And sleeping somewhere that wasn't familiar to him. Though now it had become. Hawk had become comfortable sleeping amongst the stars and in those familiar rooms above the Inn. At one point. he had had his own studio above his brother's shop. But that was long ago. Now it was just natural to stay here. Sleep here. Ringed in sunlight. It was the most apt description Hawk could have given the sun haired woman who stood before him. He sat up, closing the book, and stretched his arms out above him in a V.

She watched him a moment, her expression obscured by the sun glare. A step forward as she bent over to place a kiss to his cheek.

He smiled. Even if his face rebuked those types of things. But it was unabashed and unafraid. "Can I see what you were working on?"

Another kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Yes, if ya'd like." An affectionate ruffle of his hair as she stood back up. This time she leaned back towards the table, grabbing the tablet and leaving the pencil to roll across the floor. Turning, she plopped down on the sofa next to him, handing the requested item over. Long legs propped themselves up on the ottoman. Dinner could apparently wait.

Close, especially when her lips touched his cheek. Hawk reached up and brushed his fingers over her neck when she leaned in. Handing over the tablet he held it up so he could admire her work.

She shivered and leaned in closer to the warmth of his bare torso. It was the room they occupied, the windows, and hazy skyline. The furnishings, down to the smallest detail. Including himself, nestled into the cushions and sleeping. On looking at it from such a distance, Juliane marveled that his ability to blend in and fit with his surroundings were skills not limited to his cloak.

Hawk admired her apt depiction of the scene she had been witness to. "Your talent has never gone to waste, has it?"

"Oh, I'm sure it has. Sometime or other." She pondered a moment. "Things I should've drawn, moments I should've saved.." Quick blinks as if to banish those thoughts. "Bein' a visual magpie ain't all it's cracked up ta be sometimes."

"But it means you see the world differently." Emphatic as he gestured to her work. "Vividly. In color." Hawk took a moment to breathe in, then he breathed out. "Hopeful."

The sketch was in grayscale, so the vivid comment made her brows raise a bit. "Different is rarely easy though. 'S not so much now, here, but yeah....it wasn't always so shiny." She rested her cheek against the end of his shoulder. "But there's always potential. Possibility." She nodded. "Hope." Her own pause. "It's what th' struggle taught me most of all."

Hawk had always known this somewhere but for reasons unknown could never understand it. Or accept it. There should be more to hope for with the struggle. But there wasn't. All he knew was that the last time he returned to Rhy'din the faces were almost all completely foreign and even those he called his family had abandoned him. "You really like it here in Rhy'din."

Another pause. Like was such a subjective term. "I have freedom here. Ta do what I want. Be what I want. Have what I want." A sigh escaped her, unknowingly. "When ya haven't had it before, it's like finally bein' able ta breathe."

"I know." And he did. He knew that very intimately. "My..introduction to Rhy'din wasn't as freeing as yours." The muscles began to wind and then uncoil all in turn, his torso expanded and collapsed with a hefty breath. "But it was how I felt when I came to the city."

Turning towards him, her left arm snaked across his stomach, in some sort of half hug. Shifting a bit, she let her eyes trace the features of his face. "Why did ya come, babe?"

"I didn't." The roll of the fire had comforted him. "The Nexus took me. Set me in the deserts outside of Cadentia. I nearly died." It seemed so long ago even though it was less than a decade. "I was found but I won't call it rescue. By a slaver bringing his goods to market. I was too weak to fight. So they clapped me in fetters. Put a collar on my neck." It explained the lingering scar in parts around his neck. And the mass of keloid tissue criss-crossing his back.

Her hold on him tightened momentarily as if terrified the Nexus would dare take him away again. Lips brushed against the scar at his neck as if she could absolve it. Juliane blinked away the threat of tears at the thought of him as a slave. Her mouth opened to say something....but what? She was sorry' She wished he hadn't come" Hadn't been captured or beaten or hurt' There was no way to keep him there with her and undo the circumstances of the journey that had led him so.

"I..." The pause was poignant enough. Soft confessions beneath lingering warmth from a fire he felt more that she was close. "Found my freedom eventually. But I was forced to fight in the gladiator arena before then." That explained why there were so many scars that looked like slices into the skin.

She held her breath, visualizing it all in her mind while she listened. Her right hand sought his left, entwining their fingers.

Fingers firmly in hand he exhaled and spoke again. "But that was a long time ago." It seemed more like an age than he would let on. His first days in Rhy'din the city found him fleeting. Only a few days here and there. Very distrustful of anyone. Until he had found friends. Lovers. There was a time he had a zest and zeal for life hidden behind all that stony patience. But he was having a very hard time finding it.

"Wo...." She sputtered. "Would ya go back, if ya could?"

It was a hard question to answer. The Rhy'din he knew was almost completely gone. His wandering had taken him to lands far and wide and most of them were completely gone now. It was a mystery he had a hard time solving. Every time he returned there was less and less to come back to. Until this last time. There was nothing. An empty hollow relationship that led him to many tortured nights. But things were changing again. And he could fee the first winds of spring although the frost remained. "No. I wouldn't." Breathed barely above a whisper.

She didn't have words. The bubbly, transparent, hopeful woman was left speechless. The weight and meaning of those words resonated to her core. A kiss to his forehead. Then his temple. Then down the plane of his cheek, until at last, a soft, warm kiss found his lips.

It lingered only a few moments before Hawk tilted his forehead and rested it on hers. Burdens he had carried for so long. They had only multiplied now. It was the nature of being a man, he knew it, but it did not make it any easier. The older he became the heavier things became to carry. Unless he let them go. While he had found transcendence in his solitude he had also found emptiness. And although he had faced it, fought it, then welcomed it, it was hard to remain that way when she fit so wellin against his torso, and so perfectly within his arms.

(( Adapted from live play with the ever awesome Hawk-mun. ^.^ ))