"Some, eventually. We've got to have a way to go cross-world, for Hakkai's friends. But I've promised to go meet all forty of my step-brothers, and...I think we want to make a home to come back to, before we go roaming around. I'd never come back here, though. This whole universe isn't worth the risk."
The barge's puppet-shows of the strangest wonders are just fine for him.
"I simply cannot express how much of a baby-crazy over-energized hyperacheiving weirdo my soul clone father-prototype-thing is," Jedao explains with a deep sigh.
"Most of them were adopted in batches of five after he liberated a million squads of child soldiers from slavery and at least managed to give most of them away. But then also there were war orphans, I think? Plus someone he adopted here while he was an inmate. And maybe one of his husbands had biokids too, I don't even know."
"Gods below. I've never really understood the trend for...acquiring
families, here," Astarion remarks, looking away into the flora and aquatic
life around them. "So complicated."
"The acquisitive type?" Astarion suggests, half-smiling.
(Not acquisitive in the way his own breach self had been, he dearly fucking
hopes. His gut twists. He believes Jedao when he says he's moving on from
all that, but fuck-)
"Ah...not exactly, I guess. More the ambitious type. Anything he did was going to be ten times bigger and more than anybody else had ever done it, but it was more about the doing than the having. If he was going to be an assassin, he was going to be the personal assassin of the Heptarch. If he was going to be a soldier, he was going to be the most famous tactical genius in history who got sent to dozens of impossible battles and never lost one. If he was going to be a traitor, he was going to kill a million of his own troops in one massive catastrophe and shoot his own bridge crew in the face. If he was going to be an inmate, he was going to take five years, four permanent wardens, and then graduate with two husbands six lovers and a plan to rescue a million slaves and save a galaxy. And if he was going to be allowed to have a family at all, of course it would have to the biggest, craziest, most boisterous family anyone's ever heard of. He's just so much."
It's the kind of utterly unafraid, put-upon and yet deeply sincere grumble of someone who doesn't actually hate that guy, but has been so deeply inconvenienced by that guy's fuckups that for his own mental health, he has to take the time to be uncharitable about it every so often. It's - well. It's a lot to live up to.
It's not even that the words are all that funny, but the dismissive horror in his voice, and something inherently funny about the word commune, altogether makes Jedao throw his head back in a warm, deep laugh. The boat drifts for a few moments as Jedao just hangs on the steering pole, looking up at the shimmering curtains of auroras in the bright sunlight.
"What it means is, when I'm finished here, for few decades at least, I will very graciously allow him to set me up with my own damn house and my own damn garden, preferably somewhere convenient to the spaceport, on the same planet as, but at least half a continent away from, his fucking idyllic baby commune slash galactic military headquarters. That way I can pop in and spoil my brothers and get magic lessons from his very pretty husband, and then leave again."
"One or two of them had their moments, but the rest I could happily leave
to their own devices until the end of time."
To say nothing of the thousands of 'siblings' he discovered back at...home.
Starving and waiting and suffering, beneath his feet, for decades. Lives he
would have snuffed out without a thought.
"In case of hull breach, secure your own emergency bubble before assisting or sabotaging others," Jedao notes, in a slightly affected tone, like he's quoting from something he's heard in a tinny voice too many times.
"Ah, it's a thing the station's grid reminds people periodically, back - where I used to live. On spaceships that aren't magic like the barge, if there's damage, sometimes all the air gets sucked out of an area, and you have to get an emergency bubble helmet on within thirty seconds, or else the water on the surface of your eyes starts boiling and the little blood vessels in your lungs burst and if you pass out then you die pretty quick. Correct procedure is to prioritize survival over either heroism or opportunism, because you don't have enough time or air to do two things."
"Oh. Well - no need for concern there, darling." He laughs lightly.
"Whatever history I have with my so-called family, I shan't be likely to
see them again. So."
"Anytime," Jedao agrees, soft-warm with the dazzling sunshine and sea-spray all around them, poling gently to round the edge of another little fingerling of rock.
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The barge's puppet-shows of the strangest wonders are just fine for him.
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He's silent for a few moments, reassuring himself he didn't mishear.
"...how did you acquire forty step-brothers?"
Not that fourteen would have been much more believable.
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"Most of them were adopted in batches of five after he liberated a million squads of child soldiers from slavery and at least managed to give most of them away. But then also there were war orphans, I think? Plus someone he adopted here while he was an inmate. And maybe one of his husbands had biokids too, I don't even know."
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"Gods below. I've never really understood the trend for...acquiring families, here," Astarion remarks, looking away into the flora and aquatic life around them. "So complicated."
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"A few people make sense to me. I didn't...set out to acquire anybody. But sometimes you fit with someone. Jedao One, on the other hand..."
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"The acquisitive type?" Astarion suggests, half-smiling.
(Not acquisitive in the way his own breach self had been, he dearly fucking hopes. His gut twists. He believes Jedao when he says he's moving on from all that, but fuck-)
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It's the kind of utterly unafraid, put-upon and yet deeply sincere grumble of someone who doesn't actually hate that guy, but has been so deeply inconvenienced by that guy's fuckups that for his own mental health, he has to take the time to be uncharitable about it every so often. It's - well. It's a lot to live up to.
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Only if you're trying to. To whit:
"He sounds exhausting, darling. I'm glad to have never met him."
(Five years and four wardens? Now he feels very slightly better about himself, to one narrow degree.)
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When he thinks of it in a certain light.
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"Does this mean that when you're finished here, you and he and his vast extended family will be - what, forming some sort of commune?"
Sounds utterly hellish.
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"What it means is, when I'm finished here, for few decades at least, I will very graciously allow him to set me up with my own damn house and my own damn garden, preferably somewhere convenient to the spaceport, on the same planet as, but at least half a continent away from, his fucking idyllic baby commune slash galactic military headquarters. That way I can pop in and spoil my brothers and get magic lessons from his very pretty husband, and then leave again."
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Astarion would normally bristle at being, to his ears, laughed at. Right now it's just...well, it's not happening.
"That seems like as decent a compromise as you could hope for. Personally, if I ever see my 'siblings' again, it'll be too soon."
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"One or two of them had their moments, but the rest I could happily leave to their own devices until the end of time."
To say nothing of the thousands of 'siblings' he discovered back at...home. Starving and waiting and suffering, beneath his feet, for decades. Lives he would have snuffed out without a thought.
His gaze has turned distant.
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Astarion doesn't startle, but he does blink and focus on Jedao.
"What?"
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"Mm."
A pause.
"I was more asking - what did you say it for?"
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"Oh. Well - no need for concern there, darling." He laughs lightly. "Whatever history I have with my so-called family, I shan't be likely to see them again. So."
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"Better worlds and better company," Astarion agrees, and sighs deeply, looking up into the sky.
"...It's rather beautiful here. Good choice, darling."
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