[Here he sits, clutching the hand of the man that’d killed Corypheus of all creatures, listening rapt to the promise that next leaves his lips.
'I will die before I allow him to take you back.'
Trust.
Trust.
'Little wonder you do not trust this miracle to hold.'
The one thing Astarion’s never confessed in all his time here. No matter how many times he’s gnashed his teeth over talk of imprisonment or demons or enslavement, there’s only one truth he’s kept tight to his own chest all the while, afraid to even speak it aloud like a damning curse.
The places where their hands meet are like pressure points, knuckles and the edges of their fingers— elbows and knees near enough to feel that steadying weight the way lines are lashed to shore— all grounding.
One shallow breath.
Like stepping off the edge.]
Do you know what happens to Rifters? [He asks, following the line of Fenris' stare to fix his own somewhere along the far wall, wondering just how much— if anything— Fenris has heard in his travels.
Before it’s done leaving his lips, he’s already decided it doesn’t matter:] We don’t always stay bound to this world. Sometimes, something in that magic gives out quick as a snuffed candle, and we go with it.
I could blink one day. Shut my eyes. Turn for a second, and—
[He can’t bear it. He can’t. Beyond the shadow of his old scars, it terrifies him. Always. The percussive undercurrent driving his every last decision from the moment he realized it was a promised possibility.
And anything he can do to drown it out, he will: sabotage, sex, inebriation, violence, cruelty— feigned love and false adoration, merciless greed or well-worn apathy— he’ll do it all.
No, he does it all. Wearing it right on his sleeve for all the world to see.
Only no one does.
But he hears it again in his mind, that freely given promise, and it eclipses the constant ticking in the back of his skull. The jagged part of him that finds ways to scream in the silence— any silence— that he doesn’t want to go back. Call it a crude comfort, a childish fairytale. Because no, there’s no such thing as heroes, no sympathetic gods— but he thinks, just for a moment, just for tonight (or for longer, if the easing of his pulse stays constant come morning), that if everything shattered and the anchor-shard failed, Fenris might just find a way to reach him still.
He pulls his hand from Fenris' own, releasing him of the discomfort. Shifting at last across his ankles and knees to draw the comforter up from where it'd slunk to the end of the bed, half-tucking himself near the wall when he lies down. It's weary, not wounded. A sign of easing, rather than any upheld deflection. He doesn't ask Fenris to stay, of course, but...]
Can you remember anything from before your markings? [A shorter leap, from his pain to Fenris' own, falling from topic to horrid topic like the snowdrifts tumbling outside. 'What few remained he took care of himself', Fenris had said earlier, but in a night already overfilled with terror, curiosity pervades.
no subject
'I will die before I allow him to take you back.'
Trust.
Trust.
'Little wonder you do not trust this miracle to hold.'
The one thing Astarion’s never confessed in all his time here. No matter how many times he’s gnashed his teeth over talk of imprisonment or demons or enslavement, there’s only one truth he’s kept tight to his own chest all the while, afraid to even speak it aloud like a damning curse.
The places where their hands meet are like pressure points, knuckles and the edges of their fingers— elbows and knees near enough to feel that steadying weight the way lines are lashed to shore— all grounding.
One shallow breath.
Like stepping off the edge.]
Do you know what happens to Rifters? [He asks, following the line of Fenris' stare to fix his own somewhere along the far wall, wondering just how much— if anything— Fenris has heard in his travels.
Before it’s done leaving his lips, he’s already decided it doesn’t matter:] We don’t always stay bound to this world. Sometimes, something in that magic gives out quick as a snuffed candle, and we go with it.
I could blink one day. Shut my eyes. Turn for a second, and—
[He can’t bear it. He can’t. Beyond the shadow of his old scars, it terrifies him. Always. The percussive undercurrent driving his every last decision from the moment he realized it was a promised possibility.
And anything he can do to drown it out, he will: sabotage, sex, inebriation, violence, cruelty— feigned love and false adoration, merciless greed or well-worn apathy— he’ll do it all.
No, he does it all. Wearing it right on his sleeve for all the world to see.
Only no one does.
But he hears it again in his mind, that freely given promise, and it eclipses the constant ticking in the back of his skull. The jagged part of him that finds ways to scream in the silence— any silence— that he doesn’t want to go back. Call it a crude comfort, a childish fairytale. Because no, there’s no such thing as heroes, no sympathetic gods— but he thinks, just for a moment, just for tonight (or for longer, if the easing of his pulse stays constant come morning), that if everything shattered and the anchor-shard failed, Fenris might just find a way to reach him still.
He pulls his hand from Fenris' own, releasing him of the discomfort. Shifting at last across his ankles and knees to draw the comforter up from where it'd slunk to the end of the bed, half-tucking himself near the wall when he lies down. It's weary, not wounded. A sign of easing, rather than any upheld deflection. He doesn't ask Fenris to stay, of course, but...]
Can you remember anything from before your markings? [A shorter leap, from his pain to Fenris' own, falling from topic to horrid topic like the snowdrifts tumbling outside. 'What few remained he took care of himself', Fenris had said earlier, but in a night already overfilled with terror, curiosity pervades.
He needs this. To map it all out in someone else.
Like poison, diluted in being shared.]