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“You put that knife in your soulmate, too?” the dwarf asks, as the ruined book falls from his lap to the floor. The words are bitten out, vicious, exactly what she might have expected from a wit well-known enough that she had heard about it even before she brought him in.
The dwarf is hardly the first to bring up her mark in an interrogation, after all, and seldom do her prisoners have as much reason as he. The templars in Kirkwall had been more brutal in his arrest than she had anticipated.
In any case, it had been foolish to have removed her gauntlets while she awaited his arrival. He must have seen the delicate, curving lines, black as ink, as she pulled them back on.
It has been dark for many, many years.
Though the sorrow no longer overwhelms the memories of happier times and Cassandra has long since developed a thick skin in that regard, her answer is nonetheless brusque. She does not like that the prisoner spoke of it, that this dwarf who is an accomplice to terrorism at best and likely a blasphemer besides has seen this bit of her soul. She does not wish for his lying tongue to sully those long-ago memories.
“I did not,” she answers, succinct. She will not give him anything to grasp at, any hold on her at all.
“Haven’t got one, myself,” he says, almost conversationally. Cassandra decides that she will permit it, in the hopes that it will lead somewhere interesting. “Always seemed more trouble than it’s worth. My luck, I’d get the kind of soulmate who got me beaten up, arrested, locked in deep, dark caves all the time… or, I don’t know, started a war.”
Cassandra does not quite manage to muffle her snort of amusement. His luck, indeed. He is here, after all.
“You do not seem to have required a mark to make the sort of friend who would start a war,” Leliana interjects from the shadows, voice wry. “Perhaps if you tell us where we can find the Champion, we’ll let you loose on the world to keep searching for that singularly lucky soul you’re missing. Perhaps they can come up with another war to start.”
The dwarf heaves his own huff of amusement, but he begins speaking, at least.
x
She has all but forgotten the mention of soulmates and soulmarks by the time it comes up again, half a year and most of a continent later.
“The mage you lost,” the dwarf asks, one afternoon while the two of them set up camp and Solas tends to the Herald’s injuries. “He the one who had the matching mark?”
Cassandra does not even want to know who told him about Regalyan. If she were to find out, she might have to strangle them with her bare hands and she would never hear the end of it from Leliana.
“No,” she answers to distract herself, tugging at a rope with a practiced motion. One of the tents rises smoothly into the air.
“Shame,” he says, and it’s so far from the response she was expecting, the response she usually receives, that she looks up at him in shock. He grins at her and shrugs.
“Make for a good tragedy,” he explains with a wink.
Torn between outrage and amusement, she manages a wobbly “It was tragic enough,” that at least stops the dwarf from talking any more.
x
She should not be surprised when it comes up again. She has learned over the course of their brief association that Varric Tethras loves stories and can never let them lie. It is something she had appreciated about him through his excellent books.
When applied to her, she finds that she appreciates it less.
The Herald has become the Inquisitor and they’ve settled into Skyhold by the time he asks again. They spend nearly a month in Emprise du Lion, a bit of Orlais that Cassandra did not care for even before it was infested with templars, red lyrium and countless demons. The only good thing that may be said of the excursion is that she and Varric reach an uneasy sort of truce, built on their mutual horror at what they find in Sahrnia and campire lessons on how not to lose quite so badly at Wicked Grace.
“So, Seeker,” Varric begins, over one such lesson.
Cassandra is distracted trying to remember if it is the serpent of deceit or the serpent of despair that combines with a suite of daggers to make the serpent-entwined dagger, and merely responds with a mild hum. Varric seems to take that as permission to pry.
“If it wasn’t your mage, who was it?” he asks
Cassandra has no idea what he’s talking about and looks up in confusion, serpents and daggers forgotten.
“Your soulmark,” Varric clarifies. Her hands are bare, the better to handle the delicate playing cards, and the elegant lines of her soulmark are exposed in the firelight.
“It is rude to ask about someone’s soulmate, dwarf,” she replies, voice tart.
“Especially if their mark has darkened,” Varric agrees amiably, leaning over the flames to examine the mark. Cassandra shifts her hand away automatically.
Then: “Shit, Seeker, is that… is that a dragon?” he asks, looking up at her with wide amused eyes.
Cassandra scowls at him, fighting her rising blush as he continues, “A bit on-the-nose, don’t you think?”
It is not that she is ashamed, or that she considers the identity of her soulmate to be any great secret. It is just… her memories of him are precious, sunny smiles and promises that he would take her with him when she was old enough, treasured and too few to dilute by sharing them so freely.
“I did not choose it,” she says, finally, her voice quiet and awkward and stiff. “I do not care to speak of it.”
She wishes she had a better response, something witty and precise and distracting like the dwarf would offer were she to pry too deep, but she has never been gifted with words.
He seems unconcerned by her sudden stiffness.
“Damn shame, bet it’s a good story,” he says, leaning back and reaching for another card from the deck. “You may not know this about me, Seeker, but I love stories.”
She can’t quite stop the disgusted noise that escapes her throat, even permits herself an accompanying eyeroll.
“You love gossip,” she correct, and the dwarf chuckles in agreement.
“Well I don’t call it that,” he says, and places the Angel of Death face-up on the deck. “Would ya look at that? Hands in, Seeker.”
Cassandra scowls and flips over her cards. Varric whistles, loud enough to draw the attention of Dorian, who raises an eyebrow from his place by the Inquisitor’s fire.
“That’s the worst hand I’ve seen in my life,” he says, loudly enough that Dorian goes back to the conversation he was having.
Cassandra scowls and tosses her cards back towards the deck. Varric grins at her, but perhaps he takes pity on her because he does not pry further about her soulmark that evening.
x
They return to the news that the Grey Warden has been found, hiding in a cave outside of Crestwood. Varric leaves with the Inquisitor, and Cassandra remains behind.
She is surprised some weeks later when, before she even hears the news that they have returned, Varric seeks her out. It is well-known that she spends most of her mornings in the practice yard, of course, but it is mid-afternoon and she is only there sneaking a precious handful of hours to read a book by sunlight for once.
She at least manages to shove the book out of view before he can catch sight of the title, a small dignity but one she feels it is vital to preserve.
“Seeker,” he greets.
“Dwarf,” she returns, raising an eyebrow. He studies her for a moment, and she fights the urge to squirm like the girl she has not been for many, many years. Surely he cannot know.
“I have a question for you, and I don’t think you’re gonna like it, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d answer,” Varric says, still watching her with that odd look in his eyes. Cassandra shifts, already feeling defensive.
“Ask,” she manages to bite out. It sounds even harsher than she had intended, and she sighs.
“You can ask me,” she tries again, and Varric nods at her. He seems so different, and she realizes that he is missing even a hint of his ever-present smirk. It is… odd, and concerning, to say the least.
“You don’t have to answer,” he says, and she fights the urge to snap at him in response.
“I would not if I did not wish to,” she says instead, proud that it comes out quite mild and inoffensive.
“What’s it like, when your soulmate dies?” he asks, and Cassandra fights back a small choked sound.
Horror, horror horror horror, this can’t have happened, there has to be a way to start this day over, it can’t have happened--
She realizes that Varric is watching her closely, and swallows down the crushing memories.
“It is the single worst thing that has ever happened to me,” she says quietly, because she promised to try to answer, and because she does not think he would have asked without reason.
They found her, hours after his death, covered in his blood and nearly catatonic in her grief. She has not been the same since, though she has grown, she hopes, into a woman he would have been proud of.
Varric looks reluctant to press the issue, but still he asks-- “Yeah, but what was it like?”
Empty, hopeless, frozen--how can this have happened, undo this, please undo this, Maker I know you have turned your face from your unworthy children but he, he is worthy, if you ever loved any of us please, please please… take it back. Please.
“It is not like in the stories,” she says instead. “You do not feel it. There is no physical pain. It is like any other death, only… only worse, because you know you have lost something--someone--that you can never replace. He died and the mark darkened and I knew I would never speak to him again, never hear him laugh again, and I just wanted it to stop. I wanted time to stop, to go back, to be with him forever.”
Varric is watching her, something quiet in his eyes that she does not recognize.
“The stories are all about soulmates who are lovers,” Cassandra continues, feeling suddenly self-conscious and awkward under his stare. “It wasn’t like that for us, for, for me. He was just my… my other half. The only one who understood me when I said something at one of Uncle’s dinners that turned out to be terribly inappropriate and only made it worse when I tried to backtrack. He was the only one who--well, it wasn’t like that, for me, but he was still the other half of my soul. No one has understood me in quite that way in the time since.”
Cassandra realizes she is babbling, and forces herself to stop.
“And now?” Varric prompts. The look still lingers in his eyes, and Cassandra wants nothing more than for this conversation to be over. She never meant to tell him so much.
“It is not so painful as it was. It has been many years. Why do you ask?”
Varric seems to come to some sort of understanding, because he stands and nods at her. Then, with a strange deliberateness, the familiar smirk creeps back into the corners of his lips, and he grins. “Gotta have material for the book,” he says, winking at her.
If Cassandra had anything other than the book she very much does not want him knowing she has, she would have thrown it in his face.
“Thanks, Seeker,” he says, ducking away before she can decide whether or not she could find a plausible alibi to get away with strangling him. His smirk is back.
For a long time after he leaves, Cassandra sits and fumes and remembers. Her dreams that night are nightmares.
x
The thing is, Varric does always smirk, if not outright grin. Even when he’s managed to get himself stabbed in the shoulder at Halamshiral, he has the gall to grin at her.
“Stop fidgeting,” she orders, cutting away part of his coat and the sleeve beneath.
“I like this coat,” he complains, and Cassandra rolls her eyes, slashing away the final bit of cloth with her dagger.
“There are plenty of merchants in Orlais who will have something just as fine. I’m sure the Inquisitor will be happy to purchase you a replacement before we return to Skyhold.”
They both glance up at the Inquisitor, who is arguing with Dorian about whether they should head back the way they came or try to find another route to the Ballroom.
Varric grunts, whether in assent or disagreement she will never know, because she carefully peels away the sodden fabric to reveal his tattoo, the seal of Kirkwall.
The last time she had seen it, it had been a brilliant, startling scarlet, not this strange muddy brown. She had asked him who in their right mind would want the stamp of the accursed city branded into their skin, and he had shrugged, said something about poor decisions.
“Varric,” she says.
“Well, how bad is it?” he asks. It reminds her of the task at hand, and she pokes at the wound.
“It is not very deep, fortunately,” she says. “Varric, your tattoo.”
Varric sighs.
“Yeah. Chuckles says it’s not completely black yet. Dunno what that means. You gonna patch me up or not?”
Cassandra scowls and considers how best to bind the wound. It’s awkwardly situated, a slash across the juncture of his shoulder but not quite in the right place to simply wind the bandage around his arm.
“It is not a tattoo,” she says, a pointless distraction since it is clearly not a tattoo. She curses under her breath, and begins to wind the bandage around his shoulder and beneath his arm.
“After Adamant, I assume,” she continues, when he does not respond, because of course, but… “I did not know about Hawke.”
“Not many did.”
Varric’s reply is heavy, and tired. “Bloody sigil of Kirkwall, had to be a tattoo. What kind of soulmark is that?”
“And Hawke?” she asks, even as she knows that she is a fool for asking, for poking at this fresh wound far worse than the one on his back. She knows what the memories are like, knows that it is cruel to pry. Varric’s mark would still be bold scarlet as it had when she interrogated him in Kirkwall if not for her.
As always, the dwarf manages to surprise her.
“The moment I saw Hawke and that goddamned mark appeared, I knew I only had so long. Kid was looking to risk darkspawn and worse just to make her mother happy. Hawke was always gonna go out in a blaze of sacrificial glory, and sooner rather than later.”
The words sound as if they should be humorous, flippant, but Varric’s voice is flat and empty and she can see where his fingernails bite into his palms.
“I am sorry,” she says, because she has never been good with words, but those are easy ones to say. She is sorry. She finishes wrapping his wound, as well as she can manage in the time they have. She stands, but before she turns to Dorian and the Inquisitor to break up their bickering, she reaches down to squeeze his good shoulder.
It is a reminder, she hopes, that he is not alone.
x
It is a surprise, too, when she stumbles across him in the Chantry gardens, and even more of a surprise when she realizes that he is listening to the sisters’ evening Chant. She considers continuing past him, sitting in Skyhold’s makeshift Chantry as she had intended. Instead, she sits beside him. He looks up at her, shrugs, and offers a small smile.
For a while, they listen in silence, until the sisters conclude with the evening versicle and begin to put out all of the candles but those that will burn overnight. Their supplicants file out, silent or speaking amongst each other quietly.
“I did not think you were religious,” she says, as the sun sets and the courtyard empties. Varric shrugs.
“Weird, isn’t it? An Andrastian dwarf, who ever heard of that? My mother, though, after we left Orzammar, she found comfort in it. We weren’t welcome in the Chantry, of course, but she would sit in their garden and listen to the services. When I was a kid, she’d take me with her. I guess I took to it better than I thought. Anyway, what’s it all worth, without a little faith?”
It is an innocent enough story, but strangely enlightening, and somehow the sharing of it feels… intimate. Cassandra cannot help but turn to watch him, and he returns her gaze with a wry look.
“You think it’s true,” he asks, “that the Maker gives us each a soulmate, one soul perfectly matched to our own in understanding, one person to help us grow and learn and shape us into who he wants us to be, and marks us when we meet so that we will recognize each other?”
He looks strangely diminished and a little lost, sitting there and fiddling with the mechanisms of the crossbow beside him.
“I have always believed so,” she responds, cautiously, when it becomes clear that the question is not rhetorical. “The Chant is very clear on the matter.”
“And what does the Chantry teach about those who are never marked?” he asks, strangely bitter and brittle. Cassandra is unsure if he is asking because he truly does not know, or he wants something more, another, complicated answer from her. Perhaps he wants the answer he had wanted from her all that time ago, when he had first asked her what it was like to lose a soulmate.
She is better with the Chantry’s words than she has ever been at coming up with her own.
“And sorrow is theirs
For whom fate is unkind
And robs them of half their soul
Before the Maker may bestow his gift.”
Her voice is light and rich with decades of reciting the Chant, but she does not think the words comfort Varric. She bites her lip as he scowls. She does not know how to make this better, how to help him heal. There was no one for her, all those years ago, but the uncle who had tried to tell her that she should take comfort that her brother’s body would not rot, that would house one of the Maker’s spirits for eternity and that was a sort of life, after all.
“If Hawke had died in the Blight, I’d never have been marked. I wouldn’t be here now. It wouldn’t… there wouldn’t be a mark to remind me, every time I catch it in the mirror, of what I’ve lost,” Varric says, still bitter and brittle.
Reflexively, Cassandra curls the fingers of her unmarked hand around the curlicues of her tiny, precious dragon. She does not know what to do, what she can say that will not shatter the man before her. She does not know why he is asking her these questions, and not someone… someone he likes.
An unexpected swell of sorrow wells in her throat at that, at the thought that he doesn’t even like her. She has come to find him amusing, regardless of his many, many faults, and… well, she admires him, his casual way with words that always seem to hit their mark. It is sadder than she would have expected to realize that he probably does not return the sentiment.
Cassandra has never been one to dwell. Beneath her fingers, her soulmark is warm, and she is reminded of how Anthony used to tell her stories of how it meant that one day when they were both grown, they would leave and become famous dragon slayers like their ancestors of old. The memory returns a smile to her face.
“If you had not been marked, you would not have had the joys of your years with Hawke either,” she says, quietly. It has been too long since he spoke, her response strange and awkward in the silence, but the warmth of her mark and the memory of her brother quell her embarrassment.
Varric nods. His eyes linger on her hands, on the spots where her soulmark peers through her unmarked fingers.
“Did you ever wish yours hadn’t appeared?” he asks, a terrifying sort of desperation in his voice.
“No,” she answers. Then, because that does not seem sufficient for the sentiment she wishes to convey: “I do not remember a time when I did not have it. I was an infant when it appeared.”
It is Varric’s turn to watch her, questions lingering in her eyes about the story she still has not told him. Perhaps she never will. When he finally asks, she is surprised that it is not the question about the identity of her soulmate that she had expected.
“And how long since he… how long has it been dark?”
This question, she does not object to answering.
“Long before I came here. It was several decades ago.”
“You must have been very young,” he says, carefully.
“I was,” she agrees, “but the memories it holds now are mostly good ones, and the pain, if not gone, has dulled enough that it does not impose upon the joy. It has been long enough that to see it as I go about my day makes me want to smile rather than dwell in old sorrows.”
“Well, if we’re very lucky, I’ll have enough time to reach that point,” Varric says, and if the darkness in his voice is not entirely gone, it at least gives way to a bit of his familiar flippancy. Cassandra rolls her eyes.
They sit for a while longer before she stands to leave. She has an early morning, after all.
“Varric,” she says, pausing before she goes. “It is a hard thing, to love someone determined to be a hero.”
His chuckle of agreement follows her out of the courtyard.
x
“So, Seeker,” Varric says, several months later as he sits heavily beside her. She looks into the fire, chafing her hands for warmth against the cold of the desert night and sure that if she simply ignores him long enough he will go away and leave her alone. “You wanna tell me what I did to piss you off?”
She rubs a finger absently along the line of her soulmark and does not respond. Unfortunately, Varric also does not go away.
“I am not angry,” she says, finally. The worst of it is, she is not. Angry would be a comfortable, familiar feeling, one that she should hold in close association to the dwarf. Instead she is… of all foolish things, she is hurt.
He could not have known, of course, when the Inquisitor read the inscriptions in the dwarven tomb. Two brothers, soulmates, who built a lost dwarven empire that lasted on the surface for a thousand years, until famine and Blight had all but wiped it out. And Varric had said--
Of all things, Varric had said, “Andraste’s ass, what a nightmare, bound to your brother for life like that.”
It should have been a foolish, flippant remark. She should have rolled her eyes and moved on. Instead, she finds that it… stings.
She shifts her hands away from each other, suddenly conscious that she is rubbing the mark. If he sees, he will know.
Unfortunately, the abrupt action still catches his attention. He watches her, his eyebrows furrowed, for a long moment, and then his face relaxes and he sighs.
“Ah, shit. You should have said something, Seeker.”
She scowls into the fire.
“I am not angry,” she repeats.
“Really? Because if not, you’re doing a damn good job of acting like it, and I didn’t peg you for an actress.”
“You have a brother,” she says, hoping to deflect this line of inquiry. She does not know how to explain what she feels, how she is not angry but something… something else, something for which she does not quite have words.
“Had,” he corrects, with a shrug. “Red lyrium, remember? We didn’t get along, Bartrand and I, but he didn’t deserve to go that way.”
“I am sorry,” she says cautiously. She supposed she had known about his brother, remembered vaguely that it had been a part of the story he had told during his interrogation. It had not been of interest to her then, and she had dismissed it.
For a time, they are quiet.
“What’s it like,” he asks, as the others retire for the night, “to have a brother who loves you?”
Cassandra takes time to consider her answer. How do you tell someone what it is like to have a brother, when their own left them for dead in the dark of the Deep Roads?
Looking at Varric, his fingers stained with ink even here in the middle of the desert, she wonders if she can make him understand with a story what she does not know how to put into logical, rational words. Surely a story would not be so difficult--it is nothing more than a progression of events.
“My parents were executed for treason when I was very young,” she begins, her words slow and stiff, “Anthony and I were to be executed alongside them, but our Uncle intervened and took us in. He was a powerful man, a mortalitasi of great influence, but he had little experience with children and did not care for much beyond his studies. He brought us to his manse in the outer enclosure of the Grand Necropolis, where there were no other children, just a handful of tired old servants and the Chantry sisters who prepared the dead. We had no governess or tutor, because my uncle considered them inconveniences. He did not like unfamiliar faces in his home. Instead, he ministered to our education personally.
“My brother was twelve years older than I, and he did his best to ensure that I was taken care of, but he was a child himself and no fit guardian to raise anyone. He was my entire world though, my only friend. I have often thought, in the years since, on the Maker’s love and how great it must be, for him to have sent me my soulmate as a companion during those long and lonely years.
“We spoke often as children of how we would one day leave my uncle’s manse and hunt dragons, like the reliefs and frescoes that decorated the walls of the older crypts. Anthony used to say that our mark meant it was our destiny. I am not so sure, now, that he was as invested in that dream as I was. I wonder if it was not simply a story he told to comfort a frightened and lonely little girl. Nonetheless, when he attained his majority he immediately set off to make good on all the fool promises he had made to his younger sister.”
She pauses, a memory stirring up the ghost of a smile.
“In the years since, I have met a handful of people who knew him. They have all remarked on how he often spoke of his younger sister, who would one day fight by his side and be an even greater dragon slayer than he.”
And then the memory of the end stirs, as it always does, and her smile fades. Nonetheless, she knows that her voice retains the fondness and deep love she will always feel for her brother as she continues, “And then… then he died. My uncle had always wanted a Chantry life for me, and I was angry and upset and couldn’t bear the thought of the future I had dreamt of without Anthony by my side. I gave my uncle what he wanted in the precise way he did not want it, and I joined the Seekers of Truth. It was a life of sacrifice and service, and I did not think myself deserving of better at the time. I was too young to understand the joy and peace such a life would bring me--I thought of it as a means of punishing myself. It was only in the years after that I came to understand that my joining had proven to be a blessing, and not a sacrifice.”
She looks at Varric then, expecting something she can’t quite name.
Varric is smiling at her, a true smile without a hint of a smirk.
“You’ve managed to slay your share of dragons regardless,” he says, in a tone she realizes is teasing. She chuckles quietly.
“I suppose I have. Anthony would have been terribly proud,” she agrees, and Varric’s look shifts into something strangely intense, almost as if…
But such thoughts are foolish. Cassandra leans forward to stoke the fire.
x
She is leaving in the morning.
It seems foolish, to feel such a heady mixture of anxiety, sorrow and excitement, when she is only seeking to rebuild that which was broken as mandated by the Divine herself. It is to be a great quest with a noble aim, there is no doubt of that, and yet…
Cassandra has built a family here, of sorts, her first since the Seekers slowly decayed around her. She finds she will miss hearing the Inquisitor and Dorian flirt outrageously, will miss watching Sera and the Iron Bull roll their eyes at their lovers’ antics. She will miss Josephine’s cups of well-chosen tea and better-chosen carafes of wine, Cullen’s quiet insights into Chantry teachings, the Iron Bull’s generous, genuine admiration of her skills. She will miss Vivienne’s insights and political acumen, such as they are, Leliana’s certainty, Sera’s surprisingly edible cookies. She will miss Cole’s… well, perhaps she will not miss Cole’s oddities, but she has become strangely fond of him nonetheless. Bl--Rainier, Rainier she will not miss, not yet. She is not prepared to forgive him his lies, nor Solas his disappearance when they had needed him so much.
And Varric… well. She should not miss him. She will have his books, after all, including a new chapter of Swords and Shields that he has promised her for the road. Even so, she finds herself thinking of their evenings around campfires, of her frustration with Wicked Grace and, after even Varric was forced to admit he could not make her into more than a passable player, her frustration with the simpler game of Dead Man’s Tricks. She will be sorry to see their games end.
She has developed the habit of sitting with him in the courtyard as the evening Chants are sung, and that, too, she will miss. The songs seem more poignant and the Maker more grand when the sky stretches out above you, endless, and the small sounds of life surround you.
He’d helped her with some of her account of the Inquisition as well, sacrificing evenings and candlelight even when she insisted that he was not allowed to touch her manuscript for fear he would turn it into one of his particular brands of fiction. She would miss those late-night arguments regarding the nature of truth as it pertained to memory and storytelling, despite her frustration with them when they happened. The truth was the truth, and it was foolish to question that.
She is leaving in the morning, and somehow she has found herself in front of his door, a hand raised to push it open. For a moment, she considers fleeing, but she has a promise to collect on.
She pushes the door open.
He is there, surrounded by the detritus of bookbinding and the acrid scent of glue.
“Varric,” she says, and he looks up, face breaking into a grin. She finds herself smiling in return.
“Seeker,” he greets in return, “Almost done with your book.”
He motions to a book that is, indeed, mostly bound. Its cover is simple leather, not the fancy published work he usually gives her.
“I did not expect you to personally bind it,” she responds, wry and strangely fond.
He shrugs and motions at the tools around him. “Couldn’t have finished it in time for your send-off otherwise. Besides, it does me good to get some practice in now and again, keeps my hand in.”
She finds that she does not know what to say now. It will be some time before she sees him again, if she ever does. She looks at his hands, stained with ink and patchy with dried glue, cursing herself for not having the words to say what she means, now of all times.
Thank you, Varric, for binding a book with your own hands just because you knew that reading it would bring me joy on my journey. Thank you, Varric, for fighting by my side for all this time, when you could have turned around and sailed home instead. Thank you, Varric, for helping to shape this ramshackle group of lost and grieving souls into a family.
Thank you, Varric, for listening to my stories.
She is still standing there, and rapidly considering that she may have no other alternative than to turn around, march straight to the stables, and ride out of Skyhold at once so that she never has to see him again when Varric has the decency to save her from herself.
“Mornings aren’t really my thing,” he says, an obvious change of subject for which Cassandra is tremendously grateful. “If I don’t make it out to see you off tomorrow, I’ll be sure to have Tiny pass the book along.”
“Thank you, Varric,” she says. The words feel awkward and stunted in her mouth, so very inadequate for all she wants to say, for all that she feels.
Varric turns back to his book.
“See you around, Seeker?” he asks, already intent on his work.
“I would like that,” she agrees, and then she turns on her heel and flees.
The Iron Bull gives her the completed book in the morning. If Varric watches her leave, he does so from some window or unseen perch that Cassandra cannot find when she turns to scan the facade of Skyhold one final time. She tries not to be too disappointed.
She is three quarters of the way to Val Royeaux and halfway through the book before she realizes she is in love with him.
x
Cassandra,
Seeker,
Hope you enjoyed the book. I’d defend the guard captain’s fate to you, but you’d have to be here for me to do that. Arguing through letters just isn’t the same.
A while back, you told me about your brother. I guess I feel like I owe you something for that, especially since I lied for so long about Hawke. In my defense, I was sure you were going to lock her up in a dungeon somewhere and let her rot in hopes that it would dispirit mages and end the Mage-Templar war. I had to protect her.
You understand.
So, yeah. A story for a story, or some shit like that.
The first time I saw Hawke, I knew it wasn’t going to be a lovers thing. Wasn’t sure what it’d be, but not lovers. It itched, you know, like ants--when the mark appeared. The moment I felt it and saw the look in her eyes, though, I knew we were stuck with each other until one of us died. You were right, though; it was a good sort of stuck. We were good for each other, me and Hawke.
And then, of course, she took off her shirt in the middle of Hightown and made her sister verify that there was a mark before she ambushed me and tried to do the same. Good thing I’m light on my feet, it’s about the only thing that saved me even worse public embarrassment that day.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Bartrand left me in the Deep Roads. A human soulmate? Shameful.
The thing is, though--I knew even then we were stuck with each other until one of us died, but I guess I always thought it’d be both of us together.She was always going to go out in a blaze of glory, and I guess it seemed like it was probably my job to delay that for as long as I possibly could. Probably I wouldn’t survive it. When she didn’t come out of the rift with the rest of you…
I guess I really wrote this to thank you. I don’t know what I would have done, after, without you. I guess I figured if you could make it past this, so could I. I miss you. If you ever want to travel a bit outside Orlais and Nevarra, you know, adventure, feel free to come by Kirkwall. We could use you here.
Regards,
Varric Tethras
P.S. Some shitheads decided to make me viscount, by the way. You see what I mean when I say we could use you here. You don’t want to let me bring the entire city to ruin, do you?
x
She does not know if he will be there.
She reminds herself of this frequently in the fortnight it takes her to reach Val Royeaux. He was Viscount of Kirkwall now, likely with his own pressing concerns and worries. He wanted to fix the city whose sigil was branded into his back.
Once she had finished laughing, she had decided that Kirkwall had made its first wise decision in the matter. But now, even with the Exalted Council finally convened and the Inquisitor herself coming to Val Royeaux, surely he will be too busy to attend.
Worst of all, she does not even know if she wants him to be there. It would be terribly awkward, to fight by his side again now that she knew her own feelings. She would surely do something or say something and make a fool of herself and ruin things forever. It was far safer for her feelings to stay as they were, quiet and private and safe.
Oh, but she longed to see him even so. Though the desire invariably made her sigh a huff of irritation at herself, it was horribly, embarrassingly true. She missed him terribly.
Even if she made a fool of herself, it would be wonderful to hear that wry chuckle of his again.
At that point in her daydream, Cassandra usually found herself smiling foolishly and cut herself off. She had more important things to deal with.
Nonetheless, hope is a warm light in her chest as they arrive in Val Royeaux.
Oh, Anthony, how you would have laughed to see me now. I haven’t forgotten how mercilessly I teased you about your infatuation with Lady Cythera’s scout.
She tamps down her hope fiercely, reminds herself of how unlikely it is that he will be there, and rides into the city.
She is so successful that when she rounds a corner in the palace and finds herself face-to-face with him, she is completely flabbergasted.
“Dwarf,” she says, only it does not sound at all the way it once did. Now, it sounds breathy and shocked and embarrassingly like something imagined out of one of his novels. She is sure she’s blushing spectacularly.
“Seeker,” he responds, and his eyes crinkle at the corners from his smile.
If she was not blushing before, she certainly is now.
It takes her a moment, one she is sure Varric notices, to gather herself.
“I did not think you would make it,” she says. She is pleased to hear that she sounds like herself once again, at the very least.
He shrugs, arms open wide and still smiling.
“Oh, you know me, I found the time somewhere. Wrote another book while I was at it.”
“You did?” she asks, and unfortunately the time spent collecting herself is wasted because she once again sounds breathless and excited. At least this excitement will not be unexpected, nor will it be difficult to explain if he chooses to pry. He has not published anything, perhaps for lack of time, since that last tome he gifted her on her departure from Skyhold.
“Well, someone had to document the history of the Inquisition,” he says, and she laughs, because she knows exactly what kind of “documentation” Varric is capable of. She cannot wait to read it.
He’s grinning when she looks at him again, and as she watches, his expression settles into something gentler, a smile that makes her heart thump wildly in her chest.
“Your stories were greatly missed,” she says, because she is not sure she trusts herself to say that she missed him. And she did, oh she did, she missed him in cold Hunterhorn Mountains when she attempted to play at cards with her fellow Seekers, missed him in the gleaming halls of Val Royeaux when she was called back to serve as Divine Victoria’s advisor.
He seems on the verge of saying something, and Cassandra realizes that she’s given herself away. He knows.
In rushed words, because she will say this at least once in her life before his awkward, kindly-meant rejection can be uttered.
“You, also. You were missed, I mean. These years have been hard, and I often wished you were there. I--I--”
And, because she has ever been a fool and a coward in matters of love, her courage nearly fails her. In the end, it is the knowledge that she will likely only ever say this once that pushes her to forge on.
“I love you. I hope you don’t mind.”
She does not have the courage to look at him while she says the words, but once it is done, she forces herself to meet his eyes. His smile is gone, replaced by slack-jawed… something. Surprise? Horror?
Cassandra tries her best not to look as mortified as she feels.
When he finally recovers his words, it is not to say the romantic nothings Cassandra will never admit to imagining.
“This is a poor time to develop a sense of humor, Seeker,” he croaks.
Cassandra looks away and fights the sense of disappointment that threatens to crush her. She has faced worse, and she is very strong.
That does not ever seem to numb the hurt, though.
“You do mind,” she says, proud of how even her voice sounds. “I am.. I apologize for the bother. I should go… I must report to the Divine on the progress the Seekers in Nevarra have made.”
She has turned and taken a step before Varric’s panicked “No!” registers.
Varric is staring at her, eyes narrowed and almost… vulnerable? Surely not.
“You meant it?” he says, a question for all that it sounds like a statement.
“I am not known for wasting my words on frivolities,” Cassandra says, hating the way she automatically falls back on stiffness and formality. Could he not have simply done the decent thing, and allowed her to leave and nurse her embarrassment and her… her heartbreak, in peace?
Her heart hangs heavy in her chest as she waits for his rejection. Perhaps it is only fair that she allow him to make himself clear, but oh, she doesn’t want to hear it.
“You would just spring something like this on me in a random courtyard,” he says, sounding bemused and, oddly, fond. “I’d sweep you off your feet and kiss you and all that, but I don’t see that ending well. Height difference and all.”
She turns once again, trying to stopper the hope blossoming in her chest, and finds him looking expectantly up at her. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips.
She is not proud of how often she has dreamed of those lips, these last few years, but oh she has.
Cassandra is not well-suited for sweeping, but she bends down to press a tentative kiss against Varric’s lips, only to find herself pulled in deeper as he grabs at the straps of her armor and pulls her to him. She realizes, belatedly, that her own hands are grasping desperately at the lapels of his jacket.
A small eternity might pass before they break apart, for all Cassandra knows, breathing heavily.
“What I meant to say, Seeker,” Varric says, positively beaming at her, “is that I don’t mind.”
His smile is infectious, and Cassandra cannot stop smiling back.
“I did not think--” she says, and Varric shrugs.
“Best not to think,” he says amiably, and pulls her in for another kiss.