Disclaimer: All hail Bioware.
VII) Hawke
Hawke smiled broadly at the healer, then winced as the muscles in her face protested.
"Are you all right?" Anders asked worriedly.
"I'm fine Anders" she replied gently. "I am thirsty though. Could you help me take some water?"
Anders nodded, and fetched a glass. He helped her sit up straight, and held the glass to her lips.
"Small, even sips" he warned her.
But she was too thirsty to listen to him, and instead she took great heaving gulps. She accidentally breathed some in, and she choked, spraying water all over her bed sheets as a rack of coughing overtook her. Every cough sent a wave of searing agony across her chest. She gasped from the pain, and tried not to blackout.
When the coughing subsided, she lay back on her pillows, a light sheen of sweat coating her green tinged face.
"Hawke? Are you all right?" Anders asked, his expression troubled. "Is there something I can do?"
"No, thank you" she replied, then smiled as a look if consternation crossed his face. "Anders" she said with a weak laugh. "I'm a healer too, remember? I know that no matter how much healing magic you pump into me, this is still going to hurt. Besides, I have my own ways of dealing with pain. Pass me that book over there, and the pencil next to it."
Nonplussed, Anders did as she requested, passing her the green leather-bound book that she kept next to her journal.
"It's a good thing that brute didn't break my other arm, or I'd be stuffed" she said past the pencil she had placed between her teeth as she turned the pages of the book with her good hand.
"What is that?" he asked curiously.
"My sketchbook, of course" came the bewildering answer.
She must've caught his befuddled look. "Anders, there's a reason Varric and I are such good friends. We both tell stories. Only he does it with words and I... I do it with pictures."
"So this is your method of combating pain?" he asked.
"I draw when I'm stressed" she explained, stopping on a page that showed the most exquisite drawing of a wolf. Anders could somehow tell that it was supposed to be Fenris.