She went back to her study with her arms folded fiercely over her chest, a terrible cold settling into her body, into her bones. She could have a pot of tea brought up to warm her but the brief interaction required to ask for it - or even to say hello to her kitchen crew if she were to make it herself - seemed like far more than was worth the effort. Her lungs felt squeezed; the very idea of speaking threatened her. She wanted to be alone somewhere, somewhere quiet and dark and -

Was this it? Was this what it was like when The Calling pushed into her waking thoughts? She heard no mysterious voices, felt no threatening tug. She only felt like her heart was pounding too hard, like her voice would not work if she tried.

Her feet took her to her table, clear now of the dinner she had shared with Anders. She wondered if he were still resting. She wondered if he dreamed.

Finding the flint on her desk and lighting a single sturdy candle, Mahariel approached her bedroom door, slowly and slower still as she quietly became afraid of what she might see in her bed. She herself had such terrible nightmares, waking her up in a cold sweat, sheets twisted around her body, strangling her limbs, if she had not managed to toss them all together to the floor. She didn't know if she screamed or called out but she feared she might, feared too that she might contort into some horrible unbidden shape. When she woke up she was always sore.

But she listened, a few feet away from the door, and heard only silence. Reaching out, she twisted the knob and pulled the door ajar.

In the dim light of the candle, Anders face seemed almost serene. The pits of his eyes were exaggerated by the flickering illumination, the hollows of his cheeks looked deeper than ever. But he seemed to sleep soundly, covered up to his chin, one hand pressed beneath his cheek while he lay on his side. The covers rose and fell subtly but definitely with the motion of his breath.

An audible exhalation escaped Mahariel's chest, full of relief. She set the candle down on her nightstand, thin rivulets of wax already beginning to pool in the candleholder. Stripping down to her soft white shift, she slipped into bed beside the sleeping mage. He stirred gently but did not wake, not when she pushed soft amber hair away from his cheeks nor when wrapped a thin, strong arm around his waist. In the dim light, Mahariel saw the man she knew. She touched her nose to his, breathing his breath, and let herself fall asleep.

It was Anders who awoke first in the hazy grey morning, a thin sweat of panic broken out on his forehead. Something inside him told him dawn was breaking, and he had to start moving, get up, get going, they might be behind you -

And then he recognized the bedsheets, the robes (had he been too tired to undress himself? Of course he had, and his hands were still curved like claws), the sleeping figure beside him.

And he noticed a thin blue light receding from his own body. Woefully, he pressed his eyelids shut.

Justice.

He cursed to himself.

He could not deny that very much of what had kept him alive between Kirkwall and the Keep was Justice. Anders thought himself paranoid but the spirit within him had clued him into threats, whether direct or indirect, that Anders would never have seen, never have heard, until it was too last. Unfortunately, Justice saw all threats as punishable violations. At first, Anders was strong enough to fight the spirit back down inside of himself, or reason with it in the cases when it seemed like reasoning was in order. They were running, he would tell himself, they couldn't just go around slaughtering travellers who had not yet caught sight of them because they might be recognized, or might meet up farther down on the road. All they had to do was leave the road and they were safe.

That was at first.

After speaking internally no longer worked, Anders tried saying it out loud. The grimness of the situation was not lost on him - a lone mage, persecuted for what most people would see as an irrational, violent action, was now wandering, running, speaking to the creature that inhabited him; if he were not the abomination everyone thought him, surely he was mad.

And then Anders body grew weaker, his mind became more tired, more weary from the Blight, Justice became restless within his weakened host, and Anders could not stop him. He would lose periods of hours, sometimes days; he would feel like he was fainting and would come to later with only a vague recollection of what he had done. The shorter the outburst, the more he remembered, but there were times when he would try to fix his new location and find he had travelled miles, or dozens of miles, and almost always in the right direction, but with no memory of the terrain between. He would regain his senses exhausted, paralyzed by thirst, whispers hustling his memories and whether they were remnants of Justice as he faded back into submission or the Calling breaking through his weakened mental faculties, Anders couldn't say. He would crawl on hands and knees to drink from whatever filthy stream he could find; eat bruised and rotten fruit from the bases of trees he would then sleep under.

If he had been able to take a ship, it would have taken him weeks. A month, at most.

But even if he could find safe passage on a ship with people who either were too ignorant to know his face (unlikely at best) or with people who shared his sympathies (almost as unlikely), the odds of everyone else aboard the vessel tolerating him, or of him being able to hide for the length of such a voyage - well, there were two many variables. He could trust his own two feet, even if it meant travelling half of Thedas to do it.

The problem was that there were two other feet that had different ideas.

Anders pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, pushed his fingers back into his hair. He'd lost the small ribbon that Mahariel had given him somewhere in the sheets, and his newly-shorn hair hung about his ears and chin. Letting his hands rest on the back of his neck, he tried only to breath. He felt his thinness. His chin and nose seemed over-sharp, his lips drawn and dry. But the resting creature beside him had taken him in - again - and cleaned him up and filled his belly and saved his life. He didn't know how many times over he owed her, owed her his life, really, but he knew that with the blackness that gilded his skin he would never be able to return the favors. She knew it, too; couldn't not know it. And still she lie next to him, fast asleep.

He wanted to wake her. Wanted to tell her this. Instead, he leaned back against the headboard, tucked the pillow under the small of his back, and rested, still as he could be, quieting his thoughts before the rising of the sun.