I hope you're ready for some fluff, because that's, like, the entirety of the next three chapters.

I Shit You Not

We had to shove three tables together to hold everyone who showed up to the Herald's Rest. There were the people I absolutely expected to see there, of course, merely because it was drinking and gambling: Varric, Sera, Dorian, Bull, and Blackwall. Then there were Cullen and Leliana, the ones who made sense once I knew they had previously spoken to Hawke at least in passing. The intimidated gawkers in the form of Harding and Krem weren't a huge surprise. Josephine and Cole were the only two real surprises - that, and Vivienne stopping by, however briefly, to meet Hawke.

Solas didn't come, of course - I would have been shocked if he had, though I offered the invitation.

He merely regarded me over the cover of the book he was reading in the library, one eyebrow raised provocatively. "I hardly require the excuse of a card game to stare at the Champion of Kirkwall, should I wish to do so." His eyes returned to the page. "Try not to lose any articles of clothing, drink a cup of water before you sleep, and we will meet again in the morning."

I made a face at him. I had been intending to tell him that he could sleep in my bed, which was larger than his, but I supposed I wouldn't if he intended to be like that. He wasn't looking at me, but he smirked anyway and I knew he had caught my expression.

I was terrible at Wicked Grace. It was, of course, to be expected. I couldn't read the faces of anyone except those immediately around me and I couldn't see anyone well enough to watch for cheating. Still didn't have much peripheral vision, even in Skyhold. I folded just about every hand, and lost those I bet on.

For the first half hour, I was frustrated. After that, thanks to a cup of wine that never seemed to empty, I cared much less.

I ended up sitting between Krem and Sera, directly across from Varric, who was flanked by Hawke and Bull. Krem seemed slightly intimidated by the company, at least in the form of Hawke - he and I had interacted a number of times in the course of trying to keep the world from falling apart, after all, though tonight he called me "Your Worship" once too often. I was already a little tipsy, and so I found myself grabbing his shoulder and giving it a little shake - not that I moved him much. He wasn't tall for a human, but he was sturdy. " Sathan , no more of that," I pleaded. "Can I please just be Inana tonight?"

He looked faintly surprised for a moment, but then his face softened into a smile. "Yeah, of course, Yo - " He caught himself and laughed. "Uh, sorry."

"Say it," I teased him, giving him another largely ineffective shake.

"Inana," he repeated dutifully.

"Ma serannas," I sighed in relief.

"You use more Elvish than - shit, I don't even know if you've met Dalish," he said.

"Met? No, but her name has come up a few times," I told him. "Not all the clans use much of the language, and she may have been away long enough to be out of the habit." I propped my head on my hand. "I should make an effort to meet her. It's lonely, sometimes, being the only Dalish elf in the Inquisition." I regarded Krem thoughtfully. "Do you feel that way about being from Tevinter?"

"Er, not really," he answered. "The Chargers are my home and my family, and they've always been better than the family I left behind."

"Too bad, sometimes I think Dorian is also lonely," I said, glancing toward the end of the table where I knew he was sitting, though all I could make out was the gaudy orange and gold of the tunic he was wearing.

Krem laughed. "Your - Inqu - Inana - that isn't - we're not - Altus Pavus and I are very different social classes. It's - it's not like one of your clans, where everyone is your…cousin, or whatever it is that you call each other."

"Lethallen?" I asked.

"That's it," he agreed. "It's not - it's just not like that." He laughed again, shaking his head "It's nice of you to - I mean, I hope the altus appreciates you looking out for him."

I shrugged and shot Krem a grin. "He would probably laugh at me and then make some sort of self-deprecating joke about how flattered he is that I care, and then flutter his pretty eyelashes at me."

"So he does appreciate it, then," Krem summed up.

I laughed. "Are you sure you don't already know Dorian?"

"Fluttering eyelashes - no one flutters their eyelashes for anyone they don't appreciate," he told me dryly. "I certainly wouldn't."

I peered more closely at him. "Well, whomever you appreciate is lucky, then - your eyelashes are as pretty as Dorian's, I think."

Krem was smiling, though it fell somewhere between nervous and amused. "Inquisitor - Inana - are you flirting with me?"

"Ummm...not seriously?" I replied, realizing how my teasing had probably sounded and silently cursing my tipsy state. "You aren't...bald, or lanky, or aloof enough for me, probably."

"Shit," he swore, trying to scowl but mostly just laughing. "I owe Dalish two royals."

"Shit," I echoed. "I'm not sure I'm supposed to be telling people that. And...you bet against Dalish? On this? Why?" If anyone would recognize the signs of a Dalish elf falling in love, I imagined it would be another Dalish elf.

Krem threw his head back and laughed harder. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," he answered, and then sobered a little. "I can keep a secret," he promised me. "Dalish translated a good chunk of what you were yelling at that tree you were kicking the crap out of after meeting with the Blades." He shrugged. "Not like I care, about that or about this - I'm not part of the Chantry, either. Definitely not the southern Chantry."

"Ma serannas," I thanked him. "I appreciate that - truly."

Our attention was called back to the game as a new round started. Varric was demanding stories, and so everyone began going around the table trying to one-up each other. Cullen told one about a templar recruit running into the dining hall mostly unclothed while chasing a nug someone had hidden in his trousers, Bull about the time a village tried to pay the Chargers in rice - with Krem adding helpful details - and Josephine about a minstrel who had made the rounds of her social circle in Antiva, taking married paramours and escaping their enraged spouses with a seemingly unholy run of luck. I particularly enjoyed the one Blackwall told about the Orlesian recruit who ended up with a boot full of lizards after he tried to cook them up for his comrades as a delicacy. I thought Sera had a suspiciously gleeful gleam in her eye after hearing the story, though, and decided my boots were going in the tent with me from then on.

At least, Blackwall's was my favorite until Hawke told her story, which was naturally about Varric - an assassination attempt after an unwise dalliance with the wrong woman. "Of course Varric didn't warn us, so we go walking into the Hanged Man just like usual, discussing…shit, it was something that seemed important at the time." She looked at the dwarf. "Do you remember?"

"That was around the time Daisy took it into her head to use the Viscount's garden to try domesticating some wild herbs her clan used, because it was for the good of the city," he snorted and the rest of us chuckled. Everyone but me had likely read Varric's Tale of the Champion, and he had told me most of it over our weeks in Haven and months on the road.

"That's right. I think we spent more time smoothing ruffled feathers on her behalf than dealing with the Coterie and Carta combined. So Isabela and I are on either side of Varric, trying to work out how to discreetly discourage our friend Merrill from treating the Viscount's private garden as her own personal plant nursery as we go up the stairs. At the top, we're about to go in when Varric hisses, 'Do you feel that?' and Isabela and I freeze. All I can feel is a faint breeze coming through the very badly hung door, and say so - "

"You insulted my door, too," Varric felt compelled to point out, "which was completely uncalled for considering that its bad fit saved all our lives."

She ignored him. "And Varric says," she attempted an approximation of Varric's rough voice an accent that made the whole table laugh, "'I hate weather, why would I leave a window - '"

"I said I hate the damp," he groused.

"Oh come now," Dorian put in, "after all the time we have spent at various locations, including right here at Skyhold, do you really think any of us remain unaware that you hate weather? If it's rainy, it's too wet - "

"If it's sunny, it's too bright," Bull added, a smile in his voice.

"And if it's cloudy it's too breezy, or threatening rain, or threatening sun," Hawke concluded with a laugh. Across the table, I saw Varric's eyes crinkle at the corners, though his lips only twitched.

"All right, all right! What can I say? I don't like the outdoors," he admitted.

"So Varric says, 'I hate weather, why would I leave a window open?' And Isabela sighs, 'Oh Varric, there's an assassin in there, isn't there? I told you not to sleep with her.'"

"Yeah, but the thing is I didn't sleep with her," Varric protested. "We just met and talked."

"Yes," Hawke agreed, giving him a wry look. "You talked precisely the way Fenris and I 'talked' every time he got drunk to celebrate something during that three year - whatever that was, when we weren't together, but also weren't not together. The kind of 'talking' where we were doing it into each other's mouths, and a few articles of clothing may or may not have ended up on the floor."

"All our clothing remained in place," Varric retorted sourly. "And if some of our talking didn't happen in words, well - that's between me and her."

"And the Merchants Guild," Hawke added dryly. "And the assassins they sent after you."

" Assassin, singular - it was one assassin. That time."

I wasn't the only one watching their back-and-forth with an enormous grin, but Leliana was apparently getting impatient. "And what did you do about the one assassin, singular?" she asked.

Hawke snorted. "Isabela said, 'Follow my lead,' and then, in true Isabela fashion, without waiting for agreement or even recognition that she was about to do something at best questionable and probably outright stupid, she grabbed a handful of my hair and dragged me into the room screeching about how I was a whore and a traitor, and that Varric had been hers first."

"Technically true," Varric said, "if we're speaking strictly of acquaintances."

"What did the assassin do?" Bull demanded.

"He was Coterie, which means 'half-trained thug' at best, and so he froze and stared for several seconds - plenty of time for me to accidentally knock him off his feet, while Isabela flailed about with the hilt of her dagger and just as accidentally hit him in the head and knocked him out. Then we trussed him up like a goose for Satinalia, pinned a note to his hand with one of my throwing knives, and left him outside the Coterie leader's house."

"A note?" I repeated, enthralled. "Why a note? What did it say?"

"It was a very polite request that the Coterie refrain from forcing me to begin killing my way down its ranks, searching for someone to lead who was sensible enough not to take contracts on my friends' lives," she answered with a smirk. "I've always had a soft spot for home-grown criminal organizations, you know? So much less arrogant than the continent-spanning ones. And this was only about a year after the duel with the Arishok, so my power to intimidate was at its height. It worked beautifully. No more Coterie assassins coming for my favorite dwarf." She leaned over and bumped Varric with her shoulder.

He sighed with resigned irritation. "No, the next time someone in the Merchants Guild wanted me dead, they contracted with the House of Repose."

"Really, Varric, I don't know what you're complaining about - you always prefer to work with professionals, and the House of Repose is very professional," Hawke replied with mock exasperation. "The contract had five assassins and ten attempts, no hard feelings if you evaded all of the attempts or killed all of the assassins. Besides, you're making it sound like you didn't enjoy hiding at my estate for two months while we dealt with it."

"Maybe if I hadn't found you and Broody shoving your tongues down each other's throats in unexpected corners," Varric retorted.

"That was once," Hawke said.

"Was it? Because with the amount I saw, it felt like at least a dozen times all by itself."

"It was also your own fault - you were the one who bought shots for them to bet with after Anders ran out of cash," she added. Both their faces fell a little at the mention of Anders' name, and Hawke had to visibly pull herself back together. "Well - I've probably embarrassed Varric enough for one night. Anyone else want a turn?"

"To embarrass me or to tell a story?" the dwarf muttered.

"Either, really - I'm not picky," she assured him, glancing around the table. Her eyes landed on me. "I don't believe the Inquisitor has taken a turn."

"Oh!" I said, startled. "I...don't know if I know any funny stories. Not like the rest of you." I ducked my head, embarrassed, mind racing.

"You'd better come up with something, Vanish, or we'll let people tell funny stories about you," Varric warned me.

"Like the time I snuck up on her bathing," Sera snickered. "Scared her so bad she went arse-first into the mud!"

I shot her a glare as a few people chuckled. "Sneaking up on me isn't exactly hard to do," I pointed out.

"'Cause that's supposed to make it less fun, is it?" Sera scoffed. "You squawked like a bird," she added, snorting with the force of her gleeful laughter.

"I did not!" I squawked. There was more laughter from around the table. "Oh very well," I sighed, though I was amused in spite of myself, "if you want to laugh at me, I may as well ensure I control my own embarrassing stories. Let me tell you about the time the Keeper from Clan Morlyn visited to see about an arranged marriage between me and her First. Myathilen was still about a year away from receiving his vallaslin and I was a few of years younger, just on the cusp of adolescence…"

There hadn't been a safe water source where we were camping, so everyone had been drinking lightly-fermented wine and halla milk. Or they had been until I misinterpreted my hahren's gesture and broke open one of the feast-day casks. The result was that I got both myself and Myathilen drunk, he vomited on my nicest tunic, and his Keeper decided I would either die or get the entire clan killed in the constant battlefield that was Arlathan Forest.

Which should have been obvious even before she met me, really - it was well known among the clans that I couldn't see. I suspected that she had simply been fascinated by my ability to perceive the Veil, as well as by the early onset of my magic. Early magic was usually powerful magic, or that was what the Keepers held, anyway.

My story wasn't as funny as Hawke's, and probably not as well told, but the more subdued laughter at least sounded genuine. Afterward, I downed another two glasses of wine - more quickly than was probably advisable - as a means of calming my nerves, and the game continued.