Varric Tethras was no stranger to the mage-templar conflict. In fact, he had been right in the thick of it when the whole damn mess started. But that was years ago. Varric had seen how fleeting were the whims of the powers that be, and how flippantly wars started and ended, with little thought to the lives lost and blood shed in the midst of it. My, that's a good turn of phrase; I should write that down . . .

"Varric! Get your head back in the fight or you'll get us all killed!" snapped Cassandra, fending off another shade wreathed in the brilliant green flame of the Breach. Damn. It seemed that snippet of prose was destined to be forgotten. Varric loaded up his crossbow and let a trio of bolts fly, taking out a shade and the apostate that had conjured it. The rest of the battle was a blur to Varric, little more than a skirmish. The "other prisoner", as Varric liked to think of her, was wide-eyed and a bit awkward in a fight, but she held her own in her own scrappy way. She had the makings of a champion, if Varric fancied himself an expert (and he certainly did) — he'd made Hawke into a champion, hadn't he?

No, of course not. Hawke hadn't needed any help being the hero. Jaruah was as different from Hawke as Varric could imagine—and yet, in some ways, when she grinned at him with that slight overbite, he couldn't help but think of the best friend he'd lost. But where Hawke had been subtle, Jaruah was blunt. She had told the Seeker straight up that they didn't stand a chance in hell of sealing the Breach without her, regardless of whether she wanted to be a hero or not.

"What were you thinking about back there that had the bitch's britches in a twist?" Jaruah asked wryly, sidling up beside him as they walked, cleaning her twin blades.

Varric chuckled darkly. "Just remembering the good old days."

"You'll have to tell me about them sometime," Jaruah said, sauntering away. Varric stopped walking. Was she flirting with him?

"Is it the chest hair?" he called after her.

Jaruah smiled, but didn't answer. Perhaps she could be as subtle as Hawke after all.

"So," Jaruah said, "what was her name?" Full dark had fallen. Cassandra and Solas had already retired for the evening. The two dwarves remained by the fire.

"Who?" asked Varric.

Her eyes glittered in the firelight. "It must be a woman, the way you brood about her." She didn't sound jealous, just matter-of-fact.

"Ah, Bianca," Varric said teasingly, feigning dewy eyes. "Eyes that sparkled like the night sky, and feet carved from the Stone herself." He sighed and wiped away a fake tear.

Jaruah snorted. "C'mon. If we're gonna be friends you've got to give me more to go on than that."

"Who said we were going to be friends?"

"I did," Jaruah said boldly.

Varric gave her a long look. He wasn't sure if Jaruah could be trusted yet, but she had balls—well, figuratively speaking. He had always been talented at putting people at ease without revealing anything, but somehow he didn't think that would work on her. She seemed to be a lot sharper than most people gave her credit for. So Varric, rare as it was, opted for the truth. Part of it, anyway.

"Her name was Marian," he said, "but everyone called her Hawke."

"You were in love with her, but you never told her," Jaruah said, as matter-of-fact as if she'd said the sky is blue. Varric looked up in surprise.

"Well, you're not wrong," he quipped. "I suppose I was."

"I'm usually good at reading people," Jaruah said. "It's kept me alive a time or two. So where is she now?"

Varric shrugged, but Jaruah saw a flicker of some old wound behind his eyes. "I don't know. I lost track of her long before the Seeker took me into custody." He chuckled. "Hawke's not exactly popular since that little incident with the Chantry."

"What incident?"

Varric looked at her incredulously. "You're shitting me, right?"

Jaruah gave him a blank look. "I was run out of Orzammar a year ago," she said. "Before that, I was too busy thieving and tripping over nugs and deep mushrooms to keep up with what the tall folk were doing. Afterwards I was wrapped up with the Carta, who aren't exactly known for keeping up with current events—unless it's to their benefit. All I know is that the lyrium trade's been all out of whack for years—or so I've been told."

Varric shrugged and looked away. "Nevermind," he said. "It's not that important anyway."

Jaruah's hand closed on his forearm. "I want to know," she said. "Information is power."

"A Duster and a Carta thug, through and through," Varric said, without venom.

"I won't apologize for what I was; it made me who I am," Jaruah said. "Tell me what happened."

Varric sighed. He had been right about one thing—she wouldn't take no for an answer. He dug in his pack and pulled out a book. Varric tossed it into Jaruah's lap. She ran her fingers over the embossed title: The Tale of the Champion.

"Everything you need to know is in there," he said curtly. "I'm going to bed."

With that, Varric retired to his tent. When he awoke a few hours later to relieve himself, he noticed a hunched figure still seated where he had left her, turning a page. Silhouetted by the fire, Jaruah's mop of hair seemed aflame itself. The usually brash orange reflected a burnished red-gold, sticking up in places where the other dwarf had absently run her fingers through it. Varric wondered if it was as soft as it looked.

Varric cursed inwardly. Never get involved in the story. He ought to have learned that lesson well enough the last time.

The apostate camp was harder to find than the Templars'. These mages knew how to hide; Varric would give them that. They seemed to blend into the landscape of the Hinterlands until Varric and his companions were surrounded. Then magic was flying everywhere and the battle commenced. Varric was in his element, firing off crossbow bolts left and right, taking out crazed apostates even as Cassandra shouted in her commanding voice for them to "cease this madness and yield to the authority of the Chantry!"

Varric shook his head. His years in Kirkwall had taught him that the oppressiveness of the Chantry drove most apostates (even the relatively sane ones) to desperate acts, and now that the conflict had truly exploded into an all-out war, they were even less likely to cooperate.

Varric looked towards a mage's shout and nearly dropped Bianca. He would recognize those feathered pauldrons anywhere. "Blondie?"

The mage turned and leveled a fireball at him. Varric cursed and dove out of the way, landing hard on his shoulder and rolling. He winced as Bianca hit the ground with a loud crack, but a quick once-over showed her to be still in the fight. She was a tough little lady, just like her namesake. From his vantage point on the ground, Varric propped himself on his elbows and aimed, discharging two bolts, one after the other, and they thudded into Anders' chest—just under the bottom ridge of the pauldron, where Hawke's dagger had penetrated three years earlier. The apostate crumpled. Varric got to his feet, wheezing—he'd gotten the wind knocked out of him and twisted his knee when he fell, but it was hardly the worst injury he'd ever had.

He approached the slain mage, barely hearing Jaruah, Cassandra, and Solas come up behind him. The apostate's blonde hair had fallen over his face, the tips stained with blood like some macabre paintbrush. His brown eyes stared at the sky, unseeing. The feathers of his pauldrons shimmered in the wind, but the rest of him was still. It wasn't Anders, but they could have been brothers.

"Did you know him?" Cassandra asked in her heavily accented voice. Somehow she managed to make the question an accusation.

Varric dragged a breath into his tortured lungs. "I'm taking a walk," he said roughly. He turned and limped away.

He heard soft footsteps pad up behind him, and felt Jaruah fall into step at his side.

"Dangerous out here," she said simply.

"Bianca's got my back," Varric said.

It was awhile before she spoke. "I've got your back, too."

Varric grunted.

"So what was that about back there?" Jaruah asked. Her voice was rough, low and soft, like black velvet.

"It's nothing," he said.

"Don't lie to me," she said. "Don't you dare."

Varric felt a spike of irritation. Who does she think she is?

"You read the book. You know what happened."

"I know what you want people to think happened."

"There you go."

"But it's not the truth."

"You think you deserve the truth from me?" he said. Each word was as barbed as the bolts he carried. "Let's get one thing straight, Duster; I don't owe you anything! I'm the storyteller; I get to decide which tales to tell and which to bury. The truth you think I owe you? It was such a hopeless mess there was no way it could end happy. That's the truth."

"What happened to you?" she said softly.

"What happened? Let's start with my dear brother Bartrand, who pulled a bait and switch on me and my friends and locked us in a thaig to rot. Then my best friend's sister was infected by darkspawn and died a predictably horrifying death. I watched Hawke die just a little more inside as she cut down her own undead sister. When we finally got out, her mother was murdered by a blood mage, her body defiled. Oh, and I killed my own brother, driven mad by red lyrium. Put two bolts straight through his heart."

Varric sighed raggedly and soldiered on. "Isabela betrayed us all. She got what was coming to her though—the qunari took her back to Seheron as a prisoner of war, and the qunari are known to be a 'join or die' bunch. Merrill got in over her head with blood magic and became an abomination. She slaughtered her entire clan before Hawke cut her down. Good people too, for Dalish. When Anders finally cracked and blew up the Chantry, Hawke dealt him the just blow he deserved. And when Hawke turned against the knight-commander, Fenris sided with Meredith, and Hawke faced him across the battlefield."

Jaruah was silent for a moment, letting it all sink in. She thought of all the characters in Varric's book and realized one was still unaccounted for in his tale. "And Aveline?"

Varric gave a ragged sigh. "Aveline? I suppose she's still in Kirkwall, cleaning up the mess we made. Married to her sword. She never quite forgave Hawke for what happened to Wesley." He chuckled dryly. "I suppose we're all just a little worse off for having met Hawke."

"None of that was in the book."

"I'll let you in on a secret of storytelling, Duster," Varric began. "Never, ever get too involved in the story. So you read the book. Remember Anders?"

"Yes," Jaruah said uncertainly.

Varric stabbed a finger in the general direction of the battle behind them. "He's dead. I watched him die. But just now, I would have bet my last sovereign that was him."

They were both quiet for a moment.

Jaruah paused, on the verge of asking the question that had been on her mind since she'd finished the book. "Did you know?"

"I ask myself how I didn't every damn day," said Varric.

"What does that have to do with what happened back there?"

"Feathers," he said. "The rebels are wearing coats like his now. An homage to his sacrifice. I warned Hawke about this."

"Oh, Ancestors," breathed Jaruah. "He was the face of the revolution. She made him a martyr."

"She couldn't have known." The words were hollow, even as he said them. "But here I am with my ass in the fire, and she's holed up somewhere away from it all."

"Did you ever try to contact her, after . . . ?"

Varric shook his head. "Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't know where to look." He sighed. "I barely knew her. I probably knew her better than anyone—but she's still just as much a mystery as the day we met."

A companionable silence fell between them, and neither made a move to return the way they had come. Jaruah reached for him as if to touch him but thought better of it. Instead, she said, "The others will come looking for us soon."

"Listen, Duster," Varric said heavily. "What I just told you . . . it's not exactly common knowledge." He left the rest hanging unsaid in the air between them.

Jaruah smiled. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Seeker!" Jaruah barked. "Need some help in here!"

Varric's eyes fluttered under his eyelids as he thrashed around, his limbs tangled up under the thin blanket. Cassandra stumbled into the tent, sword and shield held at the ready. She blinked sleep out of her eyes, and her rumpled linen shirt and bare thighs indicated she had sprung up from her bedroll just moments ago. Her eyes fell on the dwarf kneeling by Varric's side.

"You can put that down; you can't fight nightmares with a sword," Jaruah said. "Well, maybe you can. Help me wake him."

Cassandra peeled the blanket off him, then the sheet, which was damp with cold sweat. Jaruah pulled Varric up, her hands on each of his shoulders. She rubbed circles into his tense muscles with her thumbs.

"You're alright now, Varric," Jaruah murmured close to his ear, keeping her voice low and soothing. "You're alright, you're alright; I'm here. Varric, can you hear me? Varric?"

Varric's eyelids opened, though whatever he was seeing was all in his head. His breath came in short shallow gasps. His broad chest heaved with each. "Feathers," he said when he woke, barely a whisper. As quickly as the word had come to his lips, it was gone, and the faces above him came into focus.

"Jaruah," he said, sucking in a deep breath and falling back onto his bedroll with a self-conscious groan. "Sorry."

Jaruah released his shoulders and sat back on her heels. Somewhere above them, Cassandra pursed her lips. "I will make sure our camp is secure," she said stiffly, and ducked out.

An uncomfortable silence fell. Varric tugged the blanket back up over himself and avoided Jaruah's eyes. He laid his hands, palm-down, over the blanket. They were trembling. Jaruah wanted to lay her own hands over his, to still them, but she refrained. Instead she watched his eyes carefully.

"I won't ask if you're alright, because clearly, you're not," she said quietly. "You would tell me, right? If you needed to?"

Varric chuckled. "Give me a minute and I'll be right as rain." His smile faded fast. Daisy used to say that. It stung a little to remember Merrill—all his memories were tainted by the monster she had become. Varric looked away. "You should go. I'm afraid I'm not as much fun as advertised before breakfast."

Jaruah didn't smile. "I don't need fun," she said. "I need to know you're not going to bail on me."

"Oh, don't worry, Duster," Varric said. "If I have one tragic flaw, it's holding on till the very end."

Jaruah's eyes shuttered, pale as frosted glass. She stood up. "Get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

Varric was in the tavern in Haven, brooding, when Jaruah found him. He wasn't typically a brooder; that had always been Fenris' bag. Life certainly hadn't turned out the way he thought it would, the way he'd written it. But he would deal with it the way he coped with everything: his acerbic wit and all the ale money could buy.

"This is war, Duster," Varric said, "and I am unwilling."

"In war, everyone is unwilling. War is the instrument of a cause, but it's the people involved who pay the price with their blood."

Varric gave her a cynical grin. "Sometimes I forget you're here against your will, too."

Cassandra shot both of them a glare. Jaruah grinned widely at her as she and Varric accepted their drinks and brought them back to their table

"You could leave, you know," Jaruah said once they'd escaped the ire of the Seeker's gaze. "Now that they've got the 'Herald of Andraste'" (she was proud she kept the sarcasm to a minimum) "they won't be as riled if you left." But I would.

Varric considered her, and she didn't look away. Bold as Branka's brass breasts, she was. "I could leave," he said lightly. "But you wouldn't last a day without me. And let's face it, Bianca needs action or she gets fidgety." He patted the stock of his crossbow fondly.

Jaruah smiled and nudged his shoulder with hers, swinging her legs as they dangled from her bar stool. "I'm glad you're here, Varric."

They sat in companionable silence for a time, watching the bard pluck a delicate melody on her lute in the corner.

"I need another ale," Varric announced. "What about you, Duster?"

"Sure," Jaruah said, swaying along to the the music. He hopped off his stool and made his way to the bar. A haunting alto voice soared over the patrons as he waited for their drinks. Varric realized he was holding his breath. My, this musician had pipes. Her voice wasn't beautiful in the traditional sense, but the song was in tune and made one's soul ache to hear it.

He almost dropped their mugs when he realized the voice that had so moved him was Jaruah's.

When the song ended, Jaruah returned to her stool as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened and accepted her mug from Varric. She drank deeply, foam clinging to her upper lip. Varric watched her tongue dart out to wipe it off.

"You never told me you could sing," Varric said.

Jaruah shrugged. "You never asked. There's a lot you don't know about me."

But I'd like to, he thought. He told himself it was a storyteller's curiosity, nothing more, but as time went on that was getting further and further from the truth.

In Kirkwall, Varric's life hadn't been easy, but it had had a certain simplicity to it. He'd write tales, drink at the Hanged Man, and every so often Hawke would drag him out of that blessed cesspool on another damned adventure. He relied on the gold of his coin and the silver of his tongue. And when those failed him, Bianca and Hawke were there with bolt and blade to back him up.

He had been the viscount of Lowtown—greasing palms and trading in secrets from the comforts of his Hanged Man suite. Now he was a suspected war criminal, running for his life, dragged into a fight that wasn't his.

"There was one person from the Tale of the Champion I didn't ask about, before," Jaruah said. "The most important character. The one most central to the story."

Varric frowned. "I already told you about—"

Jaruah stopped him with a hand over his. He looked up sharply.

"I meant you."

"Me?"

"I know what happened to the others. What happened to you?"

Varric's spine tingled, as it did whenever he felt like he'd reached a turning point in the plot of his own life story. He wanted to trust her. But all trust had ever brought him before was heartache.

She's not Hawke, he told himself. All her cards are on the table, all the time.

He smiled, and it hurt. "Hawke was always happy to have me tag along, you know," he said, rubbing his chin. "I think she liked reading about herself in the serials in Hightown, the way I made her out to be. She liked being loved—and feared.

"But after the whole Chantry business, with Anders dead, everyone turned on her. Overnight she became the most wanted woman in Thedas—and not in the good way. She was my best friend; I would have gone to the ends of the world for her. I told her that."

Jaruah simply gazed at him with those colorless eyes, and what he found there was prompt enough.

He sighed heavily and looked down at Jaruah's hands, still covering his. He tasted the words as he spoke, bitter on his tongue. "She left. Without me. Said she couldn't trust me to keep her movements a secret, that the storyteller in me would win out and I'd betray her to make it a better story. To—sell more books."

"No," Jaruah said instantly, shaking her head. "That's nug-shit."

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do."

"How?"

"Because you loved her," Jaruah said. "It's in every word you wrote about her, and in every word you say. I know you, Varric; you don't betray the ones you love. You loved Hawke. I reckon you loved Bianca, whoever she was. And now—" she sucked in a breath, "now, you love me, too."

For once it seemed Varric was at a loss for words. "Well," he said, mouth dry, "you're not wrong."

"About which part?"

"All of it," Varric said, and leaned in to press his lips to hers.

Jaruah kissed like she fought: with an awkward, scrappy style that was strangely endearing.

He broke away, gasping.

"Why did you say I was the most important character?"

"Don't you get it, Varric? Without you, the real story never gets told."

"Half that book is fiction, Duster," Varric protested.

"But the other half is real. You told me the real story, and that's enough. It's out there now. It won't die with you."

"At this rate, we'll both be dead by year's end anyway," Varric said, only half-joking.

"Probably," Jaruah said cheerfully. She kissed him again and laughed against his lips. "Let's make sure it's a pretty good story."