Open RP Post

[ombranera]

SFW, NSFW, AU, OU, etc. Drop a prompt like it's hot and let's go!

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[byblow]

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?"

[ombranera]

"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.

"Solad"

[byblow]

"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."

So very lad

[ombranera]

"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.

[byblow]

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."

[ombranera]

"Vivienne. Josephine. The Bull. Cole." Who knew by reaching into his mind and picking at old ghosts and wounds and saying things on the road like 'Hair red like blood on the cobblestones- is it the hair or the blood?' making him fight off old memories while they fight demons.

Fun times.

"The rest- they need to hope. The token attempts at reminding them I'm just an elf have not exactly gone well. This, I think, will only make it more difficult. So let them think me immune." One hand slips down to rest on Alistair's. For warmth.

[byblow]

Zevran is broad-enough shouldered as far as elves go, but they're still pretty narrow shoulders to be carrying all that weight. Belatedly, Alistair feels like an asshole for having been upset. Which is why he twists his hand around to catch and cover Zevran's—that and the warmth.

"Do the Crows know about you?" Follow-up question. "They wouldn't try anything now, would they?"

[ombranera]

There's a half startled moment before he curls his fingers against Alistair's hand. Squeezes gently to remind himself that this is real, that he did not die, that one thing is not so strange.

That, perhaps, he might live long enough to see these impossible things done.

"Yes. I have not exactly been hiding." A beat. "They would. They have not yet. Leliana knows to mind any that come to the Inquisition. Bull, as well, knows to keep an eye out."

[byblow]

"An eye," Alistair echoes, quiet but unmistakably (and inappropriately) tickled. An eye, because he just has the one, right? Get it?

Not the time. He knows.

"I don't suppose you could negotiate a ceasefire for now," he says. "It's not in their interest to have that Corypheus fellow running around and these rifts open all over Thedas, either. Surely."

[ombranera]

It twists a laugh out of him, that. Soft and strained but- a laugh none the less. "Ah, but now I am the supposed Herald. It would be a feather in their cap unless I make myself a greater political entity. It is impolitic to take contracts on wardens. There is no true precedent for being someone with a glowing green hand that seals holes in the fade. Aside from that- I'd heard rumors of Tevinter mages wandering about Antiva. This is...not so small a thing, whatever it is."

[byblow]

No easy solution. Fine. There never is one. But Alistair is disgruntled about it, anyway, briefly ducking his head down alongside Zevran's, nose to shoulder, to make a frustrated sound. Tevinters should stay in Tevinter. That's not xenophobia, it's just practical.

When he lifts his head, a passing scout glances at them and does a double-take. Not at him—at Zevran, maybe his hand. Maybe a bit at the fact he's using Alistair as an armchair. Alistair doesn't move. "He's Antivan," he says, snappish, which should explain everything, and she hastens to keep walking.

He feels a little bad. A very little.

"You should probably get some more sleep."

[ombranera]

It's a quiet sound that Zevran echos, distantly amused as he recalls many a time that same whining kept him from losing his mind in the deep roads. Fondness twists deep and he slips a hand (the glowing one) up to comb his fingers through Alistair's hair in a soothing pet.

It will work out, one way or the other.

When he lifts his head Zevran's hand does not follow, sliding to rest against the side of his face for half a heartbeat before he turns it out to wiggle his fingers at the scout. That had, for a moment, looked far too intimate.

"There will be rumors within the hour, I hope you know. But excelent excuse- I should use it more often. 'Herald you cannot have wine with breakfast' 'Yes I can, I'm Antivan.' 'Zevran you cannot lock the advisors out of the war room for a game of Wicked Grace' 'Yes I can, I'm Antivan.'" Far easier to joke and ignore the commentary about sleep. He does not need sleep.

[byblow]

Alistair grins—wide, genuine, the equivalent of a laugh from a man who's fairly stingy with the real deal—and nudges Zevran with a knee. Or a thigh. Actually. It reminds him to stop grinning, and to let go of Zevran's hand. "Sorry. It can't be the worst thing anyone's ever said about you, though," he says. He's aiming for light, but he can't help sounding bothered. He's brought into trouble along already without adding more. "Close, maybe, but not the worst."

[ombranera]

"It is not me that I worry about." He has been called and had said of him a great many things throughout his life. The sudden uptick of awe and wonder, of respect and positive ideals attributed to him recently has been disconcerting. Good, familiar 'oh Zevran is bedding so and so did you hear' gossip would be more than welcome-

If it were not with Alistair. He does not need to complicate his life.

There's a soft sound when Alistair lets go of his hand, questioning- but he does not reach again. Take what you are given and be glad for it. Of course Alistair is bothered, why would he want it said of him that he sleeps with an Antivan Assassin? "I'll make certain your name is kept out of it."

[byblow]

Alistair hums agreeably at that first part—of course Zevran isn't worried about himself, surely he's concerned about the Inquisition, the trust he needs people to put in him, the story that's being peddled—but the agreeableness evaporates as Zevran goes on. Partly. He still sounds mostly friendly when he says, "I don't give a blighted nug butt—" Yes, he said that. On purpose. Cheer up, go on. "—about my name, Zev."

Even if the world weren't falling apart. He briefly, wildly considers dipping Zevran sideways and kissing him on the mouth to prove the point, but the idea sticks uncomfortably in his chest, a lot like the feeling he gets when something he can't sense makes a noise in the dark, before it can be turned into action.

"I'm only thinking of that poor Qunari's heart. The Bull. That one."

[ombranera]

What was that? "Blighted...nug butt?"

He can't quite make that make sense. "...you have been spending time with Leliana, haven't you?"

And that image does warm him somewhat, his oldest friends laughing and teasing as they once had years ago. Something closer to normal. They had, all of them, saved the world once before. Surely they can manage it again.

"So shall I take this as your blessing, then? To find comfort in his massive, shapely arms? Perhaps I had been eyeing that Tevinter, mm? Or Cassandra." Teasing, all, but- nudging at this thing seems wiser than thinking of what comes in the morning.

[byblow]

"Ha! I told you. An hour."

He uses his recently-freed hand to poke Zevran in the ribs, triumphant, and also perfectly capable of recognizing a veil of jocularity when he sees one. But sometimes the act isn't just for other people's sake. Fake it until you genuinely don't feel the urge to start bawling. He knows.

"Whatever makes you happy, ser," he says, and means it, for now—"and whoever you can convince to put up with your ridiculous hair."

[ombranera]

"Then it is to the handsome Tevinter's tent I go." Dorian seemed amiable enough- and sharing a bed for the night would help ground him better. Feel more like himself. With some measure of reluctance he slips from the boulder, stepping away from Alistair. "There ought to be a tent for you somewhere as well, mm? Let us go find it."

[byblow]

Alistair stays on the boulder—colder now himself, but that's all right. He's hardy. "I'm staying with Master Dennet," he says. It's true. When he sleeps, which he may not for a while, Dennet isn't afraid to kick him awake if he gets noisy. Maybe because he remembers when Alistair was small enough to be picked up by the scruff of the neck and troublesome enough to need it. "You go on. Pavus is probably frozen solid."

[ombranera]

"All the more reason to thaw him out, yes? We shall commiserate about the unforgiving southern winter." There's a moment when he looks back over his shoulder and considers remaining. Sleep does not come easily to either of them- there is the same understanding of why. Alistair the dreams, Zevran the ache. But...it would invite things best left alone. Thoughts he'd laid to rest a decade ago that were easier to put from his mind when the only contact he had with Alistair was through letters or the odd visit.

He could remain, and it would be foolish. A knife that cuts. He knows better. With a wave and dip of his head, he slips into the shadows to, indeed, find Pavus and his tent and his bedroll. There is more wine drunk and idle chatter than anything truly sordid but- well. Assumptions shall be made.

***

He scouts to the north as expected of him. Keeps ahead and guides even though anyone that knows him (Alistair and everyone that followed him across the Hinterlands and Fallow Mire) knows full well he is a terrible scout and tracker. Give him a city, that is what he knows. All this endless white is blinding- but he walks through the days and makes the rounds at night, going from fire to fire to speak with The Bull, to flirt with Dorian, to make certain Sera isn't bored outside of her mind and causing mischief. Conferring with the Advisors, listening to Mother Giselle. Finding quiet moments to, perhaps, revisit his broken and distant relationship with the Maker privately, going over the old canticles in Antivan that he learned as a child.

Not avoiding Alistair but not lingering either. Until they have somewhere safe? He cannot rest easily and that would worry the Warden. A week they spend traveling north and 'soon, I promise, son' Solas whispers at this last meeting before he peels away in the pre dawn and gawks at the perfectly formed (albeit in need of some repair) fortress. Marvelous luck. Highly suspicious. But he is too grateful to have somewhere, to glad to have a destination to think on it for the moment. They set up stalls, claim rooms, light dusty hearths. The advisors mumbling and glancing at him emphatically, the murmurs of 'savior' skittering along his skin until he feels fit to fling himself from the battlements just to free himself of the weight of their expectation.

He hides in the stables, finally. Tucks himself up in the rafters with a bottle of pilfered Antivan Brandy and tries very hard not to think of what this will mean. What more they could possibly want from him.

[byblow]

Alistair doesn't look up, at first; he comes in with heavy boots and carelessly slammed doors, an Alistair in its natural unobserved state—humming, too, absentminded and melancholy, but there's nothing sad to match it about his movements. The Wardens are still fucked, but the Inquisition is safe. He's been fed recently. He's sweaty. He's been helping clear rubble out of the fortress. He rubs a horse's nose in passing, strips out of his shirt without pausing his walk, and tosses himself face-down onto a well-used blanket on a pile of hay in the back corner. It all happens very quickly and noisily.

But then he rolls over, trying to get comfortable, and sees Zevran. The sight makes him flinch, but once he's done that and briefly pressed an overdramatic hand to his chest to demonstrate that Zevran scared him, he takes better stock of the scene—Zevran perched up in the rafters—and says, "C-caw."

[ombranera]

"...?" Zevran peers down over the rafters at Alistair- he'd known who it was from the moment he'd slammed the door open and shut and dismissed any potential threat. Or being found. But apparently he is being cawed at and there he is, flopped down on a blanket in the hay-

"Why do you not have a proper room?" Save the world, get a bedroom. That should be a rule of some sort. "I will speak to Josephine about this."

Which means dropping down and finding her but...later. For now he lounges like a cat, sipping his brandy, squinting down at Alistair.

[byblow]

"Ooh, will I get the proper room without a floor or the proper room without a ceiling? Or the one overgrown with ivy? I want that one. It'd be like camping."

He props himself up on his elbows, head craned back to smile at him.

"Not to insult your castle," he says. Or a little to insult his castle, so he doesn't get a big head, but Alistair is here because he likes it, regardless—it's like home, especially when Dennet is wandering around talking to the horses in the morning, and the animals mean he's never alone and therefore that much less at risk of going mad and beating his head against a wall to get the sound out.

But maybe Zevran wanted to be alone. Hiding in the rafters and drinking seems like definite want-to-be-alone behavior.

"Who are you hiding from? If it's me, I can go."

[ombranera]

"Well if you're going to be an ass about it." He rolls his eyes, propping his chin on a hand while sipping straight from the bottle, wincing only when Alistair calls it 'his' castle. "It is not mine. It is the Inquisition's."

Which he is a part of and apparently holds some manner of vital key to but he is trying very hard not to think about that. All he wishes to think about is the warm sands of Antiva, the fish chowder, the familiar and comforting call of whores at work, the smell of leather in the tanneries. Instead he is here. On top of a mountain in the middle of the maker forsaken south, trying to cobble an army together.

"I am not hiding from anyone." Well, no, that is a lie compounded by a call of his name from outside the barn that has him scrabbling back into shadow. Cassandra pokes her head in, peering about for a moment before slipping back outside to continue the search. "...everyone. I am hiding from everyone."

[byblow]

Ass makes Alistair grin, proud of himself, but it doesn't last in the face of Zevran's grouchiness. Or his backwards slide into the shadows at Cassandra's call. Alistair holds still and silent, too, until she leaves, just to be careful.

Then—"that's a lot of people."

He decides, presumptuously, that everyone doesn't include him, and he hoists himself and his sweaty bulk back up out of the hay to look for a way up to where Zevran is. He doesn't genuinely expect to find one. Not one he can actually climb. But for the principle of it, to say I care about you enough to look like a clumsy idiot, he'll try.

"Have you tried throwing them out of your castle?" Just to be obnoxious. Meanwhile he's climbing precariously to balance on a stable door and grab for the beams overhead. "I bet you could."