#vanders

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“Good, you’re awake.”

Varric looks up from the paper as Anders approaches, stops directly in front of him, just the low table between them. His hair is loose, clean but clearly slept in. It falls in his face, pools a little at his shoulders, casts funny shadows against his features even as it catches the red-orange of the firelight at the same time.

His eyes are bright. Not quite wild, but getting there. It’s nostalgic in a way that Varric really does not like. Keeps him bound up and tight, waiting for danger, for bad news.

“Something I can do for you, Inquisitor?”

Anders opens his mouth, closes it again. Varric thinks that it throws him off sometimes, being addressed by the title. It's part of the reason he keeps using it.

“What are you writing?”

“It’s-”

“Do you believe I’m the Herald?”

Slowly, carefully, Varric lays down his quill.

“I might’ve heard something about that.”

“That’s not-” he sounds frustrated, then seems to swallow it, “I’m not asking what other people are saying, Varric, I’m asking you. Do you believe I’m Andraste’s Herald?”

Varric can’t begin to explain how little he wants to answer that question.

“Anders-”

“Don’t dodge the question, just answer.”

“You’re really putting me on the spot here. I mean, it’s kind of an awkward question to just-”

“Varric.”

He should just lie. He lies all the time. It’s easy for him, like writing, like breathing. There’s no benefit, that he can see, to telling the truth here.

He wonders why he isn’t lying, even as the words are coming out of his mouth, he wonders what in the world is compelling him to be honest.

“Yes?”

Anders blinks slowly, as if he can’t believe what Varric’s saying either.

“Ah, maybe. Probably.” He sighs, shifts in his seat. He feels terribly… watched. As there are a lot more eyes on him than there really are. Why isn’t he lying? “I mean, shit. Either you’re the Herald or you have impossibly bad luck.”

Anders gives a short, skeptical, humorless laugh.

“What? Think about it. After everything that happened in Kirkwall, everything that happened before Kirkwall, you end up at the Conclave, you survive the Breach, an Archdemon, Corypheus, for a second time, you’ve got that fucking thing in your ha-”

“So that’s your argument? I must be Her Herald, because it’s not reasonable for me to be this unlucky otherwise?”

“Yeah, yeah I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

His expression is unreadable, the lighting makes his eyes seem unusually dark, and it makes Varric want to squirm. Crawl out of his skin. Run a mile. Something.

After a moment, Anders pulls a nearby chair closer, then falls into it heavily. He sits loosely, leaning back with his hands joined behind his head, knees open. He doesn’t say anything, but looks at the tabletop between them, thinking. 

It’s like Varric isn’t even there.

He picks his quill back up, but he doesn’t do anything with it. Just watches Anders watch the table. It reminds him of the old days, the two of them across the table from each other, not talking, deep in separate thoughts. 

Except the Hanged Man was always loud, even upstairs you could always hear people, always feel them nearby. Took a lot of the pressure off of one-on-one conversations and non-conversations alike. The great main hall of Skyhold, in comparison, is dead quiet, empty except for the two of them and the wooden scaffolding, and thousands of pounds of rock. Stone hewn straight from the mountain it sits on

Varric swallows. The stuff that Skyhold is built of is old. Really, really old. He pretends he doesn’t notice, can’t feel it, but he does. It's like a humming, almost, but silent. A noise that isn't a noise. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, fills him up with restless energy and makes him want to pace, to press his hands against the stone walls or- or, to lick them or something. Fuck if he knows. It’s weird for his stone sense to bug him like this. Practically unheard of. Other dwarves got the itch, the feelings you just can’t shake, the Call of the Stone, but not Varric. He figured that, because he grew up on the surface, because he wasn’t religious in the dwarven sense, he never would. And now he doesn’t know what to do with it, how to cope, how to make it stop.

Anders’ shirt hangs loose in the front, open enough that Varric can see the scar low down on his ribcage. The length and width of a broadsword blade, it parts him down the middle, carves his body into a symmetrical right and left half. Varric’s seen the matching exit wound on his back. It’s higher up, closer to his shoulders. Evidence of the blade’s angle, that the blow started low and was then thrust upwards into him, scrambling his organs, barely missing his spine.

It always makes Varric feel a little sick, if he thinks about it too long, and he tries not to, tries to keep his eyes up but they keep getting drawn back down to that thick, faded line of scar tissue. It’s not something you’re supposed to survive, being cut open like that, split nearly in half. Anders shouldn’t have made it long enough to tell him about it, shouldn’t have lived long enough even to see the wound close, let alone heal and scar.

Anders has a lot of stories like that. Things he shouldn’t have survived. Sure deaths that could be prevented only by a miracle. But he did survive them, every single one, and here he is, alive and warm and breathing, eyes bright as he watches the fire, hair disheveled and falling in his face. Varric wants that to mean nothing, wants all of it to just be a- a funny series of coincidences. But deep down, he just can’t convince himself of it. 

Anders drops his hands into his lap, turns his head from the fire to Varric. He looks tired.

“I didn’t let you finish,” he says, softly, “what are you writing?”

“I’m not, it’s paperwork.”

“Yours or the Inquisition’s?”

“Mine. Ruffles is doing all that other stuff.”

Anders hums, leans foreward to put his elbows on the table, chin resting on one hand.

“Right,” he says, then sighs, “I suppose I should’ve known that.”

“Big organizations have learning curves, especially if you’ve never actually been part of one. You’ll get there.”

“It does change everything, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“Me being- everything that happened before, who I was, what I did in Kirkwall, it means something different now. If I’m the Herald, that changes everything.”

“I mean, not everything.”

“A lot, though.”

“It does change a lot.”

Anders heaves a big sigh, runs both hands through his hair, pushing it out of his face, holding it there behind his head.

“You want a tie?”

“I’m fine,” he says, dropping his hands and letting his hair fall loose against the back of his neck, his shoulders. It’s longer than it was in Kirkwall, Varric wonders if that was intentional or just something that just happened, because he forgot to keep up with it, “now what?”

“For you?”

“Yeah. What do I do now?”

It seems like a genuine question. Like if Varric told him what to do, right now, Anders would actually do it.

Varric throws his hands up, lets them fall heavily back into his lap.

“Fuck if I know. Anders, I don’t even know what I’m doing still here.” Deep breath. “I never, I mean I never officially joined the Inquisition. I don’t know how to do this… disciplehood thing. I’m a businessman, I’ve never really followed a chosen one before.”

He meant it to be… comforting, almost. Camraderie-building. You and me, Anders, we’re in the same boat. Out of our element, figuring it out as we go. But Anders just stares at him for a moment, expression blank, eyes slightly wide, as if Varric had just reached out and smacked him.

“Disciplehood,” he says, as if he’s choking on it, “Maker, Varric.”

“What?”

“Is anyone- no one else is calling it that. Varric, I haven’t heard anyone else- are people saying that?”

“That they’re disciples?” 

Anders nods. 

“I mean, no.” Varric admits, “Not in those exact words, but that is what’s going on, isn’t it? I don’t think there’s any other word for that.”

And he knows a lot of words. And he’s tried on a lot of them, but none of them seem to really fit and that’s- that’s the one he keeps coming back to. Maybe Anders is right, maybe that’s not what it is for anyone else. But its starting to feel like it has to be that way for him. If he’s really going to do it, really going to join the Inquisition, really going to commit then, well…

And he is committed, now. The letter went out this morning, Mal should get it within the week. Should be back in Ferelden less than a week after that, assuming she is where he thinks she is. The fact that he even considered bringing her into this is a mark of, something. Something more than he's usually willing to give. The fact that he actually told her to come and that she will actually likely be here in two weeks' time is…

He hopes he’s doing the right thing. Fuck. He hopes that he’s not making a mistake with this one. That he isn’t in over his head. Because this isn’t something he can backtrack, something he can escape easily. Once you say that someone is divinely touched, the very first time you follow along with them on that basis, put the lives of people that trust you in their hands on that basis…there’s no taking that back.

“I wasn’t expecting this from you.” Anders says, quiet and serious, eyes on the table, “That’s why- I was just laying upstairs, I was trying to sleep and it just hit me all of a sudden. I believe it. I actually believe it. I mean I still don’t- I still don’t remember anything, but I believe that- that it’s possible. That that could really be what happened. That I’m- and that’s why I came here. I needed to be talked down or- or something. To be told I wasn’t that special,” he laughs a little, in a half-hysterical way that Varric wishes wasn’t so familiar, “and I figured… I figured that if anyone was going to do that it would be you. You were always good at talking me down, you- I thought I’d come here and ask you and you’d say “no, no. Really Anders, Andraste’s Herald? You? Be serious.””

He looks up.

“But you believe it. You think it too.”

It’s not a question. Varric’s mouth is dry when he swallows. He goes over a couple of responses in his head, dismisses most of them, settles on his fifth choice. It’s the most dismissive, it’s barely even a response at all, but it’s also the least… earnest, choice. The least incriminating.

“Was that voice supposed to be me?”

“It was.”

“Anders, that was terrible.”

Nothing for a second, a beat, then Anders’ face splits into a closed-mouth grin, like flesh parting under a blade, like something soft making room for something sharp.

“Sorry,” he says, sarcastic, almost fond, “It’s been a while, I’m out of practice.”

His eyes crease around the edges when he smiles. They always did that, but it’s more pronounced now that he’s older. The lines are deeper.

He wonders if it was like this with Andraste. If the people traveling and fighting with her ever looked over and thought- and had it hit them how human she was. How flesh and nature her body is. If they ever thought: here is fire in too small of a bottle. In his mind’s eye he imagines Ealisay or Brona, Maferath even, sitting by the savior’s side and looking over and thinking: this is a woman. I have known her for many years. Mortal years. I see the places on her face where she is aging, I remember when they were young.

Maybe it wasn’t as hard for them as it is for him. Because they doubted less or, because She had never done something so big it couldn’t be fully forgiven. Maybe the weight of history did not hang so heavy on them.

Then again, Maferath clearly had his opinions.

“You should go back to bed,” he says, in the same nudging, coaxing, quiet voice he used to use on him back in Kirkwall, when he would keep himself up late into the night or for days at a time. Head too full of the nightmares he never talked about, or else his whole body too full of light and sparks and frantic energy for him to rest, “it’s been a long couple of days.”

Anders makes an odd face. Varric supposes you could call it smiling.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Varric has always suspected that he’s maybe not quite as subtle as he thinks he is, but he hates being reminded of it nonetheless. He wonders if Anders ever resented it, his poking and prodding and mother-henning. The sideways manipulations. He never said anything, and Anders has historically been the sort to not keep quiet if he felt condescended to, but that's no guarantee of anything. There were other factors involved, things that would understandably affect what Anders would and would not say. Money, to pick one example. And-

Varric shakes his head. The only way to know would be to ask. And he doesn't intend on asking.

Anders sighs deeply, like he's about to stand, and Varric, assuming that's the end of it, reaches again for his quill. There's a relief, in knowing the conversation is over now. That it will just fade out of both their memories, at least in a functional sense, and they'll never speak of it again. Just like so many other late-night conversations that came before.

"I missed you."

The pointed tip of his quill punches straight through the cheap parchment, splitting the numbers beneath it.

"What?"

"I missed you," he says, and it's just as baffling to hear the second time.

Varric realizes that he was hoping that Anders would say something different, if Varric made him repeat himself. And the look on Anders' face suggests that he can tell.

 "I know how it sounds but, in a way, I'm glad that things worked out the way they did. The idea that we would never see each other again it… weighed on me."

“Weighed on you.”

“It made me sad.”

Varric doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels like he’s losing control of the situation, like he’s standing on uneven ground. What do you say to someone who you only half-believe to be a prophet? What do you say to someone who can’t be forgiven, when he says that he missed card nights in your room? What do you say to fire in too small of a bottle?

What does it say about Varric that he almost said it back?

It’s all just so absurd. He wishes that Anders had chosen to say nothing at all, and left him out of it. Kept it to himself. He wishes Anders hadn’t forced him to think.

“Maybe I’m pushing my luck here,” Anders says, “maybe this isn’t fair for me to ask but- I don’t need disciples, Varric.” 

(Don’t say it, Varric thinks, please don’t say it.) 

“But I could use a friend.”

Varric is losing control of the situation. He is in over his head. Maker-sent, god-touched, herald, that’s one thing. Friend is quite another.

And what does it say about him that he can half-believe both, but only the second one is hard to say? That only one of them makes him ashamed, makes him feel guilty? That he’s so much more disappointed in himself for one than the other? 

Anders’ hand rests on the table, palm-up, long fingers slightly curled in a way that’s almost inviting. He doubts that Anders had done it on purpose, but that doesn’t change the fact that his instinct is to reach across the table and grab it. Squeeze his fingers tight until it almost hurts them both and say of course, of course we’re friends. Blondie, when have we never not been friends?

Because that’s what he would’ve done in the old days. Because for reasons he doesn’t understand and doesn’t think he’d like about himself if he did, some part of him really wants to just forget. That it all happened, that it was real, that he’s angry for a reason. If he doesn’t remind himself not too, he forgets, his head slips back into the good years and stays there. If he doesn’t constantly remind himself, it all just slips away.

He stares at the open palm in front of him, the small pale scars and the calluses. It would be easier to forget. To stop fighting his instincts and let it happen. He resents Mal, for half a second. Resents that spending all these years with her has forced him to think about what is right, and not just what is easy. What he doesn’t have to repress or handwave to be able to live with.

The Inquisitor’s hand closes.

“Nevermind,” he says, “no hard feelings.”

He stands, looks almost embarrassed.

“Goodnight, Varric.”

“Goodnight.”

Anders leaves him, finally, and for some time after he’s out of sight Varric just stares vaguely in the direction he walked off in. He’d say he was thinking but the truth is, there’s not a single thought in his head. All empty, dark, ringing with the non-sound of ages-old mountain rock.

He tries to finish his paperwork and fails. He’s tired, and the words bleed together, the figures melt into meaningless piles of numbers. He forces himself to bed eventually, tosses and turns there for a while because, despite the ache in his eyes and the heaviness of his limbs, he just can’t get comfortable.

And then, right before finally drifting off, he has what he can only describe as an epiphany. A moment of wild clarity.

And because he’s a much more polite man than Anders is, he decides that it can wait until morning.

                                                     *

“I’m your friend, and I’m in this with you for as long as it takes to finish it. All in, one hundred percent,” he takes a deep breath, “and I don’t forgive you. And I never will.”

Anders sort of… relaxes. He honestly seems more relieved by the addendum than the original statement. 

Varric is never going to understand how his head works.

“That’s good to hear.”

For you maybe, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

Hawke’s coming, he thinks, but he doesn’t say that either.

He’ll tell Cassandra first. Get that out of the way and Maker knows she’ll tell Anders for him. Two nugs with one stone.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Inquisitor, I have to go give the Seeker some bad news.”

Anders raises a wary eyebrow at him. He looks more put together now, a little tired, but very sheveled. Fully dressed, for one thing, hair pulled back and up, features catching the sunlight and casting a completely different set of shadows than they were by the fire.

Different and the same.

“Bad how?”

Varric grimaces.