Alaria raked her hands through her already messy spill of hair. Truthfully, she wanted to scream and stamp her foot and shake the fool man in front of her; she wasn't exactly sure what had gotten into him, but she was about to find out.
"Yes, I really do wish to talk about it," she said, not even trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. "If I didn't want to talk about it, I wouldn't have brought it up. And no, you do not get to get out of 'talking about it,' Zevran. You follow me around like a lovesick puppy and act like you've done something to really earn a place in the mabari kennels and I have no idea what's going on." Zevran tried to protest, but Alaria held a hand up to him, cutting him off.
"And if you want to leave, there's the door." The hand moved from being palm up towards him to pointing at the closed door. "I'm not holding you here. I told you after I killed Taliesin, Zevran: you need to do what is right for you. I'm not your mistress and I'm not your owner. Maker help me, I don't think I'm anything to you at all." She didn't realize how much pain she put into those last words until she saw the stricken look on his face.
"No, no, Alaria. It… it isn't that at all. Brasca. I do not know how to do these things. I do not know how to… to talk about how I am feeling. You cannot understand; you were not raised as I was. You were raised in a happy home with loving parents, in a family. You saw love every day. We could go to the alienage right now and you could see your father, and Shianni and Soris, and there is love written on their faces. Me? I saw women and men selling the illusion of love." He sank down into the plush chair that rested by the hearth, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Alaria stood where she was, arms folded under her breasts.
"When you were young, before your mother died, you saw her kiss your father, yes?" Alaria arched a brow, but replied that she had. Zevran sat back, his face tilted towards the ceiling, his hands gesturing. "When I was young, I saw men and women come in the whorehouse and trade coin for kisses, for sex. This was normal, yes? I would watch whores chat up potential clients, promising love and companionship. 'Oh, I love you and for fifty silvers, I will love you all night!' Yes? But you saw your mother and father sit together at dinner and say to each other words of love that they meant."
"Okay, you're going to have to speak more clearly, Zev. I don't get what you're saying."
"I do not know what I am saying," he grumped. "I do not know exactly what I am trying to tell you. I only know that I am not good at it. But… but that is not all. My life in the Crows. Eh… we have spoken on that. There are many reasons the Crows buy us young. It makes us more malleable, yes?" He stood up and started pacing, still gesticulating with his hands, not looking at her. "It is easier for them to drill certain concepts into us. One of these concepts is that sentiment will get you killed. Crows can have no friends. Crows can have no family. Crows can have no ties outside, because that distracts from the loyalty and will get you killed. A Crow who cares about someone is a Crow with a weakness, and if you do not seek out and exploit that weakness, then you are the dead Crow."
She started slightly and shook her head, then took three strides across the room and forced him to look at her. Well, forced him to look in the general direction she was in; he refused to look at her face or meet her eyes.
"Zevran, are you trying to say you're in love with me?"
He shuffled his feet, eyes cast down on the floor. "I… How could I know? How do you know such a thing? I was taught that everything I feel, that I might feel, is wrong. That I cannot feel these things. And that there is no such thing as love; it is something you spend some silvers on for an hour or so and then you go home or continue on your way."
"How do you know what love is?" Alaria threw her hands in the air and turned her back on him to stomp to the other side of the room and punch the wall. "Maker's breath, Zevran! What do you think actual love really is?" She shook her hand out slightly; the wall was not very forgiving. "You've listened to Alistair and Leliana too much if you think that love is this… this… great, noble, awesome thing." He started to protest again but she pointed at him. "No. You sit down, shut up, and listen to me."
He sat down. He shut up. He seemed to be listening.
"Do you want to know what real love for someone is? It's putting yourself in danger, putting your life on the line, taking blows for someone else. It's holding their hair back while they're suffering from the same food poisoning Alistair gave everyone and that you are also suffering from, and, despite the horribly embarrassing situation, they're still willing to crawl next to you in the bedroll." The Antivan flushed red; that had been a particularly embarrassing situation for the entire party, come to think of it; they had all gotten some unfortunate views of one another and had agreed that It Wasn't to Be Talked About Ever, but Alaria had just torn that agreement all to the void and back.
"Real, actual love is being willing to kill a bloody big bunch of Crows who come looking for the person you care about more than anything in the world and then turning around and telling that person that you want them to be free to make their own decisions, free to stay or leave if they choose, because it was what is best for them, with fear burning your belly because that decision might mean they leave you forever but it's worth it because it's their choice.
"Real love, Zevran, is being willing to follow some woman you've only known a few months down into the bloody Deep Roads on some absolutely insane quest to find a woman who possibly died years ago, because you can't bear to be apart from her and you know she's terrified of dying down there. And it's being willing to make deals with Ignacio, to kill people on his behalf, for just the smallest chance that it will get other Crows off your back so that maybe, just maybe, some bloody stupid foolish Antivan might decide to stay with you because you'll be less of a target. And real love means you don't care if the person you're waking up has horrible morning breath and ridiculous bed hair and is still covered with darkspawn blood or whatever because they are still waking up next to you."
She leaned back against the wall and shook her head. "Zevran, I don't know what you expect love to be. It's… it's not like something from a story, okay? It's not knights on stallions and princesses in towers or all flowers and rainbows. It hurts and it's dirty and it's hard and sometimes the passion wanes and sometimes it waxes but it's just- "
And then he was there, his mouth pressed to hers and his hands on her shoulders. Her eyes widened with shock for a moment but fluttered closed as her arms snaked around him. After what seemed like a very long few minutes, Zevran pulled back and looked at her, his golden eyes shining, a slight smile playing on his lips.
She cleared her throat and tried to straighten her hair- how had it gotten that messed up?! -and then tried to put a serious look on her face.
"I hope that cleared things up for you, Zevran," she said. The tips of his fingers brushed against her cheek before he kissed her again.
"It did, mi amor."