"I leave you alone for two seconds – "

Marian groans. She refuses to get up. No one can make her.

"And you bring home a golem? That's it," Leliana declares, dropping next to Marian before the campfire. "You're not going anywhere without me anymore."

Marian opens one eye to assess how much trouble she's in. Leliana's glaring at her, but her mouth is trembling a little, like she's trying not to laugh. Marian sighs, rolling over onto her back to stare at the night sky. "I hate you," she says to the stars.

Leliana makes a dismissive noise in the back of her throat. Marian allows her head to tip over to the side so she can see Leliana. She's staring across the fire at Shale. The fire lights her face from below, casting her eyes into shadow.

"It killed its former master," Marian says softly.

Leliana looks down at her, shocked. "What? Then why did you bring it back with you?"

It's a good question. When she gropes for the answer, all she can think of is the way that Shale looked when it asked what their purpose was, when it said it didn't remember anything of the outside world, the way it hesitated before taking the first step away from the place where it had dwelt for so many years.

"It looked so lost," Marian says, looking at Shale across the way. It's just standing there, some distance from the campfire, examining a fallen tree branch with intense interest. "It asked me what I thought it should do." The way you all do. As if I had any answers. As if I knew what I was doing. As if I weren't as lost as everyone else. "And really, who are we to judge? Zevran's an assassin, you were a bard, Sten murdered a whole family of innocent people and he won't talk about why." She stops herself, taking a breath to quell the threatening tears. "We're all killers. The only difference is in what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night."

She's not anticipating a lot of sleep tonight. Maybe she'll stay up and get something useful done for a change instead of staring at the roof of her tent.

Leliana tucks a stray curl behind Marian's ear. "Did something happen?" she asks gently.

Marian laughs. She tries to pretend that it wasn't half a sob. "Of course something happened," she says. "When don't things happen to us?"

But Marian won't talk about it, no matter what Leliana says, and eventually she gives up and goes to bed, leaving Marian lying on the ground staring into the fire. Cú is a warm weight against her back. She falls into something that's almost a trance, like her meditations; she watches the fire, the smoke, the embers falling away into the firepit, the logs shifting and cracking, the way lines of fire crawl over them and consume. She doesn't notice the time passing until Alistair sits next to her. He's got second watch.

"Can't sleep?" Alistair asks her, his voice low and sleep-rough. It's easy to imagine the way he looks, his armor sitting picture perfect, his shield on his back, and his hair a mess from his pillow. He never fixes his hair when he has midnight watches.

Instead of answering, Marian pushes herself over until she can put her head in Alistair's lap. Cú grumbles and moves, too, curling up tighter, fitting himself in the space behind her knees. Alistair rests his hand on her hair. Only now, surrounded by the people she trusts most in the world, can Marian finally sleep.

They move on the next day. They're ambushed by a number of darkspawn just before noon; in between spells, Marian can see Shale crushing darkspawn with its feet. Literally crushing. It devastates the darkspawn before it, smashing heads until they pop. Thank the Maker it's on their side, but – she'll have to get it to bathe afterward. Ew.

They're not pushing the pace this time. They've decided that they'd rather be rested for whatever Orzammar has in store for them, and in fact they spend a few hours on the road tossing around ideas for what they might face if their luck runs true. The truth is probably something about politics and therefore somehow both boring and depressing, so she's glad when Leliana smiles impishly and says that she's five sovereigns on subterranean bunny-pigs taking over the city.

Somehow the suggestions get more ridiculous after that. Marian's secretly hoping for dragons.

Sten and Shale are getting on like gangbusters. The tall, dark, and terrifying club is having its first meeting. Marian doesn't know why she's surprised.

On the third day, they pass the little track that led them to Haven. They don't stop, but Marian looks down it as they pass, and then she can't seem to look away. She still doesn't understand that place, or those people. She has this feeling, too, that she never will. She hates that.

Alistair nudges her in the ribs, breaking her train of thought. "Penny for 'em," he says, ducking his head a little to look into her face.

"I promise, they're not that interesting," she asks ruefully.

"You're only saying that so I'll stop asking." He sighs, shaking his head. "I get it, I get it. Keep your secrets, woman. I'll get it out of you eventually."

Marian laughs, looking him up and down out of the corner of her eye. "Maybe I'm wondering exactly what you use in your hair to make it..." She gestures at her own forehead."Floof like that in the front."

"The blood of my enemies, of course," Alistair says easily. Then he frowns, looking up as if he could see his own hair. His eyes cross. "I'm running out. Do you think Sten has some I can borrow?"

They tease each other mercilessly for the rest of the day. It's so much fun, and exactly what she needed. She's never met anyone who can take her out of her own head so thoroughly the way Alistair does just by being himself.

They don't get to walk together very often anymore. Her sense of the darkspawn is increasing day by day; she can feel them coming more reliably, so she trusts herself on point or as their rearguard now where she hadn't before. Her appetite is holding steady, but at least it isn't getting worse, though she's not sure how it could. She feels more like a Warden instead of a little girl playing one.

If there are other side effects of the Joining, she hasn't noticed them yet. She's stronger, and her magic has grown in both knowledge and power, but those can both be put down to the incredible and unrelenting amount of fighting she's been doing since she left the Circle.

She lets herself enjoy the respite.

It's her turn tonight to start dinner, but when she gets there to start preparing it, Bodahn's already taken it over. "I'm sure you have better things to do than cook," he says to her, with a hopeful, appealing smile that makes Marian laugh despite her pique. And it's true that even she doesn't want to eat her own cooking. She shrugs and goes away again, going through the list of camp duties that she needs to do – she thinks that her boots and armor only need a swipe and a hard brush to get the worst of the road dust off, but Leliana already has her tent up. She's waiting with commendable patience.

It's not the worst idea to practice in her armor, Marian decides, and goes to join her.

Afterward she regrets that decision so much. She's sore everywhere, but the worst is her shoulders, carrying all the weight of her scale mail and the fighting moves that Leliana is still trying to drill into her muscle memory. Leliana won't even let her collapse and whine, which is all she wants to do.

"If you'd like to be stiff and sore tomorrow..." Leliana says, shrugging.

And the worst part is, she's right.

Marian ditches her armor in her tent and sets up by the campfire, putting herself through her stances instead. They're designed to stretch all of her stubborn and unhappy muscles in turn. She reaches for the flow and the synergy between them that she knows exists. She can see it when Leliana shows her the movements, or when she joins Marian in the evenings. She just can't quite do it herself. Practice, she thinks with determination, tired as it may be. It's just practice.

"You are not quite as callow as I thought," Sten says out of nowhere, like he's continuing a conversation they'd been having. "That is... unexpected." She glances down at him, but she doesn't stop.

"Callow?" Marian repeats in disbelief. "Of all things, you thought I was callow?" The word reminds her of fresh-off-the-farm doughboys, pasty, pimply, and gawking at everything the Circle has to offer. She moves into a new stance and winces. I didn't even know I had muscles there...

"You sound surprised," he says. He looks up at her, raising his eyebrow when he sees the dismayed expression on her face. "You must have heard this before."

"Believe it or not, no," she says between her teeth.

Sten shrugs. "You'll get over it. Eventually."

She's evidently meant to take this as a compliment. Marian sighs and sits next to Sten, folding her legs. It does sting a little that his opinion of her was that low to begin with. At least it sounds like it's not anymore. She's grateful for that much, at least. She rests her chin on her knees and watches Sten scrupulously polish his borrowed sword. "I have a question, if you don't mind," Marian says tentatively.

"I am hardly surprised." And yet he doesn't sound irritated or annoyed.

It's a strange kind of permission, but she'll take it. "Why were you in that cage where I found you?"

She knows the barest facts of the matter; Leliana passed on that much. But she's curious to find out how Sten frames the situation. The way he approaches it will tell her as much or more than his actual words, if she knows him at all – and by now she thinks she does. At least a little.

"I caged myself," he says, matter-of-fact. "A weak mind is a deadly foe, as you are no doubt aware."

She knows that lesson by heart now. In Haven, in the midst of pain and rage she'd slipped, just for a moment, and she'd nearly done something unforgivable. It doesn't surprise her that he knows that lesson too, only that it's so clear for him to see on her face.

Sometimes Sten goes a little cryptic and philosophical in a turn of mood that intrigues her.

"You said that you wanted to regain your honor," Marian says, casting her mind back to the things he'd said to her when first they met. Her eyes are half-closed with the effort. "Were you punishing yourself?"

"I know that my failures were my own." Sten's watching the fire now. It casts strange shadows on his face, ones that move and shift, creating the illusion of movement on his face where there is none. He's quiet for so long that Marian thinks she's lost him, but after a long while, he does speak again. "I came to your lands with seven of the Beresaad – my brothers – to seek answers about the Blight. We made our way across the Fereldan countryside without incident, seeing nothing of the threat we were sent to observe, until the night we camped by Lake Calenhad." He pauses, though whether for breath or to delay what's clearly an emotional story for him she can't tell.

"They came from everywhere," he says softly. She has to scoot a little closer to hear him. "The earth beneath our feet, the air above us, our own shadows harbored the darkspawn. I saw the last of the creatures cut down, too late. I fell."

"That's what Ostagar was like," she says, remembering. The memory is strange, removed, like it happened to someone else, in another life. "They came out of nowhere. They just..." They'd been so quick and so quiet. The four of them hadn't a chance. Those poor guards – she'd never gotten their names.

Though, come to think of it... how had the darkspawn gotten inside the fortress to take the Tower of Ishal in the first place? And where had that second wave of darkspawn come from, the ones who overwhelmed them in the end? It's very poetic to say they melted up out of the ground, but that makes them sound like dwarf gremlins. Darkspawn use doors, just like the rest of them.

"I heard the stories of Ostagar," Sten says. She looks back at him in time to catch something that almost looks like approval on his face. It's wiped clean in the next moment, but she knows what she saw – it's just hard to believe. "Your kith stood their ground when others fled. No one can do more than that."

She closes her eyes and takes a moment out of time to think of Duncan and all of the Grey Wardens she'd never had a chance to meet, victims of Loghain's treachery and the darkspawn who swallowed them whole. They deserved better. She thinks of Amalia, too, and Lissette and Rashmi, and the poor knight of Redcliffe whose body she'd found in Haven. She remembers them. She'll keep remembering them, as long and as well as she can.

"I don't know how long I lay on the battlefield among the dead, nor do I know how the farmers found me," he says. "I only know that when I woke, I was no longer among my brothers, and my sword was gone from my hand."

That means something to him, something she doesn't understand. And it's specifically about his sword, not about feeling weaponless and vulnerable.

"So what did you do?" Marian asks.

"I searched for it. And when that failed, I asked my rescuers what had become of it."

"And did they know?"

Sten shakes his head. "They said they found me with nothing."

Marian's eyebrows draw together in confusion. "Did you not believe them?"

"I did believe them," he says. He won't look at her, like he's mesmerized by the fire, but she can still see his profile, the campfire painting color across his features. "I knew they didn't have the blade. They had no reason to lie to me." His face could be carved from marble, that's how still he is, but his voice – For the first time, it's like he's letting down those huge, strong walls that separate him from the people around him, giving her a glimpse of the person who lives inside. "I panicked. Unthinking, I struck them down."

Marian hugs her knees closer. This is... She knows she asked for it, but she doesn't want to hear this from someone she'd cautiously come to like. "But why?" she asks, upset. "They couldn't have been any kind of threat to you."

"I know." He speaks quietly, and so still. "I cannot justify what I have done. My honor is forfeit." So were their lives, Marian wants to say, but he knows. He knows, and belaboring the point isn't going to change anything. She can't force him to react the way she wants him to, and if his reactions are a little bit alien to her... Well, so is he.

"That sword was made for my hand alone," he goes on. "I have carried it from the day I was set into the Beresaad. I was to die wielding it for my people. Even if I could cross Ferelden and Tevinter unarmed and alone to bring my report to the arishok, I would be slain on sight by the antaam. They would know me as soulless, a deserter. No soldier would cast aside his blade while he drew breath."

Marian stares at him. "So instead of having a look around, you killed the people who were trying to help you?"

"If I knew where to look, it would be in my hand now," Sten says, his words short and chopped. He's growing impatient with her. She can't blame him, except that –

All right. If a soldier is nothing but a part of the machine of war, then... losing his weapon makes him unfit for duty? It makes a certain kind of sense – if she stands herself on her head to look at it. She doesn't understand the Qunari at all. Good thing she wasn't raised under the Qun...

"Where was that farm?" she asks.

Of all things that's the one that turns his head. He's looking at her like he can't make sense of what she just said. "What? If it's that important to you, we can keep an eye out," Marian says, feeling oddly defensive.

"It was near Lake Calenhad," Sten says, after a long silence. "Perhaps those words are empty, but... " He hesitates, searching her face. "Thank you all the same."

With that he gets up. Marian lets him go. She doesn't want to talk to him until she's digested the thing she just learnt. She'd already known about the farmers' death, but she'd been thinking that he'd had a reason, or... something, anything, that would have made up part of the gap toward justifying his actions. She would never have guessed that he'd quite simply lost it.

She can't decide if it makes it better or worse that he understands and acknowledges that he did something horrendous. It's not like he can go back and bring them back to life, or stop himself from killing them in the first place. Punishing him seems exquisitely pointless.

It feels wrong to just let it go, though. Though there's nothing she thinks she could do; but even if she could, should she?

She doesn't approve, of course, but she thinks she's made that clear enough. She doesn't have the right, legal or otherwise, to force some kind of punishment on him. The way he'd been talking... He caged himself, she thinks. And if they're going to hunt around a bit for his sword the next time they pass through Lake Calenhad, then maybe she can check if there's anyone Sten can make some sort of reparations to.

As always, Marian feels better when she's made a decision, for good or for ill. Some of the disquiet roiling in her stomach fades, and she lifts her head to survey the camp. Cú is lying a few feet away. She hadn't even noticed him.

Her head comes up with a sharp jerk when she hears Alistair's shocked, mortified voice ring out across the camp. "Andraste's flaming sword! I know where babies come from!"

Marian clamps both hands over her mouth to hold back her cackle of absolute disbelief. She can't help her wide eyes, though; she searches out Alistair, who's sitting with a pile of armor next to Wynne. He's staring at her. His ears are bright red, as is everything else she can see.

Wynne continues talking, too quietly for Marian to hear, but oh, she knows that look on Wynne's face. Alistair's in for it now.

Marian should feel guilty about how much she wants to give in to the laughter bubbling inside of her right now, but his face is priceless.

Alistair narrows his eyes and says something else to Wynne before getting up and stomping off in a bit of a huff. He hasn't got his shoulders up around his ears the way he does when he's feeling put upon, so Marian feels safe in assuming he's not truly upset.

Still. It's a bit embarrassing, and she just knows Morrigan's going to have a few choice words for him later.

Wynne smiles, and sits calmly, watching the fire like she's just enjoying the warmth. Maker, Marian thinks with another helpless giggle. She's evil. Alistair avoids talking to the rest of them all night, and Marian lets him. She'll catch up with him tomorrow.

The next day, sometime during their morning march, Marian watches Shale disappear into the bushes and thin, young trees that line the highway. For the third time.

When it comes back this time, Marian increases her pace so she's walking beside it. Shale looks down at her, a brow-bone raised in silent enquiry. "What are you doing when you go into the forest?" she asks.

"Hunting for pigeons and other foul creatures of the sky," is its reply. "I wish to exterminate them more effectively. To do so, I must confront the disgusting things where they dwell."

"...Oh," Marian says, at a total loss for words. "Of course." Shale sighs, a heavy, irritated sort of noise, and they walk on in silence for a while as Marian recovers her equilibrium.

"You're not quite what I expected," she says ruefully.

"Oh? Did you think I would be different? Different than what?" Shale asks. "Different than a statue? Different than a log?" It snorts. "Should I talk in a monotone?" Shale puts on a hideous, flat, grinding voice. "Yes, master. I exist to serve the master. I shall kill for the master and only for the master!" Thank the Maker, it stops then, relaxing into its previous, more natural voice. Marian is a little surprised to realize how much she prefers it to be itself instead of playing at mindlessness. "Perhaps it expected me to have a booming voice? Recite limericks? I can recite limericks, if it likes."

"What sort of limericks does a golem know?" Marian asks curiously.

"Mostly they involve slaughtering pigeons in creative and invasive manners," Shale says.

And they're right back to the awkward silence. Marian's not sure if the whole bird fixation bothers her or not. It's nothing to do with her, not really, since Marian isn't actually a bird, but...

It's a little odd.

"I have never met another golem," Shale says, breaking the silence. "I have no idea what one might be like, or why I wouldn't be like them. Why do you ask? Has it met other golems? Did they not sound as I do?"

"No," Marian admits. "I – " I made a completely unsupported assumption and reality's slapping me in the face with it is probably not the way to go here. "It wasn't a complaint," Marian says, glancing up at Shale's face. Its glowing eyes are intent on the road, but as Marian looks away, she notices Shale flicking its eyes toward her out of the corner of her eye. "If your impression is anything to go by, I prefer you the way you are."

Shale snorts again. "It thinks I hang on its every word, waiting for its approval?" It shrugs. "I don't know what other golems might be like, but I am already superior by virtue of my free will. This is a good thing."

"A very good thing," Marian agrees. She means every word. The control rod had given her the creeps, once she'd realized Shale had a personality and a will of its own.

"I am also superior to you squishy, organic creatures," it continues, as if she hadn't spoken. "Imagine, no need to eat or sleep or perform other... functions." It sounds so revolted by the very idea that Marian has to bite her lip before she starts laughing. It ignores her. "Walk underwater, crush the heads of every opponent! The possibilities are limitless! Barring the occasional thirty years or so of paralysis, there's little to compare."

"I never thought about it that way," Marian says, doing her best to flatten the amusement out of her voice. She probably failed, though. This is the strangest conversation she's ever had.

"Stop talking so much," Shale says, glaring at her. "The wagging of its moist little tongue is distracting."

Marian covers her face with her hand to hold in the surprised laughter. She drops back in the line, finding a place near the rear and hopefully out of Shale's notice, and then she laughs until tears stand in her eyes.

She doesn't know what it is, whether it's her or the Blight or what, but something is attracting all the weirdest people in Thedas to her side.

She walks into camp that night to find half of her friends already hard at work putting up their tents. Bodahn's got Sandal and Zevran unpacking with him. It must be Zevran's turn at the cooking pot. Good, Marian thinks. Bodahn won't put up with anything from Zevran. It's not that she thinks he'd poison the food. Not anymore. ...Not really.

Maybe a little.

It's better to be safe, right? she tells herself, and turns to dragging the rolled canvas of her tent to an unclaimed spot nearish the fire. This camping spot is surrounded by trees, a thick, old forest that grows dark very quickly as she looks deeper into the underbrush. It's quiet, though, and almost peaceful.

Her tent is little more than ropes supporting waxed canvas. She drives the stakes which hold the ropes in place into the ground with her heel, nudges her packs inside with the toe of her boot, and rounds the side of her tent to head for the campfire.

A long arm reaches out from behind a huge tree and pulls her around. It's Alistair, leaning against the tree, hiding in its shadow. She can't see much more than the edge of his face, the cut of his cheekbones, and the campfire that lights his hair to burnt gold.

She laughs a little, confused and breathless. "Alistair?"

He takes her face in both hands and kisses her hard and desperate, his hot breath washing across her face. She gasps, little more than a sharp, shocked inhalation that he swallows before she kisses him back, as of course she must. Her need rises sharp and hot to meet his, the taste of his mouth and his hands pressing her ever closer to the heat of his body, hungry for the feel of his skin against hers. Damn their armor.

She takes his upper arms in both hands to balance as she leans up to get a better angle on his mouth. He feels so good, big and warm under her hands, soft and welcoming against her mouth, his tongue stroking hers the way he knows that she likes.

He's never been so single-minded before, so needy and intent. So far she's been the aggressor in their relationship. This is new, and different, and she loves it. He warms her from the inside out. He makes her feel like she's flying. The outside world has gone away, making an intimate little space that's only him, and her, and this thing between them that they stoke with every breath.

She could quite happily stay here forever.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you," he says against her mouth in a low, rough voice that strikes her like a blow. A shiver crawls down her spine, melting back into her body when it reaches the base and electrifying every inch of her. "All day, the whole march – " She kisses him again; she can't help it, but she wants very much to hear what he has to say. She shifts closer, just a little bit, to press herself against every glorious inch of him.

"And what were you thinking of?" She kisses his jaw, and then she opens her mouth over his skin, sucking lightly. He jumps when she uses the tip of her tongue to draw a warm, wet line along his jaw.

His breath is coming very shaky indeed. She likes it. She likes that she can make him feel this way, this way that she feels inside all the time.

"I... I thought about..." But instead of finishing the sentence, he slides his hand up her back and into her hair. He brings her mouth back to his, kissing her until she doesn't know which way is up anymore.

"I thought about the way you sound," Alistair confesses when they come up for air. "That little moan you make in the back of your throat – " Marian frowns at him. She has no idea what he's talking about; she doesn't make noises, not unless she means to. But he can't make out her face in the darkness, and he goes on. "And..." His other hand starts moving downward from her waist, hovering on the slope that begins to form her arse.

Marian laughs low in her throat and takes his hand. She directs it downward, sliding it over the swell of her arse until he's got a nice, solid grip. He doesn't grab and squeeze, like some men she's known; instead he pulls her closer until she's tucked against him and kisses her again, kisses her like she's the only thing in his universe.

But he leaves his hands right where they are.

That night, Marian gets herself off three times to the thought of his big, broad hands and the gentle, tentative way he touches her. She laughs a little, breathless from her climaxes, as she stares at the roof of her tent. Maybe there's something to the rumors of Grey Warden prowess after all...