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[rowancrowned]

 

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[rowancrowned]

'Wilting'?

( the word said with the verbal equivalent of being held between two fingers, something gross the cat brought in, corrections wholly ignored. )

I was a lord.

( a steward with a particularly nice hat. )

[illithidnapped]

[It's so satisfyingly easy sometimes; what a gift, the sound of that revulsion.

Attention is always attention, after all.]

Arda, wasn't it? The place you'd mentioned once before. [A lot can be said of Astarion's callous nature, but his memory is sound, and he covets those fragile details as much as the cluttered curiosities set within his own home.]

Given that you and I are the only sharp-eared former nobility I've met, I'll assume it wasn't just a heap of bark and leaves, or some shrinking recess in the midst of an otherwise expansive world.

[rowancrowned]

Taur-nu-Fuin. Mirkwood, as the Men called it. The largest Elven kingdom yet remaining on the continent.

( exorcised of longing in the tone, but not fondness. )

Enough so that the lord was simply the Elvenking.

[illithidnapped]

The largest— [His laugh is high. Brittle. Quick in the way anything reflexive is, like jerking fingertips or a twitch at the corner of a mouth— only when it ends, nothing else steps in.

Because Lord finally translates as the pieces settle in. Not a Duke or a Baron, or some self-appointed keeper of a patch of muddy earth. A fucking Elven king. Literally the Elvenking. It's right there in the bloody title.

And here he’s been making an ass of himself, teasing the man about twigs and deer and frolicking in the woods. Making him clean fish and tend the fire and— Hells, even shameless Astarion, nuisance and jackknife rolled into one, knows exactly what kind of insults he's managed.

So just. Just give him one minute. To catch his breath and find his footing and put away the memory of baser commentary or silken hair tangled up in bedsheets before he melts entirely into the stone railing currently propping him upright.]

You couldn’t have told me sooner?

[rowancrowned]

( he waits for Astarion to finish sputtering before he replies, all cool smoothness: )

Told you what?

[illithidnapped]

Told— [Incredulous. Scoffing. How does he not know?]

That you were a damned king? The quintessential sort, in fact, going by the whole Elvenking affair. I—

[rowancrowned]

I have no armies. No holdings. No storied history nor alliances.

( blunt, ) If I were to put on my crown and call myself Lord, I would be thought a madman, or worse, a fool, and an elf either way. What good would that do me?

[illithidnapped]

[There, at least, is an utterly sobering truth: the sort Astarion can understand, given that for all his open-mouthed teasing, he's only confessed the depth of his true nature to a handful of people at best— and that percentage drops even more sharply in the case of anyone native to this world.

Self-preservation, realistic perceptions. It's his language, really. How can he blame Thranduil for it, when all he's done is the exact same thing?]

...well. [He starts, quiet in that tellingly contemplative docility of his.] I wouldn't have thought you were mad.

[For the record, at least.]

[rowancrowned]

( this is— better. he likes this reaction more.

how easily the mantle has fallen off, in what, less than a decade? a blink of an eye, for an elf, an idle afternoon. his entire life— )

I have a crown. It might well have added to the effect.

( it’s right over there, under the robe draped over the wardrobe door. )

You will not be behaving differently, I hope.

[illithidnapped]

[There's a tepid pause, there. Some point where Astarion's clearly weighing his own answer, still slung across the balcony with his chin settled heavily across his forearms.]

Not if you let me wear that crown at least once.

[rowancrowned]

It is silver and diamonds. It will suit you very well.

You intend to parade about the Gallows wearing it, I assume.

[illithidnapped]

[Silver and diamonds? How very to his taste.]

In an ideal world? Absolutely, darling.

That said, I'd rather not cause any further ripples of distress amongst our very narrow social circle. Or— well, your social circle, that is. [If seen preening about like a swanning dove in something unmistakably Thranduil's, Astarion imagines the sting might make things potentially more unbearable than they already are.

The whole damn continent might very well split further in half, in fact. Some kind of aftershock for yet another unintended slight.]

I'll settle for lounging around in it wherever you happen to roost.

[rowancrowned]

I will be at the Gallows. She has made it very clear I am not welcome at the estate.

( and she has every right.

he exhales. he has realized how dark the room is, how quiet. )

I am worried she— ( he cuts himself off. astarion could imagine any end to that sentence he might like and probably be right. instead: ) Come back alive and in one piece.

[illithidnapped]

[He doesn’t need to imagine how that sentence might end; the fact that it doesn’t says more than anything else ever could.

Still, rather than press, he opts to deflect from that pained flicker on Thranduil’s behalf. A rare, beneficial gesture.

His tone is easy. Light when he asks:]

You're not worried about me, are you?

[rowancrowned]

Trouble seems to find you.

( himself included. )

[illithidnapped]

Well that—

[A scoff, cut short when he opens his mouth to argue— and then shuts it again.]

Might be a little true. Somewhat.

[If being mauled to near-death, enslaved, kidnapped, infected, thrown into an entirely different world and swept up in its war counts for anything at all.]

But while we’re still on the subject of untold truths...there’s something you should know. About me, I mean.

[rowancrowned]

( laughter, bright as bells. shocked, briefly, by honesty, the flash of soft and vulnerable underbelly. it leaves his voice warm when he follows up: )

Some hidden nobility to confess, my friend?

[illithidnapped]

Ahah. Not quite....

[Well. No more than what Thranduil knows already, anyway: the pettier details of being a Magistrate, what little Astarion can remember.

So it’s chased by a milder sound. A thin puff of air let out through his nose.]

I’m not—

[Cut off, the start of his intended confession: eclipsed owing to a nearby peal of high-voiced laughter, spilling as surely as the wine that passing attendee is presently splashing all over the lip of their glass.

Right. Public soirée. The mission itself. There’s a better time and place to have this conversation.]

We’ll talk later, darling. Promise.

[And with that, he’s gone.]