Somefink lickle.

[scarylady]

Title: Lo Spirito del Corvo
Characters: Zevran, F!Brosca
Rating: T
Word Count: 691

Written for the LJ Comm DAO:Challenge. For their 15 minute challenge inspired by the word Spirit or Spirits.

 

“Any chance I can become a Crow?”

The satisfied smirk on Ignatio’s face chilled Zevran’s blood. “Come to Antiva when this is all over. You will be welcome to visit with us then.”

For all her street smarts, the child had no idea what she was asking for.

After they left the inn he pulled her aside, leaving the others to stroll through the market. “A Crow? You?”

“Why not?” Her little face, under the messy, black mop and the bars of her tattoo, scowled up at him. “You think I’m not good enough? They wouldn’t want a duster, is that it?”

Zevran blinked at her, astonished, and laughed. “No, caro mio, that is not it, not at all.”

She folded her arms, ready to refute him. “What, then?”

“They-” He stopped, gazing at her, trying to find a way to make her see. They would change her, break her, and transform the remainder into lo spirito del corvo, the spirit of the Crow. How do you explain to someone like her, a girl who grew up desperately poor, who had already killed for money, who still killed for money, that being a Crow was different?

“Why did you spare me?”

She looked bewildered at the change of subject. “I wanted to.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I liked you. You were funny and not afraid of me even though you lay in the dirt at my feet.” She looked uncomfortable and rubbed her nose. “You said I was gorgeous. No-one had ever said anything nice about me before, not really.” He found this hard to believe; she was not classically beautiful, but her big blue eyes, snub nose and cherub mouth were extremely appealing. “But mainly, I guess I’ve been in danger of being in the same position a time or two, and so I gave you the chance I would have wanted.”

He nodded. “That, yes, that. That is what the Crows would take from you. They would strip it away through pain, through devious traps and plots and Crow politics, through vicious training. They would make you trust no-one, spare no-one, care for no-one, and tell you that the removal of these things makes you strong. That is the spirit of the Crows. Is that what you want?”

She looked him up and down, a glint of amusement in her eyes. “Is that what you are?”

“Che?”

“They didn’t make you into that, did they?” The admiration in her eyes was hard to bear; he had no right to it. “You convinced yourself for a while that they had, but it was still there, wasn’t it?”

“I-” Zevran didn’t have an answer for her. Was it? He hadn’t cared to subject himself to the type of self-examination required to know the answer to that. Does one look under a rock unless one must?

She took his hands in her small ones, all callouses and broken nails and grubby skin. He couldn’t seem to ingrain any habits of self-grooming into her, however hard he tried. “I was thinking,” she began, and under the blocky tattoo a rare flush of colour bloomed, “that maybe we’d both go.” Her self-consciousness was saved for this, for the moments when she admitted her fascination with him. He thought at first he’d understood, thought that, like him, she was too hard, too scarred, to admit to… feelings. Then he’d finally worked out that she didn’t think she was good enough for him, that she lived in fear that he would realise it. It awed him, that such a creature – so full of fire and will and determination – would think he was better than she was, just because he was a trained assassin and she had been a street thug.

“I was thinking,” she continued, with more confidence, “that we’d go to Antiva, and be however the sod we wanted to be, and tell them to kiss our arses if they didn’t like it.” Her grin bloomed and Zev’s smile dawned to greet it.

She was right. The Crows hadn’t broken him, and they couldn’t break her either.

It was a moment of revelation, a new beginning.