Bea's arm curled through hers lazily. The wind off the harbor blew cold and Maria spared a thought for some of the sailors still in thin cotton and linen. She'd have frozen right through if not for the warm leather coat lined with heavy cotton. Still, the gentle warmth of Bea beside her was welcome.
"Are you girls ready?" Zarra asked, tugging on her gloves as she approached, appraising them with flinty grey eyes. "Where is your hat, Maria?"
"Do you honestly think she's going to risk messing her hair up?" Beatrix asked before Maria could respond. In retaliation, Maria jabbed her elbow into Bea's ribs. Bea winced and glared, but didn't slip her arm from hers.
Zarra smiled indulgently, her leather covered fingertips gracefully brushing a strand of red hair away from Maria's face. "Won't due to be pretty if you catch your death." Zarra warned gently.
"At least I'll have a perfectly coifed corpse." Maria quipped with her own grin. Zarra let out a long suffering sigh and Bea giggled. But Zarra's lips curled up in amusement even as she shook her head in mock exasperation.
They trailed in Zarra's wake while she strode purposefully through the harbor, pausing here and there to talk to some sailor or merchant. Maria should have been paying attention, but the chill in the air, the somber clouds hanging low in the sky served to set her teeth on edge.
"Did you get into another fight with Dunhark?"
The question startled her, made her shoot a sly look at Beatrix from the corner of her eye. Bea munched happily on an apple she certainly hadn't had when they started walking. She wondered idly which unsuspecting merchant found himself sans part of his lunch as Bea chewed thoughtfully. "Why?" Maria asked suspiciously.
"He gets under your skin." Bea shrugged simply. "You're always moody after he tells you off. I don't know why you just don't tell him where to shove his hammer at. Although it probably wouldn't fit because he's such a tight…"
Maria snorted before Bea could finish, shaking her head in amusement. Bea grinned wickedly. "Am I right?" She asked.
"About where his hammer would fit? I certainly have no way of knowing that information."
"Bet he'd let you find out. He's always staring when you're not looking." Bea teased, taking another bite of her apple and letting her eyes flick covetously to the gold jewelry circling a Rivaini raider's neck. Maria was lucky Bea looked away when she did, because she wasn't sure she could hide the flash of irritation.
Sweet baby Andraste, what a mess. She hadn't been able to set foot near the shop in two weeks and spent a considerable amount of time finding ways to alter frequent routes that may have her running into Fynn. Satinalia, she grumbled inwardly, hadn't been a good enough excuse to throw herself at a deshyr. A deshyr who, rumor had it, would be engaged within six months to someone suitably boring.
Nanna would disapprove of getting involved in any sort of mess like that and Maria didn't think she was built to be a second woman anyway.
"What are we doing anyway?" Bea asked, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand.
In a second, in that mad, senseless way dreams had of shifting, changing, they were descending into a cellar. Gooseflesh rippled down her arms as she hit hard dirt floor. The group with them, four muscle, two other rogues shared the same uneasy posture.
They did shit like this all the time. Nanna always met new contacts in person before agreeing to any sort of business relationship. Why did this time feel so wrong? Even beside her, Bea shrunk back, stuck to her like glue. Nervous, on edge, uncharacteristicly silent. Maria swore she could smell sulphur.
Her bow, slung on her back, wouldn't be good in tight quarters like this, but she had a dagger on her hip and it'd do in a pinch. Nanna looked over her shoulder, met her eyes and Maria nodded. She knew that look, understood what it meant. Nanna had the same eerie, unsettled feeling Maria did.
The man who turned the corner smiled broadly, holding his hands out in an expansive welcome. "Mistress Cadash!" He exclaimed. "A pleasure, a pleasure. My contacts have been so effusive with their praises."
"We always love a good recommendation." Zarra stated evenly, inclining her head back towards them. "The best of my crew."
Oh, really bad then. It wasn't often that Nanna didn't introduce her at least, if not Bea, as the Cadash heir. Which meant that Nanna didn't want this man to know how many of the core family he had stuck in this tunnel. Maria fisted her hand on the back of Bea's jacket and leaned down, plucking a vial from inside one of the inner pockets while Bea stared blankly ahead.
Bea loved her poisons, mixed so many of them up herself that Nanna worried pretty consistently that she'd accidentally poison herself. Bea joked she most likely developed a pretty healthy immunity to most of them. But the ones she whipped up herself were lethal, and Maria wanted the edge if it came to it.
"Don't worry, I got you." Maria whispered quietly as she pulled away from Bea's pale face. Bea flicked gray eyes up, nodded once in acknowledgement.
The man continued to chat pleasantly as they walked and Maria couldn't place his accent. North, she thought, but not Antivan. Maker, the sulphur smell was getting stronger, and…
Maria emerged into a large central chamber filled with cages and came face to face with men, women, children, staring hopelessly through the bars. Malnourished, pale, dirty, faces streaked with tears followed them with dread as they emerged into the weak lantern light.
Bea took a sharp intake of breath beside her and Maria finally placed the accent. Tevinter. Slaves.
Zarra Cadash immediately went to work talking themselves out of this situation, but Maria couldn't avoid all the eyes on her, the shaking shoulders of Bea next to her, the putrid smell of the worst atrocities people were capable of committing. Even if she closed her eyes, she swore it would follow her forever.
Bea squeezed her eyes shut, stared down at the ground, shifted so she was half behind Maria. Bea was still a child, she could afford to close her eyes and wish the world was a better place.
Maria Cadash knew better. She didn't close her eyes, even as Zarra informed the man, regretfully, they lacked the capacity to fulfill his needs. Then Zarra pushed them back through the tunnels, one hand on her own blade, the other steering Maria forward with a single minded determination.
Bea threw up the apple she'd eaten into the sea while Maria held back her hair and turned her impotent rage onto her grandmother, demanding answers for what they should do.
Maria still remembered the bitter twist of Zarra's lips. "Nothing. Thank the Maker, the ancestors, or whoever you wish for not getting murdered down there and leave those poor souls to their fates."
"We can't!" Maria protested shrilly, the wind whipping her hair away from her face, sending icy fingers down her neck. "The city guard, somebody…"
"And who will they think turned them in?" Zarra asked, reaching out and tightening her grip painfully on Maria's arm. "For the sake of your family, we'll do nothing. It is the smart thing, Maria. It's what I'm ordering."
Maria blinked back tears from her eyes, wrenched her arm free, and stormed away from her grandmother. It wasn't the first time she'd ever done so, but it was the first time she did so knowing she would disobey, knowing she couldn't do the smart thing, she just had to figure how…
When she turned the corner, a shadow darkened the alley. She looked up into the gaping maw of a wolf, teeth dripping with saliva, breath hot on her face. The red eyes bore into her soul and eerie green light crawled up the brick walls.
She woke up frozen, breath caught in her chest, eyes squeezed shut tightly.
"Why didn't you put this in your letter?"
"Well, Mittens, it's not the kind of thing you put at the end of a letter. Oh by the way, your sister's magic hand may or may not be spreading, the consequences of which are wildly unknown so whenever you feel like pulling your head out of your ass…"
Something thunked on a table, but Maria didn't move. Everything felt so heavy, from the tips of her fingers to her eyelids. "Maker's hairy balls, if she even knew I wrote at all… and it isn't like I had any guarantee Rivaini would get the letter to you in the first place."
Varric sounded as exhausted as she felt. Her mind clutched at the words, turning them over, trying to make sense of them in her head. Everything felt… foggy. Far away. Like she'd been drinking with Bull, but without the taste of fire on her tongue. Her breath felt like lead in her ribcage.
"If you hadn't tried to open that chest, she would have. You can't allow yourself to wallow in guilt." Cassandra's blunt voice cut across the room. "It was the Maker's will."
"The Maker can shove it then." Varric growled. "Why? What's the damn point of making her suffer? Why now? Why when…"
Varric trailed off. Maria opened her eyes blearily. She laid on her side, sparking hand stretched out over the blanket, light falling onto her from the windows she faced. On the other side of the bed, behind her, she heard movement. A wine bottle, she thought, clinking against a glass. Beside her, on the pillow, were those little blue flowers she loved. Orlesian marguerites, little blue daisies that climbed all over the fields of Orlais. They were near her fingertips, illuminated in the green light spilling from her palm, the light that shimmered like veins over her reddened skin, moving up over her elbow, up and up…
"What are all of you hiding?" Beatrix asked and Maria could just picture the way she crossed her arms over her chest in determination, eyes flashing passionately. Bea hated not knowing things, hated…
Maria didn't want to draw attention to herself, not yet. She'd been hurt, obviously, although the details were a bit fuzzy. Something to do with a chest, and yes, that sounded familiar. A flash of a memory, bending over Varric's shoulder as his silver lock picks flashed in the light from her palm.
So, how badly had she been hurt? Her clouded mind grasped at the feeling in her body. She ached, ached from her head to her toes like she'd been struck by lightning. She wiggled the fingers on her right hand and regretted it instantly. White hot pinpricks of pain shot up her skin and she grit her teeth together tightly to avoid making a sound.
No wonder Varric sounded so damn broken. If she hurt herself this badly, she could only imagine the damage she'd done. Hot tears burned the back of her throat.
Marguerite would have been a lovely name for a little girl. Marguerite like the little flowers Varric sent with his first poems, like the ones he left scattered for her everywhere. The ones just within reach of her traitorous hand.
"Seriously, nobody is going to answer me?" Bea continued into the heavy silence. Don't any of you dare, she thought waspishly. If Bea wanted to know, then she should have…
"The hallucination bothers me more than anything else." Dorian's elegant voice was heavy. "I have seen her face injury far more times than I wish to count, but never like that. Her eyes… she spoke to someone behind you Varric. Or at least she thought she was."
"Maria isn't losing her mind." Bea declared passionately. "She isn't the type."
"Nobody said she is losing her mind." Cassandra's steady voice broke in. "Her decisions are still sound."
Cassandra watched Cullen, once, to make sure he didn't lose his damn mind. Maria never thought she'd have to do the same thing for her. At least she knew Cass wouldn't falter in her duty.
"She saw Fynn Dunhark." Varric whispered. She heard the thunking sound again, recognized it as the sound of a whiskey glass slamming on wood. "And in case you're wondering, he didn't seem particularly impressed with me."
The bitter edge of pain and guilt in Varric's voice was enough to make her want to move. She'd face the rolling agony for Varric. She started to give herself a little pep talk, taking a small breath in preparation…
"Well, I wouldn't feel too bad about that." Bea's voice, warm and alive, tinged with a wicked laughter. "He didn't like Maria much either at first. Still ended up sneaking her into his bed the first chance he got."
"To be fair, she is much prettier." Dorian remarked with the same warm affection. "And nobody enjoys their old lover's new flame, do they? We can hardly expect to hold hallucinations to a higher standard."
She nearly laughed, only catching herself with the reminder that laughter would hurt like a son of a bitch right now. Did she see Fynn? She couldn't…
A shadow moved by the window, drew her eye to it. The curtain fluttered as a wrinkled hand caressed it appraisingly.
As if it were nothing out of the ordinary, Zarra Cadash looked over her shoulder towards Maria's prone form, tsking in disappointment. "Is this how you take care of yourself when I'm expecting my first great-grandchild?"
Maria's scream pierced the air before she could choke it back, a mixture of terror that quickly turned to pain as she tried to recoil from the ghost of her grandmother, her hand throbbing and burning.
A glass shattered, then Varric's arms were around her waist, gentle and firm and she rolled with no small amount of effort, burying her head into the broad hard planes of his chest, hiding from the demon behind her. "Honestly." Zarra sighed with as much exasperation as she'd ever heard before. "Is that any way to say hello?"
Varric spoke over top of the voice, ignoring it. Or, possibly, unable to hear or see her at all. "You're alright, you're going to be alright."
He smelled like the good whiskey she kept, or maybe it was just wafting up from wherever the broken glass landed. Her chest felt too tight, her heartbeat spiking unpleasantly, and the room was going hazy around the edges again. But Dorian's heated fingers were already pulling her away from Varric's chest even as she trembled, a flask of something tasting bitter and awful pushed into her mouth, something that made her cough and sputter.
"How long does it take to work?" Cassandra asked, voice tense and sharp.
"A minute. Perhaps two." Dorian threw the bottle away and gripped her chin solidly between his fingers. "Stay with us this time, Cadash."
She was going to throw up the foul tasting medicine right onto Varric's shirt, vomit with the echoing sound of her dead grandmother scolding her for it. Her mind must have finally cracked, too much weird shit for even her to handle. Varric hummed a comforting note, her vision swirled, a blend of crimson and gold.
Firm, gentle fingers grasped her unmarked hand and squeezed. "Maria." Bea called, kneeling on the bed beside her.
Cassandra prayed under her breath and Maria looked down the line of her arm to the fingers intertwined with her own, up into a set of matching gray eyes. Her eyes, Nanna's eyes. "I'm going mad." She sobbed through chattering teeth. Varric's arm tightened around her waist stubbornly.
"Not something mad people typically say, Princess." He whispered softly against her hair.
"Why?" Bea asked, expression uncharacteristically serious. "What happened?"
Anger churned with fear, with the sick feeling in her stomach. She felt cold all over and Bea squeezed her hand again, eyes sharp as tacks. "If it's Fynn, ask him if he's got that stick out of his ass yet."
It shocked her, and it didn't. It was exactly what Bea would say and it reassured her that some part of this horrid nightmare was real, and if Bea was real then Varric was, Dorian was, Cassandra was. The startled half-choked laugh that fell from her mouth brought a flicker of triumph to Bea's eyes. Cassandra made a shocked disgusted noise in the back of her throat and even Varric chuckled weakly.
She couldn't say her grandmother's name or trust her tongue to say any of the words without spilling the bitter brew on her tongue. She realized she didn't have to almost immediately, moving her fingers over Bea's hand, to the cold metal ring she felt against her palm.
She stroked the crest set inside the ring, knew it like she knew the exact shade of Ostwick's harbor when it rained or the signs it'll snow in Skyhold. It was Nanna's, if the world hadn't gone to hell with her in the center of it, it would have been Maria's someday. But it fit well on Bea's slender clever fingers. Quick as lightning, Bea knew what she was saying.
"Seriously?" She asked, leaning backwards. "I can prove to you she isn't here. If she was, her and I would certainly be in the middle of arguing."
Probably also true. The darkness around the edges of her vision seemed to be receding. She could feel the coiled tension of Varric's arms wrapped tight around her, count the thundering beats in his chest in the space of her own fluttering unsteady heartbeat.
"It's working." Dorian nodded in satisfaction. "Cadash, I know this is beating an old horse to death, but we really can't have you working yourself into a frenzy anymore or injuring yourself. Your hand can't take it."
Her heart stuttered and she felt like confessing she didn't think her hand was the only thing that couldn't take it anymore. Still, she pulled back from Varric's chest just long enough to look down at her wretched arm.
The angry red skin looked hot to the touch, but that was a secondary concern. The bigger issue couldn't be ignored - pulsing green lines under her skin, spiraling up her arm like Dalish tattoos, the creeping tendrils just scraping the top of her shoulder. She looked up from it in alarm, meeting Dorian's eyes. Over his shoulder, her hallucination shook its head.
"Yes, dear." Zarra Cadash began shrewdly. "That is quickly becoming our main problem, isn't it?"
No, not the main problem. The main problem was more alarming. "Varric, you need to get that woman. Claude."
Varric didn't say anything, only tightened his grip around her waist, avoiding her eyes. "Varric!" She snapped impatiently.
"Maria." Dorian began patiently, sadly. "If anything has happened, she will not be able to tell before you can. We can fetch a healer, but I doubt they'll be able to sense anything past that damned mark in your hand. And if something has happened… I don't believe they'll be able to help. Not now."
Beatrix's fingers had been stroking her unmarked palm softly, but they stuttered to a stop nearly immediately. Bea was always too clever for her own good.
She tore her eyes away from Dorian, back to Varric's face. His jaw trembled with suppressed emotion. This, she realized belatedly, was a conversation that had already happened while she'd been unconscious.
"Come." Dorian's robes rustled as he stood, meeting Cassandra's eyes. "I think a moment alone is safe, for now."
Cassandra nodded and Maria noticed, for the first time, distinct marks from her teeth where she'd bitten into her lower lip. She hadn't seen Cassandra do that since they'd found Lord Seeker Lucius raving madly. "You as well, Beatrix." Cassandra stated firmly.
Bea looked like she would argue for a minute, as stubborn as she'd been when she was a girl. Even after all this time, there was a trace of teenage mutiny in Bea's expression. But then her shoulders slumped in defeat and she let go of Maria's hand. "I'm coming back."
Right, Maria thought. She'd believe it when she saw it. She chanced a backwards glance over her shoulder, scanned the room for Zarra Cadash, couldn't find her. She didn't look back at Varric until the door clicked closed behind Cassandra's back.
"Is the medicine working?" Varric asked. He meant 'are you still hallucinating', she was sure, but that question seemed dangerous.
"She's not here, so maybe." Maria had dangerous questions of her own she wanted to ask, but instead she swallowed them.
"Why is Bea here?" That was a safer question. Varric's lips tugged upwards in a humorless smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"She followed us through the Eluvian, attacked the Qunari that meant to ambush us. An ambush of an ambush, as it was. Almost felt bad for the sorry bastards."
His fingers rose to her arm, not quite touching the blistering skin or the churning magic underneath. "I did this to you. If I'd have just thought for once before…"
"It wasn't you." She couldn't remember exactly what happened, but Varric wouldn't hurt her. He'd never harm a single hair on her head, not on purpose. "Accidents happen, Varric."
"Not like this." Varric whispered, smooth voice like brittle glass. "Damnit, Maria." He shoved his free hand through the blonde hair falling from its tie around his face.
She couldn't catch her own breath, couldn't steady her own heartbeat, but worry overtook her when she peered into his eyes. She'd never seen him look more broken. The words she'd been shoving down for too long finally boiled over, like a pot left unattended on a stove for too long. She'd already broken him, just like she always knew she would, deep down. Because that's what she was, really. The price of loving her was pain, disaster, death.
Not his death. Not this time. "I knew it was getting worse. I've known for awhile, I… you didn't cause this Varric. It would have happened without you."
He wouldn't die. She would. She grasped his free hand, pulled it away from his face. "I think that's why Solas left. I think without the orb… I think he knew he couldn't save me. I think he didn't want to watch me die."
But Varric would have to, no matter how hard she fought it, no matter how long she lasted, Varric would be forced to watch her burn away.
"There's a way." Varric growled.
"I won't stop looking for it." She promised heatedly, pressing her lips against his calloused palm. "But the baby… I knew it was a bad idea. I knew the mark… I just wanted you to have what you wanted."
I wanted to give you everything, she added inside her own head, even if I wasn't here to enjoy it with you.
"We don't know for sure." Varric whispered. "I don't want to give up hope, Princess. Not yet."
His tone was pleading, begging. Hope was a dangerous thing, too fragile to exist in her life. And yet… for Varric, she could try. For Varric, she would always try.
She blinked away the tears caught in her eyes and nodded, speechless. Varric tugged her back to his chest, tucked her head under his chin. "Alright." She mumbled softly, forcing her breath to come even, deep. "Alright then."
I knew that I was dying.
Something in me said,
go ahead, die, sleep, become as
them, accept.
Then something else in me said, no,
save the tiniest bit.
It needn't be much,
just a spark.
A spark can set a whole forest on fire.
Just a spark.
Save it.
-Charles Bukowski