The Drow Queen of Glaley [Very NSFW]

[Nathaniel]

"If her bodyguard was overcome, there's no way for her to have escaped."

[Nox]

"Ah." Nox was silent a moment. "I had told myself that he had surely given his life as a delaying tactic, a heroic last stand to buy her time. And... Zevran vanished too, so perhaps..." He briefly considered adding Lux's hunch that Zevran was far more lethal than his charm and graceful body might suggest. No. I trust Lux's instincts but it was just a hunch. 

[Nathaniel]

"That sort of thing only happens in storybooks, in my experience." Nathaniel smiles, faintly. "Though it is good to think about."

[Nox]

"Mine as well, I suppose, but..." Nox mustered a determined smile. "Our lives have both been rather... limited, no? Perhaps there are heroes just over the horizon."

[Nathaniel]

Nathaniel looks at him blankly, then pityingly. "Nox.... where were they? Our whole lives? If there were heroes, real heroes, we wouldn't be subject to this much suffering."

[Nox]

Nox hesitated, then outright paused. His eyes shifted away from Nathaniel, across the room, to rest on Krem. "Perhaps not all that far," he suggested. "Not every story has the hero winning quickly. Some suffer for years first."

[Nathaniel]

"I am thirty seven years old. I have been enslaved since before I was born."

[Nox]

Nox winced. "Technically that's still 'years?'" he tried. 

[Nathaniel]

Nathaniel is quiet a moment, clearly putting challenging thoughts together. Finally, he seems to have it: "I know how you speak of me, when you think I am not listening. How Mistress Coquette spoke of me. I know you imagine me a damaged creature, or barely a creature at all, something lesser than yourself. Something to be pitied. Something unfixable, like a vase smashed to pieces on the floor. At what point, then, would a hero be of any use to me? I will always be this. Where is the hero who would whisk me away to a life of comfort? Where is the reason for all this pain and suffering? For the loss of my flight feathers, for the loss of everyone I have ever known over and over, for the loss of--"

Here he chokes off, clearly unwilling or unable to speak of some dark piece of his personal history. 

[Nox]

"Not lesser," Nox said, voice harsh but far from unkind. He checked himself from yanking Nathanial into a hug, remembering the other man's injuries, but still wraps his arms around them. "Damaged, broken, yes. Not that Lux or I are whole ourselves. But a chipped vase can hold beauty. Even a shattered glass can live again as a breathtaking mosaic."

[Nathaniel]

"Is that, then, what I should hope for? A hero to come along and remake me into something beautiful?"

[Nox]

"Not remake you," Nox denied. "Help you remake yourself."

[Nathaniel]

"If that were possible, I would have done it."

[Nox]

"Well, you don't have their help yet," Nox pointed out gamefully.

[Nathaniel]

"What would a hero know of being enslaved?"