-oOo-

I dream of him every night.

Assuming I dream at all. It's difficult to be sure.

It's impossible even to define night, in this shifting world.

Truer to say, perhaps, that my consciousness is often filled with memories of sunshine hair and molten eyes, a wide smile that brightened even the darkest day.

I never thought of myself as gay. The beauty of my prospective bride left me cold, but then so did the shy smiles and hopeful looks I received from Soris. I just… wasn't ready. I was more interested in archery and books. While my friends were sneaking off into the bushes, I was tucked away in the high-walled yard behind our house, where I could practice with a bow without the shemlen guards seeing me, or perched in the vhenadahl with a shabby, sixth-hand copy of Brother Genetivi's travel tales. I dreamt of getting away, of seeing the world; I dreamt of excitement and adventure.

Reality was very different from fantasy.

-oOo-

"Fabian."

I turn my head a bare inch, trying to track where I heard his name. The receiving room is packed, corvi and commercianti mingling freely, making contacts, cutting deals. There was a time when I heard that name often, too often, in hushed and admiring tones, in awed whispers, in excruciatingly bad bardic verse. Five years is a long time in Antiva though, and the attention of the world is no longer centred on the Hero of Ferelden, who sacrificed himself to save us all from the Blight. Gratitude is fleeting, it browns and crisps like a delicate flower in the midday sun.

"Fabio Nerolo, so good to meet you again!"

I relax infinitesimally, shifting my gaze away from where a portly merchant is introducing himself to a group of bankers, informing each of his identity as he shakes hands with a shade too much enthusiasm. Even though it seems no-one spoke his name after all, memories stir and stretch. His wide innocent blue eyes, his soft fair hair and his sprawling tattoo, a wretched imitation of the Dalish vallaslin. His fingers clinging to mine, the hesitant touch of his lips.

My Fabian.

-oOo-

"Go away."

The demon shrugs and stretches with impossible languor. "Where would I go? I'm you." An overly-wide mouth displays pointed teeth in a vicious grin. "You don't think you're meat for any real demon, do you? A pitiful little scrap of consciousness like you, with no body, no connection to the waking world? No, Fabian, all your demons are in here." He taps my temple with a sharp nail and I flinch away. "In fact, it's far too crowded in there for my liking. I could help you purge the rest, if you like, it'll give me some room to stretch and grow."

"I don't make deals with demons." There's too much history behind those words, too much blood and pain and death and we both know it. Connor… the Circle; I squirm in the grip of memory and the pointy, unnatural smile of the demon widens in triumph.

"Oh, I know that, all too well. Nothing can sully the purity of your decisions, can it? One child in a castle or many behind the walls of a tower, they all died to ensure you didn't soil your pretty hands."

"It wasn't like that!" No matter how many times I'm tormented, the words still burn my tongue like acid. I didn't know the mages could have saved Connor. I came from the Alienage, I'd seen nothing of magic, and for all his templar training Alistair didn't tell me. Not until afterwards, not until the rage boiled out of him, pouring over me in a heated storm. Then he told me, accused me, and said there were other options I could have explored. But, by then, it was too late.

And so, having killed Connor rather than use blood magic, how could I dishonour his memory by risking the survival of other blood mages, other demons? It was hard enough to live with what I'd done. If I hadn't remained true to that decision, then his blood would truly be on my hands. I'd be nothing more than a murderer.

"You think you aren't?" The voice is piping, haunting; the voice of a long-dead child. The demon looks at me with Connor's large reproachful eyes.

"I'm here, aren't I?" I can't help the edge of bitterness in my voice, little though I merit it. I stayed true. I never condoned blood magic, never trucked with demons. My reward is to be here, locked in battle with my regrets, rather than tucked against warm, fragrant skin.

I wish I'd done that. I wish I'd had that experience… just once. Not the greatest of my regrets, but sometimes the keenest.

-oOo-

"Maestro, you are tense. Permit me to assist." Gentle hands, capable of snapping my neck in an instant, slide confidently over my shoulders to my nape.

I stretch, marking how the build-up of salts crackles in my neck when I circle it. When did it begin to do this? I must stay lean, stay strong, stay focussed, or my life will end with astonishing suddenness. The sharp, merry brown eyes of my assistant, Cecco, seem to contain only concern, but I have no doubt she would take me down without mercy if she saw me as weak. A Master Crow is never safe from his subordinates.

"You are right, I think. A session with the masseur would have benefit, no? Arrange it, if you would be so kind."

Not her intent at all, and we both know it. She's a beautiful woman, with warm caramel skin, bounteous curves that belie her steely-strong musculature, and thick, lustrous auburn hair. It's not the first time she's made a play for me, despite my reputation. She sees me as a challenge, I think, which is a thing I entirely understand. Once I would have perceived it so, also.

"The masseurs can only achieve so much, Maestro." A lie, this. Our masseurs offer everything she does and more. They are chosen not only for their skill, but also their lack of inhibition, and take both pride and pleasure in their work. "They cannot please you as I could."

This, at least, might prove to be true, and therein lies the problem. The Crows taught me many things, but it seems they failed to teach me to guard my heart. Twice I have given it and twice they died.

Never again. Urges can be met more safely by my own hand, or by the occasional whore. I will not ever again risk seeing my heart lie broken at my feet.

"No, cara Cecco, I do not think so." I keep the words gentle; I do not require another enemy and certainly not one so close to home. "The masseur can provide all that I need."

-oOo-

"You're too hard on yourself."

Another long session fighting my personal demons has left me limp and weary, and now here is Shianni – or something that looks like her – perched on a familiar fence behind my father's house, eating a piece of fruit with great relish and kicking her scuffed boots against the fence panel.

We've been through this before, but today I'm too tired to argue. Instead I lever myself onto the fence beside her and steal a bite of her peach. It's soft and pulpy, the juice running down my throat, but it has no flavour.

"Hey, that's mine!" Her grin gives the lie to her indignation. "Thieving knife-ear."

"Sez you." I flick the tip of her ear, so much longer than mine. It's not Shianni, I know it's not, but sometimes it's a relief to see a friendly face. I can pretend for just a little while, can't I?

"I'll stay as long as you want." Answering my thoughts doesn't help me to believe it's her, but after a time you grow accustomed to it. Dangerously so, I suppose. "Coz, you don't have to do this, you know. You don't have to live like this."

"Oh?" Weariness and bitterness edge the syllable. I thought I was going to have an interlude of peace, but apparently not. "Make your offer, demon, so we can get this over with."

She seizes my chin in work-roughened fingers, turning me to face her. I look into Shianni's warm, pale brown eyes, my beloved cousin, my companion since babyhood. "I'm not a demon, Fabe. I'm you. Everyone here is you. Andraste's Ass, you know that. You just won't admit it, you stupid git. Haven't you wallowed in self-loathing long enough? You did good things, too, coz. You helped people. If you insist on contemplating your own navel for all eternity, you really should be seeing the whole picture, right?" Her fingers tighten enough to make me yelp, squeezing bone. "Shape up, Fabian. I'm sick of being you. I'm tired of fighting for a miserable little chance to tell you this stuff. You're too busy hating yourself to give me an opening." She shakes my face just like I'd shake a mabari's muzzle, in mild admonishment. "Pack it in, Fabe. Give it up. There's a whole bunch of people waiting to speak to you, can't you feel 'em?"

"Monsters." It's a bare whisper, a raw admission. "Monsters pressing on my mind."

"No Fabe, the monsters are in here with you. Out there is a whole parcel of love and gratitude. I can feel it, even if you won't admit it."

I feel their attention; a thousand eyes turned my way. I want to run, to hide my shame. I failed them, killed them.

"Not these. You saved these." Shianni pulls me into a hug as I begin to cry, the tears burning me like acid. "Listen to them, sweetie. Let them tell you their tales." She hums against my hair while I sob. "In fact, let's start with mine, shall we?

"Once upon a time, there was a feisty idiot, who didn't know when to keep her mouth shut and her hands to herself. She landed herself in a whole heap of trouble, and really, truly, believed that this time she was going to wind up dead in a ditch..."

-oOo-

It's amusing to know that every Crow either requires me to live or wishes me dead. To be Maestro Grande di Corvi is no small thing. Even now, after all these years, I am not certain whether I achieved it by my own merits, or was subtly edged into place by a supreme puppet master. The role is a poisoned chalice at best; literally so… if one does not maintain a resistance to substances both old and new.

And now I find, each day, that something has been subtly moved in my private apartments, moved, added or subtracted. At first, just a comb or a candlestick. Things that a servant could, perhaps, have shifted out of place. Then slowly, the player has become bolder: bright ribbons in a careless tangle on my mantelpiece, a flower pinned to my favourite doublet. Most recently, the incursions have taken on a more menacing edge: my new armour slashed over the heart, my spare daggers crossed upon my bed.

I tighten security as much as is reasonable, but it makes no difference and in truth I have no desire to surround myself with an ever-increasing number of magical traps and guards. I have a burning curiosity to meet this impudent intruder. I wish to pit my blade against his, to live or die by my skill one last time. The grand sweep of politics and power is entertaining enough, but nothing compares to the sight and feel of your opponent's blood flowing over your hand. Except, perhaps, the writhing of your lover beneath you.

Am I weary of life? I think not, but it cannot be denied that I am running out of challenges. The prospect of fighting for my life, blade to blade, makes my heart sing again, and it seems clear to me that this is what my fine, bold intruder desires. If all he wanted was my death, then he could have orchestrated that a hundred times already.

Come. Bring me life or death, but by the sacred heart of Andraste bring me something. The world I loved so much has grown stale and cold.

-oOo-

As far as the eye can reach they stand, in groups or alone, men in homespun, women with grubby toddlers pressing against their skirts or with babes in arms. Humans, elves, dwarves. Merchants and nobles, washerwomen and farmers. And before them all a familiar figure in gold-chased armour, the weak sunlight finding copper tints in his greying hair.

I back away from him, aghast. "I didn't kill you. I know I didn't kill you."

Alistair snorts in amused derision. "Of course you didn't, you saved me." He rubs his neck, just as I remember. "Not that I was happy about it at the time, but I did my best not to waste the gift you gave me."

We all did. The words gust forward in a warm breeze, unsaid and yet clearly heard, from the vast horde behind him.

"Anyway, what I wanted to say…" Alistair stops, unusually serious, hazel eyes gazing into mine with an intensity I can't break away from. "What we wanted to say was… thank you."

Thank you. An echo of the words rushes over me like a strong wind, the gratitude of thousands. My throat closes and I nod, in a brief jerky movement. It's all I can manage.

"Told ya so, stoopid!" Shianni's triumphant voice is the last I hear before my cage opens and I fly free.

-oOo-

I dream of him every night. I did not always do so, but now, when death draws near, it seems his shade draws near also. I dream of kissing him in crumbling elven ruins, the blood of monsters still on my hands. I dream of nights by a campfire, his head against my knee as we stare into the flames, my fingers combing through his fine soft blond hair. I dream of fighting by his side, his bow unerringly finding its target as I leap in to complete the kill.

And so, when I feel the press of steel against my throat, for a bare moment its cold caress snakes into my dream; I dodge and weave the darkspawn before me, while my flesh and blood body lies frozen and helpless in my bed.

I could have died then, had she chosen. A tiny moment before I wake, before I move to seize her wrist, but for any Crow a fraction of time is enough and for this one, whom I trained myself, it is ample.

"Buona sera, Cecco." I keep my voice light, as I assess my chances of reaching the dagger under my pillow, the sword propped against the wall. She has removed neither, which is deliberate, I am sure. "I have been expecting you for some time."

"Patience has ever been my friend, Maestro." The old appellation seems to sit comfortably in her mouth, despite the years she herself has been a Master Crow. "There is a time for everything and now is the time I take your place. Regretfully, this requires your death, Zevran." It's the first time she's ever used my name. I see the shift in her eyes as I move from beloved teacher to inconvenient rival.

"And yet I still live. Did I teach you nothing?" It is true; she should have killed me as I slept. That she could do so easily proves beyond doubt that my time as a Crow is ending.

"You taught me everything." A flick of her spare hand and I grasp the hilt of the sword she flings at me. She steps back to allow me to rise from the mattress. "I have to know I can beat you, old man. It's the only way I can sit at ease in your chair."

The fight is brutal; she is no longer as young as she was, but still she is strong and fleet of foot. And I… I carry the weight of many years, but still I train every day. The noise we make is considerable; neither of us has the slightest hesitation in using our environment to our advantage. Shards of pottery rain down upon us, powders from my dressing table fill the air with choking dust and furniture is overturned to provide momentary cover. I can only assume that she has already killed my entire household. Or perhaps she managed to pay them off; certainly they will be of more use to her alive than dead if she succeeds in killing me.

The end comes quicker than I expect, a clever feint allowing her to close with me. The cold fire of her offhand dagger sears through my heart.

"I got you." The triumph in her voice is intense. She must have been waiting for years to do this.

"Yes, cara Cecco. You got me." My own blade is buried in her stomach, her blood hot and slick on my hand. Does she not know? Or not care? I have no way of telling and the world is growing dark.

-oOo-

Our feet tap on the flagstones as we whirl, and dip, bow and curtsey. Coloured lanterns blur in my vision, the grotesque masks of the other dancers flitting in and out of view. I must dance with each of them, my victims, over and over until my feet bleed and I scream with pain, but the first dance and the last are always saved for Rinna. Her dress is a scarlet flame, her blood a crimson sheet falling from her open throat.

I dream of him every night, but when dawn comes I must dance again.

As the figures of the dance alter and the heaving crowd shifts, I see a curious and unexpected sight. A rough fence surrounded by a cluster of tall weeds, incongruous against the fine paving of an Antivan city square. Two figures perch upon it, his fair head bent close to her bright copper hair; they're giggling like children, squabbling over some sweet treat. He looks up at me and his smile burns into my heart.

It's not real, you know. His mouth moves and there is no possibility that I can hear him over the music, but still his words filter into my mind. It seems I might have heard them before, many times, un-recalled until now.

You don't have to keep doing this, Zev.

Trust me.

-oOo-