Sabrina Spellman (pathofnight) wrote in valloic, @ 2023-10-23 18:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: astarion ancunín, ₴ inactive: sabrina spellman |
Now that he wasn’t doing so, well, he felt rather - lonely. Astarion prided himself on not needing interactions, on seeing through the silly intricacies of others’ human emotions and being able to fold them neatly to his whims, but damn it all, he’d made actual friends back home, actual loved ones, and now they weren’t here. And he cared. It was infuriating.
And so he windowshopped, trying to make himself feel better, enjoying the crowd as it moved around him. Naturally, he pickpocketed a few people. Just one or two. Enough to buy a new shirt, maybe. But on the whole, he was filled with goodwill: how strange, how lovely it was, to enjoy the night air and the people around him and not have to kill any of them.
He paused at the window to a clothing shoppe; the fashion here wasn’t anything he was used to, but he enjoyed the colors. He studied a red silk shirt - yes, he’d look good in that - and wondered if he’d acquired enough coin to purchase it. Why didn’t Vallo use gold? Wasn’t that the universal standard?
Sabrina had moved past the desire to drink anything and everything out of Lucifer’s apartment fairly quickly after his disappearance notification. It was difficult enough to get drunk on a good day and the melancholy that twisted through her only made it worse. Friends had offered to keep her company, throw things and set off grenades, but none of them had been appealing. She couldn’t keep heading to the yacht to escape for weeks on end and there was only so much wallowing she could do in the middle of Demonikea’s sales floor. Even if it was fun terrorizing the remaining staff.
She’d gone shopping instead, drifting from one store to the next, opting for the delivery option for most of her purchases. No one needed as many silk scarves as she’d purchased at the last place--one in every damn color and pattern available. She didn’t even wear them, but it was something to do and kept her from thinking about the long list of people she missed. Or the other list of people she worried would be next.
Forever wasn’t something she was supposed to fret about yet. Not at twenty-two. Maybe when she was seventy-two, once her mortal friends started dying. Forever was going to be, well, forever at the rate of disappearances.
She shifted her latest bag to her other hand as she headed out of the shop, glancing around to figure out which one to head to next when she spotted a familiar face. Her gaze drifted to the clothes he was looking at and she snorted. Red. Really?
Not that she could talk considering half her own wardrobe palette. “I think that’d wash you out,” she remarked as she stopped beside him, nodding toward the shirt.
“What confident advice,” Astarion answered, eyes not leaving the shirt as he considered its neckline. Too ruffly? No. “Your confidence is-” A glance at the outfit she currently wore. “--unearned.”
Astarion really did not give a single meager fuck as to what was popular or acceptable to wear here. Oh, he wanted to be ravishing, of course, but he’d be that anyway, he reasoned. You couldn’t go two-hundred years without seeing your own face and start worrying about your undertones after all. With a sigh, he returned his attention back to Sabrina, sizing her up. “I would have thought a queen of Avernus to be taller.”
It took monumental effort for her to not roll her eyes as she snorted. “That was terrible,” she replied, before glancing back at the shirt and then turning to eye him carefully. She remembered being new and while she didn’t remember needing to make the thousand dollars work because she could snap her fingers and make clothes, she remembered the weirdness of arriving with only what she had to wear. “Anyway a sock in that store would cost you half of what the DOA gave you to start out.” He might have come up with more money in ways that she didn’t particularly care about but Sabrina doubted he’d be able to afford the actual shirt yet.
“Lucky for you, I’m bored, have a ridiculous amount of money to spend, and am feeling something close to generous.” Sabrina gestured toward the store’s entrance.
Astarion didn’t move, his red eyes narrowing as he took in the small blonde in front of him. Not that he was some behemoth; Astarion was a slight man with a large presence. And presently, he was mildly offended.
“Oh,” he said with a trace of amusement dipped with poison. “Really? Really. You think I'm that much of an idiot to gleefully owe a favor to the self-admitted queen of devils?”
He’d been desperate before. Astarion wasn't too proud to discount making a deal with hell if the payoff was good enough. But over a simple shirt? “No, no, no, no; I’m afraid that’s simply not happening today.”
Sabrina did roll her eyes then. Why was everyone so damn dramatic? Maybe she should have taken Keith up on his offer to blow things up. It would have been less frustrating than this conversation. She should have stuck to drinking. Alcohol rarely let her completely down.
“What part of that said anything about a favor?” she asked, glaring up at him. Her eyes flashed their own blood red before she took a deep breath, trying to center herself. As fun as it might be to try and smite him in the middle of the street, Sabrina knew she shouldn’t do that. “I was trying to be nice because you’re new and I was kinda rude to you on your first day. Even if you were being seriously annoying with the nonstop chatting.”
“I don’t even ask for favors when I’m saving people’s lives here. I’m not about to start doing it for a ridiculous shirt that would look terrible on you anyway. The purple that’s on display in the store would have been better with your hair but whatever.”
Astarion pursed his lips and went back to appearing to consider the purple shirt. He did like the color of royalty - who wouldn’t? - but it was undoubtedly as expensive as the red, and whatever her protests, he wasn’t about to go relying on gifts from someone any way related to whatever went on in the hells. Been there, done that, no thank you; he’d just as happily steal it like any sane pers
on. “This isn't about my coloring, is it?” He asked, and before she could reply, raised a finger. “Rhetorical. I know it’s not been about my coloring. Everyone’s been all…” He gestured helplessly, as if trying to land the word: “...tenterhooks and solemn avoidance when they explain Vallo to me. People arrive…” His hands fell. “People leave.” A pause.
“Someone left you.” It wasn't a question. Astarion wasn’t keen on any of it being his problem, but he could scent out shopping therapy fairly well when it was in front of him.
If it had been only one person, it wouldn’t have mattered. No, not quite true. Lucifer’s disappearance would have still hurt but it would have been a dull ache, instead of the stabbing pain. Sabrina was one of the few who’d been around since nearly the beginning of the arrivals. Lucifer had come before her. Plus Bonnie and Sara. Caroline too, but she’d left and returned. Even when her aunts and Dan had left, Lucifer had stayed. She’d let herself believe he might always stick around.
But he was gone. Like her aunts and Dan, Nick and Callum, and countless other people she’d considered friends and family along the way. If this was a taste of forever she hated it. But she wasn’t about to open up about any of that to some vampire in hiding.
“How astute of you.” Sabrina shrugged, her gaze locked on the window displays. “Did you end up taking one of the Morningside apartments?”
Astarion didn’t smile - the corner of his mouth quirked, but nothing on his face indicated that there was any mirth to the action. Ignoring questions one didn’t want to deal with was a response he knew all too well - and generally respected. Astarion was chatty, but he wasn’t nosy. And so he picked up the conversation with a grace as if there hadn’t been an awkward pause a few moments before: “Yes, at least temporarily. It’s a step up from where I was - running water, you know.”
He turned, pressing his back to the window so as not to take up half the sidewalk with the chat. “I don’t understand half of it, but I gather I will eventually. Microwave with the best of them, and all that.”
Her shoulders relaxed when he easily moved with the conversation. She shifted closer to the wall of the shop as well. “We went to the past once here, about one thousand years before now. I think running water was one of the things we were all really happy to get back to.”
“There’s--” Sabrina paused, bags disappearing from her hands as she pulled her phone out from her purse. She swiped it on and then through to the end of her apps. “Youtube. You can download it to your phone too or it might already have it now. But if you type into the search bar what you want to learn how to do it’ll pull up videos on how to do that task.” Sabrina typed in ‘how to use a dishwater’, including the exact model she knew was in the Morningside apartments. “It comes in handy.” She scrolled backwards. “This one will let you listen to different music.”
“Do I have that on my-- phone?” Astarion was a quick study in terms of learning technology, or at least as quick a study as one could be for someone who came from such a wildly different world as this one. “That… what is it… program? Or do I need to--” an impatient huff, “purchase it?”
He still had very little idea how one purchased these sorts of things outside of “I don’t know, magic probably”, but was willing to fake it until he made it. The story of his life, really.
“That reminds me.” Astarion added. “Your suggestion to work in the arrivals the other day - it’s not a bad one.”
“Both are free but you can purchase plans on them and I think at least Youtube is already on your phone. You’d need to download the music one.” Sabrina scrolled to the ‘store’ icon. “Just type it in there and it’ll let you install it.” She demonstrated where to click before glancing up at his comment about the potential job.
She’d been half joking with her suggestion, but he was personable enough that it might not be a bad fit. “Arrivals come at all hours so you could probably pick the hours you wanted to work and I’m pretty sure the DOA has special windows installed so vampires don’t burn up inside the building.” The local ones couldn’t all walk in the sun either. “And there’s a direct portal from Morningside to it.”
Sabrina leveled her phone at him. “I will throw more than a magazine at you if you pop into my office too often.”
“Sounds good, darling. I might die of boredom anyway, if you don't.” Astarion fired off the snark unthinkingly; it came easily to him, and required no forethought. He was also mostly ignoring her attempt to train him on the App Store, having already clocked that a big smile and helpless gee whiz demeanor went a long way to getting what you needed.
“Then people… arrive here all hours of the day and night?” He asked, putting a dramatic emphasis on ‘arrive’. He wasn’t a details guy; he didn’t really care how it all worked. “So, theoretically, if no one was on the night shift than someone would need to be called in? Oh dear, that’s hardly ideal… I think I could at least do some sort of part time thing. You know, available to process arrivals, if there's a need.”
“That would lead to such a boring epitaph: Here lies Astarion, died of boredom.” Sabrina didn’t mind the snark. Conversations were far more interesting when people weren’t constantly trying to be polite. Or maybe she was hanging around demons too often recently.
“Pretty much, yeah. Vallo doesn’t care much about sticking to a nine to five when it drops people off here.” Sabrina was convinced Vallo didn’t care about much of anything anymore. “But you can basically make your own hours for the DOA. Decide what times you want to work and which days you want to be on call for, if any. But part time also works. With housing provided, you basically only need money to buy things…that you don’t manage to get through other means.” She shrugged. Sabrina didn’t particularly care about that either.
She really needed to stop hanging out in Hell.
Astarion had already had one gravestone; he didn’t need another. “That does sound… ideal…” he murmured slowly, suspiciously, drawing out the words like they were the stickiest of taffy. Astarion knew as well as anyone that nothing was truly free, not unless you were getting away with something, but until someone came demanding he pay up, he wasn’t going to worry about it. Control the bargains you made personally, see what you could get away with in terms of social requirements.
He only smiled innocently at her implication that he was stealing things. It was, emphatically, not effective given that innocence sat poorly on red eyes and fangs. “It sounds like they’ve thought of everything,” he said lightly, not because he thought they actually had, but because he was firmly back in Bullshit Mode now that he was moderately sure he’d gotten information he’d needed. “How do you find it here?”
Sabrina’s bullshit detector was usually fairly good but she honestly didn’t care much. Everyone had their own way of dealing with being in Vallo, especially when they were brand new. “Mmmm.” How did she find it there?
“If you’d asked me a week or so ago I’d have told you this whole place was bullshit and all it wants to do is torture us psychologically until we eventually break. I mean, I’m still not writing it off because Vallo is a jerk. Often. Especially with bringing and taking people away. But it’s not awful. It’s pretty much going to be what you make of it. Make friends or don’t, make a life for yourself or don’t. I like the fact that I don’t have to do the whole ‘save the world’ thing on a constant basis. Unless I want to jump into any of the fights and there are so many people who will do that, I’ll generally stay out of stuff.” She nodded toward the store. “Instead I go shopping. Or dancing. Or whatever. Much more fun.”
Astarion laughed the sort of laugh that was designed to feel grating. “Sorry? I’m-- Vallo is… psychological torture?”
He looked about him (theatrically) at the pleasant scene around them. The streets had people walking through it, talking quietly, and the smell of apple cider was in the night air. He could feel the press of the forest not far from here - and he’d heard tales of the forest, and the sorts of monsters it contained. But he also knew how powerful people were here. How protected. “You don’t mean lack of safety, surely; a deviless can take care of herself just fine.” Sabrina wasn’t a deviless, but well, Close enough. “So I presume the complaint is with the lack of control over it all?”
Control. He wanted it. Who didn’t? This Vallo provided him with far more than he’d ever had in his life. The thought that it wasn’t enough for some left a taste in his mouth worse than rotted blood. Jealousy. “That’s the deal though,” he said, dropping the false smile as he mulled over her words. “Vallo provides a comfortable place to live, knowing that at any moment it might end. It’s a better deal than nearly anywhere else - at least where I’m from.” He didn’t quite succeed in keeping bitterness out of his voice. The thought that some might consider the gift basket he’d been given a week ago lacking boggled the mind, even with the strings attached. What else had he been denied in life, to have Vallo be perceived by some as a place of such compromise?
“Who hurt you?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, but Sabrina held up a hand. No. She didn’t want to know. Or didn’t have the right to know the answer to that kind of thing yet. Mostly she didn’t want to.
“My complaint is it took the version of my father who wasn’t an absolute malicious asshole away from me and left me with Hell to rule and deal with. Like four days ago. I’m allowed to be bitter for at least a month.” Plus a long list of other things but Sabrina wasn’t getting into those. “I have no clue what all you’ve been through and you have no clue what I’ve been through in my home world or here. Maybe you’re seeing this place as something amazing considering everything and that’s fine. I know I did at first but I am allowed to wallow when it messes with me like it enjoys doing.”
Maybe she should have hexed him that first day.
Astarion’s mouth was open in what was a grab-bag of emotions: incredulity, fury, embarrassment, you name it. It was just as well she moved on from the question because he certainly hadn’t been prepared to answer it nicely.
He recovered a moment later, trying to sort through the tangle of ‘version of my father’ - whatever that meant - and landed on ‘lightly flapped’ as an emotional state. “Then wallow,” he said, and gave a nod to her bag. “I’m of the opinion that silk is always a decent balm for emotional compromise.”
His range of emotion would have been comical if not for the fact it at least vaguely confirmed her suspicions that he’d been through a lot. Most who arrived in Vallo had in their own ways. Ugh. And now she thought a little bad about considering hexing him again.
Sabrina grinned, thankful they were steering well away from trauma talk and looked down at her bags and then back at him. “It is, and I look good in it. Plus it feels great, so win-win for me and a loss for Hell because I’m spending its riches.” And a loss for Hell was always a good thing in her book.
Astarion pursed his lips and continued to look unconvinced with the notion that she was queen of the hells and also somehow screwing it over, but all that wasn’t his business and he figured if it ever became his business, it would likely become a Problem. He’d had his one bargain with a devil, and it had worked out decently. But he’d had a front row seat for infernal dealings going badly, having befriended Wyll and Karlach.
“Do you really think the purple would be better on me?” Astarion peered into the window, his vision uninterrupted by his own reflection because he didn’t have one. Only Sabrina was a visible ghost in the window. He wore purple, of course - he liked every color but brown - but crimson just seemed so apropos. On the nose. Subtlety was for other people.
Sabrina shrugged at his expression, not particularly caring whether he believed her or not. It was what it was. Her Hell was most likely different than the one he was familiar with, just like Lucifer’s had been different than her own.
She pressed her lips together at his question and glanced over at the shirt again. “No, I was mostly being an ass. I’m sure the red would be fine on you too.” Better chance of hiding blood too if he was a messy eater.
“Oh thank gods.” He hadn’t been wearing red and washing himself out for the last two centuries, then. Astarion knew that he was an absolute shitshow morally, but at least he could pride himself on having looked good while committing atrocities.
“Well, thank you, I suppose, for the assistance with the… phone,” he said with a wave toward the damned device. Gratitude did not come naturally to him, but he was making an effort. “It was kind of you, even if you are a queen of hell.” Sabrina must either be a really good queen of hell or a really bad one, and he hadn’t decided which she was.
Sabrina shrugged. Considering how the Lucifer in her world acted she was used to newcomers thinking she was awful because of her Hell status. Those she was close to in Vallo knew the truth about her. But his lack of reflection and mention of the phone reminded her of one other feature. “I don’t know if it’ll work or not,” she murmured, swiping to the camera on her phone. “But this is the camera. You might show up on it.”
She swiped again so it was in selfie mode and handed it over to him.
Astarion had no real concept of what a camera was, so he didn’t get his hopes up. Duplication spells didn't work, and no mirror - enchanted or otherwise - ever had. An artist had once sketched an image of him, and Astarion had treasured it before Cazador had taken it away. And so he looked into the little device Sabrina had indicated and frowned, taking in the street and night activity behind him.
“I don’t think it's working, darling, but the effort endeared you to me anyway,” he drawled, and handed her back her phone. “It’s fine; I don’t need to see myself to know I'm breathtaking.”
“Worth a shot,” she replied, rolling her eyes at the ‘darling’ part. “I should get going, more shopping to do.” And he probably had his own stuff to head off to as well. Or maybe not, but that wasn’t her problem. “I’m sure I’ll see you around the office if you do end up working at the DOA. People like food if you want to get into everyone’s good graces. Cronuts are an office favorite.
”Cronuts,” he repeated, as if the word might make sense if he spoke it into being. No, it was still an unfathomable, strange concept. But if it was a way to endear himself to the locals, well, he’d consider it all the same. “I’ll take it under advisement. Good luck with your shopping.”
He gave her a brief nod, eyes glancing toward her with an almost nervous sort of movement, before the shit-eating smile returned to his face as he turned to disappear into the crowd.