Thank you to everyone reading! Special thanks to suilven for her thoughtful betaing and enthusiasm.
"Something's bothering you, lover. I haven't had a decent quip out of you since I got here." Bianca rested her chin on his chest, looking up at him.
"It's nothing." Everything in Varric wanted to tell her—but he couldn't. How could he tell anyone, with the weight of everything that had happened resting squarely on his shoulders? He couldn't even blame Bartrand, not anymore, not after what had happened to that sick bastard.
"For someone who lives by lying, you're really bad at it." She walked her fingers up through his chest hair, a sensation Varric usually enjoyed. "Come on, out with it."
"Bianca." He caught her hand and moved it away from him.
"It's to do with your friend Hawke, isn't it?"
"No. Well, not really," he amended, since of course Hawke was bound up in it from first to last, through no fault of her own. But somehow she was the one who'd had to run, and there he was still cozily ensconced at the Hanged Man, like nothing had ever happened. Like an entire city hadn't burnt because one time he and his brother got greedy.
"Varric."
Bianca wouldn't rest until she had it out of him, he told himself, so he had no choice. Did he? And before he knew it, the whole story was spilling out—the red lyrium, the thaig, the idol, Bartrand's betrayal. Everything that had happened to him that he hadn't been able to write her about because it cut too close to the heart.
"Red lyrium?" she asked when he was done. She climbed off of him, kneeling on the bed next to him, oblivious to the fact that they were both still naked. "Was it stronger than the blue?"
"Stronger? It made people insane, didn't you hear me? I'd say it was stronger."
"Well, we've got to find out where it came from, whether there's more, don't we?"
"I … suppose." In telling her, he had forgotten she was an inventor, with all the keen curiosity and need to know that came with the genius.
"Tell me where you found it. I'll go looking and see what I can find, and in the meantime I'll do some digging in the archives to see if anyone's ever mentioned the stuff before. I have a friend in the Shaperate, maybe she'll be willing to look, too."
"Bianca." It was a mild protest—it was already too late to stop her.
"Sh." She laid her fingers on his lips, her eyes dancing with the excitement of a new challenge. "No more talk. I have better things to do with you than talk."
He stayed late in the tavern, carousing with the Chargers. They were a cheerful bunch, and Varric needed some cheer in his life. There hadn't been nearly enough of it lately. He couldn't stop thinking about Sunshine, the sweet, pretty girl with the beautiful smile he had first met in Kirkwall—and the haggard, drawn Grey Warden they had all left behind in the Fade. Oh, by her own request; Varric believed that. It fit with the doom and gloom she had worn like a cloak while she was in Skyhold. But the truth was that he had gotten the Void out of there as fast as he could go, and he hadn't stayed to make sure anyone else was safe, and he hadn't … Well, he'd been a coward, no two ways about it.
Eventually he decided that even the Chargers weren't boisterous enough to silence his thoughts, and he left them, still going. He wished Cabot luck throwing them out at closing time ... although the grumpy tavernkeeper seemed perfectly capable of ruining anyone's good time.
The main hall of the keep was silent, the candles in the sconces flickering. Varric briefly considered working on his next chapter, but he didn't have it in him tonight—Donnen Brennokovic had enough trouble without having Varric write him a soppy drunken scene in which he wallowed in his author's sorrows.
His own room beckoned; maybe he'd drunk enough that he could sleep. He was going to give it his best shot, that was for sure.
He didn't bother with a candle. His fire had been lit earlier by one of Skyhold's army of maids. Ruffles was frighteningly efficient and a firm believer in good living … and in the power of a clean, bright room and a luxurious night's sleep to make a noble want to open his or her purse. Varric appreciated that about her. She seemed so much softer than the Nightingale, but he believed in the end, he'd rather face the red-head's naked ruthlessness than the brunette's deceptive civility. At least you knew what you were getting.
Sighing, he patted Bianca on her stand, his fingers running over the smooth wood of her stock, checking for nicks and scratches. Then he shrugged off his coat, hanging it on the back of his chair, and unbuckled his belt. The tunic was next, and he was about to reach for the buttons on his pants when a low whistle sounded from the darkness in the corner of the room.
"Take it all off, lover."
When his heart stopped pounding, he peered into the blackness, trying to see. "Bianca?"
"Told you I was coming." She sauntered out of the shadows with that little smirk she got when she successfully snuck up on him. Varric loved that little smirk, most of the time. But he wasn't sure he was in the mood right now.
"A little more specificity might have been nice," he grumbled.
"Don't pout. You know how hard it is for me to get away, and trying to get to this frozen icecap unobserved?" Bianca frowned. "I'm still not sure if your spymaster knows I'm here or not."
"Just assume she does."
"She's very good, then."
"The best." He grasped Bianca's hand and tugged her into the firelight so he could look at her. No matter how long it was between sightings, she never seemed to age—she was as beautiful and sexy and dangerous today as she had been the day he'd met her. But he also knew her well enough to see that this wasn't a visit for the sheer pleasure of his company. "What?"
"What do you mean, what?" she asked evasively, but her eyes wouldn't quite meet his.
Varric sighed. "Oh, shit, what's gone wrong?"
"The thaig. Someone found it, and … they're carting out the red lyrium night and day."
He stared at her, unable to believe what he was hearing. "You mean … the thaig I told you about? That thaig? That's where these red lyrium monsters are coming from?"
"I'm afraid so. I'm sorry, Varric! I—I don't know what happened. How they found it." He had never seen her so genuinely upset before. She seemed almost on the verge of tears.
"I wasn't the only one who knew. We had all sorts of people hired as muscle for the expedition, and Maker only knows who Bartrand talked to, the poor mad bastard." He reached out, touching her on the arm. "It wasn't your fault."
"Varric. Varric, I—"
"I know." Maker, did he know. "It's my fault, Bianca. If I hadn't been so damned greedy, if I'd told Bartrand we had enough, we didn't need more, but … I couldn't leave well enough alone. And I dragged Hawke into it, and look where that got her, and now there's this Corypheus guy, and that's my fault, too." He turned away from her and laughed bitterly. "Varric Tethras, the dumbass who destroyed the world."
"Hey. Hey!" Bianca put her hands on his shoulders and turned him around to face her. "None of that! Not a single bit of this is your fault. Someone else would have found that thaig if you hadn't. Someone else would have fought Corypheus. It was your bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that doesn't make any of this your fault."
"Nice of you to say," Varric said wearily. He had so looked forward to her being here—it had been so long—but now that she was here, it was all just that much worse. "Look, I appreciate you coming here to tell me this in person, but it's not safe. What if the guild found out? Or, you know, whatshisname?"
Bianca smiled, that confident, assured smile that made him believe she could do anything. "You let me handle whatshisname. And the guild." Her hands moved from his shoulders down over his chest, her fingers threading through his chest hair. "Now … isn't it about time you gave me a proper hello?"
Even in the midst of his despair, there was nothing proper about the way her touch made him feel. Varric pulled her close, losing himself in the heat of her mouth and the firmness of her body, and he almost—almost—forgot everything else.
Leliana came out onto the little catwalk outside the Rookery, leaning her elbows on the railing. She was in the process of releasing her breath, letting out the tensions of the day, when she froze, holding completely still, suddenly aware of the presence of someone else here, where there should be no one.
She whirled, drawing the small dagger she carried, ready to impale whoever it was who had been sent to kill her, when she recognized him. Nathaniel Howe, Grey Warden, formerly of Amaranthine. He was shrinking back into the corner, his hands up.
"What are you doing here?"
"Looking for a safe place to think. It's the best location in Skyhold, because you can see everything that's coming but nothing can see you. No doubt why you chose it as your own personal walkway."
"And how did you get up here?" Leliana took another step toward him, the dagger not wavering, even as it approached his neck.
"Climbed. I came down from the roof." Nathaniel gave a faint smile. Leliana was impressed that there seemed no outward sign that he feared her blade. "I got a lot of practice at that at Vigil's Keep."
"As a child, or as a Grey Warden?"
"Both, really." He swallowed, looking away. "I can't believe what we allowed to happen there, and at Adamant. Shameful. Did you know my grandfather was a Grey Warden? My father was always ashamed of that. And now I'm ashamed of my father. I suppose life is like that."
Leliana pulled back the hand with the dagger, just enough to give him some room. "I was with your father when he died."
"When the Hero of Ferelden killed him, you mean."
"He gave her very little choice. Trust me, she would have preferred to drag him before the Landsmeet in chains, but he would never have submitted to that."
"No, I don't imagine he would have. Did he die well?" Nathaniel's tone was laced with sarcasm. "As if there is such a thing … but it would have mattered to him."
Leliana shrugged. "I believe he would have thought he did, and I imagine that was enough."
"Yes. You're probably right. I'm sorry I trespassed up here; it really did seem the safest place in Skyhold."
"What if I had killed you?"
"Maybe I would have had peace."
Leliana stepped back, letting him out of the corner. "You truly believe the only peace left to you is in death?"
"I brought it to so many of my companions already—don't I deserve to feel that cold kiss myself? Surely I must."
"Or perhaps you have a duty to live in such a way as to make your survival mean something," Leliana offered. She knew plenty about the guilt he was living with, and the difficulty of finding a way to feel as though one's life was worth sustaining.
"How?"
She shook her head. "That you have to discover for yourself. No one can tell you how to make meaning where there is none."
"I'll give it some thought, then." He gazed off across the tops of the buildings, the last rays of the setting sun across his cheek. He made quite a picturesque image, Leliana thought. Then he climbed to the top of the railing, grasped the edge of the roof, and casually, silently, lifted himself up onto it and was gone, leaving Leliana to wonder what possible purpose the Maker had had in putting another damaged Grey Warden in her path.