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[broodypants]

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crystal | in the absolute dead of night;

[illithidnapped]

Tell me you're still awake.

[broodypants]

I'm awake.

[illithidnapped]

[Ah— music to his ears.]

Aha, no luck sleeping, I take it? Or is this one of those long, diligent work nights I keep hearing so much about?

[broodypants]

Checking for defensive weaknesses.

[roll 9 perception or higher to realize he is lying.]

[illithidnapped]

[Nice try.]

Really?

In what, exactly? Hearts, minds— our own boringly adequate fortifications?

[broodypants]

It's hardly adequate. It has been besieged several times, once in living memory.

[illithidnapped]

Mm.

You do realize you could do that during the daytime, which is what most of the living world would opt for.

Get a little rest. Shut your weary eyes. Drift off.

[This suggestion, of course, isn’t necessarily helpful: he’d rather Fenris stay awake for his own selfish reasons.

...but that’s at odds with his perpetual desire to tip the scales.]

[broodypants]

I slept earlier. [In daylight.] My schedule is my own. Or should I be saying the same to you?

[illithidnapped]

[There’s a chuckle let loose from behind a tongue pressed flat against sharp teeth, subdued.

Well played.]

We vampires do our hunting at night.

I’m still not quite used to anything else.

[And with everyone else already sleeping like sweet little newborn babes, well...it gets unbearably quiet once the sun goes down.]

left in that dusty mage tower

[illithidnapped]

[One expertly penned note that faintly smells of lilac and leather, wrapped precisely around a single deck of finely crafted playing cards:]

A little gift for my dearest partner in crime. I've cut notches into the card corners to mark which ones are which, so if you enjoy winning, I suggest you learn them.

Of course you're free to be as virtuous as you like, but know that I'll be deeply disappointed in you. Doubly so if you lose these. They're from Hightown, after all, and took a decent bit of work to get.

Wine tonight after sunset. If you haven't studied up by then, I'm taking every last coin you have.

-Astarion

[broodypants]

[Fenris does not show up at the appointed time bECAUSE HE CAN'T FUCKING READ ASTARION.]

[illithidnapped]

[WHAT SORT OF ELF CAN'T READ.]

[broodypants]

[illithidnapped]

[The next time Dobby comes home he now has a pack of cards waiting for him and a smashed bottle of wine left directly in the center of the room.

Enjoy.]

crystal.

[broodypants]

[Well, the only person in this organization who knows about Fenris' wine habit is...]

Did you leave the note?

[illithidnapped]

Obviously.

[Is this a joke, Fenris? Are you venturing into humor again? Because if so: failing.]

It was signed, in case you failed to notice.

[Like he failed to notice so much else.]

[broodypants]

Signed it? I-

[Annoyance meets anger, impatient and harsh-]

Why would they teach slaves to read, Astarion?

crystal;

[illithidnapped]

One of our own was stabbed.

Not fatally, mind, but all things considered, you don't just ram a knife into someone without wanting them to suffer at the very least. [Which, fine, yes, people are injured all the time in Rift Watch—]

But there's more.

When I patched her up, the girl said it was another rifter that did it.

[And yet no one's said a damn word about it. Nothing on the crystals, nothing whispered elsewhere, either.

He doesn't like it.]

[broodypants]

Ellie?

[Just a shot in the fucking dark, here.]

[illithidnapped]

A-hmm. [ The noise Astarion makes is stuttering, comes out as a sort of a half-cough in an off-balance moment of surprise. It's a good guess.] No, actually.

A girl named Abby, in fact. Very strong, uniquely tall.

I did all that I could to press her for some kind of answer, but the woman was willing to leap out my own window in order to keep quiet about this. And since she knows what I am, well.

Let’s just say no amount of reaching out on my part was going to soothe her. Fairly certain she was convinced I was just waiting for an opportunity to drink her blood where no one else could see.

[A faint pause before, pointedly:]

Which— I wasn’t. Obviously.

And I couldn’t risk the thought that if something happened to her under my own roof, or if she decided to start acting as if I did to protect her secrets....well.

[Monsters have a way of winding up on the dangerous ends of torches and pitchforks. Guilty or otherwise.

And as for elves in Thedas...]

[broodypants]

You mean, the... vampire thing. She's heard of that?

[Sorry, he's still struggling to believe anyone would think Astarion drinks blood.]

What did she say?

[illithidnapped]

A lot of people have heard of it. Rifters, I mean. And not even ones from my own world, of which there are thankfully none.

[Wait until he bites you someday, Fenris. Or at the very least, someone in front of you.]

That's just it. I found her bleeding out in the street. [And he definitely. Absolutely. Was not trying to rob her before he realized it.] Coaxing her into my home was a nightmare what with all the 'how can I trust you, you're a vampire' nonsense. It was only when I bandaged her wounds that she started winding back on it.

I thought it was the local riffraff that'd tried to do her in. Maybe one of our roaming refugees, or an agent in disguise.

But the minute I started asking questions she shut up tight as a troll's ass on a rainy day: elusive. Upset. Defensive. All I got was that the person who tried to do her in was one of ours, from a rift. And a woman, at that.

And no one's said a word otherwise. Not anywhere. Not even an off-handed murmur in the Gallows about a wolf amongst the herd.

[broodypants]

Could you consider this a matter between them?

[illithidnapped]

Oh. Well now I’d never thought of it like that— of course I damned well have!

[The words hiss through his teeth, serpentine and coiled.]

But that’s beside the bloody point, isn’t it? How do we know this isn’t going to come popping up again, perhaps this time on a mission or— oh, I don’t know, in the middle of a battle where no one can, quite frankly, see shit all.

What if the woman’s out of her mind? What if she goes after one of us?

Namely us.

[Ugh. Exhausting. Awful.]

If we’re all rubbing elbows there’s no such thing as personal business. Not when it comes to daggers and hushed whispers.

[broodypants]

You cannot handle the matter for the girl if she does not want you to.