First time not going in chronological order; this one comes before The Death of Me.
Distraction
"Maker's breath, hold still!" Irene huffed. Kell whined and looked up at her with hurt eyes. "Oh, don't look at me like that, you big baby. I have to get this out, and you know it." Her grip tightened on the mabari's paw as he tried to pull it free.
"What's wrong?" Nathaniel crouched next to her and rested one hand on Kell's head. The mabari gave him a soulful look and whined again as Irene cursed under her breath and flicked her hair out of her eyes.
"His morning exploration ended with a thorn or something stuck in his paw, but every time I almost get it, he moves, or my hair falls in my eyes and I lose it," she explained, tone thick with irritation. "I swear I'm going to chop my hair off short. Well, shortier/i."
"You've been saying that for weeks. One has to wonder if you'll ever make good on it," Nathaniel replied with a quiet chuckle, reaching over to tuck back one of the offending locks. Not that I'd mind if you do.
"I mean it this time," Irene muttered, just as the chin-length brown locks swung forward again, blocking her view. "Andraste's knickerweasels! I give up!"
"Allow me." Nathaniel chuckled and nudged her hand aside.
"Be my guest," the warrior snorted, pushing to her feet and all but storming toward the woods, muttering about borrowing one of Sigrun's daggers.
Kell's muscles flexed as the mabari shifted to follow his mistress, but Nathaniel pressed a staying hand to the dog's shoulder. "She'll be alright. Let's see about getting this out, hm?" He studied the irritated skin on the bottom of Kell's paw, gently probing for whatever was responsible. "I know, boy," he soothed as the mabari whined again. "Just hold still and I'll have it out in a moment."
oOo
The mabari obeyed, miraculously enough, and it only took a few minutes for Nathaniel to dig out the thorn. He headed back toward where they had set up camp, fully expecting to find Irene pacing and mumbling to herself like she usually did when she got frustrated. But the warrior was nowhere to be found. "Where's the Commander?"
Sigrun shrugged. "Got me. She came storming through here, snatched one of my daggers and marched off that way." The dwarf motioned vaguely toward the surrounding trees, just as Irene reappeared. "Great ancestors, what happened to your hair?"
She finally did it. Nathaniel couldn't help but smile at the woman's new haircut, a much shorter, ragged pixie cut that looked good on her. Too good.
"What?" Irene blushed at the stares she was getting from Nathaniel and Sigrun both. "Does it look that horrible?"
"No! I didn't mean it like that!" Sigrun assured her. "It just looks different."
"Good different or bad different?" Irene asked almost hesitantly as she handed back the dagger she'd borrowed.
"Good." The word was past his lips almost before Nathaniel was aware of speaking.
Her face shaded an even darker tone of pink as she looked over at him. "You really like it?" She wasn't asking for a general opinion this time. She was asking him.
"I do," he replied quietly, brushing his fingers through the ragged bangs curling rebelliously against her forehead. "It...seems to suit you."
"Good," Irene murmured, tweaking one of the dangling strands of hair he could never get to stay out of his face.
"Oh, would you two just kiss already? I promise I won't look," Sigrun piped up, a grin plain in her voice as they both sent glares in her direction. "Or did I just ruin the moment?" She looked both gleeful and chagrined at the same time.
Irene sighed, casting a glance at the sky. "We need to be packing up camp, anyway, if we want to make any progress today." She shifted to step back and turn away.
Nathaniel stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "Irene."
"Mm?" She looked at him questioningly.
"You really do look beautiful." He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, ignoring Sigrun's giggles and the low whistle from Anders as the mage happened to return to camp right at that moment.
"Thank you. And thank you for helping with Kell. He can be ornery sometimes."
"Just like his owner." Nathaniel chuckled at the look that earned him. "Irene, you are one of the most stubborn people I've ever met."
She wrinkled her nose at him and muttered under her breath as she stepped back to start packing up the campsite. "Only 'cause you never met yourself."
oOo
The rest of their journey to the Blackmarsh was uneventful, to the point Irene wished something would happen, just because things never stayed this calm for this long around her. It made her jumpy, enough so that when Kell picked up on her tension and nosed her hand she nearly yelped and did jerk away. "Sodding dog, don't startle me like that," she muttered, before raising her voice. "I hear that laugh you're trying to hide, Sigrun."
"I...don't know what you're talking about, Commander," the dwarf giggled, shooting Nathaniel an impish grin behind the leader's back. "Why're you so jumpy anyway?"
"Because, Sigrun, things never stay this calm without something absolutely catastrophic brewing. At least not in my experience. And the longer it takes for chaos to erupt, the worse it is," Irene explained still looking tense as they entered the marsh.
"You know, my father used to tell me stories about this place," Nathaniel commented, scanning their surroundings warily. Mostly to distract himself from staring at Irene, if he was honest. The air seemed to resonate with the echo of a wolf's howl, and the tracking abilities he'd spent years honing were practically screaming at him.
"Do tell," Irene muttered, raking one hand through her hair while the other came to rest on Kell's head.
"He said evil magic killed everyone here." Nathaniel rested one hand against the trunk of gnarled, long-dead tree for balance as he knelt to check the ground for tracks. Sure enough, tell-tale-and rather recent-pawprints marred the soil.
"Nathaniel." Irene's voice carried a note of quiet warning as she rested a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.
The low growl from up ahead answered his question before he could ask it. A pack of blighted wolves crouched over the carcass of some no longer recognizable farm animal, snapping and snarling at each other for scraps of meat.
"Hold, boy," Irene whispered to Kell. She looked at the others, ensuring they were all as ready to fight as the mabari before she reached for the handle of her greatsword. The alpha wolf's head snapped up.
Its howl was cut off by roughly a hundred pounds of muscle and tan fur slamming into it teeth first. Kell took all of three seconds to finish off the wolf before lunging at the nearest of its followers.
Irene had to give a grim smile at the mabari's alacrity dealing with the attacking animals. I knew bringing him was a good idea.
oOo
There were more wolves after the first bunch, all blighted, and all hungry. The few that made the mistake of heading for Irene met their death far more quickly than the rest, either by Kell's teeth or Nathaniel's arrows. She noticed the extra protection the two were giving her and rewarded the mabari by ruffling his ears and the archer with a kiss on the cheek. "You know I can take care of myself, right?" she teased as they reached the tumbled ruins on the outskirts of the old village.
"You've made that abundantly clear by now," Nathaniel replied with a wry smile. "It doesn't mean I'm going to stop."
She laughed at that. "Noted."
"Uh, Commander?"
"What, Anders?" Irene turned to look at the mage. He just pointed to something barely past the rotting gate timbers. "Oh." The group hurried forward to examine the corpse, clearly that of a hurlock. "So there is a darkspawn presence. Kristoff was right about that." She nudged the body with her toe, frowning at the claw marks tearing down the creature's torso. "But what killed it?"
Nathaniel looked at the wounds. "I...don't know. Those look like wolf's claws, but they're far too large."
Something dawned in her eyes as he said that, and she swore under her breath. "Come on. We need to find whatever's responsible." She walked ahead, but had barely taken two steps before something large, dark, and hairy barrelled out of the shadows and slammed into her. Kell was on top of whatever it was a split second later, his claws and teeth tearing at it.
Nathaniel had an arrow nocked and drawn back when a second, nearly identical, dark and hairy something charged from the opposite direction. Considering that Sigrun and Kell were already handling the whatever-it-was attacking Irene, he turned and loosed his arrow toward the new threat. It let out a yelp as the shaft struck it in the neck, the sound trailing into a death howl when Anders nailed it with a lightning spell a few seconds later. Sigrun and Kell finished off the one attacking Irene, who scrambled to her feet. She looked sheepish, dirt clinging to her short hair and powdering her armor, but unscathed.
"Too slow that time, Nate," she teased, feathering her fingers through her hair to dislodge the dirt. Kell licked her hand, giving a small whine. "I'm fine, boy."
"Great ancestors, what are these things?" Sigrun muttered as she kicked the body of the first creature.
"Werewolves. Smaller than the ones I ran into in the Brecilian Forest," Irene replied.
"Smaller?" Sigrun stared at her with wide eyes.
"Mm-hm. Be careful. I doubt that's all of them."
oOo
She was right; they were attacked twice more by the werewolves, and larger groups than the first time. Irene quickly developed an intense hatred for the wiry shadow wolves, which she hadn't seen before here. They had an almost human ability to disguise their presence until they were close enough to strike. That made it near-impossible for Nathaniel or Anders to do anything to injure or slow them down before they were right up in her or Sigrun's face.
Of course, the fact Nathaniel was struggling to keep his attention off Irene and on the surrounding marsh may have been partially responsible for his lack of success. He was grateful she was always looking away whenever he glanced in her direction, as the frequency of those glances would have earned him a lecture at the very least and a lifetime of teasing at the worst.
I'm only human, and she's amazing to watch. That much was true. Irene moved far more gracefully on the battlefield than she ever had off it. You could tell she was more comfortable here; her movements more fluid when she was wearing armor and swinging a sword than they were when she was wearing a dress and dancing her way around politics. Add in that damned distracting new haircut, and she was as much a danger to him as she was to whatever was idiotic enough to attack them.
Case in point, the way he couldn't help it when his eyes drifted off the ominous crags and underbrush and onto her, even as yet another group of werewolves charged out of the gloom. Stop that, he warned himself as he nocked an arrow running almost purely on instinct. You know damned well allowing yourself to get distracted in a place like this is ten times more dangerous than it would normally be. The werewolves' all too familiar howls ricocheted almost eerily off the strange stone pillars as Irene and Kell lunged forward to meet them. Anders and Sigrun both swore as they backed up the warrior, the ring of stones echoing with the chaos of battle. Focus, Nathaniel!
The self-reprimand and Sigrun's warning cry both came too late. Even as he swung around, a blur of dark, greasy fur, wiry muscles, and teeth hurtled from behind one of the standing stones and slammed into him. The shadow wolf's claws were tearing for a good hold before they even hit the ground.
oOo
"Nate!" The shriek ripped free almost of its own accord. That old, familiar fear she hadn't felt since Fort Drakon clamped down hard on Irene as she and Sigrun both abandoned their targets with the single goal to get it off him. "Anders!" she yelled, desperation cracking her voice as she drove her sword into the shadow wolf. Healing spell, now! Nathaniel wasn't moving, and there was so much blood, and she couldn't do this. Not again. Please, Maker, not again. I can't lose him.
Trusting-with great effort-that the healing spell Anders had summoned between lightning bolts would be enough, Irene made herself turn and deal with the remaining werewolves. Her blade interrupted feral snarls from the throats of the last creatures, felling both with one swing. And that's why I love this thing, she smirked darkly as the now-headless bodies fell to the ground.
To her immense relief, when she turned back around Anders was offering Nathaniel a hand up. Thank you, Maker, and thank you, Anders. Completely ignoring the still-warm corpses littering the ground, the gloomy surroundings, the look Anders gave Sigrun, and her own exhaustion, Irene curled her fingers around the first available straps on Nathaniel's more or less ruined armor-"Come here,"-and yanked him into a kiss. Her fingers moved up to dig into his hair as he caught his balance and kept it with a hand braced against her shoulder.
He finally pulled back, feeling the fine tremor that ran through her. "Irene. I'm fine." He brushed his fingers through her bangs, bringing one hand to rest under her chin so he could make her look at him. "I promise."
Her rapid breathing slowed, the look of pure terror fading from her eyes as shaking hands dropped to his chest, tracing the half-healed gashes torn through the center of his armor. "Not yet, you're not." She looked up from the wounds when blood smeared off on her hand. "Anders?"
The healer gave her a tired smile, leaning back against one of the few living trees. "There's only so much I can do at one time, Commander. Give me a minute."
Guilt crashed down on her. "I'm sorry, Anders. I know you have limits. I tend to have a one track mind sometimes." She sighed, suddenly feeling entirely too exhausted herself. "We can take a short break, or even make camp if we need to."
"That's probably a good idea," Sigrun piped up. "We're all tired, and I think it's gettin' late." She shrugged. "Not that you can really tell here."
Irene let out a small laugh. "True. Camp it is."
oO
After they set up camp, Anders finished healing Nathaniel while Irene and Sigrun dug through the packs in search of food.
"Y'know, Commander, I didn't think I'd ever see Nathaniel get blindsided like that," the dwarf commented.
"Same here, and I'd rather not talk about it," Irene replied.
"D'you know why?"
"Why what?" Irene frowned in confusion, tugging out a set of leather armor that would work well enough for Nathaniel until the other set could be repaired.
"Why he didn't notice that thing." Sigrun grinned at her. "He was paying too much attention to you."
Irene felt the heat spread from her neck upwards. "That's silly. Nathaniel never pays more attention to anything than he does surroundings."
"Except you." Sigrun's grin widened. "Hey, I'm just telling you what I saw, Commander."
"I'm going to give this to Nate. You keep looking to see what food you can find." Irene picked up the armor and stood, ignoring the dwarf's giggles. She crossed to sit with Nathaniel, silently noting the way Anders immediately made himself scarce. "This is the next best thing we have. Not as good as yours was, of course, but it'll do the job. I hope." She worried the edges of the leather until Nathaniel covered her hand with his.
"Irene, stop worrying," he chided, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "You're worse than me."
That earned him a smile. "I very much doubt that," Irene chuckled, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. Something creepy-sounding chose that moment to squawk a cry from a non too distant bush, effectively killing the moment. "Maker, I hate this place."
"And this without having your head filled with stories like I did," Nathaniel smiled. "When I was younger, I used to dream of coming here and setting things right." He chuckled. "Little boy dreams."
"Nathaniel, every little boy wants to be a hero." Irene grinned at him. "And some little girls, too."
He thought about that for a moment. "I'd be willing to share the role if you are."
Irene scooted closer. "Deal."