Warning: There is a bit more intimacy in this portion than is usual in Beak, but nothing inappropriate for the rating.

PART VII

Daen was able to move as silently as Leliana by now, but he never used stealth when approaching Zevran. The sound of a twig snapping underfoot and the pause by Zevran's tent flap, allowing the campfire to cast his shadow across the canvas, were all deliberate signals of his presence. Zevran himself had been hovering in a state of half sleep, waiting for those signs, and he opened his eyes at the first crack.

"Come to attack me in my sleep? How intriguing," he called out, smiling and propping himself up on his elbows.

The tent flap rustled and a pale head poked in, his hair white beneath the moonlight spilling behind him.

"I didn't want to wake you up if you were already asleep. Room for one more?" he asked, voice pitched low.

"You are always welcome, amora. As long as Soris stays outside."

Daen chuckled as he slipped inside. "Don't worry, he's learned his lesson. He's by the fire. Dreaming of chasing rabbits this time, I think." He let the tent flap fall behind him. "Not enough growling to be hunting darkspawn." The two fell into darkness, but Zevran knew where the other was almost by heart. Daen stepped forward without hesitation, leather creaking as he freed himself of buckles and boots, shucking gloves from his hands and leaving everything in a careful stack by the side of the entrance. Zevran's eyes had adjusted back to darkness by then, and he watched the slim shadow stretch with a sigh before it slunk forward, dropping to hands and knees and half-crawling, half-falling straight into Zevran's arms. Zevran dropped back on his bedroll with the Warden enveloping him like a blanket. Daen's skin was chilled from sitting in the cool night air, and Zevran tucked his covers over Daen's shoulders and clasped his hands around his waist.

His hair smelled of moonlight and metal, and perhaps a little bit like flowers—yes, it was Andraste's Grace. Leliana must have been on watch with him. Daen kept bringing her stalks of the little Fereldan flower, and she had them tucked all about her bedroll and clothes. She was almost permanently perfumed with the stuff as a result.

"Nothing exciting tonight?" Zevran murmured, teasingly blowing a ruff of feather-soft hair upwards. Daen shivered with the breath of air.

"Not even one measly genlock. It's nearly a full moon; the darkspawn don't like roaming about when it's this bright out." Daen had apparently decided to take revenge by muttering his reply directly into Zevran's neck, exactly along the line where the jugular throbbed. It was not a place Zevran was accustomed to allowing lingering touches—mostly because doing so could just as easily mean finding a knife stuck there in the next moment—and he fought a rising feeling of vulnerability. But the hum of Daen's voice reverberating through his skin and the heat gathering at that point alone also quickened Zevran's pulse, and he wondered if Daen could feel it through his lips.

"Hmm. Well, I do know something that doesn't mind coming out under full moons. And it is quite eager to make the rest of tonight very exciting."

Daen groaned into the same point on Zevran's neck. "You never do stop, do you?"

He hiccupped in surprise as Zevran suddenly rolled him over onto his back, easily shifting the smaller elf with one hand supporting him from below so that Daen landed safely on the bedroll. The blanket fell to the side in the process, and Zevran ignored its departure in favor of balancing himself on one forearm, his free hand tracing the veins and curves in Daen's own neck, one knee deliberately just grazing the inside of Daen's upper thigh.

"Such cruelty, my dear Warden. How can I stop before such a vision of beauty as yourself?"

Zevran could barely see Daen's face, hovering as close as he was to his neck, but he could feel the sardonic look with which Daen was eyeing him. That perfect juxtaposition of hard eyes above, half-grin below often drifted across the Warden's face, a sure sign that he had just heard something so fantastical that it was impossible to believe.

"Hah. I bet you say that to all the gir—Zev!" Zevran's name came out of him in a squeak of expelled air. "Slow down, would you?"

Zevran smiled sweetly, knowing well that Daen was unable to see it, and let his head drift back up from where it had slid below while his hand took its place. He did move slower, always willing to accommodate the Warden, and the deliberately languid motions made Daen squirm exactly as he intended them to.

"Um. Maybe...not...that slow." Daen's heart had begun to race beneath Zevran's fingertips.

"But I am only slowing down as you commanded me to, no?" Zevran purred into Daen's ear. The knee that had been at rest against Daen's inner thigh began to shift ever so slowly, maintaining the finest bit of contact while tracing a path up and under. "You did not like fast, so slow it is...yes?"

"Y-ye...Andraste's arse!" Daen's back had just begun to arch and his hips stiffen in an unmistakable response when he suddenly threw his arms around Zevran neck, dragging him down to the bedroll with all of his strength. Zevran lost his balance and collapsed in surprise, barely managing to catch himself before he landed with his full weight on Daen's torso.

"Umph. Such danger! I nearly squished you flatter than the cookies Soris hid under Sten's bedroll!" Zevran chided. "What a tragedy that would have been!"

Daen laughed softly. "You wouldn't have hurt me."

"Ha! Just so, gatto."

"And you were being a little distracting."

"Oh? Distracting from what? Did you wish to speak of something?" Zevran bent his head as he spoke to nuzzle at the cup of Daen's collarbone.

"Mm...er, yes. I did."

Zevran shrugged and rolled himself on his side, resting his head on his hand with Daen nestled in the curve of his body. Daen's hand searched behind Zevran's back before finding the forgotten blanket and pulling it back over the two of them. It fit over them just as poorly as the bedroll did beneath—both were intended for only one body—but it made squeezing two together much more interesting.

"Is it so important? Then speak."

"You aren't mad, are you?"

"Not mad, amora, merely suddenly...bored."

Daen sighed. "I'll get on with it, then. Do you remember the human we ran across a few weeks ago, on Bann Loren's lands?"

"Ah, of course. The old one on the run. Alistair said he was with your army at Ostagar, as I recall. It is a pity he could not flee as fast from the guards as he did from the darkspawn, hmm?"

"Hah. Well, Alistair and I were talking about what he told us today. The human—he was very close to the king. Alistair thinks that there might be things at Ostagar that could be presented at the Landsmeet Arl Eamon is calling."

"So you wish to go back?" Zevran raised a brow. "Does that seem wise, amora?"

"We know it'll be dangerous. But Alistair says that the darkspawn should have thinned out by now, and if we keep to a smaller party, it'll be easier to get past most of whatever's still there. You know we'll need all the help we can get at the Landsmeet, seeing as Loghain has been doing his best to paint us as depraved as darkspawn." Daen paused. "But to be honest, I don't know if Alistair is ready for it."

Forget Alistair. Out loud, all he said was "are you?"

Zevran had picked up enough from campfire stories here and there to know how close a call it had been for the two Grey Wardens at Ostagar. Leliana was constantly needling them for details, surely writing a ballad in her head. He hadn't completely believed the part about the dragon at first—at least not until they met her herself, deep in the Korcari Wilds—but how else could one explain how a junior Warden and a skinny elven initiate, trapped at the very top of a breached tower, survived the darkspawn horde when no one else with them did?

He draped his free arm over the Warden's chest, his hand coming to a rest on the area between Daen's right shoulder and below his collarbone. He could feel the ridge of the scar that lurked there even with Daen's shirt between them. It was the worst of the half dozen round, puckered scars on his body, likely thanks to a poisoned darkspawn bolt.

Wynne knew how to heal and barely leave a scar, but not all healers were of her caliber, and the two Wardens had not had her by their side at Ostagar. Morrigan had said, only once, that Daen had been lucky that she and her mother had been there, and left it at that. Daen, not Alistair. The implication was clear, even if Daen had laughed it off.

Daen's hand slid over Zevran's, fingertips curling underneath and shielding him from the scar below. "I'm not the one to worry about. I still want to gut Loghain, but that isn't going to change any time soon. Alistair lost a lot more than I did that day, and the way he keeps thinking about it...he still hurts. His family died there. I'm not sure if going back to Ostagar will give him the closure he needs, or make him worse."

"Then don't take him."

"He wants to go. And I can't rightly deny him, if it's what he wants to do."

"You do not know how Alistair will react there, and you also do not know what awaits you. Usually it does more good to decrease unpredictability than it does to increase it, no? But then again, we Crows are a careful bunch."

"Except when hunting Wardens, apparently."

"What can I say? You are that good."

"Hah." Daen tilted his head, the tip of his nose brushing against Zevran's shoulder. "Look, Alistair has deferred to me in everything we've done so far. He's been that way ever since Ostagar. It isn't right."

"Hmm. So you wish to let him take the lead now? And here I thought the only time you liked following was when you were with me."

"Stop for a moment, would you? Look, if there's even a chance that going back will help him get over it and grow a backbone..." Daen clapped a hand to his eyes. "No, that's uncharitable. You heard Arl Eamon. Alistair might be the king someday. And I can't let him just...toddle into Denerim the way he is now, all meek and...broken. He doesn't know the humans there the way I do. The ones he'll be dealing with are all the same. If they even think they can lord over him, they will. Either he doesn't become king at all, or he'll become a king responding to their every whim."

"Then he doesn't become king."

"No." Daen's eyes drifted in the dim. "Now that I know he can...he has to. It can't be anyone else."

"What is this about, Daen?" Zevran drew his hand back from Daen's chest, letting his voice sharpen. "When did you become so interested in politics? Surely the boundaries of Warden brotherhood do not extend so far as landing Alistair on the throne. And if I recall, the last time Ferelden Wardens intended a coup, it ended with no Wardens in Ferelden at all and their leader a 200-year-old possessed corpse, did it not?"

"Thanks for the reminder," Daen said dryly. "Worried that I'll end up like Levi's charmer of a however-many-greats grandmother?"

"Worried that you are about to bite off more than you can chew, gatto." Zevran sat up, legs poised between sitting and standing. He rested a forearm on a raised knee.

Even though he was not looking at Daen, he could sense that the Warden was smiling. "You know my mouth can handle quite a bit."

At any other time, Zevran would have laughed. All he could manage now was a grumpy snort. "Oh, so I must stop for a moment but you may keep going? Such cruelty."

Daen encircled Zevran's shoulders with both arms. "Come on. We've played with crowns before. Shall I refer you to our friend King Harrowmont?"

"That whole business with the dwarves is precisely what I am talking about. You should not have interfered with the throne succession then, and you should not be interfering now. The dwarves would have worked it out on their own eventually—"

"And they would have been delighted to open trade with the new Archdemon king of Ferelden, I'm sure—"

"And we all almost died more times than I care to count on that...needle hunt the dwarves sent us on, not in the least because the needle herself decided to thread us through a maze rigged with dwarven deathtraps like fish through a chute." Zevran felt Daen's arms tighten around him and tried to soften his tone. "You are asking for trouble with this game of yours, amora, and you know it. But the Blight is one thing. What I do not know is why you are willing to entertain trouble this time. How is Alistair worth it?"

Daen was silent, and time condensed into the breaths that passed between them.

"I grew up hating the king," Daen finally said. "I never saw him and I had no idea what he was like, but I hated him. Whoever he was, however happy or unhappy the humans were with him, I hated him."

"That must have been quite a first meeting at Ostagar."

"Oh, it was. If Duncan hadn't been there to smooth things over...well, I realized King Cailan was not a bad man, but it didn't make him a good king. No good king could let the alienage be the way it is, right under his nose. Not with would-be lords strolling through and soaking the vhenedhal in piss and excrement. Not with children dying from plague, my cousins selling their pride, parents starving to death because they chose to feed their kids instead, or...just letting their kids starve, or worse, instead. Death an idle sword away and plagues every spring, rainwater and melting ice dragging the sewer down on our heads—my father is the healthiest of us all, and he still got sick whenever the snow went away. I'd sit by his side every time wondering if he'd just seen his last snowfall, and then end up sick with relief when it wasn't. And my mother...enough of us died the way she did to make almost everyone scared to death of humans."

"But not you, surely?"

"No! I...I was..." His voice shook. "Hah. Stupid," he muttered, more to himself than to Zevran. He let out a quick breath of air, as if trying to expel a memory. "How could I not be afraid, the way they...treated me—us—the way she died? She was always so brave, and proud...Dad said it was because her mother was Dalish. And then, when Shianni..."

Zevran remained quiet, silently inviting the Warden to continue. He still would not say much about how he joined the Grey Wardens, although he spoke often of his family, and particularly of his cousin Shianni.

Daen seemed to gather himself and resumed speaking. "It was like seeing my mother die all over again. I was so angry, I couldn't think about how scared I was. I was...so stupid. I put the whole alienage in danger of a purge. So I had to pay the price, and hope that would be enough to save them." He shook his head. "That's the way it's always been. We're trying to survive together, because no one ever escapes, not without consequences. Our only heritage is years upon years of fear and resentment. There is nothing new in our lives, no fresh starts, no hope; we all die the way we were born, and we're born knowing exactly how we will die. It's made us...too resigned to be angry, too angry to be resigned. Miserable. It's our bread and our poison. It's killing us."

Zevran rubbed Daen's forearm absently, buying time. He had a line of scars there, where gloves had not protected him from a badly disarmed spring trap, and Zevran let himself get lost in the way their edged network appeared and disappeared beneath his fingers. Finally: "Piss-soaked all around, and you still defied your elders to climb the vhenedhal? It is good that my imagination does not boast a sense of smell."

Daen chuckled. "It was the sacredness just as much as it was fear that I'd come down with lockjaw or the runs. I just had to be careful. My mother was the one who first encouraged me to go up there; it was the best place to be, especially whenever the humans came. If I didn't make it up fast enough...but that's a different story. The thing is, there has never been a king willing to change all of that. But Alistair is different. He isn't just a good person; he's honorable, and brave, and he has a sense of duty but he isn't foolhardy. And he has...so much light about him."

"As do you."

There was the look again. "Nice," he drawled. "But I can't be king. Alistair's the king Ferelden needs, now and when the Blight is over. He wasn't raised to expect things, and he's been fighting all his life for others—he just hasn't realized that he can fight for himself, too. I need him to be ready to do that before the Landsmeet. And he needs to see the alienage." He smiled into Zevran's shoulder, briefly lipping at a scar there, one so old that it had faded into a pale crescent on Zevran's burnished skin. "He'll probably be the first king since the vhenedhal's planting to actually stand below it."

"This is...quite the scheme." Zevran stroked a finger along the nape of Daen's neck and was pleased when the younger elf shivered in response. "I know you have achieved much in your young life, amora, but not all institutions are ready to change the way you hope they will. Oh, they are willing enough to play along for now, while the Blight is on, but what you intend extends far beyond the reaches of the Blight. Humans love their power, and elves are convenient for maintaining that. We are beautiful, and scattered, and fractured...and we can fight, but we never fight back. We are cowards. It is no wonder the Dalish leave us where we are."

"We are a broken people. Not cowards." He turned his nose into Zevran's shoulder and inhaled. "You need to meet Shianni and Soris—but especially Shianni. You'd like her."

Zevran recalled the vision that Daen had identified as Shianni, who had confronted them while they were looking for Andraste's Ashes. Daen had said that he regretted what had happened to her, but outside of the Gauntlet, he did not speak of what had actually happened. The time did not seem quite right to ask—and Zevran knew that there were secrets about himself that he would prefer to keep quiet from Daen for now, too.

"This Shianni of yours, she is a redhead, no? And just as fiery as her cousin? She sounds lovely."

"Hah! You have no idea. She's the definition of spitfire. As hot as a poker and just as likely to stick you, too." Daen still managed to eye Zevran suspiciously, even despite Zevran's attempts to distract the Warden from his question. "Don't get any funny ideas."

"Never, my dear. But what about this Soris?"

"Another cousin. If everything went well, he's married—so, again, no funny ideas. And yes, I named the dog after him."

Zevran couldn't repress the smile. "How kind! Is it because he drools as much as our Soris does?"

"He's going to kill me when he finds out, but I couldn't stop myself! The name just worked."

They dissolved into laughed together. Daen folded against Zevran's chest, and he let himself fall back against the bedroll, cradling the Warden in his arms.

"So, you and Alistair want to go to Ostagar, all part of your scheme to prime our poor, bumbling sap of a Warden for the throne. Fine. And is there anything else you wish to say, before I expire of non-excitement?"

"Hah!" Daen draped his body along the full length of Zevran's and rested his chin on his folded hands, a fox's grin in his eyes. "The boring part will be over soon, promise. We're going to tell the others tomorrow. One last thing, Zev—I don't think you should go."

"Pardon?" Zevran almost sat back up again, but was stopped by a restraining hand on his chest.

"I knew you wouldn't take it well. I just wasn't sure if I should tell you tonight or let you find out when we left."

"Daen—"

"Thought you wanted things to get exciting?"

"Enough. Is this all you came by for tonight?"

"Yes and no. Tonight was very boring, after all."

"Gatto. Then what is your reasoning for this one? It is not a plot to make me the Queen of Antiva, I hope."

"Of course not. You wouldn't fit any of her dresses."

"Just so." He fit Daen's face between his hands. "Amora, I do not care what Alistair says. You are going to be walking headlong into what is surely a darkspawn haven by now. You are good in battle, but I would feel much more comfortable letting you go with Alistair if I was with you as well."

"There. And that's why. We both know you aren't always the kindest to Alistair. He'll be pretty broken up going through Ostagar as is, and just one ill-timed remark from you—"

"I am capable of keeping my mouth shut when necessary, grasi."

"Nobody talks more than you do, Zev. Except maybe Leliana."

"And I suppose you are bringing her along?"

"I...I was hoping it would be just me and Alistair and Soris. I expect Wynne will want to come, too, since she was there as well, but I don't think it should be any more than that." He stroked Zevran's temple, tracing the well-traveled curves of the tattoos there even in the dark. "This is a purely selfish impulse of Alistair's and mine's. We have no right to risk exposing the rest of you to blight any more than we already have. You're right, the Deep Roads were too dangerous, and we were down there for too long. Please, just wait this time. You'll have your share of darkspawn soon enough. We all will."

Zevran frowned. "In light of that, perhaps it is time for you to start wearing something more substantial."

"I wouldn't be caught dead in the stuff Alistair clanks around in. He can barely move in it himself. There's a reason why he's the one the 'spawn go after first; he's a stuffed goose in that contraption."

"A helmet, then."

"Put on a hat before you catch the blight? Hah! Now you sound like Wynne. Helmets get in the way. You know that. Besides, I'm not really in the habit of catching things with my head."

"You are referring to things other than exploding abominations, I assume."

"Technically I caught a doorframe that time. And I doubt there will be exploding abominations at Ostagar."

"Hmm."

Daen rose, hands on either side of Zevran's head and legs fully astride Zevran's hips. His silhouette cocked its head, the filtered rays of moonlight infusing his hair with a faint otherworldly halo. "Don't worry so much. Darkspawn is what the Wardens were made to handle. This is what we do."

Ayana, Zevran thought fondly. Out loud, he sighed. "I do not like it, but I will think on it tonight. And the next time you decide to take on a darkspawn army, do not expect to leave me behind."

"All right. That's all I can ask for."

Zevran began to play with the laces on Daen's pants. "And when you take Alistair to the alienage, you shall take me too, hmm?"

"I...yes, of course, if you want to. I was going to ask you anyway, as long as the plague is over by then. It's just...I know, not very exciting, but we'll have to keep you and me under wraps while we're there. Almost everyone in the alienage is related to me somehow, and that means they think everything I do is their business. They're probably not going to like the idea of...us."

"Their ignorance is their loss. Does this mean that there will be no touching the whole time? I can survive, for a day or two. But at night..."

"If we stay at my dad's, then yes, you'll have to behave at night, too."

"Brasca."

"But...will you come, when we go home? Back to the alienage, I mean. Even though we can't..."

"That last bit does not entirely thrill me, per se, but yes. I wish to go. I did not grow up in an alienage, and I am curious how the elves there live."

Daen bent and touched his forehead to Zevran's. "I...thank you."

Zevran lifted Daen's head with a hand under his chin. "It is as I swore, amora. Without reservation."