Isabela yawned, blinking at the lines of text on her screen without a clue what they meant. Gods, she was tired. It was a massive effort just to keep her eyes open.

But, she didn't regret a thing. Not when she was still pleasantly sore, tingling all over from last night's activities; not with the memory of Duncan's kisses and Riordan's caresses still fresh on her mind. Last night had been hot and sweet and perfect, and it had been a struggle to tear herself away from them before dawn. In an ideal world, she'd have had those two all to herself for a whole day. No. Make that a whole weekend. A whole weekend in the company of two men who knew how to treat a lady right... Ah well, a girl could dream.

With a wistful sigh, she turned back to work. Not for the first time she wished she could just have taken the day off. But, for all his relaxed attitude, Aedan expected people to pull their weight, and it wasn't Christmas yet. Another yawn. Coffee. She needed coffee.

Walking past Oghren's cubicle, Isabela made a face at the smell rising from behind the partition. He's eating that instant noodle crap straight from the packet again. Ugh. You could always tell when you got close to the part of the office space where the programmers had their lair. If you were lucky, it was just a particularly obnoxious aftershave, but it always smelled of man there. Not that she necessarily objected to that. It depended on the man in question, really. Now, Riordan, for example-

She stopped in her tracks as she approached the kitchen and heard voices coming from the open door.

"I'm going to kill that bastard. Damn it, I should have known this would happen." Leliana, if she wasn't mistaken, sounding furious.

"Please, Lel, let it go. He never pretended to love me. He never said anything to lead me on." That was Alistair, sounding surprisingly calm. No, too calm, almost apathetic. Shit. "It was my own fault for being stupid enough to think-" Alistair's voice broke off, sounding choked.

Isabela had heard enough. Without hesitation, she marched over to Zevran's desk. He ducked behind his screen when he saw her approach, as if he wanted to hide. Healthy instincts. Isabela felt her lips set in a grim line. Grabbing Zevran's wrist, she pulled him out of his chair and dragged him off toward the little conference room next to Aedan's office, one of the few places where they would not be overheard. "We need to talk."

"We're at work, Bela." Zevran sounded irritable, but he didn't really make an effort to stop her. "We can't just disappear for a private chat."

"Oh yes, we can," she threw back over her shoulder, without slowing down. "I'll clear it with Aedan, if that's what worries you. But you're not getting out of this without an explanation."

Dragging him inside, she pushed him towards a chair, letting the door fall shut behind them. "What did you do to him?"

Zevran slumped into the chair, sighing wearily. He didn't bother asking who she was talking about. "What I should have done right away. I told him it was just a bit of fun and that we should end it before it got serious."

Isabela was speechless for a moment, but she recovered quickly. "Only it had already gotten serious, hadn't it?"

She had to prod Zevran with her foot before he answered. "Yes. And there's no need to kick me. I'm perfectly aware that it wasn't one of my finer moments."

"Damn right, it wasn't." Isabela was fuming inside. "What on Earth possessed you to-"

"Isabela!" Zevran raised his head, and the look in his eyes cut off her rant effectively.

Shit. He's hurting, too. Men! Leave it to them to mess up something that's going perfectly fine. She shook her head. "Why?"

Again, he took his time to answer. "I… I wouldn't be good for him. I'm not good for anyone. The people I love get hurt."

"Do they, now?" Gods, such drama! Isabela found it hard to remain serious. And she suddenly felt very old. "And just how do you know that? How many hearts have you broken? What happened to make you believe karma has it in for you, personally?"

"This isn't funny!" Zevran glared at her. "And I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, tough luck." She placed herself firmly between him and the door. "You're not getting out of here before you tell me the whole sad story."

Zevran groaned in exasperation. "Look, it was a long time ago, and-"

"The whole story!" she insisted, and he sighed.

"There was this girl…" he began, rubbing his eyes wearily.

"Did she have a name?" Isabela wasn't in the mood for mercy.

"Yes. Rinna." Zevran bit his lip, looking younger and more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him. "She… she was lovely, and I adored her. But my best friend at the time, Tally…" He laughed once, without a trace of humour. "He was full of advice. He said I shouldn't just keep telling Rinna how much I loved her. He claimed she would get bored and lose interest, and that it was better to keep her guessing, to play hard to get. So I did what he told me. I went out with others, told her she had to up her game. She…" Zevran clearly wasn't proud of the part he'd played. "She was unhappy, cried a lot, but I didn't listen."

"And then?" Isabela prompted. "That's not all, is it?"

"No, it isn't." Zevran threw her a dark look. "One evening, I went to see her and found her in bed with Tally."

"What an asshole." Isabela had actually seen this coming.

Zevran nodded. "I was livid. We shouted at each other, all three of us, screaming insults and accusations. And then she ran off into the night, just like that. I tried to follow her, but Tally held me back, told me to let her cool off. Said she'd be back soon enough, and we could sort it out." His face closed up, like a shuttered window. "Only she never came back. There was an accident, and-" He broke off.

Isabela flinched internally. This was a lot worse than she'd thought. She'd expected rejected love, betrayal, hurt feelings, but not outright tragedy. Still, wallowing in guilt wouldn't help, neither him nor the poor girl. "That's all very sad, but it was hardly your fault," she pointed out. "From the sound of it, you were all just incredibly young and stupid."

"That's one way of looking at it." Zevran's cool mask back was in place. "Anyway, I can't have a thing like that happen again."

Isabela sighed deeply. "Not going to argue. But, you know, I don't really get your logic here. The way I see it, you listened to bad advice, you did something stupid, and things went horribly wrong. Shit happens. As long as you pick your friends with more care in the future, you should be fine." She frowned. "And I certainly don't see why you would break up with Alistair because of this."

"No?" Zevran's laugh was bitter. "Don't you see? Clearly I'm bad news for people who fall in love with me. Or for people I love." He rose, trying to shoulder past her. "Well, at least I never told him."

"There was no need to say it, you idiot." Isabela grabbed his sleeve, her anger rising again. "It was fucking obvious to anyone who saw you."

Zevran glared at her hand. "Look, I'm telling you, I've learned my lesson. I'll be more careful next time and keep my distance. It won't happen again."

"Wrong lesson." Isabela knew she couldn't keep him there much longer, not without physically restraining him. "You didn't hurt Rinna because you loved her, Zevran. You hurt her because you didn't trust her enough. If you love Alistair, there's really no reason-"

"Whatever." Zevran didn't seem to hear what she was saying. "Alistair is a nice guy. It's good that I ended it. If I had let it go on any longer, we'd just have ended up hurting each other even more."

Isabela loosened her grip, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. "So, you're really just scared."

Zevran's head flew up at her words. "Scared?" He huffed contemptuously. "Honestly, Isabela, that's rich, coming from you. I thought you, of all people, would understand. It's not as if you let yourself get tied down."

Isabela just barely bit back an impatient sigh. "Not the same thing at all, sweetheart." When Zevran made a small, incredulous noise, she elaborated. "I do understand having fun without getting attached. If you know what you're doing, why not? It's much easier on everyone involved. No heartbreak, no jealousy, no scenes. Works fine, as long as everybody is on the same page. However…"

She raised a hand to stop him from interrupting. "What you're doing here, is something else altogether. Here you are, lucky enough to meet someone special, someone you can fall in love with, and on top of that, they're in love with you, too. And then you run away from it, because you can't bear the thought that you might get hurt?" She shook her head. "I'm sorry, honey, but that's just plain old cowardice."

"I'm not afraid of getting hurt." Zevran snapped back at her, his eyes flashing angrily. "If anything-"

"You're afraid of hurting him, I know." Isabela rolled her eyes. "Yeah. So what? Everyone gets hurt. People get over it, trust me on that. Most of them survive."

Zevran's pained grimace told her that she'd gone a little too far on that last one, and she shrugged apologetically. "Well, they do."

"So you're saying… what?" He raised a sceptical eyebrow. "That I should talk to Alistair? Beg him to take me back?"

"I'm telling you not to waste a perfectly good chance at happiness." Isabela shrugged. "How you go about getting him back, is your business."

Zevran shook his head. "Even if I wanted to, it would probably be too late."

"Maybe, maybe not." Isabela was getting fed up with his morose attitude. "You'll never know unless you try." She made for the door, but on impulse, she turned around at the last moment and winked at Zevran. "He will be here on Christmas Eve, doing holiday duty. If you should happen to be interested."

Almost there... Giant hugs and thanks to suilven. I couldn't have done it without you. :)