An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/20 Fandom: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Female Cadash/Varric Tethras, Female Cadash & Male Hawke, Male Hawke & Varric Tethras Characters: Shae Cadash, Varric Tethras, Male Hawke (Dragon Age), Cassandra Pentaghast, Bianca Davri, Kieran (Dragon Age), Morrigan (Dragon Age), Solas (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Starts pre-canon, Outsider POV for DA2, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, slow emotional burn, Friends to Lovers, Regardless of What That Contract Said, Explicit Sexual Content, Comfort Sex, Hawke Ships It, Dubious Spycraft, Remember Kids: the Carta Is Like the Mob, Dwarf Culture & Customs, My Own Dwarf Lore [side-eyes BW], Background Relationships, Skips Through Canon, Angst and Feels, The Emotional Labor Carried By One Bottle of Whiskey, Happy Ending Summary:
A Carta spy and a jaded author meet and part. And meet and part.
And then there’s a hole in the sky.
Heroes are everywhere, but neither of them really think they fit the bill. They just want some peace and quiet. Guess they’ll have to make it themselves.
 Beta'd by Iron_Angel. NSFW will be marked **. Updates weekly.
Chapter 1 - The Mark
Varric dropped down from the ledge he’d been on, the one she never even noticed in her haste to follow his boot prints.  He held the crossbow at his waist with little effort.  The look on his face was determined for all of a second before it fell away into something both softer and dismayed as he looked at her.
“Am I getting older or are you runners getting younger?”
“I’m twenty,” she snapped, indignant despite the situation.  She was hardly a child.  She’d been working for her father for almost six years now.  She tugged on her sleeve, but he pinned it good.  She’d have to wrestle the bolt out of the wall or tear it to get free.  His aim was meticulous.  She could feel a slice along the top of her wrist, but it was a mere papercut compared to what she knew he could do with his weapon.
“You got a name, sweetheart?”
