[CLOSED] AND YOU'LL KNOW THE NEXT TIME I WAKE UP SCREAMING

[illithidnapped]

WHO: Astarion, Fenris, Bastien, Emet-Selch, Mobius, Ellie, Dante, Loki
WHAT: fear spirits are no joke when you're a bag of broken glass
WHEN: backdated to Crossroads plot hours
WHERE: the Crossroads
NOTES: so many content warnings: mind control, slavery, torture, blood, mutilation and abuse of every conceivable/literal shade, possibly more warnings to be added later, not joking this is a very horrible space. There's a reason why I'm divorcing this from the main log; Astarion's canon is, in short, unkind.

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[illithidnapped]

Fish.

[He shouldn’t laugh. He isn’t actually laughing, either— it’s all reflex, the way he scoffs out a burst of breath, like the snap-pop of a band wound too tight suddenly giving way (because beneath the sickening rise of tension as they edge out into those winding depths once more, he is amused), letting his lips just slightly curl at their corner. The gesture living for a single, passing beat.

(It isn’t what he expected this shielding conversation to start off with, and maybe for that, too, it’s all the more charming somehow.)

But this is the most he’s heard of Fenris’ past. The most he’s ever glimpsed, either in confession or—

Visibly. Audibly.

(He tries to force the image of Fenris under leashing collar from his mind, quick as it blooms— not here. Not now. Don’t feed it.

There’ll be time for questions later.)

Still, though, it catches Astarion off guard in a sense, what a surprising comfort it is to hear more about someone he thought he knew. Someone he’s only just now realizing he never truly understood at all— because there is so much more to them both than just the parallels of their suffering.

Or...maybe apprehension’s just made him soft. With the ghost of his master trailing only five steps behind, it’s admittedly hard to tell.

He squeezes just a little tighter around the hold they share. A subconscious choice.]

I'm trying very hard not to judge you right now. Admittedly, it's terribly difficult.

[But there’s too much danger in pressing for more: what did your master let you eat? Why didn’t you stay in that jungle? Why come to Kirkwall at all? They’re all loaded questions, a knife poised to bleed Fenris of the worst of his memories— something they can’t afford right now.

Instead he offers that same, narrow little smile, and presses on in time with the rhythm of their strides.]

Do you know, before I came here, I hadn’t had a bath in fifty years? [As far as confessions go, he imagines this one's most likely to prove shocking enough to keep all manner of terror vividly at bay.] Water, pure and running, burns any vampire like acid. One of the more troublesome weaknesses my thoroughly cursed kind endures.

Over half a year later and I still wince when doused in water.

[It had perplexed Loki, once. So few recoil in fear from the threat of a single cup of water, after all.]

And before you ask: no, I wasn’t some gruesome, shambling mess: we don’t shed like living creatures do. No accumulation of grit or grime that can’t easily be swept away. One good scrub down with a heavily perfumed rag, or a quick pass of water laced with scented oil, and I was good as new.

It’s far more tedious, now that Thedas has its claws in me.

[A breath, before:]

But I find I like it.

[doggish]

[Later, Fenris promises himself, they'll talk. There are things they saw in those visions they ought to discuss— things, indeed, he wants to discuss with Astarion, for there has never been anyone with whom he was so comfortable. Things he wants to ask, too, that trip too close to the surface.

(Fifty years, Astarion says, and it's not that slips of the tongue can't happen, but . . . mm, Fenris doubts it. And yet he won't ask in this place, so later, later).]

A pity. Here I was ready to imagine you as a greasy, unkempt thing.

Does your—

[He cuts himself off, giving Astarion a rueful little glance. Later, he reminds himself, but that doesn't stop his burning curiosity now: does your hair grow, or was it always like this? Did you sweat? Was a rag satisfying, or did you miss baths?]

Someday, after a fight, you will try one of the baths in the mansion. They are worth the effort it takes to fill them— and you of all people, I think, will appreciate the grandeur there.

[What else? Now it's a game, a back and forth of the most mundane facts they can think of. An easy way to distract (as they head deeper into darkness, and Fenris has never been more grateful he glows) from the nightmare of before.]

Mm. I learned there I had hobbies I enjoyed, beyond the thrill of fighting. I am no deft hand at carving wood, but it is pleasing to me nonetheless.

[And he can do more than make a large block of wood a slightly smaller block of wood, so. Huzzah for Fenris.]

What else have you found you liked, here in the Thedas? Surely not just baths.

[illithidnapped]

Sunlight.

[It comes so easily to him. Easier than letting his mind run with the promise of a blissful bath (something he’s only granted the full benefit of either on missions or on day trips to the Gallows baths— and he does despise the Gallows too much to let his hackles ease down fully) or the way his mind twists to make a joke that isn’t quite a joke: that depends, would you join me? It tries to ask, which isn’t fair. Isn’t kind.

(And while Astarion is neither fair nor kind, the weight across his knuckles in the cold dark is enough to kill his worst instincts. Keep them quieted a little longer.)]

Another miserably damning aspect of vampirism: daylight scorches as if it were fire. [Does he realize he’s somehow slowly teaching Fenris each and every weakness his master possesses by way of admitting— piece by infinitesimal piece— exactly what his arrival in Thedas truly gifted him? No, in fact.

But maybe someday he’ll look back on it and think that the smallest little fragment of his heart knew exactly what it was doing.] A vampire lord could survive a minute of it in suffering, maybe. But a spawn like myself? I'd have been cinders, even with just the smallest little glimpse.

Cazador— [Ah. No.]

...in two hundred years, I never once saw the sun again after that first night.

I find myself incapable of tiring of it, now. Even if it is shockingly difficult to retool my own sleeping habits.

[Somewhere at their backs, there’s a sharper sound of scraping. A threatening hiss that tries to become a real thing— forcing itself against the wall of their conversation.

Astarion pinches his eyes shut for one lone beat longer, ignoring it entirely (despite the way the hairs on the back of his neck strain to rise).]

What sort of things do you whittle? Animals? People?

Little knives?

[It’s shockingly easy to taper anything down to a point and call it good, after all.]

[doggish]

[Sunlight. Water. He takes note of them somewhere in the back of his mind, for he has not forgotten his oath, no, and if Cazador ever comes calling, every bit of information will help. He is no fool, thinking he can take on such a creature alone, but such details matter in the heat of battle. Good tactics mark the difference between victory and defeat, so yes, he makes note of them, warrior that he is.

But he also takes note of them for Astarion's sake. Not seeing the sun for two hundred years . . . oh, no wonder he loves it. Fenris has only known him in the winter, too; he must bask like a cat in the spring and summer, soaking up the warmth and light he was denied for two centuries. He is glad, he finds. Glad for the simple reason that it so clearly brings Astarion joy, and that there's nothing to stop it from happening day after day.

Cazador, Astarion begins, and he can feel the surge of tension in the grip of those gloved fingers, the scrape of something (a blade? a stake? ah, but that's the point: it could be anything, depending on what their frightened minds automatically dart towards) echoing just behind them. There's no use in pointing it out, though Fenris can feel his heart beat a little faster. Best to just move on. Pretend it isn't frightening and it isn't just like that.

Whittling, then, and he deliberately wrinkles his nose, a pointedly petulant expression.]

Animals, mostly. I . . . there have been a few recognizable shapes. A dog. A bear. A halla, once, and that may have been my greatest artistic endeavor.

[Lotta four-legged stocky animals in this list.]

I am not an artist. But it is pleasing to have something to do with your hands at the end of the night.

[He considers this, and then, in that same deadpan voice, adds:]

Well. Something else to do with your hands, anyway.

[Is that a masturbation joke? It sure is! And yet he's moving on swiftly, lest he be called on it.]

You must have found something to occupy your time between missions.

[illithidnapped]

[Someday he’ll tell Fenris the truth. That when he first fell into Thedas he had nothing at all save for the briefest kiss of sunlight on his skin— no good memories to give. Nothing fond to look back on.

Someday he’ll admit that Ellie sat with him, and told him about her own past (a pretty little rock worth nothing at all, a trinket that linked her to the warmth she’d left behind, once), and how she’d given it to Astarion, placing it just within the center of his palm without asking.

If he couldn’t have memories of his own, she chose to gift him hers instead.

And nine months (another scrape behind them, another brushing shudder of a sound, too close for Astarion’s own instinctive comfort) is nothing in comparison to the lifetime he lacks. Nine months at war, though...

'Were those nine months worth it?'

For all his purposefully confident luster, he lacks so much, still. A reality he clutches too close to his own chest, rather than let it be seen.

'Did you think I would not find you and bring you back to me?'

And then Fenris jokes.

And his own laugh is such a stupid, abrupt thing.]

I...

[Rut, drink, murder, steal— assassinate and plot alike, and the most innocuous of all his habits is engaging in either Diamondback or Wicked Grace, both of which he uses as a means to, once again, thieve from the local populace.

It isn’t something he’s ashamed of, trust, but compared to whittling. Bathing. Basking...]

I work, mostly. Getting every advantage that I can means there isn’t much chance for rest, overall. Coin doesn’t flutter its way into my pocket, and my home is damningly expensive. [And Riftwatch pays nothing more than a pittance.]

Information sells just as well as anything else, too. So. When I’m not stealing or winning at cards, or hunting in Darktown for a body with a bounty attached to it, I work my way in where I can for gossip and secrets alike.

[It’s the truth. Just the truth.

And when he feels a press along his spine, he shoves it all away, returning to brighter things. Clutching that hold between them tighter.]

Anyway. [His mouth pulls upwards at its edge, just slightly.] Make something for me, then.

Once we’re out of this wretched place.

[doggish]

[It's understandable. Truly, it is: Maker knows Fenris remembers the constant need for work, not just because it was necessary to fill up the hours, but because life in a city is relentless, and oh, how the fees pile up . . . rent and food, weapons and clothes, oh, yes. There's a reason Varric and Isabela had lived in a bar for years on end; it's pure luck that allows Fenris to stay in a mansion, when he doesn't make nearly enough money to afford it. So yes, it's understandable.

But, he thinks, still. He will come over one night with knives and wood blocks, and they will carve something together. And perhaps Astarion will enjoy it and perhaps he'll find it dreadfully dull, but either way, he will know. And in doing, he will find another piece of himself.

He's just about to say something to that effect, oh-so-wise and terribly stoic, when Astarion cuts in with that, and oh, that derails him utterly.]

I—

[A strange sort of warmth fills his chest. It's identical to the feeling that had flooded him that night Astarion had called him Eladrin, and just like that night, he does not quite know how to respond to it. At least he doesn't flush this time.]

I just told you they are not good. I typically burn them once I am done. You would be better off buying something from Lowtown.

[Those noises are getting closer, and he squeezes Astarion's hand. Not real, and he does not look back to see if he can spot spirits. There's no point. Either he won't, which will frustrate and frighten him, or he will, which would somehow be worse. Best to just ignore it (though he can hear a ghostly sort of breath against his ear, an echo of a voice, you took everything from me, and now I'll take everything from you—

But Varania is not here. And Astarion is, he thinks, glancing over at him.]

What would you even want?

[illithidnapped]

[Their knuckles tangle. It hurts, just a little, how fiercely they dig when both Fenris and Astarion turn to honing in on that grasp— but it’s not unpleasant, you know, the bite of it across his skin, cutting clear through a host of looming worries (is he wrong, is this the dream— someone standing at his side with kind, tired eyes and an open heart, too different to be real compared to deplorable nobility or vitriolic assets— is Astarion laid out somewhere, his eyes shut and false breath steady in his lungs, nothing but a docile, unaware guinea pig for just how far Cazador’s commands can be taken), all lost beneath an anchoring hold.]

Surprise me. [And oh, it is a bright flame, that dagger sharp grin of his, born of years of smiling through the worst of it.

A wretched skill now put to better use.

The path twists, and Astarion doesn’t think when he veers to the left at a winding fork, pulling Fenris along with him.]

I’m sure it’ll all look equally as unfortunate.

[A beat, his gaze hawkishly set:]

Kidding, of course.

[Tugging on tails despite everything. It's his way. And more than that, it eclipses the sudden, surging plash of a thousand murdered souls swelling like the rush of a tide when they whisper (in both their ears, audible and quick, as though struggling for attention), all urging, 'Don’t go. Don’t go, please don’t leave us to him again.'

He does, of course; it’s always been too easy for him.

Still, Astarion might be mistaken, but something beyond that split smells— brighter, somehow. A little like fresher air.]

[doggish]

[He almost turns. His heart twisting, a sudden rush of pity— not for the spirits, exactly, but . . . perhaps for whatever they had once been. People, surely. Humans or elves or Qunari, their very existence now reduced to this (and he does not know if that is true, but still, the thought slips through his mind like ice, cold and shocking). Don't go, please don't leave us to him, and whatever bits of him have ever striven to be—

Oh, don't say hero, for heroes are not real (or if they are, they do not belong to this world, their light snuffed out too quickly, oh, Hawke). But . . . just, perhaps. A force of good. A bringer of light instead of darkness, freeing slaves and earning a near-mythologic moniker for himself, whatever bits of him embody that, want to turn back.

It's the grip of a hand that keeps him going forward. Fingers tightly interlaced and a voice sharp with amusement, and he focuses only on that. Kidding, of course, as they head further up that lefthand path towards that fresh air. Stronger, now, with every step forward, and it isn't five minutes later that they burst out of those claustrophobic tunnels, stumbling into a false brightness that makes his eyes water.

They do not get much further. The path they walk upon (hands releasing one another, and if Fenris feels a pang of regret for it, he does not say so) ends in a short, sheer drop. What lies below is lost in mist— or, more likely, doesn't exist at all. There's a mass of land some twenty feet above them, a sheer cliff face that they've no hope of scaling (and Fenris, frankly, is in no mood to even try to scale) without proper equipment.

So they make a note of it and head home. It's an inglorious end to a terrifying venture, but, Fenris thinks as they slip out of the Crossroads, there are far worse ways it could have ended. Oh, death, certainly, but . . . he has not forgotten how wholly that delusion gripped both their minds. Who's to say how long it might have held them if Astarion had not woken them both? Days? Years? Or perhaps it never would have ended. Perhaps they would spent years like that, howling in delusional terror, biting and clawing at one another like the beasts their masters always claimed they were.

No, disappointing or not . . . this is for the best.

By unspoken agreement, they go to Lowtown. Astarion does have a room waiting for him up in Fenris' mansion, the debris cleared away and sheets turned down, but . . . mm, another time. The mansion takes effort to endure some nights, and it's easier to huddle in the coziness of Astarion's home. A fire is lit; Astarion digs around in his hoard as Fenris bolts the door closed. Bottles clink together as Astarion gathers them; chairs are ignored in favor of sprawling on the bed, side by side with their backs to the wall. The faint creak of bedsprings, the soft exhales of breath, the rattle of the bottles— ordinary sounds, normal sounds, and Fenris listens to each one intently, trying to keep himself grounded.

It's hard not to think about what happened. Harder still not to hear Danarius' voice in the back of his mind, whispering softly— did you make him your new master? It's nonsense, he knows, the product of memories and his own terrors, but still, he feels the weight of them as he downs that first glass of wine.

Should they speak of it? Probably. There are questions Fenris himself has, and it will do them no good to pretend that they had not just seen what they had. But still, he is silent for a time, trying to figure out how he wants to begin. Where he wants to begin, for so much had been revealed. Not just for himself— although that too, yes— but for Astarion.

Those fine clothes. That cold, cruel voice. Look at where you are. Look at where he has led you, as he leads all his prey, and the hollow horror in Astarion's eyes . . . the stark terror that colored his voice as he cried out, all the hope fleeing from him in one breathless instant as the reality of his delusion had set in. And that's to say nothing of that glimpse of Cazador himself, lording in all his rotting splendor; all those chittering creatures surrounding them; the sight of Astarion, loyal spawn, whispering words of false comfort, it'll be easier if you don't fight it—

No, Fenris thinks, they must speak on it. There's no burying all those revelations away.

Still: it isn't until he's drunk enough that the world has gone soft at the edges that he speaks.]

A bath in fifty years, you told me. And yet you are at least two hundred.

Was that his work, too?

[Some torment half a century ago, or a figure of speech? But it also offers Astarion a choice: he can speak of Cazador if he wants, and Fenris will gladly listen. He has a thousand questions, Maker knows. But they can ease into it, too. They can speak of baths and fish and Qunari, and slowly meander their way back into the hell of their pasts.]

[illithidnapped]

[What do you remember of the life you had before?

Nothing. Nothing but sunlight scattered across motes of drifting dust. The feel of warm wood beneath his palms. Muted shape. Flickers of sensation. A promise he’d seen the sun at least once— that he’d belonged to Baldur’s Gate first, not to Cazador alone— like the tattered gaps where torn pages used to sit, swearing that something once was there. Nothing whole (nothing whole could be hidden), but yes, he can sometimes feel out what the gaps used to hold.

And because of that, he doubts he was ever a good person. Moments like these— a single second of tautness strung just along the line between them, where Astarion strides forward, away from that suffering host of desperate voices and Fenris—

Oh, Fenris.


There’s no sunlight where they sit in parallel recline almost a day or so later, their backs to the wall and a fire burning so brightly (so thoroughly overstoked) that even with winter’s chill still clinging via thickened frost to the windows on either side of that bed, the narrow space of Astarion’s flat is hot as summer itself. Not an ounce of frigidness let in. No corner left in shadow.

They drink in half silence for a time, only breaking it with words like ‘here’ or ‘move over’ or—

He fits his bottle to his lips. Spiced wine from somewhere far, far away from Kirkwall. A label he can’t read (and maybe he’ll ask Fenris about it later, if he knows, native thing that he is offsetting the nativeness Astarion only feigns at), but it tastes sweet all the same, burning warm in the back of his throat.

Another sip...and then he smiles.

It doesn’t quite fit into place.]

Sometimes it’s all too easy to turn the things the heart longs for into torture. [He doubts he needs to tell Fenris that, but...it's just talk, isn't it? A way to fill the air and scatter away everything that looms. Thoughts tangled up like fishing wire.]

Sunlight. The comfort of heated water. The touch of another living being.

You go without for so long and you dream so deeply of something better— your own secret little fantasy— and one day, after waiting for it to ripen like fruit along a heavy branch, he’d come with a smile on his lips and take that away from you, too. Make you fear it. Revile it.

[No comfort save for Cazador himself, that was the hateful point.]

Yes.

[Yes, that was why the numbers don’t align.]

Just another one of his beloved games. Another chance to watch me make myself stupid for daring to think his hold wasn’t absolute.

That I could have anything, anything at all for myself.

[Another pull, longer this time, wine sloshing faintly when it tips back and subsequently settles down, bottle sinking in against his lap. Thumb pressed too tightly to its lip.]

I...suppose that was what that place latched onto. Cazador would’ve drawn back the curtain by now, otherwise.

[His love of a grand reveal was always too potent to resist.]

[doggish]

[Yes, and oh, little shock there, but still something in his chest twists painfully. He can so perfectly imagine it, you know: Astarion just a touch too hopeful, a touch too keen, a touch too happy, and how intolerable that must have been. How gleefully Cazador must have concocted this punishment (and was it in response to something? Had Astarion dared to do something so daring as fill a tub with oil and water all mixed together, a two-inch facsimile of a bath? Or was it just that his master had grown so bored that any kind of petty sadism would do?). How he must have led Astarion right to it, one hand on his lower back, that voice (and it sounds like Danarius in Fenris' mind, but of course it does) whispering so sweetly, go on, pet, take what you deserve.

How he must have burned. Skin sloughing off and pink muscle exposed, screaming and thrashing as the scent of cooking flesh filled the air . . .

He does not allow any of his sympathy to rise to his face (though his eyes do soften). It would not be welcome now, half a century after the torment was done and gone. Any useless sentiment like I'm sorry would only be for Fenris' own sake. But still: he feels it, and maybe that's important too.

Almost idly, he reaches into Astarion's lap. Gently pries his hands free of that bottle, and if his fingers linger against his hand for a few moments longer than strictly necessary, well, they two need only know about it.]

Soulless, unhappy thing that he was, I suppose that was the only revelry that he could truly feel anymore. If he could not be happy, he would steal yours.

[It's not . . . he doesn't say it spitefully. Not a jeering derogative tossed Cazador's way like a child sticking its tongue out at a bully. Rather: it's an assessment, even and cold. He knows. He remembers. He can recall Danarius doing the same thing, albeit in a far different fashion.

But ah . . . that last sentence catches his ear, and he glances over at Astarion, seeking his gaze.]

Do you fear this, too, is a dream?

[He says it rather directly, but it's because there's a very simple trick to determining it isn't— and yet he won't enact it if Astarion is simply speaking.]

That I am nothing but a conjuration of his making?

[illithidnapped]

[He smiles when he doesn’t need to. When he’s hurt or flinching, when he feels an overwhelming rise of unease that threatens to make him look weak. Vulnerable. An animal masking its pain—

For only prey knows what it is to limp and be gutted.

He smiles now, as Fenris’ fingers slip against his own, plucking that bottle from his grasp. Thorns netted tight between his ribs, making it impossible to breathe in any way that isn’t shallow. Sharp. His eyes aren’t wet, but that doesn’t mean much.

(He’s grateful for this, somehow. Against the worst of himself, he is. In too many ways to articulate, and too difficult to besides, but when he flinches faintly at that touch it isn’t the ghost of his own past— just the heat of being too close to something so uniquely bright in comparison to it that it scalds his sun-starved form. Petulant as he can be, he’s not a child. He’s no stranger to games stitched from longing. Want. He knows how to keep himself from striving— don’t— but it’s hard, so reprehensibly hard, when they’re settled this close without a single guard between them.

With only his fear and his indigent want, and the knowledge that Fenris doesn’t—

Ah.

No.

Stop that, he thinks, and the tension eases from his fingers, letting them sift through Fenris’ grasp. Easy. Warm.

Not straining for what he can’t have.)

He swallows against the grain of his own muted smile, holding that heavy green gaze without blinking, and it’s such an audible sound in the drowning depths of pervasive silence. An answer, uncharacteristically unspoken, heavy as lead across his tongue; he can’t bring himself to admit it outright.]

How can I not?

[Evasive and affirmatory all at once, sloping from one truth to the next.] I begged, you know. For two hundred years, I begged for salvation. Waiting through the worst of it, staring at rotting stone over the tips of my own bleeding fingers as if something might up and manifest itself because I needed it. Because that's how these things were always supposed to work: a god beseeched, a gleaming, gilded hero— an outstretched hand.

Each time he sent me to someone, I’d always have moments of hope. This’ll be the one to see it. The one that'll glimpse, finally, between the lines.

But petty vanity is blinding. [And abundant.] That’s what he taught me.

[And the ones that had the most potential were always the ones who wound up rutting like they meant to control him.

Irony of ironies, and something he’d laughed so ruefully about those first few times, delirious in disbelief.] No one— not even the ones who watched me suffer— lifted a hand to save me.

[And he laughs now, fidgeting slightly for lack of a bottle to cling to. To drink from.

He doesn’t fetch the elfroot, tempting as it is. Being drunk is one thing, going too far while old hatreds haunt...]

Then again, it’s not as if they could have, anyway. Daft, stupid beasts. All of them. He’d have split them open only for a laugh.

Sometimes he did.

[(I’m sorry, for trying to make you one of them.)]

But you changed that. You— [The word sticks. It feels too soft. Too open. He forces it through the jagged edges of his fangs all the same, expression mired for the effort, tangled up in that space between his ribs. Between scar tissue, for that's all he feels he is at times.]

You’re not like them. You understand. And for so long, I never thought anything like that was possible.

So. [A catching sound, let out on exhale through his nose as if he’s struggling to confess.] yes.

I suppose I’m still just waiting for the moment he’ll make me look like a fool again.

Or that the world itself will.

[Tearing him away. Making him forget. How is that any different than a dream dissolved, anyway?

His thumbnail bites into his skin. A distant flicker of muted pain.]

[doggish]

[Oh, the agony woven in those words. The misery of it, the despair so thick on Astarion's tongue that Fenris sets the bottle down between them and catches his fingers between his own once more. No one lifted a hand to save me, and he can imagine it all too well: Astarion with his newly changed eyes and sharpened teeth, huddling in some forgotten corner in a crypt, sobbing silently and praying to any god that would hear. Anything, please, I'll do anything, but please—

And then, perhaps, footsteps. Heavy and deliberate and inevitable, Cazador's eyes gleaming in the darkness, malice and cruelty written so clearly on his face, and then—

And then, and then . . . a hundred thousand endings to that sentence, and he will make himself sick if he thinks of them. How many years did it take to break Astarion? Decades, surely. Hope is a terrible thing, flaring to life when least expected, and all it takes is an ember. A stray word, a passing glance . . . sparking even when you know better. Even when you hate yourself for it.

You understand, and he does. Truly, he does, in ways Fenris suspects no one else can. But there are places where their traumas don't quite fit; jagged edges where they don't overlap. It isn't a competition and neither of them truly had it worse— but still, Fenris feels as though he teeters at the edge of a bottomless pit, vast and black, the depths of which he can only imagine.

There is nothing he can do to truly prove that he is real. It's a non-starter, a paradox that he cannot defeat with any bit of knowledge. But so much of surviving slavery is about compromise: eking out what joys and assurances one can from an intolerable source, like blood from a stone. He slides the tips of his fingers against cold skin, stroking the lines of each digit, as much about soothing as it is assurance: feel the lyrium thrumming. Feel my flesh woven between it. Feel the callouses there, and know that they are real.]

You know him better than most, I imagine. Even if he had other slaves, two centuries is a long time. You have experienced his torments, and watched him enact them upon others. And he has favorites, does he not? Tortures he returns to again and again.

In all that time, has he ever concocted such a deliberate fantasy? Illusions that last the span of months, seeping into one's senses, inventing new languages, a new world? It would take a great deal of magic, Astarion. Perhaps not more than he has at his fingertips, but to build a world so detailed as this . . .

[But what if he has now? What if this is a new trick, what if he has found a new way to torment me, the terrified probing of every flaw and angle, oh, yes, Fenris knows.]

You experience every hour, every minute, coherently. You suffer in ways that are mundane and ordinary, and not too terrible to weather. What point is there in that? Better, if he was to trick you, to send you to a place where you have your every desire. Better, if he was to be cruel, to answer all your prayers. A hero to save you, but luxuries you have been denied for two centuries. Money and power, fortune and pleasure . . . perhaps he would even put you in his place, lording over all.

But what cruelty is there in forcing you to dream of mundane poverty? In making it so that you are not a vampire, not anymore— so that you can do things he cannot. I do not know Cazador, not as you do . . . but Danarius would have eaten his own foot before he ever allowed me to do something he could not, even in fantasy.

They cannot stand the affront to their dignity. They cannot tolerate something that is lesser than them having more.

[He squeezes his hand, thumb stroking slowly, listen to me, look at me, for I am as real as you are.]

I cannot prove to you I am real, and not some conjuring amalgam of his magic and your fantasies. But I do not see the point in a dream in which I arrived so late into your life.

[In which he did not save him, but wandered in and out, amnesic and bitter.]

[illithidnapped]

[He doesn’t know what he expected to happen in spitting up the worst of his own bitter truths, the taste of them still acrid across his lips. Maybe the press of a bottle into his hand. A roughened voice low and warm when it urges drink (just as Astarion had done that first night together), willing away horror by sheer stubbornness alone; he knows how senselessly irrational he must sound, swearing anyone could be capable of crafting something so demanding just to torment— but if anyone could, it would be his sire. His ancient, hateful, bored sire. 

He doesn’t know what he expected— but it wasn’t this.

Branded fingertips sliding just across his own with so little warning, granting him the opportunity to feel the difference between startlingly warm skin and smooth lyrium leylines, steady in their roaming course. Slow as their own breaths. Just as unmistakably present.

'Better, if he was to trick you, to send you to a place where you have your every desire. Better, if he was to be cruel, to answer all your prayers. A hero to save you, but luxuries you have been denied for two centuries. Money and power, fortune and pleasure . . . perhaps he would even put you in his place, lording over all.'

And yet Astarion can't help the single thought that comes swimming to the forefront of his mind in response to all of Fenris' grounding reason:

...you don’t know how dear you are, if that's what you think.

Better to have it all, yes. Wealth, power, sunlight, control— but what Astarion wouldn’t (have) give(n) to keep Fenris from whatever had stolen his memories. To have him here, a comfort that doesn’t demand anything, doesn’t expect anything. Between them, it isn’t about worth or want or the leveling cry of morality aimed at someone too long suffered to care (how dare anyone demand Astarion temper himself when no one tempered the monster that tore at him). It isn’t about anything at all, just the ease he feels whenever Fenris is near. Settling the cutting edges of his world, if only for a little while.

He’s addicted to it now, he knows. And maybe that’s far more alluring— far more dangerous a weapon— than either riches or fawning throngs. 

But—

No, Fenris is right. 

Cazador would never see it that way. He couldn’t. Even Astarion wouldn’t have before now, the whole of his worldview skewed. 

There’s relief in that, even as it stings.

So he looks at him— he does— willing away the glassy weight that threatens to well at the edges of his stare if he let it in for even a second, mouth pulling high along its tightened span.]

Danarius eating his own foot? Now that I would’ve liked to see.

Pity the spirits didn’t think to grant it, at the very least. 

[But it fades. All of it fades, the forced edges of his smile falling away as his fingers sink into the gaps between Fenris' own.

Carelessly, he doesn't let go.]

...did he always keep you like that? The collar. The way you looked when we...

[He doesn’t finish that sentence. He supposes he doesn’t need to.]

[doggish]

[He doesn't expect much acknowledgment— what can Astarion say, beyond wholehearted agreement or sharp refusal?— but still, there seems to be something settled in his eyes. Some measure of, if not relief, at least temperament. Terror reduced temporarily, at least while the bolt is drawn and the rest of the world (and all the worlds beyond) are kept at bay. Perhaps they will revisit the subject and perhaps they won't. Here, now, with the fire piled high and alcohol making the world softer, their respective traumas drift in and out hazily.

So: the collar, and truthfully, there are worse topics. It aches, but it aches like a scar does: only temporary, a faint echo of the pain he had once suffered.]

Not always. For day to day living, no, there was no need, although I will not say he never had the whim for it. At parties, yes, any fete he hosted or celebration he wished to enact, I was called upon to serve wine and intimidate guests with my appearance. But it was not to mark me as a slave, for my ears did that. No, it . . .

[He tips his head back, bumping against the wall behind them. Astarion does not pry his hand free, and Fenris does not pull back. There is no point. They are past such pretensions, hesitance in touch (at least like this) long since banished. He focuses on them, the faint singing sensation of soft fingers against his own, the faint echoes of his own heartbeat thudding in his fingertips.]

Understand: Tevinter has always been at war. Even before Corypheus, they were constantly locked in bitter stalemate with the Qunari. For land, for principle . . . for tradition, I suspect, after centuries of trying to dominate the north. It is a bitter thing, igniting and easing, tensions gone slack before some event would spark them into flame once more. Add to the fray a third group: a not-inconsiderable population of Qunari who have broken away from their main religion, the Qun. The Fog Warriors, who live independently in Seheron, fighting against both Tevene and Qunari forces, trying to claim the island for themselves.

[A pause, and he vaguely adds:] I was born there. In Seheron.

[It means nothing, not really. He doesn't even know if it's true. But he clings to those bits of his past with white knuckles sometimes, and it's . . . pleasing, really, to share.

Anyway.]

Have you ever seen a Qunari mage? Saarebas, they are called, and regarded as immensely dangerous things. They wear a leash and collar, as well as a visor, to blind them to the world. Sometimes, although not always, their mouths are stitched shut or their tongues cut out, to stop them from speaking some spell. They are bound to their keepers, their Arvaarad, and rely on them like a dog does his master.

[Perhaps Astarion sees where this is going. Fenris gestures with his left hand, fingers illustrating the span of his throat, down his chest.]

So. It was a joke. There were the Qunari, who treated their mages so barbarously, who would inevitably be crushed beneath Tevinter's heel— and here was the conquering Tevinter magister, with a creature he had mutilated and forged with such rare magic, kept docile not by the parody of the collar he wore, but by the very magic the Qunari meant to imprison.

[There's a sneering snarl in his voice, no small measure of disgust and loathing . . . oh, he is bitter, yes. Not hurt, but stung, and perhaps that scar did not heal so neatly, for he can still feel iron cutting into his skin. How the lyrium would sear against hot metal after a day spent Tevinter's markets, near delirious with heatstroke, his head held high and every bit of him on high alert . . .

Fenris exhales slowly.]

It also intimidated others, and he enjoyed that, too. A bodyguard so terrifying he had to be kept leashed, with only his master muzzling him temporarily. Other slaves, or other magisters . . . he liked everyone to cower before us.

[Even the other slaves were terrified of him, and for good reason. He was a sullen thing, dull-eyed and full of a rage he did not understand. Danarius fostered it, ordering Fenris into killing others when and if they displeased him, just so none would ever dare try and get close to his little wolf.

But that is not his life, not anymore. He squeezes his fingers, a tight reminder of the present, before adding:]

Irony upon ironies, then, that when I escaped, it was a group of Qunari that sheltered me. The Fog Warriors took me in and cut my collar, melting it down into so much molten metal before my eyes.

[illithidnapped]

[Astarion has suffered. Oh, how he has suffered (a fact he's so very quick to unleash on anyone that might even think to ask), to the point of being numb to every ounce of anguish he’d ever inflicted: indifferent to the souls whose skin he pared like a knife peeling away at a pear, to the other hissing spawn, all desperate in their drowning despair, each fighting to find a foothold at the end of the crumbling cliff that was their master’s fleeting favor— to himself each time he screamed, and thought it was someone else’s voice wrenched out beneath the crack of a whip or the whispers in his ear.

(Why, then, does he feel the rise of bitter nausea in his throat at that disgustingly potent description—)

His jaw flexes. Just as before, there’s no real point to his fury; the man responsible is long dead. Dust and wretched bones. But it exists all the same, enmity slithering through his veins, burning where the rest of him always runs so uniquely cold.

Cazador and Danarius would have reviled one other. Seen competition in their shared lust for unequivocal dominion. But how they mirror each other in certain monstrous facets, thriving in their love of the profane. In desecrating, mocking symbolism, all cruelly forced down onto the shoulders of a creature of their choosing. Their favoritism like a knife. A needle. Like watching yourself burn from the inside out, and wondering if there was ever anything but their work carved into your bones— for they make it clear just how much the world beyond their shadow isn’t meant for you.

Their torments are different. Their scars different. But—

Astarion is a quick learner.

In place of everything that can’t be said (I’m sorry you were his canvas, I’m sorry it was you), Astarion turns his attention towards the anchor point of that hold between them, mirroring the pressing scruff of Fenris’ previously offered touch: only this time he avoids the glassy line work of seared lyrium, fitting the edges of his fingers to calloused skin alone, watching it with hooded eyes that turn it all into an absent gesture. Devoid of a demand for a response. Existing only to exist. Because in the wake of the Crossroads, when the nights don’t bring much in the way of welcome sleep, few things ease half as much as an unspoken promise.

Yes, I am real. And yes, you have me.

Everything his piteously shriveled heart could never say aloud.

And he listens still, trying to imagine something better than the vulgarity of a stitched mouth (Cazador would have liked that) or a cut-out tongue, wondering if Danarius had employed a visor too, or if he assumed his hold was iron enough. Thoughts squeezed out by molten metal and a kinder stare.

It must have been blinding.

It must have been unthinkable.]

Fog Warriors. [He repeats it slowly, as if the name might somehow paint a picture for him (it doesn’t).]

So they freed you from his hold.

1/2

[doggish]

Yes.

[How to explain the Fog Warriors? He's offered vague details, snatches of trivia that more belong in a textbook than on his lips. A rebel group of freedom fighters that struggled for independence, and it isn't that it's untrue, but still, that doesn't encapsulate them. He stares at nothing, absently focusing on the feeling of Astarion's fingers against his own: delicate and gentle, yes, but more than that: familiar. His own fingers twitch, working gently against them, as he tries to push away the usual swell of guilt and self-loathing that always comes when he thinks of them.

But ah . . . he could do this tipsy, but why bother? Not daring to pull his hand free, he reaches with his left, plucking the bottle from between them, setting it to his lips as he drinks.

Silence, for a time, as he slowly drains the bottle and tries to remember. There's no rush right now. No pressing missions that will call them from this space, no need so great that they'll be forced to open the door and remember all that exists outside of this haven.]

They freed me and they kept me, the only outsider among their kind. I was . . . [he huffs a laugh, faint,] like a pup, really, those first few days. I stumbled around, helpless without orders to guide me, so lost that it was all I could do not to weep in vexation when I begged for them and still they refused to give them to me. But it eased. Slowly, surely, as they offered me the most minimal choices . . . where to sleep. What to eat. Encouraging me to speak my mind, if I wished, and I found I had a taste for it. When I realized that they would not punish me for being a person with my own thoughts and soul— when I found they liked when I disagreed with them, even if it was vexing to them, for at least I was saying what I thought instead of bowing to their will and whims.

Imekari, one or two of them called me. Child. I suppose I was to them.

[No, this isn't right either, although it's close. How to describe it? Sitting in a humid hut while grey paint was applied to his cheeks in slender lines, an elvish imitation of vitaar; staring fixedly at Setan five feet in front of him, stepping where he stepped, listening to his own footsteps become silent as sunlight drifted through the leaves and warmed his skin; standing in the sea, letting the water lap at his shins, as behind him voices in Qunlat sang of warriors long ago. The comfort of waking and choosing his task; the satisfaction of contributing, one part of a whole, working til exhaustion not because he had to, but because he wished to.

The joy of intimacy. Of being seen and known and wanted, not because of what he could do or what glory he could bring to others, but because of him. Desire and companionship, adoration and affection . . . their fingers slide against one another, Astarion's fingertips gliding against his palm, and Fenris exhales raggedly.]

Whatever I am, whatever I became . . . I owe it to them.

[And now finish the story. He pulls his hand away, shifting until they're no longer pressed together, thighs and hips, an unconscious action.]

I stayed with them for months. Five, I think, in total.

And then one day Danarius appeared, as easy as anything. He sailed to the shore and called me to his side, and like the loyal dog I was, I went.

[An inevitability. The fated conclusion to his little excursion. He had lived in a dream for five months, and there, now, was the waking world, come to collect. Fenris' voice is dull and deadened, but it's impossible not to hear the loathing in his voice. The rage and grief, all for a stupid boy who was too frightened to do anything but obey his master.]

He told me that I was a fool to run, and lucky that I had not encountered a worse fate than being taken in by oxmen, but that all was well now that he had found me. And when they refused to hand me over, for gold or power, he told me to kill them.

And so I did.

[Oh, what a terror. What a monster, and he was so very good at it. One after another, and oh, some tried to reason at first. Some begged him for mercy or reason, imekari please don't you don't have to, foolish things that they were. They thought him a person still, but his master was there to show them the truth. Fenris was nothing but a weapon. A dog leashed once more, his muzzle removed and his fangs bared.

The sand rusted red with blood. Bodies festering in the searing heat. In the distance, carrion birds calling, hungry for this newfound feast. And in the middle of it all: Fenris, his vitaar washed away by the blood and the sweat, rebirthed anew under his master's guiding hand.]

He praised me afterwards. Told me that I had done well. Told me that all would be forgiven.

[What a lie. What an enormous lie, and it was that which had shattered Fenris' terror and shock. He had taken a step back, and then another— Danarius' voice screaming in rage, echoing in Fenris' ears as he disappeared into the jungles of Seheron, as he raced to a port, as he stowed away on a ship heading for the mainland—

Running, always running, bile in his throat and unworthiness in his heart.]

I ran. And so we played cat-and-mouse for three years, until I crossed the border and crept into Kirkwall, where I stayed until he found me again.

[doggish]

[Silence fills the room. What is there to say in wake of such a confession? It's too much. It's ugly and awkward, and in the seconds that follow, he does not know why he said it, save that it's true. He hunches forward, pulling away fully from the other man, grimacing as he sets the empty bottle down.]

And now you know.

[He should not have said all this. Astarion hadn't asked for it, not really, and his mouth twists, his expression flickering.]

I am no savior, Astarion. I will not say I am an evil person, but . . . do not look at me as a hero.

[illithidnapped]

[Fenris drinks. Astarion sits beside him, silent for such a long time. Touch won’t help anymore, not when they’re treading the afflicted path of a topic like this. A confession far greater than any torture: yes, they saved me. Yes, I killed them all.

He looks away. And then, so quietly at first:]

It was only a mistake that tore me from Cazador’s hold.

Your world. Just an accident.

[Just you.]

So I can’t pretend to know what it’s like, fleeing for so long with fangs nipping at your heels. [Whatever risks Astarion faces now, they’re all different. Broad. It isn’t the same thing as your enemy hunting your face. Your name. So determined to have you back they’d do anything to cut you from whatever life you might hope to find: no rest, no comfort, no trusting that it’s over, wherever one might flee.] But one word from a spirit wearing the skin of my master and I had my blade at your throat. I—

[He what. It’s harder now, each second spent delving deeper into the waters of sincerity, his own mind pulling back on instinct from it; the silent alarm screaming in his ears, whispering that he shouldn’t. He can’t. Tangling in everything he doesn’t know how to express.

It’s one thing to lie. To weave pretty little truths, but this?]

It... [Don’t bite. Don’t flee. Don’t let fear turn candor into blackened, bitter bile. Don’t joke to hide the way it aches. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t, Astarion.

A breath. His empty hands stinging as he curls his fingertips in until it digs, anchor shard thrumming a sickly green where it rests, glassy magic seething beneath his touch.

Just a breath.]

Isn’t about heroism. [There isn’t, to Astarion’s mind, any such thing. Not even about the man who first stretched out his hand to save him— first from the rift— again in that dark, constricting alleyway only a few months ago. Selfless, yes. More so than Fenris will likely ever realize, but, ] That’s all a fantasy, a soothing, pretty little dream for those who haven’t had to drench themselves in reality just yet.

You fight and you bleed. Maybe it—

[Tongue to the back of overlong fangs. Cazador’s gift persisting.]

Nine months, that’s all I have, and the one thing I’ve learned within them is that maybe it’s  worth it sometimes. Scar tissue. Open wounds.

Baring your teeth at offers of gilded comfort because there’s someone you can’t imagine losing at your side, even if it’s a battle you know you won’t win.

[Gold or power. How much they might’ve needed both. How they turned away from it for the sake of one of their own.

Foolish, if Astarion had to put a word to it.

But who wouldn’t be a fool, too, standing in their place?

(He thinks of dark hair and sun spots across paler skin, thickened scar tissue overwritten by tattoos. He thinks of silver hair and green eyes, the subtle scent of scorched ozone and the ghosting trace of fingertips across his palm.)]

Everything you learned from them hasn’t been squandered.

[One last pause held there, and he thinks back on what Fenris had said, imekari. The books he'd had stacked upon the shelves in his mansion, all conspicuously free of dust.

His head twists.

He's back to looking at Fenris yet again.]

Would you teach me? Language, I mean.

Theirs. Yours.

[doggish]

[His eyes slip closed as Astarion speaks, his shoulders hunched. His head swims from the alcohol, dreamily drifting from past to present and back again, old memories whispering at the edges of his mind even as Astarion speaks. He doesn't truly expect pity, not from Astarion, but still, he's tensed up for it. For cloying words of sympathy, it wasn't your fault, don't blame yourself, oh, he'll snap and snarl, savage teeth bared as all the self-loathing and rage that broils within him comes rising to the surface, he'll tear him apart, he'll—

But of course he says nothing of the sort. He speaks, and Fenris half-turns, staring with wide eyes at the line of his profile. One word from a spirit wearing the skin of my master and I had my blade at your throat, and it isn't the same, no, but then again it is, all at once. That self-same terror, yes, but worse than that: the sinking sense of inevitability. Your mind screaming in voiceless horror as your body numbly obeys, for you know in your heart that this was how it was destined to end. You know that you are nothing more than his, only ever his, a puppet to play with, a dog to leash and muzzle— a creature, not a person, and what a fool you were to ever dare forget it.

It isn't a revelation. There is no information here that he had not known before. But Astarion speaks, his voice so achingly sincere it stings, and for the first time it truly sinks in that he understands.

More than just as a fellow slave. More than just the horror of shared trauma. He has met other former slaves, and there is camaraderie there, yes, of course, but never any real ability to bond. No sense of understanding, not truly, for no slave in the world has ever been like Fenris. Mutilated and isolated, seared with lyrium and his memories wiped, forcibly crafted into a weapon and a pet all at once, oh, no, who could ever truly understand? Who could look at a master and understand the horrid mix of emotions, longing and terror, adoration and loathing, inevitability and rebellion, dichotomous and sickening. What person could ever look at a massacre like that and understand, so terribly intimately, just why Fenris hadn't had a choice at all? No. No, most would either condemn or try to alleviate his guilt, and it would be intolerable either way. No one understands, no one ever understands—

But there Astarion is.

(Golden, and he remembers that later on, when the fire is dim and they're both ostensibly asleep: how Astarion had looked in the firelight. The slope of his nose and curve of his lips, silver curls falling in his face, all of him haloed in gold and his red eyes lit a brilliant crimson. His eyes cast down on his anchor shard, speaking words so perfect for a moment Fenris deliriously wonders if they're still in the Crossroads. If this is another trick—

But he could never have dreamed up someone like Astarion.)]

Ataas shokra.

[Low and roughened, and he clears his throat, his eyes darting away for a moment as he tries to get a grip on himself. He can't think about this right now. He can't— he makes a show of shifting on the bed, setting the empty bottle down, turning towards Astarion, and blames the flush in his cheeks on the heat suffusing the room. Ah, and the rabbiting of his heart . . . well, no one need know about that but Fenris, surely.

Baring your teeth at offers of gilded comfort because there’s someone you can’t imagine losing at your side, and he would die before he let Astarion be taken. No matter if he was forced to fight him, if he became Cazador's puppet once more, oh, it wouldn't matter. Astarion's blade piercing his heart would be such a small price to pay to try and keep him close.]

It's, ah, it's a greeting. Translated literally, it means glorious struggle— an acknowledgement of the difficulties navigating through life.

For companions, though . . .

[Emerald eyes meet crimson ones, and he murmurs, his tongue gliding over the familiar syllables easily:]

Shanedan.

[illithidnapped]

Shanedan.

[It sounds different from anything in Tevene he’s ever heard before (clever isn’t really the word for his intuition when it takes hold, all practicality in play over raw intelligence), and given the context he doesn’t need to ask: it’s Qunari, without a doubt. Theirs— the Fog Warriors— maybe even the first few phrases Fenris had learned while he acclimated to the weightless feeling of a throat without a collar.

A leash with no master attached to the other end.

'Shanedan', repeated a few more times for good measure, a little clumsy as it tumbles from his tongue, but not altogether an indecipherable mess— just heavy on the consonants, sluggish on the gaps between syllables; he’s never been a perfect hand at imitating language (melting pot that Baldur’s Gate was, the upper echelons weren’t), and so he has to work all the more diligently to prove passing at its demanding nuances.

But it’s nice, admittedly. Unexpectedly so, listening to the smooth rumble of Fenris’ voice as he teaches with a patient, figurative hand, offering up the entirety of his attention.

An acknowledgement of the difficulties navigating through life.

He likes that part.]

...do you ever think about going back to Seheron?

[Astarion shifts to face Fenris in turn as he asks, sinking lower through his own shoulders. Hackles easing while folding his legs until they cross in thicker, tangled covers. Comfortable. Warm. Elbows relaxed loosely across his knees.

It’s been exhausting, these last few weeks.

Interspersed nightmares aren’t helping.]

Would you want to, with Danarius gone.

[And then, returning to focus:]

At-as shook...

[doggish]

[Despite himself, despite the sudden swell of emotions churning through him, despite all the horrors of the past few days— still, Fenris chuckles faintly. It's not at Astarion, exactly, but simply amused. Pleased to hear something so simple as the incorrect pronounciation of a new word.]

Mm, not quite.

[But ah, Seheron . . . it's a good question, really.]

I have, once or twice. But there is nothing for me there, not really, and I would gain nothing save heartache, I suspect.

[And though he has thought about finding some other company of Fog Warriors, explaining things to them, offering his service as atonement . . . it never felt right. An act of penance made to relieve his own guilt, not to truly make up for the lives he had taken. And either way, he would not feel worthy enough to even meet with them.]

Ataas— it is one syllable, not two. Let it vibrate low in your throat, just here—

[He doesn't think before he reaches. They've gotten too used to touch these past few days, fingers tangling together so naturally, the two of them existing in orbit with one another . . . he slides two fingers against the base of Astarion's throat, pressing lightly against the hollow there, demonstrating where he ought to let the syllable hold.

Soft, he has time enough to think, before his senses return to him and he pulls his hand back. And ah, it means nothing, truly. Astarion won't think it strange, not after all that they've been through, but still, he does not want to touch just yet. Not when he's still reeling in revelation over his own newfound feelings. So: redirect, and his hands settle on his thighs, curling and flexing.]

. . . I would continue the lesson. It is pleasing for me to teach you. [Of all people, he does not say, but perhaps that's obvious enough by the way they're huddling together already.]

But I would know more of what I saw in our hallucination, if you would tell me. There was more than just Cazador and Danarius present.

[illithidnapped]

[Soft pressure. Slow and instructive. Lingering and—

Can Fenris feel it, how Astarion’s pulse jumps? Rushing to settle beneath the pads of those marked fingers?

No. Gone. Mercifully gone. And Astarion leans on two centuries’ worth of experience to let the breath he’d been holding ease out unnoticed. Only barely thready at its edges.]

Ataas. [ He echoes once more. Ataas ataas ataas...


Had there been something else in that horrid illusion?

Of course there was, though it takes Astarion the better half of a handful of seconds to remember (for his mind to work, tracing back warily over the whole of that waking dream) and ah—

His chin drops, he pins the edge of his thumb and forefinger together, inhaling. Fitting an unfeeling mask in place, so that he can tread over the topic the way someone discusses poor weather. Lost pocket change.

Nothing.]

Vampires are immortal, as a hard and fast rule. Part of our binding curse: we don’t age, and unless our weaknesses are struck directly, as I've sparingly mentioned before, we don’t die, either. Starvation is only madness. Enfeeblement. Agonizing, yet not deadly.

And Cazador was an avaricious keeper. He always wanted more.

More spawn, more assets— more entertainment or power. [More horrors, still.] But not everyone was fit to serve. And beyond that, not everyone was decent enough at it to be spared the surplus of rats or insects he forced us to feed on.

[As if either were a valuable luxury doled out at Cazador's own bountiful mercy.]

What then, to do with the slaves he no longer wanted?

Well, he could kill them, of course— and sometimes he did. Quite often, in fact. But that was a form of entertainment for him too: he enjoyed seeing the rise of panic, or to be begged, or to feel the palpable moment of betrayal when they realized they weren’t being led to his arms...but their own death instead.

Broken dregs? The ones so hopeless in their servitude that they can’t even suffer properly?

[He lifts his hand, fingertips flicking as they splay outwards.]

You throw them away.

[In essence.]

But they can’t have their freedom, can they? A life away from your hold? No. Gods, no.

[Red eyes lift, breath slipping slow and steady into his lungs. His smile so uniquely cruel— all thoughts of kind words and soft touches to the hollow of his throat forgotten.

Eclipsed.]

You take them to the catacombs. The cellar. The heavy stone walls that comprise your estate— and you put them, stone by hewn stone, inside of it all.

As long as you like. As long as it takes, until they scrabble at the walls like rats, broken down to the last hopeless shred.

[He’d seen it happen time and time again. One of the first terrors witnessed, aside from streaks of ash or the sound of throats uprooted. Aside from the first moment adoring hands turned cruel.]

And sometimes, once that’s done, you set them free again, knowing they won’t ever go anywhere at all, lost as they are now.

That’s what you saw.

The other spawn. The fate of all his unloved pets.

[doggish]

[He thinks he knows where this story is going when Astarion begins telling it. He hears the word immortal and imagines the shape of it, guided what Danarius would have done with such creatures in his employ. Starvation, and it is a grim thought, but not shocking. Gorey violence, extended torments, yes, he understands those things, and he can well imagine an immortal creature delighting in testing the limits of his spawn's bodies. Flaying him alive just to see how long they could last; dissecting them inch by terrible inch, peeling their skin back or ripping them apart at the seams . . . his fingers brush absently against his thigh, tracing out one slender line of lyrium.

(Did he take an academic view of it, as Danarius had? Pretending that all his sadism was for the sake of furthering magical knowledge, justifying his spilling of blood? Or did he grow past that after the first few centuries? It doesn't matter, not really, but still he wonders it).

But Astarion goes on. His tone light and his smile never quite reaching his eyes, gestures blithely as he describes a horror beyond comprehension. Truly: the color drains from his cheeks, leaving tan skin sallow and sickly looking; his eyes go wide, nausea pitching in his stomach. He can't help but imagine it, though he doesn't want to: the too-close press of stone and and mortar all around you, the endless darkness, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to die— and who was to know if ever you would be found again? People forget things. Masters don't care what happens to slaves.

How long could sanity last? A month? Two? And by then madness would be a relief. To break down and find escape in any form, even if it cost everything. What more would it matter? You were nothing anyway.

All of it flashes through his mind in one horrifying, nauseating flash. And on the tail end of it, he thinks again: little wonder Astarion does not trust this miracle to hold. Who would dare? Who could ever dare to hope after a place like that, where so much of day to day existence was an exercise in horror.]

And so no matter what cruelty he lavished upon you, there was still a worse fate to fear. And in that way he had you pull your own strings.

[How wretchedly clever. How horribly, wonderfully sustainable, the perfect way to keep everyone from falling into agonized complacency or desperate suicide.

There is nothing he can say that will make this easier. Nothing that he could possibly come up with that he can compare this to in his life. It's wretched and terrible, nigh-incomprehensible in its implications, and he will not cheapen it.

Instead: he sets his hand, palm up, between them. It's an offer, but he won't press, not if touch would be too much right now.]

So you kept yourself entertaining. Amusing. Nearly always in his favor.

How?

[illithidnapped]

[How.

How.

What a gutting question, that singular little word. Worse than everything else so far, Astarion finds, something in the pit of his stomach turning over, twisting in on itself. Not shame, not remorse— but much like Fenris’ prior confession (they freed me; I killed them) it’s so much worse than talking of split skin or bloodied throats.

Because it’s personal. Not what was done to them, but how they reacted to it. How they survived it, ugly with unseen scars. The sort of things that would make someone else buckle to hear them, dripping with platitudes or judgment, or both. An inability to comprehend what it is to be crushed so completely underfoot that you have to reshape yourself to endure, like a plant crawling through hairline cracks in crushing stone.

His eyes fall on that outstretched palm, held open in a gentle offer of comfort—


And Astarion pushes past it, decisive in his movements as he pulls himself up from where he's settled. A sharper turn, a sudden drop— and he’s sunken down to fit his head entirely in Fenris’ lap instead, wordlessly taking up space without bothering to so much as ask for permission.

He assumes if it’s too much, he’ll be shoved off in short order.

So then:]

How does anyone earn the favor of an egotistical, self-absorbed, fluently sadistic monster of a master?

You learn what they like. What keeps them content, what stays the worst of their inclinations— or spares your own neck in exchange for someone else’s. [The years add up. The torments no less. Only a fool struggles to clutch tight to morality throughout, and yes, some spawn did.

Astarion remembers them as stains on sills. Streaks of embers in the courtyards.

Broken babbling in the dark.]

I imagine you did the same.

Adapted. Just as you were wanted to.

[There's not even a spare flicker of judgment in his voice; he trusts his companion to understand, tipping his gaze back to meet the underview of Fenris' jaw and all its ribbing lines of silvered blue, tracing their patterning with his eyes like a point of simple fixation. Something to anchor him— much like the feeling of warmth provided— against the footfalls of his past. Part of the reason why he'd chosen to rest here.

No, all of it, actually.]

But to answer your question directly: most often, that meant knowing how he preferred torture to go. Allow yourself to grow quiet with bracing focus, and he’d lose interest. Too loud in whimpering agony, and he’d grow furious with irritation. Sometimes it meant warming his strictly fickle moods, other times his bed, or his esteemed guests. Listening so carefully for what would send him into fits of cruelty in quick anticipation— though obviously boredom itself was always a fun excuse to tear anyone unlucky enough to be nearby limb from bleeding limb.

[His exhale is thin. So acidic it could claw through steel.]

But yes. I did well, I suppose. [If there is such a thing as succeeding in suffering.] And for it, he would send me out to hunt for him. Let off the leash for a few days at a time at most, knowing I couldn’t run even if I wanted to. It was a luxury, understand. I could breathe the night air, pretend I was a living thing once more.

I had it better than most of the others, in that respect. And they certainly strived to resent me for it.

[Wretches.]

The only caveat was that I had to slip my way into the pinnacle of society’s social affairs and find someone worth bleeding to seduce during that mediocre window of opportunity. And what's important to note is that he was exceedingly particular: he craved beauty beyond beauty— a wealth of influence, or blissful youth, or pristine breeding. Or all of the above. Said it made them taste better.

I wouldn't know.

[He's still counting those glowing lines. One to the next. One, two, three—]

The night I unintentionally vanished from his side, he’d sent me off to corrupt one nobleman in particular....only I never made it back. Plucked away right in the midst of it. Left stranded here instead.

[Astarion's lips twist.

It isn't quite a smile.]

Sometimes I find myself I hoping that it gnaws at him, you know. That when he fights to yank on the enchantments that once snared me so completely, he howls hatefully to feel nothing in return. No answers. No explanations.

The only one to ever get away.

[doggish]

[Adapted, Astarion drawls, and settles himself in Fenris' lap as easy as anything. Pain flares in his thigh, his body jerking and tensing up— but before Astarion can flinch away, he sets a heavy hand on his shoulder. Stay, as he shifts a little, resting his back against the wall, stretching his legs out before them. It's the shock that hurts more than anything; that first painful rush that's already ebbing, replaced by a pleasing sort of pressure against his thigh.

It could be too much. It would be too much in other circumstances, and distantly he notes that: the rabbit-pulse of his heart picking up speed, the way his skin memorizes the feeling of weight and faint chill seeping through his trousers. But this is so far beyond some petty amount of flared feelings. This is nothing to do with infatuation, and he will not sully it (he tells himself sharply, though he knows some part of him is taking note of all the details right now) with his own unworthy feelings.

Fenris stares straight ahead, listening to a familiar song sang in a different key: yes, he knows what it is to please a sadistic master. Not in the exact same way, of course— Danarius had never wanted to mutilate his precious wolf, and it was so much easier to punish with magic than it was with whips or flails— but still, the broad strokes he knows oh, so well. How to contort and twist yourself; how to learn intimately what a certain tone or twitch of muscles meant, and what part of play thanks to it. Slavering, devoted slave or stoic bodyguard, affectionate companion or rigid protector . . . and some days, how there would be no use in predicting, for your pain was the only thing that would please.

Carefully, he strokes his fingers through Astarion's hair. He isn't very good at it, truth be told, but it's the intent that matters more than the actual execution, isn't it? His other hand braces gently on Astarion's shoulder, his thumb brushing in time with the careful drag of his fingertips. He scoffs softly as he heads that pointed demand for prey, but once again, it makes sense. It suits the spoiled, elite way these men (these mages, though that isn't quite true of Cazador, but he thinks it nonetheless) think. Sending out one's spawn to seduce and tempt some poor soul into coming back with him . . . was it worth it for the freedom? He wonders.]

Of course it does.

[Simply. Easy, as he stares straight ahead, his fingers steady and sure.]

How could he stand it? Something out of his control, stolen away from him without so much as a by-your-leave . . .

[He glances down, a faint smile shadowing around his lips.]

It likely gnaws at him. Maddening and inexplicable, and who's to say it shall not happen again?

[Not that Fenris cares if the other spawn show up, but he does rather like the thought of Cazador writhing in terror of this unknown threat.]

Na via lerno victoria, [he says in Tevene, and wonders if Astarion can hear the difference.] Only the living know victory. Meant more for battle, but . . . it suits, I think, twisted thing that your master is. You spent two hundred years in a hell of his making, and I can only imagine what that must have been like. The horrors you must have faced.

But here you are in the sunlight, doing things he could never have dreamed of. Here you are, living and breathing, and every second you spend broken from your leash is another affront to him.

[He keeps stroking his fingers through his hair. He's getting better at it: rucking up unruly curls and then smoothing them down, combing them away from Astarion's face.]

But it is hard.

I will not begrudge you bitterness, if that is what you find fills you. Or rage, or grief . . . it is . . . complicated, to be in the position you are.

[We were, though he won't insult Astarion by inserting himself into the conversation.]

Was he ever hurt, in all those centuries? Some other vampire, perhaps?