Sixth jump - you should know, you should know that [Action/Written]

[antivanleather]

[Action, locked to Isaac]

[This is not how Zevran imagined the first few hours of his freedom would be. The wine and the feasting and the drinking the day before, certainly. But the first morning after he had finished collecting his effects and bidding farewell to the Warden he intended to spend on the road. Leaving Ferelden for warmer climes. He did not intend to wake in a cell.

And yet, here he is, despite the best intentions. He wakes slowly arms flexing against his restraints and he keeps his head for the first few moments. Just manacles. Just a cold, dark cave like many that the Crows preferred to use for their longer imprisonments. But were this the Crows he would be dead, that went without saying. No, no. This is a personal vendetta- which leaves Zevran free to consider who it is he pissed off this time to earn such attentions while he works at attempting to lean just enough so that he might pull a pick from his hair. That he has none is worrying.

That there is no manner in which the manacles might be removed is of a greater concern. But when he finds that they actually constrict when he attempts to twist his thumb enough to pop it out of place and holds him all the tighter- then. Then he panics.

Crows are terrible. Nobles are worse. Mages, those that yet live and wish him dead? Horrify him and he used to be better at fighting down the swell of cold fear and the anxious ratcheting of his heart. Used to be able to laugh through it, to grin and smile and shrug off torment such as sensory deprivation and capture. It is cold. It is dark. He is alone. He is held by a mage he cannot recall at the moment and after all that he witness at the final battle in Denerim that is what makes him shift in earnest, rattle his chains and lash out with a foot to find purchase- he finds that his feet are bare and the wall is solid, little more. Brasca.]

[Action, Open]

[Later, when he is freed and his personal effects returned, when he realizes where he is in earnest and is armored and armed and less out of sorts Zev ducks into the Coffee Shop for a cup of something hot and bitter, leaving a rather short note in the journal for whoever might have missed him, though save a bare handful he cannot imagine it would be many. He does not even know if they yet remain.]

While I am pleased to have found my way back to this delightful village, I think awaking in a random bed might have been the better introduction. At least it was warm.

Fondest regards,

Zevran

[After some time spent reacquainting himself with the village's map he, warily, makes his way to House 51.]

Comments

[250mhzwabl]

[For several minutes, Jack only reads and rereads the latest post that's gone out across the journals, feeling a heavy lump stick in his throat and slowly swell until it's lodged there tight and painful. He supposes, maybe, he's glad he didn't call for Eugene the second he saw the figure in the picture. Because the note itself is more than he can entirely wrap his head around, and he's left letting his eyes trace and retrace it, searching for some kind interpretation of it.

But no, Zev's back. He's back, and he remembers, and . . . that seems to be it. Not even a few words of a quick note or a call, let alone a visit. Just a flippant little post about cruising the town, shooed off into the world at large before he goes off to do . . . whatever he's doing, now that he's back in Luceti.

Well.

Dull shock turns to seething after the third or fourth or seventeenth run-through, and Jack wedges his journal firmly into the pocket of his sweatshirt, pacing for the kitchen with the intent to grab a water bottle. His trainers and W.G. are right by the door, and the Battle Dome sounds like the only bearable place right now.]

[antivanleather]

[Despite his rather illuminating conversation with Isaac earlier- bits are still missing. Everything of his previous stay here is muzzed over by time, chill, or exhaustion. All he remembers of this house is that it has some significance, that when he walked upon the path proper there was a dull ache in his gut a little like lonliness and a lot like regret. But whatever might he have to regret?

He could try the door like a normal person- but he does not know who lives here. Does not trust himself to this strange place with it's strange lives and so he opts for the least conspicuous window. It's a kitchen- and whoever lived here before had some healthy sense of paranoia. There are several tripwires he has to avoid connected to surprisingly delicate spring loaded mechanisms that release needles, powder, or vapor and were he not so concerned with keeping himself from being a victim of these devices he might recognize the handiwork.

As it stands it only leaves him ever more wary of sliding inside. But when the last trap is disarmed and he can, and does, slide the window up- he enters all the same. Slips in and shuts the window behind him silent as anything- lean and dark and covered in drakeskin leather armor, knives and swords strapped to him- he makes a proper interloper should he be seen.

There's nothing that strikes him offhand of this place other than a staggering sense of familiarity. He knows this room. Has dreamt of it- but they were nothing more than dreams. Lost in this fugue he doesn't pick up on the patter of footsteps until he has no time whatsoever to hide, no time to find a shadow, so he turns, guiltily, hands cradled around a silver mug that he swears he knows the feel of while warm. Antivan in design and he knows that knotwork, knows the intricate lay of lines etched into it- something he did often enough idly on his own armor. Supposed runes of good health and protection as made by the Dalish.

Why is this here?]

[250mhzwabl]

[As much as it is possible for an emotion to do so, Jack's anger trips. Zevran standing there, in his kitchen, is rough enough terrain. But seeing him in unfamiliar armour, looking so utterly lost, is enough to send his outrage tumbling head over metaphorical heels, snagging on and picking up bits of all sorts of other feelings he doesn't want in there. Confusion, happiness, hurt, disbelief - his anger is coated in all of them by the time it rolls to a stop, leaving him still in the doorway, still staring right back, feeling every single one of his blood vessels going dully electric from his scalp down.]

I, uh. [His voice comes almost unintentionally, and he licks his lips, looking at Zevran uncertainly.] I'd gotten the impression you weren't coming back.

[antivanleather]

[Lost and older, leaner, sharper than when they'd last met. The remaining months during the campaign had not been entirely unkind to the Antivan, but they had not been restful. What softness there might have been was burned out of him in the deep roads, carved from him in the last weeks before Denerim. Is he broader, perhaps? Are there thin lines of new scars light along his jaw, a knotch in his eyebrow? One cannot say without coming closer- and as much as Zevran wishes to flee with this cup from this man he's utterly struck.

This. This is the face he saw in his dreams. The voice that haunted him.]

You...I. I know you.

[It is said without any of his usual bravado, without even the shadow of jest in his eyes. The cup's set aside in favor of approaching on silent feet- something Zev had given up within a week of living with Jack and Eugene and Max at their request but now he doesn't remember that arrangement. All he remembers are faces, sensations.]

[250mhzwabl]

[It's too strange for Jack to even start riddling out, Zev remembering the town but not remembering him or Eugene or any of this, Zev being back and in his kitchen and not making coffee or smiling at him or even trying to avoid his eyes. He closes the distance the rest of the way silently, expression melting into a worried frown as he reaches up for one of those new scuffs to cup his hand against it.]

Christ, Zev. What happened to you?

[swordprincess]

[Even Karla needs a break from her rather...sparse routine every now and then. So today, she's found herself in the Coffee Shop to try a little something different. A cup of coffee of her own.]

[As she stirs her drink, she spots a head of blonde hair across the room that somehow seems to nag at her memory. She doesn't recall meeting him...but she must have if he's nudging her bells like this. So she'll do something that she doesn't normally do – approach.]

[She stands, picking up her cup and makes her way across the room, standing right in front of him. She pauses, looking him over carefully, trying to connect with her own memory. Only a moment later does it dawn on her that she should probably say something.]

Um...hello...

[It's all she could think of at the moment.]

[antivanleather]

...

[Flipping through the journal and all the information therein is somewhat illuminating. Somewhat. There are maps and names and voices and flickers of memory that come and go and are more confounding than they are useful. The sensation of being watched pricks his senses soon enough and he ignores who it is aside from marking the individual in his peripheral vision.

Then they approach.

And stare.]

...Can I help you?

[swordprincess]

[Help her? No...it wouldn't be the right appoach...]

Oh...I'm sorry to disturb. I just can't help the feeling that we've...spoken before.

[It wouldn't be accurate to say that they actually met before.]

[antivanleather]

I cannot say if we have or not.

[He quirks a brow, waiting for...some manner of statement of intent. If this woman wished him dead, she would say so or act in a hostile manner. If she wished his company- she'd be sweeter.]

[swordprincess]

[If Karla wants him dead, it's a fair bet that he would be already, given how she knocks out her opponents in a mere stroke or two, while they can't even touch her.]

[Fortunately, she isn't one to wish someone dead. A KO would satisfy her far more than a kill. Let the opponent wake up and realize that they've lost so easily to a beautiful girl. She isn't even one to initiate random fights. She either lets the opponent make the first move, or schedules a duel with an opponent at a later time.]

[But none of that is on her agenda right now. For now, Karla studies Zevran once more. His voice definitely sounds familiar, but she still can't piece the puzzle together.]

Hmm...perhaps a name would help?

[relictusdeus]

The sounds of a struggle are impossible for a predator to miss, less when they break the tomb-like silence so constant and familiar to him, it has almost become a comfort. With a weapon at his back and a devil at his side, Isaac moves in in a quiet, sure-footed way, lead by jangling chains to the dungeon’s entrance. It’s too dark within for even his keenly accustomed eyes to make out more than a silhouette on the other side of the door through the barred window, but that he catches a faint whiff of magic opposite of where he knows the shackles to be only piques his interest further.

A trap, perhaps. The Malnosso are capable of many surprises.

He rests his palm lightly against the door, the Forgemaster’s seal turning visible and shimmering before it seeming vanishes behind his hand. Then the bolts budge, and the door gives with a creak, but it’s not Isaac who enters first.

With a leathery snap of its wings and a roar, Abel plunges in and comes to an abrupt stop a foot short of the prisoner, growling low in its throat as it then hovers restlessly around the perimeter of the room. Searching the darkness for other living threats. But Isaac steps in, advancing with calm confidence and the smooth roll of his hips, and the creature beelines to Zevran as if begging permission to rip him apart.

He takes his time crossing the room, past the iron nails and pincers, the hammers and scrapers and the coiled whip. Tools his cursed self had thought valuable to have and his enduring sadism and sense of practicality refused to let him throw away. And as he draws closer and details come into focus little by little, one by one, he remembers the times he had been forced down into Dracula’s dungeons far more than once to watch the punishments doled as ordered to the traitorous, to the defiant, and to the enemy. And he had been afraid, once, of hearing gristle and bone snapping and watching punctured eyes dribbling down faces like the runny whites of an egg. But he had shed that fear quickly, because there had been no other choice. Violence in many forms had simply been the daily reality of all things living and undead under the castle’s roof. It had been the reality of life in darkness itself, where humans were few and beasts were many, restlessly hungry and whimsical, free to do as they pleased within the castle with their master’s often laissez-faire approach when it came to conflict resolution among his lesser allies. So long as Dracula’s will and authority were respected, as was the chain of command, what humans and beasts did and didn’t do in that house of hell didn’t matter. The freedom was more often terrifying than anything else. But from blood and suffering and stress, leaders had been forged and ranks decided, and Isaac has stood a vicious, wary, proud man on his growing mountain of corpses. But even from up high, he never saw his own downfall coming.

He knows who it is before a flame bursts from his palm, shedding a soft glow on the prisoner’s face. He knows because he feels a low throb in his chest despite himself – and there’s a twitch at the corner of his lips. The beginnings of a sardonic smirk less at Zevran himself than fate that forces them together and won’t stop prodding something more than half-dead to life. And for just that little moment before there’s light flickering between them, Isaac closes his eyes. To ready himself. To let the memory of jokes and clinking classes echo through his mind and wash over him, because he has no choice with this either.

He’s grateful Zevran never saw what destruction his absence had wrought. It had been one matter to check and recheck the list of contacts in the journal, endlessly contemplating the place the elf’s name used to take on the page in the same irresistible way a tongue poked at the gap a pulled tooth left. But it had been entirely different when the things Isaac had crafted for him and the things left for Isaac had been held out for him to take as he stared and fiercely at Jack, as if he had gall to have come all this way to his door and bring this upon him. The weight of the sketchbook and dagger and traps and letter in his hands had given his loss a leaden, ugly sense of finality -- and then something snapped and he had begun laugh and laugh. Because he had been so certain and fixated on the idea that Jack and Eugene would keep his only friend from him that he had forgotten for just long enough that the Malnosso could do it and more quickly and effectively than they could ever manage together.

The week that followed was lost in a fog. Many days of raising glasses of wine in a joyless salute and tossing them down his throat, and nights lying wide-awake over a bed of his own notes scattered in wild disarray and thinking that a true friend would never let one finish a bottle of wine alone.

Zevran’s letter had never been read a second time. He had stowed away along with everything to do with him in a chest sealed by locks and magic and hidden in a place he hoped to one day forget about. The sketchbook had been tossed into the fireplace, failing to keep him warm for long.

“It has been a very long time since this chamber has seen use,” He says in a wry, dimly amused way, light and shadow playing his lean features, his heavy lids. Eye contact isn’t made – not yet. His gaze pans across the ceiling instead, his memory of the castle’s dungeons filling empty space with imaginary chains and dangling meat hooks.

[antivanleather]

The door creaks- and Zevran goes still. Too late to pretend he isn't awake, that he isn't sucking in shallow breaths and failing to calm himself. Too late to feign sleep or illness or delirium. There'd been light- a seal, he's held by a mage. A mage with monsters and now he knows why he cannot remember arriving. This is no true prison. He's trapped in the Fade once more. Lost to the mercy of a demon. He struggles to his feet, chains rattling despite his best efforts. Ringing in his head and around his wrists with a cold finality because this time there is no Warden to save him. This time not even the kindness of the memory of the Crows holds him. No. This time it's steel and claw and the monster that roars out into the shadows where Zevran was so content to live for decades.

It's a familiar monster- at least that may register once the initial wave of panic subsides. Eaten. Devoured. Turned and twisted into something else and he can't, he won't, he would rather death be swift and easy and real with a knife between his ribs or venom in his veins. Not drawn out into eternity like this. Not mauled and remade over and over in some small segment of damnation.

Perhaps he died. Killed in his sleep and this is all that is left for him. This cell, this monster, this twisted mage that waits with fire in his hand. Unable to steady his breathing or school his features Zevran locks up tight against the wall, eyes wide and searching through the shadows. Nothing in him says recognition. Nothing in him spells joy. There is only fear and resignation.

This face.

This is a face he knows, a face he's dreamnt of. Horrifying things of blood and lips and wine. Of pain shared and laid upon one another with a laugh. Echos of camaraderie and then. Death. He'd died. Hadn't he? This is death. This is the specter of this man come to claim him for whatever wrongs he has caused. This is his familiar hell.

"...all the better for a crow condemned to die, yes?" That has to be it. Some sort of vision of his own end. Perhaps his mother had some talent, perhaps it had been that first stint in the Fade that dragged this moment back to him during the campaign.

[relictusdeus]

He blinks and his gaze drifts back to Zevran at last, searching his face for a long moment and with a cool, clinical sort of interest. Every familiar and unfamiliar detail absorbed and catalogued.

Whether this is some manner of dry quip to meet his own or honest confusion, he can’t tell. But his mind is quick to latch onto the former as it’s the most familiar, the most fitting of the nebulous, ever-changing thing they have. A thing, because it has evaded all attempts at being labeled, and because relationship and bond feel much too strong, too constant, too sentimental for to ascribe to it, and for him to accept today.

Had this reunion come months earlier he knows he'd have been rawer and near-sick with fury and close to strangling the man for toying with him by simply existing in the same space. But the fiercest of his emotions have had time to run their course, surging and cooling like layers of igneous rock, stilled but never forgotten. More than anything, he’s tired. Tired of being the eternal plaything of the Malnosso, of living, of having this conversation when he already knows how it’ll end.

There is no joyous reunion. Today, it’s only another obstacle to overcome.

“We cannot all have what it is we want.” He coos patiently with a mocking little toss of his head. “You must learn to live with disappointment.”

Confusion or wit, he meets it all the same, offering Zevran the words he himself had been given after rising from the dead. Because a small part of him never stopped waiting for the chance to toss it back his way and make it hurt, the same part of him that’s reluctant to give the man the satisfaction of feeling he had been sorely missed. He'd be given all the attention he could ever want and more once the shackles would come free and they’d part ways. But these words have much less bite than they should, perhaps.

Isaac gaze dips lower, ever-thoughtful as he drags a gloved, long-nailed thumb down along the curve of Zevran's Adam’s apple.

“’twould be terribly easy, wouldn’t it?” Killing you. “Not unlike kicking an imp down a flight of stairs and watching it break its own neck." He draws a slow breath, sighing. "I would hear no end of it from your lovers, I am certain.”

It’s said musingly and in that matter-of-factly drawl that suggests this would be no more an inconvenience than the likes of finding only green apples at the market one day instead of the red ones he liked best.

[antivanleather]

The longer he is here the more he shifts, adjusting, considering. Trying to sort out who this might be, how long he has been out, where he is as it cannot possibly be the Fade. Magic and demon aside this was too cold, too real. There was no haze of disassociation. Magic was at work here, true, but this is not the Fade. It'd be simpler and more surreal were that the case. It eases the tension in his chest somewhat as he's more aware and better able to rationalize. Not by much but by enough that he no longer takes such sharp, panting breaths. At least until the man speaks.

Stripped down and bare the new scars are clearly visible. Pink for how fresh they are- pockmarks against his shoulder, scrapes along his ribs. Injuries mended and not yet done over in black ink. He hasn't had the time. That lithe body twists away from Isaac's touch in a flinch. No attempt at seduction. No coy teasing. Fear. Fear in it's purest form. Mages are sadistic when given cause, and he has heard a great many things of those that worked with blood.

Who better to pluck up than an elf?

His pulse jumps in his throat at the touch. Light, teasing- taunting. He hates it. "If my head is for the sword, then swing it."

Easy to manage a twisted sort of bravado, a lock jaw intensity in his eyes that fazes into confusion. "My...what? I have no lovers."

None whatsoever. Flashes of a dream, but nothing more. No one has warmed his bed since Rinna. He hasn't been able to bear it.

"...who are you? I know your face- you are a nightmare that has haunted me for months but- I know you not."

TW a bit in this tag, and there should have been a TW for graphic images in my first tag, sorry

[relictusdeus]

Some things never change.

He adores the challenging, cutting edge to Zevran’s stare; the stiff set of his jaw and the rise and fall of his chest; the way it all beckons him to tease and to test as he has so many prisoners before him. Because to a man with an abiding interest in pain, defiance is just another plaything, adding sweetness to a heady sense of triumph when it was crushed to dust. His thumb lingers on his skin, as if he has found the perfect point at which to sink in his teeth and drink as befitting his reputation in Valachia. Crunch through the windpipe and tear out meat and bury his face to his nose into wetness and warmth, the blood fresh and oozing like the juice from an orange.

Vampires have none of his respect and admiration. It’s the simple brutality of such an attack, the primal excitement of it that has the adrenaline racing in his blood. If he could not be loved, he would be feared. It’s the best alternative he has ever known.

“Alas, your head is not worth so much as a paperweight, for it would soon rot and fill my chamber with a foul stench.”

He cracks a faint, lopsided smirk at that, but it falters when a look of stunned surprise flashes across his face despite himself. He cocks his head as if he’s so sure he misheard Zevran, but as he’s taking in the elf’s blank-faced confusion his thoughts are already coming together in a moment of terrible clarity. He had forgotten the possibility of the man coming back as a blank slate. Everything gone, temporarily or permanently.

Swallowing past his heart lodged in his throat, he nods dimly in a sort of knowing, resigned way, the corners of his mouth hard-set in a smile.

“Forgotten them already?” He snorts absently, lifting his thumb away. “You are a terrible lover.” As evenly delivered the answer, sharp and crackling with roguishness, it’s strained too. Muted emotion flickers in his eyes and it’s all he’s willing to say on the matter, not caring to make it his business to reunite lovers. To have a hand in making them happy. It isn’t what Forgemasters do, he reminds himself. It’s of no benefit to him.

Sometimes, he still stirs awake from half-sleep expecting someone to be by his side, and lies there remembering the sound of his name – of Rosso – warm and tingling on the shell of his ear, the echoes still resonating through the fibres of his being. Remembering the foreign tenderness calloused hands had introduced him to. The salt of sweat on his skin, the feeling of his teeth in his flesh and lips stealing his like they meant it. Days best left behind.

He found some truth in the adage out of sight, out of mind. Zevran had already left his indelible little mark, but it hadn’t been until he was gone entirely and there were no unfiltered conversations left to stumble upon - and then to read with braced nerves and an aching, angry heart despite the protests of his better judgment – that he could truly breathe again. He was free. And day by day he found himself reminded that he was a fiercely independent and self-sufficient individual, a survivor time and time again. That devils needed neither friendship nor love, nor were meant for either, spending their lives at the edges of corners of society, looking in and taking what pity-fucks they could get. That he could live without Zevran’s company and thrive in solitude. It was not so bad, being alone, he’d tell himself. No one could touch him; no one could hurt him. No expectation, no dependency, no disappointment.

And as he holds Zevran’s gaze now with clearer eyes, it feels like so long ago, a lifetime ago, when he had laughed and meant it. When he had loved this man and lost him. It’s like some long dream he’s finally woken from, shaking off the last of the clinging illusions.

Perhaps it’s easiest this way, with Zevran’s lapse in memory. He could pretend every regretful decision could be unmade, or never made at all. Had could even press his advantage and weave a tale that they were lovers too, giving shape to a false life and trapping him in it.

“Indeed. You never did know me well, in the end.” Had you, perhaps it could have been different. We could have been different. He feels a dull pang in his throat and wills it away, smiling more gently. “But a few good fucks were had; that certainly must be of some merit.”

The flame goes out and he steps back into the shadows.

[stillplaying]

[It's a face that she doesn't ever expect to see again. Katniss hasn't yet made peace with the coming and goings of those in the village. She might never be able to do so. With each person she grows closer to, she knows the potential is there for future heartbreak. That she'll lose them. And that they'll never come back.

A couple of wild ducks hang from her belt as she makes her way back into the village, hunt much more successful without the damned saber-toothed moose lion at her side. Her hair hangs in a messy braid and she wears her normal leather hunting jacket and boots. It's on her way back home when she spots him, nearly trips as she comes to a stop.

People come back here. Sometimes. Though even with the proof in front of her, she has a hard time believing it.]

[antivanleather]

[He has some time between the forest and the village- at least as far as the map and his vague recollections go. The paths he might have taken are avoided in favor of...something. He searched for something he'd set down before he'd gone and- a trap.

Empty and long devoid of bait, no one had reset it. He lived here. Hunted here. And should he leave this out through the winter it will rust unless tended to. It's something that grounds him and helps him put more fragments together as he kneels down and starts to unfasten spring and wire and blade, startling only when he hears someone not far from him in the glen.

His eyes snap up and he locks up, utterly still. Staring at a face he remembers with painful clarity now.]

...Solano?

[That is what he called her. That is what she was to him. Beautiful and deadly and so very kind.]

[stillplaying]

[Solano. It's a name no one else calls her here. Like Catnip had been Gale's petname for her, Solano had been Zevran's. She never thought she'd hear it again. Let alone see him. Kneeling by one of his traps, putting as much are into releasing it as she would clean one of her arrows after a kill. She swallows hard, still staring. Frozen to the spot.

He remembers her. He's back and he remembers her and she should be overjoyed. Maybe Peeta might then someday come back. Rue. And even if they didn't, she had him again. One of the only people who seemed to understand her. Who knew what it was like to be a bad person and yet strive for something more.

She wants to hug him. She wants to shove him in anger for being back. And she wants to run away, pretend she never saw him here. Never opened herself up again for future heartbreak.

Instead, Katniss just blinks away tears.]

You're back.

[antivanleather]

I don't-

[His hands slow. Stall. Set aside the remainder of the trap entirely so that he might move to his feet and extend a faintly trembling hand to her. He knew her face, knew her name. Knows what he calls her and what she is to him because this- this is here they'd met. This is what they are. Hunters. Killers. Fragments slide into place, some skitter on by. Loss. Weeping. Joy once more and talk of love, talk of love making, music and dancing and how she deserves so much of it.

Deserves to be better than he was.

And she weeps. She might yet weep, he does not deserve her tears and it tears at him to think he'd ever left. That he'd ever forgotten. Certain, now, he steps around the trap and makes his way close as careful and silent as he would for a skittish deer.]

-I forgot much of this place. Thought it a dream but, you. You I could never forget entirely. Some of it is still lost to me but- you are well? You look well. Oh, Solano, do not weep for me.

[stillplaying]

[He's told her that before. Not to cry for him. But the tears start to fall down her face as he steps closer. She does nothing to stop them. Nor does she move away from him. She hates these tears. Hates the weakness they show. Better she be angry. Or happy. She'd take any other emotion but this one.

Because she doesn't think she's all that well. Seeing Zevran here again. Even before he arrived. She's not as shaky as she had been in August. Doesn't hate herself as much as she had then, right around the time he had disappeared. But she lives every day with the fear she'll lose Prim and Richard and Teddy. It's why she's started to learn the filial magic. Why she owes Isaac a yet unfilled debt. Because maybe, just maybe, she'll find a way to keep them here.

She shakes her head. Not well. And at the same time, suddenly all the more determined to find a way to keep people here. Because she doesn't think she can go through losing him again.]

I- I missed you.

[z_jay]

[Given that Eugene often frequents the coffee shop in that he works there, he doesn't initially notice him. The order for something hot and bitter in that voice took him by surprise, and he slowly rose his head to meet where the voice came from.

There's shock, something more and unreadable, but relief as well. Not to mention disbelief. The lack of more from Zevran did strike him as odd, but many things had changed and for the most part, when people die, they don't generally come back. But here he was, before him, and Eugene was torn between pulling the man into an embrace or going off to get what he'd asked for.

Something was different, harder, leaner... was it the very same Zevran who had lived with them prior? He couldn't tell empirically, so he gave the other man room to speak and act before placing someone possibly unknown, into an awkward position]

...Coming right up.

[antivanleather]

[A simple thing to place an order- he'd taken the time to observe others at it before attempting to retrace his steps from fuzzed over memory and place one of his own. He'd managed by staring at the menu rather than the man across from him and it is better for it.

He'd be lost otherwise. As lost as he is when he stares into those eyes and is struck with such aching familiarity that he knows not what to do with it. He knew this face. Knew this voice. There is a name for him and it is tangled up in the back of his throat along with pain and regret and such grief. It is not until he turns away that it tumbles past his lips in a hushed, almost reverent whisper.]

Eugene?

[He remembers. Fragments. Not much. Enough to know that this man is dear to him in much the same way Katniss is his family- but deeper.]

[z_jay]

[He didn't turn straightaway upon hearing his name-- or a close approximation if it was a whisper, but he did smile. A soft, resigned sort of smile because if this wasn't real, if this was a figment of his imagination, this would be a very, very long shift.

He returned in short order with a mug, a smile, and a nod.]

Is this the closest equivalent to a bartender that we've got here? You're not going to ask me about what's new, right?

[Fondness, though he was a little bit unsure. It came with the territory, however. Even when loved ones didn't die after being dead at home, they certainly weren't cognizant of their surroundings or recognize loved ones.]

[antivanleather]

I-

[He can't speak, not honestly, as it hurts him to remember. To think on so kind a man that he forgot. That he denied over and over upon waking in his world simply for how strange it seemed to him to have.

The mug is cradled in gloved fingers, the warmth a distant thing.]

I forgot.

[z_jay]

[In terms of an explanation, Eugene hadn't expected something so plainly given. But there it was, and he scrubbed at a spot on the counter with more attention than it truly merited. Did he want to remember? He wouldn't bring it up if he didn't.]

These things happen.

[He licked his lips and cleared his throat, forcing down some unnamable emotion that threatened to claw its way out]

Your stuff is still at ours. If you were looking for it.