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The Other One


VII.

Once, he'd thought to prove to her that he was worthy. It's the first thing he can remember wanting. The only thing.

Carver remembers himself as he was all those years ago, a tumbling bundle of dark hair and scraped elbows, gracelessly long legs and sun-freckled cheeks, chasing after his older sister always a step out of his reach, striving faster, pushing harder, always left behind, always found wanting. And trailing behind him was Bethany, in that careful, thoughtful way she had, small and quiet and unendingly kind; always last and never bothered by it, watching with hazel eyes that saw far too much, ever with a vague, gentle smile on her lips that whispered to him of home. Even now, as the distance of years and loss and death separates them until she's no more than a shadow at dusk, hazy and out of focus, when Carver thinks of home, he thinks of the three of them walking in their line through the pale gold fields of Ferelden, Marian ahead and Bethany behind and him ever caught in the middle, belonging to neither one nor the other.

Now he is last, and there is no one behind him. There is only ahead. Still Marian runs and he follows, blindly and without reason. He thinks his time has finally come to catch her and claim his victory over her, but even now he cannot think what it will mean for them; he does not ever spare a thought for what will come after.

He sits with her until the water grows chill again and she begins to shiver. She has kept her own counsel until now, with naught a word to share with him; she'd drawn her knees up to her chest to rest her chin upon, arms locked about them so tightly that her knuckles have long since turned white. The fire burns low in the grate, the glow catching in her dark eyes and bringing them to life, even as the shadows lengthen along the walls, wavering weakly, threatening to consume them both in darkness.

"Marian," he says, touching her shoulder. She rouses from her daydreaming, blinking back the glassiness in her eyes until she looks at him clearly, focused; she frowns at the sight of him, as if he's the last person she wants to see. It irritates him, that unwelcome reminder, that vulnerable familiarity sweeping over him as the most gentle, intimate of touches. The push and pull of it makes him dizzy, and he looks away. He will not rise to such callous disregard.

"You'll catch your death, you sit there much longer," he says gruffly; he stands, searching for his mislaid indifference.

"You sound like Mother," she says with impassive grace, but the silence that follows falls woefully short of the guilt he finds in her eyes when he looks back to her in surprise that she would say such a thing, when it was she who – "I'm sorry," she says quickly, and she bites her lip, teeth sinking into the flesh so sharply he thinks she might bleed. Perhaps it is only vain hope; the better to prove her mortality, the tragic beating of her hollow heart.

"Do as you please," he says, turning away once more. He wants nothing quite so much as to leave her there, but he has not the will, his desire be damned. He turns his attention to the fireplace, kneeling down, forcing his hands from idleness. He takes logs from the basket to bank the fire anew, and it isn't long before it's blazing again, throwing heat like a demon, writhing as something alive. He hears her rise from the water, and his ears burn as he stares intently into the flames, refusing to turn, to acknowledge her, and yet –

He stands, and braces an arm against the carved stone mantel that rises above him, grand and imposing. He leans all his weight into it, and lets his head hang, his eyes closing with the burden of her presence at his back, dripping water and so very exposed. To his shame, he flinches when her sodden dressing gown hits the floor with a heavy squelching sound, and the knowledge that she stands naked within his reach is almost too much to allow, his fierce and foolish sister, her flesh bared and her blood rushing, her dark hair stuck to her shoulders in long snaking tendrils. The picture in his mind is so clear and so explicit that he would not turn to spoil it with the truth of her, merely his sister, pale and shivering and human after all.

But she is restive, this woman whose flesh is as his own, and she is such a greedy thing, unwilling to allow him his private shame.

"Carver," she says as she steps up beside him, placing fingers like ice on his bare arm.

He whirls on her then, a fury blazing like a thousand stars inside of him. He does not touch her; he fears what will become of them if he does. But he advances, looming over her as she shrinks back. She's wrapped in a drying cloth, tucked under her arms and clutched to her breast, draping down her body as a shroud, clinging here or there to bone and curve. She stands her ground, using her courage as a crutch. Her pride, even in the face of her failings, cuts him to the quick. He would see her cower; he would see her kneel. He does not know if she knows how, vain and prideful creature that she is. He thinks, perhaps, that someone ought show her; yet in that moment, never does it cross his mind that the burden should fall to him.

"Damn you, Marian," he swears, running his hands through his hair, if only to keep from wrapping them around her throat. "What is the matter with you?"

She stares at him blankly; he expects tears, craves them, but is sorely disappointed. Perhaps she has not a tear left to cry after giving them all over to the bathwater, or perhaps he can no longer inspire them in her, as if she's become immune to his disapproval and resentment – and if so, they are a step closer to returning to where they once were, and it bothers him, just how welcome that would be. This uncharted territory of care and concern troubles him deeply.

"This is all so very like you, Carver," she says, shaking her head, refusing to look at him, ever her last defense. "You barge in after three years without a word, making your demands, your accusations. I've lost so much. I have no more to give you." Her voice breaks under the weight of her grief, but her eyes remain dry.

"I've lost all that you have, in case you'd forgotten," he says spitefully, turning away. His eyes go to the fire, the cleansing heat of it washing over his face. He reaches out an arm to the mantel again, fingers splayed against the warm stone. "I lost my father, my mother, my sister. All that remains to me is you."

"How sad for you," she says wearily, but the hint of sarcasm is not lost on him. Even as defeated as she is, she still can't contain that smart mouth. "You act as though these are the paths we have chosen, when they were chosen for us – and yes, I forced the Wardens upon you, I haven't forgotten, no matter what you might think. Mother moaned about it until the day she died, what I'd let happen to you in the Deep Roads."

"That wasn't –" He grits his teeth, and glares at her; she returns his gaze in kind, never faltering. A shout of frustration threatens to tear through him, but he swallows it back, feeling its heaviness caught in his throat, a constant reminder of what she does to him. "That wasn't your bloody fault, Marian."

"I should never have let you go." She sticks her chin out, as stubborn as ever. She'd fight tooth and nail until the end of time to take on all the burdens of the world if it meant she were saving him from a like fate. She'd been that way with Bethany, too, until the very last. Their father had deemed it so.

"And taken all the glory for yourself? Now that does sound like you." He's still angry, and makes no attempt to hide it. "I didn't come all the way to Kirkwall from some flame's forsaken corner of nowhere to dredge up ancient history with you, Marian. What's done is done, do you hear me?" He reaches out and takes her chin in his hand, pinching her firmly with two fingers so she cannot look away. Her eyes burn into his, reflective of the fire he knows has always raged inside of her, a fire that is so much like their father and nothing like their mother. It's the same fire that burns within his own heart, so great and terrible as to consume everything in its path and turn all the world to flame.

It's no wonder they've never gotten on – they've always burned each other with but a single look.

"What's done is done," she mutters after him, twisting her lips as though she cannot bear the taste of the words, the white lie that they are. "Then tell me true, brother: here now as you are, in this moment, are you here for my well-being, or is it your own conscience you've come to clear?"

He opens his mouth in immediate retaliation to her baiting, but words leave him, argument leaves him, and he's left cold and stammering, his hand on her face and her eyes locked to his, dark and demanding. She has always known her strength over him, her sassy and silver tongue running circles around his slow, dim-witted stumblings ever since they were children, and it rankles him now that she would use it to her advantage, testing him so when they are both so very unguarded. She seeks a fight, he knows, that steady, familiar ground on which they both know how to stand. How easy would it be to give her what she wants, when it's the very same thing that he so desires, as well?

Instead, he holds his tongue, the fierce will inside of him that would give his sister her heart's desire, if only to ease their suffering. Instead, he lets his hand slide along her jaw, to sink his fingers into the damp, tangled hair behind her ear, and it's there that he anchors himself, grip tightening until he's certain that it must be painful for her, but never for a moment does even the most fleeting hint of discomfort betray her. She stands as a statue, stands as calm as still water, her head tipped back with the weight of his pulling, staring at him with trusting eyes as he lowers his face dangerously close to hers.

"Can it be both, sister?" he asks, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. There is no menace in him now, only fatigue and defeat. In that, they are the same.

"It's always been both," she responds with a surety born of her place in this world, the eldest, the favourite, and he's left staring into those deep dark eyes that he knows so well, her thick lashes leaving cobwebs of shadow on her cheeks as she blinks up at him, so honest, so presuming, that he's all at once no longer certain of why he came to save her, after all.