"Oh." Her indignance softens off, her back straightens again, and it is something like like the Leliana of old and closer to the Nightingale once more. Still, the Nightingale holding a baby and playing with him is perhaps never going to be so much the Nightingale that people see day to day. There are vestiges of who she used to be that she cannot shake off, for all that she denies them.
Still, the thought of Sten and Oghren wins something more from her - not quite a laugh, nor a smile, but something. A lightness. "Do you remember how Sten would stop to smell flowers, when he thought no one was looking?"
Luccio takes the moment to reach up and swipe for that bright, pretty red hair. He is going to make trouble for himself if he is not careful and Zevran likely ought to say something- but the image is still too charming for him to bother.
Especially when some of that shadow drifts back and there are glimmers of the girl he'd teased on the road. "I remember the face he made when you told him you saw him with that kitten and string."
Oh, no. It has begun. Leliana tilts her head back to try and evade Luciano's grip, but she supposes that lone braid must be especially taunting. Perhaps if she does something with the hood-- she pulls it back up, using it to cover part of her face, before flipping it back and making a face at him.
And that brings a dawning realisation, when coupled with the kitten and string comment.
"Mm." Lightly: "If you ever tell anyone about this, you will regret it."
For the first time since Leliana called him out for hiding Anders? Zevran smiles at her earnestly. Openly and without reservation, far too charmed by his boy trying to reach her hair or reach her face or reach anything- and by Leliana cooing. Playing with his little light.
How darling. Perhaps he might sketch this while his boy sleeps.
"No one will hear of it from me, and Lucci is a bit young to be telling your secrets." He reaches out to stroke his boy's hair. "I do not want anyone to know of him- they will want to visit and become attached and I am certain he is safe anywhere else."
That is the main reason he has not yet told Alistair.
"Oh, that I know. That does not mean that if you should one day make knowledge of him more widely known that this would not come to the fore."
And she will remember. Except without any actual concern to be had, because she wouldn't really mind. Probably. Maybe.
She pauses, head canting just slightly to the side, and unfortunately leaving her hair momentarily in grabbing range. "One could contend that there is nowhere safer than the Inquisition," she starts, but there is a slowness and a caution in it that belies that this apparent safehaven is the place from which the Crows plucked Zevran scant months ago. "If you wanted to keep him by your side. Arrangements could surely be made."
A poor show of pragmatism, but Zevran is her friend. If this is what would be necessary for his happiness, and perhaps his safety through that, she would find a means to see it done.
An opportune moment! Much like his father before him when Lucci sees the opening offered? He takes it, chubby hand slipping up to grasp at that hanging braid.
If he were not so certain that he had no place as a father, Zevran would feel more pride.
Well. That is untrue- he feels quite a bit of pride, a strange warmth in his chest that aches, but he cannot quite so easily express it. "It does occur to me that anyone I might send him to is already here. That sending him away would not keep me from wondering if he is well. I simply..."
His hand falls away, eyes dark, uncertain. "I am no father, Leliana. How am I to raise a child? I have my hands full with the dog and Alistair."
Leliana makes a quiet sound, neither surprise nor pain and possibly amused, as she eyes the child in her arms. "Typical," is all she offers, exhaling it with something almost like a laugh.
"No one is a parent until they find themselves faced with a child, I suspect." She, herself, had been vocally incredulous about Morrigan's ability as a mother, until she saw her with Kieran. "You have your friends, many of them, at the ready to support you. And I think... remember from your own childhood what it was you desired. Love, acceptance, kindness-- you can offer those in abundance."
And she is going to gently extricate her braid from Luciano's deathgrip. "Learning as you go, improvising to suit a situation... those are skills of yours as well, I seem to recall."
Lucci is loathe to give up the shining prize, large, blue eyes welling up with tears when Leliana finally frees that pretty red hair. Until the shrieking starts, and it would, Zevran means to let her handle it however she thinks best.
"I will...consider it. You know? Alistair joked about my fathering a child some time ago. A jest about 'little zevrans' with their little knives. What I told him then I think holds true now." Ah, there is the hitching burble of breath that is the beginning of a sob. Without thought and without hesitation Zevran tugs the end of his braid over his shoulder, pressing it into Lucci's hand. "We want their lives to be better than our own. I do not know that I can provide that for him."
"That is hardly playing fair," she informs the little bundle, pouting at him a little, exaggerated, before gently tickling his tummy with the pad of her forefinger.
For a moment she just looks at Zevran in silence, expression softening, mouth catching with something that doesn't quite make it to a smile.
"You can. You would never do to him what was done to you. And finding family when you had none... surely that is too great an opportunity to pass up."
For the moment all seems well and Lucci? Giggles. Burbles with laughter that only hitches as he remembers he is meant to be sad. It passes. There is this warmth, this softness, this incredibly fragile thing in Leliana's eyes and hands.
"...finding that I wish to try and that, perhaps, I might not need to send him away to do it...it is a frightening thought." He'd never planned on children. His bloodline was not meant to pass on. "There'd been a time in the Crows where I had a dream of being free with a woman I loved. I thought, perhaps, we might have children. Then she died and the world spun on and I put such things away."
"It is you who urges me not to give up all that is past. Perhaps you should extend yourself the same advice, hm? Those possibilities need not have been set aside permanently."
It is a kindness, a generosity, that she would extend to her people before she would council herself the same way, but she can accept she is a hypocrit if it helps people. Necessity, always.
"Besides, fear is what keeps life interesting, hm?"
"...would you- ah." He looks up to Leliana- one way or the other the child will be here for this and Luccio deserves as much as he can offer. Which, in turn, includes those he keeps in his life. "Would you stand as his Madrina at his anointing? I do not know how it is done in Fereldan or Orlais but- we have witnesses, in Antiva. Parents in Spirit to help guide the child in the Chantry's ways- or to raise him should anything happen to me."
Of all the things he could have possibly said, that is not what she would expect.
"Me?"
After all that has been said between them, or not said. After she has become something he would appear to consider something repugnant, dangerous - a corruption of a sweet girl he once knew.
But she can protect, and viciously. She is a woman of faith, she understands what freedom is and what it means. There are benefits to having connections to those in power, and yet she does not think that is why Zevran is asking this.
It hurts, but in a better way than most hurts tend to strike. "I would be honoured, Zevran."
"Well...yes." He quirks a brow at her. "Leliana- I have never known someone so driven by faith in all my years. While I myself am not quite so much as you, that is due to the Crows."
Any good Antivan child knew the Chant by the time they were seven. The Crows filled that space with murder instead.
"I would trust few others with his care- but should anything happen to me? I know you would raise him kindly and raise him well." He lifts a hand to her shoulder, squeezing it gently. "You are my sister."
It would be a bad time to mention how shaken her faith has been these past months, with all that has happened. At the root of it, though, her love for the Maker remains. It is the Chantry that she has truly lost faith in, the cruelty that they impress upon others so relentlessly, but that is a topic for another time, and she simply nods.
"He could share a basket with Schmooples," Leliana says very lightly, before she cants her head very slightly, fixing Zevran with a look that's somewhere between-- somewhere between gratitude and understanding and certainty, because she would. She would raise him kindly, and she would guard him viciously.
"And you are my brother." It is not easy to say; she manages to make it sound as if there were nothing more natural for her to give voice.
"Ah, this is how I know you love him already." Zevran crackles a soft laugh satisfied that he has made the right choice. Oh the Chantry may not be ideal-but faith, morality, goodness. These things tempered by practicality will do his son well. And none could be a more kind teacher than his Leliana.
"He would have the best bedtime stories in all of Thedas." If she felt fit to tell them, it feels as though Sister Nightingale might not often have cause.
Perhaps this will change things.
"Zia Leliana, he will call you when he can speak."
"Zia?" Her Antivan is good, but used more for war than for more familiar types of terms. Affection is not much her repertoire, neither family. It takes her only a moment, deduction and de-rusting her understanding. "Aunt?"
"Just so." He is glad that all of Antiva's kinder, fonder language is not yet lost to her. "Normally said with great affection, I have no doubt he will feel that for you."
She is too kind when she gives herself cause.
"A favored companion. Never let it be said he wanted for company." It is a tentative thing, the leaning against Leliana. The arm about the waist, carefully caste, light enough to slip away at the first sign of discomfit. But it is there none the less.
The lean-- the contact. It is more than she is used to, more than she seeks, and there is a rigidness that creeps up her back with it. Not visibly noticeable, but there all the same. Familiarity feels a great thing to offer out - it is easier to extend it to a child, an innocent, than to someone who knows her.
"I should go." Not sparked by the contact, but it certainly encourages it being given voice. She lightly tickles Luciano's belly, before turning to pass him back to his father. "There is much to be done - I will see to the frost rune."
"Leliana." He murmurs, gently. It is impossible not to feel that sudden shift in tension, not to notice how she is so unused to so simple a thing. Many a night they drank and draped over one another by the fire. For warmth. For camaraderie. And now it is so foreign...it saddens him deeply, this.
Carefully and deliberately- Lucci tucked into one arm- Zevran reaches up to rest a warm, calloused hand along her cheek. It is so small a thing, this, but it has meaning.
"Give yourself a little room to breathe, yes? With your duties. And with Morrigan."
Morrigan told her in the Crossroads that she wondered if people touches so much because communication with words so often fell horribly short. Leliana wishes sometimes that contact did not communicate so much, and she does not lean into the touch at her cheek, but keeps it as light as possible, as meaningless as she can render it without pulling away and hurting her friend.
"The Rookery provides me with nothing if not an abundance of fresh air, do not worry."
"We must forgive ourselves our trespasses, yes?" Whether he'd heard that in the Chant or it was some kindness offered him by one of his fellows, Zevran cannot say. But it is...something they both need to keep in mind, that. "Even if we do not feel we deserve such things. Or that we deserve to be more than the tool we've known ourselves to be for so long."
"It is not that I do not deserve," she replies, and perhaps there is a little too much crispness to it. "I do not want more. What I want is to see Thedas reshaped into a better world."
More often than not she can believe that, because it is so close to being true, and wanting more feels like--
"Do not fret, Zevran. My trespasses are gladly embraced."
"You can do that, and have someone, Leliana." If she allows herself. What a strange thing their lives have become, for him to argue in favor of sentiment.
"But...I do truly think you can do that. Shape the future. Perhaps not with a song, but- you can."
What more is there to say that she has not already. Her brow pinches, the faintest flicker before she smoothes it away.
"I know," Leliana replies, with a certainty that could be quietly unnerving, for some. Catching Zevran's gaze, she offers a shadow of what could have been a smile, maybe, before going for the door.
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Still, the thought of Sten and Oghren wins something more from her - not quite a laugh, nor a smile, but something. A lightness. "Do you remember how Sten would stop to smell flowers, when he thought no one was looking?"
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Especially when some of that shadow drifts back and there are glimmers of the girl he'd teased on the road. "I remember the face he made when you told him you saw him with that kitten and string."
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And that brings a dawning realisation, when coupled with the kitten and string comment.
"Mm." Lightly: "If you ever tell anyone about this, you will regret it."
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How darling. Perhaps he might sketch this while his boy sleeps.
"No one will hear of it from me, and Lucci is a bit young to be telling your secrets." He reaches out to stroke his boy's hair. "I do not want anyone to know of him- they will want to visit and become attached and I am certain he is safe anywhere else."
That is the main reason he has not yet told Alistair.
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And she will remember. Except without any actual concern to be had, because she wouldn't really mind. Probably. Maybe.
She pauses, head canting just slightly to the side, and unfortunately leaving her hair momentarily in grabbing range. "One could contend that there is nowhere safer than the Inquisition," she starts, but there is a slowness and a caution in it that belies that this apparent safehaven is the place from which the Crows plucked Zevran scant months ago. "If you wanted to keep him by your side. Arrangements could surely be made."
A poor show of pragmatism, but Zevran is her friend. If this is what would be necessary for his happiness, and perhaps his safety through that, she would find a means to see it done.
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If he were not so certain that he had no place as a father, Zevran would feel more pride.
Well. That is untrue- he feels quite a bit of pride, a strange warmth in his chest that aches, but he cannot quite so easily express it. "It does occur to me that anyone I might send him to is already here. That sending him away would not keep me from wondering if he is well. I simply..."
His hand falls away, eyes dark, uncertain. "I am no father, Leliana. How am I to raise a child? I have my hands full with the dog and Alistair."
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"No one is a parent until they find themselves faced with a child, I suspect." She, herself, had been vocally incredulous about Morrigan's ability as a mother, until she saw her with Kieran. "You have your friends, many of them, at the ready to support you. And I think... remember from your own childhood what it was you desired. Love, acceptance, kindness-- you can offer those in abundance."
And she is going to gently extricate her braid from Luciano's deathgrip. "Learning as you go, improvising to suit a situation... those are skills of yours as well, I seem to recall."
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"I will...consider it. You know? Alistair joked about my fathering a child some time ago. A jest about 'little zevrans' with their little knives. What I told him then I think holds true now." Ah, there is the hitching burble of breath that is the beginning of a sob. Without thought and without hesitation Zevran tugs the end of his braid over his shoulder, pressing it into Lucci's hand. "We want their lives to be better than our own. I do not know that I can provide that for him."
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For a moment she just looks at Zevran in silence, expression softening, mouth catching with something that doesn't quite make it to a smile.
"You can. You would never do to him what was done to you. And finding family when you had none... surely that is too great an opportunity to pass up."
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"...finding that I wish to try and that, perhaps, I might not need to send him away to do it...it is a frightening thought." He'd never planned on children. His bloodline was not meant to pass on. "There'd been a time in the Crows where I had a dream of being free with a woman I loved. I thought, perhaps, we might have children. Then she died and the world spun on and I put such things away."
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It is a kindness, a generosity, that she would extend to her people before she would council herself the same way, but she can accept she is a hypocrit if it helps people. Necessity, always.
"Besides, fear is what keeps life interesting, hm?"
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"Me?"
After all that has been said between them, or not said. After she has become something he would appear to consider something repugnant, dangerous - a corruption of a sweet girl he once knew.
But she can protect, and viciously. She is a woman of faith, she understands what freedom is and what it means. There are benefits to having connections to those in power, and yet she does not think that is why Zevran is asking this.
It hurts, but in a better way than most hurts tend to strike. "I would be honoured, Zevran."
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Any good Antivan child knew the Chant by the time they were seven. The Crows filled that space with murder instead.
"I would trust few others with his care- but should anything happen to me? I know you would raise him kindly and raise him well." He lifts a hand to her shoulder, squeezing it gently. "You are my sister."
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"He could share a basket with Schmooples," Leliana says very lightly, before she cants her head very slightly, fixing Zevran with a look that's somewhere between-- somewhere between gratitude and understanding and certainty, because she would. She would raise him kindly, and she would guard him viciously.
"And you are my brother." It is not easy to say; she manages to make it sound as if there were nothing more natural for her to give voice.
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"He would have the best bedtime stories in all of Thedas." If she felt fit to tell them, it feels as though Sister Nightingale might not often have cause.
Perhaps this will change things.
"Zia Leliana, he will call you when he can speak."
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He is her brother, and yet. That surprises her.
"And Schmooples will be his cousin, hm?"
Emotions are hard bro.
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She is too kind when she gives herself cause.
"A favored companion. Never let it be said he wanted for company." It is a tentative thing, the leaning against Leliana. The arm about the waist, carefully caste, light enough to slip away at the first sign of discomfit. But it is there none the less.
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"I should go." Not sparked by the contact, but it certainly encourages it being given voice. She lightly tickles Luciano's belly, before turning to pass him back to his father. "There is much to be done - I will see to the frost rune."
A moment, and-- "You can count on my discretion."
If nothing else, she can be relied on for that.
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Carefully and deliberately- Lucci tucked into one arm- Zevran reaches up to rest a warm, calloused hand along her cheek. It is so small a thing, this, but it has meaning.
"Give yourself a little room to breathe, yes? With your duties. And with Morrigan."
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"The Rookery provides me with nothing if not an abundance of fresh air, do not worry."
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More often than not she can believe that, because it is so close to being true, and wanting more feels like--
"Do not fret, Zevran. My trespasses are gladly embraced."
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"But...I do truly think you can do that. Shape the future. Perhaps not with a song, but- you can."
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"I know," Leliana replies, with a certainty that could be quietly unnerving, for some. Catching Zevran's gaze, she offers a shadow of what could have been a smile, maybe, before going for the door.