&---ANYTHING O E S ;

Everyone doesn't notice, and to their credit, they never usually did. He supposes it's his fault, because he deliberately brought on the change at a very slow pace, encouraging their ignorance from the very start. He has to smile to himself as he recalls the plan, because it really is fucking brilliant, his mind cheers on, but he is usually too hammered drunk to even care anymore.

When his mind decides to be nice, it allows him to get a taste of sobriety for a brief amount of time. He has decided a long time ago that he hates it, with every fiber of his ever being. For as long as he lived, so long as he remained drunk it would shield himself from the horrors of this outside world.

Because back in Orzammar, nobody gave a flying shit whether his beard was unkempt or is he smelled like rotting corpse, and he has to wonder why in Andraste's holy knickers it would matter now. It's made ten thousand times worse when he tries to stick a comb in his hair, only to lose it and never find it again, or when soap just slips out of his hand because he can't control who he is and why should she change that

It wasn't like this with Branka, he spits, because Branka only cared about one thing in him. She ditched the romance and the conversation; the flowers and the chocolates. The silver and the gold and probably his testicles because he knows women are cunning and evil.

But when he looks at her, he doesn't think that.

Because when he looks at her, he can see only pretty eyes and short kept hair. He sees in between the holes her armor teasingly displays, but not as much as he'd like. He smells her when the wind carries her scent across the camp, and he begins to think her scent is just haunting him, because nobody is there when he presses the bottle to his lips.

He's no fool— he knows the look he's giving her.

She's giving the same look to that idiotic Templar.

And suddenly, he turns away, mumbling to himself that he just doesn't give a damn anymore, placing his trust and praying to the Maker that one day it could be true.

---&END.