ombranera | Open RP Post

"Not bad," Alistair says quickly, shrinking against the concern. Maybe this is why Wardens don't have many friends outside the Order. "It's quiet. I could have a year." He drinks his stolen wine, unrepentant. "Or it could have something to do with—I don't know. It shouldn't happen this way. Not to all of us at once. I know Wardens who haven't been with us six months yet who are still hearing it. And you have your Breach. Maybe the weakness in the Veil, or."

Something.

"If I can stay here, I can keep looking into it." He nudges his shoulder up under Zevran's hand. "You have to promise not to do the sad eyes."

It prompts Zevran to actually pour himself a glass. Not quite so full, but more than your average draught of wine. Antivan. Josephine tries to help him feel comfortable however she can, even if he has no idea how she managed to find it and bring it back down this far South. 'Not Bad'. All of them.

It could be whatever's made the breach. Maybe closing it will help?

"This does prove one thing." Zev's hand slips from Alistair's shoulder to his hair, petting it gently like he would a dog. "And you are welcome to stay as long as you like, though I make no promises about the sad eyes. If I must promise? You must promise not to make the sad eyebrows."

"I can't help it," Alistair says. That isn't completely true. He can control his face by emptying it of anything at all, stand there looking blank and stupid, but then Zevran will know, anyway, that Alistair's eyebrows are sad in his heart. Zevran can do masks. That's usually aggravating, but in this case, maybe good. No sad eyes.

Possibly-sad hair petting, on the other hand, is fine. Alistair wrinkles his nose for a moment, like a child having its face cleaned, but at the same time he's leaning into it. Like a dog.

"What does it prove?"

"You really can't." He cracks a laugh, idle petting twisting into combing and this is why he had the guards leave. What would they say to see their herald petting a Fereldan Warden like a particularly well behaved mabari? "I make no promises, but I shall try."

It is more than he can offer, truly.

"Mmm? Ah- among my inner circle as they are called there is a man that claims to be a Warden by the name of Blackwall. I had my suspicions of course. He sleeps far too well and does not eat near enough- and he speaks of the Wardens with such brightened, fairy tale idealism it made me wonder if he was fucking with me or actually bought the idea. Apparently? He does buy it because he's lying. Curious, that."

Alistair—like a particularly well-behaved mabari, yes, or like a man who wasn't sleeping well even before he spent a few weeks sneaking across Thedas and sleeping sitting up with a sword in his hand—closes his eyes and lists sideways against Zevran's combing, though not enough to make continuing to drink the wine impractical. He stays that way for a bit, eyebrows pinching together at Blackwall but otherwise unresponsive until he finally pries his eyes back open and straightens his neck to frown thoughtfully at Zevran.

"There is a Blackwall," he says. "I've never met him, but Duncan—maybe there's some other—"

Explanation. No. There's not.

Alistair puts the glass down and says, wryly, "I hope he isn't using his name because he killed him. I'd have to do something about that."

"Whatever it is I'm certain it will come back around to bite us in the ass sooner or later. We've already laid claim to some resources using the Grey Warden Treaties. Not much, not yet, but enough to make it very embarrassing that we did not, in fact, have a Grey Warden among us at the time." Leliana would have a field day with that but...Zevran gets the idea he's running from something different than the casual murder of a Warden.

Such things are not done casually, after all.

"We will work it out sooner or later. For now all I must worry about is sealing the great hole in the sky. Compared to that everything else is just details."

"Is that all," Alistair says, and leans forward, conspiratorial. There is a brief moment when he looks like he might lean all the way--not like that. All the way over to fall onto the floor and fall asleep. But he doesn't. "We could sneak out in the middle of the night. Be in Antiva before the month is out."

He'd never. And neither would Zevran. Alistair has known that about him possibly longer than Zevran has known it about himself.

"That'd be a marvelous idea- except the Crows are still thick in Antiva and wish me dead." He may have been killing them off in his free time, of which he had plenty, the past few years. Still- There is that wavering moment and Zevran is glad for their privacy, the faint softness around his eyes when he reaches up to rest a hand on Alistair's shoulder could be...misinterpreted.

As something more than friendly concern.

Which is all it was.

"Alas, no. I am stuck seeing this through to the end- for which I blame you. How dare you offer such a sterling example of how one doesn't go mad, drink themselves into a stupor, and flee the country." Most of what he'd cobbled together so far was, more or less, patterned after how they'd handled things during the Blight. Zevran has no idea what he's doing- but is half certain he won't survive long enough for the fallout to make him look bad.

"Save that for the very end," Alistair agrees, very wise and experienced in these matters, and drinks half his wine.

***

The end almost comes too soon, with far too much fleeing and not nearly enough drinking. And too much divine providence. Alistair isn't given to mystical thinking, but he saw what everyone else saw—Zevran facing down a dragon and Zevran buried with Haven and Zevran cresting the ridge of the mountain path, frosty but alive, with his blighted glowing hand—and it's mystifying.

So there's a wary distance, when he finds Zevran by a fire in the pass. (It's the first time he's seen him alone, or close to, without any rapturous singing or weird bald elves swooping in for his attention.) The wariness is one third what even are you, two thirds how dare you. Alistair had wanted to go back, an impulse Leliana shared but quieted. Too many enemy combatants still there. Too many people here who needed defending. Too small a chance of survival. It turns out that it is possible for tears (only a few, very quiet and manly) to freeze to one's face, which is something Alistair could have lived without knowing for multiple reasons.

Anyway. There's a fire. No one is singing. He holds out a blanket, at arm's length.

Close the breach, save the world, move on. Except it did not remove the glow from his hand. It did not stop those massive, monstrous templars from tearing through the camps. It did not stop that creature with its dragon and its words. At least the ultimate enemy did so like to go on and Zevran did, in fact, have an inkling as to what the future might hold- though running right from Redcliffe and all its horrors directly to seal the breach might have been rash.

He had not even had a moment to spare to check in with Alistair. To make certain that he was here and alive and not grown into a part of a cell wall for the sin of trying to protect his childhood home.

But all this, dragons, the future, avalanches- and he'd still managed to save his people because- that is what Jonas would have done. He stayed behind to try and buy time because that is what Alistair would have done. He sits alone after the singing, after the strange, enigmatic conference with Alistair to process that much blood on his hands, the odd detachment from guilt that only truly slams into him when he looks up and sees Alistair. His face does not crumple, exactly, but it does shift. No longer half so numb or chilled and it is undignified to stand so suddenly and stumble over- he will blame the cold. Blame the snow for tripping into the blanket and against him. Blame exhaustion for how he clung afterward. "I did not know if you made it out."

He manages, eventually.

For a moment Alistair holds his arms out, hands hovering. Normally he wouldn't hesitate. But normally Zevran hasn't so recently come back from the apparent dead, and normally there's no image for either of them to worry about maintaining. (Alistair would never admit having a mind for that sort of thing, and will discard said mind whenever it suits him better to be publicly loud and unmanageable, but he does. A peculiarity of his upbringing.)

"I'm very durable," he says as he relents and wraps his arms around Zevran's shoulders. However little people might want to see the Herald clinging to anyone else for comfort, it's probably worse if it doesn't look mutual. Anyway, he wants to. "You know that. Thick skull."

A beat. A squeeze. A thorough confirmation that Zevran is solid and—not really warm, but not reanimated corpse-cold, and not going to dissipate in a strong wind. Then Alistair pushes him back by the shoulders to look him in the face.

"Don't do that again." The freed blanket falls into the snow. "You're out of luck. You have to be. That's all the luck there is. There's no way—"

"I told Leliana to be sure." Whatever happened to him, they needed to live. If he failed, they could rally the rest, could pull this forward into something else. She'd understood. However strange he might find her now- she understands. For that there are no words he can say to express his gratitude.

Though it probably isn't what Alistair wants to hear.

He sags where he stands for a moment, for two, out this far he's sure most aren't lingering for some manner of glimpse of him, and if they saw this? He wouldn't care. He is allowed a few moments to be mortal. To be Zevran. Of course as soon as he's comfortable Alistair pushes him back and the blanket falls, wracking Zevran with minute tremors he fights to suppress out of habit. "Do what?"

Oh. "I was out of luck a decade ago. This is all just...extra."

"That is not comforting."

And it's Zevran's job to comfort him. Clearly. In addition to carrying the hopes of all of Thedas in his freaky glowing hand. The moment when Alistair realizes he's being an unfair bastard is visible, eyes unnarrowing and gaze shifting vaguely toward his shoulder, where Alistair still has a firm grip on him.

Something shakes. It takes him a second to realize it's Zevran and not his own hands.

He lets go. Fetches the blanket. Drops it over Zevran, head and all, like an unfitted cloak.

"If you do it again, I'm going to sing," he threatens.

"I do not know what you want me to say." It is unfair- and Alistair knows he is being unfair and Zevran is too cold, too overwhelmed, too afraid of this thing in his hand and the rather sudden enormity of what's before him that needs to be done to try to think of the most soothing words for Alistair's distress.

It should be easy but- it isn't. Just this once he wishes the tables turned- that he might lean and Alistair might hold fast. Perhaps that, too, is unfair of him and his shoulder slump, curling in against the cold. The thought occurs that he should return to the fire when the blanket is dumped upon him again- tugging it so he can peer through the makeshift hood as he wraps it tight about himself takes but a moment. "...That is not nearly as terrifying as you might think."

Alistair wants him to promise not to die, possibly ever, but especially not now, while everything is terrible and Zevran is his last great hope, too. But he's reached the limit of selfishness. He shakes his head, lips pursed to hold back the demands, and then says, "I was worried. That's all."

But still: no more heroics. (Ha. Ha ha.)

"I'll bow," Alistair piles on, since singing isn't scary enough. "I'll get on my knees and look at you like you're a god."

And that wasn't intentional, swear to Andraste. He doesn't even realize. He switches with ease from threats to a genuine offer, tipping his chin back toward the fire.

"I'll sit with you."

"So was I." He thinks nothing of being that honest, that vulnerable with Alistair. Who else knows him best? "There was a blighted dragon and me without a ballista."

Which had worked well enough a decade ago but not half so well now. It's an easy thing to think, plans to make for wherever they end up- thoughts that stutter to a stop abruptly at that particular mental image. Had he blood left in him he'd blush. But- fortunately, all he does is cough. "There are better things you could be doing while on your knees, Alistair."

Because innuendo is expected and easy and he can paint on the usual smile and lift his brows just so, even as he shuffles to the fire. So much snow. Why are they hiding in the mountains? Why did he decide to bury himself in an avalanche? "Why can't the world ever be ending where it is warm?"

Alistair manages a smile, at ballista—nostalgic, fond, but mostly still worried and mildly put out. "Next time." Maybe Zevran should never travel anywhere there isn't a ballista—so basically nowhere that hasn't been carefully planned for in advance—ever again.

What Zevran is saying about knees doesn't fully register until there are eyebrows to go with it. Then he laughs and flicks him lightly on the back of his head, barely enough to be felt through the blanket. If Alistair blushes, it's lost to how red his face already is, cold and wind-chapped and recently mottled by crying or the effort not to.

"Because it's the hero's lot to suffer," he says, sing-song, clearing snow off one of the low boulders that's guarding the fire from the wind before he sits down on it. There's room beside him. Or in front of him, where he's blocking the wind now, too, with the broad span of his back. "To overcome. The cold is the real dragon you have to slay."

Nonsense. But not accusatory, angry nonsense, so hopefully it's an improvement.

"I really do wish people would stop calling me that." Something he'd told Jonas ages ago. 'Have you never heard the tales? The hero always dies'. It'd been heroic Grey Wardens in that particular instance, of course, but the point remains. If he is the hero of this tail rather than the dashing love interest or the comedic side kick-

He would die.

Resigning himself to that would be no fun at all. Even now he thinks 'ah, Cassandra is clearly the leading lady, ah, Cullen has all the marks of a hero' rather than slot himself in that particular role. It is easier. Still, he shudders more from cold than fear and steps closer to the fire, slotting himself in front of Alistair as though they'd planned this thing, Leans back against him because for once Mother Giselle can look scandalized at something else.

He needs this. Something solid and warm and alive at his back. "I do not think setting fire to the mountains would help save the world."

"It might take care of your hero problem, at least," Alistair says, dropping his arms to dangle over Zevran's shoulders. It would be nice to say that he doesn't hesitate for a moment to worry about how it looks—not for his own sake, he doesn't care, he has the luxury of not caring—before deciding that the corpsey-looking spirit boy and the Tevinter in the camp are probably keeping the gossipmongers preoccupied. For now. It would also be nice to say that he goes along with it for the sake of being comforting and not being comforted.

Alas.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks, looking past Zevran's blanket-covered head to the fire. "Or we could wager how long it will take for you to get the—who do you like most? The Qunari?"

He'll worry about it later, the way they look. But Vivienne isn't staring and Bull is preoccupied with his chargers- of the whole lot those are the largest threats to his reputation as this fabled herald and Alistair's life. Madame de Fer would have a field day if it appeared they were more than friends, the Herald and Cailan's bastard.

...then again Varric might be one to avoid as well, lest he get ideas for another romance serial.

It is some manner of sign when he does not leap upon the subject immediately, snorting instead. "I have too much on my mind to consider how long it might take me to seduce someone Alistair."

Alistair says, "I'd give it an hour," out of stubbornness, a refusal to let things change too much. Some, though. He doesn't press beyond that. "What did that Solad want?"

"I should be warm enough to imagine it then, certainly." He manages, for Alistair, a faint twist of laughter. Let it be the cold, let it be the shock. "Mmm? Something about scouting to the north, something about a possible fortification unknown to man. Which is highly suspicious when you take into account his dreamwalking ways and how he just happens to know such useful information that we need. Doesn't that sound a little familiar?"

Morrigan, with her last moment ritual. Morrigan with the lore and the means to make certain the Wardens succeed. Morrigan whom he has not seen nor heard from in quite some time, but there are curious rumors in Orlais.

But it does strike him as terribly familiar.

"Mmm."

Complications. He doesn't want more complications. He wants to sit here and put his chin on Zevran's head and let the green ebb and flow of the light in his hand and the stupid song in Alistair's head and the fire coalesce into something soothing instead of distracting and scary. It might be impossible, period, but it's definitely impossible while also thinking about Morrigan.

"Maybe the dreamwalking is how he found it," he offers. "He seems nice. But if you think he's hiding something I can hold him down and you can rub snow on his head until he talks."

"I do not think that would work all that well, tempting as it may be." He sighs, letting his head thud back against Alistair's chest. "...I am going to have to play the long game."

A beat.

"I hate playing the long game." Too much could go wrong, he'd have to keep ahead of everyone else and- there was a reason Rinna handled the planning, the gaming. A reason Zevran slipped in where he was told. Over a Decade later and it is difficult on his own- not impossible, but. Difficult. "You can do your part by reminding everyone how terrible I was at trying to assassinate you and Jonas. The less guile they think I have? The safer I will be."

Bull won't buy it, but that is a thought for another time.

Alistair huffs, just short of a proper laugh. It was a very shoddy attempt. Zevran could have done better. He could definitely do better now. "I'll do a reenactment," he promises—honestly, he will—and settles one arm around Zevran's torso more firmly. To keep him warm. "Do they know about the Crows? Other than Leliana."

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"Solad"

So very lad

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