Hazelnuts and plaid

[Aveline Vallen]

"What kind of happy?" Aveline asks curiously. "Like... proud happy? Or excited? Content?"

[Marian Hawke]

"I'm not sure. I just couldn't stop smiling at myself. It felt like I was finally becoming myself, after years of pretending to be someone else."

[Aveline Vallen]

"I see," Aveline says slowly, a faint niggling of familiarity coming at the words. "What about the opposite? What makes you unhappy in the opposite way, of being sad you're not allowing yourself to be you?"

[Marian Hawke]

"I... I'm not sure. I think... I think the sadness is always with me, has been since I was a little girl. It got better after I cut my hair and started hanging out with Papa and working for myself and adventuring, but it got worse again when I got pregnant, and it's worse now that I notice it than it was before I was noticing it."

[Aveline Vallen]

Aveline is quiet for a good minute or so, just rubbing Marian's lower back with the arm around her. "Marian... can we try something? A-- an experiment, I guess."

[Marian Hawke]

"Okay." She takes a deep breath, snuggling up against Aveline's side. 

[Aveline Vallen]

"Look up at me?" After Marian complies, Aveline offers a smile. "Okay. Don't think, alright, just react. First thoughts, first feelings." Despite some visible apprehension in Marian's eyes, Aveline gets another nod. "Okay. Lady zi'Hawke, daughter of Varric." A beat. "Sir zi'Hawke, son of Varric." Another beat, just a second or so long. "Sage zi'Hawke, child of Varric."

[Marian Hawke]

"Aveline, I'm not... I can't... I think I'd know if I was like Seeker Helene." Still, she doesn't see her face -- the slight twitch at the first appellation, the way her face relaxes a smidge at the second. 

[Aveline Vallen]

"Would you?" Aveline murmurs, biting her lip as she thinks. "You push away problems a lot, amat- amato. Not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to stand out or cause trouble."

[Marian Hawke]

"My little brother was like that. Like Seeker Helene, I mean. He almost drowned himself in a duck pond when we were little, just because Father brought him a doll as a present. They took him to the oak. I'm not like him. I'm not... you can't just make a demigod fix me. Maeve would have noticed if I was like that."

[Aveline Vallen]

"You probably aren't like him. Or Helene," Aveline adds. "But maybe you're not a woman anyway. I-- Last year, I actually hired Helene to, ah, expand and correct our personnel forms. Ne ended up with thirty-eight additions to 'male, female, outsider.' So... so there's plenty of other things that you could be." And ne said that's still only a partial listing too...

[Marian Hawke]

A long, quiet pause. "Do you  know, I have this friend, Joni. And ey uses ey, em, eirs pronouns. Ey changed eir name and decided on new pronouns and cut eir hair and ey is just so... so radiant now. So cool and amazing and... I keep wishing I could be like that. Special, and so certain and sure of who I'm meant to be. Do you think... does that mean...?"

[Aveline Vallen]

"I think it might," Aveline agrees, leaning down to kiss her temple. "Do you... do you want to try some more experimentation?" Aveline flushes a little. "Umm. Words. Questions and-- like before, I mean. Unless..."

[Marian Hawke]

"Not tonight," she nearly begs. "I need... I need to sit with this a while. Think on it."

[Aveline Vallen]

"Of course," is the prompt reply. Then a hesitant look appears on Aveline's face, one shaded with timid wonder. "If... if you can offer a good enough bribe," she says, tongue tangling a little at what Hawke can't miss as being flirtation. "Something, umm, worthy of a guard captain?" Her cheeks redden and she can't quite met Hawke's eyes.