[It's a nothing-answer, a vague attempt at returning the joke withering in his throat. He can't tease right now. He can't banter back and forth about who was brattiest, not when his heart feels like ice and his mind roars with an inferno of hatred, seething simmering snarling for the murder of a creature miles and miles away.
Sixty, and it might as well be eighteen. No matter how the humans count it, Astarion wasn't grown, not really. Not as he should have been. There's a difference, and gods, doesn't Leto know it now. Sixty, and the word echoes in his mind in time with his thundering heart, a percussive beat that won't end.
In the distance, his friends call to him. He makes a vague noise, waving them off; then there's the sound of footsteps, short and sharp.]
I'm coming home.
[Of course he is. Of course he is, for they need to be together for this conversation. And yet Leto (or is it Fenris right now?) will not make Astarion wait in nauseating anticipation while he stalks there.]
What makes you certain you were sixty? I do not doubt you, [he adds hastily, feeling like a fool for how clumsily that came out. He can barely think right now, but gods, he needs to try.] But you seem certain of that age. Is it a full memory you can recall, or simply that certainty . . .?
no subject
[It's a nothing-answer, a vague attempt at returning the joke withering in his throat. He can't tease right now. He can't banter back and forth about who was brattiest, not when his heart feels like ice and his mind roars with an inferno of hatred, seething simmering snarling for the murder of a creature miles and miles away.
Sixty, and it might as well be eighteen. No matter how the humans count it, Astarion wasn't grown, not really. Not as he should have been. There's a difference, and gods, doesn't Leto know it now. Sixty, and the word echoes in his mind in time with his thundering heart, a percussive beat that won't end.
In the distance, his friends call to him. He makes a vague noise, waving them off; then there's the sound of footsteps, short and sharp.]
I'm coming home.
[Of course he is. Of course he is, for they need to be together for this conversation. And yet Leto (or is it Fenris right now?) will not make Astarion wait in nauseating anticipation while he stalks there.]
What makes you certain you were sixty? I do not doubt you, [he adds hastily, feeling like a fool for how clumsily that came out. He can barely think right now, but gods, he needs to try.] But you seem certain of that age. Is it a full memory you can recall, or simply that certainty . . .?