sixthiterationlogs | One | Fate Emptied of Hope

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One | Fate Emptied of Hope

WHO: Alistair Theirin
WHERE: Fountain Square/Inn
WHEN: Dec 27, Evening
OPEN TO: One at the fountain (Claimed by Zev), OTA at the Inn, per usual.
WARNINGS: None - will edit if any occur.

'Cross Veil and into the valley of dreams:

"Very funny," came the voice from near the fountain. Dripping wet and cold, Alistair looked challengingly up at the sky, arms held out to either side. "But I don't know how you thought I'd fall for this! This isn't Redcliffe," he called. "And it's definitely not Denerim or Kirkwall or Wycome. It's not any of those tiny towns in Orlais. I've never seen this place before, so it's not my memory, cheater!"

Bending down, he picked up the first thing he saw - oh, a rock, that'll help - and threw it upward, not really noticing where it went. He heard it fall on the ground somewhere, but that was neither here nor there. It was proof he'd thrown it the wrong way, if anything.

"I don't trust you, Nightmare!" More agitated, he started to look for another rock. Another anything. "Or is this some Despair Demon's work? Encroaching on your territory now that you lost the Inquisitor? Well tough luck to you both - I'm not afraid anymore, and there's nothing left for me to Despair over. I might be the Maker's own idiot, but I'm not going to trust this illusion!"

Where had his sword gone. His shield, his armour. Which direction was the damned Nightmare?! He couldn't fight the damned thing if he couldn't see it, and he couldn't see it. Anywhere. Whatever Demon it was fueling this illusion, it was better than any he'd fought through yet, and he didn't want to think about what that meant.

In ignorance stumbling:

There was a good fire burning, and that was nice. Really, the place was nicer than roughly every other inn he'd ever seen, including the Hanged Man -- Well, honestly, it far surpassed the Hanged Man, the Pearl, definitely the Spoiled Princess. Places with names he couldn't remember because all he'd been concerned about was finding the bottom of his mug and then having another.

No such luck here, not that he minded. He'd had years to leave that particular vice behind, not that it had been a kind one while he'd had it. But at least now he was warm, dry, and, though confused, knew a few things for certain: There was food, there was shelter, and there was a chance - at least something of a chance - that this wasn't the Fade.

As he stood by the fire, pleasantly toasting himself, he realised he had a lot to think about. And that thought made his head hurt. Nose wrinkled, Alistair rubbed at his temples, muttering a quiet, "Ow."

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"I have had worse." He allowed the touch, letting Alistair look his fill. "Yes, yes, but I wish to set my things somewhere there are fewer people. There is a home, unused, not far from here. We shall claim it as our own and then I shall take you to the Inn for food."

He must be ravenous.

"Why in Andraste's name were you on the run from the Wardens?" Zevran dusted himself off, looping one hand about Alistair's wrist to lead him much as he might a child. It was not at all for the sense of comfort that having something, at last, familiar nearby. Not at all.

His wrist was taken. He blinked. And then he was following along, because apparently that was what was happening now. "I, um. I found out about a talking Darkspawn magister thing. Called Corypheus. Kept in a prison for a few hundred years? And I had to wonder why he was imprisoned instead of killed, and then I kind of figured that he must have some kind of Archdemon power. And it turns out that... well. He got loose.

"And he blew up the Divine.

"And Haven.

"And the Wardens helped him."

"...you have got to be shitting me. We just saved Thedas from a Blight. In thirteen years an archdemon magister decides to blow up the world? Did we not endure enough?" Did they not bleed to protect the people? Did it not matter that they put their lives on the line to prevent exactly this?

And the Wardens helped such a thing come to pass?

"Wine. We need wine. I refuse to hear this tale sober." Luckily enough one of his bags had a few bottles yet.

"The whole time I was in the Fade, I got to hear exactly what Thedas thinks of the Wardens," he said then, quieter. "Archaic. Unneeded. Unwanted. They wanted us -- them. They wanted them disbanded, done away with. And I..."

He took a breath. "If it weren't for the fact that there are at least two other Archdemons waiting to rise, I'd agree. Because I think the First Warden is in on something he doesn't need to be."

"It is a thankless, ugly task. It is a duty that cannot be foresworn." He remembered well enough the talks, the tales. The rules and secrets granted, given freely as there were so few left yet to know them. "People grow comfortable in times of peace. Soft and fat, and they forget those that died to see them made safe."

Blood shed was forgotten, suffering shuffled off. It did not make for good theater, what did they care? "The Wardens are needed. They will always be needed."

"Not if the First Warden is doing what I think," he sighed. "See, the Wardens that helped Corypheus... Even before they were enthralled by him - twice over, blood magic and Blight magic - Clarel agreed to meet with the damned thing's Tevinter helper. Corypheus had started a false Calling, so all of the Wardens in Orlais and Ferelden and some of the Free Marches thought they were being called to die. Erimond offered to bind them to demons and let them take a demon army into the Deep Roads to wipe out all the Darkspawn before the Calling took them. It required a huge amount of blood ritual. And Clarel was the Warden Commander of all Orlais."

He was sure Zevran could make the connection he had. Zevran was canny like that. He had more practice with intrigue than Alistair ever had, and the idea of a Warden Commander doing that big of a blood ritual without the First Warden knowing, even up in Weisshaupt? It was impossible.

"...I had wondered that myself, once. Why the Wardens would not gather up forces enough to push and find the last of the darkspawn, destroy the taint. But after seeing the deep roads myself..." So many bodies. So much blood. Assassins were made for death, certainly- but Zevran was not made for the war Alistair had to wage. For piles upon piles of corpses, for fetid blood cloying thick, for splinters of bone and brain in his hair.

How it was they waded through so much carnage and came out the otherside mostly unmarred, he never knew. But he thanked The Maker every day for his fortune.

"It would be madness to attempt it. Either the First Warden knew and condoned the action- or he did not know and there was greater intrigue in the Anderfels." As it was a mystery all it's own more often than not? Zevran couldn't say. Uncharacteristically somber he slowed, voice soft. "...the more I hear from you, Dorian, Hawke and the Bull, the more I wonder if what we managed had any point whatsoever."

"Well," he said quietly, pulling himself up even with Zevran with a few jogging steps. "Ferelden was mostly recovered when I went through it. The land around Lothering was starting to grow back around the edges. A few people even tried to make a go of it.

"Redcliffe Village was lost, though. They walled it off and built a new one - a better one, honestly, just to the side. Crestwood was flooded, but the Inquisitor un-flooded it and now they can really start to recover. And Urthemiel was killed. That leaves two. ...Or three, depending on who you ask. Two more Archdemons for sure. So it's at least one less, no matter what."

"And the lives we saved? The contracts we enforced? What of the children in the tower? The Dalish and those cured of their Lupine curse?" If that had happened differently- he did not wish to hear it.

No, that would be a lie. He wanted to know how their paths diverged. What changed. What was done that couldn't be undone but- perhaps he could tell Alistair of a kinder variation of their victorious war. "What of you? Lost in the fade- why would you face a demon so large on your own? What would you hope to achieve, you are but one man with a shield and sword and you never mind your right flank."

"She... killed the mages," he said quietly. "She couldn't be sure which were abominations and which weren't. The werewolves were killed, too. I... I was in the Fade because I had to distract the demon to give the others time to pass. There were six of us. This way, the world only lost one, and I..."

Alistair sighed, his feet dragging to a stop. "I'd... been hearing the Calling for so long. Even knowing it wasn't real, I was ready for it to be over. And the Wardens started it all, imprisoning Corypheus, helping him blow up the Divine... It was fitting that a Warden help end it."

"She...there were children among their number." Frightened children. Zevran was no stranger to such things- he's slaughtered man, woman, child, babe in the cradle and in a mother's arms as a Crow but... they were meant to be better than the Crows, their merry band. Not pure and good and just, no, that was expecting too much. But noble enough to see something done and done well.

To avoid pointless slaughter.

Zevran paused again, bags dropped, forgotten as he turned to face Alistair. To reach out to him, up to cradle his face between his palms, thumb smoothing along the bruised skin under his eyes. "Alistair-"

The calling. A song that was beautiful and terrible, a song that caused nightmares. If only he could, perhaps, share his world, his life with Alistair. The year that changed so much for him- and in that moment something caught hold of Zevran. Settled in his blood and his hands, a twisting warmth that radiated from the back of his skull and pulled memory from his mind to play through as though it were an Antivan Opera.

Their meeting, the ambush, the clemency. Jonas handsome and charming and very uninterested, Alistair wary and petulant and suspicious until he wasn't. The tower and it's terrible choice made less, Connor's rescue, Wynne's assistance and meddling, the wolves, the dwarves, the Deep roads and splash of acid Alistair bore for him without thought or complaint. Meeting with Taliesin, saving Anora, the Landsmeet, the battle, Loghain's execution- the victory atop Fort Drakon. All of it- from his mind to Alistair's.

But in return what he got was an angry Dwarven princess, favoured heir to the throne, seemingly emotionless as she made one cutting decision after another. There is no way to be sure, she'd said in Kinloch. He's an abomination, she'd echoed in Redcliffe. Death followed her, treaties answered to the letter, and none could say that she wasn't a cunning commander. But there in the Landsmeet, she had conscripted Loghain and called Alistair a child for being hurt by her gesture, had turned her back, and he had left the country that had been one of a faint few loyalties he'd held dear.

It left Alistair's face wet with tears, his strength leaving him in favour of falling to his knees. Maker but he wished what he'd seen had been real. The good Warden striding forward, finding his place before the people, saving the innocent instead of cutting losses...

"Maker damn it all," he half-sobbed, throat tight on the words.

It left him cold in a way the winter couldn't manage. A chill in his bones that came from snow and ice- that was one thing. But this? It leeched the heat from his blood, from his gut. Settled like bile on the back of his tongue as he saw- and saw, and saw. A woman not so very unlike Taliesin holding his leash.

Someone that was more calculating than considerate. Someone that found her comfort in a boy and ruined him because she no longer had use for him.

Someone he would have slit the throat of without batting an eye, whereas at the end of the journey with Jonas? He would never. His hands remained on Alistair as he dropped to the ground, tears against his fingertips that had twins on his cheeks. He was an assassin, assassins did not weep. But the grief in Alistair- anyone else and he would not know what to do. How to handle this somber twist of emotion- but it was Alistair. Nevermind their worlds were different, their wardens and paths so strange. He was still the boy he'd followed and teased, the boy he'd fought to protect, the boy that protected him just as well.

He wrapped his arms about Alistair's shoulders and held him close, burying his own damp face against copper hair that did not smell half as much as dog as he remembered. "It is better here. It is safe."

With his face buried against Zevran's chest, he haltingly admitted, voice heavy with tears, "I'm afraid it's still the Fade. I'm afraid I'll open my eyes and it's going to be Nightmare and... and he'll have both of us." Because Zevran had bled.

Fade illusions didn't bleed. Demons didn't think far enough along to add blood. Not spontaneously, and Zevran bled.

But how would Zevran have gotten into the Fade anyway? He hadn't been at Adamant. He hadn't fallen as the wall crumbled.

Maker, he ached now, from the soul out. Everything he'd not been able to feel for a decade or more was breaking free because of a friend's gesture of kindness. Now he was crumbling like that wall.

"There are no demons here. No darkspawn. No dragons. No magic like we know." He fell into an easy rhythm of murmuring and rocking subtly, clasping Alistair's head under his chin, hand smoothing through the sodden tufts. "There are a great many people that are strange and equally lost, all of them from worlds unlike our own. If this is the Fade? It is a terrible prison. I have found it quite pleasant."

There were no ghosts. Nothing to torment him, nothing to guilt him. No reason for him to be half so afraid even if he remained somewhat wary. "This is real, Alistair. I am real. We are not home. We are not in the fade. We are...somewhere else, somewhere quite odd- and we are freezing. You are gong to catch your death of cold."

He huffed, turning to press his lips in a teasing smack against the side of Alistair's head. "We shall get you warm and dry, I shall prepare you a proper meal and you shall have to concede that this is real. That we are, at long last, impossibly so- safe. And if this is some trick, if this is some illusion and we are both caught by this nightmare? At the very least you shall no longer be facing him alone."

"I hope you never see Nightmare, Zevran," he exhaled, taking that subject and holding it close. It was easier to face. Fresher. A choice, in its way. "It picks through your head and finds your deepest fear. ...Or what it thinks is your deepest fear. Most of what it did for me was blather things that Morrigan already said."

Easier. Oh this was so much easier, talking about Morrigan, grousing about her and her horrible attitude. He took in a breath, and it shook, but as he let it go, it was smooth. "Royal bastard this," he said, "good for nothing that. The usual."

"You remember I was raised among the Crows, yes? There is nothing it could tell me that I have not already heard." They were raised without fear to leave them expendable, and the worst possible thing that could happen, the worst thing he could do? Had already come and gone long before he fell into the company of the Wardens.

He gave Alistair's hair one last smooth stroke, his forehead a soft peck of a kiss before leaning away enough to wipe at Alistair's cheeks. "So. Lies? Lies. Well you are a royal bastard, that much is true, but you'e renounced the throne. Always. You would be a miserable king- not that you would be bad at the job but- it would make you miserable."

It was slow, how he stood - but he did, placed his hands on Zev's shoulders, and then gave him another hug, warm and tight. "Thank you for..."

He'd started it. Now he had to find the words, and the words were... Well.

"...For being kind. It's been a while."

He wiped at his own eyes quickly, casting his gaze about just in case anyone bore witness to the sentiment, the display of affection. As glad as he was for Alistair- the village now held his one vulnerability.

Protecting him would be Zevran's top priority. "Do me a favor and don't mention it. You would ruin my reputation for frivolity if anyone thought me kind."

That was enough to bring a little bit of a smile back to Alistair's face. "Already got your bluff in on them, then. All right, all right, it's a huge imposition, but I'll pretend you're nothing but fluff and nonsense."

He paused.

"In front of people."

"I'm glad we have an understanding." Again, he patted Alistair's cheek, noting the pale cast to his skin, the bruising under his eyes. "Come. You need a proper bath, a good meal, and somewhere to rest for...if you have been hearing the Calling as long as you say? A week."

Or perhaps two.

A low chuckle and Alistair nodded his assent, following along with Zevran wherever it was he'd lead. The blood - accidental though it was - was enough reason for him to believe that the Painted Elf was real. And he'd missed having friends. Reason enough to let Zev do what he wanted. "Sleeping for about a week sounds pretty nice."

"You have more than earned it." He huffed, tucking himself close for the walk. No matter where they were? Alistair would keep him warm at the very least. And Zevran? Would keep him fed and safe as best he was able. Here? It was easier than it might be elsewhere.

Alistair let his arm rest around Zev since he was so close. And it was... It was nice to have contact that didn't involve exchanging money for bread or being pointed which way to go to earn his supper. To just be touched. Treated like a person.

Novel.

Sad that it was novel.

"...Real beds around here, even?" he asked. "I mean, I'm not picky anymore. I'll take a floor and a blanket."

"Real beds. Actual mattresses. The houses have heat and indoor plumbing, baths with heated water." which was a marvelous indulgence he has taken advantage of more than once. It didn't take long for him to decide on a house- somewhere warm, somewhere with room enough for them to secret themselves away, and perhaps start making room for his 'businesses' such as they were. "A kitchen with a wood burning stove and an ice box. Such luxury is unheard of outside of the manors of merchant princes in Antiva."

One | Fate Emptied of Hope

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