I don't like that I keep forgetting to update FFN. sorry. AO3 is the best place to find me, under the name calypsid.

Marian lies awake, staring at the ceiling, her hands folded across her stomach, and listens to Cú snoring at her feet.

At least someone's getting some sleep, she thinks.

She's exhausted. She feels the leaden heaviness of her body, the thick, slow thoughts circling at a snail's pace, and she thinks – surely, any minute now.

But...

The tight, painful, anxious feeling is back, sitting directly on her solar plexus. Marian pushes hard on her ribcage. It doesn't help. She used to be able to fall asleep when she wanted to, soon after she laid down. She misses that more innocent version of herself.

She hasn't been alone in so long. The thought makes her turn on her side, pulling her legs up to make her smaller. Down there – Oghren snores like thunder, and though Alistair is softer, she could still hear him; with the explicit reminder that they were alive and with Shale always there, always watching, Marian felt safe enough to sleep. But here...

It's too quiet. Her breath is coming too fast; she shoves her fist against her mouth and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to hide, though there's no one there to see her falling apart.

Everyone is all right. They're safe. What could have happened here, in a perfectly normal inn? And anything that did happen would have woken her up, or someone would have come to find her and fill her in. Everything is fine. He's fine.

He is fine.

She hears a faint, agonized whine, and with horror she realizes it's coming from her own throat, the end of a breath she's been forcing out for too long. She makes herself take the next breath. It breaks in her throat, shuddering, sounding lost and alone and confused, like she's crying.

She's scrambling out of bed before she can think about it and convince herself to stop. She pauses only long enough to wake Cú, who sighs and pads along at her heels as she darts out through her door to the landing. Alistair has the room next to hers, the corner, and she raps three times on the door before she manages to stop.

Marian steps back, her calves pressing against her dog, and shivers; she wraps her arms around herself, wishing her nightshirt wasn't quite so thin. She waits. And waits.

She's acting like she's gone mad. He's fine, he's just sleeping. Like she should be. She needs to get a hold of herself, go back to bed, and force herself to sleep. She knows that's easier said than done, but she needs to try.

She's trembling, and not just with cold, but with an anxiety she doesn't know how to soothe. She bites her lip.

If she'd woken him when she knocked, he would have opened the door by now; therefore, he's still asleep. Honestly, that's a good thing. He needs his rest. She's being incredibly selfish right now. It's bad enough that she woke Cú –

She makes herself turn back to her room, squeezing herself in a sad parody of a hug, her shoulders tight with tension.

"Marian?"

She whirls, taking him in with one lightning-quick look; he's wearing sleep pants and not much else, his eyes bleary and hair a rumpled mess, peering at her like he doesn't quite know where he is.

See? she tells herself, furious. He's fine, you woke him up for nothing –

"Are you all right?"

Marian bites her lip. No, she admits, if only to herself. She swallows. "I can't sleep," she says, her voice tight. "Can I – "

Is she really going to ask this of him? Maker, is she this weak?

Yes.

"Can I sleep with you? Just sleep," she rushes to say as his eyes widen, as his face and neck flush red. "Not – not that, I'm not pushing, I swear I would never – "

Not that part of her isn't noting how far down his chest the blush goes. Because she is.

"Hey," Alistair says gently, interrupting her panic. He smiles. "It's okay. I know that. Come on." He stands aside and lets them in, closing the door behind them. His room is much the same as hers, though his bed is pushed into the corner, the covers still in disarray from when she woke him. His packs are a messy pile against the opposite wall. Alistair yawns, scratching his bare stomach. "D'you want inside or out?"

He's acting nonchalant, like this isn't weird at all, but he's still blushing.

"In," she decides, climbing into the – into Alistair's bed. Fuck. She had not fully thought this through, or appreciated what she was asking of him, until this very moment.

It smells like him.

Marian crawls under the covers and lies on her side, pressing herself tight against the wall, leaving most of the bed for Alistair. Cú settles down on the floor, grumbling under his breath, and Alistair stares down at her in his bed and –

Highlighted by moonlight flooding through the window, his sleep pants clinging to his hips, all bare feet and tousled bedhead and worried, tired eyes, Alistair is everything that she wants – Alistair is hers, in a way that no one has ever been before. He's not her possession, he's not a thing she can lay claim to. He chose her, as she chooses him. As she chooses him every day. She leans on him in a way she has never been able to allow herself to lean on another person, trusting him to support her no matter what.

The soft, wondering look in his eye as he watches her, like she's a dream he would never have imagined could be real – is that love?

She wonders if her feelings are reflected in her eyes, the way his are.

"Alistair," she says, finding herself able to smile, after all, even if it's only a faint echo of what it could be. "Don't let me kick you out of your own bed."

"I just want to remember this," he says, watching her. "I'm still not convinced that I'm not dreaming." But he gives in, clambers into the bed and drags the covers up over both of them. He's on his side, facing her. He only has one pillow. Hopefully he'll be up to sharing. She squirms forward to prop her head on the pillow, their faces only inches apart; he's watching her with warm and sleepy attention, his eyes shining in reflected moonlight from the window.

"Hi," she whispers.

Alistair smiles a little. "Hi, yourself."

They lay like that for some time, and all the while she drinks in his face in the moonlight, every moment a revelation, like they've met anew; she likes the sharp line of his jaw, his strong nose and sensitive mouth, the straight slash of his eyebrows. She likes the affectionate tilt to his eyes, his skin that is only a dull, faded echo of its normal gold in the pale light. She can feel him breathing. The warmth of his body is a faint glow all down her front.

This is exactly what she needed.

"Thank you," Marian says quietly, snuggling into the pillow – and if that brings her a little closer to him, she's fine pretending she didn't notice. "For letting me stay with you, I mean. I'm sorry I woke you."

Alistair shrugs. "I wasn't sleeping that well, either. I'm glad you came."

She bites her lip. "Do you want to talk about it?"

He gives that some thought, a faint line appearing between his eyebrows. "Maybe later? I think some of it is going to stick and some of it isn't, if that makes sense, and I'd rather know which is which first."

"Unexpectedly sensible of you," she says, unable to flatten all of the amusement out of her voice.

"Hey!"

Soothed by this, by remembered familiarity of their teasing dynamic, she lets it lie. "I'm serious, actually. I hadn't considered that this..." She can't think of what to call it, waving her hand in a small gesture that encompasses the both of them instead. "That it could be situational. That it might be temporary. Even if it's only part of it – even if it's not – just thinking that it could be helps."

His eyes warm with more lazy fondness than she really knows what to do with. "I'm glad."

Helpless against the swell of affection that threatens to swamp her, Marian shifts closer to him, closer to the heat of his body, and lays her hand on his cheek, stroking him with her thumb in a tiny caress. And her heart, oh, her heart – her silly, fragile, emotional heart, three sizes too big and twice as likely to get her into trouble – It's so full of feelings that have been pressed down for too long that she's drowning. Now that she's allowing herself to feel them, they're too overwhelming to keep inside. She doesn't want to. Doesn't need to; she hadn't wanted to say it in the Deep Roads for fear of tainting the memory forever. But they're out – they're free. They made it. And she is always, always safe with him.

"Alistair," Marian whispers. "You have to know I love you."

"I know," he admits, turning his face into her hand, closing his eyes. There's a small hitch in his breathing, and his eyebrows are drawn tight, like he's upset, but he puts his hand over hers, pressing down for more contact.

She knows her affections aren't unwelcome. She knows it; of all of the things that she knows – and that list is very long – this she knows best of all. But leaving that aside, she's having trouble figuring out why he's reacting this way. "Alistair? What's wrong?"

If he turned his face any further into her hand, he'd be hiding. "You..." He sighs. "You stopped touching me," he admits. "While we were down there. I was starting to think..."

What? Maker, had she? Marian frantically searches her memories of the last few months, and what she finds is – Alistair is a lot closer to the truth than she'd like. She had pulled away, too lost in her head to pay attention to anything except pure survival.

Shit.

"I'm sorry," she says, her eyes stinging with tears. "Alistair, I'm so sorry – " She wraps her hand around the back of his neck and pushes forward to touch her forehead to his, slings her leg over his hip, and presses as much of the rest of her body against his as is humanly possible. "I love touching you," she says softly. "I love touching you so much. I think about putting my hands on you all the time. And I – I love the way that you touch me. I love the way that you feel against me, and I love how safe you make me feel, like even if everything else goes wrong you'll still be there."

A very small smile starts to grow on his face, giving her the courage to keep going.

"You feel like part of me that I lost somewhere along the way," Marian admits, her voice softening even more; talking about her feelings like this is making her feel shy. She edges closer, though there's precious little room between them as it is. "I – earlier, it wasn't that I couldn't sleep. I lied. I couldn't sleep without you. I almost always want to touch you, Alistair. And – "

She hesitates, long enough that he raises his eyebrows at her, prodding her. "Next time, if there is one, please tell me that something is wrong? I know I can get tangled up in my own head, and that's not your fault or anything to do with you, but I don't want you suffering because I'm – " Weak, she supplies, the thought bitter, broken, not good enough – "Struggling," she decides. "But I always want to make sure that you're happy. Promise me?"

"I promise," Alistair says softly – and too easily, to her mind. She doesn't trust it. His eyes are bright with affection, though, and it doesn't feel worth the argument. She can try to pin him down again later.

He runs his hand down her arm to the elbow and then nearly seamlessly to her waist, wrapping around her back; she's drowning in him and she never wants to leave. I love you, she nearly says, and then she has to make a face at herself when she remembers – she said it. She finally said it out loud, and that means she can say it whenever she wants.

So she does.

He kisses her, a brief, dry press of mouth on mouth. "I love you, too," Alistair tells her, his eyes direct and devastating, paler in the moonlight. As if he hadn't been telling her that forever with his eyes and his solicitude and the way that he smiles at her when he thinks she's not looking and –

"I know," Marian tells him, and kisses him again.

She keeps Alistair close as he drifts off to sleep, his face buried in her neck and his breath whispering over her skin, and she thinks that if she can just listen to the strong, steady beat of his heart, she might be able to rest, after all...

She's woken by the sun shining directly in her eyes. She's laying half on top of Alistair, draped over his chest, the hem of her nightshirt riding up around her thighs; she turns her head and buries her face in his shoulder to avoid the blinding light.

"Good morning," he says, amused.

Marian groans. "Does it have to be?"

Alistair runs a slow, soothing hand up and down her back. "I can't douse the sun for you, no."

She smiles, rubbing her face against his shoulder to smell the warmth of his skin, and Marian –

She feels –

Maker's grace, she feels better. Almost human. For the first time in months, the fog in her head is... It's not gone, not all the way, but she can think more clearly, like parts of her she'd forgotten existed are unlocking for her use. She sighs long and languid, melting into Alistair's chest, savoring the release of tension in muscles long since knotted tight.

She'd almost forgotten what it was like to live in three dimensions, to be more than a flat, weary copy of herself.

Alistair's hand never stops moving over her back. "You, too, huh?"

"Yeah," she says softly.

She's still tired and it's tempting to just lie here with him and drift back into sleep, but she's also feeling like she might be hungry and that should probably be encouraged, rather than ignored. Cú needs to eat and go out, and Alistair should eat, too, and all of that means getting out of bed, even if she'd rather not.

She considers what she could do with her day, making and discarding plans just for the pleasure of letting her mind work the way it was designed to. In all seriousness, she needs to check in with her companions, and then maybe she should talk to Bodahn about their supplies. And the money, Maker, always the money –

Alistair sighs, his chest under her cheek rising and falling with his breath. "Would it actually kill you to turn your brain off for a entire day?"

"It might," she admits sheepishly. "How did you know?"

The hand he's been running over her back slides up to knead at her shoulder; she hadn't realized she'd tensed so much. "It's hard to avoid when you're draped over me like a blanket," he says, but she can hear the smile in his voice.

"I can go, if I'm bothering you so much," she teases, leaning up on her elbow to hover over him. To her delight he really does look better, all aglow with mellow, lazy amusement. He's gotten some color back in his face and his cheeks aren't quite so pinched.

He's really beautiful, actually, she thinks, looking down at him; the morning light highlights his high, fine cheekbones, his long eyelashes, his strong and stubborn jaw. She reaches up and brushes back his hair, lets her hand drift over his forehead and down the prominent bridge of his nose. Even the shadows seem to love him. They add the contrast that emphasizes his bone structure, the pleased, sensual curve of his mouth.

"Or..." Alistair says, watching her with uncertain eyes and playing with the end of her braid. "You could stay here, instead."

"Breakfast," Marian says dreamily, her mouth watering. Thinking about food is just making her hungrier. She starts to roll off him, but he tightens his arm around her waist. "Food, Alistair."

Alistair gives her a very unimpressed look. "If I let you go, you're not coming back. You're too good at inventing errands for yourself."

"Then we're all going to starve," she points out.

"Not true," he says with a grin. "I trust myself to come back, after all." He drops a kiss on the tip of her nose and slips out from underneath her, leaving her pouting. He grabs a shirt off the floor and throws it on – honestly, Alistair, Marian thinks with a wrinkle of her nose – and takes her mabari with him when he goes. The door closes behind him with a soft click.

She stares at the door, but she doesn't see it; she's taking the measure of her feelings, instead. She doesn't like either of them being out of her sight, dog or man. She wants them where she can see them. She'd rather know for sure that they were safe, that they were there. But – It's not the overwhelming panic of last night. It's not even the sick, creeping horror of yesterday. She'd just rather they were here with her.

Is that healthy?

Marian sprawls over the whole bed, stretching long and luxuriously against sheets crumpled with sleep. It's healthier, she supposes. Is that enough? She feels like she should be doing something with herself; if not physically, then doing the mental work of putting her psyche back together.

Alistair may have had a point, after all. Marian rolls again to shove her face into his pillow, groaning. Does she even know how to stop thinking?

The bed smells like both of them now. That helps.

The morning sun is bright, so thick and warm that she's roasting; she's near to drowsing by the time Alistair returns, a tray in his hands and Cú dogging at his heels looking for scraps. He's brought porridge and honeycomb and fresh, sour gooseberries, and they eat in his bed, their knees pressed against each other; their hands brush together when she reaches for the honey, and she looks at him from under her lashes and – Oh. There's a soft, contented smile in his eyes and dancing around the edge of his mouth that she can't help but return.

"This is nice," Alistair says, nudging her with his foot.

"It is," she agrees, smiling at him huge and bright, and steals the last of the honey while he's distracted.

She lets him drag her back down into the bed like the shiftless layabouts they're going to be today. He's got her tucked between him and the wall again, which he seems to prefer, and she must admit, if only to herself, that she likes the reassuring weight of him, likes the security of his tangible presence and his warmth. Her head is on his shoulder, her hand over his heart, and with his arm tucked around her, Marian is safe enough. Maybe safe enough to check –

She trails delicate, seeking fingers through her own mind, only to find that the wounds are healing of their own accord; they're much faded, thin and nearly invisible, like pottery shards joined back together with close attention to the fit.

So much of her mind is unfamiliar to her right now. She's changed. The dark, murky depths of her mind are honestly terrifying to her, full as they are of shadows, of half-remembered feelings and emotions she never wants to relive.

What if it happens again? What if she's not strong enough to resist next time? What if she hurts someone? Marian clutches Alistair's shirt, her imagination suddenly, terrifyingly vivid, painting pictures of blood on the walls, on the ground, her friends backing away from her with horror and grief and the unthinking, instinctive terror with which the mouse watches the cat – and something terrible wearing her like a comfortable shirt, laughing from behind her eyes, enjoying it.

"Alistair?"

She has to ask. Even if it hurts – and it will hurt – she needs to know.

Alistair turns his head to nose at her hair. "Hmm?"

"Are you afraid of me?" she asks, her voice very small.

"Afraid of you?" He rolls to face her fully, but before she can hide her face in his chest he nudges her chin up so she's forced to look him in the eyes – his very confused, concerned eyes. "What makes you ask that?"

Marian turns her hand over and calls the barest whisper of force between their bodies, wispy and golden in the sunlight; it twines around her fingers like a hungry, desperate kitten. It comes when she calls it. It obeys her every whim. And with it she could crack the mountain open if she only wanted it badly enough, or she could call the hurricane, or turn her own body into a relentless, raging creature of claws and teeth and fury.

But Alistair –

He just looks at her, as steady as before, as close and concerned as before, like she couldn't turn her hand over and dissolve him into his constituent parts if she lets her will falter even a little bit. He loves her. He trusts her.

He's not afraid at all, is he?

"I would have killed all of you, do you know that?" she says softly. "And then the whole of Orzammar, and then – " She laughs. It sounds very ugly to her own ears. She banishes the magic as easily as it came, closing her hand around empty air. "Because I was weak and I let my guard down. And you're not afraid? Not even a little bit?"

"Oh," he says, his expression softening, as though that's somehow reassured him. "Is that all?"

Marian rears back; pressed against the wall as she is, she can't go far, but she feels like she's been slapped. "Is that all?"

Is that not enough?

But Alistair interrupts her, talking over her as if she's not speaking at all. "I watched you fight that demon with everything that you had," he says, urging her to come back to him with his hand on her side. "Marian, you don't give up. As long as I've known you, you've never given up. You always have another plan. You even knew when to ask for help. You're the strongest person I've ever met. What's there to be afraid of?"

She stares at him, her mouth open, her cheeks flushing.

Is that really what he thinks of her?

He's all raw honesty and encouragement and she wants to drink him in like he's her heartsblood. She laughs, because if she doesn't she's going to cry, and says, "I wish I deserved any of that." Alistair smiles at her anyway, like forgiveness, like the peace she desperately wants to make her own, and she gives in to the pressure of his hand at last and closes the distance between them, cuddling as close to his warmth as she can get.

Alistair rests his face in her hair again; she can feel his soft, warm breath ghosting along her scalp, lighting up every nerve ending. "I've never been scared of magic," he admits. "Not even when the Chantry probably would have liked me to be. Don't get me wrong – demons, phwoar." He shivers dramatically. "But they're not the same thing, are they?"

"No," she admits. "They're not."

He breathes her in for a little while, and she reclaims her hand's position over his heart before he speaks again. "At the monastery most of the books were written by templars or the Chantry layfolk," he says. "You know. Magic exists to serve man and all of that. Sometimes they'd talk about what to look out for in enough detail that I could sort of get a picture in my head of what it was really like." He chuckles, a little self-conscious for no reason that she can understand. "I don't know how realistic my ideas were – those templars were more interested in the fire and damnation bits – but it was definitely more interesting than what I was supposed to be learning."

Marian squints, like that'll actually help her remember. "Didn't I hear you fighting with Morrigan about Chantry history once?"

Alistair laughs sheepishly. "Heard that, did you?"

"How you think I could avoid hearing the two of you going at it is beyond me," she sighs.

"Fair enough." Chuckling, Alistair rolls onto his back, tugging her with him so she ends up laying on his chest again, a hand on her hip and the other rubbing soothing circles on her neck. She likes this; she can hear his heart beating if she lays her head in the right place, and he's warm and solid and he wants her exactly where she is. She sighs, a wave of contentedness worming its way into her soul.

"They wanted to prepare us for whatever we were moving on to," he explains, his voice deep and soothing in her ears, a rumble that she can feel in her own chest. "The ones who were nobles or who had status needed land management and mathematics and strategy and tactics. Some of them were meant for the Chantry, and they got drilled in the Chant and all of that history that I would quite frankly like to be able to forget." Alistair shivers exaggeratedly to make her laugh. "But I was the token bastard and everyone knew I was for the Templars – "

"Hey," she says, lifting her head to glare at him. She's interrupting him and she doesn't care. "Stop calling yourself that."

Alistair raises his eyebrows. "What, a templar?"

Marian groans. "Yes, that too, obviously – stop calling yourself a bastard, will you?"

"But I am a bastard." There's a faint smile on his face that he's trying to hide. She knows he's trying not to laugh at her, and she hates him for it.

"Only technically," she mutters into his chest. "Don't make me change my mind."

"I would never," Alistair says gravely, but she knows he's still laughing at her. Somehow, she can just tell. She considers thumping him, but before she can, he reaches one long arm over the side of the bed and fishes around on the ground for a minute before coming back up with something in his hand. It's the runestone he carries in his pocket wherever he goes, the face worn slightly concave from years of care and worry.

He offers it to her and she takes it, rubbing her thumb over it the way that she's seen him do it; the face is impossibly smooth, polished, and the rest is slightly rough, like every other runestone she's ever handled. The rune itself is sloppily cast and lopsided. She thinks that it's supposed to be a cleansing rune, but the right side is broken by a stray chisel mark that's left it unusable. Marian looks up at Alistair, raising her eyebrow in a wordless question.

"I found that after one of my first darkspawn fights," he says, looking at it with far-away, reminiscent eyes. "It's kept me company on many a long night. That, and my mother's amulet – " Here Alistair runs a fond thumb down her cheek, smiling at her; she smiles back, letting him warm the empty spaces inside of her. " – are my most treasured possessions. I don't have much that survived Ostagar."

"Neither do I," she says, thinking of Bethy and Carver's toys.

But thinking of Ostagar also makes her think of the things that happened there and the people she met, chief among them Duncan. "You know," she says slowly. "Duncan told me once that I should ask you what you thought of magic instead of assuming things about you because you were a templar. I always meant to, but it was just one thing after another – you know how it was."

"Darkspawn invasions will do that, it's true," he says, dry as bone.

Marian flips the rune at his face. It lands on his nose, off-center, and tumbles down his cheek to land on the pillow.

Alistair narrows his eyes at her, ignoring the rune entirely. "Cruel woman."

"Ah, but you love me anyway," Marian says, unable to damp down the wide, bright smile on her face at the thought.

"Yeah." Alistair smiles at her all soft and fond and tender, like he knows exactly what it does to her insides. "I do."