Wednesday mornings in the middle of the month were a tumultuous time at the offices of Music of Thedas; it was about this time every month that writers woke up with the horrible realization that their articles were either as yet unwritten, would be impossible to finish, or were just plain shit and had to be scratched.
For Leliana, it was just one more month of disappointment as she stared at her all-but-blank laptop screen, her collection of clippings, leads, and rumors spread out before her on her desk. With how pathetically unreliable and disparate they all were, not even a tabloid would publish the type of garbage she was trying to sell. Thank the Maker she had taken to pitching a back-up article to her editor every month, and writing that one first in case her desired story didn't pan out.
This month, at least, she had fared better than usual. The city of Kirkwall had recently dropped all criminal charges against every member of the guerilla punk band City in Chains, which meant they could finally come out of hiding and release their music to the public in a more conventionally legal sense. She had managed, through her connection with Varric and a lot of sweet talk, to score an interview with Chains's infamous frontman Hawke.
Next month, she thought doggedly. Or the one after that. Somewhere along the line, she would find the lead that made her elusive story, and the man or woman behind it, more than a laughable urban legend.
"'Has the Dread Wolf Caught Your Scent?' Creators' sakes, Leliana, please tell me you don't still think he's real," Melanie's voice said behind her, reading the headline on her laptop.
Leliana whirled around in her office chair, staring at her young friend with more confusion than surprise.
"How did you get in here?"
Melanie perched on the end of Leliana's desk and placed down a stack of manila envelopes in front of her.
"No one looks twice at a meek little elven girl scurrying around with a bundle of mail. Learned that from Sera."
They shared a brief conspiratorial grin.
"I didn't say I thought it was a he, necessarily," she replied evenly, glancing back at her laptop. "I do think whoever it is, though, they're elven."
"What, just because of all the wolf imagery?" Mel asked doubtfully, looking down at all the images of lyrics and sheet music on the table, scrawled on everything from legal pad, to napkins, to receipts. The only common identifying feature was the minimalist but emblematic drawing of a wolf's head that was used like a signature at the end of every piece. "Leliana, if I've learned anything from the hundreds of Dalish rock bands that have popped up in the last few decades, it's that you don't need to be Dalish, or even elven, to rip off whatever bits of our culture you like and ignore the rest. And I'm not so sure that's what's going on here."
"When I first came to you, you were positive that these illustrations were meant to evoke Fen'Harel. You even showed me similar iconography from your clan," Leliana reminded her.
"I was at the time, but… what you seem to think this person is doing, roaming around Thedas, anonymously leaving talented singers with monumental songs meant to propel them into fame, and seeking no reward from it… it's not really Fen'Harel's style," Melanie explained, crossing her arms. "He's really more… well, he's kind of an asshole."
"I never said this mystery composer was charitable," Leliana returned slyly. "That's just the piece of the puzzle I'm missing. These songs, they're not donations - they're business propositions, bargains. I'm convinced of that."
Melanie sat up slightly at that, interest piqued.
"Okay… but what's the price? And how do you know who you're making a deal with?" she asked with a furrowed brow.
"You don't," Leliana replied, giving Melanie a pointed look. "And now you know why I haven't been able to let go of this story yet."
She abruptly snapped her laptop shut and gathered all of her clippings back into their folder, continuing, "So far, the pieces I've found, the people I've talked to… they're the ones that didn't take the offer. If I could find someone that did, prove that someone currently topping the charts is doing so with a song that they didn't write…" she trailed off and waved her hand dismissively, too skeptical and tired to believe that this was a realistic goal.
"Well, I wish you luck. I know this is really important to you." Melanie spoke with solemnity, but gave only the bare minimum of respectful silence before perking up with, "So, can we talk about why I'm here yet?"
Leliana checked the time.
"You have exactly two minutes. I have a meeting."
"Good, this won't take long," Melanie said enthusiastically, undaunted by the time limit. "I was just wondering, you know that Mythal song, 'Give in'?"
"The infamous number one single that you made me listen to ten times on repeat on our road trip to Wycome? No, never heard it," Leliana interrupted with a wry smile and a long-suffering look.
"Yeah, that's the one," Melanie continued obliviously, clearly too caught up in the weight of her request to pay Leliana's sarcasm any mind. "I was wondering, do you have any idea if there was, like…" her face contorted slightly, as if she was uncomfortable, "I don't know, a demo or something, or a difference between releases, or a printing error, or something where maybe the lyrics were changed early on?"
If Leliana had the time to be curious, she would have questioned why her friend, who was one of the most obsessed Mythal fans she had ever known, seemed so unsure of herself as she posed this question. As it was, she had an editor waiting, and needed at least thirty seconds to prepare herself for another lecture from her about not delivering the promised article.
"It's… an odd question you ask," Leliana admitted. "But I can look into it when I have time later today. Some of the older staff here might know something."
Relief washed over Melanie's face as she hopped down from Leliana's desk.
"You're the best, Leliana. And remember, if you need help with any more Dalish stuff, I'm your elf."
With that, she winked at Leliana as she grabbed the envelopes she walked in with, and scampered off down the hallway, feigning hurriedness with the authenticity of a seasoned actress.
"Um…" the young qunari bouncer, who stood head and shoulders over her adversary, croaked with nervousness as she spoke. "I'll need to see some ID, ma'am."
"Look. At. Me." Each word was a menacing bark, and not one that intimated that any hypothetical bites that might follow would be any less deadly.
Cassandra Pentaghast was a sight to behold any day, composed as she was in angles so sharp they looked likely to draw blood and ever dressed to kill in finely tailored Nevarran suits. She stood with a fighter's posture that made you desperately want to ignore her perfectly sculpted ebony hair and flawless porcelain skin for fear that she'd dock you if she caught you staring too long. All of that, combined with the fury that was currently burning in her eyes, was enough to make one turn to stone at the briefest of glimpses.
The hapless bouncer swallowed thickly.
"Unfortunately, e-even if you don't look underage… it's the law," she persisted, managing to convey only the slightest sense of authority in her tone.
"No; you didn't let me finish," Cassandra accused, watching with satisfaction as looks of confusion and dread passed over the bouncer's face. "Look at me and tell me that your employer, who we both know does not give two shits about the law when it does not suit him, did not hire you for the express purpose of keeping me out."
Cassandra had no interest in hearing the bouncer's answer. Instead, she watched the qunari's face intently with the intensity of a snake watching its prey as her hazel eyes flicked for an instant to her right, then blinked as if trying to cover the action. Cassandra followed the errant gaze to the backside of The Hanging Man's front door, which was fully plastered with posters, memos, and memorabilia. In an instant she found what had drawn the qunari's attention.
Her face, printed several times in mugshot fashion, all under the ominous headline "Beware the Dragon". The photos were mostly culled from public profiles available online. On the last one, someone had drawn a dastardly curly moustache on her face and added the caption "what she might look like if she tries to sneak in wearing a disguise".
With a furious growl, Cassandra tore the poster off the door in one clean swipe and swept past the useless bouncer. When she entered the main bar and noticed with a quick sideways glance the absence of its proprietor, she marched straight up the stairs, threw open his office door and slammed it loudly behind her.
At the noise, a startled Varric looked up from his laptop. As his mind registered who was standing in front of him, his features shifted uncertainly a they struggled to convey the complexity of his reaction. Ultimately, he settled with a friendly smile that was belied by a nervous twitch in his eyebrows.
"Seeker, to what do I - OW!"
Varric's saccharine greeting stopped short as a cd case, thrown by Cassandra with stunning accuracy, hit him right between the eyes.
"You conniving little shit!" she roared, closing the distance between them until she stood before his desk where it was all the easier to tower over him.
"Andraste's ass, Seeker, I thought you'd finally been weaned off of throwing sharp objects!" he yelled back, features twisted in anger as he rubbed the injury on his forehead.
Not one to be baited when she was on a mission, Cassandra leaned forward slightly, gripping Varric's desk with two hands as if she would flip it over at the slightest provocation.
"You knew where Hawke was all along," she snarled with less volume but equal intensity.
Varric's eyes fell to the cd, which had landed on the desk. He flipped it over to read the title - "Blow the Chantry" by City in Chains, and understanding grew on his face. He took a deep breath and stood up in an effort to reduce the drastic advantage she had over him in height.
"You're damn right I did," he told her, staring up at her defiantly.
It was nearly too much for Cassandra to bear. Mildly concerned that she would actually start beating him if he kept glaring at her like that, she turned away from him and took to pacing the office in a futile effort to vent some of her frustration.
"All these years. All that time. Even when…" she stopped as she came to a realization, turning back to Varric with genuine astonishment. "Varric, after the Kirkwall Riots, the city police wanted Hawke and all the others in jail. They made up charges. They had warrants."
"I remember, Seeker. I was, as you so gloriously put it, one of the 'others'," Varric shot back testily.
"I offered you all protection," Cassandra persisted doggedly. "You, Hawke, and everyone else would have had the best lawyers Divine Records could afford."
"So long as the band signed with the company, sure."
Cassandra scoffed.
"So you kept Hawke away from me, risked the safety of all your friends, for what? Artistic integrity?" She paused a beat, thinking, before growing darker as she continued, "Or were you just trying to protect your own interests, so you could produce the album yourself? Has it been profitable for you, dwarf?" she sneered.
Varric rolled his eyes at the accusation.
"Look around, Seeker," he said, gesturing at the finely appointed albeit messy office. "Do you think I really needed the money? I was protecting my friend. Hawke wasn't just making an album; it was a statement. Something to inspire change in the fucked up pile of corruption that Kirkwall was seven years ago. How do you think that statement would have sounded after your producers got their grubby hands on it?"
"So that's the reason you lied to me? You thought - what? I couldn't be trusted? I couldn't handle it? I wasn't chasing after Hawke for the money; I was after the songs. They were important." Cassandra was yelling again, carried away by the idea that Varric had believed she was either too greedy or too incompetent at her job to have seen Hawke's album through properly.
"Oh, bullshit!" Varric spat abruptly, genuinely throwing Cassandra off balance. "You're an agent for one of the most lucrative record companies in Thedas, and you want me to believe you care about the music?"
Cassandra shook her head at him in disbelief; could he really think so little of her? She let out one long, resigned sigh, losing the energy to be angry.
"I do," she said simply, with a conviction that brooked no argument.
Varric was silent for a beat, squinting at her like she was some kind of magic eye image before he shook his head as if he had given up trying to discern it.
"Sweet Maker, you're hopeless." His tone was an irksome mixture of sympathy and mirth, but it was a welcome enough change of pace.
"I know," she admitted bitterly.
Suddenly feeling exhausted, she stepped back over to Varric's desk and collapsed into the chair across from his. Varric sat down across from her, regarding her with a caution one would typically display towards an unpredictable wild animal. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him.
"Divine Records used to put out music that meant something," she continued when it was clear he had nothing to say. "But it hasn't been that way for years; somewhere along the line we got lost. Listeners these days are growing disillusioned with our brand; I'm disillusioned with it. A band like Hawke's, one that spoke out against unjust cruelty and stood for something, could have put us back on track."
"Will all due respect, Seeker, the music of the counterculture never really gets along well with the mainstream," Varric offered dryly. He hesitated, seemingly in careful consideration, before asking, "So… what did you think? Of the album?"
"It's good," she said honestly. Then, after a beat, she added, "A little too much swearing for my liking."
Varric chuckled despite his best efforts to stifle his reaction. Cassandra glowered at him, standing up to to re-center herself.
"As strange as this has may seem to you, Varric, I did not come here simply to argue with you about the past. Hawke was a lost cause; one I had given up long ago. I came to ask you about someone else."
"Oh?" Varric's response was instantly guarded. "What makes you think I know this someone else?"
"You know a lot of people," Cassandra replied evenly.
She let a meaningful moment of silence pass before she reached into the inside pocket of her blazer, pulled out the ragged piece of sheet music stowed within, and slammed it on Varric's desk. He took one look at it, then looked up at her in shock.
"You're kidding."
"I do not kid, Varric," she replied acidly. "I'm looking for the one they call the Dread Wolf."
"Cassandra, there is no Dread Wolf," he asserted, using her real name to drive the point home. "It's just some disgruntled composer trying to put one over on the world. Or, more likely, several dozen disgruntled composers."
"No one with a brain would deny that at least half the songs out there are fakes," she retorted. "But the real ones are unmistakable - genius always stands out. I am looking for that genius."
"You want to sign the Dread Wolf," Varric stated, deadpan.
"Yes."
He scoffed and waved a hand at her dismissively.
"Good luck."
"Varric," she said, calling his full attention back to her. "Do you know who the Dread Wolf is?"
"No, I don't." He answered immediately and confidently, looking her in the eyes. "Because the Dread Wolf doesn't exist."
She honestly didn't know, after having been fooled by him for so long, if he was telling her the truth - but she was smarter this time. She leaned in one more time, levelling him with a glare and a smile laced with poison.
"Liar."
With that final accusation, she turned and left his office before he could respond, leaving the sheet music on his desk for him to contemplate.
She would be back soon, after he had time to sweat.
And she would get the truth from him.
Saturday morning's band practice had begun unremarkably enough. As per usual, Dorian and Melanie arrived early together to unlock The Hanged Man's basement, where Cole was inexplicably already seated and tuning up. From there, the three of them set up all the necessary equipment and enjoyed a good ten to fifteen minutes of idle chatter as they waited for the unfailingly late arrival of their drummer. This morning, however, as fifteen minutes stretched first into thirty, then forty-five with no sign of the blond elf, the atmosphere grew tense.
When Melanie stormed upstairs for the third time to try Sera on her cell phone, Dorian leaned in to Cole.
"I bet she's run off to follow the Qun just so she can finally bag herself a qunari," he muttered under his breath. "The woman has a horn fetish, I swear."
The young, pale lead guitarist looked up from his instrument and blinked as he took several seconds to parse everything Dorian had said.
"I don't have any money," he told Dorian simply.
"Well, neither do I, at that," Dorian replied, tilting his head at Cole. "It was just - oh, nevermind."
Conversation with Cole was a tricky thing; it was almost as if he didn't speak the same language as everyone else. Whole exchanges would pass between Dorian and Cole where neither was really quite sure for the entire time what the other was saying. It was fascinating to Dorian on the best of days, and exhausting on the worst. Thankfully, Melanie and Cole seemed to have some sort of intuitive understanding of each other that stretched beyond his sparse and oddly chosen words.
"Well, I finally got ahold of Sera." Melanie's terse voice preceded her as she emerged from the stairwell. "She's been tied up all morning working on a vintage Cadash Phoenix. 'Couldn't say no to getting under that baby's hood', in her words. She says she'll be over in fifteen and to start without her."
"Right, well, I'm glad she has her priorities sorted," Dorian snapped. Melanie shot him a warning look. "What? Don't tell me you're not angry."
"I'm pissed she didn't bother to tell us, yeah," Melanie responded. "But, as much as I would like to be, I can't be angry at her for choosing to make money doing something she loves and is good at instead of practicing with us."
She sighed heavily and sank into a nearby chair, running a hand through the longer side of her asymmetrical auburn hair.
"We're going to lose her to her job someday," she said to Dorian after a pause, a look of impending doom in her eyes.
"Do… we need a drummer?" Cole asked hesitantly, looking between the two. His question, asked innocently enough, seemed to be an attempt to console them, but Melanie couldn't help but crack a smile at the hint of seriousness she detected. Despite his best efforts, Cole really couldn't seem to get himself to like Sera, and Maker knows she made that task hard enough on her own.
"Yes, Cole, we need a drummer." She answered him without a hint of condescension. It was a quality Dorian always marvelled at, but it came easily to her. Everything came easily to her where Cole was concerned; he just had that way about him.
"Oh," was Cole's only response as he frowned and looked down at his guitar, still clearly worried.
"Don't worry about it," she reassured him. "We'll find a new one if it comes to that." She didn't sound as confident as she would have liked.
"Yes, it's you we'd all be fucked without," Dorian joked, looking at Cole.
Melanie levelled another silencing glare in his direction, but he simply shrugged in feigned innocence. It was true, after all - neither of them had ever met a more naturally talented guitarist in their lives, even in the six years they'd spent at the Circle. Poor Cole, however, looked distraught.
"Oh, but you don't have to worry about that," he said hurriedly. "I would never leave you guys. I don't have anywhere else to go." He sounded both completely genuine and not at all sorry for himself.
Melanie regarded Cole with adoration and curiosity. No one quite knew where, exactly, Cole had come from, or where he went when they weren't together. Six years ago, he had shown up unceremoniously at the audition Dorian and Melanie held to assemble the rest of their band, a scrawny fifteen year old kid with a beat up Wade's Stratocaster. Before either of them could explain they were looking for someone a bit older and more experienced, he wordlessly launched into a flawless rendition of Duncan's famous solo from The Wardens' classic hit "Blighted Lands". They would have been stupid to turn anyone down after a performance like that.
Since then, he had shown up faithfully to every practice and every show, and on very rare occasions since had turned twenty-one, he would join them at the bar after a show, where he would invariably sit quietly and contentedly without drinking anything the entire night. He never responded to questions about his personal life with anything less than discomfort, and on more than one occasion, when they dared to press further, he had reached a state of near panic. Aside from his repeated assurances to Melanie and Dorian that he did, in fact, have a place to live and hadn't sacrificed school or any other responsibilities to hang out with them, they knew next to nothing of his life outside the band.
For all his reclusiveness and evasion, however, he was kind, gentle, and unassuming. The Inquisition was truly incredibly lucky to have him.
"Cole, I would hug the crap out of you right now if I didn't know it would freak you out," she said warmly. Cole was jumpy when it came to touch.
Melanie thought she heard a quiet, sheepish "thank you" from Cole, but a buzzing in her pocket distracted her. She pulled out her phone to see she had a new text.
Leliana 9:42am
Found something interesting re: give in. Stop by office next Monday.
She pocketed her phone again, filled with a sudden uneasy anticipation at whatever it was Leliana had found. Before she could dwell on it, however, Sera noisily announced her arrival by stomping down the stairs and bellowing that the party could finally start.
Taking a deep breath, Melanie put aside any worries about the revelations that awaited her or any potential future encounters she would have with the strange man she had met nearly a week ago - she had a show to prepare for.
...
Notes:
-Duncan/The Wardens are re-imagined here as a classic rock band in the vein of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
-For the record since I neglected to mention this before and she's a pretty big figure, Mythal I see as pretty much a Madonna type, if Madonna also died tragically young at the height of her career.