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He doesn’t think she ever notices him, not really, and it’s not like many people do notice him beneath the gigantic shadow of his sibling. Out of everyone in Kirkwall though he wishes that she would. But he’s no poet or Casanova or good at anything really and he can’t, he doesn’t-
So he holds the door open at the Hanged Man for her, and then Isabela, and then Aveline, Fenris, and half of Kirkwall, but it’s worth it to hear her surprised thanks. She’s worth it. He’ll watch her back in battle, but he never hovers, never takes what is hers and tells her how strong she is as he shoulders his shield. When they’re not fighting hoards of monsters, mages and morons, he weaves flowers into baskets or wherever else she’d like them as she sits beneath that broken mirror in her tiny home. She’ll talk about everything and anything and he listens even when he thinks sometimes she doesn’t even know what she’s saying. She’s smarter than all of them combined.
It’s not only because he likes her(he does, Maker does he have it bad) or that he thinks she’ll break at the slightest wind(because he’s seen the things her blood will do) but it’s because he knows the way the world looks at her. He sees the way Fenris and Anders glare at her as she splits her palm open, how the nobles of Hightown turn their noses up at her pointed ears like pieces of cartilage really define a person, how Varric gives her a ball of string like she’s some lost kitten instead of the First of her clan. Carver knows what it is like to live at the margins, to fall between the cracks, to be treated like a child and expected to see it as a kindness.
Merrill doesn’t need charity. She needs to be seen for what she is and he sees her, knows her. He just, he wishes…
Years later and leagues away, he sits around a fire with his new family while his old one burns to ash in Kirkwall. The letter about his mother sits crumpled and stained in the bottom of his pack and he has it memorized by heart. It’s little condolence and so are the pats and sympathies he receives around camp even if these people call him Hawke like it is his name alone. He imagines the real Hawke is surrounded by their friends, friends he has not received one word from about Leandra’s death. It shouldn’t hurt so much, or maybe it should, but either way he doesn’t want it.
A hand comes down on his shoulder. “Another letter for you, Hawke.”
As he opens the parchment a pressed flower falls into his lap and he knows without reading a single line who is responsible for it. The petals are a pretty blue with bright purple centers. Her favorite. He holds the letter lightly in his heavy grip as he reads and honestly, Merrill could have written about the weather and the rats in her cellar(which she does mention a little) and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. The fact that she remembered him is enough.
Carver reads the note a few more times before carefully folding it up, flower and all, and places it in the pocket above his heart.
(She sees him too)