There's no cowing when he exhales. No simpering sightlines in his posture. What he says is sharp and determined each time he deigns to say anything at all, cutting through the air like a knife, and equally as honed once it hits Astarion's own ears: either he was a long, long time away from his former Master, or he was so well cherished he never once learned fear.
Either way, like the rest of this, it feels unreal.]
'Was' is a very specific tense for such an important pet.
[Unlike Fenris, Astarion can't find it in himself to be direct in any line of questioning.
[Ah, but this part he minds less. There's no less anger, of course, and there never will be— but some of the bitterness seeps out of his tone, replaced by something far more satisfied. A twisted smirk flashes over Fenris' face, there and gone, as he deliberately meets Astarion's gaze.]
But was is the only tense he will ever use now. I ran from him a decade— more than a decade ago now, [he realizes abruptly.] And when he tired of my killing all his bounty hunters and slavers and came after me himself, I broke his neck and left his corpse to rot in the dump.
[And how bright it sounds. How heroic he makes himself seem, and it isn't that he's trying to puff himself up, understand. He isn't a gloryhound, seeking Astarion's awe nor his praise. But Fenris has dealt with so many runaways now; he's dealt with so many more who quake in terror at the thought of heading to Tevinter, certain that once they're taken, that's all there ever is.
So he does not say: I was so scared. He does not say: if my friends had sold me out, I would have buckled and broken, no matter how many years of freedom I had behind me. He does not mention how his stomach had curdled with humiliation and rage (the boy is rather talented, isn't he?); he makes it into a fairy tale, and maybe it's for his sake as much as Astarion's.
[Everything present reiterates that tale. In the shortest imaginable span already, he'd cut down monsters— correction: demons— the likes of which Astarion has never seen. Misshapen grotesqueness too gruesome for even Cazador's bloodstained palette, though at most by a thinner margin, unmasked.
The pale elf tallies that with everything he knows thus far, and soundly at the top of that list stands a resolute fact he can't deny: no matter where he's wound up, wracked with strain and his own blood and the oddity of needing air, Astarion isn't safe. Hasn't ever been safe. But the striking creature sat nearby, knowing all the right things to say and yet sparing nothing for strangeness, might be the closest thing to that unattainable sense of safety.
And certainly the most inviting aspect of it.
Astarion stares too long despite himself. At the lopsided grin still flecked red along its border. At the ease and pride of it, spelled out only in the bottom line: he's dead, I left his broken body in the street, what of it? I want that, Astarion thinks hungrily. His stomach suddenly feeling even more barren than before under the loose lines of his torn shirt.
When he finally edges nearer to sit down fully by the fire, he isn't wary anymore.]
[In the distance, Princess Horse snorts just once, her sole contribution to the thought of Astarion sitting down. He does smell unnerving, but she's a mare that's been through quite a few bloody battles; perhaps he oughtn't approach her, but she won't raise a fuss now that he's sitting properly.
Fenris' mouth twists up into another brief smile as Astarion's posture finally relaxes— but unlike before, it isn't an unpleasant thing. There's something comforting about the other elf letting down his guard and settling in fully, though even Fenris can't say if it's because of shared camaraderie or sheer loneliness . . . ah, but it doesn't matter. It's just nice to have someone else by the fire, even for a single night.
Especially someone who understands, even a little. It's a sickeningly sweet feeling to speak of this to another slave, he has long since learned.]
Arrogant, perhaps, is the best word to encompass him. Cruel and sadistic, sometimes thoughtlessly so— but more often than not, it was a calculated thing. He was a mage— a magister, if you have such things in your— your world. Not without talent, and with more than enough wealth to fund his endless forays into the realms of blood magic.
And such things were necessary, for above all else, he craved power. He longed to climb the endless echelons of the Tevinter empire, and he was successful . . . for a time.
[And now he's dead. And now he's dead, the sentence echoing over and over in Fenris' mind, cooling the customary rage that always comes with remembering Danarius. He's dead and so are all his kin, and I am the one who triumphed, and it never soothes quite like he wants it to, but it helps.
A beat, and then, with a horrible, sardonic sort of smile, he adds:]
[That Astarion's attention only briefly flickers towards the mare (mostly) minding her own business is a testament to rapt engrossment. Something so ingrained at the smallest sampling that not even Astarion's own fear can tear him off its back right now.]
Blood magic. [Is the sunken sound that leads in brittle disbelief.] Yes. That sounds familiar. [What a sick joke, that even entire realms away, masters are ever the same.
What a miracle that it's breakable.]
And this is the first time in two centuries I haven't been able to feel his control over me from it. Or— [His body blinks. He has to breathe. Swallow on occasion. Beneath his ribs his heartbeat is a colting upswing of nausea that won't subside the longer he looks down towards his fingertips and finds his nails, well. Nails. No talons. No sign of clipping, only the soft beds of thinner outlines.] anything of him at all.
[No, on second observation, his tongue catches the backs of his fangs— canines and front teeth still dagger-sharp when and where he presses down. What of his eyes, then? His reflection? His deathly aversion to sunlight or running water?
It's too much to hope for. The next jolt from his pulse makes him certain he'll be sick, and he has to suck in air through his nostrils over the hard clap of his fingertips across his mouth when he doubles over just to keep it a suspicion, rather than fact. When he glances back up, it's with a question on his lips.]
[Two centuries, and make no mistake: he marvels over the words. He does not question if he'd heard it right, not when he damn well knows he did. Two centuries, and yes, he knows that this elf came from another world, and so presumably the blood magic there can do things it might well be incapable of here, but . . . to stretch out a lifespan to such unnatural lengths? He doesn't doubt Astarion speaks truly, but gods, what a hell that would be. What a nightmare to spend so long in captivity.
No wonder he reels. No wonder he hunches over, looking as though he might vomit. No wonder his eyes are such a strange color, and distantly, understanding without comprehending at all, Fenris wonders what else this master of his turned him into. Something not quite elven and yet not quite not; something, perhaps, so uniquely different from anyone and everyone else in his world . . .
(No wonder Fenris' heart suddenly aches, every thundering beat echoing in awful, terrible empathy).]
Yes.
[Oh, yes, the answer swiftly offered and softly spoken. He lifts a hand, palm-up, offering it as a display: one thick line of lyrium splitting into five channels, each carefully vivisecting the center of his fingers.]
I was not born with lyrium in my veins. These markings are his legacy.
[Look. Look and see how similar we are, though our mutilations differ. And though he would not allow it with any other newcomer, oh, he will keep his hand displayed for as long as Astarion likes. He'll even let him touch it, if it comes to that. Take what you need from me.]
It took him decades of experimentation to discover the exact kind of blood magic necessary to make such a procedure not just survivable, but successful. And he never managed it beyond me.
It's a familiar score, isn't it? The gouged-in brand of someone else's vision for the full span of your existence— eclipsing it— more than just your body or your looks, it's the measure of everything you know, inescapable without further mutilation: like the attached chain grown into skin for being too damned tight, the mutt will always have its scars even if it tears the leash line loose.
Astarion's mouth goes thin. Even with one eye firmly closed, his expression is both utterly transparent and entirely unreadable. An itch crawling up his spine before he wonders if the tatters of his shirt—
No. No, he knows where the borders are. Nothing's visible.]
....lyrium?
[No lilt to his voice. No songbird cadence. He's angled in and the brightness of the firelight falls on pale features in just the right way to emphasize how blatantly he's let his own doggish defenses slip.]
[So lyrium isn't common across worlds. And why should it be? But then again: why shouldn't it be? He wonders vaguely how mages in Astarion's world power their mana, fuel their spells— and further than that, how the dwarven castes make their money, how they consolidate their power . . . it doesn't matter. Certainly he won't ask tonight, curious though he is.
No, Astarion is more important. The way he angles himself towards him, all bright eyes and trusting expression, matters so much more.]
An ore that fuels magic. It is the basis of most magic in this world.
[He wants to move. To help him clean himself off, maybe, or see to that swollen eye— and sooner or later, he will. But he's equally wary of scaring this elf off, no matter how invested he seems now— and and so all Fenris does is offer his hand a little further forward, letting Astarion peer as he likes.]
Rare, and astronomically expensive in the quantities I sport. But it gives me an edge like no one else in this world— and such an edge was incredibly useful when I served as bodyguard for a power-climbing magister.
[With a wry little smirk, he adds:]
It has its drawbacks. Ignoring all the chronic, endless pain and the question of what it has done to my lifespan, I also sometimes have trouble staying solid. Objects and people both can and will fly through me at times, especially if I'm not expecting it.
[A thought occurs to him, and he adds more seriously:]
The monster that is terrorizing this world— the one I warned you of before. He uses what is known as red lyrium, which looks exactly as it sounds. If you see jagged red rocks bursting out of the earth, do not touch them. Do not even go near them, alluring though they may seem. They corrupt and cause madness, from which I have never witnessed full recovery.
[In a rare show, Astarion listens. Completely. Earnestly. Without a single vivisected thought aside from his initial kneejerk fascination over the concept of being immaterial without choice. A part of— no, not the Weave, then, but something that must serve as it in this world. It bypasses the immediate talk (albeit not completely; anyone once-branded can tell you that there's no overlooking the wretchedness of its presence when it strolls into a conversation like it has and always will belong there), but the temptation to ask to see it unobstructed sits front and center right until the end.
A fortune. Anguish irreversible. Pain.
Astarion has a shock of fallow green bored into his skin like glass, and it aches worse than any splinter. Imagining that on a grander scale— tracing with his eyes the places where those markings vanish behind thick leather and plate and rough fur—
It must be torture, whether it was designed to be or not (and Astarion has his suspicions the man's master didn't damned well care which was true), inevitably making both true.
Gods, but he still wants to see it for himself. Like an overeager pup, he's tipped forwards just a little more, almost twitching— before the idea of a world-ending nightmare brings about its own sort of sobriety, and a worried glance towards his own arm.]
What of yours, then? [Another cast-off look. Another momentary pass.] If red lyrium corrupts, aren't you in danger? Is there any way to stop it?
I stay away from red lyrium, and in that way, my own stays uncorrupted.
[He thinks. He hopes. He has no real idea, frankly, and trust that such thoughts have been the source of so many nightmares. Fenris pushes that thought away; instead, he focuses himself more on the elf in front of him. There's such a desperate hunger in his face right now, lean and starved and needy. He listens to Fenris' tale without flinching nor growing uncomfortable with misplaced pity, watching him so earnestly that you might almost mistake it for a discomfiting interest . . .
If you did not know, perhaps, what it is to yearn for validation. To seek understanding through another's pain . . . and Fenris will not assume. But he wonders quietly, and that is enough.]
I . . . will not claim to know what it would do to the marking on your hand. Lyrium and the Fade go hand in hand, so to speak— it's why, I suspect, it stung so badly when I touched your marking. But I do not think you have quite so much to fear as I do. And either way: it is an easy substance to avoid, for it is obvious enough.
[And then, quietly, his eyes focused on that desperately hungry expression:]
If you stay with me beyond tonight, and choose to join me on the journey to Kirkwall . . . I will point out some as we pass, so you might know it and avoid it.
Don't you dare. [Could be the start of a mildly-formed joke if it weren't for the way sincere alertness throttles high throughout wan features: survival instincts front and center, stubborn in how avidly it all comes cutting in when Astarion would otherwise (no, should otherwise) be mindful of his bearing for that selfsame purpose.
He only has one lifeline out here. One.
And he can't afford to lose it.]
If the idea is stay far enough away from it as possible at all times or risk losing yourself for good, believe me, red equals bad is all the description I'll ever need. And that goes for you, too.
[But the quickness of his tone abruptly hits his ears with renewed realization; like clockwork, the rag's folded over in his fingers, busy now with stubbornly swiping away the flaking peels of ruddy dried blood from his arms. Not so near to apologetic as having clearly self-corrected.
He's not some beaten animal (not fully, anyway). He knows he doesn't need to grovel. But as is the case from all prior reasoning, he can't go treating the man like one of his self-destructive siblings, either. Explanations and charm. There's no other way about it.]
Doubly so if it's something that Corypheus is aiming to make use of. Too careful is not careful enough, trust me on that.
[Though the command earns a raised eyebrow, it's the sudden self-correction that catches Fenris' interest. It's good in that the other elf clearly knows he overstepped (although of all ways to overstep, an abundance of caution isn't so bad), but it's interesting, too. Interesting that he can overstep, frankly, if he's so fresh out of enslavement, and distantly, Fenris approves.]
I did not mean to go near it. But it juts out of the landscape regardless, and we will pass some sooner or later.
[Gentle: not a correction, but an explanation. A moment, and he adds:]
You will have more luck if you use water, you know. Dried blood is stubborn enough to get out as it is. And injuries rarely clot if you let them bleed freely.
[He inches closer, one hand held out expectantly: give it to me, and he won't pull nor assume, but the offer is there.]
[Think, and he shouldn't. Think, and he wants to. Be charming, Astarion. Be pleasant, Astarion. You're bleeding from the head and dragging your fractured leash behind you on the collar that's still attached; the rules that applied in the shadows of that city never stopped applying here just because there's nothing stifling his body. His free will.]
If you don't know everything about its influence, you could be half a bloody continent away and it still might not be enough in the end. What if he changes something about it? What if passive exposure does something to you over time?
You're— well.
I suppose it goes without saying that I'd rather not lose you yet.
[But as for the water— oh, he stops there once it's mentioned. Squeezes his grip a little tighter around that already abused portion of cloth before giving up the ghost, so to speak: short passage tracking its route from one damaged palm into a finely armored one. Something like a metaphor clinging for the lapse in his expression before a smile's worked back in.]
Ah.
I....erm. Very sweet of you, but there's no point in wasting your supplies, darling.
Trust me when I say I can make do.
[Last ditch effort, really. He's already turning slightly; running through the motions of bracing up for the scalding kiss of water on his skin. After all, the elf is right: better a few seconds of agony over hours spent scraping his own skin off in the dirt.]
[Of course he sees that balking. He'd have to be blind not to notice it— but he thinks it the hesitation of a former slave who has long since learned that taking too much is the right way to earn his Master's wrath. Don't waste this on me, an elf so clearly treated as mere property says with a wan little smile, and gods, but Fenris remembers that mindset.]
You can, I imagine.
[An agreement as he dampens the cloth and sets the skein down. There's a momentary hesitation on his part, his wariness of that emerald mark present in his mind— but though they're close, there's no warning buzz from his lyrium. Perhaps it's direct contact; perhaps what happened before was akin to static shock, painful but temporary. It doesn't matter.
Gently, he presses damp cloth to the bloody cut over his companion's eye, unaware of how monumental a thing that truly is. His eyes narrow as he focuses on his work, steadily wiping away dried blood before pressing down firmly enough to encourage a clot. And as he works, he murmurs:]
But you are allowed to aspire to more than simply making do now.
[His eyes flick over, catching Astarion's gaze for a moment, before focusing back on his work. It doesn't seem so deep now that all the blood and dirt is being washed away; likely the pale elf won't even need stitches.]
And though I can understand why you fear such a thing, trust me: you are at no risk of losing me. This world holds many dangers, but I am more than a match for most of them.
[The hesitation of a former slave, yes. One that runs tight as tempered steel through his own shoulders on final, inevitable approach, setting jagged teeth down firm across the outlines of their twins in the seconds where he's grateful that eye's already shut. It wouldn't be the first injury endured, but every spawn has their preferred hiearchy of tortures that they'd rather (not) find at the end of a raw bit of misfortune, well-applied. Scalding his own cursed eyes? Oh, yes, darling. It's up there. Far, far up there.
And yet he's aligned in that cloth's shadow.
And it's sharp, at first— the kind of crispness that runs in anything white-hot, piercing its way through beseiged senses—
....only....it isn't?
No. No, it isn't.
It's cool. It's cold. That's all there is. No tailing wave of agony. No Searing blister. No stabbing bite. His heartbeat's in his throat, but even that tails off in the steadier aftermath, now that the pressure (and clean water) carefully applied has drained the swell above his lid. Wrestled its enmity down into something ugly, yet sedate.
In disbelief, both eyes open. He hadn't even heard what Fenris said over the pounding in his ears, and now— ]
Well, shit.
[Don't mind him, Fenris. He's a little breathless. A little distracted. That comment isn't aimed at you, though it does sound like it, doesn't it?]
[Amongst the sudden swell of unbidden, bitter nostalgia (it's a damned phrase, it oughtn't sting half as much as it does), oh, of course Fenris thinks that comment directed towards him. In the same way all that flinching tension must be the result of a lifetime of enslavement slamming up against a few hours of freedom, Fenris' mind offers the most logical— if not actually correct— explanation.]
Is that a comment on your choice in protector, or your newfound freedom?
[It's a joke, or at least a gentle tease. He's not going to baby Astarion by asking are you all right, but anyone with eyes can see just how shocked the pale elf seems. As if he thought that Fenris might well backhand him at the last moment just for the impudence of wanting care; breathless as if he thought that perhaps his newfound protector was not so strong as all that. He will not judge either way.]
I'm almost done.
[Added as he keeps up his careful motions. The dirt has all been washed away, as has most of the dried blood; now he's just making sure the clot holds. And truthfully? He will never say this, but there's something . . . well, nice about feeling another person beneath his fingertips. Astarion's skin is like ice, freezing to the extreme, but it's been so long since Fenris has felt another person's touch that it doesn't matter. So he lingers a little. Not creepily, he's not going to feel Astarion up, but . . . perhaps he's a bit more thorough in his cleaning than strictly necessary.]
[The wash of that rag has him listless; it vanishes the second that he understands how this has to seem. Alertness snapping back into his vision, compressing everything he feels into a single, blinding point: like an engine sputtering to life in a rush of animated reflex, he wears his thoughts across his sleeve. His tattered, bloodstained sleeve. Silk snagging a little under the indent of Fenris' waiting thumb, wrapping just around its edge.
—oh?]
Oh.
No, neither. [When everything he knows is barbed wire and fanged sharpness and want, he oscillates, still. The same overquickened sense of footing, there and gone again; excuse like an explanation, only it sinks inside his throat instead of rises.] You don't need to stop.
[He can't recall the last time he's said that.]
Let's just say that the way you were altered isn't the same way that I was.
Running water has a nasty tendency to burn when in contact with the accursed. Quite literally burn. [Masked on the off chance it was a telltale trackmark for vampirism and its revilement, but now— with so much care melting him away through every second of tread mercy, a temptation he can't shake. Never could, though he'd always paid its price.] I was prepared to endure it. I've felt so much worse for a great deal less in the grander scheme of all these years, that a little pain would only be worth it if it meant not gawking uselessly at you through a half-functioning pair of eyes.
Now I—
Gods, I don't know what to think.
[A blink, and Fenris' hands feel so damned sturdy that he drifts for just a beat beneath its run. Leaving someone else's hold across the reins. Unfamiliar. Too familiar.
[There's so much he wants to say to all of that. Accursed, and he struggles to understand what that means, exactly. His companion is an elf mutilated to the point where running water burns and his lifespan stretches out beyond mortal comprehension, and what makes him use such a specific word as accursed? He does not need to know the details of his master's perversion nor his goals, but he would understand why Astarion defines himself that way. If he was defiled by blood magic the likes of which Fenris can barely comprehend, or if it was some magic even stranger and more perverse than he can imagine . . .
He would know. For knowledge's sake, yes, but . . . also so that Astarion does not need to go through what he just did, steeling himself to pain for no reason.
But that's for later, for all of his horror and confusion ebbs in the next moment: washed away by a tide of aching empathy. Fenris' eyes soften, his ministrations pausing for just one moment as an aching smile flits over his lips.]
You really are.
[Murmured gently. He has learned so much since that fateful encounter with Orana all those years ago; what had once earned a balking swell of fear now receives softened sympathy instead.
Two fingers tuck beneath Astarion's chin, keeping his head still as he resumes slowly wiping away the grit and sweat and dried blood that's splattered intermittently over the other elf's face.]
He is gone . . . more gone than I first thought, if you do indeed come from somewhere else.
[Another slow swipe, and then, as he draws back to wet the cloth again:]
I speak from experience: such a thing can be . . . overwhelming. Freedom is overwhelming. And it may take you a long while to comprehend what it means, or what you are meant to do. But it will come in time. And it gets easier the longer you work at it.
[For those seconds when those banded fingers tuck under his chin, he remembers how it feels to be a spawn; his heart shudders in its moors before it stops and stays unbeating, tense in a way it hasn't been since waking up, when nausea and discomfort ached in time with its swift, hard pulse.
His eyes shut. Both of them this time.
He doesn't breathe.
He only listens.
And then the patter of a wrung-out rag pulls him back into the present swath, bearing the brunt of his attention when he wipes his cheek across the corner of one sleeve to dry it (never mind that it smears his skin with red again, just there), uniquely docile in the next few beats when he holds up both his palms.]
....you're a dangerously generous thing for someone who's been through so much. [Knife's edge, those words. Balanced like a dagger on the tongue. I'm not a pet project some part of it implies, but it's less the rattling of a serpent's guarding tail and more the assertion of something well aware it's standing on its last legs. Only legs. Unsteady legs.
He needs the help. Hells, some part of him even wants it, winding willingly into the shadows of the firelight in a mirror to the slow reach of his hands.
That doesn't change the part of this he fears, so much so that he can't say it.]
[No, I don't want to talk about it, and years and years later, the memory of his own mocking snarl still rings in his ears. He'd been so full of emotions he had no names for, still shuddering from the whimpering of Orana and the rush of adrenaline that killing Hadriana had brought. Like a feral wolf, he'd snarled and growled and bared his teeth at anyone and anything, and what it had meant, more or less, was: don't you dare pity me.
And that isn't what this is. But it's something similar, maybe. Flinching from a helping hand even as you long for it, for some part of you wearily whimpers that nothing good ever comes for free, and no matter how sweet their words, no one is ever really altruistic . . . that, too, Fenris remembers.
So though he is gentle as he takes Astarion's unmarred hand, it's a brusque gentleness. Not coddling, but caring.]
I think you may be the first person to call me that, though I will not refute the compliment. That said: to start with, I can afford such generosity.
[Wry, that, and not untrue. But his smile is swift to fade, and he's quiet for a time as he tries to think of how to respond. His hand moves in slow, steady strokes, and his air is that of practicality, not tender doting (and someday, Astarion will learn to feel the difference).]
But is your question why are you doing this, or what price will you ask of me later? The former is more complex. The latter less so.
[The cloth finishes one hand, and Fenris glances up fully this time, so Astarion can see his expression.]
There is no price. Not for tonight. If you journey with me and take up my cause, then that will be a different conversation— and if you run off in the night and steal my horse, I assure you, you will not find me such a generous soul.
And as for why . . .
[Mmph.]
Call it paying it forward, perhaps. Or satisfying a debt to others— ones to whom I owe my own start in freedom.
[A snort slides free from the narrow space between the back of his fangs and the roof of his mouth, burning that much hotter than he's used to— throwing himself off guard by his own attempt at amicable amusement. The way it feels, twice over: one side of the scale wearing the peculiarity of socialization the likes of which he hasn't known in ages, on the other: sweltering humidity, brought on by a beating heart. An aching heart. The jolting pulse of soft blood in his veins—
—smeared across a dampened rag.
No, some part of it implies along the wry edge of a downturned smile, no, I've no intent to rob you.]
Whatever satisfies. [Astarion concedes slowly, unaware of his own flush candor. Holding out his other hand, the picture's only in the details to his mind; he can't see the forest— just the trees that grant him shade. The darker smudge of green on canvas, impossible to navigate, but pleasantly, pleasantly lost.]
[Oh, that laugh. That smile, sweet and startled all at once, so small you might miss it if you weren't watching carefully. His heart warms to see it, though he won't be so foolish as to draw attention to it. Instead: he smiles to himself, just as small and soft as Astarion's own, and takes his other hand.]
A small geopolitical lesson, then, to start. Tevinter— the country I hail from, as does Corypheus— is the only country in Thedas that still actively buys and sells slaves, and it is from the Empire that all slaves inevitably hail.
[Later, when they are closer, he will repeat this conversation, his fingertips tracing the pathways along Astarion's palm. But they aren't what they will be, and right now, his demonstration is only verbal.]
There is one main route into the Empire: the Imperial Highway. That has only a few main roads that connect to it, and thus, only a few ways slavers, burdened with numerous captives, might go.
[His hands are endlessly patient as he wipes away blood and dirt, revealing a pale palm beneath all the grime. His eyes flick up as Fenris offers Astarion another smile, this one with a sharper edge.]
My cause, such as it is, is to free those en-route to Tevinter— and slaughter every slaver and accomplice while I'm at it.
[And there's no mistaking the bloodthirsty relish with which he says that.]
My success rate is considerable. They know to fear me now, for I am a terror to them all— though it does mean that the guards and mercenaries that they all inevitably hire to accompany them on their routes have grown in size and viciousness.
Not enough, though. Not yet.
[A moment, and he adds:]
It does not solve everything. Cut off one serpant's head and four more arise in their place, for there is little people will not stoop to for the right price. But it makes a difference, and that is enough for now.
[Later, when they're closer, this conversation will mean more than it does now, when all concepts are vague beyond the sound of Fenris' voice and the inflection with which they're said: the drawn lines across his skin (different than the feel of being washed, albeit no less caring), doing enviable work to stitch together what Astarion's already ascribed full names and details to, having more than just the simplest of concepts in his pockets such as good or bad or his enemy. My enemy.
Tevinter looks like Baldur's Gate. Corpyheus looks like Cazador— or perhaps a carving of Bhaal's infamous chosen. Depends on the moment. The severity of those placeholders, and the way they're emphasized.]
Admirable. [Isn't, for now, a criticism, though it's said without a drop of the word's own meaning present.] I won't pretend that I don't appreciate becoming one more rescue-ee on that doubtlessly extensive list of liberated slaves, despite the discrepancies in ownership.
[He casts a glance down towards his palm. Still green. Still glowing.]
I take it if your Corypheus wins, things will be much, much worse for those in shackles— and without.
[Simply said, for there's no nuance to be found here.]
His goal is to become a god, for he claims he breached the Fade and found the Maker's throne empty and barren. [Fenris pulls a little face, his hands still methodically cleaning Astarion's, and adds:] I suspect that was little more than the delusions of a magister long since corrupted and gone insane, but either way: he has already slaughtered and enslaved countless to achieve his goals, and his influence continues to grow. And if he succeeds . . .
[Mm. He finishes cleaning his hands and draws back, sitting up so they can face one another properly.]
There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Nor a god. And I doubt very much any elf's life will improve under his tender mercies; I have known too many magisters for that.
Do not take this as recruitment. As I said: I work to free those enroute to enslavement, not as part of some resistance organization. But you should know what you face, if you are to choose anything about your life now.
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There's no cowing when he exhales. No simpering sightlines in his posture. What he says is sharp and determined each time he deigns to say anything at all, cutting through the air like a knife, and equally as honed once it hits Astarion's own ears: either he was a long, long time away from his former Master, or he was so well cherished he never once learned fear.
Either way, like the rest of this, it feels unreal.]
'Was' is a very specific tense for such an important pet.
[Unlike Fenris, Astarion can't find it in himself to be direct in any line of questioning.
Instinct still has him by the throat.]
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[Ah, but this part he minds less. There's no less anger, of course, and there never will be— but some of the bitterness seeps out of his tone, replaced by something far more satisfied. A twisted smirk flashes over Fenris' face, there and gone, as he deliberately meets Astarion's gaze.]
But was is the only tense he will ever use now. I ran from him a decade— more than a decade ago now, [he realizes abruptly.] And when he tired of my killing all his bounty hunters and slavers and came after me himself, I broke his neck and left his corpse to rot in the dump.
[And how bright it sounds. How heroic he makes himself seem, and it isn't that he's trying to puff himself up, understand. He isn't a gloryhound, seeking Astarion's awe nor his praise. But Fenris has dealt with so many runaways now; he's dealt with so many more who quake in terror at the thought of heading to Tevinter, certain that once they're taken, that's all there ever is.
So he does not say: I was so scared. He does not say: if my friends had sold me out, I would have buckled and broken, no matter how many years of freedom I had behind me. He does not mention how his stomach had curdled with humiliation and rage (the boy is rather talented, isn't he?); he makes it into a fairy tale, and maybe it's for his sake as much as Astarion's.
It's better to be admired than pitied.]
A pet no longer. Nor ever again.
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The pale elf tallies that with everything he knows thus far, and soundly at the top of that list stands a resolute fact he can't deny: no matter where he's wound up, wracked with strain and his own blood and the oddity of needing air, Astarion isn't safe. Hasn't ever been safe. But the striking creature sat nearby, knowing all the right things to say and yet sparing nothing for strangeness, might be the closest thing to that unattainable sense of safety.
And certainly the most inviting aspect of it.
Astarion stares too long despite himself. At the lopsided grin still flecked red along its border. At the ease and pride of it, spelled out only in the bottom line: he's dead, I left his broken body in the street, what of it? I want that, Astarion thinks hungrily. His stomach suddenly feeling even more barren than before under the loose lines of his torn shirt.
When he finally edges nearer to sit down fully by the fire, he isn't wary anymore.]
What sort of man was he?
[Now that he knows what sort of man Fenris is.]
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PrincessHorse snorts just once, her sole contribution to the thought of Astarion sitting down. He does smell unnerving, but she's a mare that's been through quite a few bloody battles; perhaps he oughtn't approach her, but she won't raise a fuss now that he's sitting properly.Fenris' mouth twists up into another brief smile as Astarion's posture finally relaxes— but unlike before, it isn't an unpleasant thing. There's something comforting about the other elf letting down his guard and settling in fully, though even Fenris can't say if it's because of shared camaraderie or sheer loneliness . . . ah, but it doesn't matter. It's just nice to have someone else by the fire, even for a single night.
Especially someone who understands, even a little. It's a sickeningly sweet feeling to speak of this to another slave, he has long since learned.]
Arrogant, perhaps, is the best word to encompass him. Cruel and sadistic, sometimes thoughtlessly so— but more often than not, it was a calculated thing. He was a mage— a magister, if you have such things in your— your world. Not without talent, and with more than enough wealth to fund his endless forays into the realms of blood magic.
And such things were necessary, for above all else, he craved power. He longed to climb the endless echelons of the Tevinter empire, and he was successful . . . for a time.
[And now he's dead. And now he's dead, the sentence echoing over and over in Fenris' mind, cooling the customary rage that always comes with remembering Danarius. He's dead and so are all his kin, and I am the one who triumphed, and it never soothes quite like he wants it to, but it helps.
A beat, and then, with a horrible, sardonic sort of smile, he adds:]
I was his greatest accomplishment.
[He cocks his head at Astarion and adds:]
Sound familiar?
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Blood magic. [Is the sunken sound that leads in brittle disbelief.] Yes. That sounds familiar. [What a sick joke, that even entire realms away, masters are ever the same.
What a miracle that it's breakable.]
And this is the first time in two centuries I haven't been able to feel his control over me from it. Or— [His body blinks. He has to breathe. Swallow on occasion. Beneath his ribs his heartbeat is a colting upswing of nausea that won't subside the longer he looks down towards his fingertips and finds his nails, well. Nails. No talons. No sign of clipping, only the soft beds of thinner outlines.] anything of him at all.
[No, on second observation, his tongue catches the backs of his fangs— canines and front teeth still dagger-sharp when and where he presses down. What of his eyes, then? His reflection? His deathly aversion to sunlight or running water?
It's too much to hope for. The next jolt from his pulse makes him certain he'll be sick, and he has to suck in air through his nostrils over the hard clap of his fingertips across his mouth when he doubles over just to keep it a suspicion, rather than fact. When he glances back up, it's with a question on his lips.]
Did he change you?
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No wonder he reels. No wonder he hunches over, looking as though he might vomit. No wonder his eyes are such a strange color, and distantly, understanding without comprehending at all, Fenris wonders what else this master of his turned him into. Something not quite elven and yet not quite not; something, perhaps, so uniquely different from anyone and everyone else in his world . . .
(No wonder Fenris' heart suddenly aches, every thundering beat echoing in awful, terrible empathy).]
Yes.
[Oh, yes, the answer swiftly offered and softly spoken. He lifts a hand, palm-up, offering it as a display: one thick line of lyrium splitting into five channels, each carefully vivisecting the center of his fingers.]
I was not born with lyrium in my veins. These markings are his legacy.
[Look. Look and see how similar we are, though our mutilations differ. And though he would not allow it with any other newcomer, oh, he will keep his hand displayed for as long as Astarion likes. He'll even let him touch it, if it comes to that. Take what you need from me.]
It took him decades of experimentation to discover the exact kind of blood magic necessary to make such a procedure not just survivable, but successful. And he never managed it beyond me.
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It's a familiar score, isn't it? The gouged-in brand of someone else's vision for the full span of your existence— eclipsing it— more than just your body or your looks, it's the measure of everything you know, inescapable without further mutilation: like the attached chain grown into skin for being too damned tight, the mutt will always have its scars even if it tears the leash line loose.
Astarion's mouth goes thin. Even with one eye firmly closed, his expression is both utterly transparent and entirely unreadable. An itch crawling up his spine before he wonders if the tatters of his shirt—
No. No, he knows where the borders are. Nothing's visible.]
....lyrium?
[No lilt to his voice. No songbird cadence. He's angled in and the brightness of the firelight falls on pale features in just the right way to emphasize how blatantly he's let his own doggish defenses slip.]
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No, Astarion is more important. The way he angles himself towards him, all bright eyes and trusting expression, matters so much more.]
An ore that fuels magic. It is the basis of most magic in this world.
[He wants to move. To help him clean himself off, maybe, or see to that swollen eye— and sooner or later, he will. But he's equally wary of scaring this elf off, no matter how invested he seems now— and and so all Fenris does is offer his hand a little further forward, letting Astarion peer as he likes.]
Rare, and astronomically expensive in the quantities I sport. But it gives me an edge like no one else in this world— and such an edge was incredibly useful when I served as bodyguard for a power-climbing magister.
[With a wry little smirk, he adds:]
It has its drawbacks. Ignoring all the chronic, endless pain and the question of what it has done to my lifespan, I also sometimes have trouble staying solid. Objects and people both can and will fly through me at times, especially if I'm not expecting it.
[A thought occurs to him, and he adds more seriously:]
The monster that is terrorizing this world— the one I warned you of before. He uses what is known as red lyrium, which looks exactly as it sounds. If you see jagged red rocks bursting out of the earth, do not touch them. Do not even go near them, alluring though they may seem. They corrupt and cause madness, from which I have never witnessed full recovery.
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A fortune. Anguish irreversible. Pain.
Astarion has a shock of fallow green bored into his skin like glass, and it aches worse than any splinter. Imagining that on a grander scale— tracing with his eyes the places where those markings vanish behind thick leather and plate and rough fur—
It must be torture, whether it was designed to be or not (and Astarion has his suspicions the man's master didn't damned well care which was true), inevitably making both true.
Gods, but he still wants to see it for himself. Like an overeager pup, he's tipped forwards just a little more, almost twitching— before the idea of a world-ending nightmare brings about its own sort of sobriety, and a worried glance towards his own arm.]
What of yours, then? [Another cast-off look. Another momentary pass.] If red lyrium corrupts, aren't you in danger? Is there any way to stop it?
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[He thinks. He hopes. He has no real idea, frankly, and trust that such thoughts have been the source of so many nightmares. Fenris pushes that thought away; instead, he focuses himself more on the elf in front of him. There's such a desperate hunger in his face right now, lean and starved and needy. He listens to Fenris' tale without flinching nor growing uncomfortable with misplaced pity, watching him so earnestly that you might almost mistake it for a discomfiting interest . . .
If you did not know, perhaps, what it is to yearn for validation. To seek understanding through another's pain . . . and Fenris will not assume. But he wonders quietly, and that is enough.]
I . . . will not claim to know what it would do to the marking on your hand. Lyrium and the Fade go hand in hand, so to speak— it's why, I suspect, it stung so badly when I touched your marking. But I do not think you have quite so much to fear as I do. And either way: it is an easy substance to avoid, for it is obvious enough.
[And then, quietly, his eyes focused on that desperately hungry expression:]
If you stay with me beyond tonight, and choose to join me on the journey to Kirkwall . . . I will point out some as we pass, so you might know it and avoid it.
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He only has one lifeline out here. One.
And he can't afford to lose it.]
If the idea is stay far enough away from it as possible at all times or risk losing yourself for good, believe me, red equals bad is all the description I'll ever need. And that goes for you, too.
[But the quickness of his tone abruptly hits his ears with renewed realization; like clockwork, the rag's folded over in his fingers, busy now with stubbornly swiping away the flaking peels of ruddy dried blood from his arms. Not so near to apologetic as having clearly self-corrected.
He's not some beaten animal (not fully, anyway). He knows he doesn't need to grovel. But as is the case from all prior reasoning, he can't go treating the man like one of his self-destructive siblings, either. Explanations and charm. There's no other way about it.]
Doubly so if it's something that Corypheus is aiming to make use of. Too careful is not careful enough, trust me on that.
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I did not mean to go near it. But it juts out of the landscape regardless, and we will pass some sooner or later.
[Gentle: not a correction, but an explanation. A moment, and he adds:]
You will have more luck if you use water, you know. Dried blood is stubborn enough to get out as it is. And injuries rarely clot if you let them bleed freely.
[He inches closer, one hand held out expectantly: give it to me, and he won't pull nor assume, but the offer is there.]
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[Think, and he shouldn't. Think, and he wants to. Be charming, Astarion. Be pleasant, Astarion. You're bleeding from the head and dragging your fractured leash behind you on the collar that's still attached; the rules that applied in the shadows of that city never stopped applying here just because there's nothing stifling his body. His free will.]
If you don't know everything about its influence, you could be half a bloody continent away and it still might not be enough in the end. What if he changes something about it? What if passive exposure does something to you over time?
You're— well.
I suppose it goes without saying that I'd rather not lose you yet.
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Ah.
I....erm. Very sweet of you, but there's no point in wasting your supplies, darling.
Trust me when I say I can make do.
[Last ditch effort, really. He's already turning slightly; running through the motions of bracing up for the scalding kiss of water on his skin. After all, the elf is right: better a few seconds of agony over hours spent scraping his own skin off in the dirt.]
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You can, I imagine.
[An agreement as he dampens the cloth and sets the skein down. There's a momentary hesitation on his part, his wariness of that emerald mark present in his mind— but though they're close, there's no warning buzz from his lyrium. Perhaps it's direct contact; perhaps what happened before was akin to static shock, painful but temporary. It doesn't matter.
Gently, he presses damp cloth to the bloody cut over his companion's eye, unaware of how monumental a thing that truly is. His eyes narrow as he focuses on his work, steadily wiping away dried blood before pressing down firmly enough to encourage a clot. And as he works, he murmurs:]
But you are allowed to aspire to more than simply making do now.
[His eyes flick over, catching Astarion's gaze for a moment, before focusing back on his work. It doesn't seem so deep now that all the blood and dirt is being washed away; likely the pale elf won't even need stitches.]
And though I can understand why you fear such a thing, trust me: you are at no risk of losing me. This world holds many dangers, but I am more than a match for most of them.
[It's not a brag.]
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And yet he's aligned in that cloth's shadow.
And it's sharp, at first— the kind of crispness that runs in anything white-hot, piercing its way through beseiged senses—
....only....it isn't?
No. No, it isn't.
It's cool. It's cold. That's all there is. No tailing wave of agony. No Searing blister. No stabbing bite. His heartbeat's in his throat, but even that tails off in the steadier aftermath, now that the pressure (and clean water) carefully applied has drained the swell above his lid. Wrestled its enmity down into something ugly, yet sedate.
In disbelief, both eyes open. He hadn't even heard what Fenris said over the pounding in his ears, and now— ]
Well, shit.
[Don't mind him, Fenris. He's a little breathless. A little distracted. That comment isn't aimed at you, though it does sound like it, doesn't it?]
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Is that a comment on your choice in protector, or your newfound freedom?
[It's a joke, or at least a gentle tease. He's not going to baby Astarion by asking are you all right, but anyone with eyes can see just how shocked the pale elf seems. As if he thought that Fenris might well backhand him at the last moment just for the impudence of wanting care; breathless as if he thought that perhaps his newfound protector was not so strong as all that. He will not judge either way.]
I'm almost done.
[Added as he keeps up his careful motions. The dirt has all been washed away, as has most of the dried blood; now he's just making sure the clot holds. And truthfully? He will never say this, but there's something . . . well, nice about feeling another person beneath his fingertips. Astarion's skin is like ice, freezing to the extreme, but it's been so long since Fenris has felt another person's touch that it doesn't matter. So he lingers a little. Not creepily, he's not going to feel Astarion up, but . . . perhaps he's a bit more thorough in his cleaning than strictly necessary.]
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—oh?]
Oh.
No, neither. [When everything he knows is barbed wire and fanged sharpness and want, he oscillates, still. The same overquickened sense of footing, there and gone again; excuse like an explanation, only it sinks inside his throat instead of rises.] You don't need to stop.
[He can't recall the last time he's said that.]
Let's just say that the way you were altered isn't the same way that I was.
Running water has a nasty tendency to burn when in contact with the accursed. Quite literally burn. [Masked on the off chance it was a telltale trackmark for vampirism and its revilement, but now— with so much care melting him away through every second of tread mercy, a temptation he can't shake. Never could, though he'd always paid its price.] I was prepared to endure it. I've felt so much worse for a great deal less in the grander scheme of all these years, that a little pain would only be worth it if it meant not gawking uselessly at you through a half-functioning pair of eyes.
Now I—
Gods, I don't know what to think.
[A blink, and Fenris' hands feel so damned sturdy that he drifts for just a beat beneath its run. Leaving someone else's hold across the reins. Unfamiliar. Too familiar.
Changed.]
....I really am free of him, aren't I.
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He would know. For knowledge's sake, yes, but . . . also so that Astarion does not need to go through what he just did, steeling himself to pain for no reason.
But that's for later, for all of his horror and confusion ebbs in the next moment: washed away by a tide of aching empathy. Fenris' eyes soften, his ministrations pausing for just one moment as an aching smile flits over his lips.]
You really are.
[Murmured gently. He has learned so much since that fateful encounter with Orana all those years ago; what had once earned a balking swell of fear now receives softened sympathy instead.
Two fingers tuck beneath Astarion's chin, keeping his head still as he resumes slowly wiping away the grit and sweat and dried blood that's splattered intermittently over the other elf's face.]
He is gone . . . more gone than I first thought, if you do indeed come from somewhere else.
[Another slow swipe, and then, as he draws back to wet the cloth again:]
I speak from experience: such a thing can be . . . overwhelming. Freedom is overwhelming. And it may take you a long while to comprehend what it means, or what you are meant to do. But it will come in time. And it gets easier the longer you work at it.
And I will help, if I can. If you wish for it.
Give me your hands.
[So he might wipe the blood from them, too.]
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His eyes shut. Both of them this time.
He doesn't breathe.
He only listens.
And then the patter of a wrung-out rag pulls him back into the present swath, bearing the brunt of his attention when he wipes his cheek across the corner of one sleeve to dry it (never mind that it smears his skin with red again, just there), uniquely docile in the next few beats when he holds up both his palms.]
....you're a dangerously generous thing for someone who's been through so much. [Knife's edge, those words. Balanced like a dagger on the tongue. I'm not a pet project some part of it implies, but it's less the rattling of a serpent's guarding tail and more the assertion of something well aware it's standing on its last legs. Only legs. Unsteady legs.
He needs the help. Hells, some part of him even wants it, winding willingly into the shadows of the firelight in a mirror to the slow reach of his hands.
That doesn't change the part of this he fears, so much so that he can't say it.]
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And that isn't what this is. But it's something similar, maybe. Flinching from a helping hand even as you long for it, for some part of you wearily whimpers that nothing good ever comes for free, and no matter how sweet their words, no one is ever really altruistic . . . that, too, Fenris remembers.
So though he is gentle as he takes Astarion's unmarred hand, it's a brusque gentleness. Not coddling, but caring.]
I think you may be the first person to call me that, though I will not refute the compliment. That said: to start with, I can afford such generosity.
[Wry, that, and not untrue. But his smile is swift to fade, and he's quiet for a time as he tries to think of how to respond. His hand moves in slow, steady strokes, and his air is that of practicality, not tender doting (and someday, Astarion will learn to feel the difference).]
But is your question why are you doing this, or what price will you ask of me later? The former is more complex. The latter less so.
[The cloth finishes one hand, and Fenris glances up fully this time, so Astarion can see his expression.]
There is no price. Not for tonight. If you journey with me and take up my cause, then that will be a different conversation— and if you run off in the night and steal my horse, I assure you, you will not find me such a generous soul.
And as for why . . .
[Mmph.]
Call it paying it forward, perhaps. Or satisfying a debt to others— ones to whom I owe my own start in freedom.
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—smeared across a dampened rag.
No, some part of it implies along the wry edge of a downturned smile, no, I've no intent to rob you.]
Whatever satisfies. [Astarion concedes slowly, unaware of his own flush candor. Holding out his other hand, the picture's only in the details to his mind; he can't see the forest— just the trees that grant him shade. The darker smudge of green on canvas, impossible to navigate, but pleasantly, pleasantly lost.]
To that end: what exactly is your cause?
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A small geopolitical lesson, then, to start. Tevinter— the country I hail from, as does Corypheus— is the only country in Thedas that still actively buys and sells slaves, and it is from the Empire that all slaves inevitably hail.
[Later, when they are closer, he will repeat this conversation, his fingertips tracing the pathways along Astarion's palm. But they aren't what they will be, and right now, his demonstration is only verbal.]
There is one main route into the Empire: the Imperial Highway. That has only a few main roads that connect to it, and thus, only a few ways slavers, burdened with numerous captives, might go.
[His hands are endlessly patient as he wipes away blood and dirt, revealing a pale palm beneath all the grime. His eyes flick up as Fenris offers Astarion another smile, this one with a sharper edge.]
My cause, such as it is, is to free those en-route to Tevinter— and slaughter every slaver and accomplice while I'm at it.
[And there's no mistaking the bloodthirsty relish with which he says that.]
My success rate is considerable. They know to fear me now, for I am a terror to them all— though it does mean that the guards and mercenaries that they all inevitably hire to accompany them on their routes have grown in size and viciousness.
Not enough, though. Not yet.
[A moment, and he adds:]
It does not solve everything. Cut off one serpant's head and four more arise in their place, for there is little people will not stoop to for the right price. But it makes a difference, and that is enough for now.
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Tevinter looks like Baldur's Gate. Corpyheus looks like Cazador— or perhaps a carving of Bhaal's infamous chosen. Depends on the moment. The severity of those placeholders, and the way they're emphasized.]
Admirable. [Isn't, for now, a criticism, though it's said without a drop of the word's own meaning present.] I won't pretend that I don't appreciate becoming one more rescue-ee on that doubtlessly extensive list of liberated slaves, despite the discrepancies in ownership.
[He casts a glance down towards his palm. Still green. Still glowing.]
I take it if your Corypheus wins, things will be much, much worse for those in shackles— and without.
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[Simply said, for there's no nuance to be found here.]
His goal is to become a god, for he claims he breached the Fade and found the Maker's throne empty and barren. [Fenris pulls a little face, his hands still methodically cleaning Astarion's, and adds:] I suspect that was little more than the delusions of a magister long since corrupted and gone insane, but either way: he has already slaughtered and enslaved countless to achieve his goals, and his influence continues to grow. And if he succeeds . . .
[Mm. He finishes cleaning his hands and draws back, sitting up so they can face one another properly.]
There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Nor a god. And I doubt very much any elf's life will improve under his tender mercies; I have known too many magisters for that.
Do not take this as recruitment. As I said: I work to free those enroute to enslavement, not as part of some resistance organization. But you should know what you face, if you are to choose anything about your life now.
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proof yesterday was a disaster bc I forgot it was actually my turn??? ??????????
IT WAS HARD OKAY
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