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.]
How proud he must have been, Astarion thinks bitterly from his own bedding, Fenris' master watching comfortably from his perch, consolidating his most precious possessions so much the same way Cazador often did. Each one that fails becomes a little less precious— a little less loved. But the one that succeeds....
A fortune’s worth of lyrium.
Astarion seethes. His teeth ache, the way wild things work their jaw for wanting to bite down into vulnerable flesh. He can’t spare pity or sorrow; Fenris has already been marred, no shed tears will smooth down the horrid shape of it— but anger? Anger will always have its use, even if Danarius is long dead.
Even so, he keeps that to himself.]
All you’d done to free her...
[Wasted.
Abused.
What Astarion wouldn’t have given to someone who’d dared to free him from enslavement. Yet still. Still he remembers the spawn that truly loved their master for his power. His wretched cruelty. His sheltering claws, hoping to lap mere scraps from his plate. Someone else might think of options. How terrible it might have been to be free in a place like Minrathous, where even Astarion knows the only power comes from status alone.
But plenty flee.
And plenty more find themselves possessed of enough restraint not to betray those who fought for them.
Through thick covers, Astarion shifts. It’s a muted thing— possibly nothing at all, and barely noticeable besides— when he settles the edge of his foot against the unmarked arch of one of Fenris’ own.
The barest facsimile of touch.]
If she studied beneath Danarius— if she was a mage, who knew what he’d done to you— and still alive besides, are you certain she isn’t responsible for what happened? [His attention shifts slightly, red eyes peering out over the hemline of that comforter.] With the loss of your memories this time.
[Tevinter serves another master now, and its reach is far: who’s to say she didn’t find another way to get what she wanted so many years later?
Or...maybe that’s just Astarion’s paranoia talking.
[He appreciates that gentle touch. That's one of the last things he remembers later on, before time abruptly stuttered and stopped. That gentle shift, so quiet enough that neither of them needed to draw attention to it, and he flexes back against it, pushing his foot up against Astarion's own. It's soothing without being pitying, a gentle acknowledgement without doing something so crass as drawing attention to it.
And then Astarion says that, and everything breaks.
Time slows. Fenris' head snaps forward, his eyes gone wide as rigidity sets into his muscles and something deep in him lurches. The shock of a sucker punch; the abruptness of a slap, his heart gone cold, for he had not once considered the possibility—
I look on you now and I think you received the better end of the bargain.
Why wouldn't she? Resentful, hateful creature that she'd been, looking at him with malice in her eyes and her own selfish gain in her heart, why wouldn't she chase after her revenge? How hard would it be to modify his memory? For that matter, how hard would it be to sneak up on him? He knows her face, her voice (he will never forget her, that lilting accent and eyes that matched his own), but how hard would it be for her to disguise herself? She had gotten the drop on him once before. And he had taken everything from her, her future, her pathetic, sniveling, servile future—
(He remembers, in that very faint way that means he does not truly remember at all, finding out she was a mage. Feeling fear in his heart for what might become of her, an elven slave who had more talent than was good for her. Competing for their mother, yes, but for her, for at least as a liberati she might be safe—
He was so stupid).]
I, [he says, and realizes his breathing has gone shallow. Enough, he snarls at himself, realizing that he's been staring at nothing for a long few seconds, enough, but he had not dreamed this could be Varania's handiwork.]
No. No, I . .
[He closes his eyes tightly. Enough, and he forces himself to inhale sharply.]
. . . it is possible. I cannot deny that. I had not considered it, but . . . I cannot say she is not capable of it, I—
[He shakes his head sharply, as if he might simply dislodge that clawing panic in the center of his chest. But that isn't enough; with a short, frustrated exhale he shoves the blanket off himself, his fingers knotting in the fabric, his shoulders rounding as he fights to urge to run. Where? Why? But suddenly energy fills him from tip to toe, sickish and demanding, and he does not know how to disperse it.]
In any case, [move on, move on,] I— I at least have a place to begin to look.
All that time spent shedding the tatters of his past, cutting his teeth on Tevinter's crude dilation: venatori and magisters and abominations alike, learning Thedas right down to its digressive core. He’s no god killer. No vampire lord capable of twisting the fibers of the world around him to suit his needs, but he knows— more than anything— how to keep just one step ahead of a rising tide. How to keep his claws sharp by way of the daggers at his hip, the contacts in his pocket, even in the upper echelons of Wycome. Kirkwall. Ferelden.
If this is where the map of his resources all comes together, if there's something in it that can be done to keep safe the first person to have ever stretched a hand out to him from the mottled dark (who stretched out his hand now only minutes prior without a second of hesitation), then fine. It'll be where Astarion's tireless selfishness dies.
Easily.
He sits upright. He chooses to, keeping himself at a distance, knowing just how thin the ice must be. Woven through the air like a tangible thing, choking out everything else.] I don’t know if it was luck or pure chance that brought you here tonight. I suppose it doesn't matter.
Whatever it was, I’m not about to lose you again.
[Not to any pleonetic Venatori, not to slavers or mages. Not to anyone or anything. His chosen kin is his own, and he'll rip the rest to tatters for the sake of keeping him safe.]
Still, you can run if you need to. I won’t stop you— [Panic is a potent poison, and his flat is so damned small.] But my fangs aren’t just for show. And if you decide to stay, anyone senseless enough to think you’re here alone won’t realize that mistake until it’s too late, I can promise you that.
[You can run if you need to, and he does not realize what a balm that is until after it's been said. The flat is small, claustrophobicly crowded with all the magpie trappings Astarion has gathered; with the sudden suffocating weight of the comforter (and he shoves it off and away, the cold air stinging at his skin); with the horror of knowing that Varania is out there somewhere, hunting him (haunting him)—
Run, if you need to. A gulp of cold water against the arid heat of his panic. An open door instead of a leash yanking on his collar. Freedom, though if anyone had asked, Fenris would have snarled that of course this man had no power over him. And he doesn't, of course he doesn't, but . . . oh, what a shocking relief not to have to fight for that right, asserting it in face of casual possession. Fenris' head darts over, his eyes (more frantic than he realizes) darting over Astarion's face. He's hunched over, his shoulders rounded and his muscles tense, but he does not move.
I'm not about to lose you again. For the first time tonight, the implications of that truly set in. Not just the ones pertaining to him (and he won't call that selfishness, for how could he not focus only on himself at first?). But for Astarion. For this creature so much like Fenris himself, terribly torn up and terrified, lonely not for company or chatter but recognition . . . the only one who has ever truly understood. The one whose soul touches his own in so many ways that it has not yet been twenty-four hours since that fight in the alley, and yet there is no doubt in Fenris' mind that they are kin.
What must it have been like for Astarion to have lost him?
What must it have been like this afternoon, finding him again? Hands pulling him close (and the memory plays in his mind's eye, Fenris standing outside himself), a voice low and intimate, and then that blank stare, that uncertain wariness . . .
Not even a spark of recognition.
He won't run. For Astarion's sake, but for Fenris' too. For both of them, and he swallows thickly, one hand raking through silver hair. For one long moment, his gaze is filled with all the things he does not quite know how to say tonight: the relief and the grief and the longing. The intangible whisper from Astarion— trust me, darling— met with a silent affirmative. The roughened grip of fingers around his wrist and the stomach-churning drop from a rooftop still echoing in the lines of his body.
I do.
It lasts only for a few seconds. Then his eyes drop, the tension draining out of him, and he shakes his head faintly.]
Move over.
[He's going to lie down on the bed, dragging that damned comforter over himself. And it is not a good idea, and it is not what he would do with anyone else, not anyone. But he will not leave, and he does not want to return to the floor. And all the rules are different tonight, when the raw stark panic they've both felt has put everything else into perspective.]
I doubt we will sleep again tonight.
And I would hear . . .
[Gods, anything.]
A tale for a tale.
[(And it's a little funny: how he makes himself at home and yet doesn't, body all tensed up, taking up as little space as possible. Staying close and yet not wanting to overwhelm, all at once, arms crossed over his chest as he lies on his side, and he will move if Astarion indicates he does not want him there).]
Your world is different from mine. And though you have lived in Thedas for six months, I imagine you do not know all of it yet.
[It takes less than a breath for Astarion to shift to one side, leaving more than enough room for Fenris to find his way into settling however he needs to (less space or more, curled or coiled or locked tense as the stony walls they’re presently sheltered by). It takes more than that for him to rise, just briefly, with a staying gesture— one hand lifted in an utterly silent promise I’m not leaving— as he steps over to the nearby hearth and stokes its ashen coals into something warm once again, feeding it until the space begins to fill with faint light. Soft heat.
No, they probably won’t sleep again tonight. Might as well keep his companion from freezing in the process.
With that, he slips back into place, offering a wan smile to match the dark circles beneath his eyes (darker tonight for all the obvious reasons). Small, and lost in the next beat when he tips his own head back to stare at the ceiling, fingers folded loosely somewhere over his own chest. Tangled light in thin cotton.
They’ve spoken more than enough of all their harrowing fears, their festering scars; it’s time to let something else in.]
Mm. My world is very different.
You’d like it, I think— you’d do well there. And I don’t mean that by Thedosian standards: our people [our people, he says] are respected in Faerûn. Beloved. When others look to high places either in nature or amongst gilded spires, they find us there. High Elves. Eladrin. Long-lived and even longer envied.
I was...admittedly always a little domesticated, I assume. I don’t feel any deeper pulls to wild places, and I don’t think that is numbness is Cazador’s doing so much as a byproduct of the life I led, the preferences I must've nursed. [He's had more than enough time to ruminate on it. Consider where all the minuscule fragments of his persisting habits must've come from— and in the end, he's content to leave it at that.]
But amongst our people there were always stories of powerful, untamed warriors. Marked blade-wielders [Whether Fenris looks or not he lifts a hand, waving it across his face, down towards his chest— mirroring the flow of so many tattooed lines.] called Bladesingers: sacred guardians of both the common elven people and its most adored nobility. Our sacred spaces.
Guardians of everything, in fact.
As it was told to me, most of them favored longswords, and it was their innate magic— their ability to make themselves near invulnerable in battle— that made them such formidable opponents.
Still, they were often lone wanderers by trade. Most go entirely unseen for eons at a time.
[In fact, most believe they've all but vanished entirely. Died, or forgotten, or, having failed to pass on their craft, withered away into history itself.]
Which is to say, my darling, if anyone ever spotted you in Faerûn, they’d likely throw a damned feast in your honor. Wash the very ground you walk on, make a bed for you— entirely free of charge.
[He watches Astarion's profile as he speaks, eyes flicking over the curve of his lips, the faint splatter of freckles across his nose . . . grounding details, soothing details, things that root him to the present and keep him focused. The other elf's features are softer than his own, his eyes smaller, and Fenris wonders if that's true of all elves in Faerûn, or if it's simply a biological quirk. All it takes for Astarion to pass among humans is to cover his ears, but not so for Fenris.
It's odd. All of this is odd, this comparison between species and worlds, this stark illustration of how things might be . . . it's difficult to believe at first, so much so that it takes Fenris a few seconds to realize this isn't just a story woven for his amusement.
There is a world out there just as real as his own, full of the same sorts of people, petty and noble and evil and ordinary, and yet where elves are looked upon with respect. Not a species whose name is synonymous with either slave or servant, but who are looked at with awe. Envy. Revered, even, and Fenris thinks of his own existence in Hightown, barely tolerated by his neighbors, and even then, only because he is careful not to draw too much attention to himself. Of Shartan, and the fact that one of the greatest elvish heroes still began as a slave.
What a fantasy. What a dream, what a delight, to be looked at as something other than a creature defiantly making a space for himself.
Unseen beneath the covers, his fingers curl and flex against the sheets. The lyrium brands pull at his skin, a prickle of pain he's long since learned to ignore. Venerated, and for a moment he allows himself to imagine it: striding through the wilds instead of creeping through the trees, a knight instead of a wraith . . . do such creatures truly exist? He can fit himself so easily within that story, too easily, some strange amalgam of Dalish warrior and bodyguard, an upright creature full of pride and joy, not the flinching, snarling creature that he is.
It doesn't matter, of course. He will never see Faerûn; he will certainly never become such a wondrous thing as a Bladesinger. But still, he thinks of it: himself all clad in black and gold, dangerous and yet domesticated, free and yet comfortable. An elf who has a place in life, a purpose, his worth and dignity recognized and acknowledged.]
Mm. And yet I see no worship from you.
[He's joking. Or at least he's trying to, a vaguely amused observation as he sits up, resting his head in the palm of one hand. It's as much to fill the air as anything while his mind spins and turns this new information over.]
. . . truly, I cannot . . . I believe you. But it seems an impossibility. The Dalish have their stories of ages ago, when elves were . . . were not as we are today. But they are foolish things, filling their sentences with a language they cannot remember, clinging to a past long gone, if it ever existed at all. I have never paid them mind.
[As if Fenris himself does not curse in Elvish. As if he does not feel that nostalgic longing sometimes, deep in the pit of his soul. But ah, this is different. His eyes flick down for a moment, unsure, for he does not usually involve himself with his species. He tries very hard not to think about what he is, no matter that his ears and eyes mark him damningly as such.]
. . . what did you mean, Eladrin? A High elf . . . what—
[He feels clumsy. Like a child, foolish in the extreme.]
[It's charming, Astarion thinks. The fumbling struggle to understand something that pulls its form from the opposite of everything Thedas seems to promise endlessly: tainted gods and fallen empires, binding history that swears, even amongst the elven side of things as far as Astarion can tell, whatever glory might've existed amongst the elves in ancient times was so thoroughly sundered that their legacy might as well be damp paper. Sodden earth. A map of places that once belonged to their kind, all cluttered with towering statues of chantry sisters or Orlesian bowers— or worse.
He feels that adjustment more than he spots it out of the corner of his eye, how Fenris rolls up onto his side, and for the moment chooses not to look back.]
Probably ought to warn you that you’re asking the wrong person for a history lesson. [Astarion says softly, the words just shy of a breathy little laugh; not at all bothered either by his own shortcomings or the question itself.] Eladrin, as the term used to be, was meant in reference to our great, great ancestors. Chosen creatures of the wilds, you might say, very in tune with nature, unlike myself— and unlike most elves these days, for that matter.
Meaning there’s a lot of bickering about who’s what and why, and at this point I’d argue a great deal of it’s all semantics: dated pish-posh over who came before whom, what happened when, that sort of thing.
Still, when discussing what makes a High Elf a High Elf, most of it comes down to appearance. We’re slighter things by nature, compared to humans or dwarves or just about anything else. Sharp ears, of course, vital to mention those. Our eyes— barring my own, now— glittering bright in daylight like gold dust through a passing stream. [Now he tips his chin to one side, letting it fall somewhere near his shoulder with an easy little grin that fails to flash even the edge of a fang. One index finger lifting, not leaving the center of his chest when he motions towards Fenris himself.] Like yours.
We don’t age like other races do, either. No withering away even at the end of our life.
Those who call themselves sun elves tend to favor warmer hues in terms of their hair; moon elves, less saturated— silvers and blacks, though as you can imagine, there’s plenty of crossover.
You, for the record, could be either. But I’d fit you in with the moonish sort, personally. They’d like you a great deal, thoughtful thing that you are.
[Even reclusiveness likely wouldn’t keep them from peering at Fenris like some long lost member of their pack.]
As for the lack of worship, like I said: I’m not really a traditionalist.
[He drinks it in, though later he'll be embarrassed and irritated at his own fascination. Our ancestors, our eyes, our rate of aging, and he does not protest, though by all rights they don't belong to the same species. Do they? Thedas has no such distinctions; an elf is an elf, and city elves distinct from the Dalish only thanks to upbringing.
But perhaps they, too, had such distinctions once. Sun elves and moon elves, high elves . . . for the first time, Fenris thinks on it. On a past so distant it might as well be fantasy; a people who lived in cities of their own construct, not penned in like so much cattle but lived and breathed and existed with pride. Did they have the luxury of such distinctions? He does not know. He will never know, and that should not leave him feeling oddly bittersweet.
It's good, then, that Astarion offers him that distraction. The thoughtful look disappears from his face, replaced by a good-natured sort of scoff.]
Oh, do you.
I wait with baited breath to see the luxuries you offer to those you truly are fond of.
[As they lie in bed together, all their traumas laid bare . . . and that's to say nothing of all they indulged in before. Free drink and elfroot, a place to stay, compassion and understanding . . . that's what he means.
But ah, he's curious:]
If it were not for the, the vampirism . . . how long would you live?
[And oh, it’s not a line despite just how much it sounds like one when he grins. When he flexes the whole of his own sharpened smile, and those red eyes gleam in the dark.
Teasing and not. Suffering and not. Afraid and not.
What a pair of paradoxes they make tonight.
...and then Fenris mentions vampirism, and something changes. Slightly. The way air runs cold in a draft, driving him from settled comfort right into characteristic (haughty) stiffness. The little mannerisms that denote which aspects of his own self lie where, and exactly which ones are being presently dealt with.
For all that Astarion boasts about his spy work and subterfuge, his charm and endless charisma, he telegraphs so much more keenly than most.
Always.]
Hundreds of years, still. We tend to top off in the seven-hundred range provided nothing else nasty gets to us first— such as in my own case, for example.
[His exhale is...slow. Lips pursing thoughtfully, attention slithering back out to mark the distinctive scuffs in stonework overhead. Something distinctive to Kirkwall, he’s noticed.]
I’ve heard elves here didn’t use to age. Or...was it that they all just aged exceptionally slowly?
[Or did he fall for yet another Dalish myth, too?]
[Ah, and it is not so hard to spot that change, but what had Fenris expected? Of course he goes stiff at the reminder. It was a stupid thing to say, but there is no taking it back now. All he can do is push forward.]
I . . . truthfully, I am unsure.
[Which also feels stupid to admit, but so it goes. He has learned so much about elves these past few years, but a handful of anecdotes and overheard stories do not make up for a lifetime of staying around humans. He has a foot in both worlds, he sometimes feels, or . . . a foot out of them, really, not knowing enough about elves, and yet then again not knowing everything there is to know about humans, either.]
But I very much doubt we did not age at all.
[Such a thing seems impossible, and so he dismisses it. The sheer logistics alone puzzle him; how could a population survive if no one ever died?]
I would not be shocked, though, if it was true that we would age far more slowly than we do now. Seven hundred years seems an enormity to me, far longer than I could ever hope to live, but the humans have shortened our lifespans in more ways than one. Slaves in Tevinter do not often see past fifty, with rare exceptions here or there, but in the past . . .
[A sudden realization, then, awful and a little gut-wrenching for reasons Fenris can't quite (or won't) place.]
You may know better than me when it comes to the past. Elvish history is not one I have looked into, but it is a goal here, is it not?
[Slaves with such short lifespans. Astarion’s lip curls vividly in reflexive contempt as he listens, but at the same time— is that not a mercy in its own way? Strange and twisted and awful, true, but better fifty years than two hundred. Better that, than an eternity.
(But even then there’s a part of Astarion that protests, always, that isn’t servitude better than oblivion?)
He pinches his eyes shut for a second. Forces the ghost of the past from his mind, and then:] Mhm. For Riftwatch and Tevinter both, in fact, though these days when it comes to research and learning, everyone’s most obsessed with unearthing the mystery of a set of supposed Gates that’ll lead to— to—
I don’t know. Maybe the Fade, maybe the Golden City. All I know is the Venatori are utterly mad about them, and that can’t be any good.
But let’s not talk about that.
[He doesn’t want to talk about that. And he suspects Fenris doesn’t either.]
You might think several hundred is unthinkable, but I promise you, sometimes it’s not nearly enough.
And maybe....well, maybe it’s not so impossible, considering the gaps between worlds, that your origins and mine weren’t all that different. Like otherworldly explorers, our progenitors, crossing boundaries and finding their own ways to settle. [Stranger things have happened, and despite everything barring Thedas and Toril from one another, here Astarion stands.
He rolls onto his own side, now, one arm cradled beneath his head, grin running wide and sharp as anything. Incorrigible is the word for it. Confident in whatever he decides.]
Either way, you’re an Eladrin now, whether you like it or not. I’ve already made up my mind.
[No, he doesn't want to talk about that. He should, he thinks ruefully, and tomorrow he will force himself to, for what use is he if he shies away from the very topics he's meant to be helping overcome? But tonight is . . . tonight is special. A reprieve, the two of them shivering together in their trauma, safely locked away from the rest of the world. He has
So he happily goes along with that subject change. It's not such a bad one, if not a little fanciful. But then again: why not? Who's to say that they aren't related in such a way? He has no proof it isn't true, and Maker knows that inter-dimensional travel is a concept that is now, apparently, real, so . . . why not? Fenris has never given much thought to his species, nor even his own ancestry, but . . . it's a pleasing thought. That somewhere, so far in the past that all have forgotten, there might be some hint of something more than just impoverished, wretched creatures struggling to survive.
Understand: Fenris does not care about his species. He finds the Dalish to be pretentious and foolish, clinging to a past no longer relevant. City elves are even worse, trembling beneath the yoke of humanity, allowing themselves to be penned and herded like so much cattle. He has never identified with them, he has never cared to. He isn't . . . he is elvish, yes, but he has no cultural identity. He does not care, for what use does he have of a culture? Life is hard enough without adding one more identity to it.
So he does not understand why that combination— that incorrigible grin, the casual way Astarion mirrors him, but most of all that claim, inclusive and inviting and so unexpected— leaves him flushing.
Faintly. More heat than proper color, and thank the Maker for tan skin, for he's almost sure it doesn't show up. Fenris' expression goes blank, his mind suddenly left scrambling, and he does not know if he's insulted or irritated or pleased, patronized or (is it possible?) thrilled. He has never sought to be an elf, never wanted to be part of his species, never ever once cared that his connection to his family and his people was severed so completely that there was never a hope of reclaiming it (and how much easier, to pretend he does not care, rather than acknowledge yet another gaping hole in his soul).
If it was anyone else, he would snarl. He knows he would. But because it is this man, this elf who has slipped past so many defenses within a matter of hours—]
You mock me.
[It's gruff. Not an accusation, but pointing out a joke as it's being played.]
I am not—
[Eladrin. Dalish. Moon elf. City elf, even. No kin, save a sister who might have wiped his memory. No people. No culture. No knowledge, no understanding, oh, Fenris is an elf right up until you look closely— but any proper elf might just see that he's human all the way down.]
You think I brought you into my bed to mock you? [There's a soft click of his tongue, tame when it meets the back of his teeth.] Darling, I would never.
I could’ve saved myself the trouble and done that hours ago if I wanted to.
[But he doesn’t want to, is the thing. The sole little implication left suspended there between them as his smile softens just slightly at its edges, only by the barest amount of degrees. A missable thing.]
That said, you’re right. Pretty tales aside, you probably don’t have any sort of birthright to go rooting around for.
But I’d argue no more or less than I do, either: a monster of a thing who’s never left distinctly human cities in all his days, who never much cared for ancient rites or sacred oaths or...bare feet, for that matter.
I’ve been to wild places, and I know what sits within me is different than what’s in them.
[It’s harder to emphasize that in the absence of a place or a people, he’s come to realize what matters more is just what you choose for yourself.
What you choose to be.
It lives in his hovel of a home. A place he pays in triple for, compared to any human tenant— and while he could blackmail and extort his way into paying nothing, it’s a point of pride that he doesn’t. That he stares them in the eye each month, that watery-faced little creature that expects nothing at all from him, when he smiles as he forces that weight into their palm, purring.
He’ll be more than this, too, someday. Have more than this, the coffer beneath his bed laden with coins he’s even dared to steal from Riftwatch itself, unnoticed.
He’s certain of it.]
I’ve seen it in you, too. [He leans forward when he says it, just so, voice turning conspiratorial for a silent, weighted beat. Underscored by the sound of wind rattling low against the glass.]
You know what it’s like, don’t you?
Belonging nowhere. Nowhere at all, and not just because of what they took from you.
[And there, his lips peel pack decisively:]
So to the Hells with it. Knife-ear, rabbit, city elf, Dalish, slave. This world is far too small for you, my dear— and for me too, besides. Don’t let it collar you to its expectations.
Do you see this? [Astarion gestures with a flicking index finger towards a Ferelden painting in the corner, half covered, and almost lost behind a sack of potatoes.] There, that painting, I stole from a Lord in Hightown. By the door, those statuettes? Val Chevin. The finery on the far sill, Wycome, at the Duke’s inner circle....and I took so much more than that back with me.
[Pale fingers curl in a gruesome estimation of clawed hands, gnarled when he clutches them to his chest, emotive in the purest sense.]
I stood in the heart of Corypheus’ stronghold and shot arrows through the skulls of his lackeys. I tore the throat from a blood mage and left him gasping over the countless bodies bled to fuel his magic.
A slave to his own dying fear.
[He sits upright, palm pressed flat to the mattress, neck stretched long; whatever shadows haunting them in seconds or minutes or hours prior all gone, given just how brightly (devilishly) he grins, pale curls tumbled low across half his face, red eyes narrowed with an untamed cast, overlong canines flashed.
Look, Fenris. Look at everything he’s done.]
So yes. Eladrin. High elf. That’s what I am.
And if you want to be, [his chin tips lower, eyes lidded and dark when he promises, with all defiant, unbroken certainty]
What a strange word to use now, but that fits, for all of this has been strange. From that first coincidental meeting, the two of them running into one another, and all that happened afterwards . . . he would think it a trick, truthfully, if they had not talked of so many painful things. He would think it some Fade-born dream, too sweet, too thrilling, too good to be real. How could it be? How could anyone like Astarion exist? The two of them fitting so easily together— not perfectly, for nothing in life is perfect, but so smoothly it's as if they've known each other for years on end. As if this is not a first meeting, but a simple reacquaintance: each of them flowing where the other ebbs.
There were so many terrible ways Astarion could have responded. There were so many decent ways he might have responded, too, that Fenris might have flinched from anyway, snarling and snapping no matter that someone had the best of intentions. And yet somehow, he finds the correct combination of words.
Or— no, it's not that, is it? It's the intent behind them. The edge to his grin as he triumphantly lists off treasures stolen for himself; it's the weighty, unspoken knowledge behind belonging nowhere, not born of cooing sympathy, but experience. It's being seen, and it is not that Fenris has not had beloved companions, but . . .
He has never felt so understood, he thinks faintly, as he does tonight in Astarion's bed.
Somewhere in that list, he began to smile. More quietly than Astarion's gleaming grin, but with no less pleasure behind it. And he thinks, without really thinking it at all, that Astarion covered in blood and gore, viciously triumphant and savagely pleased, would be a thing to see, indeed.]
You, [he begins, but all the things that come to mind are far too silly to allow to come to light. Instead:]
Freedom suits you, Astarion. More than it does most.
[And then, most honestly:]
Perhaps someday I will . . . perhaps.
[But it does not feel so strange as it did a moment ago. Before, claiming that title had felt like a child donning a parent's clothes, stumbling around in imitation of their elders. Now . . . now, it seems like something he might or might explore. A part of him that he can pick up and put down at will.]
Eladrin. Thief. Murderer. [And they are compliments, the way he says them, his voice rumbling and low, his mind's eyes dreaming of blood mages writhing in pain and terror, his heart dreadfully thrilled.] Companion. Refugee. Rogue. Savior.
[For there is a mansion waiting for him in Hightown, lonely and cold, and he will not forget how close he was to spending his night there. Savior, but he will pretend it's due to his work in Riftwatch if Astarion presses.]
[When he laughs this time, it’s a clear-cut thing. No performative lilt, no haughty pride— just him. Just them, a pair of wounded things huddled up for shelter in the middle of a storm and finding just enough warmth to forget, only for a little while, that the wind outside might be howling their names. Speaking of terrible atrocities that yet still might come to pass. So yes. Here, tangled in stolen covers, and warmed by a fire that’s little more than a glorified, dug-out hole in the wall, they’ve cut something for themselves, and sometimes that’s the only victory one gets.
The only one needed, too.
He snorts softly on the heels of it, leveling out instead of continuing to thrive in his own wicked glory, finding his way back into his own far subtler skin.
But the smile stays.]
Mhm. A little. [Soft. Contented. Easy in his own silhouette when he slips an elbow across his knee, keeping the whole of his stare fixed on Fenris in the dark.]
But you’ll figure those out in time.
[Oh, it’s not all pretty. Even Astarion knows just how mean he can be when prompted. Ambition turned to gluttony and greed. Pride twisting into callousness. Cowardice without end. There are moments when he looks in the mirror and fears only Cazador is staring back, but...
Savior.
What an intriguing fantasy for a monster like him.
He lifts his free hand, two fingers brushing white wisps of hair from Fenris’ eyes— ring and little fingers— so precise in their work that they barely graze skin. Less an intrusion, and more a barely mentionable show of care. Small. Quick.
And then he’s back within his own space, shifting to lie down once more. Turning away and lifting the covers, keeping them tucked close against his neck.
An old, pointless habit.]
For now, try to sleep. I know it’s all so terribly tedious, but no one in Riftwatch’s going to be content to let you rest once they find out you’re here.
Better take what you can get in the meanwhile.
[The door is locked; nothing will come for you tonight.]
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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.
no subject
[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.
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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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How proud he must have been, Astarion thinks bitterly from his own bedding, Fenris' master watching comfortably from his perch, consolidating his most precious possessions so much the same way Cazador often did. Each one that fails becomes a little less precious— a little less loved. But the one that succeeds....
A fortune’s worth of lyrium.
Astarion seethes. His teeth ache, the way wild things work their jaw for wanting to bite down into vulnerable flesh. He can’t spare pity or sorrow; Fenris has already been marred, no shed tears will smooth down the horrid shape of it— but anger? Anger will always have its use, even if Danarius is long dead.
Even so, he keeps that to himself.]
All you’d done to free her...
[Wasted.
Abused.
What Astarion wouldn’t have given to someone who’d dared to free him from enslavement. Yet still. Still he remembers the spawn that truly loved their master for his power. His wretched cruelty. His sheltering claws, hoping to lap mere scraps from his plate. Someone else might think of options. How terrible it might have been to be free in a place like Minrathous, where even Astarion knows the only power comes from status alone.
But plenty flee.
And plenty more find themselves possessed of enough restraint not to betray those who fought for them.
Through thick covers, Astarion shifts. It’s a muted thing— possibly nothing at all, and barely noticeable besides— when he settles the edge of his foot against the unmarked arch of one of Fenris’ own.
The barest facsimile of touch.]
If she studied beneath Danarius— if she was a mage, who knew what he’d done to you— and still alive besides, are you certain she isn’t responsible for what happened? [His attention shifts slightly, red eyes peering out over the hemline of that comforter.] With the loss of your memories this time.
[Tevinter serves another master now, and its reach is far: who’s to say she didn’t find another way to get what she wanted so many years later?
Or...maybe that’s just Astarion’s paranoia talking.
Yet again.]
no subject
And then Astarion says that, and everything breaks.
Time slows. Fenris' head snaps forward, his eyes gone wide as rigidity sets into his muscles and something deep in him lurches. The shock of a sucker punch; the abruptness of a slap, his heart gone cold, for he had not once considered the possibility—
I look on you now and I think you received the better end of the bargain.
Why wouldn't she? Resentful, hateful creature that she'd been, looking at him with malice in her eyes and her own selfish gain in her heart, why wouldn't she chase after her revenge? How hard would it be to modify his memory? For that matter, how hard would it be to sneak up on him? He knows her face, her voice (he will never forget her, that lilting accent and eyes that matched his own), but how hard would it be for her to disguise herself? She had gotten the drop on him once before. And he had taken everything from her, her future, her pathetic, sniveling, servile future—
(He remembers, in that very faint way that means he does not truly remember at all, finding out she was a mage. Feeling fear in his heart for what might become of her, an elven slave who had more talent than was good for her. Competing for their mother, yes, but for her, for at least as a liberati she might be safe—
He was so stupid).]
I, [he says, and realizes his breathing has gone shallow. Enough, he snarls at himself, realizing that he's been staring at nothing for a long few seconds, enough, but he had not dreamed this could be Varania's handiwork.]
No. No, I . .
[He closes his eyes tightly. Enough, and he forces himself to inhale sharply.]
. . . it is possible. I cannot deny that. I had not considered it, but . . . I cannot say she is not capable of it, I—
[He shakes his head sharply, as if he might simply dislodge that clawing panic in the center of his chest. But that isn't enough; with a short, frustrated exhale he shoves the blanket off himself, his fingers knotting in the fabric, his shoulders rounding as he fights to urge to run. Where? Why? But suddenly energy fills him from tip to toe, sickish and demanding, and he does not know how to disperse it.]
In any case, [move on, move on,] I— I at least have a place to begin to look.
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[(Six months.
Nothing.
And everything.)
All that time spent shedding the tatters of his past, cutting his teeth on Tevinter's crude dilation: venatori and magisters and abominations alike, learning Thedas right down to its digressive core. He’s no god killer. No vampire lord capable of twisting the fibers of the world around him to suit his needs, but he knows— more than anything— how to keep just one step ahead of a rising tide. How to keep his claws sharp by way of the daggers at his hip, the contacts in his pocket, even in the upper echelons of Wycome. Kirkwall. Ferelden.
If this is where the map of his resources all comes together, if there's something in it that can be done to keep safe the first person to have ever stretched a hand out to him from the mottled dark (who stretched out his hand now only minutes prior without a second of hesitation), then fine. It'll be where Astarion's tireless selfishness dies.
Easily.
He sits upright. He chooses to, keeping himself at a distance, knowing just how thin the ice must be. Woven through the air like a tangible thing, choking out everything else.] I don’t know if it was luck or pure chance that brought you here tonight. I suppose it doesn't matter.
Whatever it was, I’m not about to lose you again.
[Not to any pleonetic Venatori, not to slavers or mages. Not to anyone or anything. His chosen kin is his own, and he'll rip the rest to tatters for the sake of keeping him safe.]
Still, you can run if you need to. I won’t stop you— [Panic is a potent poison, and his flat is so damned small.] But my fangs aren’t just for show. And if you decide to stay, anyone senseless enough to think you’re here alone won’t realize that mistake until it’s too late, I can promise you that.
[Trust me, darling.
Like leaping from a ledge.]
no subject
Run, if you need to. A gulp of cold water against the arid heat of his panic. An open door instead of a leash yanking on his collar. Freedom, though if anyone had asked, Fenris would have snarled that of course this man had no power over him. And he doesn't, of course he doesn't, but . . . oh, what a shocking relief not to have to fight for that right, asserting it in face of casual possession. Fenris' head darts over, his eyes (more frantic than he realizes) darting over Astarion's face. He's hunched over, his shoulders rounded and his muscles tense, but he does not move.
I'm not about to lose you again. For the first time tonight, the implications of that truly set in. Not just the ones pertaining to him (and he won't call that selfishness, for how could he not focus only on himself at first?). But for Astarion. For this creature so much like Fenris himself, terribly torn up and terrified, lonely not for company or chatter but recognition . . . the only one who has ever truly understood. The one whose soul touches his own in so many ways that it has not yet been twenty-four hours since that fight in the alley, and yet there is no doubt in Fenris' mind that they are kin.
What must it have been like for Astarion to have lost him?
What must it have been like this afternoon, finding him again? Hands pulling him close (and the memory plays in his mind's eye, Fenris standing outside himself), a voice low and intimate, and then that blank stare, that uncertain wariness . . .
Not even a spark of recognition.
He won't run. For Astarion's sake, but for Fenris' too. For both of them, and he swallows thickly, one hand raking through silver hair. For one long moment, his gaze is filled with all the things he does not quite know how to say tonight: the relief and the grief and the longing. The intangible whisper from Astarion— trust me, darling— met with a silent affirmative. The roughened grip of fingers around his wrist and the stomach-churning drop from a rooftop still echoing in the lines of his body.
I do.
It lasts only for a few seconds. Then his eyes drop, the tension draining out of him, and he shakes his head faintly.]
Move over.
[He's going to lie down on the bed, dragging that damned comforter over himself. And it is not a good idea, and it is not what he would do with anyone else, not anyone. But he will not leave, and he does not want to return to the floor. And all the rules are different tonight, when the raw stark panic they've both felt has put everything else into perspective.]
I doubt we will sleep again tonight.
And I would hear . . .
[Gods, anything.]
A tale for a tale.
[(And it's a little funny: how he makes himself at home and yet doesn't, body all tensed up, taking up as little space as possible. Staying close and yet not wanting to overwhelm, all at once, arms crossed over his chest as he lies on his side, and he will move if Astarion indicates he does not want him there).]
Your world is different from mine. And though you have lived in Thedas for six months, I imagine you do not know all of it yet.
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No, they probably won’t sleep again tonight. Might as well keep his companion from freezing in the process.
With that, he slips back into place, offering a wan smile to match the dark circles beneath his eyes (darker tonight for all the obvious reasons). Small, and lost in the next beat when he tips his own head back to stare at the ceiling, fingers folded loosely somewhere over his own chest. Tangled light in thin cotton.
They’ve spoken more than enough of all their harrowing fears, their festering scars; it’s time to let something else in.]
Mm. My world is very different.
You’d like it, I think— you’d do well there. And I don’t mean that by Thedosian standards: our people [our people, he says] are respected in Faerûn. Beloved. When others look to high places either in nature or amongst gilded spires, they find us there. High Elves. Eladrin. Long-lived and even longer envied.
I was...admittedly always a little domesticated, I assume. I don’t feel any deeper pulls to wild places, and I don’t think that is numbness is Cazador’s doing so much as a byproduct of the life I led, the preferences I must've nursed. [He's had more than enough time to ruminate on it. Consider where all the minuscule fragments of his persisting habits must've come from— and in the end, he's content to leave it at that.]
But amongst our people there were always stories of powerful, untamed warriors. Marked blade-wielders [Whether Fenris looks or not he lifts a hand, waving it across his face, down towards his chest— mirroring the flow of so many tattooed lines.] called Bladesingers: sacred guardians of both the common elven people and its most adored nobility. Our sacred spaces.
Guardians of everything, in fact.
As it was told to me, most of them favored longswords, and it was their innate magic— their ability to make themselves near invulnerable in battle— that made them such formidable opponents.
Still, they were often lone wanderers by trade. Most go entirely unseen for eons at a time.
[In fact, most believe they've all but vanished entirely. Died, or forgotten, or, having failed to pass on their craft, withered away into history itself.]
Which is to say, my darling, if anyone ever spotted you in Faerûn, they’d likely throw a damned feast in your honor. Wash the very ground you walk on, make a bed for you— entirely free of charge.
You'd be more venerated than the Divine herself.
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It's odd. All of this is odd, this comparison between species and worlds, this stark illustration of how things might be . . . it's difficult to believe at first, so much so that it takes Fenris a few seconds to realize this isn't just a story woven for his amusement.
There is a world out there just as real as his own, full of the same sorts of people, petty and noble and evil and ordinary, and yet where elves are looked upon with respect. Not a species whose name is synonymous with either slave or servant, but who are looked at with awe. Envy. Revered, even, and Fenris thinks of his own existence in Hightown, barely tolerated by his neighbors, and even then, only because he is careful not to draw too much attention to himself. Of Shartan, and the fact that one of the greatest elvish heroes still began as a slave.
What a fantasy. What a dream, what a delight, to be looked at as something other than a creature defiantly making a space for himself.
Unseen beneath the covers, his fingers curl and flex against the sheets. The lyrium brands pull at his skin, a prickle of pain he's long since learned to ignore. Venerated, and for a moment he allows himself to imagine it: striding through the wilds instead of creeping through the trees, a knight instead of a wraith . . . do such creatures truly exist? He can fit himself so easily within that story, too easily, some strange amalgam of Dalish warrior and bodyguard, an upright creature full of pride and joy, not the flinching, snarling creature that he is.
It doesn't matter, of course. He will never see Faerûn; he will certainly never become such a wondrous thing as a Bladesinger. But still, he thinks of it: himself all clad in black and gold, dangerous and yet domesticated, free and yet comfortable. An elf who has a place in life, a purpose, his worth and dignity recognized and acknowledged.]
Mm. And yet I see no worship from you.
[He's joking. Or at least he's trying to, a vaguely amused observation as he sits up, resting his head in the palm of one hand. It's as much to fill the air as anything while his mind spins and turns this new information over.]
. . . truly, I cannot . . . I believe you. But it seems an impossibility. The Dalish have their stories of ages ago, when elves were . . . were not as we are today. But they are foolish things, filling their sentences with a language they cannot remember, clinging to a past long gone, if it ever existed at all. I have never paid them mind.
[As if Fenris himself does not curse in Elvish. As if he does not feel that nostalgic longing sometimes, deep in the pit of his soul. But ah, this is different. His eyes flick down for a moment, unsure, for he does not usually involve himself with his species. He tries very hard not to think about what he is, no matter that his ears and eyes mark him damningly as such.]
. . . what did you mean, Eladrin? A High elf . . . what—
[He feels clumsy. Like a child, foolish in the extreme.]
What distinguishes us from others?
[Us.]
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He feels that adjustment more than he spots it out of the corner of his eye, how Fenris rolls up onto his side, and for the moment chooses not to look back.]
Probably ought to warn you that you’re asking the wrong person for a history lesson. [Astarion says softly, the words just shy of a breathy little laugh; not at all bothered either by his own shortcomings or the question itself.] Eladrin, as the term used to be, was meant in reference to our great, great ancestors. Chosen creatures of the wilds, you might say, very in tune with nature, unlike myself— and unlike most elves these days, for that matter.
Meaning there’s a lot of bickering about who’s what and why, and at this point I’d argue a great deal of it’s all semantics: dated pish-posh over who came before whom, what happened when, that sort of thing.
Still, when discussing what makes a High Elf a High Elf, most of it comes down to appearance. We’re slighter things by nature, compared to humans or dwarves or just about anything else. Sharp ears, of course, vital to mention those. Our eyes— barring my own, now— glittering bright in daylight like gold dust through a passing stream. [Now he tips his chin to one side, letting it fall somewhere near his shoulder with an easy little grin that fails to flash even the edge of a fang. One index finger lifting, not leaving the center of his chest when he motions towards Fenris himself.] Like yours.
We don’t age like other races do, either. No withering away even at the end of our life.
Those who call themselves sun elves tend to favor warmer hues in terms of their hair; moon elves, less saturated— silvers and blacks, though as you can imagine, there’s plenty of crossover.
You, for the record, could be either. But I’d fit you in with the moonish sort, personally. They’d like you a great deal, thoughtful thing that you are.
[Even reclusiveness likely wouldn’t keep them from peering at Fenris like some long lost member of their pack.]
As for the lack of worship, like I said: I’m not really a traditionalist.
[A beat, and then, light as tugging on a tail:]
But I like you well enough already.
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But perhaps they, too, had such distinctions once. Sun elves and moon elves, high elves . . . for the first time, Fenris thinks on it. On a past so distant it might as well be fantasy; a people who lived in cities of their own construct, not penned in like so much cattle but lived and breathed and existed with pride. Did they have the luxury of such distinctions? He does not know. He will never know, and that should not leave him feeling oddly bittersweet.
It's good, then, that Astarion offers him that distraction. The thoughtful look disappears from his face, replaced by a good-natured sort of scoff.]
Oh, do you.
I wait with baited breath to see the luxuries you offer to those you truly are fond of.
[As they lie in bed together, all their traumas laid bare . . . and that's to say nothing of all they indulged in before. Free drink and elfroot, a place to stay, compassion and understanding . . . that's what he means.
But ah, he's curious:]
If it were not for the, the vampirism . . . how long would you live?
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[And oh, it’s not a line despite just how much it sounds like one when he grins. When he flexes the whole of his own sharpened smile, and those red eyes gleam in the dark.
Teasing and not. Suffering and not. Afraid and not.
What a pair of paradoxes they make tonight.
...and then Fenris mentions vampirism, and something changes. Slightly. The way air runs cold in a draft, driving him from settled comfort right into characteristic (haughty) stiffness. The little mannerisms that denote which aspects of his own self lie where, and exactly which ones are being presently dealt with.
For all that Astarion boasts about his spy work and subterfuge, his charm and endless charisma, he telegraphs so much more keenly than most.
Always.]
Hundreds of years, still. We tend to top off in the seven-hundred range provided nothing else nasty gets to us first— such as in my own case, for example.
[His exhale is...slow. Lips pursing thoughtfully, attention slithering back out to mark the distinctive scuffs in stonework overhead. Something distinctive to Kirkwall, he’s noticed.]
I’ve heard elves here didn’t use to age. Or...was it that they all just aged exceptionally slowly?
[Or did he fall for yet another Dalish myth, too?]
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I . . . truthfully, I am unsure.
[Which also feels stupid to admit, but so it goes. He has learned so much about elves these past few years, but a handful of anecdotes and overheard stories do not make up for a lifetime of staying around humans. He has a foot in both worlds, he sometimes feels, or . . . a foot out of them, really, not knowing enough about elves, and yet then again not knowing everything there is to know about humans, either.]
But I very much doubt we did not age at all.
[Such a thing seems impossible, and so he dismisses it. The sheer logistics alone puzzle him; how could a population survive if no one ever died?]
I would not be shocked, though, if it was true that we would age far more slowly than we do now. Seven hundred years seems an enormity to me, far longer than I could ever hope to live, but the humans have shortened our lifespans in more ways than one. Slaves in Tevinter do not often see past fifty, with rare exceptions here or there, but in the past . . .
[A sudden realization, then, awful and a little gut-wrenching for reasons Fenris can't quite (or won't) place.]
You may know better than me when it comes to the past. Elvish history is not one I have looked into, but it is a goal here, is it not?
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(But even then there’s a part of Astarion that protests, always, that isn’t servitude better than oblivion?)
He pinches his eyes shut for a second. Forces the ghost of the past from his mind, and then:] Mhm. For Riftwatch and Tevinter both, in fact, though these days when it comes to research and learning, everyone’s most obsessed with unearthing the mystery of a set of supposed Gates that’ll lead to— to—
I don’t know. Maybe the Fade, maybe the Golden City. All I know is the Venatori are utterly mad about them, and that can’t be any good.
But let’s not talk about that.
[He doesn’t want to talk about that. And he suspects Fenris doesn’t either.]
You might think several hundred is unthinkable, but I promise you, sometimes it’s not nearly enough.
And maybe....well, maybe it’s not so impossible, considering the gaps between worlds, that your origins and mine weren’t all that different. Like otherworldly explorers, our progenitors, crossing boundaries and finding their own ways to settle. [Stranger things have happened, and despite everything barring Thedas and Toril from one another, here Astarion stands.
He rolls onto his own side, now, one arm cradled beneath his head, grin running wide and sharp as anything. Incorrigible is the word for it. Confident in whatever he decides.]
Either way, you’re an Eladrin now, whether you like it or not. I’ve already made up my mind.
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So he happily goes along with that subject change. It's not such a bad one, if not a little fanciful. But then again: why not? Who's to say that they aren't related in such a way? He has no proof it isn't true, and Maker knows that inter-dimensional travel is a concept that is now, apparently, real, so . . . why not? Fenris has never given much thought to his species, nor even his own ancestry, but . . . it's a pleasing thought. That somewhere, so far in the past that all have forgotten, there might be some hint of something more than just impoverished, wretched creatures struggling to survive.
Understand: Fenris does not care about his species. He finds the Dalish to be pretentious and foolish, clinging to a past no longer relevant. City elves are even worse, trembling beneath the yoke of humanity, allowing themselves to be penned and herded like so much cattle. He has never identified with them, he has never cared to. He isn't . . . he is elvish, yes, but he has no cultural identity. He does not care, for what use does he have of a culture? Life is hard enough without adding one more identity to it.
So he does not understand why that combination— that incorrigible grin, the casual way Astarion mirrors him, but most of all that claim, inclusive and inviting and so unexpected— leaves him flushing.
Faintly. More heat than proper color, and thank the Maker for tan skin, for he's almost sure it doesn't show up. Fenris' expression goes blank, his mind suddenly left scrambling, and he does not know if he's insulted or irritated or pleased, patronized or (is it possible?) thrilled. He has never sought to be an elf, never wanted to be part of his species, never ever once cared that his connection to his family and his people was severed so completely that there was never a hope of reclaiming it (and how much easier, to pretend he does not care, rather than acknowledge yet another gaping hole in his soul).
If it was anyone else, he would snarl. He knows he would. But because it is this man, this elf who has slipped past so many defenses within a matter of hours—]
You mock me.
[It's gruff. Not an accusation, but pointing out a joke as it's being played.]
I am not—
[Eladrin. Dalish. Moon elf. City elf, even. No kin, save a sister who might have wiped his memory. No people. No culture. No knowledge, no understanding, oh, Fenris is an elf right up until you look closely— but any proper elf might just see that he's human all the way down.]
I have no claim to that title.
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I could’ve saved myself the trouble and done that hours ago if I wanted to.
[But he doesn’t want to, is the thing. The sole little implication left suspended there between them as his smile softens just slightly at its edges, only by the barest amount of degrees. A missable thing.]
That said, you’re right. Pretty tales aside, you probably don’t have any sort of birthright to go rooting around for.
But I’d argue no more or less than I do, either: a monster of a thing who’s never left distinctly human cities in all his days, who never much cared for ancient rites or sacred oaths or...bare feet, for that matter.
I’ve been to wild places, and I know what sits within me is different than what’s in them.
[It’s harder to emphasize that in the absence of a place or a people, he’s come to realize what matters more is just what you choose for yourself.
What you choose to be.
It lives in his hovel of a home. A place he pays in triple for, compared to any human tenant— and while he could blackmail and extort his way into paying nothing, it’s a point of pride that he doesn’t. That he stares them in the eye each month, that watery-faced little creature that expects nothing at all from him, when he smiles as he forces that weight into their palm, purring.
He’ll be more than this, too, someday. Have more than this, the coffer beneath his bed laden with coins he’s even dared to steal from Riftwatch itself, unnoticed.
He’s certain of it.]
I’ve seen it in you, too. [He leans forward when he says it, just so, voice turning conspiratorial for a silent, weighted beat. Underscored by the sound of wind rattling low against the glass.]
You know what it’s like, don’t you?
Belonging nowhere. Nowhere at all, and not just because of what they took from you.
[And there, his lips peel pack decisively:]
So to the Hells with it. Knife-ear, rabbit, city elf, Dalish, slave. This world is far too small for you, my dear— and for me too, besides. Don’t let it collar you to its expectations.
Do you see this? [Astarion gestures with a flicking index finger towards a Ferelden painting in the corner, half covered, and almost lost behind a sack of potatoes.] There, that painting, I stole from a Lord in Hightown. By the door, those statuettes? Val Chevin. The finery on the far sill, Wycome, at the Duke’s inner circle....and I took so much more than that back with me.
[Pale fingers curl in a gruesome estimation of clawed hands, gnarled when he clutches them to his chest, emotive in the purest sense.]
I stood in the heart of Corypheus’ stronghold and shot arrows through the skulls of his lackeys. I tore the throat from a blood mage and left him gasping over the countless bodies bled to fuel his magic.
A slave to his own dying fear.
[He sits upright, palm pressed flat to the mattress, neck stretched long; whatever shadows haunting them in seconds or minutes or hours prior all gone, given just how brightly (devilishly) he grins, pale curls tumbled low across half his face, red eyes narrowed with an untamed cast, overlong canines flashed.
Look, Fenris. Look at everything he’s done.]
So yes. Eladrin. High elf. That’s what I am.
And if you want to be, [his chin tips lower, eyes lidded and dark when he promises, with all defiant, unbroken certainty]
...so you are.
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What a strange word to use now, but that fits, for all of this has been strange. From that first coincidental meeting, the two of them running into one another, and all that happened afterwards . . . he would think it a trick, truthfully, if they had not talked of so many painful things. He would think it some Fade-born dream, too sweet, too thrilling, too good to be real. How could it be? How could anyone like Astarion exist? The two of them fitting so easily together— not perfectly, for nothing in life is perfect, but so smoothly it's as if they've known each other for years on end. As if this is not a first meeting, but a simple reacquaintance: each of them flowing where the other ebbs.
There were so many terrible ways Astarion could have responded. There were so many decent ways he might have responded, too, that Fenris might have flinched from anyway, snarling and snapping no matter that someone had the best of intentions. And yet somehow, he finds the correct combination of words.
Or— no, it's not that, is it? It's the intent behind them. The edge to his grin as he triumphantly lists off treasures stolen for himself; it's the weighty, unspoken knowledge behind belonging nowhere, not born of cooing sympathy, but experience. It's being seen, and it is not that Fenris has not had beloved companions, but . . .
He has never felt so understood, he thinks faintly, as he does tonight in Astarion's bed.
Somewhere in that list, he began to smile. More quietly than Astarion's gleaming grin, but with no less pleasure behind it. And he thinks, without really thinking it at all, that Astarion covered in blood and gore, viciously triumphant and savagely pleased, would be a thing to see, indeed.]
You, [he begins, but all the things that come to mind are far too silly to allow to come to light. Instead:]
Freedom suits you, Astarion. More than it does most.
[And then, most honestly:]
Perhaps someday I will . . . perhaps.
[But it does not feel so strange as it did a moment ago. Before, claiming that title had felt like a child donning a parent's clothes, stumbling around in imitation of their elders. Now . . . now, it seems like something he might or might explore. A part of him that he can pick up and put down at will.]
Eladrin. Thief. Murderer. [And they are compliments, the way he says them, his voice rumbling and low, his mind's eyes dreaming of blood mages writhing in pain and terror, his heart dreadfully thrilled.] Companion. Refugee. Rogue. Savior.
[For there is a mansion waiting for him in Hightown, lonely and cold, and he will not forget how close he was to spending his night there. Savior, but he will pretend it's due to his work in Riftwatch if Astarion presses.]
Am I missing anything else?
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The only one needed, too.
He snorts softly on the heels of it, leveling out instead of continuing to thrive in his own wicked glory, finding his way back into his own far subtler skin.
But the smile stays.]
Mhm. A little. [Soft. Contented. Easy in his own silhouette when he slips an elbow across his knee, keeping the whole of his stare fixed on Fenris in the dark.]
But you’ll figure those out in time.
[Oh, it’s not all pretty. Even Astarion knows just how mean he can be when prompted. Ambition turned to gluttony and greed. Pride twisting into callousness. Cowardice without end. There are moments when he looks in the mirror and fears only Cazador is staring back, but...
Savior.
What an intriguing fantasy for a monster like him.
He lifts his free hand, two fingers brushing white wisps of hair from Fenris’ eyes— ring and little fingers— so precise in their work that they barely graze skin. Less an intrusion, and more a barely mentionable show of care. Small. Quick.
And then he’s back within his own space, shifting to lie down once more. Turning away and lifting the covers, keeping them tucked close against his neck.
An old, pointless habit.]
For now, try to sleep. I know it’s all so terribly tedious, but no one in Riftwatch’s going to be content to let you rest once they find out you’re here.
Better take what you can get in the meanwhile.
[The door is locked; nothing will come for you tonight.]