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Cassandra flings herself in the behemoth's path, her shield connecting with Varric's shoulder. He hits the dirt with a shout, which mingles in the air with Cassandra's cry of pain.
The sound freezes Varric's heart.
Her sword shears the behemoth's head off. It stumbles drunkenly, takes a wavering step, and collapses at Cassandra's feet. She looks over at him, Varric swears. Even though Richard's calling her name, even though her blood's pattering into the dirt. Cassandra looks at him and smiles before crumpling to the ground.
It is the single most terrible moment in Varric's life.
He can't move, can barely breathe. He half expects her to sit up and grimace at the blood and dirt caked on her armour.
She doesn't.
Cassandra lies still and pale amidst the gore and stirred up earth.
"Andraste."
Varric scrambles to his feet, throws himself towards her, fingers already fumbling for a potion. Cassandra's face is white, slack.
Someone's praying.
Varric yanks the cork out from the little vial.
Realizes it's his voice, his lips shaping prayers he hasn't spoken aloud in years.
Varric slips the bottle between Cassandra's lips and pours. Some of it slips down the side of her mouth. He wipes it away with his thumb. Lets his hand cradle her jaw.
The bottle's empty. There's nothing but quiet in the glade, and the stench of blood.
Varric waits. Doesn't dare breathe or blink or look away from her face. Time stretches out between the rise and fall of Cassandra’s chest. Her eyelids flicker, and he hardly dares hope.
Richard looms over his shoulder. Varric can hear the low murmur of his voice, doesn’t care what the Inquisitor has to say. The only important thing is the Seeker, and whether she’ll take that next breath.
Cassandra coughs, wet and rough.
She blinks up at him with heavy-lidded eyes.
"Varric?"
His name on her tongue is a gasp, and mostly consonants.
It's beautiful and Varric is furious.
"Don't you ever do that again!" he barks.
Cassandra frowns at him. There's a horrible prickling heat pressing behind Varric's eyes.
"Never. Don't you ever-" he says. Stops before the tremble in his voice worsens.
Richard crouches down, and Varric stands. Cassandra’s glassy gaze follows him up. Her mouth opens, and Varric’s sure she’s about to speak, to tell him something ridiculously self sacrificing. But he can’t bear to hear it right now. If she says anything at all, if the next words out of her mouth are “You are alright”, he will actually scream.
She says nothing, coughs instead.
Bull wraps his arms around Richard and Varric has time to think “Oh.”
Varric passes Cassandra a canteen, watches carefully as she sips from it.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he chokes out, past the rage, past the fear that she might die one day from throwing herself between him and death.
The look he gets in return is distinctly unimpressed. Cassandra has a lot of fucking gall for a woman who nearly died saving his worthless ass.
“It isn’t!”
Varric realizes with a start that he’s shouting, that he said that out loud, and Cassandra is shouting back. Her eyes blaze.
“You are not worthless,” Cassandra spits out.
Richard makes a noise, probably intending to do something foolish like make them get along. Bull holds him back, rests his chin on Richard’s head and just watches. They’re sitting cross legged at the Seeker’s side like this is some goddamn traveling player’s show.
“I’m not worth your life, Seeker!” Varric glares.
“It is my life and I will spend it however I want! And if the Maker wills I die saving you then it is-” Cassandra’s voice cracks.
She’s hurt. She’s still hurting and he’s arguing with her. Shouting like a damn fishwife. Varric’s throat burns. He can’t let this be what happens to them.
“You’re too much of a hero for your own good,” he says tiredly. “Or anyone else’s.”
Cassandra pulls herself upright, uses Bull’s massive arm to hold herself steady. She’s grey beneath the blood and the dirt. She could have died. Could have left him behind.
“I am not a danger to others, Varric!”
“You are! That’s the problem with heroes. They don’t think about what comes afterwards. About the people that they-”
Cassandra stills. Goes paler beneath the grime coating her. For a moment that drags itself out far too long, she sways. Her eyes lose focus. Varric’s heart stops cold and dead in his chest.
She exhales and the world fades back in.
“You are so angry,” she mumbles.
Varric’s surprised to hear the note of shock in her voice. As though she hadn’t expected him to be livid.
“I am furious,” he admits. “You could have died and it doesn’t mean anything to you! You don’t even understand why I might be pissed off! You almost-”
Left me.
His heart aches. A world without the Seeker in it would lose something vital, something necessary.
“Varric-” Cassandra rasps.
She stops to hack and wheeze, until Bull holds the canteen to her lips.
“I love you,” Varric says simply.
Three pairs of eyes lock onto his face, and he wants to throw up.
“You don’t,” Cassandra says firmly. Her hand cuts through the air. “You don’t.”
“I do.”
“Oh.”
Cassandra looks the way he feels, Varric thinks. Like the ground just fell out from beneath her.
He expects her to say something placating, or at worst laugh.
Her lips quiver. Shocked, embarrassed eyes peer up at him over the hand she clasps over her mouth.
The Seeker is crying.
Quietly, Bull untangles his arm from Cassandra’s grip, and herds Richard away with the other.
Cassandra’s shoulders quake and he can hear her gasping breaths.
“Cassandra-” Varric raises a hand, drops it. Stares.
She’s crying because he loves her, and that breaks the last bit of control Varric could claim to have. He loves her, and she’s crying and she almost died and left him behind with the words he hadn’t spoken.
Varric’s sure he hasn’t cried in earnest since he was a kid, and this is not the time to start making up for that. Hot tears roll down his face anyways.
“Varric.”
Cassandra’s eyes meet his.
“I love you.”
Varric blinks. Smears his palms against his eyes.
“Come again, Seeker?”
“I love you.”
Varric’s feet carry him forward with no input from his brain.
“Cassandra.”
Her hands clutch at him, press him uncomfortably against her armour. Varric couldn’t give less of a shit. He can’t speak, can’t impress her with any romantic words. Her hair is sticky with blood, as is her face. Varric kisses both, uncaring of the mess. The kiss he brushes against her forehead elicits a soft sigh.
“Never again, please. Promise me,” he says roughly.
Cassandra looks at him, and her mouth twists into a wry line.
“I can’t,” she says.
Her arms tighten around his waist.
“You would do the same,” she murmurs. “If it was my life.”
“In a heartbeat,” Varric agrees.
Cassandra chuckles. She leans forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder. Varric can feel the warmth of her breath against his throat, the rise and fall of her breathing beneath his hands.
“My love.”
She sighs the words out, quiet like he wasn’t meant to hear them.
“You can’t sleep here, Seeker,” Varric says, jostling her a bit. “Come on, back to camp.”
Cassandra staggers upright, mostly under her own power. Varric keeps a hand on her at all times, two when he can manage, until she can stand without him worrying. Even then, he can’t help but touch her, to keep her close. She looks down at him with eyes that are deeply shadowed with exhaustion. Tear tracks slice down her dirty face. She’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.
Cassandra smiles like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.
Varric yawns, his jaw cracking.
“When we return to camp,” Cassandra starts. Looks at their intertwined fingers. “Stay with me.”
“We were already sharing a tent,” Varric points out.
Cassandra sighs. Not without fondness, Varric can tell. There’s a quirk to the corners of her mouth that speak of a smile suppressed.
“With me,” she says again, stressing both words. “I don’t think-”
Her lips press together into a tight line.
“Seeker are you propositioning me?” Varric says, mostly to get a rise out of her, to see that grin again.
“Fool dwarf,” she says.
Varric is rewarded by her smile.
“I’ll stay,” he promises.
Cassandra looks at him with such warmth that Varric feels it in his bones.
It’s on the tip of his tongue to promise, to swear he’ll stay always. But he knows better. The world is hard on heroes and lovers.
“Someone has to give you a sponge bath, after all,” Varric says.
Cassandra snorts, and swats his shoulder.
“Are you sure you’ll be able to reach?” she asks.
Varric grins up at her. The blush that stains her face (beneath the blood and the dirt, and it might only be his imagination) is perfect.
Their fingers tangle together, skin hidden by layers of leather and steel.