Chapter Text
When he thought about it later, Varric decided his death was particularly lacklustre. He would have preferred something with a bit more bang – a dramatic last stand against an archdemon, perhaps, or some kind of heroic self-sacrifice. Actually, dying in his bed filthy rich at a ripe old age had a certain appeal too, but these days that seemed more unlikely than anything he might write in one of his books.
At least it was quick. The Venatori mages had taken them by surprise halfway through a clearing on the way back to their camp. The Emerald Graves was not as peaceful a place as it first looked, and three days into the forest they had long since become used to keeping an eye out for the local wildlife as well as the so-called ‘Freemen of the Dales’. But Venatori here? There was no reason for it, no possible cause. Perhaps the intention had simply been to catch them off guard, and if it was, thought Varric sourly, it had worked. It wasn’t until the first bolt of magic had sizzled over his head and earthed itself in the tree behind him that any of them had realised they were under attack, and by then the mages had them pretty well surrounded.
The battle raged around him. Dorian was engaged in some kind of one-on-one magical duel with one of the bastards, their hands raised and sweat dripping from both their faces, raw magic crackling around them and throwing back anyone else who came close. Cassandra was surrounded by a small pile of prone bodies, pummelling someone into submission with her shield and trying to keep anyone from approaching the Inquisitor. Their fearless leader herself was standing stock still with an intent look of concentration on her face, raising her marked hand to the sky. Varric had seen her do this before a couple of times, and if they could just keep the Venatori off her long enough for it to work, the mages would be having a seriously bad day. Overlooked for the moment, he let off a bolt from his crossbow in the direction of the mage Dorian was facing just on the off-chance, and without waiting to see whether it hit its mark, dashed across the clearing, dodging the spells that were flying overhead. A Venatori in robes of deep blood red was pointing his finger at the Inquisitor, and intoning the words of what looked like an extremely nasty curse. Varric raised Bianca and sent a bolt flying that went wide and hit the man in the shoulder. The mage swung round, his raised finger pointed at Varric like the tip of an arrow, and the sharp sickening power of the curse shot through the air towards him just as the Inquisitor let out a wordless yell and a burst of vivid green light filled the clearing...
And then it was gone. Not just the Venatori mage, not the curse, but the clearing and everything in it. Varric was flat on his back, his head ringing. The breath had been knocked out of him. The light was different. There was an eerie skittering noise on the edge of hearing. He was lying not on grass, but hard rock, inches deep in dust, staring up at the sky which was...also the ground. Jagged rocks carved with unrecognisable symbols and thick grey dust. He frowned, trying to make sense of this, when the faint green light surrounding him started to grow stronger. He tried to get to his feet but everything felt heavy, and there was a sensation of being pulled...
When the light died away he was standing in the clearing again, and the ground was littered with mage corpses. They’d won the battle then. Good for them. But he couldn’t feel relieved; his unease about what had just happened still prickled at the back of his mind, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that all three of his companions didn’t seem to be celebrating. They were gathered around something on the ground nearby, their faces identical masks of shock. As he drew closer, Varric realised what it was – his clothes. And his boots and Bianca, and even, glinting in the grass, his earrings. They were all lying on what appeared to be a small pile of ash. He looked down at himself automatically, and saw (as he had thought) that he was still apparently fully clothed. Bianca was slung across his back, a reassuring presence. And yet...
Varric cleared his throat loudly, but none of them reacted. The Inquisitor had sunk to her knees, head in her hands. Dorian and Cassandra just stood there, staring as if frozen in place. Varric walked up carefully, a cold dread settling in the pit of his stomach, and put his hand out to touch the Inquisitor’s shoulder. It passed through as if she were made of smoke. He bent down to pick up his shirt from the ground, and his fingers passed through that too. His actions elicited not a single response from any of them. Varric may have been a professional liar, but he made it a point not to lie to himself, and as the Inquisitor’s shoulders started to shake with sobs, it didn’t take a genius to get a grasp of the situation.
He didn’t remember much of what happened next. He didn’t remember how long they stayed there in that spot, as if enough time could reverse what had happened. He didn’t remember who finally broke the silence, or what they said. He remembered following his friends unheeded back to their small makeshift camp, and he remembered the way the grass didn’t move as he stepped on it, the way the wind rustled the branches of the trees but didn’t stir a hair on his head. He was probably in some kind of shock, he decided, which was ridiculous. Who ever heard of a ghost in shock? Once his mind started to clear a little, he tried to get through to the others in every way he could think of; yelling close to their ears, trying to pick up things around them, standing in their way as they walked (which he only tried once, as seeing someone you knew from the inside as they walked right through you was not a pleasant experience). Nothing worked. He may as well have been trying to interact with a dream. Great. He was a ghost who couldn’t even be seen or heard. So much for haunting.
As the sun started to set, Varric found himself sitting alone on a fallen log at the edge of a small cliff just a couple of hundred yards from camp. The trees were so thick in the Emerald Graves that places like this were rare; where you could see the forest spread out for miles around you, the tops of the trees glowing in the dying light, their long shadows merging into darkness beneath the canopy. He didn’t cast a shadow of his own anymore, but for the first time that day Varric found his thoughts were not ones of blind panic or grim morbidity, but of peace. It was a beautiful place, and he supposed if this was where he had to die, he couldn’t have asked for a better tomb.
He was startled out of his reverie by the arrival of Cassandra, who sat down right next to him, so close that he automatically shifted away a little along the log. He was surprised for a moment that she would choose to share the spot with him, until he remembered she had no possible way of knowing he was there. Still, he’d be damned if he’d move now, since he was here first. Cassandra stared at the vista below for a few minutes, and then rummaged around in the bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a book. He expected her to start reading, but instead she laid it across her lap as a flat surface, laid a sheet of paper on top and began to write what looked like a letter. He didn’t look over her shoulder to read – dead or not he should still maintain some semblance of common decency, surely – and he had just decided to head back and see what the others were up to when a soft noise on the edge of hearing made him stop. He stared at the Seeker in utter astonishment. She was crying. Continuing to write, irritably rubbing at her eyes every now and cursing quietly when a tear splashed onto the paper to mar the ink. Varric had never seen her cry, never really thought her capable of it, if he was honest. He had certainly never expected her to cry over him. But what other reason could there be? He had the sudden foolish urge to put his arm around her, to comfort her even if she wasn’t aware of it. But if he had even attempted such a thing while he was alive she would probably have socked him in the jaw...hell, she would never have let him see her like this in the first place.
But whatever she was feeling, it was undoubtedly his fault, so Varric did the only thing that he could – he stayed with her while she cried, her pen scratching across the paper, the forest darkening around them. It was like watching the world end.
The journey back to Skyhold was not a fun one, for Varric least of all. The party was slow and dismal, and not being able to talk to anyone was starting to a take a toll. He started to avoid the Inquisitor and Dorian, because they kept talking about him. It was their way of getting over his death he supposed, but since Varric wasn’t really over it himself yet he just found it depressing, and since their distance from any Inquisition bases meant that they had no way of getting news to anyone else, he knew he’d have to endure this all over again when they returned to the castle. For the most part he hung around Cassandra because she kept to herself, and since she had never deigned to speak to him much while he was alive anyway walking beside her in silence didn’t seem so strange. Besides – and why not admit it to himself? – he was worried about her. She hadn’t broken down again, but she didn’t seem quite her normal self either. She was the type to take the loss of a companion hard, and he wondered if she saw it as a personal failing. Perhaps they had never exactly been friends, but they were far from enemies any more, if they ever had been, and he took no pleasure at all in seeing her suffer. He vaguely recalled threatening her once after a particularly reckless battle charge that if he died because of her he would come back and haunt her for the rest of her days. It didn’t seem so funny now, and anyway the threat rather lost its punch if she didn’t actually know.
He caught the edge of a conversation one evening when he was lying on the ground next to the campfire, trying to sleep and failing. He couldn’t seem to do it at all anymore, which made the nights even more boring than the days. He bitterly remembered all the times he had stayed up late into the night writing, wishing he didn’t need to sleep so he could get more done. Sodding idiot. Now he spent hours with just his own thoughts for company, wondering what it would be like to stay like this forever, in the world but apart from it, helpless to do anything but watch for eternity. He was staring up at the stars and just wondering if he hit himself hard enough on the head he could knock himself out, when he heard Dorian’s voice floating softly through the trees.
“...hardly said a word in days.”
“Well she’s not that talkative at the best of times.”
Sparkler and the Inquisitor entered the small clearing and stopped just at the edge. They had been out gathering herbs for some potion, Varric remembered. He’d thought they were already back and asleep in their tents, but it must have taken longer than they expected. He propped himself up on one elbow and watched them converse just outside the circle of firelight.
“She hasn’t eaten much either,” Dorian said quietly.
The Inquisitor looked troubled. “I know. But I don’t know that I can say anything to her that would help. I understand how she feels but...no actually, I don’t. I understand how I feel. I didn’t think Cassandra even really liked him.”
Dorian shrugged. “I’m not so sure. Besides, that may not be important. There’s a certain type of person who feels responsible for anything that happens within a three mile radius of them, regardless of whether it’s justified or not. I wonder if Cassandra considers this her fault. She was, after all, the one who brought Varric into the Inquisition.”
“I thought he did that himself.”
“Either way, she knew him longer than any of us did.”
There was a brief moment of silence, and the Inquisitor sighed heavily. “You know the worst part about this is that I keep thinking how good Varric is at this stuff,” she said. “He’d tell some crazy story to make us all laugh, or make some comment to annoy Cassandra and force a response. I never thought I’d miss their bickering.”
In the shadows, Varric saw Dorian put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I know,” he said. “We get back to Skyhold tomorrow, perhaps we should get some rest.”
They parted ways and headed to their tents, leaving Varric lying alone on the ground, sleepless and with a tight knot of guilt in his stomach.
The last day was the worst; they were due to be back by midday, but every member of the party was dragging their feet, clearly hoping to put off the inevitable moment of return when their news would have to be told. The day was bright and crisp and beautiful, but they trudged slowly along the roads through the mountains in silence, grim faced, each lost in their own thoughts. It was nearing sunset when they finally reached Skyhold, greeted by anxious faces and a barrage of questions.
Varric sat on a low stone wall and watched from a distance, not wanting to hear what was said. The afterlife was extremely depressing so far. Even if he never made it to the Maker’s side he was still certainly thinking of writing Him a strongly worded letter. He spotted Cassandra striding off across the courtyard in the direction of her room, and followed her without really thinking about it. Maybe he was haunting her after all. He could walk faster now, he realised, easily able to keep up with her longer paces, though he supposed technically he wasn’t really walking at all in the physical sense. Maybe given time he’d be able to just think himself to wherever he wanted to go. It would be a slim comfort, but there had to be some benefit to this whole situation.
She didn’t bother closing the door when she entered her room, so Varric didn’t feel too much like he was intruding when he followed her in. He had to admit his ideas about other people’s privacy had become rather more...flexible in the last few days, but ghost or not, he wasn’t about to start watching people sleep. Especially not Cassandra. She didn’t seem bothered about privacy at the moment however, because she was too busy hauling out a trunk from beneath her bed. When she opened it Varric saw, amongst other things, a pile of his own books. Cassandra stared at them for a moment, and then rummaged around in the pack she still had slung over one shoulder and pulled out a large hessian sack – the kind the Inquisition often used to store food at their camps. She started grabbing the books from the trunk and threw them with some force, one by one, into the sack. She had more than he’d known about. The book that she had taken on the road with her soon followed the rest, and when she was done she stood up, threw the sack on the floor and kicked it viciously across the room. Where it hit Cole’s feet.
The kid looked down in mild surprise. “Ow.” He was standing just inside the open doorway, and Varric wondered that he hadn’t noticed him enter. Hell, Cole could give him some lessons in being a ghost.
Cassandra, meanwhile, had frozen briefly at the unexpected intrusion, but her shoulders relaxed after a few seconds. There was something inherently non-threatening about Cole, sudden entrances aside.
“Sorry,” she said, a little brusquely. “I didn’t know you were there.”
Cole was staring at her with the unnerving gaze he had that made you feel like a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. “The door was open,” he said. “I followed the screaming.”
“Screaming?” said Cassandra. “From where?”
“You.”
“I wasn’t...” Comprehension dawned on her face. “Oh.” She sat down heavily on the edge of her bed.
“You hurt,” said Cole, still gazing at her with a puzzled look. “Why? It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Cassandra. She sighed. “It’s complicated. I am sorry if I have caused you discomfort Cole, but I don’t have the strength to explain this to you now.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Cole. “Everyone’s hurting because they think he’s gone, and I don’t understand why.” He turned to Varric, a helpless expression on his face.
“Do you know?”