Zevran's stomach dropped, as if weighted with a stone. For a moment that felt like an eternity, he stood frozen, paralyzed in the shallow reeds, his mind stuttering and tripping over itself trying to calculate whether this was reality or nightmare. He'd already lived this horror over and over, where the debt of Kalya's soul – consigned to him the moment he broke protocol by taking her under his wing rather than turn her immediately over to the Crows – was finally paid in full, while he stood gaping.
It was Leliana who finally roused him from his frozen stupor, knocking into him as she and Morrigan rushed to Kalya's aid. Silently and efficiently, they lifted the still-convulsing elf out of the murky water and laid her on the shore. Zevran scrabbled to Kalya's side. His movements felt wrong, impotent, like those dreams where actions as simple as walking or grasping a weapon were impossible tasks.
Blue balls of light rolled and grew in Morrigan's hands even before Leliana could rip open Kalya's soggy leathers, revealing dark, splotchy patches of sickness that looked so wrong on her too-pale skin. Kalya's eyes had rolled back in her head, and for all Leliana's strength, the bard was having a difficult time keeping her still enough for Morrigan to attempt a stronger healing through skin contact.
Walls of darkness closed in around Zevran's periphery. He drew in a stuttered breath, chest heavy and heart aching, and he wrenched a crumpled silk from his pocket to began dabbing lamely at the gaping wound on Kalya's side. Ribbons of redness roped with sticky black stains drained far too quickly from the elf's delicate body. There was just so much blood.
It wasn't until Leliana grabbed onto his shoulders – firmly but not unkindly steering him away from their work – that he realized he was shaking crying. He brought a quivering hand to his mouth – a specter of habit from the early days of his training, back when a foolish 8-year-old boy-elf thought doing so could hide his emotions, before such sentiments had been beaten out of him.
Oghren materialized next to him. The dwarf didn't say a word, but a moment later, when Zevran absently lunged forward again, aching with every fiber to envelop Kalya's tiny broken frame in his arms, the dwarf blocked him with a stocky, strong arm and pressed-closed lips.
The convulsions slowed, and Zevran couldn't tell whether the healing magic had just begun to take hold or if Kalya had suddenly taken a turn for the worst. The sheer powerlessness that flushed through him like a hot wave of shame nearly crumpled him to the ground, when Kalya's face suddenly contorted in pain. Her eyes bulged and her back arched at an unnatural angle, which would have been hard enough to witness as it was, but the fear behind her wild gaze hitched Zev's breath.
Suddenly, he was back in the Observation Room above the Trial of Crows. During her days of torture, he'd seen her pissed off, cowed, and broken, but never scared. Hearing her wail and watching her claw at her throat sent a pipe of bile up his throat, and he grasped Oghren's forearm as he shakily lowered himself to the ground.
It was there, crouched in the cold mud, that Zevran finally slowed his breathing and quieted his mind enough to spare a glance at the two Grey Wardens, if only for momentary, selfish distraction.
Alistair's arms were clapped tight around his torso, and he swayed slightly, his eyes averted from the scene. His head shook arhythmically, as if agreeing with someone unseen that this wasn't really happening. Zevran felt for the soldier… though his empathy hardened a bit when the notion flitted through his mind that the man's shell-shock wasn't from reliving Duncan's death, but rather trying and failing to steel himself for the coming loss of a former lover.
When Alistair had blurted out at the Urn that he'd… known Kalya before, Zevran had truly been nothing more than surprised. He'd suspected they were friends ever since Kalya tried to back out of Alistair's assassination, and no one in Antiva is so austere as to assume their lovers haven't loved many before them. But Alistair was so… The two were very different.
Jealousy was a mask Zevran knew better than to apply, but there was something so sacred and intimate about a paramour being present in such an untamed soul's final moments. If Kalya regained consciousness – and he prayed, prayed that she would, despite all he knew of the taint sickness and blood loss – would she call out for either of them?
Zevran nearly continued this miserable line of thinking for one second more, as light seeped from the eyes of his beloved, when Elissa did something that snapped his mind to odd clarity. Something just beyond his grasp pricked his bardic intuition.
Elissa's lips were pursed into a tight line of concern. That in and of itself wasn't a tell. She was a harsh and difficult leader, but she didn't want Kalya dead. Whatever years of diplomacy her Noble parentage had instilled had left her smart enough to recognize that Kalya, from alcohol to insubordination and all the addictions in between, was a skilled and audacious weapon.
No, it wasn't that. Was it the awkward way she clenched her arms over her stomach? Was it the overt nod she gave to Leliana after the bard went rifling through her backpack for Lyrium Potions?
Morrigan's power was fading fast. Leliana kept steadying the apostate as she threatened to topple from her crouch at Kalya's side. Kalya's hands fell from where they weakly scrabbled at her own neck. Zev could see blackness roping through her veins, up her neck, and into her face.
He shuddered, fighting to stay focused. Something was there. He just had to find it. Or was he grasping for meaning where there was none?
The arch in Kalya's back subsided, and her head lolled to one side, twitching in syncopation every few seconds as seizures rippled weakly through her core. Zevran's chest felt as if it were ripping apart. He closed his eyes and held his breath. It wouldn't be long now. He'd been here enough times now to know what hollow loss came next, and here he stood – as always – helpless to stop the inevitable.
Then, he saw it. The furtive glance just a beat too long from Elissa to her only equal. An appraisal that criminals and cons learned early to mask, but one that a stuck-up noble who was honest to a fault had never learned to hide. Whatever it was, Alistair didn't meet her eyes, lost as he was in his thousand-yard stare. What was she trying to signal to him and no one else?
"Elissa!" Leliana's brow dripped with sweat, and she held up a fat green bottle with a wince, somehow urgent and sheepish all at once. Zevran recognized the shimmering liquid immediately. A Greater Health Poultice.
"Bloody void, yes!" Their leader returned with a panicked shout.
This time, the look she gave the other Warden was instantaneous.
Realization hit him like a blow. Zev had read it wrong before. Not a signal. A check. Whatever it was, Alistair was the only one Elissa was studying, and he wasn't picking up on whatever she feared he might. And she was authorizing Potions without a second's hesitation. Which could only mean…
Zevran was on his feet before he'd put all the pieces together, but he had to move. He rushed to Alistair's side.
"Please, Alistair," he huffed. "Please. There must be something you can do."
Zev felt Elissa's gaze burning into him before she turned to give some order to Leliana.
"There's nothing," Alistair muttered, rocking back and forth. "Not again. Maker, I can't go through this again."
Zevran gulped, his resolve steeling, even as it tore at his pride to say the words.
"Alistair, you loved her. I think you love her still. You're the only person who can save her. I can't save her. Please."
Alistair turned to the elf, as if noticing him there for the first time. Zev leaned to catch his eyes again when the broken man's gaze broke and landed on the gruesome scene of his lover eviscerated.
"You have to listen to me, Alistair. If you knew that something could have saved Duncan, wouldn't you have tried everything you could? Even if it were… something Elissa didn't want you to do? Something only the two of you knew."
That was it. The final card in his hand of Wicked Grace. If he was wrong… well, he'd failed Kalya enough times before.
A flicker of realization lit behind Alistair's eyes.
"Yes. Y-yes, there is!" He started to jog towards Kalya, then stopped, about-faced and marched back to his pack, muttering half to himself, half to Zev. "We're not supposed to… It's meant to be different."
Zevran's heart nearly leapt out of his chest, but he kept his demeanor neutral. They weren't done yet.
With a goblet and an empty vial in hand, Alistair pulled a small screw-cap amulet from around his neck, then jogged past Zevran, past Kalya's weakening form. Towards the crumpled corpse of the ogre slowly blackening the pond. Zevran followed just as Elissa started after them.
"Alistair, stay back," she cried. "There could be more of them!"
All three knew there weren't.
Without pause, Alistair trudged through the tainted muck and slashed into the ogre's leg with his greatsword, holding the vial up to the wound.
When enough sticky liquid filled the glass, Alistair waded to where Elissa and Zevran stood on the lakeshore, blurting out words Zev didn't understand but that swelled his heart full of hope.
"Kalya's doing the Joining," he said, marching past her.
"We don't have the–" Elissa started, but Alistair cut her off, nodding at the ingredients clutched in his arms.
"Archdemon blood, darkspawn blood, goblet. We have to, Elissa."
To Zevran's ears, it was more a boyish plea than a command. He followed the man close behind his right shoulder, fiercely protective over Kalya's potential salvation. Still, a spark of anger flared in his chest at Alistair's prostration. Was he not the ranking Warden? This man was going to be a king?
"Absolutely not." To her credit, it looked like it pained Elissa to say the words that stopped him in his tracks. "Alistair, you know Duncan would have forbidden this. This isn't something Wardens do as – as a cure."
Alistair was struck dumb at the mention of his mentor. He blinked at the vials in his arms, and Zev knew his window of opportunity was running out.
"Alistair, you couldn't save Duncan. I know you won't let Kalya slip between your fingers, too, not when you have the power to save her." It was cruel and manipulative to invoke the unknown dead man, but Zevran was scrambling to double-down. His eyes welled with tears, his voice cracking with emotion. "It kills me that I can do nothing. How can you stand there with her salvation in your arms?"
"Elissa's right," Alistair's eyes cast downward, shifting with nervous energy. "The participant must be willing. Even then, it might not work. I lost three men in my Joining, Elissa one in hers. Duncan said their souls weren't truly pledged. If Kalya's unconscious, there's no way she can–"
"This is a life sentence, Zevran," Elissa boomed. "You can't understand. It's not a mercy. It's an irreversible –"
"If you don't do this, she'll die. She's dying now! Am I to understand your only hesitation is the off-chance she lives and, what, resents you saving her life? Granting her dream? Alistair, can you live with knowing you stood idly by?"
A long silence passed between the three of them, Elissa fuming as Alistair closed his eyes, looking as if he might be sick. When Alistair began shaking his head, Zevran thought he'd lost the weak boy-king. His knees felt suddenly shaky, and he didn't realize he was drawing his shortsword until it was out of its scabbard. For whose gut it was intended they'd never find out.
"Elissa?!" Leliana gave a panicked shout. The three whipped around to find Morrigan wilted with her head in her hands and Leliana pumping hand-over-fist against Kalya's chest.
In an instant, the two men were at Kalya's side as Leliana fell away, exhausted. Kneeling next to the elf, Alistair bit the screw-tops off the vials and sloshed the black-red liquids into the metal chalice and over the sides. Too gingerly, he lifted Kalya's slack head, pouring the mixture into her open mouth and down her chin.
"Join us, brothers and sisters," Alistair recited quietly, as if in prayer. Maybe it was. "Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten and that one day we shall join you."
For several long moments, Kalya's body laid perfectly still, a ghastly vision with skin so pale, beset with roping black veins. Zevran's hand again found its way to his mouth. He wasn't breathing. None of them were.
In a flash, Kalya's head jerked backwards. Her back arched violently as her elbows dug into the ground beneath her. A squealing gasp escaped her lips like her throat was closing in on itself, as if she was struggling to breathe while being strangled. Zevran crashed to his knees on the other side of her, helpless, yet powerless to keep his hands from cradling her sweat-slicked face in his hands. Alistair clamped his large hands over her tiny shoulders, holding still the strength of her wild torqueing motions. Her eyes bulged wide, but all Zev could see was pale whiteness.
Then she collapsed. And Zevran's world went black too.
A roiling surge curled within her. Kalya despised the Fade so, but something was different. She was different. A powerful melodic aria played in her head as the vortex in her core coiled and pulled, gaining momentum. Flashes burst against the smoky sky. Leathery wings. A piercing yet muted screech. The song called to her, whispering, in a language she somehow understood, the promise of more power than she could ever imagine, if she only succumbed to the cataclysm inside her. The lick of danger surged through the foggy visions against the sky, familiar and forbidden. The susurration of its might more intoxicating than anything she'd yet survived.
Kalya awoke as a gasp was ripped from her throat.
The sudden calm was deafening. Dim candlelight illuminated Zevran's tear-stained face as it startled at her movement, then washed over with a strange, knowing relief that seemed unmatched to her near fucking death.
Because how actually was she… The last thing she remembered was staggering out of the shallow lake, taint sickness from the ogre's bite spreading through her like a stain. After that, it was all rending flares of pain and tendrils of oily blackness threatening to suffocate her in the Fade. Succeeding in suffocating her…
Unless…
Her heart leapt beneath her ribcage. It didn't seem possible, but neither did surviving the taint. She swallowed down a near giddy bubble of laughter when she realized what Alistair must have done for her. And how had Elissa permitted…?
It was only then, squinting in the murky light, that she realized she was in a bed, in a room. Zev made no attempt to mask his reddened eyes searching hers for something she couldn't place.
"How do you feel?"
"I don't know," she lied.
She felt good. Ravenously hungry, maybe. And her muscles throbbed with want to spring out of bed and… just run. She needed to fight something, needed to fuck something. If it were true, if she was really a fucking Grey Warden, she needed to be just about anywhere else in Thedas right now than a dark, mopey room. Most of all, she needed a dri—
When that urge flitted through her mind, a blanket of guilt finally sobered her mood and flushed her cheeks with a deep heat. Then, a stone of dread plunged in her gut. Why was Zev the only one here? What price had the group paid for her fuck-up?
"Where's the rest—?"
"Sleeping. I'm—I couldn't sleep. Not until I knew..." Zevran's voice cracked with emotion. "I still can't believe you're here. I watched you die this afternoon."
Kalya gulped humiliation into silence. Muffled bar-patron cacophony from the downstairs tavern's too-early hours made its way under the crooked doorframe. In the awkward silence of her room, Kalya's racing mind was unable to settle on what shamed her more, the memory of how she'd acted, what she'd said, how she'd endangered everyone… or the fact that all she could think of, looking into Zevran's raw, red eyes, was how damn near giddy she was to have finally, finally become what she'd wanted for so long. What Riordan had seen in her.
"You know," Zev cleared his throat, "it's funny. During our training, when you told me of your dream to become a Grey Warden, I actually took pride in my role of impeding that path. I gloated, knowing I was helping you live longer, not just to survive the Trials and the Crows, but years beyond the short life-expectancy of your average selfless Warden."
If he hadn't looked so sad, she might have thought he spat the word, as if it were a curse.
"Funny how things end. Now that I've failed to keep you alive as a Crow, I can truly fail you in all ways. By begging our friends to give you this gift, I've forfeited your life, conscripting you to a slow, painful death by darkspawn taint."
Kalya shifted in the rough sheets. Her skin felt itchy. Zevran's eyes pierced through the darkness, holding onto hers for as long as she could bear it, until she had to break away.
"I've loved – truly loved – only three people in this world. Three people trusted me, confided in me, as I led them into the Crows. Three people have died in my charge, more or less by my hand. Until now. Until one came back."
Welled-up tears finally spilled over in unabashed lines down his face. Damn him. The sight of his anguish made Kalya's stomach flip over on itself. Why this? Why now? She wanted to sink into the bed and disappear.
"I wish I could say I did it for you," Zevran exhaled bitterly, shaking his head, "but it seems I'm more selfish than I thought. I doomed you… just to spend a few more short years fighting by your side. I can hope that, in that time, you'll forgive me this last great failure."
The weight of what he'd done – the gift he'd given – suddenly, confoundingly seemed too much for him. Kalya worried at the corner of her lip as Zevran collapsed in her lap.
His voice muffled against the threadbare woolen blanket, repeating over and over again: "Kalya, I'm so sorry."
