#she romanced merrill despite being p solidly red

[sulevinblade]

Hi there! May I request the prompt ❝ the last man standing gets final say on who is right or wrong. ❞ for Varevas? :)

THANK YOU! I’m sorry this took so, so… so long, but I hope you enjoy it! Varevas and an ensemble cast (Hawke, Solas, Dorian/light pavellan, Varric, Bull, Alistair), leading up to Adamant, ~1150 words, implied character death. For @dadrunkwriting!!

She’s not what he expected. Granted, he didn’t know much about her before this but he certainly didn’t anticipate that the famed Champion of Kirkwall would be a woman who barely cleared his shoulder but shook his hand with more force than Cullen. Her black hair hangs long and free about her like a cape and he can see in the way she moves and carries herself some genetic memory of the nobility her family once was, a history she never lived where she would’ve been the sort of woman to wear a cape.

She remains a wanted woman so he doesn’t get to spend a fraction of the time speaking with her that he’d like to at Skyhold, but every moment of downtime in the building of their forces for the assault on Adamant is spent reading through Varric’s record of their time together in Kirkwall. It makes his selection for his forward party at Adamant astonishingly simple, because he insists Hawke share their camp so he can pick her brain, learn all he can about her magic in the short time he has.

What he learns is that there’s a reason she’s the Champion of Kirkwall. Forces he can’t even see take him from his feet again and again, barely giving him time to get stable enough to cast a retaliation. When he finally calls an end to the spar, she’s there immediately, offering a hand to get him to his feet even as she smirks down at him. “I’m half afraid you’ll help me up just for the joy of sweeping me away again.”

“Not this time, Herald. I can only absorb so many wins in one day, my body’s not used to winning anymore. Try me after breakfast.”

They gather near the fire, or rather most of them do. Bull declares he wants nothing to do with four mages gathered for a chat this close to a fortress full of other mages summoning demons and Alistair is simply absent, but Varric joins them. He brings no paper or quill but Varevas still gets the impression their conversations in front of him are on record. 

He asks Matilde how she learned, where she draws from, how it all works, and Solas and Dorian are just as curious in their ways. She describes it for him: a centering of the mind, nothing as mystic as a vision but also not as external as elemental magic. It is, she says, a tribute to her sister, for whom magic was as natural as breathing. No need for lightning bolts or walls of flame or anything showy. It’s a simple matter of force and control; when you let out that much power, you have to be strong enough to balance against the recoil. Every action has its reaction, after all. 

Solas leans in, comments that while it might seem as though it’s all her mind, it’s actually her connection to the Fade that allows her to do this, but perhaps her methods might be applicable to the work Varevas is now doing to harness the energy of the rifts for his own use. It’s all a cycle that way, after all, but Matilde protests that it’s not and then she and Solas are on their feet, back to the same flattened area of sand Varevas had so recently gotten familiar with. At least Matilde has the decency to be honest in her motives. Solas claims it’s a scholarly exercise but Hawke shakes her head. “I’ve kind of been wanting an excuse to kick your ass, I just didn’t think I’d get one.”

He leans against Dorian’s knee as he watches them. Solas is terrifyingly fast and does manage to get the better of the Champion at points but despite this being her second round of sparring, Hawke is no slouch and more than once, Solas does end up flat on his back. It’s more raw magical combat than he’s even seen in his life; this simply wasn’t done in the clan, mages were too valuable to risk it, and despite his best attempts he remains unwelcome among the recruited mages in their work. Varevas has never been in the desert before, never sat in the sand by a fire with the hand of the man he loved on his shoulder, never seen magic like Matilde’s before, but this moment feels more like home than any part of Skyhold ever has. 

Hawke and Solas only stop when they hear hoofbeats. Alistair, back from wherever he’d gone, informing them their little light show could be seen from a distance and unless they wanted company, it’s best they call it a night. Solas stalks to his tent silently but Matilde winks at him as she crosses the circle of the firelight. “Feels good to be the last man standing twice in one night, and I’m not even a man.” 

In their tent later, he wonders aloud to Dorian if he thinks Hawke might join the Inquisition when all this is done. Dorian chuckles and wonders back if he ought to be jealous. “Not hardly, I greatly prefer the way you put me on my back, but you might be wise to be a little more scared.” He never thought of himself as a part of anything with his magic–if anything, it was isolating–but tonight was a little taste of what the Inquisition could really be, what a world where mages weren’t limited in number or liberty could look like at it’s best.

And then, well. At least one part of that future shows that she has other ideas. He can see her, smirking in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes, but she’s on the far side of a wave of force that’s taken both him and Alistair from their feet. It’s her specialty, after all, but this one is fired with intent. It was clear both the Warden and the Champion intended to offer to make this sacrifice, but with one spell the decision is no longer there for Varevas to make. He probably should’ve seen it coming, taken the hushed conversations between her and Varric more seriously, but it didn’t really matter now. He flew out of the rift, skidding to a stop and lifting his arm to close it without even standing back up. 

He can’t even raise his head when Varric comes to him to ask after Hawke. He can’t look his friend in the face and let him see how he’s failed. She did like to be the last man standing, but nobody can stay standing forever. Some force in the universe demands balance, and when Varevas finally stands again, he does it knowing that it’s only because somewhere else, she’s falling. Every action has its reaction, she’d said. She may have decided it was right, but here on the other side, he’s not sure whether he agrees.

#veridium-bye #dadwc #dwc #i know it didn't have to include a hawke #but i have a lot of feels about things like varevas and a community of mages #and i have a mage hawke #i just don't really talk about her #she romanced merrill despite being p solidly red #i wanted her to romance fenris but no #ANYWAY #my metaphors got all wild in this but i hope you like it!!!!! #my writing #varevas lavellan #matilde hawke #deep focus playlist comes through again