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He loved her.
He wasn't sure when he realized it if he was honest with himself. Where his pinnings for this ridiculous woman had festered so deeply into his heart and on to the pages he wrote, spilling like confessions stained in ink.
It was some time between waltzing into her life, a charming line and an even more charming smile ready on his lips and watching her spill out everything she had and every kindness she could give for city who only lapped it up and spat at her in return, just to watch her do it all again. Somewhere in between, he'd fallen for her.
Oh he'd chalked it up to admiration at first. She was just so.. Witty and fearless and unapologetically Hawke. It was hard to remember she was a fereleden refugee, washed up and poverty stricken, barely making it inside the walls. Not when she held her back so straight with her head up high. When she spoke, people listened.
She shot forward like a wild horse on the run. She seemed to only get more powerful as she ran, never losing speed, never out of breath, breaking up through the ranks, farther and faster and stronger then he would of ever thought possible. Un steerable and untamed, all you could do was hold on. Hair whipping against the wind and a glinting smile on her face.
It was easy thing to admire her.
He wasn't blind either, he'd seen how people looked at her. She was beautiful, in a human sort of way. Legs far too long and towering with more.. Everything.. then he even knew what to do with, but beautiful. Not the same beautiful Riviani is, all soft plush curves and heaving breasts, but beautiful just the same.
He'd been tempted to liken her to a flowering death root, beautiful and dangerous at the same time but knew that wasn't what she was. With eyes of alarming blue she was dangerous and gorgeous like a vein of lyrium. Carved from rock, raw and dazzling.
Powerful all on her own. Wholly addictive and.. Yeah, she drove people a little crazy. Swaths of men and women wanted her on their side, wanted to use her for their own needs.
Any that stayed by her side for any length of time found that they would quickly do anything for her. They found themselves ready to guard her and kill for her, like precious and dangerous commodity she was. She was changing factor in bloody battles to come, tipping the scales before she even realized they were there. They'd wrap their whole lives around her without even knowing why.
He supposed he should be happy she wasn't born a dwarf, he mused. He could only imagine the dangerous creature she'd have become if she had started out a member of the carta or a guard in orzamar. Somehow, she'd land ass backwards into being hailed a paragon, or end up ruling the carta with an iron fist and flip all of orzamar on its head.
He supposed he should be lucky she wasn't trapped below, far from the love of the sun, forced to marry some blighted sod that fit her station at sword point but instead all his treacherous mind could think of is how easy it would be if she were some noble merchant dwarfs daughter herself. He felt like he was betraying someone when he thought like that, guilt sinking deep into his gut and settling there when he imagined how simple it would be to make the arrangements to take her out for walks among the vicounts gardens, how easy it would be to lace his fingers in hers.
Thoughts like that buried him in shame. He wasn't sure if it was from his loyalty to Bianca or that the thoughts defiled and sought to selfishly change what his best friend was or if it was a mixture of both and more that chased him most with guilt, but it burned cold and painful in his stomache and he was quick to chase it away and tuck it under the rug when it threatened to claw through his throat and spill his heart.
Beautiful and dangerous and human and untouchably Marian Hawke.
And he'd fallen for her. Just like all the rest.
He was painfully aware of that last fact, even before he was aware of his own interest. The woman had no shortage of interest in their little party, apart from Avaline, who had a sisterly fondness for the little trouble maker.
Blondie pinned embaressingly, sad, fond eyes following her wherever she went, hopelessly infatuated. Daisy's eyes followed her too, wide and loving, admiring her from afar. Riviani's eyes were far less innocent in intent and drank her in, unembarrassed and unsubtly, the offer clear. And Broody? He kept to himself mostly.
Though it was hard to tell with the spiked elf through his snarls and brooding, it was obvious he was loyal to a fault. He had caught the elfs eyes linger on her well sculpted ass more then a few times when they hiked the numerous stairs that plauged kirkwall but he wasn't going to assume anything, least his organs stop being on the inside of his body, where he liked them. He wasn't that suicidal yet.
She'd turned heads outside the group too, both for looks and the power she had, not that Hawke typically noticed them. Or if she did, she never commented on it.
Oh she flirted on occasion, she'd flirted with everyone in the party at least once, even him on occasion but in a non serious kind of way. Ever joking and playful, saving her seriousness for important moments that called for them, few and far between. It was difficult to tell where her playful joking flirtations ended and the serious ones started, so he never bothered to try and seperate the two. He suspected she'd be hard pressed to tell either.
So he followed her along, like everybody else. The burden of his past heavy but well tended to on his shoulders and he contented himself to sit in the sidelines and watch to see her romances unfold.
Except.. They never did.
For three years, he watched her never take on more then the odd rough and tumble from the Rose. It wasn't that she was opposed to romance, he'd wrestled that one out of her one night in the hanged man, but anything more then that was a mystery. If she found solace in any of their friends, he wasn't privy to it but from the looks of how they acted he didn't think that was the case.
It made it hoplessly easier in a sense and maddening at the same time to let his thoughts wander when it felt like he had a chance. He wasn't pinning over someone who was taken, who couldn't be with him and that in itself was a novelty. Closer and constantly in reach, he met her everyday and he was a city dwarf born in the sunlight under blue skies, even if the merchant guild wouldn't like it he could still.. But he couldn't. Not really.
Even if he untangled Bianca from every bit of his soul and with shaking hands offered the little peices that were left, the break up when Hawke came to her senses would kill him. He wouldn't recover.
He wasn't even sure he'd recover if he lost her as things were now but if they fell in love he knew that would be the piece that ended him. So he contended himself with fantasy, safe and tucked away from the woman who dated nobody and slept alone with a city full of admirers and worked on his tales until the world knew her name.
In some selfish way he hoped she did find someone, a tale of a hero needed a romantic lover, someone to keep them grounded and hold them when the days got too bad. Something to stop himself from wishing he could be with her.
She had no family left to ground her, only a home she never wanted filled with memories of a family she couldnt help and it made him ache.
His own home scattered with to much pain to even step in alone. She'd come with him then, strong and brave to stand by his side and delt with his ghosts, both real and deep in his own head, never prodding never asking.
When he'd stumbled across the plates in the old house and the memories of his brother tumbled out of his mouth hot and fast, tasting bittersweet on his lips with a noise he wasn't sure was a laugh or a sob, she'd stayed beside him and listened to it all. They were surrounded by danger with ghosts they couldn't see haunting the halls and it wasn't the time to choke back sobs, to reminisce about the only family member he had, the big brother who took up taking care of them both, the one who piled his head in finances and left happiness for good so he wouldn't have to. But she let him talk, somehow knowing it would be the only time he'd ever be able to talk about it. She'd spoken so softly and listened to him babble, guarding them both.
She stopped him from killing his brother the last time he'd been in the house. A choice he had made out of sorrow and betrayal, he wasn't sure if he hated her or loved her for it at time. He'd done terrible things, mad and crazy and tormented. It was all he could do to see that he was placed the kindest asylum he could find before shoving that too under the rug and drowning himself in drinks for weeks later, problem painfully solved.
The past had come back to kick him though, a red shard of lyrium from the idol his brother had inexplicably left him for dead for, spinning him into madness had survived hidden in the house.
She had saved him from that too. Saved him when he could hear its melody singing through his head and he wanted nothing more then to keep the shard for himself. When he became aggressive and angry to get it. Ready to shoot an innocent trembling maid for the shard of the thing that drove his only brother to insanity. A memento of his brother, he remembered he reasoned at the time, while surrounded in a house full of him.
When he finally had it in his hand, he'd argued with hawke in barely tempered rage. Six years of his life had gone into this, the shard whispered, he could feel the power course through his hand as he held it. Power enough to save his brother from himself, power enough to protect Hawke, enough to protect the rag tag team that'd become his family from anything that wanted to hurt them ever again.
If he only kept it it would solve everything. He could figure out why his brother went insane, fix a mind that had already been lost.
He could only imagine what he must of looked like, blood from the battle still caked on his face from the battle, wet and vicious, dribbling down his chin as he argued in rage that he wouldn't go insane. Hawke had forced him to drop it, to hand it over, she'd taken the shard from his trembling hands into her kind ones, cold in the chill of the empty house.
He remembered the flare of raging suspicion that she just wanted the power for herself, the hurt that she didn't trust him, didn't believe he knew what he could handle, his mind flittering through ways he could steal it back.
He felt like a fool the next day. She had the shard destroyed the moment she got home, his fears and crazed uncertainties gone. She had have'd it made into something that couldn't hurt him, a rare explosive rune, she explained, to decorate Bianca if he wanted. She seemed worried for him, unsure of what she should say, worried about his mental state he realized, worried that he'd become his brother, but stayed with him anyways.
Oh how he wanted to kiss her after that.
But he didn't and he couldn't, so he'd settled with buying her the biggest drink he could, tossing his affection into his stories of her each one greater and bigger then the last when he was sure she was out of earshot. Never of the house past ghosts or of dead siblings and by gone parents, but of grander things of dragon battles and heroic roof top fights and of a woman so loving she took in a whole city of filth and made it her own out of nothing but the daggers on her waist. Everyone loved an under dog.
He hadn't thought much about wanting to at the moment but once his mind had suggested it, it never really seemed to want to leave.