(... Uh yeah she was going to, but he just had to get the first word in didn't he. She regards him with both arms folded across her chest, containing herself. It's for his safety; her feelings toward him are volatile at best. She's still testing them, prodding gently at bruising skin.
In short: Abby has been thinking about this a lot, specifically what she wants. She's decided what would make this feel right instead of fragile, imbalanced.)
I want you to tell me something about yourself.
(There could be room for a sly comment here which is why she keeps going, determined to stomp out any opportunity for him to make one of his shit, crass jokes. It would ruin the entire conversation before its really started,) Something like what that place took from me.
Life isn’t fair, as you well know. Why you expect me to be is baffling.
But fine. In the interest of our necessary ongoing camaraderie— and maybe, just a little bit, because you put in a decent effort in Val Chevin on my behalf— all right. [This isn't a concession made out of contempt, despite his fuss. He's simply guarded, and maybe it shows, just a touch, in his tightened posture. Rigid and sharp, stiff through his own shoulders.]
One fact, equally damning, and if you so much as breathe a snide little joke about it in my direction, know that I'll either happily air the nasty little details of what I witnessed in that castle to the network at large, or simply rip your throat out with my teeth.
And even I can't say which one will be more appealing in the moment.
So.
[He holds out his hand, gloved palm turned upwards.]
(She stares at him, one eyebrow raised as if to ask 'are you finished?', and the pause before she reaches out to take his hand is deliberate. She has no idea why he thinks she might say anything. She never has, this entire time, has she. Wasn't that the entire fucking point behind why she's so embarrassed that he now knows.)
Deal.
(Angling her own hand, she turns it the gesture into more of a curt shake. In her mind's eye, she can see how he might have pulled the back of her hand toward his mouth and she's not in the mood for his version of charming.
But is she ever?
With his hand released, all she has to do now is wait.)
[If ever voiced aloud, he might press the one time she'd gone straight to Ellie to crack the figurative hammer down right overtop his very finely sculpted skull— but that was, after all, blackmail, and even Astarion knows the difference.]
Then without further adieu, I offer you what few memories I still have of my own prior existence: and the knowledge that even amongst vampires, not every monster is created equal. [If nothing else, he has a storyteller's voice: it works now to twist the pain of recounting something far deeper into a tapestry of well-distanced recitation, as though the life he's talking about isn't his own, despite the obvious truth. As though discussing whether or not rats have been in the Gallows kitchen again, or when the snowfall might come to a sudden stop at last, making room for warmer stretches.]
All that I can remember of my former life was that I was attacked in the street the night I died. [One memory. One left, etched into his mind like stone.] A lone elf cornered by a pack of Gur— humans, to oversimplify for the uninformed— and subsequently unmade by their contempt.
I was bleeding to death when he found me, the vampire that sired me, Cazador Szarr. A vision cloaked in power itself.
He cut down my assailants with indescribable ease, scattered them all like rats. And, as I lay dying, he offered me salvation. Rescue from the inevitability of my own fate.
I took it.
[Of course he took it.]
Or so I thought.
You see, vampirism is a shockingly tricky thing: get bitten, and you turn, yes, but to secure the bargain, you need to bite your sire in return. [The little caveat no one ever talks about. The one not mentioned in superstition.
Astarion wonders now just how deliberate a factor that is.]
The second part, Cazador had no interest in. He never did.
Instead, without his blood on my lips, I became a vampire spawn. [He says it with all due ugliness: tongue curling, eyes narrowed. Bile pooling across his tongue:] A thrall, bound body and soul to its master, unable to resist his every command, right down to the very last uttered detail.
He could demand I throw myself from the highest tower in the city, and, no matter how much my mind might rail against it, on my body would walk, all too happy to damn me for his amusement.
For two hundred years, he and his sadistic ilk asked infinitely more of me than that.
(He does have a storyteller's voice. He uses it to glorify two centuries worth of suffering for her and while Abby listens, the lick of righteous anger in her chest fizzles out completely. Something sharp takes its place, something she can hardly bear to examine. He's the victim of a single person who carelessly turned his life upside down, and how could she possibly not empathise with that. It sits so uncomfortably. It brings no relief. It seems childish to her that she ever thought this might balance something out between them.
It's not the first time she's forgotten she doesn't have a monopoly on pain, and loss.)
... I won't tell, (is the only thing she can think of to say, short and aching. She won't tell anybody about this or make snide jokes, and not only out of self-preservation.
It occurs to her that this is exactly how her and Ellie have been operating around each other. They carefully hold onto each other's key bits of information, and relax under the assurance of mutual self-destruction. It's no way to live, but people like them don't know many other ways.)
[She's almost unreadable for how clipped she is, even to Astarion's perceptive eyes— and he's a cynical thing at heart. A wary thing, too many times burned; erring on the side of muted interpretation comes all too naturally.
So he doesn’t thank her for her promised discretion. Why would he? This is a transactional exchange for both of them; she didn’t ask after him because she cared, and she certainly didn’t call him here for anything other than to make sure they were even: a pair of daggers held figuratively to one another’s throats, as far as he can surmise from all present promise.
He can live with that. Happily.]
Obliged.
Particularly when it comes to the others in Riftwatch, there’s no such thing as too careful.
(She didn't think that he would thank her, and it aches a little when he doesn't acknowledge their shared pain anyway. But she wonders why she thinks she deserves that from him. Surely any hope of extending an olive branch has long since passed, and how fucked up would it be to want that now? Only now, that she knows they harbor secrets like that. That pain made them different.
The complication sits in her gut like a stone. Abby isn't sure what she wants.)
Yeah.
(She wonders if asking questions is okay. Only one way to find out.)
[There’s no hesitation on his part. No embellishment this time: his voice so uncharacteristically level and low-set that it barely registers as Astarion at all, given his usual adorning flair.
Without it, he’s someone else entirely.
Maybe who he was before his sire's corruptive bite.]
Thedas did.
[And isn’t that a wonderful and wretched lot all at once, knowing the one thing that rescued you from the jaws of madness is the one thing that— at any moment— could so easily be rescinded.
Rifters are demons. Rifters are spirits. Rifters are dreams. They’re nothing. They don't last. It’s so easily said, here. So easily dismissed, the weight and worth of the souls stumbling desperately out of the Fade without a single choice in the matter.
They don’t know what it’s like. And Astarion resents every last Thedosian that dares to say it in front of him.]
(Her voice is low like his, and a little rueful.) Somebody else did.
(Half of their story is the same. The first part, the part where Abby couldn't save herself; she wasn't trying hard enough, she thinks, or maybe she didn't really want to. Maybe she didn't see anything worth salvaging. Lev saw something different.
And Thedas took him away. Thedas put a whole world between them.
She looks at him carefully, her arms drawn across herself.)
I'm glad that you're free here.
(Abby can mean that and still mourn what she lost. It's not like Thedas hasn't tried its best to placate her. She isn't lonely here, and she's met people she thinks she could, one day, try to love.)
[It takes him by surprise, that confession; everything that he’d expected from her, everything that they’ve wrought from one another’s company: tense and sharp and brittle besides, difficult in all the wrong ways (how he’d tried to comfort her, and even that failed— though still he remembers her locking grip against his chest, shivering sharp and fierce, laced with indescribable anguish).
Incompatible might be the word for it.
And yet.
And yet here she is, open and far from snapping when she says she’s glad he’s found his freedom.
Sincere.
He—
He doesn’t know what to do with that, if he’s honest. His stare a little too hangdog, his eyes low and lifted all at once in clear disbelief: eyebrows pinched, chin set nearer to his shoulders.
No preening. No sneers.]
Mm. [A hum that sticks to the back of his fangs.
Somewhere beyond the alley where they’ve met, cargo clatters as it’s hauled roughly into place, chased by the sounds of barking. Distant.]
...thank you.
[He doesn’t know if he means it. He doesn’t know if he can, but...it is trying, isn’t it.
(Abby's head turns in the direction of the faint ruckus. Her body turns too, almost imperceptibly, to face the unknown threat. She's used to reacting to the slightest sound, having to take every rustle seriously, but maybe she looks to give them both a moment to recover, too. Astarion from the surprise of hearing her say that to him and Abby from the surprise of having said it at all because she's unsure where it came from. It was a strange need to empathise.
His gratitude receives a grunt in reply in lieu of knowing what to say.
Then, lightly,) I don't know. (As if it doesn't ache like a slow-healing wound. Every single day.) It was him, and me. We didn't have anybody else.
(He isn't alone. He's still with whatever part of Abby that was left behind when she came here, but it's difficult to wrap her head around the notion. Here, she's without him. She's been having dreams of him struggling, without her.
Her breath catches. A quick in-in-out.)
I hope he's okay.
(God, she misses him.)
hey me too.....I say, looking at my mess of a backtag laden inbox....
[Softness feels uncomfortable; they aren’t there just yet, the two of them. Not him with her, not her with him— not even with the painful memories they’ve shared like a buffer, or the weight of the words thank you and I’m glad that you're free here still lingering.
But standing there in the negative space their lives have cut, empty air and immediate silence pervading, only one thing comes to mind. So there's no pretense when he asks, bluntly:]
(She doesn't look at him to assess whether or not he's being serious, simply leans into the ease of being told to do something, and following instruction. Abby is good at doing that. And she's barely spoken about Lev the entire time she's been living here, even though guarding him isn't her job any more.
It helps that Astarion doesn't act as if this is a soft moment between them, but more like a blood-letting.)
Just a– stupid kid, (she says, but her voice breaks over the sentence, cuz he was hers.) Saved my life back home. Cut me down after his people strung me up. (A sharp inhale, in memory.) They were going to cut my stomach open and pull my guts out with their bare fucking hands, and he– stopped them.
(Yara did too, but Yara is far too sore a subject; she omits the detail, and hopes she'll be forgiven for it.)
Where he came from wasn't safe. (Nothing unusual for either of them but,) I wanted to be that for him.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
In short: Abby has been thinking about this a lot, specifically what she wants. She's decided what would make this feel right instead of fragile, imbalanced.)
I want you to tell me something about yourself.
(There could be room for a sly comment here which is why she keeps going, determined to stomp out any opportunity for him to make one of his shit, crass jokes. It would ruin the entire conversation before its really started,) Something like what that place took from me.
(Something of equal value.)
It's only fair.
no subject
But fine. In the interest of our necessary ongoing camaraderie— and maybe, just a little bit, because you put in a decent effort in Val Chevin on my behalf— all right. [This isn't a concession made out of contempt, despite his fuss. He's simply guarded, and maybe it shows, just a touch, in his tightened posture. Rigid and sharp, stiff through his own shoulders.]
One fact, equally damning, and if you so much as breathe a snide little joke about it in my direction, know that I'll either happily air the nasty little details of what I witnessed in that castle to the network at large, or simply rip your throat out with my teeth.
And even I can't say which one will be more appealing in the moment.
So.
[He holds out his hand, gloved palm turned upwards.]
Deal?
no subject
Deal.
(Angling her own hand, she turns it the gesture into more of a curt shake. In her mind's eye, she can see how he might have pulled the back of her hand toward his mouth and she's not in the mood for his version of charming.
But is she ever?
With his hand released, all she has to do now is wait.)
no subject
Then without further adieu, I offer you what few memories I still have of my own prior existence: and the knowledge that even amongst vampires, not every monster is created equal. [If nothing else, he has a storyteller's voice: it works now to twist the pain of recounting something far deeper into a tapestry of well-distanced recitation, as though the life he's talking about isn't his own, despite the obvious truth. As though discussing whether or not rats have been in the Gallows kitchen again, or when the snowfall might come to a sudden stop at last, making room for warmer stretches.]
All that I can remember of my former life was that I was attacked in the street the night I died. [One memory. One left, etched into his mind like stone.] A lone elf cornered by a pack of Gur— humans, to oversimplify for the uninformed— and subsequently unmade by their contempt.
I was bleeding to death when he found me, the vampire that sired me, Cazador Szarr. A vision cloaked in power itself.
He cut down my assailants with indescribable ease, scattered them all like rats. And, as I lay dying, he offered me salvation. Rescue from the inevitability of my own fate.
I took it.
[Of course he took it.]
Or so I thought.
You see, vampirism is a shockingly tricky thing: get bitten, and you turn, yes, but to secure the bargain, you need to bite your sire in return. [The little caveat no one ever talks about. The one not mentioned in superstition.
Astarion wonders now just how deliberate a factor that is.]
The second part, Cazador had no interest in. He never did.
Instead, without his blood on my lips, I became a vampire spawn. [He says it with all due ugliness: tongue curling, eyes narrowed. Bile pooling across his tongue:] A thrall, bound body and soul to its master, unable to resist his every command, right down to the very last uttered detail.
He could demand I throw myself from the highest tower in the city, and, no matter how much my mind might rail against it, on my body would walk, all too happy to damn me for his amusement.
For two hundred years, he and his sadistic ilk asked infinitely more of me than that.
[So. As he clasps his hands and smiles.]
Let’s just say I would’ve preferred the tower.
no subject
It's not the first time she's forgotten she doesn't have a monopoly on pain, and loss.)
... I won't tell, (is the only thing she can think of to say, short and aching. She won't tell anybody about this or make snide jokes, and not only out of self-preservation.
It occurs to her that this is exactly how her and Ellie have been operating around each other. They carefully hold onto each other's key bits of information, and relax under the assurance of mutual self-destruction. It's no way to live, but people like them don't know many other ways.)
no subject
So he doesn’t thank her for her promised discretion. Why would he? This is a transactional exchange for both of them; she didn’t ask after him because she cared, and she certainly didn’t call him here for anything other than to make sure they were even: a pair of daggers held figuratively to one another’s throats, as far as he can surmise from all present promise.
He can live with that. Happily.]
Obliged.
Particularly when it comes to the others in Riftwatch, there’s no such thing as too careful.
[Ever the gentle optimist, Astarion.]
no subject
The complication sits in her gut like a stone. Abby isn't sure what she wants.)
Yeah.
(She wonders if asking questions is okay. Only one way to find out.)
... How did you save yourself?
no subject
[There’s no hesitation on his part. No embellishment this time: his voice so uncharacteristically level and low-set that it barely registers as Astarion at all, given his usual adorning flair.
Without it, he’s someone else entirely.
Maybe who he was before his sire's corruptive bite.]
Thedas did.
[And isn’t that a wonderful and wretched lot all at once, knowing the one thing that rescued you from the jaws of madness is the one thing that— at any moment— could so easily be rescinded.
Rifters are demons. Rifters are spirits. Rifters are dreams. They’re nothing. They don't last. It’s so easily said, here. So easily dismissed, the weight and worth of the souls stumbling desperately out of the Fade without a single choice in the matter.
They don’t know what it’s like. And Astarion resents every last Thedosian that dares to say it in front of him.]
How did you save yourself.
no subject
(Her voice is low like his, and a little rueful.) Somebody else did.
(Half of their story is the same. The first part, the part where Abby couldn't save herself; she wasn't trying hard enough, she thinks, or maybe she didn't really want to. Maybe she didn't see anything worth salvaging. Lev saw something different.
And Thedas took him away. Thedas put a whole world between them.
She looks at him carefully, her arms drawn across herself.)
I'm glad that you're free here.
(Abby can mean that and still mourn what she lost. It's not like Thedas hasn't tried its best to placate her. She isn't lonely here, and she's met people she thinks she could, one day, try to love.)
no subject
[It takes him by surprise, that confession; everything that he’d expected from her, everything that they’ve wrought from one another’s company: tense and sharp and brittle besides, difficult in all the wrong ways (how he’d tried to comfort her, and even that failed— though still he remembers her locking grip against his chest, shivering sharp and fierce, laced with indescribable anguish).
Incompatible might be the word for it.
And yet.
And yet here she is, open and far from snapping when she says she’s glad he’s found his freedom.
Sincere.
He—
He doesn’t know what to do with that, if he’s honest. His stare a little too hangdog, his eyes low and lifted all at once in clear disbelief: eyebrows pinched, chin set nearer to his shoulders.
No preening. No sneers.]
Mm. [A hum that sticks to the back of his fangs.
Somewhere beyond the alley where they’ve met, cargo clatters as it’s hauled roughly into place, chased by the sounds of barking. Distant.]
...thank you.
[He doesn’t know if he means it. He doesn’t know if he can, but...it is trying, isn’t it.
He is trying.]
What happened to them. The person that saved you.
i know how to tag in a timely manner
His gratitude receives a grunt in reply in lieu of knowing what to say.
Then, lightly,) I don't know. (As if it doesn't ache like a slow-healing wound. Every single day.) It was him, and me. We didn't have anybody else.
(He isn't alone. He's still with whatever part of Abby that was left behind when she came here, but it's difficult to wrap her head around the notion. Here, she's without him. She's been having dreams of him struggling, without her.
Her breath catches. A quick in-in-out.)
I hope he's okay.
(God, she misses him.)
hey me too.....I say, looking at my mess of a backtag laden inbox....
But standing there in the negative space their lives have cut, empty air and immediate silence pervading, only one thing comes to mind. So there's no pretense when he asks, bluntly:]
Tell me about him.
grips your hand also cw gore/violence mention
It helps that Astarion doesn't act as if this is a soft moment between them, but more like a blood-letting.)
Just a– stupid kid, (she says, but her voice breaks over the sentence, cuz he was hers.) Saved my life back home. Cut me down after his people strung me up. (A sharp inhale, in memory.) They were going to cut my stomach open and pull my guts out with their bare fucking hands, and he– stopped them.
(Yara did too, but Yara is far too sore a subject; she omits the detail, and hopes she'll be forgiven for it.)
Where he came from wasn't safe. (Nothing unusual for either of them but,) I wanted to be that for him.
(Lev wasn't asking for much. Only to be himself.)