illithidnapped

It’s me, isn’t it. [The accusation is so teasing that it practically has its own gravity, sucking in the rest of their conversation.]

I’m the one you’re missing.

[Astarion doesn’t wait for an answer, though.]

I’ve done a number of exceptional things, my dear. [Something from his own world, though— it wouldn’t do. They’ve spoken enough at length about misery.]

But I should tell you about the Blue Wraith. A fearsome creature, I stumbled upon him somewhere just south of Starkhaven, not long after saving Jim Holden’s life.

All the rumors were dreadful, as you might expect from the name itself: an intangible, azure ghost. A haunting creature tracking down any Venatori that dared set foot in the area, capable of rending flesh from bone in the blink of an eye. Why— I could’ve easily fallen prey to it, too, were it not for my redoubtable charms.

[The way he says that word, it might be possible to picture him idly checking his own nails.]

Shit, maybe.

[Hell, Astarion might have actually hit the nail on the head there. Her old world seems too close on nights like this, her old self. It's both nostalgic and unsettling.

Ellie settles down, though- just listening. He has a good voice, equally suited for lulling others to sleep as it is for salacious whispers. He's a good storyteller.]

So you charmed the ghost.

[He lets that prior comment fall easily, unchecked. Soft as snow across an open palm— not that he has to worry about that catching on when she can't see either his face or the way he's soaking it in ebbing light, listening to the soft crackle of a dimming fire.

Few earn the right of his tolerance. Fewer still should know it exists.]

You could say that.

[All things considered, it’s probably not too far off base.]

Still, due credit aside, I’d argue monsters are always predisposed to understanding one another— and a mutual thirst for Tevinter blood never hurts.

We wound up hunting together that night. It was the first time since coming to Thedas that I tested the newer limits of my, shall we say, recently reduced vampiric capabilities. My sense of smell and sight.

And it was my first time squaring off against a true blood mage.

I mean, putting aside the mutual thirst for blood thing, I dunno if you could actually call hunting blood mages like... monstrous. There's a sliding scale for assholery and as far as I've heard blood mages are on the... bigger. End.

[Buuut she digresses. Even if she's always willing to bust Astarion's balls about being big and bad.]

But how was it? Fighting one, I mean?

Oh absolutely awful.

[Ignoring her nominal disagreement in favor of focusing on the real issues, thank you very much.]

I’d expected something far more glorious, given the fear. The stories of corruption and danger. Hells, I’d even imagined they might be something like myself, you know: the affinity for blood, the promise of power in exchange for transformation— but they’re more illithid than vampire.

Near-tentacled, fleshy, misshapen and nauseating. What used to be a person splitting apart into...well, an abomination, as they call it. And truth be told, the title fits.

The fact that any mage here could easily become one, no wonder the Chantry’s so fussy.

... ugh. That sounds nasty. Near- tentacled?

[That sounds almost worse than tentacled.]

So they were a blood mage and then like... turned?

Like the snap of fingertips. [Which, coincidentally, is exactly what he does to punctuate his point.]

No warning. Not a second of it.

In truth, I was only the backup. Cut off the weaker of the gathered Tevinter flock, made sure they couldn’t escape. It was the Wraith that did most of the hard work, particularly in regards to the mage— not that I wasn’t pulling my own weight, of course. Just.

Never really wanted to touch the damned thing.

Wow, fuck that.

[Sums it up, really.]

Good thing he was with you. Not that you couldn't have handled yourself, but. The first time you see shit like that it always throws you off.

Speaking from experience? [He asks pointedly, tipping his own chin back to settle more comfortably against the mattress underneath. There's something to be remembered, of all the monstrous creatures she'd mentioned before. A host of names Astarion's never spoken aloud, yet hasn't forgotten, either.]

Unfortunately.

[Ellie groans aloud, just thinking back. There's a rustling as she turns over onto her stomach, cradling the crystal in her hand, looking off into the darkness lit by stars.]

I nearly pissed myself the first time I saw a Bloater. Those things can knock clear through walls to get to you. Joel had to use a shotgun and light it on fire. It was before he'd let me have a gun, so I couldn't even help him.

[The noise he makes is— thoughtful. Contemplatively light. It precedes by more than a few seconds the sound of his voice, though his tone doesn't change in that narrow segue:]

How long were you with him?

[Because the way she speaks about him, at times reads more akin to a friend, a mentor. Others, though...]

[Ellie goes silent, frowning. It's a more complicated question than he realizes.]

Met him when I was fourteen. We were on the road for a year, just the two of us. And then... we settled down in Jackson. We saw each other every day, but I-

We weren't on speaking terms. For the last couple of years he was alive.

[It's tempting to leave it there. To not explain, because it hurts, but maybe this explains part of why the grief has taken the shape it has.]

The night before he died, though- we talked. And. We were going to try to- I dunno. Fix things.

[Astarion has the capacity to hungrily bear down on perceived pressure points. A simple truth wielded as keenly as a knife whenever the mood strikes, as sure as a wolf knows how to show its teeth, a cat its claws, and so on and so forth.

Here, though, he lets her speak, silently filing it all away like scattered parchment.]

What happened— before all that, I mean. Whatever it was that drove you both not to speak to one another in the first place.

[There's growing apart, of course, but it's different than looking into one another's eyes and opting not to talk.]

[Ellie sighs, deeply, like she's sighing out a great many things. It's painful to talk about, and she's been keeping her secrets for so long, they don't come easily to her tongue. But Joel is long dead, and what he's done will never hurt Astarion.

And more than that, Astarion trusted her with the knowledge of what happened with Cazador. He's earned the full truth.]

Remember how I'm immune to that infection I told you about?

[She shuffles again, arranging herself in the grass like there's a comfortable position she can get into to explain properly. There are no good words.]

That's the reason I was with Joel. He was supposed to take me to this group called the Fireflies. They- they had scientists. Who were supposed to figure out what happened to me, so they could make a vaccine. So they could make other people immune.

[A lump comes to her throat. It hurts, it still hurts. And some small, ugly part of her is still furious, still devastated.]

It could've meant saving the people left. It could've meant... the start of rebuilding our world. It wouldn't have fixed everything, but- it would have changed everything.

It took us a year to get there. A year of absolute fucking hell.

[Ellie blows the breath out of her lungs again, slow. It's not entirely steady even after all this time.]

... they told him they could make a vaccine. But doing it would kill me.

And... it was me or the world.

[Audibly, she swallows -- because the choice was all too obvious. She's still here. And clearly, she wasn't the one to ultimately be able to make that choice.]

[Funny. Sympathizing with someone you’ve never met. Understanding why they’d make such a damning choice without ever having touched the figurative surface of every messy, uncomfortable aspect of their surrounding settings: he doesn’t know bloaters or fungal rot or the idea of vaccines— can only imagine them through the narrow lens of the very restrictive life he’s led— but he doesn’t need to ask, either. Not when it all boils down to a single, solitary endpoint.

Protect the person that matters to you, or let the world take them.

Astarion knows he wouldn’t make the right choice. He suspects, even if Ellie truly did come to resent the man’s decision, that if every role in this story were reversed, she wouldn’t walk a different path, either.]

Well, [He starts, light as an errant touch and equally as careful, given the topic at hand.] you might’ve been furious with him for it, but I can’t say the same.

[A pause. A guess, given the nature of their prior— brief— spat. The vivacity of her hurt. Her disagreement.]

Is that why you were upset about me 'going behind your back?'

[Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe she just didn’t want to be treated like a child. But they never talked about it again after that point.

It bears repeating.]

Edited 2021-10-28 09:12 (UTC)

[It doesn't surprise her that Astarion empathizes with Joel. As different as they are they're cut from the same cloth. Survivors, above all else, and deeply attached to what and who they love.

Maybe that's part of why she loves him, too. She's the same.

She doesn't know what she would've chosen, if it had been her child. The little boy whose name she still can't bring herself to say to anyone. She can talk about Joel, she can talk about Dina. She can even talk about Riley, sometimes, but...

Even though he's still alive and safe, she can't talk about losing him. And maybe that's why she understands more now about why Joel made the choice he did.]

Yeah.

He didn't bother to ask me what I wanted. Nobody did. And then he lied to me about it. For years. Until I fucking ran away on my own, across the country, to find what out what he wouldn't tell me.

He didn't just save me, he killed them.

[A deep breath.]

... and I think that's why Abby wanted him dead.

...you never asked? Never actually found out why she killed him?

[Difficult as it might’ve been to talk while tracking one another down time and miserable time again— or if they’d come to blows, even— but they’d fought here. Seen each other here. Promised mutual civility, even.

And yet.]

It doesn’t matter why.

[She almost snaps it, despite what she just said, despite the evidence of doubt. This comes from pain, and no little bit of fear.]

He’s still gone. She still had him for hours in that fucking lodge.

Edited 2021-10-30 15:26 (UTC)

[For a while, he’s quiet. It’s not solemnity or respect, he’s simply thinking. Because it’s true, of course, suffering is suffering— and Astarion’s never dealt in forgiveness.

Or forgetting.]

If the rifts gave him back, do you think it’d change anything?

[It’s not a kind question, but Astarion isn’t kind. Wild as he is, domesticated only by fondness and only just at that, he can’t help the jagged shape of his own thoughts. Sharp as glass, insatiably curious.

She granted him the gift of her memories.

He wants to know what it was like.]

How you feel. How much it hurts.

[It doesn't occur to Ellie to be hurt by the question; he sounds like the inside of her own head more often than not. He asks the questions out loud, and his unwillingness to handle her with kid gloves is sorely needed.

She wants to nurse her hurt like Joel did, but she can't. And Astarion is helping to make sure she can't.]

... I don't know.

[It's both a truth and a lie, and she sits with that answer a moment, trying to think it through.]

If she hurt him again, or tried to, I'd kill her.

[She says it softly, coldly. A little detached.]

Oh, darling. I doubt Riftwatch would stand for it if she tried.

All it took was one person barking across the network and already they’ve got Emet-Selch shut away in the Gallows under watch.

[No, it’s only Ellie that Astarion worries about. Her tipping point. Her security. Maybe her happiness, too, if that sort of luxury can at least find purchase in a place like this.

And while she might not have much to call her own now, she has him.

He likes to think he’ll make it count.]

Maybe, but it's not Riftwatch's problem to deal with.

[Ellie goes quiet then, thinking. Emet-Selch isn't a situation they've talked about, though she knows that Astarion's talked with him before. So has she. He didn't seem like a particularly bad sort, even if she can't say that she knows the whole story.

Then again, Ellie has a history of loving people who aren't good. She isn't particularly good, herself.]

If they locked her up, they'd have to lock me up too.

[The very thought makes her scoff under her breath.]

That's never worked out real well for anybody.

No one is locking you up. [The edge to his voice— wild and growling— only lasts as long as he makes that promise. Once it’s gone, he sounds exactly as delicate as ever.]

But all hypotheticals aside, do come back safe, won’t you.

At least not missing any more fingers or toes.

[It doesn't scare her. If anything, something swells in her throat, blocking out her breath for the moment.

She doesn't know what to say, how to respond. How to communicate how much his fierceness means to her. She doesn't need him to fight for her, but the fact that he would means so much.

So she just closes her eyes for longer than a blink, looking at the motes of light through her closed eyelids.]

Planning on it.

Good night, Astarion.

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