illithidnapped

Oh nonsense. You're practically a child.

[His tongue clicks against the back of his teeth, dismissive.]

You've still got, what. Another century? Two?

[All right, maybe he is teasing. Just a little.]

Two! What would anyone do with two centuries?

The same thing one does with one century, darling. Albeit better the second time around.

Or at least, that’s the way it’s supposed to go.

And besides, there are a few amongst our flock that’ve lived eons. Take Emet-Selch, for example: the poor old bastard can’t even remember how old he is, practically dust and bones after thirteen— fourteen thousand years. I’m shocked he still recalls how to dress himself every morning.

I imagine one day soon, he won't.

So please, my love, don’t tell me that you’re thirty seven and you haven’t got any idea how you’d spend eternity.

Because if so, you’d make a terrible vampire.

Oh, sans doute. I would be the worst. Restless and whiny.

[ His understanding of what being a vampire means, to Astarion, is still a sketchy outline at best. But he's also fairly sure that's an accurate assessment. As he's demonstrated in this very conversation, boredom weakens his willpower. ]

Fourteen thousand—that is older than the Chantry. [ A whew sound. ] And how old are you?

Nothing nearly so remarkable, I’m afraid. [And this time, he means it.] Given the fact that you’re not exactly versed in all the details of vampirism, I’ll explain using only the smallest of words.

For someone to become a vampire, they have to first be bitten by one. Before then, they’re just a living, breathing— whatever.

I myself was a High Elf. Nobility, in fact, as I'd mentioned once before. But that’s all I can remember. How many years I’d been alive, what I used to look like, all that nonsense, gone.

[Almost all of it, anyway. Aside from a few slivers here and there. Splinters of a life lived and lost.]

But my people can live for quite a long time compared to the creatures in this world. Lovely things like yourself.

I could have been a hundred. Or five hundred. I don’t know. What I do know is that I spent two hundred years as a vampire spawn, so there’s that for some sort of definitive timeline.

[ Thoughts that do not come anywhere close to escaping Bastien's mouth:

• Oh, fuck off. (at the smallest of words)
• High elf—Athessa would like that.
• From some perspectives you're actually about five months old, mon oison.

They're all fleeting. Except that last one. He might actually say that last one eventually.

But under them, he does feel a genuine mix of awe, that someone might have memories spanning ages, and compassion. A single lost year would be terrible. Five hundred is unfathomable. ]

I'm sorry.

[ His pause is very short. He doesn't think Astarion is someone who would enjoy sitting quietly with sympathy. ]

What does it mean—spawn? Is being a vampire spawn different from being a vampire?

[That’s too much. Too close. There are people Astarion trusts to take in the truth, and there are people he fears that might use it against him, and Bastien—

Well, Astarion doesn’t know, yet. What defines him in those dark eyes. What he looks like to their every glance.]

You’ve already asked yours.

[He counters, voice sounding deeper in his throat. All feigned sweetness lost.]

Why did you join Riftwatch?

[ Perhaps no charming stories of feckless vampiric youth, then. ]

Ah. [ Knowingly, proud to be able to apply this newly-learned word in context: ] Fair.

[ And for fairness’ sake, he’ll be fairly thorough. ]

Pourquoi… Well, I didn’t join Riftwatch. I joined the Inquisition. That was a much more respectable choice. I came after Tevinter invaded Orlais because—it is home. And it seemed like more important people would not be handling Corypheus after all.

[ He was also horrifically bored. But he’s hammered that particular nail enough for one conversation. ]

Then this part of the Inquisition became Riftwatch around me, and lucky for me that I had given up on pretending to be respectable. Otherwise I couldn’t have stayed, and look at what I would have missed.

Edited (icon) 2021-09-04 17:14 (UTC)

Awfully noble of you, taking up arms for the cause. Not many people would.

[Not many people have, in fact, given the state of things.]

And here you didn’t strike me as the type.

[ Cheerfully, ]

For nobility or for arms?

[Equally as cheerfully, in fact:]

Both, actually. Though I suppose the latter still isn’t exactly your forte.

Neither is.

[ He considers remaining cagey. Old habits, and all of that. But it isn't so very secret anymore. ]

But I am better with arms than with duty. In Orlais, you see, we have bards, and then we have bards—am I telling you something you already know?

As a matter of fact. You are. [He's no slouch study, despite still working to fill in the gaps in his understanding of this world: in some ways, he's almost pleased to hear it— the comfort of like meeting like, and so on.]

But I suppose I owe you that answer, now.

[The pause is tepid. There's no intake of breath, just the hang that lives before one step off a steep wall, or a singular leap into the dark.]

I was a slave.

Not an unfamiliar concept to you, I assume, given the nature of your world.

[ A flash of disappointment between you are and but I suppose I owe you that answer now—the resignation of feeling not particularly interesting in the company of someone who absolutely is—but it’s only a flash. It vanishes entirely as soon as Astarion says slave. ]

No. Not unfamiliar.

[ Bastien can’t frown intently at Astarion. He has to do it at the crystal. ]

That is what you mean by spawn? So you were a nobleman for—however long—and then a slave for two hundred years?

[The benefit of Astarion's own weathervane mood is that all conversation is circuitous: nothing's ever truly forgotten, only briefly interwoven. If Bastien is momentarily injured by the pass, his time will likely come again.

For now, however, Astarion only hums a single sound of assent.]

Got it in one, clever lad.

As I said, a vampire needs to bite you for the conversion to take place. To complete it, you'll then need to bite them in turn, otherwise you become nothing more than a vampire spawn: their devoted slave. An unwitting puppet in your own skin, able only to act as you're commanded.

And vampires, my dear, are eternal creatures. They don't age. They don't die.

[His addition is a lower confession. Quiet as a single exhale.]

Your world was a mercy, you know.

[ An assenting noise. Bastien rather likes the world, apocalyptic wars and his own hard knocks and all. There'd be no attempt from his corner to argue that Thedas is a terrible place even if they weren't comparing it to something as awful as this. ]

You were aware the whole time? Or...

[ He's not sure which would be worse—losing two hundred years to a mindless fog, or spending them awake and watching your body move against your will. ]

Always.

[It’s clear enough when he’s done with it, that particular subject. His voice is conversationally light; like an animal protecting itself, he doesn’t let pain shine through for a second beyond the gaps between words. The weight of the topic itself.]

So. My beautiful bard.

[Interwoven. Reprised. Part of their game, now.]

Are your fingertips retired from their Orlesian crafts, or do you still play, so to speak.

[He suspects he might know the answer, but he wants to hear it all.]

Uh...

[ Bastien could pretend—well, anything. Acting, unlike arms and nobility, is his forte. He could move past the subject as easily as Astarion seems to.

But it would be an act. This isn't one: he sounds far away when he answers, mouth moving to say, ] I was retired, [ while his thoughts are on how it must have felt. He's had occasions of sleep paralysis—perhaps it was like that. ]

Most days I still am. Sometimes— [ How little of a life has Astarion actually had, in all his years? But talking about work, he refocuses. ] —if the Scoutmaster is short-handed, you know. I help.

But I have managed not to have to kill anyone yet. That's nice.

[He’s exactly 5 months old now in freedom years tyvm.]

Nice? [Astarion scoffs.] Sounds boring to me, but— I suppose I won’t judge. For now.

[Still, one question looms large overhead, drawing the whole of his own curiosity.]

Did you choose your retirement? Or...

Mmhm.

[ He is not, for once, deflecting. It just isn't an interesting story, as far as he's concerned. He didn't want to do it anymore.

What he wants now is more information about those years of bondage. But he can guess that further prying will get his fingers bitten, so instead: ]

You think killing people is exciting?

[ There's no judgment in his voice. Astarion would hardly be the first person he's known—known and liked, some of them known and been very close to—to say yes. ]

Edited 2021-09-07 16:13 (UTC)

Obviously.

[The way someone talks about the punchline of a joke, or the point of a script: why wouldn’t he love the thrill of it? Why doesn’t Bastien, in fact?]

But there’s no need to fret. I only dabble in dousing the most inexcusable of villains.

Or...the most moderate of them. Either way, though. Still perfectly reasonable prey.

Your war has been a lovely excuse.

[He stops. Laughs.]

—I mean. cause.

[ Bastien laughs, too—a quiet, huffy noise, appreciating what he would put money on being an intentional slip. ]

Même différence, non? I am glad you are on our side.

[ To the extent that he is. ]

Is it a vampire thing, your enjoyment— [ because he’d said monster, because it would comport with Thedosian stories of demonic hunger ] —or a personal thing?

[ Or can he tell the difference, with so few memories of his life before? Or is the entire claim to find it exciting a front? ]

I—

Mm. Well.

I imagine the latter, but given that I can’t remember the former, I don’t exactly have a solid frame of reference. [And as proud as he’d been a moment before, teasing quick and joking quicker, it’s gone. Sometimes, all the little deflections are caught by a single stare in the mirror.

And facing that...]

Everything preys on something else to survive. A spider isn’t cruel for eagerly sinking her teeth into her meal, or the lioness for relishing her hunt. We were all built to kill.

I just embrace it.

[ A thoughtful hum. ]

Antiva or Orlais, I think you would enjoy the most. Probably Antiva.

[He almost laughs. In fact, he does, abrupt and low enough to be sincere.]

You know, Fenris said something similar. Rivain. Antiva.

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oh my god I never got this notif, sorry fam

pff I wouldn't have even known

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