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It would be raining on the bay right now, a curtain of water just sweeping over the ships and up into the city. Streets washed right out and every market shut down for the evening, the lanternlight still making her glitter like a gem under the storm front. Antiva City, a freshly polished jewel in the apple of his mind's eye.
The memory hurt, as all memories did now, but the muddy streets of rain-soaked Denerim made the sting feel so much sharper tonight. The sounds of the Chantry bells behind him mocked and jeered whatever prayer he'd managed to stumble through; he hadn't been able to drag himself further than the courtyard to listen to the evening verses.
Zevran stared at the old leather boots he hadn't replaced, felt another pang, and abandoned the idea of bending to scrape off the mud and grime. He was already getting enough stares from the templars at the doors, and he still had more walking to do.
Despite his fetching, half-drowned look, he secured a tavern room for tonight and tomorrow with the possibility of extending his stay, if needed. He wouldn't, but the thought was nice. And the room didn't even leak as badly as the ship cabin had.
Sleep didn't come, wouldn't come, so he spent half the night plotting out his stops for the next day and the other half hunched over the desk in the corner, writing it all down. The whole night, he kept seeing Rinna's face when he closed his eyes.
What a miserable city, he told himself as he trudged down another crooked alley in search of the thief's den Ignacio gave him back in Highever. Morning made everything look grayer and browner, and lack of sleep had stripped him of any grace he might have given Ferelden. Sidestepping a filthy, shaggy beast of a dog dozing beside a stack of crates, he took shallow breaths and knocked on the door.
Perhaps Zevran should have had more of a conscience when he hired out help for the contract. But he was up front about the details, as sparse and few as that arl and teyrn had given him, and as generous with the pay as he could afford. Every last coin on him went into the purse, and it made a loud, satisfying thud on the table that silenced all questions after that.
Two Grey Wardens and a small travelling party, including a witch, a giant, and a Chantry sister, of all things. Whichever mercenary band still wanted in after hearing that…well, their fate was on them.
Zevran already knew what his fate would be.
Before they left Denerim, Zevran dropped in at the brothel next door, lost himself in pleasure and taste and sound. He didn't let himself speak once, afraid he would say something he'd regret. Wasn't that foolish? What could he possibly do that he would regret more than…this?
I'm sorry, he would have said. I did the worst thing I could ever do that I can't take back, and I knew it when I did it and I went ahead anyway. Rinna, I—
He found himself on the docks in the morning, waiting for the mercenaries to drag themselves out of their hangovers however they could for the journey. Or maybe he was the only one doing that. Maybe the world had everything all neatly sorted out, and the only thing Zevran could put together was a mission doomed to fail.
A flag fluttering in the winter-cold wind caught his eye, just right out of the corner. He kept thinking he saw familiar things lurking in the shadow. Glimpses of Rinna and Taliesen. His old master's cane, the apartments he shared with twenty other tenants (many of them fellow peasant assassins). The mast of Luis's…no, Isabela's ship, towering above these old Ferelden derelicts.
Part of him wanted to look for her. A foolish, damaged part. She couldn't be here, she wouldn't. And even if some unfortunate wind had brought her here, why would she ever want to see him now?
Zevran couldn't bear to answer any part of that, so he turned from the harbor and gathered his party for travel.
Ferelden outside the cities was even worse: more mud, more filth, and somehow, in some strange impossible way, even more stench of wet dog. He could just hear Taliesen's wry, disgusted remarks about every sad little bend in the road that winded south to the Hinterlands. The little jokes he would purr into their ears, Rinna's soft laughter working with his humor to alleviate the misery of Zevran's journey.
Zevran stopped. He watched his traveling party fording on ahead to the crossroads where the withered remains of the Imperial Highway splintered off into a dozen twisting cow paths or something. He really didn't know; that was why he begged Ignacio to point him to at least one ranger who could track and cut off the Wardens somewhere far from civilization, from help.
No escape for you. No escape for her, for him. It really was so clear now in hindsight, how little they all mattered in the end. Good assassins, good lovers. People who had loved each other for a while. But to the Crow masters, to the Guild, to Antiva, they had been nothing. Maybe he had been too scared to face it. Maybe he had been too scared to face someone looking at him like he did matter.
He should have told them they mattered when he had the chance. Why had he wasted the chance? Rinna, especially, deserved better than how he had treated her. He hadn't dared to ask for forgiveness, not this time, but he had asked on her behalf. Forgiveness for the life they had to lead, and maybe something kinder than the hand she'd been dealt.
Sometimes, he dreamed that the Maker looked at her like she mattered, and she smiled that wonderful, dimpled smile that shone with sincerity and elegance, and she was well, and she was happy. It was the truest prayer he had ever felt.
And then Zevran was waking up from that prayer and that peace, and he found that he really wasn't as dead as he'd been expecting to wake up to. It took him a moment to remember the plan, a quick glance around to see that most of it was unmistakably dead. With every part of him seriously hurting, he fell back on the one defense he had left.
"Ugh, I rather thought I'd wake up dead," he groaned, exaggerating very little. "Or not wake up at all, as the case may be."
Most of his target group gave his sarcasm a range of skeptical and suspicious looks. Fine, fine, fair. He could talk fast enough to buy himself time for what he wanted. Swift death, swift escape? Maker, he needed time to figure out what he wanted. Why had he even woken up? This was supposed to be everything? What now?
Two pairs of road-worn boots stopped right in front of him, and he raised his head to a better, lingering look at the Grey Wardens he had just failed to kill. They both looked wary and unsure, but the warrior held himself like he was braced for a second ambush just waiting to pop up from behind Zevran. Unlikely, but imaginative.
The mage stared longer, more openly. She was much shorter than her fellow Warden and didn't really have a reason to get closer to Zevran.
But she did.
On her knees now, she seemed visibly anxious, like she was holding herself back from reaching out to him. Zevran couldn't figure out why until he felt the sting of sweat dripping into the nasty scrape he had along his jaw. At least, he hoped it was just a scrape.
"Will you answer my questions?" she asked him in the middle of his rambling, all this nonsense he was throwing out just to make room to think. "And maybe breathe in between them?"
Zevran blinked, trying to remember that he should close his mouth when he wasn't talking. The young woman was beautiful, lovely to look at and listen to even with her long red hair spilling out of its tie and blood and sweat streaked across her flushed cheeks. Exertion and pain turned her voice hoarse, and he still liked the sound of it. He scrambled to figure out why even as he nodded.
I don't understand, he thought desperately, fighting not to voice what he suddenly wanted to say. I shouldn't be alive, I shouldn't be here like this. Not in Rinna's place.
The stupidity of the thought almost choked him.
That's absurd, Taliesen would scoff. Come home, Zevran.
Rinna's pleas weren't echoing in his ears for once, sweet and kind in their absence. Instead, he saw her eyes in the Warden mage's green eyes. Not the color or shape, but the feeling of looking into Rinna's eyes before that doomed mission for the last time.
They were gentle, and warm, and they promised good things. From the mage, a chance. From Rinna, love and understanding and longing desire. He really had been so scared.
He was so scared right now, but something told him that it was alright. Rinna, or the impression of her, told him that everything was alright. It's alright to believe in mercy, he thought she might have said, in a world where he dropped to his knees in front of her and saved her.
Zevran looked up into the mage's eyes, into the compassion and mercy shining from deep within them. Misplaced, surely, and entirely hidden from perhaps even her. Maybe she didn't even know yet that she felt those things. Why would she, for a stranger who had just tried to kill her?
But that mercy was there in an extended hand and in kind eyes, and Zevran didn't let himself hide away from it. He took the Warden's hand and let her help him up.