[ OPEN ] And I'm on tonight you know my hips don't lie and I'm starting to feel it's right

[ombranera]

WHO: Zevran, His Kestrels, and You
WHAT: Music, Dance, Shenanigans
WHEN: Current
WHERE: The Herald's Rest
NOTES: It's Zev and dancing. There might end up being shiftlessness, seductions, and intoxication.

[ The Learning ]

It wasn't an intentional lesson, this. There was music, there was wine, there was talk of dancing in the small cleared space between tables. Tossing about ideas of what to play, how to dance, when Zevran made mention of a method of training oneself to isolate movement that was more or less a dance and the younger Kestrels (all but Settimo) expressed their interest. He sent Vitta to gather a few coin covered scarves and belts in all manner of colors from his room and gathered the rest to walk them through it.

Anyone else that was curious might join in, Zevran was something of a hands on teacher, adjusting posture with a hand to the plane of a back, the curve of a hip, showing with his own demonstrations as much as by moving his students by feel so they knew how it was to stand, to move, to roll. Little things, hip rolls, undulating like a snake, how to pop one's hip or hold one's shoulders still while the legs and hips do their work- these he went through as best he could before Vita returned and he offered a proper demonstration.


[ The Dancing ]

After a quick duet, all rolling hips and wide, flirtatious smiles, the Kestrels took turns dancing either on their own or with someone else that had expressed interest. Zevran, likewise, was content to either offer pointers here and there or dance alongside- or against- anyone that would have him. There was wine, there was music, there was warmth in the building and he could think of no better reason than to attempt to have a good time. The show seemed more than enough for those that didn't wish to participate on their own- apparently anything was a good change of pace from Maryden's ballads now and then.


[ The Mending / The Resting ]

Learning to bend oneself in new and exciting ways, to move or not move as one willed- it could create soreness or the occasional sprain if one was not careful. Teresa took time away from the dancing and the drinking to tend to any that might have twisted something they should not, had slipped and fallen or overextended a limb in an attempt to learn this manner of dancing. Or, more often, to offer glasses of either watered down ale or water proper to those taking a break from all the dancing. Zevran himself would flop down on a chair time to time, shirtless and sweating, watching the group with a crackle of laughter. Now this? This was living.

Comments

[ombranera]

"Dying for a cause. Dance might be a cause, the Inquisition might be a cause, love might be a cause. Devoting oneself to such things lends it own nobility- why else do you think the Chantry sisters in Antiva are beyond reproach? They have devoted their lives to service and the Maker." And thus pure, not to be touched, not to be met by most of the lower classes to be certain. Still he says little more than draw those lines, sipping his brandy and saluting Leliana.

"Being the left hand of the Divine is cause."

[fightingale]

"It was," she agrees, brow furrowed. "Justinia was the cause, in truth. Her rule, the peace she would orchestrate." And it was all gone. So much had been sacrificed and secured, and even with all the countermeasures in the world, it was all gone.

"But it is no longer the cause. I cannot be the Left Hand to a Divine that no longer lives." Her energies are being redirected, still gathering and escalating, but she already has a spy network larger than any that Thedas has ever seen before, and with that knowledge will become chances to help and to do better. To fight for what is right, not only to follow Justinia's plan, but form her own.

She does not volunteer that to Zevran. She is not sure if she wants to, or if it would mean anything if she did, or if she should even show him that much of herself.

[ombranera]

"Saving the world is a worth cause, is it not?" Touching on the true matter that lay between them before Anders, before the Crows, before all else. Doing what one must- or what one thinks they must. Whether or not ends justify means and normally? In the short term he has cared little. Even in the long term he cares little. What must be done is not what he worries over.

What DOING what must be done does to Leliana? That is where his fears lie.

That is where he worries.

"It is a terrible burden, to stand at the head of the one organization attempting to set the world to rights." A beat. "It was never so difficult during the Blight. How you manage I will never know."

[fightingale]

"That goes without saying. Saving the world, and ensuring it becomes a world we can be proud of." It certainly is not such now, she thinks, but that makes the people within it no less precious."

Not through the loyalty of friends, evidently.
Such words are petty, even for her. "I manage because I must. How is immaterial." She is immaterial, really. All that matters is that she does, that she proceeds. It is not perfect, the matter of Galadriel just one example of how she cannot be everywhere, cannot do everything or prevent every ill, but she does all she can and sometimes it is enough. "

Though in the Blight they had wondered the Deep Roads for weeks - months? she hardly cares to remember - with each day in the dark and with ever scanter provisions and water a looming reminder of her time in Harwen Raleigh's dungeon. They had seen horror upon horror, and not only within the Deep Roads, though that is always the first thing to come to her mind when she remembers the Blight. "Well, we had a larger nug to person ratio, during the Blight."

Clearly that is why it was easier, and she sips her drink, nonchalant.

[ombranera]

"How is vital." On her own? By cutting away everything of herself that makes her devout and faithful and kind? But this-

This edges into things he is trying to avoid for they o not agree on the matter and he has lost his right to speak of it. Having never truly had regard he could lose and live with losing afterward is new. It aches like a wound seeping in his side that there is no curing. They share scars but this?

They do not share. Leliana has had friends, had some manner of family. Perhaps that is why she is colder still. She expects more. Or less. "Clearly you must adopt more. Boulette looks as though she could use a few siblings."

[fightingale]

"Then let us say it is the nugs and be done with it."

People had described Justinia has having a sort of icy majesty. Appearing ever cool and collected, although Leliana knew better. She had seen the kindness and gentleness in her, and she knew as well how bold she was capable of being, how she had left people entirely thrown at the Winter Palace when she descended from the dais to walk amongst the nobility, amongst those who feared and despised her status above them as much as they might revere or admire her, if not moreso. Leliana had sculpted herself first based on Justinia’s need, and now on those of the Inquisition. Her tone with Zevran now is frosty rather than weary, as it might have been scant weeks ago.

(Ice cannot bring her closer to achieving what Justinia had not, this she knows, but it feels sometimes that it is overtaking her all the same.)

She forces herself to stay seated, rather than rising and leaving as part of her wants to. This is Zevran, and that makes severing the contact even after everything all the more painful - marks her as all the weaker.

“I had considered giving one to Kieran,” she finally manages. “I suspect Morrigan might voice some objection, at length.”

[ombranera]

He goes terribly still at that- Zevran has never been one to flinch. Not at a wound, not at an insult, not at painful memory. The reflex had long since been beaten out of him for whatever reason. 'Never let them see you sweat' is less a suggestion with the Crows and more lifestyle; but to those that knew him, those that know him? The momentary stillness can be damning. The mental shifting of gears from Zevran-in-Truth to Zevran-as-Expected.

Leliana has no use for him. Keeping that in mind is necessary. She has no use of him and no want of him and this, whatever sentiment might have lingered? Is nothing she wishes to foster. Not that he can blame her; their lives are easier without.

Perhaps he ought to worry less.

Like a veil falling over his face- distance settles in his eyes, his posture shifts. Carefully calculated indolence in how he leans against the table, how he keeps his limbs loose and a careless smirk upon his face. Aside from the eye and the scars he is as he was a decade ago; though his teeth are not quite so bloody. "And since when has that stopped you? Better you give him a nug than wait for him to adopt something she finds truly unseemly, like a mabari."

[fightingale]

Good. Better. That will make this easier. He is the shadow and she is the songbird, and they are monsters in plain sight. Zevran with all his talk of changing and living a life burdened - and yet for all that he can slip back into his assassins skin so easily. He is not one to speak of freedom, she suspects.

Or like Alistair, her mind supplies, though her tongue stays. Some wounds are not worth inflicting, whether becaues they are too petty to be truly effective, or because they might carry too great a sting, and she cannot think which camp this would settle into.

For her part she does not move a muscle, does not settle into her chair or jerk up and away.
"It stops me now because I endeavour to respect those I count as my friends." Morrigan cannot stand nugs? She will not saddle her with either the responsibility of caring for one, or Kieran's disappointment if it could not be kept. Her hand drops to pet Boulette, whose hands rest against her leg in a request for attention.

[ombranera]

"Of course." Respectful and courteous is Leliana- is The Nightingale. How could he possibly forget? He has half a mind to ask after Morrigan and Keiran but no. That too is forfeit.

He told Morrigan he would no longer care for the child and while that is not something so easily done- he will keep his distance as requested, no, demanded of him. Perhaps she had been right in that his affection was misplaced. Perhaps he'd assumed greater familiarity with her and with Leliana. They endured something terrible with one another but that did not-

That does not mean they are family. That does not make them blood, make them close.

It makes them survivors. Nothing more.

"Allowing him to visit them, now and again, might curb his requests for one. All of the fun none of the responsibility." It comes out flatter than he'd hoped, not as light, not as teasing. Is that how she sees him? Irresponsible? Does it matter?

[fightingale]

"I imagine that you are correct." I imagine you are quite familiar with that, and again she stops herself from speaking quite as cruelly as she could. She does not want to be cruel to Zevran, she simply--

She has no idea what she wants, truthfully. She wants the trust restored, and yet she cannot leave herself open to such an injury again. Even if she and Anders have reached something of an accord, she does not trust him, and she certainly does not trust the ones who concealed him, whether by deliberate action or by simply failing to be forthright.

Boulette makes a little squeak, gently grabbing one of Leliana's gloved fingers, and she absently takes a piece of bread from the table and pulls off the crust, handing it to the little nug. This is uncomfortable, and Leliana does not like being uncomfortable more than any other person. She is good at compartmentalising it, setting it aside, she is good at overcoming it. With Zevran, one who had been most trusted, that is not so easily done. (She would leave, but a conversation with Morrigan about fleeing still needles her when she lets it, and so she remains and simply offers up a quiet hope that a scout comes to retrieve her, and soon.)

She lapses into a stiff silence, sips her wine, and wonders if it would be worth leaving anyway, when he is acting like a Crow and she is acting the Nightingale.