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Varric had certain reservations about bringing Hawke into Skyhold, it has to be said.
True, most of them had to do with what the Seeker would do to him—and damn, if hadn't called that one perfectly. For all his escapades with Hawke, with the Inquisition, hell, even with Bianca so long ago, he'd never encountered that particular brand of fear until Cassandra had lunged across a table at him, eyes bright with a fury like dragon breath. Had Adaar not jumped between the two of them, he'd likely be short a limb or three. And even under the strong arm of the Inquisitor, her anger was barely leashed, present like the smell of smoke before a fire broke out.
(Varric was writing her into a serial. She was never to know.)
But while he was as selfishly concerned for his own hide as the next dwarf, Varric had—priorities. In the plural. And historically, one of those had been the well-being of Hawke, regardless of her foolhardiness and general disdain for the safety of herself and those around her. Kirkwall had been a steaming mess, too much for one person to live through without breaking under the weight. He'd been there, watched her shoulder the loss, the betrayal—been of very little use to help her bear it, of course, but he stayed. Until eventually, she outpaced him. Whatever Hawke had been up to, he'd thought sparing her another great deed might give her some peace. Some relief.
Of course, she looked rather carefree indeed when she decided to start attacking half of Skyhold by way of their livers. The Iron Bull was to be expected, for no two people who spoke so loudly and drank so fluently could ever avoid that necessary friendship born on tavern countertops, but since Hawke arrived Varric had even seen Adaar, pint in hand, making merry with all the rest, despite that gentle stoicism that settled over her brow. Vivienne seemed charmed by her roughness; Blackwall had carved her a wooden mabari to hang from her belt; Cassandra, damn it all, had gone all of three wary days of stiff greetings, until Hawke had joined her in the training yard and won her over in her typical fashion, which involved stabbing many things very quickly. Varric wasn't altogether sure they weren't just doing it to spite him.
"Stroud, my friend," Varric said, watching over his pint as Hawke unwisely tried to initiate an arm-wrestling match with Skinner, "I know you're human and all, but do you ever feel like somehow, somewhere, the Ancestors are laughing at you?"
But Stroud was turned away slightly, listening to Krem talk about a job where the Chargers had raided a nobleman's cellar and found a giant's corpse in lingerie.
"Oi!" Hawke was bellowing from across the tavern. "Come here, Varric, I need an impartial judge that will rule in my favor!"
Varric downed his drink and sighed, fondly, as he wandered off to do as he was bid, as he had only been waiting to hear.
-
"You've been holding out on me, Varric," Hawke said unsteadily, many, many drinks later. After someone had noticed a purpling bruise sprouting up between her thumb and forefinger, and Varric had been forced to admit he could no longer tell what hand belonged to whose body, they had been soundly advised by Cabot and several other patrons to quit while they were ahead.
True, ahead had been four rounds past, but, Varric considered on the stumbling path up to Skyhold proper, no one was counting. He and Hawke weren't, at least, so no one important.
"Done so well with so little," Hawke was saying, arm slung around his shoulders, "got mages and templars who don't want to kill each other, Tevinter and everybody—"
"Actually most of us do want to kill a lot of people," Varric interjected, swaying slightly as they passed under an archway. "Just typically not each other."
"Kirkwall was one city, and I couldn't keep it together," Hawke murmured, her eyes closing faintly. "Couldn't keep all of us together. The Inquisition, that's nations. Natural enemies."
"Kirkwall was a powder keg," he argued. "The Inquisition is…a reconstruction effort. And it's not quite fair to say we've done well with little, seeing as how we've got both hands of Divine Justinia plus the Herald of Andraste herself running the place." Hawke was quiet beside him, her hand strong and heavy on his shoulder. "If you're so impressed," he continued, "why don't you join up?"
"You never asked me."
At this, Varric's breath caught. The low tone in Hawke's voice was strained and unfamiliar, a guilty weight that seemed to hang over him. "I thought," he said, just as softly, "you might could do with a rest, is all."
"A rest," Hawke said, considering. She had straightened her shoulders, self-conscious, and Varric felt before he heard the old bravado returning to her. "Now, tell the truth, you only wanted a break from hauling my drunken arse to and fro."
"What, isn't that what I said?" Lightly, so as not to startle. A startled Hawke was a Hawke put to flight, after all, and that was all he needed, to selfishly run her off just as he had so selfishly pulled her back.
They struggled together up the endless staircases of the fortress, not Varric propping Hawke nor Hawke propping Varric, but more a mutual lean, weaving this way and that but always in balance, bumping hips, bumping knees. Hawke left him at his door, with nervous awkwardness Varric hadn't felt since he was a boy, and as her back was turned to him, he felt ill for the first time all night.
-
Now, here's the set-up:
A couple of old hands, outlaws, together again for one last job. You don't need to know what the past holds—only that there is one. Keep it straightforward, and keep it simple. Anything that mattered back then will come out in the here and now. One last job—and it doesn't matter whether they were retired or on the run, whether they were in the business of killing or thieving, because this job? This job is the one that ends up saving the world.
What kind of a writer couldn't make that play out? What kind of hack doesn't sell out a bookstore with that?
Assuming, of course, they both make it to the final battle.
-
"Sorry, Inquisitor," Varric said, slightly out of breath. In his defense, he had just run down several flights of stairs. "No one deigned to tell me what time we were leaving."
Adaar and Hawke, who had been murmuring together conspiratorially as they loaded saddlebags, both managed to startle in the same fashion: like naughty schoolboys caught at hiding notes. The rest of the party clamored around them, oblivious. Varric waited for an answer.
After an age, Adaar cleared her throat. "That's because you aren't coming, Varric."
He blinked. "You must be joking. We're taking an army, and you want me to stay behind?"
"Skyhold cannot be left undefended. We can't take everyone with us."
"But I—" I was the one who brought her to you.
"I made a decision, Varric." Adaar stared back at him evenly, though he saw the bob in her throat. "You elected to follow me. That was yours." With that, she turned aside, a dozen recruits eagerly peppering her with questions and praises as she did.
"Hawke," Varric said, almost a plea. But Hawke put her eyes to the ground, pulled tight the belt she'd been fidgeting with, and spun on her heel to follow the Inquisitor without a word.
Varric had felt dismissed by many in his life. Hawke had never been one of them. He felt his mouth hanging agape, an invitation to flies everywhere, but couldn't seem to work the hinge of his jaw. Hawke had not even said good-bye.
A strong hand clapped him somewhat awkwardly on the shoulder. The Seeker. Varric looked up to meet her eyes and explain that he was in no mood for threats, but she looked about as dumbstruck as he felt, her brow twisted in poorly masked concern.
"When we return," Cassandra began, a thickness to her voice as though the words had stuck in her throat. "That is to say, we will return. Soon, one would hope."
"One would hope," Varric agreed. A sudden exhaustion had desiccated him, and the sight of the Inquisition milling about, prepared for victory, gave him more of an urge to cover his head with a pillow than to trade barbs with a companion. "Maker go with you, Seeker."
He could not find Hawke's shoulders among the crowd of the departing, even if he had looked.
-
Three nights later, a chill of a thought woke him. "She's trying to protect me," he said to the darkened ceiling, in puzzled wonder. Then he swore loudly, cursing Marian Hawke to every god of dwarves, elves and humans, and for all he tried, could not bring himself to close his eyes again.
-
That said, Varric was as pleased as any to see their merry band march back into Skyhold. News had reached them days before, with Leliana's scouts, both winged and footed, being as diligent as ever, but there was nothing quite like the sight of watching at the gates as the Inquisitor returned from battle, horned and bloody and heavy with purpose, all at once the symbol of all the Chantry shunned and all it needed to become.
Well, nothing short of strolling in alongside her, but a bitter narrator makes for tedious storytelling.
Adaar, though, at the head of her great and sprawling army of relieved, rejoicing survivors, met him with neither pride nor gladness. No, she did the worst he could have imagined: she tilted her head to the ground and passed on by. Now, Varric prided himself on being a hack, in addition to a lout and all-around degenerate, but even a hack had penned that look, that carriage into as many terrible novels as any over-priced Orlesian bookseller could hold.
Guilt.
Panic came upon him like a tide breaking, swept the ground from under him, seemed to quicken his pulse and stop his lungs, as he turned from the Inquisitor's hunched, tired shoulders to scan the crowd for the one face he knew he'd not find. This was it, then; this was the day he forced Hawke to stop running, and this was the day he'd never get to see her run back to him. And this one was on him, too, entirely, had thrown her into another revolution, one she'd had no stake in. He imagined he heard her laughter, the soaring whoop that always rang sharp to his ears. Was he hallucinating already, his grief that overwhelming? He needed to sit, the bright, chilly sunshine on the courtyard full of reuniting friends and lovers suddenly too much to bear.
But there she was after all, a hallucination as convincing as any Varric had ever known, with her arm thrown around (or well, making a grand effort at being around) the Iron Bull's waist, as she joined him in a round Varric had heard rising up from the Charger's usual table in the tavern. Even from this distance, the sight of her swaggering gait was a comfort, and Varric had to breathe deep to keep his limbs from shaking. Hawke was alive. Hawke was alive, singing a drinking song with an oversized Qunari who was probably the only other person in this world who could claim to be as sexually excited by dragons as the woman herself.
Varric was very glad Hawke was alive. Now he could have the pleasure of throttling her for nearly and needlessly causing him to drop dead from shock.
But if Hawke was alive, he wondered as his higher reasoning returned to him, piercing through that Hawke-shaped fog that would likely be the death of him, why would the Inquisitor refuse to meet his eyes? His looked over the Inquisitor's entourage once more, with a calmer gaze this time, for the faces he expected to see. For any absence unaccounted for.
Stroud. Stroud was gone. There might have been a more pleasant explanation for it, but Adaar was a friend, and Varric flattered himself that he might could understand her tells by now. There had been a choice to be made, and she had made it. And she had made it for him.
He was sickened by the overwhelming rush of gratitude he felt toward the Inquisitor in that moment, that he had to resist the urge to go to her with his thanks.
Instead, he stood idly, watching Hawke approach him at a seemingly glacial pace.
"Varric," she greeted him. Her tone was easy, was Hawke's; it was a point of pride for her, that nothing could dampen her spirits without her permission. The haunting blue of her eyes was clouded over, though, as evasive as the Inquisitor had been in her own way.
Varric didn't want to speak, for fear his heart would come spilling out his mouth. "Hawke," he returned. Ah, but there it was.
"I suppose you've been sitting on your arse, writing dirty stories about me again while I was off saving all of Thedas?"
"You didn't manage to encounter a bath on your travels, I see."
Her grin was brilliant; it nearly made up for her lackluster gaze. "They don't suit me. Is there any ale left in this fortress of yours?"
"I may have saved you a pint. Only the one, though." Hawke laid a familiar hand on his shoulder and let him lead her toward the tavern, both pretending not to feel the tremor through her fingers.
-
But here, here is the part where he truly must interrupt—the part that the story wants so badly to get wrong. It isn't love, you understand?
A kind of it, perhaps, to be her brother-in-arms. To watch her grow from a smart mouth to a smarter mouth to a champion, an impossible title too heavy for her to carry on her own. To run with her as far as his legs would carry, to lie and cheat whoever he must—people he respected, damn him—to keep her free, far from him as she pleased. Someone, in a broad way, could call this love, in the same way one might call the Chant of Light a romance. It's a genre designation, a hook, a descriptor of the fiction at large. Pointless, outside of the advertisement.
Because, and this is the important part, you listening? He can't make Hawke that heroine, can't play her the way he played Aveline. It was all fine to exaggerate to strangers, outsiders, the anonymous many, but when it comes down to the real story, the one they share in taverns and Hightown estates, on the run in mountains and stuck in the hellish pits of the Deep Roads, Hawke was never there to be swept off her feet, to ever be thrown off balance. Hawke does the sweeping. In the real story, it comes down to Varric's awe, his wonder at the mere possibility that a person like Hawke could be real.
In the real story, it all comes down to the simple fact that Varric knows he doesn't want anyone to turn Hawke's story into the romance, knows for damn sure that he won't be the one to do it. That's not what the narrator's for.
Except, well. He never meant for it to spread, the immutable confidence he has in Hawke, the extent to which he perceives her magnificence which he knows borders on the unrealistic. The Seeker tracked him down in the first place because he made Hawke sound so fantastic, and all he'd been trying to do was tell the story true. What had been the acceptable excuse to make? Yes, she's the most amazing creature the Maker ever put hands on, but she can't save Thedas for you; she's only that to me.
Yeah. It sounds an awful lot like love to him, too. Well, shit.
-
Varric woke at an unreasonable hour, the delicate slant of rosy sunlight spearing him through the eyelids like a nug on a spit. It was possible he was getting too old to try to keep up with Hawke, let alone the twenty new recruits, toddlers to his eyes, that had decided to join in their fun. It was also possible that he was dying, and that there was a cat on his chest.
And what had last night been, anyhow? A painful reminiscence of a thousand identical scenes at the Hanged Man, both he and Hawke feeling around each other for ghosts and absentees, was what. He'd asked after Adamant and Bethany, and gotten a sunken, guilty stare in reply. Hawke had asked after Bianca and it had been downhill from there. He wondered if it was alcohol or stubbornness that turned all talk of the past into barbs for them to hurl at each other, but he'd known damn well not to even broach the topic of the future, so that had been when they'd switched to whiskey.
The would-be feline in his bed kneed him in the thigh. Varric, through his hangover, was becoming increasingly aware that there was not a cat in his bed, but rather a prickly champion of Kirkwall, and, based on his limited experience of sharing his bed with people who stayed 'til morning, there was a good chance they could be cuddling.
He shifted slightly, just to test his luck. Hawke gave no sign of acknowledgement. Another, more deliberate twist of his shoulder. Still, she remained perfectly motionless, without even a sleepy groan. It was then that he realized he was missing her rasping snore. Varric sighed. Of course she was already awake.
"Hawke," he croaked out. Yes, he was much too old for this already. "Marian. You can give it up."
"Shan't," she chirped into his chest. "This isn't happening."
"Ah, content to stay in my bed forever. Can't blame you."
Hawke did lift her head, then, never one to take a challenge lightly. There was a corona of light spilling through the window and encircling her, as though emanating from her inglorious, early-morning mess of hair. Hawke had always had a nasty, vicious scowl, one that made you rue the day you were born, and it was as familiar and fond to Varric as her lascivious smirks. Quite possibly he was still drunk.
"This," Hawke said firmly, "isn't happening."
"If you say so," Varric said. "Your arms are still 'round my waist, by the by."
Hawke gave a ferocious groan and planted her face against his chest again with an audible thunk. "This would have been so much easier if we were naked."
"Now, Hawke," said Varric very evenly indeed, as her breath tickled the edge of his jaw. "We talked about this. Nudity can't always be your fallback plan."
"It worked on that gang in Lowtown," she offered.
"And that, I'm quite sure we talked about not talking about ever again, so long as we both shall live." He winced, a bit nostalgically, twitching at the place he knew the scar from that particular endeavor to be.
"I wind up in your bed once, and already you're starting with the promises and forevers." Hawke chuckled once, a hoarse, warm echo through the stillness of his room, before the better part of mirth fell out of her tone. "Go on, then, say something clever so that we can both laugh and then forget about this."
Varric stared down at the crown of Hawke's head. He took a long minute to consider every strand of fly-away hair, the scent of ale that still clung to her, the pink of her scalp where the sun had singed her. He watched her long, blunt fingers as they twitched absently on his chest, as though unaware of where they rested, and, feeling brave, he reached around her to trace the sagging line of her shoulder. Hawke stilled, halla-like for all her brutishness, waiting for the cue to flee. There was a strong urge in him to grip her tighter but he fought it down, let his fingers drum along her spine instead.
Varric said, "No."
Hawke's laugh was nervous, unfamiliar. "Dragging it out, then? I can handle the teasing, but put this in a book and I swear, anything Aveline threatened, I'll double it—"
"That's not what I'm saying," Varric interrupted. Hawke's gaze flickered to his face, to her own hands, and back again. If he were putting this in a book, he'd say something about a question hanging unspoken in the air between them, but it wasn't in the air. There was a shiver of fear that tickled both their spines, and there was pull of anxiety that clung to Hawke's bones. There was the pinch of her ragged fingernails into his chest that, try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to find annoying. There was, overall, Hawke's overwhelming and terrifying frustration at him for speaking into existence something she had no intention of acknowledging. What are you saying? she would not ask.
Well.
"What I'm saying," Varric continued, looking anywhere but Hawke's face, "is why not try and salvage something worth remembering out of this, instead of tricking ourselves into forgetting it."
"Anytime I wind up in someone's bed it's memorable," Hawke said in a high, pinched voice.
"Hawke," he pleaded, softly. The look she gave him had his eyes burning, his heart fixed to stop. "Just this once, be honest. For me."
"You're spoken for."
"Am not."
"I'm an imbecile."
"You are not." She stared at him. "Well, fine, a bit of a brat on some days."
"Oh, just some days—"
"Is this your plan? Convince me in the span of three minutes that you're an awful person and not worth my time? Because I hate to break it to you, Hawke, but I know you. If I was going to get spooked it would have happened long before now." Hawke was still in his arms, her choppy hair fallen in front of her face. It killed him a little not to see her eyes. "And I think you know me, too."
"Well enough," she said quietly. "Varric, I'm very good at running away. Made something of a hobby out of it."
"I'll admit, my legs are a little bit shorter than yours," Varric drawled, "but I think I can learn to keep up."
Hawke rolled off him just slightly, enough to prop her chin in her hands and stare at him hard. He did his very best to stare back evenly, resisting the impulse to bury his fingers in her knotted hair. "You're the best person I know, Varric," she said, too serious.
"I'm flattered," he replied. "You do know the Herald of Andraste is having breakfast a floor downstairs from us?"
"And," she continued, pretending not to have heard him, "if I drove you off, if I—"
"Marian Hawke," Varric cut her off, "I got trapped in the Deep Roads with you. I half-destroyed a city with you. It took the full ire of Cassandra Pentaghast to keep me away from you this long. Do you really think there's anything you could dream up that would stop me from following you to the edge of this world and back?"
Something very strange happened. Hawke's eyelids fluttered, as eyelids are wont to do when the sting of tears looms behind them. Hawke's calloused, rugged hand fell back to his chest, where it lay still and gentle, no searching touches or outraged thumps. Hawke's mouth opened and closed, and then opened and closed again, which would probably make her less attractive if there was anything about Hawke that Varric's twisted little heart couldn't spin into gold.
He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. He'd rendered Hawke speechless.
"Well," Hawke said when she finally found her voice, after an agonizing few seconds where Varric was sure he might actually drop dead. The word was more an exhale, really, a short, ragged breath like she had been brawling, or running, or heaving into the bushes outside a tavern. "That's very good. You should put it in your next book."
"You know, I don't think I'll be writing any more books about you."
"What, am I getting boring in my old age?"
"Never. Just feel like keeping a little something to myself, this once."
"We'll likely never settle anywhere," said Hawke, clearing her throat. "So don't get any ideas about that charming little cabin on a hillside where you can churn out your next volume of weepy romance for Cassandra."
"Little cabin on a hillside? It's like you don't even know me." The quips fell easily out of his mouth, like they always did with her. Never had to take the time to think first with Hawke, did Varric. "I was thinking more a nice villa, or maybe a stately manor."
"And I reserve the right to regularly drink you under the table, in public or out, so don't go getting any notions of pride."
"Pride? All these years with you, and you expect me to still have that?"
"Furthermore," Hawke said louder, ignoring his dry remarks, "I'm still leaving for Weisshaupt as soon as the Inquisitor gives her say-so."
"Hawke," Varric murmured, the realization of what she meant finally catching up to him. The knowledge bloomed in him like a flagon of ale, like the sun on his back after the chill of nightfall, like Hawke's rakish grin whenever she turned his way.
"But I fully intend on coming back," she finished softly, curling her hand into a fist against his heart. "What say you, Master Tethras?"
"You make a convincing proposal, Champion," Varric said, trying to mask the stammer of a heartbeat lurking in his throat. "But we've not yet established the most important of grounds, here."
"Oh? How do you mean?"
"Do you want this?" he asked, as plainly as he knew how. "Me?"
Hawke pushed herself up on her elbow, so that she loomed atop him like the figure of a deity, furious in her glory and too lovely to look upon. Varric did anyway, and when she smiled—for that was what it was, a smile, not a grin nor smirk nor leer—it seemed to him the purest, kindest smile that any soul alive had ever earned.
"Idiot," said Hawke, wrapping a hand round the back of his neck to bury her long, rough fingers in his hair as she drew closer. "Why do you think I've been trying to chase you off?"
And her smile tasted just as sweet.