For the WIP game: Varric ... (I'm bracing myself for feels) 😭
Man 🌹 @kourvo after the last snippet, you're one brave lion! 🦁
(I shared a snippet of this recently for WIP Wednesday XD but this time I’m sharing the whole chapter as it’s one of the short ones! Once again, it’s an excerpt from my longfic Ablaze)
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Thank you so much again for asking about all these WIPs!
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I certainly didn't expect it!
Varric shoves, not hard, but hard enough for Hawke to feel his back collide with the battlements.
“What the blight was all the about, Hawke?” Varric half-grunts, half-yells, his voice rasping in his throat.
Hawke’s dirt-streaked hand misses his eyes, rubs against his face and beard instead.
“’Go, I will cover you? Corypheus is my responsibility?’ Andraste’s bloody tits, seriously, Hawke?”
Varric is heaving hard, huge intakes of breath.
“You would have died, you stupid bastard!” Drained, Varric slouches against the rampart of Adamant fortress, sliding down until he comes to sit on the ground, hunched over his chest. “What about Kirkwall? What about the rest of us? What about Fenris, for Maker’s sake?”
He does not look at Varric.
“Under pressure, I start swearing and write stories and you are sarcastic to the point of ridiculousness and bust some asses! That is how we cope, Hawke, and dying in the fucking Fade is not one of our mechanisms!” Then Varric voiced what Hawke was thinking. “Are you mental, Hawke?”
Hawke passes a trembling hand over his eyes, the other still grinding his bearded cheek, frantically, his mouth, chin, neck. His moving eyes dart around, unfocused.
In his chest, his breath tears around. It comes in long, hard, heaving draws.
“I cannot …,” Hawke breathes, half of his face hidden in one hand . “I cannot … –“ He stops speaking when the voice flees his throat, leaving it all raw and hurting.
Slowly, Varric watches him crumple, too, collapse, slumped to the ground, his bent back supported by the fortress’ jetstone walls. They do not look at each other, not speak, simply sit there, stooped, the tips of their grime-stained boots essentially touching. Their gaze falls to the ground, hijacked there, drawn into themselves.
For a while there is naught but silence, broken solely by their heavy breathing.
“Makes our first trip into the fade look like a holiday, huh?” Varric mumbles at length. “I still vote against taking a room there.”
“Yes. Too much vermin.” The weight of Hawke’s forehead presses upon his bruised knuckles.
“I should have come sooner,” he then says, calmly.
Varric wretches his gaze from the ground. “I told you not to, remember?”
“You should not have been alone in this, Varric.”
“Maker’s breath, I was begging you to stay away,” Varric mutters, his hands all over his pale, face, “and I am glad I did. I even wrestled Cassandra for your honor.”
A remote smile tugged at Hawke’s lips. His forehead came away from his arms to rest his head against the dark, battle-stained walls.
“Would have loved watching that. And place bets.”
“On the lying dwarf or the crazed sword-lady?”
“Not saying.”
Varric’s mouth twitches but he looks away.
“That clearly says ‘the most handsome dwarf in Skyhold’.”
“You are forgetting I fancy people with tall swords.”
A small, short-breathed laughter, cleft and cupped, escapes Varric’s throat. Hawke grunts then, hoarse. “You should not have been alone in this, Varric.”
Absent-minded, Varric motions nervelessly, a tiny shaking of his head, eyes focusing on no exact point somewhere to Hawke’s left in the fuliginous night.
“Thanks. But this is no story for heroes.” An inenarrable emotion passes over his face, quick and aching. “Did you really see spiders in there?” he almost whispers.
Varric looks at his hands in his lap. “If Bartrand and I had not found it … if we had never set out for the blighted Deep Roads … if we had not been so greedy … if we had never found the idol –“
“I went to the Deep Roads as well, remember?” Hawke interjected in a sharp voice, “There was no way we could have foreseen this. No,” wearily Hawke rubs is face again, sensing dirt, blood and sweat under the pads of his trembling fingers, “if anything, Corypheus is my fault. I swear, I thought we had killed him, I really did. If my father – “
“Don’t you start on this again,” Varric snapped angrily with an irked lift of his head, “I was there as well, remember? He sure looked as dead as you can possibly be!”
Fraught with exhaustion, breathing hard and shallow, the two of them laid back their heads, their gazes losing focus once more.
“All spiders?” asks Varric, after some time, softly.
A spasm, like the sudden rupture of a very tightened string, scuds across Hawke’s features. Eventually, he nods, throat too tight to speak. “And … them.”
They stare into the smoky, bluish-gray night sky.
“I have never seen you fight with someone before.” Varric’s mouth twisted, an edge of caution smoothing out his voice. “Well, severe a few limbs here and there and pierce a few egos, but never actually argue. You are no quarreler, Hawke. Maker knows, I have rarely witnessed you become angry ever before. “
After these words they look at each other, memories kindled like fire-lit projectiles illuminating the battle-worn night. Hawke wipes at his face again while his other hand travels to his chest, rubbing it as over smooth stone, as if trying to ease a pain within his ravaging breath inside his chest.
“Strout … was a good man.” Hawke’s words come slow, cautious, placed like dulled tiles on crumbling earth. Varric looks up to see a grimace sunder Hawke’s gray, pinched features as a discordant tune. Threaded with self-disgust. And something almost like shame. “I should not have talked to him the way I did. He deserved better. My manners never exceed in the presence of good men.” Hawke adds, a cracked smile passing between Varric and him like a secret gift, a twinkling in their eyes, before it passes away.
Hawke rubs his beard and face again, massaging his jaw with a slow-moving vigorousness bordering on real pain. Then, he laboriously climbs to his feet.
“I told the Inquisitor I would go to Weisshaupt. Someone must warn the other Wardens,” he says contemplatively, almost unattentive, absent-minded. A fast shrewdness passes over Varric’s face while he fixes his gaze at him as Hawke speaks.
The air presses its cold smoke-mouths against their faces. Hawke’s gaze lingers on Varric like moon-lit clouds on a dark pool , long and intense. “Come with me, Varric.”
“Thanks for the offer,” Varric mumbles, suddenly almost inaudibly, his slow glimpse falling upon his hands still resting in his lap, with defiant defeat. “But I am in this. Something tells me I need to stay where I am. At least for the time being. Someone must write down all this shit, I guess. Maybe I will compose an ode or something.”
Reaching out, Hawke simply nods and without further ado his slightly calloused, smoke-streaked hand, willfully steady now, comes to rest in front of Varric. “The weirdest shit I have ever seen.”
Varric lets out his breath as if had been holding it within his sunken chest. Then, an inconspicuous smile darting over his canny eyes, he seizes Hawke’s proffered hand and Varric too rises to his feet. “All of it.”
“Answer this one question, Hawke,” he continues, their hands still clasped around each other, firmly so, “Cross my heart! How in the blight did you coax Fenris into staying behind? Cut the petty excuses, we both know he would rather have killed himself than remaining behind wherever you go, Hawke, let alone let you walk into peril on your own – and we also both know that he is the single most obstinate elf in the world which is saying something. Mind you, I am glad he was not with us in there. Maker knows, our angsty elf does not need to be hunted by more demons.”
Momentarily, Varric halts there as he notices something else streak across Hawke’s face, the skin beneath his beard whitening, blanching, paling. Hawke could feel Varric’s grip unobtrusively tighten, a seriousness shining forth in his mahogany eyes. “Also, you look heartsick to the bone. Tell me. How did you do it?”
Hawke’s gaze flees to wander over the rampages and battlements, unhearing of the voices in the night, the shouts of those who fought, the cries of the wounded, the jubilation of survivors.
Finally, he bends one knee to kneel down.
Thus they embrace, on the half-shattered parapet of iron-black Adamant fortress. In a swirl of desertic coldness, shrouded and obscured in battle-spiraled fumes midst a barren, hissing wasteland, verging on a harsh-steep cliff just above the gaping chasm in perpetual danger of falling. Varric accepting his silence and thereby reaching beyond it. Varric’s fingers clawing into the fabric on Hawke’s shoulders and Hawke tightening his arms, his hold around Varric.
“Sorry … about before …,” Varric mutters all but inaudibly.
“I felt a little breeze stirring up there. Was that you?” Hawke ponders, a smile in his words, Varric's snort in its wake.
“Take care, my friend,” murmurs Hawke softly and he can feel Varric’s mouth stretch into something he cannot see. “You too, Hawke.”
When he somewhat loosens his hold, Hawke grips Varric’s shoulder. “Do write to Fenris for me, will you?” he asks hoarsely, his mouth almost too dry to speak. “He … he should be back in Kirkwall by now.”
“And once again a smart dwarf rescues another human’s sorry bottom,” Varric gives a deliberate sigh as he hastily wipes his sleeve across his eyes, “Ah, but you know I cannot refuse you anything. You do look lovelorn, you realize, Hawke? It is pitiful.”
Hawke forces a low chuckle. “Another human who would be lost without his dwarf.”
“We are helpers.”
Varric’s grip clenches once more around his cloak before he taps Hawke’s shoulder with the rim of his fist. “Don’t die, Hawke.” Then, taking a deep breath, “This really is no story for heroes.”
“It is good we are no heroes, then,” retorts Hawke, a hint of the old mischief twinkling in his eyes and Varric lets out a short, breathless laughter as they break apart.
“See you in Kirkwall, Hawke.”
And Hawke, standing upright, holds his gaze, teeth clenched, the corners of his mouth twisted into a crooked though genuine smile. “See you in Kirkwall, Varric.”
On the very first step of the spiraling staircase leading down into the battered watchtower Hawke passes a mirror, cracked, partially burst, half a spider’s web. Beneath the layer of blood-soot, iron-strained, the features of the man he catches sight of remain hidden. Smudged as a line of ink slipped, scratched wildly across the parchment.
It is the face of a man who looks as though he does not know where he is.
"Tell me what piece of you I can have. It can be any piece of your choosing. Whatever it is, I'll take it. It will be my most prized posession" I just finished an ARC of A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire by jennifer L armentrout, the second book in the from blood and ash series and it was amazing! You guys are going to be so happy when this book hits stores on september 1st! #hakwe #poppy #frombloodandash #akingdomoffleshandfire #books #arc #advancedreaderscopy # bookstagram #reading theblondebooklover https://www.instagram.com/p/CDRkPxvASfS/?igshid=fkb5ioxc4xpi
Let's list off what Hawke does before we know them
♦Travels with poor fam
♦Takes care of twin younger sibs, one of whom is a fuckin mage so they have to be extra careful so Templars don't get wind and steal her away
♦the other is a fucking upstart young warrior who wants to be like his older sibling if not better
and then we join them and Hawke helps a pair of people who are not only warriors but a Templar who is someone they've tried to protect their sister from their entire life but no, we can't kill the Templar because we're all trying to survive
and then, in a cruel twist of fate, their younger sibling is killed by an ogre because yeah, they defeated darkspawn scouts but the ogre came from nowhere and there was no time to save their sibling
and then Leandra (Andraste guide her soul) fucking blames Hakwe for not doing enough and you can see it on Hawke's face, they blame themselves as well for not being fast enough or strong enough, just not being enough in general to save their sibling who they've spent the rest of their life protecting only to lost them to something that shouldn't even exist, and not only does Hawke blame themselves but so does their mother, who literally says "Why couldn't you be faster?"
and then they go to Kirkwall and Hawke does his best for his family- lives as an indentured servant for a year with their sibling so they can even get in to Kirkwall, finds out about their estate to get their mother where she should be, tries to take care of their sibling still while gathering money for an expedition that will either kill them or make them filthy rich
and then if you take Hawke's sibling to the deep roads without Anders, Hawke loses their other sibling to something outside of their control and how much must that hurt, to know that they couldn't save another loved one? All they wanted to do was give their family a good life, but look at what they've achieved- a dead father, a sibling unrecoverable from Thedas, and now another sibling they have to leave in the deep roads because 1) traveling with a body decomposing must suck and 2) they cannot do it for various other reasons
and then Hawke has to face their mother if they lost their sibling, knowing that she hadn't wanted their sibling to go in case something like that happened, the worst happened, but it had been their decision to take their sibling and they'd been so sure it would all be okay
aND THEN LEANDRA DIES
Because Hawke was out doing business and wasn't at home to see that their mother had gotten white lilies until it was too late and they are always too late why are they always too late?
Leandra forgives Hawke and tells them she loves them but Maker's flaming knickers, how much do you think it hurts Hawke to know that there goes another family member because they weren't enough? They weren't strong enough or fast enough or smart enough to know that this would happen, never mind that they couldn't have known but they should have, dammit
and then their only family member left is Gamlen who even blames Hawke in the beginning for failing to save their mother, his own sister who yeah, he had issues with, but that was his sister and he was panicking and he couldn't save her...
I have a lot of feelings about Hawke and how they must feel like they've failed their family, okay BC
