[So many times he'd aspired to what Leto simply exuded without effort: his master slain, rich confidence his burning crown, one full decade come and gone beneath his belt that holds to all triumph and tragedy as something hard won, well treasured. He's netted just a sliver of that time before grim reality's come knocking for its due, and despite the calcified resolve he's clung to for weeks— months— he scarcely feels ready to face it.

He scarcely feels himself at all.

The fear is there again, clotting in his throat. Staved from overtaking by the wearied stroking of sore fingers, caught by clawed hands a moment later just to keep Leto stilled whilst he's still aching. Still wounded. Still bleeding. Like all else in this equation, Astarion's malformed dread can't supersede greater priority; his beloved's safety brooks no competition, nor will it ever.

His voice is thin. Runs like a shadow of itself, slipping soft between sharp fangs. It sounds like grief.

A mourning pall for none other but himself.]

Yet she wasn't foisted on you. [Perhaps unfair, that. Astarion lacks any metric by which to measure it, and the words would've left him anyway, even if he did grasp the tactlessness that drives him.] She really was your sister, your own flesh and blood....not just a tool for some madman to inspire guilt.

[A hitch, tongue pressed to the roof of his own mouth.]

....wasn't she?