apparently my new thing is having a panic attack every night and managing to distract myself by writing fic I can project on, here’s tonight’s featuring the Dragon Age boys
“I know, kid, I know, deep breaths.”
Varric rubbed Cole’s back, feeling a deep sympathy. The kid was double over as though his stomach hurt, but that wasn’t what was really bothering him.
“I can’t breathe,” Cole gasped. “I’ve never needed to breathe before, can’t breathe, going to die, can’t breathe-”
“Hey, focus on me, kid,” Varric moved to stand in front of Cole, keeping a hand on his shoulder and trying to meet his gaze. When he noticed Cole dodging his attempts he remembered the kid’s profound dislike of eye contact. “Look at my hand, focus on that.” he held up his hand and Cole’s eyes immediately locked onto it.
“I can feel myself dying,” Cole choked out. “Darkening, tingling, shaking, pain, mind going fuzzy.”
“It’s called a panic attack,” Varric said. “And we’re going to get you through it.”
Cole suddenly fled to the corner, moving almost too fast to see. He curled up in a ball and started rocking back and forth, humming to himself. His hands were restless, moving all over his body tugging at his hair or toying with each other, they never stopped moving.
“I’m going to die,” he said, and his voice sounded so terrified that it broke Varric’s heart.
He’d come across Hawke like this on more than one occasion. All that stress, of course it weighed on her hard enough to make her snap. She’d rocked sometimes too, said it helped her calm down, made her feel something good and helped her focus.
She’d rock or she’d pace, but that was just when she was in control enough to try to help herself through it. Othertimes she just sobbed helplessly while Varric held her. He could see Cole quickly reaching that territory.
“I’m here, and I’m going to keep you safe,” Varric promised him. “Remember in that last battle? When that Freeman came at you with a sword from behind?”
“You shot him,” Cole said, still rocking back and forth and starting to chew on his thumb.
“Yeah, I got him,” Varric said. “I’m going to keep doing that, okay? Anything that comes for you, I’ve got it.”
“You’re going to shoot it?”
“I can’t shoot everything, but I can protect you.”
Cole seemed to consider this for a moment, then he finally looked up at Varric. “Could you get Bianca anyway?”
“But don’t leave me,” Cole said quickly.
“You can come with me, how about that? Think you can walk?”
Cole made a distressed noise but he stood up.
Varric took the darkest most least traveled pathways through Skyhold. It was night, so there weren’t many people out already thank Andraste, but he still wanted to keep Cole away from prying eyes. He didn’t want him to be scared by anything new introduced to the situation, and he didn’t want him to be embarrassed later. Hawke would get embarrassed a lot, she would drink and make scathing jokes about herself and apologize as if it was ever a bother for him to watch her back.
They made it to Varric’s room, and he grabbed Bianca from where he’d left her. He kept the safety on, no need to make this a real crisis situation at the slip of his finger. Still, he held her at the ready.
Cole seemed bolstered by this, whimpering slightly and moving to sit on the edge of Varric’s bed just behind him.
“How we doing, kid?” Varric asked, staying protectively in place.
“I’m scared,” Cole said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea that I’m going to disappear. I don’t want to.”
“But you can’t stop that!”
“I’ve fought a god and a dragon and templars hopped up on red lyrium, nothing is going to stop me from keeping you safe, no matter what it is. I’d kick a hole in the fade to get you back.”
Cole made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, then he flopped onto his side. His fingers curled in the blanket and his hat went askew.
“Why do I feel so tired?” he asked. “Like I’ve been fighting.”
“You’ve been hyperventilating, your body thinks it’s been fighting.”
“My body can think on it’s own?”
“Yeah, you’ll keep figuring that out the more human you become,” Varric chuckled. “Bodies are always doing things we didn’t plan on.”
Varric breathed a sigh of relief as he heard Cole’s breathing began to slow and grow steady.
“What if I stop breathing?” Cole asked. “Will I die? Will my body think it’s dead?”
“I think Solas would tell you that you don’t have to breathe to keep living,” Varric said. “And I think your body just has to figure out that it’s not going to stop breathing in the first place. It’s scared, you’re scared, it just needs to remember it’s safe.”
“And you’ll keep me safe.”
Varric was surprised by a sudden weight on him, and almost fell over with an “oof!” as Cole hugged him from behind.
He was shaking, and holding on tight enough to crack a rib, but Varric didn’t mind. He dropped Bianca and turned in Cole’s grasp to hug him back.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he shushed him.
“Thank you,” Cole muttered, hiding his face against Varric’s shoulder.
Varric ended up convincing Cole to give sleeping a chance. He looked exhausted after all of that, and he figured it would help his mind reset to switch off the panic. He tucked him into his bed, promising to watch the door with Bianca. Cole hadn’t asked him to, but he looked so grateful when he said it that he figured he’d guessed correctly that he was still pretty shaken.
“You call me kid,” Cole whispered as Varric blew out the candle on the nightstand.
“Yeah, do you not like it?”
“I really like it. You make me feel safe. I don’t know what it’s like being a kid, having someone take care of you. Even when the real Cole was a kid, he didn’t know what it was like to have someone take care of you.”
Varric once again felt his heartbreak, and a bit of rage at the picture he was getting of Cole’s past.
“Well, I’ve never had the best parents either,” Varric said. “That’s how I learned to find family. It’s not the people you’re related to, it’s the people you love. The people you chose to love.”
“Yeah,” he didn’t hesitate. “You’ve got loads of family here. Bull called you his weird kid, remember? Sera treats you like a little brother, Cassandra mothers you every time you open your mouth, even her worship the inquisitor herself frets after you like a mother and she’s barely even older than you are.”
Cole was silent, but when Varric looked at him he seemed content. Calm, at the very least.
“You wanna hear a story?” he offered.
“Yes, please,” Cole said eagerly.
Varric grinned, he knew how to do this part. Helping people was hard, there were so many ways to do it, and he would try every way on the list if he had to but this was the easiest one for him.
“This is one about some of my family,” Varric said. “So, this one day, Merrill wanted my help surprising Hawke with a gift…”
As Varric told his tale, only embellishing a little here and there, Cole’s muscles slowly untensed. Varric could see the smallest smile stretch across his pale face in the dark, and by the time he finished weaving his story Cole was asleep.
Varric’s face softened looking at him. “Sweet dreams, kid.”
The next morning Varric woke up in the chair he’d pointed towards the door. He was sore, but nothing that wouldn’t be gone at the end of the day. He yawned and stretched, and that’s when his eyes fell on the items he did not remember having on his desk.
There was probably the most gorgeous leatherbound journal he’d ever seen, and then a ring he hadn’t seen in years.
Hawke’s ring, the one she had made with her family crest when she moved to Hightown.
“To commemorate my transition into high and mighty noble!” she laughed, showing off the ring and lifting her ale.
“I thought this got eaten by an ogre,” Varric mused to himself, twisting the ring over in his hands. He noticed the note next to the items. It was written, as he expected, in Cole’s handwriting. It said simply: for helping.
