[He says it carefully after a few moments of thought. You're welcome sounds trite, and it's my pleasure is true, but equally sticky. It's nothing is a falsehood and a sour one, for it isn't nothing. Fenris knows the weight of what he offers. He can hear in the fragile tone Astarion's voice has taken. The sharp difference from the man of before, flirtatious and vivacious, oh darling that's not fair, oh, darling, what a difference.
He had spoken before to Astarion, Rifter. A man freed from his past, forcibly brought into a new world and hungry to delve into it. He likes that man, Fenris realizes, but that man is but one facet of the whole. Now, Fenris thinks, and drags the wet cloth against his shoulder, now he speaks to Astarion the slave. A creature just as messy as Fenris himself, personality and instincts not naturally developed, but cobbled and stitched together as best they could, stolen moments eked out despite their masters' best efforts.
He wonders, faintly, if Astarion knows what his favorite food is. If he knows what hobbies he enjoys, or what music best pleases his ear. Little things, basic things, and oh, it's easy to point to all the horrors of slavery, but it's the mundane things stolen away that overwhelm him after all these years.
Has he ever met anyone who understood that?
It doesn't take long to clean out the wound. They both of them might do well to bandage their wounds later, but nor will they be actively bleeding. With a little hum he draws the fabric back, setting it on the ledge, tugging at Astarion's shirt to cover him up once more.]
We could hunt slavers.
[He says it a bit more normally. An easy way to move past the emotion of the moment, for all that he feels as though his skin is electrified, buzzing with this realization.]
Fitting, for tonight. But if Kirkwall has not changed too much these past few years, there are always gangs stalking the streets. There's good coin to be made from killing them.
[It’s a relief, those words. Hearing it at last from someone other than himself and his own ceaselessly feigned bravado. Understanding, unforced under the weight of Fenris' stare, and it sticks beneath his ribs like held breath. Like the pang of being seen for the first time out of Cazador's shadow, pulsebeat faint as it fumbles.
That subsequent segue from ancient aches to fresher opportunity finding its footing with such ease, and Astarion's expression brightens within its span; weariness peeling away like paint.
The last sip of wine offered in rapidly forgotten gratitude— which isn’t erased so much as pressed to the side for a little while, making room for Astarion, the Rifter once more.]
The latter, I think. [Because he needs coin. Always. And not just for petty vanity.
A truth that now— he’s certain— needs no explanation between them.] Though I do wonder.
Do they try to cheat you out of a proper bounty as much as they cheat me?
No— or at least, they did not used to. But that, at least, I had little to do with. Hawke was well known in these parts, and few wished to offend the Champion— nor any of her friends.
[He shrugs one shoulder. And ah, a mercy: it's almost easy to say was instead of is when it comes to his fallen friend. Fenris leans back, resting his weight on one hand, glancing out at the city with a little frown.]
I do not know if that reputation will hold. Unlikely, but perhaps. But I suspect I can persuade them if they attempt to cheat us both. My claymore is not just for show, and fortunately, most people realize that.
[Although, actually . . .]
How much protection does Riftwatch afford?
[Because it was one thing when he had Hawke's reputation and Aveline's position as Captain of the Guard to protect him. He had not relied on them too often, but still, it was a safeguard against all the typical elvish prejudice rife in Kirkwall.]
Do they leave us to fend for ourselves, or offer their weight as protection?
There is something to be said for anyone recognizably aligned with Riftwatch when it comes to larger incidents. Political mostly. Not the sort of work for you and I. [Though who can really say if that'll prove true overall, given the sort of ties Fenris nursed along in the past. Even he might get roped into negotiations here or there somewhere along the way, Astarion supposes.]
Sometimes in dealings with refugees there’s a sliver of gratitude to be found, if you value the opinions of the poor. [Astarion, for the record, does not.]
But otherwise— no. Outside the Gallows, we’re just pretty faces amongst an overly bitter crowd: the guards here in Kirkwall won’t look the other way if you start making too much trouble; locals might spit on you as much as they’ll let you pass by unbothered, depending on the time of day. No discounts, no local favors, and—
Well. Always better to err on the side of caution, especially when you’re sent abroad on missions.
We’re not the Inquisition, from what I've gathered: we’re misfits floating our efforts between countries infinitely larger than our own collective, and we don’t have the weight of any Maker behind us.
[His exhale is low. Stare drifting from the sharp lines of Fenris’ profile out towards the city itself.
He doesn't need to ask after it to feel the tinge of discomfort dwelling there.]
People do seem to forget their chosen champions all too quickly. Ungrateful things that they are.
Ungrateful, but at least typical. I expected no better.
[He's had the past few years to grow used to being treated like an elf instead of the odd semi-human privileged status being Hawke's friend provided. The sneers, the stares, the comments . . . people think twice when they see his sword and his don't-fuck-with-me stare, but ah, he ought to be a little more careful.
His mouth is a thin line. He did his mourning years ago, but still, it hurts. He suspects it will always hurt a little. ]
They put a statue up for her, once. After she defeated the Arishok. I have not checked to see if it remains.
[He'll be angry if it hasn't and hurt if it has, so there's no point in going to see. And there's really no reason to be saying all this, except that he's drunk and high and the filter from brain to mouth is all but erased. But oh, speaking of her reminds him, and he glances over at Astarion.]
She was the first to kill him. Corypheus. We were there when he first awoke. And I have no doubt she thought herself responsible for all the horrors that he has caused.
[The first, he says, and something about hearing it again— said with such decisive certainty— eases off a little of the ever-nagging paranoia that boils in the farthest reaches of Astarion’s own mind.
But...
First awoke sounds different than now, he thinks, with all of Tevinter at Corypheus' side and an army that grows by the day— tainted with vanity and bloody lyrium alike.
His lips thin into a flattened line; he isn’t looking at Fenris anymore.]
[Well, what about Fenris? It's a fair question, and he gives it the thought it deserves. Does he blame Hawke? But no, he knows the answer already.]
I think she had extraordinarily bad luck. And I think her father was a victim of the Wardens.
[He glances over, meeting Astarion's eyes.]
She did nothing wrong. I will not say she was blameless in all things, for that is not true. Her faults were numerous. But in the matter of Corypheus . . .
[A short exhale.]
Swear you will keep this to yourself. I will not have her life dissembled for gossip and idle curiosity.
[Knowledge is a valuable thing. Astarion’s hoarded it from the moment he first set foot in this world, clutching every minuscule shred of it to his chest, tucking it away up his sleeve for a moment where it might prove either protective or advantageous.
This? Personal as it is, isn’t any different. Whether it comes today or tomorrow, a moment of opportunity will inevitably worm its way in, and he'll know precisely how to play this tattered little card: for Riftwatch, for a mission, for an exceedingly dull soirée in need of a point of interest as distraction— or even in dealing with Corypheus’ own devoted lackeys, their unshakable faith in need of rattling.
He ought to keep it. Just like all the rest. Deep down, he knows he should.
After all, what has kindness ever gotten him? An anchor round his neck rather than anything either useful or freeing. Risk at perpetual cost.
But he sees that look on Fenris’ face. The sincerity clinging to stony contours, eyes fixed in their emerald stare, clinging to the notion that Astarion's meant to be trusted.]
Mmph. [A breathy sort of dismissal, a little too much air that hums in a half-sigh through his nose.
[In a way, he appreciates the reluctance. He'd hesitate over something earnestly promised so swiftly, no of course I shan't Fenris you're too dear to me, please. Information has power, and he can well understand why Astarion would be reluctant to promise such a thing.
But so many people have laid claim to Hawke's life. They talk of her as a hero, a champion, a menace, an inciter, a villain to blame or a hero to revere . . . but it's the little things Fenris remembers most. The crack in her voice as she'd sobbed out pleas for her mother's corpse not to leave her. The reckless glint in her eye as she'd bait templars, smugly pushing them for no other reason than she felt it was the least they deserves. The way she had once found a book for Fenris, I thought you would appreciate it, it's about Shartan— and, when he had confessed his illiteracy, her aid in teaching him.
He misses her so much it aches sometimes.]
Years ago, the Wardens, as far as I can understand it, attempted to renew the seals that kept Corypheus bound with blood magic. Specifically, the blood of Malcolm Hawke, an apostate. I believe it was involuntary, but . . . regardless, it was his blood that kept the magister away. Well and good, but . . .
[Well. Blood magic never, ever ends well. There are a thousand reasons why, and admittedly, this is one of the more mundane ways it could backfire, but still. Blood magic! It sucks! Fenris has told people that from day one!]
There was a warden. A fool. I suppose at one point her intentions were honorable: she thought she could use Corypheus to wipe out the darkspawn, perhaps. Some fool idea like that. It did not take long for her to be corrupted by his influence, subtle though I assume it was. But because it was the blood of the Hawke that had sealed him, it was only that which could free him. And since the man had long since died, she needed as close a substitute as she could get.
She tricked Hawke and a few of us into his prison, where only breaking the blood seals would set us free.
[A deep inhale— and then, a wry aside:]
That was the second time I have been trapped underground thanks to her. I did not care for that aspect of our friendship.
In any case. She had little choice but to free him. And when he awoke . . .
[Hm.]
He was malformed. Confused. Have you ever seen him? He is more demon than man, warped beyond compare. [He gestures vaguely in the air.] But he knew enough to demand we drop to our knees, rattus and dwarves and lesser beings that we were. He prayed to Dumat and spoke of storming the Golden City . . .
[And Fenris believes him, he really does. He absolutely believes that a group of magisters would get it in their heads to challenge the Maker, and as for the Maker himself . . . well. It's complicated, but . . . anyway, the point is: he believes Corypheus.]
And, when we did not answer and scrape and capitulate immediately, his rage grew. He screamed for his golden throne and decided he would slaughter us before he attempted to retake it. And we, not wishing to die, fought back.
[Silence for a precious few seconds.]
It was a hard fight. Harder than any I have ever fought in before. But he fell to blades and magic, just as any creature will. I saw his corpse fall. I watched her dismember him. And yet still, he rose again, and I do not know how.
[So. With all that being said . . .]
It was not her fault. It was never her fault. But she blamed herself, I have no doubt, and I do not need others agreeing with her memory.
[Astarion’s embittered scowl is subconscious more than anything active; he doesn’t do it for show, or to provide Fenris with a middling amount of comfort.] In Tantervale, just after his pet dragon erased the city in its entirety, I was sent to track the thing down. Figure out where it— and the rest of Tevinter’s army— was coming from.
I chased them to a hidden fortress in the Silent Plains. And I saw him there, commanding his misshapen army. More flesh than man, if there was ever anything human underneath before it went all wrong.
It baffles me still, you know. [Offends him in the most unsettling ways, elbows shifting across his knees as he leans forward over chalky stone.]
How all it’s taken for so many to slither up to his side is the empty, grotesque promise of glory.
[By which Astarion means:]
How can anyone deify something so....wrong?
[Ugly. He means ugly.
But that’s not the point of their conversation:] One does wonder if someone went through the miserable effort of reviving him after you— collective you— and she put him down. [And now she’s gone. Which is...]
[He glances over, equal parts intrigued and fascinated to hear that, though if pressed he couldn't say why. Is it the thought of Astarion in the field, or simply the proof that this organization does something tangibly important? Or both, maybe, but either way, he notes it down and marks it in his head for a later conversation.
(Strange, too, to know where he was at the time, for he recalls Tantervale's destruction. He'd been in the midst of information gathering, stalking a small group of slavers as they'd made their way towards the destruction, hoping to find victims out of refugees).]
Of course he is. [Fenris scoffs.] The delusional do not give up their power so easily.
[When his lip peels back in immediate distaste, it does him the benefit of revealing those overlong canines in full, right up to their seething gumline.]
The man looks like an abomination turned inside out. As though your Maker thought to himself in an overwhelming fit of stupidity: 'no no— I need something more hideous to really flesh out Thedas' already misconstructed bestiary' [There's such an emphasis on the word flesh there, gloved fingers twisting themselves into a closed fist as they cut through the air just in front of Astarion's collarbone. A sort of stand-in for something far more visceral in nature, really.] as if regular old darkspawn aren't good enough already.
Or...awful enough.
[Either way.]
I mean, all I'm saying is that if he were a god, you'd think he could do something about that literally god-awful face of his. [Another wave of his hand, open-palmed this time, passing directly across the entirety of his own profile before he turns up his nose with a not-so-subtle snort.] Eugh.
[Interesting, that of all things, that's Astarion's objection. Not the corruption nor the cruelty, nor even in the insanity of his plans, but his looks. It's not that deep, he won't read too far into it, but it strikes at him, as they sit there and he notes those sharp, sharp teeth.]
I suppose people cling to whatever scraps of hope they can find. And if they believe his tales of the Maker's throne being empty . . . people will worship anything that promises salvation. Or, perhaps, relief.
[He shrugs. He can understand it. Not condone it, but understand it. In his experience, what people want more than anything is stability. For tomorrow to be the same as today, so long as it is not wholly intolerable, and they'll cheer for anyone who promises it.]
I wonder how many converts of his are only mouthing along, more worried about their lives than their eternal salvation.
[Another shrug, but he rises to his feet. Turns, glancing out at the city before focusing down on the other elf.]
In the end, it matters little. They will worship him or not, but it does not change the fact he is no god. Just a mutilated magister, as power-grubbing and pathetic as the rest.
[And now Fenris really want to go hunt down some gangs. He tips his head, indicating the streets, and wonders at how his heart feels a little lighter. Not joyful, exactly, but . . . it was pleasing to speak of Hawke to someone who was inclined to listen. Who would hear her for what she was: a person, not a hero nor a villain.]
Come. Let us earn some coin.
[It's remarkable how quickly trouble finds them. It's a group of harbor rats from the docks, stupid and thuggish, eager for a quick way to let off steam. Swaggering and leering, surrounding them neatly, making the sort of stupid jokes thugs make when they believe they're the cat and not the mouse. So clearly thinking that two elves will make such easy prey. It's that which offends him most, he remarks to Astarion later, the two of them just covered in blood and all the identifiers they need to in order to get their reward safely stuffed in their pockets. The inherent assumption that just because they're elves, they'll be meek. Quiet. Pathetic, he says, and he does not mean for so much derision to color his tone, but he cannot help it.
He hates being lumped in with other elves.
They stagger back home— no. They stagger back to Astarion's home, for a bet is a bet, and really, Fenris is exhausted enough not to offer any resistance. He strips off his armor and shirt, curling beneath a spare comforter clad in breeches and little else. Not ideal, perhaps, but more comfortable than the ground, and he's tired enough to take what he can get. He falls asleep almost instantly, sprawled on his stomach and his dreams blissfully blank.
Not so for his companion, it seems.
He's always been a light sleeper; likely always will be, for those who don't wake up in time to meet trouble seldom survive it. The first whimper sounds and his hand is shooting out for his sword; Fenris jerks up, rising to his feet, head snapping as he tries to identify the trouble. A break-in? A robbery? Revenge from earlier tonight? What—
And then there's another cry, limbs fitfully tossing beneath the sheets. A face contorted with pain and fear, and Fenris exhales sharply, realizing what's happening. A nightmare.]
Astarion.
[No. He hesitates, then leans over him, one hand roughly shaking his shoulder. How deep in the Fade is he? He cannot guess what he is dreaming of, but perhaps he knows the shape. Danarius has been dead for years and yet still he haunts Fenris, his dreams forcing him back into enslavement, iron collars and the dead certainty that his freedom had only ever been a dream . . .]
[The evening goes in sections, like the chapters of a book:
‘You were right, you know.’ He adds, somewhere before they depart. ‘If you were trapped like that, it wasn’t her fault. Being used doesn't make anyone into a monster.’
A flash of glinting canines before he amends:
‘Not that it matters what I think.’
Snap forward in time, and it’s the same self-assured flash of teeth Astarion gives in the tentative seconds after they’re surrounded, like an unassuming beast suddenly flaring venomous barbs. Atmospheric tenor gone blissfully wrong under the combined crack of both it and the pervasive scent of fresh ozone. How Astarion lives for moments like these, adrenaline soaring as sweetly in his veins as his own untamed malice.
The wine-rich vibrancy of spilled blood dots the lines of their split clothes, colder now. Coin clinks against their palms. They laugh somewhere along the way, and the reason for it doesn't quite stick in the back of Astarion's mind when he shoves open the heavy door to his home with a buckled shoulder fit tight against its span, only that it happens. That they have the luxury of sharing it.
There’s a bowl-sized basin by the hearth meant for washing, and he lends it to Fenris first. And when he fits himself by the fire he does try not to stare—
Maybe, depending on Fenris’ mood or sight or sense of wearied awareness at that point in time, he succeeds.
It doesn’t much matter.
What matters is that Fenris agrees to stay. Safe in shallow numbers. Door locked and stony walls secure, Astarion left awake for a little while longer in the simple ensemble he always slumbers in (loose shirt, thin slacks; the illusion of resting nude in gleaming finery is only ever just that: something worked up only when he’s entertaining here or in the Gallows, as much a fantasy as anything else so eagerly offered) trading glances out the window— and towards Fenris’ dozing form where it's heaped beneath thick covers, a lone sentry for a threat that never comes.
Danger, though, finds him regardless.
He never sleeps well. And tonight, with the wick of all prior inebriation run low, the satchet Cole had gifted him fails in its task. His fingers curl under the weight of his subconscious, clawing fitfully at his own chest, the process illuminated sickly green from the shard tucked against his palm. His breathing stutters, spit-flecked and wild. His teeth snap in pitifully warding patterns, as if there were anything to be done to stop what assails him in sleep—
Red eyes. Hectoring commands still stitched into his bones, impossible to defy.
A hand pressed against his shoulder—
And he reels from it. Not in dreams, but reality: choking out a startled bark as he snaps upright and twists to fit his back against the wall just beside his bed, hollow eyes wide and wet and flickering with fear. His palms brace across stone, numb from the knuckles down. There’s blood on his lips.
It’s only his, he realizes, sluggish and uprooted.
He’d bitten his own tongue somewhere along the way, a narrow sting tucked across its leftmost edge.
But the sight that comes belatedly into focus isn’t the one he’d dreamed of. And it takes him longer than it should to map the difference between reality and its hazy antithesis. Fenris can’t be here? —no, Fenris is here. They’d spent the evening together. He chose to stay.
Someone he trusts, yes. But not someone he’d want seeing him like this, fragile as cracked glass, cut entirely from the tattered cloth of his own horrific past.
Hells.
The sheets are tangled tight around his ankles thanks to his own thrashing retreat. It aches, aside from making the matter of trying to shift away from where he’s curled against the wall all the more difficult. And bloody awkward. Swallowing thick in his throat only to taste the bitter tang of bile as it mingles with iron.]
...shit, I...
[Breathless. Nauseated. His heart panging painfully in his chest. His fingers tremble.
He masks it by tucking them against his shirt, already drawing away from dusty stone by narrow degrees.
[He jerks back as Astarion does, but whereas the other man scrambles and tries desperately to get away, Fenris freezes. No sudden movements, no lurching hand reaching, no. Fenris goes still, so that Astarion can see for himself that nothing is trying to trap him.
It could have gone worse, he thinks, in those breathless few seconds as they stare at one another, hearts thudding and panic thick in the air. There are a thousand ways this could have gone worse. Fenris has woken screaming from nightmares before; he has woken savagely, knife in hand, desperately stabbing at phantom shadows. So yes, on the whole, a bitten tongue and sweat-soaked tangled sheets are the least of their problems.
But there is something inherently awful about being witnessed. That, Fenris cannot help.]
There's no one here but you and I.
[Calm. Not patronizingly soft, no, but simply a statement of fact. The tension in the room eases, and so he sits slowly on the mattress, his eyes locked on Astarion all the while.]
He is not here.
[Is his master a man? Ah, but it doesn't matter, not really. It's the statement of fact that counts more than the details. And maybe he's off-base, maybe he's dreaming of some other horror, but . . . well. Former slave, and Fenris suspects they all of them are haunted by the same ghosts.]
He’s right, Fenris, mouthing steady reassurance as he sinks down against the mattress, and for a moment that too causes Astarion’s rabbiting pulse to leap; the snap snap snap of turning gears in his head stuck fast against the details, searching for every last gap in offered comfort.
Fenris doesn’t know Cazador. Astarion hadn’t mentioned him directly beyond title alone— how does he know to call him him? Why is he edging in closer? And for a moment the past is too near to be anything but tangible truth: he’s being duped. Played for a fool yet again. Cazador’s whispered in his ear to dream of something sweeter than his cuffing servitude, and fool that he is, he has, and he’ll bleed for the audacity of it later.
How is Fenris here. Why did he ever come back. Stupid fool of a spawn, not to see it sooner—
But his tongue aches.
His blood tastes of more than ash.
Compressed like a cornered thing, paranoia settles slow as shifting silt alongside the sweat-soaked contours of his silhouette. He heaves another shoddy exhale, and wipes the back of his knuckles once across his eyes.
Salt stings their edges.]
For now. [It’s a stupid laugh of a thing. Low and embittered, paper thin.] So long as the rifts don't opt to do him any favors.
[He agrees, because this isn't the time to play at heroics. The truth is he has no idea what Astarion has suffered. Indeed, he has little idea of where he even came from, save that it's somewhere that isn't Thedas. Who knows what slavery has entailed? I did better on my back than on my heels, Astarion had hinted, but though Fenris knows exactly what he means . . . no, he does not know enough, not yet.
So he will not make the fool's mistake of offering false assurance. That's the right way to a panic attack. Untangling Astarion's ankles, Fenris' hands drop, his fingers gone slack in the sheets and resettling on his thighs. Easy to see, easy to keep track of.]
But for now, the door is bolted. No one has entered. And I am here, with my sword and my lyrium, if that should change.
[His eyes flick down for a moment, dipping away, and if he notices any tears, he does not mention them. Astarion looks like a beaten dog right now: shivering in terror, muscles locked up, knowing deep down in his bones that any move he makes will be the wrong one. Sometimes there is nothing that will stop your dominus from punishing you, he knows, he remembers, but it's one thing to recall his own terror and another to see it painted so starkly before him.
Gently, he offers Astarion a hand, his palm upturned. Not a pointed gesture, but a quiet one, easily ignored if Astarion should wish.]
He has not come to drag you back, Astarion. Not tonight.
[Not while I breathe, he thinks, and startles himself with how true it is.]
[Fenris is so gentle. Lyrium-lined fingers cautious when they unravel the mess of worn sheeting that still bears tears here and there from its former life outside the pale elf’s care: like so much else that populates Astarion’s flat, it’s all second-hand. Stolen or dug up from the trash heaps that merchants discard in the shadow of dockside scaffolding, too damaged to count as exceedingly fine or noticeably salvagable.
He’s fought tooth and nail for every scrap of it, on his own. Proudly. But...
Red eyes lift nominally, watching the way Fenris sets his hands openly across his thighs. Slightly splayed to prove there’s nothing held within them. No ill will. No deceit. And Astarion, disentangled by kindness alone, takes the opportunity to fold his legs properly. Painlessly. His spine is still set against the wall, but he hunches forward through his shoulders instead, his neck slung so unspeakably low: every bit the wounded animal with its guard only tentatively withered under the tempting sway of won trust.
Not tonight, Fenris says, and the crippled look that rises to meet it is far more transparent than the snow-lined panes that bracket Astarion’s bed.
Oh, how much he wants that to be true.
(Astarion is so gentle. Narrow fingers cautious when they strain, fearfully, to press against the pads of Fenris' own.)]
...Two hundred years. That’s how long I was leashed to his side.
[He doesn’t say it to weep. Doesn’t want to scrounge around for sympathy that won’t do either of them any good. Only to illustrate the difference between two centuries of enslavement...and six months of freedom.
Six months.
It’s nothing.
And it's everything.]
My beloved master, Cazador. [The word beloved cloying across his tongue, laced with vitriol. He lifts his opposite hand, gesturing in turn to the stark crimson of his irises; his jagged, inhuman teeth.] The one who cursed me the night he stole my blood, and left me with these eyes— these fangs.
[Two hundred years, and honestly, it takes a moment for Fenris to understand what that means. It's an impossibility, a fate so horrifying he cannot, will not comprehend it at first. Two hundred years, two centuries, and his fingertips spasm against Astarion's own, his eyes going wide as he absorbs that.
No wonder he has nightmares. No wonder he stares at Fenris like that, terrified and longing all at once, an animal who refuses to believe that the cage door has finally been propped open for good. How could he? How could he believe in anything good happening, when for so long there was nothing but misery and servitude? The color has drained from his face, his expression for one moment starkly horrified.
Did you ever think about killing yourself? Anders had once asked him. No, he had replied, and that was true enough, but the real answer was that such a thing was not fathomable. Fish don't dream of flying. Escape was such an impossibility that to even contemplate it was too much to bear. People who have never felt that collar, that crushing weight, the unbearable hopelessness of days turning into weeks, into months, into years of abuse and false praise, being broken and reconditions . . . they imagine a prison. They think of a free man suddenly jailed, full of spirit and hope that surely wouldn't be crushed, even if it was suppressed.
They do not understand how much it hurts to hope. How, when you have been denied everything and your entire world has become dependent on upon the moods and whims of one impossibly powerful man, it's so much easier to bow your head and give in.
(He hates himself for it. He despises his own compliancy, and so lashes out all the more strongly when he sees it mirrored in the elves that surround them, flinching from the sight of a human, taking abuse they should not tolerate. He hates it so much, and yet he understands it so well in the same breath).
Two hundred years, Fenris thinks. And then, with a very different inflection, thinks it again. Two centuries, and still, here Astarion sits. Not crazed or cringing, whimpering for Cazador to return and guide him. Two hundred years of abuse, and still, he is his own man. He has a mind of his own. Preferences and habits, and look how has flourished under freedom.
It's humbling. Fenris can admit that to himself.]
And yet here you sit nonetheless.
[It's said firmly, iron-clad determination in those six words. A stabilizing anchor that Astarion can cling to in wake of the crashing tide of memories. Here, now, he is free. Here, now, Cazador is in another world, the door is locked, their chains are broken. Fenris inches his fingers forward, hooking them gently around Astarion's in something a little less than holding hands.]
You dreamt you were bound once more.
[It isn't a question.]
. . . I have had nightmares where I dreamt the same. That all my freedom was an illusion, and all that I had gained slipped like sand between my fingers. That I was nothing more, would never be more, than the dog he had raised me to be.
[He hesitates.]
I will not ask you to recount it, if it is too difficult. But I would listen, if you wished to speak of it. Of him.
[Those words, so far from brittle assurances, finally lift the sunken line of Astarion's stare.
He talks about it often, his past. Colored by the shades of his own mood: sometimes bitterly, sometimes morosely or entirely tranquil— most often it’s like ripping off a bandage, the way he drags it rapidly to light. Quick to horrify whoever’s beside him with a wicked laugh, if they believe him. Like defining all the little things that could cut if they're reached for.
Don’t come too close, or leave me be or, at times.... don’t go.
But now he feels the solid weight of fingertips wrapped around his own, the way the mattress tilts itself under pressure towards where Fenris sits, and in forcing one dread back on its heels, another starts to coalesce, inch by crawling inch.
Astarion wasn’t lying when he said there were some things they’d never discussed. Shallow truths he can always paint in a better light (better, as if glossing over bits and pieces changes the story in any real capacity), but confessing it all...what if Fenris recoils? What if he’s disgusted? Not by what Astarion’s endured, only by what he is.
What if those fingers yank themselves away— and in response to that thought, Astarion’s own tighten, trying to cling of their own volition; he’s forgotten sparing Fenris the pain of touch, too greedy in wanting him near.]
It...
[He should hear it. He wants him to as much as he dreads it.
Just once.
Just once, maybe he should know it all.
....and that means starting from the beginning.]
Vampirism is an affliction that doesn’t exist in Thedas, [Astarion’s learned that well enough by now.] but you should know I wasn’t always like this.
[And maybe that’s obvious despite being a Rifter; he’s learned some people see him as an elf with strange teeth more than they think of him as something else entirely, a kind of mirror puzzle that reflects whatever seems most familiar.]
The night I became his, I’d been attacked. Not all that different from tonight, I suppose, only I was weaker, then. A lone elf, fending off a pack of humans— only to wind up bleeding to death in the street, staring down my own finality, second by passing, terrible second.
Before I knew what was happening, he was there at my side. [It lingers in his memory when so much else has faded into nothing: the sight of Cazador bathed in moonlight, dark as night and equally alluring.] He chased them off, took me into his arms, and offered to save my life— the only condition being that I agreed to become a vampire, like him.
And what choice was there, really? I was dying....and he was beautiful. Not quite like anything you’ve ever seen. Powerful beyond measure, able to pour himself right from shadow as if it belonged to him. Indescribably ancient.
You wouldn’t be a fool to look at him and think he was something else entirely.
[Who wouldn’t choose that over death? Who wouldn’t bare their throat if asked?] But while vampires— true vampires: immortal, blood-drinking, all-powerful creatures capable of ruling the very night itself— spread their curse by taking in the blood of a mortal to its last drop, the catch is that after you’ve been bitten, you need to drink their blood in return.
[There might not be a need to say what comes next; Astarion does anyway.]
Cazador never intended to let that happen, of course.
Because the second my blood was on his lips, I changed— not into a vampire, but instead into a vampire spawn: an unwitting slave to its sire's every whim, able to think but not to refuse. An eternally living puppet. Cazador only ever needed to speak, and my body would obey.
Always.
[His laugh isn't a laugh. The crease between his brows sharp enough to cut for how it pinches.] And he was so endlessly cruel.
Whatever memories existed of my life before him, I lost them— all of them— to his obscene torture. To the monstrosity he inflicted. I fetched his meals, and oh, he was so very particular about the sort of well-bred creatures he wished to dine on. The kind that had to be lured to him by hand, alive and so dearly enamored that they never suspected a thing.
[Astarion's stare drops once more, lost beneath the heavy hang of dark lashes, tracing the outline of pale blue lyrium in the dark.]
For two lifetimes I bled for him, begged for him, dreamt of him— knowing I could never escape his shadow, whimpering and weeping senselessly in the dark for salvation that never came.
[No dashing heroes, no sympathetic gods. No mercy.]
Not the grip on his hand, although yes, that too, and Fenris is grateful for the physical pain. It keeps him grounded, keeps him present through this tale, and he does not mind it. But it hurts to hear, a mixture of selfish reflection and aching empathy that wrings at his heart. He aches with it, the weight of it settling on his shoulders, a hollow pit opening in the space behind his chest as he listens. The bitter irony of having your life saved just to enter into a special kind of hell; the unrelenting, unending horror of having spent two centuries being tortured, tormented, put through the worst kind of agony only to be revived again and again and again . . .
Did you ever want to kill yourself? Anders whispers in the back of his mind, and now, finally, Fenris can understand the sentiment.
The enormity of all that Astarion confesses towers over him. There is no comforting, no combination of words that will soothe these savage wounds. He cannot fix this, for the fact of the matter is that there is no fixing it. It happened. It will always have happened. Fenris could no more change that than he could fly.
So what does he say instead? How does he begin to understand this?
Start with the similarities.
He knows what it is to feel that terrible, false love for one's master. To be so helpless (and to seethe on it later, despising yourself for your foolishness) that you look to the worst person in the world for salvation. He knows what it is to learn how to bend and break yourself in order to fit their whims; he knows what it is, too, to blame yourself when their moods change and they punish you anyway.
(oh dominus please)
Astarion's head is bowed, his eyes downcast (good slaves don't meet the eyes of their better). Fenris swallows thickly. He feels a little outside of himself, truthfully. There's a ringing in his ears, a subtle sort of shock that creeps up in his throat. He ignores it.
What else does he know? What it is to be changed fundamentally. Not in the same way that Astarion was, no, but still, he knows what it is to be different from anyone else around you. He knows what it is to be used. To bleed for a master who saw you as nothing more than a pet and a body, something less than a person, there only to please him.
And he knows what it is to cry out in the dark, and hear nothing in return.
Three decades is nothing compared to two centuries. And yet still, Fenris has spent more than half his life enslaved, and perhaps agony isn't always measured in years. Perhaps it is measured in how many moments you spent pleading for someone to save you. Perhaps it is measured in empty stomachs and hollow cheeks; in tears shed, or the torment you were forced to inflict on others (imekari please you don't have to).
Or perhaps there is no measuring it. Perhaps it all of it is simply that: agony. Cruelty, unfair and spiteful, and there is no measure of who had it worse, for the answer simply tallies up to yes.]
Little wonder you do not trust this miracle to hold.
[His voice rasps as he says it.
A miracle, yes. But Fenris had not stopped looking over his shoulder in paranoid terror until Danarius was dead. He had not stopped flinching from Hawke's outstretched hand, from Isabela's offers to join her on the sea, from Aveline's offers of stability and jobs— for he had known he stood on cracked glass. And that sooner or later, something would give.
He squeezes Astarion's hand once, a silent warning before he pulls it away. Not to go far, no, but so he can lean over and nab his shirt from the floor. Tugging it on swiftly, he then moves: climbing back on the bed to sit next to Astarion, reaching for his hand again. Lacing their fingers together, shoulders bumping together, hips and knees and ragged sheets, and he stares out at the wall, as much privacy as he can offer him while still staying close.]
I cannot promise he will never come. And I did not find relief until Danarius lay dead at my feet.
[Deep breath, in and out.]
But I did kill him.
And when a so-called god arose from his slumber, a magister who triumphed over all other magisters, I killed him too.
And I will die before I allow him to take you back, Astarion. That . . . that, I can swear to you.
[Here he sits, clutching the hand of the man that’d killed Corypheus of all creatures, listening rapt to the promise that next leaves his lips.
'I will die before I allow him to take you back.'
Trust.
Trust.
'Little wonder you do not trust this miracle to hold.'
The one thing Astarion’s never confessed in all his time here. No matter how many times he’s gnashed his teeth over talk of imprisonment or demons or enslavement, there’s only one truth he’s kept tight to his own chest all the while, afraid to even speak it aloud like a damning curse.
The places where their hands meet are like pressure points, knuckles and the edges of their fingers— elbows and knees near enough to feel that steadying weight the way lines are lashed to shore— all grounding.
One shallow breath.
Like stepping off the edge.]
Do you know what happens to Rifters? [He asks, following the line of Fenris' stare to fix his own somewhere along the far wall, wondering just how much— if anything— Fenris has heard in his travels.
Before it’s done leaving his lips, he’s already decided it doesn’t matter:] We don’t always stay bound to this world. Sometimes, something in that magic gives out quick as a snuffed candle, and we go with it.
I could blink one day. Shut my eyes. Turn for a second, and—
[He can’t bear it. He can’t. Beyond the shadow of his old scars, it terrifies him. Always. The percussive undercurrent driving his every last decision from the moment he realized it was a promised possibility.
And anything he can do to drown it out, he will: sabotage, sex, inebriation, violence, cruelty— feigned love and false adoration, merciless greed or well-worn apathy— he’ll do it all.
No, he does it all. Wearing it right on his sleeve for all the world to see.
Only no one does.
But he hears it again in his mind, that freely given promise, and it eclipses the constant ticking in the back of his skull. The jagged part of him that finds ways to scream in the silence— any silence— that he doesn’t want to go back. Call it a crude comfort, a childish fairytale. Because no, there’s no such thing as heroes, no sympathetic gods— but he thinks, just for a moment, just for tonight (or for longer, if the easing of his pulse stays constant come morning), that if everything shattered and the anchor-shard failed, Fenris might just find a way to reach him still.
He pulls his hand from Fenris' own, releasing him of the discomfort. Shifting at last across his ankles and knees to draw the comforter up from where it'd slunk to the end of the bed, half-tucking himself near the wall when he lies down. It's weary, not wounded. A sign of easing, rather than any upheld deflection. He doesn't ask Fenris to stay, of course, but...]
Can you remember anything from before your markings? [A shorter leap, from his pain to Fenris' own, falling from topic to horrid topic like the snowdrifts tumbling outside. 'What few remained he took care of himself', Fenris had said earlier, but in a night already overfilled with terror, curiosity pervades.
[He exhales softly, his head sagging. No, little wonder Astarion's belief in this miracle is tenuous, for he has all the proof in the world that it won't necessarily last. There is a chance he will be spirited back, and there is nothing either of them can do to safeguard against it.
So what is there to say? He can promise his dedication, and there is no question in his mind that he would seek Astarion out should that miracle fail, but who knows if he can manage it? They barely understand the rifts themselves, never mind what drags people here; he won't do Astarion the disservice of promising something he does not know if he can keep.
They will deal with that problem if and when it comes, Fenris thinks. And in the meantime . . .
In the meantime, he reaches down again, nabbing his own blanket. He doesn't lie down, but rather settles at Astarion's feet, back resting against the wall, wrapping himself until every bit of him is safely cocooned. It's cold in the winter, all right, and he has never endured it well.]
Yes and no.
[He closes his eyes. This isn't a fun topic, but it isn't fresh pain; he has long since grown used to the scars here.]
I remember . . . my sister. Varania. Dancing with her, or playing with her in our master's courtyard while our mother worked . . .
[What kind of slave had she been? Something to do with being outside, anyway, for he can remember her at a distance: not a figure, but a blur, a vague source of comfort and, if not safety, at least adoration.
He wonders, sometimes, who she was. If she had been born into slavery or sold into it. If she was Dalish, even, although such a thought is discomfiting. He does not ever bother to wonder who his father was; there is a mystery that would never be solved even if he retained his old life.]
Sensations, mostly, is what I recall. Flashes of scenes with no context. I can remember lying in a cellar with the other slaves . . . it was hot. Summer, I suspect, and that was the coolest place my mother could find for us. The feeling of a sword beneath my hands . . . that may have been the first time I picked one up to use as my own.
[And what a thrill it had been. A slave armed. No matter it was in service of his master, that he was training (he assumes) to compete in that damned tournament . . . still, he remembers the thrill of it.
He blinks. Glances down at Astarion and offers a one-shouldered shrug.]
Sensations, as I said. Faint shapes that make little sense. The only reason I recall Varania so vividly is because she found me a few years ago.
Fenris understands. It doesn’t shock Astarion to know it, but hearing it aloud still feels like stepping forward with his eyes tightly shut— and finding the earth both soft and steady beneath his feet. Expectation intermingling with relief.
From where he’s curled beneath his covers (far less tightly; he doesn’t feel the cold), his eyes slide over to take in the sight of Fenris resting there in the dark, half-lit by the pale haze of snowy skies through the window at his side. Always bright as a foggy morning, weather like this. Even in the dead of night. Something to do with diffused lighting, if he hasn’t forgotten what he’d read on a whim, once. Plucked up from a bookshelf while stalking prey.
Like this, the only thing that glows are the tiny little spots marking the center of Fenris’ forehead.]
I remember I had a home. Not what it looked like or who was there, but it’s like...warmth at times. It smells of things like vanilla or herbs, or when wood gets too hot in plain sunlight.
[When he smells those things on their own, nothing comes to mind, but the opposite still stays true.
The talk of reunion, though, changes his focus.]
...for your pain, or hers.
[Slaves both, Astarion assumes. So then was it the reminder that hurt more— or something else entirely?]
[Vanilla or herbs, and Fenris wonders where the scents came from. If Astarion had cooked, perhaps, or had a beloved who indulged in sweets. Was there someone in the home? A spouse? Children? It does not matter, and yet then again it does, for it would not ache even now if it didn't.
He memorizes the scents. Vanilla and herbs, that particularly sharp scent when wood grows hot . . . he commits them to memory, for no other reason than they're precious details. Meaningless, in a way, and yet all the more vital for their lack of context. He stores them in that special place deep in his mind where he puts all his other memories, the faintest of details that he struggles to recall.
(He'll write them down later, too. If nothing else, he has learned very well that memory counts for little. He wrote down his own recollections, too. Literacy is a tool he is not wholly comfortable with just yet, but it has its uses).
But ah . . . Varania, and he pauses for a few moments.]
She sold me out.
[The words come woodenly, steadily: a statement of fact, not a bid for pity, just as Astarion's confessions have been.]
I came by these marks voluntarily.
[A bitter truth, but one he has grown used to by now. Still: it is remarkable how easily this story flows. It wouldn't with others, but . . . right now, all the walls have fallen. There are no secrets between them, not when it comes to their enslavement.]
Danarius had his favorite slaves vie for him. I do not remember the contest, but . . . I am told it was a violent thing, and for the unique prize of a boon. Anything the winner desired, so long as it was within Danarius' power to grant. Permission for marriage, or wealth beyond measure . . . or freedom for one's family.
But freedom did not suit Varania, apparently.
Years passed. I did not even know of her existence until she wrote me letters. She spoke of our mother, our time together, and after years of trying to determine if it was a trap, I sent her money to come to Kirkwall.
[Stupid, stupid . . . Fenris tips his head back, knocking his skull lightly against the wall, his throat bared.]
She is a mage. And in exchange for luring me out into the open, Danarius had offered her an apprenticeship.
[He can still remember her face, that sorrowful defiance as she'd spat out that last torturous revelation. You competed for them, when he had spent years raging against Danarius for what he had thought was involuntary mutilation.
He smiles, and it's as thin as Astarion's had been.]
I suppose I disrupted her plans by murdering him. But she should count herself lucky I left her alive.
[Only because Hawke had protested. Only because Varric had spoken of how painful it would be to lose a sibling. He really does not know if he regrets it or not.]
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[He says it carefully after a few moments of thought. You're welcome sounds trite, and it's my pleasure is true, but equally sticky. It's nothing is a falsehood and a sour one, for it isn't nothing. Fenris knows the weight of what he offers. He can hear in the fragile tone Astarion's voice has taken. The sharp difference from the man of before, flirtatious and vivacious, oh darling that's not fair, oh, darling, what a difference.
He had spoken before to Astarion, Rifter. A man freed from his past, forcibly brought into a new world and hungry to delve into it. He likes that man, Fenris realizes, but that man is but one facet of the whole. Now, Fenris thinks, and drags the wet cloth against his shoulder, now he speaks to Astarion the slave. A creature just as messy as Fenris himself, personality and instincts not naturally developed, but cobbled and stitched together as best they could, stolen moments eked out despite their masters' best efforts.
He wonders, faintly, if Astarion knows what his favorite food is. If he knows what hobbies he enjoys, or what music best pleases his ear. Little things, basic things, and oh, it's easy to point to all the horrors of slavery, but it's the mundane things stolen away that overwhelm him after all these years.
Has he ever met anyone who understood that?
It doesn't take long to clean out the wound. They both of them might do well to bandage their wounds later, but nor will they be actively bleeding. With a little hum he draws the fabric back, setting it on the ledge, tugging at Astarion's shirt to cover him up once more.]
We could hunt slavers.
[He says it a bit more normally. An easy way to move past the emotion of the moment, for all that he feels as though his skin is electrified, buzzing with this realization.]
Fitting, for tonight. But if Kirkwall has not changed too much these past few years, there are always gangs stalking the streets. There's good coin to be made from killing them.
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That subsequent segue from ancient aches to fresher opportunity finding its footing with such ease, and Astarion's expression brightens within its span; weariness peeling away like paint.
The last sip of wine offered in rapidly forgotten gratitude— which isn’t erased so much as pressed to the side for a little while, making room for Astarion, the Rifter once more.]
The latter, I think. [Because he needs coin. Always. And not just for petty vanity.
A truth that now— he’s certain— needs no explanation between them.] Though I do wonder.
Do they try to cheat you out of a proper bounty as much as they cheat me?
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[He shrugs one shoulder. And ah, a mercy: it's almost easy to say was instead of is when it comes to his fallen friend. Fenris leans back, resting his weight on one hand, glancing out at the city with a little frown.]
I do not know if that reputation will hold. Unlikely, but perhaps. But I suspect I can persuade them if they attempt to cheat us both. My claymore is not just for show, and fortunately, most people realize that.
[Although, actually . . .]
How much protection does Riftwatch afford?
[Because it was one thing when he had Hawke's reputation and Aveline's position as Captain of the Guard to protect him. He had not relied on them too often, but still, it was a safeguard against all the typical elvish prejudice rife in Kirkwall.]
Do they leave us to fend for ourselves, or offer their weight as protection?
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There is something to be said for anyone recognizably aligned with Riftwatch when it comes to larger incidents. Political mostly. Not the sort of work for you and I. [Though who can really say if that'll prove true overall, given the sort of ties Fenris nursed along in the past. Even he might get roped into negotiations here or there somewhere along the way, Astarion supposes.]
Sometimes in dealings with refugees there’s a sliver of gratitude to be found, if you value the opinions of the poor. [Astarion, for the record, does not.]
But otherwise— no. Outside the Gallows, we’re just pretty faces amongst an overly bitter crowd: the guards here in Kirkwall won’t look the other way if you start making too much trouble; locals might spit on you as much as they’ll let you pass by unbothered, depending on the time of day. No discounts, no local favors, and—
Well. Always better to err on the side of caution, especially when you’re sent abroad on missions.
We’re not the Inquisition, from what I've gathered: we’re misfits floating our efforts between countries infinitely larger than our own collective, and we don’t have the weight of any Maker behind us.
[His exhale is low. Stare drifting from the sharp lines of Fenris’ profile out towards the city itself.
He doesn't need to ask after it to feel the tinge of discomfort dwelling there.]
People do seem to forget their chosen champions all too quickly. Ungrateful things that they are.
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[He's had the past few years to grow used to being treated like an elf instead of the odd semi-human privileged status being Hawke's friend provided. The sneers, the stares, the comments . . . people think twice when they see his sword and his don't-fuck-with-me stare, but ah, he ought to be a little more careful.
His mouth is a thin line. He did his mourning years ago, but still, it hurts. He suspects it will always hurt a little. ]
They put a statue up for her, once. After she defeated the Arishok. I have not checked to see if it remains.
[He'll be angry if it hasn't and hurt if it has, so there's no point in going to see. And there's really no reason to be saying all this, except that he's drunk and high and the filter from brain to mouth is all but erased. But oh, speaking of her reminds him, and he glances over at Astarion.]
She was the first to kill him. Corypheus. We were there when he first awoke. And I have no doubt she thought herself responsible for all the horrors that he has caused.
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But...
First awoke sounds different than now, he thinks, with all of Tevinter at Corypheus' side and an army that grows by the day— tainted with vanity and bloody lyrium alike.
His lips thin into a flattened line; he isn’t looking at Fenris anymore.]
What about you?
[Does he blame himself?
Does he blame her?]
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I think she had extraordinarily bad luck. And I think her father was a victim of the Wardens.
[He glances over, meeting Astarion's eyes.]
She did nothing wrong. I will not say she was blameless in all things, for that is not true. Her faults were numerous. But in the matter of Corypheus . . .
[A short exhale.]
Swear you will keep this to yourself. I will not have her life dissembled for gossip and idle curiosity.
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This? Personal as it is, isn’t any different. Whether it comes today or tomorrow, a moment of opportunity will inevitably worm its way in, and he'll know precisely how to play this tattered little card: for Riftwatch, for a mission, for an exceedingly dull soirée in need of a point of interest as distraction— or even in dealing with Corypheus’ own devoted lackeys, their unshakable faith in need of rattling.
He ought to keep it. Just like all the rest. Deep down, he knows he should.
After all, what has kindness ever gotten him? An anchor round his neck rather than anything either useful or freeing. Risk at perpetual cost.
But he sees that look on Fenris’ face. The sincerity clinging to stony contours, eyes fixed in their emerald stare, clinging to the notion that Astarion's meant to be trusted.]
Mmph. [A breathy sort of dismissal, a little too much air that hums in a half-sigh through his nose.
His attention twists sharply away.]
I doubt anyone would believe me, anyway.
[That is, for the record, a yes, Fenris.]
But....what do you mean, her father?
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But so many people have laid claim to Hawke's life. They talk of her as a hero, a champion, a menace, an inciter, a villain to blame or a hero to revere . . . but it's the little things Fenris remembers most. The crack in her voice as she'd sobbed out pleas for her mother's corpse not to leave her. The reckless glint in her eye as she'd bait templars, smugly pushing them for no other reason than she felt it was the least they deserves. The way she had once found a book for Fenris, I thought you would appreciate it, it's about Shartan— and, when he had confessed his illiteracy, her aid in teaching him.
He misses her so much it aches sometimes.]
Years ago, the Wardens, as far as I can understand it, attempted to renew the seals that kept Corypheus bound with blood magic. Specifically, the blood of Malcolm Hawke, an apostate. I believe it was involuntary, but . . . regardless, it was his blood that kept the magister away. Well and good, but . . .
[Well. Blood magic never, ever ends well. There are a thousand reasons why, and admittedly, this is one of the more mundane ways it could backfire, but still. Blood magic! It sucks! Fenris has told people that from day one!]
There was a warden. A fool. I suppose at one point her intentions were honorable: she thought she could use Corypheus to wipe out the darkspawn, perhaps. Some fool idea like that. It did not take long for her to be corrupted by his influence, subtle though I assume it was. But because it was the blood of the Hawke that had sealed him, it was only that which could free him. And since the man had long since died, she needed as close a substitute as she could get.
She tricked Hawke and a few of us into his prison, where only breaking the blood seals would set us free.
[A deep inhale— and then, a wry aside:]
That was the second time I have been trapped underground thanks to her. I did not care for that aspect of our friendship.
In any case. She had little choice but to free him. And when he awoke . . .
[Hm.]
He was malformed. Confused. Have you ever seen him? He is more demon than man, warped beyond compare. [He gestures vaguely in the air.] But he knew enough to demand we drop to our knees, rattus and dwarves and lesser beings that we were. He prayed to Dumat and spoke of storming the Golden City . . .
[And Fenris believes him, he really does. He absolutely believes that a group of magisters would get it in their heads to challenge the Maker, and as for the Maker himself . . . well. It's complicated, but . . . anyway, the point is: he believes Corypheus.]
And, when we did not answer and scrape and capitulate immediately, his rage grew. He screamed for his golden throne and decided he would slaughter us before he attempted to retake it. And we, not wishing to die, fought back.
[Silence for a precious few seconds.]
It was a hard fight. Harder than any I have ever fought in before. But he fell to blades and magic, just as any creature will. I saw his corpse fall. I watched her dismember him. And yet still, he rose again, and I do not know how.
[So. With all that being said . . .]
It was not her fault. It was never her fault. But she blamed herself, I have no doubt, and I do not need others agreeing with her memory.
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[Astarion’s embittered scowl is subconscious more than anything active; he doesn’t do it for show, or to provide Fenris with a middling amount of comfort.] In Tantervale, just after his pet dragon erased the city in its entirety, I was sent to track the thing down. Figure out where it— and the rest of Tevinter’s army— was coming from.
I chased them to a hidden fortress in the Silent Plains. And I saw him there, commanding his misshapen army. More flesh than man, if there was ever anything human underneath before it went all wrong.
It baffles me still, you know. [Offends him in the most unsettling ways, elbows shifting across his knees as he leans forward over chalky stone.]
How all it’s taken for so many to slither up to his side is the empty, grotesque promise of glory.
[By which Astarion means:]
How can anyone deify something so....wrong?
[Ugly. He means ugly.
But that’s not the point of their conversation:] One does wonder if someone went through the miserable effort of reviving him after you— collective you— and she put him down. [And now she’s gone. Which is...]
He’s still looking for it, by the way. Even now.
His Throne.
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(Strange, too, to know where he was at the time, for he recalls Tantervale's destruction. He'd been in the midst of information gathering, stalking a small group of slavers as they'd made their way towards the destruction, hoping to find victims out of refugees).]
Of course he is. [Fenris scoffs.] The delusional do not give up their power so easily.
[But oh, hang on.]
Does it truly baffle you? Their worship of him?
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[When his lip peels back in immediate distaste, it does him the benefit of revealing those overlong canines in full, right up to their seething gumline.]
The man looks like an abomination turned inside out. As though your Maker thought to himself in an overwhelming fit of stupidity: 'no no— I need something more hideous to really flesh out Thedas' already misconstructed bestiary' [There's such an emphasis on the word flesh there, gloved fingers twisting themselves into a closed fist as they cut through the air just in front of Astarion's collarbone. A sort of stand-in for something far more visceral in nature, really.] as if regular old darkspawn aren't good enough already.
Or...awful enough.
[Either way.]
I mean, all I'm saying is that if he were a god, you'd think he could do something about that literally god-awful face of his. [Another wave of his hand, open-palmed this time, passing directly across the entirety of his own profile before he turns up his nose with a not-so-subtle snort.] Eugh.
Unlimited power. Nonsense.
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I suppose people cling to whatever scraps of hope they can find. And if they believe his tales of the Maker's throne being empty . . . people will worship anything that promises salvation. Or, perhaps, relief.
[He shrugs. He can understand it. Not condone it, but understand it. In his experience, what people want more than anything is stability. For tomorrow to be the same as today, so long as it is not wholly intolerable, and they'll cheer for anyone who promises it.]
I wonder how many converts of his are only mouthing along, more worried about their lives than their eternal salvation.
[Another shrug, but he rises to his feet. Turns, glancing out at the city before focusing down on the other elf.]
In the end, it matters little. They will worship him or not, but it does not change the fact he is no god. Just a mutilated magister, as power-grubbing and pathetic as the rest.
[And now Fenris really want to go hunt down some gangs. He tips his head, indicating the streets, and wonders at how his heart feels a little lighter. Not joyful, exactly, but . . . it was pleasing to speak of Hawke to someone who was inclined to listen. Who would hear her for what she was: a person, not a hero nor a villain.]
Come. Let us earn some coin.
[It's remarkable how quickly trouble finds them. It's a group of harbor rats from the docks, stupid and thuggish, eager for a quick way to let off steam. Swaggering and leering, surrounding them neatly, making the sort of stupid jokes thugs make when they believe they're the cat and not the mouse. So clearly thinking that two elves will make such easy prey. It's that which offends him most, he remarks to Astarion later, the two of them just covered in blood and all the identifiers they need to in order to get their reward safely stuffed in their pockets. The inherent assumption that just because they're elves, they'll be meek. Quiet. Pathetic, he says, and he does not mean for so much derision to color his tone, but he cannot help it.
He hates being lumped in with other elves.
They stagger back home— no. They stagger back to Astarion's home, for a bet is a bet, and really, Fenris is exhausted enough not to offer any resistance. He strips off his armor and shirt, curling beneath a spare comforter clad in breeches and little else. Not ideal, perhaps, but more comfortable than the ground, and he's tired enough to take what he can get. He falls asleep almost instantly, sprawled on his stomach and his dreams blissfully blank.
Not so for his companion, it seems.
He's always been a light sleeper; likely always will be, for those who don't wake up in time to meet trouble seldom survive it. The first whimper sounds and his hand is shooting out for his sword; Fenris jerks up, rising to his feet, head snapping as he tries to identify the trouble. A break-in? A robbery? Revenge from earlier tonight? What—
And then there's another cry, limbs fitfully tossing beneath the sheets. A face contorted with pain and fear, and Fenris exhales sharply, realizing what's happening. A nightmare.]
Astarion.
[No. He hesitates, then leans over him, one hand roughly shaking his shoulder. How deep in the Fade is he? He cannot guess what he is dreaming of, but perhaps he knows the shape. Danarius has been dead for years and yet still he haunts Fenris, his dreams forcing him back into enslavement, iron collars and the dead certainty that his freedom had only ever been a dream . . .]
Astarion!
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‘You were right, you know.’ He adds, somewhere before they depart. ‘If you were trapped like that, it wasn’t her fault. Being used doesn't make anyone into a monster.’
A flash of glinting canines before he amends:
‘Not that it matters what I think.’
Snap forward in time, and it’s the same self-assured flash of teeth Astarion gives in the tentative seconds after they’re surrounded, like an unassuming beast suddenly flaring venomous barbs. Atmospheric tenor gone blissfully wrong under the combined crack of both it and the pervasive scent of fresh ozone. How Astarion lives for moments like these, adrenaline soaring as sweetly in his veins as his own untamed malice.
The wine-rich vibrancy of spilled blood dots the lines of their split clothes, colder now. Coin clinks against their palms. They laugh somewhere along the way, and the reason for it doesn't quite stick in the back of Astarion's mind when he shoves open the heavy door to his home with a buckled shoulder fit tight against its span, only that it happens. That they have the luxury of sharing it.
There’s a bowl-sized basin by the hearth meant for washing, and he lends it to Fenris first. And when he fits himself by the fire he does try not to stare—
Maybe, depending on Fenris’ mood or sight or sense of wearied awareness at that point in time, he succeeds.
It doesn’t much matter.
What matters is that Fenris agrees to stay. Safe in shallow numbers. Door locked and stony walls secure, Astarion left awake for a little while longer in the simple ensemble he always slumbers in (loose shirt, thin slacks; the illusion of resting nude in gleaming finery is only ever just that: something worked up only when he’s entertaining here or in the Gallows, as much a fantasy as anything else so eagerly offered) trading glances out the window— and towards Fenris’ dozing form where it's heaped beneath thick covers, a lone sentry for a threat that never comes.
Danger, though, finds him regardless.
He never sleeps well. And tonight, with the wick of all prior inebriation run low, the satchet Cole had gifted him fails in its task. His fingers curl under the weight of his subconscious, clawing fitfully at his own chest, the process illuminated sickly green from the shard tucked against his palm. His breathing stutters, spit-flecked and wild. His teeth snap in pitifully warding patterns, as if there were anything to be done to stop what assails him in sleep—
Red eyes. Hectoring commands still stitched into his bones, impossible to defy.
A hand pressed against his shoulder—
And he reels from it. Not in dreams, but reality: choking out a startled bark as he snaps upright and twists to fit his back against the wall just beside his bed, hollow eyes wide and wet and flickering with fear. His palms brace across stone, numb from the knuckles down. There’s blood on his lips.
It’s only his, he realizes, sluggish and uprooted.
He’d bitten his own tongue somewhere along the way, a narrow sting tucked across its leftmost edge.
But the sight that comes belatedly into focus isn’t the one he’d dreamed of. And it takes him longer than it should to map the difference between reality and its hazy antithesis. Fenris can’t be here? —no, Fenris is here. They’d spent the evening together. He chose to stay.
Someone he trusts, yes. But not someone he’d want seeing him like this, fragile as cracked glass, cut entirely from the tattered cloth of his own horrific past.
Hells.
The sheets are tangled tight around his ankles thanks to his own thrashing retreat. It aches, aside from making the matter of trying to shift away from where he’s curled against the wall all the more difficult. And bloody awkward. Swallowing thick in his throat only to taste the bitter tang of bile as it mingles with iron.]
...shit, I...
[Breathless. Nauseated. His heart panging painfully in his chest. His fingers tremble.
He masks it by tucking them against his shirt, already drawing away from dusty stone by narrow degrees.
What a wretched sanctuary he's provided.]
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It could have gone worse, he thinks, in those breathless few seconds as they stare at one another, hearts thudding and panic thick in the air. There are a thousand ways this could have gone worse. Fenris has woken screaming from nightmares before; he has woken savagely, knife in hand, desperately stabbing at phantom shadows. So yes, on the whole, a bitten tongue and sweat-soaked tangled sheets are the least of their problems.
But there is something inherently awful about being witnessed. That, Fenris cannot help.]
There's no one here but you and I.
[Calm. Not patronizingly soft, no, but simply a statement of fact. The tension in the room eases, and so he sits slowly on the mattress, his eyes locked on Astarion all the while.]
He is not here.
[Is his master a man? Ah, but it doesn't matter, not really. It's the statement of fact that counts more than the details. And maybe he's off-base, maybe he's dreaming of some other horror, but . . . well. Former slave, and Fenris suspects they all of them are haunted by the same ghosts.]
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He’s right, Fenris, mouthing steady reassurance as he sinks down against the mattress, and for a moment that too causes Astarion’s rabbiting pulse to leap; the snap snap snap of turning gears in his head stuck fast against the details, searching for every last gap in offered comfort.
Fenris doesn’t know Cazador. Astarion hadn’t mentioned him directly beyond title alone— how does he know to call him him? Why is he edging in closer? And for a moment the past is too near to be anything but tangible truth: he’s being duped. Played for a fool yet again. Cazador’s whispered in his ear to dream of something sweeter than his cuffing servitude, and fool that he is, he has, and he’ll bleed for the audacity of it later.
How is Fenris here. Why did he ever come back. Stupid fool of a spawn, not to see it sooner—
But his tongue aches.
His blood tastes of more than ash.
Compressed like a cornered thing, paranoia settles slow as shifting silt alongside the sweat-soaked contours of his silhouette. He heaves another shoddy exhale, and wipes the back of his knuckles once across his eyes.
Salt stings their edges.]
For now. [It’s a stupid laugh of a thing. Low and embittered, paper thin.] So long as the rifts don't opt to do him any favors.
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[He agrees, because this isn't the time to play at heroics. The truth is he has no idea what Astarion has suffered. Indeed, he has little idea of where he even came from, save that it's somewhere that isn't Thedas. Who knows what slavery has entailed? I did better on my back than on my heels, Astarion had hinted, but though Fenris knows exactly what he means . . . no, he does not know enough, not yet.
So he will not make the fool's mistake of offering false assurance. That's the right way to a panic attack. Untangling Astarion's ankles, Fenris' hands drop, his fingers gone slack in the sheets and resettling on his thighs. Easy to see, easy to keep track of.]
But for now, the door is bolted. No one has entered. And I am here, with my sword and my lyrium, if that should change.
[His eyes flick down for a moment, dipping away, and if he notices any tears, he does not mention them. Astarion looks like a beaten dog right now: shivering in terror, muscles locked up, knowing deep down in his bones that any move he makes will be the wrong one. Sometimes there is nothing that will stop your dominus from punishing you, he knows, he remembers, but it's one thing to recall his own terror and another to see it painted so starkly before him.
Gently, he offers Astarion a hand, his palm upturned. Not a pointed gesture, but a quiet one, easily ignored if Astarion should wish.]
He has not come to drag you back, Astarion. Not tonight.
[Not while I breathe, he thinks, and startles himself with how true it is.]
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He’s fought tooth and nail for every scrap of it, on his own. Proudly. But...
Red eyes lift nominally, watching the way Fenris sets his hands openly across his thighs. Slightly splayed to prove there’s nothing held within them. No ill will. No deceit. And Astarion, disentangled by kindness alone, takes the opportunity to fold his legs properly. Painlessly. His spine is still set against the wall, but he hunches forward through his shoulders instead, his neck slung so unspeakably low: every bit the wounded animal with its guard only tentatively withered under the tempting sway of won trust.
Not tonight, Fenris says, and the crippled look that rises to meet it is far more transparent than the snow-lined panes that bracket Astarion’s bed.
Oh, how much he wants that to be true.
(Astarion is so gentle. Narrow fingers cautious when they strain, fearfully, to press against the pads of Fenris' own.)]
...Two hundred years. That’s how long I was leashed to his side.
[He doesn’t say it to weep. Doesn’t want to scrounge around for sympathy that won’t do either of them any good. Only to illustrate the difference between two centuries of enslavement...and six months of freedom.
Six months.
It’s nothing.
And it's everything.]
My beloved master, Cazador. [The word beloved cloying across his tongue, laced with vitriol. He lifts his opposite hand, gesturing in turn to the stark crimson of his irises; his jagged, inhuman teeth.] The one who cursed me the night he stole my blood, and left me with these eyes— these fangs.
Bound to him so that I could never run.
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No wonder he has nightmares. No wonder he stares at Fenris like that, terrified and longing all at once, an animal who refuses to believe that the cage door has finally been propped open for good. How could he? How could he believe in anything good happening, when for so long there was nothing but misery and servitude? The color has drained from his face, his expression for one moment starkly horrified.
Did you ever think about killing yourself? Anders had once asked him. No, he had replied, and that was true enough, but the real answer was that such a thing was not fathomable. Fish don't dream of flying. Escape was such an impossibility that to even contemplate it was too much to bear. People who have never felt that collar, that crushing weight, the unbearable hopelessness of days turning into weeks, into months, into years of abuse and false praise, being broken and reconditions . . . they imagine a prison. They think of a free man suddenly jailed, full of spirit and hope that surely wouldn't be crushed, even if it was suppressed.
They do not understand how much it hurts to hope. How, when you have been denied everything and your entire world has become dependent on upon the moods and whims of one impossibly powerful man, it's so much easier to bow your head and give in.
(He hates himself for it. He despises his own compliancy, and so lashes out all the more strongly when he sees it mirrored in the elves that surround them, flinching from the sight of a human, taking abuse they should not tolerate. He hates it so much, and yet he understands it so well in the same breath).
Two hundred years, Fenris thinks. And then, with a very different inflection, thinks it again. Two centuries, and still, here Astarion sits. Not crazed or cringing, whimpering for Cazador to return and guide him. Two hundred years of abuse, and still, he is his own man. He has a mind of his own. Preferences and habits, and look how has flourished under freedom.
It's humbling. Fenris can admit that to himself.]
And yet here you sit nonetheless.
[It's said firmly, iron-clad determination in those six words. A stabilizing anchor that Astarion can cling to in wake of the crashing tide of memories. Here, now, he is free. Here, now, Cazador is in another world, the door is locked, their chains are broken. Fenris inches his fingers forward, hooking them gently around Astarion's in something a little less than holding hands.]
You dreamt you were bound once more.
[It isn't a question.]
. . . I have had nightmares where I dreamt the same. That all my freedom was an illusion, and all that I had gained slipped like sand between my fingers. That I was nothing more, would never be more, than the dog he had raised me to be.
[He hesitates.]
I will not ask you to recount it, if it is too difficult. But I would listen, if you wished to speak of it. Of him.
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He talks about it often, his past. Colored by the shades of his own mood: sometimes bitterly, sometimes morosely or entirely tranquil— most often it’s like ripping off a bandage, the way he drags it rapidly to light. Quick to horrify whoever’s beside him with a wicked laugh, if they believe him. Like defining all the little things that could cut if they're reached for.
Don’t come too close, or leave me be or, at times.... don’t go.
But now he feels the solid weight of fingertips wrapped around his own, the way the mattress tilts itself under pressure towards where Fenris sits, and in forcing one dread back on its heels, another starts to coalesce, inch by crawling inch.
Astarion wasn’t lying when he said there were some things they’d never discussed. Shallow truths he can always paint in a better light (better, as if glossing over bits and pieces changes the story in any real capacity), but confessing it all...what if Fenris recoils? What if he’s disgusted? Not by what Astarion’s endured, only by what he is.
What if those fingers yank themselves away— and in response to that thought, Astarion’s own tighten, trying to cling of their own volition; he’s forgotten sparing Fenris the pain of touch, too greedy in wanting him near.]
It...
[He should hear it. He wants him to as much as he dreads it.
Just once.
Just once, maybe he should know it all.
....and that means starting from the beginning.]
Vampirism is an affliction that doesn’t exist in Thedas, [Astarion’s learned that well enough by now.] but you should know I wasn’t always like this.
[And maybe that’s obvious despite being a Rifter; he’s learned some people see him as an elf with strange teeth more than they think of him as something else entirely, a kind of mirror puzzle that reflects whatever seems most familiar.]
The night I became his, I’d been attacked. Not all that different from tonight, I suppose, only I was weaker, then. A lone elf, fending off a pack of humans— only to wind up bleeding to death in the street, staring down my own finality, second by passing, terrible second.
Before I knew what was happening, he was there at my side. [It lingers in his memory when so much else has faded into nothing: the sight of Cazador bathed in moonlight, dark as night and equally alluring.] He chased them off, took me into his arms, and offered to save my life— the only condition being that I agreed to become a vampire, like him.
And what choice was there, really? I was dying....and he was beautiful. Not quite like anything you’ve ever seen. Powerful beyond measure, able to pour himself right from shadow as if it belonged to him. Indescribably ancient.
You wouldn’t be a fool to look at him and think he was something else entirely.
[Who wouldn’t choose that over death? Who wouldn’t bare their throat if asked?] But while vampires— true vampires: immortal, blood-drinking, all-powerful creatures capable of ruling the very night itself— spread their curse by taking in the blood of a mortal to its last drop, the catch is that after you’ve been bitten, you need to drink their blood in return.
[There might not be a need to say what comes next; Astarion does anyway.]
Cazador never intended to let that happen, of course.
Because the second my blood was on his lips, I changed— not into a vampire, but instead into a vampire spawn: an unwitting slave to its sire's every whim, able to think but not to refuse. An eternally living puppet. Cazador only ever needed to speak, and my body would obey.
Always.
[His laugh isn't a laugh. The crease between his brows sharp enough to cut for how it pinches.] And he was so endlessly cruel.
Whatever memories existed of my life before him, I lost them— all of them— to his obscene torture. To the monstrosity he inflicted. I fetched his meals, and oh, he was so very particular about the sort of well-bred creatures he wished to dine on. The kind that had to be lured to him by hand, alive and so dearly enamored that they never suspected a thing.
[Astarion's stare drops once more, lost beneath the heavy hang of dark lashes, tracing the outline of pale blue lyrium in the dark.]
For two lifetimes I bled for him, begged for him, dreamt of him— knowing I could never escape his shadow, whimpering and weeping senselessly in the dark for salvation that never came.
[No dashing heroes, no sympathetic gods. No mercy.]
...and then your world found me.
cw: suicide mention
Not the grip on his hand, although yes, that too, and Fenris is grateful for the physical pain. It keeps him grounded, keeps him present through this tale, and he does not mind it. But it hurts to hear, a mixture of selfish reflection and aching empathy that wrings at his heart. He aches with it, the weight of it settling on his shoulders, a hollow pit opening in the space behind his chest as he listens. The bitter irony of having your life saved just to enter into a special kind of hell; the unrelenting, unending horror of having spent two centuries being tortured, tormented, put through the worst kind of agony only to be revived again and again and again . . .
Did you ever want to kill yourself? Anders whispers in the back of his mind, and now, finally, Fenris can understand the sentiment.
The enormity of all that Astarion confesses towers over him. There is no comforting, no combination of words that will soothe these savage wounds. He cannot fix this, for the fact of the matter is that there is no fixing it. It happened. It will always have happened. Fenris could no more change that than he could fly.
So what does he say instead? How does he begin to understand this?
Start with the similarities.
He knows what it is to feel that terrible, false love for one's master. To be so helpless (and to seethe on it later, despising yourself for your foolishness) that you look to the worst person in the world for salvation. He knows what it is to learn how to bend and break yourself in order to fit their whims; he knows what it is, too, to blame yourself when their moods change and they punish you anyway.
(oh dominus please)
Astarion's head is bowed, his eyes downcast (good slaves don't meet the eyes of their better). Fenris swallows thickly. He feels a little outside of himself, truthfully. There's a ringing in his ears, a subtle sort of shock that creeps up in his throat. He ignores it.
What else does he know? What it is to be changed fundamentally. Not in the same way that Astarion was, no, but still, he knows what it is to be different from anyone else around you. He knows what it is to be used. To bleed for a master who saw you as nothing more than a pet and a body, something less than a person, there only to please him.
And he knows what it is to cry out in the dark, and hear nothing in return.
Three decades is nothing compared to two centuries. And yet still, Fenris has spent more than half his life enslaved, and perhaps agony isn't always measured in years. Perhaps it is measured in how many moments you spent pleading for someone to save you. Perhaps it is measured in empty stomachs and hollow cheeks; in tears shed, or the torment you were forced to inflict on others (imekari please you don't have to).
Or perhaps there is no measuring it. Perhaps it all of it is simply that: agony. Cruelty, unfair and spiteful, and there is no measure of who had it worse, for the answer simply tallies up to yes.]
Little wonder you do not trust this miracle to hold.
[His voice rasps as he says it.
A miracle, yes. But Fenris had not stopped looking over his shoulder in paranoid terror until Danarius was dead. He had not stopped flinching from Hawke's outstretched hand, from Isabela's offers to join her on the sea, from Aveline's offers of stability and jobs— for he had known he stood on cracked glass. And that sooner or later, something would give.
He squeezes Astarion's hand once, a silent warning before he pulls it away. Not to go far, no, but so he can lean over and nab his shirt from the floor. Tugging it on swiftly, he then moves: climbing back on the bed to sit next to Astarion, reaching for his hand again. Lacing their fingers together, shoulders bumping together, hips and knees and ragged sheets, and he stares out at the wall, as much privacy as he can offer him while still staying close.]
I cannot promise he will never come. And I did not find relief until Danarius lay dead at my feet.
[Deep breath, in and out.]
But I did kill him.
And when a so-called god arose from his slumber, a magister who triumphed over all other magisters, I killed him too.
And I will die before I allow him to take you back, Astarion. That . . . that, I can swear to you.
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'I will die before I allow him to take you back.'
Trust.
Trust.
'Little wonder you do not trust this miracle to hold.'
The one thing Astarion’s never confessed in all his time here. No matter how many times he’s gnashed his teeth over talk of imprisonment or demons or enslavement, there’s only one truth he’s kept tight to his own chest all the while, afraid to even speak it aloud like a damning curse.
The places where their hands meet are like pressure points, knuckles and the edges of their fingers— elbows and knees near enough to feel that steadying weight the way lines are lashed to shore— all grounding.
One shallow breath.
Like stepping off the edge.]
Do you know what happens to Rifters? [He asks, following the line of Fenris' stare to fix his own somewhere along the far wall, wondering just how much— if anything— Fenris has heard in his travels.
Before it’s done leaving his lips, he’s already decided it doesn’t matter:] We don’t always stay bound to this world. Sometimes, something in that magic gives out quick as a snuffed candle, and we go with it.
I could blink one day. Shut my eyes. Turn for a second, and—
[He can’t bear it. He can’t. Beyond the shadow of his old scars, it terrifies him. Always. The percussive undercurrent driving his every last decision from the moment he realized it was a promised possibility.
And anything he can do to drown it out, he will: sabotage, sex, inebriation, violence, cruelty— feigned love and false adoration, merciless greed or well-worn apathy— he’ll do it all.
No, he does it all. Wearing it right on his sleeve for all the world to see.
Only no one does.
But he hears it again in his mind, that freely given promise, and it eclipses the constant ticking in the back of his skull. The jagged part of him that finds ways to scream in the silence— any silence— that he doesn’t want to go back. Call it a crude comfort, a childish fairytale. Because no, there’s no such thing as heroes, no sympathetic gods— but he thinks, just for a moment, just for tonight (or for longer, if the easing of his pulse stays constant come morning), that if everything shattered and the anchor-shard failed, Fenris might just find a way to reach him still.
He pulls his hand from Fenris' own, releasing him of the discomfort. Shifting at last across his ankles and knees to draw the comforter up from where it'd slunk to the end of the bed, half-tucking himself near the wall when he lies down. It's weary, not wounded. A sign of easing, rather than any upheld deflection. He doesn't ask Fenris to stay, of course, but...]
Can you remember anything from before your markings? [A shorter leap, from his pain to Fenris' own, falling from topic to horrid topic like the snowdrifts tumbling outside. 'What few remained he took care of himself', Fenris had said earlier, but in a night already overfilled with terror, curiosity pervades.
He needs this. To map it all out in someone else.
Like poison, diluted in being shared.]
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So what is there to say? He can promise his dedication, and there is no question in his mind that he would seek Astarion out should that miracle fail, but who knows if he can manage it? They barely understand the rifts themselves, never mind what drags people here; he won't do Astarion the disservice of promising something he does not know if he can keep.
They will deal with that problem if and when it comes, Fenris thinks. And in the meantime . . .
In the meantime, he reaches down again, nabbing his own blanket. He doesn't lie down, but rather settles at Astarion's feet, back resting against the wall, wrapping himself until every bit of him is safely cocooned. It's cold in the winter, all right, and he has never endured it well.]
Yes and no.
[He closes his eyes. This isn't a fun topic, but it isn't fresh pain; he has long since grown used to the scars here.]
I remember . . . my sister. Varania. Dancing with her, or playing with her in our master's courtyard while our mother worked . . .
[What kind of slave had she been? Something to do with being outside, anyway, for he can remember her at a distance: not a figure, but a blur, a vague source of comfort and, if not safety, at least adoration.
He wonders, sometimes, who she was. If she had been born into slavery or sold into it. If she was Dalish, even, although such a thought is discomfiting. He does not ever bother to wonder who his father was; there is a mystery that would never be solved even if he retained his old life.]
Sensations, mostly, is what I recall. Flashes of scenes with no context. I can remember lying in a cellar with the other slaves . . . it was hot. Summer, I suspect, and that was the coolest place my mother could find for us. The feeling of a sword beneath my hands . . . that may have been the first time I picked one up to use as my own.
[And what a thrill it had been. A slave armed. No matter it was in service of his master, that he was training (he assumes) to compete in that damned tournament . . . still, he remembers the thrill of it.
He blinks. Glances down at Astarion and offers a one-shouldered shrug.]
Sensations, as I said. Faint shapes that make little sense. The only reason I recall Varania so vividly is because she found me a few years ago.
[He smiles thinly, bitterly, and adds:]
It was not a happy reunion.
no subject
Fenris understands. It doesn’t shock Astarion to know it, but hearing it aloud still feels like stepping forward with his eyes tightly shut— and finding the earth both soft and steady beneath his feet. Expectation intermingling with relief.
From where he’s curled beneath his covers (far less tightly; he doesn’t feel the cold), his eyes slide over to take in the sight of Fenris resting there in the dark, half-lit by the pale haze of snowy skies through the window at his side. Always bright as a foggy morning, weather like this. Even in the dead of night. Something to do with diffused lighting, if he hasn’t forgotten what he’d read on a whim, once. Plucked up from a bookshelf while stalking prey.
Like this, the only thing that glows are the tiny little spots marking the center of Fenris’ forehead.]
I remember I had a home. Not what it looked like or who was there, but it’s like...warmth at times. It smells of things like vanilla or herbs, or when wood gets too hot in plain sunlight.
[When he smells those things on their own, nothing comes to mind, but the opposite still stays true.
The talk of reunion, though, changes his focus.]
...for your pain, or hers.
[Slaves both, Astarion assumes. So then was it the reminder that hurt more— or something else entirely?]
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He memorizes the scents. Vanilla and herbs, that particularly sharp scent when wood grows hot . . . he commits them to memory, for no other reason than they're precious details. Meaningless, in a way, and yet all the more vital for their lack of context. He stores them in that special place deep in his mind where he puts all his other memories, the faintest of details that he struggles to recall.
(He'll write them down later, too. If nothing else, he has learned very well that memory counts for little. He wrote down his own recollections, too. Literacy is a tool he is not wholly comfortable with just yet, but it has its uses).
But ah . . . Varania, and he pauses for a few moments.]
She sold me out.
[The words come woodenly, steadily: a statement of fact, not a bid for pity, just as Astarion's confessions have been.]
I came by these marks voluntarily.
[A bitter truth, but one he has grown used to by now. Still: it is remarkable how easily this story flows. It wouldn't with others, but . . . right now, all the walls have fallen. There are no secrets between them, not when it comes to their enslavement.]
Danarius had his favorite slaves vie for him. I do not remember the contest, but . . . I am told it was a violent thing, and for the unique prize of a boon. Anything the winner desired, so long as it was within Danarius' power to grant. Permission for marriage, or wealth beyond measure . . . or freedom for one's family.
But freedom did not suit Varania, apparently.
Years passed. I did not even know of her existence until she wrote me letters. She spoke of our mother, our time together, and after years of trying to determine if it was a trap, I sent her money to come to Kirkwall.
[Stupid, stupid . . . Fenris tips his head back, knocking his skull lightly against the wall, his throat bared.]
She is a mage. And in exchange for luring me out into the open, Danarius had offered her an apprenticeship.
[He can still remember her face, that sorrowful defiance as she'd spat out that last torturous revelation. You competed for them, when he had spent years raging against Danarius for what he had thought was involuntary mutilation.
He smiles, and it's as thin as Astarion's had been.]
I suppose I disrupted her plans by murdering him. But she should count herself lucky I left her alive.
[Only because Hawke had protested. Only because Varric had spoken of how painful it would be to lose a sibling. He really does not know if he regrets it or not.]
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