[It's late (read: just past noon). The bakery-flat curtains are drawn, his coffin lid tightly shut— though he isn't even close to tired, yet. And much to one local amatus' immense pain: Leto isn't home right now (because someone insists on paying rent via legally sanctioned murder, for some annoying reason). In fact, he's not even within reach—
Which is a sundamned tragedy, Astarion'll tell you.
But then again, that's where stones of farspeech come in handy.]
....can I ask you something, my precious little cabochon?
[No 'hello'. No 'are you busy, darling?' —no. Just that nosy little sing-song tone signaling impending boredom.
[It's both refreshing and intriguing to get to dart past the city's walls. He quite enjoys Baldur's Gate, don't get him wrong— but it's fascinating to venture outside it and see another aspect of this new world. Add to the fact he's managed to close a significant gap between him and his quarry, and he's in a rather good mood when he hears Astarion's voice in his ear.
[Of all questions, he wasn't expecting that. It draws him up, and for a moment the sound of footsteps pauses as Leto tries to think. The Maker? But that wasn't the easiest question even in Thedas, never mind here, where gods and goddesses roam the earth as easy as anything.]
. . . it's . . . I don't know.
[If nothing else, he doesn't mind sharing his uncertainty with Astarion. Setting off again, Leto's mouth twitches as he tries to give word to the shape of his thoughts.]
I . . . would like to. And I have found comfort in the Chantry before, although I do not think it a wise organization. The thought of an all-knowing Maker is soothing, but . . . I question a god that allows the kind of suffering I have seen.
[. . .]
Sebastian used to proclaim that all things happened for a reason. That the Maker's will was too vast to understand, but that there was a purpose behind every act, every word. And when I asked what the purpose was of my watching Danarius slit a child's throat for his own blood magic, Sebastian told me that perhaps it was so that I could find the strength to free others and save them from such a fate.
[So, there's that. And it's funny the way he says it, for it's noncommittal: neither agreeing nor disagreeing so much as simply presenting it.]
I do not think such a sentiment was of much comfort to the child— or his parents.
I don't know. Perhaps. If there is one, I suppose I will meet him when I die— if indeed it works like that now that I am in this new world. But I do not have enough faith to trust in his inherent goodness— nor to trust all my thoughts and actions to a creator who has let so many suffer in this world, even if it earned them a place at his side in the next.
Well I doubt they'd be leaping for joy if an all powerful being descended from on high solely to tell them it was grossly important their darling whelp of a defenseless young thing had to be bled out like a sacrificial lamb just so you could find it in you to give a damn about slaves suffering away in toil.
—that is, if they had any limbs with which to jump on left after a few more years in Tevinter. [Bad joke. Bad joke and he knows it, if the way his curling pronunciation (akin to a cat lapping up spilled cream) has anything to say on his behalf.
Call it habit, by now: better to be mean with a playful smile than to admit point blank that theory's a load of bloody hogwash already leaking water through various plot-related holes. All that time spent languishing in agony at Danarius' side....oh, Astarion imagines Leto wouldn't need a damned thing to care about the plight of his enslaved kin.
(And maybe it's just selfish, you know. How Astarion thinks without thinking at all that no kept pet deserves to be someone else's cheap prop.
Not even a god's.)]
Anyway.
[To answer your question:]
Lack of sleep. Lack of stimulation. Lack of a spry young thing to keep me warm in my own coffin like he should. Endless hours to reminisce about the state of the world....s. [It's a relevant addendum. Don't come at him.] Point being, it's something to consider now, I suppose— all the grander beats in our tales.
[It's a bad joke, and unseen, Leto grimaces for it. He knows where it comes from, and he doesn't hold it against Astarion, for he knows the point he's making. He even agrees with it, for gods know Astarion is right: what a cheap excuse for the death of a child. What a pointless excuse in a country full of atrocities. But blackened humor is sometimes hit or miss, and anyway, they've moved on.
He does exhale softly in wry amusement at that note about a spry young thing. He is that now, isn't he? He's been gently avoiding thinking about it, but the longer he inhabits this body, the harder it is to ignore. He has more energy than he used to, a restlessness beneath his skin that he can only distantly remember in his youth. His knees no longer protest when he climbs too steep a slope; he finds himself eager to settle into his newfound training routine, for it takes so very much to exhaust him nowadays.
But ah: it is something to consider. Especially when it's so late (for Astarion, anyway), and his vampire has to be feeling the sting of loneliness just as keenly as he does.]
It is.
[He says it thoughtfully. They really do have a tale, don't they? One that spans worlds not once but twice, a back-and-forth that ought to be impossible.]
And I suppose if I believed wholeheartedly in the Maker, I would call it fate that we met and found one another twice over. A miracle, by any other name.
[It's mild. It is a wonder that they met. It's a wonder how Astarion was plucked out of enslavement (though Leto still thinks that the sole responsibility of the Rifts); it's a wonder that Leto was able to find him again in this world, when there are thousands of factors that might have made that impossible. And yet . . . he's loathe to attribute that to a god, for no real reason he can discern.
Perhaps it's because no god came to their aid in all their decades of torment— and so it feels cheap to attribute a belated rescue to him.]
Do you believe? Perhaps not in the Maker, but . . .
[He trails off. There's so many gods here, and he does not want to court vague offense by claiming one in particular.]
I— [There's a lot to be drawn over. A lot to be said. Lifetimes could pass without him getting it all out into the open, and like the lifeless still of his chest that only breathes for play acting rather than necessity, his mind and his body hold fast: loathe to ever let go of anything, even his own ridiculous habit of feeling.
So, for the sake of compromise, perhaps, his tenor softens from here on out. Lowers itself alongside its pitch. Granted he's still affecting his usual practiced purr (worn like a mask whenever conversation closes in on vulnerable soft spots in his defenseless underbelly), but the tone is theirs, if nothing else. Not all reflectively blithe— just some.
Just enough to keep him sane on his own, on his master's figurative and literal doorstep, supposing about things as fickle as favor. Luck. Hope.]
Do, actually.
[There, the truth, whatever its shade.]
Or at least I agree with the idea of possibility, when it comes to him.
We've traversed two worlds, now. And you've seen— well, probably just heard how commonplace divinity is here, without half as many separating divides between realms as in yours. [The Fade. The veil. Reality. Dreams. Crossroads like a sort of melted intersection— ] Who's to say we were ever the only ones?
Your ancestors might actually have been Eladrin. Or mine, yours.
Your maker— a god like any other.
[A pause. His shift mild and deferentially wry. Gentle, where it'd been all barbed cattiness about slaves and pain (memories that— Astarion of all people knows— don't unstick.)
He never ignored that fragile admittance, only marked it.]
I'm starting to think it's for the best I won't dare let you die. [His ensuing snort is featherlight. Soft as snowdrift.] I can't imagine you meeting your Maker without trying to beat him to a bloody pulp.
[In truth, it's a more in-depth answer than Leto had expected. No, that was more or less his thought. Gods, no, not after two hundred years of torment— but then again, there's a difference between believing in a god and expecting them to save you.
And gods, Astarion is right: surely they're not the only two who have ever crossed worlds. There have to be a fair few, and who would ever say anything about it? Safer and easier to keep it to yourself, just as they're doing. Perhaps the Maker is a god from this world. Perhaps he and Astarion come from the same genetic origin. There are stranger thoughts, and after all he's seen and done, Leto won't argue.
Besides: he's growing used to the idea of gods as a more casual thing. Not an unfathomable maker, all-knowing and infinitely powerful; rather, simply a being with a great deal of power, just as fickle and petulant as any person. Like Corypheus, perhaps.
But ah: that earns a proper laugh this time, amusement and fondness tangling together.]
He has a great deal to answer for, I assure you.
[Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There would be no reverent deference, not when Leto has seen too many atrocities in his day. But ah, let's go back for a moment:]
You won't let me die?
[It's a little easier to talk about now that he knows they have, at minimum, centuries to spend with one another. It's so much time he can't conceptualize it properly, not yet; he might as well be immortal for all that it registers.]
And what will you do to ensure it? Fight Death himself?
There are a lot of different Deaths, as it so happens. [A scattering of fickle gods presiding over even more fickle planes: what virtues or vices one extols, their given race or magical affinity or who they favor. Cruelty, kindness, cunning, care— or curse. A thousand different afterlives and mysteries an undead spawn will never see.
(Which is fine, actually. There's a plane where everyone gets turned into formless blobs of astral, ascended light.
How in the Hells is anyone meant to fuck like that?)]
Possibly even some we don't know exist, for lack of personal experience.
[There's a grin in his hushed murmur. An unseen flash of teeth that anyone who knows Astarion could recognize without even trying, owing to the enriched rumbling of his throat.]
And I'd fight them all for you.
[Which sounds a lot better than: 'I'll turn you to keep you with me, if I have to.']
[He was teasing, but the sincere rumble in Astarion's voice leaves Leto smiling softly. It's sweet, for all that they're joking.]
I know you would.
[Oh, Maker, yes, there's no doubt in Leto's mind. And though he has no intention of courting death, still: there's a part of him that would happily watch Astarion raise hell for his sake, biting out throats and murdering a god just to save his amatus from certain death . . .
It's a warming thought.
. . . it also comes before Leto circles back in that conversation, belatedly frowning.]
How are there different Deaths? It's death. How many ways can varying gods split it up?
[That's to say nothing of the concept of worship in this world. How do you bow down to a god you might conceivably meet on the street? It's like worshipping the postman.]
The murder, the rampaging through the nine Hells themselves, elysian blood dripping from his palms. The fact that Leto— in spite of laughing earlier— trusts in that possibility the same way Astarion does in turn.
But that's the black and white portion of all this talk.]
Oh, infinitely. To simplify: there's murder, order, chaos, death embraced and death rejected— not to mention elven and dwarven and so on— but most of the old gods reportedly died ages ago, and it's hard to say what's only myth or occult fanaticism when compared to the truth. A half-bred child could always be a con or a powerful product of old magics given new form, and trust me when I say the ones that brag the loudest are usually the weakest of the bunch.
A real god is— I assume— a great deal like a leviathan in endlessly vast oceans. [Like Shar. Like Selune. Kelevmor. Corellon. Oberon. Massive doesn't begin to cover it.] We're the krill. A minnow at most. If there's a purpose, it doesn't involve us.
[It's the only way imprisonment like his makes sense. Why his prayers fell on deaf ears and silence laden with the sound of screams.
It also doesn't change his resentment, but that's not the topic on the table, for now.]
[On paper, at least, that makes sense to him. It's when he tries to apply it to something more practical that Leto's head spins, for he has lived with the idea that gods were untouchable beings for all his life. The thought that he might conceivably run into one at the market is . . . unnerving. The leviathan comparison suits his mindset far more— after all, what's a god to a moral, and a mortal to an ant (or something like that). It makes far more sense that singular lives don't even register to something so vast and powerful.
Just so long as they stay away from he and Astarion, Leto thinks, he'll learn to live with it.]
Let us hope it stays that way.
[Death and gods . . . Astarion had started to tell him a bit about other planes of existence, but that's a conversation for another time.]
All right. Gods I will avoid, and bandits I can dispatch without issue. One tried to jump me already, actually, though tried is perhaps the key word there.
What other things should I be wary for as I travel through this world? Tell me something I do not yet know.
[Talk to me, for it has only been a day or so, but he misses Astarion's voice.]
[It's all mutual pining; there was a reason why Astarion made this call to begin with, and despite the truth lurking squarely in one particularly obvious facet of it, it wasn't solely out of boredom.
A fact that doesn't do anything neuter Astarion's eagerness to play, however:]
Mm? Which one, a bandit or a god?
Or a bandit god?
—kidding.
[Mostly.
Poor bandit likely never knew what hit him, and it's a petty (and equally pretty) thought that flits through his mind in such a shallow set of seconds there— though Hells themselves attest Astarion would still feel better if his better half had access to his old lyrium-locked abilities, all drawbacks aside. Power is power, after all, and in a world as categorically befanged as this one, it doesn't ever hurt to have more.
[On his lips without a second thought, alas. Too late now to turn back.]
Monstrous, tentacled— things. Possessed of the power of mind control beyond what anything short of a vampire lord can enact. And they'll use it, if they get the chance, whether you're aware of them or not.
[Ilithid, and Leto's mind searches back, but he cannot ever recall Astarion mentioning those before. Then again: when on earth would they have come up? Cazador is a threat. Bandits and murderers and slavers, those are threats. Even gods, albeit distantly, might come up. But tentacled monsters . . .
It's not that he doesn't believe Astarion. If his amatus says that this is something to be wary of, then it is; it's as simple as that. But there's so many things to adjust to in this world, and how fast he can do it varies from issue to issue.]
[Looking back on his own warning, Astarion supposes that on figurative paper it doesn't sound so bad. But the difference between saying 'death by poison' and 'death by Midnight Tears' are entire worlds of horror apart: without elaboration or insight, there's no telling whether it'll be a lulling nap or a screaming, foaming transformation involving disintegrating bones and punctured skin.
Ugh. He's kicking himself for going down this trail, but— well. He's never been one to refuse Leto on even the worst of days.]
Assimilation of all relative life.
[And that's to put it lightly.]
They steal whoever they find, without discretion— and if they don't outright clamp their parasitic jaws filled with finger-long teeth into your skull and devour your mind in both the metaphorical and literal sense, or pry their tentacles into your ears or mouth to do the same, they choose the worser fate: they imprison you, and implant a larval worm within your skull that'll eventually hatch, thus condemning its host— i.e. you— to a nightmarish conversion into one of their hive-bound brood, the details of which I'll mercifully spare you. Just know it's—
[It's horrifying. So much so that his mind almost rejects it at first: hearing terms like tentacles into your ears and larval worms, oh, it's nauseating. Like a horror story crawled out of the depths of the Deep Roads, that's all he can compare it to. Like the worst sorts of rumors about broodmothers and darkspawn, and perhaps he'd compare one to the other, but—
But that tone. That glassy, brittle tone, and it isn't that Leto isn't familiar with it. He is. Of course he is. It's just that he is not used to hearing it in Astarion's voice anymore; it's just that he almost never hears it in his voice anymore, not nowadays. Perhaps in the very beginning, when they would speak of Cazador and his cruelties; when Astarion told the story of the vivid scars on his back, that awful precise pattern . . .
And of course, Astarion is whole and hale. There are no tendril scars on his body, and trust Leto would know. But . . .
Larval worm, he thinks, and feels himself grow cold.]
Astarion . . .?
[It's gentle. Tentative, because he does not want to tread too firmly on something he doesn't yet understand. And it makes no sense, for when even would such a thing have happened? But perhaps it wasn't to him. Perhaps it was some companion, some potential prey or another spawn . . . but there must have been something. He knows Astarion well enough to know that, at least.]
Ahah. [Flinty. Soft as soaked skin underneath; neither sentiment at odds with the other.]
All those souls across the years that couldn't manage to tell I was never actually smiling. Sat right in front of their damned faces the whole time.
[Across sending stones and crystals, Leto makes them all fools. Dead ones of course. Naive, peerlesly spoiled, deeply carefree fools, lost to the open jaws of Cazador Szarr and the stained edge of his once-far-less-pitch-dark dining table— but still. As far as victories go: it counts.]
You're the only one aside from Cazador himself who's ever seen right through me.
—Such a pain, you know that?
[Warm. Appreciatively cast, no matter how falsely scolding. Tailing sigh a little more meandering, though he can't pluck up much more in the way of time without confessing anyway: Leto will spot a silent admission just as keenly with that tirelessly attuned nose regardless.
....I....always told myself it was nothing but a bad dream.
[It in context being damningly self explanatory. Add to it: his tone. Add to it: his evasion. Add to it: the fact that this whole time they've been discussing Ilithid-borne kidnappings, and now all he's mentioning are dreams. Old, old displacements.]
Part and parcel when it comes to traversing the Fade, or— something like that, anyway. [Simple enough theory, really:] Fall asleep, have a nightmare or two, wake up on the other side of all the Realms themselves just like any other misplaced Rifter. It made a great deal of sense.
Coincidentally, I also don't think I ever really believed it. [Lying to oneself is an art; Astarion's only ever been half-good at it.]
Looking back, I suppose I probably just preferred the story that way. It felt better. Cleaner overall— not to mention so much easier to explain: Thedas was the one who stole me from my master. Thedas decided to imprison me. And it was Thedas that gave me a home, a life— you.
[A tepid beat, like bartering for breath he doesn't need.]
[It is a shock. That's the first thing Leto thinks, caught in those breathless moments between uncertain sentences. It's a shock, but of course it is, for they are so intimate with one another. Their worst secrets have long since been laid bare, their most private terrors whispered to one another in the dark— but ah, there's such a difference between a torment that lasted two centuries and a nightmare that might well be easily forgotten . . .
Is Leto hurt by the lack of admission? He oughtn't be, but still, he asks himself that. As visions of Astarion strapped to a table pass over his mind's eye, writhing in terror and begging for mercy, please no oh god please anything I'll do anything please, as all the while a wriggling thing gets closer and closer to his eye . . .
No. No, he is not hurt by it. How can he be, when even the mere thought is enough to turn his stomach?]
So do I.
[It's a nothing-sentence, a way to fill the air while he tries to process all this.]
The Ilithids kidnapped you. And then Thedas did.
[But that makes it too simple. And so does any reconciliatory sentence he can think of: it's over now or but they didn't manage to implant it within you. The glassiness in Astarion's tone is too brittle, too bright, for it to be reduced to a near-miss.]
. . . tell me how it happened. What happened. I would understand.
[If he wants to, that is. If it's something he feels like revisiting— but then, he must. He would not have brought it up otherwise.]
[Another noise like an answer. Like the knife he wishes he had— or had the good sense to use at the time. A sort-of laugh that isn't one at all, and when it dies on his lips, there's nothing else left but empty air and the wafting noise from Leto's end of the line; the coffin lid's closed. There's nothing but dead air and deader memories, and the nagging, restless pressure of a phantom that's long gone.]
I know you would.
[Again: warm. Again, it's that bruised quality that's more tender than guarding. Something that swears even in its clumsiness I know you would, and I'm grateful for it— but the rub is that even with all their secrets shared, he's still not used to this sort of vulnerability. He might never be, not in any way that lets him make this a clean transition. One without stop-start faults where anyone listening in could clearly hear every moment where he has to spur himself into giving Leto the truth, bit by scattered bit.
Which is different than fear or pain, for whatever it's worth.]
I was hunting for Cazador when it happened— I can remember that much. [A beat, his lips a little too dry to go without licking them.] The rest was....just a nightmare.
When they imprison you, after the torture of implantation, they have to keep tabs, you see. So there's this glass— [He's trying with his hand to convey the barrier itself in order to find the word, but it doesn't really come, and honestly doesn't really matter, either.] thing. A pod— and they leave you there in it awaiting your inevitable fate, feeling that hellish little death sentence squirming behind your eye. Watching them do the same, turning willful creature after willful creature into a mindless slave or a waiting monster.
—and then, out of nowhere, their ship crashed. I was free. Alive. [A scoff.] Albeit temporarily.
Thedas put that right.
[And again: he owes that world too much to truly ever resent whatever ugliness it held. Even words like knife-ear or rattus only ever stung once he'd been there long enough to dull old dread.]
But then Thedas had the idea of very briefly letting my path cross with a man who swore he knew who I was, and seemed distraught that the same wasn't true in turn.
He told me he had one, too. A tadpole. That we'd met after the crash, our goals aligned in freeing ourselves from its grip. Like most Rifters, he soon vanished after that. But afterwards I knew I couldn't keep pretending that it was just one long, protracted nightmare tailing my master's routine commands, and preceding my arrival here.
[Tsk.]
Anyway, to keep it simple: two rules, my love.
Never open the door at night when I'm not there to keep you safe. And two— you stay far the Hells away from those tentacled beasts and their ilk.
[Oh, gods. Oh, gods, and for a moment he's grateful they aren't face to face, for Leto can let his expression twist into nauseated horror without fear. When they imprison you, and he does not miss how Astarion dances gently past the moment of implantation— nor does he blame him for it. Squirming behind your eye, and his own hand rises, brushing against the socket of his left eye, his mind involuntarily trying to imagine what it would be to feel something writhing there. And all the while there's that note in Astarion's voice, dead and dull, so terrified that it comes out the other side into numbness, even now.
How long, he wonders, does it take between implantation and conversion? Does Astarion know? He doesn't dare ask, but he wonders. If Astarion counted the seconds, the minutes, caught desperately between trying to escape and knowing that it was futile, savoring what freedom he had . . . the first in centuries, oh, the irony is so embittering. And as for the rest . . . he wonders, vaguely, if that man is somewhere around here. If someday they'll run into him on the city streets— or perhaps he's long since lost, mutilated into a monster.
It doesn't matter.
Cruel, maybe. Selfish, almost certainly. But Leto cares little about some unknown stranger; all that matters to him right now is that Astarion never have to face such a terror again. Anger, hot and dull, writhes in the pit of his stomach, and he knows it will not leave easily, not for months.]
I think I can follow those rules.
[He says it a little numbly, truthfully: so caught up in his own thoughts that it's hard to surface. A brief moment of confusion for the note about the door, but ah . . . no, that does make sense, doesn't it, when vampires are the peak of what they have to fear— or nearly so.]
Do you . . .
Is there a chance they will ever return?
[For his thought aren't on himself, but Astarion. Leto has long since sworn not to seek out Cazador unless Astarion wishes it, and he'll abide by those rules— but if this is a new threat to be wary of, he would know. He would train for that, too, for there is nothing that will take his Astarion away from him. Not vampiric lords too old and rotted to realize their time has come— and not some monstrous species determined to use his amatus for their swelling ranks.]
It's not a choice, and isn't an argument to be debated— it's not even a request, no matter that the end result is obviously only so much in Astarion's own power to control. But rational thought means acknowledging that there's a chance it might play out for the worst despite the best of their efforts....and he can't. He just can't. (He's too bloody old, too tired, too weary of loss and too rife with scar tissue that never wanes in all its aches, though he never knows which is worse: the hideous marks he's been left with, or all the thousands more that'll never even show.)
But he knows there are other things on the table right now.
Related and distracting, and difficult to swallow. His red eyes flicking upwards somewhere across the line, unseen. Fixing on that glassy set of frosted lines drawn into the marrow of their coffin lid.]
It wouldn't be unthinkable....
[His voice sounds settled now. Even. Life for the average soul in Toril behind city walls is— largely— peaceful. Calm. Say what you will about roaming monsters and unthinkable terrors, but despite endless stories of heroism or horror there aren't whole portions of the civilized world being plunged into chaos at any given moment. No, it's the little dreads that accumulate when one least expects it: the odd shadow wandering at your back, the wolfish show of teeth after a not-so-distant catcall, the cold brush of clawed fingers at your neck. The microcosm rather than a macrocosmic nightmare.
So yes, those monsters have a high likelihood of returning— but not specifically for him. They'd have no way to track him, after all. Not with the tadpole already having vanished from his skull.
(....or at least he hopes not.)]
They were a threat once before, there's no reason to think I might not trip over one again if fate decides to be unkind.
[A beat.]
Still, I roamed these streets unbothered for two hundred years. My ancestors for centuries before that. If I had to choose my worries, believe me, that'd be on the lower rung. Somewhere between serving the wrong wine for dinner, and having Corypheus turn up on our bakery doorstep.
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sneaks into your inbox with all the grace of a potted plant;
Which is a sundamned tragedy, Astarion'll tell you.
But then again, that's where stones of farspeech come in handy.]
....can I ask you something, my precious little cabochon?
[No 'hello'. No 'are you busy, darling?' —no. Just that nosy little sing-song tone signaling impending boredom.
Or jealousy.
One of the two, at least.]
FLAWLESS
Ah . . .]
Hello to you too.
[Oh, yes, he knows this tone.]
Tell me your question.
[He's overdue a break soon anyway.]
POINTS AT U
[Like: actually believe, though. Not just weekend Chantrycamp beaded bracelets that say what would Andras— ohp, that's too many letters to work.
But still, question stands.]
Re: POINTS AT U
no subject
[Of all questions, he wasn't expecting that. It draws him up, and for a moment the sound of footsteps pauses as Leto tries to think. The Maker? But that wasn't the easiest question even in Thedas, never mind here, where gods and goddesses roam the earth as easy as anything.]
. . . it's . . . I don't know.
[If nothing else, he doesn't mind sharing his uncertainty with Astarion. Setting off again, Leto's mouth twitches as he tries to give word to the shape of his thoughts.]
I . . . would like to. And I have found comfort in the Chantry before, although I do not think it a wise organization. The thought of an all-knowing Maker is soothing, but . . . I question a god that allows the kind of suffering I have seen.
[. . .]
Sebastian used to proclaim that all things happened for a reason. That the Maker's will was too vast to understand, but that there was a purpose behind every act, every word. And when I asked what the purpose was of my watching Danarius slit a child's throat for his own blood magic, Sebastian told me that perhaps it was so that I could find the strength to free others and save them from such a fate.
[So, there's that. And it's funny the way he says it, for it's noncommittal: neither agreeing nor disagreeing so much as simply presenting it.]
I do not think such a sentiment was of much comfort to the child— or his parents.
I don't know. Perhaps. If there is one, I suppose I will meet him when I die— if indeed it works like that now that I am in this new world. But I do not have enough faith to trust in his inherent goodness— nor to trust all my thoughts and actions to a creator who has let so many suffer in this world, even if it earned them a place at his side in the next.
[And then, his voice a little more normal:]
Where did this come from?
no subject
—that is, if they had any limbs with which to jump on left after a few more years in Tevinter. [Bad joke. Bad joke and he knows it, if the way his curling pronunciation (akin to a cat lapping up spilled cream) has anything to say on his behalf.
Call it habit, by now: better to be mean with a playful smile than to admit point blank that theory's a load of bloody hogwash already leaking water through various plot-related holes. All that time spent languishing in agony at Danarius' side....oh, Astarion imagines Leto wouldn't need a damned thing to care about the plight of his enslaved kin.
(And maybe it's just selfish, you know. How Astarion thinks without thinking at all that no kept pet deserves to be someone else's cheap prop.
Not even a god's.)]
Anyway.
[To answer your question:]
Lack of sleep. Lack of stimulation. Lack of a spry young thing to keep me warm in my own coffin like he should. Endless hours to reminisce about the state of the world....s. [It's a relevant addendum. Don't come at him.] Point being, it's something to consider now, I suppose— all the grander beats in our tales.
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He does exhale softly in wry amusement at that note about a spry young thing. He is that now, isn't he? He's been gently avoiding thinking about it, but the longer he inhabits this body, the harder it is to ignore. He has more energy than he used to, a restlessness beneath his skin that he can only distantly remember in his youth. His knees no longer protest when he climbs too steep a slope; he finds himself eager to settle into his newfound training routine, for it takes so very much to exhaust him nowadays.
But ah: it is something to consider. Especially when it's so late (for Astarion, anyway), and his vampire has to be feeling the sting of loneliness just as keenly as he does.]
It is.
[He says it thoughtfully. They really do have a tale, don't they? One that spans worlds not once but twice, a back-and-forth that ought to be impossible.]
And I suppose if I believed wholeheartedly in the Maker, I would call it fate that we met and found one another twice over. A miracle, by any other name.
[It's mild. It is a wonder that they met. It's a wonder how Astarion was plucked out of enslavement (though Leto still thinks that the sole responsibility of the Rifts); it's a wonder that Leto was able to find him again in this world, when there are thousands of factors that might have made that impossible. And yet . . . he's loathe to attribute that to a god, for no real reason he can discern.
Perhaps it's because no god came to their aid in all their decades of torment— and so it feels cheap to attribute a belated rescue to him.]
Do you believe? Perhaps not in the Maker, but . . .
[He trails off. There's so many gods here, and he does not want to court vague offense by claiming one in particular.]
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So, for the sake of compromise, perhaps, his tenor softens from here on out. Lowers itself alongside its pitch. Granted he's still affecting his usual practiced purr (worn like a mask whenever conversation closes in on vulnerable soft spots in his defenseless underbelly), but the tone is theirs, if nothing else. Not all reflectively blithe— just some.
Just enough to keep him sane on his own, on his master's figurative and literal doorstep, supposing about things as fickle as favor. Luck. Hope.]
Do, actually.
[There, the truth, whatever its shade.]
Or at least I agree with the idea of possibility, when it comes to him.
We've traversed two worlds, now. And you've seen— well, probably just heard how commonplace divinity is here, without half as many separating divides between realms as in yours. [The Fade. The veil. Reality. Dreams. Crossroads like a sort of melted intersection— ] Who's to say we were ever the only ones?
Your ancestors might actually have been Eladrin. Or mine, yours.
Your maker— a god like any other.
[A pause. His shift mild and deferentially wry. Gentle, where it'd been all barbed cattiness about slaves and pain (memories that— Astarion of all people knows— don't unstick.)
He never ignored that fragile admittance, only marked it.]
Albeit a shitty one, but a god, nonetheless.
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You know, though....
I'm starting to think it's for the best I won't dare let you die. [His ensuing snort is featherlight. Soft as snowdrift.] I can't imagine you meeting your Maker without trying to beat him to a bloody pulp.
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And gods, Astarion is right: surely they're not the only two who have ever crossed worlds. There have to be a fair few, and who would ever say anything about it? Safer and easier to keep it to yourself, just as they're doing. Perhaps the Maker is a god from this world. Perhaps he and Astarion come from the same genetic origin. There are stranger thoughts, and after all he's seen and done, Leto won't argue.
Besides: he's growing used to the idea of gods as a more casual thing. Not an unfathomable maker, all-knowing and infinitely powerful; rather, simply a being with a great deal of power, just as fickle and petulant as any person. Like Corypheus, perhaps.
But ah: that earns a proper laugh this time, amusement and fondness tangling together.]
He has a great deal to answer for, I assure you.
[Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There would be no reverent deference, not when Leto has seen too many atrocities in his day. But ah, let's go back for a moment:]
You won't let me die?
[It's a little easier to talk about now that he knows they have, at minimum, centuries to spend with one another. It's so much time he can't conceptualize it properly, not yet; he might as well be immortal for all that it registers.]
And what will you do to ensure it? Fight Death himself?
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(Which is fine, actually. There's a plane where everyone gets turned into formless blobs of astral, ascended light.
How in the Hells is anyone meant to fuck like that?)]
Possibly even some we don't know exist, for lack of personal experience.
[There's a grin in his hushed murmur. An unseen flash of teeth that anyone who knows Astarion could recognize without even trying, owing to the enriched rumbling of his throat.]
And I'd fight them all for you.
[Which sounds a lot better than: 'I'll turn you to keep you with me, if I have to.']
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I know you would.
[Oh, Maker, yes, there's no doubt in Leto's mind. And though he has no intention of courting death, still: there's a part of him that would happily watch Astarion raise hell for his sake, biting out throats and murdering a god just to save his amatus from certain death . . .
It's a warming thought.
. . . it also comes before Leto circles back in that conversation, belatedly frowning.]
How are there different Deaths? It's death. How many ways can varying gods split it up?
[That's to say nothing of the concept of worship in this world. How do you bow down to a god you might conceivably meet on the street? It's like worshipping the postman.]
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The murder, the rampaging through the nine Hells themselves, elysian blood dripping from his palms. The fact that Leto— in spite of laughing earlier— trusts in that possibility the same way Astarion does in turn.
But that's the black and white portion of all this talk.]
Oh, infinitely. To simplify: there's murder, order, chaos, death embraced and death rejected— not to mention elven and dwarven and so on— but most of the old gods reportedly died ages ago, and it's hard to say what's only myth or occult fanaticism when compared to the truth. A half-bred child could always be a con or a powerful product of old magics given new form, and trust me when I say the ones that brag the loudest are usually the weakest of the bunch.
A real god is— I assume— a great deal like a leviathan in endlessly vast oceans. [Like Shar. Like Selune. Kelevmor. Corellon. Oberon. Massive doesn't begin to cover it.] We're the krill. A minnow at most. If there's a purpose, it doesn't involve us.
[It's the only way imprisonment like his makes sense. Why his prayers fell on deaf ears and silence laden with the sound of screams.
It also doesn't change his resentment, but that's not the topic on the table, for now.]
Not usually, anyway.
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Just so long as they stay away from he and Astarion, Leto thinks, he'll learn to live with it.]
Let us hope it stays that way.
[Death and gods . . . Astarion had started to tell him a bit about other planes of existence, but that's a conversation for another time.]
All right. Gods I will avoid, and bandits I can dispatch without issue. One tried to jump me already, actually, though tried is perhaps the key word there.
What other things should I be wary for as I travel through this world? Tell me something I do not yet know.
[Talk to me, for it has only been a day or so, but he misses Astarion's voice.]
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A fact that doesn't do anything neuter Astarion's eagerness to play, however:]
Mm? Which one, a bandit or a god?
Or a bandit god?
—kidding.
[Mostly.
Poor bandit likely never knew what hit him, and it's a petty (and equally pretty) thought that flits through his mind in such a shallow set of seconds there— though Hells themselves attest Astarion would still feel better if his better half had access to his old lyrium-locked abilities, all drawbacks aside. Power is power, after all, and in a world as categorically befanged as this one, it doesn't ever hurt to have more.
But on that note— ]
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Ilithid.
[On his lips without a second thought, alas. Too late now to turn back.]
Monstrous, tentacled— things. Possessed of the power of mind control beyond what anything short of a vampire lord can enact. And they'll use it, if they get the chance, whether you're aware of them or not.
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It's not that he doesn't believe Astarion. If his amatus says that this is something to be wary of, then it is; it's as simple as that. But there's so many things to adjust to in this world, and how fast he can do it varies from issue to issue.]
To what end?
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Ugh. He's kicking himself for going down this trail, but— well. He's never been one to refuse Leto on even the worst of days.]
Assimilation of all relative life.
[And that's to put it lightly.]
They steal whoever they find, without discretion— and if they don't outright clamp their parasitic jaws filled with finger-long teeth into your skull and devour your mind in both the metaphorical and literal sense, or pry their tentacles into your ears or mouth to do the same, they choose the worser fate: they imprison you, and implant a larval worm within your skull that'll eventually hatch, thus condemning its host— i.e. you— to a nightmarish conversion into one of their hive-bound brood, the details of which I'll mercifully spare you. Just know it's—
Just know that you don't want to know.
[That glassiness in Astarion's voice— is he— ]
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But that tone. That glassy, brittle tone, and it isn't that Leto isn't familiar with it. He is. Of course he is. It's just that he is not used to hearing it in Astarion's voice anymore; it's just that he almost never hears it in his voice anymore, not nowadays. Perhaps in the very beginning, when they would speak of Cazador and his cruelties; when Astarion told the story of the vivid scars on his back, that awful precise pattern . . .
And of course, Astarion is whole and hale. There are no tendril scars on his body, and trust Leto would know. But . . .
Larval worm, he thinks, and feels himself grow cold.]
Astarion . . .?
[It's gentle. Tentative, because he does not want to tread too firmly on something he doesn't yet understand. And it makes no sense, for when even would such a thing have happened? But perhaps it wasn't to him. Perhaps it was some companion, some potential prey or another spawn . . . but there must have been something. He knows Astarion well enough to know that, at least.]
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All those souls across the years that couldn't manage to tell I was never actually smiling. Sat right in front of their damned faces the whole time.
[Across sending stones and crystals, Leto makes them all fools. Dead ones of course. Naive, peerlesly spoiled, deeply carefree fools, lost to the open jaws of Cazador Szarr and the stained edge of his once-far-less-pitch-dark dining table— but still. As far as victories go: it counts.]
You're the only one aside from Cazador himself who's ever seen right through me.
—Such a pain, you know that?
[Warm. Appreciatively cast, no matter how falsely scolding. Tailing sigh a little more meandering, though he can't pluck up much more in the way of time without confessing anyway: Leto will spot a silent admission just as keenly with that tirelessly attuned nose regardless.
Might as well make it plain.]
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[It in context being damningly self explanatory. Add to it: his tone. Add to it: his evasion. Add to it: the fact that this whole time they've been discussing Ilithid-borne kidnappings, and now all he's mentioning are dreams. Old, old displacements.]
Part and parcel when it comes to traversing the Fade, or— something like that, anyway. [Simple enough theory, really:] Fall asleep, have a nightmare or two, wake up on the other side of all the Realms themselves just like any other misplaced Rifter. It made a great deal of sense.
Coincidentally, I also don't think I ever really believed it. [Lying to oneself is an art; Astarion's only ever been half-good at it.]
Looking back, I suppose I probably just preferred the story that way. It felt better. Cleaner overall— not to mention so much easier to explain: Thedas was the one who stole me from my master. Thedas decided to imprison me. And it was Thedas that gave me a home, a life— you.
[A tepid beat, like bartering for breath he doesn't need.]
That part in particular, I always liked.
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Is Leto hurt by the lack of admission? He oughtn't be, but still, he asks himself that. As visions of Astarion strapped to a table pass over his mind's eye, writhing in terror and begging for mercy, please no oh god please anything I'll do anything please, as all the while a wriggling thing gets closer and closer to his eye . . .
No. No, he is not hurt by it. How can he be, when even the mere thought is enough to turn his stomach?]
So do I.
[It's a nothing-sentence, a way to fill the air while he tries to process all this.]
The Ilithids kidnapped you. And then Thedas did.
[But that makes it too simple. And so does any reconciliatory sentence he can think of: it's over now or but they didn't manage to implant it within you. The glassiness in Astarion's tone is too brittle, too bright, for it to be reduced to a near-miss.]
. . . tell me how it happened. What happened. I would understand.
[If he wants to, that is. If it's something he feels like revisiting— but then, he must. He would not have brought it up otherwise.]
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I know you would.
[Again: warm. Again, it's that bruised quality that's more tender than guarding. Something that swears even in its clumsiness I know you would, and I'm grateful for it— but the rub is that even with all their secrets shared, he's still not used to this sort of vulnerability. He might never be, not in any way that lets him make this a clean transition. One without stop-start faults where anyone listening in could clearly hear every moment where he has to spur himself into giving Leto the truth, bit by scattered bit.
Which is different than fear or pain, for whatever it's worth.]
I was hunting for Cazador when it happened— I can remember that much. [A beat, his lips a little too dry to go without licking them.] The rest was....just a nightmare.
When they imprison you, after the torture of implantation, they have to keep tabs, you see. So there's this glass— [He's trying with his hand to convey the barrier itself in order to find the word, but it doesn't really come, and honestly doesn't really matter, either.] thing. A pod— and they leave you there in it awaiting your inevitable fate, feeling that hellish little death sentence squirming behind your eye. Watching them do the same, turning willful creature after willful creature into a mindless slave or a waiting monster.
—and then, out of nowhere, their ship crashed. I was free. Alive. [A scoff.] Albeit temporarily.
Thedas put that right.
[And again: he owes that world too much to truly ever resent whatever ugliness it held. Even words like knife-ear or rattus only ever stung once he'd been there long enough to dull old dread.]
But then Thedas had the idea of very briefly letting my path cross with a man who swore he knew who I was, and seemed distraught that the same wasn't true in turn.
He told me he had one, too. A tadpole. That we'd met after the crash, our goals aligned in freeing ourselves from its grip. Like most Rifters, he soon vanished after that. But afterwards I knew I couldn't keep pretending that it was just one long, protracted nightmare tailing my master's routine commands, and preceding my arrival here.
[Tsk.]
Anyway, to keep it simple: two rules, my love.
Never open the door at night when I'm not there to keep you safe. And two— you stay far the Hells away from those tentacled beasts and their ilk.
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How long, he wonders, does it take between implantation and conversion? Does Astarion know? He doesn't dare ask, but he wonders. If Astarion counted the seconds, the minutes, caught desperately between trying to escape and knowing that it was futile, savoring what freedom he had . . . the first in centuries, oh, the irony is so embittering. And as for the rest . . . he wonders, vaguely, if that man is somewhere around here. If someday they'll run into him on the city streets— or perhaps he's long since lost, mutilated into a monster.
It doesn't matter.
Cruel, maybe. Selfish, almost certainly. But Leto cares little about some unknown stranger; all that matters to him right now is that Astarion never have to face such a terror again. Anger, hot and dull, writhes in the pit of his stomach, and he knows it will not leave easily, not for months.]
I think I can follow those rules.
[He says it a little numbly, truthfully: so caught up in his own thoughts that it's hard to surface. A brief moment of confusion for the note about the door, but ah . . . no, that does make sense, doesn't it, when vampires are the peak of what they have to fear— or nearly so.]
Do you . . .
Is there a chance they will ever return?
[For his thought aren't on himself, but Astarion. Leto has long since sworn not to seek out Cazador unless Astarion wishes it, and he'll abide by those rules— but if this is a new threat to be wary of, he would know. He would train for that, too, for there is nothing that will take his Astarion away from him. Not vampiric lords too old and rotted to realize their time has come— and not some monstrous species determined to use his amatus for their swelling ranks.]
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It's not a choice, and isn't an argument to be debated— it's not even a request, no matter that the end result is obviously only so much in Astarion's own power to control. But rational thought means acknowledging that there's a chance it might play out for the worst despite the best of their efforts....and he can't. He just can't. (He's too bloody old, too tired, too weary of loss and too rife with scar tissue that never wanes in all its aches, though he never knows which is worse: the hideous marks he's been left with, or all the thousands more that'll never even show.)
But he knows there are other things on the table right now.
Related and distracting, and difficult to swallow. His red eyes flicking upwards somewhere across the line, unseen. Fixing on that glassy set of frosted lines drawn into the marrow of their coffin lid.]
It wouldn't be unthinkable....
[His voice sounds settled now. Even. Life for the average soul in Toril behind city walls is— largely— peaceful. Calm. Say what you will about roaming monsters and unthinkable terrors, but despite endless stories of heroism or horror there aren't whole portions of the civilized world being plunged into chaos at any given moment. No, it's the little dreads that accumulate when one least expects it: the odd shadow wandering at your back, the wolfish show of teeth after a not-so-distant catcall, the cold brush of clawed fingers at your neck. The microcosm rather than a macrocosmic nightmare.
So yes, those monsters have a high likelihood of returning— but not specifically for him. They'd have no way to track him, after all. Not with the tadpole already having vanished from his skull.
(....or at least he hopes not.)]
They were a threat once before, there's no reason to think I might not trip over one again if fate decides to be unkind.
[A beat.]
Still, I roamed these streets unbothered for two hundred years. My ancestors for centuries before that. If I had to choose my worries, believe me, that'd be on the lower rung. Somewhere between serving the wrong wine for dinner, and having Corypheus turn up on our bakery doorstep.
[These things don't just happen, is the point.]
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