#varrook

[brightaxe]

anyway, i'm completely normal about them.

[brightaxe]

So, Suri — excuse me, Lady Rainier — it looks like I've got a new dwarven rogue in my life. (Maker, how many of us are there? Someone should run a census.) Don't worry, though. She's less of a little sister, more of a... something else. I won't put a name on it yet. Kehda deserves a sure thing, and I don't know if that's what I'm capable of giving someone yet. Anyway, things are just about as insane in the North as you'd expect and just as normal as Dorian would claim, so you get how bad it is. And yes, this is me trying to distract you from what I've written in my own damn letter. The written word doesn't work that way. Idiot.

— From an unsent letter addressed to the Inquisitor, found among Varric Tethras's belongings in 9:52 Dragon. The last word is underlined three times and splattered with ink from a broken quill tip.

[brightaxe]

whatever it takes. 🖤

[brightaxe]

PROMPT : Lowtown. DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD ERA. Words: 1037. Characters: Kehda Mercar & Varric Tethras. Warning for Varric-related Veilguard spoilers.

There were plenty of places to get a drink in Minrathous that Kehda Mercar couldn’t have been paid to walk into. The weight of the coin purse didn’t matter a whit. It could’ve been enough to arm the Tevene fleet with flaming fucking trebuchets, and she would do nothing more than laugh and give her head a determined shake before walking quickly in the opposite direction. 

If the taverns and bars in Ferelden and the Free Marches were bad, wine sinks in Minrathous were diabolical. Sure, you could get your life’s savings pilfered while ordering a drink in Val Royeaux, but it was unlikely that you could ever get drunk enough to be sold into blood slavery anywhere south of Perivantium.

“Blood slavery, huh?”

Varric kicked his good leg out, pointing his foot downward to give his calf a decent enough stretch. “I’d say, ‘That would never happen in Kirkwall,’ but I’m pretty sure I knew a guy once.”

That sounded like him. I knew a guy, he said. I knew a place, he said. I knew a hero, he said.

READ THE REST ON AO3.

[brightaxe]

PROMPT : The Inquisition. DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD ERA. Words: 1008. Characters: Kehda Mercar x Varric Tethras.

For all of his talk about Hawke, Varric never spoke much about the Inquisitor.

Kehda thought that this might be because he harbored some sort of romantic feelings towards her. 

Not that that was always the assumption she made in regards to him and those he kept close to his chest. It took mere moments for her to decide that his relationship with Hawke was purely platonic. He spoke of him freely and often, and he always hoped that the Champion of Kirkwall was far away from the next world-ending threat, canoodling with his pirate rather than stuck in the action.

He spoke of Suri Cadash in passing, but moved on after straying for only a single, fond moment over the subject. No matter how important it might have been to know more about the Inquisitor and her relationship with Solas, they had managed to pry very little about her out of Varric’s mouth. Which was strange for him. 

Kehda was tired of not knowing.

So, perched on the edge of the couch he’d chosen as his roost, she put her own anxieties and her dread aside and asked him, her fretting hands buried into the voluminous folds of her dress.

“Since you don’t talk about things you really care about,” Kehda began.

READ THE REST ON AO3.