A/N: So here's the second time where Hawke should maybe have said something more to a certain elf. But if she did that, then I would have no fic to write, so ... onward! XD Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this fic so far, it's really nice to know that people are enjoying this.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything here, I'm just playing in Bioware's sandbox.

II.

It rained in Kirkwall the day they arrived home and found Bethany gone. The templars had come, Leandra had said, a mere day before Marian had returned.

Those words filled her with anger - anger at the system, anger at Varric's stupid brother … mostly, though, anger at herself. She'd spent her entire life trying to ensure that nobody would ever take Bethany away from them.

Fat lot of good she was, then. The one time she turned her back, this happened. Perhaps it would've been better if she had taken Bethany to the Deep Roads with them. She might've been able to keep her safe there.

She didn't cry, not when Leandra broke down sobbing in her arms, not when her mabari howled mournfully at the loss of another Hawke. When Varric showed up at Gamlen's house, his eyes full of sadness, and his voice cracking ever so slightly when he said he was sorry about "Sunshine" - she didn't cry then either, but her throat felt tight and dry, so she accepted his proffered invitation to have a pint.

It was still raining, and slogging through the mud that filled the Lowtown streets now meant that they were beyond bedraggled when they walked into the pub. Marian didn't care, it matched her mood perfectly.

She was surprised to see Anders there, though he wasn't drinking. He seemed agitated, and he pretty much pounced on her the second she walked in with Varric. "I know some people, Hawke, we can get Bethany out of there …"

She raised her hand and sighed. "Can we just … not … right now?"

Anders' face clouded over. "You are wasting time!" he said sharply.

Marian whirled on him. "Look, I'm sorry this is hard for you, Anders. But the thing I've feared happening for the last eighteen years of my life has just happened. Excuse me for needing a moment or two to process. And I'm not about to do something foolish that might jeopardize Bethany further while she's in there, do you understand that?"

Anders ducked his head, and Marian could tell that he was properly chagrined. Good. She was on his side about the mages, she really was. But she wasn't going to do anything that might end up making things worse for Bethany. There was just … no way.

"All right, all right, enough of that!" Isabela's bright voice cut in, shoving a tankard of something in Marian's face. "Drink up, Hawke."

Hawke brought the mug to her lips and took a drink, then frowned. "This is mead, Isabela."

"I know that, you goose," Isabela told her, rolling her eyes. Then her features softened. "Bethany liked it. So we're all going to have one. Drink it for her, then you can have a proper big girl drink."

Marian opted to not ask when Bethany had been in here, drinking mead … in truth, she was sort of glad. Glad Bethany had had a few life experiences here in Kirkwall before …

Gah, what was wrong with her? Bethany wasn't dead, after all. She just wasn't … with her any more.

Varric raised his own mug, and said, simply, "To Sunshine."

Marian smiled sadly. "To Bethany," she said, mostly to herself, and finished her mead in one long gulp. Isabela set another mug in front of her almost immediately. She eyed the pirate sideways. "Are you trying to get me drunk, Isabela?"

Isabela winked. "Always!" Marian started to say something else, but Isabela shushed her with a wave of her hand. "Ooh, speaking of people I'd like to get drunk …"

Marian followed Isabela's gaze to the door and felt her stomach flip a little when her eyes found Fenris standing there. "What is he doing here, I thought he hated this place?"

Isabela's expression was both amused and bewildered when she looked back at her. "I think he's here more for the company than for the ambiance."

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Marian grumbled, taking another long drink of the ale Isabela had set before her.

From his seat beside her, she heard Anders huff irritably when Fenris approached them. She kicked him under the table and gave him a look that said "be nice".

The exchange wasn't lost on Fenris, who looked back and forth between her and Anders, his eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly.

For her own part, Marian was eyeing him without trying to appear obvious about it. His hair was wet, plastered against his face by the rain outside. She wanted to push some of it out of his eyes, it was bothering her, but she wasn't drunk enough to think that that would be a welcome gesture.

"Well, well," Isabela said, leaning forward on the table next to Marian and smiling winningly at Fenris. "What's the occasion, for you to come slumming it Lowtown with the likes of us?"

To his credit, Fenris only glanced at Isabela and all her assets briefly before turning his attention back to Marian, who by this point, had finished her second ale. "Your mother said you were here."

"And here I am!" Marian said, smiling a bit too brightly at Varric when he set another tankard in front of her. "But what brings you here … Oooh, I know! You've come to gloat! One more mage, off the streets of Kirkwall? Bethany was awfully scary, wasn't she, Fenris? Entirely too dangerous to be allowed to live free." She laughed bitterly, shaking her head, and taking a deep drink of her ale.

"What?" Fenris asked, his brow furrowed. "Hawke, I was …" He seemed to notice that everyone at their table (and a few people at the surrounding tables) was watching him intently, awaiting his answer. "You're drunk. This is … not the right time for this."

He sighed heavily, his hand going to his forehead in an action that Marian had come to interpret over these past months as his "I feel like an idiot" gesture. Somewhere beyond the ale-addled part of her brain, a voice was saying that maybe, just maybe, he really did care. But that sounded entirely too reasonable, and she was entirely too drunk for that right now.

Isabela snorted. "Wow, that's the first time I've ever heard a man say that." Marian giggled.

"This was a bad idea," Fenris said through clenched teeth. "Sorry to have bothered you. Perhaps we can talk, some other time." He turned then, and headed for the door.

Marian rolled her eyes and started to stand up, fully intent on giving him a piece of her mind. Anders grabbed her arm. "What are you doing, Hawke? Just let him go."

She shook her head. "No, no, I have to … I have to go talk to him. He's grumpy and if I don't, his face is gonna get stuck like that!" She pulled herself free from Anders and tripped over the leg of her chair, causing said chair to clatter to the floor loudly. "Shhh," she said to it, glaring.

"Isabela, you can't honestly think it's a good idea to let her go off like that," she heard Anders saying as she weaved her way unsteadily through the pub's patrons, toward the door. She didn't hear Isabela's answer, but she did hear Varric's boisterous laugh afterward, so she probably didn't want to know anyway.

She flung open the door to the Hanged Man and stepped out into the nearly empty street. The rain was still pelting down, but it was okay, it felt nice and cool against her face. She saw Fenris, not very far from her, so she took off at what she passed as a run for her while she was intoxicated.

"Oy!" she shouted at him when she was near enough. "Fenris!"

He turned around, and squinted against the rain at her. "Hawke?"

"'Course it's me, who'd you expect?"

"Go back inside," he said wearily.

"Nope!" she said, shaking her head vehemently. "Not 'til you tell me what you came here to say."

"It doesn't matter now, you won't remember it come morning anyway."

"All the more reason to say it!" she said, smiling slightly, stepping nearer to him, close enough that he had to take a few steps back. She frowned. "Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?" he asked, his voice uncertain.

"Any time I get too close, you back away. I know I'm no Isabela, but am I really that repulsive?"

She swore she heard him snort derisively. "I'd hardly count 'not being Isabela' as a point against you, Hawke," he said in a voice that was barely audible over the sound of the rain, and she blinked in surprise. He sighed heavily then. "I came to apologize. About Bethany. I know what happened to her was the last thing you wanted."

"But …?" she prompted, sure there was more to come.

"But … perhaps it's for the best. At least you know you - she - will be safe now."

Marian was sure her jaw couldn't have dropped any further than it did. For the best? she wanted to scream at him. She wanted to ask him how he, of all people, could possibly think it better to live life in chains - metaphorical or no - than to be free. How he could stand there and look her in the eyes and tell her that everything that she and her mother and her brother and her father had done to keep Bethany out of that wretched place had been for naught, because it was better that she was in the Circle now? Safer? It was safer to live with the fear of being made Tranquil hanging over your head for the slightest misstep?

She wanted to slap him. How dare he? Just when she'd started to think that maybe, just maybe, there was something in him that might be worth her friendship, he'd gone and proved all her initial misgivings about him right, yet again.

She didn't do any of those things, though. Instead, she shook her head and turned to go back inside, suddenly feeling far too sober and chilled from the rain. "Maker take you," she said through clenched teeth.

"Hawke," Fenris called after her. "Marian."

She stopped and looked up at the sky then, letting the rain hit her squarely in the face, and laughed sardonically. The first time he'd ever used her given name … it would be now, wouldn't it? She stopped walking and turned slowly to face him.

He shook his head, and exhaled loudly. "Your loyalty to your family and the people you hold close … is one of the best things about you. But I don't want you dead. Not for any reason, not even if it's the best reason in the world. Dead isn't better. That's all."

And then he was gone, and Marian was watching him go, her brow furrowed and a frown pulling at her lips. She didn't even feel the rain any more.

I don't want you dead.

Did it mean anything, aside from the obvious? Did she want it to?

He should be everything she hated, everything she didn't want. And she was still angry. Angry about what he'd said about Bethany, and his views on mages in general. They just … didn't agree on so many things, so many important things, and yet … he moved her. She couldn't deny it. She was drawn to him, inexplicably. And it didn't make sense, and it scared her to death.

Fear had never stood in her way before … not for anything. If this was anything else, she'd be chasing it even now, demanding an explanation, demanding that he talk to her, that he tell her everything.

But if she did that, then she'd have to tell him everything. And she just … wasn't ready to do that, not yet. Maybe not ever.

So she watched him walk further away from her, and choked on the words that were forming in her throat. Words that told him everything, words that made him see that the two of them weren't so different after all.

Isabela came to drag her back inside not long after, and Marian managed to get through the rest of the night by reassuring herself that she probably wouldn't remember any of this the next morning anyhow.

And as far as any of her friends - and especially Fenris - were concerned, she didn't.