[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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Fenris;

[illithidnapped]

[Wandering in a place like this (laced as it is with only the thinnest of barriers between magic and reality— between spirits and the living), isn’t a particularly pleasant time. Nothing feels real enough beneath the steady ryhthm of Astarion's strides (a little like lucid dreaming, if Astarion had to pin it down: his body operating more on the assumption of solidity, rather than the undeniable promise of it over stone), and yet everything is also far too real. Too loud, too bright, too sharp, too present.

Thankfully they haven’t been assaulted by childish spirits or beckoning cries from the cliffs, but there’s something distinctly Not Right about this particular stretch of road they now tread, the sky (is it a sky at all, Astarion wonders absently) that surrounds them, growing dimmer by the minute.

And the rocky stone beneath their feet, it’s...

More like polished flooring in places. Flattened and glossy, but still that same shade of lightless brown.]

I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to this.

[Vital, yes. Important, as far as missions go: ensuring Corypheus hasn’t sunken his claws into the byways here, given that his forces have already been proven to travel by eluvian.

But still.

Someone else could’ve done it.

The pathways descend into fractured cliffs: boring into tunnel work that’s difficult to parse even with their elven cat’s eyes. A few feet ahead at best, if that, and it seems as good a place to look as any for a nest chock full of slippery Venatori.

Hands to the glassy pommels of his daggers, he adds, fitting Fenris with a sidelong glance— only to realize that the elf's become more glowing tattoos than recognizable features in the sprawling dark:]

I don't know what you were thinking when you agreed to this.

[doggish]

[What he was thinking, more or less, was that it would be good to contribute. That here was work he could get his hands on; a purpose, a task, a duty, that he could fulfill and go to bed feeling satisfied for once.

All well and good in theory. In reality . . . oh, he hates the Fade. And he hates it all the more because he knows this isn't quite the Fade, but it's close enough, you know? This odd little pocket dimension where nothing is quite as it seems, where magic drifts through the air as tangibly as the wind and everything has an eerie sense of unreality . . . it sets his teeth on edge. It plays hell on his lyrium, he knows that much; he hasn't stopped glowing from the moment they stepped in here.

A boon, he thinks sardonically as the world grows darker around them. How lucky they are, that he is a walking torch.]

That you would get into trouble if I was not there to look after you.

[It's theoretically a teasing joke, but it lands flatly. He's too busy glancing around, as if he might see a threat before it comes. But that's never the way with demons, is it? They appear only when they wish, insidious creatures that they are. Offering deals (and it's been years, but still some small part of Fenris writhes in humiliated self-loathing; how quickly he had fallen prey to a demon, how weak he had been to leap on that promise of power) or simply haunting their steps . . . no, they will not see it coming.

Is he afraid? No, not yet. But he is tense. Absently, he starts to keep track of their path into this tunnel before realizing it's pointless. Nothing is real here, and a map will not serve them.

They edge forward, turn left— and as the light fades from behind them, Fenris realizes that what was once ground has now decidedly become floor: the crunch of gravel and grit gone, replaced by faint footsteps (one booted, one not) tapping against . . . marble? Stone? He reaches out to steady himself against a wall and finds it smooth to the touch; he can't decide if it's natural erosion or something more deliberate.

It's cold. Not the winter chill that Fenris so often complains about, but a frigidity that seems to sink into his bones. Not just the absence of warmth, but the absence of memory of it, too: like he'll never be warm again. Like there is no warmth to be found in this lightless place, and to seek it out is a fool's errand. And there are noises. He can't say what. Faint whispers, perhaps, faint chitterings or taps . . . insects? Voices? They're so indistinct, fading in and out with no definable source, just frequent enough to set him on edge.

The tunnel opens into a larger cavern. And within it . . .]

Sarcophagi?

[He has seen broken gravestones here and there, but nothing so heavily deliberate as this. There's at least four lined up in neat rows, heavy carvings presumably denoting who each entombed corpse used to be. Curiosity flares despite himself, and he strides ahead, fingers tracing the lettering, trying to read it. H . . . a . . .]

Can you make these out?

[illithidnapped]

[Something’s wrong.

Astarion can feel it well before he recognizes the familiar scent winding its way through the air: stale decay, clinging lichen seeping deep into old stone, brittle marrow mingling with mildew and frigid, dusty rot. He's caught them before here and there. Passing through roadsides bordering Nevarra; Sundermount in the evening, particularly during those first few breaths of winter's chill when the air has such an abysmal cold snap to it that it stagnates like fog over old grave markers. But so few places in Thedas smell just the way the old catacombs running beneath Cazador’s estate did— and fewer still match it so perfectly.

His heart jolts into skipping a single beat.

He doesn’t notice.

Instead, from a handful of steps away, his voice is a shivering whisper. Hollow as the gleam in his reflective eyes.]

Step away from it.

[Get away from it. Does it matter that this can’t possibly be Baldur’s Gate? No. No, not at all. Not when every fiber in his body is prickling with tension like a sixth sense for danger. One that's never steered him wrong in all his lightless, miserable years.]

We need to go back. [A coward's move, yes. But cowards live longer. Astarion's lived longer.

The tunnel behind them is gone when he twists, hunched low through his own shoulders like a half-starved dog on instinct. Instead, more rows of half-closed coffins extend onwards into pitch-dark shadow, the stone and dirt-lined walls that surround them too distinctly un-Thedosian to be mistaken for anything else than the worst of his own nightmarish apprehension, warped in its woven reflection.

Desperation paints him terribly. Expression gaunt in the light cast by Fenris’ brands and hollow cracks in the ceiling overhead. A testing squeeze of his fingertips against his own gloved palms chases it, just to be certain his body still responds to his own commands.

Old habits.

(This isn’t some haunted castle in the middle of nowhere, plagued by demons and lost in time. He’d come from the Fade, hadn’t he? All Rifters did. If the Crossroads somehow connect to it— if something’s gone awry— who’s to say they didn’t end up slipping between spacial divides, strolling as easily through half-dreams into Toril as Astarion had when he fell headlong into Thedas?

No.

No, he’s still himself. And as long as that’s true, then Cazador—)

There isn’t any warning urged when he sets out, footsteps quick to rush ahead into cavernous corridors (hosts of red, glassy eyes slipping away at the sound of his heels, scattering like rats, like insects, and he knows those hoarse, mindless susurrations too well to settle), unwilling to slow, or stop. Muttering beneath his breath like a madman. All of him aching with fear.]

None of this is real.

[None of this is real.

Every few steps flexing his fingers downwards again, checking. Checking. Those indistinct whispers at their back almost decipherable.]

[doggish]

[Terror is an emotion Fenris knows so well.

He doesn't mean fear, although yes, he knows that too. But fear is a very ordinary thing. Fear is a response reaction, a shivering shock and repulsion designed to keep you on your toes. Fear is what Fenris had felt when Bartrand had sealed him and the others underground; fear is what he feels when he's walking alone and hears a Tevene accent drifting on the wind. Fear is awful, but fear is easily dealt with.

Terror, though . . . that's bone-deep. Terror is what seeps into your skin and slips through your system without a warning, flooding your lungs, gripping your heart and squeezing mercilessly. Terror is the absence of hope, of light, of warmth; terror is inevitable, a dreaded, awful feeling that isn't expressed through screaming horror or trembling tenor, but in the hunch of one's shoulders. The shambling, shuffling gait of a creature that knows what its future holds. A flinch, a wince, choked voice and hollow eyes— and funny, isn't it, how it becomes a part of oneself? You feel afraid for so long that it simply becomes ordinary, and you forget that normal people don't walk through their lives with that heavy iron weight hanging around their necks like—

(a collar, and his hand lifts to his throat, fingers pressing against bare skin, no, no, there's nothing there)

— a chain. Binding and damning, and no slave ever gets rid of it, not really. Not even when they've escaped. Not even when their master is long dead and rotting.

Not even when he's in another world.

For of course it's terror that's woven in Astarion's voice right now. A trembling whisper, hoarse and harsh, a guttural sort of sound that he has never once heard before. His head snaps up, and he takes a few steps forward before—]

Astarion!

[Coffins forgotten, he races after his companion, glancing around sharply— glints of glassy eyes stare back at him, and he mistakes them for animals. Rats, perhaps, or some kind of vermin; he dismisses them the moment they don't attack. He reaches for him, grabbing his elbow and yanking him back sharply.]

Would you stop?

[There's an echo there, a voice a half-second out of sync with Fenris' own. A cold voice, arrogant and distant, malicious in the most sadistically sensuous way. Not voice used to being obeyed, for that would suggest that dissent was at all possible. Simply a voice that knows what will happen next, sure as the sun rises in the east. Fenris spins, releasing Astarion's arm, glancing around left and right, but it's impossible to say where it comes from.

Did you think you could escape me forever? Threads of amusement are woven into that scolding tone. Did you think I would not find you and bring you back to me?

Were those nine months worth it?]

None of this is real.

[He says it urgently, glancing back towards Astarion. Taking a step towards him, gripping his arm tightly, trying to tether him to reality.]

Astarion, look at me— he is not here, this is not his home—

[Laughter, soft and amused. Are you so sure, little wolf? Look at where you are. Look at where he has led you, as he leads all his prey.]

[illithidnapped]

[Hope lies in ashes on the doorstep to Cazador’s estate. Hope bleeds, screaming and wailing with piteous eyes across his table like a wounded doe, watching Astarion stare back with all the uncaring depth of a hunting animal, fully broken in. Acclimated. Numb. Hope was the danger he learned better than to trust, watching it come to him time and time again. Watching it die only because he was told to.

'Do you know what happens to Rifters?

We don’t always stay bound to this world. Sometimes, something in that magic gives out quick as a snuffed candle, and we go with it.'

The places where their hands met were like pressure points, knuckles and the edges of their fingers— near enough to feel that steadying weight the way that lines are lashed to shore— all grounding.

'I will die before I allow him to take you back, Astarion. That I can swear to you.’

Hope dies.

It withers now in the current that cuts beneath Fenris’ voice — Stop— Astarion's cry horrid when Fenris takes hold of him. Wounded. Like the way an injured dog keens with animal fear too distressing to passively hear, the sound bolts from the base of his throat without thought. His bones turned to iron, his heels all but nailed to fetid earth.

(He’d turned. For a moment, Fenris had turned. He’d heard it, too. Not a hallucination. Not a dream.)

Green eyes bore into his own, and the words that give chase are all mangled by the pounding of his heart in his ears. He wants to sink into the walls. He wants to run until his soles bleed and his knees buckle. Trembling through glass joints, the air in his lungs suffocatingly thin. Nine months. Nine months, and that was all it took for the tether to snap tight across his neck. The game he’d been set to lose from the very start.

Astarion always loses.

Look at where you are. Look at where he has led you, as he leads all his prey.]

Fenris—

[Pale fingers slip from the empty space behind Fenris, coalescing into unsettling solidity— claws long and sharp— brushing along the slope of Fenris’ throat in an abhorrent imitation of a lover’s caress: from the space just beneath his ear to the span beneath his collar, heavy when it sinks, palpable, into stillness.

But the hushed murmur isn’t quite right.

It sounds different to Astarion’s ears, distorted at first, the way noise beneath water bubbles before breaking. There’s a near-thrum to it. A musing affectation that Cazador never possessed. Accent drifting to the lilting tune of oppressive satisfaction.

The crypts are warmer, though Astarion can’t feel it. Humidity settling like a shroud throughout negative space.

Little wolf.

My dear little wolf.

How I have missed you.]

Bastien;

[illithidnapped]

He can't sleep. This place haunts in ways he'd never expected on infrequent occasion, discomfort creeping in beyond whatever baseline disorientation swims through his peripheral awareness at all times. Little whispers. A hint of a familiar scent he thought he'd forgotten somewhere over the last nine months.

It leaves him irritable, drawn thin and narrow, only a handful of steps away from whirling on his heel and biting (mostly figuratively) at the person nearest to him.

Unfortunately at present, settled along the edge of one of the Crossroad's lower plateaus (a pitiful sort of play at making camp in shadow away from the starkness of unsettling light) beneath a towering cliffside overhang, the person closest to him is Bastien— who also happens to be one of the least enjoyable people to snap his fangs at on a whim.

"That's it, I can't take anymore of this miserable stone digging into my spine," it's hissed out as he all but leaps to his feet without any visible catalyst, hackles raised as high as the set of his shoulders when he adds, coldly:

"You're welcome to come along, but I refuse to just sit here twiddling my thumbs whilst sick to my own damned stomach."

Amongst other things.

[doggish]

[It's not real.

Little wolf.

It's not real. Danarius is dead. Danarius died in the Hanged Man, he remembers his last gurgling words, the feeling of bones snapping beneath his fingers, bloodshot eyes and fetid breath, Hawke had helped, Varric had helped, Isabela and Anders and Merrill—

My dear little wolf, cold fingers caressing the span of his throat, stopping when they tap against his collar— his collar, and of course it's always been there. He always wears it. Not to mark him as a slave, no, but as a joke, see? Those savage oxmen keep their mages leashed and bound— and so here, now, is the opposite. A jeering triumph: a mage keeping his powerful pet muzzled and tethered, a show of superiority and power all in one.

Thick iron that tapers down into looping metal curved over his chest, fitted precisely to his body— and himself, clad not in his preferred clothes, but the thin vest that Danarius had deigned to offer him, a middling excuse for modesty. What is the point of all those lyrium brands if not to show them off, after all?

How I have missed you.

Danarius is dead in Thedas, but they are not in Thedas. And who's to say this is not real? Everything is so distorted in the Fade, reality the most tenuous of things; who's to say this is not Danarius come back to haunt him? Who's to say the past few years have not been a fever dream conjured up by a mind so broken with terror that it could escape only in fantasy? And he is terrified. He is so, so afraid, for it does not matter that he had killed Danarius; it does not matter that he knows (vaguely, distantly, a fact forgotten) that he is in the Crossroads. All that matters is here and now. All that matters is that Danarius has found him once again.

He chokes— something yanks at his leash, drawing him away from Astarion like a dog shooed away from a littermate. On your knees, that lilting voice commands, and there is no hesitation, no thought of disobedience: Fenris falls, pain shooting like lightning through his body as he keeps his head bowed. Good. You have not forgotten all your training, it seems.

He can smell the sea. Faintly, that sea-salt tang spilling in from some crack somewhere, but he can smell it. He can hear (oh imekari please you don't have to) the sound of flesh meeting steel, the wet grunts and howling screams of his victims reverberating up his sword and seeping into his skin. Fingers card gently through his hair, sweeping it back from his eyes, tipping his chin up to stare at—

They blur. Danarius one moment, a man he does not recognize— crimson eyes and such indifferent coldness in his expression— the next. They speak, one and the same, distinct and yet not.

Kill him.]

No. No, I—

[Hoarse. Weak. A child protesting a chore, and the figure chuckles indulgently. (Not real, some tiny part of him screams, not real this can't be happening this cannot be real, but there Danarius is anyway, living and breathing, one hand resting on his staff, the other reaching for his pet).]

Please, master—

[Kill him, pet, so that we can go home. All will be forgiven, and what a lie that is, but what choice does he have? His master will always find him. He is inevitable. Fleeing him is like trying to flee the moon; there is no escape, and he is duller than the stupidest of elves for thinking that there was. His master always gets what he wants. His master always wins.

He wavers. Trembles there on the stone floor, his eyes rolling over to stare helplessly at Astarion, and there's another chuckle. Impatience is woven through Danarius' tone, barely masked; his master does not tolerate disobedience. Did you make him your new master? Sleeping at the foot of his bed night after night, oh, such devotion . . . perhaps you thought he would protect you if you skulked at his doorway long enough.

No, little wolf. You belong to me.]

I, [and some part of him tries to rouse, buckling on trembling legs, a flame of defiance,] belong to no one. I will not—

[But somehow, he is standing. But somehow, there is a blade in his hand. But somehow, he is covered in blood, and his expression is so cold and blank. Unseeing, unfeeling . . . a weapon, a feral dog let off his chain, and nothing more.

Cazador's voice cuts through the darkness, musing only for his spawn to hear: And when you defeat him, Astarion . . . shall I feast upon him, or turn him?

No right answer. No way out. No hope, only ever the illusion of it; a grand game that they will never, ever win.]

[illithidnapped]

[Cold terror forever defies logic. Like a miasmatic nightmare, the gaps between all rational possibilities blurs itself smoothly into nonexistence— or at the very least into unnoticeable camouflage, slithering unseen between far greater horrors. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t a chance the hazy mess of slick architecture and rotting crypts they now reside in somehow houses Danarius’ misbegotten soul alongside Cazador's shifting reflection. It feels too certain to be anything else.

I know you never meant to run, boy.

A hand across the back of Astarion's neck. Commanding and cold— a distinctive, unmistakable lack of life clinging to their roaming tips. Something he hasn’t felt in well over half a year (creatures in Thedas are so warm). He’s drenched in finery beneath them. Gilded filigree across thin silk, lavish enough to mask all monstrosity. One glance towards his palms and his anchor shard— his only constant, waking comfort— is gone. Vanished without a trace, as though it’d never existed at all.

Fool.

Pitiful, pitiable fool. Pouring his heart into the thinnest of transparent tricks.

I must admit, I am disappointed. You are usually a far better at bewitching your prey. Did you hesitate? Did you hold back? Did you think it would keep him safe? Have you not learned better after all these years? Vitriol drips from between overlong teeth as Cazador's envisaged silhouette sinks closer, the edges of his form rippling like sootsmoke. Yet I think he means to kill you.

(Bloody and bladed, that languishing Blue Wraith. Standing on unsteady footing despite the way Fenris mutters in withered protest against the glassiness in his own set gaze, as if it's something to be stopped.)

Correct your mistakes, boy. Bring him to me, gift me a new toy to break in your place, and I’ll spare you all the pain you’ve earned in your misbehavior.

It’s a lie. It’s always a lie.

Cazador spares nothing. Least of all a runaway. His only runaway.

And still, even knowing better, Astarion does. Compelled as ever out of sheer terrified instinct, he does. Like fighting dogs, the two of them— already he’s on his feet and prowling, glass-black daggers in hand, and maybe there’s such cruel amusement in that, too: does a vampire spawn measure up to a lyrium monstrosity? Is a fortune’s worth of branded lines comparable to a single, corruptive bite? They circle one another to the tune of jeering whispers— the host of mortal vassals Cazador kept around like a vulgar menagerie of corruption and cruelty alike, voices Astarion can recognize from years upon years of catering to their wicked wants. The Szarr family itself; the chittering, mindless spawn in the walls, abandoned to decrepitude for their failings; Cazador himself. Danarius.

His first strike isn’t as fearful as the hammering of his own heart; he rushes into it without warning, careful to keep from lunging in across Fenris’ front where a heavy blade might easily come swinging down with only a flick of tensed muscle. More to his side, wild and shockingly strong (is it adrenaline, or is he home once more), quicker than a blink. A breath.]

I’m— [No, he can’t say he’s sorry. He doesn’t have that right when he’s struggling to upset the whole of Fenris’ balance— his freedom— in a single, wrenching shove to force him back against a nearby wall, blade tucked in at the edge of his throat.

Soft words. Softened eyes, hooded in a way that’s meant to soothe. Be calm, darling. Just surrender.

Feel the weight of his breath, the press of a straining touch. Pleasant. Lilac and leather oil almost cloying in its pervasive presence.] It’s easier if you don’t fight it. He’ll be more merciful. You’ll stand a better chance of—

No. [No. It’s all lies. All the bile he sipped from for two centuries, swearing poison was wine if only because it was better than the crushing weight of oblivion.

But he’s held freedom in his grasp, now. And the ugly mirror to their first night at one another’s side, carved from the way he’s shoved Fenris flat to stony walls, staring up into startled green eyes isn’t enough to erase the memory of far warmer spaces than this.

'Freedom suits you, Astarion. More than it does most.'

He clenches his fingertips. The pommel of his dagger bites back when he silently counts out each second held purely of his own volition.

One. Two. Three.

The physical always helps. He’d learned that while being tortured, the slide of the knife beneath his skin and he found, oh so quickly, how to muddy the worst of it all by locking his teeth or his fingers, fighting to count the constellations in high ceilings overhead. The snap of the whip. The grains in dark wood while calloused palms splayed low across his back.]

This isn’t real.

I won’t kill you. Whatever’s doing this, it—

[He remembers that hateful castle that Riftwatch had unintentionally unearthed not long ago. How everything had seemed so real, even to the touch, malicious spirits trying only to keep them there, enslaved by pain and poisonous dread alike. He forces that memory sharp against the crushing weight of a desire to sink his teeth into Fenris’ throat.

To crawl, scraping and coated in his own companion’s blood, on his knees towards his master for absolution. Maybe he’ll keep them both— no, Cazador would only swap the consequences of Astarion's laughably useless petition: if Astarion asked for leniency, Fenris would no doubt die.

But his fingers flex. They tighten, all of Astarion's own accord. And there’s a spark of heat across his palm where an anchor shard should normally be.

Normally.

Because he belongs to Thedas, now. Not Toril.]

It’s not them.

Emet-Selch;

[illithidnapped]

We’ve been wandering for hours, now. [What a whiner he is when the mood strikes. All-powerful creature of the night turned slouching, snarling pest. Snitty if only because he isn’t getting his way.]

All I’m asking for is five minutes in the shade. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable for it, either.

[They aren’t far from a darkened overhang, in fact. Some place where the blinding light seems a little less oppressive. Where the whispers might die down just a little if only because they won’t be utterly exposed to what passes for elements, here.

His footsteps press forward— then stop, turning.

It has the added effect of making him look more like a dog trying to coax its owner into walking. This way, come on, stop dallying.

Red eyes so utterly expectant in their unblinking demands.]

[arkitect]

Surely you can stand it a bit longer than this-- honestly, one would think you were older than I, with such a lack of stamina. You've maintained it well enough before.

[Whatever happened to teasing Emet-Selch about his old bones, hm? He trudges along, still, then-- pauses, roughly where Astarion has stopped.]

[illithidnapped]

[Well enough before, he says, and oh, if that already present bristling doesn't rise by a noticeable measure, a few crinkling ripples working their way across the bridge of Astarion's nose.

Honestly, Hades.]

That's different, you know. There's a reward to the expulsion of bottled fervor. Not to mention adrenaline, pleasure— [Astarion pauses only briefly, lips curling despite his impressively soured mood.]

Release.

[With a softer noise pulled just from under his breath, he turns once more, satisfied at the unspoken agreement of that towering Ascian trudging along at his side, taking his first few steps into dimming light.]

Here the only thing I'm liable to find is a headache for my trouble. A pack of wild Venatori— or worse, corrupted templars. Abominations.

[He lifts a few arched fingertips, gently scratching at the reddened lines across his chin, running from the near middle downwards. Granted he isn't supposed to, but look, it's hard, okay.

Don't judge him]

[doggish]

[It's not them.

Impossible. That's his first thought, so long and strong it's a wonder he doesn't yell it out. Impossible, terror striking at his heart, his face going pale as he stares at Astarion. How could it not be? When he has a collar around his throat, when all he has to do is glance over to see his master smiling in sadistic amusement, when everything about this scenario only confirms every night terror and haunting anxiety he has ever had— that there is no escape. That freedom was nothing more than a dream, easily snatched away. That he is nothing without Danarius; that a slave is the only purpose he ever ought to have aspired towards.

Impossible, impossible, something in him howls in terror, bouncing about his mind and growing stronger with every iteration. Impossible, impossible—

And then another voice, soft like steel, murmurs: no.

No. Not an impossibility, he thinks. It seems it. Certainly Danarius wished for him to think that way. But no— and like a river bursting through a dam, all of it floods back. He had managed it once before, hadn't it? No— three times, in fact. First at harbor, and then in wake of the massacre on the beach. And then, finally, in the Hanged Man. That last, vital effort, that burst of energy— the word is Master, his master had sighed, and not half an hour later Fenris had him dangling by his throat, miserably choking, bones breaking—

This isn't real, and it all shatters at once.

Danarius. Cazador. The spectators, his collar, his clothing— all of it dissipates like so much smoke, vanishing from one heartbeat to the next. Nausea churns in his stomach, bile rising in his throat; Fenris chokes, his eyes squeezing shut as he reels— not real, and of course it isn't. The cave they're in (for of course they're in a cave, mundane and ordinary, craggy and damp-smelling, but not a crypt) is offensively ordinary, innocuous as anything.]

Fenhedis!

[It's a snarl, but the tension seeps out of him as he ceases struggling against Astarion. His blade drops, his body slumping against the wall behind him. Twice now he has found himself tricked by demons; twice he has been a fool, rushing forward in a panic, only to find himself useless and in need of rescuing.

Pathetic.]

That was—

[His mind staggers, reels, but—]

Cazador?

[And then, the puzzle pieces swiftly falling into place:]

That was his home. His crypt.

[A pale elven face, crimson eyes and coldness radiating from every inch of him . . . so unlike Danarius, and yet so much worse. Details flit back in the longer time passes: those chattering, mindless creatures surrounding them, whispering from the walls; the way that voice had rung out, inevitable as armageddon, orders that had seemed to strike Astarion to his very bones . . .

(And they aren't out of it yet, he knows, but give him a moment to reel).]

Our memories blurred. That was . . . that was how I used to look.

[The collar. The clothing. All of it was as it once was— and so the same must be true for Astarion. Being so dressed up, fine clothes and delicate appearance . . . it means nothing, of course. It does not change his opinion in any way. But it matters, in the same way Fenris' collar had mattered. It's a stark reminder not of who they are, but what they were, miserable and molded, creatures forged for a singular purpose.]

[illithidnapped]

[In a strange way it mirrors that first night between them. Astarion can’t recognize it now, but— maybe later, yes. Maybe there in recollection it’ll make more overarching, narrative sense, as if the world itself is a story that revolves entirely around old pain and fresher memories. As if it’s something that can be made sense of at all: that there’s a kind of cyclicality to his scarring, and it isn’t just demons in dark places or the ghost of a hand wrapped tight around his throat.

A fantasy, of course. But sometimes that’s needed. Even for someone so practical and bitter as him.

He can still hear hushed voices. He still smells, faintly, wet mold and stagnating water— but when clarity hits in the span of a blink (and he sees the face of his friend staring back at him with renewed focus, no collar, no wisps of longer hair or locked purpose in grim features) his hands are gloved once more.

So yes, it is so much like that first night. Stitched through with the same oscillating slide between what dread demands (Astarion will return home in a blink of snuffed magic; Fenris’ last living link will stride in and force him to his knees, finishing what was started; Cazador, Tevinter, mindless servitude without hope) and what they promise each other:

'I will die before I allow him to take you back.'

'Run if you need to, but my fangs aren’t just for show.'

'This isn’t real.'

'It isn’t them.'

Back. Push back against it. Against the hissing in the walls and the ghost across his spine, and he stays pressed to Fenris for a few beats longer just to cling to how that narrow contact grounds him in a sense.

His presence like a promise. Something he can tether himself to when he’s so at risk for slipping back into pervasive, rotting fear.]

The catacombs beneath his estate.  [Yes.

And finally he pulls back, daggers tucked loose against his palms.]

I heard his voice. Danarius. [It had to have been; it was the only sound that didn’t fit neatly into Astarion’s own memories. The one that fights now, still, to break the surface of their won peace alongside whispers that grasp like fingers, hungry for anything at all. Too distorted to comprehend, some mixed ripple of everything they've immediately dispelled.

It’s forced out of his mind.]

I—

[Forgive me, but the words never quite make it there.] We need to get out of here.

Or at least— just talk to me. Keep the rest from getting into our heads.

[He puts one dagger away completely, open hand held— palm upright— idly in the air between them before it’s flexed beneath his own leaden stare, thinking. He isn’t counting seconds, only weighing something. Only—

Offering it wordlessly to the elf at his side. A difference of small inches. The lifting of his gaze.

It might be ridiculous, leaning on something so outwardly childish at a time like this, but when reality’s being pulled like a rug from beneath their heels, pride won’t do anyone any good.]

[doggish]

[I heard his voice, and though something in him squirms, to his surprise, it isn't distaste over Astarion having heard. It's nausea for the reminder of Danarius, yes, as well as his own humiliation at being so easily tricked, but . . . what is there for Astarion to discover that he has not already? They hadn't— and there's a lurching moment of anxiety, a rush of fear quickly quelled as he sorts through his memories— he hadn't seen anything too damning. Nothing that he hadn't obliquely known before. The appearance of a collar, the clothing . . . humiliating, perhaps, but their horrors are so similar in tone if not execution that he cannot balk over Astarion having seen it.

It's fine. It's fine, he tells himself, and yet the rush of cold air when Astarion steps back stings against his skin. He swallows thickly, his head jerking into a sharp nod as the other elf asserts that. We need to get out of here, yes, talk to me, yes, he can do that. He can come up with something that isn't rooted in the past, for perhaps by talking they can banish the last of these ghosts.

A slow exhale. Already his mind casts about for stories of the past, stories that are mundane enough not to spark any emotions (and feed whatever errant spirits haunt this place). He takes a step forward—

Oh.

Stupidly, he stalls out. He actually blinks for a moment, unsure as to what the correct course of action is, for he has never—

Look. Presumably somewhere in his childhood, his mother or Varania had held his hand. (He can, vaguely, remember a small hand in his own, tiny fingers clenched tightly against the press of a crowd, but that's neither here nor there). There were certainly times when one of the Fog Warriors had brushed their fingers against his own, although that was more instructional or briefly affectionate than anything longstanding. And certainly no one in the Kirkwall crew ever had; they weren't that kind of friends. No one in Kirkwall, typically, is that kind of friend.

So he doesn't quite know what to do at first, starved for affection as he is. A split second later and reality kicks in, his own instincts screaming at him not to be such an idiot before it gets taken away, and he reaches for him. Slips their fingers together and tries not to think about how assuring it is, having such a tether in the darkness.]

I hate fish.

[Literally the most inane thing in the world, but it's the first thing he can think to say. A tentative step forward, and then another, in what he hopes is the right direction.]

It was one of the first things I discovered in freedom. I had never . . . [No, he isn't thinking about Danarius.] Well. I had never had it before. But those that found me after my escape lived near the sea. They healed me and fed me, but it was a miserable week before I was well enough to hunt my own food.

We lived in Seheron's jungles, [because that sounds odd if he doesn't explain.] Not far from the coast. They were a group of Qunari independents, a small unit of a greater whole. Independent and proud, bowing to no one but their own customs, refusing to give in to occupying forces . . . I admired them deeply.

[He still does. Idly his fingers flex, not so much squeezing as simply adjusting, the leather of Astarion's gloves pliant against his fingertips.]

But as they were a group of freedom fighters— with an escaped, highly sought after slave trailing after them— we could not simply stroll into the nearest city and buy things. So I ate fish, disgustingly slimy though it was, and spent my second week learning how to hunt in the jungle.

Mobius;

[illithidnapped]

Can you sense anything? Do Seekers have that sort of trick up their sleeves?

[Astarion asks mildly from where he paces in darker shadows: this section of building blocked off from piercing light by what looks to be crumbling ruins— elven mirror frames, all emptied, though it might prove a struggle for Mobius to pick out what lies where the further they trudge on into darkness.

Astarion, with glinting eyes that are significant kinder in places like this, hardly seems to notice.]

I don’t see why this wasn’t a purely Warden expedition anyway, if you ask me. They’re, what, attuned to all this? The corruption Corypheus houses.

[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.

[favoriteanalyst]

[He has to bite his tongue to keep himself from correcting Astarion. He'd nearly forgotten the man had convinced himself that Mobius is a Seeker, and in some ways that's funnier and easier to deal with. He can still answer the questions with a vast degree of honesty without actually correcting the mistake. No, he can't sense anything. Seekers probably do not have that sort of trick up their sleeve.

Wishes that he could, because this darkness is giving him a bit of a spook. Not for it being dark, of course. But like everything else here, his human senses perceive it all differently. Unsettling and off-kilter. Head-spinning at first, but at least after a time it settles into a nagging feeling that creeps along his skin. The light at least is a blessing, if an odd and somewhat sickening one. In the shafts of it in the hallways before, he could see the bits and bobs of destruction and decay, strange frames with some cracked and broken and dust, and some merely dusty.

But now as they move out of the light, the wrongness intensifies. Heightened senses, but somehow heightened in all the wrong ways, sideways. He doesn't stumble, but it almost feels like he no longer knows which way is up.

He sticks close to Astarion. Close as he wants to dare without gripping hold of him like a frightened child. It isn't pitch here, yet, but his eyes don't seem to be adjusting well to the dark as they normally would. He hopes his ally will give him a heads up if he's about to stumble into a hole.]

They are, in a sense. As I understand it, the corruption in the blood courses through them and gives them a sort of connection. [He frowns. Better that Wardens tend to Warden business, sure. Or elves to elf business.] There may not be enough Wardens about to do a proper expedition. Makes it easier if the rest of us can find them a clear path first, and have the ones we've got focus on whatever is happening.

Complicated history. [If Astarion wants to keep up the pretense of being a native, Mobius will...not necessarily directly call him out about it. But he still might not be aware of the story.] More in recent years. Used to be everyone saw them as venerated heroes. War's messed everything up, turned it all upside down.

[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]

[It’s not like Astarion to be attuned to— no, it is, in fact. He reads too well the shift in moods and emotions, and he clings to that knowledge like a tool at all times: something in his pocket to pry, to nag, to utilize, if and when he needs an edge.

So yes, he feels it. Yes, he’s acutely aware of Mobius’ own limitations in the growing dark— as one discomfort (nauseating light and too-harsh sound) gives way to another in the form of shadow that almost has a clinging sort of weight to it. The echoes of their footsteps hissing like the start of someone speaking. Soft. Uncomfortable.

Astarion’s long ears strain to make sense of them, even as his mind presses back.]

Mm. Corypheus didn’t do much to help. [He knows about it only because of Ellis, in truth. The full measure of what’s happened— just how muddied things have actually become.

Just how terrible the twist in the Wardens' shared tale had been.

Astarion reaches out, gently steering Mobius back towards him with a hand across his forearm, rather than letting him stumble headlong into a break in their path.]

Does it frighten you?

[Corypheus. The Blight. Wardens and their ties.

Everything.]

[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.]

[favoriteanalyst]

Something might've happened down the line eventually. [Slow tectonic shifts, rather than collapsing all at once.] But no, didn't help.

[And like Templars, there are those who survived the shifting and collapsing and still remain, still remain in the light of the Maker and are still willing to do their jobs and fight for what's right and just in the world. He wonders if Adrasteia is going to be here. Would make sense.

He breathes out, a subtle surprise and subtle relaxation, at the guiding hand. He doesn't want to be the child clinging to someone's skirts and jumping at shadows--or whatever's in the shadows. But this place was not meant for someone like him. It makes the lyrium in him feel like it's humming at a strange frequency. His steps are careful, but steady. He will not lose his way or trip over himself, or he'll do his damned best about it.]

I think only those who are truly well and lost wouldn't be at least a little bit scared. One uncertainty to another. From war to unease to war to uncertainty to war and strangeness everywhere you look? [If Astarion means to encompass everything, then yes. It frightens him.] If you mean Wardens, no, they don't frighten me. But the Blight, Maker. Of course it does.

Can't let a little fear get in the way of the job, though. You?

[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.

[illithidnapped]

[Time has a way of doing that all on its own, true— even Astarion, contrary as he likes to be, can’t help but admit that much.]

Arguably, one could. But I know your heart would never let you, steadfast little menace that it is.

[In fact, Astarion would turn tail and head back at this very moment, now that the path they’re on has turned so uncomfortably constricting; even his own acclimated sight seems to be failing him now— the radius of his world narrowed to only a few steps ahead at best.

The ground beneath their feet feels wet. And it does, admittedly, smell of something like rot.]

On second thought...

[The rest, he’s trying actively to ignore. Something like a nagging pressure along the base of his neck. His shoulders. Likely the wind.

Likely nothing.]

I’m...starting to think we may have gone too far. [That stench, so far as either the Blight or Venatori are concerned, isn’t doing wonders for Astarion’s own nerves.]

[favoriteanalyst]

The other side of this place looked like it sloped up in a pretty 'closer to the goal' way. [Just to point out. The reason they even started going through these ruins. But he wonders if this place is like the Fade. In theory, what you see is not always what you get. Things shifting and twisting around. Left is right and up is down and now you've lost your way while walking in a straight line.

He's never been, but the stories the mages tell are fantastic in the classical sense. Would he want to walk in the realm of the Maker, in the primordial chaotic soup of dreams and being? He's not sure.

Unless it feels like the Crossroads but amplified, then he's pretty sure he wants nothing to do with it. What in the name of blessed Andraste is that smell? It wasn't there before.

Rot. Decay. Not of crumbling old stone but a breakdown of living matter. Feels like it should be accompanied by the buzz of flies, and yet all he hears is their breathing, their now-damp footsteps. Is it possible it's akin to rotted seaweed strewn across the shore rather than the dead?

(Or are they lambs to slaughter?)]

It'll take us a while to go back, and it didn't look like there was a way around. We'd have to find another path.

Do things...live here, do you think? Is this a place where creatures could exist? [Not spirits, spirits are another matter. Things. That go bump in the night, that eat up wayward travelers. Things that may require the sword at his hip. He wishes he knew, but his research on eluvians and subsequently the Crossroads has not exactly been a focus previously, mostly references in passing, the occasional musing of a Brother in passing, and many texts in elven scripts he can't decipher.] Should've brought a torch.

[Somehow he gets the impression that firelight would even be reduced or even snuffed out from this oppressive dark as though a physical blanket to smother them. Maybe it isn't things in the dark that are after them. Maybe it's the dark.]