/Dear Maker on high, how long has it been?! So many distractions, so many stories to read, to enjoy and to love! But still, I didn't forget! That counts for something, right?/

Marion felt as if she were floating in clouds, with only the pain in her jaw keeping her anchored. She groaned, a dizzying expanse of green dominating her sight as she opened her eyes, then closed them again. It was still much too bright.

She was moving, though. Of that she was certain. The weightlessness she felt was interrupted by a series of regular, miniature falls, broken by her stomach against something rigid, yet strangely malleable. With every small drop, she felt wind tug at her hair and slither across her skin, tickling her dangling arms and legs. She shivered. The chemise was far too thin, and without the fire burning inside her to keep her warm, she felt the beginnings of a chill settle in her bones.

I'd much rather be frozen solid, she thought, relieved her thoughts were clearer than before, than have my mind taken from me in such a manner again.

Her eyes were shut, but it did little to deter the cold seeping into her. The shivering grew worse, yet the rhythmic tugs of gravity continued, unaware of her discomfort.

It was clear she was being carried - slung over some person's shoulder as one would a duffel bag. She tried to crack open one eye, to get a look at her abductor and better calculate her escape. She lifted and tilted her head, careful to make the movement as light and undetectable as possible...

And saw a pair of piercing, forest green eyes, looking her in the eye as if she had been screaming and thrashing about instead of sneaking. Her mind went blank, unprepared for the eventuality that she would be caught so easily, and she found her appraising her captor as she struggled to regain control over her muddled thoughts.

Her eyes quickly processed stray strands of snow-white hair draped over a lean, rugged face of elven ancestry, feeling recognition and disbelief mount within her as she laid eyes on symmetrical bone-white curvatures that marked the skin below his lips, a unique mark that could not have been a coincidence.

She recognised him.

The hardness in his jaw had been different, and his eyes had been more approachable, but she recognised him nonetheless. And from the guarded look in his eyes, he recognised her too.

She watched him as he turned away and called out to someone, whose name escaped her. Her consciousness was still coming and going, and it took nearly every ounce of concentration just to keep her eyes open, and she squeezed out what little remained when the elf turned back to her, steeling herself for whatever came next.

"What's your name?" The elf asked, tersely, but not unkindly.

That, she didn't expect.

"M-Marion." She answered, the word stumbling from her lips before her mind processed it. There was a force behind his gaze that compelled her answer, something powerful that she could not resist, even with a sharp mind and a steeled resolve.

"Marion, I'm going to let you down. You're safe with us, and there's nothing stopping you from running. But if you do, we won't be able to protect you from the poison and those it has under its spell." He said, loosening his cinch on her waist, letting her slide off his back feet first.

As her feet hit the ground, she felt her mind go blank. Her legs threatened to give way. Weightlessness took hold of her once again, and this time there was no shoulder to keep her from falling.

She felt an arm snake around her waist, bracing her on the side she was collapsing on.

"That blow to your head did more damage than I thought." She heard a female voice, highlighted by footsteps, drift from the shadows. She recognised a Fereldan accent a split second before she saw its owner materialise out of the thick smog.

Shit.

A woman outfitted in tough-looking leather armour stood before her, the rough workmanship of it standing in stark contrast with her fiery hair and fierce violet-blue eyes. Marion ran her eyes over her, taking in the well-balanced figure she cut between raw physique and feminine grace. But while she may possess a striking beauty, she certainly did not lack for intimidation, which was enhanced by her right hand resting on the pommel of an uncharacteristically wide longsword, and her left being encased in a silver gauntlet that doubled the size of her fist and seemed to gleam with a light of its own. Those two items alone spelled nobility to Marion, and it was not until she forced herself to meet the woman's condescending gaze that she identified her sworn rival in Kirkwall.

Shit.

"To your credit, though. That would have been a damned good charge," she said, mockery dripping from every word, "If it hadn't been done in imitation of a mad bull."

"You were... fortunate." Marion shot back. Her eloquence may be diminished, but she knew the Fereldan would have walked all over her if she held her tongue.

"Was I? I suppose I can say the same for you, Lady Delauncet, when I decided to let your head stay where it is." Hawke smiled, all venom.

To that, she had no answer. Her still standing with her head atop her shoulders was testament enough to the mercy Hawke had shown her, and it reminded her of the danger she was still in. If she made one wrong move, uttered one ill-spoken syllable, there would be no witnesses to her beheading save for the elf who had carried her, and he was certainly not on her side.

Think, Marion, think!

And she did. But she did not anticipate the effort it took to move even a single thought and, to compensate, her legs gave out from beneath her. Weightlessness took over and this time, she had not the will to fight it.

And he was there in an instant, breaking her fall with a strong arm at her back. Her flailing hand caught his other arm at the wrist, and she found herself looking into those piercing forest green eyes once again.

"T-thank you," she smiled, wanly but gratefully, casting her eyes downward as he helped her stand straight, albeit leaning heavily into him.

"Might I learn the name of my rescuer?" She asked, old courtesies coming to mind. She saw him hesitate, eyes looking past her for the slightest of moments, and she wondered if she had went too far, too quickly. If she were to survive the night on more than Hawke's goodwill, she had to get him on her side, or at the very least mellow whatever negativity Hawke had painted her in.

"Call me Fenris." He said. Marion did not put much trust in her eyes, but she thought she saw a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. For some reason, she found herself smiling back.

"Fenris," she said, rolling his name around. It suited him - strong, yet gentle, a mirror image of Desmond. She found it almost too easy to warm to him, and she had fight to retain her modesty, lest she devolve into a damsel in distress, saved by her knight in shining armour.

She shook herself mentally. "Well then, Fenris. I should be safe in assuming that you and Lady Hawke had not braved this..." she gestured with her free hand, settling into Fenris's awkward embrace, "foul miasma just to come to my rescue? Surely you were on the hunt for the fiend behind this treachery."

"For all we know, we have her in our clutches already." Hawke said darkly, glaring at her. Marion felt fear stab at her as her eyes fell upon the sword at Hawke's hip, and the gloved fingers drumming an impatient rhythm on its pommel. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she could have sworn she felt the sword hovering above her skin.

"Please, Lady Hawke," she countered meekly, "what would I have to gain by poisoning Hightown? I am merely a victim in this incident. You must believe me." She need not fake the desperation in her voice, but she doubted Hawke even acknowledged the emotion at all. She could see the naked fury in her eyes, and she knew at once that it had nothing to do with her feeble attempt at ambushing her. She saw her as a threat, a thorn in her side that could so easily be plucked if she so chose, innocence be damned.

It's not right! She pleaded silently, but she knew Hawke didn't care about right or wrong. In Hawke's eyes, what she planned to do was perfectly justified, for Marion knew she never forgot the day she had brought the templars to her door.

She remembered the dread in the newly-anointed noblewoman's violet-blue eyes when the mage hunters came for her younger sister. It was the same dread that chilled the blood in her veins at this very moment.

She remembered the suffocating tension in the woman's body language when Bethany Hawke, Grey Warden Commander of the Free Marches, had renounced the templars' claim over her with her title. It was the exact same tension that was making every muscle in her body lock in place, strangling her with cold, invisible hands as she stood before Clarissa Hawke, who never forgot and never forgave.

She remembered the cold fury in Clarissa Hawke's eyes as the last of the templars departed, leaving her alone in the doorway with the sisters. She had felt the very air become alight with the flame-haired woman's hatred and she had seen, behind the all-consuming rage, her swearing a silent vow that Marion had never thought she could fulfill.

She had smiled then, a thin-lipped warning offset by narrowed eyes. No words needed be said - it was the silence that eventually sunk in, not paltry, vocal threats.

But as the same silence descended over the empty Hightown street, Marion found it nigh on unbearable.

Just be quick about it!

Then she felt the arm around her waist tighten, and a familiar but unexpected voice took both Hawke and herself by surprise.

"Hawke, we've gone over this before. She is not the one who did this." Fenris spoke up, leaping to her defense. She turned at the sound of his voice, clamping down on the urge to gasp.

Hawke fixed her sizzling gaze on the elf, the shock of his betrayal adding fuel to the inferno that brew behind her furrowed eyes. Fenris, for his part, simply returned her glare with adamant eyes, unflinching even as her grip on her longsword grew bone-white, and Marion envisioned the blade's golden gleam whistling through the air, biting into her neck and ending her life with one swift, vengeful stroke.

Then she saw something shift behind the fire, and she felt Hawke's gaze on her once again, only this time her glare seemed to pass through her and diminish into the green mists, instead of nailing her to the wall with sheer force of will. She saw her cock her head, as if listening to hushed words meant for her ears alone.

Bethany. Marion thought. The younger Hawke was an apostate, and she and Clarissa have made no secret of the relationship between them being more than mere sisters. She could only hope it was sense that Bethany was whispering into Hawke's ear.

With a shaky breath, Clarissa Hawke pried her fingers from the hilt of her sword, one by agonising, second-guessing one.

Marion breathed a sigh of relief, silently thanking the white-haired elf for his intervention. She turned her eyes to the stone tiles beneath her bare soles as Hawke cut into her with her deep, dark eyes, doing to her what she herself had once done.

Your day will come, Marion Delauncet. You will watch your house crumble before your eyes, your family torn apart. And then, only then shall I take your head.

Marion heard the sound of her boots grow faint as she disappeared into the mist.

Fenris seemed to be unaware of this wordless exchange. He turned to her, handing her a silver-sheathed dagger, gracefully curved at the tip and exuding Orlesian craftsmanship everywhere else. "The smog has gotten thicker as we climbed the stairs. The spell on your lips will guard you from the poison, but there's no telling how many we are up against."

Marion nodded, gripping her dagger tightly within her fingers as they took off after the departing Hawke. Only after Fenris had caught up with Lady Hawke, with her following close behind, did she allow the ghost of a smile touch her lips. Hawke might have held the upper hand, but she has made her first, and worst, mistake.

She had let her live.

/R&R!/