Since I didn't update yesterday, I'm uploading two ficlets today. Also - thank you for all the lovely reviews! I've got all your suggestions written down, so they're all on the way :)

This was a tough one to choose a character for. I kept switching between Carver and Merrill, since the song fits them both so well (with the exception of Carver being male). I went for Carver eventually, since I find him to be one of the most interesting, and underrated, characters in DA2. Also, this one is a little more wordy than the others.

Reflection (Mulan) – Carver Hawke

Carver liked the docks. It was like a colony of ants in the day, especially on Tuesdays, with sweaty, stinking sailors and women of lesser morals scrambling around haphazardly. But in the evening, more like dusk, before the cutthroats and robbers came out and after the workers went home, it was quiet. It was almost peaceful. Almost.

And it was a relief to get away from Gamlen's house. Just to get away from Gamlen, really, with his snide remarks and his incessant drinking. He made Carver sick. Then there was Mother, looking wistfully at Hightown and lapsing into morose silence whenever she thought no one was looking. And then, as always, there was Marian, with her constant serene expression, her constant need to help people for no reward, her constant inability to see the bad in anyone. Most of the time, it made him feel ill. But then, most of the time, he wished he could be more like her.

Not with the magic – Maker's breath, he didn't want that over his head too. It was bad enough with Marian running around carelessly, staff strapped to her back. And before that, there was Bethany. And Father. He'd always seemed to care more for his daughters than Carver, though, and sometimes, Carver had wished that he just a little more like them.

And now Bethany was gone, and Marian was the breadwinner, and once again, Carver was nothing to anyone. He looked into the rippling water beneath the harbour, watching his own face look back at him. "Look at me," he sighed, to no one in particular. "I will never pass for a perfect son… Or a perfect brother. Can it be I'm not meant to play this part?" He looked away, finding his gaze drawn to the direction he'd walked, from Lowtown. "Now I see that if I were truly to be myself, I would break my family's heart."

That was the truth of things. Lately, he'd found himself more and more drawn to the Templars, to the order and stability they promised. Maybe Marian wasn't dangerous. But he'd seen enough blood mages – and that idiot, Anders – by now to understand that magic itself was. Not that his family would see it that way. But did he really want to join the Templars because he agreed with them, or did he just want to separate himself, wholly and unconditionally, from his sister? Carver himself didn't know.

He stood, walking along the harbour, planks creaking under his boots, and looking out to the water. A tall, powerful youth looked back at him, but he looking uncomfortable in his physique, as if it were a suit of armour weighing him down. "Who is that kid I see?" he asked, his heart heavy, "staring straight back at me? Why is my reflection someone I don't know?"

Collapsing onto a pile of barrels, Carver held his head in his hands. "Somehow I cannot hide who I am," he lamented, tears threatening to leak from his eyes. "Though I've tried… When will my reflection show who I am inside?" A fish jumped in the sea, shattering his reflection into ripples. "When will my reflection show who I am inside?"

He didn't know how long he sat there for. But when he went home, he had made up his mind – he would join the Templars. He didn't belong in Marian's world, anymore.

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Up Next: Zevran and Oghren teach Alistair a wonderful phrase.