ombranera | Open RP Post

"No, no beards." He reaches up to pat Alistair's cheek, smooth and only somewhat stubbly. "This little bit of fuzz under your lip is more than enough."

And change- change is unnecessary, there is more than enough change in his life. Let this one thing remain constant, let this one thing remain the same.

"More than enough? More? I'm wounded, Zev."

He's not wounded. He's pleased and petted, which isn't Zevran's job right now—a thing Alistair realizes, after a moment, and he frees his hand from Zevran's neck and hair to recover Zevran's hand from his face and transfer it to his chest for safekeeping, weighted down by Alistair's palm.

"You know you're my favorite, too," he says. "Let me sleep for a little bit and I'll come with you to see what the Seeker wants. If you want."

Anyone else and this would be too intimate. Would be too much like being lovers, too much like sentiment that Zevran flees from for so many reasons-

But it is Alistair, and they are friends, and it means nothing. This is simply how they are. Why, exactly, he doesn't know. But he doesn't question. Merely steals these moments and saves them for when the nights are dark and the world is cruel. "I do."

A beat.

"Want that. She might wish to kill me and I would like to have a second on hand just in case."

"She can try," Alistair mumbles, muffled and at best half-sensical, already drifting off. She could try. She could likely succeed. She's a very scary woman. But Alistair can think of worse ways to go than with Cassandra Pentaghast's boot on his neck, and anyway, she won't kill anyone. She probably just wants Zevran's opinion on the tapestries.

***

She did not just want Zevran's opinion on the tapestries. Apparently.

This isn't Alistair's fault. He'd had no idea that a bunch of Chantry zealots might give actual political power to an elven assassin rather than the usual symbolic and de facto sort. And even if it were his fault, he wouldn't be very sorry. He's proud. Will they follow? Cassandra had asked Cullen, and Alistair—not one of them, not in the crowd, watching from a shaded part of the battlements where a Warden belonged—thought yes, anyway. To the Void and back.

He doesn't want to know how Zevran would look at him if he said it aloud. He doesn't even really want to know how Zevran will look at him now, period. He isn't very sorry, but he is vaguely aware that he should be, possibly, for not letting him run.

Approaching the Western Approach (ha), already mildly sunburned and more sharply freckled, he pulls his horse out of the herd and heels it forward to catch up with Zevran's, leaving Sera to her quest to make Vivienne vomit. When he slows to a trot alongside Zevran, he's close enough to hold out a water skin. Maybe a little apologetically.

Very sneaky, talking to him and walking like there was no point to the conversation. Asking when they've a whole production set up already. Waiting with a sword as long as he is tall and more symbolic than anything else and staring for the few seconds Zevran deeply and seriously considers leaping from the stairs to the nearest merchant's stall to break his landing and sprint for the gate.

It is only his mumbled promise of the night before, of tending to the wardens first and then running, that has him take up the sword. His smile is terribly sweet and he plays the part as given-

But he doesn't talk to Cassandra or his advisors for the better part of a week unless he must, and even then? Not directly. Ravens shouldn't be used to send word across the room and runners have better things to do but if they are going to give him this authority they can deal with what it means.

At least he doesn't need to speak to them in the Approach. Vivienne had come to him all sweetness and suggestions that he graciously ignored, Dorian made comforting commiserating noises- The Bull Watched. Now he is a player in this game- no. A pawn. At least the itching on his skin has a direct cause, now. Sun and sand and irritation. It all chafes.

He doesn't turn to look at Alistair, waterskin or no, for a solid minute. The low ember of anger is palpable even in this heat. Finally- "I told you so."

Alistair doesn't hold the water skin out for the full minute. For half a minute, sure, convinced that if he's stubborn and adorable Zevran will give in any second now. But around the thirty second mark he caves and drinks from it himself, penitent but friendly expression darkening while he joins Zevran in staring off ahead—but not leaving. He isn't going anywhere.

"It's only a title," he says, defensive and then sullenly cheeky when he adds, with all apparent due respect, "Inquisitor."

"It's a leash." Shackles. The very thing he did not want and now? Now he is a pawn to them and their agenda. Oh they mean well but not one of them stopped to think that perhaps maneuvering an elf into having no choice but to agree so publicly was not the best way to endear themselves to him. At least Alistair had not been among the crowd.

"If you call me that again, I will hurt you." He is forced to endure it from so many, now. Even Dorian uses it non-ironically and he'd hoped to avoid that. If Alistair began? He'd go mad. Or ride off one of the nearest bluffs, whichever came first.

"No you won't," Alistair says without hesitation. It's a trust that has to be earned, from him, but is unwavering thereafter. Even when maybe it should waver just a bit. It's a moot point, regardless, as he adds, "But I'll stop. Too many syllables."

His horse snorts beneath him. He pats her neck and risks another glance at Zevran to measure his mood.

"It isn't forever," he says, which is the subtlest and most tactful way he can think of to remind Zevran that he's only seeing to the Wardens and then chopping his hand off, or whatever, without cling in the soldiers riding behind them. (If he sat down and thought about it, Alistair would already be able to say he, himself, won't be leaving for Rivain. He hasn't sat down and thought about it. He won't. It's a nice dream.) "And the clothes seem nice."

"Yes I will." A bruise for his troubles- it is not often Zevran finds himself provoked to such things but the weight of it all, Alistair's incidental part in the matter? Makes it feel almost easy. The glowering resentment he is unaccustomed to carrying makes it easy.

His face has not changed, nor his posture. Back straight, head high, eyes dark and flinty rather than burnished gold. There is no humor to him. Cole, at least, seems to understand. Apparently putting a stick figure with pointed ears on a leash and leaving it on Cullen's table still isn't hint enough. Solas remains pleased because it is something he'd wanted to see done in the first place.

"You really think I could get away now? Leliana's had guards outside my room and my tent every night since the announcement." A precaution, he knows, and she knows him so well.

"I really think you could," Alistair says, and—and this is very frustrating. Maybe they don't avoid talking with sex, maybe that's great, but there's still something to be said for physicality. As an ameliorative if not a distraction. Zevran can't keep his spine so straight or his eyes so hard when Alistair has him in a bear hug or shoves his face into his shoulder, and Alistair knows it, and if it weren't for the damned horses and the damned audience he'd give it a go.

Instead, he takes another drink of water.

"It will be all right, Zev," he says. "Even if you—you could beat him. You could end that way."

"He's an unkillable darkspawn with an army of renegade mages and a blighted dragon." Perspective, Alistair, it is important to have it. Even if he has his own army, even if he has the wardens- someone must be realistic as his Advisors are so intent on foolish optimism. Only Cullen seems to share his wary dread of what is to come- only Cullen seems to feel somewhat sheepish for how they conned him into this position.

"I'm fixing this mess of the Wardens and then I am finished." Or dead. Probably dead, but finished none the less. They can find another elf to puppet about Thedas.

Great. Now he's sitting—on a horse, but still sitting—and thinking about it. Running for Rivain. The back of Zevran's neck.

Unkillable darkspawn.

"I'm not," he says, angling his frown away from Zevran, toward the sandy horizon. He doesn't want to fight, especially now, when Zevran is riding out to save the Wardens. And him. But if he's going back on his word he doesn't want to draw it out, either. He meant it, in the stables, as much as he's ever meant anything, but out here in the daylight, with an army—"He's a darkspawn." His responsibility. "And nothing is unkillable."

"Of course." Hammered flat and not at all hurt. He knew it from the moment Alistair began humoring him. Hand or no hand, here or Rivain-

The wardens came first. The wardens always came first. Such is the way of things, there will ever and always be something more important, someone with more meaning, than Zevran. He knew this. He's known it since he was a child. It doesn't sting like it used to, but that thorn is old and well burrowed and it still does twinge a little when he leans against it. "Perhaps they shall make you Inquisitor in my absence. It would make sense to have a warden face him."

Not an elven assassin. He is meant for shadows and blood- not sunlight and war.

"Don't be ridiculous," Alistair says, and it would be very unfair of him to protest that he's unfit for leadership or make any of the usual pants jokes. Hypocritical. Zevran doesn't want to be doing it, either. But it would be very impolitic for a number of reasons, beginning with the Wardens' habit of using the impending apocalypse for coups and ending with their current apparent involvement in Corypheus' plans. "We can't go near him, anyway. Maybe if we could, we could do him like..."

Like a Archdemon. It's something to ponder. (Incorrectly. It wouldn't work, at least not without taking out the dragon first.) But not something to go on about out loud, here, when Zevran is already upset.

"And do you really think Anora would let me into Ferelden with an army? Cassandra can do it."

Or Zevran can do it. Alistair can start working in earnest on those compliments about his face.

"Now I'm ridiculous." Not the night before, not the night after Haven, not the first day in haven. Now he seems absurd, now what he sees and knows to be happening is so suddenly beyond the realm of possibility. "You don't need to do anything, Alistair, just go where they tell you, pretend to smile and nod, an sit on that hideous throne once every few days."

Judgement. As though he cared. Humans doing human things (and never before has he felt such vicious apathy until it was his job to judge them, never before has he so viscerally seen himself as an elf until all this), killing each other over petty bullshit while the world ends and pretending to wait on his word? As though they would keep to it? The whole organization is a farce.

It might as well have a clown on the throne.

An unkind thought, a cruel thought, but one that is unspoken. "I'm putting you in the next delegation to Denerim."

It's not a joke and not a threat.

"Going to squeeze that in before you leave, are you?"

Alistair looks sideways, eyebrows raised and up-and-down glance evaluating—but there's still fondness in the corners of his eyes and mouth, not quite tucked out of view, to soften the haughtiness of it. He's only sparring. Not fighting. Not for now.

"I'm not actually yours to order around, you know," he says. "If you want me running errands, you have to be nice to me." And stay. He has to stay. Stay, Alistair thinks at him very hard, like a prayer.

"If there is trouble with Corepheus in Adamant Fortress then the safest place for you to be is anywhere else." He can worry even when he is angry. He worries more when he is angry, honestly. "If we need to lay siege, and we might because that is our luck, we will need support from Ferelden. Go smile at her, see what she says."

Aside from Maker No and why have you come to haunt me we were rid of you and other such nonsense.

"I am not ordering, Alistair. I am asking." While glaring at the horizon, he is asking. "Maker knows no one listens when I order them to do anything. Why would you be any different?"

"Because I adore you," Alistair suggests, lilting, looking back ahead to lessen the sweetness. He's not done arguing. He'll get to the part where plenty of people would take orders from Zevran in a moment. First: "But I'm going to Adamant."

There's no answer to that he can give at the moment that won't sound petty or bitter- so he says nothing. Even when Alistair, of course, declines the opportunity for safety. "As you like."

It is a moot point anyway. Expecting anything to happen the way he wishes it to has always been a moot point- now? Doubly so.

Victory does not taste sweet when it's handed off that way. Alistair glares very briefly at the sun, which is making his nose sweat, then at Zevran, half-blinded by the previous sun-glaring. "You could order any one of these men to sing the Chant backwards while juggling and they would at least make an attempt," he says, "and if you said please I would try, too."

"Please go to Denerim with the next delegation." Or back to Skyhold. Or anywhere that is not here. Go somewhere safe and certain and leave this madness for him to wade through.

He doesn't expect it to work. But it feels better just to try.

Alistair exhales sharply through his nose, only saved from being a snort by how quiet it is, and goes back to glaring ahead. He's silent for a stretch. That silence is filled not with serious consideration, but with reluctance to say what he has to say and make Zevran's point for him.

Eventually, though, he says, "No. They're my brothers, Zevran."

And am I not as well?

The question sits thick and bitter on his tongue, sharp like nettles that cut just as much as he swallows it down. This last place he thought he might have for himself is no longer his at all.

At least the change is subtle, shoulders going loose, head cocking at an insolent angle, suave grin settling into place. If this is who and what he is to be- then he shall be it. For everyone. He manages to put some mirth, some warmth into his voice as he speaks- it is enough to perk up the guards that trail behind. "Then we shall have to make certain we save as many as possible, yes?"

It sits wrong. Alistair couldn't say why; loving Zevran doesn't make him clever enough to see through his masks, only enough to sometimes know one is there. And to not like it. Still, he smiles--uncertainly, but a smile is a smile--and doesn't press. He peels his eyes away from Zevran's face to glance back at the soldiers, then sets his gaze ahead to say, "Thanks, Zev."

"You are welcome, Alistair." And oh how he smiles, and oh how he resumes a positively cheerful performance. He might even whistle a bit as they ride up to the next camp and then? It is a matter of clearing the keep of pushing far enough to clear out darkspawn (which is familiar and comforting for it) and build a bridge (new but useful!) to get across gaseous wastes that would choke them otherwise.

He takes the Bull and Dorian and Sera when it comes time to clear out the Darkspawn. It is not implicitly stated that Alistair should remain behind but he makes no attempt to bring him along.

It is dark, it is as awful as it had ever been, and he is injured deflecting an attack by a shriek that no one saw. Dorian is still fussing over him guiltily by the time they ride back to camp that night and Zevran, resolved to play the part demanded of him, laughs it off even as he walks stiffly to his tent. He can patch himself up well enough on his own, thank you.

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