faderift | (closed) arm your fears like soldiers and slay them

Entry tags:

(closed) arm your fears like soldiers and slay them

WHO: Zevran & Alistair.
WHAT: Fight fight fight.
WHEN: 20ish Guardian.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: Mentions of suicidial ideation, self-harm, alcohol abuse, torture, etc., all very likely. And there's like an 80% chance that Alistair is going to cry.

He's lying on the bed when Zevran walks in, but fully clothed, boots and all—because whenever he wakes up in the middle of the night and Zevran still isn't back he winds up out of bed, walking the battlements or the courtyard, not looking for him any more than he's looking for the Old Gods but certainly more open to the idea of coming upon him by accident than he would be to finding them, worrying, humming—

So Alistair lying on the bed with his boots still on and Doghren asleep on his ankles, rhythmically throwing a white runestone into the air above his head, catching it, throwing it again. It's in the air when the latch turns but in his hand by the time the door opens. He closes it in his fist and sits up.

"Hey," he says. He extracts his feet from Doghren's possession without looking away from Zevran, who looks—normal, for the new definition of that. "Where have you been?"

He's aiming for casual, for friendly interest. What have you been up to, that's normal friend stuff, as far as he knows, sans suicide watch. But it doesn't quite work.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's careful to leave Alistair asleep at first. Slip away without jostling him, spend his nights elsewhere, slip in before morning. Eventually he stops caring so much, slips out, stays out till morning, comes back when it suits. That first time there's enough fussing that he stops for a few days but... His trepidation doesn't last long enough for him to stay more than that.

But this? This is new. Cold from the air on the battlements, he pauses in the door. Alistair usually isn't waiting for him.

They don't talk about it. They ignore it- or Zevran tries to and Alistair doesn't do more than look uncomfortable. But today, he asks? "About. Why do you have your boots on?"

"I couldn't sleep," Alistair says, swinging his freed feet down onto the floor so he can face him. "I took a walk." His cheeks aren't pink from the wind coming off the mountains anymore, but his nose still is, where it's turned raw, and the furrowed line between his eyebrows is concerned, reproachful, hurt. "You need to talk to me, Zev."

"The dreams?" Easier to discuss what is wrong in Alistair's head than his own- he cannot use what he would for others to avoid the point with Alistair even if he had it in him to do so. The idea of being intimate with anyone, even as a diversion? He closes the door behind him and locks it, walking to the chair at his desk.

His empty desk.

No traps, no poisons, nothing. Not even a pen knife.

"About?"

Dreams earns a shrug, a noncommittal head-shake: yes, and no, and he won't be diverted. Doghren stands up for a moment at the foot of the bed, where his feet used to be, and blinks her vacant, beady eyes at both of them before turning a circle and lying down with her nose tucked against her back legs.

"About where you've been," he says, "or what you're thinking, or--"

He stands up and moves to sit--a lean, really, he's tall--on the edge of the desk beside Zevran's chair, on his good side, like maybe that will make it more difficult to brush him off.

"I don't know. If you really think all the drinking is going to help. We could talk about that."

Closeness is casual, is comforting- or at least it once was. Now? It is oppressive to have Alisair so close, as much as they live in one another's back pockets, as much as he spends as much time with him against his skin or in his space. He hadn't sat on the bed for a reason and here Alistair is. Settling in where he isn't precisely wanted. Zevran leans away, turning to look up (and he does so hate having to do so) at Alistair.

Bad enough he has to look up when they're sitting.

"I have been out. You tell me I should be out more often." Something he says with excessive regularity. "I am thinking that it is hard to sleep so I might take a walk. And we are not discussing the drinking. It is a glass or two of wine a day, nothing excessive."

Save the bottles of brandy in the stables but- no. Not thinking of those.

"During the day," Alistair mutters--truly mutters, under his breath, disgruntled but not trying to interrupt. Sunlight and fresh air and people, that's what he wants, not a distant, lonely silhouette across the length of the fortress. He flexes his hand to turn the runestone curled in his fist in unseen circles, until he flattens his hand on the desk.

It isn't a slam, but there is a solidly loud, clicky knock of stone on wood.

"Don't lie to me, Zevran. We're past that."

"Are we?" He goes still and quiet, head tipped slightly to the side, eye going cool. "I thought perhaps you'd listen to fiction more than you would the truth, as being honest with you has done nothing thus far."

'how do you feel' 'terrible' 'do you want to go out-' 'no' 'can i help' 'no' 'do you blame me' 'no'- over and over in a hundred tiny ways until he's fit to scream.

Or in this particular instance- lie.

"Nothing... What do you think is going to happen? I'm miserable, Alistair--" His Antivan accent is worse than his Orlesian one, and he isn't meaning to loom over Zevran, he isn't a loomy sort of person, but he does lean forward and that's the practical effect. "--Oh, all right, Zevran, good to know, carry on with that."

"This is not yours to fix, Alistair."That he tries- that he keeps trying has goen past kind and charming, past irritating, past annoying and slipped right into infuriating. This is not his to mend. There is no potion, no cure, no monster to slay. His lips curl in a sneer, voice flattening out like it hasn't for the better par of a decade-

Or. Rather since Alistair last asked to see his eye.

"No amount of talking will change anything."

"I'm not trying to fix anything," Alistair says. That's not a lie. He is, in fact, trying to fix everything, and to stop feeling like he's losing him, and to grasp him by whatever edge he can reach every time he feels like he's being pushed back, which has been going really well so far, thanks for asking--

Whatever. It's a lie. But he's not as good at that as Zevran, transparent, voice straining, so it doesn't count.

"How do you know what's going to change anything? You haven't tried. And something has to--I can't follow you around all the time. I know you don't want me to."

"If we talk you will follow me everywhere and hover more than you do now- and if I have to endure your concern and attempts at putting me back together I may very well scream." He's on the edge of it now, wound tight in his chair, teeth grit behind lips he does not even attempt to twist into a smile.

Angry and showing it. No one else can he truly let this slip- much as it is a sigh of trust it is a sign of strain. "You cannot fix this. Stop trying."

All glaring, unmoved self-righteousness, certain he's saying the right thing and Zevran just hasn't fully understood it yet, Alistair says, "No."

I'm going to talk and you're going to listen. Cousland never pushed him that far, before that last unexpected shove straight over the edge, but he has it in him. He trotted the same tone out for Clarel, furious and hurt that she would drag them all so low—and now, smarting over endure your concern.

"No one expects you to be all right overnight. I don't. But I'm not going to stand by while you wallow and make it worse. You're better than that, Zevran."

Edited (less monologuing) 2016-02-17 18:30 (UTC)

"Wallow? Wallow. I am wallowing now, am I?" Now the teeth, now the smile, tucking the sharper shards away from the surface and coiling them all in his voice. Still angry, oh yes, on the edge of furious while he smiles upward at Alistair sweetly.

"I suppose if you were hung on a hook and had everything you know of what they do done to you and some new exciting changes added on top of that as well you wouldn't take time to find your feet at all. No, You'd be smiling kindly for your Wardens, cracking horrible jokes and make it all better over a platter of cheese. How terrible of me to not be able to step up and manage the same." How awful. How positively selfish of him to take his time piecing his mind back together.

Maybe Alistair is quick-witted, but only in a reckless way, shooting off at the mouth the same way he rushes into fights, heedless of hazards, sometimes pathologically incapable of not arguing and sassing his way into indefensible positions, where the only thing that saves him (usually, with people he doesn't love) is how little he actually cares about winning anything if he gets to make someone sputter indignantly in the meantime—there's a reason he's never had many friends, and a reason Morrigan and Zevran and Leliana and even Wynne could bat him around like mousers with prey.

The point is: he sees the smile. He hears the metallic glint underneath it. But he doesn't have even the bare modicum of self-preservation that would warn him to shut him the fuck up.

"That's not what I said." It might be what he said. He can't actually remember. "I don't expect you to be fine. If that happened to me I would already be dead. But you're not, and you're going to find your footing staying inside all day, or drinking, or hiding your face from everyone."

"So I should bare my scars to the world for all of Skyhold to admire, regardless on my feelings on the matter? My body is no longer my own to mind, bare, or hide as I wish?" Years, decades of his body bandied about as trade for pride or sentiment or survival, of his skin being for everyone and anyone aside from himself. Not much may have changed in how he copes this past decade but that? That has.

His skin is his own. How dare Alistair suggest otherwise.

"No, you do expect me to be fine. You expect me to smile, to joke, to feel safe. 'You're here, Zevran, we are watching over you, Zevran-'" Voice thick in Fereldan tones and drowning in mockery, he continues. "I was here, I was safe when they took me. You were watching when they took me. And that did not stop them. So I drink. So I have days I spend inside. So I hide my blind eye. What do you know of recovering after such a loss?"

"Nothing," Alistair says, quick and flippant, to get that line of argument out of the way, "and I don't expect that. Stop saying I do. Wanting you to get better and expecting you to be better aren't the same thing." He doesn't stand up from his lean against the desk; he does check that Doghren is still sleeping and not on the verge of walking over the edge of the bed, which is a good enough reason to stop looking at Zevran while his guilt (he was watching when they took him) struggles to share a little of his focus with his irritation. "And I don't—Maker, Zevran, you won't even show me. I don't care what you look like, and I wouldn't care if you wore a sack over your head, if it was really what you wanted—" Because his isn't, obviously, let him tell him all about what he wants. "—and not shame or embarrassment or whatever your problem is."

"So now you know better than I what I actually want?" Oh this is perfect. This is precious. This winds out a sharp crackle of laughter that's faintly incredulous. All that tension in his shoulders, the lock of his jaw goes smooth and still with the certainty of a man who has found his target and made the choice to hit it.

The question isn't even how hard to strike- it is how many.

"Want me better all you like but want me better from a distance. What do you know of shame? What do you know of embarrassment? Alistair you do not care about how anyone thinks of you or how you present yourself- and not even in a manner that speaks of having conviction. You have no pride to wound, no ego worth crushing, you do not even have the spine to step forward and lead as is your due, as is your duty, far more content to nudge someone, anyone ahead of yourself and sit back on your laurels and whine at the rest of us." He spreads his hands, loose and languid and easy, gesturing to himself from toe tip to ear tip. "This may be the price I pay for a decade's worth of calculated slaughter but at least I have done something with my time."

"Stop it," Alistair says, offhand, impatient; there are always those few seconds of uncomprehending numbness when an unexpected arrow embeds. The moment before the blood blossoms when you think, surely not. "This isn't about--"

Now the comprehension. His voice catches, his face changes, he shifts back in something that is only saved from being a wounded recoil by its subtlety, the desk behind him keeping him from going far. But he keeps his head enough to tick off points: Zevran has been through a lot, and Zevran is lashing out, and Zevran doesn't mean it. He's convinced enough to go on steadily, if more quietly than before.

"This isn't about me."

"Isn't it? I am recovering. It is not clean, it is not pretty, it is not quick. And because it is none of these things you hover, you pick, you pester, I have told you time and again to give me space, to quit asking, to leave me be. But nothing I do or say, no step forward that I take is enough for you. Even Jonas knew when to leave well enough alone." Often. More often than not, truly.

And there it is. The second most damning name, the second most grievous injury he could craft- and he has no intention of leaving it like this.

After all. Leaving Alistair to bleed out slowly over the next few days would be cruel. "This is not about me. It is about you wanting someone who died on that hook back. This is about you refusing to understand or even spare a thought as to why trying to tell me what is best for me might not be the wisest course of action. Even when he had all rights to do so, Cousland never assumed to know my mind or make my choices for me."

Later--sulking in the Emprise, or following Nathaniel across Orlais--it's died on that hook that will linger and keep him awake. Zevran is closer to his heart now than Cousland ever was. But Cousland is his perpetual open wound, an accessible strip of of exposed nerves: he hates him, he loves him, he misses him, he's going to shove him into a ravine if he ever sees him again, and he wishes he were here, now, to handle this as deftly as he handled everything else.

The runestone is still pressed between his palm and the desk.

"Jonas isn't here," he says. His voice is sticky, and his grip on his composure is slipping but still in place. "If you want me to leave, Zevran, that's all you have to say."

He scents blood on the wind, now. It is a cheap shot to make, a soft place near the spine that Alistair has never quite managed to get over. It is as raw and rancid as Zevran's own wounds concerning Taliesin. Concerning Rinna. But Alistair has never learned to go for the weakest point, to grind in salt and venom and acid while smiling sweetly to have the upper hand. He is tired. He wants the space he's been asking for. He wants Alistair to walk away and mean it and simply leaving it at Jonas; twisting the knife already in him will not be enough.

Voice thick and struggling to hold and on the edge of running, Zevran knows this. Sees it for the bent knee and exposed throat that it is-

The time has come to make that final cut.

"Clearly it is not, else you would have walked away days ago. No, Alistair, you do not walk away; you wait until everyone else leaves you for someone better. Maric did not wait for you to be born to do so, Eamon had a son and a wife, Teagan might have had the same one day, Duncan, well. Duncan chose his king and fulfilled his duty, did he not?" In death, sacrifice. "Even Jonas. Though can we really blame him when at least Loghain and Anora had the conviction to do something with their lives?"

Alistair doesn't have Zevran's instincts for going still when threatened, his curious anti-flinch, but he goes still anyway, somewhere around a son and a wife, caught mid-inhale, because the knot forming in his throat hurts too much to move. Zevran has been through a lot, Zevran is lashing out, Zevran died on that hook--

"All right."

It's mostly air, and it's most of the air he has left, leaving his chest emptied out and smaller. His eyes are pricking, and he knows a breath is going to stutter and catch, so he stands up and and crosses the room.

He doesn't own much but his armor, half hanging from and half scattered around a makeshift stand, and he doesn't bother with that. He can't wear it out anyway. Everything else fits in one bag, and he makes quick work of it, crouched on the floor to scoop and shove. His breathing is uneven but quiet. He only swipes his face with his shoulder once before he stands back up.

Doghren is still asleep, now stretched out on her back with all four paws in the air. Alistair still isn't keeping her forever, still doesn't like her, still doesn't want a dog--but he drops his bag back on the ground to sit on the edge of the bed and touch her belly, gently, like he's waking up a baby. "Hey," he says, to her.

There is, as ever, the vicious curl of pride in his stomach at a point well made, an argument won. Nevermind that he's turned his venom and blades on Alistair, his brother- nevermind that he will regret this later when the room is cold and empty and silent. Nevermind that he does not actually blame him for anything other than being overbearing in his concern. Crows fight to kill. And while he may no longer be a Crow- such things are not forgotten easily.

Alistair yields. Packs. And Zevran settles back in his chair as though he isn't bothered. He isn't. He won. This is what victory tastes like, bitter and tinged with copper from where he'd bitten through the side of his cheek.

For a visceral moment he recalls another person he loved on their knees, eyes wet, vicious words he'd spat- it passes. No one is dying here.

Then Alistair pauses for the dog and- that cannot be what forces him to stay. The dog. The pity case, he charity case. Biting and frustrated he snaps, as weary of the smelly beast as he is of Alistair. Was that cut not enough? Must he twist the blade. Lies, the rest, lies the first through grit teeth as he does reach up to tug at the bandage over his bad eye. "Take your other mistake with you."

Should Alistair wonder at the first, well. Zevran tugs the bandage free, blinking his scarred eye against air he should be able to see, but cannot. Vivid with blood and shiny from healing the scars curve up along his cheek, over his brow, his copper eye obscured by pale, milky white. "I tire of being reminded of your worst by it attempting to tug the bandage free."

Doghren wakes up with a four-legged stretch and a squeak, oblivious and incongruous to the scene she's emerging from the dog-Fade to find: Alistair sniffing loudly, only barely keeping his eyes from spilling over again, and Zevran--

His eye isn't shocking. Not really. Alistair imagined worse, the way he was hiding it, and imagined what he would say: I think it's sexy was the front runner, with an accompanying eyebrow thing. He opens his mouth to try to give that a shot, despite everything, but his bottom lip trembles and both eyes spill over with hot, heavy tears. He's thirty-one years old; he'll be horrified at himself later. Lip trembling, honestly. But right now there's no room for that. Even with both hands free, he doesn't wipe his face.

After a moment he says, "I'm sorry," instead, quiet enough he could be talking to himself. He scoops up Doghren with one arm and his bag with the other, stands up, shuffles things around so he can belatedly drag his shirt sleeve over his face--because he's leaving, he's going, he's walking out, and he doesn't want anyone to ask.

Zevran sits back to watch. The dog, the Warden, the spill of tears.

The guilt.

Experienced as he is with hardening his heart to such things keeping his face impassive takes little work. He won. That had been the point, earning a little space at whatever cost, caring little for the consequences. He is drowning in this room, let Alistair bear a cut or two.

He says nothing. Watches Alistair slink away and takes it as a boon. That he could breathe again, that he might sleep without fear of having his eye uncovered, without being disturbed by concern or the odd bear hug in the middle of then night. This is what he wanted.

Isn't it?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(closed) arm your fears like soldiers and slay them

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject