[It's quick. Too quick, maybe— but he isn't lying, and he isn't just saying it to assure Astarion. It's just that he can feel the pale elf pushing it away, shoving past it, and if Leto doesn't act quickly, they will. Astarion will sweep them along and that will be that, and he cannot let that thought linger untouched in both their memories, stark and bloody and raw.
So: you do not need to swear, honest and stark, and only in the aftermath does Leto try to understand what he means.]
You will not ever go back, Astarion. Do not undermine it. Not when there are countless slaves who justify their existence over the thought that things would be worse in freedom.
[When so much of enslavement relies upon the enslaved buying into the myth that they're better off beneath someone's heel . . . Orana's voice drifts through his mind. Hadraina's pet maid, her father's throat slit not an hour before and still, still, she'd insisted: everything was fine until today! Confusion and anguish in her voice, her eyes wet as she'd stared uncomprehending up at them, and Fenris had not known how to comfort her then. All he could say helplessly in reply was that it wasn't. You just didn't know better.
He understands more now.
But ah . . . the rest, now. The biggest part of this, ugly and jagged, ill-fitting in any kind of story. Varric, Leto finds himself thinking, wouldn't write about this. It doesn't fit. The heroic slave, a year into freedom, longing for the comfort of his master's control . . . people don't like to hear about such things. They'd rather buy into the illusion that one always strides forward, for it's so much easier than hearing the ugly, discomfiting truth that sometimes, instincts and desires and emotions all tangle together so messily, dragging a person down into the depths of the past no matter how they gasp and strain for the present.
There was a sickening comfort, and that does not surprise him. But . . . even when I realize it's your touch, and oh that, that shocks him. Leto swallows thickly, then rubs his face. He cannot say this information pleases him, but . . . this is not about him. More than ever, this is not about him.]
. . . tell me.
A specific incident, or in general . . . tell me what you mean when you say that.
[Not because he doesn't understand, but because there's too many ways it could be taken.]
I am not angry. I am not upset. I simply . . .
[His mouth is dry.]
I know what it is to long for a master's touch. To— to miss certain things, or feel the, the way he made you feel.
[Ah, don't stutter now.]
Tell me what it is you mean by that.
Are there . . . do you expect it to be him sometimes when we wake?
no subject
[It's quick. Too quick, maybe— but he isn't lying, and he isn't just saying it to assure Astarion. It's just that he can feel the pale elf pushing it away, shoving past it, and if Leto doesn't act quickly, they will. Astarion will sweep them along and that will be that, and he cannot let that thought linger untouched in both their memories, stark and bloody and raw.
So: you do not need to swear, honest and stark, and only in the aftermath does Leto try to understand what he means.]
You will not ever go back, Astarion. Do not undermine it. Not when there are countless slaves who justify their existence over the thought that things would be worse in freedom.
[When so much of enslavement relies upon the enslaved buying into the myth that they're better off beneath someone's heel . . . Orana's voice drifts through his mind. Hadraina's pet maid, her father's throat slit not an hour before and still, still, she'd insisted: everything was fine until today! Confusion and anguish in her voice, her eyes wet as she'd stared uncomprehending up at them, and Fenris had not known how to comfort her then. All he could say helplessly in reply was that it wasn't. You just didn't know better.
He understands more now.
But ah . . . the rest, now. The biggest part of this, ugly and jagged, ill-fitting in any kind of story. Varric, Leto finds himself thinking, wouldn't write about this. It doesn't fit. The heroic slave, a year into freedom, longing for the comfort of his master's control . . . people don't like to hear about such things. They'd rather buy into the illusion that one always strides forward, for it's so much easier than hearing the ugly, discomfiting truth that sometimes, instincts and desires and emotions all tangle together so messily, dragging a person down into the depths of the past no matter how they gasp and strain for the present.
There was a sickening comfort, and that does not surprise him. But . . . even when I realize it's your touch, and oh that, that shocks him. Leto swallows thickly, then rubs his face. He cannot say this information pleases him, but . . . this is not about him. More than ever, this is not about him.]
. . . tell me.
A specific incident, or in general . . . tell me what you mean when you say that.
[Not because he doesn't understand, but because there's too many ways it could be taken.]
I am not angry. I am not upset. I simply . . .
[His mouth is dry.]
I know what it is to long for a master's touch. To— to miss certain things, or feel the, the way he made you feel.
[Ah, don't stutter now.]
Tell me what it is you mean by that.
Are there . . . do you expect it to be him sometimes when we wake?