illithidnapped

[He could joke about the benefit of his own absence, but truth be told, he’s not in the mood. Instead, his expression sunken and sallow as a starved dog, he only makes his way to the nearest chair and sinks into it. One ankle folded across the other leg.]

Red, obviously.

[Obviously, he says, without bothering to go into why. Chasing it instead with something else that fits just as much.]

I didn’t come here to suffer, after all.

Don't be shy with your opinions, now.

[ He crosses to his liquor cabinet and grabs a bottle and uncorks it. Takes a swig - see, no poison - then brings it over with two glasses. ]

A Nevarran red. Full body, moderate tannins.

I never am.

But that’s hardly a surprise.

[He waves a pale hand, clearly agreeing to the suggested offering, red eyes watching Byerly from the stretching shadows of the evening in that study.

Muted, is the word for it now. His mood.]

You didn’t say. Why you wanted to see me.

And please don’t go toying with my heart: I know yours is already taken— and not by your wife.

[Smitten with Adrasteia as she is. Unsubtle as Bastien had been across the network.

The pieces were right there.]

[ Ah. By's eyebrows lift very slightly. ]

I'm flattered by your attention.

[ Then, steadying his gaze: ]

Not to toy with your heart. No. I wanted to speak with you - to hear your fears, if you will speak on them, so that I might know them.

My fears. [Astarion repeats, bitterness coating his tongue like bile.

He’s tamer now, yes. But even a snake nurses along its venom, even nestled sweetly across its own coils.]

What about yours.

You want to hear my fears?

[ A lone eyebrow now. ]

Truly? Or do you just want me to be uncomfortable?

Maybe I expect a little pain in exchange for my own.

As a rule, I don't enjoy bleeding alone.

[And fear. Fear is a powerful thing.]

[ Fine. By lifts his glass, and coats his tongue with his wine, and offers: ]

I fear that I won't be able to keep your ilk safe. Nor any member of Riftwatch, to be fair, but the safety of Riftwatch at large falls more under the purview of Forces. Diplomacy is the one that will, in the end, safeguard the Rifters and the mages, and it is my fear that I will not be equal to the task of protecting you all.

[ His smile is dry and ironic. ]

Not exactly the most confidence-inspiring confession, eh? You likely want me to be massively self-assured.

Edited 2021-09-07 01:07 (UTC)

Surprising as it might be to hear, I'd be more concerned if you were self-assured. [He takes up his glass, only beginning the tentative process of nursing it along.] Confidence, pretty as it is, has a habit of leading its practitioners right off the nearest cliff.

But you might be equally surprised to know I don't expect you to keep me safe. I don't expect anyone else here to, for that matter.

So you can put that nagging little worry to bed, at least in part.

[ Byerly gives a little shrug, like he's reluctantly agreeing to Astarion's assertions about self-assurance. Like his own "confession" wasn't calculated, as best he can calculate, to make the fellow calm down a little further. ]

You don't expect it. That doesn't mean you wouldn't like it, though, right?

As much as I’d like your Maker to come waltzing down from on high and bestow me with sovereignty and wealth, yes. Absolutely.

[Bitterness isn't bite, in this instance; his hackles are raised even as he drinks (and appreciates, for that matter, a sufficiently smooth vintage), only it isn't Byerly he's snapping at. The man's simply party to it, rather than its intended target.]

But I make it a rule not to dabble in fantasy. Never does anyone any good.

Which, as you no doubt already grasp, is why I’m not keen on all this hypothetical-yet-not-so-hypothetical nonsense about Circles and mages and Rifters: I doubt I need to confess my own aversion to the possibility.

[He taps the edge of a fingertip against his glass, lip curling.] You've heard so much of it already.

I'm not fond of it, either. My concerns have generally focused on what's immediately before me. How to survive.

[ His smile is wry, his shrug light. ]

So perhaps my sight is short, and I should be worrying more about the future. But the fact is that we have dragons to fight at the mountain's peak before we worry about the bears in the valley below. And we don't even know if the dragons are going to eat the bears before we get to fighting.

[Astarion's quiet for a moment, glass to his lips, one fang gnawing faintly at its edge.

He's thinking.]

...how old are you, darling?

[ That's - unexpected. ]

Thirty-seven.

[ He says that with a weariness that makes it clear that he expects this to be perceived as almost embarrassingly old. ]

[Nonsense, that tone. How long do humans live anyway? One hundred and fifty years? Two hundred?]

So let's say I've kept you shut away in the darkest, deepest pit of a lightless catacomb for all those years. Just for fun.

Then imagine you've been freed for the first time. Just a taste of it, mind you, before some self-serving ass decides to waltz in and claim someone else wants to throw you in a different damned box.

Now multiply those years of yours by four and then some, and you'll know exactly what it is I fear.

[And why the bears and dragons could eat themselves alive, and he'd still have no peace. No trust.]

It doesn't matter if the option could vanish by then. That it exists at all is what'll keep me from sleep if I don't think of a way to avoid it entirely.

Were those your circumstances, then?

[ Byerly's voice is quiet as he plays with his wineglass. ]

Kept prisoner?

...a slave. [There is a difference, after all.]

And my master was exceptionally cruel.

Corypheus would weep.

[His teeth click as his jaw sets. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth.

He smiles, and there’s nothing happy about it.]

Though in so many ways, I imagine they might be the best of friends were fate so overwhelmingly stupid as to bring them together.

[ Rifters are just dreams, of course. But that means that somewhere - somewhere, it's likely that there's some clever elf with a mordant wit in those circumstances, dreaming of freedom. And that yanks painfully at Byerly's heart. ]

One could go mad, thinking about how fucking miserable life is, to ensure that there are such evil men in every world.

[ His smile is bitter as well. ]

[Mad indeed. Given how far his own sanity has probably slipped over the years, Astarion's inclined to agree.]

The gods play games while we live and die like trapped rats. Your Maker— if he isn’t long dead already, bones littering a blackened city— isn’t any different.

Better to rely on yourself than fate. Or life. Or anything else at all.

Oh, I don't know. A fellow can't have a family tree as full of lunatics as mine and fully trust himself.

[ - Not really a properly manipulative comment, nor one to push Astarion towards calm. Ah, well. Sometimes a fellow's desire to be a proper puppeteer is overwhelmed by his need to pity himself. ]

You know why Averesch said all that, don't you?

Edited 2021-09-08 19:57 (UTC)

Should I care?

[Some people say you only see yourself in someone else. The optimist will leap to hope, the liar will think it's deception, the pessimist spots defeat, and the survivor, the manipulator— ]

The man was protecting himself. His cause just as much as his own magic-wielding crowd.

Just so.

[ Peas in a pod, these two. ]

He was a rebel mage, before this war. Most of our Riftwatch mages were. They want to see the Circles destroyed - and so they benefit from Rifters sharing their cause.

The more you let him crow, the closer he is to succeeding in that.

Not that it matters: I won't be lending my hand to it regardless, whatever this all comes down to. [Even if it means gnawing off his own hand with his teeth by the end of things, or slipping fully into Darktown, or— anything else, for that matter. There's a certainty stuck in it, even from a snake like Astarion.

The fight against Corypheus is as selfless as it gets, and precisely where he draws the line.]

Still. It does beg the question, what's your opinion on this little arrangement?

[Asked while he lifts his palm as punctuation, green catching in dim light.]

Which?

[ He tilts his head slightly to the side. ]

Tying your fate to the mages'? Having Rifters here at all?

Both, I suppose. [All conversational gravity spent, he returns to wine, nursing it along as he talks.]

Call me hypothetically curious, while we're indulging in chattering away about speculative nonsense.

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