sixfeetofdirt | TLV: IC Contact

"Well, I'm sure we can get Jacob to make you something badly," she teases, "Or we can just use it to pick out a theme. I think I still remember how to do that."

She leans her head back against his arm, looking around the room, realizing she hasn't been in here yet. Realizing how ridiculous that is.

"We haven't really talked since you've been back. Or me, really."

"We haven't. I'm sorry. It's been...well, honestly, I can't really say it's been any more strange than usual, can I?"

"I can certainly say it's fucking strange being on this side of graduation."

Admittedly their circumstances are different, but some of the same things carry.

"How are you?"

"I...I don't know," he admits. "I'm free. For the first time I can remember, I'm where I am by choice. Obviously it's an improvement on the alternative, but in some ways I feel...paralysed."

"There's a lot of choices to make now, huh?" she asks, from the point of view of someone who feels it as well, but it is a genuine question in case she's wrong.

"Yes. That is - I know where I want to end up. Or rather, who I want to end up with." He smiles at her. "But it's still...well. Being able to make all my choices means being able to make them all badly."

She has worried about that - worries about it. She changed the game on them all while she was gone, brought in a new element they would both be well within their rights to want nothing to do with. She smiles back, and keeps that to herself a while longer.

"What worries you most about it?" she asks instead. "About making bad choices."

"The consequences of those choices, I'm sure you'll be unsurprised to hear." He sighs. "Take Gale. I don't want to read his file unless he literally insists on it, but - is that the right choice, or is it just what I would have wanted for myself?"

"I've thought about this," she admits, because of course that's the biggest immediate question they'd now face on a pairing, isn't it?

"Do you think you need it to understand him? Is he stonewalling you out or unwilling to talk to you?"

"I don't think I need it. I understand well enough how he got to this point," Astarion says. "And frankly, he's spent long enough stewing in his own past. I'd rather talk to him about his future, at least insofar as I need to convince him he has one."

"Sounds to me like you have a good reason not to, then, unless you get stuck or he wants you to," she admits.

"Godric and I - we tried to get through mine. He insisted it would help, and maybe it did. We didn't even get to most of the worst parts, though. I couldn't."

"I'm sorry," Astarion murmurs. "I never read my file. I felt I didn't need to. I was already there for everything that would be mentioned, and I didn't enjoy any of it the first time around, so..."

"So if anything, we've both proven the file isn't necessary for graduating," she points out, reasonably.

But also, she tells the ceiling, "I felt the same way about a lot of it. But some of it... I just didn't want to see his face when he found out about some of it." She rolls her head to look at him, asking the silent question if it was like that for him, too.

Astarion considers that.

"That - may be true for Gale. For me, I...there has been so much shame, and pain, and humiliation. There would be nothing in my file I could take pride in, or enjoy recounting. So - if anything, the reverse is true. I should have wanted to see my wardens' faces, just to know they could tolerate being in the same room as me."

"Should have?" she asks, lightly. Curious.

Should doesn't have a very pronounced place in their lives, from what she can tell, and she's not trying to say it now either. But he's the one saying it, so she just prompts.

"I don't know. Maybe," he says, shrugging it off. "It all feels rather academic now. I at least recognised early on that John wasn't enough of a person to relate to anything I'd experienced, so what he thought of my file was besides the point."

She makes a soft, derisive sound at the name but doesn't take it any further than that.

"Well. Mostly I just- it's important to me that you know. If that changes and you do need to get something out of your head, I'm still here. That hasn't changed even if other things have. And I'm not going to shame or humiliate you over it."

"I know. Thank you." He shifts a little closer, puts an arm around her. "And I - lack your talents for knowing the right thing to say, but I can at least lend a pointy ear if ever it's needed."

"Oh, I'm gonna need that," she chuckles, reaching up to hook her fingers with his to pull that arm tight around her. Firm.

"I've been wanting to check back in with both of you anyway, now that some of the... reunion bliss has had a chance to wear off."

"'Check in'," he echoes. "In general, or in light of....certain developments during your absence?"

He glances down at her stomach.

"Well yes, in general," she answers, genuinely. "I don't know if you recall but it's been a fair few years for me, and it's kind of hard to just pick back up right where we left off before. I know I'm different. So yes -"

But she sighs, smiling a wee bit helplessly if she's honest.

"But also yes, that. Neither of you exactly signed up for it."

Astarion frowns thoughtfully.

"It's...different. For me. I can't speak for Jacob. It's been years for you, I know that, but I can't...feel it. It was a matter of tendays for us. I can't help but think I can just pick up where we left off, even though I know I'm just going to make a mess of it."

"I'll talk to Jacob too," she promises him. He doesn't need to speak for him, or worry about that.

"I know it wasn't long for you - in more than one way." She has to assume he perceives time so much differently than she or Jacob does. "But it's hard for me to remember exactly what that even was. Why are you so sure you're making a mess of things?"

"...I don't know. An intoxicating cocktail of self-loathing and low expectations, most likely."

He circles a path around her upper arm with his thumb.

"Can you...describe it? How you see yourself as different now."

"Well, be nice to my friend," she teases-but-not-really, squeezing his hand in hers. "He's pretty amazing if he lets you get to know him, and I would know."

This is how she segues into trying to answer his question, even though it's harder for her to connect dots; she's been the frog in the pot, after all. She isn't quite sure when the water changed temperature, only that it has.

"Well, for one, I sleep now." A rueful smile. "I'm not angry all the time, I don't hate everyone. I'm not suicidal."

She's more... not standoffish, she isn't actively avoiding anyone or anything, but this is the first time she's sat in Astarion's new room with him, and she knows she's been the same with Jacob. She's focused inward more than outward now, and she's more independent.

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