Work Text:
“You are the one bright light in Kirkwall,”
Anders says,
and Hawke believes him,
because she feels it in the dark—
a glow from within,
a white hot flame
threatening to burn her walls down.
It’s not the noxious dragon blood
she pours down her throat;
it’s nothing as elegant as magic.
It’s rage, pure and simple.
Fury banked under practiced kindness,
flickering teeth of fire that roar inside her:
every injustice,
every moment stolen by the Maker
and His mercy, His cruelty,
“Father, I’ll miss you,” and
“Carver, I’m sorry,” and
“Bethany, I’m sorry,” and
“Mother, I’m sorry,”
every balance of love
in the jagged Varric-Fenris-Merrill-Aveline-Isabela
pieces of her heart,
misshapen and scraping and
why won’t they fit,
please, Maker, make them fit!
It’s every bloodied mage
and every bleeding limb
and pain,
everywhere pain,
unfixable and forever,
worse than death.
Worse and worse until the worst,
scars of flaxen gold,
hunted and haunted and hated,
“I will drown us in blood to keep you safe,”
but Hawke has never told him that she knows.
That she was never afraid of Justice
because she is Justice,
flame trapped behind walls of flesh,
bursting, bright, begging snarled to be set free,
that she is already drowning in the blood she owes,
Father and Bethany and Carver and Mother,
Maker, so much blood, and he says,
“I’ll only hurt you.”
But at least this hurt she chose,
keeps choosing,
will choose,
over and over and over again.
With this man,
this spirit,
this justice,
Hawke is not afraid to burn.