ombranera | Open RP Post

Alistair leans to one side and tilts his head to scrutinize the wound until he's satisfied there's nothing blackened about it, then nods, sharp relieved little jerks of his chin while some of the tension bleeds out of his shoulders. And out of the tent. No one is saying sorry, but--"Let me get you some elfroot," he says, climbing back up to his feet. "If anyone asks I'll say I have a toothache or--"

The offer stands, but he stops and shakes his head at himself before he progresses too far in sweeping the problem under the rug to rot and grow mold.

"Zev, if anyone gets hurt because you're looking out for me, I won't be able to live with it. If something happens to you--you're not doing me a favor."

"That- Yes." He could use that. He even manages to scrounge up something like a sincere smile for Alistair. It is not quite the same but it is something like a sincere smile. It is all he can offer.

And they are talking about the thing, again. Marvelous.

"I am single handedly beating the countryside into submission as most would tell it. I am going to be hurt. I am going to bleed for people and causes I could not give less of a fuck about." He doesn't care. So much is set before him and he. Does not. Care. "But taking a blow to keep you safe, even if it is simply in ensuring your absence from the danger? That is something I chose. I do not get to choose much, Alistair."

Let him have this.

"I chose this," Alistair says, gesturing to—himself, all of him, his tainted blood and slowly shrinking frame, his oaths. I am not lost, he told Leliana once, and he was sullen and scared but he still meant it.

Maybe later he'll realize how loved he should feel. How necessary. Maybe on the walk to get the elfroot.

Right now he repeats, "I'm going to Adamant," just to make sure they're clear.

"How much choice do any of you have, with the act of conscription?" Slipping back and sideways and, perhaps, seeing injustices where there are none. Alistair might have made good with being a Warden, might have told himself he chose this life, but how much control did he truly have up until that point?

An old argument they have never truly had for Zevran knew better than to dig into it. He catches himself before the rest might spill out like so much blood and resumes dabbing away at the cut on his ribs. "I, apparently, cannot stop you. Do as you like."

Alistair glares as fiercely as he has glared at Zevran in nearly eleven years, because Zevran's sideways back-slipping means stepping directly into territory marked Duncan. But Zevran seems to know, already, not to push, so Alistair's eyes stay narrowed but his mouth also stays shut.

"Elfroot," he snaps instead of answering, not because he is clever enough to avoid a fight but because he's angry enough to want a break from looking at Zevran.

He ducks back out of the tent. It's a short walk to the supplies, and with air and distance his glare fades, his posture loses its furious rigidity. But when he comes back, lies about toothaches told and elfroot in hand, he's still sullen, holding out the herbs without comment.

Zevran has found a stool in the meantime, sitting and threading a curved needle while trying very hard not to feel anything. It is more difficult than it once was and for a brief, mad moment he misses the apathy he'd carried in the Crows.

It'd serve him so much better now than it ever had as an assassin proper.

Without a word and without looking he takes the elfroot and goes through the motions of grinding it into a paste, pressing it into the wound to do it's work before he starts stitching. The quickest way to numb and cure. It'll mean picking it out in the morning but by then the bulk of the work will be done and the cut will not pull as much as it would normally. "Was there anything else you wanted?"

Light. Tight, but light- a curl of entirely false cheer.

Alistair shakes his head, not looking away from the wound quite yet. Still no darkening edges. That's all he wants. That and for Zevran to stop treating him like one of his followers, and—

He isn't going to hug an elf with a rib wound. He hugs too hard as it is. And he's still angry. He says so—"I'm still angry with you"—while he leans down, hand grabbing the side of the stool for balance, and sticks his face against the juncture of Zevran's neck and shoulder, just to rest there. Presumably. If he isn't kicked in the face first.

"You and half the Inquisition-" But this is the one that stings. He locks up at the approach, tense and silent and not flinching so hard for the space of the moment it takes him to realize there are no grasping hands or teeth in play.

Lighter hair, different nose, not a ghost.

Zevran remains tense under that press- uncertain what it means. Angry means walking away, means sleeping in different tents, means not being around one another, let alone touching if it isn't to cause harm. No harm is forthcoming. "What do you want, Alistair?"

The Brother, the Assassin, the Hero? What mask does he want? Zevran cannot keep up.

There's a question. And there's a swelling feeling in Alistair's chest, his throat, that falls short of anything recognizable. Anything actionable. He turns his head so his mouth and his nose—mostly his nose—have more neck than shoulder underneath them, inhales, and stands back up.

"I want you to be safe and happy," he says, "and I want the world to not end, and right now it looks like I can't have both."

And he can't choose the first over the second. He's not built that way.

And he's still angry.

"I'll go," he says. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Were it possible (it is) Zevran goes all the more tense and still, not even breathing. Habit more than anything else has him shifting his grip on the needle, instinct has him ready to jab and that this is what they have come to should rankle. But it is all he knows, this fear. The only familiar thing left to him. Alistair moves away and he can breathe again.

"So you are allowed to want such things and be upset and act upon them but when I do so it is not fair?" He cannot keep Alistair from Adamant. But he can keep him as safe as he can manage until the moment his foolish nobility might kill him.

And that is apparently terrible.

It is selfish, he knows this, it is unreasonable and he does not care. He has been dragged by the hand into being this thing, this figure for so many people and the few he might wish to be more to, to be mortal and flawed and personable do not want that from him. Even during the fifth blight Jonas was permitted to be himself.

"You can't keep me from doing my job," Alistair says—he was going to leave, honestly, but here he is. "Do you think I never worry about you? Do you think I wouldn't prefer it if you left the blighted Crows alone and took up farming?"

"I am not a farmer." He has never been a farmer. "I suppose you have your wish, it is terribly difficult to be doing any work as an assassin when I trail an army wherever I go."

How pleased he must be, now that Zevran can no longer kill for coin. Influence, certainly, but profit? Never.

"Yes, this was exactly what I wanted to happen," Alistair says, and he has, at least, moved out of fist-clenching fury and into the loose gesticulation of passionate irritation. "For years I've been thinking, you know what Zevran really needs? Weird and potentially fatal magical powers and a religious following. That will keep him out of harm's way."

That's sarcasm. This, less so:

"And you would make an excellent farmer."

"Antivans do not farm. We fish." He could, perhaps, be a fisherman if he could envision a future where he would put down his blades at last. But even that slim thing has been taken out of his hands now.

No Rivain, no fishing boat, no bordello in Antiva City.

"Fish smell terrible," Alistair says, with emphatic authority, as if this is very important. Radcliffe is a fishing village. He knows.

"So do farms." Pig shit and cow shit and horse shit. To be a farmer is to be covered in dirt and shit.

"They smell better than fish."

He pauses. Not because he's realized that they're arguing about fish and farms and it's ridiculous—it's not, it's very important—but because he's concerned about Zevran's wound, which he tips his chin toward questioningly, as a reminder.

"I'm fine." Going back to stitching like he'd never meant to stop, twisting thread through skin in neat, parallel lines. It will hold. He'll bleed when he peels out the elfroot, but it will hold and he will be good to fight another day.

"Clearly," Alistair says, and restlessly half-turns away to run a hand through his hair and try to remember what they were actually arguing about and why he was angry.

He needs a moment. It kills his momentum—and reminds him, tracing back, that half of the problem is that Zevran gives a shit about him. So he doesn't drag it back up.

Still obviously annoyed, visibly exhausted by all of it, he says, "Can I sleep here?"

"No." It's out before he can correct himself but that same fear where he'd tried to dissuade rumors of his and Alistair's involvement after Haven remain. No matter what he cares after his name-

It is dangerous, involvement with him. All the more so now that he would have to judge the wardens whenever they do catch up.

He cannot have that fall down on Alistair's shoulders. Nor does he truly wish the man in his tent when he is so quietly, sullenly angry. "I do not think it wise, no."

"All right."

He isn't surprised enough to look or sound like a kicked puppy. It was a big ask. He's no more bothered than if Zevran told him he couldn't rename all of the Inquisition's horses things like Bunny and Wilbur.

"Then I should go."

"I will see you in the morning, Alistair." There are other holes full of Darkspawn that need tending. Other missions where a warden may, perhaps, be of use.

Nevermind the knowing looks given him by Dorian and the Bull the next day. Nevermind Sera's rather fluid and obscene gestures- or the quiet aside from Dorian about, maybe, there are some things he might deserve to know?

The next march down is exhausting- catching a moment alone is almost impossible, but begging leave to search for one of those veilfire rune bullshit things that Solas soils his drawers over seems reason enough to let him stand with the flickering torch and no audience for sagging against the nearest wall.

Alistair should leave him alone; if he didn't want to be left alone, he'd have invited company. Probably Dorian. But Alistair is shockingly terrible at leaving anything alone, so Zevran is not left to sag very long before there's the creak and clank of armor in the dark, and, "When did the dragon decide it'd had enough to eat?"

There's a beat. It isn't long enough to allow for a guess, however, mostly because he's fairly sure Zevran has heard this one before. From him. And will steal his punchline.

"About mid-knight."

Armor and he straightens, squinting at the wall like that was all he'd been doing- but the voice makes up for it.

Alistair.

He squints, instead, into the darkness where Alistair hides, the veilfire torch causing his eyes to glint and glimmer. "That joke was awful ten years ago."

And yet Oghren had nearly pissed himself laughing.

"I was hoping it would age like wine. No luck?"

No luck. Another day, another cave, he might have covered Zevran's eyes for a moment. This day and cave, he leans one shoulder against the wall at the edge of the torchlight and inclines his head to peer at him.

"They wolf whistled when I left to come after you."

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