ombranera | Open RP Post

"You are going to fall and hurt yourself." He mutters. "And I am going to laugh."

He should drop down before that happens, he knows, but he was here first. He has a right to sulk and hide and drink and not face this weighty reality for a little while longer but no, he isn't permitted that and it makes his jaw ache for how he clenches his teeth against it. "Get down, Alistair."

Rolling off, like a cat, he lands near that soft, worn blanket over hay. Settles there instead. If it'll keep Alistair from hurting himself. "They love an idea. They do not know me. They don't care to know me."

"No, I've got it, I just need to—"

Zevran hops down. That's well enough, since Alistair still hadn't thought of a plan or an end to that sentence. With Zevran on the ground he shuts up and drops obediently to join him, to sit in the hay next to the blanket and begin picking out the handful of tiny splinters he managed to get stuck in his arms. It doesn't hurt.

"It's a good idea," he says, but he does understand, sort of. Even if his own role was very much hero's sidekick, now with a side of quiet disgrace, he doesn't like the way people look at him sometimes. He can't be what they want. He flicks one of the splinters away and reaches for Zevran's glowing hand instead. Aiming to inspect it. As if he'd be able to tell if it's getting worse.

"It's a lie." A role he'd taken, a mask he'd put on for the sake of the Inquisition- to play the part of the noble hero. It is something he can somewhat manage, pretending to be Jonas. To be Alistair. It's a terrible idea but they love it all the same and he wants. He wants his life back. he wants his hand back.

The hand he lets Alistair take without question or anything more than a faint glare- but there is no heat in it. Not really. "I have thought about cutting it off."

He says, drunk enough to be honest but not so much to actually do this thing. "I could give it to Solas. He could put it on a stick and use it however he wanted."

"Do you think that would work?"

Alistair flattens his hand to look at his palm, head bent. He doesn't touch it again. If anything he's almost comically ginger, overcompensating for his blunt, callused fingers and previous prodding.

"I think I am running out of my ability to care if it does or not." They do not need him, they need his hand. He never asked for this. He never wanted a life like this. Grand adventure is more grand without people relying upon you for more than a dagger to an enemy's throat.

His fingers twitch faintly, the glow brighter, perhaps, for sealing the breach.

After a moment of contemplation, Alistair releases his hand and grabs his bottle away, eyebrows slanted—that's enough, but he's not serious, and he holds it back out once he's stolen a swig.

"I hear Rivain is nice," he says, temporarily indulgent, "for a certain definition of nice. You could get a hook."

"Well what are we waiting for? Find me a cleaver and have done with it. I can find us a ship in less than an hour once we reach the coast." Maker knows they've horses enough-

Be it the Brandy or the exhaustion or the distinct lack of a playful smirk as he flexes his glowing palm- Zevran sounds entirely serious. Cut the damn thing off and let him be finished with this part of the tale.

Alistair cranes his neck around, searching for a cleaver he knows isn't there, before slumping back in surrender on the hay, low on his elbows. Low enough to knock his temple against Zevran's shoulder. "Later," he says. "I'm tired."

If he's cutting off hands, he needs a nap first.

After a moment, more seriously, he says, "I couldn't go with you. If you really want to go. I have—" A few months to live, if things don't change. Or, less depressingly: "—the Wardens to worry about. Someone has to shout at them, when this is over, and if Pentaghast does it they'll cry."

"And why is that?" Angry, now, and he sounds it. Bitter and sullen and frustrated and even his attempts to flee somehow thwarted by the world at large. "What more could you possibly owe them? Have you not given enough?"

Is a decade of service, is not ending a blight more than enough to offer him something good and warm and not terrible for however long he has left?

"You're drunk," Alistair says, in place of anything serious—that he owes them everything, that they get his life, that he wants to die fighting like he's supposed to. "And you're not leaving."

"I am." He will. He needs to. "Before they force me to do anything else."

Close the breach, they'd said, and he'd done it. He owes them nothing. "I am not going to stay and become a pawn in their crusade. Elves die in such crusades. If I am going to be killed I'd rather it be something personal instead of being made a bullshit martyr for whatever cause they see to paint as mine."

Do it for me, Alistair doesn't say—or does say, possibly, in the way he glances up at Zevran's face and then puts his cheek against Zevran's shoulder, like a dog's needy lean. But he can't say it. The best he could say is do it for the Wardens. Do it for Thedas. Do it so there's an Antiva left to retire to afterwards.

"Why did you stay to help with the Archdemon?" he asks instead. "You couldn't have liked us that much."

He doesn't look. If he doesn't look he won't see what Alistair does not say- but he knows him. He can feel his eyes imploring, can hear his eyebrows doing the sad, somber angling. His hand slips up all the same, combing through his hair and his-

This is a reason to remain. To see this through. These quiet moments. This infuriatingly charming man. "I swore an oath."

And he kept those, as few of them that he made. "You and Jonas are shit at minding your flank. Someone needed to watch it for you."

That makes him grin, mention of Jonas and all, cheek stretching and swelling against Zevran's arm. "Stick it out for a while and I'll watch yours," he offers. His eyes are shut. The only reason Zevran's petting won't put him to sleep is that he's still holding himself up on his elbows. After a moment he manages to muster up some selfishness: "Just until we sort out the Wardens, Zev. Please? Leliana cares. I don't know if anyone else does."

"If I stay now I will not be able to leave later." He knows what that murmuring means, the glances, the hope. Political plotting, mentions of faith. of needing a leader. He'd thought nothing of scouting ahead and now? now he sees it for what it was. A ploy to make him indispensable. To make him important. "Either I leave tomorrow at dusk or I am shackled to this Inquisition until it kills me."

And it would. He has no doubt of that.

That's enough to make Alistair sit up, open his eyes, and insist on Zevran looking him in the face. "I won't let it," he says. That isn't his to promise—it's too big, the mark on Zevran's hand is too strange, he might not live long himself—but he does, anyway, because he cares too much and too stubbornly to admit it isn't possible. "Zev."

He chews the inside of his mouth for a moment, then lies down, head and shoulders beyond Zevran's back but a heavy arm sliding around his waist so he can't just slip away if Alistair dozes.

"If you want to go, you should go. But stay with me for a few minutes."

"You cannot promise me that." He'd let it go, normally. Let Alistair make his absurd statements, bask in the charming nobility of the sentiment but this is cold and real and aching in his palm, at his back, in the pit of his stomach where fear coils with thorns and hooks and the knowledge that these things do not happen without a cost. He does not let it go- and he does not look Alistair in the eye.

He'll leave in the morning, he decides. Pack a bag, pick a horse, slip out before anyone notices that he has gone. Leliana would understand. She would hate him, of course, and he would be proving everyone that assumed h'ed flee at the first sign of trouble right but-

He has given more than his due. He is done with this. With Jonas? He'd had no choice. Here he does.

"You should come with me." When he leaves. He could forget about being noble just this once. "You don't have to stay- they do not need you like-"

Like he does.

"Like others might."

He can't promise him that. He doesn't argue. He repeats it in his head, where no one can argue with it, and he means it as much as he can, but he doesn't push. He lies down and he's quiet, trying to imagine slipping out of Skyhold with Zevran and leaving Thedas to its fate, trying to imagine being the sort of person who could do that and not hate himself.

"No," he decides, and skips over all the nobler explanations for the one Zevran won't be able to roll his eyes at. "I don't want to die. Not yet. If they can stop it."

He could plead. He could argue. He could beg-

It wouldn't matter. There is always something else, someone else, and Zevran has long since resigned himself to this fate. For Alistair it has ever been and shall ever be The Wardens. He honestly should not be so surprised but it cuts a little all the same. Not so much that he tries to twist away but. It cuts.

"What makes you think they can?"

"Corypheus. He's one of ours—we caught him ages ago, but we can't kill him. He can control any Warden who gets too close. It's too much of a coincidence, for someone like that to show up at the same time we all begin hearing..."

It's sleepiness that makes him trail off as much as sadness. But he rallies and goes on.

"I've been thinking about it. It's his name that made them chase me out. I said, no blood magic, my friends, we're not thinking this through, and they said, oh, Alistair, you're so naive, sit down. But after I mentioned him they lost their minds." He curls a little. Not quite enough to make the offer to watch Zevran's flank very literal. "I don't want you to die, either. I'll cover for you while I can. If you're going."

"I need to leave the hand behind." It's the most obvious mark of who and what he is. He can live without a hand.

Probably.

He'll make do.

"Pretend you didn't hear me plan or see me leave. Leliana will continue to keep you safe and see to it the Wardens are considered as they move forward." He's leaving. He's leaving and nothing is going to keep him here. Not Leliana, not Alistair, not anything.

Alistair is silent for a few beats, trying to gear up to not sound disappointed, which for him means trying not to be disappointed. He doesn't fully succeed before saying, "All right," acceptance laced with the barest hint of I expected better and—something. Fear, maybe. But not enough to warrant making Zevran stay if it will kill him, not enough to try to make him feel guilty for leaving. There's still Leliana. He wouldn't be entirely alone.

An exhale. He moves his hand from Zevran's middle to his shoulder, then his cheek. Blindly. He nearly misses, covers it with an equally blind attempt to affectionately smooth the hair tucked behind his ear.

"If I don't see you again," he starts, and doesn't know how to finish.

It's still there, in his voice. Zevran can feel the disappointment, feel the sting it causes, the hurts it draws into being- and resents the whole of it for happening. He shouldn't care. This is not his fight any longer. He has done his part! The Inquisition needs an army, needs politicians, needs some manner of leader in the faith and he is none of these things.

Anyone can do them. He does not need to.

"I have done enough." He doesn't know if he is arguing with Alistair or himself, here. "Twenty five years I lived as someone else ordered. After the blight I swore never again. If I stay? That is all that waits for me here."

Does it mean never seeing Alistair again? Leliana, the rest? His fists clench uselessly in the blanket under him, jaw locked tight. "Life was so much simpler before you made me feel as though I had a conscious."

A pause, then, "Sorry." Insincere. A little proud—of Zevran, not himself, as counterweight to the disappointment. He drops his hand again. "They need you. And I know it isn't fair, but I need you, too. Not just your hand. They listen to you."

"They listen to Cassandra." And Cassandra does not listen to him so much as humor him. "..."

He slumps backward, twisting and tucking himself against Alistair's ribs, face buried in his shoulder. He wishes to leave. Everything in him screams it-

But those cold stones and that familiar shield. That disbelieving, crackling smile and wry twist of humor even as his voice was warped by red lyrium. That is a world without him.

That is a future where he walks away. "...until we sort this business with the wardens. Then- then you help me remove this hand and we both go to Rivain."

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