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

1/2

[doggish]

[The conversation lulls. Not dies, but there are ebbs and flows to every exchange, and this is no different. They curl up together quietly, content to hold one another and bask in the glow of all that's just been exchanged. In the distance, he can hear Ataashi padding about, roaming the mansion until she finds something to drag in front of the embers in the fireplace and gnaw on. Astarion makes a face (she's so loud about it, their darling girl) and Leto laughs, and for a time, he's content.

But eventually, Astarion asks. And though he knows he could defer . . . Leto acquiesces.

Not because he has to, understand, but because he does want to, somewhere deep in his heart. They were one of the most important parts of his life, and Astarion deserves to know about it, but . . . they also deserve to be spoken of. And perhaps he has been silent for too long, so desperate to push off the pain of grief that he has suffered with it for years on end.

So for the first time in years, Fenris (not Leto, not now) speaks of his companions.

Not the way he had before, bare scraps of information offered fleetingly, but rather at length. Steadily. His voice is even for the most part, for any tears he had to shed have dried long ago. Their loss is not a gaping wound, but rather one badly stitched over, still visible but not actively festering.

Some are easier than others, of course, especially with all this forced honesty. He tells him of Aveline: her fierce steadfastness and warm loyalty; her ridiculous courtship of her husband, and her bashfulness regarding it. We had to hide out along an entire patrol route and encourage her, except her idea of courtship either dated centuries back— I believe she actually considered goats a proper dowry gift— or awkward to the extreme. "It's a real nice night for an evening" is not exactly suave, he tells Astarion, chuckling fondly as he remembers. Pathetic, and by the end, Donnic was so put off he nearly fled. She only won his heart when she came to her senses and acted like herself instead of an idiot. Varric, too, earns a nostalgic smile: the dwarf with a thousand tales. An author and spymaster all at once, and Hawke's closest friend. A thousand connections within Kirkwall herself, too, which was how so many of them managed to live illegally for so many years: I do not know if he bribed guards or blackmailed them, but evictors never came to remove me from Danarius' mansion. Nor did the Templars bother with— with Anders' clinic, and oh, he'll get there eventually, but not yet, not yet. He wrote a book about Hawke. I have not read it, though I know I am in it. We all of us are. But it is an exaggerated affair, and I do not like that he published it at all, though I can do little about it now. But it unnerves me, knowing that to some, I am but a character in a story.

The Hawke twins are next, and perhaps briefest, for he knew them least. Bethany, charming and sweet, magic at her fingertips; Carver, always sulking in his sister's shadow, too jealous to see that he was strong in his own right. Wardens, both of them, hardened but perhaps all the better for it, given the potential alternatives. Merrill, and Fenris doesn't actually roll his eyes as he describes the chipper Dalish, but it's close. A blood mage too caught up in her dreams of the past to understand what she did was foolish to the extreme, and the important thing about honesty isn't that it's objective truth, but subjective, and what is true to Fenris does not necessarily mean it's true all over. Still, it takes its toll: she believed she could elevate elves. Perhaps she could have. I do not agree with the method, but her reasoning was . . . credible. And then: I will not say we didn't have our moments. Allied in the prejudices we faced, if nothing else. She was . . . flighty, but not stupid, and knew well enough when she was being cheated in Lowtown. I was intimidating presence enough to ensure she got a fair price on food— and given she helped many elves in the Alienage, I suppose it was not too tasking a . . . task.

Anyway.

Isabela, beloved companion, and his description of her is threaded with immense fondness. Not blindness, though: she caused an entire Qunari invasion thanks to her sticky fingers. Be grateful you were not there to see the siege of Kirkwall, for the Qunari are fierce fighters, and living through that once was more than enough. But ah, that's in the past, and though he still holds a small measure of incredulity towards her, still, he misses her too fiercely to hold her to fault for long. We were intimate, he tells Astarion, and there's a touch of hesitance there, for he isn't sure how that might be taken, forgetting his own indiscretion on the crystals. For many years. Not romantically, but she was . . . she helped me understand what sex could be. I suspect she had her own traumas, but she was not the sort to ever speak of her past. She invited me to be one of her raiders, once . . . before Danarius died. Sometimes I think of what my life had been if I'd taken that path. Oh, Isabela, brave and bold and brash, throwing off all chains and ties with a hearty laugh, and if he could speak to any of them again, it would be her.]