[No guilt. No self-pity. The words carry imagery of cold bodies in even colder streets, stilled viscera over stone standing as an all-too-familiar picture once it hits attentively priced ears. As known as either dawn or dusk. Past and present motives intertwined, if not for one whispered ultimatum: no innocents.

Because Astarion was mangled by his curse. (But then again— maybe he was mangled before it, and made all the worse for every nightmare that followed, crawling from the wreckage of his life into Cazador's waiting shadow.) He's always been a master of giving himself too much credit. Too little credit.

It'd be easy to take that offer. Three years ago he would have, rest assured: readily. Greedily. Hungrily. A place to bed his rampant savagery alongside pain. Both a thrill in their own right— feeling the split of tender skin under his teeth and the fevered tang of blood tearing free of its restrictive veins— claws and blades and blunt-force bruising.

Power.

By any name. Every name.

He sees it for what it is, and oh, still, he loves it.  Power synonymous with control. With safety. Certainty. The inverse of fear, outlined and his, no one else's.

But much like Leto, he isn't starving anymore. And what lies beneath his fingers is— ]

Strewth.

[Throatiness swimming in his voice like nothing else belongs there: a tone shared solely between them.]

Sometimes I wonder if you're real.

[It's a compliment. A show of awe, laid down with every last placed strip of bandaging. For the hunger and hatred as much as the handsomeness in moonstone skin.]

Or if this is all just one more laugh at my expense, gifting me something like you.