Anansi had seen the way Zevran looked at him. And Anansi liked the way Zevran looked at him. Anansi liked a lot of things about Zevran -- his sometimes-lilting, sometimes-throaty accent, his ease with physical contact, his infectious laugh. The way he always seemed careless and indolent, even in battle, unless he hated you, or unless he loved you.
In Redcliffe, they passed the night indoors for the first time in weeks. Anansi soaked in a large stone tub until the water went cold, brushed fragrant Rivaini oils through his hair until it shone, and slipped a thin silken robe over his bare shoulders.
When he stood in the middle of Zevran’s room, smiling his little smile, the backlighting from the fireplace made the robe look transparent.
Zevran, reclining on the bed amidst at least five pillows -- most of them gleefully stolen from other rooms -- leaped to his feet in a fast and fluid motion that didn’t look at all careless or indolent.
“Ay no,” Zevran sighed as he took in the sight, his dismay evident. Anansi’s little smile faltered. “Amico. I have misled you.”
Anansi folded his arms, huffing. “Misled me? Zevran, I’ve gotten many a look from many a man, and there’s no misinterpreting the way you look at me.”
Zevran’s lips twitched, but he managed not to smile. Anansi’s coy expression had given way to a defensive haughtiness that Zevran found irresistible, but Zev wasn’t sure he wanted to insult the Warden further by betraying his amusement. “I know. It is a bad habit. You are poetry, Anansi. Everything about you is beautiful beyond belief. How could I not look at you? But it is not sex I want.”
Anansi’s brow furrowed, his arms dropping back to his sides, then crossing again. “You... you don’t want...?”
“I know it is different for you. But for me, sex is... like training, you see? When you train, it might feel a little good, yes, but mostly you do it for the benefits -- a strong body, better skill, impressing people, you know. I do not have sex for the joy of it, I do it because I benefit from it. Seduce a mark, they become easier to kill. A little attention in the back alley, maybe a guard will forget that he saw me thieving. You see?”
Anansi didn’t see, not really. He thought of his magnetic attraction to Sten, his yearning for the warmth of Alistair’s body. The benefit was the intimacy, the skin-to-skin contact, the fierceness of desire and its ecstatic result. “You make sex sound like work,” Anansi said disbelievingly. Zevran’s apologetic eyes and sheepish shrug confirmed it.
“But you said that I’m beautiful. That you like to look at me. And yet, you don’t feel... desire? For me?” Anansi felt chilled despite the warmth of the fire, and his arms tightened around his body. Zevran seemed to soften, and he coaxed Anansi to sit with him on the bed, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, stroking his lustrous hair.
“I am not rejecting you, amico. I feel a yearning too, yes, but it is not here,” he clarified, resting his hand just above his groin. “I wish to... to be embraced by you, to feel your cheek against mine. To see you smile at me when I give you gifts. I dream about reading love poetry to you when the moon is full -- ay, this is no easy admission, Anansi! I am embarrassed,” he laughed, warmth rising in his cheeks as he covered his face.
Anansi laughed, too, but in relief. “Zevran, you... you want to court me!”
“Yes! That is it! See, you understand.” Zevran wrapped his arms around Anansi and purred contentedly. “You understand.”
“Will you read me a poem now?” Anansi asked quietly, and pressed his lips to Zevran’s shoulder so softly that Zevran didn’t feel it through his shirt.
Zevran did read him a poem, and another, and another, until Anansi’s eyelids grew heavy and he rested his dozing head on Zevran’s chest. Zevran, so used to sleeping with hunger and longing that he was blindsided by this new feeling, lay awake for a long while.
Not all the Old Gods are asleep or dead. The Dragon of Mystery has plans for us all, and one Grey Warden is about to set one of those plans into motion.
“Serah Hawk,” Alain repeats, his expression strained, as if he is attempting to keep his face placid under great stress, “may I... speak with you? Just for a moment?”
Elijah studies Alain, his darting eyes, the sheen of sweat on his brow as the sun beats down upon the robe he wears with the cowl up over his head. There’s an urgency in his bearing, in the question he asks, despite his hesitation in asking. Elijah obliges him, walking with him into the shade of a pillar.
“This... Gallows... it’s not like Starkhaven. At all. I wish I’d went along with Grace, and given them an excuse to kill me--”
“Wait, Alain-- why? What’s wrong?” Eli’s chest tightens before Alain can even answer. He wears full robes with the cowl up, even in the sun.
“They... they’re...” Alain swallows, glances towards the templars standing guard some distance away, swallows again. When he looks at Elijah again, he shakes his head, his nerve lost.
“I think they’re watching me,” he whispers, distantly, and hurries away before Eli can stop him.
Elijah pegs the templars with a hard glare before he leaves, the Beast stirring in his gut.
Elijah doesn’t see Alain in the Courtyard again. According to the First Enchanter, very few mages were allowed in the Courtyard at all anymore, and certainly not when Elijah was around, since they seemed to like talking to him a little too much, and he seemed to like them a little too much, period.
But Anders had become very active in the Mage Underground, and one night after a raiding party had returned to his Darktown clinic, he brought one mage in particular through the secret passage into Hawk Estate.
Eli, dressed in little more than his winter smalls and a dressing robe, hurries out of the bedroom when he hears Bodahn greet Anders. “Anders? I knew you’d come around eventua--”
His coy comment is cut short when he sees who is with him.
“He insisted on seeing you,” Anders shrugs helplessly, but Alain falters, holding his elbows tightly as if he is cold, afraid to meet Eli’s eyes.
Elijah feels his jaw tighten and his chest heat up, markers of an impotent rage that he cannot unleash on the Templar Order, that’s been roiling in him for years. All Alain had wanted was to be back in the Circle, a Circle he remembered as home, but he’d gotten Kirkwall instead, and the Gallows, a fate worse than death.
“Eli?” Anders’ cautious voice reminds Elijah to exhale, to let the rage simmer down. Alain is shivering, although the fireplaces were lit and recently stoked, and noticing this drains the rest of the rage from Eli and replaces it with heavy, black sorrow.
“Fuck,” he sighs, his shoulders sagging.
“I’m sorry,” Alain whispers, shivering harder. “I should have stayed. I should have stayed. I thought-- I’m sor--”
“Are you cold?” Elijah asks, because he feels like either punching something or crying and neither of those things are useful, and he couldn’t bear to hear Alain apologise again. He comes closer, and Alain’s arms tighten around himself.
Eli stops.
Anders, battling his own rage and the brutal familiarity of Alain’s plight, quietly absconds to the kitchen to do something useful with his hands.
“No... yes... I don’t...”
“If you are, I’m warm. And I won’t hurt you. I’m glad you came to me, and I won’t hurt you.”
It takes a minute for Alain to look up at Elijah. Another minute for him to drop his arms. But Eli waits, and eventually when Eli raises his hands towards Alain, palms up and open, Alain steps into the embrace.
What Anders finds when he returns with a tray of hot spiced wine and mutton stew left over from dinner is them entwined, one of Eli’s arms around Alain’s shoulders and his other hand resting protectively on Alain’s head, Alain’s hands gripping the robe tight enough to wrinkle it, and the warmth of the hearth, of the lover and protector, radiating from Eli in gentle waves. Hedge magic to soothe the traumatised spirit.
Alain sleeps deeply that night, buried under an obscene amount of linens and furs in Elijah’s own bed.
Weeks later, on a stormy night at the Docks, a templar is following up on a tip he’d received about apostates gathering in a warehouse. The door he’d just walked through slams shut behind him. He spins around, but no one’s there, and the shadows around him seem to be lengthening.
The templar draws his sword, but he cannot see a thing.
“Ser Karras,” a voice both like a man’s and not at all like a man’s growls, “Alain of Starkhaven sends his regards,” and then the Beast is upon him.
When Elijah Hawk-child returns to his estate, he is less of the Beast and more of the man, but he has a ways to go. Fortinbras barks at him from the hearth, jumping to his feet, then thinks better of it when the Beast’s oxblood glare lights upon him. So, too, does Bodahn, who bites off his greeting before it escapes his mouth and suddenly remembers an inconsequential task to do elsewhere.
Alain descends the staircase and approaches, and he is not fearful. He knows where Elijah has been. He knows what Elijah has done. And it frightens him, for he has always been nonviolent, but in a deep part of him that has become hard and sharp and venomous he is glad. He is more than glad. He wishes to unleash upon all Kirkwall this Beast that Eli is willing to become for him. He wishes to watch all Kirkwall burn.
But though his own beast wishes to rise and meet Eli’s, he exhales, and reaches even deeper within for the warmth of the hearth, the warmth of the loved and the protected. He summons this magic to wreathe him and fill his hands, the hands he brings to Elijah’s hardened face.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and the Beast rumbles and closes his eyes as Alain wraps his arms around Elijah’s neck. “Rest now.”
Elijah weeps when he comes back, as he often did, exhausted and overstimulated and sick with sorrow. But Alain is warm, and more importantly Alain is safe, and with him, and the sorrow could wait for another day.
a story, then; perhaps I tell it true, perhaps not. but I do tell it:
a skirmish in the forests of Seheron. a contingent of Saarebas and their Arvaarad deployed to rout the Vints. a particular Arvaarad who is weary of battle, who probably isn’t paying as much attention as ey should have been. a strange specter in the fog -- not quite elven, not quite qunari, not quite mortal.
they tell you that if something is lurking in the fog, kill it.
Arvaarad calls Saarebas from the main fray. the figure moves deeper into the fog. Arvaarad is annoyed, and instead of returning Saarebas to battle as ey should, drives them both into the forest after the figure.
“well, well. I knew you’d come,” the figure says from behind them, as fog obscures their vision. “I’m only in the market for the leashed one. leash-holder, you may go.”
twenty minutes later, the karataam finds Arvaarad wandering in the fog, blind and gibbering.
Saarebas finds emself in the hands of Zaarilek, in what ey can only understand as the Fade. perhaps it is the Fade; perhaps it isn’t, and is a place that mortals do not have stories about. perhaps it is a place of gods.
“you remember me,” Zaarilek says, not asking. Saarebas does. ey’d seen Zaarilek in dreams, and had not turned away. Saarebas turned away from nothing.
Saarebas watches Zaarilek every step of the way.
it begins with blue lyrium, refined. it continues with blue lyrium, raw. it begins and continues with Zaarilek’s voice in song, in chant, stoking the fires in Saarebas’ mind where pathways degrade and reroute and form anew. it continues with blood from Avernus, it continues with blood from the Architect. it continues with saar-qamek like nothing the Qunari have used, and here Zaarilek is precise with its measurements, for the balance it is striking is more delicate than a spider’s freshly-spun web. it crescendoes with red lyrium, and the song sharpens and warps, twisting in like a corkscrew, and the pain is beyond pain -- Saarebas’ eyes remain open, but they see nothing now.
Zaarilek smiles almost lovingly as it places the dragon scales over Saarebas’ wide, unseeing eyes. “and behold! I have begun a new song, built upon the fading notes of the old.”
a place that mortals do not have stories about, but will; a place of gods, both old and new. in this place, Talan awaits. Talan, the Truth, once called Saarebas. Talan, the Truth, who cannot see into our world but sees much and more than we ever could, who smiles and sings, who welcomes all to hear eir song.
it is a song of dragons. it is a song of kossith, the firstborn mortals of dragons. it is a song of Titans and Old Gods, of Evanuris and Forgotten Ones. it is a song of Fen’Harel and Corypheus, of the Fade and the Void. it is a song of Razikale-Zaarilek and its children of the ninth age, a song of a new world.
to hear it is to forget the falsehood that is the Maker, and to know divinity. so forget I have told you of it, before you return to your Chantry-haunted earth.
It didn’t snow in the Anderfels. The Anderfels was wind and sand and sun. When a boy named Jethro was ripped from his mother’s caravan during the lull before dawn, the wind had quieted, the sand was still, and the sun was still under the horizon. While a trio of Tevinter slavers knocked the boy unconscious and slung him into a cart with four others and skirted the Orlesian border to spirit their elven cargo back to Tevinter post-haste, the only thing that stirred the sand was the horses’ well-shod heels.
As Jethro’s mother wailed, rending her clothing, the imprint of the slaver’s ring still in her lacerated cheek, neither sun nor wind had solace to offer her.
Magister Cassius called the whip-thin, stone-faced Ander boy ‘Third’, at first-- for he was third in Cassius’ sextet of young elven slaves. Later, when Cassius began to favour Third, began to fall in love with the way his body healed and hid all injury, with the way his lips never parted to cry out and his eyes never welled with tears, Cassius made Third first, and gave him a name-- Angiculus.
But when Cassius’ little snake tossed his shoulders back and shed his skin, took in the red lyrium that Cassius fed him and let it flower in his blood, let in the spirits that found him in the Fade and heeded their whispered instructions... when Cassius’ little snake turned red lyrium against him and then looked deep into his eyes as he slid the dagger in to the hilt with almost loving slowness, Cassius could only call him demon.
Jethro carefully wiped the blade clean and slipped it into the cloth belt wound around his slim hips, his own blood singing with power. He hadn’t thought he could do it-- but blessedly, the spirits and his own lyrium-infused blood didn’t give him time to think. He’d uncoiled and struck, and now he waited.
The spirits left him to infiltrate the slaves like a virus. Elven youth that had felt Jethro’s fingertips brush them in the months leading up to now were seeing visions. They were looking upon their masters with new eyes. They were uncoiling and striking. The Magisterium was running red with blood, and this time it was theirs.
Jethro stepped out onto Cassius’ balcony and felt the wind on his scarred cheeks. Next came snow, cold and sharp and stinging, like sand in an Ander storm. The wind picks up, driving the snow against him, and though he is underdressed, he doesn’t shiver or hustle back indoors.
In these first tenuous moments of freedom, in this quiet before the storm truly began, this was solace.
The dragon Zaarilek had pushed him towards the nascent Inquisition, at that time just the three advisors and the Vashoth with the Anchor. At that time, but already people were beginning to magnetise towards Haven, people from all reaches of Thedas, as if Haven bore a deep gravity well at its core.
Solas knew what the gravity well was. The Anchor was the gravity well. The Herald who would vanquish the demons and close the sky.And behind em, the wolf who would open it up again, open it wide and pull heaven through.
The wolf, hungry wolf, thwarted and alienated and denied a pack.The wolf slunk to Haven with the Inquisition, and when Kasaanda tried to thank him for watching over em, he pulled away.“Fine. But I am not here to make friends,” he warned em, for eir own good, as he told himself.
So it went with Varric Tethras, who shrugged and laughed as he left Solas alone. So it went with Elias Lavellan, who along with Dorian rolled their eyes at him in such perfect synchronicity that it was uncanny. So it went with Ashala-aqun, who kept her shrewd eye on him, and with Leliana, who said, “neither am I,” and with Annis the Avvar, who squeezed his shoulder with a sad smile that made Solas sick to his stomach. He assumed, or pretended, that the illness was because he was disgusted.
“I am not here to make friends,” he warned Hiberna Skaara, who knew him before the sky had opened, who’d walked the Fade with him beside her, a bristly vantablack wolf with eyes like the stars and shadows wreathed around his feet. She had not been afraid of him then, and she wasn’t afraid of him now.
“Then you’re a fool, puppy,” she said without reservation, laughing, her dark eyes daring him to retort. “What do you think you’re here for?”
To get the Orb, he thought, stung and snappish as he turned away from her. To build my army. To infiltrate.
Arvaarad sits cross-legged across from Saarebas. They are young still, and have only just left the watchful eye of the Tamassrans to stand on their own, with their names and their Purpose held firmly in hand and heart.
Saarebas is weeping, quietly, because ey are afraid.
Arvaarad is afraid, too. Ey do not believe in eir ability to do what must be done. But it is a quiet fear, and ey rock it to sleep with a few whispered lines of the Qun. The most important one, they repeat, three times. Maraas shokra. Maraas shokra. Maraas shokra.
Arvaarad is given this Purpose because ey are strong, and steady, and have never needed correction for fostering attachment. In skirmish trials, ey chose to protect, and performed admirably in leadership tests. When Tamassran handed Arvaarad the tools for the ritual, Arvaarad did not flinch, but gazed steadily into Tamassran's eyes and answered with the voice of conviction. Ey would do what must be done, and pass into Purpose with Saarebas leashed at eir side.
"Do you remember the story?" ey ask Saarebas, finally, eir voice still lilting with the edge of youth, although its timbre has dropped significantly in the past year. Saarebas looks up at em, sullen in eir tearfulness, ashamed and defiant.
Arvaarad feels a pang in eir heart, and sighs. This was going to be hard. This was going to be so hard.
"Do you remember?" Ey open the box, making a matter-of-fact gesture of it, hoping to remind Saarebas that Purpose is as inexorable as the tides, to remind Saarebas that one either flows with the tides or is swept away by them.
Arvaarad is afraid to do this to Saarebas, true, but Arvaarad will do it anyway, just so.
Saarebas is afraid to have this done to em, but it will be done to em, just so.
Asit tal-eb.
"First Saarebas did not understand what ey were," Saarebas intones dully, and Arvaarad nods, lifting the needle from the box and dipping it in caustic oil to remove any lingering impurities. Ey threaded it with thick black thread as ey took up the tale.
"First Saarebas was born after Ashkaari Koslun brought the Qun to us and made us what we are. Until then, order had reigned within the Qunari -- all knew eir purpose, and all lived according to that purpose, and did not question or struggle. Civilisation progressed, and the Qun was known to be wise and rightful by its fruit.
First Saarebas struggled. The Qun did not quell the tempest that raged within eir mind. First Saarebas dreamed, and travelled far in dreams, and saw things that stretched First Saarebas' mind to madness.
The madness manifested in First Saarebas' works -- in the wild magic that spilled from eir hands and destroyed crops instead of cultivating them, and in the strife-stirring words that spilled from eir lips and confused minds instead of strengthening them. First Saarebas threw eir village into turmoil, raving of things not known since before the Qun, destroying the work of Ashkaari Koslun, who'd brought the Qun to us and quelled our fever-maddened minds."
Arvaarad stands and approaches Saarebas, kneeling before em and tipping eir chin upwards, smoothing back eir hair over freshly-shorn horns. Ey finish the story for Saarebas, eir voice heavy with both duty and fondness, and the strength of the bond between both.
"First Saarebas had to be killed, for the sake of the village. And the Ben-Hassrath of that village devised the Ritual of Saarebas, so that killing would not be necessary again.
We value you and we protect you. Arvaarad is given unto you, a bulwark against madness. Saarebas is given unto me, a duty to honour.
This is the Ritual of Saarebas. Anaan essam Qun."
Saarebas closes eir eyes when Arvaarad begins to sew, eir body tight and trembling and eir hands clenched into fists from which thin tricklets of blood soon began to run, but ey do not make a sound. Arvaarad's heart swells with pride, but outwardly ey are stoic, pushing the curved needle in through the bottom lip, up into the inside of the top lip, and out and around, over and over, until Saarebas' lips are sewn.
Arvaarad touches a finger gently to a bead of blood, touching the finger to eir own lips. A silent, sacred gesture.
Later, the stitches would be undone, so that Saarebas could eat and drink, but the meaning of the ritual would remain embedded, like words etched in stone. Saarebas would only speak at Arvaarad’s behest. Saarebas would only speak the words that Arvaarad allows. And Arvaarad would not take advantage of this, would not make mockery of Saarebas’ plight, would not make light of the gravity of their bond.
(Long backstory short: this alternate Alistair of mine -- Ali Bear-boy -- was raised by Avvar, who kidnapped him in retaliation for a battle they’d had with West Hills. They didn’t realise that he wasn’t one of Arl Wulff’s progeny -- Eamon had just brought the toddler with him on a visit.)
The closer they got to Haven, the more uneasy Alistair felt. He’d been enjoying his new companions, even in the midst of his grief. And this grief was heavy, because Ali loved hard-- Ali had always loved hard, and his parents had always warned him that it would cause him great pain every time.
-- Not his parents. His... kidnappers? But they hadn't kidnapped him, someone else had, a stone-faced warrior who wore his grief as a mantle of vengeance. And these surrogate parents of his were right. He felt great pain whenever he thought of them, whenever he reminded himself that they weren't truly anything to him at all, not according to blood.
They said facing the truth consistently and ruthlessly would harden him, make him strong. He felt brittle and eroded, instead.
The closer they got to Haven, the more distant he felt from his new companions; he felt the call of the mountains like a second pulse in his veins, like a song that he desperately wished to sing again. And that hurt, too, because he wanted to tell them, Anansi especially; wanted to share this thing with them that was so visceral and integral and immediate, but there were no words for it. Just a hollow, echoing ache.
"Do you miss the Circle?" he asks Anansi in desperation, as they make camp. Anansi laughs, shortly, as if he can't imagine such a thing... but then he sobers, his brow furrowed.
"I think so," he says, finally, his dark eyes soft in the flickering firelight. "I don't know how not to. It's the only place I've ever known.
But, Alistair..." he looked up to meet Alistair's gaze, seeming almost confused. "I don't want to go back. Not now. I think I am beginning to like it out here, as strange and stressful as it is. So why do I miss the Circle, if I do not want to be there?"
It is a tug-of-war feeling, Alistair realises now, as the mountains become clearer and crisper on the horizon, looming closer in their immediate line of sight; as Anansi starts to shiver almost constantly and Alistair finds he'd rather wrap Anansi in his fur cloak than wear it himself; as the wind howling through tall evergreens keeps them awake at night -- all except Alistair, who sleeps soundly for the first time in weeks -- and they see the first dusting of snow. He is tugged towards the first and only home he's known, but he is also tugged towards now, towards the life he is making for himself, and the people he is making that life with.
When they get to Haven, the pain is overwhelming. The Frostbacks are there, filling his vision, filling his lungs with biting cold air, tousling his long hair with whistling winds. Sten stirs, begins to grumble-- something about them wasting time --and then digs his heels in the dirt and challenges the Wardens' tenuous authority over the group.
Morrigan perches on a rock and watches the argument with dry amusement. Leliana, more bemused than amused, shakes her head. Anansi originally tries to reason with Sten but backs off as Briar Heart confronts em, and their shared frustration with each other -- something like animosity but something also like kinship denied far too vehemently -- reaches a fever pitch.
Alistair is drifting towards the center of the ghostly town, listening to the call. He aches, hollowly. He doesn't see Anansi's lonely confusion, looking from the arguing qunari to the silent women and then to Alistair, far away from them, his face turned up to the sky.
He goes to Alistair.
He calls out timidly as he approaches, and Alistair starts and turns around, smiling automatically, although a little wanly.
"Sorry. Got distracted."
"You want to go home," Anansi guesses, and he sounds sad-- he sees himself at the edge of a chasm, one he can't cross, and Alistair is on the other side, turned away from him.
The flinty ice of loneliness in Alistair’s heart cracks.
"I want to go home. But more importantly, I want to be here," Alistair says, firmly, grasping Anansi's shoulders and holding his gaze. "With you. --And your lovely qunari friends, who are definitely going to kill each other if we don't do something."
