[CLOSED] My bad habits lead to late nights, ending alone

[illithidnapped]

WHO: Astarion, etc
WHAT: catchall for August minutiae
WHEN: now...ish
WHERE: Kirkwall, Lowtown
NOTES: injury, will add anything else as needed

Comments

For Abby:

[illithidnapped]

The thing about ambition is it demands momentum: success isn't going to find Astarion resting on his heels in a gutter, nursing along minuscule victories like grand trophies. There's a door in Kirkwall with a lock the key in his pocket fits perfectly into, and a wealth of trash and treasure inside its walls, and it's a start.

But it isn't enough.

He'll need more to tip the balance in his favor. Coin and favor alike— but he'll start with coin. And in the wake of having been away for a little over a month in total, no fleecing prospect is too small, no prey too insignificant.

He waits in a Lowtown alley, shadowed by looming stone, awaiting the first unfortunate soul that might stumble unknowingly into his web.

Fine, alleyway. But it's close enough to a web, figuratively speaking.

cw description of panic and injury

[armd]

It's certainly true that Abby isn't having the most fortunate day.

She's been fighting panic since the end of the fight and now that she's free and on her own it's spilling over, her body wrestling with her every step of the way toward the docks. Following the smell of fish. Somebody told her that it's easier to get back to the Gallows from the pier, she thinks, but it's difficult to tease the rest of that thought out when she's so loud on the inside.

Her pathway through the alleys isn't at all subtle. Mostly she's just trying to keep breathing, remind herself that she's fine. She's bleeding from her cheek and her shoulder, ribs made bruised and sore by an errant knee that shoved its way into her midriff; all treatable. Not the worst she's had, not by a long shot.

Could have died back there, though. Could have joined everybody else she knows. She's been trying so hard not to think about it all this time, and now it's all she can see whenever she blinks. Halfway down a claustrophobic stretch of high brick walls she has to pause, lean over, dig her shoulder into something cold.

Helps, if she keeps her eyes closed and rubs her arms. She's just going to do that for a minute. That's all she needs.

[illithidnapped]

It’s almost too easy. Like finding a bird with a broken wing, or a deer with its leg snared in a trap, Astarion’s eyes— attuned to the dark— dilate at the stumbling sight of such an easy catch. The scent of blood is overwhelming. He won’t even need to pretend to pick her pocket, or slither past in the shadows with an outstretched hand, or even feign injury for sympathy. No, for once, he’s simply going to play the cutthroat and vanish so quickly, there won’t be evidence he ever existed at all.

A blade glints in his palm, visible before the rest of him, voice a low, faceless purr.

“Make this easy, darling. Empty your pockets and I won’t have to— ”

He only notices it when he’s closer. The limning green glow against her palm as she scrubs at herself with trembling hands.

“—strewth. You’re one of ours.”

Riftwatch. And a Rifter besides. His relaxed confidence shifts suddenly to wariness— not aimed at her, but in the general sense: Kirkwall is overflowing with northern refugees these days, and its roads more dangerous than usual. Spies could be anywhere. Agents and assets even more so.

His dagger’s sheathed quickly; he hesitates to move more than a single step within her own proximity, though pale fingers hang outstretched in the emptied air.

“What in the Hells happened to you?”

[armd]

The thrumming of blood in her ears fills her up but she isn't switched off. Can't ever afford to be. Her eyes jolt open at the soft slip of footsteps on the brick.

For a moment, Abby thinks that it's her. Ellie, back to finish what she started. The low light catches on the flat of the blade and delivers another shock to her system, makes her lash out with a fist into the empty space between them just to warn her back. But somebody else speaks, the timbre of the voice too low and full to have come from her nightmares. Abby breathes, blinks the blur of tears away, and gulps air as she tries to calm her heart.

She must look pathetic. It's shameful, being caught like this.

Not even by somebody she's met before. His shock of white hair is at least something to focus on while she presses her nails into her palms, and swallows everything down just enough to speak around.

"None of your business." Hard to take her seriously, with a voice that rough and watery. "Am I on the right track to get back to the Gallows?"

[illithidnapped]

That fist is warding enough: whether or not she’s wounded, he can’t afford to hurt anyone under Riftwatch’s extensively assembled banner— and as his nimble footing scuffs back by degrees (the very picture of a cat leaping away from potential trouble), he realizes he recognizes that voice.

Not her face, not her significant height or build, but all the same, he knows her.

It’s easy to step out of shadow into the faint sliver of dull light permeating the alleyway itself, neck craned forward in feral curiosity, red eyes bright.

“Abby...?”

[armd]

He doesn't immediately move away, or answer her. Abby's prepared to tell him to fuck off again, without words this time, but luckily he steps forward and cants his head toward her. His eyes flash when the light hits them: a deep, blood-red.

Hearing her own name defangs her immediately.

"Astarion?"

She's placed the lilt in his voice at last. A moment, in which she struggles with the strange turn this encounter has taken, and then she manages, "Did– were you about to mug me?"

[illithidnapped]

“—What? No. Of course not.”

The obvious flicker of a sincerely flustered expression is all too quickly smoothed over with a wave of his hand and a pinching of silvered brows, dark lashes beating heavily when he opts to bat them, making him look more passive. Docile. Trustworthy, even.

And utterly concerned.

“All that blood loss is clearly going to your head.”

This time, his outstretched palm weaves closer, fingertips turned upwards.

See, Abby? Harmless.

“You won’t get to the Gallows anytime soon like this, and you won’t have any luck catching a ferry bleeding out in the damned street. Come here. Let me look at you.”

[armd]

Good grief.

Abby watches this display with both muted curiousity, and abject wariness. He can peacock at her all he likes, but she hasn't forgotten– "You're a vampire."

His outstretched hand; her bleeding cheek, forearm, and shoulder. He's right to say she'll have difficulty catching a ferry. It's a miracle nobody tried to stop her in the street: she's been wiping carelessly at her cheek the whole time, and blood is streaked across her face. She hasn't touched her shoulder, but she feels the sharp ache deep down in her muscle, the fabric of her shirt wet, and plastered to her skin. It's in a difficult place for her to reach. Somebody will have to look at it, but Abby was thinking of Gideon, maybe Derrica. Not Astarion, and in a dark alleyway.

[illithidnapped]

“And right now, I’m all you have.”

He drops the showmanship to say it, the sense of drama gone as quickly as it'd set in. His tone is flat and level, crimson stare fixed entirely on where she still stands slumped against the dust-laden wall at her back.

“If I attack you, it won’t be long before someone starts snooping around, asking questions of the only resident blood-drinker in our midst. So much as it pains me to admit, I need you alive— and you need me.”

He leaves his hand where it is, and himself along with it: an offer she can either take— or leave for as long as her legs hold out.

[armd]

Abby hates that he's right. That he knows he's right, too.

"... Why does it pain you to admit that," she mutters, utterly resigned, and peels herself off from the wall with a sharp exhale to close the distance between them. She doesn't know what he thinks he can do to help short of... licking her clean, but he's been sincere enough in his offer that she's willing to hear him out. At the very least he might be a dab hand with needle and thread.

It's the shoulder that's bothering her the most. She gestures to that first, turning side on to give him a better glance at it, her body tight all over.

[illithidnapped]

“Quiet,” Astarion murmurs as he slithers into that granted space, chin tipped forward in a way that makes him seem more animal than man, zeroed in as he is on the deep gouge mark at her shoulder.

“I’m concentrating.”

Admittedly, there’s still something beautiful about the blooming scent of blood in the air. He’s tempted only in the way anyone might be by the sight of something alluring and faintly familiar, but he isn’t driven by it anymore. Doesn't need it. Isn’t slavering for it in the pit of his perpetually starved gut.

He ignores it, setting slender fingers to the edges of her now-tacky wound, pressing faintly to measure its depth. Its location. Whether it likely punctured bone or merely sinew.

No doubt it hurts fiercely.

[armd]

She flinches at the first touch, but not because it hurts. Abby's still thrumming, breathing fairly shallow. She's ready to go at a moment's notice if the situation calls for it. For example: if he licks his fingers? She's outta here.

"Concentrating on what," she says grouchily, after taking a moment to wet her lower lip. Her mouth is so dry. She didn't notice until now; her limbs are tired, and heavy. "Poking it?" Every deep spasm into the muscle makes her feel even worse. Ellie's knife might have glanced off bone and away from her neck, but she still slammed it deep into the meat of Abby's shoulder.

Nothing a row of strong stitches won't hold together, but it will be tender for a long time.

[illithidnapped]

He's ignoring her chatter, head tipped just so, eyes hooded slightly. It’s a reassuring sign, that ragged twitch when he presses against bared skin. And yes peripherally there’s a withering siren song luring some part of him, but it’s only an absent curiosity; sometimes dignity is worth more than indulgence.

A little bit. Just a smidge.

“Well. Good news is it’s not going to kill you. Yet.” He’s not half as worried about the bloodied split across her face, given that she’s expressive enough not to have sustained nerve damage. “Can you walk? I’ll do it here in a pinch, but this isn’t the best of places to dress a wound.”

And again. Not really wanting to get caught with a bloody mess where someone might start pointing fingers. Very bad.

for Ellie;

[illithidnapped]

[ooc: cont from here.]

[illithidnapped]

He's a man of his word, tonight. There, waiting in his closet of an apartment as promised, the place— well, not tidy, but less of a mess than it had been the night before when he'd dragged his dear friend unwittingly into the pit of his own distrustful supposition.

The floor a little less cluttered, leftover refuse tucked away rather than left out. When she knocks, she's let in.

But he doesn't have much else to say.

[notathreat]

Ellie has avoided Lowtown.

Sure, she'd swung by when Astarion first moved in, before the place was thoroughly destroyed. She'd brought something to smoke, and for a time they'd be unselfconscious degenerates together, and Ellie had felt close to being relaxed for the first time in a while.

Now, it feels... foreboding. Her stomach keeps twisting itself into knots, and the walk is just long enough for her to appreciate how thoroughly she fucked this up.

If this had happened to him, and he hadn't breathed a word to her, she'd have been more than hurt. She'd have hoped that he could trust her more than that.

Somehow she doesn't think well, I didn't think you'd find out is going to be a good reason for keeping her mouth shut and dealing with this on her own.

Ellie sidles in with her hands in her pockets, her jaw set, not quite making eye contact, and hates that he's silent. He's never fucking silent.

"... how mad are you?"

[illithidnapped]

That question is damning enough, isn’t it? If he had any doubts before, he certainly knows better now. He’s seated at his piss poor excuse for a card table (and dining table, for that matter), wine untouched, one elbow resting along its edge.

“Indescribably.” Astarion breathes, hooded eyes the color of blood as they bore into her.

There’s more that he could say, but she’s made this bed. She can drag them both out of it.

[notathreat]

Ellie hooks both thumbs in the straps of her bag, purses his lips and blows all of the breath out of her lungs. She's not scared, but the level of disappointment he practically oozes makes her want to sink into the floor. It's not a new feeling.

Joel could wield that same shit with cutting precision, but Ellie can't think of too many times she was thoroughly the one in the wrong. She shrugs off her bag, setting it down with a thump, and slides into the seat opposite of Astarion, putting her hands and elbows on the table. She fidgets immediately, fucking around with the stumps of her missing fingers, setting her jaw.

"... Abby and I have a history," she says quietly, and pinches the end of the cut bone, the place that aches at night and keeps her awake with phantom nerve pain.

"I didn't want to drag anybody else into our shit."

[illithidnapped]

"Oh," he says, soft as the air between them— and just as light, for that matter. His eyebrows lift, his chin tipped higher.

"Well that explains everything, then."

[notathreat]

"Don't-" Ellie frowns up at him, gritting her teeth. She wants to be pissed off at the way he's talking to her, but she's acutely aware that she doesn't have much of a leg to stand on.

"Don't be an asshole, I'm trying to tell you."

She just doesn't fucking know where to start.

Hissing out a breath, she digs her fingernails into the surface of the table, like she can hold onto something, and stares down at them. She doesn't want to be looking at his face when she says this. This isn't how she wanted to tell him. This wasn't how she wanted him to know this about her.

"... she's the one who killed Joel."

[illithidnapped]

He makes a noise, then. Breathy. Sharp. Entirely through his nose.

It explains some part of it, at least. A lot of it, in fact. Joel, the man that had taught her so much that she’d gone soft at the memory of him. The one who made sure she wasn’t alone, presumably when the world itself wanted to ensure she would be.

But.

Astarion pulls himself to his feet, tall as he is in the cramped quarters of his own home, drawing closer by a single step. Two. His hands perched in front of him in idle posing— not uncommon for him.

“Why.” He urges, voice hushed almost conspiratorially this time, rising just above the disappointment. Intermingled. “Why didn’t you just finish the damn job, then? You don’t half kill someone. You don’t let them walk, and talk, and track blood across every side street in Kirkwall.”

His teeth flash. His eyes are narrowed.

“You should have cut her throat and thrown her in the river. Rifters go missing. No one would have known a thing.”

Finish your fucking meals, Ellie.

[notathreat]

Astarion doesn't scare her; but then, Ellie's never gotten afraid of things or people the way normal people do. She's spent her life being smaller and weaker and vulnerable, and has poured her fire into making herself scarier than everything that's tried to kill her.

Her shoulders draw tight, down, her back straight, her hands loose, her eyes bright and fixed on his.

"Bullshit. Somebody would've found her, and the anchor in her hand. Riftwatch would've freaked out and wasted time trying to find out what happened."

Ellie's eyes glint in the firelight, her mouth pressed tight. She practically bites the words out.

"Abby didn't tell you shit because she doesn't want anyone to know."

These aren't the only reasons, but they factored in -- or at least they did, when Ellie was going over her own choices in her mind, thrashing herself back and forth over it, trying to convince herself she'd chosen right.

Living or dead, Abby's ghost was apparently destined to haunt her either way.

[illithidnapped]

“Do you realize I wouldn’t be having this talk with someone else—” His browline is still drawn tight, only this time it’s flatter in its angle. Not furious. Not livid. If it was someone other than Astarion, that sort of look might mean they’re hurt.

Things being what they are, it might still.

“I was out of my damned mind thinking there was a bloody traitor amongst us. I was looking for someone to bleed.”

That is why he was upset. That is why he was afraid, dragging Fenris from solitude like some sort of shield. Pulling Ellie to him for the same damn reason. On and on and on, as though if he could gather up his prized assets in one place, nothing at all could possibly go wrong.

He’s come too far to be a slave to fear again.

“Leave me in the dark again like a fool, and I’m going to do whatever I have to to protect myself.”

[notathreat]

The defensive anger bleeds away almost instantly, leaving Ellie feeling cold and empty, her fingertips tingling. Because she knows. This is the real heart of it, and no matter how much she tries to dress it up, the fact is that she hurt him.

"... the last time I let a friend get involved in this shit between me and Abby," she says very quietly, "he ended up dead."

Her mouth feels dry. It's the first time she's really talked about Jesse in a long time, and it feels rotten to the core. It's clear just how much she blames herself for this.

"I wanted to handle it by myself," she adds, this time without heat, her voice uncharacteristically soft, but it goes softer still, banked by hesitation and guilt.

"I'm sorry. I should've said something."

[illithidnapped]

He's silent for a tepid moment as her apology sinks in, mouth leveling out, expression relaxing somewhat until he's only left with a sunken look of exhaustion: dark lashes shadowing hollow sockets, posture receding as he slinks back over to his table to sit down— motioning faintly towards the chair opposite to him.

In his own way, this is as much of an acceptance of that apology as he's willing to give. A kind of wordless segue. A means to just move on.

They're not done talking, but they can at least be done talking about that.

"It's your game to lose, you know. If she changes her mind about this little silent truce. Or perhaps when."