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He might have liked Hawke, in another life. No, they had little in common and even less in trust for one another, and Blight or no the two already knew they would struggle to keep the peace between the group. There was too much templar in him and too much mage in Hawke, there was too much fear in their hearts, and as most things in this world, there was not enough time for them to get past it. They barely managed an uneasy tension through their journey deep into what was left of the Wilds, but Wesley loved Aveline, and Hawke loved their family, and the uneasy truce continued.Hawke was a dark, sullen apostate with large eyes and thick hair that would have curled if grown out. They looked younger than their age, he would find out from Mistress Hawke, but her eldest child fixed him with a hard edge to their face that quickly dissolved him of any underestimating thoughts. Apostates were never quite so helpless as they might appear, especially not this one. This one, he thought to himself, had someone to protect. Fair enough, so did he.He had never been a strong man, not particularly, but he managed to keep up with their group as they fled across the Blight-seared landscape. That was not where his thoughts went, however. Aveline was strong, incredibly strong, and her indomitable will was what he trusted would see her through these fiends.That was not what he wanted to protect her from.When the news of the King's army shattering in the darkspawn's grip reached him, he turned south to find her. Lothering would have been the way station between his old post and Ostagar, an excuse for why he had abandoned all sense to come looking for his wife. It was providence, perhaps, that had reunited them, but as she said, it was his bad judgment that had brought him here in the first place. If he had trusted her, she might have found a way out after all. If not, that was a darker path than he wanted to set upon. She would have wanted him to stay where she knew he was safe, she would have wanted him to wait, wait for however long it took for news to reach him, one way or another.But he had never been a strong man.Hawke would not allow him near the first of the twins, a dark-eyed girl by the name of Bethany, and the boy, Carver, looked too antsy for anything that would take him from his family's side. Mistress Hawke leaned on her son's and daughter's shoulders when she could, and Aveline would not relinquish the front now that she had more to protect; her word was as steady as her sword arm and shield, raised again and again and again. Tireless. Resolute. Certain. But Hawke, for the distrust in their dark eyes and the nervousness in their limbs, lent him their shoulder by the end. While Aveline's devotion bordered on stubbornness, Hawke's loyalty rested on the laurels of blind optimism and kindness, even for a mage to a templar. They could have crossed that chasm with time, had there been more.Wesley didn't make it a day more when he knew, even before the Witch of the Wilds turned her unsettling gaze on him, like molten fire from the mouth of the dragon she had shifted out of. He only wished that he had been able to find the words for Aveline first, but Flemeth had been stronger. By the time Aveline looked into his face to see the truth he had been hiding from, he had no strength to do more than meet her eyes and plead silently.
I'm sorry, Aveline. This has to be done.
And there it was. Wesley closed his eyes for a brief respite, a moment to will her away while he faced his mortality. Aveline du Lac...Vallen...his wife, she had always been so remarkably strong.He was surprised by the strength of that emotion as it hit him through a wave of sickness, how dizzying the thought was. It was an echo of what he'd felt the moment he had known it was her, the day he had asked her to marry him, and the sight of her at the end of a blossom-festooned aisle, looking back at him. He had loved her, and loved her, and would have loved her beyond these moments, and that was why he did what he could to protect her. She did not need his sword arm or shield to be safe. She had not needed him to come looking for her, to fight at her side through this nightmare, a continuance from what hell she had seen at Ostagar. She was not someone he had ever been meant to keep like a porcelain doll, and he had never once thought that. It was not what he ever wanted.This...thing, though, the knife at his belt and the corruption in his veins, a black, searing pain that even now wracked his core and lungs and heart, this much he wanted to keep her from. He knew her strength and will, how she would find a way forward and move on someday, that she would survive even this. But he knew she would keep the last cut cruel in her heart, a sharp, cold thorn to remind her all her days...and he couldn't let her do that.With Hawke, it would be not easier, perhaps, but simpler in a way. He mused on those last moments as Aveline turned her bright, wet eyes from him forever, and he hoped this could spare her from her own strength, though she would have been furious to know that. The thought brought a chuckle too weak to survive in his ravaged throat. But this way, he hoped, she would not turn that protectiveness inward. There would be a reason to hate, an outside force to look towards. She would have an antagonist to distrust and bear her grudge and guilt for her. I'm sorry, he didn't say to Hawke, though the intent was there in the way he slowly angled the dagger at his own heart. But please, let her hate you instead. Let her hatred for you come easily to her as my hatred for you did. Apostate, I'm sorry, but let her blame you over herself.For a kindness, Hawke's hands trembled helplessly a moment over his own, thin-fingered and cool. There was more regret and understanding than he had expected, too, and he added that to his regrets as well.Perhaps, in another, kinder world, he would have watched their hands, healer's hands, carry out happier mercies for him, for all of them. He could have learned more about the heaviness already filling their head and their frowns. Gently, with real sincerity, he might even have asked how to tell Hawke's days from he and his, she and hers, they and theirs, and with a wry but not unfriendly grin, Hawke might have answered his questions. More a what-if than a true regret, but he found himself holding another I'm sorry in his heart all the same.Out loud, he told them, thank you, for taking at least one of his regrets from him.Hawke nodded softly as a prayer, and Wesley sighed thank you as the sudden edge of his life cut into that quiet, never-ending darkness.