Note from SF: Written from a prompt submitted by Amondra for a thing I did over on Deviant request was "Anders and Varric in jail." As I was re-reading it, I realized it sorta fits this week's BSN prompt, which is Relief. Since I'm lazy...
And this is just a, um, generic F!Hawke.
"Just my luck. The one time you actually get caught doing something illegal, I happen to be with you," Anders complains into darkness. He knows the dwarf isn't that far away; he can hear him breathing, he can detect his musky scent of leather and heartwood.
He can sense him smirking.
"You know, it doesn't matter if Hawke or Aveline comes to spring us out if a templar finds me first," he can feel his cheeks warming with anger at the idea. "If that happens, I'm taking Bianca and using her to smack my way out of here."
That gets the dwarf's attention.
"Now, now, Blondie. Let's not say things we can't take back," this comes with the subtle creaking of wood as Varric shifts his crossbow in his lap. Or hugs it or something. "It's bad enough that her trigger's been broken…that will take me most of a day to fix-"
"Never mind the cost of wining and dining her for forgiveness," Anders' voice rasps. He sounds bitter. He is bitter. Of course the dwarf would be more concerned about his stupid crossbow. What does he have to worry about? The man could confess to mass murder and then talk his way out of punishment… "Andraste's tits, how did I end up in this mess?"
Varric chuckles, and Anders feels a gloved hand pat his forearm.
"This is what happens when you're too scared to make a move. And can I just say that lurky isn't a good look on you?" He snorts. "Besides, I think Hawke prefers a more direct approach."
Ass. Anders' mouth opens in mild horror at…
"I wasn't lurking!" He struggles to his feet and it takes a few seconds to steady himself. His legs are cramped from being curled in the corner of their cell, and suddenly the walls feel like they might be closer than they'd been ten minutes ago and if that's happening, then they'll need to call for help and a transfer to a cell that isn't going to crush them within a few hours. Or maybe he'll get a new cell while the dwarf stays in this one…Let's see if his precious Bianca can save him from a world-class smushing.
"Okay. You were spying," Varric is non-plussed. "You probably saw her leaving the Hanged Man with the elf, and jumped to conclusions. It's understandable. They have a history, you want to have a future, and-"
"Varric…no," he pleads it, his heart all twisty at the insinuations. He can barely handle the idea of her being with the elf once, but for it to happen again? After he'd left her? And as for wanting a future
It should not be considered.
"No," he repeats it like a prayer. "It wasn't Fenris, or anyone else." Justice isn't technically an anyone. "I just…didn't want to bother her. She might have been doing something important like..."
Varric waits.
Anders thinks.
They both know that, as a rule, Hawke's only doing something important when she's doing something with them. On her own time she's usually up to nothing more vital or strenuous than reading whatever smut Isabela's tossed her way, or drunkenly penning some of her own. It's endearing, in its way, and mostly understandable.
"Tell her," Varric must be standing now, because his voice is closer to Anders. "Because the longer you pine from a distance, the more money I lose."
"Why am I not surprised?" His head shakes, loose strands of panic-sweat dampened hair striking his cheeks in a most unpleasant way. Between the dirty cellar floor and the filthy prison everything, he's in a most besmeared state. It adds another layer of unpleasant to this whole unpleasant situation.
"You're not surprised because we bet on everything," Varric's at the front of the cell; Anders can see him in the lines of moonlight that fall between the slotted overhead vent. The broken light gives the dwarf's movements an almost otherworldly quality as he feels out the locking mechanism that stands between them and freedom. "One sovereign says I can get this before the next patrol."
Despite himself and his pitifully empty coin purse, Anders agrees. "You could barely handle the flimsy lock on the cellar door, why would I think tha-"
*click*
"Dammit, Varric," Anders begins to calculate how many meals he'll be missing because of this stupid wager. Still, there's no small amount of relief in his voice when he says it because sneaking down the narrow prison corridor is far better than being sequestered in one of its narrow cells.
Which, he's decided, isn't closing in on him.
Of course, being out of the cell presents its own set of challenges because they're obviously not guards and, if you're not a guard and you're in a prison, chances are you're supposed to be imprisoned and probably not shuffling down a dim corridor with your hand clutching and unclutching and reclutching the shoulder in front of you as the spirit within grows ever more restless.
This is a place for criminals, the men who take their rest within these walls have committed grave injustices against their fellows.
Not all of them, some are just trying to survive.
Varric stops suddenly.
Anders' forward momentum nearly results in a two man, one crossbow pile-up, but he's able to keep his balance and avoid such an embarrassing, and noisy, accident.
The men remain suspended in silence until Anders hears what Varric heard…footsteps.
"We should go back to the cell," Varric whispers. "Escaping is a worse crime than the one we committed."
"You committed," Anders hisses back, his feet not wanting to move from their spot because their spot is not in a cell. "I just made the mistake of assuming you knew which access door was Hawke's."
"It was dark," if Varric's capable of blushing, he's probably blushing right now. Anders had never seen him so flustered as he'd been when they'd stumbled out of the servant's passage that they thought for certain would dump them in Hawke's kitchen but had, instead, lead them into the quarters of an elven houseboy and his very attentive mistress. "And all those places look the same. Also, dark."
"Too bad it wasn't dark in that room," he remains unrelenting. "I say we go forward. The footsteps have stopped…"
It's true. Varric emits a ghost of a sigh and continues forward, leading them through a series of moonlit rooms. Most of the cells they pass are empty, although Anders detects movement from a few. Prisoners or rats. His toes curl inside his boots. Rats had been a thing in the Circle jail and he knew from experience that if a man was in one place long enough they'd eventually see him as just another fixture of their surroundings.
"Um-" Varric breaks into Anders' thoughts before he can delve too deeply and this time they don't need to stop and listen to know what's coming.
"Ay! What are you doing here?" The guard asks with less authority and more genuine surprise. He's holding a torch close to his face and, beyond it, it is a broad face sparsely populated by broad, sloppy features. Beyond him is a room that's not full of cells, but of tables pushed against the walls and a few cots.
"You led us to the barracks," Anders doesn't even whisper it. "Fantastic."
Varric scowls back at him, his shoulders relaxed but his hand tense on Bianca. She's fairly useless as anything but a battering ram, but Anders has seen her very effectively deployed to that end. But from the gleam in the dwarf's eyes, he's not going to risk it.
"Who are you?" The guardsman is still so confused and Varric is able to work with confusion quite nicely.
"My name is Odilo Kondrat, of the Orzammar Kondrats," he coughs softly and leans forward. "This is my brother, Cardwin."
Brother? Anders' eyebrows go up in sharp surprise, mimicking the guard's own reaction. But Varric is making mad gestures and trying to distract their potential captor.
"Please…he's sensitive," Varric lowers his voice to a barely audible scrape. "About his height."
The guard settles his face into something neutral, although his eyes continue to seek out similarities between the two men.
If Anders thinks about it, there are actually more than a few.
"We were supposed to meet Aveline Vallen," Varric smirks when the guard jumps at the mention of his captain. "But we found ourselves turned around back there at that dark hall that looks like another dark hall and it got…messy. Could you point us to the right hall? We'd prefer the one that leads…out."
"Out," he nods and begins pointing. Before he's even done explaining where they need to go, Anders and Varric are scooting on their way and Anders could almost laugh at their luck. That man has to be the dumbest guard in Kirkwall to just let them waltz away without even a-
"Varric," Aveline's voice is cold fury and she fills the doorway in front of them, perhaps more unyielding than the stone that surrounds her. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Are they both all right?" Hawke's head pops up over Aveline's shoulder, the flash of a relieved smile visible beyond the red-haired woman's own fierce glare.
It means a lot of things to see her. Mostly it means that they're definitely fine because if Hawke's there, she won't allow Aveline to go too hard on them. But it also means that Hawke had been worried. A little, at least, and maybe a lot when Aveline finally finishes lecturing them for being embarassments and shooes them out of the Keep's bowels and into Lowtown.
Hawke walks beside him, occasionally checking his face for bleeding or bruises as Varric explains what happened and how they'd just wanted to surprise her but had, instead, stumbled upon one of her neighbors in flagrante delicto and any hopes of the woman just wanting it all kept a secret disappearing when she'd immediately began screaming for her husband to shout for the guards.
"That sounds like something Isabela would write," Hawke is bright-eyed in amusement. "As a matter of fact, I think I have a story very similar to that illustrated in my journal…"
"Well it's not as much fun in reality, Hawke. Believe me," Varric stops and sparkles for a minute. "And this is where we must part. Blondie, I'm sorry I got you arrested, but you owe me a sovereign."
He almost tells the dwarf where he can stick that gold but, there's a gloved hand going up to stop him from saying anything else regrettable.
"How's this? You have three days," his eyes move deliberately to Hawke, who's busied herself with smoothing the mussed feathers at Anders' shoulders so he looks slightly less like a handsome but deranged vulture. In her words. "Double or nothing."
"What?"
"I'll pay, if you can't," Hawke finishes with his pauldrons and offers him a crooked smile. "I probably owe you, anyway. For poultices or something."
She's never owed him money ever, but that doesn't matter.
"Okay," Anders is bolstered by a surge of confidence. "It's a deal."
"I thought it might be," head tilting to the side, Varric gives him a significant wink. "Besides, we both know that coin is hardly what matters most."
He leaves them to meander home together, but Hawke watches him go for a few seconds before leading Anders towards Darktown.
"Not even jail can put a dent in that man," she says it with an incredible amount of friendly affection.
"I don't know, he was pretty worried about Bianca," Anders mimes cradling. "She's broke, so you can imagine how hard it was for him."
He expects her to say something about how sad it is that they all speak as if Bianca is an actual person. Instead, she curls her hand around the crook of his arm and holds on.
"I was worried about you," her voice is uncharacteristically serious. "If any of them had suspected, or involved the templars…"
He steals a glance, just one, and her face very much conveys something he's been waiting so long to see. Since she seems disinclined to say more, he decides to start making their plans for tomorrow.
"You're volunteering in the morning, right?" He catches her nod from the corner of his eye. "Do you think you could fetch some milk on your way down? And don't worry, I'll be able to pay you back the next time I see Varric."
