http://niceassassin.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] niceassassin.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] goshdarnspam 2011-09-04 01:04 am (UTC)

Being an elf in a dystopian future is hard. It's hard and no one understands.

But it's also familiar, being looked down upon. It's what Zevran was used to. With it came a creeping sense that his interlude of redemption was over--not just his time in the City with all the new friends he'd made there, but his time doing the right thing. He was never meant to be more than a killer at the beck and call of people far more powerful than he was.

He resisted at first, of course; he'd grown to like having the chance to develop a sense of self-worth. But the government knew his past--he'd let it slip to one too many people before the crackdown--and they knew where to apply pressure. It was harder to resist as more and more of his friends fled, and he lost contact. Then he slipped up, aided the wrong fledgling resistance group. He found himself in government custody, and through most of 2015, Zevran was shuttled from facility to facility, here tortured, there trained, until it was impressed onto his mind that he was at their mercy.

Zevran waited for rescue, trusting in his new friends; back in his world, the Warden had taught him that sometimes people could be kind to him. But they had their own troubles. No rescue came. He gave up.

That time when he thought he could be more than an assassin? It's over now. He kills who the powers that be tell him to, and when he's not busy doing that, they keep him on a lavish but short leash. His attempts to seduce figures of power are met with amused indulgence, for the most part, and his more successful conquests, they turn a blind eye to. He dines out and sleeps in at the finest restaurants and hotels, but only if they're approved for his presence. He knows he's not in charge of his own destiny anymore--if he ever was.

Sometimes, though...sometimes he slips. He lets a mark go when he could have taken them down. He tells himself it's about the sense of power, about knowing he had their life in his hands and chose to spare it. That's what his new masters believe, in any case. But every once in a while, he isn't sure. He remembers a time when he was someone better.

And then he tries to forget.

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