ombranera | Open RP Post

Rope bound around his wrist in tight, thick coils, skin gone purple from the lack, fingers tingling with the expected numbness that's doubled by the brandy. It is now or never and not even Leliana's voice is going to stop him from getting a hand on the cleaver and raising it.

As much as to help keep the mess minimal the rope is to keep his arm still. He shall have one shot at this. It would be terrible to miss.

"In a moment, Leliana." Conversational. Like he's not about to bring the cleaver down on his own wrist.

"You cannot be serious," Leliana says. She isn't the one who stops him.

It's the mage—well-meaning, Alistair is sure—who throws a hand forward and sends a burst of energy out with it, a mind blast with focus, to knock the cleaver away. Alistair is too slow to shove her hand away, though he does try, saying, "Stop—"

"He is possessed!" the girl protests. She's older than he was, when he joined, but Orlesian and therefore more given to hysterics. Alistair makes a mental note for he future. "He must be!"

"That thing is going to kill him," Alistair says in answer, but it's directed past her, to Leliana, who is moving forward now to collect the cleaver and likely the Inquisitor.

"Per l'amor del cazzo-" One job. Alistair had one job in this whole mess and he couldn't even manage that right- now the cleaver is on the other side of the room, he is still tied to the table, and he is tired.

Well.

Sawing it is, then. A good rogue has many daggers upon their person. Zevran recommends to most at least seven. He is carrying nine. Leliana manages to catch his wrist before he can put the blade to skin but that does not stop him from glowering. From hissing, softly- "You have no right to ask more of me. I am not your scouts, I am not your spies, I am not your soldiers."

And this looks...bad. At the moment he is past carrying. "...Get the girl out of here, Alistair."

"Get out."

Maybe too harsh. She looks bewildered and on the verge of tears (not only because of this, not an hour ago she was still bound to a demon), but she leaves. Alistair doesn't. He shuts the door behind her and turns back on Zevran and Leliana, who's saying, "You are the Inquisitor," with her hand firm around Zevran's wrist. "What do you propose we do with the rifts? Wave your shriveled discarded limb at them and hope it has some effect?"

"Leliana, it's—" killing him, Alistair planned to repeat, but she was listening the first time. She doesn't look at him, focused on Zevran, but she cuts him off.

"None of our lives is more important than Thedas."

"I am your puppet and I have had enough!" She should understand. More than anyone else, she should understand what it is to be held in the hand and used to kill and have no say. To be directed and have no will, no choice. She saw his life, she saw Taliesin. She saw him marvel at the choices Jonas gave him, saw him learn to walk under his own direction.

"If you wish this to be your mission, you take it. You lead. This is not my life, this is not my hand and this? Is not my fight." he has done all he swore to do. Seal the breach. Save the wardens. He is done. "Give it to Solas. He knows enough- and does no one think that strange? Does no one wonder at his convenient snippets of helpful advice?"

Does no one care so long as they have his lap to dump such things in?

"If it would still work once removed from you, Corypheus would have taken it in Haven," Leliana says, calm in the face of Zevran's anger. She doesn't let go of his knife hand. "Alistair, untie his arm before there is permanent harm."

"No," Alistair says. Maybe if the blood is cut off long enough they'll have to amputate it anyway.

That earns him a look. "Innocent people are dying. I am disappointed in both of you." More in Alistair, her glare indicates, but she should know—she should remember tromping halfway across Ferelden to persuade mages to save a possessed boy, Blight on pause and destruction of Redcliffe risked. Scaling the Frostbacks in search of a myth because Alistair made sure—however unintentionally—that the fate of Thedas depended on Eamon's survival. If he were given a clear choice, Zevran or all of Thedas, he couldn't choose Zevran. But if there's a way to believe he can have both—

"You're going to kill him," Alistair says, sounding small and tired even to his own ears. Corypheus would have taken it.

"You think I didn't offer it back?!" Not his proudest moment, of course, but it seemed as wise a thing as any to buy everyone else time. Or to be rid of it. At the moment, he hadn't thought anything of it. Hadn't thought they'd force him into being their leader, into playing a role he loathes with everything in him.

"Death happens, Leliana. Right now it is happening slightly more often." People are dying- it is not the argument to make to an assassin. Death is death. Everyone dies for some reason or another, expecting him to become twisted about with guilt over not saving people he does not know and does not care about? Is foolish. She should know this. Or perhaps she'd bought the mask along with everyone else. "Make me an agent. Make this a little more plain for everyone else, yes? Put me on a leash and take me from rift to rift to seal them but do not pretend any of the choices I make matter. Find a willing puppet for your fucking throne."

Chain him and bind him but do it honestly. Duplicity is a requirement as an assassin, as a spy- but not as friends.

But he has so few of those left. Perhaps she'd never been.

Leliana is quiet for a moment, looking at him. It might be sympathy. It might be judgment for the outburst. Maybe some of both. "We can discuss it when you are sober," she says eventually, "and have had some rest. If you wish things to change we much change them carefully. Your image is half our power. Regardless, we need you and your hand for now. This is bigger than your life. It is bigger than my life. It is certainly bigger than Alistair's feelings."

Another Look. Not knowing, only disdainful, get moving. Alistair's feeling are presently sulking, silently but also very loudly, and he stomps closer to untie Zevran's arm but doesn't do it, yet, one hand resting on the rope but waiting for Zevran to agree to it. Not Leliana's call.

"Then you should have chosen someone that cared. Or better yet- you should have asked before making a show of how much of an honor it might be!" He might have even agreed to it. Maybe. There would be less resentment for the trickery, more open agreement. Perhaps he might even been somewhat invested in this madness had it simply been a matter of choice.

But since when has anyone save perhaps Jonas and Alistair cared what it was he wished to choose?

"I am not going to Halamshiral. There is not enough gold in the world to make me dress and smile for Orlesian nobles and their Empress." It is as close to a concession as he can make, nodding to Alistair.

He'll leave tomorrow and cut his damn hand off on the road if he must.

"I would consider that carefully before you make up your mind," Leliana says. There's some humor slipping back in--the old Leliana--now that they seem to have reached some form of wobbly, unstable agreement that will at least temporarily keep Zevran's limbs attached. "We have access to quite a lot of gold."

Alistair unties the rope. When Zevran's arm is free he takes hold of it--gently--with his large hand wrapped around to rub up and down Zevran's forearm to encourage the blood along, to shorten the time when the return of sensation will hurt.

"I'll get him to bed," he offers.

Leliana says, "Ha." Untrusting.

Edited 2016-07-09 23:04 (UTC)

"And it will still not be enough." He mutters, the bitter flare of anger curtailed for the moment. His arm released, Leliana leaving, and him here with a dagger still in hand.

He did not want this. He did not even wish to be drunk tonight, simply numb. And now he does not even have that any longer with Alistair's hands coaxing sensation back into being along his bruised skin. There is a thought, there and gone, that he might have enough spite left in him to kill himself rather than be used in such a way.

It leaves, he leans against Alistair instead, infinitely weary.

"We are not staying here," Leliana says, slipping back. She takes the cleaver. The rope. She doesn't believe this is settled or that Zevran is under control, only that this is not the time or place. "The Veil is too thin from the sacrifices. It is not safe. The others are beginning to make the march back to camp. If you hurry you may be able to ride in a supply cart."

Alistair nods. It's a dismissive gesture, acknowledgement but barely a glance in her direction, preoccupied with reaching around Zevran to coax the knife out of his hand.

"That sounds like it could be all right," he says when the door creaks and closes. He isn't actually very good at optimism or at cheer, only at jokes, but he's giving it a shot. "If they let off the hook for everything else and we can just ride around the countryside closing rifts? That could be fun."

"They won't let me." He turns enough to press his face into Alistair's shoulder, fingers uncurling easily. "They need their figurehead. Someone to...point to and say that it is so because they say it so. Letting me step down would be admitting they were wrong. The rank and file would be confused, disheartened."

He doesn't care. He does. Not. Care.

"I should have let everyone think me dead at Haven." It would've been easiest to run then. He would not have gotten far in the snow, probably would have died frozen somewhere in a cave- but he would have done so under his own power, of his own choosing.

With the dagger set aside and Zevran's other arm looking closer to the right color, Alistair is free to slide a hand to the back of Zevran's head and hold him in place. "I'd miss you," he says.

He knows that isn't worth much. He tries to think of something that is and ducks his head down, nose against Zevran's hair.

"If you just hold on and survive this, I'll go with you," he says. "After we've seen to Corypheus. I can't before then, but afterwards--anywhere you want. If the Wardens won't call it an assignment, I'll walk away. I'm too handsome for them to kill." Too well-known, more seriously. A decade, and he hasn't asked for any special treatment or thrown his considerable weight around for anything. He could throw it into this. He adjusts to nudge Zevran with his nose, a chin up gesture. "I'll swear it. But you do have to promise let me have a dog."

He shouldn't snort a bitter laugh- but he is drunk enough to do so. To list away and shake his head because Alistair had made such promises once before, and the goal had been simple. Save the wardens. He's done that. And now? Now it is save the world. "What more after that?"

Because there would be something else. Some other thing Alistair needs of him for some reason or another. "What else when we are on the march and you change your mind again?"

Perhaps he shouldn't have taken Alistair for granted for so long. It'd be easier to bear the weight of his disagreement. But hearing 'yes' and 'sure Zev' for years has not made this simpler to swallow.

He earned that doubt. It still hurts, of course, but it's a deserved hurt. The kind he can accept without whining because he understands the justice in it. And there may be something else, someday. But even if the world is set to try to end every ten years now, on the dot, Alistair probably doesn't have that long to live.

He spits on his palm and holds it around to shake. Maybe that's just a Fereldan thing. "Just the dog."

"...fine." He spits in the palm of his glowing hand and shakes Alistair's, gripping as tightly as possible to help with the pins and needles ache. "It is a deal."

As though he will live long enough for it to matter. "...I suppose we should find the aforementioned cart."

A beat.

"Don't tell Dorian." About the hand. About any of this.

That hurts, too, in another way he can accept without whining, because it's the kind of hurt that means he's doing the right thing.

"Of course not," he says, while he wipes his hand on his thigh, and turns Zevran by the shoulders to straighten his coat and smooth his hair on one side so he's presentable. The Inquisitor.

The ride back to the encampment is silent. Conferring with his Inner Circle is spent mostly congratulating them for work well done, reassuring them that all is well, and avoiding Dorian and Bull. Hiding with Sera on the rooftop and talking about cookies seems to do some of the work for him.

Halamsiral calls and he- cannot be bothered with it. It is not his affair, he doesn't care, let them kill one another- but spending time in the frozen mess that is the Emprise does sooth his ire somewhat. Innocent people are dying, how terrible, how sad, it is the way of the world. Demons wandering about, now. He supposes that is his business. Little by little the bone deep resentment simmers and cools, hardening into something like resolve.

The day after they run into a deliciously handsome and charming Chevalier Zevran makes it obvious Alistair is welcome in his tent- not that Dorian or The Bull seem to have anything to say. He has finally convinced them of their relationship not being in such a way.

Which, of course, gives him leave to strip out of grimy clothes without a thought to Alistair's eyes as he marvels out loud, again, about how prettily that Chevalier blushed. "Skin as fair as his? He likely goes rosy from nose to mid thigh. What I would not give to see that."

Alistair--clothed, cold for one of the few times in his life, and suddenly keenly aware of his freckles--glares at his boots while he unties them. "Your life, I'd hope," he says, "or maybe your dignity. The way I've heard it Chevaliers usually take one or the other."

Edited 2016-07-10 05:24 (UTC)

"Ah, but did you see how he looked at me? He was intrigued." And looked like he could use a solid tumble after this Imshael demon had been tended to. "I have a bet with Bull and Dorian- three sovereigns to whomever might first wrangle a kiss."

He yanks too hard. A bootlace--brittle from the sun in the desert, now half-frozen--breaks, and he swears under his breath. He hates Orlais. One would think living somewhere for a decade would soften it, but no. He hates it.

"Thinking you're attractive and thinking you're a person aren't the same thing," he says without looking up, abandoning any pretense of untying the boots neatly and instead jerking at the laces until they loosen. "If you let him hurt you, I will punch him, and he will kill me."

"It is only a kiss, Alistair. Or perhaps fucking him- which would mess with his head more than mine." Zevran found those pamphlets about elves and considering them animals, oh yes. Without missing a beat he tugs a spare lace from his pack and offers it over.

"He will not hurt me. I have handled men twice his size with half his consideration." Trousers, gone- flicked to the side of the tent while he rummages about for something to sleep in- there is bound to be something appropriate in his pack.

Only a kiss earns a disgruntled sound. There is no sound appropriate for fucking him. Alistair goes still, instead, staring hard at his feet. So hard it takes him several beats to notice and take the lace.

"If you let him insult you," he amends, unconsoled. Knife-ear in passing is one thing. It makes Alistair grit his teeth, but he can't fight everyone who does it. Knife-ear to someone stupid de Chevin should be grateful to even have the opportunity to look at, let alone kiss--Alistair would punch him. Then he would die.

Boots off, he looks up. It's a mistake.

"Are you sure--" Nothing he hasn't seen before. Less than he's seen before. It's fine. Andraste's sword. He takes a breath and leans sideways to reach his own pack, pull out one of the formless shirts he wears beneath his armor, and toss it into Zevran's line of sight. For Zevran's sake. It's too cold for anyone to be sleeping unclothed. "Are you sure," he goes on, "you wouldn't rather sleep with, uhm."

Whoever he's sleeping with. Both of them. The Right Thing ache makes a faint return.

(He got lost in thought, not many days ago, thinking about Zevran on the beach again--white haired this time, old and lined and leaning happily into someone, and Alistair couldn't put himself into that picture. Only other people. Then he looked up from his stew and found Cole staring at him, like a weirdo. Fortunately the kid is easily distracted by any mention of nugs.)

"I have heard worse than anything he might say to me." The Crows are not so kind masters, Taliesin not so sweet an owner for him to be new to such things. But again, darker times for another night. For now there is a flask he sips from and offers over before accepting the shirt. It saves him the trouble of stealing one from Alistair later.

Another thing that makes the Bull squint on occasion, how often he smells of Alistair. Dorian gives him A Look and Cole makes noises and Sera makes Gestures but they are friends that do not fuck. It is a rare and precious thing, that.

It makes Alistair safe in ways he cannot quite explain, having someone that likes him without wanting him.

"Dorian or The Bull or both? I think, perhaps, something is brewing there and I know better than to wander in where I might become a complication." He might wish to be a complication, he might ache a little in want of that level of attention, that focus, that devotion and his voice may be a touch wistful- but he knows better. Such things are not for him. "It leaves my bed empty, so to speak."

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