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Cyris Tabris isn’t thinking about the worst day of his life when he tracks down Shianni in the Denerim alienage, companions in tow. He’s thinking about his father, sickly and alone in a dark quarantine room. When he finds her trying to communicate with an antsy, hostile crowd in the square, he’s not thinking about what happened at his almost-wedding just months earlier in that very square. But it doesn’t take long for those events to come up as Shianni tells him about everything that’s happened in the alienage.
“Cousin, you have no idea…the things that happened after your wedding…I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’m so happy to see you!”
Tabris is about to reciprocate—he’s happy to see her, too, and looking well and determined—but his companions’ expressions catch his eye. When he turns toward them, Alistair and Leliana look surprised, and Zevran has an inscrutable expression.
Oh. Right. I didn’t tell them about the wedding.
Before he has a chance to explain, Zevran speaks up.
“A wedding? So there is a secretive side to you, after all.” His tone of voice is completely unreadable. Tabris can usually pick up on Zevran’s mood right away, but the man’s countenance is almost unnervingly blank.
There’s too much to explain, and his father—and the alienage—remain in danger. He reassures Zevran as simply as he can: “The wedding never actually took place.”
A flicker of relief appears on Zevran’s face. “Oh? Did she find out you…”
“She didn’t, no, though that would have been less terrible than what really happened. Ugh…imagine a storybook wedding. This was the opposite.”
Zevran makes a little quip, then, and Shianni starts to tell them more about the situation in the alienage, and Tabris makes a note to talk about this later, when this corner of his world isn’t in such disarray.
---
After the slavers are dispatched, Alistair and Leliana head back to Arl Eamon’s estate to deliver the proof of Loghain’s involvement with the slave trade. Tabris is exhausted, but he hangs back in the alienage a while to speak to his father and cousins and make arrangements to return to help the Templar who’s convinced there’s something evil happening in the alienage. Aside from all the other evil things happening in the alienage, Tabris almost tells him, but he thinks better of it.
Zevran stays with him, but he’s uncharacteristically quiet when Tabris introduces him to his family. When Cyrion asks him if he’s a fellow Grey Warden, Tabris expects him to crack a joke, but he simply explains that he’s only a companion to the Wardens. Tabris wants to stay and let Zevran warm up his family—he’s certain his father would like Zevran, given the chance—but there’s a world to save, and after they stay for a bowl of stew with Cyrion and Soris and Shianni, Tabris says goodbye, trying not to think about how he may not survive to see any of them again.
---
When they depart the alienage, Zevran is quiet, and Tabris is tempted to drop the subject, but absent of kicking out half his companions from their shared room in Eamon’s estate, he’s not going to find a moment of privacy for him and Zevran to talk later. So he brings it up while they’re alone on the streets.
“You’re unhappy that I didn’t tell you about the wedding.” No use beating around the bush.
“Why should I be? You don’t owe me every bit of information about you, my dear Warden.”
“No? Maybe I do.” Zevran glances at him quickly, but doesn’t say anything. Tabris thinks for a moment. “I wish I had told you. If it were easier to talk about, maybe I would.”
“Ah.” Zevran clears his throat. “I’m listening, if you do want to talk.”
“I wasn’t the one who was hurt,” Tabris says. “The women—the ones Soris and I were to marry, Valora and Nesiara, and the bridesmaids, Shianni and Nola—were kidnapped by the Arl’s son. We went in to rescue them, but when we arrived, Nola had been killed and Shianni had been hurt.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, we killed the nobleman and his friends and went back to the alienage, and I took responsibility for what happened. And when the Denerim guard showed up to take me to the gallows, Duncan conscripted me into the Wardens.”
“I can see why you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Not a happy subject!” Tabris suddenly feels the urge to stab something, but they’re walking through an empty alleyway, and it seems rude to put a dent in someone’s wooden door. He settles for wiping the flat side of his dagger against his trousers, removing the last bits of slaver blood. Oh, gross.
“Do you wish you’d gotten married, then?”
“I wish it all hadn’t happened, certainly.” He sighs and sheaths his blade. “I’d change it all if it meant that Shianni and Nola hadn’t been hurt. But I never wanted to get married. You know I’m only interested in men.”
“Would you have left her at the altar, then?”
“Oh, no, I was completely resigned to getting married. It was what everyone in the alienage wanted from me. It feels strange now, but at the time, it seemed like the only direction my life could possibly take.” He scoffs. “I was wrong about that.”
Zevran laughs. “You’re too willing to give yourself over to duty, my dear,” he says. He seems more relaxed now. “I’m sorry that it happened, then, but I am not unhappy to have been the benefactor of it all, meeting you.”
“Killing me, you mean?”
“It was my honor to assassinate you, dear Warden.”
Tabris smiles. “I hope you’ll come back to the alienage with me. After the Blight is over. I know they’d like to get to know you.”
“Yes? You do plan on surviving all this, then? I’ll hold you to it, dear.”
Passerby could’ve sworn they saw two men share a kiss in the shadows of a Denerim alleyway.