#commentary meme

Simme laughs. She made Simme laugh! There's a little buzz of pride in her stomach. “Is that what people think? You guys know I didn’t write it, right?”

“I know, but you said you always try to have a concept in mind when you sing, to make the songs about something.”

He gives a little nod, acknowledging her point. “True. I guess it’s about Candace a lot.” He shrugs. “But one time it was definitely about this stretch of highway we’d been on the night before that was so full of potholes -”

“Atlanta to Nashville,” she says, instinctively, like this is some Simme trivia game and not just her knowing a weird number of facts about his actual life. “Sorry. I just… I saw the video.”

She glances sideways at him again. He looks amused rather than mad, and he hasn’t refused to answer any of her questions yet so she kind of has to. “Can I ask… Who do you think about when you sing the love songs?”

“Wilhelm.”

There’s no hesitation to it. No equivocations, no questioning. Just the name, said so softly that it takes her a moment to connect it to the reality of Crown Prince Wilhelm who gives speeches on Year with the Royal Family and gets photographed in suits hugging babies and opening hospitals.

It’s a weird crossing of streams, realising The Crown Prince is a person and there are people he dated in high school who say his name like it’s something precious they want to keep hold of.

But like, that was four years ago. And Simme hasn’t even been back to Sweden since. “Still?” she finds herself asking.

“Yeah.” He’s looking out the window, at the shadows of trees in the darkness. “He’s the only… there’s never been anyone else.”

There have been four years of constant wall to wall news coverage of Simme with this popstar or that actor or this reality TV star. Simme laughing off his high school relationship with the Prince of Sweden like it was nothing at all. “I thought… I mean we all heard about Alfonso…”

He laughs something bitter lingering at the edges to it. “I thought it was a marketing stunt, he thought it was true love. We didn’t last.”

“But you and Wilhelm are still…”

“No,” he says. “We’re not.” His fingers drum against the door handle. “Can you pull over? Just for a minute. I need to do something.”

*

She’s at that point where she’s basically awake but is refusing to admit it, nestled down into the covers trying to avoid opening her eyes, half thinking that if she does everything that happened last night is going to turn out to be a wild dream and she’ll be back in Gothenburg about to wake up and drive to Stockholm to meet Stan and see the show.

Then there’s a gentle knock on the door and an unmistakable voice says, “Hey? Can I come in?” and Laura opens her eyes to a closet-sized bedroom with posters of horses on the walls.

She’d found a nightshirt to sleep in that falls all the way down to her knees, so she’s decent enough to sit up and say, “Okay?”

Simme steps into the room. He’s changed into a purple hoodie, but otherwise he looks much the same. Like he hasn’t slept or showered since he dug out a silk pillowcase from the depths of the linen cupboard. His eyes catch on the horse posters, lingering a moment too long before he looks down at her. “There’s lunch. If you’re hungry.”

She wants to ask ‘are you okay?’ but his eyes keep darting back to the walls, his hands are twitching and he had to pull over multiple times so he could snort a powder that she’s really hoping was not cocaine so she’s not sure she’s ready for the answer.

Also now he’s mentioned food, she’s realising she’s starving. “Sure.”

He nods, takes a step back so she can stand up and then leads her back down the tiny hallway, past family photos that she resists the urge to stop and peer at, and into the kitchen where there are two strangers setting the table and one of them is Crown Prince Wilhelm.

She lets out a noise that might be a yelp, starts a, “You’re-” but thankfully cuts herself off before she can say something completely idiotic like ‘you’re here’ or ‘you’re the prince’ or ‘you’re taller than you look on TV.’

It turns out there is a difference between knowing there is something going on between Simme and the Prince and actually seeing said prince in the flesh wearing Simme’s white hoodie instead of a neatly pressed suit and setting out plates on the kitchen table.

Only the hoodie was oversize on Simme but clearly fits Prince Wilhelm just fine so that’s… a thing.

“Hello,” she says, trying to get back to normal only this isn’t normal because he’s a prince so like. “I mean, your majesty.”

Prince Wilhelm smiles. Up close, it’s the same kind of smile Simme keeps giving her, the one he seems able to paste over whatever he’s really feeling in the moment. “Your majesty is my mother,” he says. “Call me Wilhelm.”

Which of course just reminds her of being in the car the night before, the way Simme’s voice softened on Wilhelm’s name. And Simme had said they weren’t still… but Wilhelm is here, in this middle-of-nowhere town. Not Simme’s team, not Candace, just Wilhelm.

A good half of the internet would pay a large fortune for a glimpse of what she's seeing now. The way Wilhelm's eyes track Simme's progress through the room, the way Simme's whole body seems angled towards the Prince even when they're not interacting at all.

"Have you told anyone you're here?" Wilhelm's bodyguard asks her.

The bartender was alone.

Quietly, though he did not think anyone was listening, Zevran reached for the glove box on the car. Inside was a small, elegant arsenal: his favorite knife, just the right size for a killing blow delivered from the shadows, along with a pistol and silencer. He reached for the gun and wrapped his hand around the grip, pulling it into his lap with a strange sense of longing.

I could end it now.

Zevran was not sure if he was thinking of Alistair Guerrin’s life, or his own.

He had bid on this job because it was far from Antiva—far from Rinna’s memory. But more than that, the mystery of it appealed to him. A contact who refused to be contacted in person. Payments not through discreet banks that used pseudonyms, but in cash. This kind of obsessive anonymity was often a sign that the client would try kill the assassin after the job was complete—usually a drawback for the Crows. For Zevran, that possibility supplied a large portion of the job’s appeal.

But he was beginning to wonder just what sort of shadowy conspiracy wanted a joke-cracking bartender threatened and then killed. He had been scolded for such curiosity by superiors before, of course. He’d learned to keep those questions under wraps when working with other members of the Crows. Their job was to provide results, not wonder about the reasons, as he had been told many times. But he was alone now and could wonder as much as he liked.

A few things were important to me here. First, I wanted to make sure the fic wasn't softening Zevran on this first meeting. He is absolutely still a Crow, and he absolutely intends to kill Alistair. There will be no last-minute change of heart, no purposeful incompetence leading to a failed job. His plan is to do the job and do it well.

But I also wanted to show some interiority, some signs of the Zevran we come to know and trust in canon. So I wrote him speculating on who wants this job done, which I don't think he would have been encouraged to do as a Crow--and thinking about Rinna, who met a fate in this AU very similar to the one she met in canon.

Finally, I wanted to make it clear that Zevran is suicidal right now. He doesn't plan to hurt himself, but he can't help thinking about it now and then, and he absolutely believes that whoever ordered this extremely weird job is going to kill him later. It's the reason he's out here in Ferelden, after all.

She started at the entrance and worked in toward the gates, figuring she could continue down the other side if she came up empty. Part of her was cynical about finding anything so long after the fact, but the stubborn part--frustrated by her slow progress on this case--refused to give up without confirming. It didn’t look like this alley was cleaned all that often, maybe there was something useful. 

It's very fun having a character who's equal parts stubborn and cynical. A lot of "this has a 99% chance of being useless, but my other option is giving up SO I'm doing it anyway."

Besides, it was a distraction from the other thing she needed to find--the nerve to ask Red about the gala. It was much more elusive quarry than anything case related.

Ngl, I'm very proud of this pair of sentences.

What was so hard about asking him?

YOU KNOW, XAERYN SHRIKE. YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHY.

I don’t want to inconvenience him when he’s already doing so much for me.

You know he’d be happy to help, floated through her mind and only made matters worse.

The fun part about this is she genuinely doesn't want to inconvenience him. He's done a lot for her already and she doesn't want to take him from his "real job" to help her. And is also using it as an excuse. Both things are true!

She also knows he'd drop literally everything in a heartbeat to help her just for the asking(and she would for him).

Disrupting his schedule to travel all the way to Haven is a little different than turning him loose on a research project, she countered, nudging aside a tattered tarp with her shoe. Nothing.

He just told you he doesn’t have as much going in right now. And both of you would drop everything to help the other and you know it.  

Alright, fine, I don’t trust myself. The fact sat solid in her chest as soon as she admitted it, brusquely poking around a stack of discarded pallets. I’m afraid if I ask him to do this, even if it is genuinely as a friend, I won’t be able to hide the way I feel under those circumstances.

Her mask is only so good, after all. And she's been hiding this a long, long time. It's had plenty of opportunity to grow.

It was a tricky thing, carrying a torch for your best friend. And delicacy had never been a strength of hers. She was all honesty and no varnish, too blunt-

Forthright, Red’s voice corrected gently in her head.

--too forthright to be good at playing games and she dreaded what might happen if Red picked up on something bothering her.

I love "all honesty, no varnish" as a description for Ryn, another thing I'm v proud of. I love her hearing Red's voice in her head, correcting her to be kinder about herself while also being honest about what she sees as a shortcoming.

Well, your options are ask him or not go, so if you want to make progress on this case you better get ahold of yourself. You can do this. You are a professional, aren’t you? 

Her foot hit something that skittered away with a clattery rasp, breaking through her internal debate. A keen glance after the object revealed only a rusting crowbar, and Xaeryn gave a soft growl of disappointment. Not far from the crowbar, however, something silver and promising glinted from a jumble of discarded paint cans and crate frames half-stacked into a shelter. She shifted the debris enough to reach and found herself holding a fine black leather sheath, dagger-sized, silver tipped and accented. A silver insignia at the top, opposite the beltloop, bore an unfamiliar crest--what looked like crossed lightning bolts or vines surmounted with a sword, or maybe a lance. It was difficult to tell at that scale.

I can't make it too easy on her, or the payoff's no fun :D (Also, I wanted her to go to the library for the Ysa cameo)

She balanced the sheath on a nearby broken crate, pulled out her notebook and a pencil and took a rubbing of the crest. A quick shorthand annotation where she’d found it, and then she started to stash it all in her handbag. It would be a bit of a tight fit, but better than carrying her find where it would raise eyebrows.

Very professional, this gal. Immediately makes a copy of potential evidence, and a note where she found it, takes steps to not draw attention.

Xaeryn paused just before slipping the sheath in her bag. She studied it again, catching her lower lip between her teeth. What if... A quick glance at the wall behind her to ensure it was relatively clean and she leaned against the stone while focusing hard on the small sheath. There might, if this belonged to the green-haired man, be enough trace of the owner left to Scry a clue.

The world fell away in a watery grey roil, clarifying into a scene almost as disorienting as the shift itself. The viewing angle was odd, a blur of motion off-center drawing her attention. It shifted into focus, resolving into a pair of figures mid-scuffle. One was a green-haired man, clothes decent but nondescript aside from currently being mussed by the fight, the other she couldn’t make out beyond a wild beard and the impression of ragged clothes. A street bum maybe? They tussled, each getting in a few good licks, there was a gleam of metal in their grappled hands, then one’s foot caught the sheath, sending it spinning toward its resting place and jolting Xaeryn out of the vision.