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awesomenightfall · 5 years

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[the wicked & the divine]

part of the "dragon age protags are terrible adults" modern!AU [Cassandra/Varric (eventual), humor, modern!AU, no tw, mild language, super unfinished] -- Seekers/Templars are pretty much police in this world and someone has it out for Cassandra (surprise, surprise). Varric gets a very unwelcome visit from Leliana (who wants to cash in a favor, natch) and an injured Cassandra.

---

In retrospect, the whole premise was so cliche that, as a writer who had built an entire career on delivering the unexpected, Varric almost laughed himself sick at the irony.

Cliche #1: It was, of course, a dark and stormy night. The place was Kirkwall-- The Hanged Man, to be more exact. The pub was one of Varric’s more profitable business ventures. For a crime ridden, dirty, rundown town, there had been a surprisingly lack of places for local degenerates to get wasted before Varric stepped in.

He was a very hands off owner that preferred to let management run the show. Still, Varric liked to frequent the bar to see his friends, play cards, but mostly to make sure Hawke wasn’t pissing away all of the profit by doling out free drinks to men and women she wanted to sleep with.

He trusted Hawke with his life, but with his wallet? Not so much.

The bar had closed for the night and Varric was reconciling the books. It was terribly monotonous but it was a nice break from his usually hectic life filled with a ridiculous amount of dramatic extraverts that demanded pretty much all of his attention. He also tended to get his best ideas at The Hanged Man late at night when he was decompressing from the day.

Then again, he had written his tawdry, bodice ripper Swords & Shields at this very barstool, so he had to concede that maybe not all of his ideas were very good.

Cliche # 2: The quiet was interrupted by a sharp, somewhat mysterious knock at the door. There were only two types of people who came by this late at night -- robbers or booty calls. Robbers didn’t usually knock and Varric had indulged in all of zero booty in Maker knows how long, so he was intrigued. And maybe a little afraid.

Please don’t be demons or bill collectors or ex-girlfriends, for the love of all that is good and holy, please don’t be a possessed ex-girlfriend looking to cash in on a debt...

It felt very dramatic, very film noir-esque, and Varric could almost hear the saxophone music queuing up in the background as his internal monologue began.

“‘Okay Tethras,’” Varric narrated, “‘I said to myself, ‘“You’re a tough guy. You’ve been shot at, possessed, faced down the Carta, forced to go to Bertrand’s social gatherings.” Now let’s see you do something really tough—like answering the door.’”

With a deep sigh and ignoring that niggling little thing called self preservation that was screeching at him not to do it, Varric walked over to the door. His hand hovered over the knob. “Any chance you’re selling cookies for charity and not here to mug me and/or rope me into some hairbrained scheme?”

“Varric,” a familiar, accented voice replied. “It’s Leliana. Open up.”

Crap. “So no cookies, I’m guessing,” Varric said as he unlocked the door against his better judgment. “Nightingale, if you wanted to have a private tête-à-tête, did you really need to wait until the asscrack of --?”

In Leliana’s arms was one Cassandra Pentaghast, currently white as a ghost, hunched over, and bleeding out from her skull.

Plot twist.

“What the hell happened?” Varric ushered them inside, wincing at the amount of blood dripping on the dingy bar floor. He had very little lover for the Seeker (and the feeling was undeniably mutual, for so many reasons, but mostly because he prided himself on being a fabulous liar and her job was to literally seek out the truth), but that didn’t mean he wanted her to die inside of his bar.

Then again, it might do something to add to the intrigue of The Hanged Man…

No, Varric decided, he didn’t need any more death on his hands. He might have had a little bit of a hate-on (“It’s like a hard on,” Isabela had said wisely, “but for someone you want to hate-bang right through the floor”) for Cassandra since the time she took him in for a grueling six hour interrogation concerning Hawke’s whereabouts, but he wasn’t a monster.

Besides, Cassandra would just haunt him from beyond the grave and did he really want to risk having to spend eternity listening to her make that little disgusted noise she always made when he spoke?

“Ugh,” Cassandra grunted when her eyes focused on Varric. “It’s you.”

And there it was. Cassandra was nothing if not dependable and predictable.

Leliana hefted Cassandra up on the chair; no easy task, considering how tall (unnecessarily so, in Varric’s completely unbiased opinion-- what does a woman need with that much leg?) and well muscled the Seeker was. Cassandra groaned, hazily blinking blood out of her eyes. She looked… well, she looked like complete and utter shit, Varric thought, and that was being charitable.

“Assassins,” Leliana confirmed. “We’re looking into it.”

“And no doubt you’ll find them.”

“By hook or by crook,” Leliana said simply and Varric shuddered. Leliana was sweet and pretty and it was easy to forget that she was a powerful spymaster with a whole network of followers at her disposal. But when she got that look, well… Varric didn’t envy the person who had been stupid enough to go after one of Leliana’s people.

Varric grabbed his first aid kit -- always fully stocked, thanks to Hawke’s penchant for getting into fights -- and set it down on a wooden table. “So. What’d the Seeker do to get the attention of assassins?”

“I imagine it’s some kind of personal grudge.” Leliana pulled on some latex gloves and got to work on the gash on Cassandra’s forehead.

“Wow,” Varric said, voice chalk full of exaggerated surprise, “imagine that. Someone doesn’t like the Seeker? Nightingale, call the presses. The world needs to know.”

Cassandra glared at him and hissed as Leliana pressed on the wound above her eyebrow. “Such a comedian, dwarf,” she drawled, voice slightly slurred from what Varric imagined was excruciating pain. He winced in sympathy and grabbed some ice from behind the bar, wrapping it in a towel and leaving it as a peace offering. Cassandra looked surprised and suspicious, not making a move for it just yet.

“Surprised you let them get a hit in,” Varric said, leaning back in his chair dangerously. “I thought you slept with your sword under your pillow.”

He might have imagined it, but for a moment it looked like Cassandra actually blushed. Must have been a trick of the light. “I-- I was indisposed.”

“Indisposed,” Varric echoed.

“Shut up. It was nothing.”

His thoughts raced. Indisposed? The Seeker? What did that even mean? Varric imagined -- not that he thought about her that often, because that would be weird -- that she spent 24/7 in her stiff, buttoned up uniform, sword at her side, vigilant and composed as she chased down criminals and ne'er-do-wells.

She was horribly embarrassed about it, whatever it was, and that only further fueled Varric’s curiosity.

“Well now I have to know. ‘Indisposed.’ How indisposed are we talking about here? Where does it rank on a scale from 1 to Hawke, Zevran, and a team of double jointed Antivan contortionists?”

Varric was rewarded with Cassandra’s patented disgusted noise and it was music to his ears. And that’s one win for the dwarf.

Leliana tried to hide a grin and failed miserably. “She was in the shower,” she loudly whispered.

Varric nearly tipped back in his chair but caught himself before he fell. “They attacked you in the shower?”

He had so many questions like:

Did she fight naked?

Did she bring the sword into the shower?

Wait, if she was in the shower then that meant that she wasn’t wearing --

For fuck’s sake, don’t. Don’t even go there.

“Ugh,” Cassandra groaned. “Be quiet, Leliana. And don’t you even think about telling anyone about this.” She shoved a finger into Varric’s chest, each word punctuated with a strong poke. “Not. One. Word.”

“Perish the thought, Seeker,” Varric said, moving out of reach before she gouged his heart out. “Would I ever tell anyone about you fighting assassins au naturel?”

“Yes,” Cassanda and Leliana said in unison.

He waved his hand. “Your secret’s safe with me.” Cassandra snorted again. “So, you were in the shower and assassins attacked. What happened next? Did you defend yourself with a loofah? Rubber ducky? Leave no detail out. Hard in Hightown has been missing bathroom shenanigans and honestly, this is just the inspiration I need.”

“Varric.”

“What? I said I wouldn’t tell anyone, I never said I wouldn’t write about it.”

“Varric!”

Andraste’s blessed ass, was it fun to mess with her.

Leliana cleared her throat politely. “Varric, you may be wondering why we’re here.”

“I, too, would like to know why we are here, Leliana.” Cassandra’s voice was as cold as the ice starting to melt on the table.

And here it comes, Varric thought. Should he just resign himself to whatever favor Leliana was going to cash in? Beg for mercy? Skip town for a bit so he could finally get some writing done? “You want me to find the attackers?”

“Well, since Cassandra’s apartment is currently being searched and it’s not quite safe for her to return, I thought, since you have a few extra rooms upstairs, you could let her stay here.”

“What.” Cassandra’s fury was palpable and it sent a shiver down Varric’s spine. He wondered who would win in a fight between Cassandra and Leliana. He wondered if the staff would be able to get all the blood out of the carpet. Mostly, he wondered why he always got caught up in all of this shit.

Leliana looked at Cassandra evenly. “There is a hole in your roof, Cassandra. How are you supposed to stay there?”

“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself--”

“You have a concussion and possibly a broken arm, along with a few ribs,” Leliana said. “Not to mention there is a group of people who want you dead. Until we isolate the threat, you shouldn’t be there, Cassandra. You know that.”

“Ugh. Do not baby me, Leliana, I am a grown woman who--”

The bickering continued in the background as Varric thought deeply on the newest crisis foisted upon him.

Varric wasn’t angry, per se, but he wasn’t jazzed at the thought of having Cassandra as a temporary roommate, either. This bar was his oasis, his anchor in the sea of chaos known as his life. Now he was supposed to let Cassandra “I’m going to tie you up and not in the fun way” Pentaghast stay there?

But then again, if her life really was in danger… and while they weren’t best friends, they were still acquaintances that had worked together… and she wasn’t completely awful when she wasn’t preaching or yelling or shoving him into walls...

… shit, he hated having a conscience.

“It’s fine,” Varric conceded. “Stay. You’ll be safe here.”

Cassandra opened her mouth to retort, but Varric got there first. “Hope you’re not a light sleeper.” He tapped his broken nose. “Deviated septum. Possible sleep apnea. So much snoring.”

“Ugh.”

Two wins for the dwarf.

#dragon age #varric tethras #Cassandra Pentaghast #k writes trash

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