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Like many a profligate templar who has not taken a vow of chastity (and even some who have, sadly) Samson has gotten a bastard on a whore, and subsequently had little to nothing to do with raising it. Oh, here and there he's handed the girl a few coins, but she makes more than he does plying her trade, and she has a roof over her head, a nice one, so he doesn't see why he should have to wreck his health to give her what she already has. It's not like they're married. The child he sees occasionally, running around the streets of Hightown, getting under the feet of prissy nobles. He's growing up fast and now and then an atrophied cord of Samson's heart thrums when he watches his son wrestle another boy to the ground, or laugh like there's nothing wrong with the world and Kirkwall in particular.
But it's all wrong from the start, and becoming misty eyed over what might have been won't change that. He always means to get his life sorted out, but there’s little energy available for anything but getting a hold of the next fix. So this situation goes on for years, and of course once he's reinstated to the Order he can't go around acknowledging bastards. That's just not how it's done. Thank the Maker though that the boy didn't turn out a mage, that would have caused no end of trouble, and Samson has no idea how he would have reacted to having to lock up his own son…probably he would have done nothing about it, nothing that could risk his newfound grasp on the lyrium teat. He knows it, and he ain't proud.
Then the boy disappears from the city. Disappearances aren't at all unusual in Kirkwall, and another ache makes itself felt in the wretched templar’s heart. The boy's mother can't tell him anything, because she died when the chantry exploded, and no one keeps track of fatherless nobodies without fortune or family to their name. To even dream of receiving the Order's help he'd first have to admit to parentage. Something like grief gnaws at Samson's soul. He'd only spoken to the boy a few times, so feeling like this is extremely unearned in his opinion. Grief and missing something one never had should be reserved for people who gave a damn, who weren’t feckless cowards.
But when Samson rises to be pseudo leader of his own faction, he receives an answer to a question he hasn't asked himself in years by that point. One night, a clear night spangled with stars, he's out walking a battlefield littered with blue and red templar bodies, but mostly blue templar, meditating on the follies of the Chantry, when hushed voices meet his enhanced ears. Templar survivors, come to collect their wounded and dead. They fall silent at his approach, perhaps hoping he did not hear, will pass by.
“Chantry slaves, come forth. I don't wish to slay you.” the soft touch, he was always good for it.
A pair of men emerge from the underbrush on the edge of the woods, but as soon as the moonlight hits the leader, Samson forgets about the other. It would be cliche to say he is struck dumb, but he is, because the man staring back at him through narrowed eyes is his own son, his own son, grown to be the very last thing he would have wanted him to be.
“Raleigh…” Samson breathes, knowing he's in danger, but unable and unwilling at the moment to take a more defensive stance.
Recognition goes two ways, of course it does, but his son is not struck by the sudden appearance of his long lost father, because of course he was never lost, only absent, a much worse betrayal.
“Having fun?” the young man asks, poison lacing his words, potent enough to kill. He looks very much like his father, the way his father looked before the hunger bit so hard.
“It's…We're…” but the old justifications and platitudes do not come and Samson can only watch as his son signals to his companion to continue their work. The other man helps up a third, a wounded templar, and both hobble off into the trees.
“Raleigh, where did you go? I looked for you.”
“Huh. For all of five minutes. Though I suppose that's quite long for you.”
It was longer than five minutes, but Samson takes the rebuke, his mind spiralling around ways to convince his son to join his side. The speeches that work on others are likely to fall flat on these ears. All the while his child stares at him with eyes as flat as a fish’s.
“I'm not going to hurt you, boy. Come, let's talk elsewhere.”
“Are you mad? You and your monsters just slaughtered my brothers!”
“It's war, son. It doesn't mean we can't talk.” Samson steps forward, arms open, hands free of weaponry, aside from his own terrible strength, of course.
But the boy named for himself dodges backwards, toward the embrace of the trees. “Maker, I despise you. It makes my skin crawl to think I get my flesh from you. There’s not a single conviction to your name.”
“My conviction is that your mother wouldn't want us to be on opposite sides, Raleigh.”
But mentioning the boy's mother was the incorrect choice, as he pulls his sword. “Your only conviction is that lyrium and power taste equally sweet, but if you had to choose one, it would be lyrium.” He spits at the general. “Poor Mother said you had a good heart and a weak will, but only half of that is true. You're no templar, no man at all, and I'll cut you down where you stand, monster.”
So Samson flees, flees again, the mocking, barks of rage, and savage insults of his son burning his ears, loud as a waterfall even when he's left the boy far far behind.