She wanted to throw the rose to the ground, but instead she had accepted it coldly, tried her best not to hurt Alistair's feelings as he went on about her loveliness and how she was the only light in a dying world. She couldn't' recall the exact words, because sometime part way through his nervous speech her mind had solidified to a lump of dark rage and her hearing had hardened with it.
But she hadn't stomped it, or tossed it aside, because amongst all their group, she seemed to be the only one in enough control of themselves not to simply blurt out their feelings at every possible chance. Morrigan frowned if they didn't kick puppies, and Leliana sulked if they could not spare the time to help the needy. Alistair seemed to want a pat on the head at every turn.
Oghren just wanted to drink and fight and follow her lead. At least his needs were quiet, and they didn't involve her body, so much as the bodies of many, many, darkspawn under his axe. Bodahn and his son had been equally useful, finding amazing artifacts in the ruins and battlegrounds they passed through in their travels. "Perhaps Dwarves are just less of a pain in the ass than humans?" She thought.
But then there was the Council of Orzammar. She hadn't seen such bickering, backstabbing and childish behavior since they had been forced to split two toys amongst six children back in the Clan. The absurdities of the Durgen'len were behind her now. Decisions she had considered simple courtesy, like not enslaving more Dwarves to the Anvil, and not stomping the already oppressed Casteless under their heels had earned her a strange rapport with her two human comrades.
At first she thought it was an earned respect, but what began as admiration had quickly turned to an obvious infatuation. Their increasingly simpering affections were starting to grate on her. Their sweetly pining faces were aggravated by her own two-faced attempts at diplomacy with each band of humans they had to entreat with to build up defense against the Blight.
It had come to a head when Alistair pulled her aside on the road to Redcliffe. He seemed relieved, even overjoyed that she paid no mind to his status as an unacknowledged Prince. What she saw as completely outside her interest, he seemed to think was some kind of rally of support. It was all she could do not to punch him when he'd wrapped her in a large armor-clad hug.
She had finally escaped his awkward, stumbling attempt to extoll on her beauty back at the camp, stomping away under and excuse of "meditating on her ancestor." Kryn notched the arrow, drew back the bow, and centered her target: a knot of wood on a gnarled tree far away from the camp's fire. With a whistle of released tension, the arrow struck its mark, but bounced aside as the point refused to purchase in the tough old wood.
"Of course it wouldn't stick," she thought bitterly, "The best hope for the world is a knife-eared hunter, but every noble we come to keeps thanking Alistair or Leliana, like I'm not here, like I'm not the one everyone keeps looking to for answers. None of them can imagine their asses being saved by a 'filthy wild elf'."
She notched another arrow, drew, centered, and released, and again the point refused to sink, instead glancing off the old scar next to the knot, and then thumping into a rotting stump next to it.
Many times the Keeper or the Lore-Singer would have her recite the old tales to the children. She had never had much patience for repeating half-truths to garner a confused smile from simpletons, and it felt no different with the cursed Shems she'd been stuck with.
Leliana's calm smile flashed before her, waxing on about the beautiful elven servants in the Orelesian courts. How she loved them ever so much, how graceful, how delicate, how well cared for they were, as slaves! Kyrn turned up a sneer, and tried again to strike the knot.
"She acted as if I should be happy!" Kyrn grumbled, "Overjoyed to hear how she fantasizes about my people like we're her personal porcelain dolls! Ugh!"
Another pull, another arrow flew, another shot skipped across the wood's surface, now missing by an even wider margin as she fumed under her breath, "As if I would be interested in sharing a bed with either of those….those! Half-wit children!"
Broken twigs cracked to her left side, and she spun wildly to point to the danger. Zevran's momentarily shocked face stared back at her, pausing her shot. The overdrawn string snapped, and the arrow whizzed haphazardly into the night sky as she fell to the ground as pain sliced across her cheek and arm.
"Bloody Durgen-eating-" She spat and growled, dropping to her knees to concentrate on stemming the flow of blood that was quickly seeping up from the gash angled around her forearm. Red drops fell into the trampled ground, one by one while the sound of tearing fabric echoed through the small clearing.
"I did not intend to intrude," Zevran apologized with a chuckle in his voice. When he reached over to encircle her arm, she pulled away. "Really?" He chided, "You don't even trust me to bind a wound?"
"Tch," she clicked, "Did you boil your shirt before you tore it?"
"Ah…" Zevran boggled, "No. It was part of my shirt, before I tore it for you."
After a few moments of embattled stares, she finally huffed and extended her arm again, this time directing him to her elbow instead. "Tie here, then. Tightly. And find a stick about one hand long. Hurry please!" She injected, as he continued to eye her with good-natured confusion. She directed him, pointed to a few other items she needed, like a common moss to dry the wound, leaves the Dalish knew to prevent infection. They tourniqueted, then pasted and bound and he even did a middling job tying the strip over her head to hold the poultice above her eye well enough that she could watch as he snickered under his breath at her appearance despite the lesson she had tried to teach.
"You are quite the healer for a vicious criminal, Grey Warden."
"Who do you think kept you from bleeding out after you tried to assassinate us?" She snapped. "Morrigan? Ha! She's a powerful witch, but her magic cannot mend, only destroy."
Zevran's laugh was instantly cooled to an observant gaze.
With a deep sigh, Kyrn went about trying to retrieve as many arrows as she could. Behind her, the rhythmic grate of stone against metal told her that Zevran had settled into honing his blades.
"Well," She thought, "If he's sharpening his blades, at least he's not stabbing me with them."
Two arrows were hopelessly lost, but she retrieved half a dozen, all needing some amount of tending. At the sight of Zevran diligently concentrating on the edge of his weapons, she decided to find a comfortable boulder and mend her own weapons, opposite him.
The bow was almost unrepairable. It was dependable ancient ironwood, but when the clan had gifted it to her on leaving, they probably had not considered the difference between lifetimes of hunting at a distance, and a month on the frontlines, bound up in tight melee skirmishes. She had been forced to use it as a blunt weapon more than once as an enemy bridged the distance.
Now she could clearly hairline cracks forming, and the shredded remnant of her last halla-gut string. The last of the blessing of her Dalish clan, dying in her hands.
"That bow has seen better days, yes?" Zevran asked, peeking up from where he tested the edge's quality by carving a small spiral into one of his bracers.
Kyrn only nodded, grimly looking over the handful of arrows, and considering how much of each one would be discarded.
"You have been in battle more than a month now. They say you fought ancient golems, and could have been crowned queen of Orzammar if you had been a dwarf. Surely, you should not be so upset over a few broken weapons?"
"And if I am?"
"Then I would say you are dishonest," Zevran smiled at her immediate glare, continuing, "Most people would not be so angry to receive a rose, either."
Kyrn's cheeks flushed hot, and she ground her teeth as she hissed back, "That's none of your business!"
"Oh, ho ho!" Zevran gaped, "But it is hard not to notice, when Alistair declares his love in front of the fire we all share, is it not?"
Kyrn slapped her own face, wincing at the sting against the newly poulticed cut. "Fenedris! I can't stand the way those two go on around me! Leliana's always telling me some insipid story about her time in the royal courts, and Alistair moons around me, looking for some new Duncan to lead him by the nose! I'm a decade younger than him, I shouldn't be leading this… JOKE of a warden unit! And I shouldn't have to pat him on the head when he continues to give me those-those-insufferable puppy dog eyes every time I lie through my teeth to butter up some noble or paragon bastard we have to win over so the whole rotting country isn't eaten by darkspawn!"
"Oh, tell me how you really feel, then," Zevran nodded sagely. "Makes me glad you aren't honest with me."
"But I have been," Kyrn was snapped harshly from her rant by the sly way he pretended hurt. "When have I lied to you?"
"Since you are so very good at it, I surely wouldn't know, fair lady," Zevran cooed with a final swipe of his blade over the finishing leather, before striking it into it's hilt confidently.
"I… you're... " Kyrn sighed painfully, "You're making fun of me. Good. great. I suppose there's no one here who really takes me seriously." She gathered the arrows into her quiver, eager to find some new quiet spot in the marsh to repair her things. As she tried to stride past him, he grabbed her arm firmly. Lucky for him it was her uninjured arm, or her fist would have immediately taught his face proper manners.
"You misunderstand," Zevran soothed, "You are angry. You can't go on like this all the time. Either you will explode or you'll blacken an eye you can't afford to blacken."
His fingertips traced up her arm. "I prefer a more physical approach," She remembered him saying." With a hard yank she escaped his attentions before he could feel her racing heartbeat.
"Ah, stubborn? Or perhaps you are dry, like the Chantry sisters?" Zevran quipped, cocking his head to side playfully. "You must be, to turn down a gift as nice as that rose, and as fine a catch as Alistair."
"Is that so? You can have him, then," Kyrn chirped. The lewd grin that spread over his features gave her pause.
"But would he have me?" He mused. "See, I have seduced women as well as men, bon fatale. But something tells me he is more… traditional than that."
A mixture of revulsion and intrigue spun in her guts as she watched the fantasy play out in little ticks of his features. The masculine romance did not disturb her, the clans had known men to lay with each other on occasion, even a few rare pairings had been bound in the view of the Dales.
No, what disturbed her was how suddenly her own thoughts had turned like his obviously had. How quickly she had imagined Zevran as he was no doubt imagining Alistair just now, and just for a moment, forgotten what really burned deep in her guts as they travelled to fight the darkspawn: Tamlen.
She paused again, part-way through storming off as Zevran called out, "I know you will not believe me-" She turned back and only replied with a glare. "But thank you."
"For what?" Kyrn glowered.
"For sparing my life. I do like my life. Despite constantly fleeing from the crows, there is so much still left to savor and enjoy, yes? What are you living for?"
Kyrn shot him one more uncertain glare, and shook her head, "I don't know. Killing darkspawn, I suppose."