wow challenge 5, challenge 7
Title: Common Ground
Challenge(s): 7 (love), 5 (lying)
Rating: T (implied death, minor pummelling)
Pairing: Zevran/F!Mahariel (challenge-related), Alastair/F!Mahariel (implied)
Word Count: 1859
Summary: Zevran Arainai is a lover and a fighter both. However, sometimes love comes in forms that not even a master of that art can understand.
"I lied to you, you know."
Zevran raised an eyebrow and looked up, hiding bewilderment behind a look of amusement. Lyna stood over him with an armload of mangled arrows, and he realised he had no idea how long she might have been watching him, sat on the log at the outskirts of camp and engrossed in the task of sharpening his daggers. "Oh? I suppose I should not find this surprising. And yet I find myself curious - just what lie, my dear Warden, might you have told me?"
Lyna sat down next to Zevran on the log and set about mending the arrows she could still salvage. As she examined a bent shaft, she said, "You asked about where I hailed from. I spoke of my mother."
Since the Dalish Warden was apparently looking elsewhere, he indulged himself and let the confusion show on his face, though his tone was still amused when he said, "Well, that is a relief. I feared you were to tell me that you lied when you said you would not kill me once you had no further need of me. Though perhaps I hoped that you would tell me that your lie concerned your devotion to your fellow Grey Warden."
"No you didn't." Lyna smiled - a wry, purse-lipped expression that never failed to elicit a response in kind from the Antivan. "At least, I'm pretty sure you didn't. I think I know you better than that."
Zevran considered, and found himself surprised right out of his grin when he realised that she was right. In the beginning, he would have been more than pleased to have Lyna in his bed, but now the thought was ... worrisome, almost. He did not fear Alistair's wrath, but he feared the loss of this friendship to something so transient as lust. A new thought, that - one that Zevran would have to explore in detail. But that would come later - now, he simply nodded. "Perhaps you are right. I imagine that you, observant as you are, know me far better than I know myself." Lyna grinned and punched him in the shoulder, and he grinned back at her until a rogue thought snuck into his head: This is what it would have been to have a sister. The grin held up despite this alien idea, though, and he rubbed his upper arm. "Come now, abusive wench of a Warden. Tell me of this lie. Was your mother not such a gem as you claimed? Had she a butter-face, perhaps?"
Lyna turned her attention back to her arrows, and her grin died like that one lone genlock at the back of the pack upon being mobbed by half the travelling party. "I don't know, really. Only what my people said of her. Like you, I ... I never laid eyes on the woman." With a wry chuckle, she went on to say, "I suppose we have a fair bit in common, in that regard. Orphaned, from infancy, all that."
Zevran turned his head to look at her, stunned. She had never spoken of this, nor had any other member of the varied group that Lyna had collected since Ostagar. Morrigan might know - the two women spoke often, having a common bond in their fondness for wild places - but Morrigan would never speak of such a thing. "...Mother and father both?" Unable to help himself, he asked, "Was it a ... hunting accident? Some weather-related misfortune? Disease? Not that I imagine that our fathers were slain by the same thing," he added in great haste. He knew how badly Lyna might take such a suggestion.
"Shemlen," she told him, eyes on her arrows and tension in her shoulders. "I ... never knew the all of it. My people were likely wise to keep the details from me. They feared hatred would consume me, or at least blind me. Either way, they were set upon by humans while hunting. My father died outright. It was ... longer, for my mother."
"Ah." Zevran left it at that for a moment. He had little idea of what to say to that; for all his short life had been varied and colourful, he had never been in a position where he had to comfort anyone, much less wanted to. Finally, he asked, "So then ... why this lie of yours? It seems clear that the telling of it displeases you."
"The truth of it displeases me more than the lie," she told him, without hesitation but also without looking at him. With her attention still turned on the arrow she was refletching, she went on to tell him, "I suppose it wasn't really a lie in any case. Just a ... bending of the truth, like our crafter might have bent ironbark. The Hah-- elders of my clan, they spoke of her beauty. And she clung to life long enough to birth me, though she suffered greatly from wounds of both body and heart. I ... simply never knew first-hand."
After a long moment in which both elves worked on their weapons in silence, Zevran asked, "I ... have a question, if I may. How is it, friend Lyna, that you may love - and love so well - one who you have never truly met, mother or no? That is ... unless the question offends you in some way." He understood how the question might be offensive; so may questions of the heart were.
To her credit, Lyna did not look offended in the least, and actually considered the question in silence for a moment before she gave her reply. "Because she loved me," she finally said. "Because she endured so much, simply so that I would live. Perhaps she abandoned me to seek death once I was born, but ... I suppose she knew that she would, in her grief over my father, be less than she felt I deserved."
Zevran thought about that and remembered Denerim with a pang of remorse. While unwilling to stand against his friends to renew his place with the Crows - and, for that matter, at Taliesin's side - he had been equally unable to murder his old lover. At the time, he had forgiven himself the decision to abandon Lyna to fight his battle with a single vote of confidence for his allies. Now, knowing how prominent abandonment had been in Lyna's life, the nagging pinprick of guilt and regret felt more like a dagger in his gut. "And so ... you might, should circumstances demand ... forgive a weakness of that sort? An ... abandonment by the selfish?"
"Of course." Lyna did not meet his eyes, but she always did communicate best with tone and posture. She might have said I would not have forced you into such an action, out of respect for you; else I might have chosen other words than 'Of course, I would have to be dead' when Taliesin tried to cut a deal with you. She might have called him on the vagueness of the question, cornered him verbally until he admitted that his question was not about her mother's walk into the moonlight at all. However, she did not, and Zevran finally understood that she never would. We are the last of the Elvhenan, she often said, and never again shall we submit. Nor, it seemed, would they force anyone they respected to do the same.
Particularly not a brother.
Zevran took a breath and pulled off the Dalish gloves she'd given him on the way to Orzamarr on the last leg of their army-gathering expedition. "I ... perhaps you might prefer to ... keep these for yourself? To have a piece of your people close at hand, perhaps."
"Thank you, but I meant for you to have those. For three reasons, in fact. One: Every elf should have a reminder of those who keep the lore for the day we find a new Halamshiral. Two: Every person, be they human, elven or dwarf, should have a touchstone to remind them of who they came from, as well as where, and I already possess mine." She touched a pendant around her neck - not the metal and glass conglomeration that seemed full of blood, but the other one that seemed made of silver and horn. "Besides, those don't fit me anyway."
Zevran chuckled and put the gloves back on. "Well, then, far be it from me to turn up my nose at such generosity! And thus you have my thanks once again for the thought."
Lyna turned back to her arrow repairs with an amused snort. "Oh, please, spare me the ma serannas, Zev. Reason the third: I know how you operate, and I'm not giving you an excuse to say you paid me back for that bottle of bilberry wine you stole from me last week."
With a grin that combined wickedness and sheepishness, Zevran held his hands to his chest, nearly nicking himself in the chin with his dagger still clutched in his fist. "Oh, be fair, Lyna! Would you have had Oghren pilfering the wines and ale of our esteemed Arl Eamon? Or perhaps spending all of our hard-earned coin within the Gnawed Noble? I thought but to provide him with his ... hair of the nug, I think he said?" He batted his eyelashes at her, not in seduction but in the pleading sort of way that worked so well when it was her mabari giving her that look. "It was to the benefit of the party at large, for you know how much of a bear our Oghren can be when suffering a morning-after headache."
"And the fact that there were two cups stained with the stuff when I showed up to collect you for that trip to the Alienage?" The raised eyebrow told Zevran that Lyna did not buy that story for a moment; the little purse-lipped smile told him that she didn't mind as much as she pretended, and that she viewed it with the same strained but amused patience that she might with a little brother's antics. Never mind that he had at least three years on her.
When given bait like that, all Zevran could do was play the teasing brother. "Perhaps we might call it ... a boost in morale? Thought ... not for your morale, which is unfortunate, but for that, you have Oghren's comments about your ... rump roast, was it? I--"
The rest was lost in Lyna's indignant gasp and vengeful - if playful - pummelling of Zevran's shoulders. As Zevran chuckled and curled into a protective ball, he felt a bit of smug good cheer at having diverted the Grey Warden from such a heart-rending topic at such a crucial time. They were a day and a half from Redcliffe, and the final battle was fast approaching. It would not do to have a brooding Commander at the head of Ferelden's armies.
And if he had to take a pummelling from her to turn her mind from brooding thoughts? Well, that's what brothers were for.
Challenge(s): 7 (love), 5 (lying)
Rating: T (implied death, minor pummelling)
Pairing: Zevran/F!Mahariel (challenge-related), Alastair/F!Mahariel (implied)
Word Count: 1859
Summary: Zevran Arainai is a lover and a fighter both. However, sometimes love comes in forms that not even a master of that art can understand.
"I lied to you, you know."
Zevran raised an eyebrow and looked up, hiding bewilderment behind a look of amusement. Lyna stood over him with an armload of mangled arrows, and he realised he had no idea how long she might have been watching him, sat on the log at the outskirts of camp and engrossed in the task of sharpening his daggers. "Oh? I suppose I should not find this surprising. And yet I find myself curious - just what lie, my dear Warden, might you have told me?"
Lyna sat down next to Zevran on the log and set about mending the arrows she could still salvage. As she examined a bent shaft, she said, "You asked about where I hailed from. I spoke of my mother."
Since the Dalish Warden was apparently looking elsewhere, he indulged himself and let the confusion show on his face, though his tone was still amused when he said, "Well, that is a relief. I feared you were to tell me that you lied when you said you would not kill me once you had no further need of me. Though perhaps I hoped that you would tell me that your lie concerned your devotion to your fellow Grey Warden."
"No you didn't." Lyna smiled - a wry, purse-lipped expression that never failed to elicit a response in kind from the Antivan. "At least, I'm pretty sure you didn't. I think I know you better than that."
Zevran considered, and found himself surprised right out of his grin when he realised that she was right. In the beginning, he would have been more than pleased to have Lyna in his bed, but now the thought was ... worrisome, almost. He did not fear Alistair's wrath, but he feared the loss of this friendship to something so transient as lust. A new thought, that - one that Zevran would have to explore in detail. But that would come later - now, he simply nodded. "Perhaps you are right. I imagine that you, observant as you are, know me far better than I know myself." Lyna grinned and punched him in the shoulder, and he grinned back at her until a rogue thought snuck into his head: This is what it would have been to have a sister. The grin held up despite this alien idea, though, and he rubbed his upper arm. "Come now, abusive wench of a Warden. Tell me of this lie. Was your mother not such a gem as you claimed? Had she a butter-face, perhaps?"
Lyna turned her attention back to her arrows, and her grin died like that one lone genlock at the back of the pack upon being mobbed by half the travelling party. "I don't know, really. Only what my people said of her. Like you, I ... I never laid eyes on the woman." With a wry chuckle, she went on to say, "I suppose we have a fair bit in common, in that regard. Orphaned, from infancy, all that."
Zevran turned his head to look at her, stunned. She had never spoken of this, nor had any other member of the varied group that Lyna had collected since Ostagar. Morrigan might know - the two women spoke often, having a common bond in their fondness for wild places - but Morrigan would never speak of such a thing. "...Mother and father both?" Unable to help himself, he asked, "Was it a ... hunting accident? Some weather-related misfortune? Disease? Not that I imagine that our fathers were slain by the same thing," he added in great haste. He knew how badly Lyna might take such a suggestion.
"Shemlen," she told him, eyes on her arrows and tension in her shoulders. "I ... never knew the all of it. My people were likely wise to keep the details from me. They feared hatred would consume me, or at least blind me. Either way, they were set upon by humans while hunting. My father died outright. It was ... longer, for my mother."
"Ah." Zevran left it at that for a moment. He had little idea of what to say to that; for all his short life had been varied and colourful, he had never been in a position where he had to comfort anyone, much less wanted to. Finally, he asked, "So then ... why this lie of yours? It seems clear that the telling of it displeases you."
"The truth of it displeases me more than the lie," she told him, without hesitation but also without looking at him. With her attention still turned on the arrow she was refletching, she went on to tell him, "I suppose it wasn't really a lie in any case. Just a ... bending of the truth, like our crafter might have bent ironbark. The Hah-- elders of my clan, they spoke of her beauty. And she clung to life long enough to birth me, though she suffered greatly from wounds of both body and heart. I ... simply never knew first-hand."
After a long moment in which both elves worked on their weapons in silence, Zevran asked, "I ... have a question, if I may. How is it, friend Lyna, that you may love - and love so well - one who you have never truly met, mother or no? That is ... unless the question offends you in some way." He understood how the question might be offensive; so may questions of the heart were.
To her credit, Lyna did not look offended in the least, and actually considered the question in silence for a moment before she gave her reply. "Because she loved me," she finally said. "Because she endured so much, simply so that I would live. Perhaps she abandoned me to seek death once I was born, but ... I suppose she knew that she would, in her grief over my father, be less than she felt I deserved."
Zevran thought about that and remembered Denerim with a pang of remorse. While unwilling to stand against his friends to renew his place with the Crows - and, for that matter, at Taliesin's side - he had been equally unable to murder his old lover. At the time, he had forgiven himself the decision to abandon Lyna to fight his battle with a single vote of confidence for his allies. Now, knowing how prominent abandonment had been in Lyna's life, the nagging pinprick of guilt and regret felt more like a dagger in his gut. "And so ... you might, should circumstances demand ... forgive a weakness of that sort? An ... abandonment by the selfish?"
"Of course." Lyna did not meet his eyes, but she always did communicate best with tone and posture. She might have said I would not have forced you into such an action, out of respect for you; else I might have chosen other words than 'Of course, I would have to be dead' when Taliesin tried to cut a deal with you. She might have called him on the vagueness of the question, cornered him verbally until he admitted that his question was not about her mother's walk into the moonlight at all. However, she did not, and Zevran finally understood that she never would. We are the last of the Elvhenan, she often said, and never again shall we submit. Nor, it seemed, would they force anyone they respected to do the same.
Particularly not a brother.
Zevran took a breath and pulled off the Dalish gloves she'd given him on the way to Orzamarr on the last leg of their army-gathering expedition. "I ... perhaps you might prefer to ... keep these for yourself? To have a piece of your people close at hand, perhaps."
"Thank you, but I meant for you to have those. For three reasons, in fact. One: Every elf should have a reminder of those who keep the lore for the day we find a new Halamshiral. Two: Every person, be they human, elven or dwarf, should have a touchstone to remind them of who they came from, as well as where, and I already possess mine." She touched a pendant around her neck - not the metal and glass conglomeration that seemed full of blood, but the other one that seemed made of silver and horn. "Besides, those don't fit me anyway."
Zevran chuckled and put the gloves back on. "Well, then, far be it from me to turn up my nose at such generosity! And thus you have my thanks once again for the thought."
Lyna turned back to her arrow repairs with an amused snort. "Oh, please, spare me the ma serannas, Zev. Reason the third: I know how you operate, and I'm not giving you an excuse to say you paid me back for that bottle of bilberry wine you stole from me last week."
With a grin that combined wickedness and sheepishness, Zevran held his hands to his chest, nearly nicking himself in the chin with his dagger still clutched in his fist. "Oh, be fair, Lyna! Would you have had Oghren pilfering the wines and ale of our esteemed Arl Eamon? Or perhaps spending all of our hard-earned coin within the Gnawed Noble? I thought but to provide him with his ... hair of the nug, I think he said?" He batted his eyelashes at her, not in seduction but in the pleading sort of way that worked so well when it was her mabari giving her that look. "It was to the benefit of the party at large, for you know how much of a bear our Oghren can be when suffering a morning-after headache."
"And the fact that there were two cups stained with the stuff when I showed up to collect you for that trip to the Alienage?" The raised eyebrow told Zevran that Lyna did not buy that story for a moment; the little purse-lipped smile told him that she didn't mind as much as she pretended, and that she viewed it with the same strained but amused patience that she might with a little brother's antics. Never mind that he had at least three years on her.
When given bait like that, all Zevran could do was play the teasing brother. "Perhaps we might call it ... a boost in morale? Thought ... not for your morale, which is unfortunate, but for that, you have Oghren's comments about your ... rump roast, was it? I--"
The rest was lost in Lyna's indignant gasp and vengeful - if playful - pummelling of Zevran's shoulders. As Zevran chuckled and curled into a protective ball, he felt a bit of smug good cheer at having diverted the Grey Warden from such a heart-rending topic at such a crucial time. They were a day and a half from Redcliffe, and the final battle was fast approaching. It would not do to have a brooding Commander at the head of Ferelden's armies.
And if he had to take a pummelling from her to turn her mind from brooding thoughts? Well, that's what brothers were for.