Chapter 19:

They had walked the way home in silence with Fenris trailing slightly behind her as he usually did. He was never too far away, he always was that way. He gave her distance, but in a flash he would strike down anyone that would try and test her. She had never truly put too much stock in it before, but whenever she was in over her head in a fight Fenris always seemed to drop whatever enemy he had to save her. It was oddly romantic to her.

She could tell he wanted to ask her question, probably about all the things Varric had told him. She didn't think he had that much time to go into detail, and Varric did embellish, but the way Fenris looked at her with such sad eyes, it made her wonder. They had almost parted ways quietly but Fenris stopped as they were walking up the stairs to Hightown. She stopped to look back at him, he obviously wanted her attention.

"I was wondering if I could come over tomorrow… to catch up." He seemed embarrassed to ask, he had some ulterior motive. She had guessed he had failed in whatever search for his master he had set off for. She knew he would never rest while that man lived, but she didn't think sleeping with her would drive him to search again.

"You can always stop by." She left it at that, walking away before another word could be said. She didn't want to slip back into weakness and follow him to his house so she briskly went to hers.

She always found someone in her home, she was hardly surprised it was Varric. He had become a regular at her home almost as much as a regular at the Hanged Man. He thought it was his secret fascination with innocent elves, but perhaps he just enjoyed her company that much. Who was she kidding?

Varric was sitting in one of the chairs before the fireplace, and she took the opposite chair of him. "What do I owe this visit, Varric?"

"I can't just drop by to say hi, Hawke? You wound me. I thought we were best friends." He was smirking at her, and she relaxed to lean back in the chair.

"We are best friends, I don't know what I would do without my dwarf, but you never come here to talk about the weather."

"That is true. Anders came by the Hanged Man today." She tilted her head at the words that came out of Varric's mouth, Anders truly wasn't a drinker. He had told her he used to be, but that seemed like an impossibility. Anders had changed too much because of Justice he had said, another reason to distance him.

"I suppose the things drunk Anders told you would be a whole chapter in your story about me." She closed her eyes for a second, inhaling slowly to try and think of the things Anders would have told Varric.

"Some of it was too juicy. I'm trying to appeal to a large audience." She just stared at Varric as he was smirking at her again. He was a horrible liar. Maybe to everyone else he was a perfect liar but she saw straight through him.

"No. I don't think he told you any juicy details about me or my bed manners, though I am sure you tried to pry."

Varric frowned, "You take all the fun out of everything, Hawke. No he only said some quite queer things about you and a certain elf."

She smiled slightly, playing along. "Oh do tell me. I love gossip."

"Well he was saying that you and the elf were more than just friends, and that you and him were the same way until the elf came back."

Hawke shrugged, she wasn't about to talk about this with Varric when she couldn't even talk about it with Fenris. Were they supposed to be girlfriends and gossip over crushes? "Who haven't I been with? You know me and Isabella loved the Blooming Rose." Deflection, deflection, deflection. She had only gone to the Blooming Rose with Isabella a few times, and in the end Isabella and her used to get bored with whoever they hired and just rent the room out for the night. They were quite horrible girls.

"Ah yes, your rebellious phase that started after the elf left. Also how you started doing riskier jobs after the elf left. You were quite torn up about something… after the elf left." She was getting it. Was he worried about her or did he just want to write it down on the pages?

"Fenris and I did have something, but he left. I do not know what I will do now if that is what you are asking."

"I wasn't asking anything. I just came here to tell you how Anders cried to me and was saying curious things. I just had to see if they were true. Why did you toss Anders aside anyways? You seemed happy with him for a time."

She looked away from him to the fire to sigh. "I never got close to Anders because of what Fenris would say. I was afraid of him because of Justice. When Fenris left, I thought all of what he said was rubbish." She closed her eyes. "It was a mistake, and I was weak after my mother's death… and he was there." Why was she telling this to Varric? Was it because she had no one else to tell it to? That seemed to be most of the way her stories went, Varric as the only ear to hear. "I did care about him… but Justice hates me. He feels I am not doing enough for the mages, and that I was holding Anders back. Justice would kill me if he could. What am I supposed to do though? I can't do anything these days without Meredith on my ass." She looked at Varric to see how he had responded to her rant, and he just sat there looking empathetic. She hated when people looked at her like that, she was Hawke… she wasn't someone to feel sorry for. She was someone to be feared.

"That makes sense… Anders freaks me out sometimes too, but he isn't all that bad." No, Anders wasn't all bad, but he wasn't someone you wanted to share your bed with.

"I never said that. I think he is close to breaking though. Meredith's means to control the mages is fraying what control he has. I've seen it." She wouldn't talk about it anymore. She had thrown it in Ander's face as a measure to get him to hate her, but it still terrified her. She remembered watching Justice take over, she remembered trying to talk him down to no avail. She remembered how he killed that girl in one blow. That poor little mage that only wanted to go home. "I wish Isabella never left. The three of us could have become connoisseurs of whore houses and taverns… sailing the seven seas for pleasure." She laughed, she didn't like talking about such serious things. She always turned everything into a joke when she could, it made it easier than to deal with true problems. She had enough of that when she went to the gallows.

"What a life that would have been. I don't know why she ran. You were going to help her."

"She knew I wasn't going to let her keep the Qunari text… She knew I had alliances with the Arishok, and saving her ass was more important, it always was." She shrugged. "I knew from the beginning there was nothing serious to her. A pirate will be a pirate."

"So you and the elf…."

"So me and the elf…" She laughed before getting up to get some drinks for the two of them.

They had ended the night with drinking. It always seemed to happen this way with Varric. She wished she could look at her liver before and after she met Varric. She felt sometimes it was on its last leg. The dwarf could put it away, and she wouldn't let him win so easily. Tonight she didn't get so sloshed, she had too much to think about to let herself drown it all at the bottom of the bottle. She had done that too much recently, she needed a clear head to find her path in the coming days.