TLV: IC Contact

[sixfeetofdirt]

Careful; I bite.

Comments

[handleyourshit]

"That's a hard place to be."

She looks up at him, watching, now.

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Yes. It is. It's been a while since I haven't really had anything to...want."

Hopelessness feels like a maw opening beneath him. Or a tomb.

[handleyourshit]

She doesn't rush past that, doesn't railroad right over it; it's a devastating state to be in, as she knows from her own experience. The one she's still, in fact, living.

But it's not about her, so she leaves it for a few moments, considering.

Then: "Is it that you don't have anything to want?" she asks. "Or that you lost how you were sure you were going to get there?"

[sixfeetofdirt]

"The former," Astarion says quietly. "I wanted to be...powerful to the point of being untouchable. Safe and free. Back home, the business with the Nether Brain and what I learned about the Rite opened a...couple of avenues. If their promises were only ever self-delusion, then..."

He shrugs.

[handleyourshit]

"You're still powerful," she counters, though she knows he'll blow her off. It doesn't change her opinion.

"And it sounds to me that safety and freedom are still part of the goal, anyway."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"You're right."

He concedes this point extremely easily.

[handleyourshit]

"So you still want that."

And they're good things to want. They are, she'd argue, something pretty much every sentient being wants.

"It just maybe looks different, now."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"It does."

It looks like a fantasy. It looks like a joke. If ascension was a self-delusion, then freedom without power is a delusion fed to fools by others. He thinks of Dalyria and Petras, so certain that Cazador was going to give them their liberty. Pitiable.

"You want those things too, don't you?"

[handleyourshit]

"I do," she admits, and finishes up peeling her orange, setting the rind on the corner of the tray.

"I think everyone does. It just looks different for everyone - both what they want, and how they get there."

[sixfeetofdirt]

Astarion nods. He sets down the plate and reaches for an apple, but just holds it.

"So that's where I am. Just...abstract desires, and no plans. Not a desirable place to be. As you said."

[handleyourshit]

"Mm," she agrees. She did say that, and she can see that's where he is.

"May I make a suggestion?"

[sixfeetofdirt]

He looks up from the fruit to her face.

"Of course you may."

[handleyourshit]

"You've just taken a huge hit." Literally and figuratively.

"If I broke my arm, you wouldn't expect me to pick a bow back up again immediately, would you?"

[sixfeetofdirt]

Astarion blinks at her.

"I - well, I'd want you to see a healer instead of just waiting it out, but I see what you're driving at. No, I wouldn't."

[handleyourshit]

She smiles, small but warm.

"Then see a healer." Since he's the one who suggested it. "And give yourself some grace before making any major decisions either way."

[sixfeetofdirt]

He nods.

"I will."

This is the decision he's made, for now. Passivity, obedience - swallow discomfort, stop arguing, stop learning over and over that he's wrong and stupid and bound for disappointment. Nobody's going to hurt him here. Not in the way he's used to.

[handleyourshit]

She nods, both grateful and approving, and lets that sit with them both while she peels sections out of the orange to eat. Acknowledging a loss doesn't mean it doesn't still fucking hurt. It doesn't mean it doesn't still fucking suck.

She is an expert at losing, in a different way but no less thorough than he is, she's always thought.

"D'you know why I liked you straight away, when I can't stand most of the people here, cariño?"

[sixfeetofdirt]

"I assumed it was the hair," he says, and quirks a smile. "But no, I don't know. Why?"

[handleyourshit]

"Well the hair helped," she teases.

"But you're not afraid to call out the hard truths, the negatives. So many people here - in the old world, too - were willing to just gloss over it, look the other way. But if you don't look at it, and know what it is, you'll never change it."

[sixfeetofdirt]

So maybe if he stops calling those things out, she'll stop liking him? Mm.

"Knowing the hard truths doesn't seem to have helped me," he says mildly.

[handleyourshit]

"You heard the part I said about changing them, yeah?" she answers, wry.

"I just mean... I'm glad you're not okay with just wanting more and more power."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"I'm not going to say it wouldn't be nice, but even gods can be killed," he concedes. "There's no end to it."

[handleyourshit]

"And it makes people assholes, every single time."

She is far too feral to mind licking the stickiness off her fingers, though she reaches for a napkin after.

"The wrong kind of asshole, anyway."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Whereas I'm currently the right kind?" Astarion wonders, and finally takes a bite from the apple he's holding. It's crisp and sweet, and he closes his eyes for a moment to better enjoy it.

[handleyourshit]

"Well, we're certainly not pushovers, are we?"

She, too, is an asshole after all.