Unforgettable

Need to Know

"Something's bothering you, lover. I haven't had a decent quip out of you since I got here." Bianca rested her chin on his chest, looking up at him.

"It's nothing." Everything in Varric wanted to tell her—but he couldn't. How could he tell anyone, with the weight of everything that had happened resting squarely on his shoulders? He couldn't even blame Bartrand, not anymore, not after what had happened to that sick bastard.

"For someone who lives by lying, you're really bad at it." She walked her fingers up through his chest hair, a sensation Varric usually enjoyed. "Come on, out with it."

"Bianca." He caught her hand and moved it away from him.

"It's to do with your friend Hawke, isn't it?"

"No. Well, not really," he amended, since of course Hawke was bound up in it from first to last, through no fault of her own. But somehow she was the one who'd had to run, and there he was still cozily ensconced at the Hanged Man, like nothing had ever happened. Like an entire city hadn't burnt because one time he and his brother got greedy.

"Varric."

Bianca wouldn't rest until she had it out of him, he told himself, so he had no choice. Did he? And before he knew it, the whole story was spilling out—the red lyrium, the thaig, the idol, Bartrand's betrayal. Everything that had happened to him that he hadn't been able to write her about because it cut too close to the heart.

"Red lyrium?" she asked when he was done. She climbed off of him, kneeling on the bed next to him, oblivious to the fact that they were both still naked. "Was it stronger than the blue?"

"Stronger? It made people insane, didn't you hear me? I'd say it was stronger."

"Well, we've got to find out where it came from, whether there's more, don't we?"

"I ... suppose." In telling her, he had forgotten she was an inventor, with all the keen curiosity and need to know that came with the genius.

"Tell me where you found it. I'll go looking and see what I can find, and in the meantime I'll do some digging in the archives to see if anyone's ever mentioned the stuff before. I have a friend in the Shaperate, maybe she'll be willing to look, too."

"Bianca." It was a mild protest—it was already too late to stop her.

"Sh." She laid her fingers on his lips, her eyes dancing with the excitement of a new challenge. "No more talk. I have better things to do with you than talk."

He stayed late in the tavern, carousing with the Chargers. They were a cheerful bunch, and Varric needed some cheer in his life. There hadn't been nearly enough of it lately. He couldn't stop thinking about Sunshine, the sweet, pretty girl with the beautiful smile he had first met in Kirkwall—and the haggard, drawn Grey Warden they had all left behind in the Fade. Oh, by her own request; Varric believed that. It fit with the doom and gloom she had worn like a cloak while she was in Skyhold. But the truth was that he had gotten the Void out of there as fast as he could go, and he hadn't stayed to make sure anyone else was safe, and he hadn't ... Well, he'd been a coward, no two ways about it.

Eventually he decided that even the Chargers weren't boisterous enough to silence his thoughts, and he left them, still going. He wished Cabot luck throwing them out at closing time ... although the grumpy tavernkeeper seemed perfectly capable of ruining anyone's good time.

The main hall of the keep was silent, the candles in the sconces flickering. Varric briefly considered working on his next chapter, but he didn't have it in him tonight—Donnen Brennokovic had enough trouble without having Varric write him a soppy drunken scene in which he wallowed in his author's sorrows.