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This is Rosita. I'll hit you back when I can.

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[Astarion emerges from the flood in such a state of deep,
reverberating shock that he's kind of gone through it and emerged at numbness. Nothing feels real. He would quite like to pretend the previous week didn't happen.

He already knows that isn't practical.

There are people he'll need to talk to. Jacob, Arthur, John, maybe Godric and Blitzø. But at first, there's only really one person he can bring himself to contact when he's back in his own skin.]

Rosita.

Are you still...?

[A spawn? Dead? Like him? He doesn't know how to say it.]

[She hadn't been sure how to act towards Astarion; if he'd be more or less inclined to speak to her right now.

There's relief, then, but also caution when she hears this; she answers promptly nonetheless, because whatever the end of that sentence was going to be, the answer is:]

Yes.

Are you alright?

About as much as a number of others are right now, I'd wager.

[Which is to say: absolutely fucking not.]

I'm told it will just...go away on its own. The condition you're in.

[She knew the answer was absolutely fucking not. It was more a gauge to see how not alright.

She's feeling a bit numb herself.]

I've been told that too.

You want me to stay away from you until then?

No - no, not at all. I was actually going to ask the same question.

I really wish that you wouldn't.

Stay away, I mean.

Oh. I - good.

[Confusing? But good.]

I could meet you somewhere.

The common room with the tree.

I know which you mean. I'll be there shortly.

Okay.

[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.

Edited Date: 2024-06-16 08:30 pm (UTC)

"...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?"

She catches people looking at her, sometimes. She was confident as a human, comfortable in her own skin, but now -

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."

Her expression falls a little; she doesn't remember anything Glenn did that he didn't write in the journal they set up with each other. That he didn't leave evidence of on her phone.

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 don't care what he was thinking," she says, honestly.

"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.

She watches him for a long, long few moments, considering him, before she nods.

"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."

She knew that, too - knew that whatever he was going to do, it might have been worth his time to make worse if he thought it would sway Astarion. She thinks of Sasha in her casket, chained up on the bed of a truck and Negan gloating and lecturing.

"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."

"And it's ruined now, without you? He can't plug someone else in in your place?"

"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."

"And you defied him."

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."