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"We gotta stop meeting like this." Hawke leans back in a suspiciously comfortable chair in The Hanged Man and places his tankard on the table with a smile. That's where his mind goes every time he's in the Fade: old comforts, old places. Kirkwall. Varric. The track back to Weisshaupt has been exhausting; he never wants to go back. Hawke wants it to end. Varric just laughs, greying hair falling over his shoulders as he shakes his head. Hawke could look at him forever.
"Do I visit you in the Fade often?"
Hawke doesn't know if it's a demon or his mind helpfully providing him something to hold on to but he'll take it, for a brief moment. It's easy to offer the truth.
"All the time."
Varric looks down into his own tankard full of whatever Fade concoction the manifestation of Nora has given them. Hawke allows himself to look as his friend drinks as if Varric wasn't sure he could. Dwarves don't go into the Fade, dwarves don't dream. It will be over soon.
"I missed you, you know." Another truth that Hawke spills out as easily as he drinks the alcohol that won't give him a headache. "You could've written a letter."
Varric sighs.
"I...kind of really couldn't, Hawke. I wanted to. I can't." He places his ale on the thick wooden table with carefulness Hawke has seen before, a gentle touch he'd give to Bianca when he was the one to stand guard at night. To Merrill, tired and way older than any of them recognized in her. To Hawke, when Leandra died, and he didn’t know if he wanted to rage or cry, or relish in relief. The room disappears.
They're in Varric's quarters. He looks tired, with way too much grey in the ginger strands making his hair look almost silver-black under the light of a dying candle.
"Hawke, look at me. I know you're not stupid. Just...look."
Hawke obeys because it's easy, because it's Varric, one way or another, even if he'd have to kill the demon later. He notices the dark circles and a new scar on Varric's face, his hair glistening like water. He's aged. Hawke didn't think he'd see him age that much, that quickly. Maybe the Fade is being inventive. Maybe the Fade reflects reality Hawke hasn’t seen, which shouldn’t be possible, and this Varric shouldn’t be real. Maybe…well. Varric's face twists in unbearable kindness when Hawke exhales.
"How long have you been trapped here?"
Varric laughs. Touches his hand, and the calloused hand holding Hawke's is very real and warm. Hawke doesn't know why Varric looks at him as if he's gonna break.
"I love your optimism but it's not that simple, Hawke. I uh..." He looks away but doesn't withdraw his hand. "I'll see you again.”
***
Weisshaupt is cold and broken. The unmovable citadel, fractured in more ways than one. The Wardens looked lost and ashamed, at least something Hawke can understand, how the most important part of being who they are got twisted and turned against them, but by their own hand. He knows. He tries not to blame them.
There is no Warden-Commander because there is Grief, and it hasn’t left in all this time. The Warden-Commander, the only one that still makes Hawke reverent, is Maker knows where, and Hawke just hopes that she made it, that she knew something that Coripheus didn't. But there's no one in her place or Clarel's, and Hawke almost laughs when Wardens offer him to join. Mother would find it noble, fitting maybe, honouring Carver. Leandra only remembered to love their children when they were on their deathbed though, or long after, something Hawke saw firsthand when he buried them both. Hawke sees the offer for what it is: the world is dying, and you're a friend. We need a friend who has carried us before. Hawke is tired of the weight. He refuses, and the Wardens understand. For once, no one blames him.
This time it is Lake Calenhad. Not a conscious choice really, but when he sees Varric again, he still thinks of Mother before she got bitter, before she stopped being Comfort and made it her mission to remind Hawke of all the deaths he didn't stop. Varric pats the place next to him on the wooden pier.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
"If I had a penny for every thought, Carta would be on my tail real quick."
The water is perfectly still until Hawke submerges his toes in with a groan. Then the surface ripples, as if real.
Hawke knows Varric drinks him in, looks at his face staring at the sky drowning in stars. Varric looks like he's about to ask something, brows furrowed and eyes so tender that Hawke wants to scream. Not tonight. Just not tonight.
"Okay." He didn't realize he said it out loud. Varric huffs out a laugh, short and dry. "Okay then. Why here?"
Why here indeed? Hawke thinks of running to Calenhad with Bethany at his heels, screeching like children because they were still allowed to be children. He remembers picking berries and eating way too much half submerged, remembers hot summer days and cool water around his skin, before they had to move and run and skip town after town for safety that kept slipping away. He wishes they had come back to bury Father there. Varric lies down next to him.
"Too much?"
"I guess...I guess it felt important. To show you the roots, you know."
Varric's hand finds his. They lie next to each other, Hawke with his feet in the water and Varric with his just barely getting past the wooden planks. Hawke allows himself to breathe out.
"I'm glad you didn't agree, by the way. I just want to be extra clear, I would have been pretty fucking angry."
Hawke turns his head, and Varric smiles, but the crinkles around his eyes are rigid and wrong.
"Oh, you saw? From here? Keeping me in check?"
Hawke doesn't want to think what "here" means or why Varric keeps an eye on him like he's always done from the fucking Fade.
"Making sure you don't die, you idiot. It would have made years lying to Cassandra to save your ass kind of pointless." Varric sighs. Rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, and Hawke wants to touch his face, to take some of the tension away. He doesn't, of course. "I don’t want you to save the world. The world...fuck the world. You know we both care but you don't need to sacrifice yourself for it. Enough people did."
Hawke drapes his arm around Varric's shoulders and buries his nose in his greying hair. He doesn't want to think about the world or the Wardens, or the way Varric clings to him and what it all means, so he doesn't. The lake stays still.
***
He still doesn't think about it, about the streaks of silver in Varric's hair that weren't there before, about Varric seeming to know everything but still allowing Hawke to bullshit. About a letter that he knows is from Leliana, he knows what's in it. If he thinks about it, he will have to open it, touch the parchment that he wants to burn, curse Leliana's name, even though she is not the one to blame, not this time, not really. She’s done a kindness Hawke doesn’t want. Instead Hawke makes it to Kirkwall because damn it, he has his own fucking key, and avoids Aveline at all costs. He knows the guard are watching, keeping an eye on Hawke for her, but fuck her care. Fuck her righteousness. Hawke goes through Darktown knowing Bran would try to run after him and drag him to the viscount seat or worse, force him into a meeting with Aveline if he as much as set one foot in Hightown. So he goes to the only place that makes sense.
The Hanged Man changed. It's quieter, for one, less sticky, but the ale he orders is just as nasty as he remembered. "Acquired taste," as Varric used to say, and Hawke doesn't want to think about what it means that he finds comfort in the unbearable bitterness of the alcohol. The letter in his chest pocket burns more anyway. He still doesn't read it. Instead he downs as much ale as Nora will allow him to order and asks her for the key. A part of him loosens when she shrugs and tosses it.
"Still don't have your own?"
Maybe Nora doesn't know. Maybe she doesn't think about it, something they both have in common. Hawke smirks.
"Didn't need one before."
He crawls upstairs into the space he remembers being Varric's. Reds and dark wood dulled out with age, but the table is still polished and shiny. Hawke starts the fire out of habit and wants to wail when the flames flicker in warm streaks on the walls. He feels small under the covers in Varric's bed, too big for a dwarf, just right for a human. Apparently too big for Hawke, too. He wants the bed to swallow him whole.
When he opens his eyes, Varric is there. Hawke would expect him to sit at his table and not perched on the foot of the bed, but who is he to tell Varric where to sit in his own fucking room?
"Are you trying to get hunted by Nightingale? She might be the Divine and all, but I bet one day she'll show up at your door and force you to drink tea with cookies and talk about your feelings."
Hawke rubs his eyes. "Maker, that's worse than Coripheus."
Varric laughs. "No shit." He looks at Hawke with what Hawke knows to be sympathy, and he wants to throw up. Instead he sits up.
"Don't do this to me."
His friend sighs, and for a moment his hair is more red from the fire, and for a moment, Hawke forgets what he is trying not to think about. For a moment, he is in Varric's bed with Varric sitting beside him, and Hawke still has time.
"You are just delaying the inevitable, Hawke. There's no other ending to my story, no matter how much you refuse to read it.”
Something in Hawke breaks. He wants to say something, to argue, to tell Varric that he isn't ready, that he doesn't want to let him go. Instead he sobs, shakes with his whole body as if Bethany died again. He allows Varric to wrap his hands around his shoulders, put his head against the familiar warmth of Varric’s chest. There's fingers in his hair that don't leave until his body runs out of tears, even if temporarily.
“How?”
Varric tells him. It's not his usual story, when it's hard to tell which part is real. Varric tells him of Rook and Harding, and a woman called Neve. Of him being tired. Of him knowing that Solas would strike and trying to stop him anyway. He doesn't tell Hawke that he didn't care if he lived or died; they've exchanged enough letters for Hawke to know. He is thankful though, for the omission. Varric tells him about the dagger and the Lighthouse. Hawke wants to kill Solas himself.
“I'd rather you don't. The bastard is powerful, and his enemies more so, you’ve no fucking idea. Do me a favour, Hawke, lie low just this once.”
Hawke laughs, but it's a coarse sound, punched out of his lungs that are still heaving from the sobs.
“No way. Maybe if I die, then I will join you at least.”
Hawke expects a punch in the teeth. Instead, Varric sighs. He doesn't say anything. They sit face to face, and at least right now Varric or his essence, is real. His hand finds Hawke’s, interlocks their fingers together.
“I don't have much time left, Hawke.” It's the truth. Hawke nods. His throat is dry, but he needs to squeeze the words out. Varric probably knows, but it doesn't matter.
“I love you. Loved you since the Deep Roads, just was too much of a coward to tell you.” He laughs, Varric's eyes never leave his. “And now look at us. I told you only when…”
“When I died.” Varric finishes for him. Hawke exhales, shudders with it.
“Yeah.”
Varric’s hand leaves his, but Hawke doesn't have the time to feel fear: his hand is on Hawke’s cheek, caressing under the hollows of his eyes. Varric's face is close. They can share a breath neither of them really make. Hawke still indulges, and Varric allows him.
“You and me both, Hawke, you and me both.”
The kiss is just like Hawke imagined all these years, even though his lips taste of salt from the tears. Varric drinks them in regardless, takes whatever Hawke can give him. They're running out of time, and the time they have is borrowed anyway. Hawke will have to wake up. Varric is dead. He kisses Hawke, and Hawke wants to scream at the fucking gods until his throat gets hoarse, until his voice dies. Varric bites his lip.
“If you can't stay out of trouble for me, at least come to the Lighthouse, see what the kid is up to.”
Hawke doesn't know if Varric will be there. If it will be his Varric. The man gives him another firm kiss that feels like something final.
“I'll make it there. I will. Think of it as me adding an extra scene before the book closes.”
Hawke doesn't count on Solas’ kindness but he wants to count on this. Varric lies down with him in this huge bed that should have him in it, alive and well, and rested, and before Hawke closes his eyes to prepare to read the letter and choke over Leliana's perfect handwriting breaking down, he hears it.
“Love you too, you stupid man. Maker knows, love you too.”