"I've got a location," Marian tells Alistair and Leliana once they're outside Genitivi's house. "Genitivi may not be there anymore, but at least it's somewhere to start."
Naturally, it's across the entire country, which is charitably a week and a half if the roads past Redcliffe are being maintained, but she'll talk to Bodahn about that later – it may end up faster to take the North Road instead, which is supposed to be wider and more thoroughly paved than the West Road.
They're done here, so it's time for their other errand. Marian glances at Alistair, raising her eyebrows. Alistair goes blank for a moment before understanding floods his face and he nods, though it's hesitant and he looks unsure of himself.
Well, she can understand that. Meeting her sister for the first time – that had been an experience and a half, and she'd been sure of her reception.
"Alistair and I have an errand to run," Marian says to Leliana. "Will you take Cú and we'll meet you in – what do you think, Alistair? Two hours?"
Leliana agrees happily, though it's difficult to persuade Cú to leave Marian. In the end, she has to bribe him with the promise of delicious things.
"Any idea where to find her?" Marian asks Alistair.
"I have an address..." Alistair says doubtfully, looking around like his sister's house is going to pop up out of the ground if he wants it badly enough.
"All right," Marian says, gesturing for him to precede her. "Lead on, ser knight."
It takes a few minutes for Alistair to get his bearings, but once he does, he leads Marian through the market square's crowds to a small, shabby house near the north wall. He stops in front of it. "That's her house," he says.
He's just standing in the road, staring at the door like it's got all the answers he's been looking for. Marian stands beside him, waiting for him to do something, even if it's to turn and walk away, but he's either thinking hard or frozen.
"Are you sure you want me here?" she asks gently.
"Maker, no, don't go," he says at once, turning huge, horrified eyes on her. "Do I seem a little nervous? I am. I really don't know what to expect, but... I'd like you to be there with me. If you're willing." He's talking so fast it's as much as she can do just to keep up with what he's saying. His nerves are clearly getting the better of him. She's never seen him like this, so hopeful and at the same time so anxious that he's on his way to vibrating out of his skin.
"Come on, then," Marian says, raising her eyebrows expectantly at him. When he starts to protest, to talk about coming back later, she sighs and takes his hand, firmly pushing away the hunger for touch that's begun to grow so strong despite her best efforts, and leads him to his sister's door. She lets go there. She won't do this for him. He has to choose.
"Will she even know who I am?" he asks, staring at the door. "Does she even know I exist? My sister," he says, trying the words out his mouth. "That sounds very strange... sister. Siiiissster." He sighs, shaking his head. "Now I'm babbling. Let's just... Let's go."
Alistair raises his fist to the door, and hesitates one more time – Maker's sake, Marian thinks with a silent groan – but he sticks it out this time, rapping firmly three times before dropping his hand. The door opens, but it's not the tall redhead from Alistair's dream that Marian's expecting; it's a tiny blonde toddler in swaddling clothes, peering at them around a fist crammed in her mouth.
Marian glances at Alistair, who's staring at the child like she's a rampaging mabari, and sighs. She crouches down and smiles gently. "Is your mother home, darling?"
The girl nods, and then turns around and disappears into the house, leaving the door open. Marian stands and shoves Alistair inside, following him and closing the door behind her.
"Er," Alistair says, looking around at the tiny, crowded house. There's no one here, not even the tiny child who'd answered the door, but there's a doorway to another room in the back. Someone could be back there. "Hello?"
After a moment, a tall redhead strides into the room, staring hard at them. She's the spitting image of Alistair's dream sister, and Marian wonders: if Alistair's never met her before, how did the demon know what she looked like? For that matter, had her father really looked like her father, or was the demon using her decade-old memories to shape their own personal torment? She can't remember whether he'd aged at all, or if he'd been just the way she remembered him. She can't remember if he'd looked like Malcolm Hawke at all, or whether he'd been the merest semblance to which her mind had attached identity. She doesn't want to remember.
"Eh? You have linens to wash?" Goldanna says, briskly drying her hands on a towel hooked to her belt. "I charge three bits on the bundle, you won't find better. And don't trust what that Natalia woman tells you either, she's foreign and she'll rob you blind."
There's something practiced and slick about her delivery, something that says she's said the same thing to a hundred people and hated it every time. And if Marian were actually in the market for a washerwoman, she'd be leaving and searching out that Natalia; she doesn't trust the look in Goldanna's eye when she scrutinizes Alistair from head to toe. It's like she's looking for the coin purse, and she's not too particular about what she has to do to get her hands on it.
Marian has a bad feeling about this.
"I'm... not here to have any wash done," Alistair says, glancing uncertainly at Marian before turning back and taking a breath. "My name's Alistair. I'm..." He swallows nervously. "Well, this may sound sort of strange, but are you Goldanna? If so, I suppose... I'm your brother."
It goes poorly.
If she'd had the slightest bit of sense, Marian would have whisked them both away the instant the vitriol started, but Alistair is so clearly hopeful that he can make this work, that he can turn this into the idealized family reunion he wants so desperately that Marian keeps quiet, even when Goldanna starts to have a go at her. Alistair rises magnificently to her defense, in sharp contrast to the way he'd just let Goldanna say whatever she liked to him, which says a lot to Marian about what he thinks he deserves. She suggests that they go before things get out of hand.
They leave Goldanna's house behind. It's only been twenty minutes or so since they'd left Leliana, and Marian suggests that they wander the market to see if they can find her instead of waiting for the rendezvous.
She doesn't know what to say to him. He's so desperately unhappy now, so dejected, so different from his excited, nervous hope before. She aches for him. He deserves the family that he's missing so badly. Marian wants to turn right around and give Goldanna several pieces of her mind, starting with how not to be a spiteful bitch. That won't help anything or give him what he wants, she knows, but that doesn't stop the urge.
"That was... not what I expected, to put it lightly," a despondent Alistair says after a while. He doesn't seem to want to look at her; they're in one of the poorer areas, and it's not so crowded here that she can't hear him, so they can talk as they walk. She just hadn't thought he would want to talk about it. If she'd been in his situation, she'd be licking her wounds for a month. "This is the family I've been wondering about all my life? That shrew is my sister? I can't believe it."
"I have to admit, it's hard to see a family resemblance," Marian says lightly. She's not sure of her ground here.
"I... I guess I was expecting her to accept me without question. Isn't that what family is supposed to do?" He's so damned wistful that she nearly reaches for him, to comfort and to hold, and she has to dig her nails sharply into her palm to make sure she doesn't. He's staring off into the distance, lost in his own mind. "I feel..." He sighs, a long, disheartened gust of breath. "I feel like a complete idiot."
"You're not an idiot," she says immediately, stung by the idea that he could think so little of himself. "You didn't deserve any of that."
Alistair laughs, bitter in a way she's never heard from him. It hurts. He's not supposed to be that person, and it feels wrong coming from him. "I suppose not," he says. "But it's not what I wanted, either, and I'll never get it."
"You don't know that," she says, hoping against hope that she's right.
"There's no one left," he says with an unhappy shrug. "My mother and father are gone, and so is Cailan. Even Duncan."
They're not the only ones who care about you. It's cowardice that keeps it from him at this point. She's willing to admit that, if only to herself. But she might have found a way to tell him that, if she weren't so thoroughly convinced that it's not what he needs to hear right now.
"Alistair," she says gently, taking him by the elbow so he'll look at her. They stop walking in the middle of the street, people flowing around them, but she doesn't give them a moment's thought now; she's focused on him. "You have to protect yourself. Don't think I didn't notice back there, the way you let her talk to you."
He shrugs wearily. "What was I going to say? It's her house."
"That's not what I mean," Marian says, angry with herself. She's supposed to be the one with the words, and here she is, fumbling like a schoolgirl. "I mean that she can't hurt you if you don't let her." She steps closer. She can't maintain her careful distance, not now. "You wear your heart on your sleeve," she says softly, looking him in the eye. She knows she'll probably hurt him, and the irony of that doesn't escape her, but she wants so badly for this kind of thing never to happen to him again. "It's going to hurt you. It already has. There are people who will step all over it to get what they want, and you can't let them. You have to look out for yourself."
She loves his honesty, his openness, and the idea that she's urging him to change that is repulsive; but for all that he seems intent on putting his shield between them and their enemies, he is curiously unwilling to shield himself.
There's so much she's not saying. There's so much she can't say. If she had her druthers... Well, her world would look much different right now, that's for sure. And she probably would never have met him.
The ache that rolls right through her at the thought is becoming an old friend.
"I suppose you're right," Alistair says, his eyes dropping down and away. He doesn't look happy, not by a long shot, but at least he's lost the bitter edge to his mouth, and he's thinking about what she said. He heaves another sigh and looks up. "Let's just go. I don't want to talk about this any more."
She squeezes his elbow before she lets go and they begin to walk again. After another half-hour of aimless wandering, they find Leliana and Cú outside of an Orlesian import shop on the expensive side of the market, and she nearly has to drag Leliana away from the window.
Alistair is quiet the whole way. She glances over her shoulder at him more than once, but he won't meet her eyes. She leaves him be. He doesn't need her pestering him, not after this.
Their companions are just where she left them, though Wynne is glaring at Zevran as if she's trying to set his head on fire with her eyes. Alistair vanishes into his tent immediately, and doesn't come out for the rest of the night, though when Sten wakes Marian for second watch, she notices that the bowl of stew she'd left outside the flaps of his tent is clean and empty and stacked with the rest. She sits on the log in front of the campfire, or paces the bounds of their campsite, and worries. Wynne finally manages to heal the wound in her shoulder to a ragged scar over breakfast, and then they're off.
The campground is in the triangle formed by the West Road, which brought them to Denerim, and the North Road, which leads first to Amaranthine and then to points west along the northern coastline. Bodahn knows the way to the road, and they set out, walking across the breadth of Ferelden – again.
Alistair is still quiet, though it feels far less inapproachable today. At least he's not actively avoiding human contact. Marian lets him have his space; hopefully he'll come to her soon enough. He has before.
To her surprise, it's Morrigan who chooses to walk with her. "I have been studying Mother's grimoire," she says, glancing at Marian, eyebrows raised. "Do you wish to hear what I have found?"
"Of course," Marian says eagerly.
What Morrigan describes handily puts a spike in Marian's enthusiasm. She shivers. She remembers the way the Fade bent around Flemeth, and the stories that she's heard about the Witch of the Wilds, and wonders what kind of an abomination could be that powerful, that long-lived, and use magic so totally unlike the rest of the world. She can't deny that she's fascinated, even as she's terrified.
But Morrigan – how must she feel, knowing that she's merely a tool, an empty husk to be filled? That the only mother she's ever known cares only for what use she could be?
"But what are you going to do about it?" Marian asks doubtfully. She'd never go near Flemeth again, if it were her, but that hardly seems like enough. To be always looking over your shoulder in case your mother tries to eat your soul and possess your body... what a nightmare, Marian thinks with another shiver.
"There is only one possible response to this," Morrigan says, and when Marian glances over, Morrigan is staring at her, determined and grim. "Flemeth needs to die."
"What?" Marian demands.
Morrigan explains her plan, and while Marian has so many objections, more than she can count, Morrigan slowly, torturously talks her into it, and though Marian's acquiescence is grudging, she means every word.
Marian is no murderer, or at least she doesn't want to be. She doesn't want to kill Flemeth. She's not even entirely sure that they'll be able to, not with the weight of so many years and all the magic that Flemeth bears so lightly. Nonetheless, she's promised her help now, and Marian keeps her promises. Morrigan drifts away, visibly relieved, and Cú wanders after her, deep in the throes of puppy love.
You are a foolish, trusting idiot, Marian fumes at herself. She sighs. It's too late now, though; at least it's an errand that can be put off until they're in the area. She hopes that Morrigan will forgive her for not wishing to go too far out of their way.
Amaranthine is only a day's journey, and there's another massive campground where the Pilgrim's Path splits from the North Road. They stay there for the night and leave early the next morning, striking out along the North Road, which is indeed better paved. They make good time, pushing into the Bannorn before they have to stop for the night.
Alistair approaches her after they've set up camp. "Can I have a word?" he asks. He doesn't look upset anymore, or bitter in that way that pained her so, but determined. Marian is only too happy to oblige, and he leads them out into the trees where they can talk privately.
Not that their friends would eavesdrop. Of course not.
It's pretty here, warmer than it'd been in the south, with trees bursting with the promise of new life and scrubby little white flowers fully in bloom. Two squirrels chase each other through the tall branches of an oak tree overhead. She watches them bound into the distance, and only when she can't see them anymore does she bring herself back down to earth to find Alistair watching her with a poorly-hidden grin.
"What?" she demands. She's not so long out of the Tower that she takes this sort of beauty for granted. He declines the bait, shaking his head and looking away.
"So I've been thinking," Alistair says as they continue to amble through the forest, his hands in his pockets. Marian is professionally jealous of his pockets. Somehow the ass who'd designed her mage robes had forgotten how to include them. She cocks her eyebrow at him curiously. "In Denerim, you told me I needed to look out for myself." He glances at her. "Did you mean that?"
Oh, it is so tempting to take it all back. He'd probably even believe her if she claimed a sudden and debilitating – albeit temporary – apoplexy.
She sighs. He deserves her honesty. "I don't want to mean it," she offers with a grimace.
Alistair touches her elbow and stops, drawing her to a stop with him. He turns her to face him with little more than the gentle pressure of that hand under her elbow. "Hey," he says. "It's okay. I'm beginning to think that you're right. I need to stop letting everyone else make my decisions for me. I need to take a stand and think about myself for a change, or I'm never going to be happy."
That's what she wants, isn't it? For him to be happy? So why isn't she happy for him?
"Don't do it just because I said so," Marian says, troubled.
"I'm not," he says, meeting her eyes squarely. He's not lying. She's not sure he knows how, to be honest. But... lying to someone else and lying to oneself are two entirely different things. He could be fooling himself. "What you said, it made sense." He shakes his head. "I wanted the world to work a certain way, the right way. But that's not the way it is. I have to be realistic."
Marian is still troubled. She's regretting ever having said anything in the first place, even if it had been the truth; she knows how eager he is to please, and while she won't deny that some of her fondest fantasies involving him touch on that, that doesn't mean she's blind to the extent to which he might be led.
But isn't changing that what he's talking about?
"So long as it's what you want," Marian says in the end, giving up. She could go around in circles about this forever. In the end, it has to be his choice – it's his life. Her role here is supportive friend.
"It is. I should have done this a long time ago," he says firmly. And then Alistair smiles at her, a fond, lopsided grin that makes her breath catch in her throat and her fingers itch to stroke his face, his skin, the red-gold stubble he's grown since he shaved this morning. She wants him so badly, and all the time, even when he's not there. And it's not just the wanting. Marian could deal with that if she had to – she has before, in several different ways. But she cares about him, about his feelings and his future; she's caught herself just watching him sit by the fire, entranced by the flickering firelight on his face. She listens for the sounds of his armor when they're on the move, takes precious time out of a battle to make sure he's all right, trusts him with almost everything. She automatically takes what he thinks into consideration and worries about his reactions to her decisions. She misses him when he's not there.
She's got feelings for him. Oh, damn her to the Void and back – what has she done?
Alistair clears his throat. She realizes she's just been staring at him for an age like she's having a fit. She probably looked possessed. She glances away, working up a grin. "I must have been woolgathering," she says, and she's proud of the way it comes out, almost like she's a normal person and not a maniac, someone who hasn't had a life-altering realization in the span of ten seconds. "I'm so sorry." She looks back at him, the smile plastered on her face, but he's just staring at her, his eyes wide.
"Well," she says brightly. "If that's all, Leliana will be looking for me, I think..." She takes a step backward, and then another. She's not too proud to admit that she's running away to the safety of other people, looking for space to think, for the promise of her solitary tent.
Marian turns – walking backward through a dimly lit forest seems like a bad idea. Maybe she'll beg off of knife-fighting for tonight and hide out in her tent. She can deal with this. Alistair can't have figured out what she was thinking just from her face, no matter how she must have been looking at him. She'd probably just seemed a little mad, that's all. They'll laugh about it someday.
And in the meantime, it's time to get her mind in a chokehold and force it to behave. There are ways, ones she's been reluctant to use up until now because they'll probably affect the way she interacts with Alistair, and not in a good way; but if she's already acting strangely around him, then she's in an entirely different kind of trouble. It's a problem, and it's time and past time to fix it.
She actually makes it nearly halfway back to camp. The tight, anxious tension in her chest begins to subside, though still she keeps her head down, walking quickly. She doesn't know where he is, but his stride is much longer than hers; he could catch up to her quite quickly, and Marian doesn't want him asking her what's wrong. She just wants this to go away.
Avoiding problems is her new favorite tactic.
And then Alistair's hand lands on her shoulder. She swears inside, but turns back to him, the same bright smile on her face. It dies when she gets a look at his face, serious and hopeful and nervous all at once, so similar to the way she's feeling that the sight hits her like a blow.
"Wait a minute," he says, fishing in his pocket. "I just – ah," he says triumphantly, taking his hand out of his pocket and opening it to reveal a little rose, a gorgeous, velvety deep scarlet that glows against his skin. It hardly seems crushed at all from living in his pocket. Marian swallows, her smile gone like it'd never been. "Look at this."
"That's lovely," Marian says, her voice a little tight. It is, too; it's been picked just at the point when the bud begins to bloom open, the outer petals unfurling and releasing a beautiful scent that she can smell from here. Not that she's that far away from him; he's come closer, actually, and without her realizing it. When had that happened? "Where did you find that?"
"I picked it in Lothering," Alistair says, stroking the edge of a petal with his thumb. She can't look away, can't stop imagining him stroking her in all sorts of places and in just the same way. At least the inappropriate heat that follows is familiar. Maker have mercy, but she's so wet – but he continues, and she forces herself to focus on his face and not his long, agile fingers. "I remember thinking, how could something so beautiful exist in a place with so much despair and ugliness? I probably should have left it alone, but I couldn't." He looks at her with a sad smile. "The darkspawn would come and their taint would just destroy it. So I've had it ever since."
"Are you going to keep it?" she asks.
He's watching her so intently that she feels pinned, naked, spread open to show him her soft and squishy insides, like he could read her every thought in the expressions passing over her face. "I thought that I might... give it to you, actually. In a lot of ways, I think the same thing when I look at you."
He's so fucking fond, affectionate and nervous and open, despite what he'd said earlier about protecting himself. She doesn't know what to do, what to say. She can't breathe. Is he – Does he mean what she thinks he means? Is this... romantic? How else is she supposed to interpret this? Do people give their friends flowers? Friendship flowers? What is going on?
Her mind runs in circles quite without her permission. It takes a monumental effort of will to force it to stop, but she must, because she could probably do this forever and ever and the only way to settle the emotional minefield she's mired herself in is more information, which actually means talking to Alistair. Out loud. Using words.
Oh, Maker.
She takes a breath, hoping he doesn't notice the way it trembles in her throat. "You do?"
He takes her hand, turning her palm upward, and puts the rose into it. Her hand closes around it, though she doesn't know which she's trying to keep hold of, the rose or Alistair's thumb, which idly strokes the soft skin in the center of her palm. He doesn't seem inclined to let go, and she's certainly in no state to pull away. It's all she can do not to kiss him. She's nothing left for rational thought.
"I guess it's a bit silly, isn't it?" He smiles ruefully. "I just thought... here I am doing all this complaining, and you haven't exactly been having a good time of it yourself. You've had none of the good experience of being a Grey Warden since your Joining, not a word of thanks or congratulations. It's all been death and fighting and tragedy."
She doesn't have the words to tell him what that means to her, that he thinks about her that way and that he's been paying attention, but he's wrong. There's been death and fighting and tragedy, nearly more than she can bear; but interspersed with the grief, with the soul-sucking terrors and the fate of the world on their shoulders, he'd managed to make her life just a little bit brighter in quiet, stolen moments between them and the rest of the world.
"I thought... maybe I could say something," he says, intent on her face. "Tell you what a rare and wonderful thing you are to find amidst all this darkness."
If he weren't so serious, she'd think he was joking. She barely believes that this is actually happening as it is. "Oh, Alistair," she says, closing her eyes against the sting under her eyes. She wants to cry a little bit. She's spent so much time telling herself that this can't happen, that he hasn't any feelings for her, that it's hard to let go of her disbelief.
He smiles a little, a shy, wry thing, shrugging. "I guess it was just an impulse. Was it the wrong one?"
She should let him down gently. He's Maric's bastard son, so he's royalty and far out of her reach; he's her fellow Grey Warden, and that makes him the one person she can't possibly get away from. If they started something, and it ended badly, she has no idea if they could still be friends afterward, or even companions. She has plans for her life after the Blight, and romance doesn't factor into them.
But she's well-acquainted with herself, and while those are good reasons, she'd have jumped him two weeks ago if that's all that was holding her back.
She's scared. She'd had bedfellows in the Circle, most of them women, and those relationships had been fleeting and entirely physical. Everyone knew the rules. Do what you like, don't let the templars find out, take the bloody contraceptives, and don't get attached. You never knew who was going to be taken for their Harrowing next, or subject to a templar's whim, or shipped off to another Circle with little or no notice.
In truth, it had been easy for her. There hadn't been anyone who'd done more than caught her fancy for a night, not until now. She doesn't know what to do with the way that she feels. She doesn't know how to be with him. And if they somehow managed it... would she fall even further for him? An alarming percentage of her mind is already taken over by thoughts of him, what he's doing, what his ass looks like in his slacks, and the idea that it could get worse is terrifying.
But as terrifying as that is, the thought of turning him away is abhorrent. She can just picture the look on his face – she'd seen it outside of his sister's house, outside of Flemeth's house when he'd learned that Duncan and the rest of the Wardens were dead.
She can't hurt him that way. She won't. She won't allow her fears to be the knife that cuts them both – for she's under no illusions that she would come away unscathed.
"No," Marian admits, taking a shaky breath as the weight of her endless deliberations, of her unspoken desires and her fears falls from her shoulders. She laughs, incredulous with relief. "No, it wasn't." She grins at him, feeling free for the first time in a long time, inviting him to share in her delight.
"I'm glad you like it," Alistair says, and though it hardly seems possible, his grin is wider than hers. They stand there like a pair of idiots too foolish to come in out of the rain, grinning at each other, until he coughs and glances away as his cheeks flush red. "Now if we could move right on past this awkward, embarrassing stage and get right to the steamy bits, I'd appreciate it." He looks back at her with such an exaggeratedly lecherous expression, so reminiscent of Zevran at his worst, that she has to laugh.
But then...
With her free hand, Marian tucks the rose into her hair. She doesn't miss the way Alistair watches every movement of her fingers, the way his eyes linger on the rose when it's secured; and then she thinks about the soft stroke of his thumb in her palm, which he still hasn't released, about the liquid, wet, wanting way she feels around him, of the fantasies that sustain her in the deepest night alone in her tent.
Then she smiles at him, with the weight of all that feeling, all that tension. He swallows thickly, suddenly no longer amused.
They were standing close before, and she moves even closer, trailing her fingers very delicately down his breastplate, changing her path at the last moment to avoid the spot over his nipple. "That could be arranged," she says softly, looking up at his face through her lashes. She knows this could be considered cruel, but it's only a tease if she's no intention of delivering on her promise.
She has every intention of delivering.
He laughs, his fingers tightening on her hand in what she thinks is nerves. It's not quite the response she'd hoped for. "Bluff called! Damn! She saw right through me!"
"Must it be a bluff?" Marian murmurs.
"Well, it doesn't have to be," Alistair says suggestively, leaning in with a grin. The tight, twisting tension in her stomach cinches even tighter in shaky anticipation. She's wondered how he kisses, how his mouth might feel over hers, on other places. But then he falters. "I suppose we are in camp. The tent's..." He looks around, finally spotting the light of the campfire behind her. "...right over there. This is true." He sounds nervous now, even more than before. Marian narrows her eyes at him. She's not going to get what she wants tonight, is she?
In truth, it's too soon. She's still shaky with adrenaline, with disbelief, and her stomach is a roiling sack of too many emotions to count. She knows all this, but it's so hard to reason with the need riding her. She'd hoped for... well, this is more than she'd dreamed of, really. She's no business begging for more.
Too bad she can't help herself.
Marian still has her hand on his chest, and she takes a tight hold of the edge of his breastplate and uses it to steady herself as she goes up on her toes to look him straight in the eye. "Alistair, who says we need a tent?"
He goes brick-red right up to his eyebrows. "Maker," he says faintly, staring at her. He swallows. "I'll be..." Alistair laughs nervously. "I'll be standing over here. Until the blushing stops. Just to be, uh, safe. You know how it is."
"Wait," she says, before he has the chance to flee. She clings to his breastplate to keep him there – not that he's pushing her away or anything, but she doesn't want him to leave like this. If nothing else, he won't be able to look at her for the rest of the night without blushing anew, and then someone will start teasing them. For herself she doesn't mind, but she does for him. "I'm sorry," she says, offering him a smile. "I can behave, I swear."
Alistair reaches up and tucks the rose more securely into her hair, lingering for a heartbeat before he lets his hand drop. His color is still high, but his nerves seem to have gone for the moment. He's just looking at her, eyes steady and affectionate and so warm that Marian's the one who's blushing now. She can feel it spreading across her face. He's just looking at her. This is ridiculous.
"Who says I can?" he asks with a raised eyebrow and a grin, and then he gently detaches her hand from his breastplate and goes the rest of the way into camp. Marian closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, but that doesn't help her racing thoughts, or cool the wildfire that burns inside of her. She'd stoked it on purpose, so it's her own fault she feels this way, but she'd give a lot for any excuse to retire early for the night.
She's still floating when she comes back into camp. She automatically looks for Alistair in his usual place, as far away from Morrigan as he can get and still be near the fire; he's already got his armor off, giving it a cursory once-over. When he notices her, his cheekbones go red again. An answering flush rises in her own cheeks. It's probably too late to hope that the others don't notice, but she drops down next to Alistair, sitting too close to the fire so she can blame it for her color.
"It occurs to me that I didn't thank you," Marian says, drawing her knees up under her chin.
Alistair smiles down at his hands. "You're welcome." He doesn't look up from his things, and after watching him for a moment, she takes his greaves and helps.
She doesn't know what this makes them, or whether they're on the same page, or if he feels about her the way she feels about him. She doesn't know why he came over all awkward and nervous when most men would have stolen a kiss. But for tonight, she's happy here, warm inside and out, and that's enough.