ombranera | Open RP Post

He could argue--don't let them yourself, you'll outlive me--but Zevran's conceded enough as it is. It's his turn. He nods. "I'll make sure everyone knows you talk to dogs and cheat at cards," he promises, "and you tried to flirt with Cousland while you were bleeding, and you wanted to run but didn't because you're a sucker for pouting warriors."

"You were going to cry." He could tell. Somewhere, deep down, there's a twinge whenever he knows he's hit a point that makes Alistair truly sad. He does not like that twinge, he's been stabbed before but hates that twinge more than being stabbed. "I was flirting with you both, you know."

Ten years ago. He was flirting with anyone that would keep him alive, or at least kill hi quickly. "Cousland spoke up first."

"Those strong leadership qualities at work," Alistair says. Maybe with a little resentment. But not much. Alistair certainly didn't want to take charge, didn't want the throne, didn't want to marry Loghain's terrifying daughter, and Cousland is Maker knows where now while Alistair is here with Zevran. And Leliana. So it's worked out in Alistair's favor, so far. "He had to speak up first so people wouldn't be confused by my broader shoulders and stronger jaw and think I was in charge."

"You've always been prettier than him." It's an easy joke, a familiar one. Something to make his hands unclench and the tension in his shoulders ease. Some things are the same. Not many but- some.

"And you've always been prettier than all of us," Alistair says, not any less sincere for the rote and dutiful tone he takes on. He skritches his fingers against Zevran's neck as a reward for his loosened grip and slackened shoulders. "That's the story they'll tell. The Herald of Andraste stepped out of the Fade and tossed his beautiful hair over his shoulder, the odd glow of his elegant, tapered hand casting light onto his perfectly formed face..."

"This is true." He says, relaxing further still- be it from the praise ore the scratching, who can say? But this is- easy and warm and far from all his fears. For a few hours, perhaps, he might ignore them. "Mmm. Go on. Tell me how handsome I am."

Alistair laughs silently, chest shaking under Zevran's head, and tugs on his earlobe. "The most handsome. Women faint in your wake. Men lie awake questioning everything they thought they knew. The Maker is testing us, with you, to see if we're truly ready for the return of the beauty he'll bring."

"This? This I like much more than saying I am a herald for my faith." Being well known and well liked because he is PRETTY? That is familiar. That he can use. That he can shoulder without buckling. He twitches a bit at the ear tugging, tipping his chin up to peer muzzily at the underside of Alistair's jaw. "All the more reason, I suppose, to continue to be seen with Dorian in public. We are both of us too pretty for words."

Alistair makes a disgruntled noise before he's decided why he's making it and, upon hearing it, has to decide the cause. Dorian's a decent man, as far as mustache-twirling villains from the Imperium go. Alistair likes him. He seems like he'd be able to make Zevran laugh. And it isn't as if they're getting married—

jealousy. The disgruntled noise was jealousy. Alistair closes his eyes in exasperation at himself—maybe Dorian makes him laugh, maybe there's a sex thing, but he doesn't get this, the uncertainty and vulnerability and clinging, probably, maybe, and anyway Alistair wants Zevran to be so happy with someone suitably pretty and long-lived—and doesn't announce it.

"I thought my words were all right," he says instead. Offended, see, that Zevran must think that he didn't do him justice. "I know I was a little vague, but I didn't have time to prepare in advance or anything."

Edited 2016-07-06 14:54 (UTC)

"Mmm. Have something ready for the next time I wish to flee. It will happen again." Because he has too much sense to remain- except for the pleading of a Grey Warden. Maker preserve him if Cassandra and the others find out what keeps him here. They'll use Alistair against him in some way- much as he loves Leliana? She'd do it in a heartbeat.

They need him, or at least they think they need him. And her cause is righteous. It doesn't matter that she's bending him to benevolence, he is still a blade in her palm and it rankles.

"You know I'll always like you best, yes?" He tips his chin up to peer at Alistair, smiling. "You are my favorite human."

Exactly the right thing to say, exactly the right expression to say it with. Any lingering moodiness clears from Alistair's face like it was only smoke instead of a storm cloud. Which is not the case. Unchecked he could totally have thundered about for weeks.

"Are you sure?" he says anyway, milking it, drumming his fingers lightly on Zevran's back. "Because I can grow a mustache if I need to. It comes in thick enough now."

"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.

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