Chapter 3: A Guilty Conscience

Zevran lay on the soft bed propped up by several pillows, his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling. One of the woman's arms was draped across his bare chest, and her pretty face was nestled in the crook of his neck. She breathed softly and rhythmically, deep in sleep. Zevran had already forgotten her name. By tomorrow he would forget what she looked like, her face would be just one in a number of conquests that swirled around in his memories like wisps without form or substance.

I'm getting too old for this, he thought sullenly.

He was still in what many would consider the prime of his life, but Zevran Arainai felt old beyond his years nonetheless. Every time he looked in a mirror he noticed a few more lines around his eyes, a few more strands of white in his golden hair. He moved just a little bit slower with each successive fight, and took just a little bit longer to recover afterward. The lust and vigor with which he had pursued life slackened more and more with each passing year, and he often found himself preoccupied with thoughts of his own end, and questions of what it all meant. Most of all, he was tired, so very tired.

The Blight had changed him in ways that he never could have imagined as a younger man. He had grown up surrounded by death, violence, and pain. The Crows had beaten into his mind that all of those things were just abstractions that needed to be endured, not pondered. His time with the heroes of Ferelden during the Blight had ripped those preconceptions from his mind with a force that had shocked him to the very core of his being. For the first time in his life, he had realized that his actions had deep and profound consequences not only for himself and the people around him, but potentially for the entire world. In the loneliness of the wilds and the dark of the Deep Roads, it dawned on him that he was not a leaf blowing in the wind, he had a choice. He was a killer, a living weapon, and nothing he could do would ever change that. But he could change what he did, he could choose to have a cause, to stand for something greater than himself. He could have a purpose. It had been over quiet campfire chats with Feanor that Zevran had come to realize what that meant. He had always felt like an outsider to the other members of the party. They looked at him and saw nothing more than what the Crows wanted him to be: A weapon, albeit a beautiful and charming one. When Feanor looked at him, he saw a person.

It was a simple thing, to be treated like a person and not an object, but it was the first time anyone had done so since the mother he had lost as a child. To this day Zevran didn't know what Feanor had seen in him, or why the two had bonded in the way they had. Maybe it was because Feanor was also an outcast, mistrusted and looked down upon. Perhaps they gravitated toward each other simply because they had no one else. Whatever the reason, Zevran cherished Feanor more than any person he had ever met, and he hoped that someday he would be able to find the right words to tell him.

Someday, he thought, just not today.

Like everyone who had lived through the Fifth Blight, Zevran had witnessed horrible things. When it was finally over he walked away with the disturbing feeling that not all of those horrible things had been caused by the darkspawn. Some of them, many of them in fact, had been caused by people. People that spread suffering and despair, people that crushed and took lives at their own pleasure and discretion with no thought at all of the pain it caused others. People that killed without hesitation or remorse with barely a second thought for the blood they spilled. People that murdered innocents, friends, even loved ones.

People like him.

The realization that he was a villain planted a dagger of grief deep in Zevran's heart, a grief that was shared by Feanor. In the name of stopping the Blight, Feanor had done things that the others could not bring themselves to do, and he had done them with a cold and calculated precision that made him seem devoid of conscience. Of all their companions, only Zevran knew the weight of the remorse Feanor carried. To stop the enemy, he had become something he hated, and he had done so willingly.

When it was done, Feanor and Zevran found themselves alone with their guilt. No songs were sung in their praise, no toasts were raised to their names. They had only each other and the shadows they called home. In those shadows they made a choice, to atone for their sins the only way they knew how: By killing people like them. They would cure the disease of which the Crows were merely a symptom. Their initial hit list had been comprised almost entirely of people that Zevran knew personally. That was why they were at war with his former brethren now, it was not as simple and mundane as mere competition. The Black Wardens wanted to create a world in which they were no longer necessary, and organizations like the Antivan Crows could not even survive. They all knew that world was impossible, that for every head they cut off two more seemed to grow in its place. But they would keep hacking away at those heads as long as they drew breathe, if for no other reason than that they had chosen and sworn to do so.

Zevran gently removed the woman's arm from his chest and got out of the bed quietly, so as not to disturb her sleep. He stretched his arms over his head and made his way across the elaborately furnished room, one of several in the city's more upscale taverns he perpetually rented out under various aliases. He would spend a night or two in one of these rooms whenever the opportunity presented itself, and he rarely spent them alone.

But never with the person I would prefer to be spending them with, he thought sadly, casting a glance at the woman still sleeping peacefully in the bed. When she woke up tomorrow Zevran would already be gone, either to another tavern under a different name or back to the cave. She would likely never see him again, and if she did, Zevran knew he would have only the vaguest recollection of her and brush her off with his characteristic charm. He felt a pang of guilt over that, as he always did, but those were the least of the sins he had to contend with. He poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher, wrapped a blanket around his waist, opened the window of the room and stared out across Denerim's skyline. The sun had just set and the city was bathed in its residual orange glow.

Beautiful, Zevran thought. A cool breeze blew through the open window, prickling the skin on his naked arms and torso. He closed his eyes and savored the sensation, losing himself in a moment of peace.

The arrow whizzed by his face so close that Zevran could feel its feathers brush against his cheek. He dropped into a crouch and pressed himself against the wall, grabbing a dagger stashed under the windowsill. He stayed perfectly still for a few moments before stalking toward the door, being careful to stay under the archer's line of sight. He grabbed a second dagger from under the table and positioned himself up against the doorframe. Every muscle in his body tensed as he listened for the sound of boots outside the door, ready to lash out with his twin blades the second it was kicked in. But it wasn't kicked in. The hallway outside was totally silent save for the sounds of revelry drifting up from the common room below. Zevran tore his gaze away from the door toward where the arrow had planted itself in the wall, and he noticed that there was a small scroll wrapped around the shaft. Still keeping low, Zevran slid along the wall toward the arrow, wrenched it from the wood and unrolled the parchment. His eyebrows arched in surprise as he read it over several times. Slowly he stood up straight, exposing himself to the open window. He closed his eyes for a moment, half expecting another arrow to bury itself in his chest, but nothing happened. He walked silently as a cat to the open window and leaned out of it, scanning the nearby rooftops for any sign of the archer. Seeing none, he closed and latched the window and pulled the drapes shut. In the darkness he quietly and urgently pulled on his armor and weapons. He had to get back to the cavern. Now.

The woman's eyes fluttered open and she breathed in deep before letting out a long, contented sigh. She felt amazing, satisfied in a way she never dreamed possible. She reached out with her hand to stroke her lover's chest, but it fell on an empty mattress. Perplexed, she sat up and looked around the room, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darkness. Once they did, she felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was alone.