II
— she sees Varric's hand on Bianca again as she jolted awake.
Cassandra felt the pain surge through her nerves as she attempted to stand up, failing as she falls down as she attempts to prop herself up with her injured arm. She tries once again to stand up, feeling her legs go numb and her head spinning, even though the pain from her arm distracted her still. Cassandra held onto it, feeling the blood that won't stop spilling out between her fingers, hoping that maybe it will stop at some point if she held onto it hard and long enough.
She remembered what Mithiin did in the dream, but with no needle and thread in hand, she ends up just ripping off her sleeve and clutching it directly, the pressure somewhat relaxing her a little, which helps since her thoughts are rather jumbled. What happened? Was that a dream? A vision? Cassandra still felt the mixture of pain and regret weighing her chest, but seeing Varric actually alive, breathing, and flashing his shit-eating grin left and right...
Why doesn't she feel relieved to see him alive? Is something going to—
"Seeker?" Varric comes near, in the same tone of voice she remembered him using in her dream, breaking her thoughts and worries. But this time, she did not reply as she struggled to keep herself up. But Varric doesn't want her to persist, and lays a hand on her waist, imploring her to sit down at the very least, to fix her wound.
"Seeker, let's fix your wound, okay?" He had to rip off the hand over her wound before she just nods in submission. "After that, you can traipse around all you want as long as Corypheus isn't bearing down on us."
"I merely wanted to feel my legs," she says, but she lets him inspect the gash, anyway, as she returns to her seat earlier. After he's wiped off most of the blood on the wound as soon as she got settled, he just looks at it as if he didn't know much on what to do.
"Shit." He stands up, placing down her arm on her lap, in the same manner she remembered him doing. "This looks a lot worse than a simple wound. I'll call Wishes, seeker. She's been rather great on her healing late—"
Before he was able to leave, she grabs on his sleeve. "Please stay." She did not look at him, but Varric knew what it meant, and words were not needed for that. Varric looks at her, worried about to say something about her wound, but not before Cassandra speaks again. "It's not that bad. All it needs is some sewing."
He raises an eyebrow, as if not expecting to hear it. Her grip on his sleeve tightens. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." She looks up and grins. "You can sew, right?"
He nods, though he looked uncertain. "The only thing I've sewn in my life are my own breeches, but that will work, I guess. I think I got some needle and thread here, let's see..." Cassandra tried not to laugh as he sits down and pulls out a small sewing kit, enough to fit in the inside pocket of his coat, and proceeded on threading everything together. She did not know why he even had a sewing kit with him, but she did not ask.
At least, even though almost everything in her dream seems to be repeating oddly, she was glad Varric's wit and humor still stayed. That's one thing she's happy to keep.
He was neither healer nor tailor, so he struggled as he tried to sew Cassandra's wound together. It hurts more than Mithiin's work and she had to grit her teeth through it, but if it meant a few more moments to be able to talk to him, she's more than happy to bear ever prick. Later on, he's shed his gloves to attempt to have a better grip, and she felt oddly satisfied with his fingers on her arm and the silence that follows.
After Varric had a few stitches on, Cassandra tried to break the silence. The dream still troubled her greatly, and even though she was not too keen on dreams and their meanings, it's better safe than sorry.
"It's strange," she murmurs.
"Strange to be on top of a flying temple while fighting an ancient darkspawn magister?" He was midway through the gash — which took longer since it was evident that Varric has never sewn skin together before — but Cassandra did not mind. "Everything happening to Wishes is strange."
"No, not that." She smiles, and even though it's evident that it's forced, Varric wasn't looking up to her to see it. "I saw..." She looks down as Varric tends to the wound, in the exact same manner he tended to her bandages last time. "A dream came to me. I saw ourselves in this same situation, and you said the exact same things to me, and..." she trails off, not wanting to add 'and you died' to the end of the sentence, fearing that heavy weight on her chest would return.
He was silent for a few moments before he responded, trying to piece it all together. "Scared?"
"Somehow, yes." Her face distorts to pain as Varric missed and pricked something wrong, and the dwarf muttered a soft apology. "It felt too real. I still remember almost everything you did. Dreams do not stay that long."
"What did I do?" He threads in another stitch, making sure he's not hurting Cassandra way too much. "What happened?"
"You..." she swallows, and trails off, unsure how to begin, but Varric did not persist, knowing what her hesitation meant, and was silent as he finishes the stitches. He took his time making sure that it was all well and secure, because unlike Mithiin, he wasn't a healer, and he does not have the Inquisitor's resolve and heart of steel to assure Cassandra that no, he's not dying anytime soon.
The silence lingered for some time before he finally breaks the silence. "You think it will happen?"
It was Cassandra's turn to be silent. She rubs the gash — still painful, but the bleeding has reduced — out of words to say and means to find them. She just grabs on the bandage she has dropped earlier and clumsily wrapped it around the gash, and Varric helps her to make sure it actually covered the wound.
She later answers with another question.
"Do you think it would?"
"Maybe. Any of us could die today." He smiles, but it was more for himself than her. He pulls off her hand from the wound — both to keep her from ripping off the stitches and to reassure her. It was not much, and Cassandra still refuses to look him in the eye, but he's still trying.
"I still remember it, like it actually happened." She pauses, as she tries not to break down, and was successful on keeping a straight face as the image slowly clears in her head, and she closes her eyes as if trying to block it out. "You were there. Bianca was lodged on you." She swallows. "And I remember you smiling despite it all."
"I'm afraid I don't know anything about the dreaming world and the Fade and all that shit, since we dwarves don't dream, but..." He pauses, before he nervously laughs out. "Shit. Seeker. You know I'm not good at these things. But I can try to live through this. No promises. We don't really know what Corypheus has in hi—"
"That's not enough." She looks up at him, mad, desperate, pleading — she wasn't sure what she wanted to get across. She grips on his palm like it's dear life. "Promise it, that you'll live. Swear it."
He sighs. "Okay. I swear it."
"That's not enough." She repeats, gritting her teeth before she felt the pressure through her jaw, and she suddenly felt the pain on her tongue as she realizes that she was biting down on it. Varric sighs again, but after a few moments, he looks to her.
"I swear it on you. I promise it. And sure as hell that I won't be seeing anything as odd as the Maker's bosom today." He pauses, before he squeezes Cassandra's hand, as if to get her attention. "Okay? Is that enough for you?"
Cassandra didn't say anything, instead looking down again with a melancholic smile, only partly satisfied. She knew that promises won't do anything on the events of the day, but she can only hope, right? That maybe it will change at some point? That they could live through the day, both of them?
Varric smiles sadly to her, and she does the same, as forced as smiles can go. "Thank you," she says finally. She was not sure if she believed him, but it was better than enough.
"Why are you scared over it? I never knew dreams and visions in the Fade scared you."
That was one thing that wondered her, honestly. As far as dreams and visions go, nothing has scared her more than this. She was sure that it wasn't because Varric's death seems like a written rule now, but something else a lot more strange—
"I'm not afraid of the dream," she says, standing up and picking up her pauldron and greaves. She looks at the little hearts that border the rim of the pauldron before she fastens the clasps on her plate. "I'm afraid of myself. Of Corypheus, of what will happen. Sometimes I cannot predict even myself."
"Either way, I'll write them the same." He grins to her. "You come and climb on the dragon, and you kill it with that knife you used to kill that high dragon back in that ten-year gathering back at Orlais—"
The dragon's roar came before Cassandra knew it, and Morrigan was unconscious once more on a heap on the ground, bleeding and battered and with no energy left on her to fight. As quickly as the dragon had come, Mithiin was quick on attacking, and her spirit blade was drawn and already charging with gritted teeth. Cassandra ran to her shield, and Varric took her sword and threw it to the seeker's direction.
"Please, stay back." She sounded like she was pleading, catching the sword and just throwing the sheathe aside. "It may just be a dream, but this time, this is all real. There is no waking up from this once you die."
"You're not losing me anytime soon, Seeker!" He grins as he picks up and loads Bianca, taking Cassandra's tip to bring all his spare bolts with him. "We still have stories to tell!"
"How about your happy ending?" ske asks. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
"Happy ending?" He laughs. "Now that I think about it, why does it ever have to end?"
He's stormed off before she was able to reply, and she merely smiles to herself as she catches up and made doubly sure that he was always behind her at all times.
The battle was as she remembers it — Bull and Blackwall doing their best to distract the enemy, Solas and Vivienne raining down spells, Mithiin being uncharacteristically aggressive and trying her best to get a good strike on the dragon with her spirit blade. It was as she remembers it, except that Varric was not exactly trying to distract the dragon, so it's just going around trying to stomp the first person it sees. Cassandra goes around and tries to find a blind spot she could charge in, but no such luck. She ends up doing Varric's role of protecting the others who haven't recovered yet. Sera was still struggling over her vials of grenades whie in pain on a chest wound, while Dorian's shoulder look dislocated but he just tries to shrug it off as he picks up his staff. Solas later returns beside him, trying to fix his shoulder, but Dorian was struggling too much to do any progress.
After a few moments, Sera has recovered and has an armful of jars ready for throwing. Of course, she throws the one filled with bees and wasps first, and it lands straight on the dragon's head. She started laughing obnoxiously as she throws the rest — a mixture of frost and flame grenades and some other volatile things Cassandra couldn't name — and Sera seems to have gotten the desired effect because the dragon stops in its tracks as it tries to make out things past the swarm of insects.
The elf rogue notches an arrow, and draws the bowstring with a wicked smile on her face. "Take this, ape-shit piss-ass lyrium freak!" She releases the arrow and it went flying straight to the dragon's eye.
In panic of its sudden loss of sight and the pain in an obviously weak spot, the breath of fire the dragon was intending to blast at them went all spiraling around. Everyone tried to take their cue from the dragon's sudden moment of vulnerability, before the fire materialized to an odd cloud and started raining down sharp shards and chunks of red lyrium on them. Cassandra raised her shield to block the onslaught of red lyrium shards everywhere, and she runs back and tried to pull away Sera from the rain, but one shard hit her straight in the eye and another landed on her shoulder.
"Solas! Get Dorian out of there! The opposite corner's safe!" Cassandra pulls Sera close, who was trashing around and screaming all the obsenities she could think of as she tries to rip off the shards.
"Sera! Sera, it's me, Cassandra." She places the elf rogue's arm on her shoulders. "I'll bring you to Solas, okay? He and Mithiin can get those off."
"Stop yapping and bring me to that elfy bastard already!" Sera started screaming and kicking some more, as if it was her way of saying that she'd go there herself if she could, and Cassandra started walking as fast legs could allow to Solas's place.
They were halfway there when Sera tries to take the seeker's attention. "Hey, Cassie lady." Sera has pulled out the shard off her eye and is rubbing her eye in a terrible attempt to get the other particles out, and was saying, "Ain't that your dwarf lover crouched down there or it's just me? I can ride on your back and you can run to him, you can do that, yeah?"
She turns to the direction Sera was pointing to, and sure enough, there was Varric, lying sideways on the ground, with something glowing lodged on his chest. He was bleeding, and his chest is not even moving to breathe. Adrenaline seems to suddenly surge in her veins, and was about to rush to his direction, but Mithiin suddenly came out of nowhere in front of her, and pulled both Cassandra and Sera to the opposite direction. The seeker was about to struggle, but not before Mithiin have waved her staff and a barrier came between them and a firestorm that Cassandra did not notice was coming.
"Cassandra!" She pulls the seeker away from the dragon, and slings Sera to her own shoulder. "Focus! What in the Creator is going on?"
"Mithiin, I—" Another firestorm came, but this time, it was Solas's work, and was directed towards the dragon. Mithiin waved her staff upwards to create a barrier and motioned Cassandra to stay close to her to get across to Solas's corner.
"Cole rounded up those ones hit with the red lyrium, so don't worry about them, we'll do something about it." She shakes the seeker, making sure she got her attention. "Come with me!"
They quickly sprinted to the corner — as much as they could manage with a wounded Sera, at least — and Cole comes to them with a wounded Varric in his thin arms, half-dragging half-carrying him. Cassandra was not able to look at him clearly earlier, but now she's gotten a clear view, she felt her heart sinking in her chest — there's a huge chunk of red lyrium stuck on his chest, and one embedded on his neck.
Oh, Maker, no.
"He's hurting, and I can't make it stop," Cole mutters, obviously wanting to do something, but could not. "His mind is screaming for it to stop, the lyrium is getting in his mind, it's bleeding in him, it's killing him, and he screams for you amindst the chaos."
Mithiin quickly puts Sera down as carefully as she could, and motions to Cole to put Varric down. She takes off her gauntlet and the mark on her hand glows, and she channels magic to her hands before she grabs the red lyrium with her bare fingers and rips the chunk off, eliciting a sharp cry of pain from Varric.
"Mithiin, are you sure you should be handling that direct—" Solas tries to stop her on digging out the other shard, but she shoots a sharp glance to his direction."To hell with the effects," she mutters angrily, busying herself as she yanks out the other piece on Varric's neck. Later, she hands Cassandra a pair of tweezers. "Cass, help me. There's shards still in it. Yank them ou—"
"Seeker."
It was Varric. Thank the Maker, he's still alive. Cassandra felt herself relax as she stepped closer, and clasped his fingers with one hand as she tries to follow Mithiin's instructions with the tweezers in the other. Varric's fingers were warm still, but she could feel the red lyrium beating through it, and Mithiin was slowly working on extracting the lyrium out with as much magic as she could. "Seeker," he repeats again, and he squeezes back on Cassandra's fingers.
A few moments pass as Mithiin and Cassandra try to extract all the lyrium she could, but Cole breaks the silence from behind Cassandra, daggers drawn and eyes glowing red from the lyrium as he looks out to the others who are still fighting.
"He's gone," Cole mutters.
"No, he's not." Cassandra grips his hands, now cold.
"He's gone," Cole repeats. "I want to make the hurt stop, but I could not, because I am also hurt, it is—"
"I can still do something!" This time, it was Mithiin who screams out, and she desperately tried to sew together the wounds, heal them with magic, but the only thing that she could feel her fingers are the dampness of her tears and not the dwarf's heartbeat. She only stopped once Solas's hands grabbed hers — he shook his head to her and she just broke down. "No one's dying, no one's dying! Not any single one of you! Not while I can still do something!"
And Cassandra merely repeats Varric's words, and clutches his fingers close to her chest.
Why does it ever have to end?
The sounds of the dragon's roars and everyone's battle cries seems to fill the hollow spaces building up inside her, confusion and the familiar taste of pain weighing her down. Her mind started going through the Chant of Light that she had memorized by heart, his hand between her palms, as if she would find an answer, a miracle, a solution — anything to tell her that this is a dream once again.
She had seen him die once. Or twice? Or was it three times? She was sure it was not real. She was sure. She woke up from that, it was merely a dream. She woke up. It was a dream. She still feel the pain of the wound on her arm. It's real.
The dense air around her seems to be mocking her stupidity as she felt her heart heave and weigh heavier than her shield. She clutches his fingers tighter. She kisses them, hoping the warmth will bloom again. Nothing. She prays silently, hopes, maybe she could still try to pull out whatever red lyrium has seeped into him. Maybe she could still—
"It was worth it, seeker, it was you or me," Cole mutters, somewhat announcing Varric's thoughts loudly. He was shaking, his eyes glowing red, scared, yet still had his daggers between his fingers as he braced for the dragon marching their way. Sera joins him later on, with a crude eye patch on her bad eye, as she notches an arrow. The dragon comes, finds them, and the roar shook the ground and their hearts. "You write our story, seeker, you tell them how it ended, how it repeated, you tell them how far I've made it, and you write yourself a hero, because that's what you are, and you will always be the hero I had loved for so long—"
The last thing she saw was Varric's bloodied grin. This time, Cassandra couldn't smile back, the only thing in her mind being the end.
