A/N: Sorry for the long wait for an update. I was pretty sick for a few months. Doing better now though, so hoping to update more frequently.

...-...

For a guy who didn't dream, Varric had to say he had an awful lot of demonic encounters in his sleep. Pride had gotten him to turn on Hawke, embarrassingly enough.

Though, one could make the argument that it was hardly Varric's fault there. He'd never had a dream before going to try to save Feynriel, and so how was he supposed to know what to do in one?

Granted, he could have told the demon to fuck off, but somehow that thought hadn't occurred to him at the time, only later did it ever come to mind.

He'd been proud of himself the second time he'd been drawn in. That time he'd been ensnared by Desire, but he had turned away from that fantasy and pushed on to face the real world.

Ancestors, he'd even pulled Warden out of a similar dream.

He'd never really bragged about it, but he felt that he had a handle on the whole demons twisting around the mind thing. After all, he was a dwarf. It's not like he had to worry about dreams anyway.

Or, so he'd thought.

Then…

Maker, but it had been real.

He'd been drunk, like his mother, cold like Bartrand, miserly like his father. His friends had all left him and he couldn't sleep at night for fear that a dagger would find its way there. When he'd looked in the mirror, his reflection told him that he didn't need his friends so long as he could keep himself in the wealthier circles. There was plenty to do without falling into desperate adventures to help people he barely knew.

Varric had screamed at the mirror, not noticing how it only gave him a look of distaste as he shouted that he would not live like this. Better to be the poor sod who helped every ass that passed him by than to be...this.

His parents.

Just when he had felt he would lose his mind, the mirror shattered, and on the other side of it, he'd found Hero, Stardust, and Chuckles.

It hadn't taken long to figure out what had happened.

Granted, that didn't make him feel much better about being ensnared with his fears so easily.

"The creature who owns this realm is old and quite powerful," Solas had offered as an assurance.

It had been something, at least.

Not that it had stopped him from wondering. Why? Why was it that he could resist Desire, but Pride and Fear had him by the short and curlies?

That had to say something about his character, but he wasn't ready to reflect on that just yet.

And so instead, he tried to focus on the Fade itself.

It was so different from when he'd been there before. The haziness was gone except in the distance, replaced with a sharpness that hurt the eyes. Everything was too real. And bleak. There were no plants, no variations in the colors that made the world around them. Instead, it was all a sickly, blackish green—in the places where there was anything at all.

He'd peered over the edge of one of their paths once, to see how far up they were, but as far as he could tell, this place didn't have an end. In any direction. He could see a few paths and islands of floating rock below, all the same hideous colors, but beyond that, there was nothing.

More than that, sometimes just looking back the way they'd come revealed an emptiness that hadn't been there before. It was almost as though the world was making itself as they moved forward and then falling away into nothing after they had passed through.

Chuckles claimed that they were actually, physically in the Fade—another reason Varric might have fallen to Fear so easily—but Varric had a hard time believing it. After all, the Fade wasn't supposed to be a physical place, so how could one end up physically there?

"Do you remember who fell?" Hero's voice cut through the quiet around them, though his voice fell flat, despite the emptiness.

Varric was oddly pleased that there was no echo. That meant they wouldn't attract any more fearlings with talking.

Right?

Stardust stopped in her tracks, rolling one shoulder and then the other, fingers clumping the nth snarl into her hair. At this rate, she was going to have to chop the braid off to get her hair looking somewhat tamed again. "I think...I remember Warden Alistair was beside me." She tiptoed to the edge of the path they were on and peered out toward the twisting rockways beyond. "Garrett was with us, too. And Dorian."

"And Rivaini and Lord Barkington," Varric added, hastily. He swallowed as he looked out beside her. On some of the paths, they could see demons walking along as though casually patrolling. Other areas were out of focus, others too sharp to see clearly.

In all of it, though, he couldn't see any of the people they were missing.

"It is pointless to look for them with your eyes."

When Stardust and Varric looked back, Chuckles motioned for them to go another way. Varric was almost certain that path hadn't been there before.

That seemed to happen a lot.

They would come to a dead end, glance away—or even blink—and then there would be a path sprawling out before them. He and Hero had exchanged more than a few glances, especially when Stardust had first seemed wary of it as well.

Either Chuckles was doing it, or...something he didn't want to think about was leading them along.

He didn't have the courage to ask Chuckles which it was.

At least the elf was happy to lead. That had to be a good sign.

It had to be.

As they turned to go down that new path, Stardust let out a displeased huff as her finger got caught in her hair. "I don't think Isabela or the mabari came with us."

"How do you know?" The news would be good, for those two to be spared this misery—especially after Rivaini's last trip in the Fade.

Stardust hesitated a breath, coming to a stop and glancing around before finally flicking her hand outward.

The world shimmered and a transparent, frozen moment popped into existence around them.

Varric could see himself and the others mid fall. Cautiously, he stepped up to the image of himself and inspected it. Was that a gray hair at his temple?

Considering all the shit he and Hawke had been through, it was surprising he'd made it this long without developing a full head of white.

"I don't see those two." Hero's voice was gruff, but Varric thought he could detect a faint hint of something else. Resentment? Skepticism?

"I...they could have fallen after, I suppose," Stardust murmured. The image faded away into nothing.

"If they fell after or before us, I don't believe they landed in the Fade," Chuckles interrupted. "So let us hope they did not fall at all."

Varric thought back to that yawning chasm that they'd been headed into and paled.

Ancestors, Maker, whoever, don't let them have fallen down there.

"All we can do now," Stardust's voice sounded like she very desperately wanted to be sure of herself, "is look for the people we know are here."

"As we are," Chuckle's replied.

He wasn't halfway through his sentence when they turned a corner, heading into an enclosed cave-like area of the Fade, and Varric saw Hawke.

Hawke, Garrett, one of the strongest men Varric knew knelt in the center of the room with his head hanging down, face obscured by shaggy hair, a fear demon hovering near him, making a slow circle around him as its fingers dragged across his person.

Varric let out a yell to distract the damned thing. He wouldn't let them take Hawke. Not now, not ever. Just as his finger moved to Bianca's trigger, the world around them changed.

Abruptly, the air was filled with smoke. It stung his eyes, but he surged forward, clinging to Bianca as he searched for Hawke.

When someone grabbed his arm, he whirled around and fired.

The fact that Stardust could put a shield up so quickly was more than a little impressive. The bolt fell harmlessly to the ground.

Varric tried to apologize, but the smoke filled his lungs, and he doubled over coughing.

This time, when he felt her hand on his shoulder, he didn't fight as she led him.

A door clicked shut and stale, but clear air filled his nostrils. He coughed a few times before he could breathe with ease, with echoes of the others doing the same in his ears. His eyes still stung with smoke, but after a few blinks he could see well enough. All of them, save for Hawke, had taken refuge in a nearby building.

A building that didn't exist.

"What happened?" Varric asked, looking around at the unimpressive shack they'd holed up in.

"I believe we've been drawn into Ser Hawke's nightmare." Chuckles stood at a small window beside the door, scrubbing at the glass to get the grime out so that he could peer through. His frown colored his words. "We will have to find him to break free."

"Same old, same old, then, huh?" Varric asked, already moving toward the door. He stopped, however, when he noticed that no one else agreed.

After a second's pause, Hero shrugged his shoulders. "We got the jump on your demon. Never had to go in. This is…new." He glanced at their mages and shrugged again. "For me, at least."

Varric turned to stare at the rest of them. "Really?" When Stardust nodded, he motioned to the rest of them. "What about you?"

"These demons are no match for our mages," Hero boasted, offering a slight grin at the others, though neither mage reciprocated it. His smile fell. "And I'm...not quite sure what happened for me. There was a woman." He hesitated and then added. "I thought it was our Inquisitor at first, but she was older. Then, when the spell was broken, she turned to white light and disappeared. Solas found me after that."

"A woman?"

Stardust looked like she was staring eye to eye with a ghost.

"A spirit." Solas finally moved to the door. "It is good to think we have someone from this plane on our side."

Stardust simply swallowed and darted out the door after him. That was not particularly reassuring.

Despite pulling out a cloth to cover his nose, Varric found that the street that had been so thick with smoke only moments ago was clear. Varric let the cloth fall away as he moved to the front of the group.

"We're in Kirkwall."

Light began to fill the sky. It wasn't the sun, nor was it the eerie green of the Fade.

Instead it was almost red.

Instantly, Varric's gaze turned toward Hightown, toward the Chantry. He watched as the lines began to form, as that magical explosion that still haunted his nightmares burst into life. Before the explosion had finished blowing outward, it was beginning again, caught in a loop, in one of Varric's worst memories of Kirkwall.

No, not his.

"I know where Hawke is!"

Without waiting to see if his friends would follow, he took off through the winding streets. Screams filled the air, blood splashed around them, rubble rained down, and the smoke started to billow again.

He kept running.

However, as he made it to the top of the first set of stairs, he froze. There, lying on the ground, was Daisy. A templar's blade protruded from her stomach, and there were arrows in her arm and shoulder. One of her wrists was slit, and the blood still dripped fresh.

This wasn't...

As Varric reached toward her, Stardust caught his hand.

"It's part of the dream," she whispered. "If you get drawn in by what you see, you'll just make the demon making it stronger."

He winced at that as he withdrew his hand. With a nod, he moved past Daisy—the illusion of her—and hurried on.

The next illusions—he had to repeat the word over and over in his head—were just as jarring and stomach-clenching as the first. Broody, Red, Choir Boy. All of them mutilated and twisted, their deaths so obviously painful. Broody was slain with magic, Red by Qunari, Choir Boy by demons. Lord Barkington was mauled by spiders. Each death was different, and while they were all perfectly legitimate ways to go in Kirkwall, the variety of it actually helped Varric keep his head.

Crazy as Kirkwall might be, there was no way that this could all happen in one day, one hour.

This was a trick and a brutal one, but he could recognize it. Separate himself from it.

He thought he was ready for whatever might come next when they turned out of an alleyway and finally found Hawke near where he'd thought he would be: the square where Hawke killed Blondie.

Hawke knelt between two bodies, sobbing.

Cold washed over Varric, lumping in his gut. He'd forgotten, that as much as he might see through the illusion, it hadn't been made for him.

Hawke rocked back and forth, clutching Rivaini to his chest with one arm as the other held Sunshine's hand. Sunshine's body was twisted with the Blight, her mouth hanging open in a silent wail. As Varric drew closer, he could see that Isabela hadn't seemed to be attacked by anything. Instead, she'd simply fallen in place, the life drained from her.

No.

Rivaini was somewhere safe. She wasn't here. This was just...an illusion.

It wasn't real.

It wasn't.

"Please come back."

The words were so soft Varric almost couldn't hear them. Hawke sat there like a mountain that had crumbled, his broad shoulders slumped.

He looked so...small.

It was a word Varric had never expected to use for the warrior.

"We will need to take care to break the hold the demon has," Chuckles murmured from somewhere behind Varric. "Perhaps it would be best to allow Varric a moment alone with his friend."

While he couldn't say he liked the idea of the others just standing back and watching as he tried to get through to his best friend, he could understand the intent to help. Shouldering Bianca, Varric steeled himself and then moved slowly toward Hawke, not wanting to startle him.

"Hawke…"

Instantly, Hawke's head snapped up, and he looked around in bewilderment. When he saw Varric, his hold on Rivaini and Sunshine slipped, and he turned slowly, disbelievingly, toward Varric. His fingers trembled as he reached out toward Varric, though as soon as he made contact with him, Hawke jerked Varric into the tightest hug he'd ever had. Varric couldn't help but hug him right back. "It's okay. We'll get through this. This place isn't-"

"You...you were burned. I watched you burn."

As Hawke leaned back to stare at Varric as though he was the return of the Maker himself, Varric remembered the smoke from earlier. "It wasn't me."

Hawke clung to him again. "Everyone's dead...I couldn't save them. I couldn't save any of them."

"It's okay, Hawke, I promise." Try as he might to talk to the warrior, his friend was too distraught to listen, instead clinging to Varric and then weeping about those he had failed. Finally, Varric pulled away from him and gripped his shoulders. "Listen to me, dammit! They're not dead! Everyone's not dead! This is—"

His voice cut off as he saw the look of realization, or recognition stir in Hawke's eyes and he couldn't help the relief that flooded him. To think, Varric had been worried it would be hard to get through to him.

"You're right," Hawke whispered softly, abruptly straightening up and looking around. "They haven't gotten to Anders yet."

Great.

It would figure that the one of their friends who was actually dead would be the one he'd think was alive right now.

Varric pressed his fingers against his temples, glancing over his shoulder for help. Stardust was whispering with Chuckles about something, however, and Hero looked like he wasn't sure what he could do to help. His weapons were drawn, and he kept glancing around, like he wasn't paying attention to Hawke's breakdown.

Maybe he wasn't.

"We have to go."

Hawke's words had renewed purpose in them, and Varric's heart sank as he realized that he was going to have to break one death to his friend before he could assure that the others were alive. Or maybe he could skip that part.

"Listen—"

Hawke noticed Varric's concern and brushed it off. He clapped a hand on Varric's shoulder and began to lead him toward the stairs. "When I let him go, we agreed that we wouldn't keep in touch, but I bet I know how to contact him. We'll find him and—"

Varric halted, jerking Hawke to a stop with him. "Let him go? Hawke, you didn't—"

He could remember it so vividly that he was surprised the Fade didn't recreate it around them right then and there. The Chantry explosion. The horror. Then, before the rubble had even begun to hit down, Hawke had exploded. Choir Boy had cried for justice and… That fury had been contagious. Hawke had barely heard the pleas from other members of their group before he'd drawn a small hunting dagger he kept on him and stabbed Anders.

Varric could remember Blondie's body slumping to the ground. He could remember the blood. He could remember the way Hawke had turned to Meredith and asked if she would accept that justice had been done, that the villain had been slain.

Blondie was dead. Anders was dead.

"With the way Sebastian was talking, I couldn't very well let things get out of hand," Hawke implored, tugging on Varric's hand. "We didn't need a city marching on ours when our own home was already at odds with itself. I handled it." He motioned in the general direction of the western gates. "Let's go. I know it won't be easy, but we can find him. We'll keep him safe."

Maybe this was just the Fade or the demon or whatever twisting things around in Hawke's head, but...

He couldn't think about this. Not now.

"Rivaini isn't dead! Neither are Sunshine or Daisy or any of the others!" Varric blurted.

He could barely hear himself talk. Instead, Hawke's words kept bouncing around in his head. They'd find Blondie?

There was no way. Hawke wouldn't have kept something so big from him.

He wouldn't have…

Shaking himself out of it, Varric looked around and then pointed. "Look at this place! It's all wrong. Nothing's how it's supposed to be—Ancestors, I know Kirkwall was a shithole, but the buildings weren't all on fire! Not at once, anyway." Varric tried to focus on the present, on how they needed to get back to the real world, pushing aside thoughts of betrayal, of secrets. "Try to remember. We were with the Inquisition. There was a giant dragon. Demons. Lots and lots of demons."

Hawke hesitated, wincing as though something had cracked against his head. He seemed ready to argue at first before his expression became muddled. "We…we were in the desert."

"In Southern Orlais," Varric added. "I don't know about you, but I don't know any ways to get to Kirkwall that would take less than a week, much less…what, an hour?"

Wincing again, Hawke reached up to hold his head, looking back to where he'd left Sunshine and Rivaini. "Beth's…not here."

"No."

Her body vanished.

"Isabela—"

"Not in the Fade."

The ground was empty.

Hawke shuddered, nearly dropping to his knees, and for a fleeting instant, Varric thought he could see the outline of something behind his friend. In a breath, he had Bianca loaded and fired a shot into the empty air.

This time, his aim was true.

A deafening screech heralded a whoosh of air, and then claws were slamming into Varric and sending him flying.

As he thudded into the ground with a gasp, he could make out a fear demon for a second before it disappeared.

Even as it faded out, a spell wound around it and flashed so bright that Varric had to squeeze his eyes shut to block it out.

When he opened them, he could feel Stardust's magic already mending the gashes in his side.

Kirkwall was gone.

It was odd how much relief flooded through him at the sight of those spinning, floating green rocks.

Fortunately, Kirkwall's disappearance seemed to have brought an end to the demon's ability to hide. While Hawke went after the monster with a vengeance, it was a purplish bolt of magic that ended the thing.

The fight ended so quickly considering the web the monster had woven.

As Varric and his group regrouped, he found Sparkler and Warden hurrying to meet them.

Scanning the lot of them, he counted twice before finally starting to feel a bit of hope in this miserable place. Everyone who had been in Stardust's memory of the fall was accounted for.

"We're late to the party, I see," Sparkler offered with his usual playful arrogance, inspecting everyone and nodding when he saw they were—for the most part—unscathed. "I feared we would need to break you all out of your nightmares." He paused before shrugging. "It was hard enough to get out of my own."

Stardust darted over to him, searching him and then Warden for injuries. "We were looking for you."

"So she said," Warden offered, reaching out and patting Stardust's shoulder before moving to give Hawke a quick hug.

The warrior still seemed drained from his nightmare, but he brushed off the weariness, as always. "She?"

"There is not time for all this chatter." As though to answer with an unofficial introduction, a woman's voice floated through the air around them, and though her tone was gentle, something about it made Varric shiver. As he turned to look in the direction that Sparkler and Warden had come, his jaw hung slack. A being of pure light hovered there, above the pathway. Though there were no definitive details to her, her form was clearly that of a woman, one that felt oddly familiar, though Varric couldn't place from where.

"I can lead you from here, but to leave and be free, the Inquisitor must reclaim the pieces of herself that were stolen."

A glance at Stardust made all the calm, warmth that had been pooling in his gut disperse. Her eyes were wide. She stood so rigid, like a touch would send her shattering into pieces.

The woman—spirit? Whatever it was, it approached them with ease and then turned, a new pathway forming abruptly and winding its way into the void. "Come. Once you begin to gather yourself, the Nightmare will know you are here. We must hurry."