#i've been reading the other sonnets from the portuguese poems while i've been looking for epigrams and

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

Thanks for the tags @demandthedoodles and @greypetrel! I've mostly been fiddling with the fic I started posting on AO3, but here is some of another piece I've been working on as well. It's partially inspired by this poem:

I just love the contrast between all those long, hesitating lines and the abruptness of "Stand further off then! Go."

So, in relation to that, here is the precursor to the biggest fight Maria and Fenris ever have (this is...roughly three weeks after the Act 2 romance scene):

“You have a kind heart,” Hawke’s father had told her often when she was young.  It had usually been followed by a crucial word: but.   You have a kind heart—but the rabbit is beyond saving, but a kind heart will not help you when a demon comes to call, but you should let the boy fight if he wants to fight. Sometimes, the words were slightly different. Sometimes, Malcolm said instead, “Mijita, for the Maker’s sake, if you bring me to one more felled bridge I am leaving you to walk home alone,” or “Maria, you should not have shocked him back to life. I told you, did I not, what it means to be a mage? We are leaving; pack your bags.” But what he always, always meant to say was: you have a kind heart, but—

Malcolm was the first, but he wasn’t the last.  “I don’t know why you bother, Hawke,” Varric said often, feet propped on his table, shaking his head. “Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.” “I’ve no idea what you see in him,” Anders had said just a few weeks, glaring after Sebastian as he walked away. “He is beyond helping.”  “I will never understand why you let that man speak to you so,” Aveline had said more than once, scowling over something Anders had said.  Or— “you do know that the elf is like an angsty porcupine, right?”  Sometimes, she felt like snapping in return: there is no point. I don’t know why I bother, either. But—there was no point in snapping, either, was there? They didn’t really want to know why.  But Merrill—Merrill wanted to know why. Sometimes, Merrill didn’t even add the “but.” Sometimes, she just told Hawke that she was kind, no qualifiers. That was why Maria liked to spend time with her: Merrill didn’t waste time on prevarications like that. You were who you were, for good or ill, and she seemed to see little point in chiding one to change.  Merrill was her friend; Hawke might even have been tempted to call Merrill her dearest friend, if she’d ever felt inclined to bestow such a distinction. It hurt her to see Merrill hurt, to hear the tears in her voice as they trudged back up through the bowels of the mountain.  “Pol,” she said somewhere behind Hawke, “what was he thinking? He acted like I was a monster.”  “His death isn’t your fault,” Hawke wanted to say, but Fenris spoke first.  “You are a monster.”  Hawke stopped dead, turning on her heel to look at them. Fenris was not looking at her; he was looking at Merrill, disgust plain on his face. Isabela stared at him, moving to set a hand on Merrill’s shoulder. “You aren’t helping,” the pirate told him.  Tears had long since begun to fall down Merrill’s cheeks, darkening the collar of her dress, and when Isabela drew her closer more of them fell from her chin to the green fabric below.  “Good,” Fenris snapped. He opened his mouth to say more, but glanced at Hawke and shut it again.  You are a monster.  Hawke could not say if she was angrier for Merrill or herself. No—she couldn’t say what she was feeling at all, really. Fenris looked at her, his mouth pressed into a narrow line, but at last he turned away.  “Come on,” Hawke told Merrill, reaching for the elbow Isabela wasn’t holding. “Let’s get us out of these caves, alright? Nothing is ever helped by the addition of giant spiders.” Merrill nodded, her hands steady despite her tears, and allowed herself to be led from the caves.  You are a monster. 

Tagging: @star--nymph @ndostairlyrium @heniareth @daggerbean @alta-et-astra @palipunk @dungeons-and-dragon-age @idolsgf