Hawke lay in bed, kept awake by the skittering of rats and the snored of her mabari. Hawke lay awake and wondered what it felt like to hold a man's beating heart in her hand. The elf that she had met earlier that night had done that very thing in front of her. An effortless display of power. He'd crushed a man's heart from within his chest and called her an abomination, called Bethany an abomination. He'd looked at Carver with such disgust that it was clear he didn't think any better of her warrior brother.
"How'd he get those markings?" Bethany asked, her voice barely audible over the mabari's raucous snores.
"Called the wrong mage an abomination." Carver answered bluntly, his voice thick with sleep.
Hawke grinned at that, "Doesn't seemed to have stopped him." The three of them at that until a voice from the other end of the hall told them to shut it. They quieted and not long after Hawke lay awake listening to the soft breathing of her siblings, barred from sleep by the visions of her mother's death that their soft snores invoked. She had saved Bethany, pushing her stunned daughter out of the way with such strength that Bethany had been knocked clean out for most of the ensuing skirmish. Hawke growled, a low frustrated sound in the back of her throat and turned over onto her side. Her eyelids felt like they were weighted with lead but every time she let them slide shut she saw her the back of her mother's hands. Her hands lying limp and crossed over her broken chest.
Hawke woke with a start. Her leg kicking out involuntarily skimming her mabari's back. She fought for breath while he grumbled sleepily and got up moving closer to her side before settling again. Hawke stared at the wall, she couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't. Her mother had sacrificed everything for her children even if she hadn't known that her brother would only use them as collateral.
Gamlen. It was his fault that they slept in the hall of the Red Iron, allotted a corner of dank floor and tattered bed rolls because they were nothing but raw, unproven, indentured recruits. Again, Hawke found herself wondering what it would be like to hold a man's heart in her hand. As her eyes slid closed and her breathing relaxed into the long, slow pattern of sleep; Hawke dreamed of what it would feel like to hold Gamlen's heart in her hand.