Archive of Our Own ^beta

It starts like this: a blade to the throat. A baby-faced young Warden, brown hair, blueish eyes, pointing it at him. A red-haired sister with a bow and pursed lips. A tall Qunari, stone-faced. A mage woman, like a pale spider, her beauty enhanced by her anger.

And there, behind them: a failed assassination in the form of a sharp-cheeked young elf, his skin brown and his eyes the curious brown-gold of the earth being hit directly by sunbeams. A staff on his back, his hair a mess. An incurable sort of interest to his eyebrows, his unsmiling mouth, the tilt of his ears. “Who are you, and who sent you after us?”

It starts like this: a sudden desire, once more, to survive.

“My name is Zevran Arainai,” he explains, speaking only to the elf — he is the leader, even if the young Warden doesn’t know it. “I was sent to kill you.”

“You seem to be doing spectacularly,” he observes. His eyes soften further. Zevran detects curiosity, compassion, intellectual interest. He’s worked with worse.

“Oh, yes,” he says. “You seem terribly dead to me.”

“Who sent you?” the taller Warden asks, pressing the blade a bit closer. His eyes are nervous, but not cold. He doesn’t like killing, Zevran thinks, when it’s not a darkspawn — good. Easier that way.

“Loghain,” he says. Watches as they look at each other, the five of them, communicating with glances.

It starts like this: rolling over, his neck bared, his life in their hands; crows squawking in his ears as he flies away and locks himself in a cage, to keep away from the wilderness, to keep from savagery and hidden knives and the memory of Rinna, pecking incessantly at the nape of his neck.

It starts like this: with the young elf reaching out a hand.

Antiva leeches out of his skin day by day, as his skin grows paler, as his fine boots are covered with Ferelden mud. He misses her most, out of anything; misses the scent of leather and the sea, merchants and assassins nodding to each other as they run early morning errands. He misses Taliesen, sometimes distantly, sometimes desperately. The loss of a finger versus the loss of an entire limb. Sometimes he stands in the sun for hours, shifting his position with it, waiting until it sets before letting out a bone-rattling sigh. No matter what he does, his body never warms. He’s doomed to a life in the cold, under the unforgiving shade of trees. All in the name of escape, escape that will never come, not while the Crows still live, not while he does. He knew better than anyone that one does not just fly away. You end, instead. There is no paradise at the end of the path — only destruction. Wherever he goes, the Crows will one day find him. Taliesen is good at what he does.

He sits near the fire and cleans his knives. He sleeps little. He wonders if they will decide to kill him.

Alistair, at least, looks at him like he wants to. Byron Surana never does. He traces the line of Zevran’s ears with his eyes and says nothing, his eyes thoughtful, that curiosity back to the slope of his mouth. Zevran thinks it must be some misguided intellectual’s way of navigating attraction. He can’t imagine it being anything else.

It could be interesting, he thinks, sleeping with him, a means to pleasure, to an end. He thinks that Surana would go about it differently — that curiosity of his would translate well to a bed. Or a bedroll, as it might be. He hums, and raises an eyebrow back.

“What is Antiva like?” Surana asks him one afternoon, when Zevran is following the sun, cleaning his armor, flirting with Wynne to see the angry red in her cheeks. She reminds him of one of the whores who raised him, not because of her conduct but the way she mothers. It makes him uncomfortable. The flirting, at least, is neutral ground — an established and expected part of him that he can peddle out when they need to be reassured that he is not becoming too human. He thinks it will be easier if he is just some tagalong assassin, saved on an ill-advised, sentimental moment from their leader. Friendship is not something he is owed.

“It is large,” Zevran says. “There are — different people know different versions. I am afraid my version is not the kindest. Or the best.” It may actually be the worst. He loves his homeland, he does — but. It is not Ferelden, gentled at the edges by forest and sprawling with dogs. It is not gilded Orlais, either.

“I’m not interested in kind,” Surana tells him. “I’m interested in truth. Tell me?”

“All right,” Zevran says — easy, he tells himself, be easy, don’t give them any reason to kill you.

He tells him about the smell of leather, the salt of the sea. How the sun warmed you from the inside out. He tells him other things, harder things to hear, to see if it will scare him away. He tells him about killing and dethroning and doing wrong. He tells him about the whorehouse, about the Crows, about recruitment. He leaves some things out, but the bones are all there. Surana sits and watches, his curious eyebrows furrowed.

When the tale is told, Wynne has left, and the sun has set.

“Thank you,” Surana says, “for telling me.” He stares into the fire, ever thoughtful. “I hope to see Antiva, someday.”

“Even after all I’ve said? It’s not the best place for a tourist.”

“You love it,” Surana says, ignoring this.

“That does not make it a better place to visit,” Zevran says. “I have affection for many horrible things.”

Surana accepts this with a shrug, and glances towards his staff for a moment. “As do I.”

Later, underground, the air clammy, Surana takes off his cloak and presses it into Zevran’s hands. “Here,” he says.

“My dear Warden,” Zevran says, preparing to make a joke. Surana cuts him off.

“You’re not used to the cold,” he says.

“. . . Ah,” Zevran says, examining the cloak in greater detail. It baffles him. He puts it on. Easy, Zevran, be easy. “Well, thank you. Does it suit me?”

Oghren snorts, and the matter is settled.

Zevran corners him for the first time in Redcliffe, after the dead have been cleared out and the bars re-opened. Their ragged little party is enjoying a meal in the castle, but Surana, odd little bookish thing that he is, has snuck out to speak to a local historian at the tavern. Their conversation is over by the time he arrives, but Surana is staring forward and sipping idly from a mug, as though he had only been waiting for Zevran to walk through the door.

“I thought either you or Alistair would follow me,” Surana says. His mouth curls. “I’m glad it was you. Alistair’s been going on and on about his feelings lately, it’s been driving me mad.”

On the way back to the castle, Zevran crowds him against a tree, and does not say a word about feelings. Surana’s kiss is thorough, intent, curious. His hands wander. Zevran lets them, for a while, and then he pins his wrists above his head, gentle, only barely pressing them against the bark and smiling when Surana softens.

“Come to bed with me,” he offers, and Surana nods, whispers yes against his cheek.

Be easy, he tells his heartbeat, be easy. You can make all of this easy. Easy enough to lead him back to a room, to a bed; easy to kiss him and press him back, easy to do the work, to just make someone else feel good. Somehow sex always ends up like this: a desperate attempt to give. Bodies are bodies, whether they are being stabbed or fucked; all the same, it is nice to see a back arch from something other than pain. Easy to let Surana draw him up by the hair and then the shoulders, to feel fingers run appreciatively over the tattoos on his chest, to kiss him, mouth and neck and shoulder. To be kissed. To let Byron fall from his mouth, to hear Zevran whispered back, a laugh to Byron’s voice, like this is a game, a ball being volleyed back and forth between them. A give and take.

He slips out of bed once Byron sleeps, and in the morning he smiles lasciviously at him over their breakfast, and Byron laughs again, only barely. It shows in his eyes, in the concealed shaking of his body.

Easy, he thinks. But sex is always easy. It’s why he likes it so much.

He thinks, the next morning, of Byron passing him the cloak, nonchalant, well-wishing. You’re not used to the cold.

To care so much, to remember so much. It must be exhausting.

“I don’t know what you want from him—”

“I am getting what I want from him,” Zevran says, spinning a knife on his fingers and peering, vaguely amused, at Leliana. “Most every night, in fact. He does this excellent thing with his mouth—”

“He is still your target,” she interrupts, eyes cold. “One does not leave the Antivan Crows.”

“One has,” Zevran says, and turns back to the fire. “Keep an eye on me if you like, darling, Maker knows you are not the only one doing so.”

“Byron’s eyes are not watchful,” she says. “He looks because he likes to look. At everything.” She sits across from him, her arms folded over her chest, and stares at him some more. Leliana makes very little sense to Zevran, but he knows she has secrets, deeper and more wretched than his. She buries them. His secrets float close to the surface, ready to answer, should anyone ask. No one ever has.

“It is only a little fun,” Zevran says, finally, and raises his eyebrows. “As you have all pointed out, I am weak-willed when it comes to pretty things. Isn’t that enough?”

She keeps looking at him.

“I think we both know a thing or two about leaving,” he tells her. “I assure you, the Crows do not currently have my loyalty.”

Byron laughs, somewhere across camp. Zevran looks over to see him shoving Alistair in the shoulder.

He looks back at Leliana, pursed lips and red hair. “Is that enough?”

“No,” she says, but there is something considering in her eyes, in the sudden softness of her mouth. She leaves without another word, walking towards Morrigan’s fire, and Zevran idly watches her back as she goes.

It had been a while before any of them would turn their backs to him, without another set of eyes nearby. He can only assume that this is progress.

Byron sits next to him before he can think about it more, Alistair narrowing his eyes but continuing on his way.

“It’s late,” Byron says, stretching his legs out, then, “here, I have something for you.”

“A gift?” Byron has laughingly handed him bars of gold or silver before, the way he gives Wynne books and Oghren alcohol. Zevran tucks them away in his pack with the vague idea of trading them for passage, when this is all over and he needs to go on escaping. They make him cheerful, if only because giving him presents implies that Byron might decide against killing him once everything is over.

“Yes, here,” Byron says, and hands him a pair of boots.

When he takes them, he’s hit with the smell of fresh Antivan leather, with the feeling of sunshine on his cheeks, his shoulders. He stares at them for perhaps a beat too long, hands trembling.

“Do you not like them?” Byron says, worried. “The man in Denerim assured me they were Antivan, I thought—”

“No, no,” Zevran assures him, hand on his knee. “They’re very fine, it’s just—”

“Just?”

“I was home for a moment,” he says. “That’s all.”

Byron rarely smiles with his whole face. Usually it’s a twitch of his lips, a devastating gentleness in his eyes. Here, now, though, he beams with what seems like everything in him. “Good,” he says, closes his hand over Zevran’s on his knee. “That’s what I wanted.”

Zevran wears the boots the next morning as they set out for Haven, despite the mud and the high probability of snow once they arrive. Despite everything about Ferelden.

Byron smiles again, full-faced.

Zevran thinks oh, no.

The first thing that the whores told him as a child was that he mustn’t get too attached.

In those days, before the Crows, everyone had assumed he would one day follow in the footsteps of his many parents. There was little else for an elf raised in a house of sin; he could have joined a ship, he supposed, but he always hated the idea of leaving Antiva. So he sat at the feet of the women while they trimmed his hair and listed to them talk about customers, about gentleness where gentleness was needed, about getting out alive. Cia, one of the prettier and gentler of the women who mothered him, would pull him onto her lap even once he got too old for it and tell him darling, you must never love them. Save your love for your family, for your hearth. If you love on the job it will never end well.

He knew love then, sometimes. Was loved, sometimes. By his parents, all of them, when they were not busy or drunk or hungry. Cia would tell him of his mother, Dalish and proud, tan-skinned and pretty. She owed a debt, and he was paying it. It seemed natural as anything else in his world, back then. Natural that a little boy should one day grow to pay the world back for having the gall to be born into it.

When the Crows came for him, her debt was paid, and Cia only looked at him once, impassively, before he was marched away, and he wondered how much she had ever loved him at all.

He remembered what she told him, though. All of it. His mother, Dalish and pretty. The rules: never love on the job.

In the Crows, one was always on the job.

There was no time for love, he told Taliesen, and Taliesen agreed. No need for it.

And there wasn’t.

Until Rinna.

“Darling,” he remembers her telling him, sitting atop a table, beside a map, her right leg crossed over her left and her chin tilted up, like a challenge. “Zevran, you touch everyone but me.”

“Perhaps,” he told her, “I don’t want to mix business and pleasure.”

He had been afraid of her, at first. She blew into his life as willfully as a mid-summer thunderstorm, straight off the ocean. She was six inches shorter than him and carried herself like she was two feet taller. Her eyes were sea-green, her mouth always laughing. Her mind worked faster than half the senior Crows that he’d met. Taliesen slept with her in the first week, and she was the one to go before the morning, leaving him to wander back to the rooms he shared with Zevran with a disgruntled look on his face. They’d repeated the act since.

Zevran knew why he feared her, but he didn’t want to let himself know.

They’d slowly become a three-person unit, the limbs to a body that the Crows had made. Rinna the head, Taliesen the muscle, Zevran the poisoner. The seducer. She made the plans, Taliesen stood guard, and Zevran carried them out.

“You sleep with Taliesen,” she told him, matter of fact. “And in any case, business is pleasure for you, Zev.”

He shrugged. There was no defense to that.

“So why not me?”

“I know when I would be defeated, Rinna,” he told her, and saw her eyebrows raise, the laugh on her mouth fade, at his uncharacteristic seriousness.

She stood, sliding off the table. She took a few steps until she was close to him.

“Perhaps I want to be defeated, too,” she said. Then she kissed him, gentle, kind. One of her fingers was hooked in his collar, and her mouth was on his. Those were the only two places their bodies touched, and every part of him sang with it. Zevran, the seducer, entirely bowed, entirely captivated.

She moved back a step and examined him with those intelligent, sea-green eyes. Like smooth bits of glass on the beach, like a tide pool, a jungle river. He gave up on constructing metaphors. She was so close.

“This is not just business,” she said, as if she needed confirmation.

“No,” he said. “No, it is not.”

That was the closest they ever came to saying it. That moment, right at the beginning, before they fell into bed. When her finger in his collar was the only point of contact he had with her. When everything seemed possible.

Haven is cold and unpleasant. Byron’s dog whines, sticking close to his side; Zevran begs off sleeping in their tent (even with the allure of body heat) and lies close to the fire instead. They never make camp outdoors, just in the caves, but the caves are damp and windy. None of them truly get much sleep.

He wakes after sleeping fitfully one morning to find his head on Byron’s lap instead of on the ground, and a hand working carefully through his hair. He stays still, hoping that if no one notices he is awake, the hand will carry on. He aches for it, tenderness, however undeserved it might be.

“Are you awake?”

He thinks about pretending. He thinks about not moving, turning and smiling up at Byron and saying yes, yes to all of it. He is as afraid of Byron as he was of Rinna.

“Mm,” he says, finally, and sits up, and keeps a careful inch between them. He lets their knees knock together. He stretches his hands out towards the fire. “How many days until we leave this dreadful place?”

“I’m sorry I took you, now,” Byron says, wry. “I knew you hated the cold, but I just—”

“Well, you need something nice to look at in this sea of white,” Zevran said dismissively.

Byron chuckles, and then he is quiet for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about something.”

“Yes?”

“You’re — you’re not a bad assassin, Zevran.”

“Thank you.”

“No, that’s not—” He makes a frustrated noise. “I mean that — when we were in Orzammar, and you and Leliana went to gather information. Alistair and Morrigan kept saying you wouldn’t get much. That you weren’t very good at what you do, that you hadn’t even managed to kill us properly — that sort of thing. And when you both came back, you had different information, but an equal amount.”

Zevran does not look at him. “Your point?”

“You’re not bad at what you do,” Byron repeats. “In fact, you pride yourself on it. So there must have been a reason, that day, that none of us died.”

That hangs in the air between them, for a moment. Then Zevran forces a laugh.

“You were too handsome to kill,” he says.

Byron’s eyes are calm, fixed on Zevran’s face. He can feel them, even if he is not looking back. “Is that all?”

He laughs again. “What more could there be?”

Three months after that kiss, Rinna and Taliesen and Zevran had all gone to bed together, in various combinations. Her laughing mouth was becoming a permanent fixture in his life rather than a maddening dream.

Three months after that kiss, Taliesen found out Rinna had accepted a bribe from their mark, and the two of them cornered her in their rooms. Taliesen drew a knife. Rinna looked him in the eyes, then at Zevran. There were tears running down her cheeks, and she said, “Zevran, please.”

He didn’t move. Betrayal was running through him, sharp. “You put us all in danger. You selfish—”

“I didn’t do it,” she begged. “I love you—”

Taliesen laughed, high and derisive. “You love him? Like that’s worth shit.”

The knife came down as he said it. Zevran took a step forward.

She reached out for him, still bleeding, not even fighting back. “I love you,” she said again. “Please.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” he said. He was so angry in that moment that he couldn’t see. “It is only business.”

The look on her eyes as they turned and left her to die — it was as though he had stabbed her himself.

“Do you regret?” the Guardian asks, its eyes pale grey, blank.

Byron’s hand finds his elbow, his thumb moving back and forth, gently. Zevran wrenches his arm free. Do not give me more of this, he wants to scream, how dare you touch me like I am a person and not a half-dead dog at your doorstep. How dare you feed me and smile when I come back. How dare you care. The things I have done—

The Guardian still looks at him. It does not blink.

“Yes,” Zevran says. It comes out bitter, defiant. “Yes, if that is what you really wish to know. I do. Now move on.”

Regret is too small of a word. It suffices, he supposes.

Three days after her death, they found their target and killed him. They uncovered his source of information.

It was not Rinna.

Zevran ran to the top of the building, to the roof, and tore fabric from the sleeve of his tunic just so he could stuff it into his mouth, gag himself with it. So he could scream, and scream, and scream.

The hard ground below seemed, suddenly, terribly inviting.

His throat was hoarse, almost worn to nothing, when he collapsed against the wall and looked up at the sky and said “I’m sorry,” wishing the words would make his throat bleed.

Alistair finds him after Haven, when they are back at camp, away from the snow. Nearly everyone is asleep, but Zevran dreamed of Rinna laughing until she choked on blood, so he’s not terribly inclined to go back to sleep. He just tilts his head upwards, to face the sky, and wonders about survival. It’s a long, long slog, through the mud, through the shade of the trees. He’s not sure why he keeps walking it.

“Are you all right?” he asks. His eyes are blue, but deeper blue than Rinna’s. A lake, not an ocean. Zevran pokes at the fire with a stick.

“I am always all right, my friend,” he says.

“Right,” Alistair says, and sits down across from him. “Look, I — I think I should apologize.”

“No need,” Zevran says, and attempts to wave him off, but Alistair looks determined.

“No, it’s—” Then he stops, perhaps seeing the look on Zevran’s face, and laughs a little. “All right, I’ll be quiet. I just wanted you to know. That I’m sorry for not trusting you.”

It is, possibly, one of the most odd interactions that Zevran has ever had.

“Is it true you are a prince?” he says, finally, to change the subject.

“They say I am,” Alistair says, doubtfully. “I don’t want to be.” He pauses, then, gloomily, says “I might not have a choice about it.”

“Well, call me if you are ever in need of an assassin,” Zevran says, and realizes with a start that he feels entirely earnest about it.

“Why would a king need an assassin?” Alistair says.

“My dear fellow,” Zevran says, “that is all a king needs, not counting the crown.”

Alistair laughs a little, and Zevran laughs too. One more step through the mud.

When they are back in Redcliffe, the arl restored, Zevran tugs Byron from dinner early and closes them both into his room. He locks the door. Byron laughs, and the laughs turn to gasping, and Zevran catalogues every line of his body, presses kisses everywhere he can. He breathes out nonsense in Antivan against his shoulders and chest and the line of his thigh, sei perfetto, sei bello , sei mio. Byron tries to touch him back, and he brushes the hands off like flies. Let me, he keeps saying, even when Byron looks annoyed and keeps reaching out, let me , because he can’t bear tenderness tonight unless he’s the one administering it, unless it’s a way to pay back for respect, and for affection, and for the way Byron has not once asked him again why he didn’t kill them.

What more could there be?

There is always more. He knows that Byron will be smart enough to put the pieces together eventually. He had taken the most dangerous mission he could find, when months had passed and the urge to scream, to stab his own stomach in precisely the place Rinna’s had been stabbed, had not passed.

Leliana, though she said it out of suspicion, was right that one did not leave the Antivan Crows.

There was only one path to freedom, and he intended to take it.

And then — a hand reaching out. Curious brown eyes. An offer.

The urge to survive.

It had surprised him so much, at the time, that he had taken the hand, taken the offer, taken the urge by its reins and let it steer him.

Now — now there is a man in front of him who asks him things and listens, who gives him Antivan boots, who does not want to sit back and be cherished, who wants to cherish in return.

It’s not until Byron is asleep that he lets a hand, gently, touch his hair, through the mess they’ve made of it, over the pointed line of his ear.

“Mi amore,” he says, quietly. It sounds loud, ringing, even, in the still of the night.

When he goes to sleep, he makes certain they are not touching. When he wakes, though, Byron has rolled in the night, wrapped an arm around his waist, pressed his lips to his shoulder. He feels warm all over, better than Antivan sunshine.

He rolls onto his back, wondering if he can dislodge him, but Byron is awake, and he rolls, too, so he’s laying on top of Zevran, elbows braced just above his shoulders. “Good morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” says Zevran, and he thinks, holding to the hips of this miracle in his bed, that he does not want to die.

It terrifies him.

Byron kisses him, tender and slow, presses his mouth to his jaw and his collarbone before pulling away and making a face. “It’s late,” he says, apologetic. “They’ll be looking for us.”

“Mm,” Zevran agrees, suddenly unable to speak. Words threaten to pour out, to make themselves known. I have only known one other person who scared me like you do. You would not touch me like this if you know what I did to her—

“I’ll make it up to you,” Byron says, “I promise,” and then he winks, clumsy and charming, and gets out of bed, going to splash some water on his face. When Zevran doesn’t move, he turns back, puzzled. “Zev?”

It’s the nickname that does it, in the end. The easy, domestic affection of it. The mark of his presence in another person’s life.

He forces a smile and stands. “I apologize, I was only collecting myself,” he says, and dresses, and goes to eat, but all the while his mind is whirling, and Byron sends him concerned, sideways looks, before seeming to convince himself that it is nothing.

He thinks he will be able to keep it up, for a while; to continue on and somehow keep Byron from realizing his feelings, to warm his bed and kiss his neck and never ask for more. But then Byron pulls him aside in the Dalish camp, just before they leave. He has been called da’len by everyone there, and he’s been busy with sitting in on children’s stories, learning Dalish legend. A little too busy to sit around Zevran, but he’s bright eyed and excited, gorged on new knowledge in the way that only Byron can be. He was like this in Orzammar, too, locked into the Shaperate and emerging pink-cheeked and delighted.

“Zevran,” he says, “here, look at this—”

Then he pulls a pair of gloves from his pack, handling them with such delicacy, such tenderness, that Zevran feels his throat closing. They’re soft and brown, and familiar.

“Here,” Byron says. “They’re for you. I remembered you talking about the ones your mother had.”

Zevran looks up, at his bright eyes, at his open joy. He cares so much, he remembers so much, and it does not exhaust him, it only opens him up, more and more, piece by piece. He thinks about pressing a kiss to that calm, honest mouth, in thanks; he thinks about crying, and letting him see. He thinks about telling him again about his mother, and watching him eat up the story like he does everything else.

“Do you like them?” Byron asks, hopefully. “I know they’re probably not exact—”

“I do,” Zevran says, and slides them on. He can do no more than that without sobbing, without kissing him, without telling him things he does not know how to say, how to feel. Easy, he tells himself for the first time in a while, be easy. “Thank you.”

Byron smiles, and touches his wrist. “I’ve got to go talk to the First,” he says. “She said she’d show me some Dalish magic. And I wanted to ask her about that spirit we found in the temple — the one that claimed she was an Arcane Warrior? I’d love to learn more, maybe teach myself—”

“Go,” Zevran says, and forces a chuckle, and pushes him gently on the shoulder. “I will be here when you return.”

He starts telling Byron no when he asks him to his tent, thinking that that will frustrate him, maybe enough that he will turn to someone else instead. It doesn’t work, though. Byron only sends him concerned looks, and asks him if he is all right, at first as if he’s joking, and then more seriously, hand to Zevran’s cheek and worry in his pretty eyes.

He thinks: I will have to tell him, now. That is the only way to keep him away without hurting him too much . Zevran does not know how to love, not in a real way, not in a way that works, or at least he doesn’t think he does. Part of him wants to find out, but that part is quiet compared with the rest.

So he pulls Byron aside and sits next to him, but two inches apart, at the fire, and he tells him about Rinna, and Taliesen, and closes his eyes to wait for his anger, his bitterness, a fist to his cheek.

Byron only takes his hand, wrapping it securely in both of his, and presses a kiss to his knuckles.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, “I’m so sorry that you’ve carried that alone, for so long.”

“I let her die,” Zevran says, wrenching his hand free. “You can’t — you can’t tell me that, not when I—”

“What do you want me to say?” Byron asks, clearly bewildered. “That I think you’re a horrible person? I could never think that.”

“I killed her,” Zevran says.

“You’ve killed a great many people, Zevran,” Byron says. “If that was a problem with me you would have known before now.”

His eyes are defiant.

“You’re not afraid I’ll turn on you too?” Zevran says. “That one day I’ll think you’ve betrayed me, and I’ll—”

“I’ll just have to not give you a reason,” Byron says, and Zevran turns his head, clenching his jaw so hard it hurts.

Byron sighs, and shifts closer, taking his hand again.

“It’s haunted you for this long,” he says, finally. “Don’t you think that’s proof that you — you know you did wrong? That you’d never repeat it?” He runs a thumb over Zevran’s knuckles. “That you’re a good man?”

Good man. It doesn’t make sense. He wrenches his hand free again. “Don’t touch me.”

“Zevran—”

“Leave me be,” he says. “I don’t want — I don’t want this. Pity. I’d sooner die.”

He stands, turns, and storms to his tent. Byron’s hand hangs in the air, limp and holding nothing. As Zevran tosses and turns himself into sleep, alone, he remembers Rinna’s face, slowly growing slack, the look in her eyes. Betrayal, desperation, love.

The same as the look on Byron’s, tonight, as he left.

He presses his face into the bedroll.

He is studiously avoided as they travel to Denerim. Alistair, a little nervously, asks him if they’ve had a fight, the expression on his face speaking volumes as to how little he wants to be involved in it. Morrigan laughs at him, Leliana sticks to Byron’s side and glances, concerned, over her shoulder at Zevran. Wynne has a haughty look of satisfaction on her face that Zevran hates. He walks with Sten, in silence, and takes residence in trees when they stop for the night, under the guise of taking watch. What actually happens is that he ends up watching as Alistair and Sten help Byron train with a sword to he can start to learn the ways of the Arcane Warrior. He doesn’t look as excited about it, now, only serious and stern, not as curious. It hurts to see his face so closed.

It’s a shorter sword that he’s using. It doesn’t escape Zevran that the best person to teach him isn’t either of the two that are trying; it’s the fool hiding away in a tree.

Denerim, at least, is larger. Easier to get lost in, unless Byron asks Zevran to accompany him. Which, of course, he does. But Zevran prides himself on his professionalism. He has that left, if nothing else.

“Of course,” he says, each time, mechanically.

It’s on one of these awkward trips — awkward between the two of them, because Sten and Byron’s dear dog Revas are their only companions — when Taliesen finally finds him.

“You can come back,” Taliesen says, and for him, that’s almost kind. “I know why you left. We can make up some story, and all of this unpleasantness—” He waves a hand. “It’ll be over.”

Zevran thinks about that. About leaving. He would never see Byron again, that was true, and he would never see their other companions again, either; but then again Byron would undoubtedly move on eventually, finding some other man who didn’t carry corpses on his back, who didn’t have blood on his hands. He wonders if it isn’t the best option, the least selfish.

“He’ll have to die, of course,” Taliesen says, dismissively, “all of them will. It wouldn’t do to have witnesses. Loose ends. Bad for business, you understand?”

Well, never mind all that, then.

“No,” Zevran says, steps forward. Byron’s eyes snap to his face, wide and suddenly, somehow, hopeful. “No, Taliesen. If you so much as touch him—”

“You’ve gone soft,” Taliesen says, astonished.

“I will kill you,” Zevran says, his voice as soft as Taliesen is accusing him to be. “And I will enjoy it.”

“First Rinna, now this,” Taliesen says, sauntering forward. “You never learn, do you?”

Zevran stabs him. In the stomach, in precisely the same place where Rinna was stabbed. “On the contrary, old friend,” he says. “I have learned quite a bit.”

Taliesen coughs blood up, all over his face. “Not very elegant,” he wheezes. “You’re getting sloppy.”

Zevran pulls the dagger free and kicks his body back. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Stop talking.”

Behind him, there is a brush of cold air, and he turns his head to the left to see two of the Crows, frozen. Then to the right, to see Byron, staff in his left hand, eyes glowing with a lyrium potion.

He nods. Zevran nods back.

Sten charges, and Zevran flanks, and they make short work of the rest of the Crows.

“A murder,” Zevran says, after, and when they all look at him, puzzled, he clarifies, “a murder of Crows. Funny, isn’t it? I only just got it now.”

Byron bursts into laughter, bending at the waist, and holding onto his staff for support. “Oh, Zev,” he says. “I missed you.”

Even after that, Zevran goes to the library at the arl’s estate, where Byron is sitting, books spread on a table between him and Morrigan.

She makes a disgusted noise, closing her book with a snap. “I suppose this is my cue,” she says, huffy, “please do your best not to ruin any of the manuscripts.”

“Morrigan,” Byron says, looking exhausted.

She sweeps out without another word.

“I can come back another time,” Zevran says, uncertain.

“No,” Byron says. “I want to talk to you.”

Zevran nods. He doesn’t have to wait long.

“What is wrong with you?” Byron says, standing and pushing hands through his hair. “Not talking to me for weeks? Then just — jumping in and saying you would kill anyone who touches me, like you still — like you ever — I don’t know what to do with you, Zevran.”

“I confess I don’t usually know what to do with myself,” he admits. “Are you sure you want to talk about this? I don’t — I have no idea what I mean to say.”

“I want the truth,” Byron says. “That’s all. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“All right, then,” Zevran says. “I—”

“Do you not want to be with me?” Byron interrupts, in one last angry, exhausted burst. “Is that it? I can accept that, I just can’t — I need you to tell me.”

“No!” Zevran says, and then steps back a little, surprised by the strength of it, just like before. “No, I — I have been acting like an idiot, and a child, I know. Please let me explain.”

Byron nods, mouth tight, leaning back. Zevran takes a step closer to him.

I loved Rinna, he thinks of saying. It’s something I have only let myself think about now, now that I am here, with you. I loved her even though I feared what I felt, because to be an assassin one must leave such things behind. Nothing can be more important than the mission. The task at hand.

You are more important than any of that. I would die before letting anything touch you, whether it was a Crow or an archdemon.

Finally, he says, “I have always believed myself incapable of love. I thought it unnecessary, dangerous. Terrifying, because it could so easily kill me. I don’t know how I could tell — how I could ever know for sure that what I feel now is love. But I know that I — I want you to look at me and not look away. I want you beside me, and I want to be beside you, no matter what we do. When I took this mission it was a means to an end. I wanted to die, after what happened with Taliesen and Rinna. But since meeting you, since being with you, I have — I think I have moved past that grief.” He takes a breath. Byron’s eyes are shining. “And all I wish now is to remain with you, for as long as you want that too.”

“You idiot,” Byron says, eyes still gleaming, from tears, Zevran realizes, tracking their way down his cheeks, “you idiot, ” and then Byron’s warm hands are pressed to his cheeks and he is being kissed with all the pent up passion and tenderness and frustration of the past few weeks. “Of course that’s what I want.”

“Then we are in agreement?” Zevran asks.

Byron laughs, watery, against his shoulder. “I love you,” he says. “I have since — I don’t know, actually. A while. I realized when you told me about Rinna.”

“That’s a gruesome moment to realize,” Zevran says. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“You trusted me,” Byron says, simply. “I realized how much it meant. How I wanted you to go on trusting me, forever.”

Zevran presses his face into Byron’s neck and says nothing, for a moment. He thinks, briefly, be easy, then dismisses it. That is not something he has to remind himself, here.

“I adore you,” he says. “I love you. I’ll think of other ways to say it—”

Byron laughs again, and presses a kiss to the side of his face. “Don’t exhaust them all yet.”

“Ti amo,” Zevran says, to be contrary, and Byron laughs again, a little flustered this time. Zevran raises his eyebrows. “Do you like it when I say things in Antivan? How have you kept this from me? Byron, Byron—”

And then he’s laughing too, as Byron squirms out of his arms and rolls his eyes, and says “Don’t be ridiculous,” then blushes, which gives him away. “Come on, I promised Morrigan I wouldn’t ruin any of the books.”

“It goes against your nature to ruin books, amore,” Zevran says, but he is willingly led.

It’s an inverse of the night in Redcliffe, though Byron does allow Zevran to touch him, to kiss him wherever he can reach. But he’s determined and beautiful as he slides his mouth down Zevran’s body, as he asks over and over — does this feel good, does this, does this. Everything does, but there’s no telling him that.

“I love you,” he whispers, like it’s a secret, against Zevran’s hip. The words hit him, finally, and tears fill his eyes, and he pulls him up by the shoulders, watching as his eyes flicker from lust to panic to genuine, tender affection, as he climbs onto Zevran’s lap and kisses him, all over his face, holds it between the palms of his hands and says it again, careful and slow. “I love you.”

All he can do, it seems, is say it back, and he does.

Later, when they’re lying against each other, exhausted, Zevran peels himself up and stands.

“Don’t you dare leave,” Byron says, “not when we’ve been through all this nonsense.”

“I’m not,” Zevran assures him, because his exhausted, love-addled mind has just had a brilliant idea, and he takes a golden hoop earring of his from his bag, and puts it in his ear. Then he takes its twin and crosses back to the bed.

“What are you up to?” Byron asks, sleepily.

“I want you to have this.” Zevran says, and closes his hand around it. “As a — token of my affection, let’s call it.”

“An earring?”

“I want a future for us,” Zevran says. “I want to be by your side. And you’ve — you’ve given me things. I want something of mine with you, if you’d—”

Byron sits up. “That sounds like a proposal.”

His voice is flat. Zevran, suddenly, feels very nervous. “Only if you’d like it to be.”

“If I’d like —” Byron says, then shakes his head, and beams — that same full-faced smile from the first time Zevran wore his boots. “Yes. I’d like that.” He looks at it in his palm, and laughs a little. “We’ll have to pierce my ear, though.”

“Anything for you,” Zevran says, and watches as Byron carefully places the earring on the table at their bedside, and then slides back under the covers next to him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “We can ask someone in town.”

“Yes, all right,” Byron says, and tucks his face into Zevran’s shoulder. “Now go to sleep.”

“I’m glad you’re not fighting anymore,” Alistair whispers, conspiratorially. It’s a few days later and they’re at breakfast. “He was miserable.”

“I was not,” Byron says. “I was very dignified.”

“I’m sure you were, amore,” Zevran says, and he watches the glint of gold on Byron’s ear with an easy, gentle contentment. “I was, too, sulking about in trees like a child—”

Their companions laugh. Byron takes his hand under the table and squeezes once, before letting go. Outside, the sun is beating down on the cobblestones. It is not summer in Antiva, not anything close to it, but Zevran is warm.