Another foray into DA:I. While this does take place with the some of the same characters and settings as my previous Hawke stories, it can also be read entirely on its own. While it does take some liberties with the story and setting, it's not a true AU. I've also upped the rating for this one. As always, Bioware owns nearly everything. Reviews are always welcome.
Storms
Part One
"You know," Varric said, and brushed sand out of his collar. "This might not be the best idea we've ever had."
"Wonderful," Hawke responded. "And here I thought I'm meant to say things like that while you reassure me that I'm just being cynical."
"Cynical, realistic. Whichever," he said absently.
Days and days back out in the middle of nowhere, he thought, the mornings brittle and windy and the afternoons searingly hot and the nights clamping down with cold and damn it but he was actually missing Skyhold. The desert was uselessly empty, wind-raked dunes sloping up against weather-pitted ruins.
Weeks ago they had found the tower, a disappointing funnel of crumbling stone perched perilously on the edge of an outcropping. There he had seen – they had all seen – that it was as bad as they'd thought, or feared, or desperately hoped it wouldn't be. The air crackling as they had seen Wardens bound and chained to the floating, sliding shapes of demons and the vicious awareness that this was what Corypheus wanted with them.
Wanted them shackled and locked into forced loyalty.
And now Varric was here, still surrounded by nothing but sandy wasteland and the prickling knowledge that they'd be finding their way to the Warden fortress, Adamant. That he was sitting in the middle of a damn war camp, wondering just how it had all spiraled away from him and gotten this big this fast.
Except, some treacherous thought prodded, it had been already, since Haven, since the Conclave.
Since he'd stood in front of a stone archway in the Vimmark Mountains and remarked to Hawke that they were far enough out of Kirkwall that whatever the Carta wanted, it'd better be good and worth it.
"Here," Hawke said, and pushed a wineskin into his hands.
He mumbled a thank-you and tipped it up, the wine tangy and too sweet. The wind had picked up again, gusting hard enough to ripple the tents.
Whenever his thoughts drifted, he could hear it, the sound of too many people around them. Inquisition scouts and soldiers carting messages and carrying weapons and shouting orders. Someone else grousing about supper, and one of Cullen's younger soldiers worrying out loud that he still didn't know where the damn blacksmith was holed up.
On one side, he could hear Hawke, her voice teasingly soft as she said something to Fenris, the elf's clipped tones following in response. On the far side of the fire he was aware of Sera and then Blackwall, laughing raucously at whatever she'd said.
Footsteps crunched against the sand, and he looked up in time to see Cassandra, as windblown as the rest of them, her eyes narrowed.
"Seeker," Varric said, and summoned up a tired grin.
She nodded. "Varric." She glanced past him, her gaze landing on Hawke. "Champion, if I might borrow you?"
Hawke sighed and dragged herself upright. "I'm coming. Only if you promise to never call me that again."
"I'll try to remember," Cassandra said, and Varric could've sworn she almost smiled.
Varric shook the wineskin at Fenris. "It's awful, but it's one of only a few options."
The elf straightened up, his expression sharpening. "You're still talking about the wine?"
"Hah. Very funny."
Fenris tugged the wineskin out of his hand. "You've never been out this far before?"
"No. It's desolate, unsettling, empty, and above all, boring. Not my kind of place."
"Boring," the elf said, the flicker of a smile curving his mouth. "That's a complaint, is it?"
"Normally it would be."
The evening turned brittle, grey clouds rushing overhead and the wind dragging the fire flat. He got through half the wine, and the elf drained the rest. Days, he thought, bare days until they'd be standing in front of Adamant, and wondering just how to make it work. Nightfall brought Hawke back, her expression vaguely bemused.
She settled herself indolently beside Fenris. "How do I get people to stop asking me for advice?"
"Give them really bad advice the next time they ask," Varric answered genially. "They'll stop after that."
"Great idea."
"It works, I promise."
"I'm sure," Hawke said, smiling.
She looked tired, Varric thought, blue eyes bruised with shadows beneath the dark mop of her hair. Still, he figured they all looked tired and filthy, this far out into the sand.
Unbidden he thought of it, that day in Kirkwall, that day that'd been just like any other, or started like any other. He'd heard her name, bits and pieces about her, that she had a sister, that they'd come stumbling in from Ferelden on the coattails of who knew how many other refugees. That she'd scrabbled and fought and talked her way through a year with that grimy bastard Meeran and come out still kicking.
He'd found her in Hightown, and he remembered the way she'd looked at him, half a smile and all curiosity.
He blinked, realised he'd missed something, and said, "Sorry, what?"
Hawke grinned. "I hope wherever you are right now, it's more comfortable than here."
"I wish." He shook his head. "I just – can't keep myself out of my own thoughts. Sounds foolish."
"No," Fenris said. "It doesn't."
Hawke groaned. "You both look as dismal as each other. I'm going to find some more wine and my cards, and then I'm going to fleece you both ragged."
"I have a deck right here," Varric protested.
"I don't trust yours. You always seem to win with it."
"I'm wounded, Hawke. So very hurt."
"Sure you are." She turned, kissing the elf's cheek and then the corner of his mouth when he smiled slightly.
The memories surged up again, tangled and from so damn long ago and Varric wondered why he was still mired in them. Because it was easier, he supposed, to remember the start of things when you had no idea how you were going to end it, any of it.
He remembered that evening in The Hanged Man, the air riotous with conversation and how he'd taken himself back into his rooms, a tray in one hand and a curl of parchment in the other. How Hawke'd come careening in before he'd even gotten halfway through dinner, trailed by the elf they'd struck a tentative bargain with days ago. How the elf had watched him through hooded, wary eyes, his whole frame coiled as if he was a terse hairsbreadth from fleeing or attacking or both.
"Sure," he'd said, and grinned. "I remember you. The elf who glows and doesn't know how to smile. Oh, and something about you having a Tevinter magister on your ass."
"I, ah," the elf'd said, and frowned. "Right."
Something hit the ground beside his knee. Glancing down, he found himself looking at Hawke's deck of cards, battered and fading and stacked on the sand. "I'm dealing, am I?"
"You're dealing." Hawke ensconced herself beside Fenris again. She leaned forward, dropping a wineskin between the three of them.
Varric scooped the cards up, fanning them between his hands. The tension at the base of his spine eased, and he found himself smiling. "Alright. What's your first bet, Hawke?"
Under the relentlessly cloudless bowl of the sky the desert unraveled, high dunes sweeping up to the blurred line of the horizon. Hawke sat perched on the flat dusty slab of a boulder, her legs swinging above the slight dip to the sand below. Somewhere behind, she could hear the low rumble of conversation, the soldiers as they settled in for the last stretch of the afternoon.
Footsteps scraped against the rock behind her. She turned, leaning back so she could see Fenris, his frame coiled somehow, as if he was hovering.
"May I join you?"
She blinked at him. "Of course. You don't need to ask, you know that."
Fenris settled himself beside her, all maddeningly graceful motion. He was barely sweating, she noticed sourly, his arms bare and the heavy fall of his hair fringing the back of his neck.
"You like the heat," she remarked lightly.
"Well. I am comfortable in the heat."
"Least one of us is."
"You said you wanted to go somewhere warmer."
"Hah." She prodded his shoulder idly. "I was agreeing with you, as I recall."
"Fair enough."
"What is it?"
His gaze skipped away from her face, taking in the rolling sand and the rocks and then back to whatever it was he suddenly found fascinating between his feet. "You are avoiding me," he said, very quietly. "You have been for a few days."
Hawke winced. "I'm sorry."
"I mean," he added hurriedly. "You sleep beside me. Most days you eat beside me. Some days you spar with me. But you're not there. If I need to -"
"I know what you mean."
They were both, she thought wryly, sometimes still not very good at navigating the awkward complexities of each other. No, she thought, almost smiling, they had been, for a while, a long while, in Kirkwall, where they both knew the city and its rhythms and how the pieces of it fit together.
Where it was easy enough for one or both of them to step back. Where he had stayed most nights at her estate, but she knew – understood, painfully – just how much he needed sometimes to gently decline, or instead ask her to his mansion, to be reminded that even the smallest and simplest of choices was his as much as hers. Where she had learned that, regardless, he enjoyed being surprised – pretending to be surprised - by her company. When sometimes he did the same in return, and she would amble out of the kitchen at home and find Bodahn opening the door to him, and both of them would laugh or smile or shrug awkwardly as if they had never pretended to fool each other that way before.
"I wasn't trying to avoid you," Hawke said. "I just – we're surrounded by so many people. All day. Every day."
"Yes."
"Sometimes I'm selfish."
"I understand if you want to be alone," he said haltingly.
"No," she said, startling herself with the vehemence in her own voice. She reached for him, closing one hand over the back of his. "No. I'm stuck in my own thoughts."
Fenris shifted closer, the tilt of his head intent and listening.
"I'm scared we'll fail. I'm scared I'll fail. I'm scared I'll get you hurt. I'm scared I'll," she said, and stopped. The rest of it, unspoken and jolting, floated between them. "Ever feel like your luck's about to run out?" She blurted the words out, raw and uncertain.
"Too many times," he said, the ghost of a smile flitting across his mouth. "It hasn't yet though."
Hawke laughed unsteadily. "That's cheerful."
The wind keened, tugging at the loose ends of her hair. Far away, she could see the slopes of the sand, blurred. Dark shapes seemed to rise up out of the dunes, and she wondered if it was some trick of the heat and the distance, or if she was looking at towers, or the steep rises of cliffs.
Wordlessly, Fenris curled an arm around her, urging her closer. Burying her face against the crook of his shoulder, she felt the tension seep away. When he shifted so that he was sitting behind her, his legs around the outside of hers and his arms firmly around her waist, she found herself laughing.
"You know," Hawke said teasingly. "We're sitting on an outcrop right in front of half a war camp."
"I don't care," he murmured into her ear.
She turned her head, her lips brushing the raised lyrium that traced the inside of his arm. "I've been sweating hideously since I woke up."
"I don't care about that either."
"I'll think of something that will annoy you."
"I'm sure you will."
The tent walls rippled with the wind, incessant and thrumming. Hawke buried her head under her arm and swore. For long moments she glared at the tent flap, trembling and lanced with moonlight. Eventually she gave up, sitting up and scrubbing one hand across eyes that felt gritty with sand.
"Hawke," Fenris said, close enough that he was breathing against the side of her face.
She jumped, and found herself laughing. "Oh, Maker. I didn't hear you."
His arm circled her waist, bare and warm. "Are you alright?"
"What do I know about attacking a fortress?"
"Very little," he said drily, and kissed her neck, his lips finding the flutter of her pulse. "Which is why you will be standing behind the Inquisitor's troops while they attack the fortress."
"They'll know we're coming. They have to know we're coming."
"Yes," he said, and mercifully did not try to convince her otherwise.
She clasped the back of his hand, sliding her fingers between his. "If Corypheus is there, I honestly don't know what I'll do. Aside from panic, I mean."
Fenris chuckled softly. "If he is there, we will confront him. If he is not, we will discover him later."
"I love it when you're stubbornly optimistic." She leaned back into the solid warmth of his chest.
He shifted slightly, so that his chin was on her shoulder. "Because it happens so rarely?"
"You said it, not me." She felt rather than heard his answering laugh. "Wonder if he remembers us."
"I'm sure you will find the occasion to remind him, regardless."
"Oh, yes. Absolutely. Corypheus, my old friend. Stay there for a moment while I humbly beg your attention to remind you just who we are and why you don't like us." She swallowed. "Right before he slaughters me horribly."
His arm tightened around her. "You killed him last time. That sways the odds your way somewhat."
"We killed him." She rested the side of her head against his. "I'm sorry. I'm finding I can be busy during the day. I can talk to the blacksmith, go over plans with Cassandra, sword drill, anything."
"I understand."
"Well, yes, but you shouldn't have to listen to my thousand and fourth terrified worry about Corypheus."
"A thousand and four terrified worries," he echoed wryly. "You've been counting?"
"Listing. In excruciating detail."
He tipped them both sideways onto the blankets, his arm still around her. She shifted over, her hands bumping his chest, skimming over the lyrium marks. She knew them - and him - as well as she knew her own skin, the way they swirled across him, the way they mapped out the fierce drum of the blood beneath. She traced between them, seeking the warmth of his skin, of him. When she leaned up to kiss him, she misjudged the distance and ended up smacking her forehead against his chin.
"Sorry," she managed through sudden, breathless laughter.
"I can forgive you," he replied solemnly.
"You'd better," she said, before Fenris kissed her silent.
She let her eyes close, losing herself to the movement of his mouth and the way he tasted of heat and the wine they had shared and Fenris. She rolled on top of him, her hands flat on his chest. She slid down him, her mouth finding heat and hard muscle and the uneven thud of his heartbeat beneath. When she brushed the jut of his hipbones with her lips, he shivered. One of his hands tangled in her hair, tightening when she finally took him into her mouth, slowly. She felt the way his hips rolled and then stilled. She smiled, silently enjoying the familiar way he often tried to keep himself motionless, tried to last her out until he gave in, his back arching.
"Hawke," he mumbled, sounding strangled.
She laughed and eased away from him. Gracelessly, she clambered back up until she was straddling him, too feverishly aware of how he felt against her. He grinned and moved before she could, flipping them both so that she was beneath him, the breath rattling from her chest.
"Not fair," she protested.
He kissed her again, plying her lips apart with his tongue. Slowly – and probably in teasing retaliation, she was certain, because she knew him too damn well – he kissed his way across her stomach. His lips ghosted across her scars, over the one that arced just beneath her ribs, and the other, wider one that carved over the top of her leg.
When he lifted one of her legs up over his shoulder, she shuddered. He took his time with her, gentle at first until he had her writhing, his mouth buried between her thighs.
Latching her hands in his hair, she said thickly, "You're evil. You know that?"
She felt him smile. "So you have said before."
"And now you're talking," she mumbled. "Why are you talking?"
"Because you were talking."
He moved, and for a desperate, frustrating instant she felt nothing but the night air against her skin before his body covered hers. She arched up under him, one arm locking around his shoulder and her other hand guiding him into her.
She fell apart first, one of his hands sliding between them and stroking until her climax shattered her. When she cried out, he stifled her with his lips until she laughed. When he groaned, emptying himself into her, she tugged his head down against her shoulder, muffling him. They stayed like that, twined together, Hawke's fingers sliding through his hair again and again.
"Fenris," she said, almost silently.
"What is it?"
She shifted so that she could see him, all moon-washed skin and silver hair. She could see the way he was looking at her, his face full of longing. Aching, she said, "Nothing."
Adamant Fortress swelled on the horizon, hazy amid whirling dust. Every time Varric looked up and through the wind-tugged lines of the tents, he found himself staring at it, at the blurry angles of the walls and wondering just how toweringly impassive it would look if you were standing on the ground right in front of it.
The whole camp was quieter, he'd noticed, since the fortress had grown and grown in the distance, close enough now that he could roughly see the spires of it. The jangle of horses trotting past and pages hefting armour to the smithy and messengers flitting past the tents seemed oddly subdued. Long wandering moments took him past the cooking fires and eventually around the flat patch of dust that currently passed for the sparring ring. Other nights he'd happily stayed with the others and gotten indolently tipsy, arguing absently with Sera and Bull or reminding Cullen that it was actually alright to sit down and stop for half an evening.
Tonight though his thoughts were unsteady, not settling. He was too aware of the siege engines, angular and silent. He'd seen them, during the daylight, hauled and pushed across the rock, and tried not to think about what it would mean.
Scraps and fights and accidental brawls were one thing, he thought. Even desperate scuffles that turned into battles – Haven, he thought painfully – he could reword in his own head and make it seem easier or simpler. Except, he concluded ruefully, that it wasn't simple right now, and it probably hadn't been then, just easier to mask.
His steps took him past the dicing tables and there he let Maxwell coax him into one game, just the one, he promised. Three rounds later Blackwall joined them, sitting heavily.
Blackwall eyed the spread of the dice, smiled and said, "Looks like you're getting trounced, Maxwell."
"As always," the Inquisitor said forlornly.
"Hey, you asked me," Varric retorted.
"Your friend Hawke was asking if you wanted to join her," Blackwall said.
"She alright?"
"Nothing urgent, she just caught me as I was walking past. She's off behind the smithy. With her," he said, and hesitated the way Varric'd seen Andraste knew how many people falter slightly, wrestling with just how to describe the elf. "With Fenris," Blackwall settled for muttering.
"Thanks." He pushed himself upright. "Good luck thrashing the mighty leader of the Inquisition if he's still up for more punishment."
"I'm right here," Maxwell muttered.
"We know."
He found them just behind the sloping shadows of the smithy, a lantern and a wineskin between them. They were sitting together, tangled, Hawke's legs slung across the elf's and his hands crossed over her knees. Whatever the elf murmured made her smile, then grin, before she grabbed his collar and dragged him close enough to kiss him lightly.
Briefly Varric paused, wondering if he'd just intruded. He understood how painfully cramped the war camp was – how even Skyhold seemed to be, some days – and how gallingly tough it could be to find some small space to just breathe and be left alone without a messenger or a recruit or sometimes even a damned friend blundering in.
"Varric," Hawke said, and motioned him closer. She swung her legs off the elf's and straightened up.
"Where's your monster of a dog?"
"Being gallantly fought over by Cullen and Iron Bull. They like her." She frowned. "Everyone likes her. Sometimes I'm not sure if I should feel jealous or supportive."
"Go for a bit of both. Keeps you on your toes."
She rolled her eyes at him before reaching for the wineskin. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but I think I almost preferred it when we didn't know what we were walking into."
"Oh, yes," Fenris muttered. "That was just how we got to be pleasantly surprised when the Knight-Commander starting turning into red lyrium."
Hawke snorted. "Surprised, I'll give you. Pleasantly, not so much."
"I know what you mean," Varric said. "I keep looking at that damned fortress and wondering whether we'll all be walking away from it."
Fenris smiled lopsidedly. "And you both seem to think I'm the only who assumes bad outcomes."
"You do," Varric retorted.
"It's so big," Hawke said quietly.
"We'll make it out," Fenris said.
"That a wager, elf?"
"I thought you never wagered me," Fenris responded blandly.
"Only because of that time you proved damn slippery at cards. I've never worked out how you did that."
The fortress was full of echoes. Steel and footsteps and the whine of magic, searing the air. Somewhere overhead, something heavy thumped into the walls again, the ground beneath Hawke's boots trembling.
The stone warren of the fortress tasted stale inside, the air heavy with grit and sand. Long hours had taken them in through the main gates, Hawke's nerves jangling. Too quickly they had been rushed, the Wardens neither stopping nor listening, and she had grimaced and unsheathed her sword in response.
Now, flanked by torchlight and the Inquisitor's allies, she wondered – terribly, painfully – how long it might take. How they were going to carve their way through the rest of the twisting stone passageways. How they were going to track down Erimond after the bastard had run, taking himself after the Warden-Commander with his staff spitting fire. How they were going to dredge something approximating hope from the chaos they had walked into.
Hawke pressed her shoulders against the wall and exhaled. Beside her, Fenris was rigid, his markings fading as he lowered his sword. He was as much of a mess as she was, she thought, blood streaking his hair and coating the side of his ear, his armour scuffed.
"Here," Cassandra said, and flung her a waterskin.
She drank, sluicing away the dust and the acrid thick taste in her mouth. She passed the waterskin to Fenris and eyed the blood-matted side of his head. "You're hurt?"
"It's not mine."
"Good." She grinned mirthlessly. "Maxwell. Tell me someone knows where we're going?"
The Inquisitor snorted. "You mean you don't want to get lost in here?"
He was uncertain, she saw, and he had been since the gate had crumpled inwards, the edges of it crackling with flame. Since they had seen the air above the courtyard shimmer, showing the fleeting edges of something Erimond wanted desperately to bring through from the Fade. He was hiding it, she knew, behind the brash look he still had stuck on his face and the way he had one hand clamped around his sword.
"I'd rather not," she said genially.
The Inquisitor smiled lopsidedly. "We get this door open, we'll have a clean run up to the battlements."
"It'll be exposed," Cassandra said.
"Yes."
"You chase Clarel," Hawke said flatly. "I want Erimond."
The Inquisitor nodded. "Alright."
The door ahead shivered, shaking in its frame as the Inquisitor's soldiers slammed into it again. Watching, Hawke adjusted her stance until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Fenris, Varric on her other side.
The door swung wide, crashing hard against the wall. Hawke breathed in, steadying herself. The air was freighted with the choking reek of smoke, coiling up on either side of the stone walkway in front. Fenris moved first and then she was following him until her pace matched his. The din of battle assailed her first, rapid steps taking her across the walkway. Overhead, something shifted against the clouds, huge and winged.
"Well," Hawke said, gazing up. "You did say the bastard has a dragon now."
"Doesn't mean I like being right about it," Varric muttered from somewhere behind her.
The dragon was vast, slabbed with muscle and sweeping its way towards the battlements, jagged jaws dropping open. Steeling herself, Hawke gauged the distance to the battlements.
"Alright?"
"Right here," Fenris said.
"Then let's go."
There were some days, Varric reflected, when everything seemed to go so lurchingly sideways that he wondered why he'd dragged himself awake in the first place. Which was how, he supposed, that he'd found himself hurtling across a wide stone bridge with a damn dragon arcing through the air somewhere above them and close to half a dozen demons still trailing them.
Through skeins of smoke he could see Clarel, and then Erimond, both of them hurling spells swift and vicious enough at each other that the stone chimed with it.
Varric turned, his hands settling on his crossbow again. Cassandra bolted past him, shield down and the Inquisitor following. Briefly he saw Hawke – moving too fast, he thought bleakly – as she wove her way past him.
Fenris was paces behind her, his whole frame shimmering, the lyrium markings blazing when he halted. His sword swung up, hewing into the filmy dark shape of a demon.
Overhead, the dragon roared, the sound of it shaking Varric to his core. He whirled, aware suddenly that they were all too damn spread out, him and the elf blocked off by the demons as they surged forward. The dragon slammed down onto the bridge, wings unfurling. Its jaws gaped, its teeth flooding with crackling red flame. Somewhere ahead, someone shouted a warning. He heard Hawke answer, or try to, her voice gone thin and breathless. The dragon's bulk came surging down onto the bridge again, the stone trembling.
"Oh, shit," Varric muttered.
The wings clapped down, leathery and rippling. The dragon spun, the thick coil of its tail sending Cassandra to her knees.
The bridge was shaking, and he could feel it underfoot, the stone threatening to come apart.
"We need to move!" He settled Bianca against his hip and fired, the bolt embedding in the red expanse of a demon's throat. It collapsed into vivid sparks, hissing. Edging back, he tried shouting for the others again.
They couldn't hear him, he knew – he could damn well barely hear himself, above the clamour of the dragon and the way the stone was grinding – but even so he was shouting for them, for the Seeker, for Maxwell, for Hawke to get away.
The dragon crashed into the bridge again, its head snapping back when someone – he tried to pick out who but there was smoke, too much of it – threw a spell at it, engulfing its head in white light. He heard it before he saw it, the great groaning weight of the bridge as it shuddered. Shrieking, the dragon launched up into the sky again, its clawed feet driving against the gaps in the stone.
The bridge seemed to shiver before it broke apart, more than half of it crumbling, collapsing down into the darkness beneath.
"Oh," Varric said, almost mouthing the word. "Hawke."
Someone hurtled past him – Fenris, he realised, and the idiot was going for the ragged edge of the stone that was left.
Desperately Varric took off after him. Each step shocked the breath from his chest too fast and he was horribly aware he was close to exhausted. His feet skidded on blood or water or both. Stumbling he tried to right himself, one hand unusually clumsy on Bianca. Somewhere – past the ruined edge of the bridge, impossible, fucking impossible – he saw the livid green burst that he knew was jolted into life by the Inquisitor's mark, the damnable thing that was lodged deep in the kid's hand.
"Fenris! Damn you, Fenris, stop. Stop." He reached for the elf's elbow, his fingers grazing against leather. When the elf's markings flared, blue-white and blinding, he let go, staggering back. "Fenris."
The elf froze, shoulders rigid, gazing down over the broken edge of the stone.
"She's not," Varric said, and tried again. "They're not there. There was – you saw the light?"
"Yes."
Varric waited until the elf's markings had dimmed slightly. "That was Maxwell. At least, I think it was. He – the mark on his hand, you saw it."
"And that means what?"
The elf was looking down at him now, predatory and watchful and something cold crawled up Varric's spine.
"It means," Varric said, and fought for the words. "I don't know quite what it means. But it means he opened a rift. Or something."
"Or something."
"Will you stop looking at me like that," he snapped.
"Like what?" the elf demanded, his tone goading, and part of him understood.
The elf was angry – so was he – and the elf was scared, and his own pulse was still galloping, his thoughts almost flat with panic. He'd seen the stone collapse, the whole heavy weight of it coming crumbling down, and he knew you couldn't live through that. Not with the fall, and the distance. Not with the rest of the huge blocks as they had come slamming down afterwards.
Varric shook his head. "Let's just – come on, we need to get away from the edge."
The elf's shoulders slackened, and he nodded silently. Inching away, Varric kept his gaze on the elf, on the way he kept staring at where the rest of the bridge had been. Varric wondered briefly if he'd be able to get close enough to bodily drag him away before getting a glowing fist rammed through his chest in response.
"Fenris."
The elf flinched. "What."
"Come on."
"She's gone."
Something in the elf's confused, shaking tone threatened to break him. "Fenris. Come on."
The elf complied, the point of his sword dipping. "We're going down there," Fenris hissed.
"What?"
"We're going down there and we're looking."
Varric swallowed against the painful constriction in his throat. "Yes," he said, very quietly. "Right behind you."
The ruins of the bridge were a chaotic heap of stone and dust and nothing else. Varric scrubbed sweat from his eyes and blinked again. He was aching, he realised, shoulders to the back of his legs and the bruise on the side of his head still throbbed. Beside him, Fenris was as wrung through, dust clinging to his gauntlets and sweat soaking his hair from how he'd thrown himself at the stones, heaving them apart, prying them aside with shaking hands.
Four times he'd tried to grab the elf's arm, and four times he'd been unceremoniously shoved back.
"Fenris," he said wearily. "Stop, will you? You're just – they're not there. They're somewhere else."
Part of him was aware just what it meant – what it might mean – that they'd all, too many of them, just vanished. Fallen off the bridge and into Andraste knew where, or why. This, he thought, was why he should've damn well stayed in Kirkwall, away from magic and demons and rifts and whatever had led to Hawke being hauled into somewhere else.
"I don't understand," Fenris said, his voice forced flat in that way that Varric meant you were pushing it all down, back somewhere behind your heart, because that was the only way to have it make any kind of sense.
"Had to be something Maxwell did. Had to be."
"I thought the mark on his hand closed these rifts."
"It does," Varric heard himself snap. "You've seen it."
Fenris nodded, barely, a dip of his chin.
"But at Haven, he fell out of the Fade, and it was like his hand was on fire with it."
"So?"
"So if he can bring himself out, maybe he can bring them all out, maybe –"
"That does not mean –"
"I don't know what it means," Varric ground out. "Shit. Sorry." Footsteps behind made him turn too fast, his heartbeat lurching. He found himself glaring up at Cullen. "Oh. It's you," he managed stupidly.
"Who went over?" Cullen asked.
"Maxwell. Cassandra, Cole. Bull. Solas. Stroud." He swallowed. "Hawke."
Cullen nodded. "I'm sorry."
"So am I." He shook his head. "Look, they're not here. I don't quite know –"
"You think the mark took them into a rift? Through a rift? Into the Fade?"
"I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that they're not here. We've looked, and, well, we've both looked - Fenris and me - we've looked and haven't found anything or anyone and –"
"Yes," Cullen said, his voice softer, understanding. "I've got men on the way up. They can go over the area as well."
"Thanks. The Wardens?"
"Scared and uncertain, but those that are left have dropped their weapons. I've got Blackwall talking to them."
"Long as he tells them nice things about us," Varric muttered sourly.
"The other rift," Cullen said.
"Erimond's handiwork?"
"It's still not open."
He nodded. "But it might. Lovely. Any good news?"
"The dragon flew off."
"That might just be delayed bad news." He scraped a hand through his hair, the strands tangled and sodden with sweat. He was too aware of how Fenris was sitting, hands crossed over drawn-up knees and his face frighteningly blank. "Sorry. Anything else?"
"Erimond's alive. He's also unhappy, shackled, and about to answer questions whether he wants to or not."
Varric grinned, all teeth. "Is he? Let me know if you want anyone to gut him. I'll be right there. Front of the line."