driftfleet | 001.

Entry tags:

001.

Who: Marian Hawke & you.
Broadcast: Fleet wide
Action: MARSIVA, aww yeah.
When: Now, until shuffle.

[ Maker's balls it is cold.

Waking up in strange places isn't so unusual in Marian's Hawke's life, she's fairly to it by now, so she barely bats a sleepy eye when she rolls over and curls in on herself. Half mumbled words tumbling from her lips in a incoherently mess, fingers curling around whatever they can grasp in a desperate attempt to conserve heat. This continues for a good few moments until the woman manages to roll straight onto the cold metal floor. ]

─Aahh! [ There is no better way of waking someone up than a quick drop onto a cold floor - well... a bucket of water would have done as well, but thankfully there are no buckets to be seen.

It has her awake, alert as someone still gluggy with sleep can be, mope of black hair strewn about this way and that. Heart thundering in her chest a hand raises to rub the sleep from her eyes, jaw lock in evident irritation. ] Stupid Wardens, how is anyone supposed to sleep in a cot so small... [ The realization comes slow, the metal walls of the ship close enough to blurred vision to make her think she's still in Weisshaupt waiting for old men to pull their collective sticks from their asses. ] Never thought I'd miss camping out in caves─Hello...

[ Ah, there it is, that little light bulb that flicks on and says "This isn't Weisshaupt, Toto" - or it would if Hawke had any any who or what Toto was. Regardless she inhales sharp and reaches for her staff, smooth wood a comfort as she uses it to stands herself up. ]

I see we've gone to the Grey Wardens school of decor. [ A bit boring she has to say, rather bland. No dirt, no drunkard puking his guts out in the corner, no wet dog smell. Frankly it is kind of disappointing.

Once her bearings are gather it takes Hawke all of a few moments to start snooping, trying to find something - anything - to tell her where exactly she's managed to find herself now. Eventually her combings finds her a device, odd little thing that she promptly starts playing with legs across upon the very bench she woke up on. A few hours of poking has her come to a few conclusions, one; this thing is weird, two; she can swear she has seen something like this before, and three; she can talk to people on it. At least she thinks she can.

A wild guess as her flick the feed on, though the camera is at a slight angle, all smiles and more than obvious bed hair. You'd almost have no idea that she is perhaps a little rattled by all of this with the way she looks. ]

Good morning, or is it afternoon? Honestly I have no bloody idea, I tried to fun the sun but it seems that I have misplaced that alongside of almost everything else. No matter, I'm sure it'll all turn up somehow.

I'm Hawke, by the way - best to get introductions out of the way early - and I have two very important questions to ask you... [ Trailing off the screws up her nose slightly before shaking her head. ] Is there a bar nearby and how can I get there?

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[That's a voice he hasn't heard in years at this point. Varric's breath catches. He's half-expecting to be asleep or something. Usually nothing fazes him, and yet-- and yet-- there's the ungraceful sound of something being knocked off a desk and swearing.]

[He mashes the button to switch the feed, just to be sure. Thank the Maker. She's safe... for now.

Relief is plainly visible like the stubble on his face, though part of him is cautious too.]

Hawke! Maferath's balls, sure took you long enough. I've already opened a bar. Without you.

[ Words do not begin to properly express the relief she feels, the manner of which her expression changes so swiftly. For her it hasn't been so long, but that hardly matters, weeks of parting feels as though it should be years. Laugh bubbles past her lips first, light and free and more genuine that it has any right to be. ]

Varric! Oh, am I glad to see your beautiful dwarven mug. [ The tragedy of not being able to find him right now will hit her soon enough. ] I would have come sooner but you know how it is with Wardens, unless there is a Blight on it takes them ages to decide on anything.

Wardens? I thought you were trying to stay low.

[He uh, isn't that far yet. He grimaces and hopes he isn't about to hear some more bad news.]

Ah, shit. Don't tell me you're from that demon-infested shithole of a future, too.

[ Ah, there is a very evident pause before Hawke begins talking again. She did not expect this, not in the slightest. ]

I am staying low. [ Not really. ] And yes there might've been a giant hole in the sky with demons and spiders coming out of it last time I looked.

Maker's breath, Hawke. I hope you left out the part where we might've killed a Warden in that shitty Darkspawn prison with all the stalagmites.

[Whoops.]

Hold on. Let me just tweak this thing for a second.

Edited (context) 2016-01-27 07:10 (UTC)

[He switches the communication to private. NOT UNHACKABLE but it's better than... the alternative.]

Hawke, you'd better not be dead. And if you're not dead, you'd better not be thinking about being dead.

[ Shit.

Ordinarily? She'd lie, deflect and bullshit her way out of answering with the truth. They don't need to know, to hear, what happened in the Fade and how it left her. Bad enough Jove knows, bad enough Jove saw. No, no, let them believe of her what they always have, let them believe she's fine and nothing at all can phase her.

It's a shaky exhale that comes first, more telling than she hoped it would be, before she smiles - half meant, worn, and barely reaching her eyes. ]

I'm not dead. [ If only she could leave it at that, but this is Varric, it wouldn't work even if she tried. ] The Inquisitor pulled me out of there before I could do anything stupid.

[ It should have been me. ]

[He's familiar with that smile by now. It's the one he remembers, even if he hasn't seen it in a long time. He saw shades of it in that other Hawke, the one without a beard. Heard it in his hollow laugh when he talked about how everything had went down.]

Good. [He says it with some sense of finality. Most of his breath leaves him, and he doesn't meet her eyes, even through the camera, when he repeats it softly to himself. Good.]

... Listen. You've spent your whole life in the service of other people. Everyone always wants something from you, sometimes even your friends. I guess in that way I'm no different. [He looks up again.] Here's the thing. You weren't the only person down there with Corypheus in that prison. There were others, including me, and we all shoulder that burden. You can't take on the weight of the whole world by yourself. I mean, shit, that's why Kirkwall... well.

What I'm saying is, this isn't your fault. If you feel like you need to do something about it, then great. That's your do-gooder streak and I've always liked that about you. Use the rest of your life to clean up that mess if you want to.

But don't assume your problems end because you stop existing. They just get passed onto everyone you left behind.

[ That's the thing about Varric; he knows her too well, sees through the deflections, through her smile. Seen her at her worst; the months after Leandra's death and the Qunari invasion was quelled that she refused to go anywhere near her own estate. It makes her flinch less as the listen comes, easier to swallow, easier to stomach.

He tells her not to take the all weight and she thinks she might laugh. Throw her head back and let the sound come tumbling out, that broken record that passes for laughter these days. How does she even start about sharing the load? Always been up to Hawke - don't worry Hawke will fix it, Hawke will get that cat out of the tree, Hawke will stop the Knight Commander from killing us all, Marian will protect us now that Father is dead. She doesn't know how, she really doesn't. Stepping away didn't help, the damn world dragged her right back in.

Still they hit hard, in the right place, as usual for lectures given by someone who knows her better than the back of she does the back of her own and her head drops. ]

The Orlesian Wardens needed Stroud more than Thedas needed me. [ It is a quite confession, piercing through the air with less mercy than an arrow. ] But we left him there with that thing.

Edited (tree not three) 2016-01-27 08:32 (UTC)

[Maker, that hurts. He can practically feel the self-loathing dripping off that sentence.]

This is going to sound harsh but Stroud wouldn't have been commander forever. You know as well as I do what happens to Grey Wardens after a couple decades. Someone else will take his place and keep it going... They always do. [Maybe it'll even be Carver. He doesn't say that, though.]

As long as you're still alive, you can still do something. Or not do something. You lose your life and that's it. There's no pearly gates and the arms of the Maker waiting for people who lay down and give up.

I'll be right next to you whatever you decide. And if someone knocks down your door demanding you save them, I'll send 'em running with an arrow in their ass.

[ Sharp inhale, eyes closed tight, before exhale and her head rising. Blue eyes shining bright, barely holding back all the emotion that gets set aside, buried until she can fool herself into forgetting it even existed in the first place.

He sounds harsh, but she excepts that, and he makes more sense than she'd like. It doesn't grove well with her self-loathing, making it instead less of an attractive option.

Yeah, she thinks, Wardens don't last long. Everyone knows that, Hawke more keenly than others. She sent Carver to the Wardens in hopes of saving his life, but all she really did was prolong his death by a few decades. One day he'll do as all Wardens do and go into the Deep Roads to die. There is nothing she can do to stop it and it kills her. ]

Maker's balls. [ Hands raise to drag across her face, breathing a shaky breath into her palms, before they drop. ] You're always there to pick my sorry ass up off the floor when I'm down, aren't you? [ Without fail, it seems. ]

Pack a lot of arrows, Varric, you might be shooting a lot of asses with Bianca.

Sadly, Bianca's at home waiting for me like a good girl. But I do have a laser rifle capable of disintegrating a nug at a hundred yards.

[He flashes her his ever-present disarming smile, pretending he doesn't notice she's about to cry. Hawke doesn't cry. She just gets even.

He wishes he could reach through the screen and put his hand on her shoulder, but he'll have to settle for this. This lack of contact. It's unsatisfying and he really, really needs a drink after this.]

You gonna be okay for a couple days?

I never thought I'd see the day when you were without your beloved Bianca.

[ Something to grill him about later, settled nicely with a mug of terrible alcohol and company that no one could ever dare to beat. Only she wishes later was now, wishes she could skip the waiting and go find him. Take over his space as she did those months after Leandra's death - only with a lot less barely living Hawke and more of the overly obnoxious yet utterly irreplaceable Hawke. ]

Don't worry Varric, I'll find something to entertain myself with until the shuffle. [ There has to be something distracting enough on this damn ship. ] Put aside your best stuff for me, won't you?

They had to pry it from me while I was unconscious. I would've shot someone in the balls otherwise.

[She's welcome to drop in anytime after leaving the Marsiva. It's not an invitation he needs to say aloud.]

There are stars. And... slightly better food than what you find on a standard ship? Beats the Hanged Man's mystery meat stew.

[He smiles again, and there's a twinkle in his eye.]

I always do.

We'll see you reunited, Varric, you have my overly dramatic vow.

[ Of course he doesn't, it's an unspoken invitation that has existed between them for years now. One that, obviously, goes both ways. They have each other, even if the world starts falling apart around their heads, they always will.

Hawke sighs wistfully - perhaps too loudly - as her head drops to the side. ]

Might, though I kind of miss the mystery meat stew. It at least tasted better than half charred dried meat.

[ Maker's balls, where would she be without him? ]

You're the best.

The Champion I know always stands for love and righteousness.

[He watches her with too-keen eyes. He can tell how she's feeling even without her saying it. It's been a long, long time since he saw her in person, but y'know, some stuff never changes. Sometimes people are so close that when they're apart, it's like no time has passed. That's how Hawke is with her friends.]

I admit I don't have the foggiest idea of how to cook a damn steak. I ruin it every time.

[He pauses, and then texts her a string of numbers.]

Hey, there's my personal. Type that in, and you can bother me any time of night. Most likely you'll get dropped onto your new ship in the morning, though.

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