A/N: Thank you so much for the kind reviews! They gave me happy fangirl tingles :)

Part 2 of 7

There was a bowl full of white lilies on the mantle.

There were other flowers too, predominantly of the white variety, arranged in decorative vases. The smell in the room was sickeningly sweet, cloyingly so, like too much Orlesian perfume.

None of it bothered him, though, but the lilies.

"Bodahn, get rid of these."

"Of course, master Varric." The other dwarf actually looked relieved, taking the bowl of lilies from his hands. "Gladly. Only… well, the mistress has seen them already. I was going to get rid of them, and she told me not to bother. Said it didn't matter anymore."

Varric sighed, one hand coming up to rub at his eyes. This had all gone straight to the darkest part of the Fade, and he wasn't sure how to get them back from here. It was like standing on a pillar at the top of a mountain; the only way you could go was down.

"She doesn't know what matters right now. Just get rid of them. And get rid of any more like them."

Leandra Hawke was not who he'd expecting to see, strolling into the Hanged Man first thing in the morning on a Tuesday.

At first he remembers thinking he was drunk, perhaps hallucinating, or that Isabella had possibly slipped something into the last mug of beer the night before as she was always threatening to. The wench had far too much of a fixation on chest hair.

But no, she was there, and she'd brought him a pie. He'd always heard about mothers who brought people pies, but as his own mother was more likely to smash an empty wine bottle over your head he wasn't certain if there was any truth to the stories, or if they had been loving fabrications of someone bored who obviously fancied pie.

And yet, pie. How could he not invite her in?

"Mistress Hawke," he'd said, shuffling papers and books onto the table to clear for her a place to sit. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Alright, so maybe that's not how it happened. Maybe he had woken up, drunk, to find Hawke's mother peering at him with a concerned expression. And maybe it did also involve pie. But in the truer version of the story, he was not nearly so composed. There was no 'to what do I owe the pleasure', or 'top of the morning to you, missus'.

The first thing he said was, "I'm sorry."

Bethany… Sunshine. She had fallen in the Deep Roads to the Taint, and wherever she'd gone, she'd taken all of the warmth in the world with her. Hawke had ended it as gently as she could before it was too late, and now all of the light had gone out of her as well.

He didn't know where she'd gone after she'd returned to the Hawke family home in Lowtown to break the news to her family, but she hadn't come there. He would have known since he'd been rooted to the bar, understanding for a time that all he could do was drink.

Drink, and fantasize about gutting Bartrand.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. It wasn't Hawke's fault, it was mine. I should have never have led them down into the Deep Roads, I should have known that it was too dangerous. I should have known that my bastard brother would betray us…"

Leandra's eyes squeezed shut in pain, and Varric remembered thinking that he would eat one of Bianca's bolts whole if he'd made her cry. Not that the thought hadn't been tempting enough on its own, as of late.

"Varric, stop." Her smile was strained, but it was gentle, and it was there. "It wasn't your fault, and you couldn't have known. You have done the best you could for my family, and the rest is up to the Maker."

"Hawke thinks-"

"Marian thinks what Marian will think. She always has, and she always will."

Her response was quicker, sharper than he'd expected and it made his perpetually wagging tongue fall silent. If he was hurting then they all were hurting, and her not least of all.

She sighed. "The truth is, Marian believes what she does because I put it in her head. It is always easier to find someone to blame, and she has always been the strongest of us all. The truth is, I have done wrong by my child and I don't know if she will ever let me make it right. She's so stubborn…"

And killing herself with hate and sorrow he wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out. He didn't dare say them out loud.

The sad smile had returned to her face and she stood up to leave, crossing toward the door and turning back to look at him. "The truth is, I came by to ask you for a favor. Watch over my little girl, Varric. She has lost so much already."

When she left he put his head in his hands and wept.