After the confrontation outside the Chantry, the Seeker whisked them away to the nicest hotel Maria had ever stepped foot in. She took over two elegant, posh meeting rooms. Harding and Cassandra turned the first one into a mobile command base.

Maria had been trapped with them for two hours on a video call with Josephine, Leliana, and Cullen. By the time she escaped into the second room, the last thing she wanted to do was watch more of herself. Unfortunately, the only concession she'd wrung out of the men was muting the damn TV.

Harding wasn't the only one that got her on camera. It seemed like there were a hundred different videos, all showing her confrontation with the Lord Seeker, from a hundred different angles. Some were nearly pristine, presumably from the top of the line smartphones, some were so grainy she was indistinguishable but for her red hair.

The twenty-four hour news channels were having a field day. They were watching one program, hosted by an overweight balding human whose face glistened under caked on makeup. One of the cell phone videos ran in a loop on the whole left side of the screen while the host and a call-in pundit's heads occupied the right side in tiny little boxes.

Maria watched part of the video, again, where she passionately declared that she didn't need the Lord Seeker's help, her face flushed, eyes flashing. Bea had already sent sixteen text messages with different screen caps, most of them with steaming head emojis or the words "temper tantrum" typed over top of them with gifs of people laughing.

Maria sunk down further into her chair and hid her face in her hands with a muttered oath.

"This is my favorite part." Blackwall chuckled warmly and reclined back in his own chair with an air of satisfaction. "That's the look of a man who just shit himself a bit."

The sound was muted, but the talking heads next to the footage seemed to nod along in agreement with Blackwall. Maria groaned. "I can't believe they keep showing this."

"But look how small your mugshot is now!" Varric was absolutely gleeful, both phone and tablet on the table in front of him, showing both Facebook and Twitter. #MariaCadash was trending. Again. So was #Redheads and #HotHerald.

Her mugshot had, indeed, shrunk to a thumbnail in the bottom scrolling portion of the screen. If this kept up, they'd have to take it off entirely, so at least there was that. And, as far as she could tell, her sordid past hadn't been fodder for the news for nearly four hours. A new record.

"Stop scowling at the TV, kid. Your face is gonna stay that way." Varric advised. Maria peeked between her fingers to see Cole glaring at a polished photo of the Lord Seeker displayed where the video had been.

"He wants to hurt you. Humiliated. Hateful." Cole dropped his gaze nervously to the table. "I won't let him."

"I feel safer already." Maria managed a weak grin and kicked Cole's chair playfully. "He'd have to get through Cassandra, at any rate."

"Yes." Cole nodded fervently. "That would be difficult."

They all laughed, even Solas from his chair in the corner. They didn't have time to settle back down before the door to the room burst open and Harding nearly leapt across the table for the remote, successfully elbowing Varric in the sternum as she retrieved it with a flourish and pointed it at the TV. "Forget this trash…"

"That's what I've been saying." Maria mumbled.

"Voila!" Harding exclaimed, bringing up another news station. A soberly dressed older woman had the footage from Harding's drone camera in the top right corner of the screen. Harding hit the volume button and she heard the woman's crisp Orlesian accent.

"Ambassador Montiliyet states that the declaration from Maria Cadash aligns with the Inquisition's broad, humanitarian mission to end the threat of the vortex while striving for peace across Thedas. Unnamed sources within the Inquisition itself suggest that if the templar order is committed to their solitude, the Inquisition would be amenable to an alliance with the Liberated Witches of Redcliffe…"

"Would they really?" Solas asked, turning his green eyes to Cassandra in the doorway. "Or is this a political stunt?"

"The vortex is the priority." Cassandra's voice was neutral, flat. "If the templars will not assist, we must seek allies elsewhere."

"The Inquisition has not released a firm answer on whether they are adopting an official position on Maria Cadash being the Herald of Andraste." The woman continued. "Despite their silence, she is gaining a cult following dedicated to her heroics in the Crossroads and…"

The person in the video hardly looked like her. She wasn't wearing a tattered old coat, she wasn't silent and pale. The woman in the video looked fierce. She sounded confident, she was mighty and proud and…

It wasn't the woman she saw in the mirror every day. This was some crafted image, some impossible fever dream made up of clever PR techniques and…

"No." Cole whispered, covering her hand with his own. "No. You're wrong. It's not a lie."

"I need some air." She needed to go somewhere sane. She nearly knocked her chair over in her haste, nearly bowled Cassandra over when she pushed past her.

The hotel lobby was too pristine, too white, with miles of high glass windows stretching above her head. She paused, disoriented, among the neutral furnishings and odd, jarring modern art. She could have stayed there forever if not for the plunking notes of a piano, discordant in the air.

A child laughed, a young human girl in a smart little uniform. A woman, an elven nanny she assumed, hushed her and tugged her quickly away from the instrument, abandoned in the corner.

The one thing worth any money in their apartment in Hercinia was a piano, one she scraped and saved for, bought used, and presented to Fynn on his birthday after roping in a half-dozen neighborhood teens into helping her move it.

"Do you play?"

She should have known Cassandra would follow her. She swore under her breath and slumped, exhausted, into one of the plush leather chairs. Somehow, despite the largeness of it, it was still the most uncomfortable chair she'd ever sat in. "I'm not absconding."

"I did not believe you were." Cassandra took the chair opposite hers, spreading her legs wide and hunkering down as if to give a last-minute pep talk.

"Please don't." Maria groaned. "Please don't tell me the Maker is with us or that we're going to succeed. I can't stand to hear it one more time."

"Alright." Cassandra didn't relax her posture, but she nodded. "Then… tell me about yourself. I know frighteningly little about you beyond what is splashed across the headlines."

"What does it matter?" Maria's laughed bitterly.

"It matters to me. I want to know who you are. What you like." Cassandra shifted uneasily. "You do not have the same camaraderie with me that you do with the others, and it is my fault. I would… I would like to start again."

"How?" Maria asked, her throat cracked and dry. She felt numb, exhausted.

"Do you play the piano?" Cassandra repeated.

"Yes." It was a simple enough question, anyway. "But I haven't played in a long time. I'm not sure I remember how."

The woman in the video was the person she should have been if life was fair, but she hadn't been that person in a long time either.

She was glad to go upstairs to the quiet, clean room the Seeker arranged. It was still too white, too sparse, the edges too sharp, but the thought of laying down on the thick white comforter lifted her spirits.

Which, of course, meant that her phone rang the second she stripped off her coat. It wasn't the good phone, though. It was the black one, the dummy, and she dreaded even looking at it. Except, the number on the screen was Leliana's. She hesitated for a moment before she grabbed it and accepted the call.

"Hello?" She tried to keep her voice steady.

"I'm glad you answered. I wanted there to be a record that I called you." Leliana's velvet Orlesian voice sounded as calm as usual. "I'm calling to inform you that the Inquisition has taken your sister into custody."

"What?" She had to be tired, because that sentence definitely wasn't right.

Leliana giggled. "Yes. We decided it was the best way to make it appear as if you had nothing to do with it. I arranged for Inquisition agents to waylay and manhandle Beatrix in full view of several associates from the Carta. She played her part admirably."

Bea was a born actress. Leliana continued cheerfully. "I then informed Dwyka since he could not be trusted, I would be in charge of your sister's well-being. He is furious, of course, but since I'm holding the purse strings… well, it hurts to no longer have Bea within his grip, but he can manage. I suspect he will be calling you to demand her return."

"And I'm supposed to play dumb?" Maria stated numbly, collapsing on the bed.

"No. You are to display that temper of yours and act as incensed at my interference as you care to be. Make him think you are on his side." Leliana counseled calmly. "Your sister is safely with Mister Hisraad…"

"Bull." Maria corrected.

Leliana laughed. "And she's been given funds to go wherever she wishes. I've made several recommendations."

The words stuck in her throat, but she managed to get them out regardless. "Thank you."

"It is nothing." She could picture Leliana waving her concerns away. "Thank you for being so impressive this afternoon."

"I didn't do anything." She really hadn't. Leliana tsked in her ear in disbelief.

The phone beeped and she pulled it away long enough to look at the screen. She blinked wearily at the name and choked on a dry sob.

"Is it him?" Leliana asked quietly.

"Yes." Maria steeled herself, tried to freeze the blood flowing through her veins the way Solas froze the air.

"You can do this." Leliana encouraged. "I have faith, Herald."

Maria wished she did. Leliana's call disconnected and she was left staring at the screen with a mixture of disgust, anger, and cold dread. She swiped up to accept the call and put the phone to her ear. "Dwyka…"

"Listen here, cunt." His voice was a snarl that made the back of her neck prickle. "You may be able to make some piss-ass templar shit his pants, but…"

"She took Bea. She took Bea so I couldn't leave." The lie sat, twisted, on her tongue. She heard Dwyka go silent while he pondered this angle. A movement at the corner of her eye made her turn her whole head, broke her fierce concentration on Dwyka's breathing, reminded her he wasn't there, she wouldn't feel him looming behind her.

A piece of paper had been slid under the door and Maria stood, walked toward it. "Cadash…" Dwyka began, voice still menacing.

"I just want to come home." It was just a role, she could play a role. "They're never going to let me come home, they're going to keep Bea and make me some shitty Herald…"

She bent to unfold the paper with trembling fingers and shook it open. Cole's neat print spilled across the page.

I reminded them to tune the piano so you could play the song you like. The one nobody else knows.

xx

"Varric are you available for a call?"

Varric's laptop had sixteen different browser tabs open, there was a recorded call playing on his tablet, and he'd somehow been roped into a meme war with Hawke via their secure messaging system, one he was winning. He'd been so distracted, his baby's voice in his ear nearly made him jump out of his skin.

"That depends on who's calling." Varric replied smoothly.

"Bianca Davri. She wishes to video chat." The AI chirped. Varric tipped his head to the side, immediately intrigued.

"Well, sweetheart, put her through on the tablet." He instructed, beginning to close out of his tabs on the laptop. He ignored the dinging message from Hawke on the phone and kicked back in his desk chair, waiting.

This hotel was so damn Orlesian he'd be lucky if he left it without an obnoxious accent. He'd even attempted to venture to the bar downstairs, took one look at the pretentious and expensive menu, and fled back upstairs as quickly as he could. Since then, he'd been attempting to catch up on everything he should have been doing, if he hadn't been talked into following the swaying hips of the Herald of Andraste halfway across Thedas.

A queasy feeling swirled to life in his stomach. It felt… wrong, somehow, to be taking a call from Bianca and thinking about Maria. He had to remind himself that nothing was happening with either woman for a plethora of different, but equally important, reasons. Thus, there wasn't any need to feel guilty.

None at all.

The video chat on the tablet connected and in a flash, Varric stared into Bianca's brilliant turquoise eyes and her smug little half-smile. "Should I assume I didn't interrupt anything important?"

"When do I do anything important?" He asked in return with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows. "Tell me you've got news on the red lyrium."

"No." She said quickly. "Not yet, anyway. But this is important. I've been doing some research, and…"

"Now probably isn't the time to be launching a new product." He teased halfheartedly. "The economy is in the shitter everywhere except Par Vollen, and I can't bribe our way into that market to save our collective lives."

"No." Bianca's eyes narrowed. "Into Maria Cadash."

It wasn't often Varric found himself speechless, but on occasion, Bianca could do it. He looked at her face on the monitor and fought the urge to shake the whole contraption. "Maker's ass. Why?"

"Because you're too busy staring at her other assets to wonder what kind of person she is." Bianca replied smoothly, leaning forward and tapping her own screen. Varric watched as his screen split and Bianca's image shrank and slipped to the top right corner. "I got the trial records from Hercinia."

"She was found not guilty." Varric didn't budge his eyes from Bianca in the top right. He didn't want to look at the images she was pulling up on the left, a shared file library for him to delve into. If he wanted to.

He didn't want to. It was personal, it was Maria's tragedy and he didn't need…

"She had gunshot residue on her hands." Bianca continued on, nonplussed. "But the gun the police found hadn't been fired recently. There was also a sign another man had been in the house, they found short dark hair, but they couldn't get DNA off of it. It wasn't microscopically similar to Fynn's."

"Bianca…"

"And Fynn Dunhark's father was going to testify that his son was leaving her and returning to the fold. Guess the kid got tired of slumming it." There was a manic gleam in Bianca's eyes. "But he killed himself before he could testify. Probably why she ended up getting off."

"Or someone else broke in and killed the poor kid." Varric spat the words through clenched teeth. "Bianca, this is only half the story…"

"But she hasn't told you the other half, has she?" Bianca, like a surgeon, cut with precision. "If she doesn't have anything to hide…"

"She probably watched her boyfriend get gunned down. That's fucking traumatic and if she doesn't want to…"

"Dwyka has dark hair." Bianca cut in. "Pulled up his mug shot. Well, one of them. Ugly bastard."

"Hate to break it to you, but lots of people have dark hair." Varric pointed out.

"Did you know she's fucking him?"

Once, Varric got hit by an ice spell slung at him while helping Hawke do… something. He couldn't even remember. Had to do with blood witches, he thought. Or maybe that damn mining expedition of hers. He remembered the biting cold like it was yesterday, the way it sliced through him and started to turn his blood to crystals before Hawke swooped in to save his hairy chest.

She wouldn't be swooping in this time. This time, it was just him, his idiocy, and Bianca.

"I didn't think so." Bianca sounded so satisfied with herself he considered disconnecting, but he was still frozen in shock. "Has been for… at least seven years. Since she got out of lock-up in Hercinia. He's got other whores, but it's widely known in the law enforcement community that Maria Cadash is the woman he always goes back to. The cops won't say anything publicly about it, some loyalty to the woman's poor dead dad, but…"

"Shut up." Varric hissed. "Just shut up, for once in your damn life can you…"

"I'm just trying to protect you!" Bianca exploded, color rising to her face. "I see the way you're trailing after her like a lovesick puppy and she's…"

A spirit of compassion shadowed her every step, she earned the loyalty of people left and right, her sad, wistful gaze when she thought nobody was paying attention…

"You're wrong and they're wrong."

"She used your phone to call him." Bianca was speaking quickly. "You let her borrow your phone, right? When she woke up? She used it to call her sister and the second call she made was to a burner. It was his."

"You're going through my call history?" Varric asked, astonished. "That doesn't seem, I don't know, a little insane?"

"I know you, Varric." Bianca claimed, scowling. "And I know how stupid you get. She's no Hawke, she's not a hero. She's a lying thug, Varric. Go through the records, see..."

"Goodbye." Varric snapped, immediately pressing to disconnect the call. Bianca's serious face vanished, but the shared drive she opened stayed right there.

Varric didn't want to look. He wanted a cigarette and a bottle of whiskey. Damnit, Hawke would be pissed if he started smoking again.

His phone dinged and he thought about answering it, talking this through with Hawke, calming himself down before...

He set his phone aside and opened the first file. And he read until he could read anymore.

Varric heard music from the hotel lobby before the elevator doors even opened. Blighted hell, it was after three in the morning, he was both surly and morose, all he wanted was to go buy a pack of cigarettes, and who in Andraste's dimpled asscheeks chose the asscrack of night to linger over a hotel lobby grand piano anyway? Weren't they just put there to be pretentious?

It was his fault, he kept repeating that to himself. He knew she'd be trouble the first time he saw the Carta tattoo on her shoulder.

The melody from the piano sounded careworn, plucked by skilled but uncertain fingers, a sad little song that hinted at a sea of melancholy. It reminded him of a younger, more uncertain time in his own existence, and his soul quivered in response. The desperate urge for a cigarette calmed, suppressed by his writer's curiosity. What kind of creature sat and coaxed such sad songs out of thin air in the middle of the night?

He ducked past the elaborate columns until he caught sight of a lone figure sitting on the gleaming black bench. He couldn't say he was particularly surprised that Maria Cadash was still awake, conjured like his own personal demon to torment him endlessly, but he was shocked that it was her fingers trailing lovingly, hesitatingly, over ivory keys.

They were deft fingers, he reminded himself. Suited for playing the piano, he supposed, although he couldn't picture them doing anything but holding guns and switchblades or picking locks and cheating at cards now.

Not strictly true, his mind supplied traitorously. He imagined her fingers dancing over a murderous thug's muscled arms, her legs wrapped around his waist while blood dried on the pavement behind them. He imagined her fingers in dark hair and…

The song she brought forth, almost as if it were half-forgotten, seemed too gentle. It had no place in the heart of the woman exposed so masterfully by Bianca's research.

Maria Cadash. Straight-A student, graduating high school early after her father's untimely suicide and working at a shady bar in Ostwick. Maria Cadash, joining the Carta at the tender age of eighteen before seducing a rich boy and running off with him.

Maria Cadash, gunshot residue on her hands, Fynn Dunhark's blood under her nails.

Maria Cadash, right back to the Carta the second she left Hercinia behind. Maria Cadash in a monster's bed for seven years.

She knew what he was. She'd told him so.

Maria Cadash handing out candy bars, trekking through the woods with a smile, breathless with joy on the back of a motorcycle, her lips pressed against his cheek. Shining like an unexpected beacon for the smallest, weakest things. Tumbling bravely up a mountaintop to her doom, reading his book in the train, her hand on shoulder and her lips tipped upwards and the snow spiraling around them and…

And even if Varric would never have guessed he would stumble into this private, guarded moment, he had to say every bit of it suited her. The glacial expanse of white marble the elegant pillars, the bright city sparkling outside floor to ceiling windows in the middle of the night, all it did was serve to frame her as thoroughly as the ocean framed a siren.

Adjectives began to tumble through his brain. Alluring, captivating, irresistible. If this were one of his novels, the ones she loved and read repeatedly, this would be the moment the protagonist realized his complete, irrevocable, devastating attraction to the erstwhile heroine.

It wasn't, Varric reminded himself. Despite everything he'd seen, she was still a criminal, a thug, a drug dealer and a nearly-convicted murderer. It didn't matter that she could pluck out a melody to make Andraste herself weep.

But his legs hadn't gotten the memo that the rest of his body wanted to skirt around the woman he felt so betrayed by. Somehow, his traitorous limbs deposited him right next to the gleaming black bench at Maria's right elbow. His shadow fell across her hands and she paused, looking up through her thick eyelashes, a wicked smile lifting just one corner of her lips.

"Varric." She purred, all smoke and heat as her fingers stilled over the keys. "Early morning or late night?"

Despite her voice, she looked exhausted. Eyes a bit red, as if she'd been crying.

"You're a gambling woman." He couldn't help counting the freckles dashed across the bridge of her nose. "What would you think?"

"Honestly, I thought I'd see our Seeker friend first." Maria laughed, a sultry, whiskey flavored sound that curled somewhere inside Varric's stomach despite the wrongness underneath it, the way it sounded like she was trying too hard to be cheerful. Had it always been there? Was it just there tonight? "She seems like the obnoxious sort that gets up at the crack of dawn to jog or beat up a punching bag."

"And you were going to risk becoming that punching bag by lingering down here?" He queried in astonishment. "I didn't take you for stupid, Maria."

She made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat, turning her attention back to pale fingers over white keys. She pressed down on a few, letting the chord linger in the air like a ghost. "I also didn't take you for a pianist." He continued on, unable to stop and let that sound get even more at home inside him than it already was. He couldn't risk her getting more at home inside him that she already was.

It was another one of those small, restless movements she was always making. Maria could earn a gold star in fidgeting, surely, but he doubted she realized how much she gave away in that small brush of her fingertips over her right wrist. He knew underneath the sleeve she touched there was an arrow tattoo with two sets of initials.

"It's not something they teach to poor kids in the slums of Ostwick." She said simply, voice carefully light. "I didn't learn until I was older, but someone told me I had talent."

"Fynn Dunhark taught you." A statement, not a question. The man whose name was written in blood in Maria's past, all over the records on his laptop, a crimson stain on her record. "The man you were put on trial for killing."

He didn't expect her to look back up at him, but she did. She held his gaze with those shining, silvery orbs of hers like she had nothing to hide, but Varric knew better. He had the whole case file, thanks to Bianca. Every last seedy detail. "Yes." She answered simply. "He taught me."

The arrow tattoo on her wrist had Fynn Dunhark's initials above the line of the shaft, hers below. A lover's tattoo, he'd thought at the time. He remembered wondering what happened to the youthful mistake she'd embedded into her flesh. That was before he knew that Fynn Dunhark had been dead for nearly ten years with her bullet in his chest.

She'd been a fatal youthful indiscretion for him.

"Did you kill him?" For some reason, he needed to know. He was unraveling under her level gaze, unable to reconcile the laughing woman handing treats to children with the empty eyed murderess in her mugshot staring back at him from his computer. The same hotel lobby siren wrenching heartfelt melodies from an old, forgotten hotel lobby piano couldn't be the girl who murdered someone in cold blood, or worse, let her Carta boyfriend do it.

"I'm not supposed to answer questions about this." She began immediately, and fuck if it wasn't the same exact answer she'd given the Seeker. She swallowed and her eyes flicked away from his. "My lawyer…"

"Doesn't like it." Varric snapped in aggravation. "I can imagine, since you got off on a technicality more than anything. Suicide of the prime witness against you kinda robbed the prosecution of their case, didn't it?"

Maria's eyes flashed to him again and they narrowed. "How do you know that?" She demanded.

"Answer the question, Maria." He insisted. "Are you a murderer?"

"I don't owe you an answer." Maria stated flatly, turning her eyes from his in a gesture clearly meant to be dismissive. Her hotel room key was on top of the piano and she reached for it, her curvy body stretching suggestively just like some kind of film noir femme fatale, exactly how he'd write her if he ever turned his pen to the tragedy of Fynn Dunhark.

Desire reared within him, a primal possessive thing that made him picture her naked, his hand in her hair, the keys of the piano jarring and discordant as he thrust into her while she scrambled for purchase amongst the ebony and ivory. She'd make the best sounds, he was sure of it, he could bring her crashing, keening, shattering to the edge over and over again until the only word falling from those perfect pink lips was his name.

When they were done, he'd pull her flushed and sweaty body to his and she'd look at him with the same sweet, gentle expression she aimed at Cole, or maybe that light, teasing smirk she saved for the Seeker. If he was lucky, he might even get that respectful awe she sometimes directed towards Solas.

Then she'd shoot him in the chest. Or Dwyka would, he guessed.

"Off the record." Varric's voice felt as rough as he did. Damnit, he wanted that cigarette. "I can keep a secret, Cadash. Did you do it? Did he hurt you?"

That was the only thing that made sense. The foolish man left his cushy life for her, and if he regretted his decision, took his rage out on her… well, that was self-defense, and Fynn Dunhark should have known better than to abuse a Carta rat. But Maria's eyes snapped back to his and she didn't look frightened, she didn't look scared.

She looked furious, the same way she'd looked when she stared down the former Lord Seeker. "Fynn would never hurt me." She hissed defensively, color rising in splotchy bursts of red all over her pale throat. "Never. He loved me."

Her voice cracked on the words, a tide of grief and loss so deep Varric could be swept away in it. "So it was an accident? Too many loaded guns lying around?" He lowered his voice to a rumble. "Tell me you're not a murderer, Cadash. Tell me I wasn't that wrong about you."

"What does it matter!" There were tears in her eyes and her palm slammed down, jarring all the elegant keys, the piano itself groaning its displeasure. "What does it matter who pulled the trigger when it was my fault! Fynn died and it should have been me!"

The words landed like bullets in his own chest, everything distilling into a perfect moment of stillness as she realized what she'd admitted, as he realized the story was wrong, built on one shattering lie that brought the whole thing crashing down.

Maria Cadash loved Fynn Dunhark, mourned him still, any fool could see that. That meant she didn't pull the trigger. Whatever happened the night Fynn Dunhark was murdered, she believed it was her fault, but it wasn't her bullet in his heart six feet under the ground. And in her beautiful, expressive eyes, Varric could read agony, guilt, a raw wound of grief that hadn't healed. The second she said Fynn's name. The second she said it should have been her, Varric knew.

She had loved Fynn Dunhark. She still loved Fynn Dunhark. She didn't love Dwyka, she…

Suddenly, haltingly, everything clicked. Cole's voice, claiming that Maria let other people hurt her to protect others. Cole talking about bruises on her wrists, silent screams.

Dwyka doesn't like it when she's late.

I know what he is.

He hadn't been wrong about her. But he'd been fucking blind. He took a step back, stunned, gave her valuable room to breathe. She was panting as if she'd run a mile, the color high in her cheeks. Before he could stop her, she'd grabbed the key from the piano and turned to flee. He barely caught the sleeve of her jacket, just over that little arrow tattoo on her wrist. "Maria…"

"What do you want from me?" She whirled on him in a fury, a storm breaking on a jagged shoreline. "Damnit, what do you people want from me?" She demanded, agonized.

He didn't answer in time, his quick, clever tongue finally failing him as she ripped her sleeve from his grasp and dashed out into the dark city night.