illithidnapped

Look around you. Look at the mess of your own world and tell me there isn't going to be some riotous nonsense the moment the Divine so much as coughs in our direction. It's not as if anyone will have a choice, unless the Chantry just happens to be left so weak by war that it can barely drum up enough resources to hold—

Well, whatever it is they do. Ceremonies, prayer, I don't know.

Keep looking. The mage rebellion never ended, they never surrendered or resolved it, that's why the Chantry was forced to negotiate with us in the first fucking place—because of course there's going to be riotous nonsense.

Across Thedas. When the mages who put aside their conflict to save the world get pushed, and shove back. Rifters are going to be seen attached to whatever fate they have, and probably shard-bearers as soon as they realize that we're quite literally also doing magic, but you see a handful of mages next to you. The Chantry has been weakened. And mages have gained a lot of ground, integrated themselves back into the world—it's not going to be easy for the Chantry to just bring everyone to heel.

If they could have done that, they would have. With the rebellion. When the Inquisition forced this negotiation. A hundred times. But they can't, it's a question. And everything we do here matters, according to former Provost I'm Going To Find Out If Rifters Can Have Phylacteries By Making One, who I'm still not fucking happy with about that—

And if it doesn't, I for one have never had any intention of sitting on my hands and waiting for the worst to come to me.

[There's a lot he could say in turn about the state of things. About how even under an ideal set of circumstances, walking the narrow line between safety and potential isolation is too impossibly steep for him to stomach with calmer dignity.

She knows about his former life already. He doesn't expect sympathy for it now, but he also can't swallow the bitter pill of anything remotely shaped— to his mind— like even its faintest shadow.

Lock a mage in a tower, and it's nothing to him. But...]

Former Provost. You don't mean—

There's only one.

Why?

What in the Hells was he thinking?

Politics. ( bluntly. ) It's always fucking politics. Everything that he does. We wouldn't have even had a Thedosian wedding if not for that.

Stupid bastard. [Said not unaffectionately, though rife with disappointment all the same. There's a thin line: he's walking it.]

Do you think he'd get away with half of his bullshit if he wasn't so pretty?

My money's on no.

( something holds behind her teeth that even as angry as she has been with thranduil, and even as hurt as she still is, she manages to keep there.

eventually, )

He's a handsome hypocrite, they're not in short supply.

Like you, now. Screaming at the top of your lungs about how you'll be the first to condemn everyone else to the fate you can't stand.

( it's not unkind, it's frank, but she's braced for him to turn on her all the same. it feels important to say, outright and to his face, and she'll just have to live with whatever saying it means. )

Byerly doesn't understand. But the mages you're slapping away, they've lived the nightmare already. They don't want to go back to it any more than you do. They're who're on your side. And they understand it better than Thranduil ever could. There's a lot in Thedas that he'll never really understand. Averesch's not threatening you with anything that hasn't been hanging publicly over everyone's head for years now, he's telling you so you know what the stakes are and how much it matters that we actually do something about not ending up there.

If you've thought about it calmly and you think the best possible choice for you is to go be scared in the dark by yourself, that's your look out. I personally disagree.

Edited 2021-09-06 09:32 (UTC)

So what. You want me to stand proudly beside them, arm in arm, pretending that I’m—

[His voice is tight, he’s as sharp as he can make himself but it’s only defensive; it has nothing to do with her, and even given the fact that they can’t see one another, that much is more than painfully obvious in the moment.

She’s heard him at his worst. His most hateful.

This isn’t that.]

If I do that, I’m damning myself.

( it isn't. she thinks, maybe, she understands what it is—or at least something like, something close. which doesn't necessarily mean she's going to get anything resembling through to him, but it emboldens her to try, )

No, you aren't.

I'm not saying, you're wrong to be afraid. Obviously you aren't. I am literally terrified when I think on it and I haven't even been in a fucking...I used to think if anyone found out about me I'd be packed off to an alienage straight aways and that was. Anyway,

you didn't invent being scared of things. You aren't the only person who's afraid. It doesn't make you smarter than anyone else to fuck off and be scared alone, it just makes you vulnerable and easy to exploit.

[Alone. That's what he'd been when those Gur found him. It's what he's been ever since. Two hundred years, and even here, he can't stop himself from nursing along old wounds.

Or maybe he's more overwhelmed than he knows how to admit.]

It takes more than one person to dance when it comes to exploitation. So long as I keep every last wretched soul at arms' length, I won't have a problem.

( it's almost audible, the way something clicks into place for her. no wonder thranduil fucked him, she thinks; they're mirror images, she and astarion. she understands this, she thinks. )

This must be awful, ( after a pause. ) The facade is down and everyone can see how weak you are. I understand that. I just need you to know that everyone can see how pathetic it is, when you cling to it once it's exposed.

But it's your decision. I'll make it easy for you.

( the connection ends. )

Edited (clarity) 2021-09-07 04:27 (UTC)

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