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dragonagecompanions · 8 months

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DA2 crew reacting to Hawke who stops caring? Maybe after the death of Leandra they just stop showing any kind of emotion? Not even rage or sadness it's as if they're made tranquil but without the need to be cut off from the fade instead, it's their emotions that are cut off. When they finally ask Hawke they simply shrug and respond with

"Why do I care? Everyone leaves me or they want something from me only to stab me in the back, why should I care anymore?"

Just, just pure angst heartbreak something that will hurt I BEG FOR THE HURT JUICE!

WELCOME TO THE JUICE BAR! HERE THERE BE ANGST!

Varric: He gets it. For most of the time, amongst the odd band of friends he has made in the City of Chains, Varric puts on a very convincing show as the devil may care rogue with the world at his fingers and no weight on his shoulders.

But on the nights when he is not walking through Darktown killing...well, anyone who crossed their path really, it was hard to maintain the mask. When the last drunken drunken warbler had left or past out or otherwise left the Hang Man silent in the wee hours even his tavern rooms couldn't keep the echoes at bay. Brother, father, mother, ancestral culture and society; all of it gone before he was even respectably middle age. He'd lost Orzammar before his first breathe, and no matter how in the Merchant Guild he climbed no surfacer would ever be anything less than a casteless outcast.

Normally that didn't bother him, but on the heaviest nights...He can't bring back everything Hawke lost, and isn't fool enough to try. But he can be a friend, a port in the storm. Once Hawke's mindset is known Kirkwall's resident story teller makes it his mission to be a constant bulwark for his friend. He has let them flounder for too long-- dwarves might not be great at swimming, but Varric will not let Hawke drown.

Bethany: It takes a long time for her own bitterness, at a life of endless hunger and exhaustion and nightmares of a Grey Warden that she would never have chosen for herself, to fade enough for her sibling's silence to truly register. Their mother's death had been a terrible blow, a severing of the last parental bond, but it had also heralded a silence from Kirkwall that...

Well, that she had come to take for granted. Varric still wrote like clockwork, his letters a comforting and humorous glance into the city that had been home so briefly, but after more than a year the remaining Hawke sibling looks up to realize she has had not a word in months. Her last letter was so bitter, penned in grief and anger and without thought for the child who actually had to see and bury Leandra, but now those caustic words eat at her own mind.

Distance has bled off the pain, and the missive that goes to the City of Chains is almost meek in comparison to her fiery words. But the letter she receives makes silence preferable-- she can feel her sibling's desolate apathy through the short penned lines, and for once she aches for the cramped paradise of Gamlen's hovel when their family was mostly whole.

They do not write again, and in her shame and sorrow she does not ask them to. A Grey Warden is meant to leave all their former life behind, and yet somehow her older sibling has managed to cut loose of those bonds-- and Bethany finds herself clinging to a life that she cannot save.

Anders: Justice roils, unsettled and uneasy at the terrible symmetry. There is no sunburst scar to mark the sundering of mind and fade, no judgement rendered to murder life and emotion, and yet tranquility would almost be preferable to the empty aching sorrow. Hawke had always been a vibrant soul, built for purpose and life and determined to make their way in the world no matter the cost. But this...

There had been a time when Anders had been that alone. The loss of friends, of family, of the chance to have a life of his own. Even the freedom of the circles had still left him chained to another institution, no matter how preferable the Grey Wardens might have been. Isolation was a like an unhealing wound, pulling at the body and soul until there was nothing left to fight it. A sepsis of the soul, where no surgeon's blade could cut it free.

There had been no true isolation since Justice had come to him; it feels like a betrayal to admit he missed it.

And oh Anders wants to comfort his friend, tries to be there and sets aside (as much as his fracturing mental state will allow) the conversation of mages rights for other conversation. Brings food and wine and tries to rekindle that spark that had always been in Hawke's soul.

But his plans for the Chantry -and the looming betrayal that must carve them apart once again- keeps a pall of guilt over those efforts. It seems crueler somehow -infinitely more so if they are in a romantic relationshiip-to build up only to destroy, and so knowing he cannot help one of his first true friends in the city is another burden to lay against the cost of mage freedom on the scales of Justice.

Isabela: At first she brushes it off as a bad day, nothing that a trip to the Hanged Man and the Blooming Rose can't clear right up. She's had a few of her own, after all, and knows the liberal application of lover and libation to be a perfect solution for gloomy moods. Friend or lover, she knows how to raise the spirits.

But when that doesn't work, when her efforts are shot down again and again in that same terrible, dry tone, something distant and awful howls in the back of her mind. As the captain of a ship she is good at watching for storms and reefs, for the dangerous shoals that can render a ship little more than kindling or the hurricanes that turn even the greatest ports into unsafe harbors. There are no maps to nagivate here, no sounding charts or sextant readings to guide her to calmer waters.

She has looked death and danger in the eye with laughter and a ready blade, but the dull and distant apathy in her friends eyes shakes her like no nautical challenge ever has. They tetter on the crest of a wave, and for all that she might scramble for control the trough might be too much for them to weather. Emotions have never been her strong suite, commitment not in her wheelhouse. Isabela is shallow and vain by her own admission, made for the life at sea and not meant to drop anchor forever.

But when she takes a heading, she takes it true. It will be work, work the captain is not at all sure she is capable of, but in all her long life Isabela has never abandoned a crew member gone overboard. And even if Hawke is determined to struggle against joy and life and recovery, she will not let them drown.

Aveline: It is so, so tempting to lay pain for pain. To compare the loss of home and husband and life against the inevitable (if untimely) loss of parent, the grief of lost siblings and broken friendships to the struggle of proving herself to the guard. Who are they cut themselves off from those who love them, when no one is untouched by loss?

But the simple and terrible truth is that pain is a terrible equalizer, and lays low all who come before it. Aveline has fought for her position as a guardsman, and then guard captain, and is proud of her duty. But she is also too well aware that the burdens laid at her desk are nothing like that of a Champion of a city, and that Kirkwall has for years asked far more of Hawke than it has given in return. Her friend has never waivered, never failed in their devotion to a city that never stops taking.

Her own rise in station comes of both her work and theirs, and with a pang Aveline is suddenly unsure if she has ever let Hawke know how deeply grateful she has been for their friendship-- from that first day in Ferelden onward.

It is not in her nature to look back and regret on mistakes that cannot be fixed, or dwell too much on old sorrows. With Donnell's help she can only move forward as a better friend, a better companion. To make sure Hawke knows without question that they are loved, and to guard them and their future as she does the city they will build it in.

Fenris: Everything he touches, it seems, must be laid low.

There is no question that his social skills lack a certain...polish, nor that on the whole Fenris and society are mostly estranged. He in content to live in his decaying mansion, to make a life devoid of company when not traipsing through Kirkwall with a ragtag bunch of friends. He does not seek out company often, is not comfortable with the idea of the vulnerability that friendship requires with more than a handful of people.

It does not occur to him until Hawke's empty and apathetic words that those actions and attitudes might hurt more than himself. Hawke has been a better friend and compatriot than Fenris ever dared to hope for, certainly better than he had the right to ask for, but his actions have not been equal to that friendship. He has let them suffer alone, or at least mostly unsupported, and that is...

It hurts like the Fog Warriors hurt, needless betrayal when something better might have been.

There is a cold blessing in the memories of a life enslaved being ripped away by the lyrium, even if the experiences after were hardly kindness itself. But Hawke must live with it all, the pain and betrayal and the crushing isolation that comes with duty. Fenris has chosen to be alone, at least, in his self imposed solitude.

Hawke has no one.

It is a bitter vintage of guilt, particularly for a romanced Fenris who has done more than most to cause such pain. But he has not come so far in life without being tenacious, and commitment to a goal is keen to success. If he must finally leave the mansion behind, to spend everyday with his friend until that sorrow is as distant as his life in Tevinter, than it is a sacrifice worth making.

He will bring the good wine--it stands up well to despair.

Carver: There is a sort of inherent loss of self, when you have a twin. For all that Bethany and he had been different people, it is at times unavoidable that you be lumped together by even your family. It is rarely malicious but often very annoying, and was in some ways the catalyst for how much he envied his older sibling's singular triumphs and failures. There was no one to share that spotlight with, and it burned at something deep within Carver's soul.

The bitter grief that came when Bethany was gone, gone and leaving him with no one to lock step with, did not lend itself to mending the hard feelings for his older sibling. While not so cruel as Leandra to lay blame at the eldest Hawke child for his sister's death, her absence creates a void that neither can ever truly fill.

Time heals some wounds, of course, but distance and duty can cauterize what has not yet healed. Leaving his life behind to take the oath of a Grey Warden is perhaps the most freeing thing he has ever done, and if it is easier than most to carve away his past life...he is well named for it. That is not to say that the news of his mothers death does not pain him, but his new brothers and sisters a balm in a way family has not been in the past.

It is cold comfort when Varric's letter, with the uncertain request to write to his sibling in an attempt to ease their pain, makes them uncomfortably aware that years have passed without correspondence. Somewhere between the Deep Roads and his duties the oldest Hawke sibling ceased to be a daily thought for him, and Carver is ashamed to realize that he was relieved when the letters stopped. He does write a few stilted lines, unsurprised to receive no reply, and tells himself he can do no more.

If his father's face haunts his dreams with imagined disappointment and grief for months after, let that be penance enough.

Merrill: If Clan Sabrae still lives she will find it difficult to relate, but if Keeper Marethari's actions have cost her so much more than Merrill is painfully aware of the pain of total isolation. Hawke does not even have the eluvian to compensate their struggles, and for a time the Dalish mage is unsure how to help.

So she simply listens. Even if it is apathetic silence, or quiet sorrow, or even howling rage, Merrill stays. Her friend has never abandoned her, not in all the time she has known Hawke. Their life has been a bitter one, with duty and grief and helpless loss too mich a companion. Nothing she can do will fix the past, but she can prove to them with the consistency and patience of her presence that they are not alone.

The introduction of baked goods to that listening and support is also, in her experience and delight, a helpful tool. Among the Dalish shared food is the foundation of family and community, and in time she will use it to bring hope back to her friend.

Creators, let her succeed.

-Mod Fereldone

#dragon age 2 #merrill #aveline #hawke #carver hawke #bethany hawke #fenris #anders #isabela #angst

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