illithidnapped | INBOX II

[He sees the warning for what it is. Hears the coarseness in that tone, a promise of trouble brewing with the opportunity to back away from it through deferred capitulation.

But that won't help either of them right now.]

Maybe I don't want to help my case half as much as I want to figure out yours.

There is nothing to figure out.

[Gods, he knows he’s being an asshole at this point. Objecting to Astarion’s patronizing diminutives is one thing, but it’s never a good sign when he’s throwing someone’s words back at them. He glances away, collecting himself for a moment. Then, his tone a little more tempered:

Is it so hard to understand I do not like being treated like a child when I tell you I dislike something?

[But that’s a symptom, not a cause.]

[He should probably be paying attention to those growls instead of cooing over Leto like he does when Ataashi's threatening to tear her knitted-and-inanimate-and-sock-shaped prey to shreds.] Not particularly, no. Not in theory, anyway. But when it comes to tetchy little outbursts like this, I've found logic doesn't factor in half as much as it should.

Not that I mind them: it's such a thrilling tease to— even figuratively— see those pretty little milkfangs of yours come out.

[He's batting his lashes oh so sweetly, and you know what? Somehow: it actually carries. Something in his songbird tone; the old familiar lilt of it, not often used these days.] A treat I do always savor.

Astarion.

[It's sterner now. Older, strange as that sounds. Perhaps it's a response to that familiar lilt: an echo of who they used to be. Stop fussing so much, stop lingering in the past, that pretty voice urging him gently and genuinely, spoken as they'd huddled together in the middle of the night or lingered in the sun in his study. Come now, it isn't so bad, not dismissing his hurt so much as gently nudging at his tendency to linger in bitterness.

And this is not then, but now. He is no longer middle-aged, and Astarion no longer an elf. But he hears it, and something in him responds.

So: no more fussing. No more petulantly stomping his foot and flashing his fangs, seething rage so easily rising up within him— an overreaction for what ought to be mere irritation. And really: he is picking a fight. He knows he is. He doesn't like the patronization when it comes like this, doting and saccharinely sweet, but this began with his snapping randomly at his amatus.]

Enough.

[Not a dismissal so much as a firm line in the sand: enough with this petty squabble that isn't a squabble at all.]

I am aware it was an unfair outburst, my own dislike of our sex life being overheard notwithstanding— but do not make it worse like this. Answer me as an adult or wait until I return home.

[Oh there he is, the fighter from Thedas with a glare that could cut sinew and a voice to make even the surliest slavers shiver. A little long-buried, perhaps, but not long-lost; the call and response of habitual language, beautiful as music to his careworn ears.]

Awake at last, thank the gods.

[Hello again, sweetheart.]

I really didn't want to have to keep that up forever— it is exhausting turning back to old tricks.

[Playful as a fox through intonation (and utterly rapacious, thank you very much), and most importantly: not at all about to acknowledge the fact that Leto is absolutely right on all counts in his scolding.

Less fun, that part.]

[He exhales slowly in something that isn't quite a sigh— and trust that whatever notes of aggravation thread within it are mutually shared. He's as displeased with himself as anyone, annoyed by his own uncontrollable irritation and sudden habit of nipping at anyone who gets too close (and too often, that's Astarion).

Still. The patronizing does need to be addressed sooner or later.]

You—

[Mm, nope, try again. Another breath, gods, it is so hard to keep a lid on his temper sometimes. And trust he'll get to that patronizing conversation in a moment, but first, gruffly (ruefully):]

Tell me when this period of adolescence ends again?

[If one exuberantly charming resident vampire was afraid of being bitten over something like proximal closeness— well, he wouldn't be here to begin with. And that goes twice over for every scolding, too, even if he is doing his damndest to turn it into a crowish game of keep-away.

(Although that sigh from Leto's end....

....hm.)]

Oh, not long. Not long at all, my darling—

[A tepid beat, and then:]

Only until you reach one hundred.

[And really, he's not teasing him for once: it's just the naked truth.]

[It's really a show of maturity and self-control that he doesn't whine the way he wants to when he hears that.]

Gods. Sixty more years of this . . .

[Ah, and here, now, he remembers who he is— for any adolescent elf would surely view six decades as little more than the blink of an eye, not an entire lifetime.]

How does anyone stand it? It's only a handful of years for humans, and that alone is nightmare enough. [And it's stupid to compare, but he can't help it.] I do not know how elves manage to endure.

[And then, with an unseen twist of his mouth, he adds:]

I do not know how you will endure.

[He's joking, sort of. Kind of. It's not that he thinks Astarion is at risk of leaving, no, but . . . gods, he gets so impatient with himself some days, and he cannot imagine it's any easier on the other side.]

[His laugh is warm. Fond. It comes on easily, not a glimpse of an act in sight. Sound bottled with the brightness of play, rather than the extension of it.]

You say that like you're not one of us. [Trust he knows there is a difference, he'd felt the brunt of it in Thedas, but the truth of it is— ]

You make it so damned easy to bear.

Edited 2024-03-15 22:42 (UTC)

[Gods, and despite himself, his face softens into a smile. He would have been fine without assurance, for he knows their love is far stronger than a few prickly moods— but still, there's something lovely about getting it.

And in turn, it makes it easier for him to settle, some of those hackles lowering as his voice warms.]

Te amo.

[It's easier to say in Tevene than Common sometimes. But ah, on the subject of being one of them . . .]

Does it feel . . .

[Mm, no. What is he trying to say?]

What does sixty years feel like to you? I cannot . . . truthfully, I cannot even fathom such a span. I know I will continue to age, and that I will hit not just one, but two, three, four centuries, but in truth, it doesn't feel real. Sixty years . . . that seems a lifetime to me.

Does it . . . is it a long span for you?

Tsk.

[Te amo te amo, and it's only because his ears are red and ringing with a frankly adolescent amount of adoration of his own that he doesn't start grumbling about lifetimes and what it really means to be old. Hells' teeth. If he didn't already feel as if he were robbing the cradle thanks to all those rowdy cubs his lover likes to run with....

Though then again.]

Te amo, you impatient little sweetheart. [Sharper than the click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, wryness is a present player in their chat.

(Ten years with Cazador was horror itself, to say nothing of the approximal two hundred more that followed, too many of them missing. It felt endless. Muddy. Crushing. Three years in freedom, though? A blink. A sip— and there's some part of him that fears if things go wrong, that'll be all he gets. Three years of perfect freedom traded for one more unending promise of enslavement.

He can't talk about this, not directly— his perceptions are as mangled as his thoroughly broken mind. He's not the right source.

But he's not the wrong one either.)]

Huffing about sixty years. A hundred years. You think adolescence for half a century is a nightmare? Some of us have been stuck this way for an eternity and counting, thank you very much, and you don't hear us complaining about it day in and day out.

Oh?

[Interested oh. Surprised oh. Somewhat amused oh, in truth, and Leto notes that emotion as it fills him for no other reason than it would be so damned easy to go the opposite way. To flinch back, remembering revelations about siblings and long-kept secrets— and it's not that his mind doesn't go there, understand. Just that he trusts in his amatus enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this more a vague guess than a long-held secret.]

You have a guess when you were turned . . . is that based on something you remember, or general level of maturity?

[He's teasing.]

—ah, you brat!

[He's delighted to be conversationally cuffed about the ears.

It shows.]

You're one to talk about maturity, anyway, even if we are two peas in a pod on a good day.

But you could call it an educated guess, I suppose. A hunch I want to confirm when we get back to Baldur's Gate. Because ever since you told me my name— well, I wouldn't say the memories have come flooding back by any stretch, but there is....mm. I think I remember more about who I used to be.

I think I was a lot more like you than I realized.

[A beat, and then, with an abrupt little turn into all due henning fuss:]

And I saw myself in the mirror in Thedas, by the way, so this is not your invitation to go about commenting on how I may have happened to quite handsomely age in my decades of confined torment. I dare you to find any young elf that's been flayed alive that happens to look twice as good.

[Oh, what a dearth of information is packed into those sentences. I think I remember more about who I used to be, I think I was a lot more like you than I realized, and there are a thousand ways to interpret those facts. But though Leto's heart is leaping in his chest, his knuckles white for how tight he's suddenly gripped the notebook, he bites his lip until he knows he'll answer calmly.

For there's nothing worse for fragile memories than a rush of excitement. Demanding questions of who and where and why all crowd around, shattering whatever spiderweb-thin grip you have on that collection of sensations that might or might not be real . . . oh, yes, he knows.

So: keep it light. Keep up that teasing, toothless and vague, and let Astarion tell him as he will.]

I dare any elf to look half as good as you do, regardless of anything else.

[Lightly said, though sincerely meant.]

But you fuss too much about nonexistent wrinkles and flaws. You did age handsomely, my adolescent darling, but that only means you look an adult, not a teenager. And I vastly prefer to see one over the other in my bed.

[A breath, and then, gently:]

What do you mean, you were more like me?

[There's an age-old Waterdavian joke about what it takes to make a prostitute blush. Astarion can't remember the actual punchline anymore— picked up in the Flophouse over ale that reeked enough to turn his stomach— but all that pales in the face of the fact that he apparently is the punchline. Two— three hundred odd years or so old, and he can't help feeling his dead pulse stutter like machinery sputtering to start; phantom warmth pushing the tips of his ears down into a twitching pin behind his curls. None of it visible, some of it heard: sound in the back of Astarion's throat not unlike something being strangled. Or more accurately: strangling itself.

Hells' teeth. He's too bloody old to go about fluttering like a schoolboy in love.]

I—

Edited 2024-03-17 23:21 (UTC)

[But then the rest comes. And just like that the fluster's gone. Just like that, he's shifting on his end of the line (audibly by way of tread worn floorboards that groan beneath his weight in place of softer sighs), trading out one form of muteness with another.

He's fumbling. The words won't come. For someone with a heap of supposition attached to his own eroded name, suddenly it doesn't feel like enough. Like every confession he could utter's too concrete for its theoretical framework, all built up on half-recollections and a handful of weeks spent letting old nightmares wash back in with the tide, for once.

And then he pivots on instinct: comparison a language he can lean on.]

I don't believe Danarius made his tournament and then up and decided to ask you to join.

I think it was the other way round.

[There's a pause there, formed by held breath and the curl of his tongue against one fang. Subtle question lodged, and yet unspoken: (do you understand?)]

I suspect he saw a creature yet to rise to either age or potential, and knew it couldn't say no to an offer of salvation.

[Oh. Oh, oh, oh, and dazedly, beneath the rising rage and grief that roar in his ears and reverberate down to his aching fingers, he hears the question beneath those words. Fragile and unspoken, yes, I understand, yes, I know what you mean— yes, I understand why you say it the way you do.

Because the truth is such a fragile thing. Because words have power; you can endure a hundred thousand agonies and still shy away from having to ever articulate it. It makes it too real, makes it so that you can't take it back— and no matter that Leto wouldn't care if this hunch proved to be false, gods, it isn't about him. Not really. It's about Astarion. About having to face that awful truth; about having to realize and process and endure another horrific crime centuries after it was committed.

Volunteered, Leto had called it once. And it was not until Astarion had gently questioned the use of that word that Leto realized just how twisted the truth had become, even in his own mind. I think, I suspect, and it's so much easier to put it on someone else than to allow it to touch yourself . . .

But he cannot dive deeper into that thought just yet. Not when he's suddenly so angry he can barely see, breathe, function, never mind speak. I suspect he saw a creature yet to rise to either age or potential, and he has imagined that night a thousand times ever since Astarion first told him of it, but now the picture changes. Now it's not a noble in the prime of his adulthood, a magister drunk on power and foolish vanity; it's a boy. An adolescent. An elf no older than a century at most, flawed only in the way everyone else is flawed, his silver eyes bright and his fangs fledgling things, wandering innocuously home at night. Not knowing that his footsteps are stalked; not understanding that the catcalls and jeers from a block away are meant for him.

Not knowing for centuries that his fate had been sealed weeks before.

And it makes sense, you know. It's far, far more likely than Cazador happening to stumble upon a particularly pretty and clever elf that he happened to decide he wanted to turn. Such flights of fancy are for fools who glut themselves on indulgence and die too early; even Danarius wasn't so haphazard as that. Far better to arrange a scenario in which you become your victim's hero, even for a little while . . .

(Scarlet blood soaking into cobblestones, Astarion's voice broken as he begs for a savior who won't come; scarlet blood stark against the snow, a retching shivering creature crawling on all fours before his distant savior. If I do this, you set my family free? Stumbling through the streets, weeping for the pain and the shock of his lack of heartbeat, clinging to a figure that never quite returns the warmth and adoration you want so badly for him to display to you. My precious pet, show me just how grateful you are to your master— on your knees, boy. The ecstasy of being the master's favorite for weeks on end, not knowing you're being set up for a fall all over again. Training for weeks on end, his muscles screaming and sweat dripping down his face, his collar searing against his neck, all for the soft-spoken praise of good boy to leave him trembling in desperate adoration.

And then: the fall. The torment. The agony you never knew was possible (his throat bloody from screaming as he claws at his own lyrium), the horror you think you can't possibly endure (how long was he locked away, how long was he kept in one of those coffins, in the wall, moaning and weeping and screaming for forgiveness, knowing that you might never be let out). Adapting. Overcoming. Erasing your past not just because the pain wiped it all out, but because it hurts too much to remember what you were. What you lost. What you might have been, if only, if only, if only—)

[He's been quiet for too long.]

Yes.

[His voice is tight, grief and rage barely restrained. The book trembles before him, his hands shaking as he stares at nothing. Focus. Focus.]

I suspect . . .yes, I suspect you're correct. It would make more sense. He could find an elf he particularly enjoyed the look and sound of, [and all the while his mind screams and screams, killhimkillhimkillhim find him now hunt him down make him scream make him bleed make him suffer] and mold it to be his own.

[Deflection is Astarion's way, but blunt directness is Leto's— and he struggles for a moment, trying to find a way to be what his amatus needs instead of what he's instinctively inclined to do.]

I was eighteen, more or less.

[Gods. Gods.]

How old were you, do you suspect?

Edited 2024-03-18 20:15 (UTC)

[~~Vampires can't read minds.~~

What do you call it, then, when a knife slides hot between your ribs from half a day's distance away, panging in fractured resonance for something neither said nor seen? There for just a blink, then gone? I knew where to find you meeting I found you again echoed in the brackets of their chapters over and over again, and for a split-second he glances down over that book to find his thumb pressed deep (white as bone) against the midline of his palm, checking for a slice of sickly green arcana. Probing to see if it's still there.

Still linking them to one another.

To their home after all this time.]

[But all he feels is flesh. The knotted jut of bone just lurking underneath.

(Maybe they just know each other too well, that's all, and nothing more in the realm of possibility could be half as pleasant as that.)]

Older than that.

[And, no— he isn't thanking the Maker or Andraste for the less-than-hairline boon of Danarius not condemning his chosen pet to an eternity of eighteen. There's no gratitude there. No bliss. But all the same, the point stands true: knowing what he does of monstrosity, if he's glad of anything aside from broken bonds, it's that he met his lover with crease-marks on his brow and rough lines at the corners of his eyes before the rest played out.

Fenris could never be a normal elf. But for what, twenty years or so— including a little more or little less, depending— he got to live (focus on that, Astarion).

He drags his knuckles along his own jaw when he exhales, the sound whittling between sharp incisors.

It's not hesitation. Only the hissing catch of anger he can't place when its genesis is dead and long, long gone.]

But I might've had sixty or so more on my buckish dance card before he scratched his name into it. [Mild, despite its acidity. Light enough to border on playful joking if not for the gravity that holds it, keeping the corners of his mouth curled only by a scant few degrees.] I wasn't young for a magistrate in a human city, that much I know for certain. It made sense to serve, and gods, I don't doubt I must've wanted it—

Let alone took pride in it. [(Those flashes of memory that keep crawling in these last few months in dreams aren't laced with pleasant sentiment. And there's always the question of which came first in the figurative tale: the monster or the prince.)

Pulling away from it, he snorts.]

I imagine you were a much more tolerable youth.

I— yes, perhaps.

[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 . . .?

Mmh. Just that I was young. ['Just that', Astarion says, as if that's not enough entirely on its own. And yet to his credit, he's not blind in his irreverence: only someone that didn't know Leto all that well would miss the meaning behind that fumbled banter. The surging promise that he's coming home.

And Astarion knows Leto very well.]

Impatient, I think. That's the sensation I feel most whenever I find myself blindsided by an odd pang of what must be half-formed memories trying their utter damndest to cram their way into the forefront of my mind post-sleep. Probably something to do with the apparent difference between what passes for a nice, respectable age for a proper magistrate in Baldur's Gate, and the 'lifetime'— as you so eloquently put it— that forestalls Elvish naming ceremonies.

[He squints at nothing for one beat longer, trying to make sense of something from the mess inside his skull, but it was never really there to begin with.

And then, sans any segue:]

You didn't just pass up all those friends of yours just now, did you?

Edited 2024-03-21 20:17 (UTC)

[Impatient, and what an apt word, for that's what he feels thrumming through him right now. Impatience at every obstacle that forces him to halt (the crowds thick, a particularly slow woman meandering ahead of him, a line of horses tied together and led one-by-one through the streets); impatience as all his soul screams that he isn't where he ought to be. Now I need to be near him now the clamoring cry of his heart, and it's almost as loud as the echoing shriek of his mind.

Sixty.

Sixty years old, and he cannot stop picturing it. Sixty, he hears the word with every swift step. Sixty, sixty, sixty, his face softer and less lined, his eyes bright and irreverent, sipping wine and giggling as he sat among his peers at a party . . . and it doesn't matter what he used to be like. Leto knows his lover well enough to guess that he was every bit the perfect noble, irreverent and selfish, thrilling in the power he held as a magistrate and caring little for those he sentenced, yes, he knows. But it doesn't matter, see? It doesn't matter if Astarion was someone Leto might have once loathed; it doesn't matter in the same way the color of his eyes or his inclination towards spice doesn't matter. They're important details because they make up who Astarion was, and he is owed them after so long— but whatever those details are, they don't change who he is now.

Perhaps Leto (and it is Leto) was the more tolerable youth. But perhaps not. Perhaps it matters and perhaps it doesn't, but they'll figure it out once he finally gets there.

But oh, that question. Leto blinks just once, dragged out of his intent focus on what came before.]

What? Yes. Of course I did. I will meet them tomorrow.

[The number of days he has left with them is growing ever-shorter, but they still have a few weeks left. And though his heart will be sore to leave them, though he mourns any lost time already, still. This is so much more important that it doesn't compare, not in the slightest. Besides: they're available so often. Rare is the day Leto doesn't end up running around with them regardless, stray pups with limited responsibilities and too much energy so eager to get into mischief as often as they can.]

But I can well imagine that impatience, especially among humans. Especially if they matched your age.

[Tell me more, and he doesn't know why it's so important, save that he fears if they stop speaking of it, they never will again.]

I—

[But no. No, he should save this. Fasta vass, and the curse is audible beneath his breath, his irritation with himself rising. I remember more about who I used to be, and he will not let them move on from it.]

Edited 2024-03-22 02:35 (UTC)

[And the thing is, he's probably right.

(How often have they picked at the worst of their own knotted scar tissue, pricking it open to ease off fenowed rot that never really wanes— only builds into a swollen sense of passive pressure, struggling for its chance at freedom? How often has it lasted, that same dedication to excising their wounds once they've exhaled and set back in along the lines of utter comfort or sheer, blissfully upending sex? They're good at diving in. Good at grasping. Gripping. Holding—

And most of all: forgetting. Never lingering too long, lest it starts to really sting.)

So even catching the winded quality of Leto's voice over the clopping of hooves in busy streets, he's struck headlong by the mercy of care that catches him off guard. By the fact that he wants him home, too, making it a mutual affair.

And there are times and places where astarion surrenders his guard, sinking into fragile marrow. Softened shapes. Knee pulled to his chest along the edge of their bed, knuckles pushed across his lips— back to front, ridge-first. Resigned.

This is one of them.]

Tsk— you might not be wrong.

[Like a laugh, but wan. Amused and moved, and aimless in the eye of that waiting consideration that asks and truly cares to hear him speak without leashing their attention on that pause (and more miracle that it runs both ways, for:)] I do believe I remember one or two fêtes, if I'm honest. Long nights. Possibly as rowdy as the one you and those friends of yours share.

[—Ah. On second thought.]

Mm. Maybe not.

At least not unless you end your scuffles swimming naked in champagne, in which case— I'd be quite jealous. [He wouldn't.

One foot propped on the edge of the mattress, Ataashi underneath his other heel like an ottoman. Her and the pups dozing in a circle round him as he works to keep his young kadan at ease through conversation until—

Is that the sound of naked footfalls that he hears?]

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I just keep losing it about that Tinawhine lmao

HAHA GOOD

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