate understanding of them. 

tbf, I think she might be a lot more skittish towards him if his abilities actually worked on her, but they don’t--Khedira’s pretty much immune to spirit malarkey as a consequence of her initiations and the spiritual tattoos she has. So he can’t read her the way he can the others, and she couldn’t forget him even if he tried. But she’s fascinated by the way he sees the world and they have a lot of long talks about it. She wants to teach him and learn from him at the same time.

Needless to say when Solas suggests the Rivaini talisman to help him, Khedira makes it for him. No one even had to ask. She loves him in a very familial kind of way. I mean she and egglord basically adopted him. (and yes he very much stayed a spirit in my ‘verse. Khedira pretty much dismissed Varric’s pov out of hand. She’s a seer, and understands these things better than him. this is literally her job. her thought was that he might have meant well, but he had nfi what he was talking about).

🦅 Khedira loves Mari to pieces. It was weird though, because before they met, all Khedira had to go on about her were Cass and Varric--they talked about her constantly, and between Cass’ starry eyed hero worship and Varric’s obvious pining, they built her up to an almost unfair degree. And then Khedira met Mari and, well, she wasn’t expecting the woman she found lmao. But Khedira likes the real Marisol Hawke a lot more than the larger than life figure Cass painted her as, or the muse Varric’s been pining over for 10 years. Khedira appreciates how down to earth Mari is, and admires the way she doesn’t suffer fools. She also admires how clever and creative she is. (Khedira almost wept the first time she had some of Mari’s homecooking.)

i want to share nachos with blackwall and talk about boats.

i want to eat nachos with blackwall ON a boat

is he wearing an aloha shirt and a panama hat