AN: I've updated the rating as of this chapter.

The next day, Marian avoids human company, only briefly checking in on Zevran's progress and then asking Wynne for help with her robes. She just needs some time alone. Last night, talking with Alistair, had been dangerously intimate.

She tries and tries to remind herself that she can't get too close, that there's no room in her plans for emotional attachments to anyone, but she can't make herself regret it. Even her usually well-ordered mind is rebelling.

Marian keeps herself busy with Eamon's library and sleeps restlessly, with dreams she can't remember when she wakes. She tells herself that's a good sign. Now if only she could believe it.

They set out the next morning, picking up Bodahn on the way through Redcliffe Village. He says it'll be about a week to Denerim on the West Road.

The first day is entirely uneventful. Neither Marian nor Alistair are wearing their Warden armor; she's in freshly-laundered Circle robes, and he's wearing plate identical to what Ser Perth and the other knights of Redcliffe wore. Leliana has armor that actually fits her. Clearly Teagan had taken Marian's words to heart. She should probably thank him.

Sten is still wearing borrowed and blood-stained leathers, which are the only thing she's ever seen that's big enough for him to get on. She reminds herself to check for Qunari anything in Denerim. At the very least, they should be able to find something that isn't twelve sizes too small for him – or riddled with holes from the person who'd worn it before, holes Sten had probably put there.

Marian glances at the cart, where she'd directed that Zevran lie for at least the first day. Wynne says that he's more or less fully healed, and he'd do well to get some exercise and fresh air, but Marian isn't sure of him yet. She needs to talk to him in a proper conversation instead of an interrogation. She doesn't know what he could possibly say to ease her doubts, but she has to be willing to let him try, or she may as well have killed him when she had the chance.

When they stop for the night, first Leliana pulls Marian aside to run through her stances and then Bodahn asks for her attention.

"I'm ashamed I didn't think of this the first time we met," he says, digging through a pack he'd had in the depths of his cart. "I suppose I was in a bit of a state, wasn't I?" After several minutes of looking, Bodahn emerges triumphant, waving a brown paper parcel. "Here you are, Warden," he says, and hands it to her.

At his urging, she rips open the paper and pulls out a golden torc, several small earthenware bottles with tight corks, a pile of leather and two gigantic boots, which had been folded down tight to fit.

"What's this?" Marian asks, completely confused.

"Well, you see," Bodahn says, settling in and making himself comfortable. "When my boy and I passed through Lothering, I said to him, it might be that we have something we can offer these poor people, and so we set up shop. It was only for a little while, mind you, because the darkspawn were coming up behind us, but we managed to do a bit of trading anyhow. A rather twitchy fellow offered me that in return for a fair bit of coin. I convinced him to take the supplies he needed instead." He takes the pants and holds them by the waist, allowing them to unfold. "I think these might fit your Qunari friend a fair sight better than what he's wearing at the moment."

He's right. Marian thanks him most gratefully indeed, and makes her way over to Sten.

"Bodahn had this in the back of his cart," she says, holding the parcel out him. "You mentioned that your armor looked something like this. I hope it fits."

Sten gives her the most disinterested, dubious glance she's ever seen from anyone, but he takes the package anyway. He rips open the twine with no more effort than she would give to ripping a piece of paper.

Marian swallows. Sometimes she forgets how strong Sten is.

He pauses when he sees what's inside. "Where did you get these?" he demands, in the first display of actual emotion she's seen from him.

"Bodahn had them lying around, like I said," she says, mystified. "What's wrong? Do you recognize them?"

"They are mine," he answers, rapidly settling back into the stoic, slightly detached expression that he usually wears around the rest of them. "The priestess stripped these things from me when they caged me."

She shouldn't be surprised. This is what her life is now, after all: a series of unfortunate coincidences.

"Then I'm glad I could return them to you," Marian says with a smile. "May I ask what's in those jars?"

Sten regards her for a moment, then seems to make a decision and takes out one of the small jars, daubed with red paint on the side. "They are called vitaar," Sten says. He unfastens his cuirass, navigating the buckles with ease, even one-handed. He strips it off, and the thin undershirt that was all she could find for him, and quickly paints a complicated pattern on his own face and chest with the ease of long practice. He holds his naked arm out to her, and she gently touches his skin, finding it hard as a rock and curiously inflexible; but he obviously has no trouble moving, as he demonstrates when he bends to take the torc and fasten it around his neck.

She has to admit that it suits him far better than the splintmail.

"What is vitaar?" Marian asks, leaning over him to get a better look in the little pot. Then he explains that it's both blood magic and poison, mixed together with his blood, and that it would be death for her to touch it. She leans back again and keeps a wary distance.

Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to make it, nor does she think he'd tell her if he did. She leaves him alone, a little grumpy, and goes over to Zevran, who is lounging by the fire and trying to provoke Leliana into conversation.

Marian takes her staff from its hooks on her back and sits cross-legged on the ground, watching them bicker. Then she starts to feel badly about leaving Leliana to her own devices and intervenes.

"Zevran, may I have a word?" she asks.

"Of a certainty," Zevran says, sitting upright. "Duty calls, cara," he says to Leliana in farewell, and she rolls her eyes theatrically at Marian before she stands and walks away.

They're alone by the fire, but Marian can see what Zevran cannot; Alistair is by one of the tents behind him, pretending to grind a nick out of the edge of his sword. She can tell he's watching Zevran. She's safe as houses.

Zevran watches her, an amused smile playing around his mouth, waiting for her to speak. "May I ask you about the Crows?" Marian asks.

"Of course," Zevran says with perfect courtesy, but that's all that he says, forcing her to lead the conversation. It's a cheap trick that nonetheless succeeds in irritating her.

"Why did you want to leave the Crows, exactly?" she asks, her eyebrows arched.

"Ah, well now," Zevran says, leaning forward with a smile. "I imagine that's a very fair question. Being an assassin, after all, is a living, at least as far as such things go." He shrugs. "I was simply never given the opportunity to choose another way. So if that choice presents itself, why should I not seize upon it?"

Marian tilts her head, considering him carefully. "You said you were bought on the slave market when you were a child?"

"Oh, yes," Zevran says, his eyes far away. "I was but a boy of seven when I was purchased. For three sovereigns, I'm told." He comes back to the present with a shake of his head and shrugs at her. "Which is a good price, considering I was all ribs and bone and didn't know the pommel of a dagger from the pointy end. The Crows buy all their assassins that way. Buy them young, raise them to know nothing else but murder. And if you do poorly in your training, you die."

It hits a little closer to home than she wants it to. Oh, not the slavery – she has no real basis of comparison there and she knows it. But the Circle was clearly working off of the same model as the Crows.

Or is she being overly empathetic again? She hadn't let the fear twist her the way it had some of her fellow apprentices, who had gone wrong in all sorts of interesting ways, but oh, she understands the impulse. What was it like for Zevran? How did he react to it? These are the kind of things she wishes to know, and he clearly has no intention of being that vulnerable anytime soon.

She ought to leave him to his devices and carry on, try again later. But she won't, because when he made her an oath, she accepted it, and whether he knows it or not, she owes him certain things in return.

In any case, it's too late to dump him in a giant spider cave. She's half afraid he'd try to flirt his way out of it – and succeed.

He sounds bitter, though, more so than she expected. Can she work with that? A trusty assassin would be a formidable fighting companion.

"You must have done quite well in your training, then," Marian says, careful to be as neutral as possible.

"As I am sitting here, you mean? Yes, quite well," Zevran says, smiling. "We compete against our fellow assassins, and those who survive are rightfully proud of it. I know I am." Marian's suspicious, and Zevran raises his eyebrows at her. "You doubt me? In Antiva, being a Crow gets you respect. It gets you wealth. It gets you women... and men, or whatever it is you might fancy," he says with a knowing smirk. Then it fades. His expressions are all over the map – now lecherous, now bleak, now serious and thoughtful. "But that does mean doing what is expected of you, always. And it means being expendable. It's a cage, if a gilded cage. Pretty, but confining."

"Sometimes you just want to make your own decisions," Marian murmurs.

"I see you understand," Zevran says. He's looking at her, but she can't read his blank face this time. Is he acting now, or was he acting before when he'd had visible feelings? Or, more to the point, does he ever stop acting? "I thought you might."

She hadn't considered the fact that trying to provoke him into an honest vulnerability might require exposing herself as well. Can she handle that? Is he worth it?

Why is he telling her this? If it's a story, what does he gain? Her sympathy, of course, but what else? Anyone with eyes can see that her sympathy is had as easily as falling off a log.

Maker, her head hurts. She's so glad she'd never had to put her politicking lessons to use in the Circle. She would have exploded.

"I left the Crows to pursue my own future," he says after a while, staring into the fire. "Of course, that's presuming that there is one... But doing what? There's the question." He looks up at her. She can see the firelight flickering behind his eyes, and wonders if that's her imagination or perhaps something elvish. "It might be interesting to go into business for myself, for a change. Far away from Antiva, of course..." He dismisses that thought with a brisk shake of his head. "But for now, naturally, I go where you go." He grins at her, sudden and blinding. "Come, now; enough chit-chat. Talking about the Crows summons them, you know. Any Antivan fishwife could tell you so."

Marian stays where she is and watches Zevran get up and walk away; part of her is checking for any lingering weakness in his stride, and part of her is wondering what to make of him. They can't afford to keep him a prisoner much longer; not only does it deprive them of the potential benefits he may bring to the table, it uses an additional resource to keep him guarded.

"Everything all right?" Alistair asks, a little anxious, and Marian nods. She hadn't noticed him come over, but she's apparently grown used to the way he can sneak up on her, and she's grateful that she's stopped having fits every time he does it.

"I'm still not sure what to do about him," Marian says, tipping her head at Zevran's retreating back.

"I can take first watch, at the very least," Alistair offers.

"And Sten for second?" Marian asks, and when he nods she pushes herself to her feet. "Thanks, Alistair," she says, smiling at him before she goes to find Sten and tell him the good news.

The next day is more exciting; they're ambushed by bandits early in the morning, and Marian nearly loses a chunk out of her shoulder to a particularly cunning and stealthy rogue. Wynne heals her well enough to get back on the road, but wounds of this nature require rest and care, two things they can't afford at this precise moment.

Later that day, they top a rise that looks out over Lothering. Or rather, what remains of Lothering. The darkspawn horde has burnt it to the ground and sown blighted, black seeds of the taint in the soil. There is no movement anywhere, neither birds nor bees, not even the smallest blade of grass moving in the wind.

There is silence for a long moment before Marian says, "Let's go around."

As they help Bodahn shift the cart off the road, as they begin the long, backbreaking work of trudging through damp and grassy sod, as they skirt Lothering at such a distance that they can't even smell the smoke anymore, she still can't keep her eyes away from the place that used to be her mother's home, so far away that the tiny river that used to flow through Lothering is just a speck. Please, Maker, she begs. Please.

But there is no answer, and she knows there never will be an answer. The Maker has turned His gaze from His children, and here is the proof.

The only warning she gets is a sudden roil of nausea in her gut. No, it's not in her gut – it is, but it isn't, but – What is wrong with her?

"There's darkspawn ahead," Alistair says at the same moment, drawing his sword. Then he snaps his head to the side, as if he's listening to something she can't hear. "And to the right. They're trying to box us in."

"Bodahn, get out of here!" Marian cries, and Bodahn slaps the reins across the oxen's backs, urging them to greater speed. The darkspawn draw nearer and nearer, running at impossible speeds, and she watches Bodahn anxiously, willing him to get away. She sets three darkspawn on fire who thought the cart would be an easy target and they turn on her, hissing.

They're outnumbered at least three to one, but Sten has already taken the head off of one of the three darkspawn he's fighting at the same time, and Marian takes a deep breath and sets to her work.

The battle goes well enough until Cú's drawn out of position behind her and she's too busy frying a genlock to notice that her back is unguarded. Zevran throws himself at her, and she dodges him, bringing her staff around – Really? He's going to try this now? – but he's fighting another darkspawn, striking with hands and feet and knees, and it takes her a shocked second to realize what's going on and finish the thing off with an ice spell.

"How did you ever manage without me?" he says, smirking at her.

Marian makes a split-second decision, drawing her dagger and tossing it to Zevran, hilt-first. "Make yourself useful," she snaps at him, her eyebrows raised. "There's work to be done."

"At your command, bellissima," Zevran says with a bow, and disappears before she can do more than glare.

When the darkspawn are dead, Alistair and Marian check their companions over for bites and scratches before she sends them on after Bodahn. The bodies must be burnt, and as Grey Wardens, they're the only ones who can do it safely.

They can't do anything about the smell, though. Marian holds the fire spell as hot as she can and as long as she can, and when they're smoldering sluggishly, she and Alistair retreat upwind to wait.

"I felt them," she says eventually. "The darkspawn. Like you said, like a sickness in my mind." She can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn't want to look at him and show him her weakness.

"Are you all right?"

Marian shrugs. "My shoulder aches a bit," she says, deliberately misunderstanding him.

"Funny," Alistair says, dry and sarcastic. After a moment, his hand settles on her undamaged shoulder, huge against her skinny build, heavy with his gauntlet, supportive and bracing. "Welcome to the Grey Wardens," he says softly.

They stand there for hours, until the darkspawn are nothing but a huge pile of oily ashes, and then they set out to rejoin the others.

Her companions have made camp by the time Marian and Alistair finally trudge in. Wynne has a kettle of hot water waiting for them so they can wash the darkspawn blood from their skin, and then their armor. By the time they're finished, Marian is starving, and so is Alistair, by the wistful glances he's aiming at the stewpot. She waves him away to eat, and instead of following him, she sits down next to Zevran, who is sitting on a log conveniently near the fire.

He could have let that darkspawn attack her. He could have stayed out of the battle entirely. None of them would have faulted him, especially unarmed against darkspawn.

She still can't make herself trust him. She's not that good at managing her emotions. But it's time she offered him the outward trappings of trust.

That doesn't mean they won't be wary.

"Thank you, Zevran," Marian says. She's sincere in her gratitude. She hopes he can hear that.

He inclines his head, smiling at her, and then he offers her the dagger she'd taken from her belt. She takes it – it is hers, after all, and she's fond of it. In its place, she offers him two daggers she'd picked up off the bandits this morning. She remembers quite well Zevran's ambush on the road, and he'd been fighting with two daggers at the time. These are not those daggers – she's not sure where they've got to – but these should do as well.

Zevran doesn't take them immediately. He watches her instead, like he's looking for the trap. After a moment of this, she raises her eyebrows at him, and he relaxes with a laugh, taking the daggers. "So I'm no longer a threat?" he says, as if that's patently ridiculous.

It is, of course.

"No," Marian says, and she's rewarded for her honesty with a smile, half-hidden as he glances away. "But it's foolish to pretend that our lives are safe. You need to be able to protect yourself. We can't afford to do it for you."

"I rather thought I was the one protecting you earlier," he says, stung.

Marian keeps her face as still as she can, but she suspects her amusement is not as well hidden as she'd like it to be.

Zevran sighs theatrically. "Cruel woman," he accuses her, and she grins sharp and wicked before getting up to lay claim to her share of food before Alistair eats it all.

As they travel east, away from blighted Lothering, there are more and more people on the road: merchants, soldiers, farmers and refugees, and all of them take a second look at the strange sight Marian and her party presents. Most of them are looking at Sten. She wouldn't be surprised if he were the first Qunari to be seen in Ferelden in living memory. Marian, Wynne, and Morrigan attract their fair share of attention, too, and it's not kind. People are scared, and mages are easy to blame for nearly anything.

Even so, some people aren't too choosy about their dinner companions, and by the time they approach South Reach, they're regularly sharing that night's campsite, usually with a merchant party. Marian lets Bodahn do the talking, as he seems to be good at it, and she's satisfied with the results. He swaps stories with the other merchants like a professional. She comes to rely on his reading of the people they meet more and more. How is she so lucky in her friends?

As the days go by, her lessons with Leliana are finally starting to come easier. She's not making Leliana laugh anymore, at least, and she doesn't think that's from kindness alone. They work on her balance, on her awareness of what's going on around her, and she can already see a difference in the way she stands, in her muscles, even in the way she looks at the world. She's so sore every night, on top of aching legs from all the walking, but Wynne is always handy with a rejuvenation spell. She's always handy with a lecture, too, but that's both familiar and comforting, a memory of an earlier time.

She knows the others watch her and Leliana practice knifefighting – she can hear Zevran laughing when she takes a spill – but lately Alistair watches her all the time, playing with Cú, talking enchantment with Sandal, even when she's comparing magic notes with Morrigan. She can feel his eyes on her in the little hairs on the back of her neck. But when she turns to look at him, he's always doing something else with the kind of determined air that discourages any questions.

He might be extra vigilant right now because of Zevran, and if that's all it is, then his strange behavior at least makes sense. But... maybe that's not all it is.

Marian cuts off that train of thought before she falls even further into madness. Alistair does not have a thing for her. He's just protective, and they're friends, and that's all there is to it.

And if sometimes she pretends otherwise when she's all alone at night in her tent, then... well, he's not the first friend she's fantasized about with her fingers between her thighs, and it harms no one but herself. Even if it's hard to look at him afterward. Even if it makes her wonder what he looks like under all that armor, whether that smooth golden skin goes all the way down. She's strong. She can deal with it.

Right?

There's a campground several miles from Denerim where the larger merchants leave the parts of their caravans that don't need to come into the city, Bodahn tells her. It's far enough, she decides, and they rent a small space in the back. She leaves most of her party there, except for Leliana, Alistair, whose sister Marian has not forgotten, and Cú, who is reluctant to be parted from her.

The roads to Denerim are crowded, and it takes over an hour to walk the miles to the city gates, but for once she doesn't begrudge the time – she's never seen anything like Denerim. The walls stretch for miles, and people have lived against the outside walls for so long that there are real houses built up against the walls, with little dirt roads winding between them. Marian even sees a pub as they draw closer.

And there are so many people! The crowd throngs tightly as they move closer to the gates, packing in so that they can go through, and Marian hugs herself to keep her arms away from strangers. Marian's beginning to feel a bit sheltered, like a country bumpkin, and more than a bit panicky. She's never been around this many people at once, or in a crowd of people she doesn't know, and suddenly she doesn't want to be touched, not by anyone.

She drops one hand to Cú's back and something about the tension in her fingers must alert him, because he starts to growl, a deep, nearly inaudible growl that makes people give him a few precious inches of space. With that space comes room to breathe.

The guards aren't actually stopping anyone, just looking them over – for what she can't begin to guess, because the obvious answer of weapons is clearly incorrect, watching three mercenary groups pass without a word – and Marian and her friends pass through the giant gate and into the city.

The crowd starts to disperse almost at once, streams of people splitting off in every direction, and Marian draws up against a building and looks around, a little wildly. It's easy to say they'll go to Denerim and find Brother Genitivi, but now that they're here, she's no idea how to find anyone in this morass.

When she says so out loud, Leliana takes her arm, linking their elbows together, and gently draws her back into the street, where the majority of the crowd is moving straight as an arrow toward the center of the city. Alistair and Cú follow, Alistair talking to C, though the noise of the crowd drowns him out. She wonders what he's saying. "Someone in the merchant district will know where to find him," Leliana says to her, drawing Marian's attention. "All we have to do is ask."

Leliana seems to know where she's going, so Marian allows her to lead. Leliana keeps her arm, patting it absently, pointing out interesting things on the way. The crowds shrink as they go, and soon, Marian is better. Embarrassed, but better. She'd just... she'd never really thought about how many people there might be, and how it might feel to have all of those strangers in her personal space, that's all. And then she'd had a totally minor and completely mortifying panic attack.

Cú presses against her leg as they walk, and she feels better. At least one person isn't going to judge her; oh, not that Alistair and Leliana will judge her, exactly, but she wishes she hadn't reacted the way she had. She doesn't want them to think she's weak.

Marian slides her fingers under Cú's collar and holds tight to his fur.

The market district is a huge, wide-open space on the north side of the city, and finally there's a little room to breathe and space to stop and think about what to do next. The people keep coming and going, though, an ever-shifting sea of dwarves and humans and elves, with everyone focused on their business, their tasks. Many of them don't even look around.

There's a huge Chantry to her left, and Marian points it out. Leliana nods, and Alistair uses his huge shoulders to cut a path through the torrent of people; it's easy to follow along after him, like baby ducks following their mother.

The Revered Mother is happy to help them along their way – for a small donation, of course – and directs them to a small house a few blocks away on the other side of the market square. Alistair leads the way again, and again it's easier to get through the crowd; it's hard not to think of him as protecting her, not when her shadow could fit itself inside his with room to spare, when there's concern in his eyes when he glances over his shoulder at her.

Stop it, she orders herself.

Genitivi's house is small, unassuming, set in a row of up-and-down houses, all exactly alike. Luckily, their directions are good, and Alistair knocks on what Marian is almost sure is the right door.

And then they wait. And wait, and wait. Marian knocks again at the door, but still there's no answer, and she glances at Alistair and Leliana before she shrugs and tries the latch. It's not locked, and she nudges the door open, calling Brother Genitivi's name. No one answers until they actually walk into the house itself and a young man stops them in the front hall.

Marian wishes she could say that Weylon struck her as odd straight off – in retrospect, he had been rather odd, twitchy and white while they're talking, looking around as if for help when she asks him basic questions – but instead she takes him at his word and grills him for information about the missing Genitivi, and about the man himself and his research.

She doesn't notice anything strange until Weylon directly contradicts himself inside of two sentences. She presses him then, suddenly suspicious, narrowing her eyes, and questions him until he suddenly snarls at her and lunges forward, his hands reaching for her neck.

He's unarmed and unarmored. They put him down inside of twenty seconds and Marian's left staring at a body on the floor.

"What was that?" she asks no one in particular.

They search the house thoroughly and find the desiccated remains of another body in the back bedroom, one that by the smell had clearly been there for weeks. Marian pinches her nose and goes only so close as she has to in order to reach the journals sitting stacked by the body. She backs away, looking at the body all the while, and says a prayer for his soul before turning away.

"I want to look through these before we go," Marian says to Alistair and Leliana. "There might be something here we need – a map, or notes, or anything."

Leliana offers to take one of the notebooks, and Marian agrees, leaving poor Alistair to deal with the bodies. She offers him a rueful smile, one he returns, before finding a room with a chair to sit in. She searches the journal closely, but it's only Genitivi's research assistant's journal. His name had been Weylon, but he's nothing like the man she'd met in the hallway. The man they'd killed must have been an imposter. Who would do something like this? And why? It all seems so senseless.

Marian lifts her head from the book, taking a deep breath to seat herself solidly in the real world, and Leliana looks up at the sound. "Have you found something?"

"Nothing that will help us," Marian says, frowning. She puts the book down.

"This one is Genitivi's research notes," Leliana says, passing it over. "You may find something I have not. I can help Alistair dispose of the bodies."

Marian smiles gratefully. Leliana smiles back and leaves Marian to her work. This is something she's truly good at, and she's become painfully aware this past month of just how many things don't fall into that category. It feels good to really be able to contribute something beyond the ability to actually make a decision, something others seem to lack.

She turns the pages quickly until she finds the place where Genitivi's theoretical research starts to intersect with the real world. Harvard the Aegis left Tevinter with Andraste's ashes and brought them home, to the places of the Alamarri. Genitivi had studied Andraste's Birth Rock closely, both the one here in Denerim and one planted in Jader, and had painstakingly traced Harvard's path through Orlais and into Ferelden.

The last page is a sketchy map of Ferelden. Someone has made a mark in the lower reaches of the Frostbacks, and there's writing next to it in a large, messy hand: HAVEN?

Marian frowns, digging in her pack for her own map. Comparing the two, she quickly finds the spot marked on Genitivi's map, but there's nothing there on hers. That doesn't mean too much, of course; there are a lot of tiny villages that no one's ever heard of. Most of them aren't even big enough to have names.

It's a lead, at least, and that's what they needed. She folds up her map and closes the journal, thinking hard as she does. She'd been playing along, for the most part. She doesn't believe in the legends about the Urn of Andraste, or that it even exists anymore, if it ever did. But someone thought it important to divert anyone looking for Genitivi to what she's quite sure was a well-prepared ambush; important enough to kill, to leave an imposter here just in case anyone else came looking. Might that mean they know something she doesn't?

It's a good question, but one she won't be able to answer without more information, she decides, sweeping everything into her pack and standing. It's time to go, before the watch decides to investigate the smell.