illithidnapped | INBOX II

most likely, yes. but

[He hesitates. He has never been good at this, he knows. He was awful with Orana and it hasn't gotten much better; he never knows how to strike that perfect chord between sympathetic and allowing another person their own free will. Maybe there is no perfect chord; maybe that's why he always snarled whenever Hawke tried to find it.

Each word comes more slowly now, jotted down as Fenris tries to organize his thoughts.]

there are many things you could do in this world. you have lighter fingers than half the coterie, not to mention greater intelligence. and i would not see you sleep with others out of necessity for sheer lack of opportunity

[Ugh. That sounds so . . . clinical.]

i fight for money often. when there are no jobs to find and no one wants to hire an elvish mercenary, i go to the fighting pits and earn my supper. and i do not mind it, though i use skills i learned as a slave. but it is a choice i make freely, knowing there are other ways to make money.

but you need not put your own skills to work if you don't want to.

[Ugh.]

[Its kind focus. The sort of you could do better that isn't rife with a touch of indigestible poor thing. And while Astarion might hate (such an understatement) other slaves, he's come to know he doesn't hate Fenris. In fact he's beginning to doubt he ever could.

(Dangerous, the influence that much fondness holds.)

Still, the compliment only carries so much at this late hour, when it's easy to fall back on old tricks— agency too new a concept to stick properly from dusk till dawn.]

I liked it more when we were hellbent on discussing strange fetishes, rather than the wide, less enchanting measure of what my options are. The delight of planning that takes into account a war where we might find ourselves at risk should the losing side go belly up. Not to mention our disadvantage in having pointy ears, few allies, and barely any coin.

The superstitions I've already noted about my anchor shard or whatever they call it— thwarted thanks to your gloves.

[Theres a pause, and it lingers gently before committing dark ink to paper.]

I'll consider your offer. [Is as close to gratitude as he can muster when it bubbles up like bile otherwise. Sour as the urge to run. To bare teeth. To cry— which he won't allow.

But....maybe there's a point there. Something worth mulling when all's been said and done. Maybe he won't sleep tonight for thinking on it again and again, trying to discern the difference between survival and desire.

Trying to follow if he's ever had a difference to begin with at all.

And now there's a spot on the paper. A large one, brought on by his damned resting quill when he wasn't paying attention— fucking Hells.

It smudges barely when he swipes at it, but it's too late now. The damned thing's stuck in.]

Do you still see her? Your wild temptress.

[Frankly, it's a far tamer response than Fenris himself would have given so long ago. And thank god, he knows how to back off. He still doesn't love the thought of Astarion sleeping with others for money (or for the chance to steal from them), but it isn't his choice. Leave it, he orders himself sharply, and yet stares down at that blot for far longer than he should, trying to decipher its meaning.

But no: leave it, he tells himself again. There's nothing good that can come of badgering Astarion, and the last thing he wants to do is come across like some preachy Chantry brother eager to save someone from the sin of sex. The only thing he allows himself is a sentence, small and penned next to I'll consider your offer.]

There is no time limit.

[There. An endlessly open offer, and they can move on.]

No. I have not seen her for many years, but the last I heard she had gone back to sailing the seas as a raider. She even calls herself an admiral, though I do not know how true that may be— the legitimacy of the position, anyway, for I have no doubt she has the cheek to title herself that regardless.

For her sake, I hope the ships she raids are less perilous than they once were. Have you heard much about the Qunari uprising here? She began it by stealing— and losing— one of their most revered religious tomes.

It is as it should be. She always longed for the sea, and living for nearly a decade in Kirkwall was akin to caging a bird.

[A pause, and then:]

I doubt I will ever see her again.

[And it is what it is, of course, but it's not hard to hear the faintest shadow of grief in those words.]

['As it should be?'

His first, and a woman he pens about having come to him after such a vast expanse of years (oh, Astarion, hypocrite and fool in blinded measure), and all that comes of it is a resigned kiss of never again?

What is it that has him by the throat? What is it here, in these frail seconds lodged beneath the punctuation of a hideous stained blot that makes written letters look more marring than the void he'd left behind? Scowling without meaning to, lip curled idly in disgust. A conquest, he'd said. His first, he'd said. And as useless as sex has only ever been aside from living through another night with the carrot rather than the stick, Astarion knows something of firsts, now. Of the irreversible anchorhold it has. (A flicker of something, erased. Pretty words spoken hundreds of years ago, scrubbed clean not by Cazador— not directly, no— but by Astarion's own hands. Pushed away.)

Drop it, reason warns, citing the obvious occurences of less than one full minute prior, where Fenris settled back to grant fair peace in waters Astarion couldn't navigate. Change the subject. Play it sweet.

And yet he can't.]

Rotheshit it's as it should be.

[Oh. He hadn't expected that, and for a long moment Fenris blinks down at his journal, unsure how to take it. It's not wrong. Certainly it isn't, for if things were as they should be, no one would have left. Anders wouldn't have blown up the Chantry; the others wouldn't have had to scatter for their lives, and things would be as they were. He would have long since introduced Astarion to his companions, and they would have eagerly taken him under their collective wings as one more misfit ready to tag along on whatever madness Hawke had found herself embedded into . . .

Or maybe not. Maybe it was always destined to reach a boiling point: mages and templars, Qunari and Kirkwall . . . maybe Hawke has always led a life that discourages any kind of permanency no matter how hard she tries.]

Why do you say that?

[He knows why, sort of, but he wants to hear it. There's a part of him that's ever raw and wounded that longs for affirmation and assurance, and it's so rare he indulges it.]

It is perhaps not as it should be, but . . . say, then, it is what was destined to happen. She was miserable on land, and none of us were meant to last. Not Hawke nor any of our companions . . . I should have known there was a time limit.

[Lucky they're not speaking. Lucky this comes through the scratching of a bony little nib soaked through with enchanted ink. It makes him sound more reasonable, perhaps. Less incensed.

Though context swears he's not.]

Because she left.

Why would it ever be fated?

A boat can go anywhere. The freedom she sought out isn't solely the ability to run— it's the very same freedom to come back. Or at the very least to track you down.

[He doesn't know how to answer. All the things he can think to say (will you stay? would you have been different?) are either too childish or too absurd to even remotely consider penning. It's everything his lonely heart has ached for and nothing he's ever allowed himself, and now that he's faced with it . . .]

~~have you~~ ~~would you~~ ~~where~~

I am[. . .] used to people leaving. and I have found it is a foolish endeavor to expect they will ever return.

[Every word slowly written and heavily weighed.]

does it upset you?

Yes I'm upset.

[You stayed because the shard wouldn't let me leave. You abandoned tertiary freedom to shackle yourself to an organization that can't organize itself to save its life beyond not drowning in an ocean of a war. You chose me.]

A peerless vintage is a beautiful thing, darling. Lust for it for ages like air and it'll be a grand day when you feel it in your hands at last. But a gift like that is best shared, I've found. Even if all you offer is a sip.

You deserved better.

Edited 2024-10-25 22:16 (UTC)

[Again, the emotion washes over him, drowning him; again he stares at the paper, every word overwhelming and baffling and perfect. You deserved better, and when has anyone ever said that to him? When has he ever even said it to himself? It's not that no one cared. It's not that Hawke and Varric and Isabela didn't think he deserved better than the life he'd had before— but there's such a difference, isn't it, between someone sighing over your life in enslavement, and someone lamenting the fact you'd been abandoned . . .

And he doesn't know what to say to that. Truly he doesn't. The quill hovers in the air for so long that by the time he goes to write, the ink's already dried and he has to get more. But what finally emerges, slow and careful, is:]

Perhaps I have found it.

[He doesn't know if he could say that aloud, but the written word offers a little more ability to be vulnerable.]

I do not begrudge Isabela her leaving— at least, not enough to have it linger in my heart. But I will not say there is no bitterness nor grief when I think of what we had. For any of my friends who once lived here. The city is full of ghosts for me, and there are days when I loathe it.

But you make it worthwhile to stay.

[Oh.

Holding a quill between long fingers disguises too much of the truth. That his claws, now trimmed off and blunted, were designed to hook into the animals around him; his eyes for scanning every detail; his voice for honeyed words. It isn't hard to say the right thing— it's easier still to jot it down, circling the sum of Fenris' bleeding past with an instinctive nose for blood. And if he did, it would be as it always was: ultimately nothing. Ash and soot across his tongue, just like all the others made a fine means to an end. (Because it's true, that Fenris stays here now. True, that he's possessed of no desire to leave as Isabela had. But a city full of ghosts hardly sleeps. How long until it grows unbearable, then? How long until Fenris realizes that just like his old friend, he's tired of the leash and longs to run?) The last time Astarion let himself feel anything, it ruined him.

Gods swear he's all but primed himself for an encore.

But he can't stop staring at that last line. Feels it tugging again and again on the shallows of his chest with every glancing read, unable to discern whether he feels sick from wine or—

—or his own heartbeat, atrophied and delirious all at once.]

That's a relief, considering I can't leave. [Is an attempt at giving levity a place to live so much overbearing acritude.] Though on the upside of things, you'll always know right where to find me, won't you? No vanishing acts. No open seas.

~~and~~

~~just for the record~~ [I'm no good at these things. Endless centuries spent spinning stories of fondness and affection solely Cazador's amusement subsequently make any attempt at talking all this over feel as if I'm barely capable of anything but lying.]

But I'd stay even if that wasn't true.

Edited 2024-10-26 01:20 (UTC)

I believe you.

[And how quickly that comes after all the pauses of before, but it's true. It's one part blind adoration and one part common sense, but to dilute it to either of those reasons makes it sound cheaper than it is. I believe you, for there is something special about the bond they share. He has no words for it, not really, nor any kind of understanding just yet, but . . . there's something between them. Something that tethers them together.

It reminds him of Hawke, though he won't say it on the heels of all they've just spoken of. But it's that same gravitational pull, gentle but endlessly inexorable.]

And I am not going anywhere. Not without you, at any rate— though I would not say no to leaving Kirkwall if ever we can manage to make it painless. But Antiva will keep.

[It's not too much. It might never be too much, starved for affection as they both are— but it's hard to come down from the emotion of that, and they neither of them are used to it. So he jots down:]

Are you packed for the mission in a few days?

[Speaking of leaving Kirkwall . . .]

At least you will get a taste of what Orlais is like, though you may regret it.

[Oh it hurts. Like a flood after starvation, he can't quite take it in; too much is the flutter of his heart and the stutter in his breathless lungs— and yet he circles back to read those lines again and again and again. Relieved to have the freedom of another segue (and if it was for sympathy that they move on, he doesn't care); it gives him space to pace the borders of their conversation.

To frame that message with an outstretched thumb and keep it in his eyeline.]

I've only you to take, so in that sense: I'd like to think I am.

Will I?

Oh go on, then. Don't be shy— tell me everything.

The population is obsessed first and foremost with their grand Game— their term for all the endless lust and backstabbing and intrigue and petty wars that make up any wealthy class. Orlesians, however, make it into an art: even the commoners are caught up in it, and almost anything is allowable so long as you manage to be discreet. It is not dissimilar to Tevinter in that respect, I suppose, though they somehow manage to put an even greater emphasis on how one looks and acts and is perceived.

They all wear masks, and you and I shall have to as well, lest we stick out. Their fashion is impractical at best and needlessly complicated at worst, offering endless layers and frills and patterns to dizzy any eye. Their wine is decent, but their food, much like their people, tends towards the extravagant, and it is hard to find anything of substance.

And they are even worse to elves than Free Marchers are— though most will end up simply ignoring us, I suspect, or assuming we're the consorts to some wealthy Duke.

[The more he writes, the easier it gets: the heavy emotion of before not so much dissipating as easing, ebbing through him with a familiar warmth. His heart is still pleasantly heavy, thundering with emotion and adoration— but complaining about something meaningless helps. Allowing them both to inch away from that ledge helps, though Fenris is assuredly still thinking of it.]

Edited 2024-10-26 04:41 (UTC)

[There's such an art to survival at times, making the sensation of mastery over it only ever fleeting.

More and more frequently since falling into this world, the sting that imagined mastery leaves behind when it falls through proves just as fleeting too— giving way to gentler shoals. Warmer tides.

Astarion's thumb stays pinned against the words I believe you, even as he smiles to himself.]

Consorts? Both of us? [Try not to pen that so excitedly, Astarion.]

Do they wear masks all the time?

They do, unless some pressing need demands they take them off. Often they are used in a variety of ways— to suggest house allegiance, status, fashionable trends, etc. Ours, I suspect, will be "simple", made only of silver or gold (or iron painted to look like silver or gold, knowing Riftwatch's budget).

Is the prospect of being mistaken a consort so disagreeable? We can easily come up with a better story, should you not want to rely on assumptions.

You may have to lead the way when it comes to fashion, however.

On the contrary, my dear. I was just thinking how exciting it would be to be mistaken for your equal, given our divergent trades.

[It feels akin to transparency, after all this time. That secondhand feeling of a red light somehow burning in red eyes— and doubly so in a world with no elven nobility to speak of.

None that haven't been dead for thousands of years, anyway. Can't exactly pull the wool over anyone's eyes in that regard.]

Tell me something: I assume in Tevinter a slave (or servant) owned by a magister held more sway than one kept by lesser castes— is the same true in Orlais?

[There's a small blot of ink as Fenris thinks better of what he was going to write. You are my equal. That the rest of the world thinks otherwise is their fault, not yours. It's true, but it also feels cloying: sticky-sweet in a way that has no real ties with the real world. He'd scoff at anyone else saying such a thing, so why did it occur to him?

Because it's true. And it's cloying and stupid and saccharine, and somehow it's still true nonetheless.]

I suspect you will be mistaken for my better. I do not do well with these kinds of missions.

But yes and yes: there are elves, I hear, who wield more power than some minor nobles, whether because they are the lover of some human or simply high ranking enough to get away with insolence. Servants contracted to the Empress or one of the higher ranking Dukes are given deference and better treatment; it is not dissimilar in Tevinter.

You wish to pass as one of them?

I wish for us both to pass.

After all, if the only thing required are a few masks, it makes it that much easier for us to feign at being

well, anyone, yes?

[Part and parcel of a Grand Game devised atop anonymous notoriety is that just about anyone might play....if they're crafty enough.]

In theory . . . I do not doubt your acting skills, but those who play the Game tend to know the players.

[Then again: how many humans really notice elves? They'll stand out a little, no doubt, but who would assume the truth? Far more likely they exotic newcomers, just recently hired by some Duchess who wants a few pretty accessories within grasp.

Hm.]

Perhaps if we pass for new hires, prized and adored . . . I will teach you some Orelesian. I do not know the language, not the way I do Teven or Qunlat, but a few phrases are not so hard. And I will not say I have no skill in subterfuge— but it will have to be you who leads the way.

Are you up to it?

Oh there he is. Fearless and clever as ever and ready for a challenge.

But as for myself: I'm a whole new man these days. Why not double down and take up becoming an Orlesian while I'm at it? And with you at my side, I'd argue Ive never been more up to it, darling.

Know any filthy Orlesian?

Tu peux me baiser quand tu veux.

Isabela taught that to me.

"You can fuck me anytime you wish."

Tu peux me baiser quand tu veux.

[That's it. That's the whole tweet.]

[ —just kidding.]

Meet me in the Gallows before we're due to depart. I want to brush up on my Northern etiquette before diving in headlong.

And I can think of no better sounding board than one particular local, tattooed elf.

Edited (oh god i cant write even texts coherently) 2024-10-27 09:58 (UTC)

[He jots some reply down, and yet for the life of him he can't remember what it was. Something idle, no doubt. Some response that isn't a response at all, written while he sits in his lonely mansion and tries not to read far too much into what was clearly a teasing retort. That way lies ruin, and Fenris has no ability to navigate those murky waters yet again. He is too old, too broken, too wrecked and ruined to risk his heart on even the faintest hint of a possibility; better to shut it down even within his own mind, refusing the first stirrings of the faintest embers.

A few days pass. They're given provisions and supplies, including a small budget for clothes and masks, which is something, Fenris supposes. It's not a very big budget, but then again, they're hardly the only two going: it's a small party of six setting out, all aiming towards the same goal of infiltration and information gathering. Theoretically a low-risk mission, though Orlais is risk enough by sheer virtue of the grand Game they so love.

Traveling there is . . . well. It is what it is. Fenris watches helplessly each time Astarion grimaces in pain, knowing that his mark must be aching— and knowing, too, there's nothing he can say or do that will help. Even the salves that usually bring some form of relief for his markings only work so long, though he shares the pot with him each night regardless. It's no relief to finally reach the city, but at least it means that the Rifters can wince in comfort.

They're two to a room, which suits Fenris well enough. To his great relief, Astarion takes his customary grumbling and growling the way it's intended: a sort of background grumpiness that oughtn't be paid much mind. He huffs about the culture and the snobbery, the wealth disparity and the poverty carefully hidden behind glitz and glamor. It's a shame, for Val Royeaux is a beautiful city, Fenris can admit. Music constantly drifts through the air as merchants sell pretty fabrics and fine crafts; to the south, the Waking Sea glitters so brightly as the sun shines each day. The architecture is clever and deliberately placed— so different from Kirkwall's habit of building things atop another, so that most of Lowtown is little more than a series of winding alleys and endless loops.

They shop for a time— or rather, Fenris lets Astarion shop, and is quietly relieved when his companion takes it upon himself to dress them both. If Fenris had his way, he'd show up in armor and with a scowl, so it's best to leave the aesthetics to his endlessly more refined friend.

And now it's a few hours before they're due to appear, which is, apparently, not very much time at all to prepare. Fenris, a man more inclined to roll out of bed and get going, wouldn't agree, but once again: that's why he isn't in charge of this mission. He sits on his bed and leans his weight back against one hand, watching Astarion as he flits about.]

What are you doing?

[Curiously said. Makeup and perfumes and jewelry— all of that is so foreign to him, and it's interesting to watch.]

What does it look like? [Carries no bite, only a playfulness at odds with the speed at which Astarion both primps and tugs things free of his provisions— (I've only you, he said, although admittedly he'd only acquired the bulk of his assets in their Faderift-given shopping trip, either with coin or agile fingers:) perfumed oil daubbed across his throat and along the backs of his ears, dipped down into decolletage beneath layered silks; gilded jewelry gleaming in waning afternoon light, though all he'd managed to pilfer were a few delicate bangles and elven-(ish? -looking) necklaces, and a couple of pretty cuffs; kohl, black as night, streaked on across his eyes so that the mask's gaps don't come across as unseemly— and a hairbrush, oddly enough, though his hair's already woven into braids. Courtesy of asking one of the only Orlesians on their team for help, which begs the question as to why he's dug it up in the first place, shifting in his seat just so. Prelude to a fuller turn—

—which subsequently answers said question almost immediately, given the way he's eyeing his companion. (Made additionally ominous by the pitch-dark smears of makeup lining crimson eyes.)

Hello, Fenris.]

Getting ready for our debut.

[Our debut. As if they're not from two completely separate divisions, likely selected for two completely separate sets of skills.]

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