Lothering, Winter.
He smelled death and in his chest his heart raged.
"Marian!"
The air was still and stagnant, frozen like the rest of the Maker-Forsaken valley. Nothing moved. No animals stirred. Nothing breathed, sending steam up towards the white endless sky. And that scared him.
She had been missing for three days. Three.
He tried to run, sinking thigh deep into the snow for his effort. Struggling. Fighting. And all he could smell was snow and faint death.
And blood.
A black still body lay ahead of him, dusted with new snow.
Too big. Too big to be her. Too still.
He called out her name again. No answer. No movement.
Malcolm and Carver were searching as well, but he had neither seen nor heard them for days. Three days and nights alone in the valley, pitching camp alone as best he could, keeping himself warm with real fire, no magic, because he needed to be strong when he found her, needed to be able to heal her.
The body was enormous. A bear. A dead bear with a dagger lodged in its thick throat, jaw hanging loose and open, eyes open and frozen.
The hilt of the blade was hers. He knew it. He had traced the etched feather with his thumb countless times. She killed a bear… alone.
She had come with that little twat Eric into the valley. He was supposed to return her that night… but came back alone. They'd gotten separated, (they had an argument and she had stormed off… stubborn idiot!)… and the boy showed up long after nightfall, his dark red hair mussed and cheeks splotchy, blazing red with cold and fear.
Anders was the first one out, headlong into the snow, calling her name.
"Don't be dead… please…" he whispered, placing his wrapped hand on the icy coat of the bear and using the other to retrieve her blade. It was as close to a prayer as he was ever likely to speak.
The trees were mostly dead here. He scanned the area, looking for anything that might guide his way.
Dark snow. Blood.
He left the body of the bear and followed the faint trail, smelling it almost more than seeing it.
And there, there, not far… a shape that was not a tree, not a boulder or a bear. Marian.
He bolted, feet unnaturally light on the snow, and felt the magic crackle in his veins. She was still and looked so small.
He called out to her wordlessly, but she did not stir.
He tumbled into the snow beside her. She was partially buried and unconscious. He felt her pulse and frantically dug her out, revealing her thighs, and her legs, and her feet.
"Andraste's tits…" he choked. Her right ankle had been gnawed open by the rusted metal of a buried bear trap. The bone was there, he could see it, broken but not dead. She had tied her worn leather belt around her leg, above the knee, before losing consciousness. "Good girl."
He took her face between his hands. Her skin was hard and faintly blue, eyelashes snowy, shut.
"Marian," he said her name, "I'm here. I've got you."
He pulled off the snug knitted cap he'd worn and put it on her head, trying to preserve any body heat she had left. He turned his attention to the trap. It was old, and she had most likely stepped too heavily in the snow and sunk into the maw.
He looked for a mechanism that would open it… but there was nothing. He tried to pry it open but couldn't do it, not in the state it was in. Finally, with a frustrated sound, he touched it and shattered the damn thing with magic; the bottom pieces falling apart like thin spring ice.
The teeth remained in her leg, and he carefully pulled them apart and away from her. Fresh blood flowed. He tore the rest of her shredded pant leg apart and quickly reset the snapped bone, mending it with as potent healing magic as he could muster.
His glowing hands shook.
She did not move, did not respond to the bone being set, and she felt so very, very cold and firm under his fingertips.
He closed the skin, not bothering with the deep mottled bruising that spread up and down from where the trap had broken her leg. He crawled up, cradling her in his arms, a cold dead weight against him. But the pulse beat regularly in her throat, if not strongly.
They were in the middle of nowhere. He looked around them, panting… nearly square in the center of the valley there was no shelter, no caves… nothing. Just the trees.
Adrenaline fueled the decision to lift her, holding her tightly against his chest as he moved them from the open valley to the edge of trees. He sought a cluster of thin saplings, dying but not yet brittle.
Holding her awkwardly with one arm, he pointed his staff at the space between the trees and melted the snow in the center of a small circular clearing, using enough heat to dry the soil. Gently as he could, he set her down in the center of the tiny clearing, wrapped her in his outer cloak and took his staff in hand. Using what he would later be able to describe as being something between magic a sheer projected will, he bent the thin trees together, entwining the ends of their branches above his head so that they came, and stayed, together, forming a structure around them. It took some sustained magic to retain the integrity of the structure, but it would hold.
He pulled the oiled canvas he had been using to make his tent each night out of his pack and wrapped and secured it around the exterior of their conical safehouse.
If more snow fell in the night, it would only insulate them further, held at bay by the trees, the ceiling of knit branches, and the canvas. He had food, water, and magic. He would keep Marian alive.
Inside, it already felt warmer, but it was not enough. His cloak wrapped around her was still quite dry, and he had another dry blanket in his pack. He stripped himself down to his smalls and then wordlessly set to the task of removing all of her sodden freezing layers of clothing, stripping her completely, and holding her against himself, flesh to flesh. He wrapped the blanket around them both, careful to tuck it under and around her feet. Anders wrapped the cloak outside the blanket, pillowing her head against his arm. He felt the chill of her flesh deep in his core, and it horrified him.
Still, her breath came against him, cool but steady. Tucking her head beneath his chin, he closed his eyes and warmed her using magic and his own natural body heat.
He felt her size, taking comfort in the weight of her... she just seemed so small out there in the snow.
She was compact but not small, lithe and powerful with sturdy Hawke bones beneath taut musculature and smooth pale skin, marked by only the faint ghost of scars. He had healed her for so many years… he had learned to heal by healing her.
He reached down, keeping both of them swaddled and took one of her feet in his hand, sending more warmth into the blue appendage. Her toes were dark. I can fix it.
He warmed the other foot, and then returned his both arms around her, rubbing her back briskly.
Heat. Not too much. As much as he safely could. His hastily built room trapped the warmth well, and he could no longer see his breath, or hers, in the air.
Dusk came. Then night. Beside them, he conjured a small blue flame that emitted warmth but no smoke.
When she finally began to shiver against him, he kissed her temple, elated.
When she gripped him back, murmuring nonsense into his chest, he murmured back.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
When she opened her eyes, teeth chattering, he kissed her without thinking, feeling the life pulse in her skin.
"Anders… am I dead?"
"No."
"…are you sure?"
"I'm positive."
"I think I killed a bear."
He laughed, "You did."
"A big f-fucking bear."
"Massive. Biggest bear I've ever seen."
"Mmm."
She moved a hand against his chest, her fingers were still cold, but not the deathly cold that they had been. Tracing a small random design on his skin, she lightly grazed his nipple and he gasped.
"Sorry," her hand stilled. "Where are we?"
"In the valley, where I found you. And your bear."
"I want to skin it… wear it as a coat," she grinned, eyes closed, "Are we home?"
"No. You were out there for days… when you can I want you to drink a little water."
"Do you have whiskey?"
"I… yes. A little."
He thought about the tiny silver flask somewhere near the bottom of his pack… vicious stuff better used for disinfecting.
"Can I have that instead?"
She snuggled in closer to him. He felt the light brush of her lips against the tender skin of his throat, heard the scrape of his stubble against her.
"Marian…"
"I'm not fully c-convinced that I'm n-not dead, Anders," she kissed him again, so softly it was barely anything, "This doesn't seem real."
"It's real. Really real," he replied quickly, feeling a surge of something primal course through him.
He was now very much aware of the shape of her, hard bone and soft flesh, warmed by his touch, by his skin, his power. The smell of her. Familiar, family, beneath the cold and the blood. He felt his body respond to her, thinking, regardless of how hard he tried to think about anything else, about the perfectly imperfect triangle of dark hair between her thighs he had seen when he was undressing her, feeling her cool thighs around and between his own…
"Anders…"
She felt him, hard against the shallow dip near her hip. Oh, Maker help him.
He froze, his back stiff, every muscle tight.
She pushed back against him, very softly, and with that tiny moment let a delicate moan loose.
He didn't thrust, as much as all his instincts may have wanted him to. Instead, he responded with a jagged breath and a slight gentle rocking, hard flesh greeted by the soft, pliant skin of her belly.
She shifted, as she could, better aligning them together. The only thing between them was the soft thin fabric of his smalls, and he could feel the heat of her, of her, against him.
His control broke when he felt the echo of wet heat through fabric against on his cock, and he thrust in earnest as much as he could on his side. Her mouth fell open, lips pink now and not blue at all. He felt alive, the way he did when he heard music… feeling something bolder and truer than chance fill his pores and his mind and his heart. Something like music, that had existed long before either of them and would exist long after they were dust. Music and instinct and, Maker, he tasted her… he felt drums inside.
He rolled over her, his hips snug against hers. He fit urgently into her cleft, held back from fully entering her by a thin layer of linen. It was enough; he ignited. He snaked one arm out of the blanket and cloak. He touched her face. She kept her hair long, normally plaited long and thick against her back, it had come loose and spilled out under her, bits of dirt and frost and blood… he'd never seen anything be so beautiful. He brushed a thick matted tangle of her hair away from her face.
"I wanted this," she murmured, content and dreamy, her eyes drifting closed, "you."
He saw the flush in her cheeks, and knew in a jarring clear instant, that what was there, beneath that perfect skin and the constellation of freckles across her nose and cheeks, was not just desire but also fever. Male-instinct ebbed and healer faculty took over. Infection.
The wound…
He stopped, his stomach clenching at the pained sound she made when he did.
She looked up at him, confusion and the glaze of fever muddling what was otherwise very clearly need and desire. He rolled to her side.
"You don't want me?"
"I do…"
"Anders, I'm sorry…"
He scoffed, settling his trembling hand on her leg as she spoke, sending warm tentative tendrils into her skin, chasing out anything that would hurt her. "For what?"
"Eric."
He cupped her jaw in his hand for just a moment longer.
"I… I thought about… I closed my eyes, and I thought about…"
He faltered.
"You. I didn't wait for you… because you don't… I didn't want to wait anymore, Anders… I wanted to know what it was like…"
"And?" he winced, trying to focus on healing.
"Awkward. It was awkward. And kind of gross."
He laughed, a hard, aggressive release of all the things stirring inside of him… possessiveness and loss and need and-
"Is it always like that? I know you did it too."
"What?"
"With Eva. In the barn."
Eva… black hair and blue eyes and an… easy disposition. She was like a softer rounder version of Marian, a likeness she jokingly admitted to. She was willing to meet him in the barn. Willing to let him explore her and willing to let him imagine that she was someone else, provided that he showed her magic. Eva loved stars… and he made stars that hung in the rafters above them like bright diamonds, close enough to run her delicate unblemished hands through… tiny comets shooting across the shadows for her delight.
"I heard you. I heard your voice. I… listened. That's… gross. I'm sorry. You sounded so…"
He had wanted it to be her… but it was too much… too close. She was his family… his sister if not his blood. But more than that… more than he could ever really have. She listened to him, to them! He blushed to his ears, embarrassed and angry. At himself and at her.
"It hurt. If it was you, it wouldn't have. You'd never hurt me, Anders."
He didn't reply to that. He silently focused on chasing and eradicating the infection inside of her. He hated Eric. He hated him for taking that from her and for hurting her. He hated himself slightly more for wishing it had been him instead. That it had been him breaking through the membrane inside of her like a ritual, a rite of passage, a blood rite. He'd thought about feeling her clench around him and then ease, adjust, take him inside… seeing it in her face, knowing that it was him… it would always be him. And her.
She would remember nothing of that time in the valley with him.
Later, after she was home and fed and had slept for nearly two days in her own bed, nursed by copious amounts of magic and soup and Malcolm's special-occasion whiskey she would tell him that she could remember tying the belt around her thigh. She remembered trying desperately to stay awake in the snow for what seemed like years. Then... nothing.
She asked him what else had happened. He told her the truth. Mostly. He found her, healed her, and he warmed her. She'd always have a scar from the trap, a brutal looking band that completely encircled her leg just above her ankle. She liked it.
She regretted not getting the bear's skin, but was glad to have her knife back.
Anders would always think that it was better that she didn't really hear him confess anything (I love you) to her or her confession to him. She couldn't remember him holding her naked against the inhuman hot-coal heat of his body. She wouldn't know the way they had fit together, nearly completely.
The trouble was, he knew, that he did. Could. Would.
