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"No man is a mountain, love. If he were, the mountains wouldn't be made stronger." He doesn't move through it, just holds Hawke close and pets his hair with every scrap of patience in him. He could always find more- for the people that were his. He kisses Wolfe's shoulder where Chris' face is pressed near.

"You're not an example. You're not some pinnacle of one thing or another, you're certainly not meant to stand alone. Anyone who's said any of that to you, kindness or no, has done you more harm than good. You're Adalwolfe Hawke, you're a mage with charisma and charm and a mind clever as a tack and the creative reasoning of a leader...but the bowed spine of one too. Especially one forced into it. You're brilliant and those who love you do so deeply and loyally...but You've held yourself up on a rotted pedestal of expectations."

He pulls back a fraction, only enough to try and look at Wolfe, even if his gaze isn't met. "I'm holding you up because you need it, not because you can't do it. I carry your burdens because I choose to pick them up, not because they've been tossed on me, but you are no burden to me. If you were, I'd not be here. Repeat that to me. Tell me you know I'm here because I want to be."

It served two-fold, the forced practice of saying a thing to make it feel true, even if not right now...and to take Hawke's choice. He needed that right now, as much as Chris could without it being too suffocating.

"I am." He hates how small he sounds, how broken and childish when he just needs for Chris to understand. "Every mage is an example, and so many are bad. So many give justification to those who would abuse and imprison us. I have to be above reproach, but Maker take me I'm-"

His words stick in his throat as he hears them all in his father's voice. The man he'd thought above reproach too, who'd taught him what it was to be a mage, to be a man at all. The man who had been everything to everyone and never made mistakes. Only he had, hadn't he? He'd used blood magic and hid it from his family. He'd forced them to move as many times as his children had through discovered use of magic. He'd made Leandra cry more than once for fear or anger or anything else that could have been avoided with a word or an explanation or a simple listen to someone else before he went off and did whatever it was he deemed right.

He's become that person. And it got them caught. He's hung his entire concept of virtue on the pillar of one man who was really just doing his best. But doing your best, Wolfe has found, is not always doing right, and Malcolm wanted for Wolfe to be better than he was.

Maybe Chris shouldn't want to be here, if Adalwolfe is just a poor shadow of Malcolm, making the same mistakes just grander. Just worse. No wonder Carver chafed as much as he did; he'd seen the pattern plain as day. If Malcolm Hawke was such a failure, then what does that say about his first born who emulated him as much as he possibly could?

"I don't know why," he breathes, not meeting Chris' eyes. "I don't doubt that you want to be here but I can't fathom why when I am... this."

Something in Chris' gaze goes hard, but not unkind and he shifts in his mindset immediately, chin lifting a touch and voice deepening with a touch more command. Not a full King's voice, but close to it. All other thoughts and concerns flee his mind in deference to this.

His fingers hook around and under Hawke's chin and jaw as he watches his boyfriend. "And what is this, Adalwolfe? What do you see when you look in the mirror? And don't shy from me with your words, you know I'll know it if you do."

"A failure," he responds with heartbreaking immediacy, but there's a defiant spark behind it. He fails. Everyone fails, but his failures always seem to have such dire consequences for others. He still tries, but at what point is that folly? At what point does his hope become hubris and his trials become a danger to all?

Hawke curls his fingers into Chris', firmly removing the young king's grip from his chin and keeping it in his grasp. What he does know is he doesn't want this from his boyfriend right now. He appreciates what Chris is trying to do, and it had been exactly necessary not but a moment ago, but he needs a more even talk now that he's calming. He needs to know Chris understands.

"Like anyone, I succeed and fail and struggle and hope enough to keep fighting, but I can never reach where I want to be. It never ends up where I want it. Being an example means being a target too. Trying to protect myself means failing to protect those I love. I'm not... I'm not perfect, no one is perfect, but even trying to be good enough I find myself coming up short. If it was just me that reaped the consequences that would be fine, but it's others that suffer for my mistakes. It's always others that suffer and die because there's something more I could have done that I didn't think of, or did but thought I could beat."

He takes a deep breath, shuttering but stronger than before. More even. This is normal, this is what he sees of himself every day, looking back at him. An exhausted failure of a man who is just trying his best and always comes up short of his own expectations. "I know I'm nice, I'm charming, I try to be kind and friendly and loving. I'm clever and insightful and these are inherently dangerous things to be when I'm still a failure in leadership. I draw people in, people I love, and convince them to follow, and get them hurt, captured, or killed."

He puts his other hand over Chris' in his, gently covering as if it's a bird he's trying to keep from flying off. Gaze firmly on their fingers, Hawke's expression is vulnerable and tender, raw in a way that even he doesn't normally project. There's a self awareness that he buries of habit and duty but has bubbled to the surface in the wake of ebbing emotion and that's what sits before Chris now. Raw and brutal honesty. "But Maker help me I can't let them go."

Chris listens. Chris listens and wars with himself, with his knee-jerk reaction. The thing he might have said years back now. The part of him that looked at Ra'ah's struggle with his magic and saw a man fearful when he'd never been before. Had seen fear that would get him killed or his friends killed and hadn't supported him but forced him to be hard. We need you through this so get through this.

The sharp taste of accusation lingers on his tongue. The arrogance in the words, the turn of either misguided sentiment or subconscious manipulations burn in Chris' skin and for a moment, he wants to snap and bite and pull his hand back for what he's hearing. But the look in Wolfe's eyes and his own...maturity, perhaps, has him breathing a sigh. That wasn't what was needed.

Wolfe might not need the firm hand Chris presented as he presented it, but he didn't doubt he still needed the guidance. The cleric instead of the king. Chris' expression softens, but not in conviction.

"Adalwolfe...no one has asked you to. You might not have wanted to be a leader, but you 'draw in' those around you not out of deceit, but out of earnest desire. You don't force anyone, you don't magic their minds or hearts, it is their decision. You dishonor those who love you and respect you to take their decisions and fates from them. If they are hurt or die following you, then that is a fate they were prepared for. If it is borne of an honest mistake and not guilt masquerading as a mistake, then you learn and remember and do better. You do do better. There are people here better for having you and it is not your decision or right to deny that."

He pulls his hand back, but not far, only enough to not be contained between Hawke's hands but to lace their fingers together. "You do keep fighting and you let yourself rest and you let yourself take counsel and yield when needed. You are the best of what a man can be, flaws and failures and all...for no man or god is without fault, flaw, or failure and, if you think hard on whoever told you to be 'the best' of mages...I suspect you'll find you've twisted their meaning. No person who loves you would ask for something that hurts you as you're hurting now."

No one has asked you to.

That feels wrong. His whole life he's been asked to make decisions or told what he's for. Looked to by his family and lost them one by one when his actions or decisions weren't good enough. His sister dead, his brother a mess, his mother-. Maker take him, it's too much just for them but his friends too. His companions. They ask and ask and he can't but lead.

Only that's what Chris is trying to say, what Anders had been telling him all along. It's on him to know his limits, to know when to step back and ask for patience instead of burying himself under the piling weight of expectation. No one will do that for him, especially not with the skillful way he's always fine, always will be fine. Stalwart and supportive Hawke, never complained a moment even when things were at their worst. Reliable Hawke, giving until there's nothing left but this and feeling, knowing, it's still not enough.

If it were anyone else he'd have told them to stop a long time ago, but because it's himself...

"I'm better than I was. I know I am, but I don't know when that stops feeling like I'm transgressing if I step away." When he stops hearing his mother shouting that he should have prevented Carver's leaving, prevented Bethany's death. Looking to him brokenly when they'd buried Father under a tree in the woods somewhere in the Bannorn, as if it was all up to him then. And it was. It has been for decades. All up to him.

Hawke looks up to Chris, fervently wishing his love was wholley right, but he didn't know Leandra Hawke. He didn't know the size of the hole Malcolm Hawke had left for his eldest to fill. "Some day, I'll tell you about my parents, then maybe you'll understand. But I don't think-" Pause, rephrase. "I want to believe you're right."

He brings one hand away to wipe at his face, running the back of one over his eyes and sighing in a small huff that's far too warm for how he's feeling. The other remains, though with fingers only loosely hooked on Chris' own. There's a hesitant quality to it, like he's ready to let go the second Chris changes his mind but hopes - knows, perhaps - he won't. "Thank you, Love. I'm sorry you seem to have to put my head back on so often. I never set out to be so much trouble."

His parents...It's not something he's put much thought in...but maybe he should. The way Silver still looked up to his mentor, the way Ra'ah so easily settled into having a father, like a hole had been filled. Amnos' relationship with his parents was a standard, one he was living up to for his own kids. When Chris thought of his parents, he only thought of a deeper voice and commanding presence or the light catching on his mother's earring as she'd held him close in fear. It's not...something he thinks he can understand. Not in the way that seems to simply hamstring Hawke like nothing else. It reminds him of Jon, in a way. Not in a way he feels he could explain well enough right now.

And Wolfe doesn't sound like he wants to hear it anyway. He's shutting the conversation down...and maybe it should be, for now. He's said what he could, hopefully it found a place in his partner's heart somewhere instead of simply brushed away.

Chris' fingers keep with Wolfe's and his other hand reaches up to brush along his cheek. "If you were too much trouble for me, you'd know it. I only take on those I wish to and none more...I'll always do as I can to put your head to rights no different than you'd do for me."

He sighs a little and looks back towards the house. "Let's get you cleaned up and then you need some rest, alright? Once you've done so, you can go visit them. They'll be heartened in seeing you, but not half broken at their feet."

Nodding wordlessly, Hawke braces his hand in Chris' to stand back up, though most of his weight he puts on his own legs and it shows in how one of his knees pops for standing. Part of him thinks he should let go then, the sinister voice in the back of his head whispering that this is his weakness to bear and Chris shouldn't have to shoulder him when he'd made a promise that he could handle this. That he's terrible for leaning where he should be able to stand up on his own. But the part of him that's simply Adalwolfe, that loves and thinks for himself, that listens and takes advice to heart, holds Chris' hand fast in his as they walk back into the house.

"Will you stay awhile? It's alright if you have other things you need to do, I'll still stay and rest, but... I'd like it if you stayed." He asks like it's a secret, voice soft and tired, not just for running on so little sleep and the knowledge he can't get any, but for feeling wrung out. Still, he asks. Chris had said he only takes on who he wishes, so he has to trust that he'll say no if that's his want.

What is that like, to effortlessly choose to say no? To step back when you need it without fear or regret? He wonders, and he admires Chris for this ability and so much else besides.

They step into the house and are greeted with a gentle call and a 'hello' in Chris' accent and inflection which earns a 'hello' back from the cleric and a small tilt to his lips...but then his focus is back on Hawke and he reaches a hand up behind his mage's neck to pull him close enough for a kiss to his forehead.

"There's nothing else more important. I'm here. Do you need me to decide what to do now or have you an idea of what you'd like?"

"I'd just like to sit with you awhile. Maybe we can put something on. A bad television show or something else we can criticize." All he really wants is to be close and distracted. The kiss to his forehead is grounding and it's more of that, too, he could certainly do with right now, guilty as he is for it. How he gets to sit around with someone he loves while the two others he cares for are suffering punishments for something he's ultimately responsible for but Chris is right, they'll not want to see him a scattered mess. It will just make it worse.

"I'll make popcorn." And coffee. He'd rather lay with his head in Chris' lap but he'll fall asleep, just jerk awake again, and that will be a whole other conversation he can't stomach right now.

Chris nods without comment or copmplaint about whatever show Hawke might find, just resigns himself to the mindnumbing and vague confusion it usually caused him apart from the documentaries he'd occasionally watched. It wasn't about that, it was about keeping Wolfe company and keeping his head level for him until he could find the strength to lift it again with some confidence.

He leans in and kisses Hawke on the cheek. "You do that, I'll turn the thing on and get settled for you to come rest with me. Maybe lure Thunder down too." She could nest in Wolfe's hair.

He does as promised, turns on the television, leaves the remote somewhere close, and settles sideways so Hawke could place himself between Chris' legs as his reclining support. Perfect for petting the older man's hair and arms as Chris deems needed over the next however long. He meant it when he said he had nowhere else to be that mattered half as much, his time and effort was Wolfe's.

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