Thunder growls through my blissful dreamscape, and I jerk awake with a sharp gasp. Fenris's arm curls tighter over my hips, but other than that he's still—a clear sign the sudden noise has woken him up too. We're still upside-down atop the disheveled covers; I've scooted practically underneath him in an effort to stay warm. "Are you all right, dulca?" he asks softly.

Lightning sparks through the gaps in the blinds, pale blue against the velvet night. I roll over, putting my back to the window. He draws me closer against his chest and tucks my head into the hollow created between his shoulder and the mattress. "Better, now," I answer. "You?"

He shivers involuntarily as thunder claps once, like two mighty hands coming together against an insect. But he presses a smile into my hairline, wandering hands finding all the places where he knows I like to be touched. "Better, now," he offers my words back to me. Sound and light rip through the deceptive raindrop hush, and a fresh shudder courses through him. "Why do they frighten you?"

"Wizard of Oz. You?"

Too late, a crackle of warning shoots up and down my spine. His hands abruptly stop, and somehow a chill slithers into the impossibly tiny space between his skin and mine. I'm torn between retracting the question, and waiting out his sudden, remote silence.

And then, after I've convinced myself he's not going to answer and it won't matter whether or not I tell him to forget I asked, he whispers, "I was—taken—on a night like this. I can't be certain, of course," he adds, Tevinter consonants sharp and curt. "But."

Stupid, stupid, stupid! The one answer I should have anticipated, and it's the only one I didn't. All this time spent away from the ugly, brutal reality of who and what he was even before Kirkwall, let alone here, now. I've managed to bring all that up on the night he finally succeeds in creating a piece of his own freedom.

Damn my pillow talk sucks.

There's probably a graceful way to extract one's entire freaking leg from one's mouth. And it's probably not scrambling out of bed to make a pot of coffee (gently; it's not HIS fault he was a slave and I am tactless). I pull a large hoodie from my closet and tug it over my head, beating an awkward retreat into the kitchen. The light switch clicks between on and off with no response: the power's been knocked out. So much for coffee.

Fenris's silhouette barely causes a ripple in the dark living room, bare feet whispering across the hardwood floor. "I've upset you," he observes quietly.

I hear the question he isn't asking: why are you upset? I start to hate myself a little when I realize he thinks I'm upset with him; apparently I didn't flee gently enough. "It isn't you," I hasten to assure him. Great—now I have to explain. I have to explain how imagining his capture brings tears to my eyes. I have to explain how the thought of a little-boy-Fenris in chains turns my stomach with outrage. I have to explain how I hate—hate—everything he went through.

And after I explain all that, I have to explain how he wouldn't be the man I love without it.

"Erin?"

A snarl of thunder cracks open the night with all the violence of a grenade, and my window for explaining anything is snapped shut. Fenris's markings flash a startled acid blue, muted through the dark fabric of his jeans, and he whips his head toward the square of masking tape still clinging stubbornly to the floor. I sidle closer to him and hesitantly work my fingers between his, trying to shake off the icy squeeze of fear that constricts in my throat. "Fenr—?"

It isn't a sound, exactly. It isn't a feeling, exactly. It isn't even a sensation, exactly. It's a crash and a rip mashed together and played backwards on a broken record that's been taped back together in all the wrong order. It punches through the still air in the living room, leaving an oil slick of wrongness on my skin. There's a moment—that frozen second between the explosion and the shockwave. Then Fenris tears his hand from mine, markings screaming in warning. I clap my palms over my ears as the pressure quickly builds to a level beyond human tolerance. I grit my teeth, a quip on my tongue—can't they just knock?—but unable to force the words past the dull, persistent agony. But this has happened before. This is familiar. I may not particularly enjoy it, but—

Fenris shoves me to the floor, shielding me with his body, as the first missiles streak out of nowhere—literally. Sight and touch are magnified, sound queerly absent as I watch everything happen sideways. Metal legs and feet stomp in rhythmic vibrations over the floor. Fenris scrambles off of me, fists and feet swinging in arcs of beautiful precision. Scooter bays a soundless challenge from the bedroom doorway, looking eerily feral as the ghostly light from Fenris's markings plays over her mottled black-and-blue fur in pulsing waves. Something small and lethal cuts through the air above my head, thick with the sense of time having frozen, and she jerks with the impact. Sound pops abruptly back into focus: the bedroom door bangs against the wall as she topples into it, yelping in fright and pain.

This—this is invasion. I've been invaded.

A feeling like black ice pushing apart pavement solidifies into a purposeful lump in the pit of my stomach. If this is invasion, then this—this must be rage. I tremble with the novelty of it, shaking up off the floor. I pull it onto my arms like opera gloves, all the way to the shoulder; I slide it over my legs like the knee-high stiletto boots that are still in my trunk. My right hand clenches, and I drive it into the closest sneering face.

In the end, it's all just physics. Skin and muscle warp around my knuckles. A fault line of bone-on-bone resists for a brief instant, and then yields in a fantastic tremor of fracture. The slaver's head snaps to one side, momentarily stunned. That's the key to being stronger than you look, I think: just don't look strong. It's a good opening, and I've been taught better than to waste it. I ignore the vulnerable instep; bare feet against boot and greave will not end well for me. I aim my heel at the inside of his knee, instead. He clenches his legs together—all in good time, motherfucker—and wobbles. I change direction, catching his unarmored chin with the ball of my foot. Teeth graze brokenly against my bare sole, and he stumbles backwards. Now. The top of my shin fits neatly into the inverted V of the man's crotch, and the sensation of soft, vulnerable flesh bruising against impervious bone and pure rage is positively intoxicating. Fenris crouches and roughly tugs the sword from the man's limp grasp. He thrusts once; metal grates wetly against metal and blood and bone, and the slaver screams, already dead.

I suppose this is a good time for my innate decency to rear its head in horror. It doesn't. I suppose this would be the moment to have a profound epiphany on the savage dual nature of man (and elf). I don't. I pick my next target—a strangely disembodied helm bent almost double in the cramped space as gauntleted hands turn the winch on a crossbow—and throw another punch. Fenris stabs around me with his pilfered blade and the slaver drops instantly, unmoving.

We do make a good team. How about that. Fenris's markings pulse with light, leaving a thick scent like ice and gunpowder in strange pockets of displaced air. Splashes of dark, wet fluid streak the walls, popping explosively from sacs of flesh as he tears through one assailant after another. He brings the sword close to his face, lip curling in a contemptuous sneer. His eyes lock with mine, and like we've done this innumerable times (instead of, you know, once) we press our backs together in the center of the room. All that's missing is a clever one-liner.

That's my biggest mistake, in retrospect: feeling even remotely optimistic about our chances.

The buzz starts under my back teeth, radiating through my skull and pushing forward until I feel as though I can taste it, vibrating against the roof of my mouth. Light sparks in the center of the fray, roughly level with my chest, and swells to the size of a soccer ball. I choke on the air in my lungs as it burns all the way down; it's like breathing battery acid. Electricity arcs against an invisible membrane, bouncing against the sphere's sides with nowhere to go. Fenris shouts—something at me—what—?

I feel the energy in the ball release, as though the membranes on every cell in my body suddenly burst apart, and my feet leave the ground. So this is what it feels like to be struck by lightning. The force of the explosion propels me through the air; I have no doubt I could fly for miles, unhindered by things like walls and furniture and—

CRAAACK!

I don't think the sound that tears from my throat is precisely human, as I bounce cruelly off the wall close to the ceiling and drop onto the kitchen table. My momentum forces me into a roll, and I land on the pitiless hardwood floor with another horrible crack. I can't see Fenris. I can't breathe. I can't think. I can't decide which is worse.

I brace my elbows against the floor and try to lift myself, chest first. A heavy foot stomps between my shoulder blades, and I scream again as I'm forced back to the ground. I struggle weakly against the extra weight; pain lances through my chest—were those my ribs?—and I slump helplessly.

"No!" Fenris roars above the lethal whistling of blades and arrows. "I will not allow it!"

An almighty rip splits apart the flimsy tapestry of life, time, and space. Fenris drops, blood flowing into his eyes from an ugly-looking wound near his hairline. Rough hands force him down beside me, pressing his cheek into the floor. He snarls wordlessly, shaking against his assailants. A volcanic scowl of hate and fear darkens his features as his gaze lands on something above and behind me. An elaborately-embroidered hem swirls around booted feet between my face and Fenris's. My field of vision begins to collapse inward; voices drift incoherently above my head. The excruciating pressure between my shoulder blades abruptly lifts, and I whimper involuntarily as I am pushed onto my injured side.

Fenris starts an enraged growl; a crunching slap reverberates through my confusion with startling clarity, and he is ominously still. Darkness closes over me like the pages of a book, and I watch the tattooed soles of his feet recede into nothing. Going—going—

Gone.