[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.
[He hums softly in acknowledgement, some part of him . . . mm, not relaxing, but at least settling just a little more. Sometimes bad things really do just happen at random— and while he will not forget this issue, nor cease researching it, at least he knows just how much he has to fret over it. Cazador (and any other spawn that might be roaming this city) is still their biggest threat.
He glances around. It's a nice day, or at least it was. What had been bright and inviting suddenly seems wrong: too bright, too sunny, too raw. He has never been an elf comfortable in nature, and though he knows full well Astarion was snatched from the city streets, still, some part of him aches to be nestled safe among buildings and people.
Or maybe it's not about being safe. Maybe it's about having Astarion somewhere where he can see him: safely tucked away in their home, with Leto and his sword standing between him and the doorway. Him and all of Toril, with its vampiric lords and strange tentacled creatures and gods that walk among men . . . it's not that it's so much worse than Thedas. Frankly, it's still better than Thedas, if for no other reason than Leto had walked out of the city boundaries without being followed or asked sneering questions. But so much is strange and different here, and that brings its own form of homesickness.
Anyway.]
Were you ever going to tell me if I hadn't asked?
[It's a real question, not an accusation. He understands tucking away painful memories; gods know there are a few he hasn't mentioned to Astarion yet, simply because they're too awful to talk about. But he wonders.]
About your own experience, or that Rifter . . . what was his name?
[Fumbling aside, that part's surrendered (relatively) easily, at least. And he rides his initial spark-quick response like a segue, letting it carry him from one beat to the next without rising up for air:]
But my kadan. When it comes to you?
I've learned everything comes out in the wash eventually, no matter how I fight to keep it tucked well away in hand. [So deflective, his candor in that moment. Playfully deflective, that is, in a way that smacks of habit— the sort old enough to have lost nearly all relevance one year after having fallen recklessly in love.]
[And it's with that in mind that a few trickling seconds pass before he reluctantly drops his sense of play, fiddling instead with the notion of isolated discomfort.
Regardless of how frigidly unsettling it feels.]
....yes....I think I might've. Probably.
Although I'm not sure when. [Don't misread him:] It wasn't anything I wanted to consider again, you understand.
There aren't a thousand skeletons hiding in my— well, figuratively speaking, I suppose there are after all these years. But I'm not keeping anything from you, if that scares you.
[This banter isn't about survival or currying favor; Hells, he knows he doesn't need to grovel or whimper the way he'd done with Cazador or even Riftwatch's own collective, guarding the safety of his fragile belly at all times.
Even so, it's like an itch he can't scratch.
A cruel, barbed touch pulls at the edges of his mind until he's sinking one canine down against the corner of his lip, whittling shallowly at his own skin.]
[The answer comes so swiftly that he almost sounds harsh, which is the last thing he wants. It's just that he can hear that vulnerable little note in Astarion's voice, and gods know he can picture the face that goes with it. The uncertain flicker of his eyes, followed by the doeish stare that begs for sincerity and love in equal shares . . . oh, amatus. His footsteps are hurried now, wandering off the beaten path so he can settle himself beneath the shelter of a large tree— all the better to focus on what matters.]
Kadan. [Softer. Soothing. Safe.] There is a difference between things that are kept away out of malicious intent or guilt, and things that are too difficult to talk about until they come up. This was the latter, not the former. And I do not fear the former, not from you. Not ever.
[Leto closes his eyes, tipping his head back to thump gently against the trunk.]
There are things in my past I have not told you. Things that fit that category. Not secrets, but . . .
[But it's hard. But there are things that haunt them both, and things that are too hard to admit to, even when it's dark and quiet.]
I trust you, Astarion. I asked only because I know what it is to not want to think of such things . . . and because I did not expect the admission. It frightens me, but only ever for your sake. I . . .
[Mm.]
It is hard, even now, not to think like a warrior and a bodyguard. I suspect I always will. It is why I seek to know all that I can learn of vampires and how to defeat them— and it is why this took me aback, for it is not a threat I have ever had to factor in before.
[An exhale comes on so swiftly that it catches Astarion himself off guard; he didn't realize he was actually holding his own breath until it sticks to the roof of his mouth. Like a rubber band snapping all that tension goes away. At least he doesn't feel ridiculous for having asked, at least. Something to do with that swerve—
Of course he doesn't need a reminder to know that Leto isn't anything like Cazador or his coven— not like his spawn or his family, not even his suitors or his endless, wretched lackeys. It's just that he thrives on it, that potent reiteration. Each time the past is proven fallible, one more rung is plucked from the impenetrable weave of his former master's armor. It's not the same, and the world he knew before grows smaller, shrinks back into the cage it really was. It's not the same, and he doesn't know if it's the wonder of this rare, impossible creature rushing to settle down across the line, or if there's the potential out there for more— more discovery, more newness, more—
Ah. No.
No, he knows better than to open that particular door. One and a half years spent in Riftwatch, fluttering between Orlais, Kirkwall, Antiva, Nevarra, Tevinter: he knows what people are like. And there's only one exception to the rule.
Oh, kadan indeed.]
I don't know how to be much more than a liar and a whore— [Bright again. A pleasant lilt along the line. They are what they are; that's fine.] Albeit a fanged and clawed one.
You might've picked the wrong creature to safeguard.
....are you sure you're any good at this?
[Thank you, he means. Thank you, darling. Even if the words don't come, and his head is reeling and his deadened heart shudders in its moorings for the thought he understands what it is to bury what you can't stand, rather than hold it to the light.
For the odd fragility of a protector who still tries to keep him safe.
And has secrets of his own.
(Give him a second to breathe, Leto. Let him pretend to be alive— laugh with him, a liar and a whore— and he'll come around to helping you dig through the dirt.)]
[He huffs a laugh, more in acquiesce of that silent desire than anything truly related to humor. (In truth, he does not like it when Astarion refers to himself as a whore, save in bedsport— but it is what it is, and he will not scold solely out of his own discomfort). Leto stretches his legs out, kicking off the hated boots so he can sink his toes into the cool grass.]
You're still alive, are you no— ah . . . well, you may have a point there.
[You know, because he's a vampire? Undead? Get it? Ah, humor.
And they linger there for a time. Catching one another up on their respective days (or nights), little incidents and jokes offered up easy as anything. It's gentle, and as much a way to move on from the emotion of that moment as it is simple exchange.
But eventually, they quiet down. And Leto murmurs:
I'm glad you asked. About if I was worried or distrusted you . . .
I am glad to confirm the opposite. And I am glad, too, you trust me enough to ask.
[Admittedly, he says it a bit stiltedly. Emotions are hard, and articulating them harder still. But he is glad Astarion asked, for no other reason than to assure him.]
Don't start being too proud of me over there in all that sunlight. [The throatiest little puff of fond surrender, therein residing the difference between trust and raw submission: that to be terrified of what someone else sees in you means becoming perfect in pure presumption— the impossible infallibility of a kept slave— versus the small, fragile, unreliable and occasionally irrational reality of someone with a will all his own.
He can wear his flaws without immediately rolling over onto his belly now that the storm of ancient uncertainty's passed. He's glad, too. And grateful— even if he hasn't said it yet (they're both trying their level best, and Leto's tone is proof enough of that).
Although the broader spectrum of that also means admitting:]
Not five minutes later and already I want to ask about everything you've got tucked away inside that lovely little skull of yours. [Painful secrets, unsightly memories, old, shut up nightmares. Every impulse. Every fear. Every last shuttered hope.
[Oh, what a question, and distantly, Leto is grateful Astarion offers it so vaguely. It gives him leave to let his mind wander where it will— for fair is fair, and Leto does not mind delving into his past for this. But ah . . .
He's quiet for a time. Not ignoring Astarion, but simply letting his mind cast back. Things that he's pushed away in the past, silently marking them for later. Later: the ghost of his mother rising in the back of his mind, ignored for a time when they weren't laughing softly in bed, giddily hushing one another as guards walked by. Later: a shopkeep who echoes an old saying that Danarius had loved, the connection saved for when they weren't in public. Later: a woman he'd passed this morning with black hair and blue eyes who stared at him so boldly . . .]
I have not told you much of Hadriana, have I?
[No, he hasn't.]
She used to delight in collaring me and chaining me to the wall. Sometimes there would be no chain, and it would simply be my neck and hands bolted to the wall. Typically she would put my food just out of reach and watch as I crawled for it, but . . .
[Mmph. This does not compare to being kidnapped by tentacled monsters. It does not compare, even, to the horror of living for two centuries as whorish bait. I do better on my back than my feet, and it's been over a year, but still Leto thinks of Astarion's face as he had said it. The way it so deliberately wasn't gaunt or grim, a bright mask put on so naturally you almost couldn't see the seams.
But they have never played the game of who had it worse.]
Danarius was not the only person who bedded me.
She would . . . I do not know if it was meant to humiliate or if she was lustful, but it barely mattered. She would . . . there were times she would take me along on one of her illict trysts, and take pleasure in rutting where I could not help but hear. And other times, when she had me chained and gagged, she would ride me. Over and over, using her magic on me as she did. Amplifying the sensation, or using elemental magic . . .
[And it is what it is. And anyway, the bitch is dead. And anyway, it's nothing. Danarius had done the same thing with his magic, and that happened far more often. Leto shrugs sharply.]
It was only a few times. She did not have me alone often. Apprentices don't get such toys.
Over ten years in freedom, and plenty more since. There were bound to be dalliances. Experiments. Playful one-night-stands—
Maybe even something deeper (for he knows of Isabela and her feathering touch). It doesn't bother him; there's a certain amount of turmoil that comes from going from having your life dictated to you for decades at the root, to being expected to choose— everything. Anything that happens on those shores? Hells, Astarion couldn't care less about the details beyond wanting to hear them for whatever it is they are. Not exactly selflessness. Not altruism or fairness, either. Just....understanding, possibly. Just an open-mouthed desire to know more about the elf he's fallen for against all odds, who inspires the worst of his sorefooted jealousy (oh, Rialto) and the best of his ability to be patient. And open. And soft. And against all odds, sincere. (Love me, and I won't care about the rest.)
He's comfortably ready to hear a story about young love. Reckless attraction. Messy or flawed or perfect. Someone adored just as much as he is now.
He wasn't ready for this.
For the image of Leto shackled to a wall, painfully kept on bruising tenterhooks. Used like a cheap toy and put in his place in the way of any beaten dog within a pack: his muzzle grabbed and forced down to the floor no matter how he might shiver in abject submission— obedient because he has to be. Docile because it's all he was designed for, and a weapon passed into someone else's hands can't argue for how it's used.
And he can well imagine the sort of punishment there'd be if he'd protested. Refused. Dared to show his teeth or even glower at her most dehumanizing commands. Less about arousal than irrefutable control.
Oh, but he does know the type.
You belong to your master, you're his— what does that make me, if I then get to control you?
Dominus. Dominant, exult. She cut her teeth on him and yet simpered before Danarius, and somehow (though perhaps even that assumption is misplaced, his mind always seeing Cazador in the margins), Astarion suspects their master wasn't ever oblivious to that overstepped boldness.
But maybe he was.]
Vile wretch.
[With all the gracefulness of shed spit. His chest aching without the beat of his own heart. Oh, amatus.]
She might've envied you for your favor, yet I doubt that would've ever stopped until she'd sat herself squarely on top of Danarius' throne. [....to which, Leto would've been subject to yet more humiliation, for:] Clearly she couldn't stop nursing along desire's acrid taste despite herself. For him. For you.
Goes without saying death was too good an end for her— but if she had to meet it, better at the sharp end of your claws.
[A careful pause, curiosity leveled against the wretchedness of an answer. (Tryst, he'd said. And he can't stop thinking of it. Any of it.
Little wonder they have secrets hidden in their scars.)]
[Hadriana is dead, her corpse long since rotted in the depths of Sundermount, and that means Leto won, doesn't it? No matter how many indignities she enacted upon him; no matter how many times she spitefully smirked as she closed the door and left him in darkness, trembling in misplaced lust and badly suppressed rage. No matter how many times she'd drag cool fingers against his cheek and coyly whisper in his ear insults about breeding stud or elvish perversion before pressing him into a kiss . . . he won, hadn't he? She'd ended up on her belly, begging him for mercy that never came, her last seconds agonizing as she'd realized her fatal error and felt pain as she never had before.
So what does it matter? He won, and that should be enough. It is enough.
Most days, it's enough.
So why does his mouth tighten when he hears Astarion seethe on his behalf? Why does some part of him whimper in desperation? Tell me more, don't stop, validation still such a startlingly soothing thing even now. Leto exhales slowly, his eyes unfocused as he stares at the trees near him— and then, at a distance, the looming city of Baldur's Gate.]
Yes.
[Soft. Dazed, a little, before he manages to wake himself up.]
Yes. In terms of that kind of use . . . yes. Danarius did not share me, not ever. He would show me off, dress me in scraps of fabric and delight in the stares I attracted, but . . . not share. Hadriana taking me was just another evolution in her favorite game: tell our master and see what I do to you next.
[And then— a hesitation. An intake of breath, and then a pause.]
And then afterwards . . . there was Isabela.
And then there was you.
[And that's it, really. It's not that he never had the opportunity for more, but he had never trusted it. Isabela was a constant, a battle-tested friend who would rather cut her own hand off than sell him to slavers— but a stranger? Oh, bounty hunters were always so clever, and there's no better way to lower someone's guard than sex. And after Danarius' death . . . oh, it was all so awful those last few years. He had no time for sex; he certainly had no time for romance.]
And . . . do not mistake me, but . . . I am glad I had her before you. I do not think I could have . . .
[Stop, start.]
She did not coddle, but she did not rush me, either. We danced around each other for ages before the first time— and though she likes nothing better than to take, she had me lead the way the first time. And under her touch, I learned what it was to enjoy sex. To thrill in it, the way I thrill in it with you.
It was she who taught me how to . . . how to enjoy giving and taking. How to play games in the bedroom, and how fun it could be to both win and lose. She was the one who taught me that there is pleasure to be found in subjugation— so long as it comes between the thighs of someone I choose.
[Oh, yes, and despite himself, his mouth twitches in fond recollection. The steel trap of her thighs and her cunt pressed against his mouth, her fingers knotted in his hair as she'd ridden him, just like that, sweet thing . . . oh, Bela, and he misses her so very much.]
But anything else he could say dies on the tip of his tongue; he can't delight in stories about Isabela's hands or her laughter any more than he can picture it— which is telling enough on its own. Gratitude pales as a descriptor on Astarion's part, yet in the places where her silhouette should be, there's just a blurry, unfamiliar outline.
Hadriana's hatred has a face. Ridiculous that Isabela's love doesn't. It's easy to define someone you revile in a set of cold, colorless eyes, but the beauty of affection? Gods know, she might've been a vixen or a common, coarse-cut stone (her nose too big or too crooked, her smile awkward and her voice thin as a reed) and she'd still be limitlessly lovely for everything she gave a freshly fled runaway slave. Sunlight and warm spaces. A place without fear, even when skin brushes across skin.]
Rough waters.
[Those first few years, he means. Thick spit wedged in the back of his throat to cut the rest of his sentiment short. It's not his fault. Really, it's far, far from deliberate.
His chest still burns, you see. His lungs and his chest and the pit of his wretched stomach, all betraying him against his will.
He's still stuck on the first part.
On the collars and cuffs. The walls and Hadriana's blunted jeers. The agony of watching Leto's master dragging him around for sport (his hound. His Fenris.) and yet there's no rest within the margins, not with one more little game to be played underneath Danarius' nose time and time again. The most wondrous creature Astarion's ever known, treated like consumable refuse. Sitting on his heels, kept starving for anything, outlined ribs the rigid undercurrent measuring his loyalty. Starving presently at times, even with them both long laid to rest. Those nights when a warm bed won't suffice and a coffin leaves him seizing around the fringe edges of sleep.
It's not fair, you know.
He tried with all he had to be convincing (it's done, now, you got her, she's gone— good job. What a monster she was. What a nightmare. It's fine). Mere seconds later, Astarion stares down the thought that he's not as good a liar as he always thought he'd been.
How is it that levity feels farther than Danarius?]
[He can hear it in Astarion's tone: the attempt, and then the failure. Rough waters, his voice thick as it almost never is, all the lighthearted fluttering gone out of his tone in favor of something deeper. More genuine, more concerned. It's a tone only Leto ever gets, and despite himself— or maybe because of it— he doesn't want to have noticed it.
It's a momentary impulse. A desperate attempt at moving past an open wound, savage degrees of false levity— and if that was the direction he went in, Leto knows, Astarion would follow. Maybe not forever; likely he'd bring it up later, delicately laying the subject between them for Leto to nudge as he sees fit. But if Leto's tone all but screamed please, not yet, I can't talk about this yet, his amatus would follow.
But he doesn't want to do that. Not really. Not if he's being honest.
It's just that he's never told anyone about Hadriana before.]
. . . it's all right, Astarion.
[No, it's not. He doesn't know why he says it, except that he can't bear to not acknowledge that tonal shift. His fingers slide against the dirt, blindly seeking out a small rock so he can fidget with it as they speak.]
I hated her.
[Spat out. Forced out, and he does not know why his heart thunders in his chest.]
More, sometimes, than I hated Danarius. [At least the magister occasionally praised him.] She hounded my sleep, salted my food, used me as a toy, set me up to be humiliated over and over in front of important guests or visiting dignitaries— and if Danarius was displeased by my performance, all the better. And if I told Danarius, she would find a way to punish me. And if I didn't, he would punish me.
And it never ended. She had only been an apprentice a year before Danarius turned me into his bodyguard. And from the start to the very end, she never ceased her gnawing jealousy, nor her spiteful torment.
[Another pause. Another hesitation, and now his fingers work faster, rubbing at the rock with distracted motions.]
The first time she used me . . . it was not long after my first time with Danarius. I could not have been more than twenty. And she . . . she delighted in trying to earn a reaction. She thrilled when I moaned, and took such savage glee out of fitting herself atop me. And I didn't know . . .
[Gods help him, he barely knew who he was. He had no context for anything, never mind something so monumental as sex. All he'd known was that he was miserable even as his body responded, reacted to a heated palm coated with oil and a soft voice crooning Tevene in his ear . . . little wolf, maybe I won't even let you remember this. Maybe this isn't even our true first time . . . look at how well your body responds to me, after all.]
I did not know anything about sex but what they two taught me.
Little more than a child. Barely a blink of a thing, snared between two covetous grips (and he knows about the differences in ages between worlds, but that hardly changes the fact that Leto was so young— add to it having all of his memories wiped clean, and oh, it's savagery fit for Cazador's table:) taking a pretty young thing and seeing just what happens when you unmake it in your name. Taunt and tease it. Rile it and watch it smolder unaware.
And if it fails in one way or another, you simply try again.
And again.
And again.
He fills his throat fill with heat that stings like blackened bile. Impotent and outdated, but thick within the hollow of his throat.]
They tortured you. [It wasn't about sex; Astarion's fucked enough shortsighted sycophants in his time to pinpoint the outline of those aimless footprints. If it had been about sensation alone in utter control, the rutting would've been the point: punctuation played out in penetration or gulping adoration— less than none care spared for the thing they used to that end. A thing to be used and put away, not crooning about his responses or lack thereof when he's been set up just to fail. The fall the thing that brings them glee; the glory that he can't say no.
They tore him to ribbons just to lie and call it fucking.]
Both of them.
[Did Isabela know about this?
When she took him to bed, that is.
On some level, Astarion thinks she must've. But intuition is still a different beast than insight: watching a beaten thing flinch at the first sign of an outstretched hand isn't the same thing as knowing what happened. If she was perceptive enough to know how to dance with him when he scarcely knew how to suck in breath without being told, or the shape of his body beneath the surface of his skin, then she wouldn't need words or truths; he'd be an open book comprised of a slim scattering of bent pages.
And in a way Astarion supposes it doesn't matter. What she taught Leto was enough to bring him back from that nightmare through the gentle rules of her splayed fingertips. There'd be no now if not for then— her then, that is.
Still, though, it's all a mess. Still, he can't stop himself from wading through the past when he asks:]
He never thought of it like that. Torment, perhaps, and blatant abuse, oh, yes. He has never thought fondly of it. But to frame it as torture adds a heavier connotation to it, sharper and more blatant than his own half-formed thoughts. Torture to take a captive thing and render him into little more than a toy; torture to gleefully watch his reactions, and it doesn't matter whether it was jealous or twisted desire that prompted it, for it was hellish all the same.
Torture, I was tortured, and he tries it on silently, knowing even as he does that it won't stick. Not right now. Later, but not now. And maybe some part of him knows that from the start, for his next thought is so much needier.
I wish you were here.
It springs to the forefront of his mind without warning, lonely and soft. I wish you were here, I wish I was home, curled up tightly together in their coffin as Leto whispers these things in the dark. It isn't more manageable there, not really— but it feels as though it is. As if they might leave Hadriana and Danarius and all their horrors there in the shadows, with searing daylight acting as deterrent for the ghosts of the past.
But he isn't. And he's not. And he is too old to say such things aloud, no matter that he's sure Astarion feels them too. The walls creep up regardless, claustrophobic and nauseating, and his knuckles go white as he grips that rock—
And then Astarion speaks again.]
Ten years.
[More or less. And it helps, you know, to have that prompt. Better a question than bleating shows of dismay or pity (and Astarion would never, but still).]
I suspect I was eighteen when I competed in that tournament. And it was ten years of that before the Qunari attacked. [Twenty-eight. And then:] A few years on the run, and then seven in Kirkwall. Three or four more before I returned . . .
[So he was nearly forty when he and Astarion met. Or maybe he was older, or younger— he'll never know, and he's long since tormenting himself over it. At least it matters less here, when soon enough he'll count his age with three digits instead of two.
Ah. But he's deflecting.]
Ten years of enslavement. Of that . . . of torture. I grew better at evading Hadriana's grasp, and returning her torments in such a way that she could not prove it was me.
[But it was so petty. So pathetic. So pointless. He'd get her to humiliate herself in front of a group of Danarius' friends— and then wait with nauseating dread for the next torment she'd enact.]
She stopped bedding me after the first few years. Her hatred had solidified by then, as time passed and Danarius refused to allow her to graduate. But it was always a risk.
That's all he hears, though there's endless more within the margins. And no, it's never been a competition (how could it be? Astarion feels the muscle and marrow beneath his skin sting with phantom slights from memories he's never had, only heard transcribed); the captive sound of Leto muttering softly that two hundred years is worse— unfathomably worse (and true, it is always remarkable to survive what seems impossible, noting it as just another horror surpassed now that the worst of it is done: 'heading out to the store this afternoon'; I was flayed alive so many times I've lost count. 'Come to bed, it's too damned cold'; I spent ages shut away like unwanted silver for daring to smile at the wrong time)— still lodged firmly in his mind. Refusing to go away no matter how he tries or what he urges.
But that isn't how it works.
Just as it was before: there's nothing to compare.
Astarion's gut won't settle in its agonized thrashing just because he swallows down a number cut from two digits rather than three. It knows as well as he does what ten years for a whelp with no memories and no freedom had to look like— fretting in a cage cut from heavy collars, merciless punishments, and the counterbalance of honeyed words and slower touches meant to make even hell seem bearable when he swears he can't take more. You lose track of time, like that. You lose track of yourself, too. Ten years of agony is more than half a waking lifetime given the age Leto guessed at. More, with so many memories stolen, no— strewth, no: there's nothing to compare except that they had lives of their own, once. Ripped from them like so much else.
Reduce it all, and pain is pain.
And everything else is just a drop against its leverage.]
I stand corrected. [About a lot of things— but about her most of all.]
You got your fangs into her long before she took her last. [He's proud of that one note. Cold breath slipping light across his lips underneath each ceding exhale, one conversational foot figuratively planted before the next. Small as a sliver of glass, it cuts its way throughout his tone regardless— even if it'd be easier to show that sense of predatory praise through a bumping push of his nose against a narrow jaw or risen cheekbone. Through the slide of his claws in moonlit hair, swearing that he's safe. And that he did well.
(Truth be told, Astarion wishes he was there.
In daylight, that is. Nestled just at Leto's side. Two months into elevated change and his sharper teeth still feel so wrong against each other, and the emptiness of his coffin's starting to feel like imprisonment all over again— or maybe that's just the fault of current conversation.
Blood is intoxicating. Power: exhilarating.
He needs both to survive. To keep them safe where all else could so easily fail and take them right back to said years of bloodsoaked pleas drooled out over folded knees. But sometimes underneath all that secured glory, he feels so much less himself. The weaknesses. The drawbacks. The endless, unslaked urges blotting out the edges of his mien. Call him weak (he'd be the first in line to lever it against himself), but he misses sunlight at his lover's side. He misses grabbing hold of vulnerable flesh without forcing an eternity's worth of delicacy into his own touch, roughly imitating trying to grasp ancient parchment without puncture. That as the weeks roll on, more and more and more he misses—
Ah.
Well.
That's not the conversation, is it?)
Funny how everything compounds when so much scar tissue bears down.]
I won't say that I'm glad it was only your master's touch that you had to endure right to the end, but....
[His lips thin; it comes across as the smallest sigh.]
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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.]
2/2
[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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He glances around. It's a nice day, or at least it was. What had been bright and inviting suddenly seems wrong: too bright, too sunny, too raw. He has never been an elf comfortable in nature, and though he knows full well Astarion was snatched from the city streets, still, some part of him aches to be nestled safe among buildings and people.
Or maybe it's not about being safe. Maybe it's about having Astarion somewhere where he can see him: safely tucked away in their home, with Leto and his sword standing between him and the doorway. Him and all of Toril, with its vampiric lords and strange tentacled creatures and gods that walk among men . . . it's not that it's so much worse than Thedas. Frankly, it's still better than Thedas, if for no other reason than Leto had walked out of the city boundaries without being followed or asked sneering questions. But so much is strange and different here, and that brings its own form of homesickness.
Anyway.]
Were you ever going to tell me if I hadn't asked?
[It's a real question, not an accusation. He understands tucking away painful memories; gods know there are a few he hasn't mentioned to Astarion yet, simply because they're too awful to talk about. But he wonders.]
About your own experience, or that Rifter . . . what was his name?
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[Fumbling aside, that part's surrendered (relatively) easily, at least. And he rides his initial spark-quick response like a segue, letting it carry him from one beat to the next without rising up for air:]
But my kadan. When it comes to you?
I've learned everything comes out in the wash eventually, no matter how I fight to keep it tucked well away in hand. [So deflective, his candor in that moment. Playfully deflective, that is, in a way that smacks of habit— the sort old enough to have lost nearly all relevance one year after having fallen recklessly in love.]
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Regardless of how frigidly unsettling it feels.]
....yes....I think I might've. Probably.
Although I'm not sure when. [Don't misread him:] It wasn't anything I wanted to consider again, you understand.
There aren't a thousand skeletons hiding in my— well, figuratively speaking, I suppose there are after all these years. But I'm not keeping anything from you, if that scares you.
[This banter isn't about survival or currying favor; Hells, he knows he doesn't need to grovel or whimper the way he'd done with Cazador or even Riftwatch's own collective, guarding the safety of his fragile belly at all times.
Even so, it's like an itch he can't scratch.
A cruel, barbed touch pulls at the edges of his mind until he's sinking one canine down against the corner of his lip, whittling shallowly at his own skin.]
Which it doesn't.
[Of course it doesn't.]
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No. No, Astarion—
[The answer comes so swiftly that he almost sounds harsh, which is the last thing he wants. It's just that he can hear that vulnerable little note in Astarion's voice, and gods know he can picture the face that goes with it. The uncertain flicker of his eyes, followed by the doeish stare that begs for sincerity and love in equal shares . . . oh, amatus. His footsteps are hurried now, wandering off the beaten path so he can settle himself beneath the shelter of a large tree— all the better to focus on what matters.]
Kadan. [Softer. Soothing. Safe.] There is a difference between things that are kept away out of malicious intent or guilt, and things that are too difficult to talk about until they come up. This was the latter, not the former. And I do not fear the former, not from you. Not ever.
[Leto closes his eyes, tipping his head back to thump gently against the trunk.]
There are things in my past I have not told you. Things that fit that category. Not secrets, but . . .
[But it's hard. But there are things that haunt them both, and things that are too hard to admit to, even when it's dark and quiet.]
I trust you, Astarion. I asked only because I know what it is to not want to think of such things . . . and because I did not expect the admission. It frightens me, but only ever for your sake. I . . .
[Mm.]
It is hard, even now, not to think like a warrior and a bodyguard. I suspect I always will. It is why I seek to know all that I can learn of vampires and how to defeat them— and it is why this took me aback, for it is not a threat I have ever had to factor in before.
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Of course he doesn't need a reminder to know that Leto isn't anything like Cazador or his coven— not like his spawn or his family, not even his suitors or his endless, wretched lackeys. It's just that he thrives on it, that potent reiteration. Each time the past is proven fallible, one more rung is plucked from the impenetrable weave of his former master's armor. It's not the same, and the world he knew before grows smaller, shrinks back into the cage it really was. It's not the same, and he doesn't know if it's the wonder of this rare, impossible creature rushing to settle down across the line, or if there's the potential out there for more— more discovery, more newness, more—
Ah. No.
No, he knows better than to open that particular door. One and a half years spent in Riftwatch, fluttering between Orlais, Kirkwall, Antiva, Nevarra, Tevinter: he knows what people are like. And there's only one exception to the rule.
Oh, kadan indeed.]
I don't know how to be much more than a liar and a whore— [Bright again. A pleasant lilt along the line. They are what they are; that's fine.] Albeit a fanged and clawed one.
You might've picked the wrong creature to safeguard.
....are you sure you're any good at this?
[Thank you, he means. Thank you, darling. Even if the words don't come, and his head is reeling and his deadened heart shudders in its moorings for the thought he understands what it is to bury what you can't stand, rather than hold it to the light.
For the odd fragility of a protector who still tries to keep him safe.
And has secrets of his own.
(Give him a second to breathe, Leto. Let him pretend to be alive— laugh with him, a liar and a whore— and he'll come around to helping you dig through the dirt.)]
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You're still alive, are you no— ah . . . well, you may have a point there.
[You know, because he's a vampire? Undead? Get it? Ah, humor.
And they linger there for a time. Catching one another up on their respective days (or nights), little incidents and jokes offered up easy as anything. It's gentle, and as much a way to move on from the emotion of that moment as it is simple exchange.
But eventually, they quiet down. And Leto murmurs:
I'm glad you asked. About if I was worried or distrusted you . . .
I am glad to confirm the opposite. And I am glad, too, you trust me enough to ask.
[Admittedly, he says it a bit stiltedly. Emotions are hard, and articulating them harder still. But he is glad Astarion asked, for no other reason than to assure him.]
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He can wear his flaws without immediately rolling over onto his belly now that the storm of ancient uncertainty's passed. He's glad, too. And grateful— even if he hasn't said it yet (they're both trying their level best, and Leto's tone is proof enough of that).
Although the broader spectrum of that also means admitting:]
Not five minutes later and already I want to ask about everything you've got tucked away inside that lovely little skull of yours. [Painful secrets, unsightly memories, old, shut up nightmares. Every impulse. Every fear. Every last shuttered hope.
How's that for fairness, hmm?]
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He's quiet for a time. Not ignoring Astarion, but simply letting his mind cast back. Things that he's pushed away in the past, silently marking them for later. Later: the ghost of his mother rising in the back of his mind, ignored for a time when they weren't laughing softly in bed, giddily hushing one another as guards walked by. Later: a shopkeep who echoes an old saying that Danarius had loved, the connection saved for when they weren't in public. Later: a woman he'd passed this morning with black hair and blue eyes who stared at him so boldly . . .]
I have not told you much of Hadriana, have I?
[No, he hasn't.]
She used to delight in collaring me and chaining me to the wall. Sometimes there would be no chain, and it would simply be my neck and hands bolted to the wall. Typically she would put my food just out of reach and watch as I crawled for it, but . . .
[Mmph. This does not compare to being kidnapped by tentacled monsters. It does not compare, even, to the horror of living for two centuries as whorish bait. I do better on my back than my feet, and it's been over a year, but still Leto thinks of Astarion's face as he had said it. The way it so deliberately wasn't gaunt or grim, a bright mask put on so naturally you almost couldn't see the seams.
But they have never played the game of who had it worse.]
Danarius was not the only person who bedded me.
She would . . . I do not know if it was meant to humiliate or if she was lustful, but it barely mattered. She would . . . there were times she would take me along on one of her illict trysts, and take pleasure in rutting where I could not help but hear. And other times, when she had me chained and gagged, she would ride me. Over and over, using her magic on me as she did. Amplifying the sensation, or using elemental magic . . .
[And it is what it is. And anyway, the bitch is dead. And anyway, it's nothing. Danarius had done the same thing with his magic, and that happened far more often. Leto shrugs sharply.]
It was only a few times. She did not have me alone often. Apprentices don't get such toys.
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Over ten years in freedom, and plenty more since. There were bound to be dalliances. Experiments. Playful one-night-stands—
Maybe even something deeper (for he knows of Isabela and her feathering touch). It doesn't bother him; there's a certain amount of turmoil that comes from going from having your life dictated to you for decades at the root, to being expected to choose— everything. Anything that happens on those shores? Hells, Astarion couldn't care less about the details beyond wanting to hear them for whatever it is they are. Not exactly selflessness. Not altruism or fairness, either. Just....understanding, possibly. Just an open-mouthed desire to know more about the elf he's fallen for against all odds, who inspires the worst of his sorefooted jealousy (oh, Rialto) and the best of his ability to be patient. And open. And soft. And against all odds, sincere. (Love me, and I won't care about the rest.)
He's comfortably ready to hear a story about young love. Reckless attraction. Messy or flawed or perfect. Someone adored just as much as he is now.
He wasn't ready for this.
For the image of Leto shackled to a wall, painfully kept on bruising tenterhooks. Used like a cheap toy and put in his place in the way of any beaten dog within a pack: his muzzle grabbed and forced down to the floor no matter how he might shiver in abject submission— obedient because he has to be. Docile because it's all he was designed for, and a weapon passed into someone else's hands can't argue for how it's used.
And he can well imagine the sort of punishment there'd be if he'd protested. Refused. Dared to show his teeth or even glower at her most dehumanizing commands. Less about arousal than irrefutable control.
Oh, but he does know the type.
You belong to your master, you're his— what does that make me, if I then get to control you?
Dominus. Dominant, exult. She cut her teeth on him and yet simpered before Danarius, and somehow (though perhaps even that assumption is misplaced, his mind always seeing Cazador in the margins), Astarion suspects their master wasn't ever oblivious to that overstepped boldness.
But maybe he was.]
Vile wretch.
[With all the gracefulness of shed spit. His chest aching without the beat of his own heart. Oh, amatus.]
She might've envied you for your favor, yet I doubt that would've ever stopped until she'd sat herself squarely on top of Danarius' throne. [....to which, Leto would've been subject to yet more humiliation, for:] Clearly she couldn't stop nursing along desire's acrid taste despite herself. For him. For you.
Goes without saying death was too good an end for her— but if she had to meet it, better at the sharp end of your claws.
[A careful pause, curiosity leveled against the wretchedness of an answer. (Tryst, he'd said. And he can't stop thinking of it. Any of it.
Little wonder they have secrets hidden in their scars.)]
....was she the only one?
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So what does it matter? He won, and that should be enough. It is enough.
Most days, it's enough.
So why does his mouth tighten when he hears Astarion seethe on his behalf? Why does some part of him whimper in desperation? Tell me more, don't stop, validation still such a startlingly soothing thing even now. Leto exhales slowly, his eyes unfocused as he stares at the trees near him— and then, at a distance, the looming city of Baldur's Gate.]
Yes.
[Soft. Dazed, a little, before he manages to wake himself up.]
Yes. In terms of that kind of use . . . yes. Danarius did not share me, not ever. He would show me off, dress me in scraps of fabric and delight in the stares I attracted, but . . . not share. Hadriana taking me was just another evolution in her favorite game: tell our master and see what I do to you next.
[And then— a hesitation. An intake of breath, and then a pause.]
And then afterwards . . . there was Isabela.
And then there was you.
[And that's it, really. It's not that he never had the opportunity for more, but he had never trusted it. Isabela was a constant, a battle-tested friend who would rather cut her own hand off than sell him to slavers— but a stranger? Oh, bounty hunters were always so clever, and there's no better way to lower someone's guard than sex. And after Danarius' death . . . oh, it was all so awful those last few years. He had no time for sex; he certainly had no time for romance.]
And . . . do not mistake me, but . . . I am glad I had her before you. I do not think I could have . . .
[Stop, start.]
She did not coddle, but she did not rush me, either. We danced around each other for ages before the first time— and though she likes nothing better than to take, she had me lead the way the first time. And under her touch, I learned what it was to enjoy sex. To thrill in it, the way I thrill in it with you.
It was she who taught me how to . . . how to enjoy giving and taking. How to play games in the bedroom, and how fun it could be to both win and lose. She was the one who taught me that there is pleasure to be found in subjugation— so long as it comes between the thighs of someone I choose.
[Oh, yes, and despite himself, his mouth twitches in fond recollection. The steel trap of her thighs and her cunt pressed against his mouth, her fingers knotted in his hair as she'd ridden him, just like that, sweet thing . . . oh, Bela, and he misses her so very much.]
You would have liked her.
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But anything else he could say dies on the tip of his tongue; he can't delight in stories about Isabela's hands or her laughter any more than he can picture it— which is telling enough on its own. Gratitude pales as a descriptor on Astarion's part, yet in the places where her silhouette should be, there's just a blurry, unfamiliar outline.
Hadriana's hatred has a face. Ridiculous that Isabela's love doesn't. It's easy to define someone you revile in a set of cold, colorless eyes, but the beauty of affection? Gods know, she might've been a vixen or a common, coarse-cut stone (her nose too big or too crooked, her smile awkward and her voice thin as a reed) and she'd still be limitlessly lovely for everything she gave a freshly fled runaway slave. Sunlight and warm spaces. A place without fear, even when skin brushes across skin.]
Rough waters.
[Those first few years, he means. Thick spit wedged in the back of his throat to cut the rest of his sentiment short. It's not his fault. Really, it's far, far from deliberate.
His chest still burns, you see. His lungs and his chest and the pit of his wretched stomach, all betraying him against his will.
He's still stuck on the first part.
On the collars and cuffs. The walls and Hadriana's blunted jeers. The agony of watching Leto's master dragging him around for sport (his hound. His Fenris.) and yet there's no rest within the margins, not with one more little game to be played underneath Danarius' nose time and time again. The most wondrous creature Astarion's ever known, treated like consumable refuse. Sitting on his heels, kept starving for anything, outlined ribs the rigid undercurrent measuring his loyalty. Starving presently at times, even with them both long laid to rest. Those nights when a warm bed won't suffice and a coffin leaves him seizing around the fringe edges of sleep.
It's not fair, you know.
He tried with all he had to be convincing (it's done, now, you got her, she's gone— good job. What a monster she was. What a nightmare. It's fine). Mere seconds later, Astarion stares down the thought that he's not as good a liar as he always thought he'd been.
How is it that levity feels farther than Danarius?]
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It's a momentary impulse. A desperate attempt at moving past an open wound, savage degrees of false levity— and if that was the direction he went in, Leto knows, Astarion would follow. Maybe not forever; likely he'd bring it up later, delicately laying the subject between them for Leto to nudge as he sees fit. But if Leto's tone all but screamed please, not yet, I can't talk about this yet, his amatus would follow.
But he doesn't want to do that. Not really. Not if he's being honest.
It's just that he's never told anyone about Hadriana before.]
. . . it's all right, Astarion.
[No, it's not. He doesn't know why he says it, except that he can't bear to not acknowledge that tonal shift. His fingers slide against the dirt, blindly seeking out a small rock so he can fidget with it as they speak.]
I hated her.
[Spat out. Forced out, and he does not know why his heart thunders in his chest.]
More, sometimes, than I hated Danarius. [At least the magister occasionally praised him.] She hounded my sleep, salted my food, used me as a toy, set me up to be humiliated over and over in front of important guests or visiting dignitaries— and if Danarius was displeased by my performance, all the better. And if I told Danarius, she would find a way to punish me. And if I didn't, he would punish me.
And it never ended. She had only been an apprentice a year before Danarius turned me into his bodyguard. And from the start to the very end, she never ceased her gnawing jealousy, nor her spiteful torment.
[Another pause. Another hesitation, and now his fingers work faster, rubbing at the rock with distracted motions.]
The first time she used me . . . it was not long after my first time with Danarius. I could not have been more than twenty. And she . . . she delighted in trying to earn a reaction. She thrilled when I moaned, and took such savage glee out of fitting herself atop me. And I didn't know . . .
[Gods help him, he barely knew who he was. He had no context for anything, never mind something so monumental as sex. All he'd known was that he was miserable even as his body responded, reacted to a heated palm coated with oil and a soft voice crooning Tevene in his ear . . . little wolf, maybe I won't even let you remember this. Maybe this isn't even our true first time . . . look at how well your body responds to me, after all.]
I did not know anything about sex but what they two taught me.
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Little more than a child. Barely a blink of a thing, snared between two covetous grips (and he knows about the differences in ages between worlds, but that hardly changes the fact that Leto was so young— add to it having all of his memories wiped clean, and oh, it's savagery fit for Cazador's table:) taking a pretty young thing and seeing just what happens when you unmake it in your name. Taunt and tease it. Rile it and watch it smolder unaware.
And if it fails in one way or another, you simply try again.
And again.
And again.
He fills his throat fill with heat that stings like blackened bile. Impotent and outdated, but thick within the hollow of his throat.]
They tortured you. [It wasn't about sex; Astarion's fucked enough shortsighted sycophants in his time to pinpoint the outline of those aimless footprints. If it had been about sensation alone in utter control, the rutting would've been the point: punctuation played out in penetration or gulping adoration— less than none care spared for the thing they used to that end. A thing to be used and put away, not crooning about his responses or lack thereof when he's been set up just to fail. The fall the thing that brings them glee; the glory that he can't say no.
They tore him to ribbons just to lie and call it fucking.]
Both of them.
[Did Isabela know about this?
When she took him to bed, that is.
On some level, Astarion thinks she must've. But intuition is still a different beast than insight: watching a beaten thing flinch at the first sign of an outstretched hand isn't the same thing as knowing what happened. If she was perceptive enough to know how to dance with him when he scarcely knew how to suck in breath without being told, or the shape of his body beneath the surface of his skin, then she wouldn't need words or truths; he'd be an open book comprised of a slim scattering of bent pages.
And in a way Astarion supposes it doesn't matter. What she taught Leto was enough to bring him back from that nightmare through the gentle rules of her splayed fingertips. There'd be no now if not for then— her then, that is.
Still, though, it's all a mess. Still, he can't stop himself from wading through the past when he asks:]
How long was it like that? Your captivity, not—
[Hells, Astarion.]
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He never thought of it like that. Torment, perhaps, and blatant abuse, oh, yes. He has never thought fondly of it. But to frame it as torture adds a heavier connotation to it, sharper and more blatant than his own half-formed thoughts. Torture to take a captive thing and render him into little more than a toy; torture to gleefully watch his reactions, and it doesn't matter whether it was jealous or twisted desire that prompted it, for it was hellish all the same.
Torture, I was tortured, and he tries it on silently, knowing even as he does that it won't stick. Not right now. Later, but not now. And maybe some part of him knows that from the start, for his next thought is so much needier.
I wish you were here.
It springs to the forefront of his mind without warning, lonely and soft. I wish you were here, I wish I was home, curled up tightly together in their coffin as Leto whispers these things in the dark. It isn't more manageable there, not really— but it feels as though it is. As if they might leave Hadriana and Danarius and all their horrors there in the shadows, with searing daylight acting as deterrent for the ghosts of the past.
But he isn't. And he's not. And he is too old to say such things aloud, no matter that he's sure Astarion feels them too. The walls creep up regardless, claustrophobic and nauseating, and his knuckles go white as he grips that rock—
And then Astarion speaks again.]
Ten years.
[More or less. And it helps, you know, to have that prompt. Better a question than bleating shows of dismay or pity (and Astarion would never, but still).]
I suspect I was eighteen when I competed in that tournament. And it was ten years of that before the Qunari attacked. [Twenty-eight. And then:] A few years on the run, and then seven in Kirkwall. Three or four more before I returned . . .
[So he was nearly forty when he and Astarion met. Or maybe he was older, or younger— he'll never know, and he's long since tormenting himself over it. At least it matters less here, when soon enough he'll count his age with three digits instead of two.
Ah. But he's deflecting.]
Ten years of enslavement. Of that . . . of torture. I grew better at evading Hadriana's grasp, and returning her torments in such a way that she could not prove it was me.
[But it was so petty. So pathetic. So pointless. He'd get her to humiliate herself in front of a group of Danarius' friends— and then wait with nauseating dread for the next torment she'd enact.]
She stopped bedding me after the first few years. Her hatred had solidified by then, as time passed and Danarius refused to allow her to graduate. But it was always a risk.
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That's all he hears, though there's endless more within the margins. And no, it's never been a competition (how could it be? Astarion feels the muscle and marrow beneath his skin sting with phantom slights from memories he's never had, only heard transcribed); the captive sound of Leto muttering softly that two hundred years is worse— unfathomably worse (and true, it is always remarkable to survive what seems impossible, noting it as just another horror surpassed now that the worst of it is done: 'heading out to the store this afternoon'; I was flayed alive so many times I've lost count. 'Come to bed, it's too damned cold'; I spent ages shut away like unwanted silver for daring to smile at the wrong time)— still lodged firmly in his mind. Refusing to go away no matter how he tries or what he urges.
But that isn't how it works.
Just as it was before: there's nothing to compare.
Astarion's gut won't settle in its agonized thrashing just because he swallows down a number cut from two digits rather than three. It knows as well as he does what ten years for a whelp with no memories and no freedom had to look like— fretting in a cage cut from heavy collars, merciless punishments, and the counterbalance of honeyed words and slower touches meant to make even hell seem bearable when he swears he can't take more. You lose track of time, like that. You lose track of yourself, too. Ten years of agony is more than half a waking lifetime given the age Leto guessed at. More, with so many memories stolen, no— strewth, no: there's nothing to compare except that they had lives of their own, once. Ripped from them like so much else.
Reduce it all, and pain is pain.
And everything else is just a drop against its leverage.]
I stand corrected. [About a lot of things— but about her most of all.]
You got your fangs into her long before she took her last. [He's proud of that one note. Cold breath slipping light across his lips underneath each ceding exhale, one conversational foot figuratively planted before the next. Small as a sliver of glass, it cuts its way throughout his tone regardless— even if it'd be easier to show that sense of predatory praise through a bumping push of his nose against a narrow jaw or risen cheekbone. Through the slide of his claws in moonlit hair, swearing that he's safe. And that he did well.
(Truth be told, Astarion wishes he was there.
In daylight, that is. Nestled just at Leto's side. Two months into elevated change and his sharper teeth still feel so wrong against each other, and the emptiness of his coffin's starting to feel like imprisonment all over again— or maybe that's just the fault of current conversation.
Blood is intoxicating. Power: exhilarating.
He needs both to survive. To keep them safe where all else could so easily fail and take them right back to said years of bloodsoaked pleas drooled out over folded knees. But sometimes underneath all that secured glory, he feels so much less himself. The weaknesses. The drawbacks. The endless, unslaked urges blotting out the edges of his mien. Call him weak (he'd be the first in line to lever it against himself), but he misses sunlight at his lover's side. He misses grabbing hold of vulnerable flesh without forcing an eternity's worth of delicacy into his own touch, roughly imitating trying to grasp ancient parchment without puncture. That as the weeks roll on, more and more and more he misses—
Ah.
Well.
That's not the conversation, is it?)
Funny how everything compounds when so much scar tissue bears down.]
I won't say that I'm glad it was only your master's touch that you had to endure right to the end, but....
[His lips thin; it comes across as the smallest sigh.]
I know what a difference it makes.
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