“And dish it out,” Hawke points out dryly, smirking as she thinks back to all of the punishment Aveline had dished out over the years. The woman stood face-to-face with the Maker-cursed Arishok. A Qunari leader! And she hadn’t even flinched. She’d parried spears out of the air, thrown by hate-filled Qunari agents. The woman never backed down from a fight.

Hawke makes a mental note to point that out to her next time Aveline comments on how much Hawke refuses to take the easy way out. And then she remembers that unless Aveline gets dragged here, she won’t get that chance.

“Maybe. But I’ve known someone else like that.” Fenris might have been good at taking things down, but he never quite was willing to take the punishment for everyone else. Not like Aveline. “One of my best friends used to say... ‘Protect what matters with everything you have or you’ll have nothing and deserve it.’ I think you’d like her.”