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Cassandra frowned slightly. There was a mattress where she slept. It had replaced the simple bedroll she usually used both out at camp and back here at Skyhold, and a moment’s investigation found the old thing neatly rolled up and placed in a corner. She prodded the mattress suspiciously with her foot. It looked new, and there was a pillow and some kind of quilt she didn’t recognise either.
Cole? No, Varric, it had to be. He had only first seen the place where she slept above the armoury a couple of days ago, and hadn’t done much to disguise his melodramatic horror at what she considered a perfectly functional space in which to sleep and keep her belongings. Cassandra had never been much of a nest builder, preferring the outdoors as it was, and if she needed to relax she’d go and read a book in the garden or go for a walk. She’d told the Inquisitor that home was wherever she was, and that was true – she hadn’t many possessions beyond her armour and books, and had no need for a luxurious living space. This was entirely adequate for her needs.
Varric clearly disagreed. Cassandra sighed, torn between irritation and amusement. They had been...together for only a short time, and though she was happier than she believed possible at the unexpected turn of events, she was still getting used to the idea. Together; a word that implied too much and not enough all at once. But then what other word could she use? Varric himself probably had half a dozen in mind, but that sort of thing had never come easily to her. ‘Friends’ was no longer appropriate, ‘allies’ far too cold, ‘lovers’ was – Maker, she blushed even to think the word – inaccurate. Especially since they weren’t...they hadn’t...
Cassandra’s eyes were drawn irresistibly back to the mattress.
No, that was absurd. Varric was not trying to seduce her with furniture. More likely he just genuinely thought her living space was too basic and couldn’t resist the urge to interfere, terrible busybody that he was. Cassandra tried without much success to fend off the overwhelming feeling of fondness that crept over her at the thought. Maker save her, but she couldn’t help but find his irrepressible need to personally fix everything rather endearing. She could rebuke him for the invasion of her privacy of course, but that wasn’t really an issue. She felt no particular sense of ownership over this room; it wasn’t as if it even had a door, beyond the one that led into the armoury below from outside. And she trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t pry into her belongings, such as they were.
Really, there was no reason to be annoyed by this other than the fact that it was...strange. Unexpected, that seeing where she slept had apparently preyed on Varric’s mind to the point where he had taken action. A little touching, actually. Cassandra was unused to the idea that someone might do something for her with no other motive than to make her life slightly easier.
The idea of Varric of all people making her life easier was certainly a novel one. But then she’d had to somewhat re-evaluate her ideas of their relationship recently, after all.
She smiled to herself. Perhaps she could keep the mattress. Some changes could be for the better, after all.
In spite of the precedence, the chair still came as a surprise when it turned up about a week later. Cassandra climbed the stairs above the armoury after a long, spectacularly boring afternoon talking strategy in the war room, wanting nothing more than to read a few chapters of a familiar book and fall asleep, and she had actually sat down in the chair for several minutes before she realised that she hadn’t had one before today.
She got up and examined it wearily. This was ridiculous. The mattress had been...kind, if initially unwanted, and once she had gotten used to sleeping on it Cassandra had to admit it was an improvement. But did Varric intend to replace all her furniture bit by bit and hope that somehow she wouldn’t notice?
It wasn’t a bad chair. It was comfortable, cushioned but straight backed, oak wood with carved legs. It went quite neatly next to the small table where she usually kept a pile of books, unobtrusive enough. But she hadn’t needed a chair. Or well...perhaps she had, but she had made do without one. Sitting around all day was not the way to get things done.
Cassandra sighed heavily. Varric was still away in some desert with the Inquisitor for the next week or so, and had been gone for several days already. Which meant he must have roped in someone else to do his dirty work for him, and all while he was safely out of range of her inevitable protests too. The coward. They would be having words about this.
Strangely enough, she found she was rather looking forward to it.
In the meantime, Cassandra picked up her copy of Swords and Shields and grudgingly settled into her new chair to read, drawing her quilt around her. She had read the latest chapter half a dozen times already, and it was now more of a habit than anything – something comfortingly familiar in an increasingly uncertain time. Just as its author was, actually. You could always rely on the Guard Captain to save the day, on her dashing lover to watch her back and support her through thick and thin, for there to be a happy (if wildly improbable) ending. And you could always rely on Varric to be himself – charming and generous and thoroughly irritating and surprisingly thoughtful.
He had done this for her too, though she had hardly realised it at the time, continued a story he had all but disowned just to see the look on her face. He’d been flippant and off-hand but he had done it nonetheless, and not once used it against her, or asked for anything in return. And yet it had taken her such a long time to believe he truly cared for her. What was it Justinia had used to say? ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’ As the sun went down, Cassandra fell asleep in her chair, book dropping to her side, wondering what the Divine would have thought of all this.
By the time Varric returned from the Western Approach, Cassandra had forgotten her intention to harangue him about the chair. In truth, it was good to see him again.
When the watercolour paintings appeared on her wall (sweet Andraste, where had he even got those from?) Cassandra didn’t even bother bringing it up, since they at least were quite lovely. Varric had good taste, which would come as something of a shock to anyone who had read his novels, surely. One painting was of the oasis they had been to in the western desert some months back, one of the few places they had been on Inquisition business that had been well worth the trip, not just for what they had learned but because it had been remarkably beautiful. If she looked at the painting she could almost hear the rushing of the waterfalls, feel the warm dappled sun on her skin. The other paintings were less recognisable but still somehow familiar; forests and mountains, castles and bustling cities, but all so real and vibrant that they might have been lifted from her own memories.
When she next saw Cole, he had paint on his fingers. When Cassandra asked him about it, he smiled shyly.
“He wanted to bring the outside in for you, his head is always full of words and yours is full of pictures. You read his but he can’t see yours so I told him I wanted to help. But he said they should be yours because they already are.”
“Thank you. They’re beautiful.”
“His heart, your eyes, my hands. Yes, they are.”
The small bookcase she almost let pass without comment too, as it was really quite useful, but the addition of several books of varying degrees of literary merit was, Cassandra decided, a step too far. When she tried to bring it up to Varric however, somehow they became drawn into a conversation about the cutthroat world of romance novelists, which ended up in him telling her a story about a certain bestselling Tevinter author’s escapades that had her laughing until tears rolled down her cheeks. Even a passing Dorian couldn’t wangle the true name of the infamous author out of Varric however, and by the end of the conversation the mage had ruefully declared his intent to read every single book on Cassandra’s shelves, with her permission, in order to try and work it out.
Actually, he confided in her later, some of them weren’t half bad.
The trip to the Emerald Graves had taken longer than expected, and the journey back had not been improved by the Inquisitor getting them lost several times, or Vivienne and Blackwall’s constant bickering. Cassandra was not in a particularly good mood when they arrived back at Skyhold far later than planned, and she headed straight to the armoury, as relieved just to be able to away from the others for a while as she was to be back. It was the early hours of the morning when she finally dragged her feet up the stairs, and she was so tired that she was only vaguely aware of something on the small table that she would have to look at tomorrow. Then she practically fell into bed and straight to sleep.
When she awoke it was past noon, the sunlight was streaming though the window and the room was full of the scent of flowers. There was a vase on the table with a spray of wildflowers in it, along with a book. Cassandra scrambled out of bed and picked it up to see what was unmistakably the next chapter of Swords and Shields. There was a note inside the front:
I know you’re supposed to get back sometime later tonight but I expect you’ll be too tired to want to see anyone until tomorrow, so I thought I’d just leave this here. As you can see, I got a lot of writing done while you were away – you’re a terrible distraction, you know that, Seeker? So you only have yourself to blame for this. Enjoy.
-Varric
P.S. Come and see me when you can. I missed you.
Cassandra stared at the last three words of the note, containing more simple honesty than Varric had heretofore displayed for the entire time she’d known him. Then she looked at the slim book in her hand, and did something she had never in her life imagined she would do...put it down without opening it. Instead she headed downstairs, a smile spreading across her face, and went to find Varric.
Cassandra didn’t make it back to her own room that night, so it wasn’t until the next morning that she noticed the new curtains hanging on the window and the thick sheepskin rug on the floor, which she had completely overlooked the previous day. But by then, she didn’t much care anymore.