The Amell Legacy: Transgressions

[Marian Hawke]

"You'll be here for his puberty, though, right? When he needs to learn how to become a man? I won't be able to teach him that, nor Haliel..."

[Varric]

"Yes," Varric reassures her with a grin. "That's less than thirty years off. I have that and more still in me."

[Marian Hawke]

She runs a hand through her hair. "I wouldn't have said I did, if you asked before all this happened. It's... terrifying, really."

[Varric]

"Change is like that a lot of the time. Can't find it in me to regret making you face it though."

[Marian Hawke]

"...making me?"

[Varric]

"Falling into your life, leading to all this," Varric says, waving a hand absently. "Not like I knew we'd end up here by any means. Hells, not even Greybeard could have predicted all this." He scowls a little, muttering something under his breath. Nothing flattering, Marian can tell.

[Marian Hawke]

"Varric!" she scolds. "That's the Herald of the Divine! The Most Learned One, the Honorable and Venerable Greybeard, the Ancient One, the Font of Knowledge!" She shivers a little, tone shocked and reverential. "You can't call him an asshole!"

[Varric]

"Clearly I can," Varric protests.

[Marian Hawke]

"Well you shouldn't!"

[Varric]

"Hey, hey," Varric says gently, patting the air. "What's wrong?"

[Marian Hawke]

"It's blasphemy," she hisses. "Against The Muse Of Dreams, she-that-is-Alydra!"

[Varric]

"They," Varric argues automatically. The actual gender Alydra claims can't be expressed in common and, when a long ago Seeker cleric had asked, is a topic that has been debated for over two thousand years. "And not really. There's nothing in the dogma forbidding it. Insolence, yes, blasphemy no."

[Marian Hawke]

"Disrespecting the gods is blasphemy," she growls. 

[Varric]

"No, it's not," Varric says gently. "Not all of them. But as it bothers you," suddenly and with perfectly understandable reason, "I can do my best to refrain from such in your presence."

[Marian Hawke]

"Sorry," she says, taking a deep breath. "Sorry. I-- I don't know why it bothers me so much, it just... it feels like itching under my skin to think about."