A/N I started writing this nearly six years ago, but couldn't quite get the ending right. It was while I was struggling with writer's block on another one of my projects that a bolt of inspiration struck me – proving just how fickle my muse is – so I dusted off this project, reformatted it, changed it from a one shot to multi-chapter fic and got down to the business of re-writing it, and this is the result. I had an absolute hoot writing this and I hope you have as much fun reading it. Fair warning, there is a fair amount of foul language and gratuitous insults in this fic. I've also aged Daine up by a year as the timeline of the four books has never made much sense to me.

Credit for the title goes to the song Trouble is a Friend by Lenka.

Trouble he will find you no matter where you go,
No matter if you're fast no matter if you're slow,

Numair Salmalin was in trouble. Big Trouble. The sort of trouble that has a capital T and comes at you with an ugly expression swinging an axe. Had he been a more self-aware individual he might have, he considered later, been able to avoid this situation. However, as the gods seemed to delight in laughing at him, this was probably inevitable.

The shape this particular trouble came in was that of his pretty, 17-year-old student and best friend. Somewhere in the chaotic, frantic and fantastical mess that had been the last three and a half years, Numair had committed the cardinal sin of all sins – he had somehow, and quite without any cognitive awareness, fallen in love for the first time. The fact that his heart, that cantankerous and treacherous organ, had chosen the person who was probably the least suitable object in the whole of Tortall (with the possible exception of Kally, the Crown Princess) for him to fix his attentions on was an irony that was not lost on the poor mage.

Part of the problem, Numair thought grumpily, was that falling in love was nothing like falling. Whoever had coined that expression had, in the mage's opinion, an awful lot to answer for and should be taken to the deepest darkest glacier in northern Scanra and left there to contemplate their utter inadequacy. Numair had experience with falling – plenty of it – especially in those early days after he had first learnt to shapeshift into a hawk. Falling was an unpleasant swooping in the pit of your stomach. Falling was an unnatural weightlessness. Falling was the knowledge that sooner rather than later you're going to become far more closely acquainted with the ground than you would normally wish to be. Falling was terror and fear.

If falling in love with Daine had felt like that Numair would definitely have noticed and been able to do something about it; probably by running in the opposite direction. No, there had been no falling involved in the evolution of this new emotional complication.

Then there was this 'in love' bit. That wasn't helpful either. It felt like it had always been there – an inexorable part of him, like his hands or his black hair. Loving Daine was as natural as breathing and just as easy. It just was. Ineffable. Inevitable. Inescapable.

He'd loved her as a semi-feral 13-year-old with atrocious grammar; full of pain and rage at the injustice of the universe. He'd loved her as a surly 14-year-old, who merely had to ask for him to leave his warm book room, and fascinating experiments, to spend weeks in the freezing cold trekking the length of the country to help a pack of wolves. He'd loved her as a fierce 15-year-old, taking charge and starting to come into her power. He'd loved her since he'd met her, but the nature of that love had changed.

Before it had been a warm feeling; a protective desire to look after her, to see her grow to become the person he knew she would be. Over time, innocent affection had slowly morphed into a sense of belonging and camaraderie that was unique in his life.

Numair could count on one hand with fingers to spare the number of people who knew him, knew what he was truly capable of and felt completely comfortable around him. Daine had never feared him; not when his temper caused things to explode, not when he rashly turned Tristan Staghorn into a tree with a word of power, and not when others whispered things about him that made courtiers flinch and ignorant people stare in terror when he walked past. Now that warmth had changed into a raging inferno; a powerful, heady sensation that gripped him and consumed him. He felt like his whole life had been remade, reborn, to orientate around Daine.

It wasn't just lust either. Numair knew lust. He and lustful infatuation had been good and constant friends since his first fumbling interactions with the opposite sex at the age of 17. Lust was easy. Lust could be controlled. Lust could be ignored.

There was nothing easy about this emotion, and it definitely couldn't be controlled or ignored – even for a man like Numair who had made a career of compartmentalisation and shallow relationships. This was a raging current, a perpetual itch that could never quite be reached, a constant ache that had set up shop where his heart should be.

And it bloody hurt.

~*o0o*~

It wasn't that Numair had anything against love in general. As a young man he'd had the same dreams as most other people – of falling in love, marriage and a house full of noisy children with a mixture of his and their mother's features. For a while, when he was studying at the University, he had even wondered if maybe that person was Varice.

Time, distance, and growing up had quickly shown him he was wrong, and his return to Carthak had banished the thought forever. Another old ghost laid to rest.

Lindhall with his usual frankness and perspicacity had been correct all those years ago – little as a young, head strong Aram Draper had wished to acknowledge it – he and Varice might have been pieces in the same puzzle, but they would never fit together, they were too different. Even back then they'd wanted different things, had different values, and saw the world too differently.

Varice was happy as she was, she wanted to create beauty and loved life at the Imperial Court with all its intrigues and excitement. In contrast, he wanted to be a famous scholar, to explore the furthest reaches of his gift, to do something – be someone – that made a difference.

Court politics bored him, and quite frankly he'd rather stick his head in a vat of boiling oil than deal with two-faced courtiers on a regular basis; but more than that, the lack of ethics and the wanton disregard of principles, was the very antithesis of his own heart. It had been this last one which had set him on a collision course with Ozorne all those years ago, and which had nearly resulted in his early death. After discovering what his former friend had been planning he'd fled from the Imperial Court and only narrowly managed to avoid the Imperial Guard and the mages sent to capture him.

After that, love had been a luxury he couldn't afford during those long months it took for him to work his way around the Inland Sea to reach the safety of Tortall. Onua hadn't been exaggerating when she'd told Daine that he'd nearly starved during that time. His had been a precarious existence and, even if he had been so inclined, few women wanted to know a homeless beggar and street entertainer. So the question of love had been put on hold.

Once in Tortall, it took time for things to improve. It was months before he came to the attention of the King, and even then learning to trust his new benefactor and the apparent safety that Tortall offered was a slow process. His exile had shown him the worst of the world: the greed, the poverty, the anger, the mistrust, the fear, the abuse of power that happened every day. Things he had been kept carefully sheltered from in the ivory tower that was the Imperial University of Carthak. It had been an eye-opening experience, in more ways than one.

He didn't just see abject poverty – he lived it. He felt the crack of the whip as constables and law officers took exception to a nameless vagrant. He saw women beaten by their husbands and sat with children starving in the gutter. For the first time in his life he experienced what it was like to be completely powerless: his gift was of little use to him here, being a Black Robe mage wouldn't feed him or keep him alive, it was just another thing that set him apart and made people wary of him.

Things changed as he slowly adjusted and Tortall became his home. Aram Draper was a name he left behind him and instead Numair Salmalin – the Black Robe Mage of Tortall – rose in Aram's place. Now, years later, he was at the height of his power; wealthy, respected, he had a home, food, a workroom where he could spend hours devoted to his scholarly pursuits, and friends who were fond of him.

He was extraordinarily lucky. Things could so easily have turned out different; he could have died any number of times, or been captured by the Imperial Guard and taken back to Carthak, where he would have wished for death. Jonathan could have rejected his plea for asylum, or been no different to the amoral Ozorne, and extracted a high price for his life and safety.

He was well aware of his good fortune and yet, despite it, he was still alone. People were scared of him – of his gift – even, on occasion, his closest friends. It was an invisible dividing line that he knew was there even if no one ever mentioned it.

Black Robes were feared – and for good reason. That much power concentrated in one man? Even if they didn't go mad, and a startling number of those who try for the ultimate robe do, Black Robes were the closest mortals get to having the power of a god. Even those who were covetous of the power feared it.

He had been too young, ignorant and arrogant, to realise what path his tutors had put him on at the Imperial University. If he had, he would have run kicking and screaming in a opposite direction. They had seen the chance to have one of a handful of acknowledged Black Robe mages in the world affiliated to the University; and to the Imperial Court, of course.

Aram, full of the arrogance that comes with youth and intelligence, had been led down the path like a blind sheep to the slaughter. He'd achieved the highest honour but had lost so very much more as a result. Before that, people had been awe filled during his demonstrations, but they didn't fear him – they didn't make the sign against evil when he passed them by, or turn their face away from his gaze, as if even looking at him might taint them.

Jon had told him once, when Numair had been particularly maudlin, that 'lonely is the head that wears the crown'. He might not have an earthly crown, but he had the magical equivalent. It set him apart, raised him above others with the gift, identified him as different. Jon's advice was simple – being different, for whatever reason, was lonely – but it didn't have to mean that you are alone. "Find someone," Jon had instructed as he topped up Numair's glass with more wine. "Someone who loves you because you're different, not despite it."

It was good advice, sound advice, even. Alanna had said much the same, and George and Thayet. The only problem was that it was only simple in theory – in practice finding that someone proved much more difficult.

Still, he was young yet and if his adventures had taught him anything it was the importance of patience. So, he'd put it to the back of his mind and got on with his life. Even if he hadn't found the love of his life, there were plenty of willing women who wanted to pass the time with him and who were happy to fill the hole in his bed, if not his heart.

Then he met a small, scraggly girl fleeing from Galla and his world changed again.