Chapter Text
The quiet was new. It was the first thing he noticed as the stillness of sleep gave way and he blinked himself awake: not the way his arms still ached from that last fight, not the embers hissing as they died in the grate, not the shadow of the armoire pushed in front of the door (just in case), not the steady rise and fall of Hawke’s breath beside him, but the quiet. The quiet.
Maker, he hated it.
It was like his ears hadn’t popped after the boom, like something had been knocked loose inside of his head, or, shit, the world itself, and now everything was doomed to be muffled. Muted. Quiet.
Forever.
Before his ears could start ringing with it—the silence, the absence, the writerly instinct to spiral deeper and deeper into whatever it was—Varric rolled onto his side, leaving the too-hot divot of his pillow to bury his face in the crook of Hawke’s neck. His arms went around her, he pulled her close, and even as he pressed his lips to her shoulder, her breathing stayed steady; an answer to a question he hadn’t asked.
“Never thought I’d see the day, but here it is…” he murmured against her skin, “I actually miss waking up to Norah’s swearing. You believe that?”
Instead of answering outright, she took a breath and let it out in a sigh. One of her hands slid over his. The other remained beneath her pillow.
The quiet persisted.
“And her stomping? Don’t get me started on her stomping! Not to mention her shouting, her endlessly charming habit of dropping full trays of dishes right at the asscrack of dawn...” Suddenly, he found himself thinking too of Corf’s humming. Rivaini’s teasing. The low drone of the elf’s voice coming from the next room over. All gone now, all scattered like funeral ashes.
He held Hawke a little tighter.
She pulled in another long breath that he worried would end in another sigh, but…it didn’t. It took a minute, but finally (finally) she spoke, helping him to push the quiet away.
“Some nerve you have, messere, waxing poetic about another woman in my bed. If I were anyone else, you’d be on the street by now. Or, barring that—” One of her legs slid up in a hollow threat. “—the floor.”
“Waxing poetic? Me?”
“Mhm. Admit it, you’re but a step away from bringing up the color of her eyes—”
“Dirty dish water.”
“—the timbre of her voice—”
“Metal scraping on cobblestone.”
“—the decidedly alluring way she’d come to us at the end of a long night, shooing us off from the usual table…”
“Usually with a broom, yeah.”
And for a moment, an instant, everything was okay. He heard the soft snort of her laughter, the rustle of her pillowcase, felt her fingertips tracing the shape of his hands. Things were normal; things were fine. Past the drawn canopy of her bed, the world was dark and slow and still, and there were jokes to be made. He could almost hear Daisy’s laughter, could just about see the way Blondie’s eyes gleamed before he threw his hat in the ring. This was where Aveline would suck her teeth, where Sunshine would cover her mouth before anyone could see how wide her smile was. This was where they’d be if they weren’t all hiding.
This was where they’d be.
“I miss her too,” Hawke admitted, shaking him from the maudlin cast of his thoughts. The laughter had gone out of her voice, though the smile, as ever, fought on. She tapped her fingers along his skin, every ounce of nervous energy channeled into those ten little points, and then she sighed again, deeper than before. “I miss everyone.”
“Yeah.” Varric shut eyes. “Except Choir Boy, right? That one's kind of a relief, if you ask me.”
That time, the joke didn’t stick. Hell, he wasn’t even sure it landed, not with the way he felt her hands leaving his, the movement of the sheets suggesting they’d gone to her hair, her face. His stomach twisted (it was starting to seem that was the only thing it was capable of doing, anymore) but he refused to let it show. She’d been so strong for so long, she’d carried everything for everyone else, held the weight of the whole damn city on her shoulders since she’d taken that first step off the boat—he could do this one thing for her, he could hold steady until she left.
After that was anyone’s guess, but until then? Yeah. Yeah, he could do that.
As if reading his mind, she started to say, “I should just stay. I should just stay…” and because he wanted that too, because there was nothing in the world he wanted more, Varric made himself cut her off before she became too convincing.
“The hero always has to leave home, you know,” he said, hoping she couldn’t feel his frown as he brought his lips to her shoulder again. Her skin was still warm from sleep. “Creates drama. And you know how much the people love drama…it’s what keeps them going, makes them turn the page to see what happens next.”
She didn’t respond to that, but he knew it wasn’t for a lack of things to say. How many homes had Hawke left already? How many had she been forced to leave? Homes physical and not, literal and sentimental, built on foundations of dirt, of stone, of blood, of unlikely friendship and love? More than just this one. More than any one person should’ve been asked to endure.
He swallowed around the growing lump in his throat and willed his voice to hold steady. “Buuut…she always comes back. She has to, the audience would riot if she didn’t! Besides,” he found he had to swallow again, “there’s the handsome love interest to take into consideration. You know, the one who’ll be pining for her every day until she makes her dramatic return? There are only so many windows for him to gaze longingly out of, Hawke…there are only so many couches for him to throw himself across in a fit of pique.”
At that, she scoffed, and it was such a tiny, brittle sound that it barely seemed to belong to her at all, but it did, and so he screwed his eyes shut tighter in an attempt to memorize it, knowing memory was what he’d have of her, come tomorrow.
Come tonight.
A few hours from now.
Maybe less.
How would he survive the quiet then? How would he stand it?
In his arms, Hawke took a deep breath. Huffed it out. She felt coiled tight as a spring next to him, wound up the way she’d been before facing the Arishok, Orsino, Meredith, her mother’s pyre. “What then?” she asked, her tone uncharacteristically flat. “The hero leaves. The audience cheers. The story goes on, doesn’t it? So what happens while she’s gone?”
“Things get better and they get worse.” Not knowing what else to do, Varric shrugged, then, worried he was smothering her somehow, loosened his grasp. He rolled onto his back, tucking a hand behind his head as he stared up at the canopy.
He could tell her a story, sure. It’s what he did best, after all (and lately, it had started to seem like it was the only thing he could do).
“That’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Tale as old as time. The city pulls itself together while she’s away, so she doesn’t have to worry about watching the growing pains while she takes care of herself. It falls apart, too, because she isn’t there to keep the rabble in line, but when she gets back, oooh…it all falls into place.”
The quiet pressed in again, insistent and impatient. Ready, he thought, to settle into the spaces where once their friends had been—where life as he’d known it had burnt away beneath the heat of the Chantry ruins. A lifetime of doing everything in his power to avoid it, to outrun it, to fill it, and there it was anyway. Was that irony, he wondered? Or just sad?
He made a mental note to ask his editor.
The mattress whined when Hawke finally followed him, rolling onto her other side. Without a word, at least not at first, she set her head on his chest and curled herself up and up and up until she felt small beside him. Impossibly small. The Champion wasn’t meant to shrink like that; she was a statue on the docks, a razor-edged profile in countless tapestries. She should’ve made a much bigger dent in the bed.
“And then?” she asked, laying a hand over his heart in what he realized was her own silent memorization. “After that?”
His fingers found her hair the way they always seemed to in idle moments. How long would it be the next time he saw her? “Hmm? Oh, the series will fall off. It’ll get real boring real fast. The hero and her incredibly charming love interest, well, they’ll probably get married…get old…have a couple kids along the way, or, for the Fereldan readers, a couple horrible, terrible dogs that eat all their expensive Antivan rugs…”
Hawke breathed hard through her nose. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was close enough for him. “Or both.”
Varric smiled. Tried to, anyway. Close enough for her, he hoped. “Or both. And the happily ever after will be so happy and so idyllic that people will get bored of it and quit caring altogether. Sad to say, huh? Sad but true. When the conflict resolves and the danger’s gone, everyone loses interest. Give it enough time, I’ll bet they forget the hero ever was the hero. Hell, they might forget she ever existed! She’ll just have to spend the rest of her long, long, long life in obscurity. No one will make her do anything heroic ever again.”
For a beat, she just lay with him, her breath synced perfectly to his. Then, “You promise?”
He didn’t pretend to think about it. “I do. It’s the only way this one can end, Hawke. Trust me, I’ve written enough of them to know.”
She lifted her head, her eyes meeting his, and there was another moment—fleeting but tangible—where things could’ve almost been normal. In the thin morning light coming through the canopy, Hawke smiled before setting her cheek back on his chest, no doubt readying herself for what came next. “You’re an excellent liar, you know that?” she teased. “…but I hope you’re right.”
“Yeah,” he said, pressing a kiss into her hair as he silently begged the sun to stop rising, the world to stop turning, if only so they could stay there a little longer. “So do I.”