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peopleofthedas2010-12-09 02:57 pm
Trovommi Amor: Searching the Wrong Soul
Title: Searching the Wrong Soul
Words: 2529
Rating: PG default
Characters: Zevran/f!Tabris (Taniva) and the gang
Summary: There's nothing two careworn, slow-to-trust elves enjoy more than having their secrets stripped bare in front of everybody by some random spirit! Oh, and also there's a dragon. Whatever. (Also-also, the series title makes a cameo.)
<-Previous: A Perverse Communication (M)
Searching the Wrong Soul
The worst part of the following long, cold day was not walking even further up the mountain, so high that there were small drifts of snow and ice out of season, and the air was unpleasantly thin. It was not Genitivi’s happy prattling about the sacred site as he insistently limped up toward it, oblivious to the danger he presented to himself and those who would have to protect him. It was not the fresh supply of cultists that was waiting for them underground, or the broodling dragons they were raising.
It was not even the full-grown dragon they were calling Andraste. That was very bad, yes, but there was a sort of perverse amusement in seeing Zev plaster himself against a wall as he regarded it, wide-eyed. In the look of disbelief he gave her as she drew her weapons.
“Surely you do not mean to fight it,” he hissed. “Can’t we just... sneak around it?”
She grimaced. “Us and the boys in the heavy armor, sure. And it’ll be just as easy when we’re coming back down and she’s still here. Come on, it’ll be fun, right? Practice for the archdemon!”
He shook his head and chuckled at her. “Yes, I suppose it will be that.”
It was not fun: it was grueling, and nearly fatal several times over. Taniva had never been gladder to have Wynne nearby, because more than once she was the last one standing, scrambling to revive the others one by one and avoid blasts from the dragon at the same time. The poor old woman was exhausted by the time the false Andraste was dead, and Morrigan had to come out and heal her before they could go on. Even so, it was not the worst part of Taniva’s day.
The worst thing was actually finding the ruined temple, because it was waiting for them.
She had her daggers ready before the Guardian’s voice echoed strangely around her, promising no violent intentions. A servant of Andraste, he said, a servant of the Urn, merely testing the hearts of those who meant to enter holy ground.
Merely. With a few words, he had Alistair nearly wishing himself dead again for Ostagar. And then he turned toward Taniva. “All the men you killed for Shianni,” he said, “and yet you were still too late to keep them from – ”
“Don’t say it!” she snapped. “You have no right to say it!”
Or to know. How could he know?
He inclined his head politely. “Do you blame yourself?”
“I....” She felt frozen. Of course it wasn’t her fault. It was Vaughan’s fault. And the other men she’d killed, and Denerim’s whole noble line, and the men Vaughan prowled the Alienage with who hadn’t been there that day, and Cailan’s for not paying attention to how his knife-eared subjects were treated –
“Yes,” she said, her eyes stinging. “I should never have let them take her.”
“Don’t do that,” Alistair muttered, though still only half-emerged from his own trauma. “You just told me not to do that. Don’t keep blaming yourself for what you couldn’t do or didn’t know. Not that I even know what he’s talking about.”
“But I do,” Zevran hissed over her shoulder, glaring hatefully at the Guardian. “Keep the blame where it belongs, my dear Warden. It is not yours. And you,” he added, raising his chin at the guardian, “move on.”
“In that case, Zevran Arainai, I have a question for you as well.”
“Oh, good. My turn now. Wonderful.” He shifted his weight, and Taniva could feel his tension behind her, and his building anger.
“You are an Antivan Crow, trained to kill without regret. But has the training taken? Is there even one victim that you have mourned? Perhaps a woman, the one you knew as – ”
“Yes!” Zev shouted. “Is that what you want? Yes!”
A moment of silence, and then the Guardian stepped aside, head bowed. “Proceed with Andraste’s blessing.”
That simple. And then they lumbered forward with wounds Wynne could not heal, all silent and avoiding each other’s eyes.
*
Alistair was the one she spoke to first as they dragged their weary carcasses back down to Haven, the Urn having been found and a little pouch of ashes retrieved. He was easier precisely because she knew they had seen less deeply into each other. “Did that... make you happy? Does it strengthen your faith, or something?”
“Or something?” he snickered. “I don’t know. I mean, it does strengthen my faith – it was amazing, actually. I don’t know if happy is the word I’d use. I felt pretty wretched when we first went in.”
“You do know there’s nothing you could have done for him, don’t you? If you had been on the field.”
“I know. I... spoke with him. It was so strange.” He glanced sidelong at her. “You didn’t, I take it.”
“No. Did it help you?”
“I think it did.”
She nodded and left it at that, because she did not want to destroy the illusion if it had made him happy. What she had seen had been Shianni, and she knew Shianni was not dead. ...Well. She was almost sure: Shianni had been alive and well when Taniva had left home. And the vision, whatever it had been, had not been helpful or cheering to her, either. No, her vision had asked her if she had forgotten about Shianni, the Alienage, and the elves.
And that was gnawing at her, because in a way, she had. Even though her blood burned and she was compelled to a life of battle she had not chosen, the physical freedom to move about the country was exciting, and – and she had Zev. And given the choice, now... the thought of what she might do given the choice made her guilty and miserable.
Zev volunteered for first watch of the night even though he had been one of those who had done the most during the day, claiming that he was not ready to sleep yet. Shale agreed to “keep the painted elf company” and to continue through the second watch so more people could sleep, since technically she didn’t need sleep at all. That settled, Zev skulked over to a patch of grass between houses, threw off his armor, and started scrubbing at it with ruthless determination.
Perhaps a woman, the guardian had said. Perhaps aside from being a betrayal of Shianni, choosing Zev would be really, really stupid. But she was too tired to try to find out right away, so she went off by herself to the bed they had shared the night before. Her mind made several attempts to escape sleep in favor of painful introspection, but her body finally won.
In the morning there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that there was no hurry to move on. Everyone was back to a point where they could make agreeable small talk – at least everyone who had been capable of it before – but still the mood was pensive and private. Zev she found sitting in the same patch of grass as the night before, watching the sky.
She doubted the wisdom of asking her real question first, so she picked another one, thinking back to the specters of saints that had met them within the temple. “I’d never heard that there was an elf among Andraste’s companions. Had you?”
He stretched his legs out and let his head fall back. “No. But I can easily imagine how back when the Chantry declared war on the elves, they would have edited out that part. Has this place put you into a religious mood? Are you perhaps going to run off and become a lay sister?”
“No.” Sighing, she sat down next to him. “No, I’m trying to work up the courage to ask you something else.” She looked a bit past him rather than at him. “You seemed so rattled by what the Guardian said. About that woman.”
“Ah, yes, I thought so.” He fell back into the grass and looked up dolefully at her. “I suppose this is the time. Her name was Rinna. My partner Taliesin and I took her under wing after she became a Crow, and the three of us were together for a good while. I had never trusted anyone more than I did them.”
Another woman. The fact that it sounded like she was dead helped surprisingly little. “Did you love her?”
His look went thoughtful and probing, and his hand came to find hers before he answered. “I... thought so at the time. As close as I had ever come to it, anyway. She was everything I thought I wanted, dark and beautiful and deadly. I have a type, it would seem,” he added, chuckling; but when she lacked the heart to laugh with him, he went on. “And secretive, and perhaps not as fond of Taliesin as she was of me. That proved to be the problem, you see. I thought we were all getting along, just because they both got along with me, and they do not turn out to be the same thing.
“Taliesin accused Rinna of being a traitor, of trying to get us killed. He... gave me proof. By the time we confronted her, I was so sure.” His eyes drifted up toward the clouds, soft and sad. “Taliesin was the one who killed her, but I did nothing to stop him. She pleaded with me, and I only laughed at her, because I thought she was trying to manipulate me. She said she loved me, and I stood there and watched her die. And then – it wasn’t true. She had not betrayed us after all.”
She was miserable for him. She was miserable for herself, wondering how a living, cranky woman would ever compete with a martyred first love. “Zev,” she whispered.
“Taliesin swore he’d thought it was true, but by then I did not know what to believe. And our Master didn’t care either way. We were nothing to him. He would have cared more if he had lost a dog. When I truly realized that, I... lost interest in staying alive, for a time. That was why I took the contract against you, in fact. My plan was to let you kill me.” He ran his hand up her back, smiling a little. “That you would spare me and then be too bewitching to escape never crossed my mind.”
“Hmm. Bewitching.”
He shook his head at her skepticism, and as he petted her back, started to murmur under his breath. “Era il giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro per la pietà del suo factore i rai, quando ì fui preso, et non me ne guardai, chè i bè vostr'occhi, donna, mi legaro – ”
“For love of the Maker,” she scowled, “don’t start chanting at me in foreign tongues.”
“Tsk. It is a poem, my dear Warden. A rather lovely one, had you let me finish it.”
“Would you have told me what it meant?”
“Ah,” he said with a teasing look, “it is too late to ask that now, I’m afraid.”
She swatted his knee in protest. “Fine, then. But – you are interested in staying alive now, right?”
“Yes, I am, as I hope you are. I learned something from the Guardian too, you know.” He went back to stroking her. “You did not tell me Shianni was taken along with you.”
Taniva balled up a little bit. “It’s not mine to tell. I wish he hadn’t said it.”
“And they had already... had their way with her when you found her.”
She could feel everything inside her tightening. “Yes.”
He was speaking very softly now. “And even so, Taniva, it is still their fault and not yours.”
“If I’d been stronger then,” she hissed at him over her shoulder, “if I hadn’t given up fighting for so long, I could have killed him the first time, and none of this would have happened at all.”
“None of it? There would have been no Blight if not for you?”
“...Hmph.”
“How would I have met you, my Warden? How would we lie together in the grass?” With that, he yanked her down by the wrist.
It seemed foolish to argue the point. So they just lay there on their backs in the grass, staring up at the clouds. She would never have imagined such a thing, though of course that was because there was no grass to speak of in the Alienage. It was strangely relaxing.
“Maybe someday, when the Blight is over, I’ll run a Chantry dedicated to Saint Shartan,” she mused. And then she actually thought about it. “Well, no. That would be a terrible idea.”
“You can pay to found it when we’re rich,” Zevran said. “That will balance out all the sins we’ll be committing to get the money, yes?”
She laughed. “Yes. Much better.”
“Do you know what I would like to do?” He rolled onto his side to face toward her. “Make love to you on Father Eirik’s altar.”
She smiled up at him tolerantly. “Of course you would.”
He raised her hand to his face. “Do you not think it would make a magnificent gesture?”
“Actually... yes, I do.” And she might even have let him make a case for doing it, but for the awkward coughing coming from above them.
“Tan?” Alistair said. “Everyone is ready to go. We should, ah, get moving.”
“Maybe next time,” she told Zev with a peck on the cheek, then allowed Alistair to pull her to her feet.
Zevran rolled onto his back again and remained for a moment before getting up, pouting. “Però al mio parer non li fu honore ferir me de saetta in quello stato.”
*
...Petrarch’s poem in full:
Era il giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro Tempo non mi parea da far riparo Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato Però al mio parer non li fu honore | It was the day the sun's ray had turned pale It seemed no time to be on guard against Love found me all disarmed and found the way It seems to me it did him little honour |
Good job
Re: Good job
"Pardon me, but who are you now?"
"An elf girl you don't know who is probably actually alive!"
"Okaaaay. Can I just get by here? Trying to find the Urn."
"Come to terms with your past!!"
"...Sure. Excuse me. Things to do."