faderift | open | holiday spirits

Entry tags:

open | holiday spirits

WHO: Whoever, plus some spirits.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.

THE CASTLE

Their convenient shelter from the unexpected blizzard that whips up around them in the mountain pass isn't too convenient. Anyone with a reasonable detailed map will find it marked there; reaching its clifftop location requires a slight detour. When they approach, it has no warm ethereal glow or suspiciously welcoming lit torches. The windows stay dark. The portcullis is raised just high enough to be ducked under, but the heavy doors of the keep don't swing open to welcome them.

The only immediate sign that something is amiss is the thorough, all-encompassing emptiness of the place, and it might take some investigation before that begins to feel strange. The fortress' abandonment seems recent and abrupt: ample firewood has been cut and stacked for the winter, nothing has been done to protect the furniture or strip the beds, the kitchen is fully stocked and even has some perishables that do not seem close to perishing, the stables are equipped to comfortably keep any animals along for the journey, and a chess board before the hearth in the (humble) grand hall seems to have been left mid-game. But there are no messages, no bodies, no footsteps dimpling the crunchy layer of old snow accumulated in the bailey beneath the fresh snowfall.

As they search, the castle's visitors may begin to find signs that the castle hasn't been entirely abandoned. It begins with whispers emanating from the dark ends of corridors, voices they recognize and others they don't, or faces both familiar and unfamiliar flashing in still water or window panes when firelight hits right, or forms moving on the edge of vision but vanishing before they can be looked at directly.

By the time this becomes worrisome enough to drive anyone back out of the castle, the portcullis has fallen shut and won't budge. Neither will any other doors to the outside. The windows won't break; doors won't give way even to makeshift battering rams. The only walls that can be climbed or reached by stairs face out over a deep ravine. It might be a survivable climb, if the wind and weather allowed, but it would not be a survivable fall.

THE SPIRITS

--so back inside, then.

The keep is built like the Gallows' towers, square and tall, and it won't take long for Riftwatch to notice that whatever is wrong is more wrong the higher they climb. The whispers and glimpses on the lowest floor become voices and lingering shadowy figures on the second. Someone might turn and find their hand briefly held by an unfamiliar man's, warm and real for the moment it takes him to say, "Come with me." Or behind them, a woman's shocked and seething voice says, "What are you doing?" Or maybe it's a hand they do know and a voice saying something they've heard before.

As people venture to the higher floors--whether intrepidly seeking the source or involuntarily herded onward by spirits--these moments will begin to last and linger and repeat. And those who don't dare venture higher won't be exempt, confronted by stronger spirits that emerge like ants from a kicked hive as the upper floors are disturbed.

As they approach the uppermost floor, reality will begin to slip away from them. They may find themselves lost in a maze of rooms, even though that shouldn't be possible in so few square feet, and ultimately enveloped in comforting worlds where they didn't do that thing they regret and that, like dreams, feel real until they suddenly don't--until something is too unbelievable, until someone interrupts, or until a demon is holding them under the water of the warm bath they were tempted into, shoving them off a balcony, or whispering into their ears and minds, let me in and you can keep it.

The hauntings will continue until ~~morale improves~~ the eldest, most powerful demon has been dealt with.

THE END

When it ends, it ends abruptly. Weaker spirits vanish; stronger ones retreat into the dark. The lesser demons on the upper floors linger, and some may put up a last-ditch physical fight, but without their superior, they've lost most of their mental pull and emotional sway. The castle has changed, too. Its abandonment no longer looks so recent. The food and firewood is gone, along with any sense of warmth or satiety anyone used them to acquire earlier. There is dust where none was before, mildew and rot, and a few scattered, unfortunate skeletons.

The sun is not quite up, the sky a faintly luminescent grey. But the weather is survivable, though it will be slower travel than it would have been without the fresh snow. The doors will open, and the portcullis will raise. Everyone can set off on their cold, hours-long journey back to the city. Talking about their feelings or avoiding eye contact the entire time: the choice is theirs.

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It an almost herculean effort, this process of sobering up enough to realize he was under whatever influence these spirits or demons (whatever the hell they were) and their ability to tug at the corners of his memories. Clearly the seemed to take enjoyment in the worst of them, the things that Dante regretted most regardless of the amount of control he had over the situation, in fact the lack of control he had in each situation only compounded the issue.

The echo that remained behind even after Dante woke up, his mother's voice rebounding distantly off of the walls, the presence of the memory still creating an environment of sensations. If Dante had the option of being run through with a sword or reliving this memory one more time he'd fall on the sword. For some people there were worse things: torture, solitude, indignity. These were the bottoms for some, for Dante it was the death of his mother and the deaths of other mother figures in his life that haunted him.

So becoming aware of the person in his arms and who they were took several moments, and concentrated effort, to look at Astarion's face, fix his eyes on the other man and recognize him through the tears he was still shedding. He couldn't stop in spite of himself and he couldn't seem to control it either and if felt so out of the order even though feeling was one of the things he liked about human beings, he had simply done it so rarely in his own life. When it happened it really was just a flood gate.

Nothing he could do to hide it he bowed his head against Astarion's chest, trying to block everything else out but that sweet lilac scent, "Star..."

Pressure harsh against his chest. The pained sound of distress buried heavy against his skin and dark silk alike. Astarion’s arms work their way around Dante’s shoulders after a momentary— almost hesitant— pause, shielding him at least in part from the warped sense of time and place that surrounds them, attempting to pull at the edges of their sanity.

“Clumsy, you know. Falling asleep in a place like this.” Soft, that chiding, delayed by a single beat. It doesn’t quite fit Astarion, genuine kindness; he’s never really known how to comfort— not when it comes to someone he actually cares for in any capacity.

It's not the same thing as lying to a stranger, after all. It shouldn't be.

But he's trying, at least as much as he can.

“Though I suppose that’s what I get for leaving you on your own.”

Whether it was burning shame that kept him bowed against Astarion or just a strong desire to pull the curtains down on emotional vulnerability (as someone who was so often theatrical, imperturbable, and eager to confront things head-on) it was hard to tell. As someone who often put his life on the line carelessly and without hesitation, perhaps it was a small tickle of fear that showing any kind of weakness would put those he cared about in danger.

Still, once he managed to control his breathing and clear his head enough to understand this shitty scenario was all inside of his head...sort of...maybe a manifestation from what the spirits ad demons were able to accomplish, but it was still memories. Once he'd gained some measure of himself he tipped his head up a bit, most of his face still obscured in Astarion's chest, silk cool against his face, but his eyes were visible.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Dante manage to say jokingly, though it was muffled and half-hearted at best, "without you around I'm a barely functioning azalea, pretty to look at, but high maintenance."

Not true, but lending himself to Astarion's humor is better than lingering on pain.

"Thanks...for coming to the land of Nod."

There might be something to it, the well-worn fight for levity between them.

Because that screaming seems...quieter somehow, in the tensely wound beats that follow. If only just. The potency of it all so thin, like a looking glass turned on its side. Without it bearing down across their shoulders, Astarion’s exhale is sincere enough this time, body going a few degrees more lax.

His grip gone a touch more gentle.

“Someone certainly had to.” Another faint, thready sort of chuckle. Another passing slip of long fingers as they coast through Dante’s hair, and his own attention roams higher for a single beat.

“But...just between us, I’d prefer not to have to do it again in the near future.”

Levity was relief from emotional obligation, at least on his part, the struggle not to bury someone under the weight of his own baggage. The fight to keep it in the bottle was often expedited by levity and humor.

But now there's really nothing he could do to take back the knowledge, the bow whose home was attacked by demons, whose mother was murdered in front of his eyes as she sought out her other missing child. A boy who could do nothing to protect her or himself and to this day was haunted by that guilt.

He was a child, but it would never be justification enough.

"You and me both," Dante for obvious reasons, but just the general notion of Astarion not having to rouse Dante from a nightmare every time he had them in this place was enough, "should probably stop sleeping, best way to avoid bad dreams, right?"

He tipped his profile up at the other man, half grinning, but it was obvious his mind was still elsewhere and he pressed his cheek against Astarion's chest, just over his heart. He could selfishly enjoy the coddling for a few minutes more, the fingers combing through his hair.

"She was...trying to find my twin brother...he never knew."

“But you knew.” An assumption and a question all bound together, shifting where he stands to sink down across the armrest of the chair where Dante had been otherwise sleeping, continuing the steady course and flow of his own brushing fingertips.

“Did you ever tell him? Or...”

That or stands as its own implication. No, he never survived. No, I never saw him again. No, I’d forgotten. No, I never had the chance.

"Vergil is...complicated," it was one word among many he could use to describe him, their relationship, their dynamic, "we didn't really get the chance to have that heart-to-heart conversation."

So I never had a chance was partially true, but for reasons other than what one might assume.

"Turns out he survived, but it was years after..." he waved a hand vaguely, gesturing that he meant the dream taking place, "...he turned up."

Sighing inwardly Dante slung an arm around Astarion's waist as he slid onto the armrest.

"He wasn't as surprised and relieved to see me as I was to see him, he'd become obsessed with power and his own demonic nature," Dante tipped his head back against his chair his gaze directed at the cieling, "and in a way I get it, wanting to cloister yourself in power so the world can never hurt you...if you can be defeated you can be a victim, I think that nagged at him as much as thinking she didn't love him as much as she loved me..."

Maybe Vergil had other motivations, but Dante could only assume that his constant scramble for power had to do with their mother in part and wanting to protect himself from his own trauma and revisiting it.

"Anyway, he wanted an amulet I had that was half of a key to the demon world so he could gain more power at the expense of so many lives...so naturally I had to kick his ass," and of course that did not lend itself to much in the way of a productive conversation.

Vergil.

Somewhere in the bleak recesses of Astarion’s mind, that name is filed away under lock and key. Thedas, after all, has a way of making everything relevant; old pain, lost commitments, forgotten silhouettes. And if the shadow of Dante’s past decides to come crawling through the Fade one day, it can’t hurt to grasp exactly what it is.

Or the sort of pain it might cause.

“...mm.” Soft. Uniquely level. Dante’s arm wrapped heavy about his waist is a grounding comfort, but the words strike so bitterly close to home all the same. Wanting to cloister yourself in power so the world can never hurt you.

His jaw flexes for a single, quiet beat. The world itself shivers.

And then he presses on.

“Did you kill him?”

An unkind question, maybe. An important one, all the same.

"No...I didn't...or maybe I just couldn't," and maybe it was because they were twins, split right down the center, and that bond made it difficult for Dante, or something else that held him back, "...I sealed the demon world and he wanted to go so I let him go."

That and any attempt at trying to pull Vergil back was rebuffed with the swat of a blade.

"Maybe I should have...I guess he wanted to see if he could fight the ruler of the demon world and defeat him like our father did...he found Mundus...and it didn't work out the way he wanted it to. He was defeated, corrupted, entombed in a Black Knight armor, and made to serve for years," maybe death would have been kinder.

There, under the weight of that confession, Astarion doesn’t quite know what to say. The story’s too familiar. There’s nothing he can latch onto to tease about or deflect with.

“So he was enslaved.”

There’s nothing else for it. No other name as far as Astarion can tell.

“But if you know what happened to him, you must have witnessed it somehow. Or heard of it.” Neither prospect pleasant. Neither bodes well, when set beside the tears Dante had shed only moments before. The ones still clinging in salt trails near his eyes, where Astarion smooths the edge of a single thumb.

"Yeah, he was enslaved," though Dante had avoided using the word specifically, pointedly, it was still very accurate.

"I had to put the pieces together retroactively, once he was in the demon world there was no contact between us. It wasn't until several years had passed and Mundus erected a Hell Gate so he could sashay his ass out of the demon world, to do what demons do best, that I found out about it," Dante closed his eyes letting Astarion wipe at his tears, "Mundus sent Vergil in this armor to assassinate me several times...I guess he had no memory left, Mundus had taken all of it from him so he could force us into battle, hoping we'd finish each other off."

All the better, the Sparda bloodline gone, extinguished. Not with a roar, but with a whimper.

"I didn't realize it until our last fight in Mundus's castle, I defeated Vergil and he disappeared leaving an amulet behind...it was the other half of the key...that's when I knew what happened," and Dante couldn't imagine the hell and the nightmares.

“And after that was when you were stolen?”

Stolen, Astarion says. Not dreamed, the way so many Thedosians might argue. A bitter point of contention on his own part, and the only one he maintains that stands opposed to all local ideology.

From the corner of Dante’s eyes— once carefully tended to— Astarion’s hand runs higher, nails returning once more to coursing a path across Dante’s scalp through long, silver hair.

“To come here, I mean.”

"Stolen," Dante spoke the word as if considering it, opening his eyes again to look up at Astarion as fingers once more combed through his hair. He wasn't sure if he was rambling or making any kind of sense. Maybe he was synthesizing the information down to details that were very basic, but the whole story would have been too complex to put together even for himself, "no, not at that point, those were the early days, the young and moody days. The days when I began wearing more clothing."

Dante, defining the periods in his life through style, though his taste in clothing had said something about his mood and where he was in his life. So perhaps that wasn't too far of the mark in terms of defining his own timeline.

Leaning into Astarion as fingers raked pleasantly over his scalp, he recalled the details in his current timeline. He really didn't know about all of the specifics, only the information he'd been given and what he'd seen with his own eyes.

"No, when I was stolen from? About 20 years later give or take...I run an agency that focuses on demon hunting and other supernatural affairs. A client walked into my shop needing my help with a demon he claimed was emerging to take over. I didn't believe him at first, but he told me the name of the demon was Vergil and that Vergil was going to demonize our childhood city, Red Grave...I had to go, I needed to be sure."

Dante closed his eyes again, holding a picture in his mind of Red Grave when he arrived.

"And he was right, it was an infestation...Vergil, going by the name Urizen used his gift left to him by our father, a sword that can cut through dimensions, to cut a hole from the demon world into the human world. This hole allowed the roots of a tree called the Qliphoth to invade and find the nourishment it craves most, human blood," a great deal of human blood as by the time Dante had already gotten there the roots had grown skyward, "the tree produces a singular piece of fruit that can grant the one who eats it unparalleled power...Mundus was the last one to eat the fruit before becoming ruler of the demon world."

That his brother would go so far as to become the next Mundus?

"Not killing him was my mistake, Star, he turned our childhood home into an eldritch nightmare and the roots of that tree stole the lives of so many humans leaving behind dried up husks frozen in time," and that too was something Dante had to accept accountability for, "I throw a lot of my wealth into the collateral damage I cause in every mission I take...but there's no amount of money I could possibly pull in that could cover so much life."

And the demons that were based around the roots of the tree were also a compounding problem.

"I confronted Urizen and I knew he was Vergil, he'd survived, shed his humanity, hooked himself up to those roots and became the most powerful monstrosity I'd ever seen. I wasn't ready for what he'd become, and I lost that fight. He knocked me off of the Qliphoth into the lower echelon of the roots, the force knocked me out, but hitting the base put me into a coma and that's...all I know."

“Strewth.”

It’s all so much to try and understand. Like something from the teachings of Shar or Selûne— too fantastic to be real, and not in a good way, either. How can he hold onto knowledge like that?

How can Dante?

“If it’s any consolation, I’m sure someone in your world will...”

Will what, kill his brother ascended? The way Dante talks, that seems highly unlikely— and maybe not the most comforting sentiment in the moment, either.

...shit.

His touch turns a little more heavy. A little more noticable, as if making sure it can be felt might somehow alleviate part of the present discomfort. Its mangled pain.

“Well, that is, it’s not your problem anymore.”

And isn’t that the better outcome, anyway?

Dante wasn't the smartest man by any means, he had no formal education or secondary education. He did like to read things when he could and relied mostly on street smarts and talent. He did, however, possess the ability to synthesize information that was relative or important in some way and log that information away.

"Nero...the only other person who would stand a snowball's chance in hell would be Nero," and Dante wasn't exactly thrilled that this burden had been left to him, "...I never wanted him involved though, didn't want to have the boy kill his father."

And that was if Nero had the strength required to kill Vergil, if he could pull it from a place where Dante couldn't. There really wasn't anything he could do from here so worrying about it served to do nothing, logically Dante understood that, but it wouldn't leave him alone.

"Yeah...yeah I know..." he stilled Astarion's hand drawing it to his lips to press a reassuring kiss to the inside of his wrist, "...and thanks for listening to me yammer...and for everything else."

“For not leaving you to be tortured within my reach? Oh yes,” he teases gently, those warm lips to his cool wrist and his own exhale soft as down for it, settling in some respects.

That Dante isn’t balking or bristling, that he isn’t mired deeper, that he hasn’t been lost to the spirits here— even if he can’t voice it, even if he isn’t quite sure how, it’s a relief in its own right.

And in the spirit of physicality speaking of more than anything he could eloquently reach for, he shifts forward there, slipping down into Dante’s lap without asking. Head to his shoulder, legs still perched across the armrest he’d been settled on for so long.

Doting, in other words.

But he isn’t joking in the seconds that follow, ring finger scuffing along Dante’s hand in turn.

“You should know I’ve never been....mm.” Poor start. Try again. “This has never been easy for me. Comfort, I mean. Not the real sort. Not the kind that doesn’t come from a bottle to soothe anxious nobles or—”

Or.

It hangs, that word.

“But what happened here, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped it, or altered it.” Life, wretched as it is, has a way of forcing things into place without caring for all subsequent harm. “You can’t go around blaming yourself for how things turned out.”

As Astarion eased into his lap Dante cradled him for his own comfort and sense of security, the reason he suspected the other man made himself physically available. It was endearing, it was sweet, it was the kind of comfort Dante never sought out but at the same time he'd never had for himself in such a long time. He doesn't rebuff him or snap at him, Astarion seeing the rarest and most exposed parts of him were hardly his fault and there was nothing for it at this point.

Besides he couldn't find it in himself to object too loudly when his arms were filled with Astarion and the uplifting and comforting scent of lilac that always hung about him.

"Guess we're two peas in a pod then...giving comfort...and accepting comfort...it's hard," words are hard, appearing vulnerable is hard, and admitting it is hard, "...but you make it easy."

Easy because he's not trying to manufacture comfort, he's simply doing the best he can with the tools he's been given and not pretending to be an expert on it.

"Inside my head I know...getting it across to my heart...well it's a bit more stubborn," it was the best way Dante could explain it, even though he didn't mean his heart literally, but maybe his emotions against his reason. Reason telling him that not everything can be reined in and controlled no matter how he tried, while his feelings didn't care.

Comfort. A mutually foreign prospect. No wonder he finds himself so at ease in it, the surrounding circle of Dante's presence. The way he—

Ah.

The way he deflects.

Humor, like Astarion. Pure will, or optimism, or an unwillingness to cede ground to what discomforts and disquiets. The shape of it is different, true, they wear their own masks differently, but here at least he can see it now, coiled in the lap of the boy who was left behind.

The picture's clearer, if not painfully so.

His heart, Dante says, and as if prompted he sets the edges of his own pale fingers over that spot at the near-center of Dante's chest, pressure light and tracing. Feeling the steady beat beat beat of it just beneath the surface. "Ever since this happened, you were on your own, then?"

Humor, self-deprecation, all were good mechanisms for masking the vulnerability of opening old wounds and reliving them. It's a mask that's difficult to maintain when those memories are blown open for anyone to see, or maybe he was lucky, and it was just Astarion.

There was very little point in deflecting, a grown man having a hellish nightmare about his mother's death, waking up from that nightmare crying in Astarion's arms? What did he have left to hide at this point?

"More or less..." Dante said dully, covering Astarion's hand with his own and pressing it into his chest, "...I followed my mother's last request and took up a new identity."

Dante shifted a bit and with his free hand he dislodged Ebony and Ivory from the holster underneath his coat. They might have been useless for anything here, but they were familiar, like an old friend he carried around out of habit sometimes.

Laying the pistols in Astarion's lap he ran his thumb over one of the inscriptions that read For Tony Redgrave by .45 Art Works.

"I was Tony Redgrave, I created a new identity and moved from place to place. The first place I moved to, a port town, a woman posed as a mother figure to maintain my identity, but demons attacked, and we left after we were accused of starting a fire that killed most of the people in the village. She wouldn't be safe with me, I knew that, so I moved on."

Dante idly turned the pistols over in Astarion's lap for something to do.

"Some time after that I was able to falsify my identity and I became a mercenary; I think by that time I might have suppressed my memories and I might have been disturbingly childlike. Killing was play and I enjoyed being around my partner's family, Grue and his kids."

He remembered the food fights and how exasperated Grue would become having a hurricane like Dante in his home playing with his kids even after bloodying his hands.

"I was paired up with another mercenary, Gilver and during that time my Partner's daughter became ill and to pay for her hospital bills Grue became an assassin. On one of his missions Grue came across Gilver and he died trying to kill Gilver. A demon as it turned out, a Vergil clone...maybe if I understood what anagrams were..."

Dante laughed, it was a brief and hollow thing.

"After Grue's death I learned the reason why his daughter became sick, she'd been possessed by a demon who was using her pain and despair to fuse her with a tree in order to grow a path between the human and demon world. I had to put her...Jessica...out of her misery..."

Killing the child of his friend and partner after learning about the death of his partner was another wave of Darkness that loomed over him, "all I could do for Grue was set up accounts for his remaining children and pour money into it...he wasn't around to take care of them."

A pause.

"And then there's Nell..." he ran his thumb over the little portraits on each of the handles.

"Nell...?"

The only natural progression, though his mind is still leashed to processing the sickly outline of events that'd led to the death of both a man and his daughter over nothing more than the sin of proximity. Logically— his gloved fingertips slipping just along the edges of those pistols, uncertain of precisely what they are— his mind knows there's nothing of his own damning tale to be found in it. But it still rings similarly, in a sense.

Knowing what it's like to be poison in a well, just for the matter of existing.

But then again, what else is more fitting for a cambion and a vampire?

"Nell was a weapon's artisan and she was like a mother to me," another motherly figure, "she had lost her son so maybe I was a surrogate for her. At this point most of my memories of my old life were buried somewhere, that might be why I attached to her so quickly."

And he attached to people without reservation in that stretch of time, not because he needed them to survive, but because of loneliness.

"Anyway, she was constantly trying to build weapons for me because most of them couldn't hold up to the strain I put them under. She would make me sandwiches, and I'd tell her how shitty they were, she would make we a weapon, and I would hand her a pile of money for it," that kind of fond relationship filled with banter but plenty of give and take.

"Apparently Gilver entered her shop and paid for one of her weapons, she was the one who tried to warn me about Gilver not being entirely human, but all I could see was a strong mercenary and a good fighter," dumb kid brain stuff.

"The last time I saw Nell her workshop had exploded and when I tried to get her out of the fire she wouldn't leave, she kept working on her guns. When she had finished, she gave me the parts that make up these pistols," he guided Astarion's hands around Ebony and Ivory so they were both holding them the way they should be held, "she told me to assemble them myself to make them truly mine and then she collapsed...not from the fire, but from an injury I didn't know she had. All I could do was hold her."

Until she died was the unspoken thought and it was triggering for him in that moment as well as his mother had died in a fire from a demon attack.

"Her death woke me up, reminded me of who and what I was, and it was in that moment that I stopped being a mercenary and became a demon hunter, I started by killing the demons hiding in the fire. Then I used her last gift to kill Gilver."

They feel heavy in his hands, those weapons.

Those memories.

Brow creasing as he adjusts to it, clever mind already noting little things like how they shift in balance. Like the dig of the grips against his gloved palms, still held lightly by Dante’s own heavier grasp.

“Hm.” Soft. A breath of a thing, his forehead settling just beneath Dante’s downturned jawline, curls clinging to his skin.

“Ever the story repeats.”

But that’s part of it, isn’t it? Part of the pain this place latched onto. Part of the difficulty of trust, and closeness, and remembering that not every bit of contact comes with promised agony nestled in behind it.

And so.

“...it won’t be like that, here.”

"Life is pretty damned slippery that way," Dante's tone was soft, matching Astarion's, and it worked with the comfortable closeness in the less than cheerful revelations of Dante's childhood, "it's rare to find something to hold onto, harder to keep it."

All the people that slid through Dante's hands made him reluctant to form bonds, but he still felt responsible for the people in his life that were casualties due to proximity. Friends. Family of friends.

Watching and caring from a distance was the safest thing for them, even if he did want to be part of their lives. Burying himself in the work, arming himself with wit and a carefree presentation was more for his own benefit.

"I've got you to protect me," Dante said, the smile returning to his voice as he turned the conversation towards Astarion, "a knight on a white charger."

Burying his face in the soft, nicely kempt curls Dante allowed himself to consider it.

"...different for both of us, right?"

He's ready to tease. Ready to joke— pistols slipping back as he carries on holding them to nestle in against his own chest instead, letting it all ease down into something more relaxed— about playing the dashing hero. The infamous rogue, wanted by all and snared by no one.

But that final question hangs so heavily in the air that for a moment, nothing comes. No smiles, no teasing, no brushing it away. Dante sags into him like an animal too long starved, and Astarion offers nothing. Or near it. Or...

He pulls one hand away from an intricately carved grip, gloved fingers falling in the curtain of Dante's hair where it hangs loose across the back of his neck. Thumb a rolling pressure, contact slow. Steady.

"Yes, darling." He says, and he tries in his own way to make it the truth. To think that if the worst comes in the weeks ahead, he'll be one step ahead, always.

That he won't go back to even the shadow of his own nightmarish past.

"Those days are done for both of us."

Edited 2022-01-17 10:19 (UTC)

Maybe it's not the best timing on his part, but Astarion perched across his lap, hand curled lightly around the back of his neck, the comfort he's extending in his closeness? Maybe it his emotions required some kind of outlet aver being spent on reliving his past, maybe he couldn't help himself. Whatever the case was he leaned in to slot his mouth against Astarion's, the angle was odd, but it was electric all the same.

As much as he would have enjoyed lingering, he pulled back after a few chaste moments of just feeling the pressure of lips against his own. Soft and smoother than satin, a taste was all he really wanted not in the proper frame of mind to want for too much more than that and enjoying Astarion's presence, his weight, the familiar comfort of him as much as anything else.

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