I’m alive and managed to write some words for the first time in about two weeks. Things are in the thick of it now for Violet, and of course she decides to confide in Varric. This is DA2 after all.
Tagging a few people if they’d like to share. And if not, I simply offer hugs. @softeasun @babydinosaur930 @inkysqueed @blossom-adventures @mylosingdogs
Friday night at the Hanged Man is always bustling, bodies jostling against each other and beers sloshing violently onto the floor, but tonight is even more cramped than usual. When Violet had asked him to meet her, Varric wondered what would be so important that Hawke would brave the extra waves of Kirkwall scum—himself included—just to buy him a drink to mollify him.
“Of all of the idiotic, half-assed things that we have been involved in, that I have seen you do, this is the most—”
“And you love every second of them.” She points at him accusingly before leaning back into her chair. “It’s not a big deal. Stop making it out to be!”
“Stop making a big deal out of it.” Varric shakes his head. “Do you even hear yourself right now?”
“You don’t understand. I—”
Behind his temples Varric’s head start to pound. He knows she has good intentions, crazy ideas that usually pull them out of whatever shitshow they find themselves in, but this— He had warned her, had been watching her, watching Blondie. But all of his words have fallen on deaf ears, and now she has thrown herself into something he is not sure she can pull herself out of.
“You married Anders.” He repeats what she had told him again, laying it out plainly.
“Yes, I sent in the paperwork to the Viscount this morning. It’s for his own good. I can protect him. I can—”
“You didn’t even consult him!”
“You’re just mad I didn’t invite you.” She folds her arms over her chest. “If this were anybody else, you’d have already started scribbling in that notebook of yours.”
He sighs, hands carefully steepling themselves in front of him, and in a rare moment of gravity, fixes his eyes to her. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” He pauses for a moment before adding. “And I don’t want to see Blondie get hurt either.”
“There is nothing for you to worry about. Nothing is going to change. He isn’t even going to know, and when this is all over, I’ll have it annulled and—”
“You say that and yet you didn’t think to tell your husband,” Varric raises a brow as he places careful emphasis on the word, “that you were going to marry him. Hawke, how do you think this is going to go when he eventually finds out, or even better, when your brain finally catches up to that emotion-addled heart of yours?”
She blinks, picking up her mug and draining it before smacking it back onto the table more forcefully than she had intended. “I beg your pardon?”
“That is exactly what I mean. You have no clue.” He shakes his head. “And neither does he. Even you should be able to see that this will only end in disaster.”
She leans forward, voice snapping despite the roar of the bar around them. “It only ends in disaster if I allow it to, and that will happen over my dead body.”
