illithidnapped

It's been maybe a week or two since their return from Val Chevin.

The first few days had been little more than a blur of exhaustion, settling back into the Gallows and Kirkwall, the still-wounded seeing healing. The arrow wound in his foot has been reduced down to little more than a scar and a twinge when he takes too many stairs, walks too far, without resting. He's spent some time seeing to Buggie in the eyrie, getting well-earned relaxation, and Dulcinea in the stables, pleased to see him again. There's work he'd left behind at his desk, things he'd forgotten to clean in his room. Strange, as Astarion had once pointed out, to have a place to come back to, a place where he lives.

What he hadn't remembered was that he'd left some unease back at the Gallows, as surely as his horse or his books. The problem hadn't been relevant in Orlais. But here, surrounded by familiar walls, it creeps back into his mind. Tonight — it's late enough that the last ferry to the Gallows has come and gone, and there's a knock on Astarion's door. Loud, in the quiet of the hour, but not overly insistent. This isn't some late night delivery of terrible news.

Edited 2022-01-02 19:39 (UTC)

Well at least there’s that.

Still, the look Astarion wears when he answers that door is momentarily surprised: eyebrows lifted, a singular little crease running along his forehead until one weighty second passes— one where Astarion decides he doesn’t care to ask what brings Holden here at such a dangerous hour (by Lowtown standards), instead pulling the door back to let him in while at the same time extending his hand. Expectantly.

Offering?

Edited 2022-01-03 10:41 (UTC)

In truth: he's empty-handed. He lingers in the doorway, flashing empty (gloved) palms after a moment of incomprehension.

"I realized on the ferry I didn't have enough for the inn I was thinking about."

Both explanation and apology. He looks less put-together than normal in small ways. Something about the hair, a little unruly, or maybe a button missed somewhere on his coat. He'd been in a hurry.

"But I can find somewhere else."

Disappointing, but fair, Astarion decides, given the circumstances. The minor signs of distress— or at the very least, distraction— acting as testament to the promise that this visit wasn’t exactly planned.

The fireplace is warm already, lit and staving off frigid air from outside. As for the state of the flat itself, it is as it ever was: a mess of hoarded gilt and garbage.

“You can owe me.” He says mildly as he shuts that heavy door with a creaking, iron groan. Metal hinges protesting as fervently as ever.

A Kirkwall staple.

“Did something happen?”

"Thank you,"

is murmured as he allows himself inside. The warmth of the fireplace is such a welcome thing after the cold air that'd blown straight through the fabric of his coat. He works down the line of buttons — notices the missed one at last — to pull that coat off and drape it against a chair, then set to his boots. His tunic and trousers, beneath all that, don't look unlike something he might sleep in.

Did something happen? He's quiet a long moment as he decides how he wants to answer that. Admitted:

"I can't sleep in the Gallows tonight."

Red eyes watch almost impassively from a distance, though the narrowness of Astarion’s closet of a home means it’s no more than a handful of steps away at best— his stare focused on the lack of proper clothing for the weather outside (aside from the coat, most living creatures would opt for something far more substantial this time of year), the strange exhaustion in Holden’s expression. Restlessness or...

“There’s a blanket on the floor by the doorway,” he says almost flatly for how removed it is. The way someone minds their fingertips around thorns, by hovering rather than touching.

(Astarion thinks he recognizes the shape of it now, and if that’s true, he doesn’t want to come anywhere near letting it in.)

“Fenris’ old spot. I haven’t moved it yet.”

He might never move it, in fact. Not that it means anything in particular.

“Unlike you to be so afraid— for yourself, I mean.”

It takes him a moment, as he works at his bootlaces, then pulls them off, to place Fenris's name. They hadn't known each other well, not enough for Jim to mark his absence until it's now been pointed out. He considers being surprised that Fenris had a spot here; then remembers that they met while searching for Astarion in enemy territory, and decides that he isn't.

Astarion's tone worries him about the welcomeness of this imposition — and he is imposing, there's no question. But it would've been easy enough to not let him inside. He'd offered an out, himself.

Instead, as he stands and turns to face the vampire properly, he makes a wry sound.

"It happens more often than you think."

He's spent so much of the last several years afraid. At home. In Thedas. If he'd let himself, he sometimes thinks there'd be nothing but fear left in him.

"I'm sorry to come here so late. I'll stay out of your way."

As much as is possible in the small space, but he doesn't really mean physically.

Edited 2022-01-03 18:41 (UTC)

"Hm."

Hm. Such a soft sound, the barest edge of a breath as he continues his passive observation of Holden's wearied silhouette.

It's not an unreasonable assumption on Holden's part: in the absence of performance and false mirth and forced maliciousness, Astarion is— very much as thin as a drawn shadow. Easily lost. Easily overlooked. The antithesis of the image he works so very hard to cultivate like a shield.

Because really, that's all it ever was.

He sits down by the fire, just along the edge of a corner stuffed with half-covered paintings and baskets of stored fruit, ankle tipped just over the rise of his knee.

"There's no need to apologize, you know." It's such an uncomfortable set of words. For the giver, the receiver, and so on. Most of the time the people that enjoy hearing it are the sort that tend to demand it, in Astarion's experience. "I don't have company over, and it wasn't as if I was planning on trying to accomplish any real amount of work tonight in such miserable weather."

It's fine.

"But if something's troubling you, I expect you to speak up, darling."

"Do you want the list?"

The words might be flippant, but his tone isn't. There's no end to the things troubling James Holden, and that's been true before he first set eyes on Kirkwall. Probably, everyone who knows him even a little knows this about him. But he breathes out as he relents, goes to sit facing Astarion, near enough to talk. He wouldn't be able to fall asleep again now even if he tried, if he's being honest.

"It's different," he says, after a moment, "to dream about something happening in the Gallows...and then wake up, in the Gallows."

For all of his nightmares, every fear that's hounded him, the Roci was always a safe place. He never doubted that. Waking in his cabins, with Naomi there, was always a comfort. Even dreams of that inn in Ostwick, a Venatori prison that never was, the ruin at Tantervale — the familiar stone walls of his room were enough to remind him where he really was.

But nightmares of glowing red lyrium creeping along the towers, bodies covered in red or blue crawling in the windows or shattering doorways, and then waking up in the tower —

There's a crooked quality to his smile as he goes on, "It's just nightmares. I probably should've opened with that."

“We’re in Thedas,” he returns wryly, forced humor muted by something akin to resonance. Understanding. However reluctant he might be to sink into it fully, it comes all the same. “Technically it’s never just nightmares.”

Whether it’s the Fade or not, whether it’s real or not, it’s the possibility that haunts. The potential that holds more dread than anything else.

And that potential is so very real.

“Have you always had them, or are these...new?”

"Don't remind me," he says, making a face.

He's more used to the idea of spirits in his head than most, but dreams not technically being his own is still a weird thought.

"These are new," he says first, since he's never really needed to flee the Gallows for nightmares before. After the undead, there were jobs, missions, two trips to Val Chevin. Enough to keep him out of Kirkwall and delay this eventuality before now. But then he shrugs. "In general, I'm pretty used to them. It's not usually like this."

Since the Cant and Donnager blew up from under him. Since Eros. Since every other horrific thing he's seen since then. Nightmares like these might not be old friends, exactly, but they're frequent visitors. He knows them well. He knows how to manage the fear, and he'll figure out how to handle this too.

It’s hard, going from such highly keyed pacing to— nothingness. To the mundane spread of work and quiet desks and the darkened shadows of the Gallows at night.

In worlds like Thedas, like Toril, even, misery is always a tangible thing: even when so much of the evidence has been erased, it coalesces into hateful tenebrosity. Scars given form. Given an opportunity to press on indefinitely. In magic, in crystalline stone beneath the earth, in the mimicry of spirits and the long reach of shiftless, eyeless creatures waiting in the dark.

It doesn’t matter if you try to ignore it. It’s there all the same.

“Are they all related to the Gallows? Maybe it’s just proximity doing you in.” After all, it’s no surprise things have been particularly tumultuous within Kirkwall as of late.

“That, or just Riftwatch’s hideous interior design.”

Maybe it's paradoxical that he smiles. But it's kind, how Astarion looks for solutions, explanations. Ways to understand and make it better, ways to lighten the mood.

"That might be it," he agrees first, to the reach for humor. Then, more seriously, "Usually, they're about other things I've seen. Other places I've been. Tantervale wasn't the first place I've seen destroyed."

He thinks Astarion might know that. Or that it may simply make more sense to him now, looking back. One reason Holden had preferred death to being taken was the horror of Tevinter. Another was simply that he wasn't sure how much more he could take. Isn't sure. His recent talk with Derrica has only brought that knowledge about himself to the surface.

"But the attack from the undead was right there. I spent a lot of the night fighting at the tower I sleep in."

It scares me, he'd admitted in this very room, months ago. He'd meant it.

Everything is a problem that has to be fixed. Everything a puzzle in need of a solution. Control might be a philosophical illusion to some, but to Astarion— only recently freed from a life forcibly lived in its harrowing absence— it’s the only thing that soothes when so much else feels thin as paper in his grasp.

More than trust. More than fondness, or pleasure, or peace and quiet.

He doesn’t have to strain to help Holden find a trace of it here and now; he chooses to.

And therein lies the difference.

“And I imagine moving away from it isn’t an option, if your funding remains as limited as it did nearly a month ago.”

It's such a rational suggestion. It's such a good idea. It's also the first time the thought has come to him. He only breathes out.

"Something like that."

He wouldn't feel better in an anonymous dwelling of his own than a room in the Gallows. He might sleep better, in the sense of these specific nightmares. But there's no strong enough draw to leave. He'd rather be close if something else happens. He'd rather be there, in easy reach of his friends who live there. He'd rather know if any new rifters arrive. Amos had chosen those rooms. It'd feel strange to sleep anywhere else.

He shakes his head.

"It's okay. I got spooked tonight. Next time it happens, I'll be more ready for it. I don't need anything else."

There, Astarion's head tilts, as though searching for something buried deep in the recesses of Holden's expression. He doesn't move from his perch, though, leaving the space divided comfortably in two: room to breathe for both of them, space to acclimate that no doubt feels safe under the warmer glow of a burning hearth.

"How will you be more ready for it?" He asks, without any particular inflection.

A deliberate choice.

"I'll know it's coming."

He says, and he shrugs. Doesn't help in the immediate throes of nightmares, or even those first breaths of waking, but after — he can understand enough that he's somewhere safe, even if he doesn't feel like he is. He can tamp down terror enough to not throw on a coat in the middle of the night and run. He can get used to it. He's gotten used to so much already.

“Oh. Yes. Perfect plan. The height of foresight and innovation.” Scoff running sharp through his own nose, head cocking more severely. “If you’re about to walk in a hole and your plan is ‘oh it’s fine, I know it’s there’, I’m not going to be shocked when you limp back with a broken ankle.”

He shifts forward, spare heel dropping to the floor, gesturing with the tips of his fingers.

“For gods’ sake, darling. Consider a roommate. A tincture. Anything proactive in the slightest.”

And then, for punctuation:

“Even I sleep with a damned satchet.”

"A satchet of what?"

— is maybe not the most relevant part of this conversation, but his mouth has been known to get ahead of his head sometimes. He takes a breath, gives a faint headshake meant to convey that Astarion only has to answer that if he wants to.

"I'm not asking anyone to move or to put up with this."

It's one thing if he doesn't sleep. It's another if he ruins someone else's night.

"To put up with what?" Astarion puffs back, exasperation clear as the stars outside— though it's soft-mouthed by all his usual standards.

"Or do you think I pluck up partners for fun? Which— actually is also true— but aside from that." Not the point. "There's nothing wrong in having someone around to set your thick little heart at ease."

He moves to stand, striding over to the carefully embroidered pillow resting at the head of his bed, throwing the entirety of its span to Holden instead, perfumed herbs inside wafting sweetly through the air.

The math, Astarion suspects, is easy enough to do.

"Besides, you're not the only person in the Gallows whose fears come crawling in at night." Hand to his hip, he presses, "It's not an imposition if you both need it."

Back in Val Chevin, Derrica had said, your pain matters as much as mine. And in a way, Astarion is saying the same thing. Why not seek comfort elsewhere, somewhere? From someone?

He catches the pillow, holds it close enough to his face to catch its scent. Easy enough, as Astarion had thought, to understand how it helps. He lowers his hands, holds it in his lap.

It hadn't been like this on the Roci. It hasn't even been like this the whole time he's been in Thedas. But some part of his attention snags on the word need, and isn't that the reality? What Thedas needs of him. It needs an anchor-bearer. It needs some of his skills. His morality, maybe. Does it need a fallible man, with hopes or dreams? Does it need the terrors he's brought with him, or has found here? Does anyone really need Jim Holden, here?

A part of him knows that's not a fair thought. A part of him knows that there are people in Riftwatch who care for him. That he's looking at one of them, right now. The rest of him is very tired.

"Do you think I should try putting out an ad?"

He isn't not being a smartass. But there's a real question to it. Not as if he intends to come banging on Astarion's door every time something frightens him, or Derrica's, for that matter. When he'd been a younger man, he actually had taken an approach like Astarion's — Naomi had once suggested he might've slept his way through a lot of the Cant's crew over the years, and. Well. — but these days, he'd sooner brew some fresh coffee and find himself something else that needs to be done.

Astarion sees that shift. Watches shifting pain roll through an already tired frame. He doesn’t need to guess to understand how that struggle is silently playing out.

And when it’s done, he smiles.

Quiet. Lopsided.

“Mhm.” A breathy laugh, rather than an affirmation. Just as muted as it should be when he finds his way to sitting down across the edge of his bed, tugging off his gloves. His shirt, exposing the deeply knotted scarwork running across his back as he stoops down to fish up something lighter from a heap laid out just beside his heels.

“Still,” an absent start, his attention occupied with redressing, “you can come here whenever you like, until you find someone else to hold your hand.”

It’s not an offer he’d make, normally. One only given to three other people after half a year in Thedas.

“Just remember that if I don’t answer, I’m very, very busy.”

Not saying with what, but again. Math.

“So. Best get to work on that little ad of yours.”

Astarion always seems to surprise. Like the shifting of light, there are always newer sides to him, different subtleties. That soft laugh. The gentle humoring of Jim's, admittedly, incredibly stupid joke. He's not sure what he expected of that — of coming here, at all — but it wasn't this.

And it wasn't, either, the horror of scarring across Astarion's back. Entrusted to him so casually, so carelessly, that the only thing he can do is swallow very hard and clench his hands into fists in the pillow he holds, releasing a burst of fragrance. He knows that Astarion has suffered. He suspects he'll never really grasp the extent of it.

"Thank you," he says instead of anything else, not so softly as to not be heard. What a thing it is, to know pain, and to make a small bubble of safety. Not just for oneself, but for others too.

It's not long after this that they settle to attempt sleep. It's not so long after that, that sleep actually arrives. And when daylight starts to stream in through the windows, there's a knocking at the door.

It's a narrow exchange, given that it takes Astarion all of five-ish steps to reach the doorway from his bed. Iron doors subsequently cracked open, muted voices muttering for a few beats before Astarion pulls back inside, bolting the door (just as he always does, no chances taken) and pacing his own way back to the edge of his bed, one leg half-nosing in under heavy covers as he turns over a single letter in his hand.

Unfolded and untangled, thin parchment pulled from packaging, and the small little slip of paper is—

Oh.

Oh.

Something in his expression twisting. Blinking once, twice, and the note's so small that there can't be that much written on it to have him poring over it so many times, but it must. Or it seems to. Because Astarion does.

The length of time is enough for him to wake, going from bleary confusion (where is he, again?) to something resembling alertness. He sits up, first propped up an elbow and then sitting properly, blinking, as he takes in that long pause.

"What is it?"

INBOX

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