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Astarion was jerked out of his trance, any vestiges of what remained fluttering away at the sudden violence. He was already sitting up, staring at a point in a room where something say curled in a corner. Not something, but someone: Quinntav curled into themself, pinpricks of copper in the air telling Astarion that the... |
"You need to leave." |
"What's happening?" |
"Astarion, GO!" |
They had forgotten the glyphs. One almost decent night of peace and it was fortunate that Quinn had recalled the cuff. As much good as that had done. |
"I'm not going anywhere," Astarion said to them, getting up, his bare feet on the floor boards, his night vision taking what was offered from the moonlight and catching other small details. The right wrap of their tail around their folded legs, the way they say with their arms over their head, holding themself in a hun... |
"I WILL KILL YOU, ASTARION!" |
He sighed at their revealed expression, all bared teeth and red, wet eyes. There was no sick joy there, only pain and fear and rage. "You should have seen me a month into confinement. Hungry, slathering, mad with need. I cut my nails to the quick every day scratching at that coffin lid, begging to be let out," he crouc... |
Quinn turned their head away, hiding their face again, groaning pitifully. Nearly a whimper. What thoughts had to be going through their head. |
"Yes-," a hiss. |
"He's gone now. It's just the two of us." |
"Just the two of us." Nearly a song. They tensed further into themself, the copper smell intensified. Quinn was doing the hurting. "Pretty. Prettyprettypretty." Their wording was quick, trembling, marked with dissonance and fear, as if several terrified voices wished to speak at once. |
"How kind of you to say, sweetling." |
"I want to pluck out your eyes and wear them around my neck." |
"I've seen you staring, are they so lovely, darling?" |
"So,sosososo pretty. Camilla, carnation, chrysanthemum." |
"Come now, there must be something else you love about me aside from my eyes?" |
"Your fingers! Clever, cunning, calming. To hear them snap-, no. Nonono." They whimpered, the smell increased. He knew from experience that Quinntav could lose a lot of blood before they began to black out. They took powders daily for it and ate like a man starved at times. Astarion tried to recall with an unreasonable... |
"I can smell you. Don't hurt yourself for my sake." |
They covered their face with both hands: "Little Star." |
Astarion inhaled. He never should have asked them to look into his history, all it done was cause harm, to give them and himself ammunition. "Enough about me for a change. What about a song. A melody, anything. Remember what you told me, Quinntav. Music is powerful, it has a hold on memory nothing else is comparable to... |
A smell. A sensation. Quinn could ramble, truly, clumsily ramble without any hint of poetry when they were utterly enthralled by something. Music was one of these subjects, and the vampire couldn't forget when Wyll asked what had driven them to the violin. |
"Music had a mastery over memory nothing else can compare to. Think of it! Your mum tells you to use a melody to recall the alphabet, or to pick out what poison ivy looks like or how to watch for rain!" Only much later did Astarion question to himself if they recalled having a mother. "Smells, sensation, flavor, all of... |
Gale had chimed in, Karlach as well. Before the day had ended everyone had mentioned some song or psalm or what have your that they appreciated. He had not. Though Quinntav had pulled back to ask. |
"An instrument? A song?" |
His years had sapped him dry of any love for music. The ballroom dances, the commissioned ballads, the tavern jaunts spilling into allies during hunts. But it had been early in their time together, so, "The violin." |
"Really? I never would have guessed." A lift of their mouth, a dancing of eyes. Not joy, but calm scrutiny. He should have known better then to attempt to lie to a liar. |
But Astarion would watch. Watch as their body swayed with every saw, holding the instrument aloft as if were a lover on their shoulder, daring never to touch their feet to the ground. And he wondered, what did Quinn recall when they heard music, if they did very much of anything at all? |
In the present Astarion latched onto one in particular: "That thing you hum sometimes? Does it have words? Surely you've made some up by now." |
Quinntav made a sound, a laugh, a quick sob. |
"Hold me, dove, love me, dove, strangle my heart. |
Darling dove, mourning dove, hold me by my heart. |
Diamond eyes, sugared lies, take me by my hand, |
Sister dear, sower o" fear, lead me by hand. |
Father, father, bringer of blood upon thy brow, |
Father, father, to your hunger I forever bow." |
What in the Nine Hells was that? That was the song that stuck to their head like wax? That's what Astarion had begun to learn? |
"You would make the prettiest corpse." |
"I've heard that before," Astarion replied. Then he startled, realizing how true that was. "When we first met, after our first connection with the tadpoles. That was you." |
"No, the tadpoles. That's it. I don't think exactly want to know what's going on in that head of yours, but I imagine I've witnessed worse, as well. On the other hand," Astarion moved closer, ignoring Quinntav's violent flinch away. A sure sign, the opposite may have been more worrying. "Let's try this again." He close... |
He'd followed, that ingrained fear of rushing water making it look like poison, like a death sure to sap him of all strength and drag him to the ocean depths. Instead, with an air sunny sweet and the chime of gulls in his ears, Astarion had stepped onto the waves. Quinn there, a pillar standing against the momentum, gr... |
How the small fish had nipped at his ankles, how the buried shells had picked at his soles, how he had left his boots behind, almost shivering from the experience. The sea. The water. Two centuries of waiting to no longer feel afraid. |
They offered their hands, he took them, the terror still stabbing into his nerves in sharp pricks making any complaint fly to the wind. "Close your eyes." He had. "I have you. Listen." |
No song. No melody. Only waves crashing, the shuddering around his legs making him rock, but never sweeping him away. Serenity, at least the closest he had come to it since waking up in the daylight, free of its scathing hate. |
When dawn arrived Astarion found himself pinned. Quinntav's head was in his lap, their arms a vice around his waist. The quiet rise and fall gave away their slumber, while the occasional shiver revealed their state of mind, even while unconscious. It had been several hours since his watch had begun, not that it had bee... |
They would need to see to their chest wound. Astarion was sure they would confess what had happened if given the chance to the others, thus the vampire would have to nip that in the bud. All the same, they needed the healing. Bottles awaited in their pack, along with salves, powders, the like: Shadowheart may have been... |
"You think too much." |
He'd forgotten about the bond. |
It had always been a matter of force before. After the initial connection, that meeting of minds as the worms latched onto one another like long lost bosom buddies, any means of communication Astarion had to more less shove towards Quinntav and assume they would accept it. They always had. But that line of dialouge had... |
He let it be. Quinntav's deluge of hungry murder driven madness, struck through with stakes of iron refusal, had tapered off over time. They tossed and turned in their mind as they slept, even though their body reminded rigid against him. At least, for the most part. There had been some periods of calm where Astarion h... |
"And you're obsessed with me. Really," as Quinn blinked an eye up he moved the hair from their vision out of the way. "It's embarrassing." |
"Did I hurt you?" The eye was tinged with red from their earlier distress. A few more hours, some water, and food, it would all do them some good. |
Astarion ignored the kick of his leg for his musings. "You know you haven't." |
"I can't feel it all, Astarion." |
"What? You mean that little part of myself locked away from sight even from my purview? I stopped paying attention to that a long time ago." Quinn closed the eye, but the blush of response was felt all the same: guilt, exhaustion, fear, possessiveness, and, not unwelcome--, "You think so? With these bags?" |
They looked up again. "You could be drowning and look beautiful." |
"I notice the lack of dismissal of their being rings under my eyes." |
Quinntav chuckled, soft puffs of air hitting Astarion's stomach. |
"Now. Tell me. You didn't begin by calling me dove because of that song, did you?" |
A flash of confusion. Then their hold loosened. Astarion rose his brows at the regret from letting him go, and he chided them for it gently. Quinn sat up, back cracking, Astarion watching the roll of muscle in their shoulders from the window offered by their shirt and they rubbed their neck, where he often supped. |
Quinn pressed themself to the wall beside him, unbending all that length of leg and sighing in exhaustion. The light of dawn had long since filled the singular window of the room, and with their profile cupped with the creeping hands of light, Quinn appeared the oldest in that moment then they had ever once previously. |
"Don't snap at me, darling, we don't all age gracefully." |
An image of a pigeon strutting across a cobblestoned path entered his head in a slap. "Pardon me! That absolutely cannot be the reason!" |
"If the boot fits, chicken!" |
Astarion grabbed for their tail, giving a warning look and threatening a twist the moment he was provoked. Quinn laughed, the thing wiggling in the vampire's grasp, and he gripped it in response. |
"I think I had a sister," Quinn said suddenly, looking away towards the window. "But when I try to remember her all I see is...pale. Pale eyes, pale skin, pale hair. A smear of...bone white and cream against a red canvas." |
"And the father?" |
Quinn turned their head back, dropping it against the wall with a shrug. "Nothing. Nothing at all." |
"But the words came to you all the same?" |
"Perhaps from the same deep crevice where you keep some of your memories," they replied, flicking their gaze to his forehead. |
"The butler did mention that I was an heir to something, but it could have been metaphor." |
"Was he here," Astarion's eyes narrowed in concern at the flash of guilt. |
"In the corner beside me." |
"He was feet away from us? From our bed?" The guilt doubled into shame, Quinntav looking pointedly away as if they were a dog asking if they had chewed up the vampire's favorite slipper." Why are you acting as though I've caught you with another lover?" |
"Because you shouldn't have to be in the same room! We should be able to share a bed or spend some time otherwise alone together without the physical manifestation of my destiny to cull the world of it's inhabitants tucking us in." |
"It is a bit of a mood dampener." He couldn't help his amusement, Quinn drawing up their knees in response with a sulk. "And there you were offering to be my jester. Imagine if you had instead asked for my hand." |
Astarion's smirk slipped when their mood truly darkened, their expression half hidden behind their arms that they did cross over their knees in contemplation. "He says I need to kill you, Astarion. Specifically you." |
"...how is it that it came to be me after that girl? And really it's rather difficult for it to be me if you on insist on refusing, now isn't it?" |
"You saw me, Astarion." They spread their legs again, plucking at their turn shirt: below their sternum, between their ribs, they had gouged themself with their nails. Five deep cups, no longer bleeding but still in need of tending continued to spice the air with flavor as well as tension. "What happens if I sustain an... |
"You won't. You will not kill me. Because now you know the truth. Now you know you can fight it. And you have, several times," he interrupted their beginning argument. "Who has died? Who have you killed save for wayward bandits and creatures on the road and those cultists we're all hunting together?" He attempted to be... |
"You were on the floor beside me." |
"Worse still! But. You did not kill me. I would call that as much a victory as any. Hells, you spent a majority of the time complimenting me." |
"As one would a prized stag." |
"Oh, a stag, am I?" His preening was more then enough for that blip of fondness to return. But as anyone else, Quinntav was layered, and Astarion had to accept that if he wanted to read their emotions as they were via the connection he would have to accept a certain fact. That as long as he had known them, Quinntav had... |
"This stag has a means of defending himself, remember. I did not only survive as long as I have due to my charming wit and fantastic sense of style. I have killed, Quinntav. And I will kill you before I allow you to make me yet another victim." |
Quinntav was silent, watching. The ocean that was their mind stilling to a frozen pool. But then their eyes fluttered shut, the relief as palpable as the air on his face, and they bent their head. |
Astarion felt a pain in his chest. A dull ache. Quinn opened their eyes to question, but he cut off the connection, their lips parting in surprise. "We need to see to the damage you've inflicted on yourself," he said, standing up, knees complaining, Quinn following with their hand still in his. "I don't need my snack c... |
Quinn smiled. "How soon is later?" |
"Are you the one eating or am I?" |
"Why not both?" |
Astarion scoffed. "Spoiled brat." |
There was a shivering spattering of rain falling over their camp. They had left civilization behind them, the approaching grasp of the Shadowfell frightening away any potential life for miles around. They had their fire at the heart of the ruins they called home: a lonely abode, crumbling down a cliff face, cupped gent... |
Some had turned in early for the night, longing instead for the darkness of dreams over that over the horizon of black they slowly approached. Quinntav was not one of these number, the Hunter half buried in a mound of pillows stolen from two separate tents while they and Astarion ruminated each a book of their own. Ast... |
His Tiefling. Their evening together. And to top it off Quinn insisted on pausing, here and there, to share some anecdote from the novel they had picked up from the last tavern they had left behind. |
"Frey is here with Crake sharing his kernels in the middle of a stakeout, and I don’t think either of them know what’s happening," the Tiefling was smirking over the pages. "Five chapters ago Crake was spitting mad about whether Frey cared at all, one chapter ago Frey was muttering about how self-centered he had become... |
"I still believe Crake is a fool," Astarion mumbled a response. He had very well forgotten about his own book, his place held with a few fingers as he lounged back in the chair, leg crossed over thigh, chin beheld in a palm. When he had begun staring, he wasn’t sure. When he had stopped reading, he was less sure of sti... |
"He is. He’s kind and clever enough I believe he could find anyone who recognizes that and settle in nicely in comfort somewhere. But then there are no questions. No "what-if’s". No thrill on the horizon at every turn. He could have left the others behind at that bar and been done with it all. And |
." Quinn’s tail flickered, they turned a page, and Astarion watched as their expression flickered into focused interest. |
Astarion could watch them all night. |
He had. Before. Meditation only required six hours of respite, where as Quinn’s sleep cycles could push on to nine hours depending on what had happened on the road leading to them. There was only so much to be done in the night while waiting for the others to rouse, and sometimes whomever was on watch left less to be d... |
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