Work Text:
Zevran decided that tonight was the night he was going to ask her. They were only a day’s journey from Denerim, and it wouldn’t be long before Willow would see her family again. They would also be confronting the man who had betrayed the Wardens, who had allowed her to (almost) die in what he knew would be a hopeless battle, and Zevran would no doubt be following her into yet another one. So as they lay inside her tent, his head resting very comfortably between her dusky breasts with one of her hands resting on his chest, he asked her something that had been on his mind for a long, long time.
“Who gave you this ring?”
He heard her heart jump in her chest, beating violently against her ribs. She took a deep breath and raised the hand that had been stroking him, no doubt taking a long look at the trinket. The ring in question was a simple gold band, scratched and tarnished from being present in battle. It was also coated in an irremovable coat of grime, which dulled the shine of the metal. She sighed, and when Zevran looked up at her over her breasts, she had closed her eyes. Her orange hair, normally held back, curled around her face and ears.
“I was almost married, once.” she said. When she opened her eyes, they shone with tears.
“Did you love him?”
She smiled at that, and began to sit up. Zevran moved as well, adjusting himself so he was facing her. She blinked away the tears. “No. Infatuated, yes. I had just met him.” She looked at him then, trying to gauge his reaction to this news. “My father was so worried about whether or not he’d like me. ‘Don’t tell him your mother trained you to kill,’ he said. He said it a lot nicer than that, but that’s what he said.” She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to hear about this.”
“No, I do.” he argued, probably a little too quickly, if he judged the look she gave him correctly. She had narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. He wasn’t sure if her pursed lips were in a frown or a scowl, but either way he didn’t like it. “I don’t want to make you feel like you have to hide these things from me.”
Willow’s tension melted away with a sigh. “All right.” Under the blankets she pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on top of them and wrapping her arms around herself. Her expression glazed over as she relived that scarily recent time in her life. “My cousin and I were both getting married. Mass weddings were a tradition in the alienage; since no one could really afford a proper wedding, it made more sense for everyone to pitch in and marry off their daughters at the same time. Before the ceremony, these noble shem came and tried to cause trouble. Shianni…” she laughed. “Dear Shianni, she clubbed Lord Vaughan right in the face. Knocked him clean out.”
“I’ll bet everyone cheered her name.” he said.
Willow began to turn a little pale. “I only wish. During the ceremony, they came back. They took all of us. Me, Shianni, the Chantry sister. They knocked us unconscious and locked us up. They took her first, and left us for the guards.” She swallowed, hard. Her hands clenched into fists, trembling. “I was angry, so angry. I wanted to taste their blood, and I did. I got ahold of a guard’s weapons, and that was that. Soris, my cousin, had come for us, and so had Nelaros.”
He didn’t ask who Nelaros was.
“He was a terrific fighter, according to Soris, but…” Her voice trembled, and she hugged herself even tighter. “He was adamant that something be done for us, that we be saved somehow. He had stayed behind to guard the hall. He wanted to help us so badly, and yet—” she hiccupped “—he was killed so easily. I saw him, held him as he died. He had the ring he was going to give me in his hands. Crafted it himself. I just couldn’t bear to leave it with him, so I took it.” She looked at him, her brown eyes shimmering. “I wear it as a reminder of what human nobles have taken from me, of what I and my kind have suffered at their hands. Of the husband-to-be I lost.” She closed her eyes, but no tears fell. “But no, I did not love him. I don’t wear it out of duty to a dead husband. But if you don’t like it—”
He stopped her by taking her hand, now relaxed, and planting a kiss on the ring. When he looked at her again, he shook his head. “It is important to you, it stands for so much more. Don’t lose that, not even for me.”
He was glad to see her smile genuinely as she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. “Who the hell are you and what have you done with Zevran?”