Marian Hawke needed to stop challenging Fenris and Isabella to drinking contests. Really, how else could she explain the pounding headache and the nasty taste in her mouth? She started to sit up, but thought better of it when the room started to spin. She wasn't going to argue with the five sets of fireplaces telling her to lie back down. She groaned, Andraste's burning knickers, that swill they served at the Hanged Man really packed a wallop.

"Hawke?"

Oh dear Maker, she must've been drunker than she thought. Fenris was here? With her? In her bedroom? There were some things she wanted to forget, but a night with Fenris wasn't one of them. Oh please let me not have done anything stupid last night and I swear I will never touch another bottle again… for the next few weeks at least.

"Hawke are you awake? How do you feel?"

She opened her bleary eyes, trying to focus on Fenris' face. "Sit still, will you?" She croaked, "I can't talk to all three of you at the same time."

Fenris laughed, "Feeling good enough to make bad jokes I see."

"Shut up, my jokes are hilarious, Varric thinks so too." Marian squeezed her eyes shut, nausea rolling through her. She really didn't want to be sick in front of Fenris. He'd seen her in most states of undress and distress, but heaving her guts into a bucket wasn't one of them and she wanted to keep it that way. Her stomach had other ideas, however.

"What's wrong Hawke?" Concern threaded through Fenris' husky voice.

"Bucket." Was all she got out before she was fighting to keep the contents of her stomach from evacuating.

The cold metal of the pot touched her hands and she became violently ill, cursing whatever god or gods existed that put her in this mortifying position. There is nothing worse than seeing someone sick. You just can't think about someone the same way after you've seen them lose all their dignity and their dinner. She felt Fenris put a cold towel on the back of her neck and she instantly wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

She cracked one eye open and stared incredulously into the bucket in her lap, her embarrassment completely forgotten, "By the Maker, what in the hell did I drink? Its… blue…"

"That would be the lyrium," Fenris sighed, "so Merril was right."

Marian laughed nervously, "Would you care to explain that? Was Varric making some sort of sick bet at my expense again?"

Fenris looked at her closely, his green eyes guarded, "What do you remember about last night?"

She wracked her brain, but all she got were fuzzy images of an alleyway and the faint glow of Fenris' tattoos. "Were you agitated about something? I can sort of remember you glowing like a sexy blue candle, but that's about it."

Fenris laughed, "Agitated is a nice way to put it, and thank you, I think." His face lost some of its humor, "So you really remember nothing?"

"No." she shook her head and immediately wished she hadn't. She held onto her bucket a little harder and waited for the dizziness to pass.

"Here, take this."

Fenris handed her a glass of water. She winced as a way of thanks and he chuckled at her. Marian swished the water in her mouth and spit, hoping to remove the vestiges of the nasty taste lingering on her tongue.

"Ok," she said as she leaned back into the pillows, "care to explain how I got the god of all hangovers? And please tell me I didn't do anything too embarrassing, like dance naked on the table tops."

"As much as I would've paid to see that, no, you didn't." Fenris' smile didn't reach his eyes. "We were on our way to meet with Pollis, that rat who runs the warehouses on the Eastside Docks, to hear what information he had on that trafficking ring that's been active lately. We were ambushed."

He looked down at his hands, squeezing them together as if he was trying to keep himself from breaking something. "Pollis sold us out to some Tevinter slavers, but they weren't just there for me. It seems Denarius has taken an interest in you too."

"So what?" Marian shrugged, "I could care less about what Denarius wants or what he can do. Compared to the shit we've been getting ourselves into, the stuff he's thrown our way has been less than satisfying." She snorted, shutting her eyes against the swirling room, "Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed. For a Tevinter magister, he sure does love to pussy-foot around the issue."

"Dammit Hawke," Fenris growled, "you nearly died last night!"

Hawke laughed nervously, she had never seen Fenris so angry before. His lyrium markings were glowing again and the snarl on his face was feral, and terrifying. "Nearly dead isn't dead," she patted herself all over, checking her limbs, "and no, everything is all there, right where it should be."

Fenris jerked from his chair and began to pace furiously back and forth in front of the fire place. He kept mumbling curses under his breath and with every other stiff step, his tattoos glowed a little brighter. Suddenly he turned to face her.

"I nearly got you killed!" He yelled angrily, running a hand through his snow white hair, "You sensed the ambush and knocked me out of the way of a poisoned dart, which you took in the neck. We fought them off, you laughed, you looted, but when we turned to leave, you collapsed and stopped breathing."

The fire burning in his eyes seared her and for a moment, she stopped breathing again.

His voice was barely a whisper, "I thought I'd lost you…"

Tension hung in the air between them and the silence stretched, stealing all the air and making Marian burn from the heat he was exuding. The moment was broken by the sound of a log popping in the fire. Marian drew a grateful breath, her heart pounding and her head swimming.

Fenris turned back to the fireplace and stared into the flames. "I ran as fast as I could to Anders' clinic. It wasn't that far from where we were, but he could only do so much, even with the help of his pet demon. The poison was magically tied to your blood, so Merril was called. She switched the blood in our bodies so that the poison's hold on you would break and it could be safely cleansed through me."

He hung his head, his shoulders slumping. "Maker, I thought I'd lost you!" Fenris braced one arm against the mantle of the fireplace, "I felt so utterly hopeless. It was like the poison was killing me as well."

"Fenris…" Marian had her hand to her neck, feeling the slight lump that remained from her wound. She wasn't shocked to hear of her near death, she'd lived through too much to get stuck on what had happened before. She was here now and that's all that mattered, but she knew that Fenris would kill himself over this. Hurts of the past wounded him just as badly as wounds inflicted in the present.

"Fenris," she said softly, "why don't you read to me?"

He looked at her incredulously, his anguish momentarily forgotten, "You want me to… read to you…"

"Well it seems like I'll be bed ridden for a while so I might as well get something done." She grinned when he chuckled half-heartedly and the smothering aura of grief began to ebb from the room. If there was one thing she couldn't stand, it was the look of torment etched into his face.

It wasn't lost on her that he had allowed Merril to use blood magic on him in order to save her, but that was a subject she was afraid to broach, her humor could only take her so far into those dangerous waters before she drowned under their weight. And she certainly felt like she was drowning. He had braved his worst fear to save her life, and that meant more to her than any words could.

The bed dipped under Fenris' weight as he sat beside her, a closed book on his lap. For a moment, he just sat there, stiffly, but when Marian scooched up a little closer and rested her head on his shoulder, he tentatively put his arm around her.

"Oh for Maker's sake Fenris, I don't bite." Marian grinned at the dour look he shot her. "Okay… so I don't bite much."

The joke worked. Fenris' lips quirked in an unbidden smile and he relaxed against her, his hand settling comfortably on her hip. Suddenly, this close to Fenris for the first time in two years, Marian felt unbelievably peaceful, as if she'd had this exhausting pressure in her head that had finally let up. Her eyes drooped and the dizziness abated somewhat, leaving her drowsy.

She felt Fenris shift. "Marian? You need rest, I should go."

"No, no," she yawned, "I'm just going to close my eyes for a second. You don't have to leave…"

Marian smiled contentedly when he placed a kiss on the top of her head.

"Ok Hawke, why don't you lie down? I'll stay with you till your eyes open again." There was a definite smile in his rugged voice and that brought her even more peace as he wrapped his arms around her and lay down beside her.

She drifted off to sleep then, listening to Fenris breathing evenly behind her. With the strength of his chest against her back, Marian slept peacefully, feeling safer than she had even before her family fled Lothering five years ago.