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Sunshine has decided to read Swords and Shields.
Varric’s not in the habit of actively watching people read his work. He made one exception with the Seeker, though that was more of an accidental eavesdrop than a deliberate game of spying. At the time he was on his way to the tavern when he caught her outside reading his book—the book the Inquisitor asked him to write for her. She was about seventy percent through the novel. Compelled, Varric watched her find out what happened to the Knight Captain. She gasped, actually gasped in surprise with a lack of composure she never had while fighting, her cheeks red as buried her face in the pages. She must have gotten to the part where the guardsman broke the Knight Captain out of the prison and declared his love. It was drivel. Complete and utter drivel, the writing courtesy of spite and wine. The Tale of the Champion taxed him when he wrote. He had to make sure he was honest with every word. He didn’t need any of that with Swords and Shields. He only needed to have fun. As a result, so did Cassandra, So is Bethany.
Sunshine is having a blast reading Swords and Shields, and though he’s not in the habit of watching people read his books, he does peer at her as she reads, almost done with the novel. He’s sitting on his chair, half interested in editing his newest manuscript about the Inquisitor while she’s sprawled out on the loveseat. The fire crackles in the hearth. It’s not cold outside but it is chilly with the promise of a crisp autumn and snowy winter. But Varric commissioned only the finest craftsmanship for his home in Kirkwall, and Sunshine picked out the gold trimmings herself that adorn the mantle. If she could have a fire going, she would. She likes cozy and indeed Kirkwall has never been cozier, especially since they’re back home for good now, overseeing rebuilding efforts. He’d never attribute “cozy” to Kirkwall, but Sunshine makes it that way, especially in their home where she’s the brightest. Sunshine likes taking up space. She deserves it. He’ll let her have the bounty on as much space as she desires.
She smiles as she reads, occasionally laughing. Few sights are so delightful as Sunshine reading. Once books were all she had, a promise of the wider world beyond Lothering. Now free she still reads, and she’s just as thrilled by his attempts at romance in Swords and Shields as she is when he whispers something soft in her ear, or when he kisses her shoulder as they’re laying by the fire reading together on the furs. More than the pages of love, as even Varric’s own pages of love wax on about trials, and love, and love making it through the trials in only the most transcendent way, he’ll take a women reading and absorbing the words and seeing herself in the characters over even the most poetic words of on the subject. Empathy is the most romantic of things, to read something and see yourself in someone else’s shoes. Sunshine has always thought of others. He always thought his romances, particularly Swords and Shields as drivel, and perhaps it is to some. But not to Cassandra, he thinks with a small laugh. And not to Sunshine. They’ve found the truth in it.
Maybe after he writes the Inquisitor’s story he’ll start a new romance. He never had a muse before when he wrote romances. Now when he drafts and when he writes, he’ll think of his Sunshine.
She finishes the book, closing it with satisfied finality before setting it aside on the loveseat. “So the guardsman and the Knight-Captain dance at the end,” she says longingly, stretching on the loveseat.
The pages of his manuscript flutter to the floor as he curses. He knows that look. She’s going to rise and ask for his hand. “Sunshine—"
She laughs. “No, no, not tonight. We’ll be able to do that soon though so wipe that smirk off your face. And I don’t care what anyone else says about our heights. We will waltz like we mean it. I’m only surprised you decided to end the novel with dancing in the moonlight. It’s surprising seeing as how you hate dancing. Supposedly.”
“I thought the Seeker would like it,” he admits, picking up the scattered pages and sorting them out. “Cassandra is the second most romantic woman I think I have ever known. Candles, baths, dancing in the moonlight. You name it, she likes it.”
Admittedly he had a bit too much fun writing the book. It only took a few days, what with spite, irony, the knowledge it didn’t have to be great, and the promise of a good show alighting his creativity. He gave the Knight Captain something of Cassandra’s quirks too. The moment of frustration she has where she punches that oak tree was entirely based off of the Seeker’s own anecdotes about punching trees whenever she is sick. With Cassandra, he had no doubt the limbs always shook whenever a tree got her vengeance. So his Knight-Captain in his story hit the tree so hard the limbs shook.
Varric tells Sunshine where the bit about the tree came from. She chuckles, delighted, but calls him something absurd. She calls him romantic.
He will not have it. “Not hardly as much as you.”
“Well, that is true.”
He expected her to rebuff and disagree and call him the most romantic fool in Thedas. What other man would take her on a stroll in the moonlight on the beach specifically because she mentioned once that walking on the shore barefoot was one of her favorite things? Besides, one had to be at least a little romantic to be a writer. Writers always had to see the best in things, lest they make a reader hopeless and existential.
“I would write something else, that’s all,” Bethany says with a sly smile, resting her cheek upon her hand as she lays against the side of the loveseat.
“Excuse me Sunshine. Did you write this book or did I?”
“You. Clearly. Now it is very good,” she contends that at least, and he’s glad she has. Sometimes she thinks he has too much pride. She then takes the book and flips through it, arriving at a dog-eared page. He remembers seeing her do that, and he flushed with pride that there was a page she wanted to return to like an old friend.
“The guardsman didn’t look for love,” Sunshine reads. Varric remembers writing it. Some words are difficult and must be pried out of oneself to risk the look of a stark blank white page. Other words are effortless. Sunshine reads one of the effortless passages as if she wrote it herself.
“Love found him and he crashed into it with all the wonder and mysteries,” she reads. “It came for him when he didn’t think he was ready. But the Knight Captain made it easy. She made him fall bit by bit until he was all in and he couldn’t imagine himself from before again. The truth was, he never wanted to be that man again. There are some people who irrevocably change you. He’s one of the lucky ones who has been changed for good.”
She sets the book down once more on her lap. She’s dreaming yet awake and alive like the guardsman and Knight-Captain. She says this passage, more than any other, reminds her of the book she would write.
“Tell me more.”
She asks him to imagine it, a little girl from Lothering in Ferelden, growing up hidden away and reading romance novels for an escape. Then one day, forced to flee from her home, she makes it to the big city of Kirkwall. She doesn’t meet him immediately, the man she always dreamed about that would be so like the men in the romance novels, but when she does meet him, she doesn’t realize it at first. Neither of them do. Slow, she calls it, and an effortless adaptation until she’s all in and is never truly away from him even when they’re separated by continents. She’d write a novel of love letters, she says. Letters to remind they’re never far away.
“I’ll still write those love letters,” Sunshine promises. “Even when we’re here together.”
They must be the last romantics left in the world, the best of stories, because he promises only the same.
She grins once more. She has another thought. He knows her looks too well. “Your story doesn’t end in a happily ever after,” she says, proving his theory of her thoughts.
“It does so,” he however insists. “They’re dancing in the moonlight.”
Sunshine wants the words. “I would give the words,” she says. “They lived happily ever after.”
Varric smiles. “We will live happily ever after.”
“I don’t want that for me,” she says, and out of everything she’s said that night, he finds it the most surprising. Until she concedes.
“Well. Alright maybe I do,” she says as Varric rises, sitting next to her on the loveseat till they’re pressed together, his hand over hers. “But I’d rather have a promise.”
He asks of what. She takes his hand in hers and kisses it, his writer’s hands, his lived hands, his hand that she treasures.
“We’ll try,” she says.
“We’re doing better than trying,” he promises. “We’re here.”
He tells her a new story after he kisses her hand, the one of the last romantics. He tells her the story of those that try.