#lfkajdklj

    “What are you waiting for? Try them on. Find a pair that fits!” Inara encouraged.

    “But I’m not finished admiring them yet! Can you smell that? Like rotting flesh. Just like back in Antiva City. Now if only you could find me a prostitute or two, a bowl of fish chowder, and a corrupt politician, I’d really feel like I was home!” Zevran laughed, before fishing through the pile of boots until he found a pair and, casting his old, tattered boots off, tried them on. “And they fit! Marvelous!”

    “Well, I’ve been paid for sex before, and I think we can find a corrupt politician in Denerim,” Inara grinned in response. “We’ll make you feel like you’re right at home on this mad quest yet. Hopefully before we all get eaten by the Archdemon.”

Zevran tittered a bit longer, stretching his legs out one-by-one to admire the boots on his feet, while Inara moved to search through the shop shelves, finding herself suddenly consumed with a desire to find the sweet little bottled cherries that the Chantry used to give them on holy days. It was a long-shot, perhaps, thinking Haven’s tiny mercantile would hold such a thing, but she still pushed around all the jars on the shelf, searching. When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Zevran watching her with great interest.

    “Do you stare at everyone like that?” she asked him.

    “Not everyone. But a beautiful woman like yourself? Why not? I am sure you draw many stares, from men and even other women,” Zevran asserted, and Inara’s cheeks filled with a deep blush as she shook her head and denied the assertion quietly. “Does this bother you?”

    “Not really,” Inara answered. “I was just curious.”

    “But you would prefer I desisted, perhaps? It would be difficult, traveling as we do in close proximity, but I am nothing if not a gentleman,” Zevran offered.

    “A gentleman? How disappointing,” Inara teased.

   “Oh? Now this is intriguing. I shall have to redouble my efforts immediately. There was a young elven dancer in Antiva City once, and I believe I actually managed to stare off all seven of her skirts. It’s a trick worth retrying. Now that that is out of the way, perhaps we should move on. With you in front, of course,” Zevran grinned.

Inara returned to her search, and, when another shelf came up devoid of cherries, she—emotion overwhelmed her, and she hung her head, lifting her hands up quickly to press against her face and muffle her breath as she sobbed. For a moment, she hoped that she was being quiet enough that Zevran wouldn’t notice.

    “I—did not mean to offend you, I only—,” he said a few moments later, shattering that illusion.

    “It’s not you,” Inara managed, struggling to control her breathing, to reign in her tears as she lifted her head from her hands and turned to glance at the mortified-looking assassin. “I’m… I think I’m having an… existential crisis.”

    “I know just the thing,” Zevran said quickly, lifting his arm up from behind the counter and setting a bottle on the hardwood surface.

When Inara came closer, she could see that it was a bottle of spirits. Zevran popped the cork out of the bottle with a clever twist of a thin blade in his hand, and offered the bottle to her, and she took it and took a long drink despite the way the liquid filled and burned her mouth and throat, swallowing thickly as she grimaced. Zevran whistled appreciatively.

    “What is that?” she asked.

    “Antivan brandy,” Zevran answered with an easy smile. “Apple, I believe. Perhaps I could find some glasses, or—”

Before Zevran could take the bottle for a drink for himself, or find glasses to pour the liquid in for them both, Inara picked it back up, and sucked down more of it. Taking her intention with an impressed raising of his eyebrows, Zevran pulled another bottle from the counter for himself, and popped it open, partaking with a half-smile at her.

    “I haven’t been drunk in a long time,” Inara told him.

    “What better time than now?” Zevran replied.

    “Is there more of this back there?” she asked him.

    “Easy,” Zevran cautioned. “Antivan brandy is not ale, my dear Warden.”

    “Duly noted,” answered the Warden.

She moved with him to the shelves, and they spent their time piling canned goods into the supply crates they’d slid out from back behind the counter, alternating between sipping on the brandy and working diligently to fill their crate with food that looked useful and travel-hardy. When they were finished, Inara sank to the floor at the shop counter with a heavy sigh, her back against the shop counter. With a chuckle, Zevran hopped up on the counter, and sat with his legs hanging off the edge, looking down at her, the bottle he drank from set beside him as she cradled hers between her legs. She pressed her head back against the counter, enjoying the way it stretched the muscles in her neck, and looked up at him.

    “What seems to be the trouble?” Zevran asked her. “What is your crisis, my dear?”

    “I thought it would be… better,” Inara said.

    “I don’t want to assume—”

    “The Temple. The Ashes. I thought…” Inara heaved another sigh, and took another drink. She grimaced, coughing a little as she wiped the liquor off her lips with the back of her hand as if it would help the burning in her throat. “I don’t know. I thought that I’d feel…”

    “Special?” Zevran asked.

    “Forgiven,” Inara said. She thought a moment. “And… yeah. I guess. Special. Chosen.”

    “Mm. I overheard part of what you said to our qunari friend,” Zevran admitted.

Inara stared hard down at the bottle in her hands, turning it around slowly to watch the light glint off the brown glass. Whatever label the bottle had once held, time had worn away. Inara marveled faintly that Zevran could recognize it, even so worn with age. She was quiet for a few moments, considering her words, how they’d sound.

    “We proved ourselves worthy to find Andraste. We passed through the flames,” Inara said then, softly. “Shouldn’t that… I mean. Shouldn’t we…?”

    “Hm. Do you think perhaps that passing through those flames should have burned away my desire to kill others for money? Made me a wholesome elf, wanting only to spend my day singing the Chant and toiling away scrubbing some noble’s floors? Because it did not. I remain unchanged, desiring to finish this business with you and perhaps return to the business of killing after. I do not weep, do not think on the words that Wynne has said with my heart wounded. I do not cry over my past wrongdoings, nor do I wish to stop doing wrong in the future, so long as it pays. Do you believe that this should be different, that the flames should have changed me?” Zevran asked.

    “I can’t see you scrubbing floors in any version of reality, for what it’s worth,” Inara told him. She took another drink. Smaller, this time. Wasn’t alcohol supposed to burn less with time? “Did you doubt that you would survive the fire?”

    “For a moment,” Zevran answered.

    “So did I,” Inara said, voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t even know why I stepped through.”

    “But you did. And you lived,” Zevran told her. “As did Sten, and Shale, and Morrigan, and we know that they are not believers in any manner of the word.”

Inara’s brow furrowed, slightly. “And my father was there. He didn’t believe in Andraste. If he even knew that she existed. I never heard anything about the Chantry or the Maker from him. It was always the Avvar gods, always the old ways. All the tales and all the reasons for everything that happened.”

    “So what do you make of the Temple?” Zevran asked.

    “I don’t know,” Inara answered.

She took another drink, and her cheeks began to tingle. She could feel her ears, in the strangest sense.

    “What do you make of it?”

    “There are two distinct possibilities that come to my mind,” Zevran said. “One, the temple is, as Shale suggested, the product of lyrium running in the walls, strong and pure and close to the surface, making us all hallucinate, and see whatever we wished to see that would convince us that we had found Andraste. Or two, for whatever reason, the Maker and his Bride favor us, and allowed us to pass through this Temple and take Andraste’s Ashes. If it is the former, then we have convinced ourselves of a fable, and it means nothing. If it is the latter, what right have we to object to the Maker’s decision? In my mind, no. We have no choice but to accept that the Maker and Andraste have found us worthy, just as we are.”

Inara thought on it a moment, and frowned deeply. She reached down, then, and pulled the dagger that Ulrich had given to her in the Temple, turning it over in her hands. She offered it up to Zevran, and he took it, examining it with some awe, even whistling in appreciation when he pulled the blade from its white leather sheath and admired the way that the black of the blade glittered dangerously.

    “How did a spirit recreate such a thing?” Inara asked.

    “I cannot answer that,” Zevran told her. He handed the blade back.

Inara pouted some more, and tucked the blade away, before thumping her head back against the counter once more. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. Talk to me about something else. Tell me about your adventures.”

    “My adventures?” Zevran chuckled. “I’m hardly an old man just returned from across the ocean, am I? Should I shake my fist at nearby children while I talk about the good ole days?”

    “If you’d prefer not to talk, that’s fine,” Inara said.

    “Now. I didn’t say that, did I? Old men love to talk, after all. Will I get a kiss afterwards?” Zevran purred.

    “You want me to kiss you?” Inara asked, looking back up at him in shock.

    “You seem so surprised. You are a lovely woman. I am a lovely man. Sound familiar?” Zevran smiled.

    “I have to pass. Alistair and I are—”

    “My apologies,” Zevran cut in. “I did not realize that you were… official, as it were. Though everyone in camp can see that you share a certain… fondness.”

    “We do,” Inara replied with a gentle smile, though it fell from her lips some when she thought of the way that he could not answer her when she asked if he felt that they were meant to be together. “You can always dream about it.”

    “Oh! Good idea. I’ll have to keep that in mind for tonight,” Zevran chuckled. “Hmm. Let’s see. My second mission ever for the Crows was a bit intriguing. I was sent to kill a mage who had been meddling in politics.”

    “Meddling how?” Inara asked.

    “How should I know? I got the impression it involved sex… but then I get that impression about most everything. Odd, really. As it turned out, the mage in question was a delightful young woman. Long, divine legs as I recall. I caught her in a carriage on her way to escape to the provinces. After I killed her guard, she got down on her hands and knees and begged for her life… rather aptly, I might add. So I joined her in the carriage for the night and left the next morning,” Zevran said.

    “And she didn’t try to kill you? To protect herself?” Inara scoffed.

    “Well, yes. Twice, actually. Then she decided to try and use me, instead. The woman had actually convinced me to speak to the Crows on her behalf,” Zevran only shrugged when Inara’s eyebrows furrowed a bit. “What can I say? I was young and foolish at the time. Then, as I was kissing her good-bye to return to Antiva City, she slipped on the threshold and fell backwards out of the carriage. Broke her neck. Shame, really, but at least it happened quickly.”

    “She died? Just like that? Were you upset?”

    “At first, yes. Well, not upset… surprised is really a better word. Then I found out that she had told the driver to take her to Genellan instead. She had planned to lose me in the provinces. I would have looked very foolish to the Crows. As it was, my master was very impressed that I had done such a fine job of making it look like an accident. The Circle of Magi was unaware of foul play and everyone was happier all around,” Zevran chirped.

    “Except the mage, of course,” Inara frowned, and took another drink of the brandy.

    “It was after that I learned that one needn’t let a pretty face go to your head. Professionalism was key. That’s my moral of the day, you see,” Zevran told her.

    “So you never mix business with pleasure?” Inara asked.

    “Oh, I might be convinced. I think that it would take being captured and tied up by a beautiful woman, at the very least,” Zevran purred.

    “Well that’s already been done,” Inara smiled.

    “And here the Crows told me that getting captured in the line of duty was the worst thing possible. What do they know?” Zevran grinned.

    “Also, to be clear: your idea of a story that would entice me to kiss you was of you killing someone during a good-bye kiss?” Inara asked, one of her eyebrows cocked slightly as she looked up to him.

    “Hmm. Now that I think about it, perhaps not the best choice,” Zevran ceded.

    “Perhaps not,” Inara smiled. They sat in silence a while longer, then she said, “Tell me more about your Crow adventures.”

    “Another? So soon? Well, now… what might interest you, I wonder? Shall I describe the stages involved in lanthrax poisoning? I watched a man go through all seven, once,” Zevran teased.

    “Sure. Sounds fun,” Inara responded, lifting her bottle to him as she took another gulp, her head beginning to fill with fuzz and pleasant buzzing.

    “Aha. You have rather macabre tastes. I like that. Let’s see. How about the largest battle I ever took part in? That would have been the slaughter of Prince Azrin. Did you hear of that down in these parts?” Zevran inquired.

    “You killed a prince?” Inara returned.

    “Me? Not personally. But I did take part in the attack. Prince Azrin was fourth in line to the throne, you see. He started off as eleventh, but worked his way up the old-fashioned method, by inheriting control of an entire Crow cell from his grandfather. After assassinating his way through the royal family, the King hired three other cells to take down Prince Azrin once and for all. I was in one of those cells,” Zevran explained.

    “Is that sort of thing common in Antiva?” Inara asked him.

    “Antivan royalty is very much bound up in the Crows. You wouldn’t want it run by a bunch of commoners, after all, would you? And this means they get involved in politics quite often. This particular fight nearly bankrupted the nation, I understand. It almost ended up putting a Crow on the throne, a commoner…  but that’s a whole different story. I played a very small part,” Zevran assured her.

    “What did you do?”

    “My part in the entire battle was taken up trying to reach Princess Ferenna, who had thrown in with her brother. I killed about eleven of her guards personally before I got knocked out of a window. I landed in the river and nearly drowned. I was fished out by some urchins who robbed me blind. Made off with my boots, too. At least they didn’t cut my throat. And that was my part in history,” Zevran said proudly.

Inara laughed. “Wow. You are a very lucky man.”

    “It’s true! I live a charmed life. One of the prostitutes that raised me was a fortune teller. Said I wouldn’t die young. She was rather startled by that. But there you go. Tale told. Let’s quit before I tell more embarrassing stories, hm?” Zevran tittered.

    “You don’t have any others?” Inara asked, sounding sour just before she took another long chug of the brandy, grunting and shivering when it was done.

    “Why don’t you tell me a story?” Zevran asked. “Surely you have some good ones, no? How did you come to be a Warden, anyway? I am certain that is a worthy tale, no?”

    “I lived on the streets in Denerim,” Inara told him. “Well. I had a… crack in the wall. I didn’t live on the streets, exactly. I had hay… a little pillow. Somewhere warm. My best friend was named Ellis. An elven boy from the Alienage. One day we… we found some elves um… being attacked by guards in an alley. Ellis’ sister was one of the elves. She was a child.”

Zevran’s eyes darkened, some.

    “We killed the guards. Well. A couple of them. But one got away. Got others. We shouldn’t have done, maybe. But… the girl. Ellis… Duncan told me he got him out of the city, but when we were in Denerim… the Alienage was all closed off and I couldn’t…” Inara frowned hard, and took another drink, sputtered after and hissed in a breath. “I don’t know what happened to him. I was a bad friend.”

    “I’m sorry,” Zevran said. “I didn’t mean to…”

    “I was looking for cherries,” Inara said.

    “What?”

    “On the shelves. I wanted cherries,” she explained, as a tear slipped down her cheek. “The Chantry gave us cherries on holy days. Little cherries in a glass. Red. They were good. I just wanted some.”

    “Perhaps you should give me the bottle,” Zevran suggested.

Inara thought on it a moment, feeling the way her cheeks were burning and her tongue was tingling and her head swam with swirls and dips. She tried to lift it up to him, forgot what she was doing, and took another drink, even as Zevran caught the bottom of the bottle, tried to gently pry it away from her, lying sideways on the counter so that he could try to tilt the bottom down and away from her lips. He managed to pull it away, and Inara’s hand dropped down into her lap as her head rested against the warm wood, her eyes suddenly quite heavy.

    “Oh dear,” she heard Zevran gasp as he examined the bottle. “Oh, no.”

    “My tongue feels warm,” she said.

    “I am certain that it does,” Zevran assured her.

He hopped off the counter and knelt at her side, his eyes wide with concern, and she smiled at him, and lifted her fingers up to touch the markings on his face. She was a bit surprised that they did not feel any different than the rest of his skin, and pushed at them, just to make sure, before he pulled her hand down, away from his face.

    “You are going to be very sick,” Zevran warned her. “Sit here a moment. I am going to find some water. Maybe bread.”

Inara sat, and started singing slowly, a tune that her father used to sing to her, the tale of Tyrdda Bright-Axe, Avvar Mother. After some time, and a couple stanzas of the song, Inara heard a great clinking, and when she opened her eyes she saw Alistair standing upside down—no, just before her as she laid on the floor. She wondered when she’d laid down, but the worry soon passed. The floor was nice.

    “What happened?” Alistair asked, face full of concern above her as she lay there on the ground. “It’s starting to snow, and it’s going to be bad. We need to go.”

    “I am drunk!” Inara informed him with a grin, both hands spread out wide above her. “Because I’m sad! Do you love me?”

    “There was an… accident,” she heard Zevran say.

    “Oh, you smell like a brewery,” Alistair recoiled slightly, grimacing as he knelt by Inara’s side. “Here, let’s get you up.”

Inara groaned some as Alistair pulled at her, but eventually the former templar was able to pull her up onto her feet, and when that didn’t take, he heaved her up into his arms, making her gasp softly as he held her. She squirmed, and he grunted.

    “I did not mean for her to drink the whole bottle,” she heard Zevran telling Alistair, as if it were far away.

    “You smell good,” Inara told Alistair, and she heard him give a frustrated huff as her hands found his hair. It felt good beneath her fingers.

    “Inara—you have to quit—I can’t see when you’re doing that!” she heard him object.

    “When I’m doing what?” she asked.

    “Weren’t you supposed to be gathering food?” Leliana’s voice was soft, like rain.

    “We did!” Zevran sounded affronted.