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.

"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.

“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.”

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.

"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."

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."

“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?”

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.

Fortunately— or perhaps unfortunately, depending on perspective— Astarion has precisely what he wants. What he needs. The rest won’t involve James Holden; they’ve said everything there is to be said between them.

Now, Astarion’s simply looking to know for the sake of knowing. For the security it provides.

And that goes beyond the bounds of Thedas.

“I might.” He counters, blinking slow as wine is drawn once again to his lips. “Though you know I’ll wonder why you haven’t always kept them covered, in that case.”

That makes him smile, actually, funnily. If he pours himself more of the wine, well. From one difficult topic to another. Despite that, his tone is less grim when he speaks. Easier to make light of the things that don't hurt anyone but himself.

"I did when I first got here," he admits, having a drink. "I don't remember when it was that I stopped."

And he doesn't. But it was after he got that ugly scar on his belly, when he first came to realize how much more there was to fear in Thedas than what he'd brought with him.

"How much did you hear about the attack by the undead?"

Edited 2021-11-27 21:05 (UTC)

"I do my homework." Astarion confesses openly for once. A rare truth, given the vampire's love of playing the fool. Easier to be seen as ignorant, to be underestimated, when the opposite inspires suspicion just as much as a potentially raised guard.

With Holden, he's certain the man won't care either way.

"Nevarran undead, transported mostly via Eluvian. Laced with red lyrium of all things."

He fiddles, one-handed, with the hem of his glove. The non-anchor hand, like he's tempted to free his shard to visible sight. He isn't, of course. He isn't even aware he's doing it. The nervous tic only lasts a few moments, till the next time he reaches for his glass.

"Yeah," he agrees to all parts of that, nodding. "They were infected with red, glowing crystals." Astarion's sharp, is the thing. He doesn't have to draw the comparison to anchors. "There's something like it where I come from. Not much like it, but they look a little alike. I've seen a lot of people dead that way."

Something like 100,000, to be exact. To say nothing of the Caliban project.

His voice twists mocking, but only of himself. "It scares me."

There's nothing wrong with being afraid, contrary to popular belief. It's healthy in the sense that it's preventative. In the simple truth that anyone who's been alive long enough to know real, unsuppressed ugliness knows there's plenty worth fearing, and too much of it well within reach.

Holden's right to be afraid. It's only confessing it that's dangerous.

"If it was anything like red lyrium, then it's a very ugly way to go, I'd wager."

He would never think less of anyone for their fear. He'd tell them, easily, how normal it is. It's not exactly his own fear he dislikes, but the places he knows it's led him. The person he has the capacity to be. It's difficult to trust his own judgment, and he doesn't have Amos or Naomi or Alex anymore to make sure he does the right thing. He'd endangered, too, Gwenaëlle and Gabranth for his fear.

Prickly, difficult Astarion, who'd lashed out even as this wine bottle has been open, might seem like a strange person to answer about this. But there's been no point to distrusting him since Tantervale. Forget point: there's no distrusting him right now.

"Worse than ugly."

Devoured, and not even able to get the peace of death.

"Go on, then." He says, shifting back in that rotted little seat, wood creaking faintly as one leg crosses— ankle to knee— the wine glass goes with him; he drinks in expectant silence.

There's the option to deny the vampire's muted pressing, of course, but Astarion isn't so gentle as to offer it.

He doesn't have to.

Jim's quiet a long moment. But this conversation has dredged up a lot already; his worst fear is Venatori with something like the protomolecule, and the night the undead attacked had made him think it realized. Talking about it so soon after discussing the dangers the Venatori pose, how eager they are to get their hands on people like the two of them, the things they could extract out of him —

he shakes his head, draining his glass.

"Trust me, you're happier not knowing." He glances towards the bottle, adding, "Besides, I'm out of time."

They've emptied it between the two of them, and he remembers the terms of Astarion's attention.

“Two hundred years, and I’ve found that’s still the most untrue statement anyone’s ever bothered to utter.” Ignorance equates to bliss only until the hammer falls. Unrelated as this might be to Thedas, it isn’t unrelated to Holden: knowing what might have him freezing or wary is still its own advantage. A ward against disaster. “No one’s better off not knowing. Doesn’t matter what the subject is.”

The room's gone dark from waning daylight outside. Nighttime in Lowtown brings nothing good.

“But you’re right,” he says, leaning forward to set his glass along the table’s edge. “We had a deal.”

Until the wine’s gone. Astarion’s own rule.

“You’ll owe me the rest of that story.”

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