Title: The Art of Winning
Summary: A brief examination of Zevran's life and what being an assassin has meant to him.
Author: RinoaTifa
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age, but I may enjoy it a little bit too much for my own good…
For Zevran, being an assassin has always been like living on a knife edge. Just the smallest, subtlest of actions can tip the balance between life and death, victory and defeat. For, essentially, in his line of profession they are the same thing – to win is to live another day while to lose will cost you everything.
Well, that's what Zevran used to think, before a certain Grey Warden who'd proved decidedly more difficult to kill than he'd anticipated decided to spare his life.
The truth, he had come to learn, was far more complicated than what the Crows had taught him. It wasn't as simple as this action inevitably leading to this conclusion, cause and effect, situations that, if planned down to the last detail, can always be controlled and manipulated. There were always variables that couldn't be anticipated, having an influence on events. The knife could be tipping in your favour before something unexpected sends it flying the other way.
And then there were degrees of winning and losing. Life outside the Crows meant he no longer had the security of knowing 'dead' equalled 'good' while 'not yet dead' equalled 'not yet good.' Despite being so thoroughly and – might he add – embarrassingly thrashed by the Grey Warden and her companions, Zevran couldn't help but feel that, in some small way, he'd still won. He was alive, after all, which was always a plus (he was far too pretty to die just yet). He'd already noticed several rather beautiful young things to occupy his attention, for a little while at least, and who knew? Maybe they wouldn't all die in this seemingly hopeless endeavour and he'd find he even enjoyed this hero lark. Well, he'd always been an optimist at heart...
No, it seemed to Zevran that the only thing he'd lost from his encounter was his freedom, which had belonged to the Crows since his boyhood anyway. The Chantry boy threw him another dark look and Zevran smirked to himself; yes, he could definitely find ways to turn this into a win.
And, for the weeks and months that followed, he thought he had. Much to his own surprise, he found he was actually quite enjoying playing at being the good guy and, if nothing else, this life certainly had a way of keeping his reflexes sharp without having to worry about a knife in his back at every turn (thought he still slept with a blade under his pillow; Zevran always did prefer to err on the side of caution). Then he'd been confronted by Tailsen. Even after all their time together a part of him was still surprised when the Grey Warden chose to defend him rather than throw him to his fate. Looking down at the body of his ex-co-worker, Zevran found himself smiling. He was free of the Crows. And it felt like victory.
But all too soon the body he was looking at belonged to the Grey Warden who had saved him, and Zevran realised just how fleeting even the hardest won victories could be.
And so it went on, down the years, a series of wins and losses that defined the Antivan's existence. He travelled for a while, taking the good with the bad, and when the inevitable happened he fought off the Crows, one victory at a time. And yet again, he ended up surprised, for when his one man war ended and those that remained of the assassin's guild came practically begging on hand and knee for him to lead them, he knew that, against all the odds, he hadn't lost. But somehow it didn't feel like a victory either.
It troubled him, that he couldn't work out whether being made head of the Crows was winning or losing. Like when he spent the night with identical triplets – beautiful and deadly and dangerous, just as he liked 'em – only to have their blood smeared all over his sheets in the morning and their dead eyes staring at him accusingly from their lifeless bodies, collateral damage in yet another attempt on his life from a rival guild. Or when his network of spies tracked down a traitor within the guild, averting possibly one of the biggest and most intricate plots to overthrow the leader of the Crows in the guild's history, simply to discover after the execution order was given that the traitor had been a whore-house elf boy, like himself, who had been desperately stalling for time by feeding the conspirators false information until he could work out a way to rescue his mother and sisters from their clutches. Wins and losses – again and again he teetered between the two. It always seemed as though Zevran couldn't have one without the other.
In the end, though, he decided it didn't matter. When living on a knife edge, life will always be a balancing act, a constant battle to keep all bases covered, and he knows that he did his best. What matters is that the final victory will be his, and no-one will take that away from him, thinks Zevran as he lies peacefully on his death bed, ready to become the first leader of the Crows in the guild's history to die of old age.