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Shades of Grey	By : myghinmin Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 3767 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age: Origins, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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Title: Shades of Grey
Story Rating: M (mature). NSFW (not safe for work) due to sexual content in chapters five, seven, and eight, and for torture in chapters eleven and twelve.
Chapter Rating: T (teen).
Chapter Warnings: Mild slash (male/male) action.
Word Count: 1941 words.
PC: Fem!Amell, deceased.
Pairing: Zevran/Alistair.
Spoilers: End-game spoilers. Set post game.
Summary: She made him swear to keep Alistair on his feet until he could stand alone. Maker help him, Zevran will honor that final promise, even if it kills him.
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[[ ... Pre-Chapter ..... ]]
She was so tired of holding on. Her head ached; her body railed against the punishment that she was forcing it through. Her turquoise eyes lifted and met Jowan's grey ones, and they both drew a deep breath. They were going to pass out if the demon didn't let up soon. Beads of sweat were on their foreheads, and their hands were linked as they both struggled to keep the raging demon at bay. They only had to hold on until Alistair returned.
The air felt achingly cold as it pushed into her lungs, but she knew that it was actually room temperature. The demon attacked them in ways they couldn't combat without injuring the boy. As both of them struggled, the demon was feeding their exhaustion, their fears. She was just so tired, and with the bitter taste of bile in her throat, she knew it had been too long since she had last slept. She was falling apart; an easy target.
Slowly, the attack lessened, and then Connor was gasping, tears in his eyes as he looked up at her. She murmured soft words to him, reaching to touch the side of face tenderly. They all had to hold on until Alistair and the others returned with the mages. They just had to keep the demon sealed, keep her from killing anyone else.
She felt eyes on her, and when she turned to look, she saw Teagan in the doorway. He offered her a sad smile and then stepped aside, and her knight strode in; behind him, the mages followed. She stood quickly, her robe whispering against the sheets. Now came the hard part, she realized.
She looked up, met two pairs of dark eyes, and swallowed. She could do it. She would do it. She could earn the loyalty that they gave so freely to her. She could be their Warden.
[[ ... Chapter 3 ..... ]]
The Darkspawn were not gone. The Blight was over, but Wardens were still needed, still had to be trained, still had to be sent out. Especially close to the Wilds, the Darkspawn still had groups on the surface. They terrorized the locals, and the Wardens would have none of it. Three of the six recruits had been sent with Clovis and Julien, the Orlesian Wardens, to help fight them back, while the other three were sent to nearby cities in an attempt to recruit more.
There weren't enough of them, and Zevran wasn't good enough to simply conjure more. He couldn't leave to recruit, not with Alistair's... incident. He reached up, touching his own lips softly, distracted. He could still taste the former prince; the taste wouldn't be washed away, even after two glasses of wine. What had he been thinking?
When Alistair crowded him, Zevran had recognized that look. He knew the aggression in the behavior, knew that gleam. Alistair was about to put him in his place, and Zevran wasn't about to let him. Instead, he had thought to turn the tables, to send the blond running back into the room scared. And somehow, Alistair had managed to spin the table back right around, forcing Zevran to bolt instead. Well, perhaps not bolt literally, but he had been the one to yield for once.
Now, he sat, confusion on his face, looking at papers and not even managing to see the crests that were on them. He could only see that expression, lips red, cheeks flushed--
He shoved himself away from the desk. No one got under his skin this way. A kiss was just that: a kiss. It wasn't as though it were something special or ... He stopped moving suddenly, one of his hands clenching. No, it had been something special to Alistair. It had to have been, or he wouldn't have ordered Zevran out. He never used that tone, not with anyone who had known him before. Not with the Antivan.
He frowned before he looked up at the ceiling. Delicate stonework that even Oghren had appreciated when they came through the first time glittered in the morning light, and the elf blew out a breath forcefully, moving a few pieces of hair from his eyes. Alistair was just on the other side of that ceiling. If he wanted answers, it was the best place to start.
She would have liked this, he realized wryly. Her best friend and her... lover, entangled in such a mess. No doubt it would have amused her greatly before she sat them both down and straightened it out. It was what she did. There was nothing that she couldn't single-handedly fix.
He looked back down and out the window. Late morning, getting close to noon. If Alistair slept at all the past few hours, he would be waking soon; it was as good of a time as any to approach him. The element of surprise would be on the Antivan's side, after all. He swept the papers together and shoved them into a desk drawer before he left the room, heading up toward the largest suite.
When he reached the door, he lightly tested the knob before he withdrew his favored lock pick set. Even in the keep, old habits died hard. Daggers were still tucked into hidden sheaths in boots, lock picks were still tucked into tiny pockets in his clothing. He slipped into the room noiselessly once he got the door open, taking care to shut it where Alistair wouldn't hear it. He shot a look into the room, at Alistair's form, still clothed, curled up on the bed. His hand was resting very lightly near the hilt of a sword propped up on the side of the mattress.
Old habits.
He crossed the room, his leather boots designed to be completely silent as they met the stone. No rugs in this room to muffle his movement, and he wondered idly if it was on purpose. He had once explained to Alistair that his favorite rooms to break into all had thick, plush rugs. He reached the bed, and he moved the sword first. He didn't want Alistair reaching for it on instinct and managing to turn this into a fight. It was a confrontation, not a battle. Not to mention, his own fighting skills were a little rusty, but Alistair's were downright suffering since he no longer did anything more than drills.
Once satisfied that there was nothing that Alistair could grab in an attempt to beat him off, Zevran crouched beside the bed, not putting weight on it, not wanting to wake the blond just yet. He wanted ... a minute. For once, he could see the Alistair they had known, and he realized that it must have been how she had seen him. On the morning that she had died.
Swallowing hard, he didn't let himself think too long on that. She had left Alistair's bed only to approach Zevran. It had been the morning she'd extracted the promise.
His hand reached out and caught Alistair's chin. The Warden's eyes flew open, and he attempted to jerk away instinctively as he assessed the threat so close to him. His hands came up to wrap around Zevran's forearms, but just as they touched, he seemed to realize who it was holding him. Shock was slowly replaced by something that Zevran wasn't sure he'd ever seen on Alistair's face, something he didn't think he could name. Then anger washed it away. Oh, there it was. That was the Alistair he knew and loved so much.
"What the bloody hell-"
"Time to wake up," he said, cheerfully interrupting the warrior as he gave the face still in his hand a squeeze. Only when those lips puckered up did he drop his hand and stand, moving over to pull the drapes open. He savored the sputtering reaction, closing his eyes momentarily as he drank in the indignant noise from behind him.
Light streamed in, and for a moment, Zevran was reminded of the only other morning he'd done that with a Warden. It had been in Denerim. He swallowed and cast another glance over at the Fereldan who was pulling himself up to sit in the bed. One of his hands was rubbing at his eyes, trying to get rid of the remnants of sleep crusted around them. The motion was strangely endearing, such vulnerability being displayed without concern that it could be taken advantage of.
It was then that he knew. He couldn't confront him. Not yet. That meant that he needed another reason for being here. He frowned just slightly, and it was then he noticed the stain on Alistair's shirt. He crossed the room, throwing open the armoire when he reached it. There was nothing hanging up. All of the blond's clothes were in a pile in the bottom. He gingerly pulled out a single tunic, pinching it between his forefinger and thumb. "Are these even clean, Alistair?" He arched an eyebrow as he studied it, then deemed that it was not.
"Doesn't matter," the other man muttered rebelliously, shooting the elf a glare that he could feel through his back. This was an improvement, he decided, ignoring the venomous undertones in it. It was the beginnings of something. Anything was better than the cold flatness that Alistair had been exhibiting. "It's dry."
"So, those awful habits really were awful habits, not just travel habits, eh?" Zevran cast a glance back over his shoulder, then sighed as he surveyed the clothes in the bottom of the armoire. His eyes cut over to the window, and he nodded, more to himself than anything. He opened that window, then walked back to pick up the pile.
By this point, Alistair was sitting up, rubbing at his face with an aggravated muttering. Said muttering stopped the moment the clothes were tossed cheerfully out the window. That face turned pale, and he stared blankly, as though not entirely certain what he'd just seen. "Zev?" he asked, his voice quiet for once.
"Hm?" The elf didn't stop there, deciding to sweep up the rest of the clothes in the armoire as well. He headed back to the window, and Alistair made a strangled noise as he watched the rest of his clothing be tossed carelessly out.
"What... My clothes!"
"They were filthy, Alistair. You couldn't wear any of them." Then Zevran turned his appraising eyes on the tunic and trousers that Alistair was actually wearing. The Warden shot him a look, and then moved to stand, looking out the other window in the room, seeing where his clothes had gone. Thankfully, most of them were in a pile together still, and he figured that if he wanted, he could go down and gather them up. Levi was staring up at the keep, and Alistair growled as Zevran waved cheerfully at their mutual acquaintance.
"Come on, you," the elf looked back at Alistair, and sighed. "We'll go wash your things. They were wretched."
"We could have washed them in here! What did you throw them out the window for?" The pitiful note in the voice was heaven to Zevran's ears. It had been two months since he'd heard anything other than rage or ice from Alistair; finally, some sort of progress was being made. "We--"
"Are not carrying those down stairs and then back up again if we could just cut the work in half." Zevran's tone booked no argument, and Alistair frowned at him before he turned and left the window, heading down the stairs. The elf let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Alistair had won the first battle, now Zevran had won the second.
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Shades of Grey