There's a certain artistry and pleasure to violence—Meryllia agreed with Zevran when he'd mentioned this to her. Something in her snarled happily whenever she let such thoughts consume her. When she'd asked Zevran to teach her how to be an assassin, he hadn't expected her to let loose and fight all-out dirty.
He'd shown her that fighting on pure emotion wasn't The Way of the Assassin because there wasn't anything subtle about it, and though she couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that she couldn't revel in a too-powerful, well-aimed punch…There was also beauty and poetry in learning the etiquette of the quieter rogue.
It's also beautiful to slink among shadows unseen, and in this, Meryllia excelled. If you took away the whole "violence" aspect of being a rogue, the rest was perfect. The same kind of rush was achieved when slinking past intelligent beings who should probably know you're there, but they don't. She and Zevran could amuse themselves in Redcliffe, whenever they got tired of political meetings, by finding nooks and crannies to hide in, and just become invisible in the darkness.
Among all these other roguish qualities, lock-picking is also a lovely thing. It's a delicate kind of beauty, precise and fragile. Tumblers rang with music, adding to the click-click-click of lock-picks coaxing them into proper places. Truly, this art is another glorious quality of being trained in stealth.
But when you're tired of the Deep Roads and covered in blood and impatient and not willing to spend the extra energy required to make lock-picking into something beautiful…Well.
There's something profoundly beautiful and artistic in screaming in rage, picking up a darkspawn battleax that's several times too large for a female elf, and bashing it into the blighted chest whose lock is too complicated, sparing no thought for its treasures and just splicing the wood open. Breathing heavily, allowing the weapon to clatter noisily to her side, and staring at the mess that the—it's opened, it's opened!—thing that used to be a chest, Meryllia can feel Zevran's approving, if amused stare on her back.
Meryllia ignores Leliana's quiet, appalled mutter of "I could have unlocked it if you had just asked," and digs her hands into the chest to pull out the gold and silver and the like it stores. She grabs a handful of the stuff—all undamaged, thank the Maker—and turns to face the bard, flipping her off through the jewels. "This solution says fuck you, Leliana," she informs her with an icy anger.
As she storms off with her prize to put it in her pack, she hears Zevran finally crack up and clap his hands together, whistling appreciatively. "I love emotion-fueled violence!" she cries back in response. His answer is only more laughing. The rest of the party says nothing, in confused silence.
A/N: Should've been writing the next chapter to A Resistance. Instead, I wrote this. I apologise.