#their special little is only sibling club that carver was

[h-awke-a]

malcolm was an educated man—moving between circles (read:escaping from) for most of his younger and adult life had afforded him that at least, and when theo was young and an only child his father would teach him to read and write, give him occasional little lessons when they had time, and theo was awed by him, by the way their neighbours would come to ask him questions, seemed to respect him as an educated person, would pay him for lessons, but soon those paid lessons and the mutual attempt between father and son to make money for the family meant that theo’s lessons fell to the wayside—malcolm could see that theo didn’t have a focus or particular talent academically, he was certainly no mage, so he thought to let the boy just learn the basics and not bother him with all the rest

then, when the twins were born, malcolm was convinced that one of them, at least, would manifest magick—and from the time they could toddle he was passionate about educating them in all he knew (much of his advanced education was of course magickal scholarship), eventually his focus shifted to bethany because he correctly sensed her aptitude, and he spent almost all of his free time educating his daughter one on one, giving her almost all of his attention

carver developed a deep resentment over this—theo i don’t think ever resented it so much as it fucked up his sense of self worth further, he just internalized the idea that he hadn’t been intelligent enough to really warrant his fathers focus the same way, of course it would have been a waste to pass all that onto him, it also gave him this inherent idea that mages are, in general, more intelligent than him, more educated, of a higher strata in a class-based way, the hawkes grew up in extreme poverty and theo only attended a few years of the paltry free schooling the chantry offered before leaving to take work to make money—carver attended for much longer, and attached himself to the chantry much for the reason that the sisters there seemed willing to show him the special attention that his father reserved for their sister in their little private school at home

of course, the root of all malcolm’s focus on bethany wasn’t favoritism—it was fear, he was desperately trying to equip her with the knowledge she would need to keep herself safe and secret from the templars, always living with the crushing fear that if anything happened to him she would be utterly alone and unprepared to deal with her own magicks unless he could teach her everything he knew while there was still time, it was loving for bethany, the special focus of her father, but it was also suffocating, and terrifying, and a constant reminder of how frightening her future was going to be