Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

                I'm not calling you a liar
                                ...just don't lie to me.

It wasn't every day one encountered an eligible dwarven lady in Kirkwall, and this one was fresh out of Orzammar, still with that wide-eyed look and the fear of falling into the open sky.  Varric was having quite an easy time of charming her until a most unwelcome third party had elected to open her fat mouth.

A hand, long-fingered and distinctly human, slammed down upon the table between them.  Varric followed the path of the bare, muscled arm to the human who wielded it, a shock of black hair against pale skin, a shock of blue eyes against the corporeal world, a smug smile that immediately set him on edge.

"Would the esteemed gentleman be so kind as to conduct his sordid business elsewhere?" the human asked him, in a voice so crisp and so clear it almost hurt, somewhere behind his eyes.

Varric raised an eyebrow in response.  "I...beg your pardon?" he managed, but she turned her attention to his companion, danger flashing in her eyes.

"Terribly sorry to interfere, but I only felt you should know about the Master Tethras's lovely wife and children, whom he has left woefully unattended to this evening in hopes of gaining your favour."

Wide-eyed, falling up into the open sky.  The dwarven woman's eyes were a lovely, decidedly earthly hazel.  "Is this true?"

"No!" Varric waved his hands wildly, glared up at the human.  "I've never seen this human before in my life!  How do you even know my name?"

Mock-hurt, smug smile hidden but not quite gone.  "Why, Varric, what a desperate pretense you've adopted, and here am I, only trying to help you."  She held aloft a small stack of scrapped letters, ones he would recognize anywhere, all positively crawling with highly personal information.  "Whatever would Bianca think if she could see you now?"

Now it was Varric's turn to slam his hands on the table.  He stood, enraged, and of course she was a human, and a lanky one at that, so standing did little to shift the balance between them.  Varric was left with nothing but a gnawing, vulnerable kind of anger that settled heavy in his stomach and made his knees shake.

The human tutted and shook her head, and the dwarven lady stood, too, and spoke some meaningless admonition before she took her leave, and Varric was left alone with a madwoman.

"All right," he sneered.  "You've got my attention, human."

Her otherworldly blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly.  "What an honour."

He moved, lightning fast, in an attempt to snatch the discarded letters from her hands, but she was too quick for him, and held them aloft, out of his reach.  Varric felt his lips curl upward in a travesty of a smirk.  "If you were going to blackmail me, couldn't you have at least let me get laid first?"

The human inclined her head in mock-sympathy.  "Aww, poor thing.  What's it been, a few days?"

"Is that supposed to be an insult?"

"Sex isn't a difficult thing for a filthy liar to come by, Master Tethras," the human replied.  "If you think charming wide-eyed fools out of their breeches is something to be proud of, then I haven't misjudged you at all."

Varric wrinkled his nose.  "Was there something you wanted, milady?"

The human pointed a finger at his face.  "You," she said, just slowly enough to send a fresh wave of irritation coursing through his veins, "are Bartrand's brother."

He'd been so overwhelmed by her piercing eyes and obnoxious presence that he hadn't noticed other obvious things about her: Fereldan accent, unkempt hair, dirty, roughed-up hands, old clothes, but not without some protective qualities.  A refugee.  Hadn't so much as flinched in response to a show of aggression.  Probably mixed up in some shit business.  Mercs, maybe, or smugglers.  Looking for a way up in the world.  "The Deep Roads expedition," Varric sighed at last.

The human tapped his nose before he could move to swat her hand away.  Twice now that she'd been too quick for him, and he hated her all the more for it.

"So what?" he threw up his hands in exasperation.  "I help you or you keep rooting through my trash?  And slamming your grimy human hands into the middle of perfectly pleasant evenings?"

The human...advanced on him, somehow, but without really moving.  She shifted her weight, squared her shoulders, lowered the tilt of her head, and the smile she offered him then was nothing short of terrifying.  "You don't know me very well, Varric," she said, and the saccharine tone of her voice gave him actual chills.  "But you could.  And I assure you, the people who know me find me positively exhausting.  You see, there are a great many things that I do very well.  But I've never been especially good at giving up."

Varric dragged a hand across his face as he contemplated his options.  Court what could well be a lifetime of these kinds of nerve-wracking, exhausting conversations with someone who obviously had nothing to lose, risk calling in a few favours to have her shut up, or send her off into the Deep Roads, where the odds were good she could get bitten by a tainted rat and never return to the surface to bother him again?

"What Bartrand needs," he said at last, "is a partner.  I assume you have skills beyond extortion.  Flash Bartrand some coin and the usefulness of whatever it is you do to make ends meet, and..." he sighed again.   "If it'll get you off my ass, I'll put in a good word for you."

The human's eyes narrowed again.  "Do I look like I've got coin to spare, Master Tethras?"

"Maker's balls, human, what more do you want from me?"

"You're correct in assuming my formidable wit and charm are far from my only assets," the human replied through bared teeth.  "Alas, my network is decidedly limited by my status.  You, on the other hand..."

"Human," Varric cut her off.  "If it will end this conversation, I will pass a few gigs your way."

The smug grin returned.  "Oh, Varric, darling, I knew you'd come through."

"Yeah, sure, whatever."  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the pretty dwarf exiting the tavern.  Damn.  He returned his attention to the psychotic human.  "To whom do I owe the pleasure?"

She thrust out her hand.  "Hawke."

Varric contemplated her hand with raised eyebrows.  "Is that some kind of nickname?"

"A surname, if you must know."

"And your first name?" Varric inclined his head skeptically.

A vicious smile, "Is on a need-to-know basis."

If it'll end this conversation, he reminded himself, and took her proffered hand.  "Pleasure doing business with you, Hawke."

As it turned out, Hawke was more competent than she was obnoxious, and that was saying something—not that Varric would ever admit that to her.  Still, he ended up passing along far more and better leads to her than he had ever intended, and the one he'd gotten wind of today was such a doozy he had to wait for the perfect moment to spring it.

Fortune was on his side.  He spotted Hawke in the corner of the Hanged Man (not the only tavern in Kirkwall, but the only one that didn't ask too many questions), engrossed in conversation with a wide-eyed young Dalish elf, of all things.

Varric had to be quick: she was a warrior with the second sense of a mage and the reflexes of a rogue.  He relied on the way she seemed to captivate the girl's attention, stayed out of her periphery entirely and kept his eyes trained elsewhere until he was ready to strike.

He slammed his hand onto the table between them, just for good measure.  "Shame on you, Hawke," he said lightly.

She looked up at him, expectant.  Something in her eyes said I dare you.

He leaned in.  "Trying to seduce a second young lady in the span of a day?  Haven't you had quite enough?"

"What can I say, Varric?" she replied smoothly.  "I am seldom satisfied."

"Oh!"  The elf's wide eyes grew somehow wider, and she scrambled to her feet, muttering something about "I should go" and "I'll...see you later.  Maybe.  Possibly.  I'll just..."

Hawke watched her go, almost but not quite impassive.

"Well, well, well," said Varric.  "The haughty mercenary isn't so immune to the pleasures of the flesh, after all."

He'd rattled her calm, he could see it, just barely, but she hadn't stopped smiling yet.  "Did you need something, Varric, darling?" she wondered crisply.  "Or were you merely overcome by vicious jealousy?"

Varric's face twisted.  "Hardly," he spat, but struggled to regain his composure.  "I just came across some information I thought might interest you.  But if you'd rather while the night away with wide-eyed fools..."

Hawke laughed, a high, mirthless sound.  "Unlike you, Master Tethras, my priorities are quite in order."

"Oh, really?" Varric narrowed his eyes, leaned on his hands.  "And what would those be?  Harass innocent dwarves, slaughter for coin, drink yourself into a stupour, rinse and repeat?"

Hawke turned the full force of her sharp blue eyes upon him.  "I do beg your pardon, but who is doing the harassing this evening?"

Now it was Varric's turn for a smug grin.  "Just returning the favour, Messere," he replied, with a small bow.  "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more important matters to attend to."

"And what would those be?" Hawke cut him off coolly.  "Seduce innocent dwarves, spill the world's dirty laundry to anyone who can stand to listen to you droning on for hours, drink yourself into a stupour, rinse and repeat?"

Varric felt his fists clench without his permission, set his jaw and breathed deeply before he responded.  "Do you want my damn info or not, human?"

Hawke made a mocking flourish with her hand.  "At your leisure, Messere," she replied sweetly.

"Word on the street is, there's a former Grey Warden somewhere in Darktown."

"A former Grey Warden," Hawke echoed skeptically, and returned the better part of her attention to her ale.

"Listen, I didn't ask for his whole backstory," said Varric, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  "But I have it on good authority, and in case you're too wrapped up in whatever goes on under that nug's nest on your head to make the connection, a Grey Warden's knowledge of the Deep Roads could be a great asset to you."

"Am I to take hair advice from you, Varric?" Hawke retorted.  "Hasn't the Hanged Man any suitable water for bathing?  Why, if I had to guess, I'd say that adorable ponytail of yours is mere days from walking off by itself."

Varric's lip curled.  "Does the Red Iron require that you keep wearing torn up rookie armour, or is that gun show especially for Meeran?"

Hawke stood then, enraged, and if Varric were not so deeply satisfied to have gotten a rise out of her, he might have been a little more wary of the spark in her otherworldly eyes.  But she only stood, fists clenched tightly at her sides, and stared him down like she could murder him with her mind. 

When she spoke, it was low and quiet, but still so crisp he wondered if the bartender couldn't hear them from here.  What she said might as well have been the exact opposite of what he'd expected.  "Thank you for the information, serah.  Good evening."

 "What?" Varric balked at his brother's suggestion.  "No!"

"Would you rather your scruffy friend find all the treasure without us?" Bartrand did not quite whisper.  "Keep an eye on her."  He gesticulated wildly towards Hawke's other companions,   The lot of them."

"Fine," said Hawke coolly, an unsubtle reminder that she could hear him.  Then, to Varric, smugly, "Hope you take orders better than you aim."

Varric stroked Bianca protectively.  "Hope you watch your back better than your mouth," he retorted.

They cut through the remaining darkspawn easily.  Almost too easily, for the strange imbalance of their team and how out of practice Varric felt.  Varric had heavily questioned the people she had assembled, but they were all bizarrely willing to follow her, which he supposed was more than enough to get the job done.  With them now were the ex-Grey Warden about whom Varric had tipped her off and an ex-Tevinter slave she'd found through some of her old merc contacts.  ("You'd have been quite taken with Anso," she'd needled Varric afterward.  "Had that 'afraid of falling into the sky' look about him that you're so fond of.") 

They followed her lead easily, actually, like they'd done it for years, and Varric was able to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that her lead was not a bad one to follow.  He wondered where a scruffy refugee mercenary had learned to command so seamlessly, but did not question their success until they ran afoul of a dragon.

"Shit!"

Something she'd said to him, just a stupid joke that had almost coaxed a genuine laugh out of him, came back to the forefront of his mind in full force.  Any entrance to the blighted Deep Roads will do, won't it? she'd sneered.  So long as there's not a dragon sitting in it.

But while Varric was busy considering ironies and real-life foreshadowing, Hawke had already drawn her blade and launched herself at the dragon, and while Varric had known from hearsay that she was good, had been able to see for himself that her leadership against a few handfuls of darkspawn was good, he could not help but to be surprised at exactly how good.  Anyone could take out Lowtown's trash.  Plenty of people—entire orders—fought darkspawn.  Not just anyone could launch herself at a creature of legend with such confidence.

"Shall I get you some snacks?!" she barked at him over her shoulder, then landed a hit that seemed almost...  "Son of a bitch, Varric!" she added, and he was forced to return his attention to the task at hand.  He aimed Bianca, humming an old, half-forgotten song under his breath, and proceeded to create a veritable rainstorm of arrows.

The dragon fell, its remains still smouldering as Hawke shouldered her...weapon...and began the process of inspecting her wounds.  "Took you long enough," she remarked flatly in his direction.  "Do your hostile encounters usually give you a half hour of prep time before your first shot?"

"You're a mage."  The words tumbled out before he could think better of them, felt loud and clunky in the stillness of the cavernous underground.

Hawke didn't look at him.  Her hand only just slightly hitched as it picked at the fabric of her protective vest.  "Never seen a bladed staff before, Tethras?  And here I thought you knew everything."

"You fight like a warrior," he managed lamely.  Combed his memory for clues, found...surprisingly few.

"Yes, well," said Hawke flatly, still inspecting some imaginary loose thread on her clothes.  "Comes in handy.  Are you planning to run to the Knight-Commander now?  Because I daresay her office will be closed by the time you get back."

"No, I wasn't—sod it all, Hawke, I'm just trying to..."

"What?" Hawke turned on him, blue eyes somehow even brighter in the darkness.

"Understand," he finished, with a shrug.

"All the key points seem pretty clear to me," said Hawke coldly.  "Really, Varric, I'd always imagined you were a bit less thick-headed than I gave you credit for."

"Maker, I was trying to be nice!" Varric threw up his hands.

Hawke barked a mirthless laugh.  "You must be rightfully out of practice!"

"And you're the pinnacle of kindness?"

"No, but at least I don't pretend to be," Hawke countered, and something about her stance suddenly said predator, poised to spring.  "Lounging about the Hanged Man spinning wild tales so people will pay attention to my lazy ass.  Have you ever personally done anything worth talking about, Varric, or do you merely capitalize upon the adventures of others?"

"Excuse me if I don't want to go baring my soul to anyone who asks!" Varric shot back, and only faintly realized his stance had changed to match hers.  "And I'll have you know that plenty of people genuinely enjoy my company.  Can you say the same, Hawke?  I might spin stories, but what exactly do you think you bring to the table?  People will put up with a lot of bullshit from someone who's moderately skilled if she's more than willing to get her hands dirty."

"Self-righteous ass!" Hawke crowed.  "Who in fuck's name are you to talk to me about dirty hands?"

"Who are you to talk to me about being unlikeable?" Varric fired back.

Hawke's lip curled viciously.  "If you hate me so much, why did you keep helping me in the first place?"

Varric threw his hands up.  "You wouldn't leave me alone!" he cried.

Hawke drew herself up to her full height, set her jaw just so to indicate that she was looking down her nose at him, and replied, with that icy quietness that never failed to catch him off his guard, "Well, you may rest assured, Master Tethras, that once we make it out of this shithole, I shall never darken your doorway again."

As was often the case, Varric left the conversation with Hawke feeling the peculiar tugging sensation of anxiety borne of a kind of creeping melancholy, and he had no idea why he should feel this way.  He should only be so lucky as to be rid of her.

Things took a rather drastic turn for the worse when Bartrand sealed them in.

Varric saw red.  He felt like he must be imploding upon himself.  And the worst part was that the anger was not even really with his brother, but with himself.  He banged his fists against stone walls until they bled, screamed until he went hoarse, and Hawke, who had spent the last two days not speaking to him except to give orders, grabbed hold of him by the shoulders and shook him violently until he returned to some semblance of his senses.

"All finished with your hissy fit?" she asked him with her usual cool mockery, but there was a darker undertone to her voice, a thin layer of genuine concern behind her eyes, and that was enough to allow confusion to drown out a significant portion of blind rage.

He shrugged her off, averted his eyes.  "I'm not prone to murderous rages, if that's what you're worried about," he retorted.

"Can't say the same for myself," she said with a crooked smirk, and bizarrely, he almost felt better.  She clapped him too hard on the shoulder and returned to the search for another exit.

Once they'd clawed their way out of the vault, there was nothing but dark road stretching out before them in innumerable directions.  The Grey Warden, Anders, had no insight to offer.  The area was unmapped.  Varric privately wondered if, were it not for Hawke's steely determination, the rest of them might have just sat there and stared overwhelmed into the abyss until they starved to death.  But maybe that was the melodrama of memory.

As hours or days or weeks rolled by, though, with no sign of anything but further darkness and disrepair, and only the occasional darkspawn on which to take out their rising aggression, they began to argue ferociously.

"Always said if I ever saw the Deep Roads again it'd be too soon."

"Shame you came at all," said the Tevinter elf.  "It seems your knowledge of the Deep Roads was useless."

"Come now, Fenris," said Hawke thinly.  "Would you really rather be left to my healing?"

Rage flared visibly in the lyrium marked into Fenris's flesh.  "I'd rather die if it meant I never had to feel a mage's touch again!"

"That can be arranged, too," Hawke replied coolly.

Varric expected him to attack her, but before he even had the option, Anders cut in.  "Really?  You'd really rather die than have a mage heal you?  You've allowed one bad experience to colour your entire perception of—"

"One bad experience!"  Suddenly all of Fenris's rage was directed at Anders.  "You call a lifetime of torment one bad experience?"

"I have known a lifetime of torment at the hands of the likes of you!"

"Well, then, by your standards, oughtn't you to forgive and forget?"

"Gentlemen!" Hawke cut in.  "There'll be plenty of time to kill each other once we've made it out of the blighted Deep Roads."

"Oh, and then you don't care anymore?" Anders countered, incensed anew.  "Once we've helped you make it out alive, all the mages in Kirkwall can rot, for all you're concerned?"

"I'm not trying to have the Knight-Commander drawn and quartered, if that's what you're asking," Hawke replied evenly.

"Yet you continue to bandy your own power about unchecked?" Fenris began.  "You would endanger your family by association, subject yourself to the threat of possession under the same roof?"

"Hawke has a family?" Varric remarked without thinking.  "I'd always assumed you crawled out of a Fereldan swamp somewhere."

"None of your damned business, Varric!" said Hawke, with that same light evenness of tone, but now it came out thin and sharp.

"A family wrought with mages," Fenris gave away, instead, and now Hawke looked prepared to attack him.  "Are you quite certain you are the only one who remains?"

"Are you quite finished?" Hawke snarled at him, but he was undeterred.  "Yes, Fenris.  I'm no medic, but I'm fairly certain I know what death looks like."

Fenris was almost cowed by this admission, but still added, "I was referring to—"

"I know what you were referring to," said Hawke, with a sudden finality that overshadowed her irritation, "and if you'd met my mother or uncle instead of just running your mouth, you'd know they're as nonmagical as they come.  If my word is not enough for you, let it be my blade against yours.  After we've survived this."

Anders started to hallucinate.  Talking to someone who wasn't there, raving like a madman just barely under his breath.  Fenris became somehow even more withdrawn, and repressed rage positively radiated from him, like waves or pulses.  Varric obsessively combed over his life for evidence to refute Hawke's claims against his character. 

Hawke wore her rage brightly upon her sleeve, face forever twisted into a kind of determined scowl as she soldiered onward day after day, or endless night after endless night, as it were.  Somehow, something about her—her fire or her rage or her sheer grit—gave the rest of them the strength to follow after her into the darkness.  As vehemently as Varric wished he'd never met her, he couldn't help but to admire her then.

That they stumbled upon anything of any value at all was nothing short of a miracle.  Ancient shit, buried into the very walls, so much a part of the Deep Roads that they wondered if removing it might cause the whole place to cave in, extinguishing what little chance they had of making it out alive.  But where there was old treasure, there was also new growth, some herbs that Anders knew how to fashion into something vaguely edible that probably wouldn't give them taint sickness.

Everything seemed much clearer then, and Varric was able to put aside his unnecessary mental preoccupation and actually be of some assistance.  He had never ached from hunger before, but he realized with sudden clarity that the others had, and bore it far better.  When they moved out, he fell into step with Hawke and clapped her weakly on the shoulder, meaning it as some kind of indication that he was here, that he was trying.

She regarded him for a moment, curiously, then returned her attention to the dark expanse before them.  "So, what's the word, Tethras?" she asked him in a voice gone too hoarse to have that painful clarity.  "Going to try to turn me into the Circle when we get out of here?"

Varric almost laughed, but even the impulse hurt his lungs.  "Try?"

"Never said I'd go quietly."

"I don't doubt you'd gut anyone who crossed you," said Varric.  "With aplomb."

"I've done it before," Hawke replied mildly.

"So why let me live with the option?" Varric wondered, with genuine curiosity.  He'd spent enough nights asleep under her watch, too weak to even think to fear for retribution, but he realized now, with a clearer head, that he'd never really thought she'd stab him in the back, and wondered what reason he had for such trust.

"Well, I was thinking about that," said Hawke, "and I realized you need me too much to let me go.  Otherwise you'd already have done."

"Need you?" Varric scoffed.  "Need you?  Why would I possibly need you?"

Hawke shrugged.  "I haven't figured that out yet.  Maybe it's just because I'm good at doing your dirty work.  Plenty of people have kept me around for no better reason.  Maybe," she added with a sly sideways glance, "you like me better than you say you do."

Varric sputtered again.  "Keep dreaming, human," he spat.  "This dwarf is spoken for."

Hawke chuckled lightly, something very different from her usual sharp laughter.  "Don't flatter yourself, Tethras.  I've no interest in becoming the next Bianca.  For one thing, I've little patience for rambling letters of distant longing."

"Ass."

"For another, Hawke is a terrible name for a crossbow."

Varric's laughter surprised him, and it came out harsh and brittle.  "Fucking trebuchet, maybe."

The light, almost musical chuckle came again, and they fell into a silence that was almost companionable as they walked, which seemed like it should have been impossible after what had passed between them only days prior.

The change in mood made Varric bold, and he spoke before he had time to talk himself out of it.  "So...I only kind of...pieced together...about a loss in your family?"  He felt Hawke tense next to him, and added, quickly.  "I'm sorry.  That's all."

Hawke was quiet for a long time, so long Varric figured she wouldn't say anything at all, but eventually, when he'd almost stopped waiting, she spoke.  "Sometimes it seems like nothing but loss after loss in my family," she said quietly.  "But if all this shit is as valuable as you say, I'll be able to take care of all that remains, at least.  Anyway..." Varric saw her frown out of the corner of his eye, glance his way, and then quickly back to the road ahead.  "I'm sorry your brother is an ass.  I mean, more of an ass than you.  I doubt you'd pull a stunt like that."

Varric frowned, scratched the back of his neck, adjusted where Bianca hung over his shoulders.  "Bartrand will get what's coming to him," he said simply.

"Well," said Hawke, then hesitated before she continued.  "If you...find yourself in need of a hand, when that day comes..."

Varric looked up at her, trying and failing to disguise his shock.

The glint in her eyes gave her away an instant before she spoke, "Then you can fucking find someone else, because I'll be dead or retired by then."

Varric wasn't sure whether he laughed out of surprise or genuine amusement, but it hurt, and it also felt good.  He'd never known how to reconcile the two feelings, pain coexisting with something like release.  Maybe that was why he always seemed to seek them out in a pair.

After they came clawing and scraping their way back out into daylight, they were almost friends for awhile.  The malnutrition and strange haze from the Deep Roads made them too weak to pick unnecessary fights, and so they just sat in the Hanged Man, together, and drank in companionable silence.

"I had a brother," Hawke offered one night, out of nowhere.

"Was he a piece of shit?" Varric asked her, for lack of anything better to say.

"Definitely," said Hawke.  "But he had a lot of...honour about him, or whatever.  Wouldn't do anything dirty or underhanded unless he thought it was somehow Right."

"Not you, though," said Varric wryly.

Hawke shrugged, took a long sip of her ale.  "There's lawful, and there's right, and there's necessary, and they seldom coincide.  I hardly think my wrongdoings are gratuitous."

"Now who's self-righteous?" Varric snorted.

"When you believe in doing the Right Thing too hard," Hawke continued, with little more than a withering glance in his direction, "sometimes you end up doing something unbelievably stupid, like turning yourself over to the bloody Templars."

Varric raised his eyebrows.

"I also had a sister," she added, by way of explanation.

"Shit," he said, simply.

Hawke took a long swig, swallowed hard.  "How about you, Tethras?  Any more family to watch out for?"

"Thought it was none of my damned business."

"Quid pro quo," said Hawke lightly.

Varric wrinkled his nose.  "You're lucky I'm so sodding nosey.  All right, fine," he sighed, stretched, cracked his knuckles.  "No, I barely remember my dad.  He died when I was just a kid.  Mom said leaving Orzammar was what killed him.  Also said he liked to sing—ha!  Can you imagine someone with my face carrying a tune?"

"You can't stop humming when you shoot your stupid crossbow," Hawke countered mildly.

Varric felt the words he'd meant to say catch in his throat.  "You...heard that, huh."

"Well, yes, I'm not deaf," Hawke raised her eyebrows, as though it were obvious.  But no one had ever mentioned it before, even in passing.  When he didn't respond right away, Hawke leaned in.  "What's your problem, Tethras?  You hum, I wield a staff like it's a broadsword."  She waved vaguely in front of his face.  "Anders talks about justice under his fucking breath the whole damned time, like he's possessed, so you could have worse eccentricities, honestly."

Varric gladly latched onto the bait she'd thrown him, befuddled though he was that she had offered it in the first place.  "Been meaning to ask you about that.  Your staff looks like a broadsword."

"Kept breaking regular ones," Hawke flexed her ever-bare muscles dramatically.  "What can I say, I'm just too strong for my own good."

Against his better judgement, Varric cracked a grin.  Try though he might to hide it as soon as it had shown itself, the smug smirk that beset Hawke's features told him he'd already revealed his hand.

"Like what you see after all, Tethras?" she teased, low and almost sultry.

And Varric would be hard-pressed to explain what the hell happened in that moment, but their eyes met, and they were both grinning, laughing, enjoying themselves, warm and alive and full of shitty ale, hands not a finger's breadth apart on the table, knees just barely touching beneath it.

"In your dreams, human," said Varric with a shake of his head, but somehow they had grown closer, and their fingertips were touching now.  "You're the one who can't seem to leave me alone."

"Is that what you and Bianca do together?" Hawke wondered, with a glimmer in her bright eyes that sent a shiver coursing through him.  She hadn't moved away yet, hadn't even broken eye contact.  "You go up to your room and sit on opposite sides so you can write her sexy letters?  I rather wish I could have read those, instead."

"Well, clearly you just didn't look hard enough."

"Clearly," said Hawke.  "We should go and look.  Right now."

"Right now?"

"Right.  Now."

Don't make a scene, Varric almost said, but the words died somewhere in his throat.  If there was a scene to be made, they'd already have made it, sitting not a breath apart like this and then taking off together in a hurry.  But the Hanged Man was relatively empty tonight, and Hawke was here, pulling on his wrist with her warm, thin, long-fingered hands, smiling at him in a way that made her eyes shine in the dim light, and they had survived, they had made it out, and—

He barely got the door closed before she slammed him into it.

"Fuck!" he managed to bite out before her lips were on his, and she somehow managed to press her lanky form against him perfectly, and all thoughts of what had come before this moment, from their bickering to nearly dying a few dozen times in the Deep Roads to the absurdity of the moments that had carried them here, fled from his mind.

Varric had always thought humans were kind of funny-looking, but now he supposed he could find an appreciation for this particular human—everything about her was too long and lean—it looked all off to him, but it wasn't all spindly and unsupported the way he'd imagined.  She made a joke of it, but Hawke really was all muscle, all hard lines and sharp angles, and she cut a surprisingly pleasant figure in the candlelight as her clothing fell away.

Varric had always figured the height and breadth difference would be awkward, but at the moment, he supposed, he could find it useful.  After all, he was in an excellent position to examine the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the firmness of her ass, and—he almost smirked when the thought occurred to him—he bet he could catch her completely off her guard when he—

"Aaah!  Shit!"  She clutched onto his shoulders in surprise as he swept her quite literally off her feet.  Varric chuckled, carried her across the room to his bed and deposited her there.  She was laughing now, too, and tugging at the belt of his trousers, muttering tricky bastard under her breath.

Suddenly his bed was a maze of long limbs, legs on either side of him, arms pulling him closer, drawing him in, eyes shining too brightly for the dim lighting, eyelids drooping and neck arching back when he pushed inside of her, and shit, maybe humans weren't so bad after all.  When he rested his forearms on either side of her, somewhere amid the mess of limbs, he could so easily capture a nipple between his teeth, and this could so easily elicit a scream from her lips that he employed this advantage as often as she'd allow it.

Hawke was loud, and the walls of the Hanged Man were thin, but Varric could not bring himself to care.  When she started trembling against him, dug her fingernails into his back and cried out "Fuck, fuck, fuck, Varric," the sound of his name on her lips, real and breathless and not mocking at all, made him feel as though something had shattered, violently, and whatever it was might never be restored to him.

He bit back his own groan, buried his face in the nape of her neck, his teeth in the sharpness of her collarbone, allowed her scream to sound for him.  It occurred to him, vaguely, that he was trembling all over, himself, now, and that she hadn't released her vise grip, legs or arms, and so he simply remained, frozen somewhere out of time, reality a distant echo, no concern of his just now.

He didn't know how much time passed, but eventually she released him, and he rolled unceremoniously to her side.  As soon as he had landed, she was on her feet, and she was talking, and the words weren't making any sense.

"Well then.  I should be going."

"Going?" he echoed stupidly.  She'd already gotten her trousers on.

"Late.  Wouldn't want to make a scene."  She wasn't looking at him anymore.

Make a scene, the words he'd bitten back earlier.  "What, embarrassed?" he needled her, as he was certain she'd have done in his place.

If she hadn't gotten caught up pulling on one of her boots, she might already be home by now.  "Mornings after are awkward, Tethras, no way around it."

Varric's heart sank.  Back to Tethras now, he thought, and then balked at the sentimentality of the thought.  Of course back to Tethras now.  What, did he think this had altered the fabric of the universe somehow?  Stupid.

"Sweet dreams," she said sweetly over her shoulder.  "Oh, wait."  And then his door closed, and he was left naked and alone and very, very confused.

Things were decidedly tense after that.  Hawke didn't stop by the Hanged Man much anymore, barely even looked at Varric when she did.  What Varric knew about her, he mostly discovered from straight-up hiring people to follow her.  It was a little stupid, a lot sentimental, and very risky—he wasn't sure exactly what she was capable of, only that it was more than anyone would ever guess.

As it turned out, the mother and uncle she had mentioned were what little remained of the noble family Amell, and Hawke had used the money from their near-death experience to take back their family home in Hightown from what were almost definitely slavers.  Isabela, a Rivaini pirate who frequented the Hanged Man, the Tevinter elf Fenris, and the wide-eyed Dalish elf Varric had scared off a few months back, whose name was Merrill, were all seen milling about the place, so Varric guessed Hawke wasn't just ignoring all her former associates these days.

Being ignored wasn't anyone's favourite pastime, he guessed, but the whole progression of their acquaintanceship was completely bizarre, and it started to overtake his every thought.  He was used to being the one who didn't care, who could talk his way out, and he didn't care—he didn't!  So why should he care?  Why did he need the opportunity to talk his way out when there was nothing to talk his way out of?

The next time Hawke showed her face at the Hanged Man came at as opportune a time as any—Varric had finally found a buyer for the last of the Deep Roads shit, so he had coin to impart to her.  Everyone liked to be handed money, right?

But she showed her face to see Isabela, and she sat with her back facing him, and seemed to shift her shoulders every time he glanced in her direction, like she knew when he was watching her.  They drank and talked and played cards for a few hours, and then Isabela got caught up in someone she was obviously hoping to bang, and Hawke stood to leave them to it.

Varric narrowly avoided looking like a complete idiot, scrambling across the room to catch her at the door.  "Hawke!" he said, with some thin attempt at joviality.

She barely even looked at him as she passed.  "If you don't mind, Master Tethras, some of us have things to do—"

Varric blocked her exit with his arm.  This was completely ridiculous.  She inspected it with a look that was equal parts contempt and amusement.

"Hey."

Hawke raised her eyebrows.

"Hey!"

She met his eyes at long last.  Unnervingly blue as ever.

"Hey," he said again.  "So."  He gestured vaguely.  "What the hell?"

"Have you moved into freeverse poetry?  Because I must say the medium doesn't suit you."

Varric ignored her.  "You invite yourself into my room, you invite yourself into my...into my life, and what, now you're just done with me?"

"On the contrary," said Hawke lightly, folding her arms, "I think it's rather common practice for two fellow adventurers to share a night of passion after the job is done.  None of them have ever so rudely blocked my exit with their breakable, breakable limbs."  She regarded his arm again with pointed distaste.  "One would think a famed storyteller would be more familiar with the conceit."

Varric let his arm fall limp at his side, took up the satchel slung over his shoulder, and shoved it into her hands.  Somehow he felt heavier letting it go than holding onto it.  "Here," he said, and pushed past her to leave.  "I was just going to tell you the rest of your share came through today.  Good work, and all that.  See you never, I guess."

"I have your stupid mail, by the way."

Varric stopped, but did not turn around.  "What?"

"Figured you'd have known it was missing by now, but I guess it doesn't matter that much to you, after all."

Varric took the bait.  He turned around.  Hawke's face gave away nothing.  "What the hell are you talking about?"  Varric received a veritable fuckton of mail almost every day, and most of it was garbage.  That something of any importance could slip through the cracks was pretty much guaranteed.

Hawke withdrew only one letter from a pocket on her vest.  "Now, if you don't mind, I'll go back to leaving you alone.  Just the way you always wanted it, Tethras."

And then she was gone, and Varric was left with an opened letter from none other than Bianca Davri.

Varric didn't sleep well that night.  He'd often thought it was a kindness that dwarves couldn't dream—he figured he'd have a lot of exhausting nightmares when he managed to sleep at all.  Instead, his own mind, divorced of any otherworldly power, kept offering up images of things that couldn't be helped: the look on Bartrand's face the last time Varric saw him, the look on a younger Bartrand's face the first time a younger Varric had managed to talk them out of serious trouble, the gangly human with the smug smirk he could no longer imagine completely despising, because there, too, was a tangle of too-long limbs wrapped around him, a too-clear voice crying out his name.

And then, a fantasy: those too-long limbs sprawled out upon his bed, relaxed, spent.  Soft smiles playing at their lips.  Happy.  Contented.

Stupid.  Varric got up and started to write, instead.  One good thing about sleepless nights and mental anguish was that they usually made for some decent material.

Things in Kirkwall started going to shit pretty quickly, and, surprise, surprise, it was starting to seem like Hawke had planted herself squarely in the middle of trouble.  Some business with runaway mages?  Some scruffy kid with black hair and blue eyes turned up at the scene.  Some business with possessed templars?  And oh, hey, there was this crazy human lady there, too—Maker knows why, but man, can she fight!  Some shit with a qunari hostage and a missing relic?  Well.  That came directly from the source, actually, because much as Hawke apparently despised Varric, she liked Isabela well enough to drag her ass back down to Lowtown for a drink or five.

Bianca had written him to tell him that she was coming to Kirkwall to take care of some business.  She mentioned, several times, that her husband would not be accompanying her, but did not directly ask for...well, anything.  Shit.  Varric really needed to get better at not showing his hand.  Probably knew without a second thought that Varric would drop everything for a few stolen seconds of her time.

If Hawke had a polar opposite, it might well be Bianca.  Bianca didn't come crashing in and out of his life like a natural disaster.  Everything about Bianca was subtle, withdrawn, understated, and definitely backhanded.  She would act all sweet to your face, all the while quietly crafting some kind of brilliant death machine to stab you in the back.  Bianca didn't crash, didn't slam; rather her touch was so light that he barely felt her arrive, seldom saw her leave, only got the vague sense that some essential part of himself had been tampered with, and he could not even begin to make out what had changed.

"Hi, Varric."

Varric almost spilled ink all over the page.  He hadn't even heard footsteps.  He steeled himself before he looked up, but it wasn't a lot of use.  There was this horrible twisting sensation already building in his chest, and one look at her seemed to rend his heart thoroughly in two.

She looked different.  Sadder.  But she was smiling at him, leaning against his doorframe, and she was here, and she was alone with him, and Varric swallowed hard before he managed only to say, "Hey."

"You seem surprised," she said, sounding faintly amused.  She stepped over the threshold.  "Didn't you get my letter?"

Did you get any of mine? he almost bit back, but swallowed again, instead.  "Yeah.  Sorry about that.  Not responding, I mean.  Judging from the date, it took a little longer than you'd expect to get here."

"No matter," she shrugged, smiled again, let the hood fall from her head to reveal the soft gold of her hair.  He remembered with a pang how she used to let him braid it.  Now when she visited she always wanted to keep it in a tight bun, untouchable, unchangeable, even when...

Experimentally, he reached for it.  She caught his hands seamlessly, like she wasn't keeping him from anything at all, and repositioned his hands at her waist as she moved into him.

Maker.  Sometimes it was like seeing a ghost.  Like seeing a stranger wearing the face of someone he'd once loved. But his body didn't know that, refused to acknowledge it, and when she pressed up against him—did not slam, did not push, did not crash, only pressed, melted, melded—he released a shuddering sigh.

"It's...good you're here, actually," he managed, trying to avoid having to audibly swallow the lump forming in his throat a third time in as many minutes.

"Is it?" she wondered.

"Yeah, it's..." her hand was lingering at his belt now, fingertips just barely tugging, and Varric's concentration was wavering rapidly.  He'd been meaning to write her, been meaning to ask about the red lyrium they'd seen in the Deep Roads, if Bianca knew anything about it, what it did, if it had done something to...

But Bianca had a smirk on her lips that indicated she knew exactly what she was doing in distracting him, and sod it all if he was going to ruin this moment by thinking about all that shit.  "It can wait," he amended at last.

Bianca's smirk widened, and an old memory superimposed itself on the present, a younger, happier Bianca with her hair in cockeyed braids of Varric's devising, Varric with a flower crown she'd made for him, the two of them running around like a couple of kids, or a couple of love-drunk idiots, at least, in the woods outside the city.  They were both supposed to be other places that afternoon, Varric remembered, but he couldn't remember for the life of him where those places might have been.

She'd fallen into the grass and pulled him down on top of her—the way she did now, into his bed—softly, gently, so softly he could barely feel her touch, so gently he felt she might slip from his grasp at any moment, and so he held her tighter to him, kissed her more deeply, pulled at the ties on her braids so her hair fell loose in sun-soaked curls against the green, green grass.

In the present, Bianca wasn't quite looking at him.  In the present, she wouldn't let him touch her hair, pushed at his hands if he held her too tightly, closed her eyes when she climaxed, pushed him away before he'd even come close.

Varric was overcome by the strangest thought, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of it.  Took long, slow breaths through his teeth to ease the tension as Bianca nestled herself into his side.  It seemed like something Hawke would have done, was what he'd thought—to take her pleasure and deny him his, for some twisted reason unknowable to him.

"So," he began, because he felt strange and anxious and unsettled and he needed idle chatter to calm his nerves, "how is Orlais?"

"Hm," said Bianca thoughtfully.  "It's pretty.  Warm.  Sunny.  You'd probably hate it."

"Yeah, you know me, I hate sun and warmth and happiness."

Bianca laughed mirthlessly.  "I sometimes wonder if you do."

Varric didn't have anything to say to that, so he remained silent for the rest of the time Bianca lay in his arms.  Eventually, like some sort of timer had gone off, she made the seemingly arbitrary decision to get up and gather her clothes.

"Well," said Varric, again talking more out of a weird, nervous kind of energy than because he had anything useful to say, "it was good to see you."

Bianca smiled at him as she pulled her hood up over her hair, so different, so much sadder than the woman he'd loved.  And damn.  Maybe it was mostly his fault, but he never could shake the feeling that she'd be much better off without him than she'd ever have been with him.

She held his hands when she kissed him goodbye, so softly, so gently she might slip from his grasp.

 'By the way," said Bianca, fingertips still lingering in his palms, "your human friend with the scruffy hair has been following me around since I set foot in the city.  If I didn't know better, I'd tell you to find a better spy."

"Shit."  Varric withdrew a hand to drag it across his face.  "Sorry about that."

"So you do know who I mean," said Bianca, with no small amount of interest.

"I have a pretty good idea, yeah."

"Who is she?" she leaned in.

"A crazy person."

"Mhm," said Bianca, pointedly.

"Don't say it like that—I don't know what she wants," Varric argued.  "Nosey as fuck—she dug through my trash a few times.  Found some...discarded drafts.  Probably just amusing herself, making up stories."

Bianca chuckled quietly.  "What, about us?"

Another flash of memory, brighter than the present moment.  Another Bianca with uneven braids and fire in her eyes.  In the present, Varric tapped this Bianca on the chin, leaned in against his better judgement for one last kiss.  "Can hardly blame her."

Bianca gave him that same, strangely sad smile she'd entered with, cupped his cheek with her hand.  "Take care of yourself, Varric," she said simply, and then left.

Varric sat down at his desk and cradled his head in his hands.  He didn't know why he felt like crying.  It wasn't like anything was different.

Sometime late into the night, when Varric made his way downstairs in hopes of a drink to soothe his rattled nerves, the Hanged Man was already mostly empty.  Good.  He needed something strong enough to knock him out.

"Enjoy your time with your little friend?"

"Andraste's ass, Hawke!" Varric almost yelled, startled and irritable and vulnerable and exhausted.  "You know, if you turn out to be certifiably insane, I won't have misjudged you at all."

"You know, for someone you've pledged your undying devotion to, she seems awfully married to someone else."  She was leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, feet up on the table.  Corff didn't even seem to acknowledge her.  Varric briefly entertained the notion that he was hallucinating, and the real Hawke was off somewhere still ignoring him.

"Why am I never allowed to employ the phrase none of your damned business?"

"I suppose you are, but you're remarkably susceptible to blind perseverance."

Varric scoffed.  "Oh, is that what you call stealing my mail and following people around the city?"

"She's a very interesting person, this Bianca of yours, I'll give you that," said Hawke, almost pleasantly.  "Holds her cards close to her chest.  I expect you admire that about her, since you're so dreadful at doing the same."

Varric dragged his hand across his face.  "You're a piece of work, you know that?"

"She was talking to a lot of mechanics," Hawke continued, unphased.  "Don't suppose she made the crossbow?"

Varric sighed, tapped his nose.

"Ha ha!  I knew it!"

"Yeah, you're a fucking genius," said Varric flatly.  "Don't suppose I can convince you to let me drink my feelings in peace?"

"Hey now," Hawke unfolded her arms long enough to retrieve her glass from the table that contained her feet, and she raised it to him in a toast, "what fun is drinking your feelings without someone to hold your dirty ponytail when you puke?"

"That why you keep your hair so short?" Varric muttered.

Hawke grinned smugly, tapped her nose.

Varric relented, too tired to offer any real protest.  He asked Corff for a shot of the strongest stuff he had, followed by the bitterest ale he could find to wash it down.  He hesitated, shook his head, then added, "Make it two, actually."