snow blind

by teeterss

Summary:

Varric could probably, with a lot of complaining, put up with the bitter cold of Emprise du Lion. It's the singing that's really starting to get to him, along with the Seeker's unshakable presence.

Notes:

This fic was born out of my disappointment that Red Lyrium didn't make people as feral, possessive, and strange as it did in DA2, along with my love of making my favourites suffer horribly. Let us consider what would happen if Varric fully 'Frodo, Act 2 of Return of the King''d out and it was up to Cassandra to be his Sam.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow was not Varric’s friend. Neither was ice or frost or slurry or whatever other solid form water took when it wasn’t the kind that chilled his drink. He did not suit the cold, even more so than the heat, which for the record; also bad. Heat was just exhausting, sticky, and uncomfortable, but being truly cold, the cold that sinks into your bones and settles there? It was one of the very few things that made him see the appeal in burrowing very deep underground where it was warm and dry, and staying there.

Kirkwall had only ever gotten cold enough to properly snow twice in Varric’s lifetime. Once when he was a child, when he ran out into it with naive wonder to see the yellowed marble of Hightown turned a perfect, uniform white, and played in it for all of a candlemark, wherein he got a surly and unimpressed Bartrand, muttering about the sodding weirdness of the sky, squarely in the face with a handful of snow, before Varric had started sneezing. Which turned into coughing, which turned into a week in bed with little sympathy.

The second time was only half a dozen years ago but still felt like a childhood memory somehow. He’d been awoken at an ungodly hour by a far too overexcited for his age Hawke bounding unannounced into Varric’s bedroom, throwing him his coat, and dragging him down to snow covered Lowtown where the market square’s usually cramped stalls had been cleared, and the gritty dirt of the street had been transformed into ice as smooth and even as glass. A small crowd had already descended upon it, sliding over it to varying degrees of success but universal excitement and laughter. It had taken both Hawke and Fenris tugging on both Varric’s arms to drag him onto it, along with Merrill’s giddy laughter as she glided about on it like it was what she was born for. He'd managed to make it at least halfway to almost halfway to the centre before he fell spectacularly on his ass. If anyone noticed that there was no conceivable way that the ice had formed like that naturally, no one mentioned it, not even the few Templars who stopped to have a go.

The snow of Emprise du Lion, however, was not the kind you played in. It was the kind you felt really, really bad in.

The faces of the locals in the dilapidated village they pass through were wan, gaunt and quiet, like they’d been starved of more than just food and warmth. In the short time they linger to gather information, they do what they can, which isn’t much with their own limited supplies. Dorian patches up as many caved in roofs that were letting in a frigid flurry as he could with a wave of his fingers and barely any of his usual smugness, and Varric and Cassandra scavenge the abandoned homes for unsalvageable furniture to break down for kindling. There were shivering children tucked into corners of a lot of the homes, and a pile of the frozen dead stacked just outside the village limits waiting to thaw out enough to burn.

Cassandra leads a prayer with a huddled few around the meagre fire in the centre of town beside their towering shrine of Andraste, whose many candles warmed more than any home. Varric hovers out of sight, leaning against a crumbling wall, half listening to Lavellan talking quietly to a widow too cold or too exhausted to have any grief left in her voice, and half reciting the words along with Cassandra, mouth shaping them silently.

Maybe he could have put up with the bitter cold. He would have complained, sure, but that was all part of the charm of bringing him along, and he was the one who had insisted on being part of this particular mission. So the snow was deep enough to come up to his thighs, and his clothes had been soaked since they arrived, and feeling in his fingers and toes felt as distant a memory as his first clumsily attempt to shave at age seven? What was another unbearably miserable climate out of the many miserable climates he'd been dragged to in the long run?

It’s when he hears the singing that shit starts to really get bleak.

The red lyrium looks startling against the snow. It would almost be a pleasant break in all the white, if it wasn’t pulsing with an all too familiar humming that was like a screw boring to Varric’s skull and making him itch for something intangible. It’s with great relish that he fires an explosive bolt into the first looming shard cluster jutting out under an awning of ice, turning it into nothing more than smoking powder that makes the snow pink, but there is no relief afterwards. The region has been too thoroughly tainted with its poison for it to even make a dent.

It’s useful to their mission he tells himself, as they trudge on. It is the excuse he gives as to why he doesn’t tell anyone about how the red lyrium calls to him from all across the mountains, beckoning to him like a lover calling from the next room. He could probably mark each spot on the map with an approximate precision. That would also be useful; their own dwarf-sized red lyrium detector. He says nothing.

If no one else was going to bring up that red lyrium made dwarves particularly crazy then he certainly wasn’t going to be the first.

It’s in his reports anyway, probably. One of them. Maybe. Cassandra knew, at the very least. She’d wrung it out of him in hour… maybe eighteen of their little introductory chat. The severe sternness of her face had shifted into something conceivably and unnervingly similar to sympathy when Varric had laid out the full, grim tale of it all to her, so he’d quickly moved onto the one about how Hawke had framed a Templar by claiming he ritually sacrificed goats just to have her scowling at him again.

The first day they destroy three clusters and butcher their way through dozens of the lurching Templar monstrosities, who seem more concerned about protecting their little farms than they do about preserving their own lives. It’s the first time Varric felt anything like sympathy for them beyond the usual disgust.

With each cluster they take down, he imagines he can feel the fine dust crawling into his lungs, crystallising, burying deep as the cold.

At the last node, Lavellan reaches down to pick up a large chunk out of the snow that hadn’t been destroyed with the rest, dusting it off for inspection. It’s clear and vibrant as a ruby, raw and glistening like it’s wet, and Varric has to push down the surging, throttling urge to go over and snap his neck and take it from him.

He considers then, while sitting on a freezing rock as the others discuss the next steps, fists clenched in his lap to stop himself from doing anything beyond his control, about confessing to the effects it is having on him. How he was feeling less and less like himself the longer they stayed here and needed to be sent back to Skyhold now before he was gone completely. Or just put down like a dog.

Then he remembers the look of feral desperation and hatred on Bartrand’s face, the red glaze in his empty eyes as he clawed at Varric, begging him to let him hear the song just once more. The trembling children in the town with their sallow cheeks, thin limbs, and draughty homes, asking if their parents were ever coming back from the quarry. The discarded, empty carts in the thoroughly plundered mine in Valammar, the key locking the door after the proverbial, world-damning horses had already bolted. And he knows he can’t leave until this is done.

Misery isn’t exactly in short supply so his silences mostly go unnoticed. Dorian fills the gap with his own aimless commentary on the trek to the spot they'd marked to camp. Varric likes listening to him talk, he has the voice of a raconteur even if his subject matters sometimes went over most people’s heads and is unconcerned in adapting. He was surprisingly good at maintaining morale, adept at keeping even the most dire circumstances light, and never actually complained as much as all his fussing suggests. Even his flirting with Lavellan isn’t as outrageous as he seems to think it is. Varric listens to it numbly, focusing on it instead of the song, letting his body go through the motions of movement automatically as he stumbles along at the rear.

“Wolves aren’t all that bad really, all things considered,” Dorian was musing loudly to everyone and no one. The stench of charred canid flesh still lingered. “Not when you’ve had bears to contend with for what seems like the entire age. They die quite easily if you chuck enough magic at them and their pelts make rather fetching throws. I’m almost tempted to take the one draped over whatever is humorously masquerading as a bed in my quarters back to Tevinter with me. It’s rare to find a coat so evenly white without having to hunt a creature to extinction. I feel almost ecological.”

“If there is a list of things to take back to Tevinter, can my name find its way onto it?” Lavellan’s voice floats by. Varric can hear the easy grin in it.

“Hmm, let’s start with things I’m willing to take back to my bed first, then take it from there.”

“Might I suggest you continue this conversation at another time, gentleman,” Cassandra cuts in, disapproval dripping. “In private.”

“Ah, I’m forgetting, our fair Cassandra only likes to take books to bed.” Dorrian’s affectedly disappointed sigh carries over the wind, clear as crystal. “Though something wild and hairy between the sheets wouldn’t go amiss, I dare say.”

Cassandra grunts in little more than exasperation and says no more. Varric glares at the backs of her boots, watching their steady and unwavering crunch through the snow, as the conversation drifts onto a discussion of whether wolf meat would taste better than their pack rations. It was unfair, he decides, that Dorian could poke and rile Cassandra as much as he pleased and yet drew none of the ire Varric received. Varric puts his own boots in the divots Cassandra’s long legs had easily carved out for him. Distinctly unfair.

He resents her being here. He can’t recall if he’d told Lavellan not to bring her, maybe he’d just thought it. She was too composed for this place, too ready and able to face all its hardships with stoic, capable determination. Seekers were immune to the red, but even if they weren't, he doubts she would have even shown a flicker that it was bothering her. There were no cracks, nothing faltered. Varric was nothing but cracks, all jutting shards and red dripping in the snow.

Cassandra saw too much and expected even more, and there was nowhere to hide in all this endless, sprawling white.

Over a meagre dinner Varric mostly ignored and even measlier campfire, Cassandra makes a positively benign comment about being pleased to have her armour in such weather and Varric’s snide reply is cutting enough to gut the conversation dead. He can’t wipe the sneer from his face even as she icily announces she’ll take first watch and disappears into the darkness of the snow. He avoids the reproachful eyes of the others and stokes the fire viciously, futilely encouraging it to grow.

*

The weird goings on in Suledin Keep had all the makings of a good story; an ice fortress guarded by giants, twisted experiments and snatched villagers to add a dash of horror to really get the blood pumping, and a smart talking demon with a dramatic flare acting as the villain.

Well, it almost had everything.

Michel de Chevin is the type of hero that other, less original authors write about, in books that are endlessly dour and all the drama comes from how much suffering the protagonist can endure and how stoically honourable he is about it all. Personally, Varric never had much time for heroes without a little grit to offset all the do-goodary. Or ones that are so Orlesian.

“Ser Michel de Chevin?” Cassandra says in a rush at their meeting, uncharacteristically talking over the Inquisitor. Her eyes are rather wide. The bodies of the shades de Chevin had effortlessly cut down before their party even had the chance to unholster their weapons were still steaming in the snow. “Empress Celene's champion?”

De Chevin smiles and bows his head with all the gallant humility that would have seemed over-egged in print. “No longer champion and no longer a Ser, my Lady.”

The cold had never made Cassandra’s cheeks so rosy.

“Shit, you must have done something really bad to get that title taken away,” Varric pipes up. It’s the first thing he’s said in hours and he’s talking too loudly, almost yelling over the song that suddenly seems to crescendo. “Even Hawke got to keep his, and he’ll probably be put in the stocks on sight if he ever goes back to Kirkwall.”

Three glares turn to him and one polite smile. The discussion promptly turns to the villagers de Chevin has sworn to protect and the demon that threatens them, and Varric scowls, busying himself with yanking a bolt out of the only shade he’d managed to hit.

*

Evil, corrupting forces are a little like the carriages in Hightown; you wait all day for one then two show up at once.

The demon isn’t as interesting as Varric had hoped. He'd never come across one that claimed their own name before but once you’ve heard one demon deal, you’ve heard them all, and if you weren’t brushing off demonic advances at least quarterly in Kirkwall you weren’t truly living. He barely listens to the one it offers Lavellan. Nothing could be as tempting as what is being whispered in his ear soft as a lullaby. He catches something about virgins and Dorian’s mirthful snort.

Night in Suledin Keep has protection against the harsh winds and snow going for it but little else, and even that is slightly dubious given how many holes the large fortress has in it. The stone of the walls in the cramped room Varric is given due to being one of the few with all four still intact is too exposed and raw. There’s nowhere Varric can look without seeing it, even behind his eyelids. It’s not red but still it invades his head and will not leave.

He keeps his eyes tightly shut and when he opens them an undefinable passage of time later, he is pressed flush against the cold, damp stone, cheek on the rough, palms spread as flat as they will go.

The wax of his candle has barely run when he’s abandoning the room for the bitter cold of the exposed battlements, and spends the night and then the dawn telling each person he meets he’d just woken and needed a little air.

*

The next day is more positive in that the frigid winds have died down a little and they find most of the workers. The downside is that it also means they find the quarry.

It’s more red than Varric has ever seen. The song is so loud it blots out everything else, even thought. Varric can see mouths moving, workers sobbing, laughing, embracing, clapping Lavellan and Dorian on the back, and can’t hear any of it. He stares into the depths of all that fizzing, throbbing red and wants to climb inside of it like a womb. It would be warm in there, he knows this. He’d never be cold again.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, tugging him around. Cassandra has a very pretty mouth, he decides, as he watches it moving mutely. It turns down in a grimace more often than not but it’s not how it naturally sits. It wants to curl upwards at the corners, just slightly, like the furling edges of a leaf. It must be warm too, warm and red and wet.

The slap is sharp and tastes like something elemental and Varric blinks twice before he even registers it.

“Ow,” he says, more for the principle of the thing, touching his cheek. That must be red now too.

“Sorry, but you were starting to drool. It was… concerning.”

Varric blinks again and takes all of her in, including her words. She does look concerned, hard brow drawn heavy with it, that red mouth pursed prettily. He looks away.

“Your concern hurts about as much as your contempt.” He still pointedly rubs at his cheek though he barely feels its sting. “But that's hardly surprising. Empathy doesn’t seem to come wholly naturally to you.”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Cassandra says, ignoring his comment entirely. Her voice has dropped so only he can hear, not that anyone else was paying attention. A dog had been recovered from somewhere, miraculously unharmed, and everyone was beside themselves about it. Humans and their dogs, it wasn’t just a Fereldan thing. “The way it affects you. I see how you suffer. I remember… your brother, how it…” Her frown deepens. “Being this close must be hard on you, is what I mean to say.”

There’s nothing Varric can think to say to that, which might be a first. He wants to come up with something disarming, aloof, and clever. Something that would make her roll her eyes and stop them looking at him like that, boring as deep into him as the song. Or maybe something so witty she actually laughs. He’s gotten her to laugh — properly laugh, not scoff or snort derisively — twice since he’s known her and each time felt in its own way like a miracle.

Nothing comes. Someone’s lifted the dog up on their shoulders and it's barking happily and everyone’s cheering like it single-handedly took down all the Red Templars, killed Corypheus, and cured the blight.

“I’m fine, Seeker,” is all he can come up with, and even he can’t spin it into sounding halfway believable.

“No,” she says, “you are not. Do not lie to me, Varric. It does no one any good, least of all you.” A frosty moment passes and she sighs. “Well, at least until we are free from all this wretched lyrium.”

Varric manages a shadow of a grin. “And then I can go back to lying through my teeth?”

“I have learnt to manage my expectations,” she says dryly.

Varric hums, which is as close as he can get to a laugh. He looks up at the high, plunging walls of granite of the quarry that surrounds them. There’s hardly any grey left. Tunnelled below, he can feel the deep, sprawling veins, pulsing and calling to him to return to the stone.

“You’re not going to like what I’m about to say, Seeker,” he says, voice sounding rough and distant to his own ears. “In fact it’s probably going to put you in a book stabbing mood again.”

The crinkle of Cassandra’s nose when she scowls is almost as adorable as her mouth is pretty, Varric thinks absently. He wants to see it smooth out as her face goes slack, mouth open in a gasp, eyes sliding closed. The song surges as though it agrees.

He scrubs a hand over his face.

“We’re going to need a bomb, a rather large one, and I just so happen to know how to make one.”

*

The explosion is, all things considered, the most enjoyable thing to happen since they arrived.

“You know, the last few massive exploding things I witnessed were kind of a buzzkill,” Varric drawls, folding his arms as he watches sheets of ice and slate stone crumble in on itself in a great plume of smoke, burying the dust and ash below. “But that was kinda fun.”

He glances to where Cassandra stands with Lavellan and the rest of the workers, surveying the proceedings from a distance almost gravely. Maybe the conclave was on her mind, too. Or Kirkwall.

“I imagine it helps that there wasn’t anyone inside this one,” Dorian says, voice raised over the rumble. “At least, no one on our side. If there were any Red Templars left scuttling about in their little tunnels, I say that’s just another point to us for efficiency.”

Setting the controlled explosion had eaten up the rest of the day and the little sunlight they had would be gone soon. Lavellan had insisted it could wait, that they could return tomorrow after a night’s rest but Varric couldn’t. He needed this to be over. He had caught sight of his own reflection in the shining metal of one of the drill's vast pendulums and saw the deep set of his eyes, their raw rims, and the smears of dark bruising under them. It might have just been the unnatural glow all around them but he thought he could see sparks of red dancing in them.

Exhaustion grips him now in ways he’s never experienced before, like he’s been stretched taut and thin, but his head feels less like it’s submerged in something viscous and his thoughts come more or less clearly. The song still whispers.

The workers hadn’t wanted to wait either. Every one of them had turned down the offer to be escorted back and had stayed to watch the quarry crumble.

“You made a rather handy little bomb there, Varric,” Dorian says. “If I didn’t know any better I'd say this wasn’t your first dalliance with things that go bang.”

“Yeah, well.” Varric glances back at Cassandra, half expecting to find her listening but she is speaking quietly with Lavellan, turned away. “Let’s just say I got a second wind of beginner's luck.”

It’s as dark as the nights get out here when they finally make it back to camp, and they dare not travel further to the keep. The workers are grateful for any shelter that isn’t a cage, so eagerly accept the tents five to each. Varric offers up his own; he hadn’t slept more than a few hours since they arrived.

He must really look like shit because both Dorian and Lavellan wordlessly and inconspicuously slip him their hot toddy over their huddled meal. Varric isn’t above gratefully downing them both along with his own, even though he’s not felt the cold for a long while.

If he'd hoped destruction of the quarry would lessen the lyrium’s effects, then he was forgetting the sort of luck he was perpetually saddled with. The last remaining clusters eagerly call out to him with an impatient insistence. Only seven left in the whole region. Relief and panic follow the thought in equal measure.

Cassandra finds him later at the furthest brazier from the rest of the camp, keeping himself busy with oiling Bianca’s gears that were more prone to jamming in the cold. His hands are clumsy and numb and he might be getting more oil in the snow at his feet but he’s past caring really.

“It is rewarding to see first-hand the good that we can accomplish,” she says, looking back to the small crowd around the campfire of both workers and the Inquisition. Someone had produced a harmonica from somewhere and the shrill snatches that made it over to them were more haunting than cheery.

“Can’t argue with success,” Varric says blandly. He will not say they would never have needed rescuing if it wasn't for what he'd helped unleash as she already knows and self-pity wasn't all that attractive. Doesn't mean he won't think it.

She takes a seat on a crate beside him without being asked. She often did that, just assume that she could force her way into his space and he would allow it. It used to irritate the shit out of him and now it just drives him mad.

There’s a moment of what could almost be considered amicable silence that Cassandra promptly ruins by saying, “Why do you always insist on dressing so inappropriately for the task at hand?” She gestures vaguely to his general being. “This is no outfit for a cold climate.”

“What are you talking about? I’m all buttoned up. Look, I’ve got a proper official breastplate and everything.” Varric lifts back one side of his coat, flashing the gleaming piece of metal armour he’d begrudgingly deigned to wear to face the cold after it had sat on his desk acting as a fruit bowl for the past year.

“You are shivering.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

Varric glares at her mulishly, but then realises his teeth are indeed chattering. Just a bit. He grinds them together. She lets out a harsh sound of exasperation, more grunt than sigh, then stands and begins tugging at her belts.

“What is this? What are you doing?” Varric asks, rather alarmed. If she was going for her sword he wanted at least a little warning.

“Be quiet,” she says and with one hard tug, yanks the grey sash secured around her free, unspooling it from her waist. She reclaims her seat. “Here,” she hands it out to him.

Varric stares at it like it's an entirely foreign object with the potential to hurt him very badly. “What?”

She grunts again impatiently. “Take it, put it on.”

“I’m not taking your clothes, Seeker.”

“Varric, you will wear it!”

“You can’t actually force it on me, and unless you want to wrestle me to the ground and hog tie me with it, I'm not wearing it.”

“May the Void take you!” Cassandra is on her feet again. “Put on the damn scarf!” She thrusts it at him again and now he’s standing too.

“Fine!” He snatches it out of her hand and wraps it jerkily around his neck then spreads his arms petulantly for inspection. “There, happy?”

“Ecstatically,” she drawls coolly, and lowers herself stiffly back to her seat. He mimics her. There is silence again, the prickly, uncomfortable kind that they’ve spent a lot of time in but not for a while. They both look stubbornly in alternate directions. Varric turns his head just enough to press his cheek into the soft material at his neck. It’s still warm from her body heat. Already, it chases away some of the chill he hadn’t even been aware of. There’s the faint hint of her scent, all sharp spice and sweat from a day’s exertion. His eyes slide, briefly, closed.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly, taking up his oil can again. “It’s… it does actually help.”

“Think nothing of it,” she says dismissively and he knows she’s one of the few people to say it and actually mean it. The thought brings a flicker of a smile. He adjusts the scarf to sit better against his chest.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her fiddling with her gloves, pushing them further into the gaps of her fingers. “Varric, I am going to ask you something,” she says abruptly.

Varric snorts. Maker, she was a breed entirely of her own. An announcement of a question. Maybe it was a warning; incoming, the Seeker is seeking! It was sort of nice, he supposed. A half step up from just charging ahead, which was her usual way.

“Should I brace myself? Hold onto the nearest thing that's bolted down?” She takes the oil can from his thick fingers and sets it down. He looks at the space it once was and says nothing.

“How long did it take for your brother to fully succumb to the red lyrium he was exposed to?”

Varric wished he still had his can. He would have liked to throw it very hard and very far into the blackness and wait to hear the clang of it hitting something.

“Shit, Seeker, I don’t know.” He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face and feeling the roughness of too many days worth of stubble prickle through his glove. “Took him the length of a sneeze to be so taken with the stuff he was willing to leave me and his business partner for dead, in an aptly horrific way for a lifelong betrayal. Didn't even need to tart up that particular chapter of the story. But then again, he might have done that over a couple of sovereigns and half a pouch of decent smoke, so that could mean nothing.”

“I only ask because—”

“I know why you ask, Seeker,” Varric snaps, voice rough as razor burn. “I’m all too aware of why you’re asking.”

The campfire music still plays; there’s the sound of clapping now too, slightly out of time with the song. It overlaps with the one already playing in his head. The wind snatches a fragment of high laughter, distorting it into a scream.

“Bartrand was exposed to the stuff for years,” Varric mutters after a long while. “Years and years, doing Maker knows what with it. It wasn’t… it’s not this. It’s fine, Seeker. It’ll all be done in a few days.”

“You told me you also felt it,” Cassandra says, not straying from her course even an inch. “Back then. That it… affected you. Just a piece and after not very long at all. Varric, there is so much of it here.”

Varric closes his eyes. Why had he told her? Why had he let that one sliver of miserable truth about himself slip out of all those tales he spun her? He can still see the look on her face as he laid it all out in all its pathetic glory, of all he went through with Bartrand only to nearly fall for it himself, how he would have if Hawke hadn’t been there and been stronger than him. That resigned sympathy that looked so like pity. He’d hated it then, had wanted something closer to disgust, revulsion at what he was so easily capable of being reduced to, but in some pathetic way it had felt like absolution.

“Yeah, I remember, Seeker,” he says quietly. “When it turned me briefly into the perfect greedy dwarven bastard cliché. Surprised I didn’t sprout a beard right then and there.”

If only mother dear had seen, she might have even liked that me, he almost says. Was all too close to saying. Maker, how did Cassandra do this to him?

“You were not yourself,” Cassandra says, so firmly it makes Varric look at her. “And you are not yourself now. I… worry for you. The toll it exacts. I would not have you do this if the cost is too great. It benefits no one if you are not at a suitable performance.”

Despite, well, everything, Varric grins. “Shit, Seeker, I wouldn't have you worrying over me and my performance. Let’s see, how to be more like my good old self… how about this one; a dwarf, an elf, and two humans walk into a bar in the middle of a frozen blightscape…”

“Is this the part where you say ‘duck’,” she says dryly, “or are we just playing wish fulfilment?”

“Hey, Seeker knows a joke! Knew there was a funny bone in there somewhere.”

“Oh, it’s there. You always find a way of needling it.”

Varric lets out a hoarse laugh. The way she draws out the nee of needling with that accent of hers is deeply satisfying. He keeps replaying it over and over in his head like she’s whispering it to him on a loop, joining in with the song’s chorus.

They would let her come with him, he thinks in a thought he’s not entirely sure is his own. She would be allowed down in the deep red. He’s never belonged up here, not truly, but he’ll make sure she’s welcome down there, where she’ll be safe and warm and finally hear the song with him.

“Would you at least try and rest tonight?” Cassandra says, dragging him back up from wherever he had descended. “You have not been, I know you haven’t.”

Varric blinks at her slowly. “I don’t have a tent,” he says, dumbly.

Cassandra lets out a noise of irritation. “Then you will share mine.” She stands and his gaze follows her up, neck craning. “Come, we shall retire now. How the rest of them are still standing is beyond me.”

He watches her turn and purposefully march back across the camp, not even looking back at him, so assured that he would follow. It takes him a moment of staring dumbfounded after her to truly process what had just happened and what was currently happening, then he’s hastily shoving the can and rag into his pocket, tucking Bianca under his arm, and hurrying after her, clutching her scarf tight to his chest.

*

“Oh dear,” is the first thing Varric hears when he resurfaces from the tent, crawling right until his hands reach snow to put off the vertigo of being upright for as long as possible.

It’s not exactly encouraging.

“I went and spent all my cup of truly wretched coffee coming up with a most amusing witticism about you rolling out of the honourable Seeker’s tent,” Dorian continues from where he’s looking far too perky over by the breakfast pot, tin mug held aloft, “but now it just seems too much like poor sportsmanship. Kicking a man when he’s down and all that.”

“That bad, huh?” Varric says. His voice is like the vibration of Sera’s bees.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if Cassandra didn't give you a poke this morning to check if you were still breathing.” Dorian’s far too perfect moustache twitches. “Or if you didn’t give her a poke right back.”

“If that was what you spent all that time workshopping” —Varric heaves himself up with a groan, hand cradling the small of his back— “then I think it needs another cup of coffee.”

The spinning world resettles on a cold, grim morning. Mist lingers about the camp like it's haunting it. Through it, Varric catches sight of Cassandra speaking with Lavellan and an Inquisition officer. Her profile is turned slightly, one scar visible; a sliver of red. It completes its rotation and her eyes land on him, steely, sharp, and knowing, even at this distance. She gives him a half nod of acknowledgement and returns to her conversation.

Varric is well aware he’s staring but can’t remember a reason not to.

In the close confines of her tent he’d at least had the excuse that there was nowhere else to look. Behind his lids there was only the glow of red, like tilting your closed eyes up to the naked sun, so having no alternative, he’d looked at her instead.

It was not a tent made for two people; the edges of their bed rolls almost touched and the exhale of their every breath tickled the points of the other's exposed skin. A private tent was the singular trapping of status and luxury Cassandra awarded herself on all their excursions together, so seeing her like this, unguarded with all that literal and figurative armour stripped away and no risk of incurring that all too ready glare, was entirely novel, like witnessing a sleeping dragon in its lair.

She looked younger, or maybe just unburdened, curled in on her side, arms tucked in tight protectively, face slack but that fascinating mouth still, somehow, pursed. The dim light that did nothing to impede his vision softened much of her severity, and sleep took care of the rest. He could finally imagine her, not as a warrior sprung fully formed and armed from the ground, but as the girl she must have once been: lonely, strange, and already too large for the small world they tried to keep her.

Varric had laid on his side for hours, head pillowed on his folded arm, breathing in their shared air, watching her as the light gradually changed, neither conscious or unconscious, and wondered if this was what it was like to dream.

He had made no pretence at sleep when she awoke, though distantly he knew it would probably be the proper courtesy. She gave no indication she was aware of him or his brazen gaze on her as she went through the motions of her routine, stripping the long braid in her hair loose then braiding it again with an efficiency of motion that spoke of years of practice, applying touches of cosmetics around her eyes in a looking glass, darkening them in a way Varric had never even considered before, and strapping plated armour over the clothes she had slept in with little effort, though Varric would guess most people would need a retainer’s aid from it’s complexity.

It was a unique experience, watching The Seeker slowly appear before him. The girl didn’t entirely disappear.

She had bid him a quiet good morning as she was leaving the tent, eyes finally returning his gaze, like a quiet acknowledgement she had known he was there, watching, the whole while.

“Say Varric.” Dorian draws Varric back to him and away from the quiet tent that felt like the only warm place in this entire frozen shithole. “Are you going to be alright going out today?” Dorian’s tone is light but there’s a flash of the sincerity he puts a vast amount of effort into keeping hidden. “You are aware that your dramatic sacrificial death in an icy wasteland isn't actually necessary to wrap this up? Especially with most of what we came for already so much dust in the wind.”

“You sound like Cassandra,” Varric mutters, wandering over to him and helping himself to coffee from the pot over the fire just to give his hands something to do. He adjusts the scarf at his neck, holding it a little closer. “Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of not being a burden on everyone. Might even find me useful.”

“Ah yes, that was my point entirely,” Dorian says, his usual drawl even more affected. “Thank you for so soundly allaying my fears.”

“I'll be fine, it's just a head cold. I just need… coffee.” He lifts his steaming cup to Dorian pointedly and takes a sip with a grimace. “Besides,” he says smacking burnt lips, “you need someone at long range to cover all your numerous blind spots.”

“Ouch,” Dorian says breezily, “I think you might be getting your dark beauties confused. Your nasty little words are usually reserved for Cassandra, yes?” Varric glares at him but can’t think of a decent rejoinder so just takes another sip. Dorian tosses the dregs of his own mug into the snow, making brown sludge, and stands. “But point made, I suppose we shall just have to suffer you.”

“Never know, might even find something else that needs blowing up. And anyway” —he nods over to where Cassandra and Lavellan were pouring over the map, heads bowed together— “we gotta look after those two, right? Not everyone can be smart enough to not leap headfirst into danger at every opportunity.”

“Evidently,” Dorian says with a pointed eyebrow raise. His eyes flit down, and a smile plays about his lips as he plucks at the scarf hanging around Varric’s neck with two fingers, before tugging at it to sit in what was probably the proper, more en vogue style. Varric braces himself for a comment but Dorian just says, “Just… take care of yourself, alright? I'd hate to be left as the worst degenerate gambler in the Inquisition. Second place allows me to feel terribly smug, and I do not intend to have to do any sort of self reflection.”

Varric huffs a laugh. Cassandra was gesturing over the landscape, Lavellan frowning down at the maps spread out over the crates, presumably planning out the hunt for the last deposits the scouts had tracked that Varric can feel like he feels his own limbs.

He closes his eyes and lets himself, briefly, just listen. They would not go down easy, the song promises that.

He opens them again blearily and feels terribly old. “I'll be fine, Hawke.”

“Varric…”

Varric looks at Dorian and finds him looking at him strangely. “What?”

“Nothing. Just… just keep an eye out for those blind spots for me.”

*

A snow fox has been following them for hours. At least, Varric is fairly certain it’s the same one. He is still self-aware enough to recognise that manic paranoia has well and truly settled in now.

At first he thinks, with a private, black amusement, that it sees in Varric the potential for a very substantial dinner, and is simply waiting for nature to take its course and for him to face-plant in the snow. After he spots it in the corner of his eye as they take down a lyrium cluster that had cracked a bed of granite cleanly in two, the less rational part of him that’s doused in red whispers to him that it is instead after the lyrium, that it is tracking them, waiting for the chance to take it from him.

He fires a bolt at it, going wide enough just to send it scampering off, and tells the others that he was just warning off Dorian’s future rug collection.

They make fast work of the day's task. None of them want to linger here. Varric’s aim still doesn’t falter as he pulls the trigger at every mass of swirling red, but each time the sound of it shattering and the piercing wail of what remains gets sharper, louder. He grieves it and he thinks that makes him mad.

By the time they pause to force down some rations, they’ve wiped the surface clean of the deposits that were marked on the map and the white sun is still high in the sky, though it feels like they’ve been trekking for days. They rest beside a crumbling tower that was sealed tight long ago and a large bridge of thick stone that has seen far better days. Not even the scouts have crossed it yet.

A few agents find them just as Dorian successfully coaxes a feeble fire to sprout in damp logs, bringing supplies and a report on the latest breakthrough back in Skyhold of something that will destroy the red lyrium right where it originates in the ground. It is the kind of news Varric had been begging the Maker for for years but he’s barely listening at all.

He’s looking out across the bridge, where dry snow blows across it like dust. It doesn’t seem all that far at all. The length of it shortens the longer he looks. The last cluster, the very last, lies on the other side. He hasn’t told the others yet. He can feel it pulsing, hear it beckoning him, singing so sweetly. It’s lonely, so lonely, but all would be well if he were just to find it.

Varric is aware of the other's voices growing dimmer, his own body moving without conscious thought, the crunch of soft snow under foot turning into hard, wonderful stone. The song drowns out even that. He doesn’t need anything else, not really, just to follow its call.

A faint cry of his name slips through, the cadence so familiar and the tone urgent, lodging in his head deep enough for him to pause. Dimly, he registers the harsh, exposed wind tugging at his hair and clothes, the surrounding mountainside that seems oddly distant, and the vast amount of empty space around him. He looks up and sees a face he doesn’t recognise towering over him, sword held grandly aloft, carved from the stone just like him.

A firm hand grips him, yanking him around, and Cassandra is there. Of course it’s her, of course she’s here. She has to come too. How could he have left her behind? She’s yelling something, loud and angry. No, not angry. Scared. It’s so hard to tell with her sometimes, everything always defaults to anger.

“—we must go. Varric, listen to me. We have to move!” They’re on the old bridge, he now realises, though he has no memory of crossing it to nearly the halfway point, and she’s dragging him with her, fist tight in his coat, back the way they came. The wrong way.

“No,” he says softly. He grabs at her wrist less softly. “No.”

A terrible, elemental roar echoes across the valley, reverberating around his skull like he'd already heard it before. Varric looks up at the sky, thick head too slow to piece together what his frantic pulse already knew, and sees the silhouettes of two sets of black wings blotting out the sun, circling them in tandem like the large red fish in Hightown’ fountain. Reality comes crashing back down all too quickly.

“Shit.”

They wouldn’t have made it, wouldn’t have survived the initial blast of scorching ice nor the whipping crash of a horned tail slamming into the elevated ground, had Cassandra not bodily flung them both forwards, shielding them with the one strapped to her back, then dragged them back up again and getting them far enough to the other side that they could jump up onto the parapet, Cassandra hauling Varric up with her, and, with scarcely enough time to brace themselves, leaping off the side, down, down onto the sloping side of the mountain.

Varric, at the very least, has the foresight to grab Cassandra close and brace himself for impact, so it's his back that slams into snow, cushioning her against his chest, knocking the breath clean out of him. They’ve barely finished rolling, tumbling head over limbs, when an enormous black dragon, scales like slabs of metal, crashes down where they had stood only moments ago, unfurling tail sending one of the tall statues mounted upon the bridge tumbling headless over the side to be dashed on the mountainside not twenty feet away from them. Its companion lands beside it, slighter than the first with stripes of unnatural red covering it warningly, as if it needed any more of a natural deterrent. Its jaw glows a bright, electric blue, building up a terrible force, before it unleashes a torrent of rageful ice into the space in the air they had just occupied.

Varric rolls over onto his back, dislodging where he’d come to a stop half buried in the snow, and spits out twigs and cold dirt. Somehow, he starts laughing. “There are dragons here, Seeker,” he wheezes too loudly. “Plural. Plural dragons.” Cassandra is over him, shaking him, hissing something urgent, but he barely registers it. “Because of course the snow, red lyrium, demons, insane Templars, infected giants, and all the sodding Orlesians weren't enough.” He laughs again, high and hysterical, then sits up and roars up at the sky, “are you fucking kidding me?!”

Cassandra drags him roughly back down, gloved hand clamped over his mouth, just as the dragons let out a chorus of unholy screeching. There are shouts above them, Varric can see bolts of magic and the whizz of arrows coming from across the bridge. Then the dragons are taking off again, broad wings beating such a gale, Varric flings his coat over both their heads to shield them against raining debris. The impact of the dragons’ ascent sends the cracked stone of the bridge crumbling, until the bowing middle finally gives way completely and an entire broad section of it collapses into the valley below, shuddering even the mountain.

The destructive noise of it seems to last an age, until finally there is only the howl of the wind, the impact of the last few errant rocks joining the rest, and the song calling from seemingly very far away. Varric slowly lowers his arm. He’s hovering over Cassandra, who blinks up at him with wide, stunned eyes. She is clutching at his coat collar with an unbreakable grip.

“Are you alright?” he asks hoarsely.

“I… I am intact,” she says, which isn’t exactly alright. There’s a cut on her forehead, oozing unpleasantly. He sucks on his thumb then wipes away the smear of blood. She hisses a little at the sting.

“Sorry.”

“It is fine.” She pushes at him and he moves off of her. They both get up very gingerly, as if neither of them were quite sure they weren’t actually missing a limb or bleeding profusely from somewhere and are too in shock — from what Varric is sure hindsight will tell him was a really, really good story but right now feels a little like a panic attack waiting to happen — to notice.

“All is… alright,” Cassandra confirms slightly hesitantly, straightening to her full height and giving her head a little shake, dislodging snow and debris from her hair. Her hand goes to the hilt of her sword at her hip in a habit Varric had noted a long time ago was out of the need for comfort.

“Yeah. Maker knows how but, yeah. We’re good.” He looks around and spots Bianca lying miraculously preserved in the snow a little way off. He hadn’t even been aware he’d been holding her on the bridge. “Tomorrow I’m going to ask you if that really happened,” —Varric picks up the crossbow and buffs it with his sleeve— “and you’re going to need to tell me that, yeah, yeah it did.”

“This is if I can even believe it myself.”

They numbly walk up the slope to the ruined remains of their side of the bridge. Across the vast absence between them, they can see Lavellan, Dorian, and the two Inquisition agents on the other side. Lavellan is jumping up and down with a frantic energy, waving his arms in the air, and Dorian is folded over, bracing his hands on his knees.

So yeah, that must have looked just as bad as it felt.

“What are they saying?” Cassandra squints across at them, hand shielding the white sun from her eyes.

Varric strains to listen. “‘Wait there, we’ll come get you.’ Well, there goes my plan of flying us back across on dragonback,” Varric says, voice still too thin to really nail sarcasm. “Though I was stumped about where we’d find the saddle.”

Now the blunt shock of it all was fading a little, cold reality and shame were settling in. He could have got Cassandra killed, could have got them all killed. He was a liability, a risk far beyond whatever help he could have once offered. Again, Cassandra had done something wholly decent for him and been given nothing but grief in return. How long would they be stuck out here, with no shelter or supplies? Could anyone even survive a night in these temperatures alone and unprotected? The bridge was very wide and the stone was very thick. It might take weeks to rebuild, months.

He clears his throat that feels rough as sand. “Hey… Seeker. Thanks for, you know, getting stranded with me.” He runs a hand over his mouth, risking a glance up at her. “If it gets to week two and the bridge still isn’t looking like it's getting anywhere and we’re sick of chewing on rocks, you have permission to eat me.”

“Varric, do not be ridiculous,” Cassandra says tersely. “They will build a scaffold to bring us back across. It’ll take a matter of hours.”

“Oh, yeah, right…” Varric nods. He probably should have known that. Shit, on a normal day, he probably would have helped organise the damn thing.

Cassandra sighs. She sounds tired. “Varric, what were you even doing on the bridge in the first place?”

Lying to her, he thinks, used to be easy. It was something he was exceedingly good at. She’s looking at him with those dark eyes, her head still bleeding, mouth turned down unnaturally, and he thinks if he disappoints her again today he’ll just up and join the ruins of the bridge at the bottom of the valley.

“It’s the lyrium,” he says, no colour in his voice. “I could hear it. The singing. It’s been singing to me all this time, calling to me, but now it’s so loud. It’s the last of it, it wants to be found. I think it wants it to be me or maybe I just want it to be, and I just… Maker, I just need it to be over.”

Cassandra looks at him for a long, searching moment, then nods. Then she is turning around and marching down the bridge to the snowy path beyond.

“H-hey.” Varric stumbles after her, almost breaking into a run to keep up. “Don’t you think we should—”

“We can do nothing to aid their effort to rescue us,” she says, voice hard with a renewed purpose. “What we can do is finally rid this place of this damn lyrium that makes you so sick. We have our weapons, we have the daylight, we are bodily able. There is nothing stopping us from ending it now.”

Varric side steps a large gouge in the stone made from dragon talons. He’s grinning, almost giddy with relief. Cassandra was still willing to help him, still believed he could do this, could be useful, enough to trust him to watch her back. It could all be over soon.

“If that's the word of the Seeker, who am I to argue?”

She lets out an irritable noise. It's comforting in its familiarity.

“If it means anything,” he says, bumping his elbow into hers, “I can’t think of better company to be stuck on a frozen, dragon infested, red lyrium riddled mountain with.”

Cassandra raises a dark eyebrow at him. Her pace slows, just a little. “Yes, I’m sure a human shield is very valuable to you right now.”

“Hey, I’m very discerning with my human shields.”

Her mouth twists into a small smile, like she’s holding back a larger one, and Varric’s stomach feels like he’s still falling off the bridge.

*

The configuration of the sloping narrow paths and the lee of high granite meant they were almost entirely sheltered from the wind in this new territory. Coupled with the hot springs sprouted up around them, it makes the climate almost tolerable. The absence of the near constant whistling gale of the last few days left an eerie sort of stillness that was interrupted only by the distant rumble of massive lungs.

“Are we alright to just be wandering around like this?” Varric asks, eyeing the sky warily, paranoia suddenly not so irrational. “Dragons don’t really seem to be the ‘live and let live’ types, and I don’t think I’ve enough luck left in me to survive more than two dragon attacks a day.”

A sound behind them whips his head around, only to see a crow taking flight on black wings. If it was in search of carrion, it wouldn’t have to look far around here.

“We are in little danger — from the dragons at least,” Cassandra says. “If they have returned to their nests it means they have sated their hunger and finished their hunt. I imagine a local ram herd is now short a dozen or so of their flock.” She had wordlessly reduced her pace to Varric’s far slower than normal one to allow him to lead them, given he was the only one with any clue where they were headed. She seems content now they have a clear task to execute. “It takes a considerable amount of energy to fly and digest the vast quantity of food they have just eaten. They will now need to sleep for a substantial length of time, especially the big one. A few days at least. Unless we make as much noise as, say, a bridge collapsing or a mine exploding, we shall be fine.”

“Right. No more making things explode. Got it.” Varric gives her a two finger salute and she exasperatedly casts her eyes skyward. His hands had started to shake a while ago so he shoves them back in his jacket pockets, balled into fists.

It was interesting to hear her discussing something so knowledgeably outside the Inquisition or any of her other institutions, especially as it was a very good distraction for the real, very loud reason they were here that Varric was trying hard to block out. They could almost be on another ridiculously suicidal dragon hunt, like back in the desert. Never would he have thought he’d almost be nostalgic about that particular afternoon of poking through animal carcases and dodging fireballs.

It was sometimes easy to forget Cassandra had been bred into knowing everything about these creatures of their age that still, somehow, despite his numerous close run-ins with their kind, felt like they only hailed from legend. But then she was hardly forthcoming about discussing any part of her life back in Nevarra, nor her both famous and infamous family.

“Remind me when my brain is less scrambled to pick yours about dragon hunting.” He stumbles a little, feet slow and heavy, but keeps going. He clutches onto the scarf around his neck like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. “I’ve never written about it before but that’s a lot of untapped potential, and people always expect an adventure story to have a dragon in it. You might even get a drink or two out of it.”

Cassandra looks at him in surprise. “You would really be interested in writing about a dragon hunter?”

“Sure, what’s not to like? It's a good premise for a hero. They’re obviously brave, would need to be, and a little crazy to want to do it in the first place. Probably a long, weird family history involved too. Family trauma is always fantastic character motivation.” Varric had just been running his mouth before for a distraction but was starting to see more and more potential in the idea. If only he had his quill, and hands that worked. “Never set a book in Nevarra either, if you fancy sharing about that.”

“I am perhaps not the right person to speak on Nevarra, but dragon hunting…” Cassandra is biting at her lip, her cheeks a little flush and eyes bright with excitement. It’s entirely charming. “I shall be the one to name the lead dragon hunter character,” she announces, like she was declaring the Inquisition all over again, not haggling over intellectual property, “and I shall have three drinks from you, on three different occasions. Those are my terms.”

“Done,” Varric says. He keeps drifting over to the tall wall of granite that shelters them, constantly course-correcting, but now he just lets his unsteady fingers absently trail over the cold, soothing stone. “You never fancied getting into the family business? Or one of the businesses. You certainly inherited the knack for it.” The Abyssal High Dragon’s head had barely clung to its neck by the time she was done with it.

“There was a time when I considered it…” Cassandra says, a hesitance in her voice that told of a story there. “But it did not come to pass. My brother…” She stops herself again and Varric glances at her, but says nothing. Sometimes you just need to let a story breathe to let it reveal itself. “My brother was the hunter of the family. The last of the line, I think. May it stay that way.”

“He’s not still at it?”

“No,” she says bluntly. “He is dead.”

Varric would have picked up on that any other time. He wished he’d never opened his mouth. “Ah, shit, Seeker. I’m sorry. Let’s go back to me whining about the lyrium and forget I said anything.”

“It is fine,” she says, a stiltedness to her voice that makes it obvious it had taken a long time for her to say that even half way convincingly. “It happened a long time ago. I only wish…” She takes another pause, finding the words. “I wish that it had happened in battle, how he would have wanted. It was an art to him, a thing of beauty. He saw in those creatures something that I do not think I have found anywhere. It was cruel that it was denied him.”

Varric nods, understanding all too well. “Life rarely provides a satisfying conclusion. That’s why I prefer stories, or just making up the ending instead.”

“Yes, sometimes fiction is preferable.” Cassandra’s hand flexes on the hilt of her sword. “He was murdered,” she says, answering the question Varric was determined not to ask. “By blood mages. I was twelve.”

Varric lets out a slow breath. That was no age at all, barely enough time being a person to even have memories to cling to. He tries to recall what he would have remembered of Bartrand if he had lost him at that age but his head is too thick and there was too much bad shit at the end to find any of it.

“Did you get them,” he asks, “the ones that did it?”

“No,” she says, an overwhelming bitterness in her voice. “No one did.”

Varric sees again in her the girl from that morning, all that rage and pain of a child that had lost everything but still had to find a way to keep going and build a life alone. It is not hard to see the path that had led her here.

“You know, Seeker, if you want to name this dragon hunter character of ours Cassandra, we’ll have to be a bit more creative,” he says, voice lightening as he drags the conversation away from this knife edge they were teetering on and back to the start. “Cassie or Sandra or… shit, something better than that, ask me again later. The less brain-scrambled later.” The sudden pink that creeps up Cassandra’s cheeks was the giveaway that he was right on the money with her choice of name. “Gotta be careful, otherwise I’ll be accused of being a hack ripping off The Hero of Orlais story or, to borrow a phrase coined by a truly debauched writer of truly terrible erotica, writing friend-fiction.”

“‘Friend-fiction’?” Cassandra asks, brow furrowed, the old grief lifting. “Do you mean… No, forget it, I do not want to know. I recall enough of that… pirate of yours to know she is involved somehow.”

A fond, bleary grin spreads across Varric’s face. He blinks slowly and sees a flash of red. The Hanged Man seems so far away it may as well only exist in one of his stories, but suddenly he can recall with startling clarity reading Isabela’s borderline disgusting smut aloud in his grimy back room of the tavern, Aveline chasing a cackling Isabela around, over and under the table Hawke was doubled over with laughter on, Fenris glowering with his fingers jammed in his pointed ears, Anders loudly complaining of anatomical impossibilities, while Merrill listened with a rapt attention.

Swords and Shields had been born that night, when Varric, never one to be outdone, had loudly and arrogantly announced that if you wanted something done right, you needed to do it yourself, and sent for pen and ink. He’d almost forgotten that. He’s half tempted to tell Cassandra but even he isn’t that cruel.

His heavy eyes slide to Cassandra’s profile, chiselled and perfect as the stone at his fingertips, and his thoughts drift into the crimson drenched image of doing the same with her, reading her some filthy climax of a story starring the character that bore her name, describing exactly what was being done to her. The noise in his head hums in satisfaction. He quickly halts that line of thought.

Varric assumes the conversation had run its course, until Cassandra almost shyly pipes up again.

“What about Allegra?”

He doesn’t hide his loud bark of laughter, sleeping dragons be damned.

*

Conversation peters out into silence as they journey on. There isn’t room in Varric’s head for anything else anymore. They’re nearly upon it, so close now. Awareness narrows to that one, singular fact. They reach the base of a sharp incline and he knows this is it. His pace hurries, a burst of energy coming from knowing what lies at the top, just around the corner. It was nearly his.

Or it would have been if Cassandra wasn’t barrelling past him, shoving him behind her as she draws her blade. He would have noticed the Red Templars without her, he’s fairly sure. The sheer size of the lumbering behemoth hurtling towards them would have tipped him off eventually.

Cassandra charges at it with a roar while Varric remains at the outskirts, unleashing a broad shower of bolts at the corrupted Templars that try to intercept her, skewering them to the snowy ground. He picks off the few that get back up again, bolts hitting their mark more or less accurately. His hands had never been unsteady holding Bianca and he wasn't about to start now, not with Cassandra relying on him and only him. Their party is down by two but Varric had often thought that at times they act as more Cassandra’s clean up crew than anything. She slices through the enemy like they were made from vellum, easily tackling the behemoth like it wasn’t twice her size.

Varric is both fuelled and diminished by what lies just beyond them. Close, so close now. He glances up, up where he knows it’s waiting for him. His split concentration costs him. He almost misses the Templar charging at him from the side, only seeing it with just enough time to avoid its slashing dagger. He swings the end of Bianca into its foul teeth in a spray of blood, but it’s not enough to stop it barrelling right into him, uncaring of personal injury, and pinning Varric to the wall of granite behind him.

They scuffle, longer than they should; the creature’s blade trapped frozen between them, Varric’s hold on its wrist the only thing preventing it from plunging into his chest. Varric has the strength advantage over it but his reactions are delayed, hampered by dulled senses, and the Templar is all manic energy free from self-preservation. The Templar’s hood slips down as they wrestle, revealing an all too human face, twisted and warped by protruding chunks of red and swollen, blackened veins. Once it had dark, sandy hair that fell about its ears but most of it was lost to the crystals. It’s like looking in some awful, cracked mirror.

“You will all serve the red storm,” it’s saying, madness making its voice high and strange. Flecks of bloody spit from its ruined mouth catch on Varric’s cheek. He turns it in disgust. “Her corpse will be a garden for it to grow.”

Everything then becomes very narrow, as hot, terrible fury floods Varric, burning away all else. It’s hatred like he’s never known, twisted, writhing, all-consuming. The song shrieks deafeningly in his ears, and a red film saturates his vision. They would not have her, she is not theirs, never theirs.

With a surging strength, he wrenches the wrist caught in his hand back until he hears the sickening crunch of bone breaking. Then he grabs the blade from slack fingers and plunges it into the side of the Templar’s throat, not stopping until its tip emerges from the other side. Deep satisfaction surges as he listens to it gurgle and choke, spewing blood.

He shoves the body away from him, onto the floor, and sags against the rock. Wildly he seeks out Cassandra, expecting the worst, and finds her standing upon the felled behemoth’s chest, hacking chunks from it as it snarls and slashes impotently up at her with its last remaining nub of a limb. Bodies litter the ground around her. His relief is dizzying.

“It’s not yours,” croaks a voice from the ground. Varric blinks down and finds the Templar’s face a ruin of red, no white even left in its eyes anymore. Only its mouth moves and barely at all. “It’ll never be yours. It is only ever ours.”

The words, a strange mimicry of his own thoughts from just a few moments ago, catch like frozen fear in his chest. He jerks his head up to look to the crest of the hill. So close. Just a little more now.

He fumbles in the snow for Bianca, shooting a bolt carelessly into the body to make it go utterly still, then heaves her onto his shoulder and staggers onwards. He does not look back. The song roars like euphoria.

The air seems thin at the top but maybe that’s just him. His breath rattles in his chest as he makes the last few steps, leaning heavily on his thighs. He keeps expecting to see red but it’s all still white and grey as far as the eye can see. Panic grips him until he peers over the edge of the very steep ravine to the sheer drop below and finally sees it; jutting from the rock some thirty feet down is a mass of glittering shards protruding like red, angular stalagmites, reaching up to him.

The sight is instantly soothing. He watches it for a long, drawn out moment, fascinated by the loving glow that he can feel on his face like a physical caress. Then, fighting against his every instinct, he swings Bianca off his shoulder, clicks an explosive arrow into the chamber, and slowly raises her into position.

This was it. This one last round, then it was done. Then he would be free of it. Never to hear it ever again.

The song almost sounds like real words now, ones he can almost, almost fathom. He hums along with it, knowing what would come next instinctively. For the first time in his life, his trigger finger falters.

“Sod it,” he says, and, with a monumental effort, fires.

Nothing happens. He tries again and again, desperately. Bianca’s gears don’t move. Jammed in the cold.

The crossbow slips from his grasp, falling into the snow as he collapses to his knees. His shoulders shake with exhausted, frayed laughter. Of course. Of course, she would fail him now.

He tips his face up to the cool breeze, laughter dying inside him. There was nothing else he could do, no way to beat it now. What was the point in fighting it anymore? Why did he think he was stronger than this? Bartrand wasn’t. The song washes over him, sounding so sweet tears roll down his cheeks.

He stands on shaking legs and moves towards the edge, where the entire world lies below. He sees it now clearly perhaps for the first time. Sees all the ways it’s alive, the intricacies of it, the ways it pulses, speaks, and breathes. It suddenly makes perfect sense, like the innards of a machine all working together in perfect harmony. Joining it would be easy, he would be just another cog in that divine machine. How has he lived away from it? He’s been so cold, so alone up here. How has he been able to stand it? Every second parted from it was unbearable.

He moves to take the final step, over the ledge then down, down, down to warmth and home, when he’s yanked back, thrown down into the cold, cruel snow.

There’s a weight holding him, pinning him down, keeping him up here in this misery. Varric lets out a guttural, wounded cry, and fights against it with a primal desperation. He needs to go to it, he’ll crawl if he must, he’ll kill.

“Varric! Varric, listen to me. You need to focus, do not listen to it. Hear only my voice.”

Varric doesn’t listen. Can’t listen. Nothing else mattered anymore but returning. He fights with everything he has. Frees an arm and lashes out hard, striking the shape over him. The weight slides off him with a winded noise, and then he’s free enough to squirm out from under it. He barely makes it a foot before he’s being dragged back down by the back of his collar.

“You will listen!” A sharp smack jerks his head to the side. Stars spring in front of his eyes and when they clear, so does the red, retreating to the very edges of his vision, enough for him to see the face looming over him. The cut on Cassandra’s forehead had opened again, bleeding red. A large bruise is blooming under her right eye on her cheek, like a blot of ink seeping through a page. She’s still lovely, still achingly lovely.

“Seeker,” he croaks, relief filling every corner of him. His bottom lip has split, cracked down the middle and crying blood as he speaks, but he doesn’t care. “You’re here, you’ve come. Of course, you have. You had to.”

“Yes, I am here.” Her voice is very quiet. He strains to listen. “You need to let go of it, Varric. Do not let it take a hold of you. It needs to be destroyed.”

“No!” Fear grips him again and he lashes out against the hold she has on him, jerking his arm from her grasp. His elbow catches her on the chin with a hard thud of impact. “No, we have to go to it. Have to join. Together. Seeker, please.”

“No, Varric. Listen to me, it’ll kill you. Maker, stop! You’ll die!”

It descends into scrapping in the snow; Varric trying to drag her with him to the edge, while Cassandra tries to stop him. There is little skill on Varric’s part, all wild instinct and brute strength. In this one way, he is stronger than her, he knows he is, even though she is the more adept fighter. But he is all hard, heavy stone, raw and of the earth, and she must listen to him. Must understand. He can't leave her here in the cold, empty above. All alone.

He manages to flip them, pushing her down onto her back, over her. Cassandra lets out a frustrated cry and swings her fist with great force. A sudden gush of warm blood pours down into his mouth, but he doesn’t feel it. Nothing can touch him but the agony of Cassandra not understanding, still fighting him, not letting them go. He uses her momentum against her, grabbing both her wrists and pinning them above her head. She struggles and screams, thrashing and bucking uselessly against him, tossing her head in the snow, but he just holds her. He is stronger.

He hums the song gently, breathing heavy, and presses his forehead to her temple, smearing his blood purposefully between them, painting them both red. Eventually she goes limp, panting harshly beneath him.

“Seeker,” he murmurs and his voice sounds like jagged, crystalised vibration. “Cassandra. I’m going to make us safe. We’ll go home. Have you had a home before? I don’t think I have. You won't be sad anymore, won’t ever be lonely again. Nothing to make us afraid.” He nuzzles against her cheek, spreading the slippery wetness of his body excessively. She’s very still under him, finally understanding. He smiles, and is so happy. “Yes, we’ll be safe and warm. We’ll be together. Together in the stone. I’ll make you safe.”

“I know you will,” Cassandra says softly. “I know, Varric. Let us go to it, then. Together.”

He lifts his head to look down at her. Half her face is almost lost to red. He rubs her hammering heartbeat at her wrists with his thumbs and thinks of what it’ll be like when they pulse as one. More red drips from him onto her cheek. “Together,” he repeats, blissfully.

She smiles strangely at him and he smiles back, overjoyed, then in a sudden surge of movement, she headbutts him squarely in the face. There is a nauseating crunch as his nose breaks yet again.

It blinds him and for a moment he’s unaware of anything at all as the world goes completely dark, absent even from the red.

When sight eventually returns to him, he is curled on his side alone in the snow, panting like a dying dog. He spits out a mouthful of thick blood and looks around groggily, barely able to lift his head.

Cassandra stands at the cliff’s edge with her back half turned to him, tall, striking, and formidable, by all appearances untouched by the violence that had crippled him. In her arms, flexed with effort, is Bianca.

The sight strikes through Varric like an electric current, seering into his mind like a brand never to be forgotten. He draws in a sharp breath, eyes widening, pulse flaring.

It takes a long, stunned moment to piece together what is about to happen.

“No,” he rasps weakly, pleading. “Don’t.”

“This is for you, Varric,” Cassandra says, not looking at him, and fires.

The gears and cogs shift and slide perfectly against each other, the jam from before having loosened, and the primed arrow sings as it is freed from its chamber. Varric can only listen with a mixture of dread and baited hope. The sound of it hitting its target and the following explosion echoes across the valley. A scream only Varric can hear bellows like the inception of the world and is suddenly silenced.

Varric stares out across the lip of the cliff, towards the destruction he cannot see, breath stilled in his lungs, until curling smoke floats up to them followed by the scorched smell of annihilation. It takes him a moment to understand the odd pressure in his ears, then he realises he can’t hear anything beyond the whistle of the high wind anymore. It's the best thing he’s ever heard.

He flops over onto his back. The sky was still bright, still grey. He had thought it so empty, cold and vast before but now he thinks he can make out a hint of comforting blue. He drags the back of a gloved hand across his face. It comes back so smeared in blood, he can only imagine the utter mess his face is in. A numbing chill is seeping in through the back of his duster, melted snow reaching his skin, and there is a dim but growing awareness of the many aching pains throughout his body. He grins weakly, blood in his teeth, ignoring how it makes his aching nose throb even harder, welcoming the return of normal sensation. He hadn’t realised just how untethered he’d been from himself before, how strangely unalive he’d been.

Cassandra appears above him, blocking out the pale sky. She’s still holding Bianca like she’s spent her whole life with it in her arms. “Varric, are you alright? Speak to me!” she says urgently, all that hard, inelegant concern. His blood still covers her face like Qunari war paint. Iron Bull would probably lose it on sight if he saw her like this. Varric grins even harder, pleased to be the only one with her here and now and alive.

“Now, Seeker,” he says, voice a hoarse drawl, “I’m fairly sure that counts as an explosion, and you know what we agreed about that. If any dragons show up, you can deal with them.”

Cassandra stares down at him, arms going slack under Bianca’s weight, then, miraculously, wonderfully, she breaks into real, genuine laughter.

*

Hawke was the only person Varric had ever met who actually preferred walking uphill to downhill.

“Downhill is just so… insistent,” he’d told Varric once during one of their endless treks up the outer dunes of Kirkwall’s coastline, staff slung carelessly over one shoulder, cutting off one of Varric’s lengthy, colourful tirades about the sins of the outdoors. “Like it’s rushing me to get to the bottom.”

“Hawke, you are one of the most impatient people I’ve ever met,” Varric replied, swatting away sand flies. “You’re perpetually in a rush. What’s not to like?”

“Ah, the difference is,” Hawke said, with a natural tone of authority he should never have been awarded, “I like to be the one choosing to do the rushing, not at the behest of gravity.”

As Varric and Cassandra make their way back down the steep snowy hill, Cassandra’s arm slung around Varric’s waist, keeping him pressed flush to the warmth of her side as she bore most of his weight, Varric can finally see the merit in Hawke’s point. He wouldn’t mind stretching this out a little longer, it was the best he’d felt all week.

“It is not far,” Cassandra says, voice barely affected by the effort the position no doubt takes. She has to crouch slightly for them to manage it. She adjusts the grip she has on his wrist, looped over her shoulder, drawing him a little closer.

“Yeah,” Varric says, stumbling along beside her. He still feels distinctly odd, still not quite reconnected to his body. He’s more aware of hers than he is of his own. “I think my nose might be broken.”

“Yes, very probably.”

He expects her to lead them back the way they came when they reach the bottom, where they can wait on what’s left of their side of the bridge to be rescued, but she veers left, passing the red smear of corpses in the snow and up where the path goes inland.

“In the mood for a little sightseeing?” Varric says thickly. His nose has swollen enough to make it difficult to breathe through it. “Or is there something else you’re just dying to do before we leave?”

She ignores him and he thinks he deserves that.

They head up a gradual slope, to where the tall granite offers the most shelter and the muggy steam of a tight cluster of hot springs heats the air humidly. There’s a tall, man-made tower-like structure nearby, where someone might have resided once, and a small fence around the area. One could almost imagine it pleasant, under very different circumstances.

Cassandra deposits Varric on the stone edge of one of the smaller pools and he slumps onto it, easing Bianca down with him, grateful to be off his feet again. He watches her set aside her own shield and unsheathe her sword to lay them both down in the snow, then take a seat beside him. She strips off her gloves one by one to reveal pale, slim hands. She reaches for him and his heart rate skyrockets. She hesitates.

“This will hurt,” she warns plainly. He blinks, then understands what she intends to do.

“Oh, right, yeah. Suppose it will.”

“You have done it before.” It’s not a question. The evidence of its occurrence had been written on his face the entire time she had known him.

“Yeah, twice actually. It’s like falling in love, it gets easier the more times it's broken.” He didn’t know why he said that. It sounds like a very odd thing to say here and now even to his own dazed ears.

“Good, then you are prepared,” she says, then with the brash efficiency that she does everything, she snaps his nose back into place.

He swears, very loudly. It echoes around them, bouncing off the stone. He clutches at his nose as a fresh torrent of blood pours out of it. She has to nudge him before he notices the slim elfroot potion vial she offers out to him.

“You have it,” he gets out from around his fingers. He knows it’s her last one. “Your head.”

“I am fine, you are a mess.” There’s no effective way to deny that while actively bleeding, so he takes the potion.

It always surprises him how quickly the stuff works. The bleeding stops almost immediately and his nose tingles hotly, as though he can feel the bone and cartilage starting to knit back together. He touches it very gingerly, vain enough to hope it doesn’t swell too far out of shape again.

Cassandra stands. “Up,” she says brusquely, ordering him like he was a dog. He very nearly obeys, would have if his body had allowed it.

“Can we just… take a moment? I’ll be alright to get going in a bit.”

“No, we need to get you in.”

“In?” Varric blinks groggily, trying to get his brain in gear to understand what she was talking about. His eyes land on the spring just behind Cassandra, larger than the one he is currently sitting on. “You mean… in the water?”

“Varric, you are more than likely in shock, you’ve lost a considerable amount of blood, most of which you are caked in, and you are shivering again.”

“Am I?” He genuinely hadn’t noticed.

“We need to warm you up, so you are getting in the spring.”

“Right,” he nods. He makes no move to do so. His hands feel excessively useless, curled in his lap, taut with his own drying blood beneath his gloves. She sighs, turning to look out across the landscape, as though she could draw on patience from it. It was quite a nice view really, they're high enough to see far across a slice of the snow coated landscape whose bitter hardships look quiet and peaceful from up here, though Varric isn’t looking at it. Cassandra then turns back to him, face set with the determination of a decision, and drops down to one knee in front of him, apparently uncaring of the cold beneath her, and takes up his boot, hand at the back of his ankle, to begin tugging at its laces.

“Um,” he says stupidly. “Oh, OK.” His head was suddenly spinning so intently, the landscape rapidly rotated like the turning of a trebuchet’s handle.

“Well, can you do it yourself?” she demands, dropping his boot to put her balled fists on her hips, and the offer of assistance has never sounded so accusatory.

“Yeah, uh, no, probably not,” Varric says dazedly. “Bending over seems like a very bad, unconsciousness-inducing idea right now.”

“Well then,” she says, returning to the task, as though that was that.

He would have liked to say something else, something nonchalant and witty to address the fact she was undressing him so they could all be very normal about it and not treat it like the insanity that it was, but she’s already wrenching the laces loose enough to yank his boot off, and he doesn’t trust himself not to say something odd and off putting instead, so that really was that.

She is a little more gentle removing the other one, as methodically efficient as she had been with her own dressing that morning. He watches her unashamedly, just as he had done then, with no excuse now beyond he can’t look away. As she moves onto his gloves that are stained dark with his own blood, he catalogues all the differences in her since then. The tail of her once perfect braid now hangs limp and frayed, curled over one shoulder, disturbed from its crown in their scuffle. The discreetly applied cosmetics about her eyes had run in dark lines down her face like she had been crying. Maybe she had. His blood still violently smears one of her cheeks, and the cut on her forehead had crusted over, her own dried blood matted in her hairline. Her other cheek is marred by the bruise high on her cheekbone. It’s already darkening, like a shadow. He thinks he gave it to her, but he can’t really remember.

She’s tugging at his coat and he numbly helps her as much as he can, which mostly means moving where he is moved. She leans in very close to manoeuvre it from around his shoulders. Wetness still clings to her eyelashes like dew.

Varric swallows thickly against something awful rising in his throat. The memory of kneeling in the snow over her pushes insistently through his haze, pressing to the forefront of his memory, though he’d dearly love to keep it smothered down somewhere deep forever. Her wrists pinned easily under his hands, her bones so delicate in his grip he could snap them with a thought. Her cheek slippery and warm against his own. Her body under him, thrashing, screaming, desperate to get away. That must have been when she'd cried.

“I hurt you,” he says, his voice thin. There doesn’t seem to be anything else he can say beyond acknowledgement. Sorry sounds so fucking inadequate.

She sits back on her heels, looking at him. She folds his coat over her arm then sets it on the rock beside him. “It is nothing. The Templars and fall did worse.”

Varric lets out a strangled noise. “Not hurting you as much as the things trying very hard to kill you isn’t exactly a high bar.”

Cassandra starts on the straps of his breastplate at his shoulder. “Do not do this to yourself.”

“Do what? Take accountability for the fucked up shit I did to you?”

“Blame yourself for something outside of your control.”

“Please stop excusing what I did.” He’s angry now, at himself but it’s spilling over everywhere, and she is the very last person that deserves to receive it. “There is no excusing it. I still did it.”

Cassandra sits back again, hands on her thighs. Her usual hard expression hardens further. “Do you know what happened on that hilltop?”

“I went crazy, attacked you, said a load of really weird shit, and tried to throw us both over the edge of a cliff?” Varric says, voice so bitter there’s no trace of the levity he was aiming for. “Did I miss anything?”

“You were exposed to an evil that brings out the very worst in people, especially your people. Deprives them of all sense, turns them against their very kin, pushes them to kill out of jealousy or fear, drives away all rational thought beyond coveting it only for themselves, or pushes them into such a frenzy of paranoia they become a genocidal maniac.” Varric flinches. “But you, you tried to share it with me. Would do nothing without me joining you.” Cassandra returns to the straps, loosening the buckles and easing the breastplate off him. “If that is the worst of you, then you should feel very smug. I shall allow it this once.”

Varric blinks at her. He opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes so he closes it again. Her assessment of him is more exposing than the clothing she strips off him. She gently pulls her scarf free from around his neck. He’d almost forgotten he was wearing it.

“Sorry, I got blood on it,” he mutters. It had seen the worst of his bloody nose.

“It is yours,” she shrugs, laying it with the rest of his discarded clothes.

Her hands go to his belts. Varric looks determinately up at the sky, leaning back with his hands propped up behind him to allow it, fingers gripping the edge of the stone fiercely, and counts the wisps of snowflakes that have started to fall. Even in his half dressed state, he feels strangely warm, like the heat of his healing face was spreading throughout his body.

He can’t help but glance down when she starts pulling at the hooks of his tunic, watching her fingers work, revealing skin. He can’t remember if the flush on Cassandra’s cheeks was there before from the cold or not, and desperately wants to.

She eases the tunic off his shoulders. She does it slowly, he thinks, out of consideration for his battered body.

“You are… quite bruised,” she says, wide eyes slowly cataloguing the myriad of emerging dark bruises he’s littered with. He glances down at himself, away from her face. It’s pretty bad but he’s seen worse. There’s a large dark smear that wraps around the swell of his bicep where he’d borne the brunt of their fall. Her eyes linger there.

“Guess that’s what I get for taking on the Seeker.”

She nods hard twice, eyes unmoving. “Yes, of course.” He’s not exactly shy but he does sort of wish he didn’t look like such utter shit the first time she saw him in this state of undress. Not that he really expects there to be a second time. It’s the sort of thing that changes the way you see a person. If he hadn’t already fundamentally altered the way she saw him on that hilltop, he might be more concerned about it.

She finally looks away and folds the tunic busily. “Up,” she says again, just as demanding if a little less forceful than before, and he actually manages it this time.

Standing half naked before her as she kneels in front of him, unlacing his trouser ties, is probably excruciatingly awkward, but Varric is still out of it enough that the full force of its feeling is beyond him. Her touch is too warming and comforting for him to be bothered by much else. He can’t remember the last time anyone had touched him like this; intimate and attentive. At least, he can’t remember making note of it. He goes back to counting the snow.

When they’re finally loose enough for her to tug the garment down his thighs, he realises he’s half hard in his underclothes. He had hoped the cold and blood loss would have taken care of that side of things, or at the very least the many horrors and exhaustion of the day, but it seems his body wasn’t done betraying him yet.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. The strange warmth protecting him doesn’t seem to allow shame to fully reach him either and he meets her eye.

“There is nothing to forgive,” she says curtly. Her cheeks are a darker shade of pink, he is sure of it this time.

Her movements aren’t rushed as she manoeuvres him to lift each uncoordinated leg to liberate him of them, but he can tell she’s eager to get this ordeal over and done with now. He can’t exactly blame her. She quickly stands when she’s done and turns her back to him. “Alright, get in.”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.” He briefly considers stripping completely down to his skin, but quickly dismisses the thought. He needs some barriers left between them, some shred of dignity to cling to.

The water is almost too hot to be bearable at first. He hisses as he wades in, his numb fingers and toes rapidly regaining feeling as they burn excruciatingly, but he doesn’t stop until he’s fully submerged up to his shoulders in the surprisingly deep pool. He moves right to the opposite end then turns to press his back against the hot stone that now feels like nothing more than hot stone.

Cassandra still has her back to him, but she isn’t idle, now removing her own clothes, already down to her undershirt. “Oh,” he says, shocked even though it was obviously the inevitable conclusion to this bizarre situation. Of course she was getting in too, she was just as cold as he was and had more than enough pains of her own to soothe. He turns away, and tries to think of nothing at all.

His body temperature finally finds some middle ground between frozen and boiled, and the surrounding warmth starts to feel pleasant. It seeps into his sore muscles, relaxing him, draining whatever lingering tension there was left in him. The steam is thick and sits heavy on the air. He breathes it in deep, feeling its texture in his throat and lungs, cleaning him from the inside out.

“This was a good idea, Seeker,” he says lazily, head tipped back, staring up at the sky, feeling oddly weightless. He hears the disturbance of something entering the water, feels the water levels rising, lapping against him. There’s a little sigh. Varric swallows, the stretched line of his throat working, and suddenly can’t move.

“You can look at me, Varric,” Cassandra says exasperatedly. “I think we are beyond modesty.”

“Alright,” he says, heat now prickling where it creeps up the base of his neck, “but I want you to know I’m doing it with the proper amount of respect. Whatever that is. Even more respectful than that.” He does look at her, across the pool that seems suddenly and paradoxically very small yet very wide, and finds her sitting opposite him, regarding him with something close to amusement. Even through the water and curling steam, it is evident she is almost entirely naked. Her knees are drawn up to her chest where she's submerged in the water, but there is no discomfort or self consciousness in her demeanour. Maybe it's growing up in barracks packed with fellow Seekers where privacy must have been a rare commodity, or maybe it's just the fact she hasn't got a single thing to be embarrassed about, while Varric had embarrassed himself enough for the both of them. Her shoulders look surprisingly slender without all those many layers of armour. He’s never thought of her as slight before, but maybe it's just a matter of perspective. Most humans look slight compared to his own wide breadth. Despite that, she doesn’t look vulnerable or exposed. Nothing has diminished her, he doesn’t think that’s even possible. There’s a simple strength to her in her nakedness, like the armour was doing nothing but holding her back.

He wants to be able to stop staring, to stop counting every scar that is now revealed to him, admiring all that tanned, toned muscle, all that raw beauty, but it's a feat he hasn’t managed all day.

“It does feel good in here,” she says, looking at him right back, eyes as deep and reflective as the water.

He smiles with an ease he doesn’t feel. “I don’t know how you’re going to get me out again, quite frankly.”

She hums in amusement and wraps her arms around her knees pulling them closer to her. On her bare wrists, there are twin rings of ugly bruising like shackles. He could probably line up his fingers with them perfectly, like retreading footprints left in the snow. The sight of it makes him ill.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asks, unable to keep the thought to himself. You don’t even like me, he wants to add but it sounds so petulantly accusatory he refrains.

Her lingering smile drops. “I am not being nice, I am being practical.”

“No, being practical is stopping me from killing us up on that hilltop then leaving me for the Inquisitor to deal with, or leaving me to sulk last night instead of sharing your very small tent. This is… this is definitely nice. It’s the nicest anyone has been to me since…” He trails off, grasping for an example and coming up depressingly short. He doesn’t let people do things for him, he’s always the one taking care of everything for everyone else before they even realise it needs doing. It’s his whole thing.

Bianca had once faked a highly contagious illness on a surface work trip and hired a dupe to make vaguely groaning noises anytime anyone knocked on her door to spend a week with him in Markham — nice, neutral territory — for his thirtieth nameday. At the time he'd thought it was just about the most romantic thing anyone could do, but it seems a little humiliating in comparison now.

“Since Curly moved the morning training sessions to the other side of the barracks to avoid my window,” he finishes rather lamely. It wasn't even true, but he was betting Cassandra couldn't care less about the training rota to know it.

Cassandra levels him with the severe look that means she’s thinking, then looks away. She draws her knees up a little closer. “Red lyrium destroyed many within my order. We should be immune, they should have been spared, yet good men and women I thought of more as family than my own blood were given deaths by its hand that I would not wish upon my greatest enemy, for no more reason than an insane man’s grapple with his own ineffectuality.” Varric remembers her Daniel curled on the floor, a ruin of a person, and the lyrium fed parasite growing inside him. His boyish face devastated by decay and infection was a hard thing to forget, neither was how he had looked up at Cassandra with utter peace, knowing she would be the last thing he would ever see. “If I could have saved any of them,” Cassandra continues, “spared them that fate… I would have given anything.” She looks at Varric, eyes ablaze. “And I will not sit idly by while another suffers it’s evil, not while I still breathe.”

Varric nods slowly. So that was it. This was simply just what Cassandra does, with all her unwavering nobility, obstinate sense of duty, and fierce, endless compassion. She so loved a cause to really throw herself into, no matter it’s hopelessness. She would have done the same for anyone, really, it just so happened this time it was Varric stumbling along, needing saving. It is a rare and remarkable quality in her, and yet disappointment sits so vast and cold inside him, he can barely breathe.

“That’s… very decent of you,” he manages. It’s flat and ungracious, and not at all what she deserves. He sinks lower in the water, letting his eyes slide close, head resting against the ledge behind him. He thinks he could sit in here until they cobble together something fit to rescue them and that cold feeling still wouldn’t have thawed.

“Do you know the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me?” Varric cracks open his eyes and finds Cassandra still watching him. Her skin has turned pink in the water, the hollow of her cheeks rosy and damp under the layer of blood and grime that still mars her.

“Did someone once let you get the last hit on an ogre or something?”

She shakes her head. “Someone once wrote another of my favourite books simply because I wanted to read it.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. It makes him sit up a little straighter. It seemed unfathomable that that would be the instance that stood out most prominently to her in all her remarkable life. Was it even that nice? He’d had a sort of manic glee when he’d written it, thrilled at the prospect of showing off for her, flexing his skill in the arena he was best at, and made all the better in service to her beloved, smutty friend-fiction disguised as a trash romance serial. He’d shut himself away to get it finished, ignoring all other duties, fuelled by the idea of having such an easy, undeniable way of gaining her forgiveness, which he had thought impossible. It was easily the fastest he’d ever written such a substantial volume; the words had just flowed as soon as he put ink to page. It all felt distinctly self-serving, even the smug pleasure of seeing the sheer, guileless elation on her face upon receiving it. He’d even teased her about it.

“I’m not sure that was all that nice, Seeker. Nice things are supposed to be done simply out of the goodness of one’s heart. I was just trying to stop you attempting to throttle me on sight.”

“If that were your sole intent, you would have done something that required far less effort. You did not. You spent hours writing something you did not enjoy, would gain no profit from or have a large audience for, and you did it all under the guise of a joke.” Her mouth lifts slightly in a half smile, as though that last part was just as important. “That is the Varric Tethras I strived to aid today, not the sickness that weakened you. I consider that man worth saving.”

The steam of the spring stings Varric’s eyes. He feels ridiculously like he might cry, the strain of all these endless, trying days with no rest catching up to him. He looks determinately upwards, fingernails digging into his water-softened palms. He can still feel her eyes on him and he really has no right to wish she’d look away.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly, clearing his throat. “That’s… that’s really… I think I needed to hear that. Kinda feeling like Thedas’ biggest piece of shit right now.” He bites his inner cheek to stop himself from babbling on further.

“It is the truth,” she shrugs. It is what he can always rely on from her, along with pulling him back from the edge, literally and figuratively, numerous times in a single day, apparently. “And if there were a list of Thedas’ biggest pieces of shit, your name wouldn’t even make the first page. Probably.”

He lets out a startled laugh, always slightly thrilled at hearing her swear. “That might not be as reassuring as you think, Seeker. I've seen your handwriting, you could only fit like ten names to a page.”

“Then simply be content with eluding the top ten.” He laughs again, genuinely tickled. She was trying to cheer him up, he realises, which draws another chuckle out of him. What a weird fucking day. The dragons were the most normal part.

“Varric.”

“Yeah?”

“You are still covered in a staggering amount of blood.”

A wide grin spreads across said bloody face. He nods at her. “So are you. But I think you’re pulling it off better than I am.” He drags a wet hand languidly across his mouth. “Better?”

“I think you are underestimating the sheer volume.”

He lounges back lazily against the wall, fanning his heavy arms out wide along it. It’s hard to be too concerned about anything at all, not with Cassandra looking at him like that, her exasperation almost, almost fond. “Well, unless you want to come over here and do a better job of it, I think that’s probably the best it’s going to get for now.”

He should know by now that a provocation with her goes down about as well as a fake cheque at a Marchant’s Guild meeting. Her eyes sharpen, alight with challenge, shoulders straightening a little. He forces himself not to glance down.

“Close your eyes.”

“Seeker, I was joking—”

“Close your eyes.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. I am now telling you to close your eyes.”

Varric huffs a put upon sigh, then lets his eyes fall shut, anticipation a heavy weight in his gut. It feels a little like closing your eyes in front of a charging bronto and expecting to come out of the experience unscathed. The water ripples and sloshes with movement, lapping at his chest. He becomes very aware of his own breathing, rattling around his head unnaturally loud. He swallows and that too sounds deafening.

He feels the shift of air around him, a closeness to its warm touch on his skin that means a body is now very near him. His arms drop back in the water, off the ledge. He wants to reach out, to know.

“Feeling a little vulnerable here, Seeker,” he says into the blackness, mouth lifting crookedly in an unsure smile.

“Stay still.” Cassandra’s voice sounds even closer than he’d anticipated. His head turns slightly in its direction. He jumps at the first wet touch to his cheek. “What did I just say?” she snaps.

“I’m sorry, it’s a little unnerving being prodded at while blind!”

“I do not prod.” The hand at his cheek is removed. He listens to the splash and drip of water. “I’m going to touch you again, please try to refrain from screaming.”

“Ha ha.”

A hand cupped with water is pressed to his cheek, gentler this time. Water runs down his face and neck as Cassandra wipes at the unseen mess he’s coated in. It can't be the most effective manner of washing, he’d probably be better off just dunking his head under, but she is persistent and thorough. If it’s strange, it’s no more so than anything else that had happened to them that day.

“Think you can get my back after this too?” he says, the movement of words taking her hand with it.

“Talk and I just might break your nose again.”

The matted stubble around his mouth apparently suffered the worst of it and requires the most attention. Her gentler approach wanes. Varric keeps his mouth pressed tightly shut against the onslaught. He feels Cassandra’s huff of laughter rather than hears it; hot breath on damp skin. “If the others were to come across us like this, they would assume I was attempting to smother you.”

Varric bites on his smile. “‘Varric Tethras, choked to death in the bath by a naked Seeker’ isn’t a half bad epitaph.”

Cassandra’s touch follows the bow of his smile lines. “I am so ill-suited to this sort of thing, I might even do it accidentally.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Seeker, I'm getting kinda used to you being my second pair of hands.” It sounds far too close to being something else for this tentative equilibrium they had found. Varric could bite his tongue. He wants to see her face, see what’s written there that she can’t ever hide. “Though you were a little too slick with Bianca there,” he adds, course correcting. “If I didn't now know for a fact you sleep with your sword beside you, I might start getting a little jealous.”

“She is quite the weapon.” Admiration is evident in her voice and Varric no longer has the red lyrium as an excuse for the way something in his chest purrs in satisfaction. “But I think I shall stick with something I can more easily hit people with. It is no easy feat to bear her, though I now can see how you…” she trails off.

“How I what?” he prompts, insatiably curious of what she stopped herself from saying.

“How you guard her so fiercely.” It wasn’t what she was going to say but he wasn’t about to pull her up on it. He might have once.

“You should feel honoured, you're only the second person to ever wield her.”

“Really?” She sounds genuinely shocked. “Not even…” —she hesitates— “Hawke?” Varric shakes his head, just enough so as not to disturb her.

“Nope, he never even asked. Think he didn’t want to hear me tell him no.”

“Which you would have?”

“Probably, yeah. Depends how drunk I was, or how sober.”

Cassandra falls quiet. Her fingertips sweep under the hollow of his eye, pressing into the tender flesh there, leaving a river of water down his face like tears. He wants to open them to judge the flavour of the silence but refrains.

“The last time I was this covered in blood was with those Avvar rat bastards in the Fallow Mire, remember?” he offers the silence, filling it easily. “That gusher that would not go down.”

“If I recall, it was your arrow that opened the artery.”

“Had to find some chink in all that fur and horns.” Her hand returns to the water, washing away his blood. Back in Hargrave Keep, standing amongst the bodies of the rebel Avvar, sticky with human blood, Cassandra’s lip had curled in disgust and irritation levelled right at him, even more drenched than he was. She’d had to finish off the lumbering idiot leader as he swung his unwieldy maul, spraying them all copiously from his neck, Varric’s bolt lodged in it. It seems a far cry from the look she surveyed him with across the pool.

“Varric?” He hums in acknowledgement, pulled back from what might have been the edge of sleep. It’s very relaxing in the warmth, her hand gentle on him once again. “When we rejoin the others, we shall have to explain to the Herald what has occurred.” She always reverts to that title with Lavellan when she wants to maintain a level of distance between them, he’s noticed. Elevate him back up to something she cannot touch, rather than the elf he’d once seen her voluntarily and disgustingly share a toothbrush with. It’s not as bad as when she stiffly calls him my Lord, but still a little jarring all these many months of companionship later.

“Yeah, that we will.” It’s not exactly a prospect he’s looking forward to but if there was one thing he was good at, it's turning a truly wretched story into something palatable. If he’s lucky he’ll just be grounded from expeditions for a while, but then Lavellan was deeply fond and protective of Cassandra, so maybe he’ll have to start packing on their return. Not that he would blame him. He deserves far worse.

“I was thinking,” she continues. Her thumb keeps smoothing over the jut of his cheekbone. It must be sparklingly clean by now. “Maybe… maybe we should only provide him with the essential information.”

“If you’re worried about him finding out about this little spar detour you just insisted we take, Seeker…”

“You know that I am not,” she snaps and he grins lazily, knowing exactly what expression of irritable frustration she is currently wearing without having to see it. “I mean that we need only report on the results we have achieved. Our goal here was completed satisfactorily, that will be sufficient.”

“Seeker, are you suggesting we lie to our beloved Inquisitor?” Everything that had happened, all the suffering, pain, and indignity, might almost have been worth it for this one, perfect moment. Almost.

“That is not what I am suggesting!” She lets out a harsh noise and her hand falls away. “I simply mean…” There is a pause where she seeks her words. Varric keeps grinning, enjoying himself entirely too much. “There is nothing to be gained from sharing irrelevant information that would do more harm than good to our cause. This excursion has provided no new information on the lyrium, no harm has been done to either of us that rest will not cure, and there is no ill will. Currently,” she adds, pointedly. “There is nothing noteworthy to mention, only that which would add confusion to a… complex situation. Many do not understand red lyrium, or its effects. They do not know of its full devastation, what it can do to a person, the… change it can bring. If I had not been there in Kirkwall personally…” She trails off, the weight of what is left unsaid hanging in the air. Varric is no longer smiling. He understands what she's getting at but can scarcely believe it. “I simply do not want to complicate matters that needn’t be so. There are some things… some things that are better left unsaid.”

Varric can’t help it, he opens his eyes. She is startlingly close, watching him almost expectantly, and makes no move to cover herself or turn away. Those slender shoulders glisten in the water. They are at eye level for perhaps the first time he can remember. He's never known the colour of her eyes, he realises, and even now looking deeply into them, he feels inadequately equipped to name it.

“Are you saying that unless you spent three days in a Kirkwall interrogation room, four weeks crossing the Waking Sea, then a year and change trekking over the worst pits of Southern Thedas, you can’t really understand what happened here today?”

Cassandra has a smile that rarely comes out that Varric thinks is almost, almost wicked. “Yes,” she says, “I think that is exactly what I’m saying.”

He smiles back. “Alright,” he says softly. “Thank you, Cassandra.”

She nods once. “Alright.”

He lifts a hand between them, hovering before her, dripping copiously. She glances at it but doesn’t move. “Your turn,” he says, determined not to make it a question.

She looks at him, those dark eyes that see so much suddenly so difficult to read, and then nods again. They slide closed as he cups her bloody cheek and starts to wash her clean. It is altogether strange to touch the face he’d spent so many recent hours studying, like she was suddenly real after living only as something he had imagined. He follows the perfect slope of her nose with his thumb, the impossibly sharp curve of her cheek, feeling the imprint of a scar left long before he knew her. Without conscious thought, he traces the shape of that fascinating mouth, the dip of the cupid’s bow, the plumpness of her bottom lip. It tilts up at the corners, as it’s supposed to, as she smiles.

“Sorry,” he mutters quietly, moving away.

“Ticklish,” she mumbles, and something clenches tight in his chest.

The blood comes off easily, perhaps because it was his and he can’t really stain her in any way that can last. It's funny, he thinks, as she slowly loses all trace of red, that with anyone else you’d agree a pact over blood, while they do it by washing it away.

The smeared black and dark tears around her eyes are more difficult to remove, but he is careful and thorough as she was, thumb just brushing her fluttering eyelids. The cut on her forehead he is even more gentle with. He hopes it doesn’t scar like his nose.

“There,” he says, when he’s done all he can and can no longer justify touching her. “Look at that, the Inquisitor would never know anyone went crazy and bled on anyone else.”

Cassandra blinks her eyes back open, fresh faced and cleansed, bare skin pink and freckled, neither the fearsome Seeker he had known nor the girl he had caught glimpses of. She was simply Cassandra.

She touches her cheek with her fingertips, almost in surprise. “That feels… much better.”

“Yeah.” He touches his own. “Much.” They smile at each other, perhaps a little shyly, like they’re sharing some secret.

“You know, you can't fool me, Seeker,” Varric says, forcibly adopting his usual easy drawl. “I know why you really want me sticking around. It's so you can read about our dragon hunter, Alina.”

Her brows come together in a slight frown. “It's Allegra.”

Varric cocks his head, as though in thought. “Hmm, you're right, that doesn't really work, does it?” He sighs theatrically. “Guess she'll just have to be Cassandra then.”

He sees the delight spring into her eyes, catches the sharp intake of breath between them, and thinks it is entirely worth how utterly terrible this book will turn out just for this.

“Cassandra is… a very popular name in Nevarra.”

Varric bursts into laughter, harder than was warranted, feeling warmed right the way through, and after a moment Cassandra joins him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Happy Veilguard launch week, everyone!

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