Author's Note: Thank you to all who have read, followed, favorited or reviewed so far. I appreciate it! I hope you're enjoying this silly, wild story. It's mostly going to be a humorous/smutty story (we'll get to the smut eventually) with a few notes of angst thrown in here and there. The whole gang will show up, but some are more prominent than others, but I tried to give them all something to do here. Hope you continue to enjoy it!

Fancy Meeting You Here

Chapter 3: The Pirate Queen versus the Ice Queen

The mage never stood a chance.

At first it looked dicey—Danarius had what seemed like a never-ending stream of cronies to launch at them, and when those were gone, he started in with the demon summoning.

That probably spelled his doom, Varric mused as he kicked aside the still smoking corpse of a shriek. Once the mage started casting, it was all over. He got the attention of the big man in the back room, and he appeared, using a chair as a make-shift shield and bellowing loudly as he slammed into the Tevinter magister, draining the man quickly of all his mana. It was all over after that.

A few seconds of silence as the dust settled, and everyone realized they'd won. And then a bunch of things happened at once.

First, Alistair turned around and almost knocked over Isabela. His eyes went wide. "Isabela?"

Isabela's mouth hung open. "Your majesty?" she gasped out, loud enough for the few patrons who hadn't already escaped to hear.

Daisy and Hawke froze in place sporting twin looks of disbelief. "'Your majesty?'" they said in unison.

And then, the Warden Commander emerged from behind the king. Varric was shocked to see the small woman's delicate features curled into a sneer.

"Is . . . a . . . bella," she said. Varric could swear his testicles shrank a size from the iciness of her voice.

"Oh it's the Ice Princess!" Isabela said in the most sarcastic sing-song voice she could muster. Alistair's face was turning the most fascinating shade of red. Or was it purple now?

"Isabela, I'm sure you remember Elissa . . . my wife."

Varric watched in delight as an expression that could almost be considered chagrin descended over Riviani's face. He hadn't thought her capable of it.

He was so absorbed in the dramatic scene that was unfolding before him that he didn't even notice Hawke and Fenris had moved off to the corner until he heard Hawke's voice above the din.

"Fenris, that's your sister!"

Sister? Shit. . .

"So I guess I should say, Ice Queen?" he heard Isabela say as he made his way over to Hawke. He would have loved to see Elissa's reaction to that, of course, but . . . this shit with Fenris seemed pretty serious.


The confrontation with Fenris was over quickly enough, with both Hawke and Varric managing to convince the distraught elf not to kill his backstabbing sister.

Varric could sympathize.

Hawke looked for a moment like he was going to follow the elf after he stomped off. Varric put up a hand to stop him.

"Hawke, let him go," he said. "You know how Broody is. He needs time to himself to . . . you know, brood."

Hawke smirked. "I suppose you're right."

"I am!" Varric said confidently. "And besides, look who is here! Can you believe this shit?"

"No," Hawke snorted, looking over at the couple with skepticism. Suddenly his expression changed and he cocked his head to the side. "Why does the Warden Commander have a dagger pointed at Isabela's throat?"

"What?!" Varric almost knocked Daisy down as he ran, quick as his short legs could carry him, to the pirate's side.


Hawke helped Merrill regain her balance, giving her an arm with which to steady herself. She looked up at him with an appreciative smile.

"I haven't the slightest idea what is going on," she confessed. At Hawke's surprised face she gave a little self-deprecating laugh.

"It's like I need a primer on all things Ferelden," she continued while he led her over to the others. "I know I'm from there, but I don't think I'm from the same Ferelden as all of you."

Hawke stopped and pointed at the woman Varric had introduced said was Elissa. "That's the Warden Commander of Ferelden . . . or at least she used to be. Don't you remember Anders talking about her?"

She watched the way his beard moved when he talked, fascinated by all that hair on his face. Hawke quickly explained how the two humans were the very same Wardens who killed the Archdemon and ended the Blight, not so very long ago.

"Come, come sweet thing," Merrill turned away in time to hear Isabela say. "You know I'm teasing! One of the things that I have always loved about you is the fact that you're a stone cold . . . bitch.

Merrill gasped. And then hiccupped.

"Come, come Isabela," the Warden managed to make her friend's name sound like a slur. "You know damn well the reason you have my dagger at your throat has nothing to do with whether you like me or not, and everything to do with the fact that you tried to have me killed."

Merrill blinked drunkenly, starting to remember the various stories she'd heard when hanging out, playing cards with Isabela.

"What do you mean you tried to have her killed?" Hawke asked. Merrill noticed the way his arm muscles tensed when he spoke. Such very large arm muscles.

Elissa's voiced snapped her back to the situation at hand.

"She trapped me in a room with seven Antivan Crows and told them they'd each get twenty sovereigns if I never made it out." Elissa pressed the dagger against Isabela's neck and leaned into the pirate.

Merrill held her breath. Isabela gave the barest of shrugs.

"That was the last part of your training! It was a test." She grinned wickedly at the furious Queen glaring up at her. "Congratulations! You passed."

Merrill felt faint, sure the blonde woman was going to rip out Isabela's throat, if not with her dagger, than with her teeth. Elissa muttered something incomprehensible, and Merrill feared Isabela had finally made her last wisecrack, but Alistair stepped in just in time. He gently laid a hand on Elissa's wrist and then guided her back a step.

"Look," Alistair gave his wife a little shake to get her attention. "Elissa! What are you going to do? Slit her throat here in front of all these people."

"What's one more body?" she muttered, still pointing her dagger at Isabela, who—Merrill thought—appeared far more smug than she really ought.

Alistair sighed. "Come on. We're supposed to be out having fun. So let's commit to that: fun, not murder." He glanced around at the bodies that were being noisily hauled away. "Er. . . . or at least less murder."

Elissa took her eyes off Isabela and looked up at her husband. She must've liked what she saw there because she finally lowered the dagger and slid it back into the sheath at her hip.

"Fine, no more murder" she said. "At least not tonight," she added menacingly, glaring at Isabela.

"Great!" Varric said stepping forward and gesturing at all of them. Before he could continue, Merrill gasped.

"Oh that's funny," she blurted out suddenly. "Hic! And here we were all so worried this was all because you knew Isabela slept with your husband!"


It was a testament to the Champion's charisma, or perhaps to the fluid nature of the Warden's loyalties or to—some other blasted random variable Varric couldn't begin to figure—that the night didn't end then and there with Daisy's adorable little outburst.

But instead of the chorus of denials and accusation he had expected, a tense stillness descended on the party after Merrill's hiccupping exclamation.

"I have two words to say to that," Alistair said quietly after a moment of standing next to a frozen Elissa. "No, three words. Dark times. And Antiva."

And for reasons of which Varric had no clue, those three words were the winning pieces in whatever private chess match the two of them were playing right in front of all his friends.