Chapter Text
The journey to Skyhold had been perilous, arduous, and grim. With Haven left in tatters, and a harsh storm on their heels, the remainder of the Inquisition’s forces who’d survived Corypheus’s attack had enough time to establish only the barest of essentials before being forced to hunker down and wait out the worst of the weather.
The tavern was up and running by the first day’s end.
As so little else was set up at the time, Cassandra, as many, found herself taking supper most nights within the newly minted ‘Herald’s Rest,’ where she stayed long past most of the boisterous crowd, occupying her time tucked away in a far corner by a window reviewing reports and old maps of the area until the night grew dark and quiet around her and all the day’s light was bled from the skies. On this particular evening, swamped by the sheer volume of what still needed doing for the Inquisition to be back in working order, she’d relocated to a seat at the empty bar counter and conscripted several now dying candles to her cause. So engrossed was she in the work, that she scarcely noticed when another figure come in until the bartender was asking them their pleasure.
“A glass of whatever you can reach easiest,” said the stranger in a lively tone, which contrasted so sharply with the lateness of the night that it caused the Seeker to finally look up and observe the newcomer, briefly. It was a woman’s voice, spoken from beneath a thick cloak and under a heavy hood. Possibly Ferelden, by the accent. Her robes looked as though they’d seen better days, as did the tightly packed bag of her belongings that she’d set down beside her as she took to a stool two down from Cassandra’s. A traveler, then, the Seeker concluded, who perhaps wanted to volunteer to serve in the Inquisition. The war council had already welcomed several dozen such altruists in the days prior.
The pilgrim seemed in no rush to remove her vestments or even lower her cowl. The hearth was dying, and she likely still felt deep in her bones the chill from the raging storm outside.
The barkeep gave a nod, saying, “Right then,” before he turned his attention to his only other patron, “And you, Seeker?”
Cassandra hesitated. She looked to her glass, which remained nearly empty but for about a mouthful of what was no doubt now terribly lukewarm ale. She’d stopped drinking it when the temperature had become distasteful, and while she may have liked a few sips more until she’d finished up the last of her reading, she was not entirely certain she wanted to commit to another glass.
“She’ll have another,” said the strange woman, “On my tab.”
Cassandra drew up her gaze to look at the traveler more directly, taking in the sight of her — the way her cover was tattered around nearly every edge and riddled with poorly stitched patches; how her boots seemed just about falling apart; the way her rucksack seemed held together by nothing more than twine and prayer — before answering in a tone that was hopefully not too impolite, “That is unnecessary, I assure you.”
“Alright, then put my drink on her tab,” replied the vagabond without missing so much as a beat. The bartender laughed, surprised by the woman’s brashness, before turning towards the Seeker and supplying a look of amused but hesitant inquiry. If Cassandra’s deeds were the stuff of legend, as too was her temper. Yet, despite both herself and her chilly reputation, Cassandra found she was inexplicably curious about this charismatic character, and after only a brief pause offered a curt nod. First to the bartender, and then to the stranger.
When they’d each been served and the bartender had wandered off into the backroom, the traveler took her glass in long, thin fingers and brought it towards her. She managed to raise it to her lips in such a fashion that the heavy material of her hood still failed to fall away, revealing nothing of her face save a few wisps of some long, dark hair. Overgrown bangs, if Cassandra had to wager a guess. They obscured the woman’s eyes from view but seemed not to hamper her vision. Or, even if they did, not enough for the drifter to correct it.
“‘Seeker,’ did he say?” she asked as she set the glass down.
“He did,” said Cassandra, taking a drink, herself, “What of it?”
“Not the most common bunch. I have a friend who knows one fairly well.”
“You do?” this piqued her interest. She’d heard little from her former Order since the encounter with Lord Seeker Lucius in Val Royeaux, which had been disheartening to say the least.
“Yes. Some dragon-slaying hero. Saved a Chantry mother, or something.”
Cassandra scoffed, and she could tell from the tilt of the hood that the stranger was giving her a sidelong glance. Elaborating, she said, “You’re speaking of the ‘Hero of Orlais.’”
The stranger snapped her fingers. “Yes! That was it.”
“Cassandra Pentaghast.”
“That’s the one.” A pause, “You know her?”
“I am she,” Cassandra took another gulp of her ale, mentally noting how much the proper temperature influenced the ease with which the drink went down. “You are one of Leliana’s people, I take it?”
“Leliana,” the stranger contemplated the name, briefly, “Red hair, good with a pair of daggers, traveled with the Hero of Ferelden?”
“The very same.”
“We’ve met. Though I’d hardly call myself one of her ‘people.’”
Cassandra looked down again. She didn’t have many friends. Fewer still in the Inquisition. Tentatively, she asked, “Then, tell me, who is this friend of yours? The one whom I should know?”
“Varric Tethras.”
The seeker snorted a laugh. “Then I’m afraid you are mistaken. The dwarf and I are not friends. You must have your stories confused.”
“Oh, I doubt that. He’s very descriptive, you know. All that practice writing serials, and such,” the strange woman waved her hand and shifted slightly, though when Cassandra cast another glance her way found her face still obscured in shadow. She waited a moment for further elaboration, but none came.
“Then you have me at a disadvantage,” Cassandra answered, growing somewhat impatient with their little tête-à-tête, “You’ve yet to introduce yourself.”
“Oh, I’m no one of importance.”
The Seeker found that hard to believe. For as much as the dwarf got on her nerves, she would have been a fool not to have recognized Varric’s uncanny ability to attract those well worthy of notice to his acquaintanceship. Pirate queens. Rebel mages. Wayward Wardens. ‘A byproduct of being a businessman,’ he’d said to her once when speaking on the subject.
Rather, it was Cassandra’s suspicion that this traveler simply did not wish her identity to be known at this time. That in and of itself was perhaps not so unusual. The Seeker herself often loathed the way her past preceded her. While there were definitely benefits to notoriety, the relief of anonymity could be an alluring one. However, she also knew that far too often the desire to remain nameless was not so innocuous.
Equally suspect was the fact this woman seemed to know Cassandra’s story, or at least the overly-embellished version of it that was so often told, but appeared rather unimpressed. And while Cassandra was thankful for this, the irregularity of such an interaction was conspicuous. To the Seeker’s way of thinking, it could mean one of two things. Either, one, that such a tale of dragon hunters, crazed mages, and innocent lives of clergy members on the line was not so larger-than-life to the traveler, suggesting she herself had some run-ins with feats of legendary proportions, or two, that she was modeling the behavior she wished the Seeker to display towards her: that of polite disinterest. Very possibly it could be both.
Taking all this into consideration, Cassandra found herself growing increasingly suspicious. She reached again for her glass as she considered how best to respond. At that moment, a gust of gale force wind blew open the tavern door and slammed it against the far wall of the building so hard the room shook. Each Cassandra and the stranger startled, and the Seeker fumbled with her glass, which tipped over onto the bar and sent its contents spilling out over the edge.
“I am sorry,” the Seeker had already begun to apologize as she’d reached to right the glass before it either tumbled down and shattered on the floor or any more of her drink soaked the pair. On reflex, the traveler had also made a move for the beer mug, and in doing so had stretched out her arm, revealing a strange red marking just above her elbow. At first, Cassandra assumed it blood, and thought perhaps the glass had chipped and cut her somehow, but when her gaze lifted and granted her a better look at the symbol, it was instantly recognizable. She’d only ever seen that particular design once before: on an artist’s rendering of an infamous member of the Amell family. The very one whom Cassandra had spent the better part of the last two years searching for.
At the sudden realization, Cassandra pushed off from her barstool with such force that it toppled over behind her, her glass forgotten as the rest of the malt saturated into the counter and floorboards. The traveler, who took to her feet in response, shoved away from the high top and reached for the walking stick that until now Cassandra had not noticed doubled as a modest mage’s staff.
With the sharp movement came the flourish of her cloak, and the armor underneath was unmistakable: The Mantle of the Champion of Kirkwall.
Cassandra instinctively reached for her blade, only to recall she did not have it on her, instead having to shuffle for the small dagger kept holstered on her belt, which she used more often to open parcels with than to actually defend. A problem rendered moot by the fact that no sooner had she drawn the feeble weapon from its sheath did she recognized the blunt end of the glaive swing out to strike her hand, and the Seeker’s blade went sailing across the room. She moved to counter with a closed fist, but the strike was just a hair too slow, and her combatant parried.
A twirl of the staff, the sharp slam of a shoulder to her chest, and then there was a blade at her throat.
“Now, now,” said the Champion, whose hood had at last fallen to reveal icy grey-blue eyes that watched the Seeker closely, “And we were getting off to such a good start. To think, I was going to put you on my Feastday card list.”
While the sharpened end of the mage staff beneath her chin was quite the preoccupation, Cassandra still could not help but note the sight before her. Varric’s descriptions in his novelization had been fairly accurate. Though it seemed in the months spent in hiding Hawke had let her hair grow out some, and the famed slash of red was missing from across her nose. The mage had sharp features, pale skin, and bright eyes that shone in the flickering candlelight. It seemed some of her characteristics had been embellished — her eyes were not quite so blue as their depictions in the book, for example — but it was still generally a good likeness. Nonetheless, were it not for the famed armor, Cassandra was unsure if she would have picked the woman out from a crowd.
Also, she was… taller than Cassandra had pictured.
With each slow, small step backwards from the Seeker, a mirroring one forward followed from the Champion, and before long she’d managed to back Cassandra up against one of the support pillars of the still unfamiliar building. When her back met the harsh wood behind her, Cassandra felt herself swallow. Where the hell was that damned bartender?
She cursed under her breath, abominably angry with herself for having let her guard down while in the company of a stranger. And so soon after the attack on Haven! Had she not just learned the terrible consequences of failed vigilance? Were she better prepared, it would have perhaps been a close fight. She was a Seeker, after all. Even as one who had left the Order, she still retained many of her magic-impeding abilities.
But was this all not part of what made the Champion so dangerous? While clearly a skilled fighter in her own right — had she not just bested Cassandra without casting so much as a single spell? — it was now clear that of equal threat was the woman’s uncanny ability to make even the most reticent of individuals drop their guard while in her company. Cassandra had felt safe. Had felt interested. Invited. Enthralled, even. It was one part charisma, two parts deliberate, subtle invitation to be underestimated.
“Am I to take it that this is Varric’s idea? To have me slain by the very woman I was looking for when I questioned him?” For all the venom in her voice, there was audible strain in it, too. Cassandra was a trained warrior, true, but there was no getting used to the frightful sensation of cool, sharp metal against warm, thin flesh. “‘Poetic justice,’ he might call it.”
“I think you give our dear friend Mr. Tethras far too much credit,” Hawke answered, “Pretty sure he’d just call this murder.”
It seemed the Champion’s signature snark, occasionally over the most morbid of subject matter, was not just the garnish of an easily excitable author. Cassandra took a measured breath as she considered her next best course of action. Could she summon her Seeker powers before Hawke had the chance to slice the blade across her throat?
As she began calculating the odds of successfully executing a carefully choreographed combat roll, she said, “I give him too much credit, you say? Funny. He once said something similar about you.”
“And was this before or after the kidnapping and interrogation?”
Cassandra’s eyes narrowed slightly. “After,” she said, “But he was no longer my prisoner at the time. Nor is he now. He is free to leave the Inquisition whenever he chooses.” Upon feeling the cutlass lower ever so slightly from its resting place against the hollow of her neck, the Seeker added, “A fact I remind him of daily.”
“Hmm,” Hawke hummed as she studied her, and once again Cassandra begun to consider avenues of escape.
In truth, Cassandra did not know if she actually believed in that moment that the Champion would have struck her down. There was a time when she would not have hesitated to think so, but over the months of her acquaintanceship with Varric, and what she’d learned from her time hunting for the famed woman prior to the Conclave, suspicion had grown to begrudging respect had grown to downright admiration. Hawke was not the madwoman many claimed her to be. The Seeker knew that now. However, nothing deadened the voice of logical thought quite so suffocatingly as the pulsing sound of one’s own heartbeat in their ears when adrenaline had been dumped into the bloodstream en masse.
Instead of a bloody execution, however, a switch seemed to have been thrown in her mind and the mage stepped away. With another twirl, the blade was gone from the Seeker’s throat and the staff returned to its rightful place over Hawke’s shoulder, who sat back down after pulling up a new barstool to replace the one that had tumbled over. She made quick work of the rest of her drink and then, as casually as if nothing had happened at all, she looked up from her empty glass to Cassandra, who had yet to move from the spot she’d been backed into, and asked, “Another round?”
“Varric knew where Hawke was all along?” Leliana asked before chuckling quietly, “That is the last time we send Cassandra to perform an interrogation.”
Cassandra grumbled but said little in defense of herself as the remainder of the war council smiled and engaged in some lighthearted teasing. She’d already spoken with the Herald privately — who’d stopped her from very nearly ripping Varric’s head off — and her temper over the subject had cooled significantly. And, despite popular assumptions to the contrary, Cassandra was not so unused to friendship as to not recognize that the jibbing was out of genuine fondness rather than any legitimate questioning of her capabilities.
Furthermore, the group had been working tirelessly to bring things in Skyhold to running order now that the worst of the weather had passed and Thedas was quickly making its way towards Spring. The Herald had been named Inquisitor, a Darkspawn magister was still at large, the flowers would soon be in bloom, and there was much to be done; they could all use a little bit of levity.
“So, word is Champion of Shitstown had you pinned to a post like a wanted poster on a chanter’s board, yeah?”
Cassandra groaned into her glass as Sera dragged a chair up to the small alcove on the second floor of the tavern where she had been trying, in vain, to get some work done before the day’s end. “I would not exactly say she had me ‘pinned.’”
“Oh, I would,” said none other than the Champion herself, who saddled up beside her with Varric in tow. “Like a broach to the lapel of a stuffy Orlesian noble.”
In mere moments, it seemed nearly the Inquisitor’s entire inner circle had appeared from out of the woodwork, pulling up chairs or leaning on the nearby railing. The Seeker had the sudden sensation that she had been ambushed.
After shooting a brief glare about the group, Cassandra replied, “Why do you ask, Sera?”
Sera just shrugged. “Kinda’ hot.”
The flare of Cassandra’s cheeks betrayed her, and the group quickly erupted in boisterous laughter. “She took me by surprise!” she said, perhaps a bit too defensively, “It was not a fair fight.”
“They rarely are,” remarked Dorian, “Just imagine if that excuse worked with every gang of thugs or Red Templar encampment we came across. Why, the Hinterlands would never recover!”
“Surprise is a weapon just as much as any dagger or sword, Seeker,” Varric said, who had shrewdly taken up a seat out of arms reach and was considerably more emboldened amongst the company of half a dozen witnesses than he had been last they’d spoken.
“I for one would love to see the famed Hero of Orlais and Champion of Kirkwall go head to head,” said the Inquisitor, who was last to arrive at the table, though in doing so brought two large tankards of ale and began refilling glasses without prompting, “I’m sorry to have missed it.”
“You and me both,” muttered Sera, who received a kick under the table from somebody and cackled.
“I’m sure that could be arranged,” said The Iron Bull, “I wouldn’t mind a round, myself.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Dorian.
“Ahh, people lining up to try and kill me,” Hawke sighed, wistfully, “Just like old times.”
“You know, I think he’s actually rather fond of you, in his own way,” Hawke said later as the two of them walked through the empty courtyard. Cassandra had excused herself under the pretense of turning in early after she’d taken just about all she could of her comrades' cacophonous fraternization. It was not that she particularly disliked any of them – quite the contrary, in fact – she merely lacked the stomach for such late-night indulgences when there was work required of her the following morning. To her surprise, Hawke had also taken the opportunity to depart for the evening. Cassandra had offered to show her to some quarters she knew to be vacant, and Hawke had happily accepted.
“Who is?” Cassandra asked.
Hawke rolled her eyes, “Varric, of course.”
The Seeker scoffed as if she’d just heard a bad joke.
“Truly,” Hawke continued, “He thinks quite highly of you. He considers you a close ally and friend.”
“He called me a friend?”
“Well, a close ally.”
Thinking back to the quarrel they’d had upon Hawke’s arrival at Skyhold, Cassandra found that hard to believe. Had he not just called her a crazed zealot and accused her of having lost her mind? Though she knew as well as anyone that the words flung in anger were often distant relatives to the subtleties of the truths from which they’d stemmed.
“That is... hard to believe.”
They walked silently for a short while, just enjoying the quiet crispness of the night.
After a time, Cassandra said, “They will not desist their prodding until we spar. You know this?”
Hawke sighed up towards the stars but the smile that settled on her lips after was good natured, and she cast the Seeker a sidelong glance. “Admit it, you just want another go at me.”
Cassandra laughed and conceded, “I am not completely opposed to the idea,”
“Alright,” said Hawke, “But I’ll warn you now: I won’t go easy on you this time.”