Hawke was a fool. No, worse than that, she was a masochist. That was the only possible reason she'd be standing there in front of the open gate to the compound, thinking about going in. She wasn't well versed in the more esoteric laws of Kirkwall, but she was fairly sure what the Arishok had done would count as torture in some circles. It had been two days before she could lift her arms, and her mother had raged, and Anders had nearly wept, and Fenris had given her that tight-lipped worried look, even Varric had squeezed her hand in a rare display of affection.

She had been given what seemed to be an impossible test. She had passed. And somehow, no one had ever suggested that she might not have, or should not have, or could not have. It didn't occur to anyone but herself that she couldn't do it.

Hawke felt strong. Powerful, with a gravitas that she hadn't felt in years, a sense of destiny, a vision of endless skies. She was pure lyrium, immortal, untouchable, unstoppable. She wanted to scream and dance and laugh until she cried. She was caught in a tug of war between aggression and sexuality. She wanted to fight, she wanted to fuck, and she wasn't entirely sure where the line between them was.

Perhaps her encounter with Cullen had ruined more than the novice on the fourth floor.

The Qun, or the Qunari, or perhaps just the Arishok, one of them was a drug, and here she was, looking for a fix. She dragged a hand through her loose hair and sighed at herself. She'd spent all day in Ander's clinic, watching him pack, then unpack, then pace, then rant and rave and weirdly, question her attraction to Fenris. In front of the elf. She'd been shocked and humiliated, he'd been confused and suspicious, and Varric had coughed. Coughing. The universal sign for desperately trying not to laugh. But no one would ever think to find her here.

It was a rationalization. Hawke accepted that.

She walked in, up the stairs, and stood silently at the bottom of the dias, gazing up the man himself and a small circle of karasten speaking intently about something. She made no noise, just watched, the karasten more animated than she'd ever seen, the Arishok silent and listening. Minutes passed before he held up a single hand and the circle of men immediately went silent. The arishok said something, two or maybe three words, and the circle dissolved. She felt powerful, but the Arishok was power.

It only took a moment after the meeting broke up for him to notice her, and he tilted his head before standing and striding down the stairs towards her, "Hawke. You have discovered the truth of my words?" He stopped a couple feet away and held out a hand.

She took the hand, automatic, unthinking, and fought the urge to press herself against his side. She couldn't manage to stop gazing up at him wide, intense eyes, whatever she told herself about how she was trying to look, "I don't know," she said. She'd never really considered lying to the man. Besides being a fairly bad liar, he just wasn't the sort you lied to, "I'm beginning to think it's sexual."

The Arishok looked down at her with weighty, considering eyes before he turned, leading her back up the stairs, "You are powerful, but you lack focus, certainty." He stopped at the top and turned her around, holding her arm out to the side before he released her hand, the fingers sliding to her elbow, just barely holding her arm up, "You seek security in the inevitability of your own death, Hawke."

Hawke swallowed, looking ahead though all of her attention was focused behind her, on the heat radiating from the man, on the claws touching her elbow, "That…" she shook her head, "That took a bit of a turn towards morbid."

More claws appeared on her other elbow and lifted it up to match the first arm, mirroring the torture of her first night, except he held her arms up, not the bench, "It is only when your choices are as the karasten - to accept and succeed, or deny and die - that you yield to the Qun. You surrender, and overcome."

His claws slowly pulled away until she was supporting her arms herself, and they quickly began to tremble, still weak. She narrowed her eyes at the dim courtyard before responding, "Could still be sexual."