A/N:

I got a sudden writing itch that needs scratching. Putting this out here in hopes the itch will go away if scratched well enough. No ideas if or when or how many updates might come. Nor any definite ideas about the form of this… story? One-shot? Shorts? Not a clue. For now, just a little exploration of the team dynamics. For later? Who knows…

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A Walk Through A Forest

In which the Commander is sleepwalking, Oghren is being supportive, Anders is being contemplative and Nathaniel wishes he never returned from Free Marches. Bonus apperances - Cat and Dog.

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"SHIANNI!"

The scream pierced the morning fog and the ears of those nearby. The Warden-Commander jolted up. Her forehead connected with the jaw of an overly worried mabari, causing the beast to yelp and jump away.

Trying to scramble up, her hand slipped in the bloodied mud and she shoved madly at the first things too close for comfort, even if they were meant to offer precicely that.

Mindful of his clothes, Anders was crouching on his haunches. Misaimed shove sent him back ass-first into grass and mud and Darkspawn corpse.

Nathaniel was down on one knee. Better balanced and further away, he easily swayed away from the flailing arm.

Oghren couldn't be knocked over if an ogre charged him.

"Right, Commander. Up and at 'em." He grabbed the elf by the arm and yanked her up.

The dog whined pathetically, pawing its bruised jaw; Anders was cursing up a storm; Anders' cat jumped out of his backpack with an angry hiss; the mabari forgot about it's throbbing muzzle in an instant; Oghren was… Oghren, and Nathaniel wondered what in Andraste's name posessed him to ever ask for a Joining in the first place. He had his reasons. Good reasons, too. He was sure he must have. He just… couldn't remember a single one of them right there and then. None good enough anyway.

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"A tree, Commander. Can't walk through them. I know 'cause I tried," Oghren stirred the still zig-zagging elf away from another trunk she was dazedly walking into.

"Mmhmm…" She acknowledged eloquently, acting for all the world like she's seeing one of those for the first time ever.

"We had one of those in the Alienage," she announced, slurring a bit still.

Oghren never missed a beat.

"Could you walk through it?"

Shake of a head. "Uh-uh."

"Then don't try walking through these either. Can't walk through your own tree, sure can't walk through these… foreign ones, runt."

"'tupid thing," the elf muttered into her chin. "Should've chopped it down and used it for kindling."

Oghren patted his axe with one hand, the other still commited to keeping the bundle of anger, also known as "Warden-Commander of the Grey", currently indisposed, from close introductions with the surrounding vegetation.

Anders padded behind them, muttering darkly, rubbing his behind with one hand and cradling the cat with the other. Mabari had a fresh claw mark across his nose, again, and stuck close to Nathaniel's heel, glaring dog daggers at the bundle of fur in the mage's arm.

Nathaniel let out a long suffering sigh and glanced around. A man should always count his blessings, he was once told. All he had was curses. He took inventory.

Mage, one, as suited to the grand outdoors as Dalish to the grand court. Cat, one, clinging to said mage, an accessory to a wilderness hike only a porrige-brained mage would think of bringing along. Mabari, usualy the only sane of the lot, currently fixated on said cat instead of everything else that might be lurking around. Dwarf, one, miraculously only half as drunk as he usually was, mostly due to drinking himself into stupid stupor the night before, thus sporting a usual hangover and belching loud enough to be heard all the way to the Black City. And their leader, still wobbly on her feet and still treating the trees as something that will scoot out of her way if she just keeps walking straight into them - a tought, worth noting, that Nathaniel soon regretted having. And they were only at the outskirts of the Wending Woods for Maker's sake!

Someone ought to be paying attention to their surroundings. And it was again item number six, one Nathaniel Howe, who ended up doing it while struggling inwardly from a) losing what temper he had in stash for the day, and b) going back to his original plan of putting an arrow through the Warden-Commander's back and calling it a day.

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Anders kept up his muttering long after he really felt the need to. It seemed to annoy Howe and Anders was long used to finding what fun he could, where he could, no matter how childishly inane it sometimes was. What he was really eyeing, though, was the Warden-Commander's behind, and for once not because it was a better view than Oghren's (and to be perfectly honest, pretty much everything was a better view than that).

There was, he recounted, what must've been a sleeping spell. He still had only the barest idea about the magic an odd Darkspwan could wield, but from what he'd seen so far it was similar, in effect at least, to the regular kind. When the elf suddenly collapsed in the middle of a fight, limp as you like it, his first tought was that she was done for. He would've been right, too, but for that monster of a dog that saved her hide from Darkspawn blades.

But just as the dog was shredding the closest Darkspawn's throat into neat bite-sized bits, Anders felt another spell overlay the first one. Just the fringes of it, for he was at the very edge of its effect, but it did make his skin momentarily crawl just the same.

So, he surmised, Sleep spell plus Horror spell. Not a pretty thing, the second one, if you fall under its effects. Devastating, if you're already under the effect of the first.

He had no idea who, or what, a "Shianni" was, but whatever it was shook their Commander well and good. Although "good" probably wasn't the right word to describe it.

Either way, something shook the elf right to the core back then and as a healer, Anders couldn't just let it pass unchecked. He held his own councel, though; hardly a point in sharing his insights with the rest of the crew right now. Oghren would just belch and love his dwarvish resistance to magic a bit more for a while (although in reality, he'd just be pissed, as he always was when encountering a rare problem that couldn't be solved with a well-placed axe). Neither furballs could do much about anything and Howe probably didn't give a hoot either way.

The Commander herself wouldn't talk, not before she went full Oghren on whatever booze of her own she was stashing and Anders tought it best she remains sober for the time being.

The Horror was wearing off quickly - the only merciful thing about that spell - and though still shaky on her feet, it seemed the Sleep effects were wearing off at a steady pace as well.

For now, that will do.