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"This round's on me," boasted Hawke grandiosely, throwing a pleasantly warm arm around Isabela's shoulders as she swiped a mug off Norah's tray with the other. She took a swig and then put down the mug to clap Varric on the shoulder. "In honor of a promising new business venture that does not involve tromping through darkspawn-infested tunnels."
Carver glowered across the table. "Oh, that's great. I'm not allowed to visit the Rose because we need to save all our coin for your stupid expedition, but you can buy ale for all your mooching friends whenever you want."
"Suddenly it's her expedition?" said Bethany, raising an eyebrow at her brother. "You're the one who can't shut up about how heroic you are for planning to brave the Deep Roads."
"Cut him some slack, Beth," said Hawke, her words completely belied by her teasing tone. "You know he's just sulky that he cheated himself out of a chance to kill dragons today." She dropped into a mocking false tenor. "No, I'm much too important and special to go stare at rocks at the Bone Pit, I'm going to go bet on wallop games with Uncle Gamlen." She shot her brother a pitying look. "He punishes himself, he doesn't need us to make it worse."
"Lovely. Thanks ever so much for your support, Sister."
Hawke smirked, Bethany laughed, and Isabela furrowed her brow, weeks of curiosity and several mugs of ale sparked by Carver's words into a flame of inquiry.
"Why do you call her that?"
Carver blinked at her, confused out of his petulance. "Call who what?"
"Hawke. Do you even know her name? I've known you lot half a year now and I've never heard you or Bethany use it, not once."
His expression grew, if possible, even more perplexed. "She's our sister."
"Bethany's your sister. You call her Bethany," pointed out Varric reasonably.
"She's my twin," said Carver, like this should be ridiculously obvious.
Isabela exchanged glances with Varric.
"Junior, you're not making sense."
"It's a Ferelden thing," said Anders, as he nodded a polite thanks to Norah and took his mug. "Fereldans are big on family. You respect your parents, you respect your aunts, you respect your older siblings, it's all very scary and clannish and authoritarian. The two of them aren't going to call Hawke by her name any more than they're going to call their mother 'Leandra'."
"That does not mean they do not know it," pointed out Fenris reasonably.
Aveline rolled her eyes. "Of course they know it. How could they possibly not know it?"
"Aveline knows it too," said Carver.
Every pair of eyes at the table swiveled to the guardswoman, who crossed her arms and stared right back with withering contempt. "Not happening."
Hawke grinned smugly.
The twins exchanged an odd look, then glanced at Hawke. Hawke narrowed her eyes in warning. Carver, grinning bold and sly and flushed with drink, rose to his feet to lean forward. "If you guys really want to know, it's --"
Hawke actually leapt over the table, legs curled up like some giant human flea as she pivoted on one hand laid flat between their mugs and powered into Carver, making him interrupt himself with a yelp as she clotheslined him with a violent whack and dragged them into an awkward half-tackling scrum. She managed to clap her hand over his mouth and lock his arms behind him. "Maker take it Carver, if you tell them Father wins!"
"Aammphmmn," said Carver through her hand, trying to shake her off, tossing an elbow and then whimpering as Hawke twisted his arm.
As they grappled, Bethany leaned forward over the table, smiled sweetly, and said, "Her name is Adrian."
Hawke dropped Carver -- literally, sending him crashing off-balance onto his ass on the sawdust floor -- and stared at her little sister with a look of such abject, horrified betrayal that Isabela almost fell off the bench laughing.
"Beth," breathed the mercenary, wounded, and sank onto the bench where Carver had been, staring at her sister in blank disbelief.
Bethany giggled helplessly, and Carver pulled himself to his feet again with a triumphant smirk.
"I admit I'm not all that up on Fereldan culture," said Isabela, "but isn't that a boy's name?"
Varric leaned in, the storyteller's curious glint in his eye. "I've heard of babies being named for the gender their parents wanted, but Leandra doesn't seem the type."
Bethany grinned widely at Carver, and he offered a face-splitting snicker in return. Hawke, without even looking at them, sighed heavily and took a deep swig of her whiskey.
Bethany plucked Carver's jacket off the bench next to her and balled it up, stuffing it under her shirt, and Carver leaned over her with a dopey grin, adopting a deep, false baritone.
"Oh, Leandra, I'm so excited for our wonderful firstborn who will never do anything wrong. What should we call this miraculous child."
Still giggling, Bethany aped cooing over the bundle over her stomach and took up a high falsetto. "Adelaide for a girl, Malcolm, and Adrian for a boy! Don't they just sound perfect."
She reached over and grabbed at Anders, pulling him to his feet and sideways toward her. "Oh, it is time for the baby to come! And here is the priest to perform her Naming."
Anders shuffled a little and caught his balance, and stepped dutifully into character, stiffening his posture and tilting his chin. "It is an honor in the Maker's eyes to attend this blessed miracle," he pronounced with a falsetto of his own.
Bethany broke down giggling again, and Carver kneed her in the shoulder, grinning too hard to convincingly sell any real annoyance at her missing her cues. "Oh no, Leandra! You look unwell!"
A mess of laughter and bad acting, Bethany made a show of thrashing like a beached fish. "I am hurt, Malcolm! The baby will not come! They have cut me open and taken her from my stomach!" She pulled the bundled jacket out of her shirt and shoved it at Carver, who juggled it for a moment before smushing its loose tails and sleeves into a single amorphous lump.
"Aie, the pain, I am delirious!" she added unconvincingly, as Carver stuffed the jacket into Anders' arms.
"Tell her it's a girl, tell her it's a girl," he urged, not actually at all under his breath, elbowing the apostate repeatedly.
Anders ducked out of the way of his elbow and threw one arm out grandiosely. "Madam! Rejoice! The Maker has blessed you with a healthy baby --"
"Name my son!" interrupted Bethany, giggling madly. "Quick, before the pain takes me and I die of it, in my dramatic woe! Name my son, priest! In the eyes of the Maker, he is to be Adrian!"
Anders, without prompting, looked at Carver, and with his deep assumed baritone and a shit-eating prankster's grin to rival his elder sister's own best, 'Malcolm' said only, "Well, you heard the woman, priest! Pass the baby through the fire and introduce the Maker to little Adrian!"
He lost it at that point, and collapsed back onto the bench between his sisters, burying his face in Hawke's shoulder as he laughed uproariously. Bethany did no better next to him as she clawed desperately at Anders' coat for purchase so her own hysterics didn't knock her off the bench. Hawke just watched them sideways, mouth tilted in a wry, fond smile.
Anders reclaimed his seat, letting Bethany slump giggling onto the table, and the group watched with varying degrees of amusement (even Aveline was smirking a little) as the twins slowly pulled themselves back together.
"Then you use your family name because you don't want to use a boy's name?" asked Merrill, once the hilarity died down.
"Hmn? Oh, not at all," said Hawke with a casually dismissive wave of her hand. "It's not any more masculine than 'Hawke' really. It's a perfectly fine name. Turned out to rather suit me, actually."
"But how do you one-up that?" added Carver, his grin still wide and drunk. "Dear Sister here got Father a few good ones in her time, but a prank that lasts from nameday to the grave, there's just no topping."
"He was a master," agreed Hawke with perfect good will, raising her mug in salute before draining the last dregs.
"Ooh, but Mother was so mad at him," giggled Bethany conspiratorially. "How often does she actually use it? It's always 'Dear' and 'Darling' and 'Love." I think she's embarrassed."
"Seventy-eight times," said Hawke with her own trademark smirk. "Though I started that count at age ten, so I may have missed a few."
"Your mother's only called you by name seventy-eight times in your entire life?"
Hawke grinned. "Well, Father used it about that many times a day so it all balances out. Never stopped finding it funny, the jackass," she added fondly, before swiping Aveline's mug to replace her own empty. "Norah, damn your gorgeous ass," she bellowed, "we're drying up over here!"
"Ah, hold your bleedin' halla," the waitress shouted back across the tavern. "Just because you're the soddin' loudest customers doesn't make you the most important!"
Hawke just grinned, and turned to Isabela. "What about you, Bela? What's your name?"
"You just said it," said Isabela. "Well, half of it."
"Oh, come on, Rivaini. We all know that's not your real name. Tell us what your mother used to call you, back before you became a pirate."
Isabela tsked. "My mother mostly used to call me 'you little shit.'
"You know mine," cajoled Hawke. "Be fair."
Isabela dropped her forehead and eyed Hawke through her lashes. "What's it worth to you, sweet thing?" she purred seductively.
Hawke, unmoved as usual, simply scolded, "Certainly not my precious womanly virtue, my dear Bela," with a wide grin.
"Well. You know where to find me if you change your mind."
"I'm still holding out for our beautiful Norah, here," said Hawke grandiosely as the waitress in question showed up with their drinks. "How about it, lovely? Want to let me sweep you off your delicate feet?"
Norah rolled her eyes and slapped Hawke's mug down in front of her, hard enough to make it splash the mercenary's sleeve. "Keep dreaming, Hawke."
"The Fade should be so lucky as to see you grace it," said Hawke, earning herself nothing but another eyeroll. She grinned and turned back to her friends. "Okay, then. Names. Anders. What about you?"
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember," said Carver, staring at him in flat disbelief.
"You don't remember what? Is your name not Anders either? Doesn't anyone here use their actual name?"
"It is my actual name, Merrill, or as close as I've got to one. It's all they ever called me in the Circle. I was that kid from the Anderfels. Whatever my parents named me, I don't remember it. If my parents even named me," he added, with idle thoughtfulness. "I was an unwanted mage child. I suppose they could have just called me 'little shit' too."
"Well I hope not. That wouldn't be a very good name at all."
"Well, we can't all be mighty Amells," grinned Anders.
"I think you mean mighty Hawkes," corrected Isabela, tossing a grin of her own at Hawke.
Carver snorted. "That's the real reason she doesn't introduce herself as Adrian. She gets to be the Hawke and the two of us have to wear her name as our livery."
Hawke smirked. "A toast! To the Hawke line, and all the boy names, treacherous little sisters and obnoxious little brothers in it. May it be long and powerful."
"And full of generations of successful jackass pranksters," added Isabela, raising her own mug.
Hawke laughed and quaffed her ale. "I'll drink to that."