Varric Tethras watched Maria Cadash die, then he watched the world veer at full speed towards apocalypse. At first, the two things seemed unrelated. Maria's fate a tragedy, the start of a string of ill luck and bad omens. She'd been thirty when she was struck down, leaving no body. No trace.
It wasn't until later where he began to pinpoint that moment as the beginning of the end. Maybe it was folly to think the so-called Herald of Andraste could have saved Thedas. Particularly when the Maker didn't deign to step in and save her. If the fucking creator wouldn't reach down and deliver his own, what chance did the rest of them have?
Except, for a dead woman, Maria Cadash looked damn good. Exactly the way he remembered her, in fact, which surprised him. In the year since she died, Varric half-convinced himself he remembered her wrong, remembered her with rose colored glasses and a storyteller's gift for exaggeration. Her hair couldn't have been as red as he thought, her eyes couldn't have been that striking, her little half smile hadn't been that enchanting. The woman he conjured at night in his dreams was a stand-in for the real one, a bright representation of a kinder world full of impossible what-ifs and should-haves.
But if anything, time had dimmed her in his memories. The woman Hawke hoisted off the ground was no mere pale ghost of his daydreams, but vibrant and alive in the flickering flames above her. Her mere presence was enough to rattle open all the boxes inside him he thought he slammed shut.
He didn't save her. He didn't save her, and he should have. Hawke's cards said Varric was supposed to save her and he failed. He fucking failed.
Maria glared at the dog that bowled her over. Loki responded, as he usually did, by letting his tongue loll out the side of his mouth and panting. It was, Varric knew, the best apology anyone was going to get from the mutt. Maria frowned in response and looked past the massive hound, back to him like she couldn't look away.
"Varric?" When she said his name this time, it was softer, more cautious. Almost pleading.
He needed to get it together. He needed to say something to her. Anything. So he went to his favorite line of defense, a sarcastic drawl. "Nice of you to join us, Princess."
His voice sounded rough to his own ears, sandpaper and gravel, but it sent a wave of relief over her face regardless. She opened her mouth to say something, shut it again at a loss for words, expressive eyes sliding over his scarred face, his malnourished frame.
He suddenly wished he had taken the time to shave that morning instead of simply accepting second-day stubble for expediency's sake.
"What happened to you?" Maria's horrified whisper was barely audible.
"Maria." He hadn't said her name out loud in ages. Her real name, at any rate. She was always the Herald when they spoke, as if nobody could bear to remember they'd lost a real person instead of some mythical figurehead. Like they could forget how vibrant and alive she'd been before she suddenly wasn't.
But he had forgotten how her name felt in his mouth, the way the syllables rolled off his tongue like a well-loved prayer. But that one word, her name, was the only thing he felt capable of saying. He stared at her helplessly. She looked back, eyes growing more and more wary as the silence stretched on.
"Long story short." Hawke rushed to save him without a thought, two fingers still pinching that card so hard he could see her hand shaking. "You're remarkably well-preserved for a woman who died a year ago. Like something you see on an internet ad, you know? Dermatologists hate her…"
And as usual, Varric wasn't sure if Hawke was helping or hurting the situation. He winced, but before he could try and figure out how to salvage it, Maria sputtered out one sentence. "Dead a year?"
"Oh." Dorian said softly, a far away look clouding his too-handsome face. "Oh, that isn't good."
"This the Vint?" Hawke jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, making a rather dangerous level of eye contact with Varric. "The not-quite-Magister?"
"But… but I was just…" Maria reached up one hand to run her fingers through her blood red hair, the gesture enough to almost bring him to tears. Yes. He'd watched enough stolen clips of her in the year she'd been gone to recognize that gesture. He still managed to yank his eyes from her enough to level a warning glance at Hawke. One he hoped told her, clearly, to behave herself.
Hawke, as she frequently did, ignored him. She whipped around, fist curling on the zippo she held. In one lightning fast strike, she landed a solid punch on Dorian's impressive jawbone. The witch reeled back in shock, sputtering Tevene curses, his bird taking flight uttering appalled caws. Hawke unclenched her fist and flexed her fingers while venom dripped from her lips. "That's for getting us into this mess."
"You cretin!" Dorian exclaimed. "What in the Maker's name…"
"Time magic!" Hawke seethed. "You Magisters can't fucking leave anything alone."
"Oh excuse us for not locking up all our witches in dismal little cells!" Dorian still held his jawbone. "How dare we pursue scholarly research…"
"Scholarly research?!" Hawke lacked at least six inches of Dorian's height, but Varric knew that look. It was the look Hawke had right before things started going up in flames. "Scholarly research that brought about the fucking apocalypse!"
"I tried to stop it!" Dorian drew himself up to his full height and glared pointedly down his nose. "I know who you are Champion. You took your vigilante boyfriend and you hid when the war you caused broke out!"
"My vigilante boyfriend?" Hawke's eyes grew cold as ice, her voice lowered to a soft hiss. Varric swore he could smell sulphur.
"That's enough!" Maria elbowed in between them and glared up at both of them in return, her gray eyes sparking. Despite her own lack of height, both humans took a step back and fixed their gaze on her. Maria's breath came hard and she shook her head to clear it. "We can argue about whose fault it is after we know what the fuck happened."
"Temporal and spatial displacement." Dorian offered immediately. "Alexius didn't just mean to kill you, he wished to erase you from the timeline. I deflected the attack, and for some reason, we were drawn to this time, this place…"
"To me." Hawke snapped, looking down at the card in her hand before her shoulders sagged in defeat. Varric watched her trace the shape of The Lovers before Hawke met Varric's eyes. Her voice lowered in defeat. "It's my card. It was coming back to me."
Her card. And Broody's. It seemed cruel it made its way back to Hawke now. The same way it cut deeply that Maria was finally here. Now. When there was hardly anything left to fight for besides her memory.
"The watch!" Dorian exclaimed, turning to Maria. "If I were to get it from Alexius, we could reverse the enchantment. We could go back to our time."
"That's… that sounds impossible." Varric broke in.
"Your time." Hawke murmured softly without looking up. "Before this. Before all of this."
Before the death of almost all their friends. Before Fenris and Bethany died screaming. Before…
"There's bigger problems than Alexius. Some… creature they call the Elder One. It... shit. We don't know what it is." Varric broke in with a painful shrug.
He hadn't imagined Maria's bravery, hadn't projected that quality onto her without reason. He watched it now, saw her choke back fear and tip her chin up in determination while she clenched her hands into fists. "What happened?" She asked, eyes fixed on him with blazing strength and endless will.
Varric could almost believe it would be alright again. Almost. "You died." Varric began, slowly. "We tried, but we couldn't find anyway to close the vortex without you. Solas vanished. Then… well, nobody was prepared for the army of demons that showed up in the west. Maybe we could have held it off, but Orlais… their prime minister was assassinated. They didn't have a leader, we didn't have you, and…"
He shrugged hopelessly. "We've been fighting on the losing side since."
"We?" She asked. Varric couldn't bear to see the glimmer of hope on her face, not when he'd watched it die on so many other ones.
"I'm afraid there aren't many of us left." Hawke broke in, ripping her eyes from the card in her hand. "In fact, you're looking at half of a rather slapstick rescue operation."
The old radio at her hip crackled and Hawke reached for it. The thick static nearly eclipsed the Nevarran accented voice coming through, clipped and stern. "Champion we have located an entrance that appears safe in the northwestern tunnels."
Hawke kept her eyes on Maria as she hit the button to respond. "Right. On our way and we're bringing unexpected guests."
"Reinforcements?" The Seeker asked suspiciously.
"Better." Hawke stated evenly, lyrium blue eyes flashing intently to Dorian. "A second chance."
Before the Seeker could respond, Hawke dropped the radio back to her waist. Varric shook his head at the manic gleam in her eye. "Hawke this is…"
"Impossible." Hawke supplied.
"Batshit crazy." He corrected.
Maria's abbreviated short of laughter showed she agreed with him one hundred percent. Hawke fished in her pocket for the too familiar deck of cards. Varric fought the urge to slap them out of her hand.
"I was wrong." She muttered angrily, flicking her eyes ruefully to Maria. "I saw… in the cards I saw you could be saved but there wasn't a chance."
Varric hadn't saved her. He replayed that day over and over in his mind, came up with hundreds of ways to save her, but he hadn't. Maria died. Maria always died. Until now. Until here.
"I'm sorry, are those tarot cards?" Dorian scoffed, folded his arms across his chest. "I didn't realize we had time for Rivaini smoke and mirrors. Please, go on. I've always wanted to know the initials of my true love."
"Shut up." Hawke snarled, fanning the cards out in her hands and proffering them to Maria. The madness was back, the one Varric saw more and more often. It flickered over Hawke's pixie like features like fire. "Pick one."
"I don't…" Maria shook her head, frowning, a worried glance thrown over Hawke's shoulder at him.
"Pick. One." Hawke demanded insistently. Maria shot a doubtful glance at Dorian, who sighed wearily, but she reached forward anyway. She frowned as she pulled not one, but two cards free.
"They're stuck together."
"Of course they are." Hawke pulled the rest of the cards away and watched while Maria flipped over two. Varric couldn't see them from where he stood, but when Hawke's shriek of hysterical laughter echoed off the tunnel he knew what they were, knew before she grabbed them from Maria's hand and displayed them like trophies.
In Hawke's hand, the Hanged Man and the Knight of Swords stared accusingly at him.
Like the last time he didn't save Maria Cadash. But maybe Hawke hadn't been wrong. Maybe, just maybe, she'd been early.
"Come on then, Herald." Hawke offered cheerfully, folding all the cards back up in her deck. "We're taking you back home."
xx
The red lyrium grew worse the further into the tunnels they delved. It illuminated their faces in a terrible red glow, the heat sweltering. The silence weighed heavily, but Maria knew better than to try and lift it with awkward small talk. Dorian, apparently, never learned that lesson.
"So, will I be meeting your paramour? Do want to make sure I'm prepared to dodge any assassination attempts."
Maria saw Hawke's back stiffen, caught the sympathetic glance Varric shot up at her. Still, Hawke's voice was clear and steely when she spoke. "No."
"Shame that. It was sure to be interesting." Dorian tapped his pen irritably against his jaw line.
Hawke's jaw clenched and she didn't say a word. Maria saw her grip go white knuckled around the lighter she held. In the red glow, Hawke's mouth opened into a small o, but no sound came out. Her eyes screamed, though. And Maria knew that look.
"Dorian. Maybe focus on coming up with a workable plan?" She requested anxiously, hunching her own shoulders. She didn't miss the grateful look Varric sent her way.
She couldn't miss anything about Varric. Not the way he moved, the sound of his voice, the way he watched her like he'd never seen anything more miraculous in his life.
Like he feared she'd vanish every time he looked away.
The radio on Hawke's hip squawked again. The static nearly hid the voice on the other end, the words indecipherable. Hawke put it close to her pale lips and hit the button. "Gonna need to repeat that."
The only answer was more static, a haunting voice layered underneath it, too distorted to be understood. Hawke swore under her breath and shook her head, glaring pointedly at the red lyrium studding the tunnel. "It's this shit. Distorts the signal."
"I'm assuming we simply can't call them?" Dorian asked.
Maria's hand dived into her pocket without a second thought, pulling her own cell phone from within. The bright light of the screen was almost blinding, but she didn't have any service and the date and time still showed what it should have showed.
"Haven't had cell services in months." Varric's frown deepened. "We haven't had most technology for ages. You'll see why."
"Listen, there's something you should know." Hawke stated briskly, meeting and holding Maria's eyes. "Your sister is with the Seeker."
Maria's immediate reaction was that her sister was in Haven, safe and furious with Cole beside her. Maria left her just that morning. Her sister couldn't be here, that didn't make any sense, Bea didn't belong here.
"She's not well." Varric's voice was too gentle and Maria could hardly hear him past the internal alarm bells screaming in her head.
"What?" It was the first thing she could think to say. "What do you mean not well? What's wrong with her? Why is she here?"
"She didn't want to be left alone." Hawke murmured quietly. Varric sighed and shook his head.
"This shit." Varric gestured to the spikes of poison lyrium. "They grow it, using people. Being around it is enough to drive a person mad, but being infected… it's not pretty. There was an ambush, the Venatori took Bea, Bethany, and Fenris. We got them back but…"
"We didn't get them all back." Hawke snapped immediately, face frozen in that mask of grief and rage. At her heel, her massive dog whimpered.
"Fenris died before we got there. Bethany and Bea were infected by then, but we got them out. Bea… she's held up better than Sunshine did. Don't know why. That fabled dwarven resistance to magic? Hell, she may just be more stubborn." Varric shrugged uncomfortably, barely able to meet Maria's eyes. "But she's… she's not the same."
Dread settled in Maria's stomach. She hadn't finished Tale of the Champion, but she knew what the red lyrium did to Bartrand Tethras. "What do you mean?"
Varric and Hawke shared a look Maria didn't like at all, one that made her spine stiffen and her hands clench into tight fists. The radio crackled again, and this time Maria could make out a voice in the static. It drifted, hauntingly familiar, over the white noise on the airway.
It was Bea. She'd know her voice anywhere, even with the haunting, echoing quality cutting underneath the static, singing a chillingly off key chorus.
"Come on baby, don't fear the reaper… baby take my hand and don't fear the reaper…"
The voice trailed off and Maria reached forward to wrench the radio out of the raven haired witch's hand, but Hawke pulled it closer to her lips, pressing the button to speak. "Beatrix." Hawke snapped. "Focus."
For a long moment, there was nothing but silence. Then a soft hiss. "Do you see the one with the face?"
Hawke pinched her nose and exhaled deeply before she snapped into the radio again. "What face? Where the hell is the Seeker?"
"It's staring at you. It sees the smoke beneath your skin. Ashes and fire and sparks and…"
"I can't fucking talk to her when she's like this." Hawke exploded and thrust the radio, not into Maria's grasping hands but toward Varric. She snatched at it the same moment Varric reached for it, both their fingers wrapping around the cheap plastic.
"Let me talk to her." Maria begged, unable to contain her desperation. Varric's grip didn't loosen and he shook his head sadly.
"Listen, if she hears you she's… she's gonna think it's a hallucination. Best case scenario is she's gonna ignore you. Worst case… hell if I know. She's had some bad days lately. I can get her to make sense."
"She's my sister." Maria couldn't keep the knife edge of desperation out of her voice. The barely concealed panic. She was her baby sister and she'd promised Nanna, she'd promised her father that she'd keep Bea safe and…
"I know, Princess. I know." Varric reached forward with his other hand, calloused fingers gently prying hers away from the radio. "Trust me."
Against her better judgement she let go and she watched Varric take a deep steadying breath before he pressed the button on the radio with feigned nonchalance. "What's this face look like, Mittens?"
A brief moment of silence, then an answer. "She must have tried to run. There's nowhere left though. You know what they do to the ones that try and get away."
Varric's shoulders tightened. "I know. Which way do we go when we get there?"
"To the Seeker." Bea replied like it was obvious, despite Hawke rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "Varric the song changed. It's loud but different."
Varric inclined his head forward and Hawke stalked off forward, but Maria stuck to Varric's side, eying the radio nervously as they delved further into the red lit darkness. Varric sighed softly, stroking the radio and shaking his head. "Bea sings because she's trying to drown out… whatever the fuck she hears in her head now. She says it's a song."
"There's a cure." Maria's heart thudded uncomfortably in her throat. There had to be. Something that could be done, some way to…
She couldn't let Bea go the same way Nanna had, slipping into madness as the cancer ate away at her bones.
"There isn't." Varric eyed Hawke's back anxiously. "It…"
The radio crackled, Bea's voice incomprehensible in the static, but clearly distressed. Varric lifted the radio back up to his lips and quipped into it immediately. "If you need song ideas, I'm in the mood for something a bit more upbeat."
A bright burst of laughter, haunting and sharp, cut through the static before vanishing into eerie, troubling silence. Varric sighed and Maria fought the urge to rip the radio from his hand. "Why is she here?" Maria demanded furiously.
"There wasn't anywhere else to go." Varric insisted, frowning at her. He opened his mouth, closed it quickly in the face of her accusatory stare. He shook his head sadly, lips tipping into a sad, small smile. "Would you believe I tried to keep her safe, Princess? Thought it was the absolute least I could do if I couldn't save you."
"I didn't need saved." Maria seethed, ignoring the rush of… something in her chest. Something that ached like a wound. Something that quivered both nervously and hopefully. Her hands trembled and she clenched them into fists to stop them.
"Obviously." Hawke chimed in brightly, thumb clicking the zippo in her hand open, then closed. Open, closed. Her eyes rolled constantly, warily, from side to side as she swaggered down the red lyrium tunnel.
The radio crackled, Maria heard just a snatch of a note quavering in Bea's echoing voice. Then Hawke stopped short as it faded into silence. "Well. Shit. Guess we found crazy Bea's face."
"Don't call her that." Maria snapped to Hawke's back. Hawke shrugged only semi-apologetically and stepped to the side, revealing the end of the hallway, the tunnel splitting into two directions. But dead in the center of the wall, a horrifying face leered out of the wall. It had, at one point in time, been human. Now… a spike of red lyrium lanced through an eerily empty eye socket. Lank dark hair hung matted over the other one, hiding all but the barest glimmer of a pupil stuck, ever seeing in death.
The same way Fynn's had been. The same way her father's had been. Maria's stomach dropped somewhere to her knees and she looked away, alarmed. Not before her traitorous eyes found the rest of the skeleton, impaled grumesomely by red lyrium, bits of the body being eclipsed by the deadly shards.
"Shit." Varric sighed in weary resignation. "How long do you think this one lasted?"
"Someone left a person like this?" Dorian echoed, horrified. Maria's skin prickled in dread. Hawke simply shrugged again, shaking her head.
She must have tried to run.
Varric pulled the radio back up to his lips, his voice calm and steady even as he stared down the body on the wall. "Which way at the face, Mittens?"
"Hmm?" Bea answered, distracted.
"Face. Tunnels." Varric repeated genially. "We'd really enjoy spending less time staring at the ugly present the Venatori left us, so if you can let us know which way to turn sometime before I need to shave again…"
"He should have shaved yesterday." Hawke whispered conspirtorially towards Maria, a stage whisper meant to carry. "But, you know, when the world is ending it's so hard to remember to dress to impress."
She couldn't help the flicker of a smile, but it vanished as soon as she heard Bea's voice, normally so confident, tremble as she repeated something, a mantra of some sort. "My name is Beatrix Cadash. I'm twenty-nine years old. I grew up in Ostwick, in the Free Marches. I left Ostwick and I went to Haven because my sister…"
Bea's voice cracked. Varric cut in smoothly, his eyes meeting and holding Maria's own as he coached Bea through the radio. "Your sister tripped right into trouble."
"Tits first." And for a moment, Bea almost sounded like herself. "Like always. Yes. The face. Left, left until… until… fuck, Varric."
The radio crackled. Varric shook it, irritated, but his voice was still calm and gentle when he answered. "You're doing good. Stay with us."
"I don't know what's worse." Hawke hunched her shoulders defensively. "When she's mad, or when she comes back and she knows she's losing it."
They lost the radio again when they descended further into tunnels so thick with red lyrium that they had no choice but to inch past the glowing shards as cautiously as possible. Sweat beaded at the back of her neck, dripped uncomfortably down her shirt, and tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead.
She swore the shit sang A song she knew, but couldn't quite remember. Something from her childhood, maybe? A lullaby her mother sang before she died? Or maybe something Nanna used to hum under her breath when she made tea in the morning. Maria knew there was a sharp, vibrating sound from regular lyrium if you stopped and listened close enough, a high note that carried on and caused stray dogs to howl.
Not this. Not this eerie melody that tickled the edges of her memory, that reminded her of haunted rooms and death.
"Anything, Varric?" Hawke asked quietly.
"Static, static, and…" Varric grunted while he slid underneath a spike of lyrium. "Shockingly, more static."
"If I wanted a smartass answer…"
"You'd have answered your own question?"
There was an easy cadence, a rhythm to their banter that felt more important than the words themselves. She wished she could pay better attention to it. She wished…
She wished she'd open her damn eyes and find that she'd tripped over her own damn feet and knocked herself unconscious. Anything to get Bea's haunted, trembling voice out of her ears and Varric's aged face out of her head.
"This isn't real, you know." Dorian soothed optimistically. "This is merely… a blip! One we will soon put behind us."
"Feels awfully real to me." Hawke muttered under her breath. Maria agreed wholeheartedly. Even if they left, even if somehow they got back to where and when they were supposed to be, how was she supposed to forget this?
Hawke stopped short, spotting the same shadow appearing on the wall around the corner that Maria did. Instantly, the zippo in her hand burst into flame and Varric slipped himself between it and Maria, shotgun ready. The shadow paused as well, wary, before a familiar voice called out. "Champion? Varric?"
Hawke's shoulders relaxed an inch and Varric lowered his gun. The zippo extinguished itself. "Seeker." Hawke drawled playfully. "Boy do we have a surprise for you."
The lanky form that slipped around the corner, gun cocked carefully but aimed at the ground, didn't look amused. Seeker Pentaghast, still recognizable with longer, choppier hair and a trio of wicked scars across her entire face, scowled and opened her mouth, her eyes moving from Hawke, to Varric, then landing on Maria.
She froze, gun lifting on instinct, a startled cry of shock slipping from her pale lips. Maria swore she thought the gun shook in Cassandra's hands. "No! It cannot be, it cannot… is it you? Is it truly…?"
"Why are you always pointing a gun at me?" Maria asked, ignoring the reverent hopefulness in Cassandra's eyes, the sheer joyful amazement.
"In the flesh, Seeker." Varric's tired features rearranged themselves into his own small, hopeful smile. "And, you're not gonna believe this, but with a plan for a do-over."
(AN: MERRY CHRISTMAS! I was in a rather serious car accident and have just recently been able to get together to do some writing. I'm hopeful to update all three stories going currently by the end of the year! Thank you for your patience!)