faderift | Did I go at it wrong? Did I go intentionally to destroy me?

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Did I go at it wrong? Did I go intentionally to destroy me?

WHO: Zevran and You
WHAT: Zevran back at Skyhold, Recovering
WHEN: Mid to late guardian, covering a span of time
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: CW/TW FOR: Mentions of torture, withdrawal, suicidal ideation, swearing, self loathing, etc. Shit gets dark. This log is also for characters not on the rescue long. Locked thread below will be done on first come, first serve.

[ His Quarters ]

Good day

Sometimes it's good. He's tired from the trip, tired from the ordeal- but he'll see people. Play cards, answer questions- as many as he can stand. Nothing about the side of his face he has hidden under a bandage, nothing about what was done to him- but he'll describe Antiva. Mention how gallant and ridiculously awesome his rescuers were. Share coffee or brandy or whatever he has on hand- and make light. He tires easily early on in his recovery, but later? He might converse for an hour or so before needing a break. Alistair sees most people in and out as needed.

Bad day

Early on he spends more time alone, quiet and isolated, Alistair a silent, stoic wall between him and the world. Notes will be passed along as well wishes- but he'll only see the most demanding and even then? He'll be listless. Snappish. Frustrated that they forced their way and company upon him when he would rather be left in peace.

[ Stables ]

Good day

A target on the far wall and a dagger in his hands, he's attempting to learn to compensate for the eye- under a leather patch now that neatly hides both the eye and his new scars, and talking a small group of strange new students as they work on...carving toys. Or sketching one another. Or working on a lute- a difference from the lessons he'd been giving before. But they do as they're told and laze about while he works on the throwing, or while he walks them through a particular shading technique, curl of the knife, or chord. Even when they're dismissed he continues with the throwing, aim slowly circling about to something better.

Bad day

When his patience with himself is at it's limit, when he's climbing the walls for want to get away from Alistair's oppressive hovering, when he cannot bear to even teach, he hides in the rafters of the stable. More likely than not there is a bottle of wine or brandy or something stronger still hanging from his fingers, head tipped into the shadows as he drums his fingers against his chest. Until Alistair or Beleth hunt him down, he means to remain there, high above where most people don't think to look.

[ Clearing Outside of Skyhold ]

Later in his recovery, when the worst of it is settled, no matter his temperament he is out running drills with those same students, agility drills, knife drills, a highly acrobatic and complicated looking game of tag or one of the most terrifying rounds of hide and seek possible while he lounges under a tree, calling out corrections or instructions. A bottle of wine, a basket of bread and dried sausages. When his mood is poor and his patience low he runs with them, pushing himself to the point of surly exhaustion. When it is high he sits and drinks and sketches out various shapes of armor, tools- things they may need.

[ Battlements - Locked to Bruce, Sabine, Martel, Mia, and Nahariel ]

On the darkest nights he cannot sleep. Not for all the wine in skyhold, not for all the sleeping spells and draughts available. To close his eyes is to see the fade- to be back on that hook, back in that cell with the blood and whispering. The Shades. He's back with the choice- the knife in his hand and the order in his ear. Wakes to find Alistair, so quiet so trusting. It would take nothing. When the weight of this is too much he walks up, out, finds himself a perch, sitting on the edge of the battlements, peering down at the rocks below. All he has to do is lean. All he needs to do is let go. It would be so very easy to let go, to be done. Maker above, he wants to. Even when he has found it in himself to take a step back, to return to bed; another night might have him back on the battlements once again, considering the drop.

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How haunted he looks. He is but a pale shadow of that laughing elf from the tavern. Whatever was done to him has cut deeper than flesh, and she cannot help but feel anger, fury for those who did this to him. The world is content to crush the lot of them, body and spirit, is it not enough? Do they have to play favorites now?

That hard look of hers softens, something working in her throat she can't quite swallow past. "I'm not sure we see things quite the same," she murmurs, arms wrapping a little tighter around herself.

"You may have to point out to me what we're meant to be looking at."

The stones, he might say, or the snow that drifts under his feet between. Imagining the fall, how he'd be weightless until he was nothing. He could be honest.

Or he could lie.

"...The mountains." It is easy enough for him to gesture out to the inky blackness beyond, the snow and the dark and the stars. "Best seen from a distance. You never see a mountain when you are on one."

Mia casts her eyes towards the distant ridges that even now stretch up to reach the darkness, twinkling stars like jewels set into black velvet. How very atmospheric. But it wasn't their beauty he was seeing.

Her hand, which had begun to tremble slightly, took tighter hold of her boots to steady their grip. "True. I lived in the mountains until I was well past childhood, and yet I remember only hills and flowers, trees and ponds. I suppose things look very different when you are mired in the midst of them."

It's skirting the issue, something she's never liked. She doesn't know how to be delicate, but he seems so fragile just now. Frightening. As though she could touch him and he'd simply fall away, disappear into the dark.

Her gut clenches unexpectedly at the thought.

"Much like being unable to see the forest for the trees." He turns back to stare at the void, a gust of wind whipping his hair about his shoulders and bearing him forward- not enough to tip over but enough that his current grip against the ledge is not enough to keep him from listing. But it is enough to keep him from falling.

There is a moment, when he's tipped that far forward where his heart thunders in his throat and he thinks, perhaps, he should let go.

It passes. Just as it always does, it passes and he leans back- sagging, even, against the cold stone. Waiting for the wind to make the call his hands cannot.

"Zevran..."

It's barely a voice, a whisper, a plea. Don't. Don't do this in front of her, don't throw his life away. Whatever's happened, it cannot be enough to destroy him so utterly.

It's impulse, the way her hand reaches, then stays just behind him, and finally falls away when he leans back again. She lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Tongue sweeping briefly over her lips, she tries again, this time her voice louder. Earnest.

"Why. Why this? Will you tell me that?"

"Alistair removed all my daggers and poisons from the room." It isn't a kind answer- but it is an honest one. He hadn't thought of doing this to himself at all but making it more of an effort? Has kept him from drinking something he shouldn't or digging a dagger in just to watch himself bleed.

"So I come here. I climb. I consider." More than once- and more afterward most likely.

She'll take honesty over kindness any day, even when the truth is horrifying. Heart-breaking. The words dig but it's not her pain that matters in this moment, and her eyes stay fixed on him where he rests, so perilously close to having no choice at all.

"You consider throwing yourself to the wind and letting that be that."

The wind stings her eyes, but she is focused on him. Intent. Something prickles at the inside of her skin and her fingers close into fists again.

"Yes." He's tired. Is he not allowed to be tired? To be done? To want to put this down and worry no longer? The crows he'd taken in- they knew what to do if he did not check in with them one morning. Pack and flee to Rivain. He'd left them coin and supplies enough, hidden away for his own use should he wish to leave. Someone might as well make use of it.

"And what becomes of Alistair? Your friends? Those who risked life and limb to bring you back to us?"

The horror is slipping away, replaced with something like anger. But that's not right. It burns, it hurts, flickers like an ember in her chest from some old forgotten flame, but she holds it fast. She keeps her voice steady.

"Do you know what it is to struggle to keep someone alive, to hold them fast so they don't slip away, and lose them anyway? That is a void that can never close, never be filled, never heal."

She swallows at the thickness in her throat, taking another step closer. "You could condemn them to that? All of them?"

"I told him to not." A decade ago, to be certain, but the lesson should have held. "He knew what they would do. He knew what he would find."

A shell. A hollow, empty thing that wasn't him. He could paste on smiles as well as the next one till his lips cracked and bled but it did not make any of this better. It did not seal over the wounds, it did not give him his eye back. It did not end the pain roiling in his bones.

"No, I do not. Every time I killed someone I loved it was over with quickly." Killed, not lost, and he had in some way loved Taliesin. Loved Rinna differently. Like a limb, like the aching place where his heart ought to be and has never quite been filled since. "Lingering another day keeps the cut from being clean. That is the first rule as an assassin. You make the kill clean."

This would be qiuck, this would be clean. It'd hurt for a week- a month, and they would move on. They have a world yet to save.

She stares at him as he speaks, her face inscrutable. He's committed to this, to this path of self-destruction. Drowning in his pain and misery and so desperate for an end to it that he's actually considering this a good end, and it's...

Selfish. That's what it is. And he is more than that.

The boots tumble from her grasp as she reaches out, grabs the loose fabric at the back of Zevran's borrowed shirt, winding her fingers in a vice-like grip, before yanking him back from the edge with all the strength she can muster.

"Don't be such a fool." The words slip free, trembling on her lips, her eyes near black with that rising heat. "I took you for better than that. Don't you make a fool of me, too."

The only warning he is given is the sound of her boots striking the flagstones and even then, he does not think to turn. She is likely putting on her shoes to walk away and be done of this foolishness-

And then there are hands in his shirt-

A sharp, sudden yank putting an uncomfortable pressure against his throat and chest-

Tangled and flailing as he falls backward, skidding along stone to end up against her, heels barely hanging over the edge-

"I- what?"

Good. Something has struck up against that wall, and if it takes shaking sense into him for that wall to start to fracture, she'll bloody well do it. Delicacy is not for her, not with so much on the line. Even one life is worth more than that. Perhaps he's never understood that, as an assassin.

But no. She's seen loss haunt his eyes once before. He has to know, even if he refuses to say as much.

Mia's jaw tightens. "There is no such thing as a clean death. It is an infection. It will set root and grow long after, and it will mark everyone you have ever met. Anyone who has ever cared for you. They will wonder for the rest of their lives what they could have done to keep you from it, what could have been done or said to stop you from this mad course."

She cannot pretend it is the sting of the bitter wind that sweeps across the battlements bringing that blur to the corner of her eyes, but she is not done. A breath is drawn to steady herself, to press on, and her hands tighten their hold.

"It comes to this. They accept that this was your choice, that there was nothing they could have done, and they will feel the helplessness of that echo the rest of their lives. Or they will never accept it, always believe there could have been something, and they failed to find it. It is worse than death. Do not lie to yourself, and do not lie to me, by claiming it as some kind of mercy!"

This is something he hasn't expected- words or yelling, yes. Being dragged away from the edge, left half hanging off in her grip? If he sat here he'd slip out of his shirt-

Actually no.

He does slip out of his shirt (this is what he gets for stealing Alistair's rather than his own) and falls to her feet with a grunt, sans shirt, blinking up at her from the flagstones. Her frustrations, her fury rain down upon him and perhaps he had not thought this through. Or- he had but it circled back around to the fact that at the core- he is a selfish creature. He'd rather be done than worry about everyone else's feelings on the matter. Putting that much thought into anything? It's exhausting. He does not know how anyone can do it, let alone do it, mind themselves, and continue existing. As he told Wynne once forever ago- he simply would not have the time to live and feel guilty.

Or in this case, care and live.

"...If you wished to see me shirtless, Mia, you only needed to ask."

That- diverting things like that- it's safer than addressing anything she's said. If he can fluster her, perhaps she'll forget long enough for him to run.

"Oh, don't you start."

Her eyes flash, and before he can scurry away she's dropping her knees on the stone, her thick skirts piling around her. Then, after a moment of debate, she reaches up to unfasten the front of her fur-lined cloak and tugs it away, moving to drape it around his thin shoulders.

Perhaps some would have taken the opportunity to oggle. Even with scars, he was still a ridiculously beautiful elf. But all she could see was how sorely he needed to realize that he was of worth, that he would be missed, and perhaps consider that this pain too could pass in time.

"And you're not allowed to leap to your doom with my cloak, before you get any more idiotic ideas," she adds, her lips thinning.

Edited 2016-02-10 16:51 (UTC)

"I-" Am not starting, he's feeling. He's not trying to run to the ledge but away from her and her sentiment and now there was a cloak about him and he-

He did not know what one does in this situation. Usually when a Crow wished to die it did not take much effort to see it done. In the past ten years- he had darker days. Rougher nights. Never to this pitch and even then. Even in the last moment when he had been so determined it ended with him in the dirt, blood in his mouth, staring up at his savior.

Given purpose again.

Here and now it is the cold flagstones, heart in his throat knotted around black, bitter pain and sentiment he has no words for- looking up at one of the singularly most compassionate people he has ever known. That wastes it on him and does not think such a thing wasteful. "I- I would never. It is ingallant to steal a Lady's cloak."

"Ingallant." There's a strained noise that could be a laugh. "Maker forbid."

That compassion comes with a fury, entangled with it and perhaps the source of its strength, in truth. Each subsequent loss in her life has only hardened her resolve to endure, because there has to be a reason. There has to be purpose beyond the pain, no matter how terrible.

Zevran is in an enormous amount of pain, that's clear enough for anyone, but he could endure this. It could even be worth it. And perhaps there's some selfishness there too, on her part, unwilling to watch someone else slip out of her grip. Mia's eyes remain steady on him, and the dampness at the corners becomes embarrassingly apparent. They haven't fallen, so she ignores them instead, taking a steadying breath.

"Don't you leave us. Don't you dare."

Odd. When he'd first swaggered up to her she'd have gladly thought of any reason to send him away, and here she is, fingers still knotted in the thick fabric of that cloak, unwilling to say goodbye just yet.

"...I cannot give you my word in this." He would before in a heartbeat- and it would be a lie. But after this- after being yanked from the void and given her cloak, given the truth of her frustrations and perhaps her sentiment in the tears that have not yet fallen...

Lying would be unworthy. Not that he is ever terribly concerned with being worthy but it is a disservice to them both.

"I cannot-" Breathe. Or see. Or feel, some days, and those are the days when the battlements call is the strongest, when all that is aching and hollow in him no longer aches and his skin is so too numb to the touch. To come into the cold where the wind claws at him till he feels as though he ought to be bleeding. "I cannot promise that."

Better honesty than a comforting lie. Surely he must have had to pretend for enough people as it was. Doing so while feeling so utterly numb was so very, very tiring.

But there were always reasons to, always obligations, weren't there?

Mia blinks twice, very quickly, before giving a jerking sort of nod. She understands, even if the answer twists cold in her stomach. It could still happen, he could still slip away and nothing anyone could say would be enough. Her grip loosens, smoothing over his shoulders.

"...what did they do to you?"

It's less a question to be answered than a quiet, bitter lament. Whatever it was had to be monstrous, to have broken him like this.

"Nothing I would lay at your feet." there are some he might tell- not Alistair, he won't understand, not Mia for she has taken on more than he ever wished to put on her shoulders in this already. He was to be a pleasant diversion to her, a charming associate, someone to tease and play chess with and smile. Not...this.

She did not need this.

He wished to protect her. That was noble, in its way. That or he wished to protect himself, and that she could not have blamed him for either. This was a great deal more than either of them would have expected from the other, before now.

But these troubled times changed people. She'd lived through them once before, and known just how true it was, how much a person could change. Impossible to say what Zevran might have thought of the girl she was back then, and no reason to question it now. What was, was.

"...I was told the Hero of Ferelden passed through our village, once. Long after the Darkspawn took it. A little spit of land called Honnleath." The words felt leaden on her tongue, but necessary. She'd yet to let go. "Do you remember it?"

"..." Of all the things he might have been asked- of everything he could think to discuss while here after being pulled back from the brink- this was not on the list. For a moment he stared at Mia, wide eyed and incredulous before a burble of something helpless and ruinous burst forth, high and raw, snatched away by the wind as fast as he could breathe. Honnleath.

"That- that is the village where we found Shale."

That almost brings a laugh to her lips, though it dies halfway. "Yes. Though if we'd known it was a golem, I doubt many of us would have braved going near it," she admits, the corner of her mouth curling for a moment. She can still picture it standing there in the town square, as she lifted Rosalie in her arms to place flowers about its stone head for the festival.

But her smile fades. "You saw what became of it. We'd heard rumors of Darkspawn in the wilds, but it seemed so far away. The army would turn it, surely. Arl Eamon would send forces to protect us. We never..."

Her voice falters a moment, and she swallows hard.

"We were completely unprepared when they came. Surrounded by friends and family, there at home, we thought we were safe."

"...Does it ever return?" It does not make sense, that he asks, that he thought he deserved to know. Never before had he thought himself truly safe, there'd always been that awareness. That fear. But here-

Here he'd been comfortable. Felt secure. He had assumed he would see the signs. That should the Crows try to take him he would know them for what they were before they could make the attempt- that others would be able to protect him as well. "Feeling...safe. Does that ever return?"

Or is it lost forever?

He'd only just begun to settle into that sentiment- that damnable sensation of belonging. Of having a home.

Lies, reassurances, all seem unworthy even were she inclined towards them. Her lips tighten as she takes a breath, eyes lifting skyward for a moment. The view really is spectacular.

"Not all at once. Some nights are better than others." And some nights every noise feels like a warning, nerves rasping raw and on edge. Slowly her gaze lowers, another deep breath taken. "I've found keeping busy helps. Exhaustion means fewer nights awake to contemplate. But it's gotten better. It never goes away entirely, but..."

A happier prospect might have encouraged him to reconsider, but she can't do that. She almost wishes she could, if that's what it would take to convince him.

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