Quark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
latinumsbetter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
letsplayamurder2025-08-10 03:20 am
latinumsbetter) wrote in letsplayamurder2025-08-10 03:20 am
Entry tags:
Afterparty
[After Zvei walks down into the earth and it closes over his head, and Typhon gives his goodbye...the Phantasmal Bar finally flickers out of existence. Quark breathes out a slow breath.]
Alright. The bar downstairs is going to be open. Stop in. [That is not a request.]
Riful, let's see what we can do about that thing you need.
[He'll give Leb a squeeze--before she detaches from him. He makes eye contact at least once with all of his employees, and then he turns and walks out of the Arena. So...post trial, the bar downstairs is once again open. The employees are around at different times, and Quark is once again behind the bar. There’s been several of the extra togas gathered and folded to be used as blankets. There's food and drinks and places to sit and think or talk or whatever one would like to do.
There are two more drinks that are made and sit just behind the counter to accompany with the other two that are usually remade and replaced every day.
The door is open.]
Alright. The bar downstairs is going to be open. Stop in. [That is not a request.]
Riful, let's see what we can do about that thing you need.
[He'll give Leb a squeeze--before she detaches from him. He makes eye contact at least once with all of his employees, and then he turns and walks out of the Arena. So...post trial, the bar downstairs is once again open. The employees are around at different times, and Quark is once again behind the bar. There’s been several of the extra togas gathered and folded to be used as blankets. There's food and drinks and places to sit and think or talk or whatever one would like to do.
There are two more drinks that are made and sit just behind the counter to accompany with the other two that are usually remade and replaced every day.
The door is open.]
no subject
[ She makes a small sound of agreement, hanging her head. He's right. It's something and that's at least better than nothing.
She sighs. She doesn't like the words she's about to say - she knows they're selfish and that she shouldn't voice them. But she'd spent her life forced to be selfless, give pieces of herself up for others and submit to their selfish whims, until it ultimately claimed her life and eternal rest.
Maybe it's fine if she acts like a selfish child for once. ]
...I'm so tired, Mr. Astarion. I'm so tired of being abandoned like this.
[ It's not fair of her to say. Aglaea didn't mean to leave her. But neither did Alex. Didn't mean they hadn't. Just like Snow White. Just like Elise. ]
no subject
[He falls silent. Astarion isn't good at comforting for the simple and horrible reason that he's never been offered comfort. Not until far too recently for his liking.]
Though our circumstances may have been quite different, I understand.
[Gods, does he understand. Nobody ever came to his rescue. Nobody cared when he vanished.]
We... we'll get through this. And then you'll be able to go somewhere else, far away. Where He can't hurt you, can't find you.
And then you'll never need to fear again.
[Though he'd offered safety in the fortress, in truth it doesn't matter to him where Lebkuchen goes, so long as she's safe.]
no subject
But it’s hard. It’s so hard when she keeps letting hope in and feels it get snuffed out just as quickly as it was lit. ]
Will we…?
[ Her voice is heavy with doubt that she tried so hard to let go of when Snow claimed they were all doomed. ]
I don’t know anymore… Miss Aglaea was so strong and yet she was still killed. She said there’d always be someone here for me, but I don’t know which of you is next. Today it was her and almost Mr. Quark, tomorrow it could be Cerejeira or even you.
I want to believe- to trust what you say but I… I…
[ She trails off, realizing something through all this talk of trust and being abandoned. A crucial difference between herself and Astarion that she hasn’t found the chance to explain to him properly yet. ]
…I haven’t told you what actually happened the night I became a Golden Maiden, have I?
no subject
All the sorrow and horror Astarion felt when he realized what happened to him.]
...You haven't, no.
[But he's known her long enough to know the scar runs deep and still throbs.]
1/ I swear I did not mean for this tag to become such a long ass monster but here we are
She shifts in position, adjusting her legs under her a little more as she tries to steady herself. This... this will be a long one. ]
You know how I told you before that there were three of us lasses who grew up together in the village? Freya was one of them but the other... her name is Elise.
She was the one I was closer to. We were both found abandoned as babies - me on the church steps and her in the woods - and taken in by elderly women in the village, so we had much more in common. Our grannies had been best friends their whole lives as well, so of course we were going to see each other a lot. The two of us became inseparable, doing everything together, good or bad... usually bad. Oh, the mischief we'd get into... stealing cookie fillings, splashing each other in the town fountain, making plans to spend the night in an abandoned house we thought was haunted, breaking into the church so we could star gaze from the bell tower while snacking on leftover pretzels... we'd get in trouble all the time and everyone would say she was a bad influence on me, not knowing I was just the one who was better at keeping my mouth shut.
2/
Though I suppose she was always a little more bratty - one day she sawed the heels off my nice church shoes because she thought it was hurting me to stand around in them all day. Another time she threw a rock at my window and broke it while trying to get me to come outside. She even once took all my veils and habits and hid them in an abandoned house! Always making it clear that she hated me becoming a nun because she could tell it made me unhappy, even before I realized that myself...
[ And then that smile is back to being a little sad ]
We knew and understood each other better than anyone else - even more so than we knew ourselves, honestly. She was the only other person I could truly be... myself around. The me who doesn't bite her tongue, who has razor sharp wit and likes to tease, who laughs every time she successfully makes her best friend a flustered mess. And that's what she was: my best friend.
At some point though... I realized I loved her in ways more than that. She wasn't just that to me, she was my everything... I was completely and utterly in love with her.
3/ cw: mild sarvation mention jic
But her own happy childhood was cut short. She was only 8 when Granny Holle died and left her all alone to fend for herself. She had to start working just to survive and usually went to bed hungry with just enough in her belly to live another day. I gave her bread every day of course but there was only so much her pride would let me and granny do for her. It also didn't help that she was always an outspoken and forceful girl, so many of the villagers would treat her horribly while taking advantage of her poverty. It wore her down, made her bitter and resentful, and I'd often catch her staring off at the castle in the distance, wishing for a prince in a carriage to come and take her away to a life of wealth and comfort - just like in the fairy tales we used to read together. I always knew she would leave as soon as she was able to, just as she always knew I was never happy with my habit.
The week before it all happened though I could tell something was... off. She was acting strange, like she was hiding something from me, but even though my intuition was telling me otherwise I decided to trust her. Chose to believe that she would tell me the truth when she was ready. Then I started to get this... feeling that she was finally going to leave. Tensions in the village were high, and we had both been dragged through the mud the day before as part of the ridiculous witch nonsense that had swept them into a frenzy. Even I had had enough of it all... I gave so much of myself to those people as their only "holy maiden" but one accusation from a feverish child was enough to turn them all against me. And so in the spur of the moment, before I could lose her to whatever I thought was going to take her away from me I... finally confessed my love to her.
4/
But of course... then it became a nightmare.
5/
Remember what I said about those shoes? How He sends them to lasses with ambitions that catch His eye? They... they weren't offered to me, although I wear them now in that form against my wishes. I was never His target - it was always her. That's what she'd been hiding from me. She'd been wearing them that whole week, following instructions to gather gifts for Him so He could make that same life of luxury she wished for come true.
...She was told to arrive with "Good Company". That's the third gift, the one you hold closest to your heart - your very beloved. It's all part of the trick of course: the gifts aren't part of the actual deal you make with Him, they're just how you get in the door. That way even if you decide you don't want to take the deal in the end, He still gets to claim a soul. Still gets a meal and sometimes a new Golden Maiden if He likes the unknowing victim enough.
6/ cw: demon vore back at it again
So she... sh-she told me she wanted to show me something in the woods. She led me right to Him, let Him whisk me away so they could bargain and then... th-then...
[ She closes her eyes and runs a hand over her face, trying to keep it together even as the vivid memories of that night start to flood back in. The stage, the crow and the snake, an audience of Golden Maidens jeering and laughing... the tentacles with all the eyes and teeth and Elise... Elise... ]
...I still remember crying out her name and begging for her to save me as He began to tear me limb from limb. The way His underlings pinned me down as all of them gorged themselves on my flesh and reveled in my screams. But the whole time... all she did was watch. I loved her so much and trusted her despite all the signs and she... did nothing. Nothing at all. All of the pain of being eaten alive and everything I endured after He took my soul and bathed it in gold... none of it hurt as much as realizing she'd betrayed me and seeing her be so... passive in it all.
7/7 GOD OK SORRY NIN
But in a quieter voice: ]
I wish... I wish I had my own "Tav". I wish I had someone so incredible who loved me like that, who I could depend on and would know just what to do... and wouldn't do something like that to me... just sacrifice our future for their own gain...
[ And then, even quieter and shakier: ]
I remember being loved like that once... And I-I just... I wish I still was...
[ The flowers grown for Aglaea are fine, but the flowers that usually grow where ever Lebkuchen stands or rests her feet in response to her very life force
they're drooping and wilting again. ]
IT'S ALL GOOD 1/2
There is one thing he and Lebkuchen do not have in common. Astarion was never betrayed by a loved one. He doesn't remember anymore, if he had been pursuing a relationship before Cazador turned him. Probably not, given how clearly he remembers the victims he lead to their doom. How starkly Sebastian's face stayed with him, even after 200 years.]
Gods, Lebkuchen.
[He remembered when he told Tav about his reaction to the pushy drow. How he'd realized, in that moment, that if Tav had commanded him to drink her blood he would have done so. Not because he wanted to, but because he still thought of himself as a slave. How grateful he'd been that Tav had stood up for him. And then she'd hugged him.
Such a simple act, and he'd known with absolute certainty that this woman was the love of his life. His first love. His only love.]
2/2
But he can do what Tav did those months ago, and pulls Lebkuchen into a hug.]