faderift | [ OPEN | PLAYER PLOT ] This is how it feels to take a fall

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[ OPEN | PLAYER PLOT ] This is how it feels to take a fall

WHO: Tiffany, Barrow, Astarion and...you??
WHAT: an assignment gone terribly wrong
WHEN: week 5, segueing into week 6 of the plot, just after dragon tracking concluded with a terrible, literal bang
WHERE: the most silent portion of the Silent Plains, nearer to Hasmal, and not far from Tevinter's very nicely constructed base
NOTES: cw for injury, darkness, being stranded, absolute idiocy | OOC POST: here

Previously: having successfully scouted Primus Taxarchis’ base in the Silent Plains, Tiffany, Barrow and Astarion make an unsuccessful escape under the fully alerted watch of the base’s active forces— provoking a near lethal counter attack that sees them crash landing not far away, and forcing the stranded trio to desperately petition for help.

That’s where you come in.

The ravine runs like a crooked gash throughout desert sands, deep and layered, sloping inward at an angle too steep to safely (or reliably) climb. Easy to spot from above, not as easy to get into without breaking an ankle or an arm, and impossible to freely clamber out of once inside: the stone is brittle and flaking to the touch, lean too much on it, and you’ll drop right to the earth along with it.

The caverns connected to it are far more accessible— the only downside is they’re labyrinthine in their knotted nature: it’s easy to reach an end too narrow to be traversed, or so broad that it loops back on where you’ve already been, descending downward in steeper layers, becoming a near honeycombed network at points.

Of course, you also might not be alone in the dark. This territory isn’t as unclaimed as appearances might otherwise suggest, factoring in proximity to the base the three had been previously scouting. Luckily no overwhelming force has been sent to give chase and comb the desert in pursuit, but that’s not to say there aren’t still eyes to be found in the depths of lightless pathways. Armor-clad agents working for the exact same reasons you are, their noses to the trail.

Well. Not the exact same reasons.

The temperature is freezing cold at night, and in the fuller depths of the caverns where light doesn’t reach, that’s a near consistent constant. Firelight might draw attention, for better or worse. Magic, too, and— despite earning the label of Silent— there is wildlife occasionally to be found. Proof of life’s perseverance even in the harshes of places, fleeting and skittish.

Or dangerous.

Whatever approach is taken, one thing is clear throughout: none of this is going to be easy.

[ooc notes:

-The trio rest at the very bottom of those lightless depths where they’d initially fallen, in varying states of wellness and action.

-they’re lacking in supplies, warmth, healing, mounts, protection, a way out— you name it they need it.

-time is a given: none of this will go quickly, so feel free to handwave or assume anything you need to to make your dream threads come true.

-this timeline wise takes place at the end of week five segueing into week 6, when Riftwatch forces are free to head home if they care to, but given that this is technically hostile territory between Primus Taxarchis’ base and Hasmal, it’s probably going to be a deliberate choice if your characters decide to come here.

-pls just don’t do anything to officially alert the nearby base in full, that would be Bad— and super difficult to do from a hole in the ground but mostly just Bad. Otherwise chase your bliss and make your wildest spelunking/survival/heroic fantasies a reality.

-ooc post is here, for all your delving needs and details.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'll try harder," he says, canting his head, "to be thinking of your love life, the next time I'm in a besieged city."

But Astarion's badly hurt, laying in the dark without much more comfort than a coat and the hope they aren't all found by Venatori before they can escape, so he relents —

"He was wearing armor, so it was hard to get a good look at him. He rode in on a white horse."

So it was, at least, very dramatic and fairytale.

Thank you.

Kind of you to realize exactly what sort of accommodations he needs at the moment.

“Well, that’s something.”

Not much, but something.

“I’ll count on you to work out an introduction once this is all finished.”

"I'll write him as soon as we get back to Kirkwall."

Astarion isn't wrong about the cold. It seems to creep in slowly the longer he sits, despite his best efforts to ignore it. There are a lot of things he's been able to tamp down on in the face of the work that needs doing here, but when he shivers reflexively, it can't be helped.

That doesn't mean, though, that he has to talk about it.

"What are you going to do if he isn't your type?"

Edited 2021-08-01 19:35 (UTC)

“You mean if he’s hideous?” Astarion asks slyly, the edge of it middling at best given the combination of breathlessness and chilled focus.

“Depends on how rich he is.”

Red eyes watch Holden in the dark. Perceive that shiver as it slips in, even as they both work to pretend— to varying degrees— that they aren't here. That this isn't so terrible. Or risky, all things considered.

“...wouldn’t hold it against you if you needed to get up and roam. Venatori might. But I won’t.”

He just makes a hmm sound in response to both things Astarion says, a prince's relative wealth and the offer, such as it is. He does move to stand, actually, walks a few paces towards their supplies. He's going to make this concession to his own comfort useful. Of course.

"I will," he says with a brief look over his shoulder as he looks for a blanket, "be fine," because making himself useful doesn't mean he won't be fucking annoying, "especially if I can find — here."

The blanket appears in his hands, and he approaches Astarion again, goes again to sit nearby.

"What's the backup plan if he's ugly and broke?"

Which the prince might be, or may be soon enough, considering the situation on his hands. Jim unrolls the blanket and drapes it over Astarion, jacket and all. It's long enough that there's a small length left over, enough to pull over his lap and cover his hands with. Which is a significant improvement over, you know, nothing.

"Then I imagine I'll have to pass." His eyes draw shut beneath the combined pressure of the blanket alongside that coat— alongside bandaging and the remaining wounds beneath. Just a silent moment of wordless acclimation, offering up a narrow opportunity to catch his breath for the sake of continuing conversation. "An impoverished title doesn't amount to much in terms of conquest, and no human royalty in a world like this is going to sling their arm around mine to even grant the benefit of land or claim, so..."

Astarion's attention wanders lower, briefly, surveying the way Holden's tucked himself barely beneath its edge. Just a passing glance.

"Nothing against ugly people, of course...It's not their fault. Most of them have winning personalities."

"That's generous of you to say."

Though he says it with genuine amusement, makes it a long way from being a barb. And he goes on, with similar good humor:

"I didn't realize conquest was what you were after."

He thought it was just attention, let's be real.

"Sometimes." He admits, without shame in his voice. It's instead laced with the tension of a swimming mixture of pain and stubborn cold (hard to work up body heat under a blanket when you're missing it to begin with, and what lingered in Holden's coat is already ebbing). Maybe— just maybe that's why he confesses a moment later, "Sometimes not."

Again, his eyes trail down towards those hands, and the lining of the blanket. Again he seems to mull something over before he murmurs, thinly:

"...come here."

His assumption is, of course, that there's something Astarion needs. That he's in pain, that he'll ask for a healer, or for another blanket, or some food or water. There's no hesitation as he moves closer, concern puckering his brow.

"What is it?"

Well. Things being what they are, he can’t exactly reach out and drag Holden to him in an effort to get his point across. Probably for the best.

He’s never been the brute force type anyway, perhaps shocking to no one.

"Must I spell it out for you? Get under the damned blanket, darling."

Astarion tips his head to one side by a nominal difference of degrees, attempting to both look at Holden whilst simultaneously avoiding pulling at the mending wounds peppering the lower slope of his own throat. A delicate balance.

He does well enough.

"...no point in us both freezing for pride."

Astarion probably realizes that he made the right choice in how to word that. Just insisting that Holden keep himself from freezing would've made him dig his heels in. But if Astarion suggests it's going to help him...

Well.

His lips twitch by way of acquiescence; and he comments,

"Try taking a guy out to dinner first, next time."

Which is not, of course, a no. He lifts the blanket cautiously, not intending to expose Astarion to the elements unnecessarily, and settles himself down beneath it. There's only so much space underneath, but he tries to keep some small distance between the two of them; God forbid he move without thinking and hurt him more.

“I tried making a reservation, but apparently the nearest location is hostile.”

Humor, brittle as the sand beneath them, makes everything a little more comfortable, after all. A little more bearable. A little more normal, when all the world feels tilted on its side and deeply imperiled.

There’s thought that could be given to the idea that if even one Venatori agent manages to persuade someone higher up to truly commit to this search— that it might be a deeper threat to them— there won’t be enough time or supplies to crawl out of here unscathed.

But that’s hopeless cynicism. A problem that hasn’t yet reared it’s hideous head.

And there’s no point in entertaining that.

So instead he focuses on something else. On the warmth beside him, bright as embers compared to deathly chill. A balm.

“Who’d have guessed.”

Brittle though the joke may be, it earns a soft laugh, no less genuine for the necessity of quiet. Bleak humor is as much as you can get sometimes, isn't it. Morale can be as important as the wellness of the body; despair, in times like these, would actively hinder their ability to survive and escape.

"I hear their service is terrible, anyway."

There's an echo in the room, or it seems like it. This might be a moment to make a promise like Astarion had made to him not so very long ago: I'll make sure you die before they take you. He could. He doesn't.

A promise like that would be thoughtful, all things considered. Maybe no one had mentioned it to Holden— maybe no one’s been keen at all to share the results of their dragon tracking— but the base they rest beside isn’t one to be taken lightly.

Or to be taken by at all.

Even so, Astarion’s only a fan of mercy killing when it comes to those around him: it’s for the best that Holden says nothing of the sort. That they rest there in silence, Holden’s own life-given warmth finally settling into the blanket’s coarse fibers— Astarion only capable of exchanging it for a paler chill compared to the sand and stone that surrounds. But as the minutes tick on, it does get better.

Less of a futile effort.

“...you’re a fool for coming.” He says at last, meaning every murmured word of it.

The breath he exhales has a touch of humor to it, self-deprecation. Something like, yeah, probably. But he says,

"Of course I was going to come."

Whether or not he's received a sitrep as of yet, he knows about the presence of the base nearby. He knows enough of the danger to any of them, to rifters, to have nightmares about it. And he knows they were tracking Corypheus's dragon. Whatever they've found here, it's nothing good.

And yet, down here in the dark, warmer for the blanket but colder for Astarion's proximity, it's still easy for him to say of course.

Astarion shifts beneath the coat, warmer now for the presence of its former master— former because Holden will be lucky if he ever gets it back, now that the vampire's sunk his figurative claws into it. It pulls at the blanket, shifts the sand beneath them, but neither is a difficult trial to overcome or acclimate to, in truth.

For a moment, he seems to be thinking over something— hence the movement. In the end, what he settles on is:

“You don’t make any sense.”

"I'm not that complicated."

He raises an eyebrow as he says so, not very removed from the humor of a moment ago, faint embers now. There's something funny to such an assertion from someone like Astarion, prickly and mercurial; in comparison, Jim can't imagine himself posing much of a mystery.

"You are to me," he counters in nearly the same breath, far from finding the humor in how ridiculous they must look right now: once again laid out flat across the earth— one of them half-dead, the other exhausted for the trouble.

Maybe history truly seeks to repeat as often as it's able.

And if that's so, he'll be sure to strike a few chapters from the record first.

"But then again, you're not the sort of person I'd have rubbed elbows with back in Baldur's Gate— willingly or otherwise."

Astarion might have called them even when he pulled Holden from the rubble, but the truth is that this feels closer to balancing the scales. But the truth is that balance hadn't entered his mind until long after committing himself to this rescue effort. A bonus, not a motivator.

He considers that Astarion doesn't seem to have known many decent people at all in Baldur's Gate, the way he talks. How often it is that he calls a cruelty familiar, understandable; but this he calls complicated. There's no way to say that without sounding self-aggrandizing or arrogant, so he settles on,

"And what kind of person is that?"

“Poor, for one.”

Spoken mildly, with only a touch of judgment to spare. No offense, Holden, but your coat smells like you've actually gone through the trouble of leaving your house on the regular, and for more than just a stroll through estate gardens.

“Lacking in aristocratic birthright or political power. Though your face is nice enough to suit Cazador’s tastes, he had a preference for a slightly more...delicate vintage.”

Those are interesting assertions to make about James Holden for a number of reasons, but he smiles and lets them pass.

"I get the feeling that's not something to feel too sorry about."

Cazador, that is. He doubts he'd like a lot of the people Astarion had known before falling into Thedas.

Astarion jokes easily about him. Free-flowing, the way his mouth twisted easily even in exhaustion for that prior commentary and all its darker implications— whether or not Holden could possibly glimpse beneath the surface to understand just how deep the ice runs underneath— and so maybe it's no surprise that his mood drops just as quickly in the next beat. Not weathervane, not chaotic.

Sobered.

“You truly have no idea just how lucky you are for it.” The words are slowed by sincerity, his own attention tipping away into deadened air, profile angled towards the ceiling overhead as his eyes drift briefly shut. Easy to pin promise on the idea that it’s Astarion’s lot now, too. Merciful absence.

“We should all hope that’s one creature that never steps through a rift into this world.”

Thedas has quite enough terror already, and the veil might split itself apart to spare potential pain under the crusades of both a tyrant magister and a true vampire lord, if it ever came to that.

“I’ll take your sacrificial virtue, your heroism, and all your irritating kindness over that.”

Jim turns to watch Astarion as he speaks, amusement bleeding out in the wake of that sincerity, in the horror just behind his words. There's so much that he doesn't know about the vampire. And that isn't a thing that bothers him, in the same way that it doesn't bother him that he only knows broad sketches of Amos's past, that it took years for Naomi to start trusting him with her truth. But he's confronted with the breadth of it, in this moment, his ignorance of everything Astarion has been through.

He could promise something like, we'd protect you, and he'd mean it. But it'd be an insult to the darkness lurking beneath the surface of that admission.

Instead, he says, "I'm glad you're here."

“Why would you ever be glad of that?”

A genuine question for once, not a barbed one, even as Astarion huffs for the effort of folding his fingertips against the hem of Holden’s coat, clinging to those heavy seams.

He can’t fathom it. Or— he doesn’t know how to trust it, given the strange juxtaposition of their exchanges thus far.

The way Holden keeps the world at arms length by holding it entirely too close.

“Someone else surely would’ve saved you, you know. And I’m not inclined to lap up pity for my past, if that’s what this is supposed to be.” Those are, after all, the only angles he can glean from all available possibility. “I’m not even the only former slave here.”

Not in Thedas. Not in Riftwatch.

Former slave is a hell of an admission. Even with every dark thing he's alluded to before now, it's unexpected. He doubts Astarion would've made it if he weren't hurt and sick, shivering in the dark. So he swallows, hard, doesn't allow any burst of fresh anger or outrage to breach the surface. Instead, he moves into a position that's actually a little less comfortable than the last — a little sliver of rock, or crystal, or something poking his back just so — and breathes out.

And when he looks to Astarion again, there's a smile, lopsided, on his face. The question doesn't pose much of a challenge to answer.

"I like you." He's also glad Astarion is here, away from that evil fuck, though the argument can be made — compellingly — that he might not be much safer here. "You're weirdly likable for a pain in the ass vampire." Then he shrugs. "You can call it selfishness. I wouldn't have met you if you hadn't come here."

It's wording that, he thinks, may appeal more.

[ OPEN | PLAYER PLOT ] This is how it feels to take a fall

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