"Have you ever considered," she says wearily, "that I will never understand and you are wasting both our times?"
"With me as a teacher? Nah." His fingers shuffle the deck again, the sound hypnotic. "But if it was easy, everybody would be good at it now, wouldn't they?"
"Varric."
"Seeker."
She pinches the bridge of her nose, rocking back on her chair legs in frustration as he deals yet another hand onto the scarred wood between them. He sits on her left at the head of the table, almost close enough to touch, ostensibly so that he can lean over and look at her cards when she needs help which so far has ranged between often and very often. While the mid afternoon sun streaking across the rough planks of the tavern floor is giving a warm glaze to everything, and the hour has the place nearly emptied of watchers, she still feels exposed. She flexes her shoulders, trying to forestall the urge to hunch.
"I do not. Understand. There are too many rules and they keep changing."
"Not a big fan of that, I take it?" His voice is sympathetic enough but her irked pride is sure that somewhere he is laughing at her clumsy attempts.
"No."
"C'mon, Seeker, give yourself a break here. They don't actually, you know, change. There's just a lot of them to take in." He winks, putting the rest of the deck down between them before taking another healthy swig from the tankard because of course Varric needs to have a drink at hand. Maker forbid he save it for a more seemly hour. "I only make it look easy because I've been playing my entire life. Or least all the life I feel like remembering."
It's an odd statement but before she can do anything with it, he picks up his cards so perforce she must as well. She stares at the complicated pictures and tries to make sense of what she's seeing. Already the concentration is giving her a vague headache.
"Okay, easy question. Name any card ranked higher than a Knight of Sacrifice." He arranges the order of his hand, fingers hesitating over one before moving it, then moving it back. That probably means something only she has no idea what.
"Any Angel," she replies automatically. This is one she'd had drilled into her enough to grasp. "Unless there are two reversed Angels down already." She looks at Varric who is pursing his lips and she can see the shake of his head already forming. She groans, leaning further back in the chair as if trying to distance herself from this farce. The cards are smooth under her fingers from use and gilt winks in the design of two of them. That probably means something too and she scowls at them.
"This is foolish."
"You almost had it. Any reversed Angel of either Blood or Chains, but Mercy, Truth or Charity wouldn't count."
"And why not?"
"Because it's a Sacrifice, Seeker. Not a lot Charity is going to be able to do to cancel that out. Or Mercy. Or Truth for that matter."
She huffs. "I beg to differ. If one is to… to sacrifice oneself, then there is no better reason than truth." She finds two Serpents and puts them together.
Varric laughs, a deep, impulsive sound and she glares at him, nonplussed. His eyes are crinkled with whatever he finds so amusing and she falters a little, finding herself trapped by the open expression on his face. It's not as if Varric doesn't laugh often and loudly, but still, there is always something about it that utterly disarms her. Even if it does seem to be at her expense at the moment. She tries scowling again, in case it will help.
"Now why didn't I know you'd say that?" He raises his eyes up as if appealing to the Maker. "Since you are, after all, the Seeker of exactly that. Did you know your mouth pursed up like you'd just eaten a lemon?" He waggles his eyebrows at her. "I bet that's your answer to everything."
"You are terrible. Just because you treat it as casually as… as you do, does not mean… oh. I don't know why I even try to explain."
"Now, now, Seeker. Truth isn't the answer to all of life's questions, you know." She rolls her eyes at the nearly salacious tone of voice he injects into that since it's glaringly obvious he's making reference to his tendency to deal in everything but. Why he finds that so amusing all of a sudden is beyond her. She decides to pointedly ignore it. "But yeah, in this case? Definitely doesn't cancel Sacrifice. This is Wicked Grace, not Chantry Indoctrination For Beginning Seekers."
She finds her lips quirking. Perhaps it is a little funny. "I shall endeavour to remember."
They take turns drawing cards and she gnaws the inside of her lip with each addition, struggling to keep any of it straight in her head. The longer the game goes on, of course, the more complex the links between cards on the table as she and Varric arrange, build and discard the stacks between them. Finally she draws the Angel of Death and with relief, puts it on top of the deck. She puts her hidden cards down even as he does and they both hunker over the final totals.
"Bah," she growls, disgusted with herself again. She rocks back harshly in the chair, her hands slapping down. She had thought she'd done better.
Her traitor foot, hooked around a table leg all this time, slips and there is a split second of fear, the lurch in her throat even as her hands come up to grab something, anything as she tips backwards.
Her fingers dig into Varric's bicep.
The dwarf lunged so fast she hadn't even registered it, his large hand now locked around the back of the chair. His heavy face is suddenly all she can see, outstretched as he is across the corner of the table to prevent her fall. Her heart, only just catching up to the danger, thumps heavily once and then again.
She has been close to Varric before and thought nothing of it. He is a familiar figure to her, they have touched casually many times in the course of their duties. They have shared the same bowl in camp, arms and hands brushing. She has seen him half stripped, his wounds being tended; she has checked him herself, a rough soldier's inspection in absence of anyone else with more skill. She's seen him returning after washing at unknown streams, his hair loosely plastered to his skull and the worst of the dirt scraped off. She has helped him over many obstacles with the unspoken offer of a forearm, her longer legs and reach just another tool to be leveraged even as his shorter stature has granted him the advantage elsewhere.
But this is much too close.
Because she can suddenly see the lighter flecks in his eyes, unguarded in this instant, shifting leaf green against the brown. The strong column of his throat rises, the swing of the chain around his neck with its heavy gold loop bumping against his chest, only just settling again. His skin is shockingly warm through the silk of his shirt. It is nearly an embrace.
The subtle scent of his body touches her face. Clean, sharp, spicy. Varric.
Her fingers flex on the corded muscle of his arm without thought and she can feel it tense like stone under her fingertips. It ripples through his body, across his face, she can all but see the path it travels. Without volition her hand starts to slide up, chasing.
He pulls back, dragging her chair back down. The thump as all four legs hit the ground seems terribly final, as small as sound as it is.
"Careful, Seeker. Don't want to break your head open."
Her hand drops to the table as his arm falls away and she takes a deep breath, turning her face away. "No. Truly." And then belatedly, "Thank you."
He sprawls back in his chair and picks up the deck, scraping the scattered cards back into an untidy pile. "No problem." He starts to shuffle once more, his fingers as deft as before, the rhythm unhurried. "Another game, Seeker?"
She is already shaking her head, shoving the chair back gracelessly. She has never been more conscious of her height as in this moment, the sheer length of her own body in comparison to his as she stands. Her hand flexes in unwilling agitation. Silk. Heat. "No. I… I must go. Thank you for the lessons.
"Again, no problem. Anytime."
She leaves, regardless if it is abrupt, regardless of what he thinks. Whatever she saw, she isn't sure it won't be on her face too and that she will not abide.