[As a rule, necessity hardly makes anything more palatable. Least of all in Fenris' case, who has suffered more than any of them combined— the terrified, savage-eyed creature he'd happened across one unexpected night while hunting larger game, barely prowling on its last legs. Too stubborn to succumb. Too stricken with mistrustful panic to find calm in its would-be final moments.
Not a night goes by that Vakares doesn't remember what it was like. And in the iterative overlap of tonight already, foresight is a shriveled thing beside him, stretched out in the empty space where Astarion had been; they have no choice but to live within blunt realities, untouched. It is unfair of Vakares to pin this to their future, and it is necessary.
And that final facet will always matter more to their sire than it will to them.]
Yet he fixates upon approval.
[Blunt realities. So unfairly blunt.] They will feed him emptiness and call it admiration the first chance they find. He will grow lonely— and look for me everywhere but in my coffin. [He would not look to you, the only other creature closest to his heart.] You are right: he would make an exceptional lord, and yet his weaknesses would still be preyed on before I dared to close my eyes.
[He doesn't reach between them when he shifts to follow suit, turning by tempered inches to find the measure of that crimson stare (something distractable within his chest catching like a shallow snag once done. There and gone again).]
You, Fenris, have always seen through the procession, the false flattery. The pointlessness of their feigned affection means nothing to you, only their actions. [A vampire that resents such petty excess, having resented it since before he'd grown into his fangs.] You would strike before you bowed your head in deference to anything as small as politesse.
What Astarion can't grasp, you do.
You compliment each other. Strengthen each other. I could no more force a mantle on one of you than I could condemn the other to a century upon his knees [oh yes, he'd heard what was spoken behind closed doors] and I see no reason why the way things have always been for our kin is the way it has to be for the two I cherish most. Not when it could be better.
no subject
Not a night goes by that Vakares doesn't remember what it was like. And in the iterative overlap of tonight already, foresight is a shriveled thing beside him, stretched out in the empty space where Astarion had been; they have no choice but to live within blunt realities, untouched. It is unfair of Vakares to pin this to their future, and it is necessary.
And that final facet will always matter more to their sire than it will to them.]
Yet he fixates upon approval.
[Blunt realities. So unfairly blunt.] They will feed him emptiness and call it admiration the first chance they find. He will grow lonely— and look for me everywhere but in my coffin. [He would not look to you, the only other creature closest to his heart.] You are right: he would make an exceptional lord, and yet his weaknesses would still be preyed on before I dared to close my eyes.
[He doesn't reach between them when he shifts to follow suit, turning by tempered inches to find the measure of that crimson stare (something distractable within his chest catching like a shallow snag once done. There and gone again).]
You, Fenris, have always seen through the procession, the false flattery. The pointlessness of their feigned affection means nothing to you, only their actions. [A vampire that resents such petty excess, having resented it since before he'd grown into his fangs.] You would strike before you bowed your head in deference to anything as small as politesse.
What Astarion can't grasp, you do.
You compliment each other. Strengthen each other. I could no more force a mantle on one of you than I could condemn the other to a century upon his knees [oh yes, he'd heard what was spoken behind closed doors] and I see no reason why the way things have always been for our kin is the way it has to be for the two I cherish most. Not when it could be better.
[The faintest pause, before (in all sincerity):]
Do you see it differently?