Archive of Our Own ^beta

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IN SEARCH OF A WAYWARD BRONTO
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“So, Cupcake. What’s it like abdicating royal responsibility? I have an idea for a new adventure serial.”

Alistair scowls at Varric as forcefully as he can, which is about as fearsome as an irate Brecilian Retriever. He flicks his head toward Garrett. “Is he really going to call me that?”

“Afraid so,” grins Garrett. “Nobody escapes it.”

The five of them are halfway across Orlais already, Garrett, Varric and Alistair and their two scouts, Feyrith and Liska, en route to the Western Approach to rescue Carver from some kind of Warden falderal. Past Lake Celestine now, the verdant, lofty forests of the Heartlands dwindle away into scrubby, sad woodlands as they near the blight-ruined lands of the Approach. They’ve slogged through and dodged all manner of horrors that they note in journals for the Inquisition: bandits and Fade rifts and army deserters, abandoned villages streaked in blood, remnants of red lyrium. They slip into dark discussions about all the ways the world is falling apart before buoying their limp spirits trading tasteless stories and roasting each other. It’s an old habit between Garrett and Varric and Alistair slides right in like he’d been there all those years, too.

Alistair shoots them a feeble, sulky look. “But why Cupcake?”

Varric shrugs in his coat. “It’s just a vibe.”

“Baked goods though?” Alistair presses. “Really?”

“Adorable baked goods in pretty colors,” Garrett says encouragingly. “With sprinkles.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Well, I don’t see it,” argues Alistair.

Varric turns to him with a wicked grin. “Would you prefer Prince Charming? Dreamboat? Bright Eyes?”

Alistair’s torment is delightfully manufactured; he knows he’s been adopted at last. “Maker, you’ve been stockpiling them? I’ll take bloody Cupcake, thanks.”

“I’m a fan of Dreamboat, personally,” notes Garrett.

“Well I suppose I can’t blame either of you for developing a crush. I am the best looking one of the bunch. And the most charming. And the best smelling.” Alistair draws up short staring at a thicket at the edge of the road up ahead, where a black mass flutters on the persistent breeze. “What do you make of that?”

“A garden-variety bad omen?” suggests Garrett, never one to waste an opportunity for foolishness. 

“Probably just a lost cloak,” suggests Varric, riding alongside him atop his donkey. “Maybe it blew off a corpse. Damn near enough of them around here.”

“I know, I know. It’s a Hanged Man. Somebody knew we were coming,” says Garrett. 

“Maker, Hawke,” says Varric. Well. Not every joke can be a winner.

As Alistair advances toward it, his horse protests, jerking to the left and stuttering its steps while she snorts and squeals. “Come off it, Winnie,” he scolds her. He fights a moment longer then circles back and dismounts, handing the reins off to Garrett.

With crossed arms, Garrett watches in some amusement as Alistair approaches the flotsam with a stick and a drawn longsword in each hand.

Carver is gone. Just like Mum.

The notion creeps in slowly, like the bleed of cream into tea, an overwhelming feeling that they should turn back to Skyhold.

“Now I know the Hanged Man thing was a joke , but— there are… feet.”

“Shit,” hisses Varric, jumping off Fluffy to investigate. “Yeah, those are feet.”

“Surprised Liska and Feyrith didn’t ride back to warn us.”

“They probably didn’t look that hard.”

Perched on Rosco, Garrett is placid as his mind wanders to a familiar place, a basin of hopelessness as vast as the Waking Sea. It almost feels like going home, the home that can’t be replaced— his mum’s kitchen— now only a hollow grasping spot inside him. 

You can’t fix anything. 

Old empty thoughts flock about him like gulls, chattering and clawing at him, edging him toward some precipice.

He falls. Flemeth once spoke of watching for an abyss and he used to joke that he’d found it, hiding in the Vimmark foothills in that little cabin with Beth. 

That’s where you belong. Where you can’t make another blazing mess.

But he’s distracted by a spark, not a real one, but a wisp of feeling that flits across the void. He captures it. Laughter first. Then cheeky looks and traded sketches.  Fingers laced and noses squashed. Light feet skimming the floor to an allemande.

He snaps to awareness, perfectly acquainted with the mess in the thicket.

“Hold on that’s a—” A splitting, dissonant shriek startles both of his companions straight onto their arses. “—despair demon.”

Muscling out the intrusion, his head smarts and a warm trickle falls from his nose. The creature thrashes and screams and prods around in Garrett’s head some more, scratching around for purchase, but he holds fast to that spark. 

“Try again, you walnut,” he laughs, suddenly aware of the demon’s predicament.

“It’s stuck in a bush,” says Alistair. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“This shit just writes itself,” snorts Varric. “What's going on with your face?”

He catches the blood against the side of his pointer finger to assess the flow. “Bastard started mucking about in my head. Did it get either of you?”

“Dwarves are pretty resistant to that sort of thing.”

Alistair winces when the creature’s face-sized mouth begins snapping at him between saplings. “No— I, think it must have gone straight for you.”

Clutching a handkerchief over his nose, Garrett snorts to himself. There’s plenty to latch onto, but it didn’t know about Rose. Hard to free fall into the depths of darkness when he’s got his own blazing goddess of the sun.

“How’d it get there? You think there’s a rift nearby?” asks Varric.

“You want to go poking around for one?” asks Alistair. “Just put it out of its misery with a couple bolts.” Alistair chucks a pebble at it unwittingly, like it can't freeze your heart solid with a precision strike. Garrett stops breathing, unable to do anything but sputter about 'Bianca'. But Varric isn’t faster than the demon who sends a shard of frost magic hurtling toward Alistair. A couple quick bolts follow, sending the creature back to the Fade with a splatter of ichor and a puff of ash, but the damage has been done.

“Fuck,” says Alistair, rolling around, clutching his waist beneath the edge of his cuirass. “For having a mouth full of goofy rat teeth, those fuckers hurt.”

“Let’s not throw rocks at demons, smart guy,” says Varric, crouching to look at where it hit Alistair. “We’ve got— what— ten of those rashvine potions and no medic.”

They get Alistair sorted, stripping away his mail and gambeson and shirt until they can see the extent of the blistered, frostbitten skin, a waxy, white swath that stretches from his ribs to his hipbone. A wound like that would turn necrotic within hours.

“How deep?” asks Garrett.

Alistair answers through clenched teeth as his belly jerks and trembles against the wound. “Deep, I think.”

“Hit him with the good stuff,” says Varric. Garrett fishes in his pack for a brownish draught, one of Ellendra’s highly potent healing concoctions that Rose insisted upon, and hands it to Alistair who sucks it dry and licks what he can out of the vial. He pants and fidgets as he waits for it to work, wondering if one is enough or whether they’ll need to search out a healer. 

“If I don’t make it, could you make up a better story for Mina? Please?” he begs, sweat gathering along his hairline. Garrett huffs a laugh and assents.

But within a quarter of an hour he’s up and about and bitching about demon tactics in general and in his relief, Garrett is left to think of the places the demon had nudged him to, and how he’d climbed out of that void with memories of Rose.

“Let’s not do that again,” says Varric once more. “If you’re going to make a habit of provoking—”

“I promise. I swear,” Alistair assures him.

oOo

“The knots should lie to one side,” insists Alistair, straining his neck to watch Garrett stitch up a laceration that stripes the back of his arm. The warden’s hair lights up like spun gold as the first threat of the sun spills over the upland ridges that lord over the flats and the Abyssal Reach.

“It doesn’t matter,” insists Garrett.

“Listen, I learned to darn socks and stitch wounds from a pushy senior enchanter. It does. And you’re puckering it.”

“Look you’ve got me or you’ve got ol’ Stubby Fingers over there,” says Garrett, pulling a bight of thread through.

Varric looks up from oiling Bianca and wipes his hands. “I don’t do sutures. You can leave the shape of my fingers out of it.”

“What about Liska?” Alistair turns to the dwarf who’s busy setting up a tent with Feyrith. “You probably know your way around a needle, right?”

“Why, because I’m a woman?” she calls back, eyebrow raised. “I’m happy to let the rest of you work it out.”

Garrett shakes his head with a laugh. “You walked right into that one.”

“The spacing is all over the place,” gripes Alistair.

“I really don’t need critiques from the man who was attempting to mimic the cries of an alpha quillback for his own amusement,” says Garrett, scrunching his brow at the wound in concentration.

“I just wanted to see if I could do it,” says Alistair.

“And now you know,” says Varric. “Uncanny really.”

Silence swallows them up again. Their scouts have mostly dodged their banter out of mix of politeness and deference— or at the very least an unwillingness to be teased into oblivion. Two days deep in the desert and they’re already letting the place chip away at their better judgment. There’s no relief from their rising anxiety, only distractions. Increasingly stupid jokes. Petty arguments. Picking impulsive fights with the wildlife.

“My shoulder hurts,” moans Alistair, rolling it slightly while Garrett tugs another stitch closed.

“I sincerely hope you don’t whine like this for Mina,” says Garrett, brow lifted. “So far you’re the only one who’s managed to get injured.”

Their silences always buzz with the energy of their incipient quips and theories and this one is no exception. Garrett makes a game of tracking who breaks the quiet most often.

“So if the red templars are Corypheus’ souped up army, then he wants the Wardens to be— what? More army?” asks Varric. It’s usually Varric.

“Is there an upper limit to the amount of army an ancient magister with aspirations to godhood should have?” answers Garrett. 

“I just don’t see how he gets their buy in. Most Wardens are Andrastian. Why would they align themselves with a guy who wants the Maker’s throne?”

“You remember how Corypheus messed with the Wardens’ heads inside that bloody fun house of a prison,” says Garrett, tying the last stitch. “They probably have no idea it’s him. Just swallowing whatever hokum he feeds them.”

Alistair runs his fingers over his sutured injury and wobbles his head in mixed approval before Garrett starts wrapping it. He sighs. 

“For those that never lived through a proper Blight as a Warden, the Calling is terrifying. And if all the younger wardens are experiencing it? Well, surely there must be something cataclysmic coming. The Breach was just the beginning. And Wardens will do anything to stop that, whatever it is. To some of them, blood magic is a small price to pay to save the world.”

“I’d like to believe that Carver would have your good sense,” Garrett says. “But I haven’t seen him more than a handful of times since he joined.”

“Carver’s smart. But I’ve never met a more dedicated Warden. He needs to belong. I wish I could set your mind at ease,” says Alistair. “But my gut is telling me we’re not going to like what we find at the tower.”

“Fuck.” Alistair’s right. Carver was always bothered by all the ways Garrett went against the grain and drew attention to himself. And now he’s found a place to make a name for himself. He won’t give it up easily.

“We’ll find him,” promises Varric. “And drag him out of there if we have to.”

Varric’s been ministering to him since he first came to Skyhold, a little like his mum used to be honest; delighted he’s back but wary of another tumble into the dark. And Garrett has been doing well. But this business with Carver threatens to unravel him once more and Maker, he’d really rather it didn’t. Still seared into his memory the horror of watching the blight make an easy meal of someone who could swing a hammer clean through a pair of hurlocks on any given day. His ashen face. The blackening of his veins. And then the stricken, wild-eyed looks of his mum and sister, as this ragged, half-starved stranger told him that Carver wasn’t coming home after all. There’s no room to mess this up.

Garrett spends his rest hours scratching whatever details he can into his journal. He catalogs and maps evidence of the Wardens and the Red Templars. He writes an update in careful, tiny script to send back to Cullen by one of Feyrith’s ravens. And when all of that fails to manage his worry, he writes to Rose. He rambles about how much he needs to get this right and how he wonders if they’ll be too sweaty and malodorous for a proper snuggle and how the stars out here in the Approach remind him of the nights they’d shared in Crestwood. He contemplates adding some details about all the ways he’d like to make her sing with his hands and his mouth and his— but he doesn’t figure it complements that last bit. And then Garrett folds it up and tucks it in his journal and debates giving it to her, but at least his stomach isn’t hurting any longer.

oOo

“I think there’s sand under my eyelids,” complains Varric. “Sand in my shoes. Sand in my hair. Sand in creases I didn’t know I had. And now my Maker-damned eyelids.”

“Hawke, where’s your spyglass?” asks Alistair.

“Check the outside pocket,” says Garrett, taking a swig from his water skin and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He squints through the darkness, scanning for the ritual tower that’s supposed to be right bloody here. They’d sent Liska and Feyrith on to the Inquisition camp ahead of them to reduce their party size on these vast stretches of sand and salt.

Instead, Alistair pulls out that well-worn copy of The Fires of Satinalia Garrett kept, his eyebrow arched high, wrestling with a tenacious grin and losing.

“The Fires of Satinalia?” chuckles Alistair. Garrett plucks it from him and thumbs randomly through the pages, laughing in preparation for the roasting. Alistair snatches it back, dancing out of reach. “Hey Varric— look what Hawke’s had all this time. Contraband.”

Varric saunters over, catching the book Alistair tosses. “Maker, Hawke, really? I thought you were a few pegs above the target audience for this shit.”

“You seem more like a Lurid Lust Charade man, to be honest,” says Alistair. “Or maybe The Pleasure Château.”

“Bit quick on the draw with those titles, aren’t you?” asks Garrett, flashing a grin. He leans into it, desperate for something to lighten his mood. “If you must know. It’s sentimental.” He braces for another savage tide of comments.

“Sentimental? Of velvety candlelit nights with your hand in your drawers?”

“How scurrilous of you, my sweet prince,” rejoins Garrett. “Try ‘velvety candlelit nights making my lover snort brandy through her nose’.”

“Really didn’t need to know that,” says Varric. 

“Pish posh. You’re just envious of my good fortune! How long’s it been for you? Four years? Five?” Varric waves him off.

“Keep your sodding smut,” says Alistair, chucking the book at Garrett’s chest. “Just hang a sock on the tent before you cozy up with it.”

“Spoken like a true connoisseur.”

Alistair huffs an indignant laugh and taps his temple. “I certainly have no need of such things.”

“You never had a stack of poorly drawn tits hidden under your mattress? I find that highly doubtful,” says Garrett.

“The way the sisters would scour the dormitory?” he chuckles. “No.”

“Probably behind a loose brick in the base of a statue of Andraste that they’d all know about,” theorizes Varric.

“Well— it was Hessarian,” admits Alistair, finally fishing out the spyglass. “Impressive guess though.”

Varric smirks. “Adolescents are nothing if not predictable.”

“The prevailing rationale was that Andraste’s holy bosoms would draw suspicion,” says Alistair. “They were— remarkably shapely.”

“And anyway. We need to fix you up, Varric. Maybe the Seeker will take pity on you,” says Garrett, as Alistair scans the brightening horizon with the glass. Varric’s look could scorch him to ashes. “Or what about that Carta bitty you had a thing with? She must still be running around Kirkwall. Jumping roof to roof. Stabbing people.”

“Carta bitty?”

“Yeah, the one with the extra dwarfy name. Shale-ga?”

“You mean… Shae? The one with a normal-ass name?”

“Shae…” Her name slides out over a few seconds as he remembers. “Yes. Her. What about her?”

“It’s— complicated.”

“I saw the way you looked at each other,” says Garrett. “It was like this.” He musters an exaggerated smolder. Varric’s eyes nearly do a cartwheel.

“You really want to know?” 

“Of course I do. Your happiness is right up there with my own.”

“She’s been our Carta contact for lyrium shipments for the last eight months. Saw her six weeks ago.”

“You saw her. Well. I hope you made an impression on her. With deft strokes of your quill.”

“You son of a bitch. I can’t even get pissy at you about that one.”

Alistair reaches out blindly for Garrett’s shoulder, prodding and tapping at it as he fixates on one spot on the horizon. The three trade the glass back and forth, the sharp makings of a Tevinter structure on the horizon, torches like tiny orange embers against the darkest part of the pre-dawn sky.

“There you are, brother,” murmurs Garrett. His gut twists as fear needles him. His pulse quickens and slows again and again and he swallows back the crawl of nausea. 

“We’ll take a closer look tonight,” says Varric, nudging him with a reassuring elbow. “We’re going to find him.”

oOo

They set camp on the north side of an outcropping fringed with scraggly brush and try to rest before the heat makes it impossible to sleep. Alistair volunteers to take first watch and while Varric passes right out on the compacted earth, Garrett can’t settle himself. Each blazing pebble digging into his back reminds him to worry his mind raw about his little brother. Would he really follow bad orders? Would he sacrifice himself? And if he finds him, would he be relieved to see his big brother?

Alistair catches Hawke peeling all the bark off a twig when the sun is high and their shade dwindles to a scant stripe along the rocks. Varric’s sleeping feet poke into the sun. Garrett mops sweat from his forehead and neck and rakes it back into his hair, cursing it.

“You all right, Hawke?” asks Alistair.

Garrett nods. “Should’ve cut this bloody mop is all.”

Alistair’s brow furrows and he presses. “Ah yes, the deep brooding of a man in need of a hair cut.”

Garrett chucks the naked twig at Alistair with a huffed laugh and then pulls his mum’s scarf over his face in search of darkness.

“So it’s getting serious with Rose then?” asks Alistair, attempting a distraction. “Official.”

Garrett peeks an eye at him from under the scarf and he can’t stop the turn of one corner of his lips. He waffles his head around like there’s some truth to it. 

“I called it,” says Alistair, smiling triumphantly. “You should have seen that woman bite her nails over you during that dragon fight. All the irrational huffing you’d expect of someone in love.” Garrett remembers. She could have summoned a fireball with that scowl of hers as he made light of the whole ordeal. He’d never been happier to be excoriated so. And then they made love in a dewy, starlit meadow, all while telling themselves it would be the last time. It wasn’t the last time.

“It had only been days at that point.”

“Sometimes you just know. On some level anyway,” says Alistair. “Right from the start.”

Garrett snuffs softly. He’d known. Or hoped furiously, anyway. But if Rose knew it merely tickled at the back of her mind. Alistair doesn’t know about Cullen or how Rose had stumbled into his arms on the heels of that catastrophe or the weeks Garrett had spent swallowing back his feelings while she hoped to patch up the mess back at Skyhold. Somehow it seems to have worked out, but Garrett often wonders how things might have transpired had she never been involved with another. 

“I haven’t seen you together much since then, but in Crestwood? I would have bet a clean hundred on it,” Alistair says, stretching. “I’m happy for you. I know you chew yourself up over your part in things, but the way I see it, you were always doing your best to be a good man. And a good man deserves a good woman.”

Garrett’s been avoiding thinking about whether or not he deserves her. It’s too fragile a supposition. He’d been untethered from the world when he first heard of her and then the promise she held reeled him in and wove him right back into it. He’s been happy since he first arrived at Skyhold. Consistently so. Who knew joy could be so fiercely tenacious?

But here in the Approach where the desert sun conspires to broil away his sanity, their relationship feels uncanny and ephemeral, like his own story being read back to him. He fancies his love for her could start riots or tame dragons or other equally ridiculous things. Each day he washes away the miseries of the road with soft remembrances of her. The question of worthiness now haunts him like a bloody mosquito. Does he really have her at all?

Alistair throws a twig back at Garrett. “Hey. You want me to cut your hair?”

oOo

The camp at Lost Spring Canyon appears like a blessing, a shadowy cluster of tents along a sliver of sand contained between high sandstone bluffs, a few small torches lighting the way. Garrett pulls up Rosco to drink from one of the pools that gathers beneath an outcropping. The deathroot shrubs here are perkier than their miserable cousins trying to make a go of it on the flats. Maybe they’ll be a perkier crew, too.

The desert still cooks well after the sun goes down, the rocks and sand clinging stubbornly to the baked in heat. It makes a cranky trio of the three normally affable men, leaving them bitching about their saddle sores and chafing bits. They argue about the close shave they had with a Venatori spellbinder and his minions who seemed to be investigating a crumbling Tevinter ruin. For the most part, this wasteland has been sensibly devoid of people, so suddenly stumbling upon errant pockets of Tevinters makes it feel downright crowded.

At the very least the bastards don’t seem to be expecting company. Without their own mage in their midst, they had to satisfy themselves with dispatching of the spellbinder instead of questioning him. Varric had put a triplet of bolts in his neck from a hundred yards and then the chest of their lone archer whose arrows flew laughably wide. That’s why you get a scope, sweetheart, he’d said. By the time Garrett and Alistair had closed in on the rest of the sorry sods and knocked them on their arses, there was no one left with any useful knowledge. The rest of them couldn’t have told the difference between a fart and a mind blast if their lives depended upon it.

But they scavenged the campsite for journals and letters and artifacts, took their weapons and the rest of of their provisions and left the bodies to the appetites of the quillbacks before pressing on to Rose’s camp. There’s a passphrase that Inquisition scouts have been using in the Approach to announce friendly. Cullen had given it to Garrett the day before he departed. As passphrases and responses go, it’s ordinary enough to not rouse suspicion and easy enough to bury in conversation. They stop fifty yards shy of the camp.

“I’m looking for a wayward bronto!” calls Varric. “Anyone seen one around here?”

“Wayward? Bloody bronto took my lunch pail,” snickers Alistair as they wait for an answer.

“Not since last week.” The prescribed response.

“Bronto made a joke about my mum,” grins Garrett, nudging his horse forward.

Alistair shakes his head and clucks his tongue. “Bronto’s been skipping chant again.”

“Bronto got into old Higginbottom’s boot screech stash,” says Garrett. “Staggered all around town before winding up in a bush.”

“Andraste’s ass,” moans Varric, properly worn out by them at this point. “What are you twelve ?”

“Closer to thirteen,” says Garrett, still laughing as they ride into their first hint of civilization in a week.

The camp is just settling down for the day shift as they tie off their horses and unload their saddle bags. There’s a waiting tent for the three of them, canvas rolled and tied to let the last of the cool night air wash through it. One of the Inquisition’s mage scouts deactivates the saucer sized rune that’s been heating the pot of stew. Stew. Thank the Maker.

“Dispatch for you, Champion,” says an Inquisition officer, snapping to attention three feet away and holding out a cylinder.

“It’s Hawke,” he says gently, taking the cylinder. “Sick of the title, really.” The officer flushes and nods and then retreats to another task. 

Garrett opens the sealed cylinder and slides out the vellum. It’s Rose’s hand. His guts misbehave like he might as well be thirteen.

Garrett,

I haven’t felt this happy in ages.

I think it might be you.

Yours,

Lady Violet

All his anxiety over their still-fruitless search settles beneath the outrageous glow of his heart. He sinks absently down to half-sit on the table behind him to read it and reread it but the planks catapult up under his weight, sending materials scattering to the Void.

He curses sharply and then staggers around gathering everything up as his heart does its own staggering. Yours, she wrote. 

Alistair wanders over, arms crossed expectantly. “What’s got you all a flutter over here?” he asks. “Yes, I’m being nosy.”

“Just— a raven from her,” says Garrett. He hands it to him to read before he can think the better of it. Alistair holds the curling paper open between two fingers, glancing from the note to Garrett over and over with an impish grin.

Alistair hands it back to him. “I believe she’s in love.”

“Maybe a little,” admits Garrett.

“Well, you don’t send a note like that if you’re on the fence,” he says. “I’d give anything for such a romantic note right about now.”

“Tell you what, you mend the broken links in my hauberk and I’ll write you a memorable one,” Garrett says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Mina will be back before you know it.”

oOo

They surveille the ritual tower for hours, trading the spyglass back and forth as dawn breaks, its searing gaze spilling over the sandstone masonry of the Tevinter structure. The thick cluster of deathroot they’ve been relegated to for cover does nothing to shield them from the sun.

They’ve seen Venatori. And then they see Wardens. And then they see Wardens cutting the throats of other Wardens and demons springing from the ground.

And then he sees Carver. His jet hair gives him away even at this distance though it’s all grown out to his shoulders. Garrett almost chuckles to himself that the poor sod has a doozy of a sunburn before terror prods him into something rash. He drops the glass and tears across the barren flats toward the tower in furious strides.

“Hawke, wait!” says Varric, stumbling along somewhere behind him. “ Hawke. ”

“He’s in that tower,” shouts Garrett, knowing Varric could never catch him. He’s got to get him— shake some sense into him.

Alistair’s footsteps close in a clanking, chinking sprint and suddenly Garrett is grappled by both arms and laid down onto the compacted earth in the scorching heat of the day. “Andraste’s— use your bloody brain.” Alistair paces a loop around Garrett and when he doesn’t rise, and then picks up the spyglass again.

Varric catches up to him, choking out curses through scraggly, racing breaths. 

Garrett talks to a wisp of cloud high above. “What do you want me to do? Abandon him?”

Bracing himself on his knees, Varric shakes his head. “We’ve counted at least thirty people in that tower. We aren’t rescuing shit right now,” argues Varric. “We’ll have to wait for Rose and the rest. If we want to survive it.”

“They were cutting their throats. To summon demons,” chokes Garrett. “How long do you think Carver has, hm? He’s not a mage. He’s a useless fucking warrior.”

“Ok, hero. You’re going to run up there and then what? Throw rocks until Carver notices you? And then he runs conveniently into big brother’s arms?” counters Varric. “You’d have Tevinters and demons and Wardens on your ass in seconds. Might make it fifty yards before they fry you with a fireball. Furthermore, you’d take us down with you. You know it.”

Alistair scans the ritual tower carefully as Hawke stares forcefully into the sky. “It’s not Carver. The guy with the black hair? It’s not Carver.”

“What?” Varric and Garrett both ask. Hope and terror tussle for dominance inside him.

“See for yourself.”

Garrett snatches the spyglass and looks. Maker, it’s true. Whoever this Warden is has Carver’s fair skin and dark hair, but he’s easily a full head shorter. Varric takes his turn with it and confirms it.

“Shit, Hawke. You’re going to give me an ulcer, you know that?” grumbles Varric. “Now can we get back to the canyon before the sun fries us to a crisp?”

Their hope that Carver isn’t yet in the ritual tower carries them back across the plateau on light feet. They’re so busy chewing the fat that they only hear an approaching party in a bend in the road until they’re nearly upon them. They stop short, hands hovering over their weapons.

“Cupcake, helmet—” hisses Varric. Alistair plunks it onto his head and flips the visor down in a clumsy scramble.

It’s a Warden patrol. Garrett is relieved his distinctive armor is hidden under his linen, but he curses the kaddis he’d swiped across his nose that morning, nearly without thinking. He scans them, searching for Carver’s shape and bright blue scowl. He isn’t among them.

“Identify yourselves.” The command echoes like a hammer on stone.

“A couple humble relic hunters,” says Varric easily. “Say. You’re Grey Wardens, aren’t you? I was in Denerim in the Blight. It’s good to see you heroes still kicking around.”

They look like a shifty bunch, but the compliment softens the tension in their shoulders.

“Well at least someone appreciates what we do,” the woman huffs in a throaty Orlesian lilt. The others relax behind her.

“Well, we best be on our way,” says Varric. “Got to hit Echoback Canyon before the sun gets too high.”

With a choleric nod, the Warden leader yields the road and they begin to move past one another.

The mutters of the Wardens amongst themselves are rather piquant. “Look at this guy. Warpaint on his nose like he’s the bloody Champion of Kirkwall.”

Garrett reels to a stop. “Funny you should say that. He’s my second cousin. Bit of a family schtick, the warpaint. And now that I think of it his brother is a Warden. Maybe you know him,” says Garrett, careful beneath his affable tone. The Warden looks equal parts defensive and sheepish. “Carver Hawke. Tall. Black hair. Bit tetchy.”

“Hawke? I know him. He is in Frossard’s patrol. They are dealing with Darkspawn tunnels in the uplands around here.” 

Relief nearly clocks Garrett dumb, but he manages a reply. “Fancy that.”

The woman gestures at Varric. “You were in Denerim, dwarf, so you know to watch yourself.”

“Watch for demons. Crawling all over these parts,” says Varric. Alistair grunts in agreement inside his helmet.

When the Wardens have vanished down the road toward whatever sketchy fate they’re fashioning for themselves, Alistair claws his helmet off a sweaty head.

“Colette LeClerc. One of Clarel’s flunkies,” he explains. “Gives me with the willies that they’re all so eager to follow that woman, Calling be damned.” Garrett has been so absorbed with the news of Carver that he barely attends.

 “You heard that, though, right? Carver’s up in the mountains or something.”

“Yeah. Let’s hope he stays there,” says Varric. “Come on, let’s get back to camp.”

Garrett hadn’t realized how completely his fears about Carver had hobbled him until they fell free. As they snake their way up toward Lost Spring, he catches his breath like he’d literally set down the load. Then he lets his thoughts spring to Rose, Rose who on this thirty-third day apart should be arriving soon. He pulls her note from where he keeps it tucked in his cuirass and unfolds it, handled so many times already that the creases have grown fuzzy and pliant. He opens it and reads it a half dozen times before returning to its safe spot. Romantic ideas sprout and tangle as he bounces his fist against his mouth.

She loves him.

And at the end of the world, certainly one shouldn’t dawdle about declaring these things. But if it’s so obvious, why do his guts dance when he thinks of telling her? Perhaps it feels too pure, just another thing he’ll fumble given enough time. Garrett drops well back from Varric and motions for Alistair to join him. 

“How’d you tell Mina you loved her the first time?” asks Garrett quietly.

“You’re thinking of telling her!” declares Alistair with a sly smirk, his enthusiasm obvious. “I— didn’t. She did. But— when I was trying to tell her how I felt before, I gave her a rose. And let me tell you— that went over pre-tty well.”

Garrett drops his head back, amused by the thought. “A rose ! The pinnacle of imagination! A proper paragon of romance, Alistair.”

Alistair gives him a flat look. “Listen. I was twenty. And besides, the world was ending. It didn’t need to be fancy.”

“Well I’m not looking for fancy per se. Do I look like a fancy man to you?”

“You look like a man who’s going to cook up some needlessly over the top plot,” argues Alistair. “You don’t need to earn her love like that you know. You’re plenty worthy already.”

“Plenty worthy,” Garrett mutters down at the swell of Rosco’s saddle. He’d love to believe it.

“I’m telling you, the frills don’t really matter. Isn’t your love enough?”

The question catches like a burr inside him.

“Besides,” continues Alistair, “who doesn’t love flowers?”

Garrett gestures at the barren rocks all around them. “Well, I think I’m shit out of luck there. Maybe she’ll make like Mina and tell me first.”

“You know I’ve always thought you were this abnormally fearless oddity, Hawke. But if you’re going to be a chicken about this, I’m going to have to rethink my position. Tell her.”

oOo

They’re out clearing hyenas and varghests from the back of the canyon when he finds it, a stubborn cactus growing from a crack in a fallen rock, festooned in yellow flowers. It seems to have found the only patch of sunlight, its tear shaped pads reaching toward it in a gawky lean. Garrett gets pricked a half dozen times in pursuit of a bloom, but he claims it for Rose. Something lovely growing in the most inhospitable of places. The parallel couldn’t be more apt.

He stares at the dainty flower in his palm. They’re already drowning in sunshine, what’s a little more?

“That thing’s going to wilt before she gets here you know,” says Varric, racking Bianca on his back.

“Thanks. Very helpful,” says Garrett. “Here to press me with a dozen fretful looks about her?”

Varric lets a sigh slip but there’s a whole mountain of opinions buried in there. “I like you two for each other. I do. I just— it makes me antsy.”

“Well if it’s any consolation, it makes me antsy, too. It’s too good. Too easy. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so lucky without there being some latent cost.”

“Easy there, Waffles,” Varric says gently. “You two should have the world. Together, if you want. I just don’t want her to be the only thing keeping you afloat, you know?”

A puff of breath leaves Garrett, something like a laugh, something like a sigh. “Yeah. It’s all tied up together. But I’d like to believe that if we weren’t involved that I’d be on the same upswing.”

“Me too,” says Varric. “The world needs you, Hawke. Who else is going to take a keep with a horde of four dozen undead? You’re the man who finds a way.”

“Except for all the times I didn’t,” laughs Garrett.

“We don’t talk about those, remember?” says the dwarf.

“Right, right,” he chuckles. “Feelings. Gross.”

“I’m glad we have an understanding.”

Garrett stares at the cactus flower and then begins rummaging around in his head for an over the top plan. His love might be enough, but it couldn’t hurt to stack the deck, now could it?

oOo

Garrett is mending his mail with a pair of pliers when he hears distant voices, a flurry of disturbed birds and then the crunch and shuffle of horses echoing in the canyon. He stands, his mail sliding from his lap into a heap in the dirt and then rushes to the edge of camp. Even at fifty yards he knows its her by Juniper’s singular piebald coat, certainly not the figure atop who wears some manner of oversized yellow hat and an ivory cloak. He jogs out to meet her, his chest tight, tripping through all the potential witticisms he might use to charm her furiously. But all the worry and misery of the last five weeks still has him all bound up. All he really wants is a hug.

“I’m looking for a wayward bronto,” she says, little flecks of light drifting across her face from the sun poking through her straw hat. She slides to the ground. “Have you seen one?”

Garrett tugs her into his arms, knocking her ridiculous hat into the sand. He rediscovers her scent and her shape; the way she spills into all the little hollows and crevices in his heart. The smart-assery and snickers from the rest melt into an unintelligible soup around them. She erects a home right here in the blazing sun, the squeeze of her arms as good as any cottage or manse. Safe there, a lone sob hitches in his ribs. She must have felt it because she buries her face into his chest and tightens her hold. And then he feels her own as she grips handfuls of his shirt.

Rose tilts her head up and runs a hand through his short shaggy locks, her glistening eyes appraising him with their usual spark. If it wasn’t for the audience he might tell her right there.

“Well? Any lost-looking beasts out here?”

He drops his forehead against hers and kisses her knuckles, a lemon-yellow cactus flower unfolding right in his chest. “You found me.”