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illithidnapped) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2021-08-15 11:01 pm
illithidnapped) wrote in faderift2021-08-15 11:01 pmEntry tags:
illithidnapped) wrote in faderift2021-08-15 11:01 pm
For Abby:
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
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.
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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?”
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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?"
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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...?”
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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?"
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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"... 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.
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“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.
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"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.
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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.
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Her mood is betraying how she really feels, irritation curling into her tone. She's overtired. Wrung out. What she'd like most would be to see to her own wounds, in her own time; be alone for the rest of the evening to process everything that's happened. That want feels very far away from the current situation. It isn't Astarion's fault for offering to help her, but Abby begrudges it all the same. Shouldn't need it. (Don't deserve it.)
"I've had worse," she adds, by way of explanation. Both to reassure him, and in attempt to smooth over the jagged edges of her mood. "I'll be fine.
Where are we going?
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It isn’t far, his home— not that he’d intended to let a pseudo-stranger into his humble abode. “Before I have to carry you there myself.”
A few dismal streets over, in an exceedingly dusty corner that faintly smells of sea brine, he pulls a key from his pocket and slips it into a creaking iron door— same as all the other miserably rusted ones lining Lowtown. Inside, gleaming clutter is everywhere, save for a lone slanted mattress, a table and a few chairs, and a pit of a stony fireplace carved into the wall. It smells of wine, and— much like Astarion himself— lilac oil and leather, and its own stale stone walls, but all things considered it could, to some, be considered cozy.
“Try not to bleed all over everything. And sit down by the wall.”
He’s too busy to direct her, already digging through a heap of silk for a few bandages and some potted salve. It isn’t much, but it’ll work well enough to potentially get her back to the Gallows and out of his perfectly curled hair by nightfall.
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By the time her breathing is coming in soft wheezes again (fuck, she still hasn't fully loosened up from that hit in the chest Ellie delivered right at the start. Still feels like there's a fist clenched shut, pressing on her sternum), they're at the front door. Abby leans up against the stone, and tips herself through the frame once he's inside, taking note of her surroundings. One window, one door. She kind of likes his various effects, the decoration, the hazy, floral scent in the air that layers over the cold. There's certainly no short of anything to look at as she takes her seat with a grunt.
She watches him search through his things with eyes half-lidded. Abby thinks she'd be suspicious if she had the energy left to do it.
"Why are you helping me?"
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Her breathing, labored as a wounded animal, doesn't do anything to deter the instinctive growling in his gut. He can't help it, just the same as she can't help being a stubborn, defensive burr.
But they do what they have to do, in a place like this.
He kneels easily at her side, first rinsing away the blood with a cold, damp cloth (he's not about to waste time reheating the basin and kindling a fire in the middle of the damned day)— letting it soak and saturate until the thing is clear save for the fresh welling of blood, easily packed with salve-suffused gauze. Her shoulder held tight beneath its pressure, and the press of his hand.
"We're in the middle of a war— and we're losing. Bleeding assets aren't going to do any of us any good, and believe me, you don't want to wind up in the enemy's fetid, unsightly hands."
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She remembers. Same reason he keeps calling her darling even though it makes her skin itch and prickle. But the cold cloth feels nice, and she's glad he didn't heat the water. It soothes her skin's irritated flare around the wound, dampens the sting a little. Abby falls silent while he works, and her eyes narrow to slits. He could hurt her right now if he wanted, badly, but her reaction time would be too slow to stop it. She has to trust him not to. She's about half-way there.
"Are you supposed to tell me that we're losing?" She says eventually, her voice far away. She's tired, and the rummaging around in the wound at her shoulder is sapping her energy. It takes effort to keep from wincing through it, "You're not worried about... demoralising the troops, or whatever."
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He talks as he works, low and far from lilting with all his usual fanfare.
"I think knowing exactly what we're up against is going to work a little better than denying the obvious: we're swimming in refugees and licking our wounds— it doesn't take a genius to figure out things aren't working in our favor, and I imagine you're very much in the same boat as I am."
A section of bandaging is smoothed down with deft precision, pulled taut.
"You need Riftwatch."
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"Everybody needs something." Easier to downplay than get into it: she has nothing to her name, not even back home. No faction, no pack. It's her and Lev, the both of them torn asunder by separate grief. "Otherwise, what's the point."
She's never had the luxury of being aimless before. Sometimes she wonders what it's like.
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From there, he reaches down, fishing up the rest of the salve and dabbing it— generously— across her cheek with surprising care.
"So. For the sake of our continued survival: who did this to you? Venatori? A thief? A mercenary, perhaps?"
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"... Another rifter, actually," she volunteers, her gaze flicking to his face to gauge his reaction.
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And...suspiciously enough, have none of it come out across the crystal.
He doesn't sound anything but serious when he asks, voice uncharacteristically deep:
"...who."
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"Doesn't matter," she says, and meets his gaze steadily to show that she's serious. Feels safe enough to add that, "I know her. We came here from the same place. She won't be a threat to anybody else."
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"And your sound judgment has currently left you bleeding; you'll forgive me if I don't trust it outright." This isn't a game. It isn't a joke. Pale light seeps in from the window behind Abby, and it has a way of eclipsing Astarion in her own shadow, his expression gone hard. "I'm not going to tattle on you— whether you started it or she did, I don't care— but I won't be left in the dark about something like this."
His tongue clicks against the back of his canines, sharp.
"Don't make me compel you."
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