capeandcowllogs | in and out of stages

Entry tags:

in and out of stages

WHO: Zevran (

niceassassin) and OPEN.
WHERE: Around the City.
WHEN: The night of Saturday, May 14th.
WARNINGS: Terrible references to sex. Anything else on a case-by-case basis.
SUMMARY: Zevran goes out to try to make up for the lost time during kid week. Come help him out, join him, or try to foil his plans: whichever is your fancy.
FORMAT: Whatever you prefer!

By noon on Saturday, the memory of the past week is clearly stretched out in Zevran's mind like a poisoning victim, and by late afternoon, he can no longer tolerate it. It has been a very long time since that kind of vulnerability and sentimentality was so fresh in his recall. Oh, yes, moments of it escaped during his journeys with the Grey Warden, but they were mostly controlled. This, this is different and unwelcome.

Fortunately, by the time dark is falling and the artificial lights that seem so excessive to him are coming on around the City, business as usual has mostly picked up again--at least in some places. The denizens of the City, newly freed from the spell, will be seeking contact with other adults. So the most popular of social places are scrambling to be ready for them--be they parks or clubs. Zevran's usual haunts are still getting their feet back under them: the gaming stores, the fantasy bookshops, they remain closed for now. But he's determined to take a positive view of things (all the better to forget how frightened and deluded he was before the spell ended). This is an opportunity to try out new grounds, to find out if the less nerdy demographics in the City are just as willing to enjoy the company of an attractive elf with a foreign accent and a ready smile.

And so begins this night's adventure: drifting from bar to pub to club, idly attempting to seduce the bouncers outside the latter, investigating the people within. And maybe keeping an eye out for anyone interesting outside, as well. It is a moderately cool night; he has an excuse for a jacket. Which means he can bring his dagger along, just in case violence enters the equation. He is not averse to that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He sighs ruefully. It's so hard for him to remember that his innuendo goes right over her head; he's too used to it. "To activities you have already expressed no interest in. Ah, what I mean to say is, my life has become other than normal as well."

She'll get used to it eventually -- perhaps when she's more used to the company. It's been ages since she's known anyone who flirts even half as much as Zevran does. It's getting too used to it that will inevitably prove the hazard.

But that is the future. For the now, Terra seems understanding. "You're still getting used to this world. It gets easier... but not easy."

He's certainly not going to stop. Even if he stops making actual passes at her, well, he'll still be dropping not-so-subtle references to his own activities.

"Not just in this world," he hastens to add. "Things were very interesting for a while back home as well. But they will wait while I'm here, yes?"

"So I'm told. I've never gone since coming here, and... the only person who's come here that's known me, it--" she shakes her head, brushing bangs from her face. "I didn't know him, and neither of us can tell if I should have or not."

Her hand makes a loose, dismissive roll. "Anyway. What was so interesting?"

He shrugs. "Even if it's not true, an absence from my world can only do me good. There are people there I should stay away from." And people he wouldn't mind seeing more of, but he won't talk about that for now. Friends? In his life? Again with the awkward. "You were asking what was so interesting. Well, I took a job assisting a foreign politician..." Euphemisms: not just for the bedroom. "Let us say I underperformed and made friends with his enemies instead. They had adventures. We had adventures."

"... huh." Though minor, the momentary recognition of similarity -- of switching sides, presumably because the other side was a friendlier sort -- was an unexpected thing, a subtle change in her eyes. "What sort of adventures? I'm curious now."

It would be more accurate to say that the other side was a more merciful sort, but again: Zevran is leaving certain things out of the story. "Oh, we saved the world, I think. After many stops along the way."

"The stops are what make it an adventure," she punctuates with a more amused smile, rapping fingertips against the bar. "You're pretty tight-lipped."

"There are so many who would disagree with you on that, my dear," is his immediate response. When in doubt, innuendo. But after a moment, his expression softens slightly. "What do you want to hear about? How we found the golem? The dwarves and their politics? The lovely little village full of mad cultists and dragons? The werewolves in the forest? The town besieged by walking corpses? I wasn't there for the mages' tower, I'm afraid, or some of the others."

It's getting easier to identify the innuendo, if only for the saturation of it in the conversation; she's learning not to question it. As for the actual question, she thinks over the options for a short moment.

"The golem."

He's okay with that. It's one of the less personal tales by far. "Ah, yes. A merchant up near the Frostbacks gave us a control rod for a golem--said it had caused him nothing but trouble and he wanted to see the last of it. He may have been right to do so. The town it led us to was overrun with darkspawn. Monsters, I suppose you would say. And as for the golem itself...the command phrase we had been given did not work. We had to search the village for survivors to learn the correct phrase." A beat. "And because the Warden was the sort of person who rescued survivors. The rest of us, we followed her."

She listens attentively, chin balancing on one hand. She doesn't know much about golems, especially not of other worlds, so the use of 'it' doesn't quite hit her, but the rest of the story does not seem too unusual to her. Monsters were common in her own world, though they didn't much venture into cities; a scenario like that didn't seem too fantastic.

"The Warden?"

Oh, Zevran may get to the part about the golem's reaction to being called it all the time. That might be good for a laugh. For now, he pauses to address the question. "The Grey Wardens are an elite order formed thousands of years ago to fight the darkspawn." He lifts a hand and waves it vaguely. "It's complicated. Not my sort of thing. I am not the heroing type. She is. We were all in this in the first place to stop the Blight, you see--an invasion of darkspawn led by an archdemon. But we needed all the help we could get first, and so we went to find the golem and learn how to activate it."

He pauses to get back into that part of the story. "There were survivors in a basement, and one of them knew the correct command phrase. But he wouldn't give it to us until we saved his daughter from a demon. Typical, really."

She's from an RPG, too. She should know what he's talking about.

Or something else entirely. Though Terra herself managed to avoid most of the more roundabout adventures, she heard some tale of Celes' stunt doubling as an opera singer in order to hijack an airship. And Sabin's whole trek across the Veldt throwing out scraps of meat to get the help of a thieving wild child.

Meanwhile, she tended to wake up in strange beds in men's houses and no idea how she arrived there. It is probably not a topic she should broach, lest the elf get ideas.

Though she's curious about the darkspawn and all the rest, it's probably best to finish the story they're on now. "You saved her, right?"

"Of course. We are, as I have said many times in the past, ridiculously awesome." Because he has the best battle quotes. "The demon wanted our help freeing it from wards set up by a long-dead mage so that it could possess the young girl--instead of being forever trapped in the body of a cat locked in a basement, as it was then. So the Warden assured it that we would free it and let it possess the girl. Then we took down the wards--" He shrugs in irritation at the memory. Ugh, puzzles. At least it wasn't sudoku. "And at the Warden's command, we all killed the demon before it could possess the girl. Mmm, what did she say? 'I promised I would set you free. I didn't say I would let you live.'"

Not exactly the ending she was expecting, but in the same position, Terra could see herself doing the same thing. "She sounds like... quite the leader," for that at least was true that she can tell. "And the golem?"

"She is." He sounds, momentarily, more serious than usual. In another world she might be, but the Warden is still perhaps the only person he would truly call friend. But he prefers to speak of other subjects, so on he goes without hesitation. "The golem, well. We activated it, and it insulted us, called the Warden 'it,' and introduced itself--introduced herself as Shale."

The unexpected turn toward gendered pronoun and the rest gives Terra a moment of pause. "What... is a golem?" she asks, a little hesitant. "I think I have the wrong idea."

"I suppose it varies across worlds," Zevran concludes after a moment's thought. "In my world...well, that is a story all its own, and I may not be the one to tell it. Mmm. Golems are great stone giants who were once dwarves. Most of them do the bidding of whoever holds their control rod." He's already made the obvious joke about that back home when talking to Shale, though, so he doesn't make it now. Instead he just goes on: "Shale's was broken. She had free will. I believe she interpreted this as 'free will to be a cynical misanthrope.' She was quite interesting that way."

Quite suddenly, Terra feels very, very uncomfortable with this story. It's no surprise why to anyone who knows her past, but Zevran is not one of those people. It's visible in her face, how the congenial interest almost melts out like frost on a hot stove, and a hand clasps over her mouth. She doesn't know if she trusts herself enough to speak.

He has no idea why--but he can tell that she's disturbed by what he's said, and he can come up with a few guesses as to why. He may be many things, but he's not stupid. Zevran regards Terra in silence for a moment, then says, "There will be no more golems. The Warden destroyed the anvil on which they were made. And there, I have spoiled the end of another story for you."

She's not facing him then, trying to keep the sick sort of dread hanging round her neck from tightening; knowing that such at thing had been done to her was unfortunate, but Terra is free of it, and was the only one to have suffered so in her world. As far as she's aware, at any rate; the idea that an entire people had been controlled like that — created to be controlled like that — is almost too much to bear.

There's a tremble in her voice when she asks, "and the others?"

Edited 2011-05-17 08:23 (UTC)

He watches what he can of her--for once, with no lecherous intent. "Gone. Long since destroyed fighting the darkspawn, or in the final battle to take the anvil. The last of them, what was left of the man who created the anvil, he took his own life when freed from its power."

He does not speak to her of how there are other ways to control a person, and nothing can be smashed to stop them. He is ruthless, and a killer, but he isn't cruel.

Breath escapes like a puncture, and the hand that had covered her mouth slips up to brace against her forehead — blessedly bare. It's probably overreaction, she knows, and it's too emotional a display for a stranger, but there are few things more frightening than that loss of control and will.

With an inhale, her gaze drifts back to Zevran in the corner of her eye. "Sorry," she says, but she doesn't ease this with as much of a smile. "I ruined your story."

He responds easily, half a smile on his face. "And I ruined your night. I think we are even."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject