Author's notes: This is a direct continuation from my first DA2 fic, "Witch". If you haven't read that yet, I strongly suggest you take a turn around here: s/8529944/1/Witch , because this story will make little sense else.

I want to say Thank You again to all who rode, followed, favorited, and reviewed to "Witch". Even if I forgot to write an answer to your review, or couldn't (as with the guest reviews), know that I soaked your kind words up like a sponge ;D They really kept me going.

And now I'll stop the rambling and go on to:

(And ah yes, there's the Disclaimer: Dragon Age 2 and all of its characters are the intellectual property of Bioware. I'm just borrowing them for my own fun ;) )

Apostate

"Spiders up ahead."

A groan left her lips. "Mythal, please no... If they have a queen with them, I'll scream."

"Scream all you like, but save it for after I'm down there." Fenris reached up behind his shoulder to loosen the sword in its scabbard, lips twitching into what she had learned to recognize as a smile.

"I'm not stupid."

He said nothing. Very meaningfully so. She snorted and swatted at him with her staff, but he easily side-stepped out of her reach and left her glowering. "You... flat-ear. Go get them, I've got your back."

He looked at her briefly, nodded. "I know." Then he drew his weapon and charged.

They had done this so often in the past that Merrill had stopped counting. When it wasn't spiders, it was bandits, or walking skeletons, or shades. It had taken them only a little adjusting to fighting as a pair, rather than as part of a team of four or more people. She was familiar with Fenris' moves, she knew his strengths and his weaknesses, she knew to keep watching his blind spots, to pick out the archers or other mages, if there were any, and to give the death strike to those he had wounded, lest they attack him from behind with their last strength when he had already turned to another foe.

Her staff whirled, lighting exploding from its sleek wooden form. Down in the clearing, Fenris' sword flashed in a silver arc, like an answering bolt. She summoned vines from the ground to drag a large black-and red spider from a tree, and Fenris finished it with a powerful downcut that nearly cleaved it in two.

And that was it. Merrill started to pull back her magic as Fenris re-sheathed his sword, then slithered down the slope to join him in the now empty spiders' nest. Empty but for the bodies, of course. Fenris was already busy tearing open the cocoon of spider's silk around a longish form, revealing an emaciated, dried-up mummy of what had once been a human within. She shuddered. There was a reason she hated giant spiders...

"Do you think he's here?", she asked, peering around him as he stood and wiped his hands on his trousers.

"Not unlikely. Those spiders have been busy. Look..." He pointed with his chin. She looked in the direction and made a face. "Elgar'nan, will we have to go through all these?"

"You got us into this.", he reminded her. Again.

"I know. But I couldn't leave a fellow elvhen in doubt about what has happened to her brother. Besides, she might pay us..."

"If you don't decline the money again, that is."

"That man was a beggar, Fenris!"

"If it takes threats to get someone to not pay you, I'd say they can spare the money."

"Oh, you... heartless flat-ear!"

He chuckled low. Merrill rolled her eyes. There were some things they likely would never see eye to eye about. Money was one of them. As they made their way back into country inhabited by humans, to hopefully throw the Dalish off their scent, they had passed a few farmsteads lying isolated among the low hills. At the first, it had been two cloaks from the clothesline and a chicken. Fenris had taken them without a second thought. She'd left their worth in silver in the chicken's nest. The second had lost two loaves of bread left to cool on the kitchen windowsill, and acquired a handful of coppers. At the third, boots, since it had gotten really cold by then, in exchange for her last sovereign. And so on.

Merrill knew, technically, that it would have been the smart thing to save their money until they really needed to spend it on something. But she couldn't bring herself to steal. Once was bad enough. Even if the victims were shems.

Fenris rolled his eyes at her over that, but thankfully refrained from saying anything. She'd thought taking up odd jobs, like they had done with Hawke, would be a good idea to bolster their finances a bit, but since the people they usually ended up helping were all poor, and mostly elvhen, it was hard for her to ask for money in exchange for their services. Mostly, she left that part to Fenris, who looked quite intimidating even with his markings hidden as well as could be by the long, hooded cloak and a threadbare shawl, and his hair dyed a sort of mud-color. Her hands had been brown for days afterward from the cooked walnut rinds.

Her hands were currently digging around in a cocoon from which the ripe smell of rotting meat wafted in a great cloud. She gagged. Her breakfast wanted very much to see the light of day again...

Fingers dipped into decaying flesh. Looked like it would be getting its wish.

"I think you found him.", Fenris called to her where she was standing doubled over at the other end of the clearing, having quickly fled there. Not quick enough to save the contents of her stomach, but at least she was out of the worst of the smell now.

"Well that's... something to be thankful for..." She retched again. Creators, she hated spiders.

A hand settled on her back, rubbing soft circles there. She felt instantly better. This was something she still marveled at: Fenris touching her, not by accident, not because it couldn't be helped, but because he wanted to. Fenris allowing himself to be touched- although she tried not to push it, which was harder than it appeared. As the weather had been getting steadily colder, autumn sliding into winter, they had taken to sleeping back to back under their shared blankets for warmth. Sometimes she would be woken abruptly by Fenris shaking her off, to find that she had turned in her sleep and snuck her arms around him. Sometimes she would, on impulse, stretch out a hand toward him and feel him stiffen. There would be days when he seemed almost as far-away and closed off as he used to be in Kirkwall. Then there'd be days when he would hold out a hand to her to help her across some obstacle in their way, sit close enough to her by the fire that their thighs brushed, or- well, do what he was doing right now.

These moods came and went, and she'd had to accept that she could neither predict them, nor find out what caused them. So she simply tried to be grateful for every touch freely given or accepted, though she also had to admit that she was yearning for more. Much more. After that one clumsy kiss, there had not been another, let alone... no, she wouldn't go there. Best not to.

"Are you alright?", he was asking now, handing her his water skin to rinse her mouth. She nodded and smiled a bit lopsidedly after spitting out the water. "I feel better now. Sorry, that was a bit... much. How can you stand that smell?" He did seem to be quite unaffected by it, she noticed with no little envy.

He shrugged. "Fighting undead corpses from close up for years on end will do that. Maybe you should go for close combat a little more.", he suggested with a tiny lift to the corners of his mouth. His eyes had that certain sparkle again. She refused to rise to the bait this time, though.

"No, thank you. Could we... please... leave this place? I'd like to get some distance between myself and those bodies."

"We found what we were looking for. No reason to be staying." And oh, but she was grateful for that...

Fenris leaned back against the wall of the tiny hovel inhabited by a rather young elf woman and twice as many children as should rightly have fit into it, and watched Merrill struggle through her condolences. They had agreed, on the way back, that, ill-suited though she was to breaking the news of a loved one's death to a person, she at least had the merit of being better than him.

All in all, the woman was taking it well. No thanks to Merrill's bumbling around the issue. Fenris rolled his eyes when she went into details of how they'd found her brother's body. Not something a sister should be forced to hear, even he knew that. He shifted a little and shook his head at the little witch, and, thankfully, she took the hint and petered off into silence. His eyebrows rose just a tad. Now that was unexpected. He was so used to her plowing on, despite any hints she might get towards shutting the Void up; hints that mostly just went by her, in any case.

She had changed a lot since Kirkwall, though most of it had happened in the three or so months since they'd... ah... met again. And not just in her attitude towards magic in general, blood magic in particular, but in... very nearly everything. He remembered the snotty little witch from seven years past only too well, with her genuine Dalish attitude- that is to say, feeling herself to be superior to other elves and humans both, if not considering her own self the only real elf in the entire alienage- her pride and self-assurance (unfounded, as it had later turned out) in her own strength, her condescending pity for the city elves- or himself- and her total obsession with the fool's errand that was restoring her cursed mirror. All that, and her unbelievable naiveté and social awkwardness made her a trial to be around.

Now she was sitting in stolen (well, some of them) clothes in a hut she would not have put a toe in a year ago, holding a city elf's grimy hand in one of her own and cradling an elven toddler close with the other and not even noticing he-she?- was busy wiping his/her runny nose on her sleeve, and, while she kept stumbling over her own words, there was genuine compassion in those she managed to get out. And Fenris was watching, and listening to her, with feelings that came very close to pride. She might fluctuate between the woman, the child, and the child-woman, but the appearances of the latter two, exasperating though they sometimes were, only served to highlight the new strength and calmness she had gained, and he found himself drawn to her more every day.

It could all have been nicely straightforward from there, but Fenris was learning once again that something in him simply did not like straightforward. Not in this matter. Oh, his body certainly would have welcomed such an approach- sleeping close, even with all their clothes in the way, did... things to him. He was becoming intimately acquainted with the way Merrill moved, and turned, and breathed in her sleep, as it was sometimes impossible for him to get any shuteye beside her.

Yet whenever he came close, fear would drive him back again. He would wake in the night to the feel of arms encircling him, and all would drown beneath a flood of panic. An unexpected touch would one day be welcome, the next, have the effect of a whiplash. There was a bottom layer of foul, rotten memories in his mind, bubbling softly like a swamp, and whenever he thought that swamp had been laid to rest, infallibly a new bubble would burst and poison his mind afresh with the remembrance of atrocities committed to him, on him- by him. And he would flinch away from her as if burned.

He gave a frustrated sigh, and realized belatedly that he had drifted off, and that several pairs of eyes were resting on him. Instantly, his entire body went into alarm, but a wary look around revealed his watchers to be the gaggle of elf children in the corner. He relaxed again, unclenching his fists and feeling slightly foolish. The brats, catching him looking, immediately went into a huddle from which urgent whispering originated, broken by the occasional giggle and interrupted by shy looks in his direction.

Fenris re-crossed his arms, eyebrows slowly sliding upwards. What was that about?

He shot a look towards Merrill and the presumed eldest sister- at least, he hoped, for her, that those weren't all her own children- who were still deep in conversation. The baby on Merrill's arm had fallen asleep and she was petting its hair in a way that, for some reason, made his stomach clench in something a lot like guilt.

Then a small cough drew his attention first away, and then downward. The largest, bluest eyes he had ever seen met his in a look that was part curiosity, part defiance, part pants-pissing fear. They belonged to a girl about seven years old- not that he was any judge- who was, apparently, the leader of the pack of brats. She was toying with a lock of her long, unwashed brown hair, putting it in her mouth, chewing on it, and withdrawing it again. And the scrutiny she was putting him under had him feeling oddly uncomfortable.

"Messere...?"

That seemed to be it. There wasn't any more forthcoming, in any case, and after a little while of fidgeting and hair-nibbling on the girls' part, and feeling utterly at sea with this odd situation on his, he finally decided to prompt her to spit it out with a soft "Yes...?"

"Uhm... me an' my sibs, we were wondering... are you really an elf, messere?"

Was he really a... what? His brows hit his hairline for good now. "What else would I be?"

"I... dunno. You look so weird... not like any elf I've ever seen. Those lines, they're pretty." She pointed at his chin, and he cursed softly in his head. Of course he couldn't very well keep his face muffled in his shawl within doors, but a brat prattling on about the elf man with the pretty silver markings on his face all around the neighborhood was one of the last things he needed.

"They're... they're just paint. I'm an elf just like you and your siblings. Question answered?" Maker, please make it so.

The problem with the Maker was, he so rarely heard one's pleas. The girl thought about his answer for a moment, but was not yet satisfied.

"Why'd you paint them on, then?"

"I..." Maker's breath, he was being cross-questioned by a seven-year-old. And he had not a single good answer ready for her. "Be...cause I... like them? Why else?" He must really look confused. The girl giggled, more of the shyness and apprehension disappearing from her face for good.

"I like them, too.", she confessed. "Do you think I could paint my face like that?" Now she looked as eager as a puppy. Fenris found it mildly disconcerting, apart from the tight feeling in his gut he always got when someone took too much interest in his markings.

"I think you'll have to wait until you're a little older." That response pleased her not at all. She put her hands on her hips, looking eerily like another female elf he knew (but clothed, luckily). "Pah. I'm nine, I'll have you know. That's practic'ly grown up!"

"Is it, now?" He was beginning to enjoy this despite himself. The brat's pout had him biting his cheek in an attempt not to smile. Now she really did look a lot like Merrill when she was put out.

"Meany! Bllll..." And she stuck out her tongue at him. His teeth almost drew blood now. He could have gone on teasing the girl for hours, if her presumed sister had not become aware of what she was doing.

"Shanna! Will you stop that! Go out and play and stop pestering serrah!- I apologize, messere, she's just so cheeky..- outside with you, or you'll feel the flat of my hand! Now!- I'm so sorry..."

Shanna fled with one lingering look of disappointment at him, and Fenris felt a soft twinge of the same sentiment. Merrill was reassuring the woman that he didn't mind at all, which was almost true- the girl hadn't asked to be allowed to touch his markings, after all. He would certainly have minded then. But as it was, it hadn't been... all that bad.

The rest of the brats had gone back to huddling, and none of them seemed to want to follow their sister's example, so he was left alone for the short remainder of time they stayed in the tiny house. Then Merrill stood and disentangled herself from the baby's grasp with some difficulty- it had obviously taken a liking to her, and was threatening to start squalling as soon as the witch handed it back over to its caretaker. A little shushing and cooing prevented that, and he marveled at Merrill's patience with the infant, or that she even knew what to do.

Baby on her arm, the elf woman then dug around in her purse and handed them what amounted to maybe two silvers in copper coins.

"I do hope this is enough. I'm sorry I can't give you more for all the trouble you had, but... know that I appreciate it. Very much. It is so good to... finally know." There was a hitch to her voice.

Merrill was half looking like she wanted to decline the money, so Fenris stepped forward and accepted it before she could open her mouth. "It is sufficient."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Merrill wince, and added, "Thank you.", inclining his head. He made for the door while Merrill added her own more gentle thanks, and when he stepped out into the cold air, she wasn't far behind him.

He had almost reached the end of the street when he noticed that she was not following him any more, and, turning around, found her standing in the middle of the narrow, dirty lane, looking forlornly up the row of ramshackle buildings. As he was watching, however, she turned and came after him, brushing against him in her way past, and he did not draw his hand back when hers touched it, nor when her fingers slid along his palm, and tangled with his own.

Perched on top of a rotting barrel, arms slung around her skinny legs, a small elf girl with the bluest imaginable eyes watched them go. She sighed softly, snuggling her cheek against a pair of knees covered in a dirty skirt. Then those eyes turned towards the sky, its endless depths.

In a dirty little village, on a cold winter day, a girl dreamed of freedom, and a strong hand to hold her own.