"He was hurting you," Tria said, in that eerie sing-song voice of hers, the one Owen remembered so clearly from the day they'd first found her in the alienage. Only this time she wasn't sweetly asking if he'd brought her candy, or wanting to see the scar on his scalp to be sure he was himself.

"Yes, he was, but not in any way I did not wish him too," Zevran said, voice ragged with emotion. "Tria... do not do this thing. It would be kinder for you to cut my throat than to kill him before me."

A knife; that was part of what was pressing against his throat, Owen realized. He remained frozen, frightened that any movement or sound from him might set her off, might make her finish the stroke that would lay open his throat and kill him, his own life's blood drowning him faster than any magic could hope to heal. He wondered for a moment what had stopped her from having already done so, then realized what else was pressing so firmly into the flesh under his jaw; knuckles. A hand; Zevran's hand, having caught Tria's hand or perhaps the knife itself, he wasn't sure which. There was still the smell of blood; either his own, or Zevran's, and possibly both. He was terrified now, terrified for both of them. His neck and back protested his arched-back position, his arms and legs beginning to shake with the tension of holding it, with the fear that filled him.

"But he was hurting you?" Tria again, sounding lost and almost equally frightened. "He was holding you down and hurting you," she said, voice firming, the sing-song quality gone, a dangerous note in it instead.

"Yes, but it was all right, Tria. I promise you, it was nothing I did not want him to do; it is just a game people sometimes like to play with each other. Tria, please, let go the knife," Zevran said, his voice cracking as he spoke. He was crying, Owen realized, which he'd only heard the elf do twice before; once after Zevran had finally told him about Rinna, and what had happened to her, and once again after Zevran had killed Taliesin, the man who'd killed Rinna, whom Zevran had also loved. Who'd killed her by cutting her throat while Zevran watched, he remembered, and ached for the pain Zevran must be feeling in this moment, seeing his worst nightmare being played out before him a second time.

"Please Tria; do not kill him. I would rather you cut my own throat than kill someone I... someone... I..."

Owen's eyes filled with tears, knowing the word that Zevran couldn't bring himself to say, even now, even with someone's knife at Owen's throat. Owen blinked, and said it for him, ignoring now the knife pressed against his throat, the threat it represented. "Love," he rasped out, and blinked again, tears spilling down his cheeks. He could hear them dripping down onto the bed, or perhaps it was droplets of the blood he could still smell, or perhaps both. "I love you," he whispered, for a moment no longer caring about the knife, so long as Zevran knew that one thing first, that most important thing.

Zevran drew a great shuddering gulp of breath. When he spoke again, his voice was flat, all emotion kept out of it. "Do not make me watch again while someone I love is killed before me. Kill me first, Tria. If you must kill him, kill me first."

For a long moment all was still and silent, and then Tria suddenly moved; away, abandoning her knife, a keening cry escaping her. Zevran threw aside the dagger – the dagger he'd bought her, Owen recognized in the brief glimpse of it he had as it spun away – and then lunged upward. He almost knocked Owen over backwards as he hurled himself into Owen's arms, the elf babbling now in Antivan, words Owen couldn't understand apart from what was conveyed by the frantic and tearful tone.

The assassin was half-hysterical now that the immediate crisis had passed. He clung desperately to Owen, arms and legs wrapped as tightly around the mage as if Zevran was a frightened child holding on to its mother. Owen hugged him tightly in return, rocking him comfortingly back and forth, running hands up and down his back and trying to calm him. There was, he realized dimly after a while, still a strong smell of blood, and he worked one hand free to feel at his own throat. Just a small cut there, an inch or two long, and shallow; not the source of the blood he could see spattered on the sheets around him. But blood – blood somewhere, and he realized there was a warm wetness running down the skin of his back, from where Zevran's hands clutched so tightly onto him.

"Maker, your hand," he exclaimed in horror once he'd managed to unwrap Zevran enough to see the deep cut across the fingers of the elf's right hand; he had indeed caught the knife. Caught it by the blade, which had laid the flesh of his fingers open deep enough to show bone in at least one of the cuts. Owen cupped his hands around the wound, frantically channelling healing energy into it, eyes shutting for a moment as he concentrated on drawing the gash closed, on bringing back together severed muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and healing them, knitting flesh back together. For a while everything vanished from his consciousness but the wound, and the need to heal it.

Zevran was leaning heavily against him when he came back from the healing. Leaning against him, and talking very quietly and soothingly, voice sounding very tired. He had one hand held out toward Tria, curled up in a tight ball beside the pair of them, arms wrapped tightly around her knees and shoulders shaking as she cried into the bedding. Whatever anger Owen might had felt because of her actions vanished at the sight of the expression on her face when she raised it enough to peer at the two of them through the fall of her disordered hair, looking heartbroken and miserable.

She had thought he was hurting Zevran; thought he was doing to the elf what cruel men had done to her. Had moved to save Zevran, misunderstanding the situation. Their own fault, really, for having gone ahead with her sleeping right there in the room, when they knew her dreams were restless, and the spell might not hold.

"It is all right, Tria," Zevran said softly, voice tired but gentle, so very gentle. He understood, clearly, what had moved her to attack. "It's all right. We all managed to frighten each other very much, did we not? Owen and I scared you, and you scared us, but look, see? We are all fine. No real harm was done. Come, come here my dear, let us all say we are sorry to each other."

A gentle and soothing voice, the elf's hand held out invitingly to her the whole time. She uncurled a little, enough to reach out and put her own hand into Zevran's. It was shaking, Owen could see, as she trembled in fear and stress over what had just happened. Zevran let it rest there, closing his hand only a little around it, voice switching to some other language – not Antivan, it didn't sound like that – for just a few words. Tria's shoulders shook and she made an odd hiccuping sound; a brief, broken laugh, Owen recognized in some surprise. Zevran had said something that had made her laugh.

The assassin tugged gently on her hand, voice still talking away soothingly, and she uncurled further, looking fearfully at Owen for a moment. Looking at how he was holding Zevran, he thought; the elf curled up in his lap, one of his arm's wrapped comfortingly around the elf's shoulders, both of them naked and daubed with blood and still, he began to blush as he realized, smeared with grease and at least partially erect, damn the poor timing of certain physical responses to danger. Not exactly what he'd consider a reassuring sight, and tightened his grip on Zevran's healed hand, that he still held cupped in his own.

"Tell her it's all right," Zevran said softly.

He forced a smile, realizing how tired and upset he was when the corners of his mouth trembled, not wanting to hold a smile. When he had to blink to clear his eyes before he spoke, his voice emerging in a tremulous rasp. "I'm fine. Zevran is fine. We're all fine," he said, as reassuringly as he could, which probably wasn't very.

Zevran tugged on her hand again, speaking another few words in that third language, and in a rush that made Owen freeze in startled fear for a moment, moved toward them. Zevran's hand lifted free from Owen's, the assassin's arms closing around Tria as she clung to him almost as desperately as he, just minutes before, had clung to Owen. Owen hesitantly wrapped his free arm around her as well, then his own emotions caught up to events and he tightened his other arm rather more firmly around Zevran's shoulders, burying his face in the elf's thoroughly mussed hair and crying in relief that they had all survived the incident – the accident? The misunderstanding – with nothing worse than a bad fright all around and only a very little blood lost. It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.

Zevran was talking again, voice low and soothing, sometimes in words Owen understood, sometimes in ones he didn't. Somehow the assassin got the three of them lying down together, all spooned up with Tria to one side of Zevran and Owen to the other, his longer arm easily reaching over both elves as they huddled all together, seeking the simplest comfort of all, that of a warm body close by, ignoring the state of the sheets and the mess smeared all over them.

Owen buried his face in Zevran's hair again, drawing in a deep, reassuring breath of the assassin's scent. He felt a last few tears leak out of swollen-feeling eyes, and then for a while there was simply nothing, not even dreams, as simple exhaustion dragged him down into sleep.


Talking woke him. Zevran, talking softly to Tria, who had rolled over at some point while Owen had slept, and was now curled up in a ball again, her head pressed against Zevran's chest while the assassin gently stroked her hair. Crying again, Owen thought, and pressed a silent kiss to Zevran's bare shoulder to let the elf know he was awake, but otherwise remaining silent and still, leaving things in Zevran's hands.

"You are my sister," Zevran was saying, in that very gentle, soothing voice. "There is a bond of blood between us now, and I say it makes you my sister. You thought I was in danger, and moved to help me, and that is not something I can forget. Do you mind being my sister?"

She shook her head, and said something, the words quiet enough and muffled by the angle of her head so that Owen did not catch what she said, though Zevran evidently did. He laughed, a brief warm chuckle, an earthy chuckle that made Owen's ears heat with self-conscious embarrassment. "No, he is not my brother, nor yours. But you have nothing to fear from him. He and I are" – a word that Owen didn't understand, that third language again, he supposed – "And he would never knowingly hurt me, or you."

"But he was hurting you?"

"A game, lethallan, that lovers sometimes play with each other. A game I like very much, though I am sorry we frightened you with it. It could just as easily have been I holding him down, rather than he pinning me," Zevran added, voice roughening just slightly, and Owen blushed and had to bury his own face against Zevran's shoulder for a moment, feeling his cock express rather noticeable interest in the flood of mental images the assassin's words had conjured. His blush deepened even further when he raised his head again only to find Tria had uncurled enough to be peering at him over Zevran's shoulder.

"But he's so big," she protested to Zevran.

Zevran chuckled again, and shifted, rolling over and craning his head enough to smile toothily at Owen. "Yes, quite gloriously large. But do not doubt I could do it, if the two of us had a wish to," he said, and then to Owen's further embarrassment Zevran snaked one arm free, fingers threading into Owen's hair to draw him down for a rather heated kiss. He was torn between his awareness of Tria being right there beside them, watching, and just enjoying the kiss.

Zevran rolled upright and sat leaning back against Owen's belly with perfect aplomb after the kiss ended, smiling at Tria. "You are my sister, and he is emma vhenan, and if I tell you some night to hamin na inan, do you know what to do?"

Tria laughed, looking unexpectedly delighted. "Hami n'inan," she corrected, and then covered her eyes with her hands.

"Is that how you say it here? We say it otherwise in the north. But the meaning is the same, yes?"

"Yes," she agreed, dropping her hands and smiling again, and gave Owen such a sly, amused look that he found himself blushing again.

"Translate for the poor shem?" Owen asked as lightly as he could.

Zevran laughed, and slid down a little so he could drape one arm over back Owen's waist. "You have seen how crowded the living arrangements for the elves are, in the alienage here. And this is one of the better ones; many are much more crowded than this. Often there are many people living and sleeping together in a single room, and no privacy other than a, um... deliberate ignoring of activities around one. So rest your eyes, we often say first, particularly around young children, which is the way of telling people that whatever is about to happen is something private, something to be ignored. It is not happening, other than for the people involved."

"Ahhh," Owen said, understanding immediately. The woman who'd run the child-gang he'd been part of had a similar saying, though rather more crudely phrased, for when she was entertaining guests. "So if you and I want to, err... and Tria is here, one of us should say that first? Hami-whatever...?"

"Hamin na inan," Zevran said, at the same time as Tria said "Hami n'inan." They looked at each other and laughed, and Owen found himself smiling.

Something had changed last night, he was certain, when Tria had been scared and had moved to save Zevran; not just the most obvious things, such as their joint fright, and Zevran's sudden determination to consider her his sister, but something with Tria as well. She suddenly seemed so very normal compared to how she had been; as if some part of her, after being in hiding for so long, had finally woken up and returned.

Zevran yawned. "None of us have slept much tonight,:" he pointed out as he struggled to sit more upright again. "But I fear we should rise now anyway. We are all filthy and need a good bath, and these sheets will need a change before we lie down again anyway. Come, let us all go bathe."

The two elves climbed out of bed, and Owen followed, grimacing as he took in the state of the sheets and the flaking dried blood smeared over both himself and Zevran. Not to mention the grease, smeared on all three of them and the sheets after their having shared the bed.

"Go start the water running, lethallan," Zevran told Tria. "We will be in shortly."

She nodded and hurried off, and as soon as she was gone Zevran turned back to Owen, stepping close to him and dragging him down for another heated kiss. Owen kissed him back just as hungrily. "And what is en... emma vhana?"he asked a touch breathlessly when it ended.

Zervan grinned briefly. "Emma vhenan," he corrected. "Do you truly need to ask? My heart," he finished on a whisper.

Owen swallowed thickly, and cupped his hands to either side of Zevran's face, studying it intently, looking searchingly into the elf's eyes. "Emma vhenan," he agreed, voice husky, and kissed him back. Not a heated kiss, but a very long and tender one, lasting until he could feel Zevran trembling in reaction to it. He tangled his fingers into the assassin's hair, tugging his head back to expose his throat, kissing his way down the length of it, though the angle was awkward and uncomfortable for both of them. Nipped, gently, at the elf's earlobe, then finally straightened up and sighed. "Bath," he said, by an effort keeping his voice firm, hopefully not betraying the flood of strong emotions he was currently feeling.

Zevran smiled. "Of course," he agreed, and led the way to the bathing chamber, already filling with warm steam as the tub filled, Tria perched on the edge of it and investigating the shelf full of scented soaps and oils.