Okay but, thinking about how Hawke is always the one she blamed for their siblings' death in the prologue and how in Act 2, when checking in with Merrill Purple!Hawke can basically tell Merrill that Leandra blames Hawke for Bethany being in the circle despite Leandra begging them not to let her go on the expedition. And just more and more of Hawke shouldering more and more guilt for failing to combat forces outside of their control and how it applies to Keir and I just-!

he’s straight up not having a good time

the thing abt keir is that of all my hawkes, he agrees with leandra the most. for someone who is so outwardly different, he is very very much his mother’s son. he accepted the responsibility for his siblings’ safekeeping and anything that happens to them is on him; he would’ve blamed himself for that before she said anything and it would never occur to him to contradict her because in his view she’s right. sometimes that means he accepts things she hasn’t even said because he assumes, i.e. bethany is the favourite child, because of course she is, look at her, why wouldn’t she be. leandra is more protective and such of bethy than she is of keir but that’s for various complicated reasons and does not mean she loves keir any less, imo. it’s just how he reads it because he will always go for the simplest read on an emotional situation bc he’s not very good at this. and he’s not going to bring it up even if he had anything he wanted to say, because he doesn’t know how to look after leandra the way bethy does so he’s just trying to not be a problem

which is not to say that keir never upsets leandra. i’ve mentioned that keir has the Act Break Breakdown™️, where in the three years between acts 1 and 2 he largely doesn’t talk to his friends for the better part of a year, and he ‘comes back’ only to then start becoming a reaver whether anyone likes it or not. keir is trying not to bring all that home and his idea of the best way to do that would be to not be at home at all. that’s the selfless reason; the selfish reason is that keir loathes the amell estate for a long time. he was always trying to get out of gamlen’s house and be somewhere else, and the estate is even worse. he doesn’t want to fucking be here. i imagine he took several trips out of kirkwall entirely for weeks or months at a time, on jobs for meeran and the like. he’s not there for leandra in the act break after they lose bethy. he doesn’t know how to be

the thing about keir and leandra is that they’re designed to function with three other people inbetween them. keir’s an aggressive hawke who finds it really hard to be anything else. they’re supposed to have malcolm to follow or to fondly ally against (don’t listen to your father, darling, he can scare all the merchants from here to denerim but he still doesn’t know a sovereign from a silver) and carver to fondly bully (mother, tell the brat if he’s late to old barlin’s we’ll both lose our jobs and that waitress at dane’s refuge won’t even look him in the eye) and bethany who understands them both to translate between them (dearest, are you still awake? bethany says you had a bad day. oh, why didn’t you say something? look at those bruises. poor dear. when you were little you’d tell me anything. i remember when you’d skin your knee and come running straight to me...). with only the two of them left, there’s just the distance of those three people between them. left to his own devices in the estate, keir will just put as many diplomatic words as he can together and then walk out the door to where he can be himself. and by the time he would do anything to have spent more time with her it’s too late