Dragn

Lin

Home is, and always has been, just a word. Home is a concept at its very most and one he refuses to let bind his decisions in this world. Getting too caught on what it is and what it means leads to a different kind of feeling in his chest. Home is just a word and so if it's something he'd never had then that was the way it would stay.

Haven wasn't home. Haven was a prison, a holding for a short week that had forced him into fights he'd never meant to face. The people there couldn't decide whether to sneer at his presence or cheer in his honor. He'd been called a herald and a prophet and a child of the maker just as quickly as he'd been called a scoundrel and a murderer and every combination of elven slurs a shem could come up with.

The settlement was barely considerable as a town, the place he slept could hardly be considered a house, the people were as far from family as one could get. It was a carefully curated prison made to ensure he continued to help them cure the shredded skies. He'd never wanted to leave, never thought to, and yet the place was a standing threat scattered with chantry members who could only look at him with a face unreadable.

Cassandra was steely and cold, Cullen was an enigma, the mage and the rogue and the squirrely kid that aided in tearing through the endless pour of demons from the sky were so hard to take apart that he couldn't tell what they stood for. The Hinterlands feel like a never ending curse with each new request the people put upon him. Never mind that he blooms when he sees them complete. Filing back in to the war room is a drain. It doesn't matter that his heart cries out when he ticks another task off the board and removes the marker. Josephine and Leliana are a complicated pair who's job is to do what he can't, so when he leaves the ambassadors treats from their travels who's to say what the ladies think of them.

Haven is a trap born from a curse that he hadn't asked for and a crime he can't remember.

So why, then, does something snap inside when he sees the snow piled higher than ever before. The buildings and the stones and the ash of ruble buried far beneath the frost are surely never to be seen again, he can't begin to tell where the smith begins and the shops end and what used to be of the tavern. He can't see any of it. What he can see is glimpses of smoke and hands stained red that just barely peak out of the sea of white. Haven wasn't a home, these people weren't his family, these burdens aren't a gift.

So then why does he feel like he's lost his home?