A/N: Thank you to Leomonta for beta-ing.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except Rana.

The front door was not supposed to be locked. Sebastian frowned. They'd made arrangements to meet after morning prayer, after all, it wasn't as though he wasn't expected. He knocked again.

Nothing. Of course, there was nothing.

He fished a key out of his pouch and made for the servants' entrance. Fenris usually kept a shutter pried loose, for escape purposes, but he wasn't about to climb through a window in his armor, especially this early in the morning. He closed the door behind him and listened.

Silence. Hm.

He unsheathed his dagger, stood in the atrium. If there were slavers, the door would've been broken in, aye? There would be signs of a struggle. He took the stairs two at a time. "Fenris?"

Drooling in his armchair and cocooned in a blanket wasn't what he'd expected to find.

He crossed the room to him. "Fenris?" No reaction. That wasn't right. Fenris was a notoriously light sleeper. He tapped his friend's foot. "Fenris?"

"Hn."

Sebastian pinched the bridge of his nose. What'd happened? Wha—ah. He picked up the bottle from the table and squinted—Fenris' room never got the light in the morning. 'PAIN,' the bottle said in a sure script. Pain tinctures. He'd probably taken too much again, silly elf. He heaved a sigh and went downstairs to the library. Perhaps, if he was lucky, Fenris would wake up soon, and they'd sort Rana out. Hopefully.

The morning had come and gone, he'd attended midday prayer service, and Fenris was still dead to the world. His charge wasn't that different: she'd barely stirred when he'd entered their quarters. Had they both taken that vile stuff?

"Right," Sebastian muttered to himself, "best make yerself useful."

He checked his friend's stock of food: a hunk of bread and cheese, barely enough for a meal. He checked the laundry room to find Fenris' armor on the chair, where he'd left it. He must have been more pained than Sebastian had realized, if he hadn't cleaned his armor. He was a stickler for such a thing.

Not like ye have anything better to do, aye?

Sebastian could list a hundred things he'd prefer over 'scraping old blood off with vinegar-sand.' The stuff turned his stomach, but his friend needed him, and Fenris had always been there for him in the past. It took naught but an hour to cover everything. By that time, he was hungry and positively batty from staying inside all day. He needed to get out. He needed to move. He needed—

He needed to get to market before afternoon prayer, actually.

"Shh! Lift up yer end."

If someone had asked Sebastian what he'd planned on doing that day, he would've had several answers. None of those included 'hauling a spare bed into his friend's room with a blood witch.'

He'd considered it good fortune to have met Merrill at market. He'd explained his purpose, expressed his concern over Rana, and she'd sensibly pointed out there was no way they'd find the girl a position that afternoon. She'd have to stay another day, until they could come up with a plan. None of the other bedrooms in Fenris' house were habitable.

Hence his and Merrill's current task. Rana had, thankfully, already risen. She remembered them from last night, and while she couldn't speak, she'd helped put away the food. He and Merrill had to wash down the kitchen and larder first, because Fenris never cooked. Ever. Sebastian seriously doubted the elf even knew how.

"Merrill?" She was guiding the bed back towards the wall. "Merrill, do ye smell something burning?"

"No." Weren't elves' senses of smell superior to humans? "Oh. Wait, I…no."

This didn't seem right, not at all. Not at—Sweet Andraste, there was smoke in the atrium. They skidded into the kitchen to find Rana attempting to cook.

"Avete," she said. She collected the rest of the charred bread and plopped it on the plate. There was a ring of bowls and cutting boards around her. Far too many to be practical. She dumped the chopped lettuce into the largest bowl, along with the herbs. Fenris would be annoyed she'd picked all his purslane without permission.

"How did ye," Sebastian pointed to the hearth.

She nodded to the broken crate in the corner and waved the flint. Ah. Resourceful. She brought the heel of her hand down on her knife. Bits or garlic and papery skin went airborne. She chopped and peeled until she had enough garlic for a small army.

"What is going on here?" There was Fenris, blanket trailing behind, hair standing on end. Rather indignant. "I smelled smoke."

"Ya Fenris, ave," the girl replied with a smile. The elf's face softened. "Esurisne?" She pursed her fingers together and brought her hand to her mouth, pointing to him. He nodded. She gestured to the rest of them.

"She wants to know if you're hungry. And I want to know what's going on."

He tried. Oh, how Sebastian tried to explain before Merrill opened her big mouth. His friend's brows drew together and refused to come apart. He thought the scowl would never go away.

"You invited everyone over without my permission?"

Sebastian gulped and nodded.

"And you were going to tell me…when?"

"I-I was just about to wake ye. I swear."

The conversation abruptly ended when Fenris tossed his blanket on the chair and rolled his sleeves, asking Rana questions in that undulating tongue of theirs. Sebastian picked his jaw up from the floor and shoved Merrill out into the hall.

"…Did he just offer to cook with her," she asked.

He crossed the atrium to the seldom, if ever, used dining room. "Aye, I do believe he did."

Who was this, and what had they done with Fenris?

Rana and Fenris made more salad. It was literally the only thing she could make, salad, so they improvised with finger foods.

"Meze," she said with a smile, surveying the table. "It is a meze."

Fenris assumed that meant 'dinner party.' Somehow, salad, toppings, and toast impressed everyone. It was the small bowls, he decided. People thought you'd spent hours over food, if you'd put it in lots of small bowls. Even Marian was impressed.

"Well, seems she's good for something," she said. "We can send her to a kitchen."

"Not for at least a fortnight," the Abomination replied. "Her skull's broken."

What? Sebastian had failed to mention that. 'What in the Void,' Fenris' eyes asked Sebastian over his toast. The man looked sheepish. Fenris drowned his annoyance in his wine.

There was more banter, back and forth about what they should do with her. 'Bakery,' 'laundry house,' 'tailor shop.' As the girl could neither bake, wash, nor sew, they were quickly abandoned.

"They might take her at the Chantry," Sebastian said. "She'd be welcome there."

"A Northern 'infidel' in the Chantry? No," Fenris replied.

Rana cleared the table of the plates and brought them into the kitchen, leaving the others to their debate. They wracked their brains. Where could they send her? Where—

Floating, effortless notes like spun silver drifted in from across the atrium. Freefalling, like a autumn leaf. The table fell silent. They collectively got up from their seats and rushed across the atrium to the kitchen.

"You can sing," Fenris exclaimed in surprise. The others agreed. Rana yelped and blinked at them, wide eyed. "Would the Hanged Man want her, Varric?"

The dwarf shrugged. "I'll talk to the barkeep."

Fenris nodded thanks, translating questions as well as he could for her. While she couldn't answer many of them, she indulged every request for another song.

He'd never thought, in all his years, he'd share a house with a bard. A bard who…couldn't play a lute. She couldn't even hold it correctly, poor thing. Was she even a real bard, if she couldn't play a lute?

Does it matter? Her voice could make angels weep. The way her eyes lit up when she sang made him smile.

"Why am I here, again?"

Fenris and Isabela browsed the fabric stalls in Hightown. None of the clothes Fenris had found at the house fit Rana. That was terribly annoying to find out, after washing them all. As was his duty as a host, he set out to procure clothes for his guest. Isabela did not appreciate being brought into it, however. She was very busy finding a crew for her newest sea voyage to the north, and had no time for such 'nonsense,' as she called it.

He frowned at a horrible orange calico. "Because. You're the only other," his face went hot, "you know." He waved his hands near his chest. "Erm… 'Well-endowed' woman I know."

Isabela smirked. "She's perfectly capable of dressing herself."

"Two words: slaver bait." She mocked him under her breath. "Come on, you're getting a new hat out of it." He considered some sort of…green-blue cotton? How would he know what Rana would want? The girl literally only wore black. And it wasn't as though he had a lot to choose from: thanks to his and Isabela's darker complexions, they'd been relegated to the back of the stall, filled every nightmarish pattern and shade imaginable. Even the black was faded beyond saving.

"…Wouldn't she need to be here to try things on," Isabela asked, passing over a bolt of so-old-it-turned-yellowish white wool.

Oh.

Ohhhh.

He hadn't thought of that. He'd remembered 'broken skull,' and had left it at that.

"Maker, you're hopeless." He hurried after her towards the house, to fetch Rana. "…Two hats. With really big feathers in them."

"Two h—" She narrowed her eyes at him, "t-two hats."

This was not going as he'd expected.

Rana allowed the pirate captain to manhandle her into an Orlesian silk corset—he cringed at the price, but as Isabela said, 'quality lasts.' She suffered through Isabela tugging down chemise necklines, and blushed when the woman held up a pair of frilly underclothes sheer enough to see through.

Important questions, like 'is that too tight,' or 'can you breathe,' had to be asked, he just… He saw a lot more of Rana than he'd bargained for, considering she was in naught but a chemise and a corset. And stockings tied on with scarlet ribbons, but that was beside the point, because he could not take his eyes off of her chest and h—The pirate had to shove him out of the room before she pissed herself laughing.

He'd never hear the end of this. Isabela would spread this far and wide, thanks to her wagging tongue, and Rana? He was certain she'd never speak to him, again. A part of him wanted to crawl into a wine barrel and drown himself.

There were other places in Hightown Isabela insisted they visit. "A girl has to have accessories," she purred in his ear, herding him down the street. "You wouldn't want her to be shabby, now, would you?"

Was it horrible he couldn't stop thinking of Rana in that corset? Or those stockings?

His face was hot enough to cook an egg, he was certain. He brushed his hair to hide his ears. His undoubtedly red, scalding ears. They finally found the Antivan imports store she'd wanted, and mayhem descended.

"Ooh, look at this, sweet thing." Isabela held up a pot of eye pigment. "You'd look beautiful in this." Rana pulled a face and tugged his sleeve.

"She hates yellow," he said.

"How do you know?" He heaved a sigh and nodded to his guest. "This blue, then. Your color." It was met with ambivalence. "…Come here, let me try—" she grabbed his face.

"Get that away from me—"

"I need to know—"

"Isabela!"

"I'm already wearing some, and you're close enough to her color, anyway—"

"She's nowhere close to m—"

…They left that store with an unholy amount of jewelry, enough cosmetics to turn the entire Chantry into harlots, jasmine hair oil, two outrageous hats, and a painted, swearing elf… sporting two shades of eyeshadow, and a very happy girl on his arm.

He could think of worse ways to spend the afternoon, actually.