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crystal

[acreage]

[ some days after the second satinalia party, ]

Do you mind if I drop by later?

[illithidnapped]

Mind? No. Just do me the favor of bringing along a bottle of something sharp and dry.

[acreage]

I'll see what I can do. I'll be there soon.

[ well, "soon." soon as he wraps up the task he's currently on, gets the ferry, winds his way to astarion's home. soon, in a general sense. ]

[illithidnapped]

And Astarion, nestled amongst beautiful gifts and a mess of ruined belongings (the shattered glass had been cleaned away, but traces of things still remain amongst clutter: rogue pearls fled far from broken necklaces, fragments of pottery precariously peppered around the edges of the single-room flat— nothing to serve as evidence when Astarion acquires junk just as much as treasure) waits just as he'd promised he would.

As of late, it's the only promise kept.

[acreage]

True to his word, when he knocks the door, he comes bearing gifts. Specifically: an unopened bottle of rich, red wine of Antivan provenance. He's otherwise dressed against the weather: a heavier coat than the one he gave Astarion, thick gloves that he won't remove even when he's let inside, heavy boots, long sleeves and trousers. He sets the wine down once inside, then says,

"Should I open it now?" Then, "We'll be talking. There's something I want to make sure you know."

His hope that Astarion already does is thready, at this point. He's spoken to enough to know by now.

[illithidnapped]

"Ominous." Astarion puffs, kicking the door shut with his heel before locking it, his stare trailing after Holden with an arched sort of curiosity. The little table by the fire (extraordinarily little, in fact, just barely big enough for a game of Wicked Grace) already set with emptied cups.

"Pour on, then." Seat taken along the edge of his mattress, he holds out an expectant hand for— well, likely for a cup of wine, but also perhaps the implication of information. "You'll have my undivided attention for as long as the bottle lasts."

[acreage]

"It won't take that long."

The news has proven quick to deliver, which makes it feel all the more ridiculous that it hasn't been done yet. He cracks open the bottle, pours two glasses. The glass with more is handed to Astarion, and then he sits with his own.

"Has anyone told you about the interest Tevinter has in anchor-bearers?"

[illithidnapped]

Astarion’s stare suddenly runs sidelong in a flickering shift, head still tipped down towards his glass, leaving a glint of suddenly alert red shadowed by the heavy hang of dark lashes.

His mouth doesn’t move. Neither does the rest of him. Something not entirely dissimilar to an animal spotting a predator lurking amongst the brush.

He isn’t drinking.

“...what sort of interest.”

[acreage]

He'd expected this.

But he still mutters a fuck, moves so he's better facing Astarion. After the conversation they'd had in the ruins of Tantervale, with the dangers they faced in those cold caverns, he'd thought —

he rubs a hand down his face.

"They're more likely to capture than kill us. Anyone with an anchor, not just rifters." He knows how heavy a thing that is to tell Astarion, who won't even live in the Gallows. And rightfully fucking so. "They're interested in rifts, grabbing people before we can get to them. They've experimented on rifters they've taken in the past, that we know for sure. And God only knows what else."

[illithidnapped]

The line of Astarion's mouth runs impossibly tight. He isn’t watching Holden’s face anymore, but the hand wrapped around a battered wineglass, gloved hand dark in the low light from the evening sky outside— only just offset by fainter traces of candlelight.

It’s too long a beat before he blinks.

“Why are you telling me this.”

Why now.

Why not before now.

[acreage]

Astarion isn't the first person to ask that question. But he is the first to wield it like a dagger, like a wrong answer could be dangerous. Jim breathes out, then shakes his head. The glass in his own hands is untouched; he should move to put it on the table, probably, but doesn't.

"Because I found out you didn't know. Any of you, who got here after I did."

After the dreams. Close enough to the same thing, for this conversation.

[illithidnapped]

“But everyone else knew, is that it?”

There, finally, the illusion of placidity breaks by way of a curled lip, drawn high enough to expose the edges of his fangs.

It’s obvious, now. Holden might’ve dodged the figurative tip of a blade, but Astarion’s hunting for someone to blame. For a reason it’s taken so damn long for a warning to reach his ears.

All the people he’d spoken to in Riftwatch. All the promises of camaraderie.

[acreage]

"I don't know who else knew. I can't speak for everyone."

He says it calmly, firmly. Honestly. He didn't even know who among rifters did or didn't know — same for the issue of Circles — let alone the rest of Riftwatch. Probably, everyone who experienced that one particular dream had an idea, if nothing else. But people come and go; and there was the other dream too, the kinder one, the one he so often forgets because he barely saw it. Hard to imagine most natives of Thedas aren't, in some way, aware. But it's negligence more than the kind of pointed conspiracy Astarion seems to imagine.

He can say, even if they did, you've been protected this long. No one's let them take you, even when it was a close shave. He would, to someone else.

"I'm sorry for my part. I thought you did know. I would've said something sooner if I'd had any idea."

[illithidnapped]

“Oh, you’re sorry,” he sneers, near pantherine as the cup in hand meets his lips— as he drinks deep enough to empty it when he rises, pacing closer to the fireplace with his own shoulders pitched combatively forward.

The door is locked. That thought is more of a comfort than it should be.

“How, then, did you find out we haven’t been told? What awareness did you lucky few have that we so conveniently missed out on?”

'They've experimented on rifters they've taken in the past', Holden had said, but that's not enough for Astarion. Not nearly enough when the memory of his own arrival— months fresh and potent still in the back of his mind— presses in like a knife against all present awareness.

'Rifters just go missing. It's what they do.'

How do they know. How does anyone know for certain the difference between slipping away into the Fade, or being plucked up when no one's had the good sense to keep watch.

[acreage]

He finally sets his glass aside. The first answer comes easily, with a shrug.

"Our Master of Information told me. He thought," said not without wryness, "I might want to do something about it."

He'd obviously thought right, doesn't need to be said. Here's Jim Holden, clotheslining any newer rifter he can find to make sure they do know. Because whatever angle had been in John's mind, the lapse of information is a very real problem.

Holden turns over the second question in his mind, frowning slightly. "No one told me either," he realizes aloud, nonplussed. He'd never had the thought in so many words. If not for that one night at the start of the year —

The pause, this time, is more deliberate. Then he says,

"In Wintermarch, the spirit of the Herald of Andraste sent us a dream. It was a warning. She showed us a possible future where everything had gone wrong and we'd lost the war. I dreamt myself a Venatori prisoner." He looks up, now, to meet Astarion's eyes. "That's how I found out."

[illithidnapped]

“A dream. That’s it?”

It isn’t, of course; the evidence of torture’s already been mentioned, but what Astarion leans into is the idea of how maddening this all sounds at first wretched blush. A long dead herald whispering of fated omens.

Your master of information— is the place where his mind races before his tongue catches up, all stop-start frustration pinned under the weight of too much, too quickly. Reaching and grasping at nothing, every possible outlet for his own outrage fails to find purchase. It’s a credit to Holden himself, not the situation at hand.

It’s also uniquely infuriating, but better than the alternative.

“Sit down.” He says, turning on his heel to face Jim once more. Solidifying the promise this won’t be a quick visit.

“And tell me everything.”

If you won’t give him ammunition, you can at least give him information.

[acreage]

That's it, he says, and months and months and months ago, would've earned a hollow laugh. So much of the dream has faded now, though, blurred at the edges until all that remains are specific moments, impressions, the severity of her warning. More salient is the bone deep terror it's left Holden with: he'd told the vampire to kill him rather than let the Venatori take him in Tantervale, and not for selfless thoughts of protecting Riftwatch.

"I will. I'll tell you everything I know."

He does pause in sitting, though, just long enough for a few swallows of wine. Surely, having this conversation stone cold sober is too much to ask of anyone.

And then: carefully, but readily, he does. He talks about the dream in general terms, the capture and imprisonment of anchor-bearers, the torture, the army ripping open holes in the sky. He talks about the things he's discovered since; the fact that capture and experimentation has really happened, if interrupted by rescue, if years ago, and the Venatori's failure to succeed in the years after. The fact that it's never happened, in the time he's been in Thedas. The letters Ellis had shown him from Riftwatch's archives, evidence of them taking subjects from towns near rifts and taking them God knows where. When he's done, he shakes his head, leans back.

"That's all of it."

More or less, at least; he'd left Cosima's name, some of the gruesome details she'd shared, out of that particular story. But it's not his to tell.

[illithidnapped]

Astarion listens.

Without commentary, without snide remarks or attempts at snapping humor. It’s night and day compared to the mask he usually wears, transparent in how he takes up information, sorting it in real time through the flickering shifts of his pupils as they dart back and forth, watching the table more than Holden himself. Interrupted only by deep sips of wine.

It doesn’t help, but it doesn’t hurt, either.

By the end of it, there isn’t much to be said: he’ll need time first. To adjust his own plans. To alter patterns and responses and precautions. To think about how this matters— not in the broadest scope (because there nothing changes: Corypheus is still their enemy, the Venatori just as much a threat as ever, Kirkwall an anchor and a leashing chain for anyone with a shard embedded in their palm) just in the narrower span. The one that reminds him of cold sand and dark places, and the sound of footsteps that weren’t the Seeker’s own.

“This won’t work, you know.”

Spoken after the longest of pauses, fingertips still wound around his cup.

[acreage]

"Which part?"

is asked on an exhale, tired humor and faint bitterness. He's taken back to his cup as well, a little soothing on the throat after talking, better soothing on the nerves after revisiting all of that. Or, if not soothing, at least something to think about that isn't imprisonment, and torture, and death, and how Astarion's taking this.

[illithidnapped]

“This, all of it. The way things are now. You know as well as I do that everyone around here shrugs their shoulders the second a rifter goes missing.”

And what’s to be missed? One less mark to keep track of, one less arrow in their quiver, true— but it’s not as if anchor shards aren’t trouble in their own right. Byerly himself had said it correctly: they come in so certain of themselves and their ways that it’s hard, so very hard, to fit in at all.

If they ever do.

“All those people vanished over the last few months. Years. All the research the Venatori have been doing into the Fade, mirrors— gates, even. There’s absolutely no way of knowing if it was the Fade plucking them up,” the edge of his palm slides across the table as if acting out the physical portion of his own example, drifting from one edge to another.

“Or Corypheus himself.”

Red eyes lift. His face doesn’t.

“And if you don’t know that, this war might already be shot.”

[acreage]

Jim cants his head. It's a good point, and one he maybe should've expected Astarion to make.

"You'd be right," he says, "except for one thing. I've seen it happen more than once."

Naomi. Amos. Very literally there one moment and gone the next, as simple as the blink of the eye. No fuss, no danger, no one showing up suddenly to spirit them away.

"But you still have a point," he concedes. "There isn't always someone watching when someone disappears. It might not always be the Fade." It might not always be natural causes from the Fade, either. That's a prickle of anxiety; this conversation costs him something, but he'll pay for it later. In the right now, what matters is Astarion. "And there's no way of knowing, the way things are now. The Provost has been working on improving our ways of finding rifters as they arrive. We've been laying out devices in likely places for rifts so we can know in advance."

So, on the flipside: it's not that nothing is happening.

[illithidnapped]

"It's the ones we can't see, darling, that'll be the death of us all."

An arrow punched through Barrow's lung, the Seeker exhausted and struggling between two levered weapons, blood dripping from the fringe edges of her armor. Astarion's lips draw out thin when he swallows nothing but his own spit, reaching again for the bottle that sits between them.

He can never quite tell whether fate looks out for him, or just waits for the right opportunity to make things infinitely worse.

"Arrival isn't good enough. How many missions do we run? How many worthless jobs in dark alleys? Our dear Yseult does good work, but her eyes can't be everywhere." A pause sits there, coming before the start of a short, bitter snort. "Well. If they can, it only makes it easier to blind them."

And Riftwatch is a damned mess. Small, underfunded, holed up behind high walls the way an animal dens itself for protection. A political nightmare, even if their cause is favored.

"You'd be a fool to sleep well at night— but I suppose that's why you, and I, wear gloves."

[acreage]

The sound he makes is clear agreement — of course he's thought about this. He'd asked Ellis what was stopping Venatori from plucking rifters out of the Gallows, and some days that answer of because we would kill them is the best comfort he has. He opens his mouth to mention something of that, actually, and then

looks down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time,

and looks back up to Astarion with some surprise. He'd forgotten, clearly. And there's little likelihood of playing that off, so he agrees,

"Part of it. That's why it's important to be careful who knows, especially outside of the city."

[illithidnapped]

“Fortunately all the talk of Circles saw to that precaution long before now.”

Another reason. The same reason? One little word piques Astarion’s interest, head tilting only by degrees.

He seems so different when he isn’t putting on airs.

He is different.

“But you said part. What else is there?”

[acreage]

In some ways, this feels like something entrusted to him — as much as those cold, dark caves, as much as the rare awkwardness when he says something too sincerely. As much as the person who'd been unwilling to leave him to die in a burning city.

He breathes out, heavily; this isn't unexpected either, Astarion sighting blood in the water.

"Would you believe me," he says, and it's an echo, and that's deliberate, "if I said it had nothing to do with Thedas?"

He means: no danger to you. He means: this is a change of subject, so if Astarion isn't done with the last, this isn't a road to go down.