*mumbles* DA: Awakening plot bunny where Zevran has just finished murdering his way through the Crows until House Arainai is in bloody ruins and the rest of the Crows draw away, saying, enough, enough, enough. Weāve seen nothing. We wonāt involve ourselves in this. He finds himself standing in the literal and metaphorical wreckage of House Arainai, finds himself finally free, and is about to get back on a boat to Ferelden whenā suddenly, there is a child running out of an alleyway after him. Zevran just about cuts the kidās throat on reflex but stops himself, and he looks, and this ratty little raw-boned callus-handed teenager doesnāt even have to speak for Zevran to know sheās a half-trained Crow.
Sheās a compradi of House Arainai, one of the recruits abandoned when her trainers and masters were either picked off by Zevran or fled the country to escape him as the House collapsed. Sheās sharp, this recruit, to have actually identifiedĀ him, let alone found him, but sheās not near grown. And sheās⦠his? She says sheās his, isnāt she? Her and the other compradi. If heās the Black Shadow, if heās the assassin of assassins,Ā then everything that was House Arainai is his for the claiming, and doesnāt he⦠have plans for them? Isnāt he the new Master? Isnāt that why he tore them down?
Itās not. Itās not anything like what Zevran wanted. In fact, itās the opposite. Him, be the breaker of children? Him, go to the docks and the whorehouses looking for fresh meat cheap enough that it doesnāt matter if nine out of ten wonāt make it?Ā Him, return to power in a life in which othersā lives are worthless, when heās so recently discovered that thereās someone in Ferelden who thinks heās worth something after all, and Zevran might even be starting to believe it, too?
There are other compradi in the warehouse still, she says, this half-fledged killer. Theyāve been hungry since the trainers vanished, but theyāve survived, of course. Theyāre tough, theyāre good. Theyāll do anything he wants.
Theyāre desperate, she doesnāt say; Zevran only knows because he knows. Theyāre children, not even the older ones trained enough to make it on their own. The Crows donāt exactly teach self-sufficiency. If not the Crows, then someone else will take them. Antiva City is ready and waiting to eat her young alive.
Itās not so bad being a Crow, Zevran used to say. And itās not. It could have been worse. Heās not sad for himself. He can make others die to keep himself alive, and he has at least as many pleasures as pains.
But still he thinks⦠He canāt bring himself to make them Crows. And if he leaves the scraps of House Arainai to Antiva and chance, then the ones who survive, they might not be the lucky ones.
And thatās how Zevran finally returns to Ferelden, returns to his Warden two years into the rebuilding of Vigilās Keep, with a ragtag group of half-grown Antivan children not quite under his wing, but certainly trailing along after him. Some of them are teenagers and some almost babies; some are far too deep into training to accept any life but killing, and some still are soft and frightened and want a mother again. Some, maybe, could be pried out of the life, and eventually grow up and move on with nothing remaining but memories like blood crusted beneath the nails.
I know this wasnāt quite the reunion you were expecting, amora, he says. I myself imagined a few candles, a little more oil, a lotĀ less clothing... Heās smiling crookedly, covering everything with humour, but oh, heās afraid, heās ready to hear that a man with twenty children to somehowĀ raise isnāt what the Warden wants. That, after three long years, their intense romance in the bloody heart of a Blight doesnāt make the Warden feel the same as it once did. That an ex-assassin with a black history and no idea what to do with his future isnāt the lover for an Arl and Warden-Commander and Hero of Ferelden.Ā I am⦠not quite sure what to tell you.
And the Warden buries their face against his neck, tangles their fingers into his hair, breathesĀ like heās the air theyāve been missing.Ā You donāt have to say anything, they finally murmer. Onlyā introduce us all, Zevran, or itāll be a bit awkward to live with them, wonāt it?