Chapter Text
Varric: I found something kid. And it's not pretty.
Rook: Well, fuck
Rook: Meet me at Orwen's later?
Varric: Kinda busy at the moment, and I'd rather not get into it in public.
Varric: I'll call you.
It's been three days, and Varric hasn't called. Hasn't responded to any of her texts or her calls, either, which is why Rook finds herself at his door at 7 pm on a Thursday night, dread pooling in her stomach at the sight of dark windows and the obviously busted lock.
"Varric?"
No answer.
There's a slight creak when she pushes through the door into the gloom of the apartment. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust — the only light being provided by the faint glow of the streetlamps outside and the stand-by-LEDs on some electronic devices — so she doesn't clock the overturned coatrack before her foot finds it, sending her tumbling with a clatter and a curse. So much for quiet.
It's ok though — there's no one here to hear her. Not anymore. Whoever busted the lock and trashed the place is clearly long gone, leaving nothing behind but a bunch of overturned drawers and slashed couch cushions and the body lying in its own blood before the desk.
Varric.
The dread in Rook's stomach turns to nausea as she steps closer, noting the empty eyes staring at the ceiling and the bloody hole between them, careful not to notice the brain matter sprayed over the surface of the desk. It's probably a good thing he landed on his back.
Not much else that's good here, and it gets worse when the door creaks again, and Rook disappears.
"Varric?"
Male voice, as is the silhouette that carefully steps through the doorway — not stumbling over the overturned coat rack — to slowly take in the carnage.
Varric had told her he was working for Evanuris Inc. (and his card certainly said so), but Rook had kind of assumed that he was just another office jockey; any business needs mundanes for admin and maintenance, right? The last thing she'd expected to find in his apartment was a guy in a corny spandex suit, the skin-tight fabric swallowing what little light there was to be had.
It doesn't take long for the honest-to-Andraste-superhero — because it can't be a villain (please don't be a super-villain), they surely wouldn't be so careful not to disturb the scene, and no one else in their right mind would be running around in that kind of costume — to stop in his tracks, having found the unfortunate conclusion to this truly shitty experience.
"Mierda. Neve, you might want to see this."
Right, that's Rook's cue — the last thing she needs is for spandex-man to call in reinforcements while she's here, and it's not like she can hold her breath forever. Quiet as a mouse, she aims for the open space next to him, her well-worn sneakers silent on Varric's cheap laminate (or so she thinks) — until a firm hand clamps around her arm, and she reappears with a gasp.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
Instinct kicks in, and Rook rams her elbow into his side and stomps her heel towards his toes, but super-dude is unfortunately quick on the uptake and sidesteps her effort. He ducks the fist aimed at his face, too, and attempts to manoeuvre himself behind her when she tries to kick him. She does hit his toes then, but he's fast and manages to either evade or block the rest of her attempts to shake him off, releasing her arm only when he succeeds in catching her other wrist and twisting it behind her back. His other arm locks around her throat when she stops moving, not-so-silently cursing her rotten luck and his stupid fucking timing.
Rook is panting with the fruitless effort of trying to get away, regrettably aware that to him, it probably barely counts as a scuffle.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, I just want some answers!"
He doesn't even sound a little bit out of breath. Asshole.
"And I want a house in Rivain and a pony, but we don't always get what we want," she tries to quip, but her voice comes out a bit too strained to sell it properly.
Super-dude sighs — the kind of sigh you might heave at the end of a long work-day, when some enterprising idiot decides that surely, calling with a complicated and emotionally charged customer support issue exactly 2 minutes before you're allowed to clock out is the best possible way to waste everyone's time.
"Just stop trying to fight me."
"Sure — just as soon as you get your hands off me, jerk."
"So you can disappear again and make a run for it? Not likely."
"Worth a shot," she mutters under her breath. The tough girl act might be suffering a little from the fact that her shoulders won't stop trembling, a detail that would be difficult for him to miss given how he's essentially holding her against his chest.
"You understand that I can't simply let you go after finding you alone in my dead coworker's trashed apartment along with his body, yes?"
"I didn't kill him!"
"I didn't say you did."
She stills. "Wait, what?"
"I don't think you killed Varric."
Rook tries to turn her head, stops with a wince when the motion pulls at her twisted arm. "You don't?!"
"No. He was shot — by a professional by the looks of it — and you didn't even try to pull a gun to get away from me."
"… huh."
"Now will you behave or do I really need to keep restraining you? You smell like bleach, and this isn't exactly comfortable for either of us."
She can't help but bristle under the insinuation — how dare he complain about the way she smells, it's not like she chose to have him pressed against her — but then she remembers that she did just re-colour her hair last night (it's a bright turquoise this time), and the scent does tend to linger, and it would be all kinds of weird and off-putting if he enjoyed keeping her in a dead-lock.
"… fine."
As soon as he feels her slump, he removes his arm from around her neck and relaxes his grip on her wrist — not enough to let her go, more's the pity, but enough to let her take a step back and turn around to glare at him. The jerk doesn't even have the decency to let her have a good look at his face, because he's wearing a freaking mask on top of the suit and the cape (who even wears capes anymore? Don't you get all tangled up trying to fight crime in one?).
(Skill issue, her opponent would say if he could hear the thought.)
"So. Who are you, and what are you doing in Varric's apartment?"
"I could ask you the same question, you know."
"I work with Varric — or used to — and volunteered to check on him after he didn't show up for work without notice or answering anyone's calls."
She hadn't really expected him to answer. No name though; typical.
Their stare-off is broken when the door creaks a third time, and the room is suddenly bathed in light, making both of them flinch.
"A little warning next time?" her captor grouses towards the doorway, which now holds two dark-haired women — notably not in costume, but in perfectly regular (and tasteful; Rook may need to steal the taller one's trench-coat) street clothes.
"Sorry!" the one with the mass of hair gathered on top of her head chirps. "I thought light would help?"
The one with the awesome coat chuckles. "Made a friend, Luca?"
"That remains to be seen," Rook's captor mutters as the two newcomers take in the room. It's pretty obvious when they spot the body.
"Oh no, Varric!" the chirpy one wails, even as trench-coat lady curses under her breath.
The grief is to be expected, Rook supposes. She hadn't spent much time around Varric — had explicitly avoided him until she could no longer see a way to figure things out by herself, in fact — but he had been … easy, to interact with. Friendly. Charming. Caring, even. His colleagues —friends? — should be sad to find him murdered.
What's less expected is the way the chirpy one whips around and gets right in her face.
"YOU!" she yells, pointing her finger straight at Rook's nose, "this was you, wasn't it? What did Varric ever do to you?!"
Rook takes a step back, pulls up short against the hand still clamped around her wrist, glares. "I didn't! Why would I kill Varric? He was helping me!"
"Why should I believe you?"
Super-dude — Luca? — clears his throat.
"For the record, I don't think she did it. Yes, she was here before I arrived, but Varric was shot — most likely by a professional — and judging by the dried blood, he's been dead at least a day. This one is not a professional."
Rook's glaring intensifies.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Trench-coat sighs and claps her hands to redirect everyone's attention.
"Alright people, let's all take a deep breath and start again. Varric is dead, his apartment is trashed, and his laptop is gone — and I bet his phone is, too. His murder was clearly staged to look like a b&e gone wrong, and our only suspect not only denies that she did it, but also got an endorsement on that front from our resident professional. Everyone with me so far?"
Rook blinks. "Wait a minute — how do you know this was just staged to look like a b&e gone wrong?"
Trench-coat raises a brow at super-dude.
"Varric was shot straight between the eyes, which is either a very lucky shot — highly unlikely —, or the work of a paid killer, one who knows what they're doing. The fact that none of his neighbours appear to have heard and reported a gun going off in his apartment indicates that whoever did this used a good silencer — not something you're likely to find on a bunch of goons intent on making some quick cash by stealing someone's valuables.
What's more, all of the expensive tech is still here," he adds, pointing towards the media wall with the big TV and the shiny VR headset. "Those are usually among the first things your regular burglar would take."
Trench-coat nods. "Additionally, everything else that's trashed — the cuts in his couch cushions, the overturned drawers, the fallen furniture — seems completely random; either his attackers were looking for something very specific that they didn't find, or they just wanted to make it appear like they were looking for valuables. Very few people actually keep cash or jewellery hidden inside cushions on a regular basis."
"Guess you guys do now what you're doing," Rook mutters, impressed in spite of herself, making Trench-coat smile.
"This is what we do."
"Well, and beat up bad guys," chirpy adds.
"And that, yes. What we don't know is how you fit into the picture," Trench-coat continues.
Rook squirms under the the attention of three pairs of very attentive eyes.
"Ok, fine. You can let go of my wrist now," she directs at super-dude, who doesn't make any move to comply.
"Suit yourself. My name is Rook, and Varric is — was — a … friend, of sorts? He helped me out of a bad spot when he really had no reason to a few years back; gave me his card, too, and told me to call him if I ever needed help."
"That sounds like Varric," chirpy agrees dejectedly.
"Anyway, I didn't have any intention of taking him up on it, but then people started disappearing, and I didn't think too much of it, because sometimes people just disappear, right? The regular kind of disappearing, I mean. Until a friend of mine disappeared, too, and I know she was really looking forward to celebrating her anniversary with her partner, so I tried looking into it, and when I couldn't make any headway, I remembered Varric and his fancy corporate heroics job. He agreed to keep an eye out, and then he found something, and then he stopped responding to any of my messages. Which is why I decided to check on him, and found this," she gestures around the room. "Right around the same time super-dude here showed up."
Trench-coat and chirpy try to suppress a snort, and super-dude pinches the bridge of his nose.
"I'm not — Mierda. Don't you dare tell Davrin about this. Or Taash."
Chirpy loses her cool and begins to snicker.
"Ok, back up," Trench-coat says, fighting down the smirk threatening to overtake her face. "You said Varric found something? Do you know what?"
"No; he said he'd call me when he had time to meet up and go over it, but then he never called."
Trench-coat shares a look with super-dude and chirpy.
"So … he told you he found something, and then he was …?" chirpy trails off.
Rook nods. "His exact words were: 'I found something kid, and it's not pretty."
"That really does sound like Varric." Chirpy isn't taking this well at all.
"Fantastic. How about we go over this carnage again and see if our burglars have missed anything?" Trench-coat is much more pragmatic about it.
"… you want my help?" Rook asks, wide-eyed.
"You're the only one who knows what to look for."
"I wouldn't know anything about how he organized his findings though …"
"I know. Look, this is Varric we're talking about; there's no telling what else he was up to in his downtime, but I think there's a good chance that whatever he was looking into for you got him killed. I'd like to find out what that was, and who wanted to keep it a secret — don't you?"
There's a pit in Rook's stomach in the shape of 'this is my fault' and 'what if I'm next', and it feels about the size of a mountain. Her first instinct is to vanish, to run and never look back — but she can't hold her breath forever, and if whatever this is got to Varric, who was working for fucking Superheroes Incorporated and had a bunch of superhero friends, who's to say how far she'd even have to run?
"I … alright. I guess I do," she answers, much more subdued now, and the fingers around her wrist finally open. One breath, and she disappears, blinking back into existence a few steps further away, rubbing her wrist. The latter isn't strictly necessary, because while super-dude has a pretty firm grip, he did make sure not to cut off her circulation. The former is all instinct, a decade of running that's hard to shake.
"Ah, sorry. Is your arm alright?" super-dude inquires when she reappears.
"It's fine." It's unnerving that she can't see his eyes, but he really didn't hurt her.
"Before we begin — hi, I'm Neve," trench-coat says and extends her hand. It's warm and dry when Rook takes it, solid without being crushing. "My friend here is Bellara, and that's Lucanis," she finishes, pointing at super-dude.
"Seriously?" he protests, and trench-coat — Neve — smirks again.
"Come on, did you want to stay 'super-dude'?"
His annoyed grunt should be answer enough, and the eye-roll is heavily implied.
"You could have gone with ma actual code name, you know."
"Eh, no need to get all official just yet."
They begin combing the ruin of Varric's apartment together, carefully rifling through drawers and looking under tossed furniture. Super-dude — Lucanis — is apparently the designated corpse guy, cautiously patting down the dead man and checking his pockets and between his teeth. After 20 minutes, all they have to show for their efforts are a grocery list, a couple of unpaid invoices and some decidedly raunchy romance novels. Varric's laptop, phone, calendar, and any other notebooks and papers are gone. The 'burglars' even emptied his paper basket.
"Well, fuck," Rook mutters, kicking a fallen pillow.
"Wouldn't put it in quite the same words, but yes," Neve agrees.
"Hey — if they have his phone, do you think they have a way to track the people he was in contact with?" Rook asks.
"Oh, definitely. It's pretty easy to track someone when you've got their phone number, if you know what you're doing," Bellara replies, a little preoccupied. She's staring down at Varric's VR-headset.
"Fuck," Rook reiterates, drops her phone on the floor — and smashes her heel into it. And then again, for good measure.
"Well, that's one way to take care of that," Neve muses.
"Hey, Lucanis? Didn't you give him that headset?" Bellara asks, finally looking up.
"Ah, yes? He said he really needed a vacation but never found the time, and there are apps that let you pretend you're walking through pretty much any city in Thedas, or sit on a beach or a mountain-top or even under the ocean."
Pretty expensive gift for a coworker.
"Hmm … don't you have one, too? Spending your evenings back at home?" Neve asks slyly, and Lucanis turns away, crossing his arms.
"I don't see how that's any of your business."
That mask is doing a pretty good job of covering his eyes, but Rook could swear he's blushing, just a little.
"Did you maybe help him set it up?" Bellara re-enters the conversation.
"I did, why?"
"Because it would be really useful if we had his password. Some people use these for work, too," she elaborates, "creating a physical space to organise their notes and things like that."
"Wait, you mean I don't have to cover my entire living room wall in paper?" Neve interjects.
"Maybe? I thought you like your murder-wall."
"I mean, yes, but I'd have to worry less about paper mites that way."
"Let's just take it with us?" Lucanis suggests. "We do need to call this in, but it's not like the templars would know to look for it."
Bellara moves to unplug the headset and hugs it against her chest.
"Good idea. Let's reconvene at Emmrich's? The rest of the team will want to know, and that way, we can all put our heads together. We could drive ahead and fill them in while you call in the break-in and the homicide?" Neve proposes.
Lucanis grimaces, then nods.
"How come you're still in costume, anyway?
"My car is at the garage, so it seemed more convenient to fly home."
"Oh no, what happened?" Bellara wants to know.
"Some asshole keyed it."
"Mhhh, that's a shame; somehow, no one ever bothers keying my car," Neve teases.
She can't see it through the mask, but Rook could swear that he's rolling his eyes. Again.
"Yes, well, your car doesn't even have air-condition."
"Good thing I don't need that," Neve smirks, before taking out a small notebook and scribbling something on a free page. She rips out the page and extends it to Rook, who has remained suspiciously quiet over the last few minutes.
"Here — if you want to stay in the loop, find us at this address in half an hour or so. Or I could give you a ride."
"No thank you," Rook presses out — the last thing she needs is even more hero-types remembering her face — but pockets the address anyway. "Best of luck," she adds, and then she's gone.
The remains of her phone land in a dumpster in an alley two blocks down from Varric's apartment before she sinks to the ground behind it, hiding in the dark while she waits for her limbs to stop shaking.