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It starts in the Deep Roads.
The worst day of Varric’s life begins with marching through damp, echoing darkness and ends when he’s finally run out of obscenities to yell about his mother’s eldest son at an unsympathetic stone door. That’s how it is, underground; days are only demarcated by when you tie up and shake out your bedroll. When Varric finally pauses for breath, reaches for a new vermin animal to compare Bertrand to, or creative fate for his genitals, and finds nothing, Hawke places a hand on his shoulder.
He turns around and looks up into the kind, dirty face of his business partner.
“I made a fire,” she says, and he realizes he is cold. “Let’s call it a night for now.”
They sit on one side of the fire, Anders and Carver bitching quietly to one another on the other side, and the smoke rising between them, up into the invisible darkness of the cave ceiling. Hawke rips a piece off a chunk of jerky and chews it thoughtfully (as distinct from quietly). Then, to Varric’s immense consternation, she scoots over, closing the small distance between them, and leans against his side.
Varric’s mind goes blank, and then starts racing.
She isn’t suddenly asleep – he can still hear the chewing. She isn’t propositioning him either, not with her brother eight feet away. Maybe it’s a human thing, he thinks absurdly, as though he doesn’t know more humans than dwarves, and as though the two humans across the fire aren’t maintaining a firm and masculine buffer space.
In his panic, Varric makes eye contact with Carver.
Carver looks at Hawke, and back at Varric, and smiles wearily.
He doesn’t look confused. He isn’t staring daggers. He seems to think it’s understandable, even expected that his sister would be slouching her not inconsiderable human weight against Varric’s shoulder, as though it’s the natural response to —
Right, Varric thinks, feeling a little stupid. He is being offered comfort.
Hawke goes right on chewing her jerky in his ear.
He exhales, finally, and lets himself lean against her in return…
…and, well, that’s really where all his trouble starts.
Varric thought that Hawke’s willingness to accept odd jobs was an attempt to make ends meet, or a left behind reflex from the yearlong contract that got her into the city. Now, however, that she has a fortune in her pocket and it is becoming increasingly apparent Hawke has never possessed an order-following instinct in her life, Varric is starting to suspect with some small horror that it might be out of the goodness of her heart.
They are investigating somebody’s lost something — either a necklace or an apprentice, Varric thinks. He stopped paying attention when he realized the enterprise was going to involve caves, and he’s mostly been following along, gritting his teeth and keeping an eye on the ceiling for giant spiders and impending cave ins.
“Wait, come take a look at this,” Hawke calls, and he doesn’t look down until a warm hand closes around his wrist.
It is not, maybe, the smartest thing to do to a man holding a crossbow, but your average man holding a crossbow wouldn’t have let it happen either. The fact that Varric doesn’t notice Hawke slipping past his barriers is a little concerning.
He notices once she’s past them though, all right. The feeling of her hand against his skin is more shocking than it should be, and in his momentary daze he has no choice but to be dragged along to whatever clue she’s found now.
Long after she lets go, Varric feels her touch on his wrist, and he couldn’t tell you why.
He walks through the Hightown market with her, watching her touch things and make small talk with the merchants. Varric doesn’t do this, shopping; he gets his clothes made to order and his sundries delivered, and if he goes out walking and talking in the marketplace, it’s to see and be seen.
He’s not the only one watching the troublemaking Amell heir as she rubs the fabric of a scarf between her fingers. Hawke doesn’t seem to notice. He’s pretty sure the only way her rise in station affected her market day is that she doesn’t have to shop in Lowtown anymore.
They’ll go to Lowtown after this, of course. She claims it’s the only place that has good potatoes. Maker save him from Fereldans.
“What do you think of this one?” she asks, tossing the scarf around her shoulders. It is some sort of soft, downy wool, the color of a winter sky, and the color of Hawke’s eyes is startling above it.
“Looks a little warm,” he says.
“It’s supposed to be warm,” she says. “It’s a scarf. That’s an endorsement for a scarf.”
Varric reaches up to adjust it, but changes his mind at the last moment and waves away an imaginary bug.
“Doesn’t get as cold here as it did back home,” he points out. “I know you people love a good scarf, but Marchers not so much.”
“No, no,” she says. “Fereldens love a good mitten. Everyone loves a scarf.” She turns him around so he’s facing the little mirror in the merchant’s stall, and leans on the back of his shoulders, her chin on the top of his head. She takes the end of the scarf and flicks it across his neck, so they are both wearing the scarf at once, the wool warming and warmed by both of their pulses. It is even softer than it looked.
“See?” she says, looking pleased at their shared reflection. “Universal.”
She whips the scarf off them both and hands it over to be paid for, but Varric remains for a moment, meeting his own eyes in the merchant’s mirror.
Shit.
She does it to other people too, the touching. He’s watched. He’s noted very objectively that she does it to other people. She walks arm in arm with Merrill, chucks a very consternated Anders under the chin, throws an arm over the shoulders of Aveline or Fenris. She even kisses Isabela on the cheek, just in case Varric is wondering how it could get worse. (Better? Worse?)
Does she do it more to Varric than to others?
This is where his objectivity runs out. He knows better than anyone, after all, that he’s an unreliable narrator.
But no, of course she doesn’t. He knows she doesn’t, why would she, and even if she did, it wouldn’t mean that because Hawke’s just touchy, she’s always been. Hawke isn’t like him, she cares about people, and she shows it and she doesn’t worry what things mean.
Maker. Of all the things he knows a woman can make him, he doesn’t care to add “delusional” to the list. He just has to get used to it.
It’s even worse (Better? No, worse) when she’s a little drunk. Or a lot drunk. Tonight is wicked grace night, and Hawke’s chair is close enough to his that her elbow keeps threatening his beer.
“If this is you trying to see my cards,” Varric says, “I regret to tell you it’s not gonna work out the way you’re hoping.”
“I’m insulted, Tethras,” Hawke says, but the lazy, sozzled grin on her face doesn’t look particularly insulted. “If I were trying to see your cards, I’d do it like this. ”
She scoots back her chair a little, and that’s the only warning Varric gets before Hawke slides out of her seat and into his lap. She loops an arm around his neck and looks very pleased with herself.
“Comfortable?” he says, as casually as he can.
“Yes,” she says, flashing a toothy smile. “I am very comfortable.”
“Great,” he says. “You’re also very heavy.”
“It’s rude to comment on a lady’s weight,” she sniffs. “Your turn.”
She smells like beer and the salt sweat of a long day on the Wounded Coast — too real, too warm and solid, to be the rising star of the stories he tells about her. Even an author fails to realize sometimes that even protagonists are like this, people with breath and weight and warm skin. Hawke, at least, never lets him forget it.
He tries to take as subtle a deep breath as he can, and because he has had a few beers as well and fuck it, she was the one who sat down in the first place, threads his arm around the back of her waist to keep her from falling. She settles into the new arrangement like a favorite armchair, and Varric despairs a little bit in his head. He lays down his tree of flowers — face down, just to spite her. Despite Hawke’s best efforts, he does not let her see his hand.
“Yours now,” he says.
She tilts dangerously in his lap to look at her cards without showing them to him, unwittingly displaying them clearly to a delighted Isabela. After a moment’s consideration, she slaps a card (or more accurately three cards, in some of the most poorly executed cheating he’s ever seen from her) down in front of her abandoned chair. Isabela definitely sees the extra cards, but going by the smug look on her face, her hand is better enough than Hawke’s that she doesn’t feel the need to comment on it.
Fenris, however, does not seem to feel the need to refrain.
“Not likely, Hawke,” he says dryly. Hawke tightens her arm around Varric’s neck and laughs, full of glee.
If Anders were here, she’d more than likely be sitting on his lap, he reminds himself. They’ve been circling each other for ages now. It’ll make a good story if it happens, even if he’s not sure it’ll be a good match. Anders’s no doubt appealing passion feels more volatile every day from where Varric stands, and as the tension cranks up in Kirkwall, and in the mage’s own head, he shows a side that is spiteful and — well, jealous.
Varric knows it’s a little hypocritical of him. As long as nobody else knows it too, he can live with that.
“Aren’t you done yet? ” Hawke whines, leaning over the back of Varric’s chair to drape herself across his shoulders.
“I didn’t ask you to wait, you know,” he says, amused, dipping his pen in the inkwell again. “There’s a whole tavern right downstairs if you’re bored.”
“I don’t want to drink, I want to fight something,” she gripes.
“I’m pretty sure you can order a fight at the Hanged Man just as easily as a beer,” Varric offers. “Maybe easier, depending on Corff’s mood tonight.”
Hawke only groans and peels herself off his back. He does not have time to miss it before she is circling around his chair to lean against his side, half sitting on the desk. She is dangerously close to putting her ass straight into his inkwell. Varric slides the bottle back to safety.
“How much longer?” she demands. It’s indicative of how fucked he is that he only smiles.
“Could be a little while,” he says, unperturbed. “Why don’t you close your eyes for a second? Feel like you haven’t slept as much as you could have lately.”
He knows perfectly well that she hasn’t been getting enough sleep, as a matter of fact. She stays late at the Hanged Man, then goes out early to promises and obligations, and in between either one, crisscrosses town solving problems for her friends or chasing fights in the street. It’s been that way since Leandra. She hasn’t conceded to talk about it yet.
“I sleep,” she objects, scoffing. “Love sleeping. All I do is sleep. How long is a little while?”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I’m free,” he offers. “How about that?”
He honestly expects her to go downstairs and find a card game or a brawl, but all she does is slide to the floor, her back against his desk.
“I’ll wait,” she says, and tilts to rest her head on the side of his thigh.
It’s not that it isn’t distracting. Of course it’s distracting. But it’s also comfortable in a much more damning way, like an anchor. Her arm hooks itself around his left calf and he feels held down in a high wind, her loose grip an unbreakable tether tying him tightly to the world, and to her.
He knows by now that he is not a free man, though he usually tries not to think about it. But the room is warm and her cheek is warmer through his trouser leg, and it’s not as though he was going anywhere anyway, in either the more literal short or the metaphorical long term. It feels good and right to have her here, holding on to him.
He resists the urge to reach down and run his hand over her hair, half falling out of its tie. She’s not holding onto him, not really, not like that. It’s not safe to be thinking that way.
On the floor, Hawke begins to snore, and Varric smiles.
“It’s a sprained ankle,” he grouses. “It’s not like I broke it. I’ll be fine.”
“If we were in Lowtown, you might be fine,” Hawke snorts. “Although I don’t fancy your chances on the wrong side of one of those sets of stairs. But I’m not trudging patiently next to you in the rain while you limp your manly-man self over multiple miles of soggy sand.”
She’s probably right, although he refuses to admit it. The spiteful unpredictability of the Wounded Coast is what got him into this problem in the first place. A burrow where there shouldn’t be a burrow, a piece of half-buried driftwood you didn’t see, and next thing you know you’re being half carried into a sea cave hobbling like an old man.
“This rain isn’t likely to let up anytime soon,” Isabela says, frowning wisely out at the unrelenting weather. “That’s how it is at sea.”
“We’re not at sea, Rivaini,” Varric says, rolling his eyes. “We are seaside, and we all know how the weather behaves seaside because we live in a seaside city. Fuck, careful!”
This last is directed to Hawke, who is pulling off his boot not quite gently enough. She looks up and winces apologetically.
“Sorry,” she says, setting the boot to the side. “Sorry you’re a big baby, anyway.” All the same, she winces again when she peels his sock off. “Oh shit, Varric, you sure you didn’t break it? You’re purple. ”
“I’ve sprained an ankle before,” he grumbles. “If you’ve done it once, you’re more likely to do it again.”
“Are you telling me you’ve got a bum leg?” Isabela grins. “Shall we get you a cane? And a pair of reading spectacles, grandpa?”
Varric glances to Hawke, who knows perfectly well he has glasses in his room that he uses occasionally for reading in dim light. Her lips twitch in a smile, but she says nothing.
“Well, you have to get this up,” Hawke pronounces. She pulls off her sodden cloak and rolls it up, then grabs Varric by the shoulders and manhandles him into a reclining position, his head pillowed on her lap. She piles her cloak on top of her bag, and positions his foot to rest on top of it.
Varric does not look at Isabela. He knows without checking that she’s smirking.
Hawke is pulling a sopping scarf out of her hair and lifting Varric’s leg gingerly to wrap it around his ankle. She lowers his foot to the pile again, and touches fingertips to the scarf, sending threads of frost skating over the wet fabric.
“Anders is the one who knows all the healing, but that ought to help a little,” she says.
“Feels better already,” Varric says, and Hawke smiles down at him. He grins back up at her. “Your heroics truly never cease, Champion.”
A shadow passes over her face, just for a second, and Varric kicks himself internally.
“I’ll go for help,” Isabela says, and Varric shoots her a skeptical look.
“You’re gonna go for help?” he demands. “ What help? In the rain?”
“It’s fine,” Isabela assures him. “I look great wet.”
“Not really my primary concern!” he grinds out, but Isabela is already heading to the mouth of the cave.
“Be back when I can!” she says brightly. She winks at Varric — she winks at him — and steps out into the torrent.
Isabela is a good friend, in her own awful, terrible way. She thinks she’s giving Varric a shot. She doesn’t know he’ll never take it.
Still, it’s not nothing to have his head in the lap of the woman he loves, alone in a dark sea cave with the rain hammering the gray afternoon light into antique silver. She’s picking detritus out of his hair, and it’s not quite a caress but hell, it’s close enough.
At some point he stopped thinking about what was or wasn’t safe to think. The only thing at risk is himself, anyhow, and… well. Too late for that.
“Sorry about that joke earlier,” he says. “The Champion thing. It wasn’t funny.”
The sound of the rain fills the tiny space of the cave. Hawke pulls out his hair tie, and starts untangling his rain snarled hair with her fingers.
“It’s all right,” she says finally. “If it was just helping you with your bum leg, grandpa, I wouldn’t mind being a Champion at all.”
“Suppose I deserved that,” he says, folding his hands on his chest. Hawke’s fingernails scratch Varric’s scalp absently, and he closes his eyes. The rain on the sand is a dull shushing roar, and the air is warm and sticky. The sharper ache of his sprain is battling the dull ache of the icy cloth around it, which leaches cold through his now numb skin and into the bones of his ankle. Neither of them have anything, though, on the low, persistent ache in his chest.
“I don’t think she’s coming back,” Hawke observes. Varric does not open his eyes.
“I don’t think so either,” he says. “Let’s just wait until the rain passes.”
Hawke only hums in answer, but she does not stop touching Varric’s hair.
The world goes to hell. Varric goes on pretending it hasn’t as long as he can.
It doesn’t take as long as he would like. Varric feels like the ashes of the chantry should still be smoldering the night he knocks one final time on Hawke’s door.
She opens it herself. He last saw her just the previous day, but they stand in the doorway for a moment looking at each other as though negotiating the first words after a long separation.
“Sent Bodahn and Orana home early?” Varric says, breaking the moment, and Hawke scoffs.
“Yeah, two days ago,” she says, and steps out of the way to let him in.
He follows her in, noting silently as he does what two days without Orana’s tender attentions have rendered upon the Hawke estate.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she says, turning her back on him to root through the heap of papers and detritus on her desk. Varric sighs.
“If you know what I’m going to say,” he replies, “then you know why I’m going to say it and you know I’m right.”
Hawke makes an impatient noise without halting her search. An empty mug falls to the floor with a clunk, and Varric steps forward and halts its roll with the toe of his boot.
“I know you want to stay and fix it,” he says to the back of her head. “But you can’t make much of a difference when they come and cart you away, and that’s the way this is heading.”
Hawke finds what she’s looking for, which is apparently a corkscrew, and grabs a couple bottles of wine from a small collection of them to the side of the desk. They dangle by the necks from her fingers, clanking together as she turns away again.
“I just got the news that another circle fell,” he continues doggedly, following her up the stairs. “This isn’t a Kirkwall thing anymore, but that means that you don’t have to stay in Kirkwall to see it through. You want to do good, there’s good you can do out there, but honestly after everything you’ve done, the world owes you something back, and maybe that thing is an exit stage right.”
Hawke pushes her bedroom door open without turning around, and he stays on her heels.
“Hawke, look at me,” he insists. “You know I’m right.“
He steps inside her bedroom. At the foot of the bed is an open trunk, her possessions spread around the room and a rucksack half full on the bed. Hawke turns and looks at him, raising one eloquent eyebrow.
“Oh,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says. She huffs a little laugh, and tips her head over to the ladder in the corner that leads to the roof. Varric nods, and follows her up.
The night is warm and the wind is light, even on the roof with most of Kirkwall spread beneath them. Varric stands and looks out over the scattered starfield of lighted windows, while Hawke settles in at the edge of the roof with her clinking bottles.
“Isabela’s our transport,” Hawke says, head tilted back to regard the clouded sky. “Merrill’s coming — she’s been promised a very large hat. And Fenris, although I don’t think he’d look as good in a hat.” She exhales slowly. “Aveline is staying, of course.”
Varric throws a glance to his left to take in her leaning backward on her hands, closing her eyes as though there is sun for her to feel on her face, instead of just the faint stink of the harbor drifting up to them.
“So telling me last, huh?” he says, and it doesn’t come out as nearly as much of a joke as he wants it to be.
Hawke opens up her eyes to roll them at him.
“We only decided it last night,” she says. “Not my fault you’ve been wasting your time keeping this city from falling in on itself instead of drinking with me.”
“Well, I can remedy that grave error in judgement now, anyway,” he says, and sits down next to her, taking one of the bottles. “Hand me that corkscrew.”
He sits down next to her — closer than he would have on his own six years before, his leg brushing hers, their shoulders bumping. Hawke sways to give him an extra bump as she hands the corkscrew over.
“Hey,“ she says as he pops the cork out. “Remember the night Merrill tried to teach Fenris how to dance?“
“Probably would have gone better for both of them if Merrill had known how to dance,” Varric muses, and takes a swig.
“It wasn’t a bad effort,“ Hawke protests, and starts giggling. “At least, until they hit the chair.“
“That’s the thing about a place that attracts as many bar brawls as the Hanged Man,” he grins. “Sturdy chairs.”
“—flipped over it—”
“— hit the ground on his feet sputtering like an upended cat,“ Varric declares over Hawke’s laughter. “What a landing. Would’ve been even more elegant if Daisy hadn’t brought them both down with a clatter a second later.”
“Anders laughed himself sick. Literally,” she says, and then suddenly her giggles seem to disagree with her. She washes them down with a drink from her own bottle.
Varric can forgive Blondie for a lot of things, he thinks. Better men have done worse for good intentions. Murder, terrorism, awful taste in cloaks. He can’t even be angry on behalf of Kirkwall, when Kirkwall has done so much ill. But breaking Hawke’s heart — that, he’ll probably hold against the man longer than she does.
“Hey,” he says, bumping her shoulder back. “How about the time Isabela snuck into Aveline’s office before her anniversary, and filled it with rose petals and—”
“She thought it was me!” Hawke howls, tipping over into his space, leaning backward on his chest. He adjusts his posture to accept her weight better, lets her settle against him. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. Meredith, dragons, darkspawn, they’re all distant runners up.”
They drink. They tell stories. When Hawke has finished her bottle, he wordlessly hands her his. Her weight against his chest is solid and warm, and holds him down like a paperweight on a stacked manuscript. Varric has never been the kind of dwarf that worries about falling into the sky, but when Hawke is around he finds himself grateful for the anchor.
Their words lapse into tipsy silence right around the time Varric starts to see the horizon going gray, drawing a lighter line over the distant dark ocean. Hawke’s chin is nestled into her chest, and her eyes are drowsy. He wonders what she’s thinking of.
“Fuck you, by the way,” he says casually, stealing back the bottle. “I know what a goodbye looks like.”
He feels her head lift, but he doesn’t look to see if her eyes are open again. He tips back the bottle and drains the last dregs of it.
“Somebody’s got to keep an eye on Kirkwall,” she begins, but it’s the voice she uses to rope bystanders into a cause and he doesn’t have the patience for it.
“Yeah, I know what you’re going to say,” he snaps.
There is a pause, and she reaches to the side to lay a hand over his on the bottle.
“Then you know I’m right,” she says.
The aftertaste of the wine is sour in his mouth.
“Aveline will keep an eye on things just fine,” he says, but he can hear it in his own voice that he’s already lost.
“And thank the Maker for it,” says Hawke. “But she takes care of a different Kirwall than you and I do. I want you with me,” she adds. “But I need you here.”
Varric takes one dizzy too-sober moment to resent, and regret, and feel. He breathes in, and then out, and Hawke’s head rises and falls with his chest.
“Be safe,” he says. “As safe as you can be fomenting revolution, anyway.”
“I’ll try to keep all the important parts attached,” she agrees. She slides her hand over his and onto the neck of the wine bottle, and slips it out of his grip. She wiggles the empty bottle, frowning at the lack of wine swishing inside. “And we’ll write.”
“Who’s going to gather an accurate account of your world shaping heroics?” he sighs. “Isabela? Not likely.”
“No less likely than you gathering an accurate account of anything,” Hawke snorts.
“You might be surprised,” Varric says, and gets back to memorizing the smell of spilled wine and the pale sunrise.
Somewhere below them in Hightown, a bird starts singing.
They write letters. Not many, not enough. He fills them with anecdotes and jokes and makes no references to the war or the rebuilding of the city. In the Kirkwall he paints for her, everyone is safe and no one is frightened.
Her replies come more seldomly than his. She jokes too, but he feels her weariness in her dragging handwriting, the dirty paper. She talks about warm safehouses and merry campfires, and all Varric can feel is the dark and cold pressing at windows and the edges of wooded clearings.
I don’t even remember anymore what I thought was so great about peace and quiet or personal space, he writes. When you get back, you can poke me, shove me, lean on me, or pass out in the middle of my bed to your heart's desire.
I mean, I’d definitely take a hug, she writes back.
Varric looks at the scratchy, slanted handwriting on the page, and his throat gets a little tight.
You can definitely have a hug, he replies. I’ll keep one ready for you.
Four years after wine on a rooftop, Varric writes to her one last time, as the Inquisition moves into Skyhold.
Your hug is waiting, Varric writes.
Yes, all right, Varric has pictured the reunion.
He has pictured the reunion seven, maybe eight hundred times, at a conservative estimate, because of course he fucking has, because he hasn’t seen her in four damn years and they could both die at any moment and not to put too fine a point on it, but he’s in love with the lady. So yes. Varric has, one could say, a couple different ways in his head the thing could go.
A few hundred of them involve Hawke crashing into his arms, either at the end of a slide on her knees through the dirt, or swooping down on him and knocking them both to the ground. In a particular mood, he’s partial to the two of them just quietly walking forward into the embrace, as though they have both been marching ever forward in search of it and have finally reached the end of the trek. If he feels like writing dialogue, he’ll give them each a couple bon mots and a tight, sincere squeeze.
When the day comes that she said she’d be arriving, he loiters out at the gate of Skyhold all day. Once he finally sees her slogging across the long bridge, he starts smiling, but the distant hooded figure does not look up or wave or pick up speed, and Varric’s smile starts to fade.
It is her, isn’t it?
No, of course it’s her. Varric would know Marian Hawke as an old woman, as an abomination, as an enchanted creature in a charming animal folktale, but a limp and a bowed head make her nearly unrecognizable. She is well in shouting distance by the time she raises her eyes, but Varric doesn’t know what to shout. Instead he only smiles, and his heart quiets when he sees Hawke finally smile back and quicken her pace.
She stops a few paces from him, easing a heavy looking pack off her shoulder and lowering her hood.
“Hey,” she says.
It’s not what he’s expecting, but it’s so good to hear her voice anyway that his grin turns soft and easy.
“Hey,” he says. “Hope you’re ready to poke some dragon nests. Nobody knows you’re coming. The Seeker might just roast me on a spit.”
“Poking dragon nests is my favorite pastime, you know that,” she says, and she’s grinning too now, although it’s weary around the edges in a way that makes him ache. “Think I could get a bath and maybe a nap first, though?”
“I think that can be arranged,” he says, and then holds out his arms, one eyebrow raised invitingly. “How about your hug?”
And Hawke… hesitates.
It isn’t much, and it isn’t long. But Varric sees her look at the invitation and stop herself, just for a second, and his heart chills.
The moment passes, it seems, and Hawke goes down to a knee to let Varric wrap his arms around her. Hers go low on his waist, and she squeezes back, melts into it just a little. But she doesn’t hang onto him the way he remembers, the way he associates with the warm press of her body on his, and after several seconds she pulls away again.
He lets her go, dread pooling in his stomach.
“Hey, what’s with the limp?” he asks as she straightens back up. “You need a healer?”
She rolls her eyes and rubs the offending appendage.
“No, it’s not even properly injured,” she sighs. “Just the product of sleeping on the ground when you’re over thirty.”
It’s so strange to think of the two of them getting older, as strange as it is to think of the things that have happened to Hawke in his absence. He thinks of all the things he left out of his own letters, and knows he might never know everything she carries with her now. Not for the first time, Varric thinks that staying behind might have been the worst mistake he ever made, Kirkwall be damned.
He does not trust himself to weigh the value of years of slow progress, invisible steps of change and growth for an entire city-state, against whatever it was that happened that made Hawke uncomfortable in a hug. Instead, he smiles and hefts the dropped bag onto his shoulder.
“Well, let’s get you that bath,” he says. “If I know anything about the perils of being over thirty, it oughta help some.” Hawke snorts at ‘over thirty’ and he stops himself from nudging her with his shoulder. “Look, let me have this one, will you?”
Hawke smiles and pulls her hood back up over her face, and Varric leads them both in through the gate, and tries to quiet his heart.
Introducing Hawke to the Inquisitor — and consequently, showing his hand to the Seeker — goes about as well as expected.
Varric honestly likes Cassandra well enough. He respects, to a certain degree, being driven by principle, and he thinks she does a better job than other principle-driven individuals at critically analyzing her own motivations, at least these days. But he really doesn’t give much of a shit if the Seeker feels like Varric betrayed her, or betrayed the Divine, or the Chant of Light, or whatever. He’s got higher loyalties than that.
He has never been aware of a mark, or a threat, or an opponent’s hand of cards the way he is aware of Hawke in Skyhold, those first couple of days. He gets her put in rooms near his, and when she walks the parapets in the afternoon he wanders repeatedly to the door of the great hall to keep an eye on her. It’s tempting to drop in on her continually, fetch her for meals together and put his head in the door of whatever room she’s in to make a joke or just see her face. But he made clear where he could be found when he moved her in, and he isn’t going to… he doesn’t want to…
It wouldn’t have felt this way in Kirkwall, is the problem. He never worried about stifling her or bothering her. Some days they tracked their own projects for a day or two, and some days their friends pointed out that if they’d met for breakfast and lunch, meeting for dinner was probably excessive and unnecessary. But he’s never had the impression before that Hawke was avoiding him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
It’s not about him, he insists in his own head. Hawke walks around Skyhold now like someone accustomed to solitude and that’s… terrible, that’s maybe worse than if it’s just Varric, but the point is that it’s not just Varric. The point is that they’ll be okay, and they’ll both be okay faster now that they have each other again. The point is that without feeling her constant absence, the hole in the room that should contain Hawke, he doesn’t have to be a pining thwarted lover, set of one, he can be a friend again, he can be the half of a set of two that he was so good at once. Varric could get used to being snuggled and perched upon and touched gently on the arm if Hawke would just get back to doing it.
It’s not about him, he repeats. Hawke is healing. She can take all the time she needs.
That narrative lasts right up until the night she goes to the Herald’s Rest.
Varric isn’t expecting to find her there. He even thinks about going and tracking her down when he hears the sounds of raucous laughter inside, thinks that maybe a drink and a game of wicked grace is exactly what she needs. He’s still talking himself out of it when he pushes open the door.
Hawke is at a table, sandwiched between two of Bull’s Chargers, stacking shot glasses with her tongue stuck out between her teeth in focus. Just as she’s about to place the peak of the pyramid she’s constructing, Skinner jostles her elbow mischievously. The pyramid clatters to the table, rolling around on its uneven surface. One glass bounces to the ground and shatters, and the Chargers laugh. Hawke laughs too, long and loud, head thrown back, like Varric has not heard in years, and the sound knits together something in his chest that he hadn’t known was torn open.
She tips over as she laughs, practically into Dalish’s lap, and accepts a shot poured into one of the retrieved glasses from Bull’s hand. Her grin is bright and untroubled, and it is healing to watch her be like this, like she was before.
She does not, of course, act much like someone who should be unable to face her best friend.
Varric sits down at the edge of the room, and watches her.
She squeezes out from her closely-packed table with a casual hand on Skinner’s shoulder, punctuates a chuckle at Bull’s joke with a hand on his arm. As she passes through the Inquisitor’s space, she even pauses to sling an arm over their shoulders, mutters something that makes them smile and blush.
When Varric has seen enough, before Hawke can spot him, he slips out the door.
He’s glad it’s just him. He is. It feels like a reprieve, like giving up something of his to give her back something of hers. He would do worse, for what little worse there is, to ensure that somewhere, Hawke was laughing and reaching out to touch somebody.
If it’s just him, though, the question is what he’s done.
He doesn’t have to reach far. If she were angry at him, she’d say. If he’d hurt her, she’d say. Instead she’s smiled reassuringly, and tried to joke, and given him a wide berth. It’s the same reaction he’s been waiting for since the day in the marketplace. He had a pretty good run, really.
He sits in the dark outside the tavern and wonders what gave him away. The answer, of course, is probably all of it, everything he did the entire time, and one misplaced word in a letter, a little time to think out in the wilderness. And now she knows, and it’s never going to be exactly the same again.
The tavern door pushes open, spilling sound and golden light out into the courtyard. Hawke emerges, because the Maker does have a sense of humor, after all.
“Varric,” she says, smiling, and then he sees her remember, sees her eyes slide off him and the smile falter.
He takes a deep breath. No use putting it off.
“Looked like you’ve been in just about every personal bubble in the room tonight,” he says. “But you haven’t broken mine in a while.”
He waits for the look of realization that he knows is coming. When it comes, it stings, but not the way he expected it to. Hawke looks guilty and regretful, like she’s mostly just worried about hurting him. It makes him feel achingly fond. She pushes the door closed behind her, and they are alone in the darkness.
“So I guess the truth is out,” he says, and her eyes tell him she hadn’t expected him to have put it together already. “You’ve never been as good at bluffing as you think you are.”
Hawke doesn’t even smile at the dig, which is not going to work, she absolutely has to smile at the hilarious joke of Varric being in love with her because if she doesn’t, it’s just going to be him, just him laughing alone at his own stupid broken heart.
“Varric…” she says, and he waves quickly away whatever pitying speech she’s lining up.
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s fine. We’ve both done stupider things with our hearts before,” and fuck, that’s not what he meant to say, he did not intend to invoke Blondie in this moment, of all people. But it seems to work all the same, because Hawke gives him the beginning of a wobbly smile. “It’s fine,” he says again, encouraged. “You know? It doesn’t have to be weird. We don’t have to make it weird, right?”
“No, I know, I know,” Hawke says quickly. “I’m not… I’m not trying to.” The smile is fading.
“It wasn’t weird before,” he offers, trying not to sound desperate.
“I didn’t know before!” snaps Hawke.
Her voice in the empty courtyard is louder than either of them expect. Varric thinks he hears the first fissure appear across his heart, a distant ping like a frozen lake cracking. Hawke looks immediately contrite, which is worse.
“I’m sorry,” she winces. The starlight is pale on her apologetic face, and Varric might actually just die, right here, spontaneously. “It’s just… different now. But I’ll get over it.” She’ll get over it? She is practically begging, and Varric feels a couple more cracks spider across the surface of the lake. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s fine.”
“It just might take some time, that’s all.”
“I said it’s fine.”
“I’m sorry,” she pleads.
Varric laughs, a weak and hollow sound to his own ears, and runs a hand over his face. There isn’t a tragedy left in his life that he hasn’t seen beaten until it turned into a farce.
“Shit, Hawke,” he sighs. “I don’t know why you’re apologizing. It’s not your fault.”
Hawke laughs a little ruefully, and puts her back against the tavern wall with a dull thump. She swipes quickly at her eyes with the back of her hand. Shit, she’s crying?
“Of course,” she says, in a tone of gentle if unsteady teasing. “You’re so handsome and charming, I’m sure everyone falls for you eventually. You probably have this conversation all the time.”
The gears of Varric’s mind catch on the words, and grind to a sudden and definitive halt.
“...What?” says Varric.
Hawke acts as though she hasn’t heard him. Varric’s heart is beating with suspicious vehemence.
“You really must tell me sometime how it went with Fenris,” she continues, keeping her eyes on some hidden point in the darkness. “I’m sure that exchange was —”
“No, hold on,” he says, and Hawke’s mouth shuts with a snap. “What’s this about falling for me?”
A shadow of irritation crosses her face, and she turns her head away as though something in the still darkness has seized her attention.
“I said I’d get over it, okay?” she sighs. “I’m working on it.”
The frozen lake encounters a flash thaw. Varric bites down on a smile and takes a slow breath, the cool air suddenly thin and tingling in his lungs.
“How far along would you say you are in that?” he says, keeping his voice level. Hawke whips her head back around, some sharp retort doubtless on her tongue and Varric can’t hold back the smile anymore. “I only ask because if you were almost done and I kissed you, well. That would be gauche.”
Hawke stares at him.
He grins, and steps deliberately forward into her space, tipping his head back to keep an eye on her blank expression. He grins wider when her hands slip up over his shoulders as though they are choosing to do it on their own.
“Think we’ve been talking at cross purposes,” he says. “Is there any chance you’ve been giving me space, Marian Hawke, because you made the mistake of falling in love with me while you were gone?”
“I don’t know when it was,” she says immediately. “I think it was way before that, but I didn’t figure it out until…” she swallows. “Varric, not to be overly— well, inquisitive, but what exactly the fuck is happening right now?”
Varric carefully lays aside years of training to keep his hands to himself, and reaches up to rest them on her hips.
“Well, I only noticed because I’m in love with you too,” he says.
Hawke blinks.
“You’re what?” she returns faintly.
“Works out nicely, don’t you think?” he muses.
Varric has a sort of plan forming in his head, that he’ll tug her gently down to one knee with a fist full of her robes, cup her face in his hands, kiss her like the cover of a classy novel.
Hawke doesn’t let him get even as far as the first step.
She leans over and throws her arms around his neck, crushing her mouth to his so suddenly that he has to step back with one foot to steady them both. He wraps his arms around her back and kisses her for all he’s worth.
When they finally come up for air, Varric does not let go.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for ten years of your piss poor personal boundaries,” he says, and Hawke grins. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“Yeah?” she says. “That sounds like a story.” She straightens, slipping out of his arms, but leaves her hand wrapped in the fabric of his shirt, and gives him a slow, heated smile that leaves his mouth dry. “Why don’t you come up to my room and tell it to me?”
“I’m warning you now,” he says, but he’s already following her, just as he always has. “It starts in the Deep Roads.”