CRYSTAL | MISS ME, DARLINGS?

[illithidnapped]

FORM: sending crystals, during the truth event, you know what to do
SENDER: your favorite rogue, Astarion xoxo
RECIPIENT: as always, everyone
NOTES: if you drank Truth Soup, cough up your feelings; if you didn't drink the soup, make it worse for everyone, I dare you

[Someone's bored tonight. And it's been over a year since the last time he felt restlessness stirring him into needling action— particularly when he's noticed a couple of blurted-out confessions running high and harsh in the air. He could sleuth around. Sniff about for any signs of volatile tampering (or ask if this is just the next phase of whatever sleepless affliction's still nipping at everyone's collective heels)....

But this is so much more fun.

Anyway— ahem, and all that:]

Name one thing you like about someone else in Riftwatch. Anything. Anything at all.

Bonus points if you feel like getting weird with it.

[And don't think he's generous enough to actually start this game himself: that, you're all going to have to do on your own.

Or maybe just ask nicely.]

Comments

[illithidnapped]

Oh no no no, don't you dare let it end there.

[It's just getting good, after all.]

Go on, what do you appreciate about her.

[armd]

I appreciate that she's trying to meet me halfway despite everything, because it's making me feel more at home here.

[notathreat]

[Crystal shoved under pillow so she won't answer, but that. Actually is nice. Sorta softens the weirdness there.]

[notathreat]

No!

[illithidnapped]

What? You compliment her and she gets off with zipping her mouth shut?

[Pfft. Hardly seems fair.]

[notathreat]

This is only fun for you.

[illithidnapped]

[His huff is quick, it has all the makings of someone struggling to clean a kitten all too eager to sink claws and needle-sharp fangs into tender skin.]

Must you bite— [Of course she has to; he'd be just the same in her place.] I'm not doing this to humiliate you.

[notathreat]

Then what are you doing it for?

1/2

[illithidnapped]

You've trudged through a great deal together.

Victims of circumstance, one could say. [Astarion's not going to be the one to strictly label them that, but someone out there— someone who isn't him— well, they could say it, is the point. And besides: ] You'll go through a great deal more together, too.

You were right when you told me you were glad that you didn't kill her.

[....mm. Thank you presently unidentified source of this compulsive honesty, because that's absolutely not what he intended to say out loud, but fine.]

Bottom line— and I do hate having to be the only person spitting it out instead of pleasantly feigning indifference, but— the longer you two go on dragging this out by yanking at one another's collars, the harder it's going to be for you to both come to terms with the fact that you're not to blame for being fucked over by the messiness of life's perpetually repulsive narrative.

2/2

[illithidnapped]

Also, for what it's worth, because I obviously can't lie right now: you should know she didn't say no to my posed question.

[Just a little food for thought.]

I'll let you infer the rest on your own.

[notathreat]

[Ellie snorts aloud, but the fire goes out of her.]

I know.

I get it, and I get her, I get the way she thinks, and she gets me, in a way that probably nobody else alive could.

And I -- trust her.

[Ellie's voice cracks on the word. Like it still hurts her to do it, but it's true, and it's never not been true, in the weirdest and most fucked up ways.]

If things were different, we would have been friends.

[Not probably. Would have.]

That doesn't mean it's simple.

[illithidnapped]

Obviously not. [Mildness swept up in the word obviously, making it a touch gentler— wrier— than what it could otherwise be. He knows it's not an easy fix.

He's seen enough from both of them to know, now.]

But odds are, it has to start somewhere.

And if that means nipping at both your precious little heels to get some sort of confession out.... [One pause a sort of verbal, silent version of lifting hands.] I'll gladly endure the blowback.

I can spare it, after all. Charming as I am.

[Oh, hey. That counts as a truth!! :0]

[notathreat]

Sap.

[It comes out just as it would any other day, with all the love in the world behind it, but today it comes with a little more.]

I can't stand your shit sometimes. But it means the world to me that you do it anyway.

[illithidnapped]

As if you're any better. [He's teasing, but please know the fact that he's able to get it out at all speaks for itself.]

[notathreat]

I take pride in that.

[Unfortunately she's not WORSE, but she's up there.]

[armd]

(-- NO. TOO SINCERE

Pissily,) Happy?? Fuck off!

[illithidnapped]

Not really.

[That's honesty, too.]

After everything you've been through, it just seems a little....I don't know, anticlimactic?

[armd]

Oh, sorry, was it not scandalous enough for you. Am I supposed to say that she looks good when she bothers to try.

(... Because she does, for the record, and that isn't the point!)

[illithidnapped]

[Honestly he had a different route he was going to take, but how can anyone put a cup of water in front of a cat and not expect it to meet gravity....]

Well.

....does she?

private

[armd]

(Whoops her hand slipped and she disconnected from the main line!)

Sure. She does.

(Get dunked on)

a few moments...ish later

[illithidnapped]

Clever thing.

I'm almost proud of you for that.

[He can't lie; you have to know where he truly stands, now. For better or worse.]

Did you listen in, by the way? Overhear what I said to her?

Because I can always repeat it here, if need be.

[And if you fixate on the tattling, so help him, Abby....]

[armd]

(An impatient huff.)

Yeah. I listened. (She's been sitting on the edge of her bed for the entire conversation and that little exchange between Astarion and Ellie... she held her breath during it to keep from being heard. She listened to every last word.) Don't repeat it.

(All she needs is time to let the words cure.

But also,) You know this is still none of your business, right. (She's gonna stand by that one!) I get that you care about her, and are- almost proud of me? (Spoken like a question,) But you can't force this, or help it along, or whatever you think you're doing. We'll get there in our own time, or we won't.

Back off.

[illithidnapped]

And if we weren't in the middle of a life or death scenario, I'd leave you both an eternity to reconcile on your own.

....or at least the next hundred years or so. [How long do humans live again? Eh. Unimportant.]

But you're not. We're not. And every day I watch disaster after disaster pick and pull at the already tenuous fabric of our existence. If it's not the war itself, it's the Chantry, or the anchor shards, or rampant magic, or experiments, etcetera etcetera ad nauseaum.

You have one chance, darling. One. To get through this. And there's strength in numbers— provided they're the numbers you can trust. [He's going to cleanse himself of all this real talk by bathing in mischief for the rest of the night, if he can help it— but for now:] She trusts you. I assume, even if you don't enjoy one another's company for all your scars, you might feel the same.

Don't squander it.

[And then, more to himself than anything else because compulsion is in this Chili's tonight:] Bad enough all the mages have started swaying her to their side, desperate as they are.

[armd]

Yeah, (is the clipped response, clearly unmoved,) I know that.

But I don't think you get that I don't give a shit if I die having never made peace with her. (She isn't angry at all, but it could be a little unnerving how calmly she says it. How readily, like she's thought about it before now.)

I trust her. It's enough for her. It's gonna have to be enough for you too. (Got that?

Now,) Why wouldn't she side with the mages? She knows magic. (Duh, dude.)

[illithidnapped]

Oh.

[You know that noise. Everyone that knows Astarion, knows that noise.]

I'd suspected it, but now that I know it for certain, I have to confess that I'm much more curious about what you do actually 'give a shit' about— at least before you die.

[His scoff is light; he's scratching at his own curls somewhere she can't see.]

It's not native magic. It's not a vehicle for possession the way the Chantry likes to wave about when it comes to mages and whatnot. It also, for the record, feeds into exactly what all rebel mages want: which is us taking up their cause as if it were our own— as if the stakes matter equally for both sides, and that the second the Chantry starts locking up anyone with a staff, they'll be grabbing with their other hand for every last Rifter on the streets.