[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]

...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.]