faderift | [ CLOSED ] THE ANTIVAN CROWS SEND THEIR REGARDS

Entry tags:

[ CLOSED ] THE ANTIVAN CROWS SEND THEIR REGARDS

WHO: Alistair, Araceli Bonaventura, Beleth Ashara, ~~Anders~~ Detlef, Korrin Ataash, Taashath, The Iron Bull, Twisted Fate, an Zevran Arainai. Guest Starring: Samouel, Cyril, and Merrick, Super Special Guest Star: Leliana.
WHAT: The Crows come for the Ombra Nera.
WHEN: Begins Guardian 6
WHERE: Skyhold/Antivan Border/The Road
NOTES: CW/TW FOR: Flesh hommonculi, violent/gruesome content, torture, blood magic, non-consensual drug use, adult content, adult language, reader discretion is advised. Sign up post, original plotting post, hit me on PM or @

thesouthernbelle if you have questions.

It's a normal morning in Thedas until, abruptly, it isn't. The Crows come calling; they are swift, they are certain, they are silent and leave behind but one witness that won't be alive for much longer (or so they assume). Prize in hand they ride North for Antiva.

Subthreads for portions of the plot are yours to tag around in as you like!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The fog lingers- whether it is the magic, the opium, or whatever else the'd poured into him while he was hanging on that hook, Zevran cannot say. No venom or poison he's ever known did this; turning a man's mind against itself. Anders approaches and Zevran goes quietly still from where he'd been picking at the stitching of his cloak. Something mindless and meticulous to remind him that here is here.

That this is real.

Even if he remains ever uncertain.

His throat clicks when he swallows, but he manages the words. "My eye." Anders has likely done all he can for it but- he does not want to think of living without being able to see with both eyes.

Anders looks down for a moment before lifting his hand and casting, seeing what he can do to ease the pain.

"I... I can't fix it completely. I'm sorry. I can't even tell you that there might be a spirit healer alive who can." Maybe Wynne could have pulled it off, but the damage the Crows did is precise as if they knew exactly how to thwart a healer. Which, considering the Crows, is possible.

"Would you like to be touched, or would you like me to keep my hands off while I help?" He'll fully understand either, and as much as he longs to touch the Elf, Zevran's wants come first. By now the pain should be easing as Anders soothes nerves and repairs what damage he can.

"..." He should have known- he's been bracing himself for it all day and it still drops the bottom out of his world to hear it. What good is magic if it cannot undo the work of one knife? Whatever it'd been painted with, whatever acid, whatever venom had done it's work well.

So he is to be blind and partly scarred until this ends.

"I-" He shakes his head, uncertain. The glow of magic is warm and soothing and blue but he still- there's a ringing in his ears that is entirely of his own creation and he needs something grounding. He cannot find the words but he reaches out all the same, curling his fingers around Anders' wrist.

"I'm sorry," he whispers again. Anders has so few friends, and somehow he manages to fail them at every opportunity anyway. At least he can try to do better here and now, though. His free hand gently brushes hair away from Zevran's face before he loops it around the man's shoulders, holding him as he heals.

"Just know that you're not alone." It's important. "You've people here for you, and more waiting back at Skyhold."

He spreads his attention outward, away from the eye now, finding the places Zevran has been made vulnerable and mending steadily, slowly. There's days' worth of work ahead of him, but he's not going to let anything be undone if he can help it.

"I took the blow." Like that makes it better. His eye, Alistair's throat. He couldn't let his brother die, anymore than he could have let any of them come to harm.

And they had. For him. He grimaces, pressing his forehead against Anders' shoulder rather than let him see the scarring on his face, the eye he cannot mend. There's a finality that comes with the apology, the reality of the wound only staring to sink in.

"...you should not have come." He isn't who they came for. He's. Less, now, in more ways than one.

"As you would not have come?" He snorts, though it's more gentle a noise than normal. "You would have, and you know it. How could I do any less?"

There. That's what he needs to work on now, if he's to restore Zevran to as much health as possible. Anders closes his eyes and focuses more, channeling what he can get from Justice into the Elf's body.

"I came, I'm here. I've not met so many who would offer me kindness that I want to lose any of them, Zevran."

"You have more to lose." He's rebuilt a life for himself, here. Is trying to do more, carries another soul in himself. Zevran? Is a knife. And not a particularly good one any longer.

The soothing pulse of power is entirely unlike the waves of bitter blood magic he'd endured in that cell, it is easier to curl close and let it roll over him. His bones still ache in a way he can't quite explain and the magic can only quiet for a few hours. But it is a few hours he would not have had otherwise.

"If you were recognized? If you lost control of Justice? They would kill you." He is not worth that risk.

"I run a greater risk of being recognized back at Skyhold, with Fenris and Cullen and who knows what other Templars are there."

Anders' voice is calm, gently deconstructing Zevran's arguments as he reconstructs his body.

"I'll be found out and executed. I know this. And I'm at peace with it. I'd rather have it happen while I save someone I give a care about than while I'm sitting on my ass, reading in the library."

He presses a gentle kiss to the Elf's forehead, feeling the way magic's been twisted deeply into muscles and bones. They don't teach how to deal with this in the Circle. Then again, they don't teach much of what he's needed there, and he's had a great deal of time to discover new methods and treatments on his own, just as he's learned how to wrap himself in self-loathing and to see when others are doing it as well.

"If I was to choose again whether or not to come, I'd come."

"No." He does not get to die. Zevran was sure before hat he could protect Anders from such an outcome but now? Shaking, half blind, half in and out of a fog- what good is he now? None. But that solid determination to make certain Anders doesn't die? Remains. How he'll protect him like this, he doesn't know. But his hand goes tight in Anders robes, ears drooping low. "They are not going to kill you."

I will not let them.

It goes unsaid, but he has not cut his own throat and jumped from ramparts countless times in the past week just to let Anders be executed.

"You are a fool." Not worth it. He knows precisely how much he is worth down to the last adrini, and he is not worth any spirit healer's life. Let alone an Abomination's.

"I am a fool," he agrees easily, "but not in this."

There's some sort of twist that's an... anchor, for lack of a better word, and Anders starts working his magic underneath it, trying to free Zevran from at least one thing that's causing damage. This is right. This is just. They're still fighting blood mages after having killed plenty, and Justice is actually satisfied. Anders feels whole right now, and entirely certain of what he's done.

He also feels that he can hear more to the statement about them not killing him, like there's words there Zevran didn't say but means. Extrapolation is easy enough. Stopping people from mob justice would likely be beyond Zevran at the best of times. Now?

"Besides. You owe me lessons in picking more difficult locks. If I didn't come for you, you'd not be able to teach me, and I'd be in even more danger when they choose to come for me."

Now he needs to heal not just the physical; he needs to make sure Zevran has a reason to keep going after his treatment. Anders had nearly given up on everything after solitary. Only the concerted efforts of Karl and a couple of others had made him regain who he was.

The anchor-knot comes free, falling apart, and Anders feels a surge of triumph. They'd work blood magic on his friends? They didn't know who they were dealing with.

"Then you are a fool twice over for not knowing yourself to be foolish." Muttered, frustrated and angry- but without the heat it would normally have. Why? Why do they say these things, why do they mean them? How can they mean them? They do not know him, do not know what he has done, the blood on his hands or the bitterness in his heart.

How can they possibly care when they don't see more than he lets them- and what little they see is false?

Mostly false.

Vaguely false.

Perhaps he has been lying with honesty for so long he cannot pick apart what is a smile made for sanity and one made of sweetness.

That tug twists bitter, a flare of pain that has him grinding his teeth and pressing his face into the side of Anders' throat- but it gives. More of the fog lifts. That odd detachment, that distance. He feels his bones keenly, is skin prickling with awareness. "...Justice does not let you lie easily."

Beyond what he must to live, of course. In a tight, trembling voice Zevran murmurs. "Tell me this is real."

The comment about him being a fool twice over gets a calm, neutral hum. Nothing the Elf says can hurt him, because Zevran's in pain and been through hell. The things Anders had yelled at Karl still send a rush of shame through him. Zevran's taking this far better.

His arm tightens around Zevran for a moment at the request, though. That, he knows full well.

"This is real. We came for you, we broke you out, and now there's going to be more pain as I continue fixing your body, but you'll heal. You'll heal among foolish friends who would foolishly do this all over again. And, if you're lucky, this next time it'll be Isabela who wears the bow and nothing else."

There are reasons for hope. Not for Anders, with a death sentence likely hanging over his head, but for Zevran.

Real. It's real. The robe in his hand, the pulse against his skin, the ache in his bones that he can't shake that has nothing to do with actual pain and everything to do with what he can still recall of the warped life he'd gone through over and over in the fade. It can't be true- he is not worth coming for.

"You've come before." An bought him, or broke him out and bled out on the backs of arrows while Zevran watched, gagged on venom that Zevran couldn't prevent- begged for a knife that Zevran turned on himself. The mages hadn't known who. Who didn't matter. "And it wasn't- It didn't-"

Only that they put forth shades for him to watch, shades for him to kill.

Shades he couldn't.

His voice catches in his throat around a helpless crackle of laughter high and faintly hysteric as the last few shards of that distant wall came crumbling down, leaving him a raw, overworked nerve. Nothing, and they've come. They've truly come. Eyes stinging with heat- and while it does not see it can weep- Zevran tried and failed to swallow back a sob. Shudders his way through it with a great rattling of his bones so intense he feels as though he is to shake apart. "Prove it."

He cannot take another lie. He can't.

Prove it, combined with tears. Anders abandons healing for a few moments, wrapping his other arm around the Elf as well to hold him close. Prove it. He doesn't know what Zevran saw, what they showed him, which means the only way to convince him would be to say something Zevran's subconscious couldn't.

And make it something that made the Elf crying against him feel like it's no shame to break down.

"My sixth escape attempt was, I thought, my last. They were hauling me back, talking about what they intended to do, how they'd enjoy rolling dice to see who got to wield the sword that took my head off. When they threw me in the dungeon cell it was nothing new, and I paced, fearing my end."

He takes a slow breath, forcing back the demons that haunt him from this. There are so many of them, but if he can use them to help his friend, he will.

"Only the Templars didn't come back that night. I could see a little light from outside through a little crack of a window, and was shocked when dawn didn't bring them either, or midday. Evening brought a plate of gruel, deliberately half-dumped, and no explanation. Days went on, one plate of gruel, four walls, and the whispers of demons promising me freedom. Every time I closed my eyes I saw a way to get out. I saw K-- I saw friends coming down and saving me. I saw the First Enchanter relenting. I became so powerful I blew a hole in the wall and fled. On and on. For a year."

Nausea is rising, burning the back of his throat, but he fights it down with practiced efficiency. Later he can be sick. Later he can submit to the emotions that are making his hands tremble and his already-hushed voice shake.

"When they finally opened the door for me to walk out, I thought it another demon trick. The first... the first sign that it wasn't was when I could barely get my legs to work and fell over and the Templars near me started laughing. After they dragged me up the steps, knees hitting as many as they could manage, I began to wonder. It was only when they dropped me on the floor and one knelt close and promised that next time I'd be silenced, gutted, and would take a great deal of time to die that I realized I was out."

He's almost done with the story. Almost. He feels like he's run miles at this point, cold sweat on his brow and stomach twisted in knots.

"I laid there and sobbed. I don't know how much time passed before the friends who recognized me after that found me there and helped me back to a room, but I sobbed the whole time. And no Crow, no Blood Mage, not even your own mind, could summon that up. You're out, Zevran. I've no stairs to bang your knees against now that we're clear of the fortress, but you're out."

Of all the things he might have expected- a tale of escape, of isolation- that is not on the list. He'd known of Anders and his attempts. Much like a good chunk of his own past the mage never spoke of it aside from the odd jest or offhand comment. Much like him, Anders uses humor as a mask and a shield. A way to distance himself from the horrors. It is something Zevran can manage normally but having them all ripped to the surface all at once? New ones pile on over and over till he was fit to beg for the dagger to end it?

He could not. A joke would have brought him little comfort. A kiss? A fleeting sense of reality.

Something like this- that hurt to tell. That hurt to hear, that ached in the pit of his stomach and the hollow shell of his bones; it must be true. Life hurts. Living hurts. Comforts are few and far between, kindness rarer still. For Anders who guards his hurts and scars as dearly as Zevran to bare this to him; to cut his own chest open and show the wounds-

Zevran's hands slip from his robe to lock tight around his ribs, face still pressed tight to his throat. With the blood in his ears, the gnarled, rotten anger that such a thing could be done even when he knows full well the world is cold and cruel to all the maker's children, to mages all the more so, when he knows better than to be surprised or to care, he feels the ending more than he hears it. Shudders past another gut rending sob- as though someone threaded fish line and hooks through his stomach and pulled the knotted mass up through his mouth, ripping it from him. He cracks.

He weeps. Silently. Teeth clamped tight on his bottom lip to keep those horrible signs of weakness that are these sobs locked inside. But he weeps.

And trusts Anders is telling the truth. A lie would not hurt half so much.

There's wounds being aggravated by Zevran's movements, by the grief wracking his body, and Anders casts as he holds him tight, easing what's pulling and simply being there as the Elf clings to him. A couple know that he'd spent a year in solitary confinement, but Zevran is now the only living person save Anders to know so much of that story. The fact that the Elf can let go enough to weep makes laying himself bare like that worth it.

He hums quietly, an Anders lullaby he's long forgotten the words to, the only thing he remembers of his mother's voice. It's always comforted him. Maybe it will help Zevran too. At the very least he knows that being here, holding and healing, will.

Life is pain. Life is suffering and struggling and running and trying so hard to live just one more day. It's something Justice will never understand. It's something he knows Zevran gets.

"I'm here," he whispers at the end of the tune. "And I can stay here for a while if you'd like. As long as you'd like, even." He's not on guard rotation because he's using all he has to heal Zevran and the others, and he's grateful for the break. "I've nowhere I'd rather be, mein Freund."

Little by little it subsides- even if it feels as though he's been crying forever, every tear he never shed in all his years. For Rinna, for Taliesin, for Wynne, for every friendly Crow he'd lost, for every life he took that left him with regret. Every hour he's lost worrying and planning, wound too tight to sleep waiting for something to give. Knowing that this was coming, what would likely be done and living it-

Surviving it-

He weeps. He curls in a tight arc around Anders as best he can, face still pressed to his throat, hands fisted in his robes. Nothing and no one would see him come loose until he was good and ready and he...is still not yet ready. This manner of weakness isn't something he knows how to recover from.

Little hitches overtake his breathing. He manages a faint, wordless whine as he drags himself closer still to Anders. As close as he can mange to asking him to stay.

He shifts slowly so they can both lay down. Zevran needs rest, and it will be the easiest position to stay in for a long time while holding him.

"I'll stay." His voice is quiet, pitched to be soothing. "I won't leave you alone." Zevran could do better for company. Alistair is out there, for instance. But Anders isn't leaving when it's clear he's needed.

"Whatever you need, Zevran. If I can give you it, it's yours." At least he knows that he can help with healing the physical damage done to the man. Most of it. The rest... The rest might take many more people and quite some time. Some things don't heal easily.

When he can find his voice again, when his breath has steadied enough for words to form against the ragged edge of sobs swallowed down, he thanks him. Softly and endlessly in Antivan, a desperate curl to it that he cannot shake. This is real, Anders is here, and it is over.

All he needs is this. A hand in his hair and a heartbeat under his ear. Someone to remind him that he is not on the hook.

It takes some time for him to wind his way down to a half doze and even then, the grip he has on Anders' robs is tight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ CLOSED ] THE ANTIVAN CROWS SEND THEIR REGARDS

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject