Cowards
"Long time no see, old brother-in-arms."
A smooth, accented, and dreadfully familiar voice rang out behind Alistair as he sat behind his desk in his room, royally adorned for the newly crowned Theirin king and his wife.
The voice of a man that he had been intentionally avoiding since his Mahariel's fatal sacrifice to defeat the Archdemon and end the blight.
"What are you doing here?"
"Why Alistair, that is no way to greet an old friend!" Zevran exclaimed from the open door across the room, his arms open towards Alistair. However there was nothing friendly about the words that Zevran had just uttered. And there was absolutely nothing inviting about the arms that Zevran had just opened. The piercing gaze glinting in his eyes made that obviously so.
Inviting himself into the royal bedroom, the lithe elf quietly closed the door behind him and took a few steps towards the king's direction. Although the physical distance between them closed in, the distance between them as people had never seemed so far apart. It would be a major understatement to say that Alistair felt incredibly uncomfortable.
But Alistair was king now, and he would assert his authority. Once again he asked in a cool voice, just barely hiding his discomfort. He should have known better than to think that his past and its grim reminders could so simply be left behind and forgotten.
"What do you want?" It was more of a statement, an order, than a sincere question now.
But Zevran knew. No amount of bluster could serve to shield who he knew Alistair to be. The time they shared fighting at each others' backs was enough for Zevran to learn that at Alistair's core, he was a man full of self-doubt and insecurity, pathetically covered by a thin layer of soot that could be so easily washed away by even a light sprinkle of rain. This knowledge held power, power stronger than a thousand thunderous storms. That was just the way he liked it.
"Something rather simple actually. I plan to head back to Antiva soon, matters with the Crows, and thought I should deal with unfinished business first. Tie up some loose ends."
"Zevran finishing unfinished business? Now that'll be a first." Alistair laughed awkwardly, feeling increasingly suffocated by the tension building with each silent second between the two. They both knew the lingering question on Alistair's mind, but neither addressed it. Trying to diffuse the situation, the king asked another, different question.
"How did you get in here?"
"Through the door, just as you saw dear Alistair." It was a typical Zevran answer but with none of the typical Zevran inflection nor charm. He stood still, leaning slightly on one leg with his arms crossed, eyes unchanged from before. But there was an oxymoronic smirk dancing on the corner of his pursed lips.
"Very funny. But breaking into Fereldan's royal quarters is no small nor easy feat."
"I would beg to differ, my presence here as evidence. The security here is quite shameful; even the fresh apprentice Crows could easily break in as if it was a practice contract. You should be thankful that the Crows aren't all the rage here as they are in Antiva or you would have been assassinated already." Zevran scoffed, briefly breaking form to display his amusement. Maybe the apprentice Crows part was an overstatement; it would have actually probably taken a more decently trained Crow to break in.
The point was that the exaggeration had taken its desired effect, seen with Alistair's heavy sigh of stress as he rubbed his temples together. The strain of his abrupt kingship had physically taxed his body. Zevran couldn't help but notice the light bags underneath his eyes and the dull, glazed look he gave with each uncertain glance. Funny how serving as king seemed to be more stressful than fighting a blight as one would assume according to Alistair's appearance.
"Andraste's ass… Another trouble to add to my ever growing list. I swear that the Maker is going out of his way to make this whole king thing as complicated as possible."
And enough with trying to make this complicated for me by changing the topic, Zevran thought bluntly. "Then I suppose that the Maker must have sent me as well to add to that list."
Alistair's eyes bored into Zevran with uneasy inquisition, asking him what his mouth would not voice. What unfinished business was he talking about?
Zevran spoke first.
"Do you remember the day our fearless leader decided to mercifully spare me my forfeit life in exchange for my service and loyalty?"
Alistair chuckled nervously, "Of course I do. People don't normally forget instances when other people try to murder them."
"From that day forth, my life was bound to hers. I pledged my oath of loyalty to her and was forever indebted, at least until she chose to release me. I was her man, without reservation. This I swore.
'My job was to protect her or die trying. And yet she died while I am standing here, still alive." Zevran's harsh eyes softened at that last statement, instead filling with a painful sense of guilt and regret.
Alistair bit down on his lip and lowered his eyes. "I… I'm sorry Zevran. I understand. I feel that pain every day, trust me. Words can't express how I feel."
In the blink of his eyes, it was almost as if the elf had flown to the desk where Alistair was sitting. With both hands imposingly on the desk, Zevran leaned over to Alistair, slightly tilting his head.
"Really? Is that so, Alistair? Because I seem to remember a certain someone breaking it off with her rather harshly. I'm sure that whatever pain you are experiencing now is but a speck of dust compared to what she felt when you told her she wasn't enough for you. It is nothing compared to the pain she experienced the night before she gave her life to the Archdemon."
Alistair was king now. The vocalization of the long buried memories of pain broke something within him. Exasperatedly throwing his hands up into the air, Alistair nearly shouted, "She set me up to be King, she set me up to marry Anora. Don't you remember? I never wanted any of this! I would've been perfectly content then, just her and I running off together into the sunset to rebuild the order."
The elf simply shook his head. "Tsk tsk, Alistair, of course, trying to run away from the inevitable truth. Very unmanly of you if you ask me. Our dear Warden knew her duty, as well as yours, better than you ever did. She followed duty, not whatever foolish dreams you may have had, and it broke her."
"What would you have proposed I did? Keep her as a woman on the side, my mistress? You keep conveniently forgetting that it was she that set me up with my brother's wife. It was she who broke her own heart."
"She fulfilled your duty for you Alistair. Don't you dare forget that." Zevran hissed. "And as for that, that is not the reason that led to this very, very long-awaited visit. Our Warden chose to induct Loghain into your dying ranks. A logical and wise choice if any, kept in the best interests of your order. And yet how did you repay her? You accused her of betrayal, of smearing the name of the Grey Wardens, no? Not only did you break her heart, but you danced over its shattered pieces with your words." Zevran's grey eyes were now glinting with passionate rage. "How do you Fereldans put it? Ah yes, you 'rubbed it in' like ocean salt in a festering wound. What a way to thank your beloved, especially considering how deeply love she was with you."
Alistair arose from his plush velvet seat in a rush and circled around the desk, standing behind Zevran. As the elf turned around to face him, Alistair set his jaw and looked directly into Zevran's glinting eyes. "She never truly loved me! How could she have so easily have betrayed me, betrayed what we Grey Wardens have always stood for, if she had loved me?"
"Ah, and how can you so easily doubt the affections of our dear Warden, Alistair? How can you so easily doubt her motives? Brother, were you so fully blinded by your childishly consuming emotions to notice the obvious?" Zevran swiftly pinned the king to the wall, one arm against his chest, the other softly caressed his golden brown hair. Alistair's eyes cautiously kept glancing down at the dagger sheathed to the elf's side, positioned to be swiftly drawn and used.
"She was of the Dalish! She disobeyed the teachings of her clan for you. She threw away any chances of returning to her clan, her own family, for you! Alas, is that not love?" Zevran softly inquired, his lips mere centimeters away from Alistair's ear.
"She stood by her choice as I stand by mine! She had a choice; she chose Loghain." Alistair retorted to the Antivan, his own face a deep maroon red with indignation. Casting his face down, he softly muttered, "She never loved me. People who love each other, care for each other- they don't betray each other." He then shoved the lithe elf off of him, his gaze never quite leaving the ground as he began pacing through his room before finally taking a seat on the edge of his bed. Alistair was indeed bigger, stronger than he was, but Zevran was quicker and could fend for himself, yet he let Alistair push him off.
"Maybe it's unfitting for me, an ex-Crow to talk of love when I myself cannot even say I surely know what that is. But I am sure that I would have better returned the Warden's affections. Better so than you at least…" Zevran trailed off, for once breaking eye contact with the last remaining Grey Warden in Ferelden.
Eyes widening, Alistair's jaw slightly dropped in sudden realization.
"Maker's breath! You….You loved her?"
Idiot templar.
"You are truly something Alistair; never have I met any man as dense and clueless as you. What she saw in you I do not know." He slightly shook his head to reinforce this point, before following with a statement of realization to contradict himself. "No… I know what she saw in you Alistair. A refreshing innocence found in none of us, not even in herself. A relief. Someone that kept her tethered to her 'humanity'. An anchor." Swiftly, like the slick assassin the Crows had trained him to be, Zevran felt an take advantage of his instinctive urge to dominate in response to the lost look Alistair gave him. As an assassin, he had been trained to read and utilize each situation he faced to its full advantage. Zevran turned towards Alistair and roughly pushed his sitting body over on the bed, his heavy body gradually sinking into the clouds of silk white sheets laced with threads of gold.
The vastly smaller elf adjusted position as he straddled the king underneath him with one hand firmly planted on the hilt of the dagger sheathed on his hip. The other was held tenderly against a sensitive spot on Alistair's neck, one of the many pressure points taught by the Crows for special cases of hand-to-hand combat.
"She saw you as someone yet to be fully tainted and corrupted by the world's cruel ways like the rest of our cozy little party. Like me. Like herself. A hope."
Alistair didn't fight it, didn't fight the elf straddling him for dominance. Something in him held him back. Maybe it was the resurgence of suppressed emotions and confusion.
Zevran clouded eyes stared distantly into the king's eyes and softly spoke, the hand formerly on his dagger moving smoothly towards the middle of his chest. That only thing that stood between Zevran and Alistair's vulnerable skin was the thin summer nightshirt that he wore.
"The night before the battle, she came to me. She told me that she wanted to forget everything. She wanted to let go of all for once, fearing that that night would be her last. She was alone, afraid, and she said that that was not how she wanted to spend her final night." Zevran's hand slowly unbuttoned Alistair's shirt as he spoke, all the way until Alistair's chest lay sprawled before him. The assassin's hands absently ran over his scars, ran over the muscles toned from the months spent fighting darkspawn. Alistair automatically relaxed under his touch. His hands were surprisingly warm and tender, experienced without a doubt.
"I do not know if she knew of my affections towards her, but alas, I was not thinking clearly and leaped at the chance. The woman I so desired had just come to me to ask me to make love to her. How could one have refused such a sexy temptress as her?" Zevran leaned over, moving one hand from Alistair's chest to caress his head, lips lightly tracing the side of his face. Alistair's breath hitched in his chest, frozen.
What's happening? Why can't I resist him?
And then he remembered that Zevran had cleverly held him captive at his pressure point.
"Close your eyes. Imagine her again. Her warmth, her skin, her lips." Zevran's voice was a commanding hiss, one that Alistair found himself unwillingly following.
Zevran continued on. "It was amazing. She was more beautiful than I had imagined her to be in my fantasies, her voice more seductive and body more luscious. I was hers as I had sworn to be so long ago, and for that one night, she was mine. I'm sure you understand exactly what I mean, no?" He chuckled into the king's ear, warm breath sending shivers down his spine before the elf's tongue slipped to caress the shell of his ear. The action elicited another shudder.
Alistair did understand, and he felt a familiar sense of possession overwhelm him. That body was his to claim and touch. He hadn't felt this swallowing ugly feeling since Zevran first offered to warm her bed the moment she chose to spare his life. She had curtly rejected him then. Oh, how times had changed, and how he had changed.
The assassin's lips curled slightly as he sensed agitation. Alistair was silent with every move Zevran was doing to his body, and Zevran liked it. He proceeded to move his lips down his neck, lightly tracing his veins with his tongue, softly kissing along the way to his chest. He soon felt a bulge grow from underneath him, an encouragement to him.
"She was a little devil, passionately releasing what she had held back for so long. I cherished every moment of her I had. I can honestly say that I had never experienced anything as intense as we did that night. But even as we became one, still I felt her gaze and body recoil from me. I thought then that perhaps it was her fear for the following day keeping her away. So I tried even harder to make her forget. Tension built up, but when we finally released together, I knew why."
"It was you, Alistair; the name that fell off of her wet lips was yours. That was when I knew what she truly sought was to forget was you. It was never about me, us, but always you."
Slyly, Zevran's hands slipped to the buckle of the belt keeping the King's trousers in place, and in a skillful flurry, unbuckled it, hands slithering down to his hardened member. Control rod. Hmph.
Alistair's eyes opened wide within milliseconds, gasping at the heated touch of his hands, instinctively trying to slink away. What the hell did Zevran think he was doing?!
With a quick flick of the wrist, the elf had him back in his control, his hands running unyieldingly up the length as Alistair groaned, eyes clenching shut again.
"Remember how she touched you? Remember how she gave herself to you?" With each word the assassin said, the pace picked up, hands stroking faster and more firmly in a rhythmic pattern up and down, up and down, stopping only to spit in his palms. The only response from the king was a quickening of his breath and the bucking of his hips at the touch, too lost in the past to answer.
Unfazed, Zevran looked up to the writhing king, so easily reduced into a reddened puddle so easily. He couldn't see it. He couldn't see anything in him.
The elf let go, only to grab onto the muscles of his hips, mouth lowering onto his groin. Alistair's groan deepened, his mind lost in a reverie and long gone. Instinctively, the king's hands grabbed the assassin's head, pushing it further as his hips sought more to meet the base of his throbbing length. Zevran coerced, tongue moving and massaging the growing warmth, stopping to swirl slight circles on his leaking tip.
That did it.
In a short spasm of movement, a flood of smooth and hot liquid ran down the back of Zevran's throat, an intense moan of released pleasure eliciting from Alistair.
"Lyna!"
The elf unceremoniously swallowed and promptly picked himself back up to look at the mess lying in front of him, breeches down so shamelessly to his knees, exposed, shirt torn and wrinkled. All that was left was a panting man, slick with sweat and shame, eyes still closed in his dreams yet very much awake.
No. Zevran still couldn't see it. But he could see that in this sorry state, now was the best chance that he would ever get. Finally unhitching the dagger, Zevran only shook his head as the climbed over the body to press the cool and hungry metal to the king's neck. Zevran didn't think he could ever see it.
A whisper left from the very throat he pressed against. "You know what her last words to me were?"
"What?" The pressure never relented though inside, the elf felt startled.
"Of course you wouldn't; she left you at the gate." Alistair said, eyes straight up to the ceiling, thinking back to rooftop the hour she had died.
The pressure grew. "Spit it out." Zevran was done. He had tried; he had tried to see before he kept his last promise to protect his Warden from all of her enemies. He had tried, but he couldn't.
"She told me to tell you that you are released." Pressure relented.
"She released you from your servitude to her."
Zevran was silent.
"I wanted to tell you, but I was a coward. I couldn't face you; I couldn't face anyone. Not after she died and I walked out as alive as ever. Fit to be king, she said." Alistair eyes now looked straight into Zevran's golden orbs, voice broken. "I still am a coward, Zevran."
The elf quietly got up, for once not saying anything. She had released him; there was no reason for him to be here anymore. A waste of his time.
Zevran sheathed his unused dagger and brushed himself off and began to head for the windows.
"I'm a coward, Zevran." Alistair repeated, voice more pleading than before. Pleading for what, exactly?
This was a waste of his time. Time he could be spending on assassination missions, women, brandy, and earning money. Instead he was here, with some pathetic half-naked Fereldan king and a memory of a woman that neither of them could release.
"I'm a coward too." Zevran quickly admitted under his breath before swiftly slinking into the night in an invisible flurry.
But in the end Alistair, the one who so cruelly broke his Warden's heart, the one who cowardly let her die in his stead, would end up with a kingdom, the admiration of his people, and a wife to love. And Zevran, the one who cared so much for his Warden that sometimes he couldn't breathe at night, the one who would have given his life for her without a second thought, he would end up with only painful memories of lingering regrets, with no one to call the thief of his heart.
Bitterly, Zevran had to laugh.
Fate was such a tricky whore, wasn't it?
Damn. That was tough to write on so many levels and for so many reasons. Reviews and feedback would be very much appreciated!