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No - no, not at all. I was actually going to ask the same question.
Stay away, I mean.
Oh. I - good.
[Confusing? But good.]
I could meet you somewhere.
I know which you mean. I'll be there shortly.
[Rosita is not someone who normally gets nervous, but she is now. There's a lot of things she's feeling that she either doesn't have a name for or that she can't identify a source for - and more that she she can identify and explain but still feels.
A lot of the unknown stems from this new condition of being a vampire. Godric has helped her with a lot of it, and still more is temporary, but talking to Astarion again - who knows?
Who knows. So she makes herself stay curled up in the chair she's in, working on her sketches and trying not to think too much either way.
And when she looks up and sees him, she still smiles, though she has no idea how he'll react to her in turn.]
Astarion. Thank you for coming.
"...Hello, darling."
He sits down across from her. The red glow of her eyes, the pallid wash to her skin - it's familiar, but it's not. He never encountered any of his siblings before they were turned; he never had an opportunity to know what normal looked like, for them.
"How are you feeling?"
Now.
She shakes her head, and she shrugs as she sits back in her chair. How is she meant to be feeling?
"Better. Godric - fed me, just to be sure. And I don't hurt anymore, not really. So mostly I'm just... worried." She tips her head. "How much are you willing to talk about?"
"As much as you want," he says. "I...remember all of it. Being...him. Being in his head."
The first thing that's important to her that he know is, "I don't remember exactly what all I said, but I was just trying to distract him to get away. I don't believe you owe him anything. I don't believe he didn't know exactly what he was doing."
"He's always been a sadistic bastard. And he'll do anything to claim power over others," Astarion says, with a grimace. "He's no great mind but he's never thoughtless."
"I want you to know I would never side with him over you. I need you to know that."
He cocks his head for a moment, then seems to latch onto what she's saying.
"Oh - truth be told, the thought never crossed my mind."
Because he....trusts her? What a disturbing thought.
"Good." That seems to be true, and she hopes that it is.
"I was hiding in Zero while he was still around. I only came out again when I was sure the visitors were gone. Godric said it would block... you know."
She's still working out what's difficult to talk about because it's difficult, and what's because Cazador forbade her.
Astarion nods.
"I know. If he'd realised I actually give a damn about your wellbeing, it would have been...much, much worse."
"He seems very invested in you in particular. More Chosen One nonsense, or?"
"I was always his favourite, in all the worst ways a sadistic monster can have a 'favourite'. But his...specific problem with my being here was that he had other plans for me. He'd arranged for the other spawn and I to be traded to the a devil in exchange for tremendous power."
"I don't know why it wouldn't be possible," Astarion concedes. "But he's....obsessed with control. The simple fact that he had planned for me to be his sacrifice, and that I defied him? He wouldn't be able to just let it go."
She is herself a defiant person; at least, certainly, she is willing to speak her mind and to stand behind those convictions if it was important enough to speak up, to act out in the first place. She is first in line to defy Negan.
But she thinks about when Cazador gave her a direct order, when he impressed his will upon her; maybe with hundreds of years of practice she could find a way around it, but now? It is unimmaginable.
"I'm so sorry, Astarion. And I'm so proud of you."
Astarion just blinks at her for a moment.
"You shouldn't be," he says. "It was only coincidence that gave me the opportunity to slip his grasp. Chosen One nonsense. No great effort on my part."
But she does know this: "How long have you been bound to him? Has he been able to force you into something just because he wants to and can?"
"...Two hundred years, give or take a few months. Two centuries under his control."
She swallows.
"I hid for days, Astarion. I ran at the mere thought of hearing his voice again and knowing that if I did, I would run right to him. And maybe that would change over time but I'm sitting here in it, now, knowing exactly what it would take for me to be able to do it, and he wasn't even interested in me at all. So I both can imagine what it must have taken for you - and I know that I can't even begin to."
"...I was stolen from him. Snatched away and dropped hundred of miles from my city. When I finally returned home, to kill him, he took one look at me and told me to stop slouching. He had no power over me, and all the same I could feel myself straighten my back."
He shakes his head.
"How I treat you has nothing to do with him."
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