Chapter Text
They had met long before either of them knew Alana.
There had been a riot, terrible- burning trash cans, smashed windows- the university had been on the map for a few days. Of course that left Cassandra, the university police sheriff, scrambling.
Their small police force did not have anything resembling riot gear, nor did she want any to begin with. Pressure from the city police came down hard on her to control the situation, but she refused to use harsh methods on kids. She may not have understood the rioting- from what she had gathered it had been a political rally gone wrong- but she would not arrest college students for being sucked into a mob mentality. She did her best to locate and fine those who had done any damage to the school but her real interest was who had incited it. That was the one person she would be sure would pay for making that week her own personal hell.
Rumors circulated about the professors who had attended the rally. Many students refused to name names and with no charges to threaten them with, Cassandra was at a loss. Finally, one name came to light: Varric Tethras.
She had sent a few of her officers to pick him up under the specific command that he was not under arrest, but she wished to make him feel as if he had little choice. Her officers did not disappoint- into the station came a short, stocky man who wore a smirk of confidence, flanked by two men in uniform. Cassandra watched from her office as they led him down to the small interrogation room. The door closed behind the man and she stood, inhaling deeply. She would get all the information she could out of this man. She would persuade him that his tenure would be in danger.
As soon as she entered the room her confidence was shaken. Tethras sat leaning back in the wooden chair, completely unfazed by the circumstances. Under normal circumstances, people in the interrogation room were scared, shaken. Instead, Varric looked up and smiled as she came in, greeting her with an enthusiastic, “Sheriff!” It gave her pause.
“Mr. Tethras,” she greeted, making sure not to address him as ‘professor’. If she could prove he helped incite the riot, he would not be professor for long.
“A pleasure,” he said, “Though, perhaps not, under the circumstances.”
Cassandra sat, back straight, face unmoved by his nonchalance. She flipped through the report she had in her hand, looking for the specific page that the student’s testimonial insinuated Tethras’s presence at the riot.
“I don’t suppose I’m here for a cordial visit,” the man continued, “But to be honest, Sheriff, I don’t know what else I could possibly be here for.”
Cassandra quickly checked the camera in the corner of the room. The red light was blinking. As her gaze flicked back to Tethras, she noticed he had followed her gaze and was now looking at the camera, his confident smirk fading. Good, she thought, He should be nervous.
“Please state your name and position,” she said, pen in her hand, a legal bound yellow notepad beside her.
“Varric Tethras, Professor of English. I specialize in Creative Writing and Literary Classics.” Cassandra continued looking at him, pen unmoving. “But you already knew that.”
“How long have you been working at the university?”
“Forty years.”
Cassandra’s brow furrowed. The man was barely thirty, according to his records.
“Ah, that’s what I thought,” the English professor said, “You know these answers already. Why bother then, Sheriff? Am I being detained?”
“Do not test me, Mr. Tethras,” Cassandra said, her grip on her pen tight enough to whiten her knuckles.
What was left of Varric’s smirk dissipated quickly. “Seven years.”
“What were you doing on April 28th of this year?”
Understanding seemed to dawn on the man’s face before it was quickly hidden under a new and improved smirk. “So that’s what this is about! The riot!”
Cassandra drew a quick “k” on the notepad followed by a “a?” Varric glanced down at the letters, his mask refusing to crack.
“Did you attend this riot?”
Varric raised an eyebrow. “You know the answer to that one too, don’t you?”
“And if I said I didn’t?”
“You’d be lying.”
They stared each other down, Cassandra doing her best to remain cool for the camera. No doubt any younger recruits were standing behind the two-way mirror, taking notes. She could not afford to give into this man’s instigatory tactics.
Varric was the first to break eye contact. “Fine, you got me Sheriff. Yeah, I was at the rally that started the riot but I’m really not as important to the inciting of it as you seem to think.”
“Do you know a student by the name of Anderson Smith?”
“Yeah,” Varric sighed, “He’s one of my students.”
Cassandra began writing down different shorthand notes to herself about his demeanor and his language usage.
“Many seem to agree that he was the one to first incite violence and that you were in the vicinity. Others report that Anderson and one by the name of Marian Hawke are both your students and good friends.”
“Now wait, Sheriff-“
“As if that weren’t already very close to a breach of education ethics, Mr. Tethras, is implicating that you may be involved in some way with the student who is responsible for beginning the riot that led to thousands of dollars of damage to the school and-“
“Now wait a minute, Sheriff!”
Cassandra stopped, infuriated by the interruption.
“They may be my students, and yes, even friends, and I know how that looks,” he said, “But you need to hear the whole story.”
Cassandra threw the report over her shoulder and pointed the pen in her hand directly in Varric’s face. “Very well,” she obliged, teeth grinding, “But I want every single detail.”
The interrogation had lasted well over three hours. Cassandra scribbled away on her notepad and the English teacher weaved a tale of a young civil rights movement being born across the country and, indirectly, through the university. The story was so rich, Varric’s voice the voice of a storyteller, that Cassandra couldn’t help but be entranced. When the man said his last, her page was covered in shorthand, her brain filled with images of the intense romance between Anderson and Marian, their burning need for justice overwhelming everything they touched.
Perhaps it was three-hour session that left her brain muddled, or perhaps it was the images of the romantic two young revolutionaries and their group of friends, but she let Varric go. When she had regained herself she went to go find and potentially arrest Anderson and Marian only to find they had dropped out and disappeared. Rage blinded her- she did not see until weeks later that if she had not let Varric go, they would not have had time to duck out from under her jurisdiction. When the city police asked for a final report she had simply stated that there had been too many contributing factors to place the blame on one or two students.
The situation had brought Cassandra closer to the higher ups, leading her to Alana. It wasn’t until three years later, though, did Alana’s accident occur and she was brought face to face with Varric Tethras once more.