Just a Musebox

She's not sure how many minutes it actually is before she looks around and registers trees and grass and a stream instead of her home in Alexandria - her cabin on the Barge. She's still finding it a bit hard to breathe leaving Astarion behind - even knowing he can handle himself, even knowing he'll be along shortly, even knowing he agreed to this, it still feels like willingly abandoning him and it breaks her heart in a very specific, very intimate way, but she still does it. It needs done, so she does it.

She's able to prepare for that. She has a harder time preparing for the unexpectedly harsh slap of actually doing it, and for a moment she just focuses on breathing, focuses on striding over to the tree line out of an instinctive need for cover.

She's supposed to meet Jacob, she remembers when she can think straight again. She was supposed to be brought here to meet Jacob. She straightens to look around, finally, and after a moment sends up the whistle that she's used before to tell him she's here, she's looking for him.

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Mae's ears go up and Jacob stands immediately, hand going to his waist to grab the knife he knows is there.

But that whistle is familiar, directly so, and he nearly collapses in relief. Instead, he sends an answering call of a whistle and presses forward, bags across his shoulders, trying not to rush. He makes noise across the trail back to her, deliberately avoiding trying to sneak.

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Something in her squeezes and releases when she hears that answer, too. She hikes her pack further up on her back and starts towards where she thinks it came from, adjusting slightly when she hears something - two somethings - moving towards her quickly.

She's still ready to pull her knife if she's wrong, but sge sees the flash of red hair and it's only been a few days for her, but she laughs in relief.

"There you are," she calls when she finally spots him directly, and then the pack is on the ground and she's completely unashamed to be throwing herself into him like it's been years since they were together.

They made it. Two out of three of them made it, safe and sound and real.

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He opens his arms to her, his own pack falling to the ground, and he wraps her in an embrace as if it hasn't been just a few minutes. As if he hasn't missed her every single second. As if he had been worrying, or trying not to worry, that she wouldn't be able to show. Her and Astarion after her.

"How long was it?" he wonders, hoping that she hadn't had to stay too long. Hoping she hadn't been pulled into nonsense. Hoping that she didn't have to make any more sacrifices.

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She jumps, letting him catch her, arms slung around his neck and legs half wrapped around his waist, face buried in his neck. She doesn't even try to answer for a moment. She's top busy feeling him under her hands, feeling his arms around her, breathing him in.

It's so hard for her to trust the things she can't control. She does not take it for granted when someone comes through for her.

"Two days," she finally breathes, lifting her head away just a bit. "Two days," she says again, "And I feel terrible, but Astarion says he'll be along as soon as he can. He promised."

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He keeps on arm around her and the other underneath her, keeping her up as he just remembers how this felt. It hasn't been long, but it's also been hours. Days. Weeks. Years. Each tick of the second hand was torture. But now she's here and now the wait begins again but, this time, he isn't alone.

"He will be," he assures her. "Five minutes." He repeats that mantra. "Five minutes."

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"Five minutes," she agrees, even though she's not sure it's going to be that number exactly. It doesn't matter. She kisses him, deep and a bit desperate, and then sets their foreheads together when they break apart.

"We promised him a soft place to land," she reminds him, takes another moment longer and another, slower kiss before she considers starting to climb down.

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He lets her go carefully, gently bringing her into one last kiss.

"Seems there's a settlement down the river. We're on the outskirts now. No one has come by and no one is close enough for Mae to alert," he explains to her, still marveling at the fact that she is here, with him, close enough to touch.

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The 'five minutes' - more like half an hour, the Admiral can't do any fucking thing right - is a briefer span from Astarion's perspective than he'd planned for. He'd committed himself to spending as long as it took for Gale to graduate or be snatched from the ship, be that weeks or months or (gods preserve him) even longer, and he's done neither. Instead he's run, like a coward, and no number of justifications are going to help.

He graduated, he reminds himself. He didn't become a good person, just less...actively harmful to those around him.

He isn't exactly encumbered. Most of what's precious to him is almost weightless - not least the magic jewellery he's picked up along the way, including the new ring that's allowing him to walk in the sunlight. The stuff of legend, and Florian had just pawned it off on him like some random trinket he'd found between the cushions. Incredible. Everything else is in a pack slung over his shoulders, or - like his bow, quiver and knives - strapped to him within easy reach.

The only thing loose is Aylin, who is thankfully not as keen on exploring the wilderness as she is on staying close. When she darts off along the riverbank, then, Astarion yelps in unpleasant surprise - he's got no way of knowing it's because she's caught a familiar scent.

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As a scout for the communities, Rosita had hammered on always being as unencumbered as possible; of all the reasons she would have accepted for not being, holding onto someone's hand would not have made the list in any way, shape, or form. Still, she holds onto Jacob anyway, at least for a little while.

"Let's stay away from them, for now," she decides. "At least until Astarion is here to explain anything we fuck up without knowing." It won't take long, she adapts quickly, but even she needs a warm up period.

She keeps the dagger he gave her, the one that cancels magic, close to hand though as they scout for a good place to make camp. When she hears the yelp, she hesitates, automatically easing closer to a tree she can use for cover while she scans for the source.

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Jacob spots a good place across the river, but they need to actually get there to utilize it. He can spot a bridge down the way and sent Mae up ahead to scout for it, meaning the yelp catches them off guard. He lets go of Rosita's hand and draws a bow from his shoulder, notching it silently as he scans the trees.

He doesn't yet recall Mae, even as something approaches in the bushes. Something small, though that doesn't mean he lets his guard down any.

But when Aylin pops through the brush, he nearly drops the bow. "Astarion," he tells Rosita and whistles sharply for Mae.

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Astarion himself doesn't quite come crashing through the brush himself, but instead Misty Steps past it to appear out in the open. He sees Aylin, a white blur ambling up without a care to say hello to-

Jacob. And Rosita.

Now, if he were suspended over a tank of holy water, he might admit their presence was something he had hoped for rather than expected. When Rosita had chosen to leave with Jacob - or as good as with him - he'd assumed it was because they'd both come to their senses and realised what they were signing up for. He'd imagined they would have found a less apocalyptic version of Earth to retire to and just...done that.

He didn't really deserve any better, did he? He certainly doesn't now. Yet that isn't what's happened, and sheer relief makes his knees buckle for a moment.

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She trusts her people. She does. It's harder when it's someone who can hurt her, but she does her best anyway, she's done her best this time too. But the doubt is still there - she has been let down more than she's been safe - and she does not trust the Admiral or the Barge at all.

None of that matters when Jacob says his name, though, when she recognizes Aylin, when she sees him. Her hand drops away from her knife and she bolts out to meet him without hesitation.

She'll feel ridiculous later. Right now, she just gives in to the feeling that if she doesn't get to him fast, he'll disappear, and they really won't see him again; right now, she just closes the distance.

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Jacob hated leaving them. It was a relief to leave the Barge, to get away from the nonsense that it brought, but it was physically painful to leave both Rosita and Astarion.

He felt it in his chest and stomach, like he had swallowed a rock. Like he would never recover because he would never feel right again.

He's a second behind Rosita, his arms around them both and then, only then, does he feel right again.

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Astarion wheezes out an unnecessary breath and closes his eyes, letting them surround him. Listening to their hearts beating. Hoping that if this is some illusion, it might persist long enough for him to carve them a little deeper into his memory.

"I hope I didn't keep you waiting long," he says, with a brittle little giggle.

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She doesn't hesitate: she throws her arms around Astarion, hugging him in tight, fully expecting Jacob a moment behind her. She didn't see any blood on the way over - his or otherwise - so she's content for the moment to just hold onto him and let them all know for a fact this is real.

She laughs when he does, kisses his cheek, waits her turn to kiss him properly.

"You didn't give us long enough to make camp," she promises. "And you know how much Jacob loves camping."

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He doesn't bother to hide how relieved he is and holds them close, kissing him quickly, just to prove that he's still there.

"We had a place possibly scouted out, but if you don't mind a tent, then I can have us ready soon." He doesn't move away from holding them, though. He can't.

"Just - just glad you're here." He wouldn't be able to focus enough to make anything until Astarion joined them.

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"I'm glad to be here," he mutters, hiding his face against Rosita's shoulder. "Gods - it's been barely any time at all, Gale is still there, I just - I can't. I can't be in that fucking place any more. I can't be what he needs."

Not even for a deal. He can't let the Barge keep hollowing him out and remaking him, over and over. He's had enough. But it doesn't keep the bitter shame from his voice.

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Rosita would have focused them. She would have kept her eye on the prize of the soft place to land that they promised, if he took long enough to give them that chance. She doesn't have to now, though.

She curls her hand up over the back of his head, turns her own to shield him better, brow furrowing.

"Cariño," she murmurs, reassurance mostly, not trying to shush him but to remind him he's here with them. He's safe. "It's okay. It's okay. We don't belong there, we don't owe anyone anything, not a one of us. It's okay."

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He shakes his head. "None of us. We were only there to get our asses in line and...find each other."

He steps back from them, keeping his eyes cast around. "Come on. We can talk more when we're sitting and settled for the night."

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Astarion nods, retreats slightly - reaches up, embarrassed, to knock a few tears away from the corners of his eyes. Ridiculous.

Eventually it will hit him, he's sure, that they're here and solid and with him and this is the true start of their lives together. That they're aware from floods and death tolls, that this is...

...this is real. He doesn't have to just survive any more. He can live.

Right now he's still just waiting to wake up.

"You're right. Tomorrow we can work out where we are, exactly, and - yes." He clears his throat. "We can go from there."

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She will spend the rest of her life worrying about Astarion Ancunín, she thinks as she lets him step back from her. From them. She stays where she is, dropping her hands to her sides and then smoothing her palms down her thighs even though they're already dry.

She squeezes Jacob's arm, then looks around for where she dropped her pack. It's not far from them and she goes to scoop it up.

"We have time. I think that's probably going to be the trick: remembering that."

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Jacob looks between the two of them as the rest of the world tunnels down to nothing except them. He has made his life about them, about this, because it's his choice.

And he will do his best to fix it.

"Come on. There was a good place up the river, across a bridge. Looked protected against the hill and rocks."

He reaches for Astarion's hand almost instinctively, trying to ground himself in this moment.

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