[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]

[Yes, he feared for her. Yes, he fears for her still. Always. Not a realization made in leaps and bounds, but in gradual seconds while a bowstring thrums beneath his bloodied fingertips, or here, now, when all it takes is one heavy shove to tilt the scales.

If he’s slower, if he’s trapped, if he’s lost to this nightmare, it won’t matter half as much as her escape in this very moment (he’ll find his own way, in time— in one year or a thousand, in anguish or endless determination, he’ll rip free via tooth and claw alike, without a shadow of a doubt).

And then something cuts past him.

A blaze of golden light, searing as it passes, displacing gravity itself (faint tinkling like the sound of broken glass ringing in his ears, the surreal feeling of his curls twisting in its wake, lighter than the air that surrounds them) and then a pop-snap as it collides brutally with the ruinous shadow at his back (he turns too slowly to see the exact moment of impact, only by the time he’s whirled around on his heel does he catch sight of a fear spirit— still partially cloaked in the skin of his master— thrashing wildly in howling anguish), a prelude to the pooling spread of reality: that nightmarish backdrop surrounding them splintering in breaking fragments, giving way to the stony tunnels from before.

Astarion perched along a steep slope, and at its rise, Ellie.]

Ellie—

[How?

No, it doesn’t matter. He’s at her side in an instant, a few long-legged strides before he yanks her back into his arms, clutching her to his chest in brittle relief.

Gods.

Gods, he’d thought he lost her.]

Of course it was a damned spirit.

[Of course.]

How could I have been so bloody stupid to think...

[notathreat]

[It hits, and Ellie's heart leaps. Somewhere in the depths of her own jagged fear, she'd thought there was a chance it could be real- but even if it wasn't, the twisted magic around them could make it so. If Astarion believed it, then it could be just as real, just as binding.

And still, he'd fought it.

Ellie loses her breath as they collide, and she squeezes him just as hard, her bow still in her hand across his back.

There's an inkling, just a flicker of surprise that he isn't angry with her, before she realizes that instead, he's angry with himself.]

Don't start that shit.

[Her voice is a little muffled by his shoulder, and she hugs him harder. There's a fine trembling in her hands, all relief and lingering protective rage.]

You thought it was real. You fought it anyway.

[Ellie pulls back enough to see his face, to show that she means it.]

We're alive.

[illithidnapped]

It was because I could fight it that I knew it wasn’t real. [Astarion counters almost sharply, though it's dulled so fiercely by concern he doesn't quite know how to place— what to do with it. Because while it's true that this isn't the first time they've seen one another in any amount of damning danger, this is the first time she's come so horrifyingly close to his past.

To the one thing he'll never stop fearing, not in a thousand years.]

Cazador’s control wouldn’t have allowed me the chance to do anything but hand you to him on a silver platter. [Understand that, Ellie. Recognize it, please.

His hands across her cheeks, lifting her eyeline by force for a single moment.]

If that ever happens again, you don’t beg me for help, understand?

[No, not clear enough. Try again.]

You don’t shoot him.

You shoot me.

[The edge of his thumb scuffing just for a moment with such weighted determination in his stare— and then it breaks. Just a bit. Just as it always does, with him, softening the blow of all sincerity.]

....preferably not fatally. Or somewhere that can’t be healed. Think above the belt.

[notathreat]

[Ellie presses her lips together, some of that trapped, impotent rage coming to the surface in her eyes. Even as he cups her face, she feels a child again, thinking of watching Joel be shoved under the water, drowning by inches.

That Astarion is so very reasonable about it is just salt in the wound.]

You don't know that.

[It comes out almost petulant, angry as the rest of her. Like she's groping for some possible, stupid way to be right. She knows that he's trying to protect her, but leaving him to it, escaping herself- it's impossible. So is turning her attacks on him, even if it's just to wound. She knows he's trying to soften the blow, to protect her.

All the more, it makes her show her teeth.]

What if you could resist him? Like you just did?

[illithidnapped]

Then I would’ve been free a long bloody time ago.

[Sharp. Keyed up, yet so far from livid, just— not of a mind to entertain hypotheticals that feel so much like pure fantasy to his overtaxed mind, grip on her that much steadier for it.] But that isn’t how it works. And you wouldn’t say anything different if our places were swapped, so don’t bother lying to me now.

You’re not a child. This isn’t a game.

[Each word forced through the edges of his fangs.]

So don’t.

Don’t make me do to you what I’ve done to thousands of other fools. I—

[his voice cuts off there, a half-step away from splintering.]

Please.

[notathreat]

You were alone, back then. I can't-

[Ellie falls silent, all the words she could say, all the arguments she could make, dying on her tongue as he cups her face, as she realizes where he is, just how scared he is. Her breathing stutters, the corner of her mouth twitching, before the fight goes out of her, and she lifts both her hands to put them over the back of his, bowing her head until their foreheads touch.]

I can't leave you there.

[It's very quiet, hardly more than a whisper. What's the other option? What option can she make?]

[illithidnapped]

...Hells.

[What else can he say? 'Yes, you can', pretty and bolstering and oh-so-selfless— no, that’s not for him. It never has been.

Her hands wrapped around his, foreheads pressed together still, there’s nothing in this midpoint between reality and the hypothetical that truly matters. Nothing to plan for the way they might want to in some vain attempt to soothe themselves. It’s foolish. Pointless.

(He doesn’t want to be left behind; he doesn’t want to kill her; hoping for a third option is a waste of everything they have left in them to give, now.)]

We’d better hope he never actually turns up here, then.

[Bitter as bile, that joke. Black and bleak— and also the truth, too.

It comes before the lightest huff. The smallest laugh.

An equally diminutive kiss to her forehead as he draws back.]

Come on. I want out of this place. Sooner, rather than later— before yet another spirit gets any miserable ideas.

[notathreat]

Right behind ya.

[Nothing about this is pretty or easy or clean. They aren't those people. She gives him a twitch of a smile, though, at the kiss on her forehead -- he, who touches her so easily when she's spent a lifetime at arm's length, she who tousles his curls when he's used to far more painful things -- and takes a second to drop his hand, to let him go from her.

She wishes she could agree, if only to set his mind at ease. She wishes that she could promise, could swear to him that she'll do as he says. But someone lied to her once, trying to spare her the pain. And the echoes still crash around her like waves, howling like wolfsong.

So instead Ellie clings to his hand for a moment before she lets him drop her hand. The dream may have faded, but the bruises ache, and she's one arrow lighter.]