Author's Note: Funny story, I tend to regard Hawke as a much 'weaker' character than the Warden (or Shepard), less badass, less epic, less interesting. But everytime I actually play, it occurs to me that Hawke is someone who loses so much through the course of the story and it's utterly incredible (and badess and epic and interesting) that he is still standing by the end of it.
This is a homage and an apology, because I keep overlooking Hawke.
AGE OF RAPTORS
by moondusted
Hawke isn't real. He makes no sense. He seems to be breezing through life, at first glance, with a witty remark about everything on his lips. There is an attitude, facing slavers and calamities and threats of every kind. It seems as if nothing touches him. Until the mask slips and there is another face underneath, harsher and cast in jagged edges. Hawke kills with a ruthless efficiency that is as frightening to his friends as to his enemies.
"I am you," Hawke says to the boy Feynriel and he means it. Maybe. Or it's just another role he has assumed for reasons of his own. It looks good, it fits with who people think he is. It's another layer, past the attitude and the mercilessness, where there is someone who has, in his life, lost his home and his family.
There is nothing hunted about Hawke, nothing vulnerable at all.
He sets himself up as the wild young nobleman, favoured by fortune for his daring. He is a mage, an open secret that holds no weight even in the City of Chains. For some reason, no one ever goes after him, as if the thought never even occurs, not even only to be discarded.
He dances with Isabela on her terms, takes and discards her and their shared pleasure. He ties and pins her with her own desires and she doesn't even hate him for it.
There are no clever words when Leandra dies. Hawke becomes perfectly inscrutable. What does it mean to him, having lost so much? Having fought so hard and still being unable to hold onto anything at all? What is breaking behind his shifting face, being here, in the sewers with the heavy scent of formaldehyte and death pressing down all around them?
He invites no pity. He sneers and snarls it down with ice in his gaze, past the laughter.
Hawke, for all the connections he makes, is singular.
The laughter fades and wavers when the Chantry comes crashing down.
Yet, there is not even shock, just something frosty and calculating. It doesn't matter that he has been a part in this, however close to Anders he once was. Or maybe it does and the layers on Hawke's face have only been misaligned and it makes sense that he kills him.
It's a personal thing, this execution, a mercy rather than a cruelty, a facet of Hawke that conveys compassion, unexpectedly, at the end of all things.
Hawke turns on Orsino because the Circle never dared leash him, never bend or broke his will, but Meredith finds no ally in him. She wields no more power over Hawke than anyone else and she seals her fate with her sword at his throat. She has written her own death long before she crumbles.
When the dust settles, Kirkwall has a Viscount again. One who will not so easily be opposed, one who shows a different mask to everyone, who cannot be attacked at all, for all the target he should be.
One could see, looking at Hawke's life, all the paths he has taken — and the ones he refused — to find a certain inevitability there, a mind dissatisfied with being cast adrift by a fate he doesn't even believe in.
Hawke is many things to many people, he wears different faces, drawn across his own and every time the mask slips — or is allowed to slip — there is just another mask underneath. He sprawls in the Viscount's chair, young and good-looking, pitchblack hair and piercing eyes. He wears a sword at his hip, cold steel to complement the fire and lightning at his fingertips. Sometimes — rarely — there are whispers of blood magic, too. And the image is quite striking. This is what the Tevinter Magisters must have been like, in the beginning of their history, when the Golden City fell, before Andraste tore them down. Where but Tevinter, even today, would a man make his way as Hawke has, on nothing but cunning and willpower? Each loss, each wound and scar has only ever served to reinforce whatever ambition lies beneath the many faces he wears.
Times change and the world shivers and shakes and Kirkwall clings to its master desperately, believing the lie of him — all the lies of him. It's a different place, this Kirkwall where a mage rules as if he wasn't the most disputed being in existence.
An age of raptors is coming and he sits, perched on his throne, ready to leap and prove his mettle once and for all. There is no face that would disappoint.
End