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[ It's late, and Anders is up on the surface, face lit occasionally by the rolling crackle of the sky. But he's not thinking about this strange place called Earth, his eyes distant. ]

Has anyone else met someone they... knew in their Matrix, but who was extracted from a different Matrix?

[ He's fumbling with the question, not sure how to ask what he wants to ask and not daring to voice what underlies it. ]

There are other versions of us still living their lives. It feels like I'm ...

[ A pause, and he decides not to follow up with whatever point he was planning, sighs instead, switches the feed off and tries to work out if there's some way to delete the recording from the network. ]

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[The hope cuts him more than he expected. Anders was his friend once. Maybe he still is. But it's different now. What they once had is long gone and maybe that's not entirely Anders fault. He can't change the past, but he can see the places where different actions might have helped, and while his stories might mask it to some extent it would have been hard to be entirely blind to just how far he'd been falling. Especially for a man like Varric.]

That's me.

[It's the best he can manage for the moment. Even that simple confirmation is hard to work out of the tightness of his throat. It's a far cry from the easy trade of stories they used to share in his suite in the Hanged Man, or even the later years where Varric had talked and Anders had become more and more withdrawn. It's easy to be angry when he isn't there, but now he's talking to him (or trying to) it's the hurt he feels the most.]

I didn't know you were here.

[ That's the understatement of a lifetime. ]

Hawke must be pleased.

[ And Anders can be happy on his behalf, at least. He's glad to see Varric for his own sake, too — with two years between himself and Justice, he has a better perspective on the dark spiral downwards he'd fallen into in Kirkwall. He hadn't made reparations with Fenris by any means, hadn't really been of a mind to, but Varric.... ]

Hawke?

[Of all the things he could have said, that is not one of them. Hawke's dead. Left in the Fade while the rest of them saved themselves. Hearing about him not just in present tense, but as though he's here... the grief is still fresh for him, he can't quite bring himself to believe he's heard Anders right.]

Hawke.

[ Suddenly uncertain: he'd come from a matrix with a different Hawke. Perhaps Varric had been extracted from one with no Hawke at all.

At least then he wouldn't be quite as interested in Anders getting his lovelorn nonsense all over the network. ]

The Champion of Kirkwall ring any bells?

No, no... I know who Hawke is. I just didn't know he was here.

[His questioning has clearly been misinterpreted, which is probably for the best. Going by what Anders has said it's unlikely to be his Hawke, but still... Hawke. Any Hawke is more than he could have hoped for.]

[ Any Hawke in a storm, as the saying absolutely doesn't go. ]

Well. He is.

He lives with me, when he's not shipped off to nearly get himself killed.

Hawke does enjoy trying to get himself killed.

[Or succeeding in recent cases.]

He's already spent a few weeks unconscious. Probably the time I most wished for my magic back. And now he's gallivanting off again, as Hawke does.

[ Talking about Hawke is making him feel far more at ease with Varric again, and now that awkwardness has eased there's a dryness and a lightness to his tone that was all but eradicated by Justice's anger in later years. ]

How about you, joined up yet?

Not yet. I think I've had my share of gallivanting for the foreseeable future.

[Unless he gets dragged into it again by Hawke, which does seem likely if he's here.]

You aren't off adventuring with Hawke then?

Joining a crew tends to require venturing back into the Matrix, and I think I've had enough of that. I finally got my own clinic here, so that keeps me occupied when Hawke ships out.

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