Open RP Post

[ombranera]

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

Comments

[byblow]

Victory does not taste sweet when it's handed off that way. Alistair glares very briefly at the sun, which is making his nose sweat, then at Zevran, half-blinded by the previous sun-glaring. "You could order any one of these men to sing the Chant backwards while juggling and they would at least make an attempt," he says, "and if you said please I would try, too."

[ombranera]

"Please go to Denerim with the next delegation." Or back to Skyhold. Or anywhere that is not here. Go somewhere safe and certain and leave this madness for him to wade through.

He doesn't expect it to work. But it feels better just to try.

[byblow]

Alistair exhales sharply through his nose, only saved from being a snort by how quiet it is, and goes back to glaring ahead. He's silent for a stretch. That silence is filled not with serious consideration, but with reluctance to say what he has to say and make Zevran's point for him.

Eventually, though, he says, "No. They're my brothers, Zevran."

[ombranera]

And am I not as well?

The question sits thick and bitter on his tongue, sharp like nettles that cut just as much as he swallows it down. This last place he thought he might have for himself is no longer his at all.

At least the change is subtle, shoulders going loose, head cocking at an insolent angle, suave grin settling into place. If this is who and what he is to be- then he shall be it. For everyone. He manages to put some mirth, some warmth into his voice as he speaks- it is enough to perk up the guards that trail behind. "Then we shall have to make certain we save as many as possible, yes?"

[byblow]

It sits wrong. Alistair couldn't say why; loving Zevran doesn't make him clever enough to see through his masks, only enough to sometimes know one is there. And to not like it. Still, he smiles--uncertainly, but a smile is a smile--and doesn't press. He peels his eyes away from Zevran's face to glance back at the soldiers, then sets his gaze ahead to say, "Thanks, Zev."

[ombranera]

"You are welcome, Alistair." And oh how he smiles, and oh how he resumes a positively cheerful performance. He might even whistle a bit as they ride up to the next camp and then? It is a matter of clearing the keep of pushing far enough to clear out darkspawn (which is familiar and comforting for it) and build a bridge (new but useful!) to get across gaseous wastes that would choke them otherwise.

He takes the Bull and Dorian and Sera when it comes time to clear out the Darkspawn. It is not implicitly stated that Alistair should remain behind but he makes no attempt to bring him along.

It is dark, it is as awful as it had ever been, and he is injured deflecting an attack by a shriek that no one saw. Dorian is still fussing over him guiltily by the time they ride back to camp that night and Zevran, resolved to play the part demanded of him, laughs it off even as he walks stiffly to his tent. He can patch himself up well enough on his own, thank you.

[byblow]

Alistair watches him pass from his spot beside the fire; Zevran is mostly a silhouette, features only faintly visible in the moons' light, but Alistair knows how he's meant to walk and knows that it isn't like that. He stays seated, though, long enough for Sera to wander over and answer his question with got it from a darkspawn, didn't he? Looking at him like it's a stupid question (it is) and like it's his fault (it is).

His furious march to Zevran's tent loses some steam when he trips over the sand and his own feet. He's still dusting his arms off, where the sand is sticking to clammy night-sweat, when he nods to Zevran's guards and shoves through his tent flaps without pausing to allow them to stop him.

"I am good at one thing, Zevran," he says while his eyes adjust to the light, then cuts his own rant short in favor of trying to discern how bad it is.

[ombranera]

"Aside from shirking responsibility?" It could cut, those words, but he tempers them with a crackle of laughter. An old joke from a decade ago because isn't it funny, Alistair, that he is in charge. Is it not hilarious that people listen and that, perhaps, he actually has a choice in how he uses this power?

Alistair cannot blame him for doing what little he can to keep him safe. Or he could to be a contrary shit but right now he is shirtless and peeling the bandages away from his ribs, smile still painted on. "I needed you above in case they got it in their heads to attack the camps. They would have no warning otherwise."

[byblow]

It cuts anyway. Not too deep, but enough, coupled with his irritation and helplessness, to raise his defenses. "This is my responsibility," he says. Hisses. A suppressed shout. People are asleep. He needs to be at least slightly more upset to wake them all up yelling at the Herald of Andraste—

or not yelling. He's still rigid with temper, as Zevran goes on, but he can't argue with that. It's the kind of thing he would have done. The kind of thing that he might have approved of, if he'd been asked or explained to or if he actually bought it at all. He doesn't, but he can't call Zevran a liar. He can't argue. But for a few seconds he still looks and feels like he might crack from all the feelings that no longer have a verbal outlet, before he forcibly breathes normally and looks away. Just for a moment. Long enough to snap the tension.

"Let me see," he says, rough and quiet but not quite angry. Mostly scared.

[ombranera]

Zevran waits for the rest, brows lifted. Call him on this, Alistair. Point out how it's bullshit, call him a liar. It'd be true to do so and why he doesn't, why he looks away instead of pressing a valid point- Zevran cannot guess at. They do not argue often, they are never around each other long enough to do so. Never raw and angry but he knows how to do this even if Alistair does not.

That he relents is odd.

"It is only a scrape. Dorian did not see or hear the shriek." Zevran knows them well enough to counter them once he is aware- Dorian has never heard the sound of their blades skittering in the dark. "I am fine."

[byblow]

"They're the clever ones. Sometimes they coat their blades with—" Shit, shit, shit. Maybe he'll be angry again when he's less worried. "Just let me see."

Or tell him it was a stone, scraped against in the scuffle. A clean one. If anything underground here is clean. He comes closer and drops expectantly to one knee.

"You need to see a healer," he announces, too. He doesn't care how bad or not bad it is underneath.

[ombranera]

"Tainted blood, yes, I know. I fought through the deep roads next to you for weeks, Alistair." And the blade had been clean. well. Poisoned, yes, but not tainted. He considers quite strongly for a moment having the guards come escort Alistair out.

But then there would be talk. Significant glances. 'Trouble in paradise, boss?' asks the Bull when he thinks Zevran isn't aware of why he's asking.

"The healers are tending to the wounded that need them. This is a shallow cut. All I need is brandy and thread." he cannot be their savior if he bleeds. They cannot see him inured.

[byblow]

"Ten years ago," Alistair says. It's only a token protest. He knows Zevran is good, he knows Zevran can take care of himself—except when he doesn't, and comes back bleeding—and the fact that the sentiment apparently isn't mutual stings as much as anything. He kneels there, useless and rebuffed, until he remembers to feel stupid as well and sits down flat on the ground.

He almost asks if Zevran has thread and brandy, but he probably does, and Alistair doesn't have the stomach to demonstrate his uselessness again unnecessarily.

He should probably leave.

He says, "Nice of you, to think of the camp," instead, which might be passive aggressive if it weren't so damned obvious.

[ombranera]

"I am not the one that cannot mind their flank." This, too, is meant to be light and teasing but the faint hiss from dried blood catching skin makes it a bit unkind and perhaps this wound is deeper than he'd originally thought- but it is not poisoned and it is not tainted.

He's. Mostly sure it is not tainted. If he leaves the wound exposed as he tosses the bloody bandages aside, no one can call him on it. Dousing his ribs with brandy doesn't prompt so much as a flinch as he has learned far better- and Alistair is no longer someone he is allowed to flinch about. Nor whine. Nor be open and vulnerable.

It's simpler like this, anyway.

"I have people to keep in mind, now. Apparently caring whether they are foolish and die or are careful and live is something I am supposed to be doing, now." So. Alistair remained above. "Besides. Apparently arranging things regarding someone's life without informing them is great fun and I wished to try my hand at it."

[byblow]

Alistair flinches for him. Maybe a little for himself, too, that this is what the person who knows him best knows him for--shirking, needing a minder, being foolish. He doesn't need a massive oil-voiced asshole of a demon to ask him if he really thought he could prove himself or murmur that it's too late.

His chest aches. He ignores it. He's staring glaze-eyed at the wound on Zevran's ribs, the brandy running pink. He has to blink a few times to refocus when Zevran sounds to be finished talking, and then he crooks one corner of his mouth up. It doesn't reach his eyes--but they're hardening, determined. Not on the verge of tears. Possibly on the verge of something stupid, though, next time there's a halfway decent opportunity to die bravely.

"How is it?" he asks. He can't fake breeziness, so he doesn't try. He sounds hurt, he sounds like he's dealing with it. "As fun as it looks?"

[ombranera]

"..." There's a moment, here. A way to turn the knife away from either of them instead of continuing to cut. He is stuck here. This thing in his hand will kill him. He can continue to resent Alistair for choosing the wardens first, continue to punish him for being the sort of man to buy into that greater purpose-

When it is the fact he is that sort of man that makes Alistair so dear.

He considers the wound for a moment, stopping in his dousing to squint. "...No. I am not, I suppose, human enough to enjoy such trickery. Or perhaps I am not Orlesian enough. Next time I have an opportunity to pull it on Cassandra I might find it more gratifying."

He daubs at his cut, squints again. Turns to show Alistair. "...See? Not tainted."

[byblow]

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."

[ombranera]

"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.

[byblow]

"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.

[ombranera]

"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."

[byblow]

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.

[ombranera]

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.

[byblow]

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.

[ombranera]

"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.

[byblow]

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."