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fridaypls · 1 month

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AU Seed: Rival Art Thieves

Humming softly, Gale finished wrapping the portrait neatly in brown paper for removal and leaned it against the gallery wall it had once hung from so neatly, ready for easy removal. There were only a few things left to do, then he could be gone—into the night, as though he’d never been there.

First, though, he needed to leave proof he had been.

There were plenty of art thieves in the world; good ones and bad ones. Gale tended to judge good and bad on two scales; talent and morality. There were plenty of talented art thieves—perhaps a dozen with true talent—but morals? Scruples?

As far as he was aware, there was only one truly good art thief. One man working from the shadows to reunite art with the peoples it belonged to, ripping creations from the rich and powerful in order to return that art to the people it was created for. One silent thief, never caught on so much as film.

Him.

Gale was aware, of course, that there had been others who had trod the path of an enterprising, Robin-Hood-esque art-thief—Stéphane Breitwiese, for one, had been an inspiration. There had been others, their names less well known and their prior careers less… chaotic? Publicly enflamed?

He shook those thoughts off and went back to the task at hand, carefully wiping down the little glass plaque he’d brought to replace the stolen painting. It would inform the gallery of why the painting had been taken, drawing attention to reason for the theft—warning other galleries that he was coming for them, as well.

“Now that,” intoned a bored, cold voice from the shadows above him, “is just needless pageantry.”

Want to see more? Leave me a comment.

This is a story in progress, featuring retired-assassin Astarion, who retired from a life that his former mentor and master, Cazador Szarr, will stop at nothing to drag him back into. With a bounty on his own head, he seeks to buy back his life by stealing as many valuable paintings before his time runs out.

...except he has a rival. An exceptionally frustrating and dashing rival in the form of Gale Dekarios, who has made it his life's mission to return art to the people it belongs to, following years of stealing it on his ex-wife's behest.

Created with @wincestielfttfwin ♡

Scattered work start-up notes below for your amusment:

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||| With Astarion as a rival art thief in it for profit, with some formidable talents of his own; I think he’s a retired assassin with a price on his own head he’s trying to pay off before someone completes the contract on him ||| Stealing for his life while trying to evade the man who made him and who has offered him a choice; live by the sword or die by the sword. Or, less dramatically, come back to work and start killing people for Cazador again or get killed. ||| Astarion hopes he can just pay off the price on his head, since Cazador dangled an impossible price over his head ||| Intrigue sparks when they try to pull off the same job and the same time; Astarion shows up while Gale is still setting up his Stolen to be returned to the people to whom it belongs by Gale’s Art Thief Name Here display in its place because he’s Gale and he does have to show off a bit, after all ||| And Astarion calls it pageantry, they argue, sparks fly and neither of them realize it—Astarion baits Gale with something flirtatious, then escapes with the art while he’s distracted, possibly tripping an alarm deliberately on his way out to be a shit ||| They meet again while they’re both casing another job, Gale persuades him to work together and split the gallery; Astarion takes the art that Gale wasn’t there to steal, Gale takes the three works he’s there for and they go their separate ways. By working together, Astarion can take much more art, much more easily… so he says yes ||| Gets to see Gale on the job, realizes he’s actually pretty skilled (and he has been the whole time, but now Astarion’s having trouble denying it) ||| Jobs goes really well, Gale asks him to work together again, Astarion says no (to keep him safe) and vanishes the instant he’s not looking, leaving Gale pretty heartbroken ||| …until he starts getting anonymous texts that are very much Astarion, flirting with him more comfortably when they both pretend he’s anonymous ||| Astarion deliberately bumping into him again on a new job, working together… and the pattern repeating again. Perhaps a couple times more. ||| Until Cazador makes an attempt on Astarion while they’re both casing a job together and it could easily have killed them both - almost kills Gale, if Astarion hadn’t barely spotted something critical and saved them both ||| And Astarion vanishes into the wind again, rather than get Gale killed ||| And they go back to not talking ||| And Gale mourns the loss of his friendship and what he’d hoped was a blossoming romance ||| And keeps working ||| …until he finds a note behind a painting he steals with his name on it, in a familiar handwriting.

AND @wincestielfttfwin WAS IN CHARGE OF LAYERING MYSTRA

IT'S SO GOOD, HERE WE GO:

I really was picturing the vibes of some yeah, again, Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, we’re wearing tight clothes and doing all sorts of gymnast-style feats to get our burgaling done, so I thought “what if Gale’s background is a gymnast?”

So then I thought, Gale, training for the olympics around age 15, catches Mystra’s attention

Mystra is a museum curator in my idea space, and she believes she can make use of Gale’s skillset and naivete

She convinces him that the real villains in the world are the private collectors who’ve smuggled art of artifacts out of their countries of origin and that all those important objects belong in a museum (with my apologies to Indianna Jones)

So, Gale gets into thieving for Mystra initially, going after targets who yes, are terrible people who’ve absolutely smuggled their art and have it illegally, and Gale brings the art/artifacts to Mystra, who waits until the initial heat around their theft has died down to display them in her museum as coming from an “anonymous donor”

And like, it’s not suuuuuuper secret that Mystra is up to some shady practices in her museum, but she’s got Important Social Connections enough to be pretty powerful and well-respected, and the people she-via-Gale is targeting are already into enough shady shit, they can’t exactly go to the cops about it, so *shrugs* all round

And of course, at some point in a barely-legal timeline, she and Gale start their romantic relationship, though Mystra knows it will reflect poorly on her, so she insists they keep it a secret, and Gale still has all his “not good enough for Mystra” self-esteem issues, believing *he’s* the problem (for some reason, he never made it to the Olympics, so he sees himself as a “washed-out gymnast” who clearly isn’t good enough for Mystra, the Curator of Important Museum who has her pulse on the rest of the art world too)

HOWEVER! There’s some specific artifact Mystra is butt-hurt her museum doesn’t have. I thought maybe it’s something she even wrote her Master’s thesis on and is convinced it would tie together some important/essential collection in her museum, her “brain-child” exhibit or whatever, and when it went up for auction X number years ago, she was outbid by someone else, so it is in Another Museum, and Mystra has never let it go

So, still young, trying to impress Mystra Gale decides to stage his first heist at another museum. He manages to steal the thing, and he brings it to Mystra, but unlike stealing from shady private collectors, this heist was BIG, and it made the news. People know the thingy was stolen, and the cops are looking for whoever did it!

So, Mystra of course freaks out, because she can’t handle having this kind of heat put on her. She can’t even take the artifact, because it’s too hot right now, it would ruin her if word came out she had it, her whole life would blow up in her face (heheh), etc. And she’ll never be able to put this in her museum now. So, she breaks up with Gale, leaves him with the very highly-sought after artifact, and he is utterly shattered

But in the end, he decides that maybe a museum in like, NYC or London isn’t the best place for the artifact anyway. He returns it to the culture it’s from and realizes that’s what he should’ve been doing all along. The museums and people like Mystra treating all this art as their personal feathers-in-their cap are part of the problem. And thus, Gale’s crusade is born!