Blood Poison 29 and 30
Summary: f!Surana/Zevran in Antiva and in the Fade, and Zevran getting a bit navel-gazing for once.
Rating: PG, and I'm being generous.
Archive: At LJ or at ff.net
Does anyone else have trouble posting in rich text via Chrome?
"Yes. Yes, goodnight my friend," Zevran said while Neria unlocked the door to their rooms. He had his arm around her waist and his mouth nearly touching her neck as he spoke to the other Crow. As soon as the door was shut behind them, Neria gave a little shudder and slipped out of Zevran's grasp.
Zevran made for a great chair. "Such a reaction you always have when I touch you in front of people, my Warden, and yet I still flatter myself to think that you like me a little."
The corners of Neria's eyes creased in a hidden smile as she loosened her dress and stripped down to her shift. "You never flatter yourself, my Zevran. The closest you come is an understatement of the truth." He gave a wicked grin. She returned to him and lounged across his lap, her legs flung over one arm of the chair, her head over the other arm, and her bottom between his thighs.
"You know why I do this thing that makes you discomfited, I hope?" Zevran traced a slow line over her belly, smoothing the wrinkles in her shift. "And I hope it is working? Truly most Antivans are not used to the thought of powerful women, and I wish to make it very clear that no one has as much power as you."
"It is working, yes. I am making quite a lot of money in bribes for your favor and I am obeyed when I speak." Neria shifted, curling more on her side and fitting her head firmly to the crook of his shoulder. She stroked her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and he gave a pleased sigh. "And it is a flaw of mine that I am so superstitious about your public affection. I always feel like the Chantry is watching and we are about to be cut down by the Templars."
Zevran curled his hand over Neria's hip and shifted her closer. "The Chantry of Antiva would not dare touch you. You must know that. The Grand Cleric here is as afraid of the Crows as anyone. As you once said to me, I say to you: you are free, my friend."
Neria just closed her eyes and rubbed her face against the side of his neck.
Taddeo's hand pressed Neria's waist as he turned her, each step in place with the music. He was as tall as Alistair but not nearly as broad, she always noticed. His hazel eyes were currently showing an interest and care for the lady in his arms, an expression she knew to be calculated, but they flicked away only occasionally at any who came to near to them. Neria watched his face, but she was aware of the calculations going on nearby. Many wanted to come closer to her, some were hoping to escape her notice, and a few were going to try to see that she died.
As the song neared its end Taddeo swept her into a hallway. Someone on the other side of the wall gave a high giggle that was swallowed by conversation, but for the moment, they were alone. He lifted his hand to her face and bent his head to hers for a kiss, and because she knew well that this entire dance was a dream in the Fade, she allowed it.
Fade-Taddeo was a skilled kisser, brushing his lips along hers before delicately applying his tongue, though his mouth felt a little like Anders's.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" said a mocking voice that Neria knew nearly as well as her own.
Neria pushed away from Taddeo and turned to find Morrigan, looking the same as she did before the Archdemon fell. "Leave us," she said to Taddeo with a flick of her fingers at the dream-Crow. Taddeo went back to the dancing hall with a frown.
"Do you think you are dreaming of me, I wonder?" Morrigan stepped a little closer to Neria, then shifted to walk slowly around her with a swivel of her hips.
Neria shook her head. "I would be a short-lived mage indeed if I could not distinguish between visions and spirits. No. You are either a demon or, through some skill that I have never heard of, Morrigan herself. Either way, I would speak to you."
Morrigan gave her winsome laugh. "Ah, our Neria, ever willing to consort with demons. I count myself fortunate that I may yet speak with you before your inevitable change into an abomination."
Neria laughed in return and opened a door across the hall. "I have missed you, my friend, if you can believe it." She stepped into the raw Fade and Morrigan followed.
So too did Taddeo. "Mistress," he said, as Neria turned to frown at him with blunt reeds waving in the air around her. "Come back to me, please." There was an urgency in his voice.
"I said be gone," Neria snapped, flicking her fingers again. The doorway disappeared, as did Taddeo's form, leaving behind a desire demon, laughing and arching her back. She began to spin, voice echoing through the undulating grassland.
"Why must they always first appear as women?" Neria wondered as Morrigan pushed a gale of ice at the creature. "I have no interest in women. It is foolish." She pulled her mana deliciously wide, for she never got the chance to do this anymore while awake, and launched great, jagged forks of lightning at the demon.
Morrigan began to laugh again, but stopped when something shook Neria. The elf-mage took a deep breath, shut her eyes and opened them, hearing a fading Morrigan cry out, "What? Blast it! No!"
Zevran awoke to all of his body spasming and his jaw clenched shut. White light seared blinding paths in the blackness of his bedroom, and sparking out from his bedmate. He collapsed. "Neria! Neria!" He gripped her shoulder tightly and the magic stopped. "You were casting in your sleep."
She gasped and lit the bedside lamp. Her face, when he saw it, was an open book. Her brows were drawn up and together, her eyes wide, and she panicked to see that she had hurt him. She flew to the medicine chest, which amused him to no end. If anyone else asked her for healing help, she was utterly disdainful, but if Zevran was hurt, all of her Tower learning came to her and she fussed over him in a manner that he, quite frankly, enjoyed. He had spent too much time in his life bandaging his own wounds and hiding in the cold while he healed to not appreciate this.
Zevran considered Neria, his lover of eight years now, as she spoke quickly and slipped dried elfroot into his mouth. She was very much a part of him, he knew, because when they were apart for any length of time it felt as if half of his body were gone. There was probably a name for this feeling, though he did not know it.
She gently massaged a poultice into a burn on his forehead and he made the appropriate noises where she required them in her monologue. He felt ridiculously, unquestionably secure in his trust in her, the only person that he had ever truly trusted. One time someone had offered her three hundred sovereigns to kill him-three hundredsovereigns-and she had brought the man to him, half-burned and quivering, much like a cat presenting a half-dead mouse as a gift. Just as he was constantly feeding her power through his word and touch, she too used all of her considerable manipulative skill to secure his own power. There was no one that she would not betray for his sake.
There was also the matter of... love. He tested the word in his mind gingerly and found that the alarm that the concept once brought had faded with time. After the affair with Conti she was no longer able to tolerate any man's touch save Zevran's, a fact which he viewed with frank possessive joy. He bedded only her, except when killing a mark required otherwise-and yet, as years passed, even this became intolerable to the point where he would send someone else on missions that might lead to it. For three years now they had been disgustingly monogamous, but his insatiable and inventive darling had yet to bore him.
Twice she had been poisoned, though by now she was partially immune. She had survived, obviously, but both times he had left their rooms only when he needed to satisfy his fury by carving small and vital pieces out of the bodies of the still-living men that had done this to her. And every once in a while when she was a little late with her monthly bleeding he amused himself with visions of his Warden with a round-moon belly. These thoughts had once brought to him a measure of trepidation due to the death of his own mother, but as she had not conceived since Ferelden, he allowed himself the fanciful pleasure of imagining Neria's body heavy with his child, Neria nursing a pretty red-headed daughter, and himself swinging the child into the air and catching her.
Neria was watching him now, his chest bandaged from a minor burn beneath his ribs, and he could see in her face that she was aware that he wasn't paying attention. She didn't ask why this was as she turned away to tidy up. She never did. When he had offered her the earring she had accepted it without a single question about what it meant, questions that he would not have been prepared to answer at the time, but she had never taken it off save the once. In their very few sideways, hedging conversations about their relationship, he had always been the aggressor.
Neria came back to bed and fit herself snugly to his side, stroking his neck in a way that she knew he liked. Zevran laid the facts out in his mind, an exercise which he had previously avoided and which she had never asked of him. He... let us call it 'need.' He needed her. He trusted her. He loved her. He would not leave her due to the oath that he imagined she had forgotten about by now (in his mind, she was very much his mistress and he still her man, though the Crows did not know this). He was… yes. He was in arelationship with her. For four years now they had been presenting themselves as husband and wife and he justified this as a shield that gave her protection and power, but tonight he was being honest with himself. The whoreson child in him, sick and frightened in the dark, and the hardened man he had become, neither of them wanted to release this treasure that he found in her. He wanted to be with her every day of his life. He no longer wanted 'husband' to be a convenient word to use and decided he would not allow it to be so. He would be her husband in truth.
Zevran rolled to his side and pulled his wife close against him with a satisfied smile. He tucked the blankets around them both and rubbed her back, whispering kind things to her and teasing away the guilt that still lingered in her stiff shoulders. As the hours passed toward morning, he watched her eyes in the darkness and traded soft words with her. She accepted this slight change in him without comment, but his smile grew as he felt the trembling within her, saw how her face turned at his words like a flower to the sun. She did not know it yet, and would likely accept it as her due, proud thing, but she was about to become the most ludicrously spoiled creature in all of Thedas.