This Is War
Title: This Is War
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: NC-17
Characters: M!Cousland, Gawain Cousland, Zevran, Leliana
Summary: Some men are born for war. Some men are made in war. Gawain Cousland, Zevran thinks absently, might be a bit of both. M!Cousland, M!Cousland/Zevran.
Note: Done for my beta. I don't know how you put up with me. Also, because you complained there weren't enough non-dutiful Cousland fics. Warning, disturbed Cousland is disturbed.
-
Gawain Cousland, Zevran thinks, is infinitely complex.
Perhaps that is why he stays on, beyond just a sense of self-preservation, by swearing to serve the man who defeated a perfectly (if Zevran might say so himself) planned ambush and held his steel to the Crow’s throat.
He remembers, that moment, as if carved in the stone Antiva is so skilled at working - the Warden, for he can’t think of Gawain as Gawain in that instant, sword held to his throat, eyes chips of grey and perfectly, perfectly empty. This is the face of a killer, a man without conscience, and Zevran knows men like these - he’s seen one or two among the Crows who began like this, who can kill and feel completely nothing and go off for a bowl of fish chowder with their arms still soaked in blood.
He doesn’t know why Gawain twitches his wrist the other way, and the point of steel shifts away from Zevran’s throat and to the side.
“Get up,” Gawain says.
The mask of the killer is gone in an instant, replaced by a pleasantly bland expression, eyes still calculating and watching him.
There is more than one side to most men, Zevran knows. He accepts his blades back from the redhead and sheaths them absently.
But this man - this man is an enigma.
“We’re leaving.” Gawain tells him. He doesn’t even turn around to look back.
If he wasn’t so battered, Zevran could have made another attempt, to step behind Gawain and slip a poniard between the joints of his plate armor.
But he’s given his word (for now), and Gawain Cousland is a bit of an enigma. There aren’t many choices, and Zevran, as always, picks the one that amuses him the most, and what seems to be the best choice he can make.
He follows.
-
This is the Slayer, wolf-grey eyes too empty as Gawain shoulders into a hurlock, shield smashing and breaking teeth and bone and rams his sword straight into its chest, point ripping through in a fountain of gore.
Brutal, economical, and his motions precise, his teeth bared in a disturbing smile and he turns and casually asks, “Are you alright?” as he yanks his sword free and in the same motion, cuts at another hurlock.
This is the Warrior, eyes the grey of flashing steel, face stern as he blocks Alistair’s sword stroke on his shield and slips his blade effortlessly past the other Warden’s guard and says, “Dead,” clinically. This is the man who is legend in the Provings, who walks through a melee of flashing steel and sheds blows like raindrops, and Zevran admits what he knew all along - Crows, this man can fight.
This is the General, who says, “You cannot leave him alive,” and effortlessly beheads the kneeling Aeducan prince, and damn him because he should have sided with the prince from the start. This is the General who breaks the Anvil, not because he wants the golems to be free but because he later admits that the dwarves are a capricious ally at best, and this kind of power should not be in their hands.
This is the Leader, who answers Sten’s challenge with an armoured fist to the jaw and a mouthful of broken teeth and blood, and Zevran finds himself wondering if he knows what he’s gotten himself into.
This is the Friend, who laughs and smiles and says “Oh, I remembered you mentioned the boots,” and presents him a pair of the finest Antivan leather, and Zevran wonders just how much of what he says does Gawain remember.
(And just how many of the smiles are real, because he’s seen cold people before in Antiva, and at least two of them were not quite there, and he has the sinking suspicion that Gawain might just be a little like that.)
And there are so many more little bits, here and there, that Zevran can’t place, and it maddens him, because in the course of his assassination career, he’s always been able to place and know the target, and that’s what makes him so good at it.
This is a dangerous game he plays, but he’s content to ride it out, and to get inside Gawain’s skin and find out what makes him tick, while he’s at it. Sex not absolutely required, but Zevran always takes what he can get, and just a little more.
-
“Why did you keep me alive?” He asks, just because, filing the point of his dagger where the suspicious other Warden had blunted it. Honestly, didn’t he - Alistair, Zevran thought the name was, know how to handle weapons with just a little respect?
The Warden - Gawain, Zevran remembers, barely glances at him, bored, bare sword lying across his knees. He can barely make out the device on the scarred shield - two intertwined branches, which is probably Highever.
Gawain scrapes at the device with his dagger, flaking paint off with each stroke.
“Because you can fight worth a damn, and I need everyone I can get in this Blight.” The Warden says.
Zevran feels his pride just a little stung. “And so did I pass your test?”
The scrape of the dagger pauses, and Zevran feels his spine prickle, just a little. He reaches for the hilt of his dagger, even though he knows he can’t draw it and fight his way out of the camp. He makes plans anyway - throw the knife in the face of the Warden, and head left, the bard may try to shoot him, so by heading left, he’ll put the Warden between him and the bard, and oh, what about the mage -
He assesses the possibilities in a swift instant.
“It was not a test.” Gawain says, softly, and the moment of danger passes. He sets aside the sword on the dry earth, and Zevran breathes a little easier. The sound of the dagger scratching on the steel shield continues. “Backstab us, and I’ll kill you.”
Zevran believes him.
“You think I would? I have given my word.”
“There’s nothing to bind you but your word,” Gawain replies, “And I don’t believe in taking chances.”
Then why am I alive? Zevran wants to comment, but he says nothing. He fancies himself alive, and he doesn’t exactly want to remind the Warden he’s found himself bound to that he should really be dead.
Scratch, scratch, scrape.
“You were from Highever?”
Pause.
“Yes.”
Scratch, scrape.
He doesn’t ask why Gawain is painstakingly scratching off every last bit of paint, every last bit of the Highever device from his shield. The reason is perfectly obvious, and the more Zevran thinks about it, the more he’s perfectly certain it’s either a disconnect or a need to shed the past.
He’s done that too many times, after all, when things go to the crows.
“Come.” Gawain says. The scraping stops. The shield is bare of paint, and scratched and worn and battered. An empty shield, the shield of a mercenary or a sellsword. He stands up, picks up his sword.
“You call?”
Gawain makes an impatient sound. “To see how good you really are.” He says, matter-of-factly. “To first blood.”
Zevran blinks. “With drawn steel,” He states, getting to his feet.
Gawain stares at him as if he is stupid.
“Of course. Do you see anything else to fight with?”
They clear a space on the grass; Zevran draws the plain sword he’s used for the past three jobs, and the Crow dagger in his right hand. He’s ambidextrous, but he bets the Warden doesn’t know that, and it’s safe to pretend he’s right-handed.
Gawain is a classic fighter; shield in one hand, sword in the other, and he isn’t in plate armour this time, but a light hauberk of chainmail.
“To first blood?” Zevran asks.
Gawain nods brusquely and they move, almost at the same time.
The first exchange is almost traditional - his longsword rebounds off Gawain’s shield, but Zevran steps close and his dagger-strike screeches off Gawain’s sword and they exchange a few more strokes before Zevran disengages, admitting his wounds have made him slow.
He’s fast, Zevran realises, like a dangerous cat, but Zevran knows he can be faster than that. They meet in a flurry of steel and sparks and separate again, and Zevran finds himself almost-smirking, while Gawain’s expression has lightened.
“You’re toying with me,” He notes lightly, when they separate from the furious melee, because Zevran hurls a handful of dirt at Gawain’s face and backpedals while he can. Gawain’s style is built around staying power and force, Zevran’s is built around speed and motion, and yet somehow, the Warden has managed to draw him in, forced him to take a standing battle he isn’t meant to fight.
“So are you,” Gawain says. “I want you to hit me - as hard as you can.”
“Only if you’ll take this seriously,” Zevran taunts, and moves in on the left slant. He’s killed fencing nobles before, and Gawain’s fighting like a fencer right now, although he’s seen the man move into the brutal bash-and-hack of a shield-sword warrior in combat. Gawain’s sword is in his right hand, so Zevran figures he won’t expect this -
He moves in, close, then swaps weapons and strikes.
He twists to the right to avoid Gawain’s sword -
Wait, sword?
They separate.
A line of blood trickles down Gawain’s cheek. Zevran glances at his dagger - the point is faintly, just faintly red.
He thinks he catches a line of red along Gawain’s sword, and glances down. Oh. That. His thigh is bleeding, though the cut doesn’t seem deep.
“Not bad.” Gawain says. His eyes aren’t blank anymore, they are measuring, and maybe just a little approving. He thrusts his sword into the dirt, scrubbing the edge to clean it. Zevran does the same. “You swapped sides.”
“You guessed.” Zevran says, faintly impressed. Few people do. (Later, he will realise that Gawain looks alive, almost-smiling, after their duel.)
“You stopped leading with your dagger, halfway through the fight. It was obvious after that.”
He watches the blood trickle, one droplet, two droplets, down Gawain’s cheek, and thinks that maybe swearing to the Warden wasn’t as stupid an idea as it first seemed after all.
-
“So, you’re an Antivan Crow.” She (the red-head) says. She has two daggers, but Zevran knows she’s a greater danger with that bow of hers. He notices things. That’s his job. The ideal assassin is one who can size up his opponents.
“Why yes,” He replies, “And have we been introduced? I do think I would remember the name of so lovely a creature.”
She gives him a measuring look, “I’m Leliana,” She says, “Lay sister of the Chantry of Lothering.”
“And I am Zevran Arainai, former Antivan Crow,” Zevran says, “I’d give you a proper Antivan kiss, save that our leader will probably demand one too, and I don’t swing that way.”
Gawain doesn’t even look back at them.
“I don’t need an Antivan kiss,” Leliana informs him, and Zevran smirks.
“Then you must not have met very many Antivans. I am a notorious kisser, my friend, and they posted warnings about me at the border last year.”
Alistair rolls his eyes, and suddenly says, “Maker,” and draws his sword, shrugging on his shield at the same time.
Zevran learns later that the Grey Wardens can sense the presence of darkspawn, so he hadn’t missed anything. For now, he draws the sword and the dagger, dropping into a fighting crouch because archery was never his strongest suit.
Gawain is there, a juggernaut in plate armour, and his first strike severs a hurlock, beheading it instantly, and it flops to the ground and the head rolls and comes to stop at Zevran’s feet, and all he can think of is, Crows, the darkspawn are monstrous.
He fights like he knows how to, dodging desperately and cutting and slashing several times with the dagger (parry with the sword, close in, slit their throats with the dagger, Arainai!) and the darkspawn drops dead but the next one is on him, and Crows, that’s one huge darkspawn -
A distant part of Zevran’s mind is aware of Leliana, nocking arrows and shooting in swift, fluid motion beside him. It is also aware of Alistair ramming his mailed shoulder into a hurlock emissary, sword almost blazing with strange wisps of light that trail his blade where he slashes into the emissary.
And this is Gawain, a lone figure, wielding a battered shield and sword, facing the horned ogre that towers over him.
The ogre roars and smashes its fist down, to meet Gawain’s shield, but Gawain has no staying power and ducks from underneath, darting in but is repulsed by its other hammer-fist which slams into his plate-armour and makes a sound like a hammer on an anvil.
Zevran slips through the melee. He thinks a blade might have nicked him across the calf, but he doesn’t care right now, and he absently slits the throat of a hurlock on the way. Sloppy technique, he must point it out to Alistair later. Clubbing something to death with a shield doesn’t mean it’s dead yet.
Surprise is the key. He doesn’t believe in a fair fight. He feels for the vial he always carries on his vial-belt, and then remembers he hasn’t gotten the chance to replenish his poison flasks yet.
Plan B. Gawain has cut into the ogre’s side and it is bleeding and roaring in fury, black blood splattering everywhere with gore but it is still strong. Zevran runs, lightly over the ground. He’s just a little out of practice since he hasn’t done this for a while since he left Antiva city. The first running leap takes him off the ground, and for a moment, he fears he’s missed, but then he slams right into the ogre’s arm and stabs down with the dagger.
The ogre roars again, spraying Zevran with blood and saliva and (Gawain will fund him a new set of armor, definitely) Zevran clings on for dear life, digging his dagger in and plunging his sword higher up the ogre’s arm. This way, he makes slow progress upwards, though his grip is slick with blood and unmentionable fluid and below, Gawain’s sword methodically hews chunks out of the ogre.
The ogre flails, and it’s all Zevran can do to hang on. In a desperate gamble, he whips out the blood-drenched dagger and hurls it. It flashes through the air, spinning hilt-over-point then sinks into the ogre’s chest with a meaty smack.
In the next moment, there is a whistling sound, and two arrows cluster around the hilt of his knife, and Zevran hopes, are deeply embedded. He takes a deep breath and throws himself, feeling his stomach muscles almost-rip, but he barely makes the jump, fingers almost brushing air before his hand closes around the hilt of the dagger, and the other closes around the embedded arrow-shaft.
He doesn’t have a sword now.
One movement. It has to be one movement.
Zevran pauses, waiting and then moves, pulling the dagger free and yanking on the arrow shaft to pull himself upwards, in one swift motion, so the arrow-shaft doesn’t snap in his hands. With the dagger, he slashes, and gouts of black blood spurt from where he slits the throat of the ogre.
The ogre roars, gurgles a death rattle, and Zevran can see the dripping maw much closer than he’d personally prefer, can smell the fetid stink of its breath, can see, and sigh with pleasure as the last spark of crude animal life leaves its eyes, can feel the moment when its muscles go limp, and then the ogre crashes to the ground, and breaks his fall.
The first thing Zevran does is to retrieve his sword. It’s a good sword, and he’s paid enough for it.
The second thing he does is to glance at Gawain.
They’re both a sight for sore eyes, literally soaked to the skin in black blood (and he’d like to get this mess off him as soon as he can, gracias). But there is something about Gawain Cousland, casually walking among the dead and grabbing weak gurgling darkspawn by the hair and slitting their throats that is strangely fitting.
As if, in some sense, the man is defined by war and violence and enough blood to bathe in.
-
There is a strangely incomplete sense of vulnerability to Gawain, when they rest that night at the party camp. Zevran finds the Warden approaching him, and wonders why. He’s busy trying to get dried blood off his leathers. Pity he might have to discard the entire set of armor. He’d actually liked it.
“Where’d you pick that up?” Gawain asks, and his expression is unreadable. There is no cold killer now, only the strange dislocation of a soldier stranded away from his element, the same blunt approach that Zevran expects from any general.
“You know I was a member of the Antivan Crows,” Zevran says. He decides the boots, at least, are salveageable. Fortunately, because they are made of good leather, and he remembers the butter-soft feel of the finest Antivan leather. Consider it an indulgence, but Zevran’s always been good at taking his little pleasures where he can find them. “Assassination requires many tools.”
He pauses, and decides to make a trade.
“And where does a Grey Warden learn to fight?”
Gawain eyes him, as if deciding whether to answer, and then says, “Around. Recruits are chosen based on their combat abilities.”
“Tell me your answer, and you’ll have mine. The nature of a trade. Fair, no?”
Gawain shrugs. “I’m the second son of the teyrn of Highever. I’ve learned to fight since I was young. Then I became a Grey Warden.”
“Fair enough. I was bought on the slave market for a fair price. The Crows believe in training their assassins young. They trained us in everything we needed. One of the exercises involved a chase around Antiva city. The masters could be anywhere, on the roofs, in the canals, waiting. You can imagine we learned how to climb, jump and hide very quickly.”
“You must have been good at it.”
“Oh, I was very bad.” Zevran chuckles. The suds finally start working, and he sighs as layers and layers of caked blood loosen and all but float off his leathers. “But tell me, how does the son of a teyrn become a Grey Warden?”
Gawain pauses. His eyes become curiously blank, and the smile vanishes.
“When his family is killed by a treacherous arl.” He says. Perhaps the most frightening part, Zevran thinks, is the matter-of-fact way he says it, the way he triggers Zevran’s danger-instincts, because this man is a born killer.
-
Later that night, he comes across Gawain in the clearing, long after even Leliana has gone to sleep. Gawain has shrugged on a hauberk of chainmail and Zevran’s sharp hearing can pick up the whistle of sword strokes as the Warden practices, again and again.
“Training?” He asks, wryly.
Gawain turns. His eyes narrow.
“Fight me.” He says,voice dipping, almost a growl. It is not a request. It is a command, an order.
Zevran moves, drawing his parrying-sword and striking-dagger from their sheaths. He doesn’t hesitate this time, because he almost knows how Gawain is going to strike, almost knows what Gawain really wants.
Their swords clash with the sharp, clear note of metal on metal. Zevran twists in, and his dagger scrapes off Gawain’s shield, but he’s in the perfect position to execute a reverse-slash and does so, forcing Gawain backwards.
Gawain grunts as Zevran’s foot catches him in the stomach and staggers another step backwards, but then lashes out with his shield, and Zevran takes the blow without flinching and thinks that there’s going to be a lot of bruises the next day.
There is no elegance to this fight, Zevran will later think. None of his usual style, little in the way of tricks and ambushes and misdirections, plenty in the way of feint and parry but somehow, the brutal need in Gawain for hack and bash combat suddenly plays out in Zevran and he finds himself fighting in older, harsher, more primitive patterns - the kind they learned when they were young children in Antiva, just beginning the basics of combat.
Sword strikes, dagger parries. No sophistication.
They hammer and batter each other down the length of the clearing. Sweat trickles down Zevran’s damp hair, and Gawain is breathing heavily.
Steel ringing on steel. Dodge and return Gawain’s attack with a pommel smash, dodge the rising path of Gawain’s shield.
He doesn’t know quite when it ends, only that at some point, Gawain throws down his sword and shield and stalks up to him and kisses him, and that by the end of that fierce, savage kiss, Zevran feels his lips beginning to bleed, and desire, from where those strong hands grip him.
“Come to my tent,” Gawain pants, and Zevran does so.
He does, after all, swing both ways, and he takes his pleasures where he can get them, and Gawain is, in a blunt and endearing way, rather charming.
-
Later, he thinks that Gawain is defined by war, and harsh violence, and deep, unselfish passion.
Some men are made in war.
In the morning, he rubs at the rope burns on his wrists, and carefully pulls stiff leather bracers over them. The bruises and the marks are covered by his cleaned armor, and he can pretend nothing happened, and Gawain certainly does.
-
This is the sum of whatever exists between them.
It grows by the little moments of battle, when they kill hurlocks and genlocks and shrieks and whatever other kinds of darkspawn there are. Zevran can’t identify them, but evidently Alistair can, and that those things die with a good blade to the back is more than enough for him.
They bond over combat, the strangely sensual pleasure of feeling life slip away from your victim, and that is something Zevran never thought he’d see a soldier and someone not an assassin understand.
This unspoken something grows stronger in battle, when Zevran knows where Gawain will move before Gawain does, when he is always the shadow behind the knight, ready to slip sharp death between the shoulder-blades, from behind, through poison and the many weapons in his arsenal. It grows stronger when he slips and almost falls before a hurlock emissary, only to find Gawain already there, blade biting deep into the emissary’s side with a sharp swing.
It grows by their regular sparring, by Gawain’s need for combat, competition, and war; it grows by the nights of harsh passion they spend together, later, in Gawain’s tent, bodies maps of bruises where their hands press too hard and where Gawain’s fingers leave marks, where Zevran’s teeth leave imprints on the Warden’s powerful shoulders. It grows by the bruises and bleeding where they press their lips together in savage kisses that have nothing to do with gentleness and everything to do with desire.
It is a strange kind of war, a strange kind of long-drawn combat they are engaged in, but if Gawain can only be defined through strife, then Zevran takes what he can get.
-
They all are fools for the Warden, Zevran knows. He should have fled long ago, or maybe slipped a knife between Gawain’s ribs, and sometimes, he wonders if he should leave.
Whatever that exists between them is hard to describe; it flares up in the middle of strife and then dies down again after, when Leliana takes it upon herself to rub a poultice into his wounds and bandage them, or when Wynne’s spells close most of the injuries they have seamlessly.
No, he wants to say, Gawain is not a knight, he does not belong to the world of gentle nobility as you do, a world of bards and white knights. There is a darker edge to him, a deep shadow, and only I have tasted it. He was made by blood and pain and battle, and that is a part of him wholly mine, and that you will never understand.
Even when Leliana accepts Andraste’s Grace from Gawain, or when he smiles and plants a kiss on her hand, it is too soft, too gentle, and Zevran pretends he isn’t bothered that Gawain is just as free with who he sleeps with.
(He is, just a little. After all, he does the same thing, and isn’t exactly sure what the nature of their relationship really is.)
In the end, Gawain always comes back.
Sleeping in the same tent, feeling the hot, languid press of Gawain’s strongly muscled body, Zevran takes what he gets, and feels just a little bitter.
-
“No,” Gawain says.
The Guardian stares, bleak, unjudging, except that Zevran can feel the way the man’s ageless eyes stare, right into him and is unsettled, but Gawain meets the Guardian’s gaze without flinching.
“There was nothing I could do. They were already dead. The keep was taken.”
Silence.
The Guardian dips his head.
Zevran waits for his turn, his gauntlet.
-
“Why?” Zevran wants to know. “Ferelden and Orlais, they say, are wedded to their Chantries.”
Gawain blinks, and shrugs. “I know.” He says, and shifts a little in their shared bedroll. “But I was never very good about attending services. What was the point? Andraste was long dead. Any amount of bowing and scraping wasn’t going to change the Maker’s mind.”
Later, he will say, “I didn’t like it. All the cringing, and prostration, in the hope that the Maker would change his mind and care. We don’t need the Maker. We don’t need a god who created us and turned his back and only cared because of a beautiful woman. Why be complete, why be perfect? That’s the beauty of battle. Everything happens. We change, we respond. It gives us power.”
Later, Zevran will think that this is the biggest insight he has ever gotten into who Gawain Cousland really is.
-
Some men are born for war. Some are made in war. Gawain Cousland, Zevran thinks absently, might be a bit of both.
He is made for battle, and for cold strategising beyond battle. He has no qualms about striding into the forest lair and slaughtering each and every one of the werewolves and burning them to death.
Witherfang he slays, and cuts the heart out and slips it into a bag to take to Zathrian.
He kills the child quickly, the demon-possessed child, slipping his sword between the child’s ribs with an almost-loving precision, and walks away and deals with Alistair’s complaints with a cold, sharp answer.
(Later that night, Gawain is harsher than usual.)
He is made for battle; it is battle that brings him alive, that fleshes his rough edges out like one of the Antivan mosaics done by the great artists, like the Antivan dock-whores, little pearls that only truly shine in the act itself, or so Zevran would like to think.
He is a man they still follow, despite all he has done, and even Alistair, despite how furious he is, follows Gawain loyally into combat, and Sten too, and Zevran can only wonder at how Gawain has earned the respect of the silent qunari.
Somehow, Gawain has become the pivot upon which the outcome of this Blight depends, and Loghain’s forces still comb for them and there is combat. But the endless tasks that pile upon their shoulders, the many battles have had their effect, and Zevran thinks that the lines of Gawain’s face only get harsher and harsher; he gets leaner and sharper like the blade and the weapon of war he is becoming.
And the problem with weapons forged in battle is, what do they do in times of peace?
But there is no time to think of peace now, and Zevran flips his dagger over and over, and catches it by the hilt each time.
Leliana watches, and Zevran smiles.
He, too, is a man of daggers and knives and less of peace.
-
“Would you have done it?” Zevran asks, finally. He has to know, if only for his peace of mind. He asks that question later that night, after the battle with the Tevinter mage and after they’ve freed the Alienage slaves.
He sees the burns where the mage caught Gawain in a fire spell, stark angry raw red against Gawain’s skin, because Wynne is drained, and her healing can’t do much for Gawain’s wounds, or even Zevran’s.
He runs his fingers over them gently. Gawain shivers, just a little, and says nothing.
It is the silence that frightens Zevran the most, in the depths of his heart.
The one thing Gawain has never done so far is to lie to him. Gawain closes his eyes. “Yes,” He finally admits. “If I’d thought he’d have kept his word.”
“He wouldn’t?”
“He was willing to break his word to Loghain.” Gawain says. “There was no guarantee he would not have brought word of us to Loghain, and then Loghain would have been prepared.”
Zevran closes his eyes. He’s used to treachery, and knows a lot about backstabbing, but even that pales next to the single word - Yes, he would sell the elves into slavery, if he’d thought it’d be any good.
Zevran hardly identifies himself as an elf. Certainly not with the Dalish, or the pathetic grovelling he too often finds among the city elves. And yet even now, the sureness, the certainty with which Gawain says he’d sell them off hurts.
He leaves Gawain’s tent the next morning.
They don’t speak for two weeks.
-
Gawain never apologises. Zevran never demands an apology. But on the eve of the Landsmeet, right after Zevran frees him from Fort Drakon, they spend the night together in Gawain’s rooms at Arl Eamon’s Denerim estate.
Neither of them admit that while they faced the real possibility of dying before, it had never become so desperately true as Gawain being outmaneuvered and defeated by Ser Cauthrien, and never become so concrete as the look on Gawain’s face when Ser Cauthrien dealt Zevran the wound that will leave a scar along his abdomen for the rest of his days.
The Landsmeet is tomorrow, Gawain says.
Zevran’s intuition whispers that tomorrow, the shape of things will change. Every task, every battle they have fought has been a step on the path leading towards that moment in the Landsmeet, to despose Loghain and to rally Ferelden against the darkspawn.
Zevran takes what he gets, but even he knows how to hold on.
That night, it is war beneath the sheets, violent, and vicious, as all desperate things are. And in some ways, it is an apology, because things will never be the same, and yet in the period of time when they are moving against each other, things don’t seem to have changed at all.
-
This is the eve of the battle for Denerim, where Gawain tells him what the other Grey Warden, Riordan, has said. Whoever strikes the killing blow will die.
“Well,” Zevran replies, “Then you will leave the blow to Riordan, yes?”
Gawain just looks at him, and says nothing, and Zevran doesn’t think about what it means until later.
If the true culmination of the journey they have embarked on is in tomorrow’s battle, their desperate attempt to slay the archdemon at Denerim, then tonight is the climax of this long war they have fought.
Gawain leaves early in the night, and comes back later, a sheet wrapped around his naked body. Zevran says nothing, and just pulls him onto the bed.
They are awake, making each hour count, all the way through the early hours of the dawn.
In the morning, when Gawain begins to pull on the padding he wears beneath his armour, Zevran just watches, and wonders if this is to be the shape of things for the rest of their lives.
-
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: NC-17
Characters: M!Cousland, Gawain Cousland, Zevran, Leliana
Summary: Some men are born for war. Some men are made in war. Gawain Cousland, Zevran thinks absently, might be a bit of both. M!Cousland, M!Cousland/Zevran.
Note: Done for my beta. I don't know how you put up with me. Also, because you complained there weren't enough non-dutiful Cousland fics. Warning, disturbed Cousland is disturbed.
-
Gawain Cousland, Zevran thinks, is infinitely complex.
Perhaps that is why he stays on, beyond just a sense of self-preservation, by swearing to serve the man who defeated a perfectly (if Zevran might say so himself) planned ambush and held his steel to the Crow’s throat.
He remembers, that moment, as if carved in the stone Antiva is so skilled at working - the Warden, for he can’t think of Gawain as Gawain in that instant, sword held to his throat, eyes chips of grey and perfectly, perfectly empty. This is the face of a killer, a man without conscience, and Zevran knows men like these - he’s seen one or two among the Crows who began like this, who can kill and feel completely nothing and go off for a bowl of fish chowder with their arms still soaked in blood.
He doesn’t know why Gawain twitches his wrist the other way, and the point of steel shifts away from Zevran’s throat and to the side.
“Get up,” Gawain says.
The mask of the killer is gone in an instant, replaced by a pleasantly bland expression, eyes still calculating and watching him.
There is more than one side to most men, Zevran knows. He accepts his blades back from the redhead and sheaths them absently.
But this man - this man is an enigma.
“We’re leaving.” Gawain tells him. He doesn’t even turn around to look back.
If he wasn’t so battered, Zevran could have made another attempt, to step behind Gawain and slip a poniard between the joints of his plate armor.
But he’s given his word (for now), and Gawain Cousland is a bit of an enigma. There aren’t many choices, and Zevran, as always, picks the one that amuses him the most, and what seems to be the best choice he can make.
He follows.
-
This is the Slayer, wolf-grey eyes too empty as Gawain shoulders into a hurlock, shield smashing and breaking teeth and bone and rams his sword straight into its chest, point ripping through in a fountain of gore.
Brutal, economical, and his motions precise, his teeth bared in a disturbing smile and he turns and casually asks, “Are you alright?” as he yanks his sword free and in the same motion, cuts at another hurlock.
This is the Warrior, eyes the grey of flashing steel, face stern as he blocks Alistair’s sword stroke on his shield and slips his blade effortlessly past the other Warden’s guard and says, “Dead,” clinically. This is the man who is legend in the Provings, who walks through a melee of flashing steel and sheds blows like raindrops, and Zevran admits what he knew all along - Crows, this man can fight.
This is the General, who says, “You cannot leave him alive,” and effortlessly beheads the kneeling Aeducan prince, and damn him because he should have sided with the prince from the start. This is the General who breaks the Anvil, not because he wants the golems to be free but because he later admits that the dwarves are a capricious ally at best, and this kind of power should not be in their hands.
This is the Leader, who answers Sten’s challenge with an armoured fist to the jaw and a mouthful of broken teeth and blood, and Zevran finds himself wondering if he knows what he’s gotten himself into.
This is the Friend, who laughs and smiles and says “Oh, I remembered you mentioned the boots,” and presents him a pair of the finest Antivan leather, and Zevran wonders just how much of what he says does Gawain remember.
(And just how many of the smiles are real, because he’s seen cold people before in Antiva, and at least two of them were not quite there, and he has the sinking suspicion that Gawain might just be a little like that.)
And there are so many more little bits, here and there, that Zevran can’t place, and it maddens him, because in the course of his assassination career, he’s always been able to place and know the target, and that’s what makes him so good at it.
This is a dangerous game he plays, but he’s content to ride it out, and to get inside Gawain’s skin and find out what makes him tick, while he’s at it. Sex not absolutely required, but Zevran always takes what he can get, and just a little more.
-
“Why did you keep me alive?” He asks, just because, filing the point of his dagger where the suspicious other Warden had blunted it. Honestly, didn’t he - Alistair, Zevran thought the name was, know how to handle weapons with just a little respect?
The Warden - Gawain, Zevran remembers, barely glances at him, bored, bare sword lying across his knees. He can barely make out the device on the scarred shield - two intertwined branches, which is probably Highever.
Gawain scrapes at the device with his dagger, flaking paint off with each stroke.
“Because you can fight worth a damn, and I need everyone I can get in this Blight.” The Warden says.
Zevran feels his pride just a little stung. “And so did I pass your test?”
The scrape of the dagger pauses, and Zevran feels his spine prickle, just a little. He reaches for the hilt of his dagger, even though he knows he can’t draw it and fight his way out of the camp. He makes plans anyway - throw the knife in the face of the Warden, and head left, the bard may try to shoot him, so by heading left, he’ll put the Warden between him and the bard, and oh, what about the mage -
He assesses the possibilities in a swift instant.
“It was not a test.” Gawain says, softly, and the moment of danger passes. He sets aside the sword on the dry earth, and Zevran breathes a little easier. The sound of the dagger scratching on the steel shield continues. “Backstab us, and I’ll kill you.”
Zevran believes him.
“You think I would? I have given my word.”
“There’s nothing to bind you but your word,” Gawain replies, “And I don’t believe in taking chances.”
Then why am I alive? Zevran wants to comment, but he says nothing. He fancies himself alive, and he doesn’t exactly want to remind the Warden he’s found himself bound to that he should really be dead.
Scratch, scratch, scrape.
“You were from Highever?”
Pause.
“Yes.”
Scratch, scrape.
He doesn’t ask why Gawain is painstakingly scratching off every last bit of paint, every last bit of the Highever device from his shield. The reason is perfectly obvious, and the more Zevran thinks about it, the more he’s perfectly certain it’s either a disconnect or a need to shed the past.
He’s done that too many times, after all, when things go to the crows.
“Come.” Gawain says. The scraping stops. The shield is bare of paint, and scratched and worn and battered. An empty shield, the shield of a mercenary or a sellsword. He stands up, picks up his sword.
“You call?”
Gawain makes an impatient sound. “To see how good you really are.” He says, matter-of-factly. “To first blood.”
Zevran blinks. “With drawn steel,” He states, getting to his feet.
Gawain stares at him as if he is stupid.
“Of course. Do you see anything else to fight with?”
They clear a space on the grass; Zevran draws the plain sword he’s used for the past three jobs, and the Crow dagger in his right hand. He’s ambidextrous, but he bets the Warden doesn’t know that, and it’s safe to pretend he’s right-handed.
Gawain is a classic fighter; shield in one hand, sword in the other, and he isn’t in plate armour this time, but a light hauberk of chainmail.
“To first blood?” Zevran asks.
Gawain nods brusquely and they move, almost at the same time.
The first exchange is almost traditional - his longsword rebounds off Gawain’s shield, but Zevran steps close and his dagger-strike screeches off Gawain’s sword and they exchange a few more strokes before Zevran disengages, admitting his wounds have made him slow.
He’s fast, Zevran realises, like a dangerous cat, but Zevran knows he can be faster than that. They meet in a flurry of steel and sparks and separate again, and Zevran finds himself almost-smirking, while Gawain’s expression has lightened.
“You’re toying with me,” He notes lightly, when they separate from the furious melee, because Zevran hurls a handful of dirt at Gawain’s face and backpedals while he can. Gawain’s style is built around staying power and force, Zevran’s is built around speed and motion, and yet somehow, the Warden has managed to draw him in, forced him to take a standing battle he isn’t meant to fight.
“So are you,” Gawain says. “I want you to hit me - as hard as you can.”
“Only if you’ll take this seriously,” Zevran taunts, and moves in on the left slant. He’s killed fencing nobles before, and Gawain’s fighting like a fencer right now, although he’s seen the man move into the brutal bash-and-hack of a shield-sword warrior in combat. Gawain’s sword is in his right hand, so Zevran figures he won’t expect this -
He moves in, close, then swaps weapons and strikes.
He twists to the right to avoid Gawain’s sword -
Wait, sword?
They separate.
A line of blood trickles down Gawain’s cheek. Zevran glances at his dagger - the point is faintly, just faintly red.
He thinks he catches a line of red along Gawain’s sword, and glances down. Oh. That. His thigh is bleeding, though the cut doesn’t seem deep.
“Not bad.” Gawain says. His eyes aren’t blank anymore, they are measuring, and maybe just a little approving. He thrusts his sword into the dirt, scrubbing the edge to clean it. Zevran does the same. “You swapped sides.”
“You guessed.” Zevran says, faintly impressed. Few people do. (Later, he will realise that Gawain looks alive, almost-smiling, after their duel.)
“You stopped leading with your dagger, halfway through the fight. It was obvious after that.”
He watches the blood trickle, one droplet, two droplets, down Gawain’s cheek, and thinks that maybe swearing to the Warden wasn’t as stupid an idea as it first seemed after all.
-
“So, you’re an Antivan Crow.” She (the red-head) says. She has two daggers, but Zevran knows she’s a greater danger with that bow of hers. He notices things. That’s his job. The ideal assassin is one who can size up his opponents.
“Why yes,” He replies, “And have we been introduced? I do think I would remember the name of so lovely a creature.”
She gives him a measuring look, “I’m Leliana,” She says, “Lay sister of the Chantry of Lothering.”
“And I am Zevran Arainai, former Antivan Crow,” Zevran says, “I’d give you a proper Antivan kiss, save that our leader will probably demand one too, and I don’t swing that way.”
Gawain doesn’t even look back at them.
“I don’t need an Antivan kiss,” Leliana informs him, and Zevran smirks.
“Then you must not have met very many Antivans. I am a notorious kisser, my friend, and they posted warnings about me at the border last year.”
Alistair rolls his eyes, and suddenly says, “Maker,” and draws his sword, shrugging on his shield at the same time.
Zevran learns later that the Grey Wardens can sense the presence of darkspawn, so he hadn’t missed anything. For now, he draws the sword and the dagger, dropping into a fighting crouch because archery was never his strongest suit.
Gawain is there, a juggernaut in plate armour, and his first strike severs a hurlock, beheading it instantly, and it flops to the ground and the head rolls and comes to stop at Zevran’s feet, and all he can think of is, Crows, the darkspawn are monstrous.
He fights like he knows how to, dodging desperately and cutting and slashing several times with the dagger (parry with the sword, close in, slit their throats with the dagger, Arainai!) and the darkspawn drops dead but the next one is on him, and Crows, that’s one huge darkspawn -
A distant part of Zevran’s mind is aware of Leliana, nocking arrows and shooting in swift, fluid motion beside him. It is also aware of Alistair ramming his mailed shoulder into a hurlock emissary, sword almost blazing with strange wisps of light that trail his blade where he slashes into the emissary.
And this is Gawain, a lone figure, wielding a battered shield and sword, facing the horned ogre that towers over him.
The ogre roars and smashes its fist down, to meet Gawain’s shield, but Gawain has no staying power and ducks from underneath, darting in but is repulsed by its other hammer-fist which slams into his plate-armour and makes a sound like a hammer on an anvil.
Zevran slips through the melee. He thinks a blade might have nicked him across the calf, but he doesn’t care right now, and he absently slits the throat of a hurlock on the way. Sloppy technique, he must point it out to Alistair later. Clubbing something to death with a shield doesn’t mean it’s dead yet.
Surprise is the key. He doesn’t believe in a fair fight. He feels for the vial he always carries on his vial-belt, and then remembers he hasn’t gotten the chance to replenish his poison flasks yet.
Plan B. Gawain has cut into the ogre’s side and it is bleeding and roaring in fury, black blood splattering everywhere with gore but it is still strong. Zevran runs, lightly over the ground. He’s just a little out of practice since he hasn’t done this for a while since he left Antiva city. The first running leap takes him off the ground, and for a moment, he fears he’s missed, but then he slams right into the ogre’s arm and stabs down with the dagger.
The ogre roars again, spraying Zevran with blood and saliva and (Gawain will fund him a new set of armor, definitely) Zevran clings on for dear life, digging his dagger in and plunging his sword higher up the ogre’s arm. This way, he makes slow progress upwards, though his grip is slick with blood and unmentionable fluid and below, Gawain’s sword methodically hews chunks out of the ogre.
The ogre flails, and it’s all Zevran can do to hang on. In a desperate gamble, he whips out the blood-drenched dagger and hurls it. It flashes through the air, spinning hilt-over-point then sinks into the ogre’s chest with a meaty smack.
In the next moment, there is a whistling sound, and two arrows cluster around the hilt of his knife, and Zevran hopes, are deeply embedded. He takes a deep breath and throws himself, feeling his stomach muscles almost-rip, but he barely makes the jump, fingers almost brushing air before his hand closes around the hilt of the dagger, and the other closes around the embedded arrow-shaft.
He doesn’t have a sword now.
One movement. It has to be one movement.
Zevran pauses, waiting and then moves, pulling the dagger free and yanking on the arrow shaft to pull himself upwards, in one swift motion, so the arrow-shaft doesn’t snap in his hands. With the dagger, he slashes, and gouts of black blood spurt from where he slits the throat of the ogre.
The ogre roars, gurgles a death rattle, and Zevran can see the dripping maw much closer than he’d personally prefer, can smell the fetid stink of its breath, can see, and sigh with pleasure as the last spark of crude animal life leaves its eyes, can feel the moment when its muscles go limp, and then the ogre crashes to the ground, and breaks his fall.
The first thing Zevran does is to retrieve his sword. It’s a good sword, and he’s paid enough for it.
The second thing he does is to glance at Gawain.
They’re both a sight for sore eyes, literally soaked to the skin in black blood (and he’d like to get this mess off him as soon as he can, gracias). But there is something about Gawain Cousland, casually walking among the dead and grabbing weak gurgling darkspawn by the hair and slitting their throats that is strangely fitting.
As if, in some sense, the man is defined by war and violence and enough blood to bathe in.
-
There is a strangely incomplete sense of vulnerability to Gawain, when they rest that night at the party camp. Zevran finds the Warden approaching him, and wonders why. He’s busy trying to get dried blood off his leathers. Pity he might have to discard the entire set of armor. He’d actually liked it.
“Where’d you pick that up?” Gawain asks, and his expression is unreadable. There is no cold killer now, only the strange dislocation of a soldier stranded away from his element, the same blunt approach that Zevran expects from any general.
“You know I was a member of the Antivan Crows,” Zevran says. He decides the boots, at least, are salveageable. Fortunately, because they are made of good leather, and he remembers the butter-soft feel of the finest Antivan leather. Consider it an indulgence, but Zevran’s always been good at taking his little pleasures where he can find them. “Assassination requires many tools.”
He pauses, and decides to make a trade.
“And where does a Grey Warden learn to fight?”
Gawain eyes him, as if deciding whether to answer, and then says, “Around. Recruits are chosen based on their combat abilities.”
“Tell me your answer, and you’ll have mine. The nature of a trade. Fair, no?”
Gawain shrugs. “I’m the second son of the teyrn of Highever. I’ve learned to fight since I was young. Then I became a Grey Warden.”
“Fair enough. I was bought on the slave market for a fair price. The Crows believe in training their assassins young. They trained us in everything we needed. One of the exercises involved a chase around Antiva city. The masters could be anywhere, on the roofs, in the canals, waiting. You can imagine we learned how to climb, jump and hide very quickly.”
“You must have been good at it.”
“Oh, I was very bad.” Zevran chuckles. The suds finally start working, and he sighs as layers and layers of caked blood loosen and all but float off his leathers. “But tell me, how does the son of a teyrn become a Grey Warden?”
Gawain pauses. His eyes become curiously blank, and the smile vanishes.
“When his family is killed by a treacherous arl.” He says. Perhaps the most frightening part, Zevran thinks, is the matter-of-fact way he says it, the way he triggers Zevran’s danger-instincts, because this man is a born killer.
-
Later that night, he comes across Gawain in the clearing, long after even Leliana has gone to sleep. Gawain has shrugged on a hauberk of chainmail and Zevran’s sharp hearing can pick up the whistle of sword strokes as the Warden practices, again and again.
“Training?” He asks, wryly.
Gawain turns. His eyes narrow.
“Fight me.” He says,voice dipping, almost a growl. It is not a request. It is a command, an order.
Zevran moves, drawing his parrying-sword and striking-dagger from their sheaths. He doesn’t hesitate this time, because he almost knows how Gawain is going to strike, almost knows what Gawain really wants.
Their swords clash with the sharp, clear note of metal on metal. Zevran twists in, and his dagger scrapes off Gawain’s shield, but he’s in the perfect position to execute a reverse-slash and does so, forcing Gawain backwards.
Gawain grunts as Zevran’s foot catches him in the stomach and staggers another step backwards, but then lashes out with his shield, and Zevran takes the blow without flinching and thinks that there’s going to be a lot of bruises the next day.
There is no elegance to this fight, Zevran will later think. None of his usual style, little in the way of tricks and ambushes and misdirections, plenty in the way of feint and parry but somehow, the brutal need in Gawain for hack and bash combat suddenly plays out in Zevran and he finds himself fighting in older, harsher, more primitive patterns - the kind they learned when they were young children in Antiva, just beginning the basics of combat.
Sword strikes, dagger parries. No sophistication.
They hammer and batter each other down the length of the clearing. Sweat trickles down Zevran’s damp hair, and Gawain is breathing heavily.
Steel ringing on steel. Dodge and return Gawain’s attack with a pommel smash, dodge the rising path of Gawain’s shield.
He doesn’t know quite when it ends, only that at some point, Gawain throws down his sword and shield and stalks up to him and kisses him, and that by the end of that fierce, savage kiss, Zevran feels his lips beginning to bleed, and desire, from where those strong hands grip him.
“Come to my tent,” Gawain pants, and Zevran does so.
He does, after all, swing both ways, and he takes his pleasures where he can get them, and Gawain is, in a blunt and endearing way, rather charming.
-
Later, he thinks that Gawain is defined by war, and harsh violence, and deep, unselfish passion.
Some men are made in war.
In the morning, he rubs at the rope burns on his wrists, and carefully pulls stiff leather bracers over them. The bruises and the marks are covered by his cleaned armor, and he can pretend nothing happened, and Gawain certainly does.
-
This is the sum of whatever exists between them.
It grows by the little moments of battle, when they kill hurlocks and genlocks and shrieks and whatever other kinds of darkspawn there are. Zevran can’t identify them, but evidently Alistair can, and that those things die with a good blade to the back is more than enough for him.
They bond over combat, the strangely sensual pleasure of feeling life slip away from your victim, and that is something Zevran never thought he’d see a soldier and someone not an assassin understand.
This unspoken something grows stronger in battle, when Zevran knows where Gawain will move before Gawain does, when he is always the shadow behind the knight, ready to slip sharp death between the shoulder-blades, from behind, through poison and the many weapons in his arsenal. It grows stronger when he slips and almost falls before a hurlock emissary, only to find Gawain already there, blade biting deep into the emissary’s side with a sharp swing.
It grows by their regular sparring, by Gawain’s need for combat, competition, and war; it grows by the nights of harsh passion they spend together, later, in Gawain’s tent, bodies maps of bruises where their hands press too hard and where Gawain’s fingers leave marks, where Zevran’s teeth leave imprints on the Warden’s powerful shoulders. It grows by the bruises and bleeding where they press their lips together in savage kisses that have nothing to do with gentleness and everything to do with desire.
It is a strange kind of war, a strange kind of long-drawn combat they are engaged in, but if Gawain can only be defined through strife, then Zevran takes what he can get.
-
They all are fools for the Warden, Zevran knows. He should have fled long ago, or maybe slipped a knife between Gawain’s ribs, and sometimes, he wonders if he should leave.
Whatever that exists between them is hard to describe; it flares up in the middle of strife and then dies down again after, when Leliana takes it upon herself to rub a poultice into his wounds and bandage them, or when Wynne’s spells close most of the injuries they have seamlessly.
No, he wants to say, Gawain is not a knight, he does not belong to the world of gentle nobility as you do, a world of bards and white knights. There is a darker edge to him, a deep shadow, and only I have tasted it. He was made by blood and pain and battle, and that is a part of him wholly mine, and that you will never understand.
Even when Leliana accepts Andraste’s Grace from Gawain, or when he smiles and plants a kiss on her hand, it is too soft, too gentle, and Zevran pretends he isn’t bothered that Gawain is just as free with who he sleeps with.
(He is, just a little. After all, he does the same thing, and isn’t exactly sure what the nature of their relationship really is.)
In the end, Gawain always comes back.
Sleeping in the same tent, feeling the hot, languid press of Gawain’s strongly muscled body, Zevran takes what he gets, and feels just a little bitter.
-
“No,” Gawain says.
The Guardian stares, bleak, unjudging, except that Zevran can feel the way the man’s ageless eyes stare, right into him and is unsettled, but Gawain meets the Guardian’s gaze without flinching.
“There was nothing I could do. They were already dead. The keep was taken.”
Silence.
The Guardian dips his head.
Zevran waits for his turn, his gauntlet.
-
“Why?” Zevran wants to know. “Ferelden and Orlais, they say, are wedded to their Chantries.”
Gawain blinks, and shrugs. “I know.” He says, and shifts a little in their shared bedroll. “But I was never very good about attending services. What was the point? Andraste was long dead. Any amount of bowing and scraping wasn’t going to change the Maker’s mind.”
Later, he will say, “I didn’t like it. All the cringing, and prostration, in the hope that the Maker would change his mind and care. We don’t need the Maker. We don’t need a god who created us and turned his back and only cared because of a beautiful woman. Why be complete, why be perfect? That’s the beauty of battle. Everything happens. We change, we respond. It gives us power.”
Later, Zevran will think that this is the biggest insight he has ever gotten into who Gawain Cousland really is.
-
Some men are born for war. Some are made in war. Gawain Cousland, Zevran thinks absently, might be a bit of both.
He is made for battle, and for cold strategising beyond battle. He has no qualms about striding into the forest lair and slaughtering each and every one of the werewolves and burning them to death.
Witherfang he slays, and cuts the heart out and slips it into a bag to take to Zathrian.
He kills the child quickly, the demon-possessed child, slipping his sword between the child’s ribs with an almost-loving precision, and walks away and deals with Alistair’s complaints with a cold, sharp answer.
(Later that night, Gawain is harsher than usual.)
He is made for battle; it is battle that brings him alive, that fleshes his rough edges out like one of the Antivan mosaics done by the great artists, like the Antivan dock-whores, little pearls that only truly shine in the act itself, or so Zevran would like to think.
He is a man they still follow, despite all he has done, and even Alistair, despite how furious he is, follows Gawain loyally into combat, and Sten too, and Zevran can only wonder at how Gawain has earned the respect of the silent qunari.
Somehow, Gawain has become the pivot upon which the outcome of this Blight depends, and Loghain’s forces still comb for them and there is combat. But the endless tasks that pile upon their shoulders, the many battles have had their effect, and Zevran thinks that the lines of Gawain’s face only get harsher and harsher; he gets leaner and sharper like the blade and the weapon of war he is becoming.
And the problem with weapons forged in battle is, what do they do in times of peace?
But there is no time to think of peace now, and Zevran flips his dagger over and over, and catches it by the hilt each time.
Leliana watches, and Zevran smiles.
He, too, is a man of daggers and knives and less of peace.
-
“Would you have done it?” Zevran asks, finally. He has to know, if only for his peace of mind. He asks that question later that night, after the battle with the Tevinter mage and after they’ve freed the Alienage slaves.
He sees the burns where the mage caught Gawain in a fire spell, stark angry raw red against Gawain’s skin, because Wynne is drained, and her healing can’t do much for Gawain’s wounds, or even Zevran’s.
He runs his fingers over them gently. Gawain shivers, just a little, and says nothing.
It is the silence that frightens Zevran the most, in the depths of his heart.
The one thing Gawain has never done so far is to lie to him. Gawain closes his eyes. “Yes,” He finally admits. “If I’d thought he’d have kept his word.”
“He wouldn’t?”
“He was willing to break his word to Loghain.” Gawain says. “There was no guarantee he would not have brought word of us to Loghain, and then Loghain would have been prepared.”
Zevran closes his eyes. He’s used to treachery, and knows a lot about backstabbing, but even that pales next to the single word - Yes, he would sell the elves into slavery, if he’d thought it’d be any good.
Zevran hardly identifies himself as an elf. Certainly not with the Dalish, or the pathetic grovelling he too often finds among the city elves. And yet even now, the sureness, the certainty with which Gawain says he’d sell them off hurts.
He leaves Gawain’s tent the next morning.
They don’t speak for two weeks.
-
Gawain never apologises. Zevran never demands an apology. But on the eve of the Landsmeet, right after Zevran frees him from Fort Drakon, they spend the night together in Gawain’s rooms at Arl Eamon’s Denerim estate.
Neither of them admit that while they faced the real possibility of dying before, it had never become so desperately true as Gawain being outmaneuvered and defeated by Ser Cauthrien, and never become so concrete as the look on Gawain’s face when Ser Cauthrien dealt Zevran the wound that will leave a scar along his abdomen for the rest of his days.
The Landsmeet is tomorrow, Gawain says.
Zevran’s intuition whispers that tomorrow, the shape of things will change. Every task, every battle they have fought has been a step on the path leading towards that moment in the Landsmeet, to despose Loghain and to rally Ferelden against the darkspawn.
Zevran takes what he gets, but even he knows how to hold on.
That night, it is war beneath the sheets, violent, and vicious, as all desperate things are. And in some ways, it is an apology, because things will never be the same, and yet in the period of time when they are moving against each other, things don’t seem to have changed at all.
-
This is the eve of the battle for Denerim, where Gawain tells him what the other Grey Warden, Riordan, has said. Whoever strikes the killing blow will die.
“Well,” Zevran replies, “Then you will leave the blow to Riordan, yes?”
Gawain just looks at him, and says nothing, and Zevran doesn’t think about what it means until later.
If the true culmination of the journey they have embarked on is in tomorrow’s battle, their desperate attempt to slay the archdemon at Denerim, then tonight is the climax of this long war they have fought.
Gawain leaves early in the night, and comes back later, a sheet wrapped around his naked body. Zevran says nothing, and just pulls him onto the bed.
They are awake, making each hour count, all the way through the early hours of the dawn.
In the morning, when Gawain begins to pull on the padding he wears beneath his armour, Zevran just watches, and wonders if this is to be the shape of things for the rest of their lives.
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