It took her friends working together to talk Marian down from another mad plan to get into the Gallows alone.
"But I can go in through the tunnels Anders told us about," she protested over a breakfast shared in the clinic's back room. "I just need the element of surprise."
"Who's going to be better at the element of surprise," Varric asked. "The mage or the templar hunters who are as good at appearing out of thin air as Isabela over there?" He jerked a thumb toward the pirate in question.
"Those tunnels are swarming with lyrium smugglers," Anders warned. "Carta thugs. Even if you pull the 'Don't mind me, I'm Tranquil' act on them, they might just want to sell you to some slavers." Maker knew she was beautiful enough. "I try not to go into those tunnels without other members of the mage underground and I know the tunnels. It's just too bloody dangerous solo."
And if she thought he was going to let her go down there alone after last night, she was madder than he was. Which, come to think of it, might be saying something.
"I will not allow you to go alone," Fenris said, leaning in to put a finger in Marian's face. "We have all done too much for you in recent days for you to just throw that away. If you insist on this madness, I willaccompany you."
"You aren't leaving me behind," Anders said quickly. He let memories of the night with Marian quell his jealousy of Fenris, but even that couldn't extinguish it entirely.
The elf could never understand her the way they – the way hedid.
"You'll be needing someone good with traps," Varric said. "No offense to you, Rivaini, but you get distracted by shiny things and boom! someone steps on a trap, and thenyou remember to mention it to them."
Aveline scowled, having been on the receiving end of spikes through her boot only to hear Isabela blithely point out the trap after the fact.
Isabela shrugged. "Priorities. Traps are less interesting than treasure."
Marian sighed. "If we need more than the four of us, it will be more than a raid, it will be a war. Looks like it's me, Fenris, Anders, and Varric. Aveline, would you go check on my mother? It will look good for the templars and it would help me to know she's holding on."
Isabela slung a companionable arm over Merrill's shoulders. "Looks like it's just you and me, kitten. There's more of Anders' salve left."
Anders raised an eyebrow while Merrill turned a delicate shade of pink and became very interested in her feet, checking the soles for dirt in that cute habit she shared with Fenris. It looked like the elf had gotten over the little sister thing from Marian already.
He had never been worried about Isabela. As Marian said, Isabela wouldn't pine.
Aveline nodded. "I can do that. If you need help, I'll be back at the keep after I see your mother."
Marian clasped hands with Aveline before she left and gave Isabela a grin that said she knew exactly what the woman had planned for Anders' salve. She watched Isabela and Merrill leave with a fond smile before Varric touched her elbow to draw her away from Anders and Fenris.
Not far enough that the two men couldn't hear everything they said.
"You and Whatshisname," Varric jerked his chin toward Anders, "seem to be getting pretty close. So, what's going on, Hawke?"
Since when was that any of Varric's business, Anders thought. He shot a glance at Fenris and saw the elf was riveted on the conversation.
Marian tried to deflect with humor. "Well, well, well, I never thought you were the type, Varric. I'm flattered."
"Hawke, I know I'm damned near irresistible, but you're just too high-maintenance for me. Sorry." Varric rubbed his forehead as though the whole thing gave him a headache. "Listen, as your friend, I feel like I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't say something. Maybe, just maybe, getting involved with the possessed mage might be dangerous. There, I've said my piece."
"I'm right here, you know," Anders grumbled, but Marian just waved a hand back at him to indicate she could manage this herself.
"In all the time that you've known me, have I ever given you the impression that I was turned off by crazy?" she asked him with a grin. "Besides, Varric, I'm a possessed mage now, too. It's kind of a perfect match when you think about it."
Fenris made a noise that Anders thought was a barely suppressed growl.
Varric laughed. "Okay, point taken."
"Good," Anders said. "Because that was bloody rude."
Varric shrugged, "Hate to break it to you, Blondie but you're a little unstable."
"It's crossed my mind," Anders said wryly, and to drive the attempt at humor home, he added, "Minds."
Marian made a face. "This is all wonderful and I'm sure we will come out of this even better friends than before, but can we get moving?"
She snatched her staff up from where it leaned against the wall, checked her belt to ensure that both potions and grenades were within easy reach and strode toward the door, stopping when Fenris put an arm out across her chest to block her.
The elf pulled her hood up and arranged it to hide the livid brand on her forehead before letting her go. It was a tender gesture despite his loathing of mages and abominations and despite what Marian had told him the night before.
If Anders didn't despise him, he might have pitied him.
She smiled and touched Fenris' chin with her fingertips for a moment before leading her companions out of the clinic and through Darktown's narrow passages toward the smuggler's tunnel where Anders had told them they would find their way into the Gallows.
• • •
What was there to be said about the trip through the tunnels? There were lyrium smugglers, and they were just as relentless and sturdy as Anders had ever expected from dwarven criminals. They were there to supply the templars' ever-growing lyrium addiction, above and beyond what the Chantry subsidized.
They fought mercilessly, swarming the companions without giving them time to catch their breaths.
Marian and Anders fought smoothly together, staves moving almost in unison as though choreographed – left, right, slaminto the ground to launch ice and fire in deadly lines along the stone floor. Anders thought it was almost as good as sex to move so perfectly together. Almost. When Marian paused to raise her voice in a shout that brought fire raining down from the roof, Anders swept his arms out, sending healing magic through his allies while their enemies foundered around them. Varric showed no sign of caring that his foes were fellow dwarves as Bianca spat bolt after bolt, piercing armor and raining showers of bolts down on their enemies.
And Fenris… Fenrisswept through them in a wave of deceptive calm. His great sword cleared circles of dwaves around him, the only sound from him low murmurs of Arcanum, observations that sounded contemptuous despite the language barrier. He glowed with lyrium fire.
Without Fenris, they might have been lost.
When the last of the smuggler foremen had fallen, Anders stopped to catch his breath, hands on his knees while his head swam from the expenditure of power and Justice's barely restrained need to be unleashed.
"So, Hawke," Varric panted while he wiped blood off Bianca's stock. "How does wholesale slaughter line up with the whole Compassion thing? Because I'm not really seeing it so far."
Marian sank down on a set of stairs and mopped sweat off her face with her sleeve. "It's like this – in the Fade, Compassion can be compassionate for everyone. This world is just an idea for spirits. But here, the reality is you have to pick and choose and when it comes to life or death, Ichoose compassion for myself before the people trying to kill me."
"What about the templars?" Fenris asked, looking up from rummaging through another fallen templar's belongings.
"Compassion for the mages they're hurting," Marian replied without a pause to consider. "Not least of all for myself." Her next words seemed to come to her unbidden, quoting something, perhaps from Compassion, "'It is possible to travel the whole world in search of one who is more worthy of compassion than oneself. No such person can be found.'"
She shrugged. "It's all well and good to be compassionate for everyone when you're in the Fade, but in this world we have no choice but to choose sides, and I choose me, and all the people like me. I regret the deaths, but I just have to remember the other people I'm helping along the way."
Anders felt a swell of – pride? – from Justice that matched the warmth he felt hearing Marian's words. Who knew, perhaps a hundred years from now, their children might love without fear. It made everything they fought for so worth the sacrifices both of them would have to make.
Marian took a deep breath to gather her strength and pushed herself up.
"Stop slacking, you three," she scolded with a grin. "Let's go show those templars some compassion."
• • •
They heard the woman's voice before they rounded the corner into an open cavern. "No, please! I haven't done anything wrong."
"That's a lie," purred a man's voice.
Anders' lips drew back from his teeth in a silent snarl. He recognized Ser Alrik's voice, and based on Marian's sudden tension, so did she.
"What do we do to mages who lie?" Ser Alrik said. He could afford to be smug against a single mage with his loyal compatriots around him – templars, hunters, and archers all focused on one weak mage.
"I just wanted to see my mum," protested the woman. "No one ever told her where they were taking me."
Anders felt the electric swell of Justice's rage, rising in response to his own hatred for the templar. "No. No," he said aloud, trying to quell the spill of anger before it was too late. "This is their place. We cannot—"
Ser Alrik went on, still unaware of the observers. "So, you admit your attempt at escape. You know what happens to mage girls who don't toe the line around here. Don't you?"
A glance at Marian showed her expression drawn tight with anger and memory. Her knuckles were white where she clenched her staff.
"Please, no!" The girl went to her knees, pleading. "Don't make me Tranquil!"
Behind him, he heard Fenris loosen his sword in its sheath and Varric muttered, "Over my dead body."
"I'll do anything!"
"That's right," Ser Alrik replied, smugness oozing from his voice. "Once you're Tranquil, you'll do anything I ask."
Before Anders could lose himself in Justice's fury, Marian pushed forward into the cavern. "Get your hands off her!"
"You fiends will never touch a mage again!" Justice snarled, winning out over Anders' will at last with the question of whether Ser Alrik had made Marian do anything he had asked the way he threatened this girl. "They will die! I will have every last templar for these abuses!"
Marian slammed her staff into the floor. "We'll kill them all," she swore, her eyes on Ser Alrik, lighting with an incandescence to match Justice's. "I promise."
Varric whistled under his breath. "Shit just got real," he muttered, bringing up Bianca to shower bolts down on the templars.
Fenris pushed past Marian and Anders, putting himself between the two mages and the templars as the fight moved into overdrive. His sword swung, cutting indiscriminately into armor and flesh alike, slamming one man in the head with the pommel before he pushed him back with a kick to his chest and leapt into the air to pierce another templar's chest with the full length of his blade.
He jerked it free and whirled to find his next target while Bianca barked a trio of bolts out into Ser Alrik's chest. Marian's voice rose above the sudden chaos, singing out a spell that sent bolts of lightning jumping from one armored man to the next. Justice's shout cut through the clamor, preceding a rain of molten rage from the ceiling onto the templars.
Varric jerked the back of Marian's robe, pulling her back as more templars joined their companions. He pulled her back into the tunnel that had led into the templars' cavern to keep them from being flanked, but she barely noticed in her spirit-ridden state. Her voice rose again to join Justice's rain of fire with a storm of lightning that danced mercilessly from one armored figure to the next, taking advantage of the templars' love of heavy mail.
She screamed when a templar hunter slid out of the shadows to bury twin knives in her back, drawing Justice's attention while Varric shouted "Hawke!"
Before either man could react, she spun, thrusting out a hand to wrap him in a mantle of ice. Varric pulled a thicker bolt from his quiver – one of Bianca's "lances" – and hit the hunter with a punch that shattered both the ice and the flesh beneath it.
Marian flashed him a grin despite the inhuman blue blaze of her eyes and returned to raining elemental chaos down on the templars.
Minutes, hours, dayslater, when all had fallen, Anders' blood still sang with Justice's rage. The girl still crouched in fear away from the worst of the fighting. He advanced on her, meaning to help her, but….
"Every one of them will feel Justice's burn,"Justice proclaimed from his lips.
"Get away from me, demon!" the girl cried.
"I am no demon!," Justice growled. "Are you one of them that you would call me such?"
"Anders," Marian said, coming closer, reaching out to him. "That girl is a mage. We rescued her from being made Tranquil."
"She is theirs. I can feel their hold on her!"
Marian took another step toward him. "She's the reason we're fighting, Anders. Don't turn on her now."
The girl went to her knees. "Please, messere!"
Justice drew his hand back to smite her, but Marian laid a hand on his arm and the blue incandescence that had painted her skin rippled out, dancing against the cold blue that crackled along Ander's arm.
"No," she said in a voice that echoed with a memory of the Fade, "No, Justice. This is not right."
He paused, then staggered, the crystalline brilliance winking out before Anders went to his knees.
Marian, only herself again without Compassion's manifestation, sank down with him and wrapped her arms around him.
"Maker, no," he moaned. "I almost—if you weren't here…."
She held him even when he tried to get away, trying to protest that he needed to get out of there. "No, Anders. I'm not going anywhere."
"How can you stay?" he asked, turning in her arms to cling to her. "I am a monster."
"No." She dropped to her bum and pulled him down against her, heedless of the blood and slaughter around them, ignoring Varric as he went to check on the mage girl who had run from Justice's display, dismissing Fenris' glower without a glance. "No, Anders. I'm not leaving you. I'm never leaving."
"But why?" he asked, letting her draw him down despite his need to flee the place where he had nearly become something so much worse than a man ridden by a Fade spirit. "How can you tolerate this? That was not Justice, that was Vengeance."
How? How can she stay when she can see the demon he has almost become?
"Because, love," she said, putting a hand to his cheek to make him see her eyes, clear of fear or anger, "Vengeance is Justice without Compassion."