Prompt: Zevran in love

Originally Written: 1/15/11

Notes: A Quark prompt! Also, I neglected to explain my absence in the last chapter I posted. I shall blame a combination of real life and the fact that I didn't beat DA2 until last month. In my desire to avoid spoilers, I dropped out of the DA fandom for a while-but I'm back! These prompts are still older, but, hey, better late than never.

Wynne was the one who figured it out.

She wasn't supposed to. No one was supposed to. He hadn't even figured it out, and was doing a very good job of not figuring it out, thank you very much. He killed and he joked and that was all he ever had to think about it—and if somehow the killing and the joking didn't fill up his mind, he could always think about thighs. Pale thighs, tan thighs, hard-as-rock thighs, soft-and-fleshy thighs, boy thighs, girl thighs—thinking about all these thighs took lots of time, especially as he had to dedicate his mind to an intense remembrance of each pair of thighs he'd known. So between the killing and the joking and the thighs, he didn't have time to figure things out, or fantasize about thighs he'd never had the pleasure of seeing. Frankly, there wasn't even anything of interest in thighs he'd never seen, especially when he'd never seen breasts or shoulders or even ankles to go along with them. He couldn't even spare time to figure out how the Circle mages managed to run without lifting their robes above their knees. There was absolutely no time to figure out why his stomach dropped like a stone every time she tripped in battle or failed to smile when he slumped next to her with an innuendo at the end of the day. He was running on instinct, living on borrowed time, waiting for her to kill him or for him to kill her or for the darkspawn to kill them all—he didn't care enough to figure it out.

Except then he was sitting with Wynne and Alistair, the bastard, was across the campfire making her laugh, and the sound distracted him from his attempts to snuggle into Wynne's warm, warm bosom (it was ample and heaving under her robes, which was more than could be said for any other Circle mages in the area, not that bosoms were as interesting as thighs or that he even minded when bosoms were small enough for his hands to cover them completely), and the old woman crossed her arms and said, "Have you told her, yet?"

"Hm?" he said, trying to focus his attention on her bosom, but her steely blue gaze refused to allow him the pleasure.

"You know what I'm talking about," Wynne said, barely tilting her head in the direction of the laughter (now coming from a figure lying sideways on the ground, clutching her sides, but the damn fire was preventing him from catching any glimpses).

He laughed, though it was not nearly as warm a sound. "My dear woman," he said, "you are attempting to redirect my interest, and it simply won't work. I am much too dedicated—"

"To ignoring your feelings, yes, and denying her any expression of hers in the process, and I wonder how far you will drive her away before you realize what you are losing."

He was fairly certain his mouth was hanging open, his mind cleared of all thought and grasping at uncertain straws best left to float downstream. Better to drown, he told himself, and his mind replied, perhaps better to have lo—

"You mistake my interest," he said, wincing at the weakness of the excuse.

She raised an eyebrow at him, her gaze cutting like—like many sharp knives, such as he hadn't faced since he underwent his initiation into the Crows—and she said simply, "It is your choice, of course, but if you are planning on wasting away while she packs herself into a neat little box and chooses Alistair for his sweetness, I suggest you do us a favor and announce your intentions."

"Perhaps you think she should have killed me when she had the chance," he said, strangely stung by the thought—Wynne had never approved of him, exactly, but she never blushed at his innuendo, no matter how flustered her words, and once or twice he thought he caught a spark of amusement in her eyes. It reminded him, in so many words, of the oldest whores from his mother's brothel, when the young men would treat them to flattery, as if they remembered times when such flattery was given from truth and not mere affection. It was comforting and familiar and he liked drawing it forth, and the thought that it was hatred and not gratitude—

"I think she made the choice necessary for her to continue living with herself," Wynne said, "which perhaps was not wise at the time, but has the potential to right itself—if you will allow it to."

He refused to shrink under her glare, but his words were not as strong as he would have liked. "I am under her command," he said. "I cannot act of my own accord."

"If you think she does not have every intention of allowing you to leave," Wynne said, "then perhaps you do not know her as I thought."

He knew. He saw her kindred gaze—one a Crow and the other a Circle mage and a Warden to boot and neither truly free to act of their own will—across the campfire, in the heat of battle, in the moments between waking and sleep when one went on watch and the other retired to a tent. It was unspoken in her words—never orders, barely even requests—in the shy smiles she gave him, hesitantly inviting without ever explicitly asking, and how could he respond when he'd never learned the words he needed?

"I cannot," he repeated, and Wynne sighed, and slowly stood.

"Life is too short, Zevran," she said, looking down at him.

"You lecture an assassin on the brevity of life?"

"I lecture a youth," she said, "who knows too much of death and too little of what ought to fill a life before it comes." She looked at him a moment more; the dying echoes of laughter floated from across the campfire, and her gaze shifted as if to show him where he ought to be. He resisted the urge to turn his head. "Good night, assassin."

"Not as good as a night as it would be with your bosom for a pillow," he said, but she did not smile, and as soon as she went inside her tent he sighed and allowed his shoulders to slump, briefly. Camp had gone quiet, aside from Alistair discretely unpacking the dolls (figurines) that he used to entertain himself when he sat on watch alone.

He wasn't in the mood to tease the ex-templar about them, and so he stood and went to his tent. He stopped, and turned to look at the sky; as he dropped his gaze, he saw her standing on front of her own tent, her arms crossed, her eyes on him. He smiled, and it was soft and genuine and he couldn't convince it to leave his face; she smiled in return, as true as her laughter—but then, she had not been laughing for him.

"Sweet dreams, Zevran," she called, her voice quiet but pitched to carry.

"Of you? But of course," he replied, and for a moment he thought she might—but she was gone in a whisper of cloth, and he decided to disappear, as well. He had his bedroll and a blanket to keep him warm and the memory of Rinna's laugh and death and firm-fleshy thighs to keep his thoughts occupied, and he locked his heart away.