Chapter Text

Part 1: Descent

“Help me do this. Please.”

If the desperation in his eyes and the heartbreak on his face hadn’t already been enough to break you, the tremble in his voice would have done it. And even without all that, how could you ever say no to this man? He who stood beside you as you discovered your lost self. He who remained beside you when you learned your cursed history. He who bound the knots of your restraints and stroked your hair through the night, even as you writhed and fought to end his life. He helped you gain your freedom from the damnation of your birth. How could you possibly deny helping him with his own same freedom?

But, says a voice in your head, seven thousand souls.

“It will kill so many people,” you say, the words numbing your mouth like poison.

“People? Those ‘people’ died years ago, trust me on that. All that’s left are feral spawn, desperate for blood. Think how many people they’d kill. Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? But if we complete the ritual, think of the power I’ll have. With me by your side, we can save the city - we can save ourselves. And I’ll be able to walk in the sun. I’ll be really, truly free. Isn’t that what you want?”

Of course it is what you want. It’s all you want. Freedom to be together, to escape your haunted pasts, to forge a new and brighter future.

“Please,” he whispers, “I can’t do this alone.”

The words cut you like a knife to your heart. Your eyes meet, and you willingly open your mind to him. Your thoughts join as you become one. You feel the knife in his hand as if it were in yours, and you taste the tang of power and blood that fills his mouth. It is intoxicating, almost all-consuming, and if you focus your mind on it hard enough, you find you can almost drown out Cazador’s screams. Giving Astarion control of your eyes puts you in a dreamy, trance-like state; an escape from the cold, echoing horror of the Szarr dungeon in which you stand.

You do not know how much time has passed when Astarion severs your connection and you are dragged back to the nightmarish present. The corpses of Cazador’s servants surround you once more, and death hangs thick in the air. Cazador’s screams have diminished to exhausted whimpers, and you regain your vision fully just in time to see Astarion brandish the vampire lord’s staff, sending his old master flying to take his spot for the ritual. 

You watch as your love brings the staff down with a crash in front of him. His voice is harsher than you’ve ever heard it as he begins to chant.

“No, Astarion, stop this!” Shadowheart’s voice sounds quiet and weak beside his.

“Don’t you dare! I can feel their power flowing into me!” His voice is a roar now, and his very words seem to carry a magic within them. Any thoughts of stopping him slip away into the void.

You’re not sure you had any thoughts of stopping him anyway.

His chanting continues, and a magic unlike any you’ve ever felt permeates the air around you. You feel your companions stirring in terror beside you, but you cannot take your eyes off Astarion. He stands at the centre of a circle of glowing runes that are far beyond your understanding, his perfect body incandescent with infernal power, his beautiful eyes nothing more than white-hot spots of brilliance. You hear a sickening series of cracks and bursts around you, and you are glad that your lover is the sole focus of your fascination. The fact that you do not even have the stomach to watch the destruction you have helped unleash around you makes you flush with shame, but you shove the feeling down. You did this for him. For him, you would do anything.

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The sound of a seventh and final bloody death has barely left your ears when the glowing red runes begin to fade. The chanting is done, and the magic seems to slowly seep inwards to the ritual’s epicentre. Astarion is still cloaked in otherworldly flames, eyes all aglow, when he finally speaks.

“My hunger… it’s gone. I’m free. I’m finally free.”

You watch as he turns towards you, his every move carrying a newfound confidence. You don’t know what you were expecting - relief, joy, exhaustion, perhaps - but his expression surprises you. He looks hungry. Predatory. A shiver runs down your spine.

“You’re finally free of Cazador. Aren’t you relieved?”

“Never again. I will never think about him again. Everything has changed now. I felt so little for so long… my edges dulled over the numb years of rotting in the boudoir and kennels. But now, at last, I can hear it. I can see it. How all the lowly creatures of this plane are begging to serve.”

You look at him in horror. To serve? This ritual was meant to free him. To grant him the power to walk with you in the sun. Not to give him the power to rule over others.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, my love. In you, too, I can tell… your heartbeat races. You hold your breath while I speak. You await my command.” He tilts his head and smiles a devilish smile. “The world will stir in fear.”

This is not him, you think to yourself. This is just the fear and the blood and the rush of being free. You know the real him. So you say to him, “I’m not afraid of you.”

He laughs. “Yes, you have been very brave, haven’t you? And now everything will be ours. Everything.”

---

You feel numb as you walk back through the dungeon in silence by his side. Behind you, you can hear Gale and Shadowheart muttering in disapproving tones, but neither of them speaks up. You try to keep your eyes fixed firmly in front of you, but a single flicker of your gaze to the cages that you pass tells you everything you didn’t want to know: they are filled with the gore and viscera of those who were destroyed.

Remembering Astarion’s torment at being confronted by his victims earlier, you search his face with a worried glance, but you see no reaction to the visible proof of the damnation of these poor doomed souls. Then again, he has always been a master at masking his feelings.

He comes to a sudden stop, and you think for a moment that the guilt of what you’ve just done has overcome him. He sniffs the air, and his full lips wrinkle in a sneer.

“Gur,” he says, eyes narrowing.

Looking ahead, you can see that there is a group of people blocking the way out of the dungeon. One of them calls out to you, and you recognise her by her voice in the dimness.

“I had hoped to avoid this path, but I was a fool to ever hope a beast like you could be saved.” Ulma’s voice is sombre as it echoes off of the dungeon walls.

“Oh please,” Astarion scoffs, resuming his path towards the Gur, “I promised you Cazador’s death, and he’s dead, isn’t he?”

“This doesn’t need to be a fight, Ulma,” you say, worrying about the monster hunters’ intentions.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Astarion says, as an aside that is nevertheless loud enough to carry, “this might be the perfect place for them to die.”

You give him a sharp look; this is no time for jokes, and you tell him as much.

“I’m not joking. Look at the hate in their eyes. They won’t ever stop hunting me.”

“There’s no hope for him,” calls Ulma. “But to the rest of you, I ask: Will you stand against evil? Will you help us destroy this monster?”

Gale and Shadowheart remain silent behind you, and you know the decision lies solely at your feet. Your throat feels tight, and you swallow, but the decision has already been made. You would never turn on one of your own, least of all him.

“I can’t,” you say, your voice not as strong as you would like. “There has to be another way.”

“There is not,” says Ulma frankly.

Astarion is grinning. “My dear,” he says to you, “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

With that, Ulma gives the command to fight. Before many of the Gur have even had a chance to draw their weapons, Astarion is on them. You barely even saw him move, he charges at them at such speed. You watch in frozen shock as he falls upon Ulma, draining her in a single bite, flying on to his next victim in a burst of mist and darkness before the old woman’s body has even hit the floor.

Gale lets out a groan of horror from behind you and murmurs, “What have we done?”

You and your companions stand there, awestruck spectators of a bloody battle that is over in moments. When it is over, Astarion returns to your side, panting and ensanguined, eyes all aglow with bloodlust.

“Oh, that was incredibly satisfying,” he says, a wild smile on his crimson-stained lips. “Who better to test my new powers on? And who better to have by my side than you, who helped me get them? Still, I can't believe you let me do that. Killing all those people. A pleasant surprise.”

You don’t know if he means the Gur, or the spawn, but your answer is the same regardless. “I don't feel great about it, honestly.”

“Well, what's done is done. And there's simply no point in dwelling on the past, is there? Not when you have given me a glorious new future.” He pulls you into an embrace, kissing you possessively, completely ignoring the presence of your companions. His mouth tastes like the Gurs’ blood, and the taste makes you gasp in disgust, but he uses his newfound strength to keep you pinned in place until he decides the embrace is done.

Chapter Text

You both agreed it would be prudent to wait until after your fight against the Elder Brain to try to turn you. Astarion’s own transformation was so long ago that he can't clearly remember the side effects, and even if he could, there's no way of knowing if being turned by an ascended vampire would be the same. You both decide it's not worth risking your skills when the outcome of such an important battle hangs in the balance.

“Besides,” you say to him one night, “what's the point of immortality when I'm facing near certain death regardless?”

Your decision to wait doesn't stop him talking about the future, of course. He tells you every day of the wondrous things that the future holds for you both. Sometimes you feel as though he has been distant since his transformation. Sometimes you worry that the cruel streak that has always been there is getting stronger. But he speaks with such passion and love about your entwined destinies, and all the greatness that you will achieve together, all the greatness you can do because you have each other, you find your worries are assuaged. The changes in his behaviour can be explained away by the guilt of the ritual weighing on him, or the stress of trying to save a city, or a dozen other reasons that you will work through together. You will have all the time in the world, after all. It's strange, but even though you know the biggest battle is yet to come, you feel as though you've both finally found your happy endings.

And then, finally, the battle comes. And then, finally, it's all over.

You won.

You don't know how any of you have the energy to walk, let alone dance, but that's what you find yourself doing in the hours after the fight: dancing and drinking in a tavern with giddy abandon in the arms of your allies. You'll mourn those lost along the way in time, but for now the overwhelming sense of joy cannot be denied. You swirl around your friends, linking arms, clasping hands, singing songs and calling out for more drinks before your current cup has even run dry.

You feel Astarion’s eyes on you for every moment of it. 

He has sat himself in an alcove to the side of the room you have taken over for the occasion, half shrouding himself in shadows. He doesn't join in the revelry, even when you beckon him over. He simply raises his glass in a toast to you as you are whisked up in another jig, smirking as if watching you is all the entertainment he needs.

Eventually the raucousness dies down, and you twirl over to him, cheeks flushed and skin glowing from the drink and the dancing. When he looks at you, the desire in his eyes makes your heart skip a beat.

“I have been waiting for this night for a long time” he says, standing up to kiss you fully. “You look beautiful, my treasure, and you could look this beautiful forever, if you want to.”

You smile at him, and maybe it is only because you are so tipsy, but he seems to sense your deep-down hesitation.

“What is it, my sweet?”

You shake your head, pulling away from him, unsure how to phrase the worries that have been bubbling up inside you over the past tenday or more. Under his inquisitive gaze, you crack, the words tumbling clumsily out of your mouth.

“You’ve seemed different since the ritual. Distant, I guess.”

“I suppose it’s possible. I’ve been imbibed with unfathomable new talents. It’s taking me some time to become acquainted with my new self.”

“…and I can’t stop thinking about all those deaths…” you say nervously.

“Death was better for them, darling. We’ve discussed this.”

“How can you say that so callously?” Your voice is barely more than a whisper now. “You sound like him. You sound like—“

“Don’t say it!” Astarion spits, his face suddenly twisted with fury. “Don't you ever compare me to him! Never! How dare you stand there and judge me.  Your hands are bloody as mine, darling. Why would you go along with any of this just to pretend you're innocent now?”

“I just wanted to help you feel safe.”

“It seems I misjudged you. I thought we would have a future together - even an eternity - but perhaps you’re not worthy. So what’s it to be, darling? After all this, is this it? Is this the end?”

Your thoughts swirl in a drunken panic. “No!” you cry, tears of frustration welling in your eyes. “No, Astarion, I love you. We’ll make it work.”

Like a switch has been flipped, the ugly rage disappears from Astarion’s face, and he takes you in his arms once more, wiping away your tears.

“Of course we’ll make it work, love. Of course we will. You’re the one that I want. The only one I love. And you could be so much more than that. One little bite and you could be mine forever. My beautiful consort. My most beloved spawn.”

This makes you pause. “You said you’d make me a true vampire,” you say, trying to keep the wobble of accusation out of your voice. “After everything you’ve been through, you would make me a spawn?”

“Our situations will be entirely different, of course. I would never hurt you. I love you. And I will make you a true vampire eventually, but these transformations take time. Trust me, my love.”

You nod mutely, because the bone-weariness from the past day, the past ten-day, the past entire remembered history of your life is suddenly seeping into you, and you have nothing left to say. Besides, you do trust him. This man who stood against your father with you - who stood against a god with you. You trusted him enough to have him by your side through the toughest battles of your life. Why on all the planes would that change now?

He smiles and kisses you gently. “Now, my love. Shall we make love one more time while your heart is still beating?”

You nod again and tell yourself that the dread you feel is only the result of tiredness, and you let him take you by the hand. 

“Then come with me, my darling, and live your final night.”

Chapter Text

He had seen or sensed your tiredness, and had lavished you with sweet, tender love and whispered promises of all the beautiful nights to come. You had fallen asleep in his arms feeling more content than you could ever remember being before.

When you awake, your body is still tingling with the golden glow of his devotion. You see Astarion is already up, standing half-naked by the window, basking in the brilliant morning rays of sun that shine into the room. You slide out of bed and walk over to him, standing behind him and wrapping your arms around his waist, your chest soaring as it always does when you lay eyes on his unbearably perfect physique. You nuzzle your chin into his shoulder, smiling to yourself as the warmth of the light washes over you. Outside, you see the newly-saved city bustling and bursting with a thousand colours, and you think to yourself, we did it. We made it. You sigh contentedly.

Astarion reaches to pull the curtains closed, blocking out the light and colour of the city below, then twists around in your arms to face you. He lifts his hands to your face, cupping your jaw.

“Are you ready?” he whispers, before kissing you chastely on the lips. “Are you ready for forever?”

You smile at him, trying to read those deep red eyes, and nod.

“On your knees, darling,” he says, with a hint of coldness. It is enough to make you think that, just this once, you need to know what he is thinking. It’s now or never. You silently cast the spell that will allow you to read his thoughts, and then you focus on his mind.

It’s like a wall of ice. Cold, opaque, utterly impenetrable.

Astarion tuts, and gives you a knowing smile. “Bad girl. Better not try that again, my love. Now, kneel.”

You drop to your knees. Every nerve in your body seems to be screaming at you to run, but you are utterly transfixed by the terrible beauty of the man who stands above you. 

“I’m going to drink every drop of your blood,” he says, his voice slow and low. “Own your body. Kill your mind.”

He takes a moment to enjoy looking down on your rapturous face, then shoves you roughly backwards onto the floor. You gasp in shock, but then he is bending over you, taking your hand and kissing it with such gentleness that it makes your head spin.

“It will only hurt a bit,” he says, “and the pleasure will be far greater than the pain.”

You can barely take in his soft words over the pounding of your heartbeat. You keep forgetting to breathe.

“I love you,” you say, because it is all you can think to say.

He smiles down at you, bringing his face so close you think he is going to kiss you.

“You have given me everything,” he breathes. “Thank you.”

His lips brush yours in the briefest kiss before his mouth moves to your throat. A stinging numbness spreads through you, so familiar now that it feels like home. As he drinks more and more of you, you feel yourself fading into the darkness. When you wake again, you will be bound together forever. A faint smile rests on your lips as your life slips away.

Chapter Text

Forever, it seems, is a lesson in patience.

When you first came to, Astarion had been by your side to hold you through the wracking spasms, to stroke your hair as you wretched up more bile and blood than a body should be able to hold, to clasp your hand as you wept through the rush of conflicting emotions as the last remnants of your living self died within you.

He had handed you your first goblet of blood as soon as the twitching and nausea stopped as if he’d known that you would instantly be overcome with a seemingly unquenchable hunger. At the time you were too ravenous to ask where it had come from, but he has since convinced you that he has several willing sources to sate your new taste for blood.

“It’s much more simple, really,” he says when you bemoan your new diet of blood and wine. “No need for cooks or kitchen maids.”

You do have cooks and kitchen maids, of course. Astarion is enjoying regaining his mortal appetites. Every evening you sit down to dinner together, and you find you cannot stop yourself eyeing the feasts you find laid on the table with a jealous twinge as you reach for one of your two cups of red.

But he managed this in reverse, you tell yourself, for the entirety of our travels together. It is really not much of a burden to bear.

The hunger, though? That is a hardship you’re not sure you can endure. It is a constant thorn in your side. The physical pain of it leaves you curled and cramping on the floor on bad days. Sometimes the respite of a cup of blood only lasts an hour or two. Sometimes it gives no relief at all.

“It will get better in time, my love,” Astarion tells you. “But you see now why I needed to make you my spawn first? This way, if it comes to it, I can compel you not to harm others. Imagine the danger you would be if I wasn’t able to help you.”

It makes perfect sense, of course. You don’t need persuading. You feel so lucky to have someone by your side who can guide you through all of this. You stop asking him when he will transform you into a true vampire; you know you are not ready. You scare yourself, sometimes.

One day, he comes to you with a ring.

“We should be wed,” he says. “We are bound by something so eternal already, but the city will not understand our love until it has been declared through their banal system.”

He does not kneel. You do not mind. From the snatches of memory from your childhood that you have seen, you do not think you were ever the kind of girl who dreamed of a romantic proposal. Besides, what is more romantic than the love you already have?

You accept the ring with sincere thanks. Thanks for his love, and for this everlasting life, and for his taking care of everything as you go through this latest change.

The wedding preparations begin immediately, but mostly without you. You are too often confined to your room with fits of blood-hunger. You are happy, though. You are excited.

The fact that you have no idea when you will be able to feel the warm sun on your skin again makes your chest tighten with a greater sense of loss than you have ever felt. 

Chapter Text

A month has passed since Astarion’s proposal. The hunger, as he promised, has become more manageable. You can go hours between feeds without entirely losing your mind.

It is the night before your wedding, and you are in the drawing room with your husband-to-be. He sits in a high-backed chair by the fire; you sit at his feet, resting your head on his knee. You are tracing the elaborate stitching on his trousers absentmindedly, while he strokes your hair.

“What are you thinking?” you ask after a while, breaking the comfortable silence as you watch the flames dancing before you. There is a long pause before he replies.

“Bhaal’s army would have made a wonderful dowry.”

You freeze, then turn to him, and you know you haven’t managed to hide the hurt in your face. “I thought you were glad that I was free of him.”

“Of course I am. After all, how could I have made you my pet when you were still on your father’s leash?”

You jerk away from him, not even trying to hide the hurt now.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, my love. I’m only joking. If I had known making you undead would kill your sense of humour then I might have held off for longer. Come here.”

He takes hold of your forearms and pulls you, facing him, onto his lap.

“You know I love you, don’t you, little pet?”

You give a nod that turns into a shrug.

“Hmm. It seems you might need some convincing,” he says, releasing one of your arms and snaking his arm down your body, finding the spot between your legs with a practised hand and applying just enough pressure to make you squirm.

“Astarion, I don’t—“

“Shh, pet. Sit still. Good girl.”

There’s only the barest hint of command in his voice, but you comply anyway, allowing him to push his hand under your clothes and tug your underwear to the side. His fingers slide inside you as his thumb strokes teasingly around your clit, every gentle brush sending a thrill through your body. He curls his fingers inside you, pumping in and out, every movement pushing against that place within you that emits an almost unbearable bliss at the touch. Before long your head falls back, eyes half closed in ecstasy, moaned prayers to the pantheon and the godlike man before you spilling from your lips. All the while, he whispers a string of honeyed words into your ear, sending shivers down your spine.

“My sweet treasure. My darling consort. My queen. My future wife. Everything you are…” He pulls his face away from your ear to watch you for a moment, and through the delirious haze of your pleasure you notice that there is no joy on his face - just a cold curiosity as he takes in your writhing gratification. “Everything you are is mine.” He punctuates the last word with a particularly deep thrust of his fingers, curling and pushing against that sweet spot inside you, and that is all it takes to make you come undone. You cry out, arching your back and bucking your hips desperately against his hand, pleasure crashing in waves through your body. You feel him pull you close, feel the cold sting of fangs piercing the flesh of your neck, and the ebbing buzz of your orgasm melts into the numbing rush of being fed upon. You think of how your heart would be beating wildly had he not already stopped it. Drunk on the over-stimulation, you let your lover bite and suck at your neck until dizziness threatens to overwhelm you, at which point you murmur a wordless warning into his hair. He pulls away, face smeared with red, eyes heavily lidded.

“My love,” he says, then he kisses you. You taste your own blood on his lips and tongue, and you delight in the flavour. Hunger stirs in your stomach once more, but you try to push it down, focusing instead on your future husband. The man you love. He pulls back from the kiss, and looks into your eyes, brushing a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“Tomorrow is the big day. Our big day. I’m sure you’re excited to see them, but I worry our old friends will have grown jealous of our power… of our love. You will defend me to them, won’t you, darling?”

“Of course,” you say, and you mean it. But a small part of you wonders whether it would even have been possible for you to say anything else.

Chapter Text

You stand together before the huge gilt mirror in your bedchamber, looking at his reflection. It still causes a twinge of unease in your heart to see the utter lack of yourself reflected back.

He gives the mirror a satisfied smile, then turns to you, taking you in from head to toe. He spared no expense on you today. Your usual lady’s maid was assisted by a flock of additional servants: one for make-up, one for hairdressing, one for jewellery, and one to help your regular maid with your wedding dress. The dress itself is a thing of beauty, pure white, embroidered and beaded so finely that you cannot help but wonder at the hours of painstaking labour, the skill, the artistry, and the drops of blood from wayward needles that must have gone into its finer details. The dress’ corset is laced so tightly with white satin ribbon that you’re certain you would faint if you had any need to breathe anymore, and the neckline is cut wide and low, showing off your delicate décolletage in a way that must be quite pleasing, if the glint in your future husband’s eye is anything to go by.

“Beautiful,” he breathes, planting a delicate kiss on your forehead.

“Magnificent,” he murmurs as he moves his face down to kiss your cheek.

“Wondrous,” he whispers against your lips, pulling you into a passionate kiss, sharp teeth grazing your lip, tongue delving lustfully into your mouth before pulling away and moving down further.

“Divine,” he says against your neck, kissing you there, making your shallow breaths hitch in your throat. You feel the cold sting of his fangs piercing your skin, and the feeling of him taking your blood enthrals you. You stand there in his arms, swaying, fading, entirely captivated by his attentions.

Your eyelids are beginning to close by the time he pulls away from you, his lips gleaming, his eyes bright. He turns back to the mirror and, using a handkerchief pulled from a pocket in his jacket, he dabs his face clean of your blood.

“I should get cleaned up before the ceremony,” you say as the room around you blurs in a bloodless haze. You do not need to see your reflection to know that your makeup must be smudged, and you can see the trail of bright red blood that has dripped from your neck down your chest to stain the neckline of your gown.

“No,” he says, with a force that lets you know you won’t disobey. Not that you want to, anyway. “I like you like this. Wistful and wanton. Freshly taken. Perfect.”

Before you can object - but again, would you even want to? - he takes you by the hand and leads you to the ballroom, where your guests await.

Chapter Text

Maybe the tightness of your corset is having some effect after all, or maybe it is just the vigour with which Astarion drained you earlier, but you find yourself in a daze throughout the ceremony. Try as you might, you can barely even remember the exchange of vows. Only the very last line of them seems to be burned into your mind.

Even death could not part us.

You both agreed that a small wedding ceremony and celebration would suit you. Neither of you have many people from your past that you want to share in your special day. Only those companions that you had both travelled with, fought with, saved the world with. Even of that small group, you are fairly certain Astarion only invited some for their newfound positions of power, rather than out of any kind of longstanding affection. Certainly he and Gale had no love lost between them on your past travels, and even you cannot deny that Wyll’s saviour complex has become a little tiresome since being declared a hero of Baldur’s Gate. Still, you are glad for the excuse to see your old friends; your lives have all been so busy since the defeat of the Elder Brain that you haven’t had a chance to see any of them.

Shadowheart is the first to approach you once the vows are said and done. Astarion has hired a band to play in the corner of the ballroom, and tables around the edge of the room are piled with a feast fit for a hundred. You have sat at a table and taken a plate, but can do nothing more than stare at it wistfully as your friend takes a seat next to you.

“I believe they call this a ‘good spread,’” she says, helping herself to some of the piles of food. You smile at her. “So, you’re married to a vampire lord now. Are you sure that was a wise decision?”

Straight to the point as ever, you think. You could almost laugh at how predictable she is.

“How dare you question my lord and husband?” someone says, and your eyes grow wide when you realise the words came from your own lips. I didn’t say that, you want to say. I didn’t mean to say that. But the words refuse to form on your tongue.

“Gods, he really did turn you into a spawn. I suppose I knew it would only be a matter of time, but I didn’t think it would be like this.” Shadowheart sighed and shook her head. “I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into. I hope he treats you well. If he’s even able to.”

She looks sad as she meets your eyes, and you will her to be able to hear your thoughts - to tell her that you’re happy, to tell her that he does treat you well, to tell her that you’ve missed her - but the tadpoles are long gone, and she seems to take your stare as nothing more than a glassy-eyed glare.

“I don’t think I can watch any more of this,” she says. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be like this, what with him being ascended, but as it is… I think I’m going to go. Do pass my regards on to your lord and husband.” The words drip with spite, and she pushes her chair away from the table to rise. When she stands, she looks down at you and speaks for a final time. “I do love you, you know. Or I did love you— I don’t know if you’re still the person I loved. But if that person is in there, and ever wants to be free, just know I’ll be there. I can’t bear to witness this charade, but I won’t abandon you. If you need me— the real you— then I’ll be there.”

With that, she turns and leaves without a backwards glance.

———

You sit at the table alone for a while, stewing over what Shadowheart said to you, and worrying over the words that had come from your mouth without your control. Surely Astarion wouldn’t have used his powers on you. Not today. Not ever. He’d promised, hadn’t he? You cast your mind back, trying to remember a conversation that you’re unsure ever happened. He’d certainly said that he didn’t think he’d need to use his power over you, but that wasn’t quite the same thing, was it?

You catch sight of him talking with Wyll at the side of the room. Something in their body language makes you sense that they are doing more than exchanging pleasantries, and you strain your ears to try to listen to what is being said. Eventually, a lull in the music allows you to overhear a snippet of their exchange.

“The two of you are the unholiest union I can bloody imagine,” says Wyll, an uncharacteristic edge of steel in his voice.

“I don’t recall asking your opinion.”

“You had the most precious thing - someone who would do anything for you - and you damn well took everything. Degenerate doesn’t half cut it.”

“Watch yourself, boy. If your father wasn’t of such import I would have gutted you already for daring to speak that way to me. On my wedding day, of all days.”

Astarion’s eyes flick up and catch you watching him. You hurriedly look away, not wanting him to know that you’ve overheard their conversation. Blessedly the bulky form of Halsin quickly blocks you from his view, as the huge arch-druid pulls out a chair beside you.

“Is this seat taken?” he asks in his gentle, rumbling tones.

You smile and shake your head, and he takes a seat next to you.

“I can’t quite believe how much everything has changed,” he says, and he gestures around at the ballroom, but instinct tells you that he isn’t simply talking about the decor. Before you have a chance to question his meaning, a firm hand slips around the back of your neck, as though collaring you, and you feel your husband’s body pressed against your back.

“Enjoying your reunion with my pretty little bride, druid?”

“I enjoy the company of all those in this room, when I am lucky enough to get it.”

“But you did particularly enjoy her company, did you not? You hardly tried to hide the way you looked at her when we were travelling together. My love,” Astarion says, turning to you, the tone of his voice denoting that he has just had a wonderful idea, “why don’t you give Halsin a kiss?”

“What?” You and Halsin ask at the same time.

“A kiss, my love. Give Halsin a kiss.”

You look at Astarion in confusion, and he gives you a reassuring nod. You lean towards Halsin uncertainly, and plant a gentle kiss on his cheek. You don’t think you wanted to, but your body seems to move of it’s own accord.

“A proper kiss, my treasure. Show him what he’s missing out on.”

You glance at Astarion again, but his face is expectant, so you don’t question it this time, instead leaning in to kiss Halsin fully. His warm lips are unyielding beneath yours. When you pull away, he looks at you with sad eyes.

“To give oneself wholly, and to have a lover totally in your thrall? A harmless game, until it becomes real. I worry for the two of you, Astarion.”

“Ugh, must you take everything so seriously? We’re both happy with our arrangement, and that’s all that matters.”

“For your sake, I hope some of it is just a fantasy deep in your heart. I will take my leave of you now, I think, but I truly wish the best for both of you.”

As Halsin walks away from you, Astarion sighs. “I really don’t remember our companions being such dreadful bores. I suppose your charm on the road must have hidden their utter lack of it.”

Before you can ask him what he is doing - what he was thinking, telling you to kiss another man on your wedding day - a wizard-shaped distraction appears in front of the pair of you.

“Congratulations are in order. You two certainly wasted no time in tying the knot.”

“I rather thought I was a little slow. I’m used to being begged to wed and bed my quarries on the first night.”

“Tell me, do you always woo your lovers with such patient attention?”

You try not to smile. Sharp as their words are, this exchange is no different to the dozens of other sniping matches these two carried out on your many long hours on the road together. It almost feels nostalgic.

“As the Vampire Ascendant, I’ve granted my lover immortality and bound them to me forever. I shan’t need to woo anyone ever again.”

“I suppose I’m just surprised that you decided to marry at all. I admit I expected to you turn your back once you got what you wanted.”

“Quite the opposite. I need someone I can trust, and now I know she will never betray me.” He says these words with a smile at you, and there’s a softness to his eyes that reminds you of how he looked at you before the change. You smile back at him, and take his hand and squeeze it, and tell yourself that this is proof that he is still the same man. Sometimes you just have to look that bit harder to see it.

Chapter Text

“You know,” Astarion says to you later as you are slowly removing your wedding outfit, “I wasn’t much taken by our companions this evening. They are not the people I thought them to be.”

You catch his face in the mirror as you struggle to remove your necklace, and see that he is watching you carefully before he continues.

“A purge may be in order. What do you say, my pet? Will you fight by my side once more?”

You blink in surprise. “You want me to kill our friends?”

“Well, darling, they’re all going to die one day,” he says, in the voice of a man explaining something very simple to someone very stupid. “I just want to make sure that day comes before they have a chance to turn on us.”

“No,” you say in shock. “I won’t do it.”

“No? After everything I’ve done for you, you think you can say no to me?”

You say nothing, but stare at him defiantly.

“You know, pet,” he says, spitting the word, “I don’t think I like hearing the word ‘no’ coming from your lips. You are never to say it again in my presence. Do you understand?”

The compulsion washes the defiance from your face, and you nod, wide-eyed.

“Good. I’m sure I can think of better uses for that pretty mouth of yours. Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.” The words hurt all the more because you know them, despite everything, to be true.

“Better. Now, on your knees.”

Your knees fold beneath you, and he walks to stand in front of you, unlacing the front of his trousers as he moves.

“Astarion—“

“Open,” he says, pulling his length free of his trousers and lining it up with your obediently parted lips. He runs his thumb over your lips, then onto your tongue, pushing it into just shy of the depth that would make you gag. “Look at me.”

You look up and meet his eyes. They glint with a cold intensity that makes you shiver as he takes his thumb from your mouth and gathers a handful of your hair in his fist, then forces his cock deep into your throat with a single thrust. You gag and blink your eyes at the tears that have sprung within them.

“Keep your eyes on me, darling,” he says coldly, and you meet his gaze once more as he pulls your head back off of him, his length glistening with your saliva. The smallest smile twitches for a moment at the corner of his mouth, and then he plunges his cock back into your mouth, then out, then in, setting a punishing rhythm, his face remaining impassive to your gagging and the tears that begin to stream down your cheeks. Your scalp stings from the tight grip he has on your hair, and you try to relax your throat to lessen the bruising pressure you feel as he fucks your mouth, but it only makes him push deeper and deeper until you are entirely overwhelmed by the ferocity of his movements.

You think that if you weren’t undead already you would be dying from the lack of air. As it is, your chest still burns with the want of breath, causing tears to run more heavily from your eyes. Eventually his fierce rhythm stutters, and with a final forceful thrust you taste him coming undone on your tongue. A look that might have been disgust passes over his face, but it’s gone before you can be sure. He pulls out of your mouth and studies you as he laces his trousers back up, then crouches down next to you, lifting some of your wedding gown's skirt to wipe away the drool and cum from your chin.

“Do you see, my treasure?” he says, dabbing at the corners of your mouth. “Do you see how lucky you are that I treat you so well? That I care about your pleasure? That I love you so much? It could be like this every time. I could take my pleasure from you and give you nothing in return. But I don’t, do I? I make you so happy. All I ask in return is that you remember: you are mine. And you will do as I say.”

Chapter Text

You stay there, kneeling on the floor, numb. Your mind is in shock. You hear him moving around the room but your eyes are glazed and staring at nothing. Eventually you hear him leave, and still you stay on your knees, sinking into the silence he has left you in. You want to remain frozen like this forever, your head empty, your mind quiet, your thoughts swirling slowly like snowflakes, melting away to nothingness the moment they touch you. You know if you allow your thoughts to settle, you will have to think things that are too painful for you to endure. If you allow your mind to form cohesive ideas it will present you with words you do not want to hear. So you sit, statuesque, with eyes of glass and face of stone, impervious to time or thought or feeling.

You hear the chamber door open again. You couldn't say how long has passed. Time means nothing to you any more, anyway. Your internal measurements of the passing of time have all been taken from you. How many heartbeats has it been? How many breaths?

None.

You feel a strong arm wrap around you, and feel the metal rim of a cup being pushed against your lips.

"Drink, my love," says he.

You do not want to, but he tilts the cup anyway, and the moment the sweet iron scent of blood hits your nose, your mouth opens on instinct and a suppressed hunger deep in your gut roars back to life. You gulp greedily, messily, adding to the ruination of the beautiful white gown you had donned this morning when your heart had been so full of hope. The blood warms your belly, melting your icy resolve, freeing the emotions that you had so carefully trapped within yourself. Hot tears well in your eyes, spilling out, following the rivulets of your thrice-ruined makeup down your cheeks.

"Shh, my sweetest thing," he says in a voice as syrupy and soft as honey. "No more tears. You were just hungry, weren't you? I know, I know. You want to be better for me, don't you? Hush now. You're so good, aren't you? Such a good girl."

He puts the empty cup aside and picks up your limp form as he whispers his sweet nothings in your ears, kissing you gently on the head, stroking your hair with exquisite tenderness. He places you carefully on the bed and prepares you for rest, removing your clothes with practised delicacy, cleaning your face and chest softly with a damp warm cloth, pecking at your freshly cleaned skin as he goes. Tears still flow from your eyes, but without makeup they are harder to see. When he is done he undresses himself and climbs into bed beside you, spooning you with his body, wrapping you in his strong arms.

As his hands move down your frame, you have the realisation that your body will always betray you for him, and the heat from the blood in your belly slowly spreads down, pooling between your legs. As his fingers move between your thighs he lets out a small exhale of appreciation at your body's traitorous readiness for him.

"Such a good girl," he purrs, "so beautifully compliant."

He dips his fingers inside you once, twice, just enough to watch your body react to his attentions. He brushes his thumb against your clit at you buck against him involuntarily. 

"So eager," he whispers in your ear, his fingers moving to part your lips for him as he positions his body to line up his length with your entrance.

He holds there, letting the anticipation build within you, and then he plunges his full length inside you in the same moment as he sinks his fangs into your neck.

You let out a sound that could have been a whine of pleasure or could have been a sob. With every stroke, a bittersweet tension builds within you until you no longer know if you're weeping from pleasure or from heartbreak. He keeps you there, on the precipice, with his slow, steady strokes and his masterful fingers, as his fangs at your neck gently drain you into oblivion.

Chapter Text

He is still trancing when you wake up. You are entirely enveloped by him: his arms wrapped around you, his thigh draped over your legs, his face tucked into the crook of your neck. Between your thighs, the stickiness of his seed tells you that he continued to take his pleasure from you after you passed out.

The thick curtains block out any light from the room, so you carefully extract yourself from his embrace and go to light one of the candles on your bedside. You've had little need for magic since you turned - most of your days have been spent driven to distraction by hunger pains - so it's only now that you realise with a sense foreboding that your magic does not come easily. Even producing a tiny flame to light a candle takes a force of will that you almost find yourself lacking, drained as you are. Still, although it flickers and wavers in a nonexistent breeze, you manage to hold the cantrip long enough to light the candle closest to you before falling back onto your pillows, inexplicably exhausted.

In the soft golden light, you take in Astarion's resting face. Lily white skin so soft and smooth that kissing it feels like a dream. Voluptuous lips partly parted in his repose. Long elfin ears, finely pointed and tinged pink like a blushing rose. A jaw that dances on the edge of strong and delicate.

You had thought that the ritual had aged him, but you see now that his face still possesses the unmarred youthfulness that you have always known. Rather, it is the near-constant half frown, the slight curl of the lip, the sneer that now so often graces his beautiful features that seem to age him. Here, unburdened by the thoughts of his walking self, he looks like the Astarion that you thought he was. The Astarion you fell in love with.

For a moment you are spellbound by his visage, and by the memories that replay themselves in your mind as you try to convince yourself that that man - the sweet, kind, gentle man - had not been imagined. 

"I can feel you watching me, you know."

The voice starts you from your reverie. He doesn't open his eyes - barely moves his lips - but suddenly you can feel his awareness of you.

"What's going through that pretty little head of yours, hm?" he asks as he reaches for you, pulling you back into his grasp with his new irresistible strength. "Nothing bad, I hope."

"Nothing bad," you confirm, and he gives a content sigh as he presses his body against yours.

"Things are going to get better," he says, his eyes still closed. You don't respond. You just lay there, caged or cradled in his arms, wondering - worrying - what better means.

Chapter Text

Things do seem to get better for you, in a way. Day by day your hunger becomes easier to - not control, exactly, but at least manage. After all, resisting dark urges is hardly a new experience for you. As your appetites become less all-consuming, you try to look back on the surreal and shifting memories you have made since your cravings began.

You realise that almost two moons have passed since Astarion turned you, and you have no idea as to the state of the world around you. Every moment has been spent in a kind of waking dream. You resolve to use your newfound clarity of mind to find out as much as you can about the time that you have missed, and to connect once more with the companions who had been your daily guides until that strange day of victory. But you still feel as though your mental state is unsteady, and the reclamation of your sense of self is unsure, so you decide to take your investigations slowly. You start small, wandering the house with sharp eyes and ears whenever Astarion has reason to leave.

You pretend that it doesn’t hurt to watch him have the front doors flung open so he can stroll out into the sunshine without you. As you cower away from the light outside, you remind yourself that he is going about business that will improve both of your lives.

You so want it to be true. You so hate to doubt him.

You find yourself searching for proof anyway.

———

The first thing you notice as you prowl the shadowy corridors of your home is that almost all of the servants - your servants - are thralls.

You had no reason, no need, no desire to speak to any of them in your previous state, but now that you try it, you see that they have the dull speech and dead eyes of beings entirely incapable of independent thought. They can carry out basic commands and answer simple questions easily enough, but any queries of significant depth, or any inquiry into anything personal, is met with a glassy stare of incomprehension.

To your surprise, it is Astarion who becomes your best source of information. He seems to enjoy telling you of his machinations in the city. 

“I won’t give you too many details, darling, I don’t want to confuse that pretty little head of yours,” he says, before describing his plans to you in broad strokes. He has already bought himself re-entry to the Barrister’s Guild, and has taken his seat in the Parliament of Peers that runs the city. Each one of you - every so-called Hero of Baldur’s Gate - was given a seat in honour of your contributions to the city, apparently. Your eyes widen at this newly discovered capacity of yours. Astarion sees your face and lets out a high laugh.

“Oh, no, darling, you don’t have a seat,” he explains, his voice dancing with mirth at your foolishness. “Naturally there is only one seat per family. You gave up your claim to a seat when you married me. Oh, you sweet thing, sometimes I forget how simple you can be these days.”

Your eye twitches, and you blink away the disappointment. Silly, you tell yourself, to be disappointed at the loss of something you never had. How would it work, anyway, sitting on a council, when you can’t even exist in the sunlight? When your hunger is still so precariously controlled? You’re a fool. You’re a fool. So you pull a fool’s smile onto your face and listen intently to your wise husband.

He explains that the law and order of the Gate was in shambles after the defeat of the Elder Brain. Gortash had disassembled the old City Watch, and in turn, you had disassembled his Steel Watch. The Flaming Fist was in disarray, and although they had clung to just enough semblance of control to muddle through in those first few days after the battle, it was clear that the city needed additional forces to dispense justice.

Who better to lead this New Watch than a Hero of Baldur’s Gate? Who better to administer the judicial control of the city than a man already practiced in the city’s laws, who had so recently shown his dedication to the city in such an unquestionable way?

You smile and nod at his shrewdness. Although, a voice in your head dares to say, his path to power does seem awfully similar to that of a certain follower of Bane. You wonder if you dare voice this thought to Astarion.

Eventually, you do. Quietly, meekly, of course, so as not to cause his anger to flare, so as not to hurt his pride.

“Our plans are not the same at all, my love,” he says with a patronising smile on his full lips. “Gortash was a fool. He believed that the only way the populace would hand power over to him was if he controlled enough of them with the tadpoles. He didn’t understand the world. I can see the way things truly are. People do not need to be controlled to hand over power. They do it willingly. They thank me for it. They are no more than cattle and they long to be led. They willingly hand over the tools of their subjugation because they know, deep down, that this is the way that things should be.”

Chapter Text

Now that your mind is clear enough from the hunger to engage in more complex conversations, your husband delights in telling you of the cases he is presiding over. Every day that he works, he will regale you with stories when you sit down for dinner; you to your glasses of wine and blood, and he to his meal. You wonder if it’s a coincidence that the food he is served is so often the meals that you once told him were your favourite. You decide it’s better not to know.

Today he is delighting over a gnome he sentenced harshly for stealing. “The beggar brought his family to the courthouse as if his squalling pups would make me go easier on him. Can you imagine? Trying to manipulate me with such crude tactics? So naturally I gave him the longest sentence possible. And then,” he adds with glee, “his wife made such a racket that I had her arrested for disturbing the proceedings! They were both dragged off to prison together!” He lets out a cruel laugh.

“What happened to the children?” you ask, keeping your voice as neutral as you can.

“What? Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure they scuttled off back to whatever hole they nest in. They're only gnomes. Anyway,” he says, raising his glass, “here’s to justice. Drink up, darling.”

There’s something about the glint in his eye when he says that last sentence that sends a terrible stab of suspicion through your chest. A question burns on your lips. You’ve asked it before with little success, but now you are determined to know the truth of it.

“Where did this blood come from, Astarion?”

He says nothing, only smiles at you. When you put your cup down and push it away from you he rolls his eyes.

“You told me it came from willing sources.”

“It does, my dear. Most willing. It’s amazing what people will do to commute their sentence of imprisonment.”

“And the Flaming Fist just allow you to waltz into Wyrms Rock prison and bleed their prisoners dry?”

“Wyrms Rock? Dear me, no, my love. The New Watch imprisons criminals right here. After all, we’re blessed with a newly emptied dungeon fit to hold thousands.”

A newly emptied dungeon. What a pleasant way of putting it. Just a clear-out. Just a clean-up. Not the damnation of seven thousand souls. You’re speaking before your brain catches up with your mouth.

“Do you ever think that killing all those people might have changed you?”

“Of course it changed me, you sweet, silly thing. Killing them allowed me to ascend.”

“You used to be kinder. More gentle.”

“I used to be weak.”

“You used to be good.”

“And now I am great. Besides, you’ve got far more blood on your pretty little hands than I do, my love.” His voice grows colder. “How convenient that you forget your own bloody past when you throw these accusations at me. I am a veritable paladin of virtue compared to you, you godless murderspawn.”

The viciousness of his voice makes you flinch. That's not fair, you want to say, but you can't bring yourself to utter the words because a part of you sees the truth in what he says. All of his cruelty is nothing when compared to the destruction your past self wreaked upon the world. He seems to see the conflict on your face - he is so good at seeing your weaknesses now - and he pounces on it.

“Your ungratefulness astounds me, my pretty little love. You have no idea how worthless you would be without me, do you? Do you think anyone else would want such a useless, broken wretch as yourself? Cast out by your own father, rejected by your chosen god. The weight of the sins you carry should force you to your knees every day in penance. To the world, you are less than worthless. And yet I chose you. I, the greatest vampire who ever lived. And through my love I allow you to share in my majesty, and still you do not thank me. You should kiss the very ground I walk on. You should pray to me every night. But you do not. You dare question me, your husband, your master, your god. My patience with you is proof enough, I think, that I am still kind. I am still gentle. Trust me, pet, you do not want to see what happens when that patience runs out." He pauses and cocks his head to the side, considering. When he continues, his voice is lower, quieter, slower. Deadly. "Or perhaps you do, hmm? You have always liked it when I exert my power over you, haven't you, darling? Back when your heart still beat it would betray your excitement, and now… you might tell me you don't like it, but your actions betray your true desires, don't they? Your actions beg me to discipline you. To punish you. To break you."

You let out the small hum of fear that is the closest you can get to saying 'no' since he took the word from you.

He rises from his seat at the head of the table and walks over to you, pulling your chair out for you.

“I’d go and get some rest, my treasure,” he says to you. “I’m going to need you at your best tomorrow.”

You follow his suggestion, but you already know that the dreadful apprehension curling in your gut will keep you awake tonight.

Chapter Text

At some point in the small hours sleep finally agrees to court you, but you feel the fear tightening your chest once more before your eyes even open in the morning. Astarion is sitting in a chair by the curtained window, watching you. He smiles when he sees you wake.

“Oh good, you’re awake. I was starting to worry you might make us late. You’d better dress quickly, my dear.” He tilts his head towards one of the dark wooden dressers.

You look in the direction of his nod, and you see an outfit has been laid out for you: something white with gold metal detailing. It looks outrageously skimpy, like an outfit the wardrobe mistress of Sharess’ Caress might choose if the girls were putting on a show of celestials. It is not a suitable outfit for a lady, but you have resigned yourself to the fact that you are not a lady. You are his doll.

He watches you hungrily as you dress yourself. Your ladies maid disappeared sometime after the wedding, but you didn’t think to ask about it: being dressed by someone else always felt like a strange way to start the day to you, so you didn’t really miss her. As soon as you are dressed, Astarion leaves the room. He doesn’t need to tell you to follow.

As you trail him through the corridors, your mind is whirling with foreboding. Not knowing what horrors he has in store for you is a torture in itself - one that you cannot help but inflict on yourself over and over as the anticipation builds in your chest. He must know it, too, for he sets a slow, almost leisurely pace as he leads you through the house.

You walk past a servant - slave, thrall, victim, they are all one and the same in this house - and an idea flashes in your mind. Maybe the servants will know your fate. You reach for your magic subtly, in the way that only those with sorcerous powers can, to try to detect the thoughts of the passing servant. However, as you pull on the weave that has been flowing in your blood ever since you can remember, you find, much to your dismay, that the magical power is nowhere to be found. The space where magic once roiled, hot and chaotic and almost uncontrollable, is now empty and cold. You turn deeper in on yourself, and though you find the odd flicker and flash of energy, there is nothing close to enough to cast the spell that you have held in your mind. And then you have passed the servant, and your opportunity is missed, and you are left feeling more concerned than ever.

Before long, Astarion leads you into his study. Like the rest of the house, it has undergone a significant transformation in the past months, with all traces of Cazador destroyed. The dark desk has been pushed against a wall, and the room has been set up as more of an audience chamber than an office. One large throne faces a dozen smaller chairs, and Astarion takes his seat on the throne, patting his knee with a hand to indicate that you should take a seat there.

He told you once, long ago, that he would rule the world, issuing commands from his throne while you perched naked on his lap. It seems he is finally making good on his promise. You almost feel grateful for the skimpy scraps of cloth he has allowed you - although you realise you have no reason to believe that he will let you keep them on for long. You think it is a sign of how far you have fallen for him that you don’t feel the indignity of it at all. You only feel relief. Oh, this is shameful, of course; whatever dignity you have left is going to be cut into smaller scraps than the outfit you are sporting. But you had feared a much worse punishment. By contrast, this feels almost like a gift.

When you balance yourself on his lap he pulls you closer to him, his strong arm wrapping around your exposed midriff, his fingers resting lewdly between your bare thighs.  The proximity of his fingertips to your skin makes you shiver in hot anticipation.

“I thought you might help me with my associates today,” he purrs in your ear. “I’m quite sure that your presence will have an enhancing effect on my proposals.”

You squirm at his closeness, but before you can adjust your position a thrall enters the room, announcing your husband’s first guest.

Chapter Text

You wonder if shaming you is the only reason he brought you here today. You fear the real reason he did it is to show you how hopeless your situation is. A parade of the great and the good of the city passes before you in one appointment after another, and not one of them seems to take umbrage at your position. Indeed, more than a few seem to have been entirely enraptured by the near-naked consort of the Lord of the New Watch. You can feel him smiling against your cheek as their eyes roam over you, shifting and uncomfortable in their arousal.

You try to follow the plans that are laid out in each appointment, but both Astarion and his guests speak in half-truths and vague metaphors. Nebulous deals are made before your eyes and yet you find you can barely distinguish those of finance from those of a more mercenary nature. Perhaps Astarion brought you here to show you just how dim your mind has become in his thrall. Even when your mind is at its clearest, after a servant has delivered a cup of blood for you and wine for him, you struggle to unweave the threads of the web that he is carefully setting out across the city. You find you've drunk the blood before you can even try to resist its pull - your hunger is still too overwhelming to think of fighting it.

Your mind starts to wander away from the obscurities of your husband’s business dealings, and you are only pulled back to reality from time to time by the light brushes of his fingers along your inner thighs. You hate that the tingling trails his fingertips trace leave you craving more. As time goes by his touch moves higher and higher, achingly slowly, and you find yourself pressing your body closer to his in unwanted desire. He pays you no mind, not breaking concentration from the discussion with his current guest for a moment, even as he teases you to distraction.

Finally -  finally - the current visitor leaves, and as the door closes behind them Astarion turns his full attention on you. His fingers ghost over the ache between your legs, never quite touching, but so close you swear you can sense them even when you close your eyes at the torment. When he finally grazes the pad of his thumb over your clit, a jolt of yearning shoots through you, so strong you let out a whimper.

Astarion lets out a low chuckle. “You’re playing your part so well, my dear. Such a needy thing. Such a pretty consort. Your good work deserves a reward, don’t you think?”

Before you can nod your head he’s plunging his fingers into you, curling those masterful fingers inside you, slowly pumping in and out, thumb still applying just enough pressure on your clit to leave you squirming and moaning in a heart-wrenching ecstasy on his lap. The pent-up need from his teasing has you at the edge in moments, but he knows your body like it’s his own, and his prowess in the arts of pleasure allows him to keep you balanced there, slowing the strokes of his cunning hands as he watches your face with cool intensity.

“Not yet, I think,” he murmurs, and then he removes his hand. His fingers are slick with your excitement, and he shoves them roughly into your mouth, which you had just opened to beseech him to deliver your release. You suck them clean dutifully, trying to blink away the tears that have welled in your eyes from your desperate want.

“There’s still one more visitor who needs to be seen. But soon, my treasure,” he says in response to your begging stare. As a servant enters the room to announce the final guest, Astarion pulls his fingers from your mouth and wipes them on a piece of your skirt.

“Marshall Bormul of the Flaming Fist,” calls the thrall, holding open the door for a hulking figure of a man, who strolls in with that specific swagger of a person who thinks they could best anyone they came across in a fight. It takes all of your willpower to stop yourself grinding against your husband’s leg in wanton frustration. The guest takes a seat opposite you, and their conversation is lost to you in your lustful haze.

Your concentration is suddenly dragged back to the pair of men by a sharp pinch on your thigh.

“Our guest was speaking to you, darling. Do try to be polite.”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” you manage to say, unsure which of them you’re really apologising to.

“I was just saying what a beauty you are,” says the Marshall. “Very pleasing on the eye.”

“Very pleasing in plenty of other ways, too, I assure you,” says Astarion. “I’m sure she’d be more than happy to show you. Wouldn’t you, pet?”

The realisation of what he is asking washes a cold wave of fear through you. He is only joking, you tell yourself. He is many things, but surely he is too possessive to ask you to do what you think he is asking of you. Perhaps this is a test of some kind? You twist in his lap to try to read his face, but his mask is as impeccable and indecipherable as ever.

“But I only wish to please you, my love,” you say. You try your best to sound sensual, appealing, almost teasing, but you worry he can hear the desperation in your voice.

Astarion pouts mockingly. “That's terribly sweet, my treasure, but it would please me to see you please my friend. Now.”

With that final word, he pushes you from his lap, and you fall onto your hands and knees on the floor.

“Go on,” he encourages, voice all sing-song, eyes glinting, nodding his head towards the Marshall. You start to get to your feet, but he stops you. “No, no, darling,” he says. “Crawl to him.”

Chapter Text

You crawl.

If you were moving of your own volition you know your legs would be shaking, but the compulsion drives you forward smoothly, slinking across the floor to the Fist that sits before you. He watches you with lustful eyes, licking his lips in anticipation. He could be handsome, you suppose, though he is weathered in that way that humans of a certain age become when they have lived a life of war. When you reach him you pause, unsure, trying to reason your way out of doing anything further. You don’t have much hope; you’ve never beaten your husband’s will before. Seeing your hesitation, Astarion gives you clearer instructions. Clearer, and therefore harder to resist.

“Help our guest with his trousers, my love,” he says from behind you. 

At this command you kneel before the Marshall, your deft fingers unlacing the front of his trousers. Fingers that should be trembling but are instead steady. Fingers that should be scratching and hitting and gouging, but are instead gentle. It feels alien, watching them move before your eyes. It’s as if they’re not yours - not a part of your body. But then again, your body is hardly yours any more, is it? Your body is his.

A flicker of uncertainly seems to cut through the Fist’s lust, but Astarion seems to sense it, and brushes it aside with his silver tongue.

“Please, don’t feel ill at ease. She’s quite the lascivious little pet. She lives for this kind of thing. You love this sort of attention, don’t you, darling?”

You wish you could be certain in your denial of his claims, but even now you find you cannot be sure of your feelings. Have you not willingly stumbled after him from one debasement to the next? Is your reluctance true distress, or are you simply flustered that Astarion has pushed you one step further, and yet again you’re complying, shame-faced but willing?

You’ve barely freed the Fist’s length from his trousers before Astarion gives you your next command.

“Stroke him, darling. And use your mouth.”

Before your mind can react your body is acting on his words. In a desperate attempt to focus on anything but what your body is doing, you fixate on the words being spoken above you. The Fist’s voice stutters sometimes, because of what you are doing between his legs— but no, you’re not thinking about that— you’re listening.

“…a deal, then. You’ll start the move immediately?” Your husband's voice is the centre of your concentration.

“Uh, certainly. Especially as you’ve been so, uh, accommodating.”

Astarion barks out a laugh. “What better way to celebrate the union of our forces?”

“It’s certainly making me look forward to the days that I'll be working from here.”

“Oh,” Astarion gives another short, high laugh, “I wouldn’t get too used to this. We are celebrating, after all, but what’s mine to share is still very much mine.”

“Of course, Lord Ancunín.”

But then you hear Astarion’s steps moving towards you, and then you feel the presence of him behind you, and you cannot ignore him or his touch, no matter how hard you will it.

“Time for your reward, my love,” he murmurs, and you feel him pressing himself against you, the scraps of your outfit easily moved aside to make way for him. His proximity pulls you back into yourself, and you are aware of your body once more - the hardness pressing into you from behind, the jaw-aching fullness of your mouth, the wet warmth against your tongue, and the bruising pressure on your throat. There is a brief moment of resistance, and then he slides inside you, and the pleasure from the thrust empties your mind of all of your anger, fear, disgust. You moan around the Fist’s cock, and the Fist groans in response. A part of you wants to hold on to the rage you felt, but you find you cannot feel anything but the fullness that seems to subsume you, the heat that comes from your husband’s touch.

Astarion sets a rhythm, and you are rocked along with him to a mindless state of bliss. Perhaps the mindlessness is the bliss; you cling to this physical pleasure as an escape from the mental torment. For now, you can indulge in the carnal delight of his touch, and lose yourself in the gratification that he allows you, for a small and scared voice inside you tells you that joy is not something that you have much hope of feeling for long. Take it while you can. Take it when you must. It may only be a temporary diversion, only a brief reprieve, but you will take solace wherever you find it, for it is a rare thing in this house.

The Fist finishes first, spilling his seed into your mouth, making you gag and bringing tears to your eyes. Then Astarion is reaching around to touch that spot between your legs that brings your pleasure to an all-encompassing climax, and for a brief moment in time the world shrinks into nothing beyond the feeling that sweeps through you, and all your thoughts are of him and the profound euphoria of his touch, and you think to yourself that this feeling should last forever, and that maybe this is love, or greater than love, and it is more than enough. His thrusts from behind become faster, filled with fervour, and then you feel him release inside you, hips pressed hard against you as the pleasure of climax twitches through him.

He pulls out, pulls away from you, and the elation fades. The fires of your union are choked out as the cold reality of the world comes flooding back in, roaring in its silence. You feel the men shifting around you, barely hearing the words they exchange over the deafening stillness of your mind, and you sink to your knees where they left you.

A door opens. A door closes. You are alone with your husband once more.

He walks over to you, bends down, cups your jaw in his hand, and angles your face upwards to look at him.

“You did well,” he says, but he doesn’t look pleased. You do not care. You don’t think you will ever care again. Not for him. Not for anything.

He sighs, then bends down further, picking you up off of the floor and holding you in his arms like you weigh nothing. Like you are nothing. You are nothing, you tell yourself. He carries you out of the room, through quiet corridors, into your bed chamber. He puts you on the bed and you lie there awkwardly, limbs tense, wary eyes on him.

He looks at you, and there’s a flash of something in his eyes that you might be able to distinguish if your mind were not so numb. Then it is gone, and the placid stone mask is back in place.

“Sleep,” he commands, and your body collapses into the soft bed, limp, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Chapter Text

You wake up to a clear head and reach automatically for the cup of blood that has been placed beside the bed. Astarion has already left for the day. Your sleep was deep and undisturbed, but as soon as you awake your mind drags you back to the last things you saw before bed.

That flash in his eyes. Perhaps it is only hope twisting yet another knife in your gut, but you think, pray, know that it was him, deep down, clawing briefly to the surface. The Astarion you once knew. The Astarion who loved you.

Your resolve is set, and you know you have to act fast, before your bravery can falter or your hunger can distract you. You have to appeal to that part of your husband that so recently made an appearance. 

You dress yourself, giving the mirror a wistful glance before you leave on the hunt for the man that you love.

You find him in his study, sitting at the desk from which Cazador once ruled his coven. The words tumble out of your mouth as he turns to see who has entered his sanctuary; before his dark red gaze can wilt the courage that you have scraped together to face him. 

“Please, Astarion, if there is any part of you still in there, just let me go. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. This isn’t how I thought our future would be.”

He laughs at your supplication. “Don’t be stupid, darling. You’re mine, remember? And that means your future is mine to decide. Your actions are mine to decide. I’ve told you time and again how lucky you are that I chose you as my consort.”

“I’m not your consort, I’m your spawn.”

“You are my wife. And we’ll be together forever, darling. I can promise you that.”

“How can you say I’m your wife when you make me— when you treat me like a whore to offer up in whatever business dealings you are undertaking!”

“Oh, please. You should be grateful that I can still see some use in you. It’s not like you have any magical ability to speak of anymore.”

You freeze. 

“How... How do you know that?” you ask in a low voice. Even you didn’t know that; not really. You’ve seen the signs, of course, but you hadn’t wanted to believe them to be true. You wanted it to just be a temporary effect of the new hunger that plagues your every waking moment. He smiles at your reaction to his words.

“I had an inkling. It seems that in draining every drop of your blood when I transformed you, your powers were taken from you. You see, I realised that some of my newfound powers felt strangely… familiar. It seems that what was once yours is now mine. I always had some magic myself, of course, but never anything like yours. Not until now. I suppose what they say is true: sorcerers really do have magic in their very blood. You will still have some magical residue, I imagine, from the single drop of blood that I fed you?”

This is too much. Too far. There was so much of yourself that you were willing to give up for him; friends, principles, dignity, life. But your magic was what made you you. It felt like it was your very soul. And now he has taken that too. Astarion gives a sympathetic pout, but you see the twisted pleasure dancing behind his eyes. 

“My little spell-less sorceress,” he croons. Then he murmurs words that you once knew and waves his delicate pale fingers in a pattern that is somehow now foreign to you, and you find yourself lifted from the floor, held aloft by the telekinesis spell that had once been your own.

“Just let me go,” you whisper. “You’ve taken everything from me.”

“Everything you are, everything you have, everything you ever will be is mine. Why by all the gods would I ever let you go?”

“Please,” you say, voice breaking.

“Don’t cry, darling. Come here,” he says, and he moves his hands, and you float over to him. He places you on the floor by his feet, guiding your head with his hands to rest upon his lap. He strokes your hair gently, and you think back to the last time you sat in this position, basking in the warmth of the drawing room fire on the night before you were wed. You had been so full of hope.

“There, there, little love,” he soothes. “You can sit with me again today. I haven’t been paying you enough attention, have I? That’s why you’re acting out like this. It’s ok. We’ll make it work.”

He pretends not to feel the hot tears soaking into the rich fabric of his trousers. You think to yourself that hope is a hellish thing.

Chapter Text

The house is buzzing with change over the next few days. People that you don’t recognise stream through the main door, carrying crates and boxes and rolls of papers. You watch them with curiosity from a dark recess beyond the entrance hall.

Wyrm’s Rock, Astarion tells you when you question the new activity in the house, was badly damaged in the battle for Baldur's Gate. Until now, the Flaming Fist has been scrambling to find an alternative location for their base in the city. Your husband - concerned and noble citizen that he is - has proposed a temporary unification of the Flaming Fist and the New Watch, using your own home as a headquarters. You quietly wonder how long the deal will remain temporary. Oh, he tells you that the two forces will be led by a committee of the city's best and brightest, but you have no doubt it will be your husband who is really pulling the strings of the law. They will be in his house, and under his influence. The dungeons beneath the house will be used as the city prison while repairs are made to Wyrm’s Rock. The west wing of the house will be taken over for the operational needs of the two parties. 

You are warned that this means you will need to stay away from that part of the house. The curtains will be open. Sunlight will abound. Besides, you couldn't possibly risk your hunger getting the better of you: you might drain dry some poor soul who is only trying to do their job. And it really wouldn’t do for the city to find out about your affliction. Astarion himself is safe from any kind of vampiric suspicion - who ever heard of a vampire who can walk in the sun? - but if anyone were to find out that you were a spawn, your life would be forfeit and you know it. You nod obediently at these new restrictions being imposed upon you, and then, as soon as you are left alone, you begin to plan.

You’ve never needed a saviour before, and the thought of having one makes you uneasy, but without your powers you know that you have no chance of making it out of here alone. You’ve all but given up on your one-time companions coming for you without prompting; you’ve not seen or heard hide nor hair of them since you were married. Confined as you are to your current residence, and surrounded by no one but thralls and the monster you married, getting a message to any of them has, until now, felt nigh on impossible. But now, your luck might finally be changing. It seems your darling husband has just made a deal to ensure that almost every heroically inclined fighter in the city has access to your house, and by extension, has access to you. 

Now all you need to do is find a bleeding-hearted champion from amongst them to do your bidding.

Chapter Text

You decide to bide your time with your escape plan. You know you’ll need to subtly befriend a guard or two - some young, naive, idealist Flaming Fist who still believes in goodness for the sake of being good. You cannot guess at the limitations of Astarion’s new powers, but you’re sure that he cannot possibly have them all in his thrall. Not all of the time, at least. So you’ll tread carefully, test the limits of his control, and find the perfect target. When you’re certain that you can trust them, you’ll task them with a mission of delivering a message to as many of your old companions as they can find. Your faith in your fellow beings has taken a hit as of late, but you still feel certain that some of your fellow Heroes of the Gate would be willing to save you if you asked. Shadowheart, at least, had all but promised as much in your last meeting.

Just thinking about escape has you quite on edge. You feel more alive, more alert than you have in months. Your mind is full of jittery, nervous energy from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep. You’ve bitten your nails down to the quick, and your lips are scabbed from your permanent biting and picking at them. The constant faint taste of blood brings your hunger into overdrive, making you skittish and snappish. Occasionally you even snap at Astarion. You do not mean to, of course, but the hunger still overcomes even your best intentions sometimes.

Eventually, he snaps back.

“You know, my darling,” he says one morning, “every time you’ve opened that lovely little mouth of yours recently, you’ve said something so horrible. It’s got me thinking… how much does a consort really need to be able to speak? All I require of you is to sit prettily on my lap as I issue rulings from my throne. I could silence you forever with a single command.”

A cold horror stabs at your gut. You see in his eyes that he’s enjoying goading you, but you cannot tell how serious he is. It doesn’t matter: you cannot let him do this. You cannot lose your voice. You have a plan, and that plan very much relies on you being able to communicate with your potential saviours. You cannot say this to him, of course. Instead, you throw yourself on your knees at his feet, and look up at him, beseeching.

“Don’t, my love,” you say, taking one of his hands in yours and kissing it fervently. “Please, Astarion, I beg of you, don’t.”

A ghost of a smile flickers over his face. He loves to watch people beg. You redouble your efforts, prostrating yourself before him, pressing kisses onto his elegant boots, murmuring pleas of leniency, of mercy, of compassion. He lets you go on until you’re running out of words with which to beg, and then he nudges you gently with his foot.

“Up,” he says, and you rise unsteadily to your feet, knowing that your uncertainty will only make him more enamoured. You embrace him tenderly, trying to convey your softheartedness in your actions, tentatively reaching to remove his shirt as you kiss along his sharp jaw. He tugs it off, then pulls your dress off over your head. The sight of him still makes your chest ache, because he is so unbearably beautiful. It’s not the only reason you fell in love with him, but a sad voice inside you thinks that it might be the only one remaining. You force the sorrow away, focusing your entire being on pleasing the man standing before you. If you do not please him, he might take your voice. It should astound you that he can still find things to take from you, but somehow it feels as though you always knew it would be this way.

He leads you through a dance of pleasure. He might be a master, but you are practiced now and know your steps by heart. You let him push you further than you usually would, to the edges of pleasure and pain, and you cry out sweetly when he takes you to those dizzying extremes of sensation in the way you know he likes. Such sweet screams, he has said before, and his words echoed those spoken by an Astarion from a different lifetime. An Astarion who still felt fear, and sadness, and pain, rather than being the cause of them. Again you push those thoughts away, refocusing on the man who now holds you. When he is sated, and you are reduced to a wet and wanton mess in his arms, you kiss him slowly again, whispering to him all the kinds of words he wants to hear. How perfect he is. How lucky you are to have found him. How you are his, and how terribly you love him.

“I’ve given you everything,” you say to him as he watches you with soft, amorous eyes. “And I would give you everything again. You are everything to me.”

“Oh, my sweet love,” he says, stroking your hair and smiling at you. His words are filled with such warmth that they spark something inside you, and you can’t help but wonder if there is still love here, somewhere deep down. “My dear, devoted darling. Do you know how much I have loved this?” He kisses you on the forehead, then pulls back and gives you such a sweet half-smile that your breath catches in your throat.

You run your fingers over his marble-perfect skin, marvelling at the touch of something so smooth and pure. The honeyed words continue to spill from your mouth, but with each spoken praise, the spark of hope flares a little brighter within your chest. You could believe these words again, you think to yourself. You’d like to believe these words again. You had a love that was flawless, once upon a time. All-encompassing, all-devouring, desperately perfect. Perhaps there is still hope to find your way back to it again.

You go to nuzzle into his chest, seeking the warmth of his embrace, but the hand that was stroking your hair suddenly grasps a handful of it painfully, holding you face to face with him.

“Oh, darling,” he whispers, in a low and dangerous voice that banishes the glow of hope from your breast in an instant. “Do you know how delicious it is to watch you try to manipulate me? Me? Of all people? You thought you could ever beat me at my own game?”

Your eyes are wide with horror. He knows.

“Oh, don’t look like that, darling. I loved it. I could watch you whore yourself for me for a century and I wouldn’t grow bored of it. It almost makes me regret what I’m about to do.” He gives you a wicked grin. “Almost.” Then he pulls you close to him, presses his lips to your ear, and whispers: “You shall never speak again.”

Chapter Text

In taking your voice, Astarion has killed your last hope of getting out of here alive. That’s alright, you tell yourself. Alive doesn’t mean that much to you anyway anymore. You’re so trapped here that it hardly feels like living. You’re compelled to stay within the boundaries of the estate, and even then, you can only enter the grounds at night.

You can only enter the grounds at night.

So you do exactly that. You go into the grounds at night. You wander under the stars, remembering times on your travels when you looked up at the clear countryside sky with the man who became your husband and he wistfully spoke about how the celestial sphere never looked quite so beautiful from the city. You tell yourself the stories of the constellations, the myths of victories and tragedies from times gone by, and you feel a wondrous sense of peace in the knowledge that the epic narrative of the universe will continue onwards, even without you there to witness it.

You stay outside through the darkest hours, getting lost in the sounds of your fellow creatures of the night. Rustling leaves and whispering wings tell you tales of the lives of the unseen things that cling to their existence even in this estate of death. You sit with them until the pale blue of dawn starts to creep across the firmament. Slowly a pink tinge washes upwards from the east, and you go tense with the anticipation of the sun's first rays finally reaching you. You think it will feel like an embrace, even as you die.

It does not feel like an embrace.

It feels like burning.

Your eyes are blinded at the sight of the very first sliver of sun that rises over the horizon. The pain is too overwhelming to even remember to scream. If your eyes could still see, they would know that your pallid skin has started glowing, flaking, flashing like molten silver, ready to slough off your bones, to be loosed from your frame, to dissipate into the cold dawn air. There is only one word you can think of throughout the pain.

Free.

And then the pain stops. You think that your nerves must have melted away. You feel your very soul being lifted, carried in a pair of strong arms. You think this must be death's grasp; that you have found the final comfort that you had been so desperately seeking.

Then death speaks, and his voice makes you weep from eyes that still cannot see.

"Darling, what in the nine hells are you doing?"

You don't answer. You feel fast movement, somehow, even though your senses have been shaken to uselessness by the pain.  

"Are you trying to die?"

Again, you do not answer. You are too focused on mourning the escape that you had been so close to holding. You continue to weep, silently, like a wound.

He tuts. "My silly little treasure. No more wandering the grounds for you, I think. You are not to leave this house. Do you understand?"

You give the barest nod. Your vision is slowly coming back, and you see blurs of familiar corridors, a familiar door, a familiar bed.

"There's a good little pet. You will stay here until I return, and then you can show me how grateful you are to me for saving your life. Because you are grateful, aren't you?"

Gods, you hate him for it, but as soon as you hear the words, you are grateful. He speaks, and it becomes truth.

He goes to leave, but his hand lingers on the door handle.

"Oh, and darling? Don’t try anything like that again." His voice is light when he turns back to look at you. "If anyone's going to kill you, it will be me."

With that he leaves, the door clicking shut behind him.

Chapter Text

“I’m growing tired of your moroseness,” Astarion says to you one morning as you drink your breakfast in sullen silence. “Won’t you smile for me?”

Your face lights up at his words, unwilling muscles pulling your features into a gormless grin.

“Hmm.” He doesn’t seem pleased with the result, but he moves on. “We’re hosting a unity ball tonight in celebration of the formation of the ‘greatest law enforcement organisation this city has ever seen’.” His words drip with the sarcasm he reserves for any and all mentions of heroics. “I’ll see to it that the servants dress you appropriately. You will not do anything to embarrass me, do you understand?”

You nod.

The day passes by in a blur. You’ve found in the days since your escape attempt that imbibing a constant mix of wine and blood helps numb you to the pain of existence. The mixture isn’t quite enough to get you drunk, but it keeps your mind tipsy and your head aching until it is time to escape to sleep once more. Today, though, your apathetic routine will be interrupted by a ball. Your first proper social event since your wedding. You are too listless to care much; you feel neither excitement nor dread. It is just another thing to get through before you can withdraw to your bed.

The thralls arrive in the late afternoon, as Astarion told you they would. You do not imagine you will be permitted to drink blood at such a large social gathering - exposing yourself as a vampire presumably falls under the newly stated ‘not embarrassing Astarion’ rule - so you drink your fill to the point of sickness while the servants fuss and preen over you, bedecking you in beads and jewels, decorating your frame with fine silks and ruffled lace. Your cheeks and lips are powdered and painted to give your face the blush of life that it so lacks these days, and your eyes are charmed back from their ruby tones to a more human shade of ruddy brown. You wonder impassively whether you look beautiful or foolish. The mirror gives you no answers. Eventually, you are led from your chamber to the ballroom where you mutely take your seat at the top table by your husband’s side.

As the room fills up around you, you force yourself to see him as the crowds must see him. Noble and just, with a face carved so delicately by the gods that it is nigh on impossible to believe the man behind it could be capable of anything but greatness. Even now, sitting there in your enforced silence, a part of you wants to believe him to be good. You want to believe that this evil is a passing curse; that one more rest in each other's arms will cure him of all of his wrongs. You want to believe it, but you cannot. Not when your tongue is so bound by his compulsions. Not when the months have gone by and you’ve watched him grow more monstrous by the day.

You turn your face away from him and focus instead on the guests taking seats at the long feasting tables before you. You can’t help but speculate that you could have known some of these faces in your past life, in that life of blood and shadows that is entirely lost to you now. There are certainly no familiar faces from your current memories. You feel a pang of disappointment when you fail to spot a single companion amongst the crowd, though you hate yourself for feeling that way. You have told yourself you’ve hardened your heart against any more hope, and yet here it is again, taunting you with empty dreams of rescue.

Astarion must see the desperate gleam in your eyes as you scan the crowds.

“Looking for our friends, my love?”

You cannot respond, of course, but he doesn’t need you to.

“I wouldn’t bother trying to find them. It seems they don’t care for us much anymore. All were invited, of course, but none but the wizard even had the decency to respond.” He shakes his head with disdain, then reaches to clasp your hand in his. “Don’t let them upset you, darling,” he says, pressing a chaste kiss into the back of your hand. “This is all that matters. It’s just you and I, forever. Against them all.”

It’s all you can do not to yank your hand back from his grip. You think you might have, had he not compelled you not to embarrass him today. Instead, you keep your face blank, keep your feelings tempered, and as soon as he releases your hand you reach desperately for more wine.

A feast is served and partaken in and cleared away before you as you seek solace in your wine cup. The lower tables are moved to make way for mingling and dancing, and your husband leaves your side to mix with the masses. The magnetism of his presence draws entranced gazes as he moves through the room. He is elegant and engaging as he converses with council members, and alluring as can be when he dances with fellow nobles. You do not think you can bear to watch a moment more of it. The crowds of infatuated citizens entirely enamoured with the monster who would rule them make your guts squirm with disgust. It all feels so hopeless.

You decide you need not witness any more of it. You push your chair back and rise, heading to the nearest door, keeping your head down. You have been compelled not to embarrass your husband, but you cannot imagine anybody will notice that you are missing. If you are stopped, you can simply say that you are stepping out for some air.

Nobody stops you.

You walk down a corridor until your chest begins to feel less constricted, and then you turn to the nearest door and open it. You enter the room - a small reading room of some sort that you don’t think you’ve ever been in before - and let out a sigh as the quiet envelops you. The curtains are open, and the bright light of the moon casts a pearly sheen over the shelves of books and plush furniture. You were once a person who thrived in ballrooms. You used to love to dance and laugh with friends and strangers, shining at the centre of the room, radiating happiness and joy amidst the din. You wonder where along the way that person got lost. They feel like a stranger to you now.

 All of a sudden you hear a voice from behind you, somehow familiar although you cannot quite place it.

“Just where are you sneaking off to?”

Chapter Text

You freeze. Though the voice is vaguely familiar, its source remains a mystery to you until the speaker steps forward out of the shadows that hide him.

“I asked you a question, monster.”

Your eyes go wide as the moonlight reveals his face to you. Marshall Bormul, the Flaming Fist that Astarion had made you… perform for.

He gives a cruel chuckle. “Those big doe eyes won’t work on me. They’re only further proof of your aberration. I should run you through with a stake right now,” he says, prowling towards you. You back away from him, fearing the manic glint in his eye, desperate to tell him that he’s got it wrong, that you’re not a monster, but the words cannot come.

“How’d you do it, hm? How’d you gain control over a good man like Lord Ancunín? A spell? Some ghoulish charm?” He tuts in disgust. “You might have charmed yourself pretty today, but you didn’t before, did you? I could see there was something wrong with you the moment I set eyes on you. And when you touched me with those cold, dead hands, I knew.”

Your back hits the bookshelf that lines the wall as your eyes grow watery with frustrated tears. It is so desperately unfair that in your tongue-bound state, you cannot even speak up in your own defence. In all your life you don’t think you’ve ever seen so intense a hatred as the one that twists over his face right now.

“Your poor husband doesn’t have a clue, does he? No matter. I’m sure the charm you have over him will break when I kill you. He’ll thank me for it, most likely.”

He licks his lips, eyes bright with anticipation. He knows he has you cornered. 

“But if you’re going to die anyway, why not have a little fun with you first, ey? Your lord said you like it, after all.”

He lunges at you, and you let out a cry, surprising yourself. You cannot remember the last time you made a noise.

I cannot speak, but I can scream.

This unexpected boon gives you a brief flare of optimism. Your cry, however, is quickly cut off by Bormul’s heavy palm as he presses it against your mouth. You struggle, twisting your head until his grip is slightly loosened, and then you bite, hard, with teeth made for ripping flesh, and you taste the intoxicating hot metal rush of blood in your mouth. He lets out a stifled curse and pulls his hand from your mouth, then slams his other hand around your neck, cutting off your next budding scream before it can even reach your bloodied lips.

“Keep quiet, you undead brat,” he spits. Your bite only seems to have spurred him on, as his movements are redoubled in effort. He clumsily pulls off his belt with his still-bleeding hand. The smell of his freshly flowing blood is almost making your eyes roll back in your skull with thirst, even as your vision grows dark around the edges from his choking grip. He laughs as he shifts his trousers down, mistaking your hunger for lust.

“By the nine hells, you really are a salacious little whore, ey?”

You’ve never felt fear like the feeling that churns in your chest now, but your spluttering gasps are growing fainter as his hold on your throat remains. You wonder hysterically if he’ll have killed you before he can have his fun. You hope so. The ostentatious layering of the silk and lace of your skirts seems to be giving him some difficulty. The call of the darkness has never sounded so appealing. You could follow it happily to your own end. Until this moment you never fully understood the appeal of Shar, but now that she holds out her arms you find yourself craving that cold, eternal embrace. True death would be a kindness. You’d sought it out yourself so recently - how strange that your body still tries to fight it when it is delivered by a stranger’s hand. Hadn’t you once told Astarion - the old Astarion, the true Astarion - that if you had to die, you’d want it to be like this? Strangulation? You’d laughed about it back then, bonding over morbid jokes as if your lives weren’t really at risk, and you’d laughed more when he declared beheading would be his method of choice. A perfectly noble choice for your perfect noble love. Your faculties are fading now, but you still feel faintly pleased that your last thoughts will be of a happier time, rather than the horrors of the present. The blackness is complete now. Your mind empties. All but one sensation fades.

Relief.

Chapter Text

Death tastes like blood.

Like hot blood that splatters thick and sticky across your face, coating your closed eyelids and hollow cheeks, filling your mouth, hitting the back of your throat with a force that makes you choke.

Your eyes snap open. Fresh blood. Lifeblood. Your greed for it almost drives every other thought from your deadened brain. Through a red mist, you see the flash of a silver blade, a headless body collapsing to its knees at your feet, a dark object that could be a man's head thudding to the floor beside you. Shadowy figures crowd in through the doorway, bringing with them mutterings then shouts then screams. A pale, delicate hand gestures in the air in front of you, and with a rush of magic - my magic, rages a whispered voice inside you - the room lights up, every candle and fireplace dancing to life to illuminate the grisly scene before you.

Marshall Bormul’s beheaded corpse is sprawled at your feet. Astarion stands a step behind where the Marshall had stood, one hand still raised from casting the spell, the other clasping a bloodied silver blade by his side. His handsome face is blood-splattered in a way you haven’t seen since you adventured together all those moons ago, and something about it - the desecration of something so flawless and white with something so dark and inherently violent - makes your newly found breath catch in your throat. Beautiful, rich red blood spills from the Fist’s neck, seeping into the carpet. Wasted. The exquisite scent of it drives you wild, and you let out a voiceless keen, falling to your knees, needing to put your lips to the gaping wounds that continue to pour forth the blood that you so desperately crave.

Astarion's arms are around you before you have a chance to press your lips to the still-warm corpse. You writhe in his hold, feral with hunger, until he whispers a command to you:

“Be still.”

Your body goes limp; your thoughts quieten. You settle in his arms.

“Good gods, man, what have you done?” exclaims a man from the crowd by the door.

Astarion whips around with you clutched to his chest.

"I have rescued my wife," he snaps at the man. "You all saw it. The man was all over her like a rabid dog. I had to put him down."

He speaks with such authority that none dare oppose him. Meek murmurs of "Yes, lord," and "Of course, Lord Ancunín," are the only responses he receives. He turns his attention to the scattering of servants in the crowd.

"Someone tidy this up. You, bring the councillors to my receiving room. I'll meet them there shortly. Everyone else, back to the ballroom. Now. This… unfortunate incident is no reason to ruin a perfectly good party."

Having given his orders, Astarion strides out of the room, pushing past guests dressed to the nines, carrying you with him. Behind him people begin to drift slowly back towards the ballroom, buzzing and humming with uncertainty and shock, while the servants among them spring to act on his commands.

“I warned him,” Astarion mutters, seemingly more to himself than you. “I told him that what is mine to share is still mine.”

You are still frozen by his earlier command, but he doesn't seem to notice until he's carried you all the way to your bedchamber and laid you, lolling, on the bed. Suddenly noticing the state you are in, he sighs.

“You may move.”

At his words, a chaos of feeling and movement floods through you. You are wracked by breathless, wordless sobs, though whether they are caused by fear, relief, or disappointment, you do not know. You curl in on yourself, trying to force your shuddering breathing back into order, and slowly the sobs subside into deep, shaking breaths. Astarion, standing by the bedside with a slight frown on his face, gives a nod at your newfound composure.

“I’ll send servants to tend to you. You need cleaning up.”

With that, he turns to leave. 

As he walks away towards the door you sense the quiet and the darkness gathering, ready to settle over the room the moment he leaves. While earlier in the night the gloom was a place of solace, the thought of being within it alone now fills you with a deep sense of dread. It is no longer an escape; rather, it is an obscurity filled with strange and unknown terrors that are only waiting for your husband to leave before pouncing.

Unable to call out to him, you let out a panicked hum, pausing him in his tracks. He turns around to look at you questioningly, and you beckon him back over to you.

“What is it, my sweet?”

You beckon again, more forcefully this time, ignoring the confusion and dismay in your chest. Dreadful though he may be, you do not want to be alone. He cannot leave you.

“You want me to stay?”

You give a single reluctant nod, blinking away the hotness in your eyes. A smile twitches at the edges of his mouth, and he walks back to the bed, sits on it, and pulls you into his arms. You close your eyes and try to find comfort in his embrace. He brushes the blood-matted hair from your face, hushes you, and whispers soft things into your ear as he rocks you gently.

“You are mine, my treasure. My darling love. You are mine. And I will kill anyone who ever tries to take you from me.”

There is a threat in his comfort, just as there is an edge to all of his kindnesses these days, but you cannot bring yourself to mind it. He is an evil that you chose, not an evil that is being forced upon you, and tonight that somehow feels like it means everything.

Chapter Text

For the first time in a long time, you wake up in Astarion’s arms. It surprises you that you feel no desire to pull away. He seems to sense your wakefulness and shifts to further encompass you in his embrace.

“Two rescues in a tenday,” he says, kissing your hair. “Once from yourself, and once from an ally. They say things happen in threes - I do wonder what the third shall be.”

You think you can hear a trace of mockery in his voice, but you deafen yourself to it. You want to melt into the warmth of his body. You want to crawl up inside his ribs and make a home for yourself beside his loudly beating heart. You want to become whatever it is that he wants you to be.

Anything as long as you don’t have to be yourself.

Anything as long as you don’t have to be alone.

You trail him like a shadow through the morning, pressing close to him while he writes letters and issues sendings to his puppets on the council. You want to scream when he announces he is leaving to take care of business in the city after luncheon. When he leaves, you search desperately for company amongst the staff, making a nuisance of yourself in the kitchens and the scullery until you are firmly led out of each.

You wander, aimless, panicked, until you find your feet leading you back to the room from the night before.

You stand in the doorway.

You don’t know why you’ve come, but your feet drive you inside. Someone has drawn the curtains against the sun, but the candles are fire are lit. There is a dark brown stain on the floor, and the furniture has been pushed to the sides of the room to make way for seemingly failed cleaning attempts.

You sink into a settee. Your mind feels so crowded with thoughts that you can’t make out a single one clearly from the din. Your fingers pick painfully at your nails as your eyes dart desperately around the room, looking for any kind of distraction, eventually settling on the bookshelves that line the walls. You pick up a book, opening it to the first page. For a while you stare at the opening paragraph, eyes unfocused, brain unable to process anything, but eventually, slowly, the words draw you in.

It’s only when hunger creeps up on you, clawing and red in your belly, that you realise that you’ve almost finished the book. The golden blush of sunlight that was ringing the curtains has faded to a weak silver, and you are shocked to find that you had become so lost in the story that you have read right through dinnertime.

You hurry to your chamber, where - thank the gods - a cup of blood is waiting for you. Astarion has still not returned.

You are not ready to feel anything so strong as pride, but you force yourself to acknowledge the fact that you have at least survived another day.

Chapter Text

You have become a shadow in your own home.

You exist. For now, that has to be enough. You know that the days are slipping by from the passing glow and fade of sun around the edges of the heavy red curtains on the windows. When wine doesn’t offer enough escape, you find yourself turning to the endless shelves of books in the house. You used to be the type who favoured blades over books, but now the pages that you lose yourself in are worth more to you than any weapon. They are a shield against the darkness that surrounds you, and gods know you could use the protection.

You still hate being alone. Astarion is gone more days than he is here. You can’t help but wonder how much the incident with the Fist has disrupted his plans for the council. If he’s worried, he never shows it. And if the stacks of correspondences that arrive for him daily are anything to go by, there are still plenty of people out there who want to remain in his good books.

 Even when Astarion is around, he sometimes tires of your constant company, commanding you to wait in mindless silence in your bedchamber until he wishes to see you again. To avoid this fate, you begin to follow him less, although it pains you to do so.

You know you should stay away from the west wing, that den of Flaming Fist and New Watch, lest the sunlight burns you, or some other Fist discovers your secret, but you find yourself drawn to it like a moth to a flame. The bustling noises, and the energetic buzz of people hard at work, are proof of a world that is still thriving beyond the stone walls of your living tomb.

So you have taken to venturing into this hive of activity, keeping to the places that the sun cannot reach even with the curtains thrown back and the windows flung open. You haunt the alcoves and the inner corridors, stepping lightly from one shaded spot to the next. You only go directly after you have drunk, so you need not fear your hunger getting the better of you. When you find a place in the half-gloom, obscured from the view of the flurry of living beings around you, you sit, read, and absorb the tumult with a feeling close to joy.

You never try to speak to anyone. You do not crave communication. Besides, it would be useless, tongue-bound as you are. You only wish to know that you are not entirely alone.

You are sat like this, in a dark alcove, reading, lost in an imaginary world, when a voice interrupts you.

“A good one, is it?”

The voice is so painfully cheerful it makes you wince. You look up into the youthful face of a human man - a boy, really - wearing the uniform of a Flaming Fist. He grins at you.

“The book, I mean. It’s a good one?”

You stare at him, frozen. When was the last time someone spoke to you with good will? Someone new? Someone free?

“Never been much one for reading, me,” he continues. “My sister loves it, though. Reckon she’s read more books in t’ past year than most read in a lifetime.”

He seems to have finally noticed your utter lack of response. His grin stays in place, but his brow furrows slightly as if he’s just remembered himself.

“I’m Lucas, by the way. What’s your name?”

You purse your lips in something that isn’t quite a smile and give a small shrug.

“Cat got your tongue, eh? Ah, well. Worse parts of you to lose. I should know.” He reaches down, beaming, and knocks on his left shin, which emits a hollow clunk. You raise your eyebrows at his enthusiasm. He seems to take it as encouragement.

“Great, ent it? I told everyone at the Mermaid that I lost it in t’ Battle of Baldur’s Gate and now I get free drinks all the time.” Then he continues in a lower voice, “Don’t tell anyone, but I actually lost it on the journey here. Horse bloody fell on me. Total nightmare. Still, got to look on the bright side, don’t you?”

You blink incredulously. Somehow, he is still talking.

“Anyway, best get back, supposed to be on duty. Get lost in this bloody house all the damn time. Good to meet you, o’ silent lady of the books.”

He crumples into an inelegant bow, then lopes off down the corridor. You are left entirely too bewildered to get back into your book.

Chapter Text

“You’re smiling,” Astarion observes across the breakfast table.

You carefully rearrange your features back to blankness.

“I didn’t say to stop,” he snaps. “It’s good to see you’re starting to appreciate your position again. Unless there’s something else that has your spirits so lifted this morning?”

His tone lets you know he already guesses at the answer, so you do not lie outright. Instead, you give him a half-truth, miming the opening and reading of a book, trying to ignore how it makes it look like you are praying to him, or begging for mercy.

“Mm. You may entertain yourself as you see fit, pet, but I would warn you against getting too lost in those petty fantasies. I feel as though you’re just making your way back to me, and it really wouldn’t do to have you disappear again.”

You nod solemnly. The rest of breakfast is taken in silence. When Astarion finishes his food - a particular favourite dish of yours today, you notice with a stab of jealousy - he speaks again.

“You may sit with me today. I have some correspondence I need to deal with this morning.”

You nod once more, trying to convey appreciation in your face. The mere thought of being alone still makes you sick, so you’re not sure why you feel a faint pang of disappointment at his words. When he rises from the table, you get up to follow him to his study.

He perches you on his lap when he takes a seat at his desk. He works his way through a stack of letters while you sit there, safe and bored and still and quiet, until a signature catches your eye.

Gale of Waterdeep.

The top of the letter is covered by other sheets of paper, and you can think of no way to subtly move them in order to read further. Tongue-tied though you are, you cannot let your curiosity go unanswered. You squeeze Astarion’s arm and point to the letter, eyebrows raised in question. He looks to where you’re pointing, then tuts.

“Naughty, little pet. If you insist on being nosy I might have to take your eyes as well as your tongue.”

He sees your face drop and laughs.

“Gods, can you imagine? You’d be insufferably needy. So helpless. It’d be funny for a day or so, perhaps, but not for much longer.” He sighs. “If you must know, our wizard friend has been helping me with the next stage of my plans. I was surprised he was willing, but I suppose he always did have a taste for power.” He smirks at his own joke. “Now, may I carry on in peace, or must I send you to wait in our bedroom?”

You bow your head and cast your eyes down, unwilling to give him any more cause to complain about you reading things that you shouldn’t be. You know it’s unfair, but you can’t help but feel angry at Gale for being a willing accomplice in Astarion’s grand plans. The wizard wasn’t a stupid man - he must be aware of, or at least suspect, how dark Astarion’s desires have become. Surely he, of all people, has the insight to realise that you are in dire need of help. You’d thought he was a friend, but his collaboration with Astarion is nothing short of complicity with your treatment. You bitterly force away your feelings of betrayal. You know they will do you no good. You can only be disappointed when you’ve hoped for a better outcome, and you’ve already promised yourself that hope is a thing of the past.

Your mind wanders back to the pang of disappointment you felt at breakfast. What reason did you have for being disappointed that Astarion wanted to spend time with you? It’s not like you had any guarantee of company elsewhere. Your chance encounter with the young Fist is plaguing your mind in ways you can’t explain, and therefore don’t like. Was it only because he had been so kind? So naively affable? Was it just because you craved such genial and light conversation after being so long of being denied any?

Or was it because his naivety had reminded you of a plan that you had long since given up on?

Could it still be possible to escape?

It seems, no matter how hard you try to disavow it, that hope refuses to leave your heart. When you break for lunch, you almost find yourself wishing that Astarion would excuse himself for the afternoon, but he invites you back to his office once more, and you follow obediently. Gratefully. You see how blank you can keep your mind until it is time to go to dinner.

You know, logically, that there is next to no chance that the Fist will be back where you met him yesterday, especially not at this time of evening. You know it, but still, you find yourself walking the long way around to get to your bedchamber when you go to dress for dinner. The long way around just so happens to go past the entrance to the west wing, and before you know it you find yourself standing in the very alcove that you met the young man yesterday.

It is, of course, empty. The corridor is entirely silent.

You stand there for a moment, feeling foolish for feeling disappointed. A stupid part of you wants to stay, but if you are late for dinner Astarion will question where you went. As you turn to leave, deflated, you notice that someone has tucked a book upright against the inner wall of the alcove. You bend down to pick it up, reading the title as you do so.

The True and Impossible Adventures of Tenebrux Morrow
Vol 1

You’ve heard of the series, but never read it yourself. You flip the cover page open as you begin to walk back to your chamber and see an inscription scrawled in messy handwriting on the inside cover.

My lady,
I thought you might like this,
My sister says it is very good.
Your humble and obedient servant,
Fist Lucas

You close the book. You cannot help but smile.

Chapter Text

Over the next month, you partake in an exchange of books and notes.

You only check the alcove on the days that Astarion leaves for business, which is happening more often than ever as he expertly plucks at the strings of his puppets throughout the city. More often than not, you find a book containing a cheery message in that wonderfully slipshod handwriting. You start leaving books of your own, with messages of thanks written in neat lines on sheets of paper tucked within the pages. You can’t imagine anyone will miss them.

You struggle to know how to sign your notes, so you leave them blank. Anonymous. You realise you cannot remember the last time someone called you by your own name. At most, you are Lady Ancunín. His. His name, his wife, his darling, his treasure. There’s no part of you left that exists independently of him. Your name, your face, your sense of self have all faded into those parts of memory that only come back to you in occasional dreams. You remember a conversation you had when you were travelling, before Astarion ascended, when he admitted he couldn’t remember what colour his eyes had been before he had been turned. You’d thought it so strange back then - how someone could lose the knowledge of something so personal to themselves.

You don’t find it strange anymore.

Still, the notes and books make you feel heard in a way that you have been desperately missing. You feel seen for who you are, rather than for someone else’s idea of what you ought to be. Something about exchanging words with someone freely, even if those words are little more than written nothings on scraps of paper, lightens your heart more than you thought could be possible. They don’t banish the darkness within you, exactly, but they do make it feel a little less impenetrable.

You don’t know if it is your imagination, but you can’t help but observe that as your mood lifts, your husband’s temperament darkens. His nightly attentions turn into frantic, violent things, with fingers and fangs digging into your flesh with such ferocity that tears spring from your eyes. There are no more whispered words of love or possession. He drains you to the point of unconsciousness in silent savagery.

You wake up to him brooding beside you, and you notice him watching you over the dining table, and you wonder if the malevolence in his gaze is aimed at you. You don’t think you would ask him even if you could. Some things are better not to know.

You do wish you could ask Lucas what it was he saw in you that first day that made him seek to cheer you up. Was your sadness so apparent? Was his altruism so abundant that he sought to befriend every melancholy waif he happened upon? You do not ask, though. You suspect the answers would not be so easy to fit on a single sheet of paper, especially in his large, untidy hand. 

Instead, you decide to show your thanks to him and the sister of his who so kindly offers up her books. When you next leave a book in the alcove, you slip a necklace into the note that you hide between the pages - your dresser contains more jewels than you know what to do with, after all - writing that you hope that it conveys your gratitude for their kindness.

Chapter Text

When you next collect a book from the alcove, you are surprised to find that a necklace - your necklace - falls out of it as you pick it up. Frowning, you open the book to the title page and read a note written in an unfamiliar hand.

Good lady,
My sincerest thanks, but I cannot accept this.
It would be a debt that I could never hope to repay.
It is beautiful, but I truly prefer the books - which I will keep with gratitude.
Besides, when would I ever have an opportunity to wear it?
Yours humbly,
Säde 
(L’s sister)

The words convey such a sense of proud dignity that you can’t help but immediately warm to this unknown sister of Lucas. A small, sad part of you mourns your past self - long gone now - who once wielded a similar level of self-respect. A crueller part of you is annoyed that the sister didn’t accept the gift. You’ve been learning at the feet of a master manipulator for long enough now that you know it is always useful to have people in your debt.

Still, the fact that they have extended this bookish hand of friendship for no reason or reward beyond goodness itself does warm your heart. With trepidation, you begin to think that these two could be trusted to help you. They are already taking notes from you, after all - what difference would one more note make, other than the fact it would need to be taken to a further afield destination?

But therein lies the issue. What destination could you even send your pleas of assistance to? Certainly not Gale - his communication with Astarion made it clear he could not be trusted. Wyll was ever the hero, but you don’t know how tied up the Ravenguard family might be in Astarion’s plots; you can’t risk it. Halsin could be anywhere, so contacting him would be difficult. Lae’zel and Karlach are both on entirely different planes, as far as you are aware, and would therefore be even harder to contact than the druid. Minsc was… well, you’re not entirely sure he can read, so you decide he’s also off the list. 

That only left Jaheira and Shadowheart. Blessedly, they are the two souls that you would most easily trust with your rescue. You begin drafting a letter to them in your mind.

———

Astarion’s brooding continues. 

One evening you retire to your bedchamber to discover that he is already there, reclining on your bed in his underclothes. He watches you enter the room, choosing to match your enforced silence with his own. You feel his eyes on you as you undress. You crawl across the silken sheets to him and curl yourself against his chest. It still amazes you that the feeling of his skin on your skin still fills you with such a tender glow. It still amazes you that after everything he has done to you, you cannot help but crave more of his touch.

You look up into his cold, immaculate face. His eyes, cool and hard as rubies, glister in the dim light of the candles as they meet your gaze.

“It’s done,” he says. “The city is mine.”

You sit up in surprise. His tone is not one of triumph. You give him a questioning look, and he continues in a flat voice.

“Most were easy enough to charm. Those who resisted have been… replaced. I wield the combined force of the Watch and the Fist, and I control every aspect of the council.”

You clap your hands and grin dutifully, delightedly, at his victory, in spite of his impassive delivery. A small smile twitches at the corner of his mouth and then is gone. He pulls you close to him, holds you so tightly that it’s almost painful, and kisses your hair. His next words are whispered so quietly that you question whether you heard them at all.

“So why do I feel nothing?”

Chapter Text

The next morning at the breakfast table your husband announces he will take a break from business for a few days to celebrate his achievements.

“Not quite the century sequestered in a castle to ravish you to my heart's content that I promised you, but that will come in time. For now, we shall have to make the most of what we can get.”

You nod and smile. There was a time you would have given anything in the world for time alone with your husband with nothing to do but enjoy each other's company, but now the tight crush of anticipation that you feel in your chest is closer to fear than excitement. Still, it is a terror tinged with that heat that Astarion has always been able to cause to swell within you. You are the one who gave him the power to strike fear within your heart, and you will be the one to face the consequences.

“Come here, my love,” he says from his place at the opposite end of the table. 

You have barely started to drink the glass of blood that has been set before you, so as you rise to comply with his command, you pick it up to bring it with you.

“Leave that,” he says, and though your stomach bubbles with hunger, you obey.

You walk the length of the table, past the plates of meat, baskets of bread, bowls of fruit, and platters of pastries that always garnish your husband’s end of the table in the morning. 

“I find myself craving an entirely different kind of feast today,” he says when you reach him. The hunger in his eyes gleams red as he wraps his arms around you, lifting you into a greedy embrace. His kiss is savage as he backs you against the table, perching you on the edge as he moves a hand in a spell-casting gesture. Gold-leafed plates, silver platters, food and glass and crystal all go flying from the table’s surface, crashing to the stone floor in a destructive cacophony that makes you flinch. He doesn’t seem to notice or doesn’t seem to care. He pushes you back to lie on the dark wood, and your breath catches in your throat when you see that he has pulled a sharp, silver dagger from his belt.

“Lie still,” he says, and your body is frozen in place before you have a chance to even think of escaping. A memory flashes before your eyes: a sun-baked beach, a crashed nautiloid, cold white skin and colder silver metal pressed against your throat. Your very first touch. You’re dragged back to the present when he pulls the material of your dress taut with one hand, then slashes it straight through with the dagger, splitting the garment from bust to hem, leaving you lying exposed on the tabletop. An amused smile flickers over his lips at the sight of your eyes so wide with fear.

“Darling,” he purrs, voice dripping with mockery, “Would I ever hurt you?”

He traces patterns across your neck, your chest, your navel, first with his warm fingers, then with the cold flat of the blade. Your nerves blossom to life with every touch. The fine hairs on your skin stand on end, and you shiver from the churning mixture within you of fear and lust, desire and hatred. When he moves his hands to your thighs, parting them before him, he grins a roguish grin at the sight of your obvious arousal.

“Oh my eager little treat,” he murmurs, and you can feel the ghost of a blush that would once have tinged your face and chest a rosy pink. “You can move,” he says, running his hands along your inner thighs, “but these stay open. Understand?”

You wriggle slightly, then nod at his demanding look, keeping your legs wide for him. Finally free to move, you roll your head to the side and are horrified to see that a handful of serving thralls are still stood lining the walls, taking in every inch of your nudity through dull eyes. You reach to squeeze Astarion's forearm, gesturing frantically at the servants to alert him to their presence.

He tilts his head to the side and raises an eyebrow.

“What is it, treasure? Do you not want to put on a show?”

You shake your head emphatically.

“You're no fun,” he pouts, “but if you insist. Anything for my most beloved pet.” Then he turns and says in a louder, more authoritative voice, “Leave. All of you. Now.”

You watch the servants shuffle slowly out of the dining hall until your thoughts are brought sharply back to your husband by a hot gust of air on the wetness between your legs. His face is framed by your thighs, his lips a mere fingers breadth away from your core.

“I am going to devour you,” he murmurs, and before the shiver of anticipation that his words spark manages to make its way up your spine, his mouth is on you. Hot and wet and hungry, his soft lips and rough tongue moving as if he were a starving man and you the meal he has dreamed about for an age. He eats you out with such a ravenous passion that within moments your head is dropping back to the table, eyes closed, seeing fireworks explode behind your eyelids as that familiar overwhelming pressure builds up inside you. The feeling is so overpowering that you barely feel the sharp stinging pain on your inner thigh. When you open your eyes to search for the source of it, you see the dagger Astarion still wields pressed against your skin there, just hard enough to have drawn a thin line of blood, stark red beading against the pallid white of your leg.

You gasp, and he moves his mouth to the cut, licking at it and then sinking his sharp fangs deep into the flesh of your thigh. You whine - at the sting, at the spreading numbness, at the fact that you were so close to release when he moved his lips off of yours. His spare hand moves to your centre, his thumb rubbing teasing circles around your slick clit, keeping you so close to that edge of ecstasy that you moan in desperation, bucking against his hand in an attempt to communicate your craving: you want him inside you, filling you, sending you over that edge.

He pulls away from the bite, lips smeared red, eyelids heavy with bloodlust and desire. He slides a finger into you, pumping in and out with a cruelly deliberate slowness. You catch a devilish glint in his eye and feel a trickle of fear at the base of your neck as you watch him flip the dagger in his other hand, bringing the cold metal of its pommel to glide over your clit. Removing his finger, he drags the handle through your folds, teasing it ever so slightly in and out of your entrance, before plunging it deeper inside you. You gasp. You can feel every ridge on the handle as he fucks you with it, deeper and deeper until the guard of the dagger is pressing hard against your clit. It feels so obscene that you would be flushed with shame were you not so desperately chasing the release that feels only moments away. Then, just as you feel it about to hit you, Astarion stops moving the dagger. He looks down at you, legs splayed, stuffed to the literal hilt, trembling and panting, and his eyes still sparkle with that rapacious hunger.

“Fuck,” he breathes, unlacing his trousers as he takes in the sight of you. “I could do whatever I wanted to you, couldn’t I?”

You whimper, and then you nod, because there is no denying it. No denying him. He lets out a deep breath, then pulls the dagger out of you and throws it clattering to the ground. His hands slip beneath your arse and pulls you right to the edge of the table, your back scraping against the wood, and then he’s plunging himself into you, his cock hot and thick where the dagger had been cold and hard. You cry out at the feel of it as it sends sparks flying within you, setting your body aflame with a bliss so divine it is almost painful to withstand. He fucks you into the table voraciously, the euphoria of his touch rendering you blind, dumb, entirely enraptured by him. He doesn’t stop when the first climax tears through you, as your mind fills with all the prayers and curses that would be spilling from your lips if you only had the power to speak. He fucks you through that apex of pleasure and out the other side until you are over-sensitive, over-stimulated, a mewling mess unable to tell whether the feeling is pain or pleasure anymore.

In the glimpses of reality that you snatch between each crescendo of sensation, you notice that his eyes never leave your face. He doesn't gaze upon you in amorous passion; rather, he seems to be searching for something that he cannot find. His brow is lightly creased in a frown, and his eyes betray a spark of something closer to curiosity than love. Still, it is easy enough not to look too closely. It is better, in fact, to instead steal glances at those desperately full lips, that exquisitely carved nose, those ethereally fine ears. Before long, another wave of pleasure washes away any lingering thoughts of his strange watchfulness.

It takes three days of constant company before Astarion has his fill of you. Three days of uninterrupted contact, skin on skin, teeth on flesh, his hot heart beating for the both of you. Climax follows climax until your head spins and your limbs shake. Even when you take a break from the pleasures of each other's bodies he keeps you pressed possessively against him, perched on his knee or draped over his lap, or constricted within his strong, firm arms. You notice that his watchful gaze never lessens; he seems to consider you with a vigilance, a mindfulness, that makes you wish that you could know what he is thinking. You sleep only in short, stolen bursts of rest against his chest. You skip meals to the point that your hunger ravages you with the intensity of the freshly-turned. You wonder if Astarion notices; his hunger is sated by your blood, but there is nothing to sate you. You cannot speak up to ask.

On the afternoon of the third day, he finally announces that he will take a break from your celebrations to dine in the city. You cling to him and make beseeching eyes, which makes him smirk. He peels off your embracing arms and gives you a kiss on the cheek.

“I’ll see you tonight, my love,” he says in a voice still thick with lust, and then he leaves you.

You listen to his footsteps receding down the corridor. You force yourself to wait the amount of time you think it must take to leave the grounds. You wait until you cannot bear to wait any longer, and then you head to the library to write a letter.

Chapter Text

You write out the letter that you’ve held in your head over the past few days. You’re glad that you’ve already planned what you want to say, because your mind is clumsy with hunger now. When you are happy with your writing, you copy it out again, then address the two sheets: one to Shadowheart, one to Jaheira. Next, you write a message out to Lucas, entreating him to deliver these letters as quickly as he can. Finally, you search for a book to enclose them in. You settle on The Descent to Nessus. You’ve never read it, but it is thick, bound in red leather, and gilded - it looks expensive. You hope, at least, that Lucas might be able to sell it to get some compensation for his troubles.

You set off for the alcove, pausing for a moment to lean in the doorway when a dizzying spell of hunger takes hold of you. You will yourself to focus. You do not know how long Astarion will be gone, so you need to drop this book off as soon as possible. Once it is safely tucked in the alcove, you can go and find some blood.

You ignore the voice in your head that tells you that you have no idea where you would even find blood. It has always been served to you wherever you are. You have no idea where it is stored, and you don’t much fancy your chances of waltzing down into the dungeons to take it directly from the source.

You force those thoughts away. You will cross that bridge when you come to it.

———

Your heart gives a strange lurch as you turn into the alcove’s corridor, as though it wants to soar and sink all at once. A familiar figure stands beside the alcove, tall and lanky and leaning slightly askew from his lost leg. He gives you a bright grin and a wave when he sees you approach. His smile is like a wonky ray of sunshine. You want to eat him whole. You swallow. You can do this. You are strong.

“I was just starting to worry about you,” he says, brandishing a book at you. “I left this here two days ago and you still hadn’t taken it.”

You give him an apologetic grimace and hold out your own book to swap with his. You try to ignore the fact you can see the pulse beating beneath the honey-coloured skin of his neck. You wonder if he would taste sweeter than most. You lick your lips. You think he might.

“Blimey, that’s a big one,” he says jovially, taking the book from your hands and replacing it with the one he was originally holding. He flips it open and raises his eyebrows at the amount of notes within. “Three notes? Someone’s feeling talkative. Making up for lost time, eh?”

You clench your jaw and shake your head. You hold your breath against the waft of his scent that washes over you when he moves to swap the books: savoury sweat, and something wild and lean. You close your eyes, focus, then open them again. He’s looking at you quizzically. You take a deep, shaking breath, tell yourself that your mouth is watering for reasons other than the delicious fresh-meat smell of his flesh, and try to mime delivering a letter, pointing with quivering hands at the sheets within his book.

“You want me to deliver these to someone?”

You nod eagerly.

“Alright. Sure, I guess. Why not. But look, lady, are you okay?” He reaches towards you, concern painted across his broad, open face. His eyes are wide with worry. You flinch away from his touch. Gods, you can hear his heart beating. Like a war drum. Like a siren song. Your eyes are wild, almost rolling from the temptation of it. You shake your head.

You cannot hold anymore.

With a final desperate force of will, you turn on your heel and flee the corridor.

You can only hope that your display won’t cause him to become suspicious. You can only pray that he will keep his word.

Chapter Text

You run straight to your chambers in the desperate hope that you will find a cup of blood waiting for you. For once, hope doesn’t let you down.

A glass sits on your bedside table. You can smell the buttery iron scent of it from the doorway. So overwhelming is your need for it that you barely register your husband lounging on the bed beside it. The scope of your thoughts has narrowed down to one thing and one thing only: the fact that you are starving. You stumble to the glass and raise it to your mouth with shaking hands, guzzling the rich red liquid with such a frantic speed that it overflows from your lips, dripping down your chin in sticky red rivulets. A warm feeling of relief spreads through you as you drink, and slowly your mind unfurls once more, opening back up beyond the overwhelming hunger for blood, to thoughts of yourself and your surroundings.

Astarion is watching you drink with a disgusted kind of interest, but the blood feels too ambrosial on your tongue for you to feel any shame. When you finish the glass you take several deep, gasping breaths, and he reaches over to you, wiping the blood from your chin with a finger that he then brings to his own mouth for a taste. He smells of wine and whisky, of smoke, of the kind of tawdry nights in taverns that you doubt you will never experience again. His eyes are heavy-lidded and half-closed when he looks at you, but you cannot know if it’s lust or drink that makes them so.

“Quite the ravenous little beast, aren’t you?” he says, in a tone that balances mockery and affection. There’s a slight slur to his voice that you’ve only ever heard before when he’s drained a living creature dry. You can’t help but wonder what he has been doing while you’ve been scheming. He pulls you onto the bed with him as your body slowly adjusts to the change from shivering hunger to mild satiation.

“I’ve been thinking, darling,” he says, curling one arm around you while his other hand brushes a loose strand of hair from your face. “Thinking about my purpose in this world. I’m a lord amongst vampires; a god amongst men. I had thought my goal would be to gain control over the city, but it was just too easy. I could spread my reach further, of course, and I will. But what use is power if it doesn’t serve some higher purpose?”

He sighs as he runs his fingers back and forth along your bare arm, brushing your skin in a movement that feels far less polished than his usual masterful touch. Still, you feel your body come alive at the contact, the heat from the blood you’ve just drunk diffusing through you as your skin prickles and tingles with each caress.

“Then I got to thinking about you, my dear. My darling wife. My dark consort. My ever-beloved spawn. Since the day we met it has been clear that we were destined to be together, but these past few days I have been questioning why. You know, I used to think we were so similar - twin souls, so to speak. But we’re not, are we? When you really think about it, we are so very different. I suffered for two hundred years. I was ground down to nothing so that I could accept this power having earned it. And now I finally have what I deserve. But you? You haven’t got what you deserved, have you?”

Your eyes search his face desperately for a clue as to where he is going with this. It is surely too much to hope that he will finally make you a true vampire. But then, if he has succeeded in his goal of taking over the city, maybe having a more powerful ally will be of use to him in whatever dastardly plans he has for the future. World domination, most likely. The past three days have confirmed to you one thing: he is utterly insatiable. Perhaps he has finally realised that having a true vampire by his side would be a boon. You close your eyes and listen as he continues.

“What have you ever suffered, my love? You caused suffering, certainly. More of it than most could even dream of. But what reparations have you made? What has been your atonement?”

I saved the gods-damned city, you want to say as you open your eyes to frown at him. I threw off my father’s yoke and forged a better path, paying penance for my old sins. Although you cannot help but think about that greatest sin, that stain which you still bear upon your conscience. The sin of seven thousand souls. You swallow. You do not think you like where this is going.

“We’re fated to be together, I think, but not as twin souls. It’s like the gods made me who I am, and put me through everything I’ve been through, so I would know exactly how to punish you. You are living sin, my dear, and you deserve to be so thoroughly punished.”

He smiles at you so sweetly. The juxtaposition of those angelic features and devilish words causes something to wrench in your chest. He kisses you gently on the cheek, snaking his arms tighter around you as he settles into sleep.

“Not just you, of course,” he murmurs, his voice slurring with tiredness or drunkenness. “All of them. All the lowly creatures of this plane beg for castigation. I see it when I close my eyes. I hear them whenever I rest.” He pulls you close to his chest, trapping you within his arms. “Sleep well. Sweet dreams,” he breathes, and by his command, the sound of his heartbeat lulls you into a reluctant, uneasy sleep.

Chapter Text

You don’t know what you expected - perhaps you had managed to convince yourself that his words the night before were nothing but drunken ramblings - but you are foolishly surprised to be awoken to the feeling of Astarion fastening ropes around your wrists. As wakefulness fully dawns on you, you make an effort to free yourself from his grip, but his strength renders your attempts pointless.

“Good morning, my sweet,” he says with malicious brightness, displaying no exertion whatsoever despite your contests. “You can struggle if you want, but I promise it will make things worse for you.”

The words carry such a threat within them that you go still.

“I could compel you to lie here without the need for constraints, of course. Or command you to do this to yourself, even. All that will come in time. But for now, I want you in full control. Or,” he says, with a high laugh that sends a wave of hatred through you, “at least as in control as you can be. I want you to prove you can choose to be good for me.”

You clench your jaw, and for the first time, you feel glad that you cannot speak. You do not want to think about what he would do to you if he could hear all the things you want to say to him right now. He finishes attaching your wrists to the bedposts then walks to the other side of the room, where a chest has been placed. You don't remember seeing it before, and wonder if he had it moved in here while you slept.

“I’ve been going through your things, my treasure. All the spoils from our little adventure together. I thought we could have some fun with some of them. It’s not like you’ll be using them otherwise - your adventuring days are over, after all.”

He pauses to concentrate on sifting through the contents of the chest, apparently looking for something in particular. You try to keep your breathing steady as you watch him.

“Ah, here it is,” he says, straightening up, holding out an item with both hands. “Do you remember this? Taken from the body of an illithid-infected gnoll on the Risen Road. You talked her into killing herself. Eating herself. I’d never seen anything so depraved. I knew then that you had so much potential. I knew I had to make you mine.”

The shattered flail. The leather straps sway malevolently in his hands. Of course you remember it. You don’t think you’ll ever forget the terrible rush of power that came with the realisation that you could influence another living being so completely. It had sickened you at the time, but you couldn’t help but also feel at least a little bit in awe of the potential that you had within you. To have that much power in your grasp is nought but a distant memory for you now.

Astarion is walking back towards you, grasping the handle of the flail tight in one hand while he caresses the leather strips with the other. He stalks with such a predatory air that you cannot help yourself; you pull against the restraints holding your arms to the bed. Your legs have been left free, and you pull them up awkwardly, trying to hunch into a ball to protect yourself from that which you dread to come.

“Now, now, darling, remember what I said. Struggling will only make this worse for you. Why don’t you try to lie nice and still for me?”

There’s no command in his voice, so you have to force your trembling limbs to straighten, lying flat on the bed for him. You take a deep breath, but before you can brace yourself there is a hiss of leather speeding through air and then a smack as the flail slaps into the flesh of your thigh. You cry out at the sharp pain of it, eyes instantly filling with tears, and some small, stupid part of you is shocked that he actually, actively hurt you.

“Such pretty cries,” he smirks, his handsome face twisted with malice as he pulls back his arm for another hit. You grind your jaw shut, close your eyes, tense your body, and when the flail connects with flesh a second time you just about manage to stay silent. He tuts in irritation at your resistance and raises the arm that grips the flail once more.

This time you cannot help it. Your body flinches away from the whoosh of leather despite your attempts to resist the urge. You hear the flail hit the mattress beside you, and feel the dip in the soft bed where your body should have been. Now, you do not doubt, your punishment will be worse than before. You screw your eyes shut tighter in anticipation and wait for the coming blow to land. You breathe in. You breathe out. Nothing comes.

“Tav?”

Something about his voice makes your eyes snap open. There’s a softness to it - a lightness - that you haven’t heard in so many moons. Or perhaps it’s simply the fact that you haven’t heard him - haven’t heard anyone - say your name since you were turned. When your eyes meet his, the look on his face renders you frozen with shock. 

He is horrified. 

His eyes are wide and well with tears that glisten in the dim light. His brow is raised and wrinkled with concern. You swear you can even see a slight tremble on those beautiful lips.

“Oh gods. Oh gods. Tav, you can hear me?” 

His voice is breaking, cracked with emotion. You nod, your own eyes just as wide as his in your confusion.

“You have to get out of here, Tav. He’ll kill you.”

Chapter Text

You cannot stop staring at the man standing before you. Your body is still rooted to the spot even as your thoughts rush around your head with a frightening speed.

It’s a trick, you think. It must be. Some sort of trap. Just another way of dashing your hopes against the wall. Just another torment. You know all too well that he's more than capable of it. This will just be his way of making you prove that you miss the old him - the version of him that he so despises. He'll play along just enough to break your heart, just enough to add more fuel to his rage, just for the fun of it. You know the person he is now. You know that neither of you are the people you once were. Those two lost souls who sought comfort in eachother's arms and found love where they least expected are dead and gone, replaced by a dark lord and his broken toy. You're fooling yourself if you think there's any trace of the man he once was left within him.

And yet…

There’s something there. Something in the way he stands, hunched, smaller, more prey than predator. Something in his open face that somehow looks younger, his wide eyes still holding a small spark of hope, of innocence, of all the things that you thought had been lost for good. It’s like all of the pain and vulnerability and fear that he so desperately sought to hide have been exposed, painted across his being for all the world to see. There’s something in his voice. Something in how broken he looks.

It’s him.

Your Astarion. The one you once knew. The one you once loved. The one you feared you had killed in the ascension. Gods, you wish you could speak. You wish you could ask if it’s really him, if he’s really come back to you after all this time. Instead you pull yourself as upright as you can with your hands still bound as they are, and try to communicate with your gaze all the things you want to say.

He sways slightly where he stands, pale eyelids flickering as if he’s on the verge of fainting. He cannot seem to take his sad eyes off of you.

“I don’t know what—how—I—gods above, let’s get you out of here.”

He walks unsteadily towards the bed. He’s still clutching the flail in shaking hands, although he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. When he reaches you he seems to falter, lips parting and then closing again as if he cannot find the words he wants to say. His breathing falters, each breath carrying a tremor of some emotion too difficult to vocalise. He is a picture of sorrow; a most beautiful portrait of woe. His expression turns heartbreak into a masterpiece. You continue to stare at him, wanting to speak but unsure how you could even voice all the things you want to express. What words could possibly cover everything you need him to know? You barely even know how you feel. You want to weep with joy and with sorrow, you want to rage at the fact that he left you and laugh in disbelief at the fact that he's back, you want to kiss him and hit him and hold him and never let go. You had given up all hope that he still lived, that he had ever even existed, but now here he is. It’s him. The real him. Astarion. 

You’re unable to shake the violent desire to drink in every feature, mentally devouring every soft edge of his face, the wideness of those heartbroken eyes, the tenderness with which he moves, the delicate tilt of his speechless lips. It’s hard to process how the same face that you’ve been tormented by for so long can look so very different . He shakes his head slightly, as though trying to clear his thoughts, then moves to untie your binds, dropping the flail on the bed as he does so.

And that’s when you see it. Like a dark cloud passing over the moon, his face changes in an instant. His jaw tenses, his eyes narrow, his lips tighten into a snarl. Hands that had been reaching to help you now clutch at your throat, slamming you against the headboard and holding you there.

“What in the hells did you do to me?” he hisses, his face so close to yours that your noses are almost touching. His hand is tightening around your neck, and your head is ringing from the hit it took on the headboard. You try to shake your head but he has you pinned too firmly, so you mouth desperate, silent pleas in the hope that he will see that you are just as confused as he is. You don’t want to believe it. You don’t know what to believe. You have no idea what is happening but you know, with heartbreaking certainty, that your Astarion has disappeared again. He’s left you alone, to face the mercies of the man he has become. He lets out a growl of fury, but as black spots begin to appear in your vision he finally wrenches his hands off your throat, leaving you coughing and wheezing for air.

“You may speak,” he spits.

It takes you a moment to catch your breath, and when you finally try to speak, your voice is hoarse from disuse.

“I didn't do anything,” you wheeze, your mind reeling, unable to make sense of whatever just happened.

His eyes are manic, roving over your face, his hands, the room around you. He seems unwilling to believe that your confusion is genuine.

“Don't lie to me, darling. You've been hiding powers from me all this time, haven't you? After everything I've done for you, after all I've given you, you dare—“

“Astarion, please, it wasn't m—“

You're cut off as he slaps you, hard, across the face. The ringing in your head redoubles its effect, and you taste blood in your mouth from your cheek tearing on your fangs.

“Do not interrupt me, spawn,” he hisses. “What spell did you cast, hm? How stupid are you to think that a creature as weak and pathetic as you could possibly hope to overpower me with whatever remnants of magic you possess?”

“I didn't cast a spell,” you whisper, fearing another strike for speaking but knowing that what he will do to you if you cannot dispel the blame will be worse than any slap.

“I will drain you dry, my love,” he says, spitting the last word like a curse. “I will find this hidden power of yours and take it for my own. Whatever tricks you thought you could play on me are over.”

You shake your head frantically, arms uselessly struggling against their restraints, legs kicking out at him in a futile attempt to stop his advance towards you - towards your neck.

“Please, Astarion, I didn’t do anything," you implore, your stomach twisting in fear at the ferocity in his eyes. "Please, don't, don't—“

Your pleas becomes a shriek but he is already on you, and the sharp stab in your neck seems to burn colder than usual. The familiar numbness races with a painful tingle through your body as your world is swallowed by darkness.

Chapter Text

You wake up feeling groggy, eyes blurry, mouth tasting bitter and ashy. Your neck aches dully, but you can barely feel it over the stabbing spasms that twitch across your abdomen. For a while the pain incapacitates you, and you lie on your back as the world swims in and out of focus around you. Slowly, after minutes or hours or days lost to the agony, the pain fades enough for you to get your bearings. You are lying on your bed, propped up on silk pillows that are crusted with dried blood. 

There’s a fog in your brain that you know you’ve been lost in before, back when you were first turned. It’s a fog that dampens thoughts and emotions, that warps the passing of time. It doesn’t scare you, though. You’ve survived it before, after all. You know you can do so again.

This time, however, you face it alone. No husband waits by your side to comfort you, to feed you, to talk you through the pain of being so desperately empty of blood. When he does eventually return to your side, the attention he lavishes upon you is far less nurturing. 

Some days he wants pleasure. Some days he wants pain. Sometimes he delivers his tortures with such loving care that you could almost believe that he thinks he is doing you a kindness. Some days he ravishes you with carnal bliss while whispering such cruel words that your heart could break with every climax. Through it all, you do not see a single spark of the old him.

He denies you blood until you reach the very precipice of starvation, and then allows you just enough to last another day. Even when he allows you to drink, he finds ways to make quenching your thirst an additional torture. Some days he insists you dine with him at the table and presents you with blood in an ornate soup bowl, insisting that you drink it daintily with a gilded soup spoon. Your hand shakes with the effort of restraint, and he smiles at the sound of gold clattering against fine china. If you eat it too fast, or spill a drop, or hold yourself in a way he deems unladylike, the bowl is taken from you and you are forced to watch him eat while you sit and stew in your starvation.

One day you manage to finish an entire bowl without a single mistake, despite your trembling hands and the overwhelming desire to pick up the bowl and drink it straight down. He showers you with praises, pampers you with kisses, tells you what a perfect, what a beautiful, what an elegant wife you have become for him. He tells you he loves you. The blood has cleared your head enough that you know to smile at him when he says that.

Unfortunately, your smile is no longer enough to please him.

———

The next day there is no seat for you at the table. You frown; you can smell fresh blood, but there is no place set, no glass full, no sanguine soup put out for you. Astarion is sat at his end of the table, surrounded by his usual morning feast. There's the faintest of smiles on his face as his eyes flick to the floor at his feet. Your eyes follow his to a dog bowl on the ground beside his chair, filled to the brim with blood.

You swallow and set your jaw before walking to him. When you reach him you drop to your knees, eyes on his face, trying to read him. He is perfectly impassive, his attention on the meal before him as if he has not even noticed that you are by his side. It is only when you reach to pick up the bowl and bring it to your lips that Astarion holds out a hand to stop you.

“I think not,” he says. His voice is cold, but his eyes glitter with a callous amusement. You know what he wants you to do without needing to be told. You are too desperate to do anything but accept it. You get on your hands and knees and lower your mouth to the bowl on the floor, your stomach tightening at the smell of it in your nostrils then the taste of it on your tongue. He coos down at you while you drink and you try to blink away the tears of shame.

“Maybe I'll get you a pretty collar to wear too. Would you like that, pet? With a little bell, so the staff know to avoid you, and I can always find you. Wouldn't that be nice?”

He strokes your head in a mockery of affection. He has not yet taken back your voice - perhaps he has remembered how much he likes to hear you beg - so you have to bite your tongue to prevent yourself from saying anything you'll regret.

Your only consolation in his treatment of you is that he doesn’t seem to realize that he is creating a means to soften your punishments. The more he restricts your blood consumption, the thicker the fog of hunger hangs over you, and the duller your thoughts and feelings become. Words and weapons that would normally cut you to the bone seem only to sting through the haze. The mist in your mind is a shield against the fathoms of his cruelty, and you willingly throw yourself into its murky embrace. As your sense of self becomes obscured, so too does your pain, shrouded as it is by the overwhelming hunger that seeps into every aspect of your being.

Through the mist, you are driven forward by a single shining light of hope. The man you loved came back to you, even if it was only for a mere moment. You know he is in there. You know he's not gone for good. Now you just need to figure out how to save him. When the hunger abates enough for you to feel anything, you feel happy: you've always preferred to play the role of the hero rather than the damsel in distress.

Chapter Text

Some days Astarion seems to forget about you entirely, preferring to spend his time plotting in his study, and on those days you pray thanks to the gods and advance your own schemes.

You often go to your secret alcove hoping for salvation, but you find nothing there but frustration. Lucas still leaves books for you, and the notes within them all say the same things: they're not easy people to find and it's almost like they're hiding and not giving up but no luck yet!

You feel guilty that his optimistic tone leaves you feeling sickened and irritable. He’s risking so much to help you, even if he doesn’t know it. It’s not the poor boy’s fault that your desperation for escape has reached almost unbearable levels. You can feel yourself slipping away with every day that passes. You are at least gladdened that your display the last time you saw him didn't put him off from helping you. You try to only go to the alcove at times when you're sure he won't be there, fearing how raw and uncontrollable your hunger is these days. It's almost laughable to you now that you struggled to be near him after a mere three days without feeding before. You can't remember the last time you felt sated. There's a feral edge to your mind now, and every day you feel yourself becoming something closer to the wild, lowly creature that your husband sees you as. You wonder if there will come a day when you wake up as someone or something else entirely.

In the brief moments of mental clarity that you steal from the raging hunger within, you find yourself plagued by questions. What was it that caused the Astarion you knew to break through? Initially, you had thought it had been triggered by him hurting you, but the past tenday’s lessons in pain by his hand have thoroughly dispelled that notion. Every torture he has inflicted hasn’t revealed a single glimpse of anyone other than the monster he has become.

In your mind’s eye, you replay his movements leading up to that brief moment of transformation. You see him prowling towards you, gripping his weapon of choice - the flail - in his hand. Hadn’t the leather strips swayed to and fro as if they had a mind of their own? Could the weapon itself have had some magical effect? You desperately search your memories, but nothing about it comes to mind. You collected so many weapons on your travels, and so many of them had been touched by the arcane in some way or another that all but the most favoured or most malignant have faded into the depths of your mind, entirely beyond reach. If only you could talk to your companions, wherever they are. You’re sure that one of them could tell you more if only you could find a way to speak with them.

That train of thought only leads you to further doubts. The more you try to remember that brief visit, the blurrier the details become. You had felt so certain of it - of him - when it happened, but now you cannot help but question everything that you had originally believed to be true. Had it even been him? Really, truly him? Or had you only seen that which you so desperately wanted to see? At the time, he had been the only person in your mind who would have come to save you. But hadn’t there been a hint of Wyll in those puppy-dog eyes? Hadn’t those tender, compassionate movements been seen by you before, only in the larger, rougher hands of Halsin? Could the breakthrough, the possession, whatever it had been, have been one of your companions trying to reach out to you?

The only thing that you can be sure of is that your husband is just as confused by it as you are. You catch him watching you with a new wariness that is quite at odds with your current state. You know you couldn’t lift even a finger against him, even if you tried with all your might. Still, he eyes you as if you are some dying beast of prey: weakened, certainly, marked for death, but still capable of a final blow before its demise. Though you know that his suspicions are baseless, it pleases some twisted part of you to know that there are still things within you that are a mystery to him. He’s not scared of you, exactly, but he’s not sure of you either, and that feels enough like a victory.

Astarion seems to take the numbness within you as acceptance. That, or he grows bored of torturing you when it garners so little reaction from you. Either way, the intensity of his attention seems to ease as the days go by. You are too short on optimism to expect the reprieve to last for long, but you are nevertheless grateful for it. Still, you cannot help but wait, with a resigned, tired kind of anticipation, for whatever he has planned for you next. You know it is only a matter of time.

Chapter Text

Your heart sinks when Astarion wakes you up one morning with a beatific smile on his face. It’s time then, you think to yourself, carefully organising your features into a mask of bland acceptance. Whatever new horrors he has in store for you, you refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing that you’re scared.

“I’ve got a surprise for you, darling,” he says as you push yourself upright in bed. “A little treat for my little treat.”

“What is it?” you ask, hoping that you’ve balanced your tone correctly. Not too sullen, not too eager, certainly not at all resentful or fearful.

“A visitor,” he says, “a special guest. I’ll be busy with him today, but you’re to join us for dinner. Do try to make yourself presentable, won’t you?”

You would have bristled at that if you had the energy to feel annoyed. Instead, you nod your head once, although you’re not sure how you’ll manage to with no reflection and no lady’s maid. When he turns away to leave the room, you self-consciously try to smooth your hair with your hands, but your fingers become tangled in the matted mess. You can’t think when you last brushed it. You can’t think when you last bathed. Your life has been nothing but blood-thirst and fog for so long that grooming has somewhat fallen by the wayside.

Not wanting to give Astarion any additional reason to punish you, you spend the day preparing and preening to the best of your abilities. At least with your voice returned to you it is easier to obtain assistance from some of the many thralls who mill around the house. You wonder, as they fuss and flap around you, why it is that they do not awaken the hunger within you. Perhaps because they are so clearly marked as his: you could no more bite their necks than you could sink your fangs into Astarion’s own. Still, the extent of your starvation is made clear when you come close to fainting as you step into the hot bath that has been poured for you. As your vision swims, you cannot help but question whether you will even survive until dinner. Worse, you cannot help but question if Astarion’s guest will survive the dinner itself.

A sense of nervous apprehension grips you as the day passes by. Scrubbing yourself clean only makes you more aware of the marks left on you that you cannot wash away. Your arms and legs are mosaics of cuts and bruises, bite marks and scabs. Your skin, ever pale since your transformation, is papery and grey as opposed to Astarion’s lily-white sheen. When you rinse your face, your cheekbone still feels tender from a slap you can barely remember, and you wonder if your face is as mottled as the rest of you. Presentable seems like a futility, but at least you can say that you’ve tried.

You try not to think about what your punishment might be if Astarion deems your attempts to not be adequate. Then again, what more could he possibly take from you? He’s taken it all already. Your life, your freedom, your voice, your mind - all are held in his cruel, commanding hand. You have nothing else to lose.

But every time you find yourself thinking that, he manages to find one last thing to take.

A lopsided smile and loping gait flash to the forefront of your mind, but you quickly push the thought away. Lucas is safe. Lucas is nothing. You have an irrational notion that if you do not think of him, Astarion will not find out about him, so you push all thoughts of him down into the thick fog of your mind. Besides, you’ve been so careful. You have only ever gone to the alcove when Astarion has been busy, and you’ve always made certain that there are no thralls around to spy on you. He’s fine. You’re fine. It’s all going to be fine.

You are summoned to the dining room by a dead-eyed thrall sometime after sunset. You follow the thrall through candlelit corridors with a growing sense of dread until you reach the doors to the dining room. Instead of opening the doors and announcing your arrival, the thrall knocks and waits for them to be opened. To your surprise it's Astarion himself who answers, dismissing the thrall with a wave of his hand before walking up to you and kissing you on the forehead. He looks you up and down when he pulls back, raising one eyebrow in a look that isn't quite disappointment, but certainly isn't appreciation either.

“Hello, darling,” he says with a slight sigh in his voice. “While I’ve no doubt that you’ll behave for me, I think it would be for the best if you don’t speak tonight.”

You hear the command in his voice and feel your tongue being tied by his ruling.

“Ready for your surprise?” he asks. You can do nothing but nod as your guts twist like snakes in anticipation of what awaits in the dining room. He leads you inside.

The vast room spreads out before you, lit only by candelabras standing on the large dining table in the centre of the room. Their light doesn’t quite meet the walls, so you walk through shifting, shadowy darkness as you approach. The table is strewn with books and maps, sheets of paper, and objects that must be of some arcane origin that are entirely alien to you. Amongst them lie half-eaten plates and empty cups; it seems Astarion took luncheon here, and possibly breakfast too, without breaking from whatever work he is undertaking.

A familiar man sits at the far end of the table, although - gods be good - it is not the man you feared your husband might have snared. Gale of Waterdeep is pouring over a map in front of him, but he looks up when he hears Astarion's returning footsteps. At the sight of you, he stands, waves his hands, and says an incantation that you cannot quite hear from the other side of the room. The detritus on the table glows briefly before disappearing into the ether.

“Hello,” says Gale when you get close enough that he doesn't need to shout. He speaks in such an easy, friendly tone that you almost feel physically repulsed by his audacity. How dare he act his usual charming self after being so willing to align himself with the man who has kept you prisoner, who has tortured you, who has changed and taken away every single part of you that you ever liked. You’ve always known Gale has a dark side; you’ve seen the results of his hubris, and you’ve seen his lust for power, but you’ve never hated him for it before. Not until now. Now you struggle to keep the sneer from your face as you approach your seat at the table.

Admittedly, you do see something in his expression falter as you reach the circle of light thrown by the candles on the table. A flicker of horror seems to pass over his eyes as he takes in your appearance before he regains his composure. You suppose it could just be a shock at the contrast between you and your husband. He looks so well-groomed, so flawless, such a paragon of health and good living. The golden light of the flames casts him in a warm glow, highlighting his full lips, his high cheekbones, and the effortlessly suave waves of his hair. He looks regal. He looks perfect. You cannot imagine you look anything of the sort.

“You won’t get much by way of response, I’m afraid,” says Astarion. “Our little sorceress found herself on the wrong side of an experimentation with a Silence spell. Still, it shouldn’t make too much difference. It’s not like we used to keep her around for her personality.” He gives a little laugh at that, and Gale responds with a tight-lipped smile and a chuckle. You stretch a smile of your own over your teeth, like the good little wife you are, and think how nice it would be to rip out both of their throats with your fangs.

Chapter Text

The moment you are seated, the doors to the dining room are opened once more by thralls bearing food for dinner. You are pleasantly surprised - relieved, really - to see that Astarion has moved on from degrading you during your mealtimes, and your dinner arrives in the form of an admittedly small glass of blood beside a larger glass of wine. Still, it beats a near-empty soup bowl and certainly trumps a dog bowl on the floor. You suppose the reprieve might only be the result of having a guest, but you’re nevertheless glad for it.

You take the smallest sip of blood that you can tolerate before moving on to the wine. You want to eke out the enjoyment of uninhibited drinking for as long as you possibly can. Unfortunately, each sip of blood only seems to whet your appetite, and you are dismayed to find the glass half empty before the first course has even been finished. You’re glad that at least your mind feels a little sharper, although most of that sharpness is currently focused on just how much blood the wizard must have inside his body, and the various ways you can think of to free it from its fleshy prison.

You can’t help but notice that despite Astarion claiming this would be a treat for you, you have been seated at the opposite end of the table to the two men. You suppose it is safer this way - gods help you if you could actually smell Gale instead of just fantasising about the taste of him from a distance. They are deep in a hushed conversation that you can barely hear, only catching the odd word or phrase as you drink your wine and observe them sourly. From the little you overhear, it sounds as though your husband has managed to cajole Gale into helping with the next phase of his plans: getting him a crown, if you heard correctly. You would roll your eyes at your husband’s unquenchable ambition if you weren’t scared of the repercussions of such insolence. Of course ruling a city - even the largest gods-damned city in all of Faerûn - isn’t enough for him. He won’t stop until he rules the entire Sword Coast from his diabolical throne. The whole world would have to kneel before him before he was satisfied. You can see him in your mind's eye: a golden crown upon silver curls, a devilish smile upon bloodstained lips. The image makes you shiver.

Finding the scraps of their conversation distasteful, you allow your mind to wander as you lose yourself in the rich metallic taste of blood on your tongue. You watch them through half-closed eyes and think to yourself how eminent Astarion’s beautiful golden-crowned head would look if it were severed on a spike. Or better yet, how delectable Gale’s might look served up to you on a silver platter. A smile - a real, genuine smile - twitches at the edges of your blood-slick lips, and you wonder when, exactly, you became quite so bloodthirsty. Perhaps you always have been. You are a child of murder, after all. You’re close to losing yourself in this tantalising line of thought when a sound from within your mind shocks you out of your reverie.

Hello.

You nearly drop your glass. The word you just heard was definitely in your head, and was unmistakably in Gale's voice. But you are watching him speak with your husband right before you. Had you imagined it? Gods knew your mind wasn't exactly trustworthy these days. Or perhaps he had said it out loud and you only thought that it was inside your head— 

Probably best not to stare too much, friend. A subtle approach is needed for this, I think.

You blink and look away from Gale. Not imagined, then. Definitely a voice in your head. Definitely Gale's voice. Although it could be your husband using Gale's voice to test you. You cannot trust it. Cannot believe a word it says. But oh, gods, you want to.

Your lack of speech wasn't caused by a self-inflicted silencing spell, was it?

You give the slightest shake of your head. Your eyes flick up to Gale once more, but he and Astarion are still deep in conversation. There is no indication of this secondary discussion taking place within your mind. Without looking at you, he seems to have taken in your shake of the head.

I thought not. You're not alright, are you? He's not treating you well?

What is it about these simple questions that bring tears to your eyes? Perhaps simply that you no longer believed that anyone cared enough to ask them. You clench your jaw and will the tears away, taking a deep swig of blood in an attempt to clear your mind. The glass is almost empty now, but your hunger only seems to be growing. Again, you give a barely perceptible shake of the head in answer to his question, and again, he seems to know it without his gaze ever moving close to you.

It's as I feared. We've got a plan, but it will take a little while longer. Can you hold on just a little bit more?

You nod. You nod because it's what he wants to hear. You nod because you know you should believe in yourself enough to think you can cling on for that little while longer. But you know deep down it's too late already. Whoever you were before this sad tale began - whoever it is that Gale thinks he is saving - is already long dead and buried by Astarion's pale, delicate hands.

Chapter Text

Gale doesn't attempt any further communication during the meal - you imagine he doesn't want to do anything to raise Astarion's suspicions - so you are left in silence as they discuss your husband’s grand plans for the future. You can barely hear a word of it over the rushing in your ears. You have to remind yourself how to breathe. The moment you think about not looking guilty, you become painfully, unbearably aware of every tiny movement of your face. No expression feels comfortable anymore. You can only pray that your disquiet isn't noticed. Admittedly, praying so soon after having been on the receiving end of a miracle does feel slightly ungrateful, but then again, this situation only goes to show that your prayers can be answered.

You wish there was some way to advance the passing of time to the moment of your rescue. If this dinner is anything to go by, every day between now and then will feel like an eternity. Knowing what is to come only makes the waiting harder. You grit your teeth as Astarion calls for more drinks, more food, something to smoke while they continue their conversation long into the night. You are forced to sit and replay every word that Gale said over and over in your head while you wait for them to finish. Your only desire is to go to bed and sleep until this is all over.

At least after everything you've been through, you know your patience will hold out.

You cannot help but analyse every word of Gale’s speech. It will take a little while longer. How much longer is a little while? How long have you even been living in this hell? Anything more than a day or two ago seems to be lost to the fog of time. You must have been here for more than a tenday. More than a moon. Could it even be more than a year? It feels hard, now, to remember existence before you were in this state, but if you really force yourself to think on it, you can dredge vague memories up into your mind. Life before this felt like a summer day's sun on your skin. It felt like an unwritten story. It felt wild and warm and full of wonder.

And it had been filled with love. Real love. Not possessiveness, obsession, or manipulation, but love, given and taken freely. The love of friendship and shared hardship. The kind of love that allowed for differences and disagreements, and grew stronger, not weaker, because of them. The memories fill you with a warmth that you did not even realise you were lacking until now. Not the same kind of heat that Astarion can still awaken deep in your core; rather, a warmth higher in your chest, rising and fluttering like a spring breeze, threatening to burst out of you like laughter with the overwhelming sense of it that you feel towards Gale for reminding you that you are loved, and you can love, and you still have hope.

And hadn't he said we have a plan? Not I have a plan - although, admittedly, you'd just as happily take a single person's plan over the grand total of zero plans you had before. But he had said we, which meant that the others must be involved too. Your mind is whirling now at the possibilities you can extract from his statement. Perhaps this is why Lucas has so struggled to find Jaheira and Shadowheart? Could they be tucked away in Gale’s tower in Waterdeep, plotting and planning and building a force to take down the monster that Astarion has become?

And there’s another boon, now that you think of it: you can tell Lucas to stop searching for them. Now that your companions know of your situation you have no need of the boy’s assistance. You’ll be able to wait for your salvation without the gnawing worry that he’ll be harmed for trying to help you, at least. You’ll tell him to stop bringing you books, to stop working for the Fist, to take his sister and flee Baldur’s Gate before Astarion’s hold on the city tightens to a death grip. You’ll both be free.

You are torn away from pretty thoughts of freedom by the sound of chairs being pushed back, legs grating harshly on the flagstone floor. It seems Astarion and Gale have finally reached a suitable end to their discussion.

“Come, then, my love,” Astarion says to you, putting on a show of sweetness, “let’s get you to bed. You look exhausted.”

Gale clasps Astarion’s hand by way of farewell, then turns to you and gives a stiff half-bow. “Always a pleasure,” he says, and you smile faintly in return, unwilling to meet his eyes lest your desperation gives you both away to Astarion.

You follow your husband out of the room, through corridors where thralls are pulling curtains closed against the incoming dawn, and into your chamber. Your tiredness and hunger should be overcoming you, but the tight buzz of anticipation in your chest keeps you going as you unlace boots and corset, peel off layers of petticoats and stockings, and prepare yourself for bed.

“What did you think of your treat, my dear?” Astarion asks as he undresses. “I thought you'd be happy to see one of our old companions, but you looked positively livid when I brought you in to dine.”

He doesn’t look upset by your initial reaction; merely entertained. You remain silent, staring blankly at him until he realises that his compulsion still holds your tongue.

“Oh, of course,” he says, tutting and rolling his eyes as if your silence is somehow your fault. “You may speak.”

You swallow, choosing your words carefully. “It wasn't what I expected.”

“No? Well, you never were very good at reading people, were you?”

That stung. Funny that after all this time he is still managing to root out these half-formed insecurities in your mind to drag them into the foreground.

“You're right,” you say, fighting off a sneer as you meet his gaze. “I suppose I wasn't.”

He doesn't seem to like the steely glint that you must have failed to hide in your eyes, because he strides to you, half undressed, and grasps your jaw in his hand, forcing you to keep looking at him.

“Need I remind you that you chose this?”

His grip is so tight you can already imagine the bruises he's leaving, his fingertips digging into your jawbone like a vice. The pain is enough that your eyes sting with tears, and you suddenly want to say whatever it is that he wants to hear instead of seeing how far he will push you.

“Please,” you whisper, "stop".

His hand loosens slightly, and he brushes the single tear from your cheek with his thumb. 

“You should be grateful that I'm willing to share your company with anyone else,” he murmurs. “Especially after what happened last time.” There he is again, plucking those deep, dark fears from your mind and then stabbing them back into your heart without a moment's hesitation. He must see the hurt on your face because he smiles. “You should be thanking me,” he says.

There's a moment of silence before you realise he is watching you with expectation.

“Thank you,” you manage. His smile only grows darker.

“I’m sure you can think of better ways to show your gratitude than that.”

He finishes undressing and then sits on the edge of your bed, leaning back on his elbows and regarding you with the same self-certain expectation as before.

You force the emotions to drop from your face. Force your mind to go blank. Fall to your knees for him.

You know this will all be over soon.

Chapter Text

You are awakened, feeling tired and hungry, by the sounds of Astarion noisily getting ready for the day. When he sees you stirring, he speaks.

“I’m heading out. I need to catch the wizard before he leaves the city.”

“Why?” you ask, trying to ignore the apprehension simmering in your gut. There’s nothing to worry about. He cannot know.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Will I see you at breakfast?”

“I’ve already had a tray sent up,” he says, gesturing to a table housing the remnants of a breakfast. There is nothing for you there. No blood whatsoever. He seems irritated by your longing gaze because he adds, “I’ll be back for dinner. You can feed then.”

You do not miss the sneer in his voice when he says the word feed. Having said his piece, he walks out of the room, leaving you to face another day of hunger alone. Any mental clarity that the small glass of blood from last night granted you is fading fast. You try to brace yourself for the hunger pangs, the twisting, stabbing emptiness, and the fog that will soon descend once more over your thoughts. 

You decide to make use of what little lucidity you have left. You cannot know when your rescue will come - tonight? Tomorrow? In a tenday? - but you can at least use Astarion’s absence to free Lucas from whatever obligations he feels towards you. You dress, fetch a book, write a note, and then head straight to the alcove.

It is a clear, sunny day in Baldur’s Gate, and the windows and curtains of the west wing have been thrown open to welcome in the sunlight and fresh breeze. The brightness makes your journey treacherous and fills you with a pining for being outdoors, baking under the sun, laying on warm green grass, or bathing in a sparkling creek. The smells of the city float in on the air, and the aromas of freshly baked bread, budding flowers, and the salty sea fill your lungs. The longing for the feel of sunshine on your skin becomes so great that you can’t help but pause by a window and slowly, tentatively stretch out your fingers to touch the light that streams in.

The pain is instant and intense. Even as you snatch your fingers back from the light you see that they are smoking, glowing a fiery molten silver and sizzling in the cool shadows that you have retreated to. You suck on them in an attempt to alleviate the pain, cursing yourself for your folly, and continue onwards to the alcove.

As you round the corner of the alcove’s corridor, you spot a familiar figure that you had hoped to avoid. Of course. The fates had been so kind to you yesterday - today they would balance the score by torturing you with temptation. At least you know from your dinner with Gale that you can resist the urge to bite so long as you keep your distance. You slow your approach, and Lucas looks up at the sound of your footsteps.

“Oh! I was hoping to run into you. I was worried, you looked so ill the last time I saw ya…” He trails off, frowning slightly at you, and you can almost hear his mind finishing the sentence as he takes in your appearance: not that you look any better now. He gives a slight shake of his head, as if clearing the thought away, and continues in his usual upbeat tone.

“Anyway, I wanted to say, you don’t need to give the books back, y’know. My sister says she’s read them all already, and you’ve got more room for them here than we do anyhow.”

It’s your turn to frown, now, confused as to why he thinks you are trying to return anything.

“What do you mean?” you ask.

“Wait, you can talk?”

“What? Oh, yes, sometimes.” You wave a hand dismissively at the look of surprise on his boyish face. “But why do you think I’m going to give the books back?”

“I just— well, I mean, I thought that you putting them all here meant you were trying to give them back.”

“Putting them all—?” Your voice dies in your throat as you finally focus on the alcove itself, rather than the man standing beside it. Sure enough, it is filled with a large pile of familiar-looking books. Books that you thought you had hidden so well, dotted around the vast house in hard-to-reach places, on shelves thick with decades of dust, in rooms that surely hadn’t been used in a century or more. All have been plucked from their hiding places and brought back to this place of meeting. This place of sanctuary. This single place of hope. Your blood runs cold.

Astarion knows.

He always knows. How could you have been so stupid as to think that you could keep this from him? How could you have been so cruel as to let someone else get dragged into this deadly game the two of you play? Still, there would be time for remorse later. Now is the time for action, if you want any chance of saving the poor boy that you have come so close to condemning.

“You have to run,” you say, fixing Lucas with what you hope is a most commanding stare.

“I— what?!”

“Run.”

Chapter Text

Lucas, bless his foolish soul, does not run. He stares at you, stupefied, and doesn’t make a single move to rush towards safety.

“Go!” you urge, gesturing with increased urgency.

“I— what?— I don’t— why do I need to go?”

“He knows.”

“Who knows? Knows what?”

“Astarion— Lord Ancunín— he knows about you. About the books—“

“So? They’re just books.”

“They’re not just books, they’re letters, and help, and hope—“

He scoffs, and, gods damn him, grins. “You’re allowed to send letters, lady.”

“I'm not!” You cry out, frustration bubbling over. “I am not allowed to send letters, and if he finds out that you’ve been helping me then he’ll kill you for it, and I think he must already know because why else would he get all the books—“

“He’ll… kill me?” The lopsided grin is fading now, your outburst finally having the effect that you hoped for.

“Yes, so you need to run now. Get out of here, get your sister, and get out of the city. Please, I’m begging you, just run.”

“I can’t,” he says, and you think that you would very much like to slap him across his sweet, heroic face if only you weren’t worried that the proximity would lead to a somewhat more fatal attack.

“You can. You have to. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine—“

“No, no, it’s not that. I mean, really, I can’t. My leg… I can’t run.”

Gods above, of course he couldn’t. Gods below, you are almost certain that you are going to regret this. But time is of the essence, and his ruin will be your fault if you don’t get him out of here before Astarion returns. You have enough doomed souls on your conscience - you refuse to add Lucas to that list. You nod, more to assure yourself than anything else, then take a deep breath and move towards him, pulling his arm over your shoulder to take some of his weight.

His smell hits you first. It is the hot, wild game of a freshly shot stag; the charred, savoury burn of meat roasting over fire; the almost-sickly sweetness of honeycomb torn asunder. Savage hunger roils in your gut. A taste of him would be like a drop of water to a desert-lost traveller. Your mouth instantly fills with saliva. You swallow hard. You can do this.

His warmth hits you next. His life. He is hot to the touch, and so loudly, frenetically full of life that it almost overwhelms you. His chest presses and eases against you as it rises and falls, and his breath and heartbeat boom and bellow in your ears.

You clench your jaw. You can do this.

“We. Are going. To run,” you grit out, trying not to breathe as you speak, and with that, you pull him forward with all the speed you can manage.

It is not easy going. You both move awkwardly, with his bad balance and your weakness from your hunger working against you, but at least you are moving with slightly more speed than he could manage alone. You drag him onwards, your entire being focused on getting him out of here, leaving no time to listen to the voices screaming inside your head about what a delicious meal he would make, and how sweet his blood must taste, and what it would feel like to sink your sharpened teeth into his soft golden flesh. You are so focused on your goal that when you stagger around a corner you do not see the golden shafts of light pouring in from an opened window until it is too late, and you stagger directly into the glowing beam.

You scream. The pain is all consuming, as if every inch of exposed skin has been flayed off in a single moment. You fling yourself instinctively aside into the shadows against the wall. You drop your hold on Lucas as you do so, and through the red flashes of agony that half-blind your vision you see him staring at you as he falls, eyes wide, mouth open in horror. 

You curse and scramble back onto your feet. His expression tells you all you need to know - he's seen you for what you really are. The molten glow of your skin is fading already, but it is too late.

“It's not– it's not what it looks like, I swear. Or, well, it is, but I'm not going to hurt you.”

You offer him your hand to pull him back onto his feet. He doesn't move from where he landed, sprawling in the sunlight as if the patch of golden warmth is a safe haven. Indeed it is, you suppose. Perhaps he's not as simple as you had initially thought. 

“What are you?”

“I’m– I'm a monster. But I swear, Lucas, I won’t hurt you. Please get up. Please. We need to keep moving.”

He stares up at your extended hand, face etched with uncertainty. You swear you can see his innocence melting away before you. His wide eyes seem to say, how could you do this to me and how could you betray me and I trusted you. No time for moping now, though. The story isn't over yet, and by all the gods you intend to ensure that this one has a happy ending. His story, of course, not your own. Yours has long since ended. You don't even think you were the hero.

“Lucas, please,” you say, eyes imploring, hand reaching as far as you dare towards him.

His eyes dart over your face, over your body, searching desperately for something to make sense of what he has seen. He thought you were a damsel in distress, a princess waiting for a saviour, and now the tale he told himself is crumbling around you both. Now you stand before him in the ruins of his belief, offering him a hand. His face is an open book: you can read his doubt, and watch as it is overwritten by the steely glint of resolve. You could almost weep with relief when he finally reaches for your arm and pulls himself up. You both take a moment to reposition, and you do not miss the wince that he tries to hide as he regains his balance. You send a silent prayer up to the gods that he didn't graze himself when he fell. You are under no illusions that the faintest smell of blood would have been the end of any resistance you have mustered.

“Ready?” you ask.

He nods, brows still furrowed with distrust, and you start moving once more.

“But… explain.”

“I'm a vampire. A spawn. His spawn. He controls me… controls everything. You need to flee the city. He's dangerous.” Your silted explanation comes in pants and gasps as you push yourself to pick up speed. Your muscles ache from the strain and your lip quivers with the struggle of resisting your hunger, but it is all worth it when you finally see the doors to the foyer. You've made it. He'll be free.

You haven't given yourself a moment to think about what will happen to you once he is gone. That doesn't matter. Some things aren't worth saving, after all.

Your only concern is how he will fare once you get to the front door. You cannot assist him outside in the daylight. You'll have to rely on the kindness of whoever you can find nearby - a guard, perhaps, or even a thrall. Strange, really, that you haven't passed any so far, but the entrance foyer is always bustling with folk, so you're not worried about finding somebody there.

Not yet.

Not until you fling the door to the foyer open and find it quiet and empty as a crypt.

And there, silhouetted by the golden sun behind him, Astarion stands in the front doorway, as terrible and beautiful as you have ever seen him.

“Hello, darling,” he says, his eyes glittering with malice. “Going somewhere?”

Chapter Text

You stop in your tracks and feel Lucas freeze in fear beside you. You can hear his heartbeat rising as he leans on your shoulder, his chest heaving against you. Eventually, you manage to find your voice.

“Astarion, please—“

“It looks like you're struggling,” he says, cutting across your plea as he strides towards you. “Let me help.”

He wears his most winning smile, and while you know the danger that lurks within it, you can see the fear on Lucas's face falter. You know firsthand that it is hard to see the evil behind such an impeccably beautiful mask. When Astarion reaches you, he takes Lucas by the other arm, taking his weight off of you with ease. 

“Why don't we go and have a little chat,” he says, pulling Lucas off your arm and leading him away from where you still stand frozen on the spot. Lucas throws you a desperate, questioning glance over his shoulder, making Astarion laugh.

“Oh, I wouldn't bother looking to her for help,” he says jovially, that deadly, charming smile still carved across his face. “She can’t be trusted,” he adds in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. He turns to you, and the coldness of his voice when he addresses you is made more profound by the previous warmth of his tone. “Follow,” he says, and your legs obey without a moment's hesitation.

He leads you both away from the front door, away from the west wing, into the maze of corridors that make up your personal residence. No curtains have been parted here, no windows opened, no breeze let in. It is dim and stuffy and full of dread.

He opens the door to one of the many dozens or hundreds of rooms that you have not yet explored, bringing you all into a small parlour and depositing a still-dumbstruck Lucas onto one of the plush settees within. The boy looks at you again, although this time he seems not to be looking for reassurance, eyeing you instead with a hint of fear. You try not to let it sting. Astarion moves over to a window and twitches the curtain open a little, letting in a ray of light that makes you press yourself against the wall in fear of it touching you. The corner of his mouth twitches at your reaction, but he drops the curtain back into place with a sigh before turning to Lucas.

“Such a beautiful day outside. Such a shame that you won’t be alive to enjoy much more of it.”

He gives the boy no time to respond before his fingers dance, his lips move, and he casts a spell directly at him. You cry out and stumble forward, fearing the worst and trying to put yourself between the two men, but the spell that goes off doesn’t appear to cause any damage. Lucas jerks slightly in his seat, as if twitching against invisible binds, concern spreading over his face, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain. It seems that having a spell cast upon him has finally given him the conviction to speak, for he stutters out an entreaty to your husband, trying to move in his bondage enough to look around your attempts to shield him and meet Astarion’s eyes.

“No, ser— my lord— please! I can explain. I didn’t do anything—“

“You dare speak to me without being addressed?” Astarion hisses, striding forwards and shoving you aside so he stands directly in front of Lucas. Lucas’s face is a portrait of shock at this sudden change in manner.

“What— no, I— please, my lord, you can’t do this!”

“Wrong, boy. I can do whatever I want.” The look of malignance on his face is enough to strike terror into even the stoutest of hearts.

“I beg you, Astarion—“ you begin, placing a placating hand on his arm, but Lucas is struggling against his magical binds in earnest now and shouts over your attempts at peacemaking.

“Let me go! It’s—it’s already over! I’ve got her letters out— people will come! And—and my sister will alert the guards if I’m not back tonight, she knows everything—“

Oh, sweet, stupid Lucas, you think, your heart breaking at his naivety. His attempts at lying his way out of this are as unsubtle as they are obviously false, but he has unwittingly given Astarion more fuel for whatever torture he must have in store. Astarion notices, of course, and gives a low, evil chuckle.

“A sister, you say? My, my, that would be fun. What do you say, wife? Shall we make a pretty little sister for you to play with? Another pretty neck for me to feed on? Another pretty body for my bed?”

Lucas’ face drains of all colour as he realises his mistake. “No. No!” He strains against his invisible restraints, his arms and neck growing red as if he is thrashing against ropes or hands that hold him fast. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” he shouts, spittle flying from his lips in his panic, fear and rage breaking his voice. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”

Astarion raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, and casts another spell. Lucas’s yells are cut off, although you can still see his lips moving, face growing red, eyes brimming with tears of frustration. You cannot take your eyes off of his still and silent rampage, knowing that all this wrath is your fault.

“Please don’t kill him,” you whisper, a lump in your throat restricting the strength of your voice. You know that nothing you say will have any sway, but you have to try. “He’s good. He’s kind. He didn’t want any of this.”

“Do you remember, my love, when I told you that I would kill anyone who ever tried to take you from me?”

You nod morosely, your gaze not moving from Lucas.

“I lied. This boy tried to take you from me, but I will not kill him.”

This gives you pause, and your eyes flick to your husband. It’s a trick. It always is. But you still cannot help but hope and play along with his game.

“And you won’t hurt him? You can do what you want to me. I'll do anything. But don't hurt him.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t?”

“Oh, don’t look so surprised. You always did have a way with words. You beg so beautifully. And you’re quite right; the boy is sweet. Spirited. I find myself rather fond of him. So innocent, so full of promise. No, you don’t need to worry. I won't lay a finger on him.”

He gives you a smile so charming that your own lips twitch upwards in response. You’re paralysed by the tenderness in his gaze and do not move as he plants a gentle kiss on your forehead. You remain stock still, eyes following his movement as he makes his way towards the door. You are waiting for him to strike. You cannot trust him.

He opens the door, steps into the doorway, then turns back to look at you once more. He clicks his fingers. You hear movement and cursing behind you, and your head snaps back to Lucas, who is sprawled on the floor, seemingly having regained his voice and use of his limbs mid-struggle. You turn back to the doorway in time to see a sliver of a smile, far less tender, far less loving, before the door shuts and is locked with a click.

Chapter Text

You heard the lock click into place, but that doesn’t stop you from dashing to the door and trying the handle. It is shut fast. You turn back to Lucas, who has got to his feet and is now standing, unsteady, and looking at you with such a tumultuous face that you can almost feel his inner turmoil from across the room.

“He’s just… gone?” he asks. 

You nod.

“But why? Why’s he just left us here?”

It’s a question that you don’t think you want to answer, so you deflect. “Do you have any idea how to pick a lock?”
 
“I mean, I could give it a shot, but it’s not like I carry lock-picks around with me. Do you?”

You sigh. “I do not.”

“Maybe the windows—“

“They’ll be locked.”

“So? They’re made of glass.” He walks to the window and pulls open the curtains, causing you to once more press yourself against the far wall to avoid the light that spills into the room. “We just need to—“

You see what he is planning to do a moment too late. Your eyes go wide and you let loose a cry of “Stop!” just as he pulls his arm into his chest and then punches his elbow through the window pane with all the force he can muster.

The fragile pane shatters. Lead strips crack. Glass explodes in glittering fragments in the air. Time seems to slow as you watch the sparkling shards catch the bright sunlight outside, sending brilliant reflections dancing around the room. Some of the specks of light land on your face, your arms, your breast, sparking sizzling jolts of pain across your skin.

You wince. The pieces of glass begin to fall. Dagger-sharp flakes dash against golden skin. Small cuts slash into being. Tiny beads of blood blossom along each laceration. You instinctively hold your breath. You force yourself to freeze. You swear you can taste it already.

“Stay in the light,” you say, your voice low and deadly soft, taking care not to use too much air. It is a faint hope that it will be enough to save him, but it is all you have.

“What?”

“Stay. In. The. Light.”

“What— what’s happening?”

It is too late to respond. Speech is beyond you now. You barely understand the sounds coming from his lips. They are merely the mewlings of prey.

No, you think to yourself. You try to focus on anything else. On the rainbows shimmering across the mosaic of broken glass that decorates the plush carpet. On the golden motes of dust dancing on the gentle gusts that twirl in through the newly broken window.

But those gusts of air carry the scent of blood to your nostrils, and draw your attention back to the very thing you are desperately trying to pretend is not there.

The man. The boy. The bloodied prey.

He cringes into the light as though it might protect him. He is a fool. It will offer him no shelter. It is all the better to see him in. Oh, it will hurt you, of course, but pain is nothing to you. Pain is a part of you. Pain is your entire existence. At least this pain will taste so, so sweet.

No, you think to yourself. He is Lucas. He is good. He is kind. He is sweet. He does not deserve this. He—

—is made of flesh that cries out to be sundered. He is hot red meat wrapped in sweat-drenched gilded skin. He is tendons to chew on and bones to crunch between your long-starved jaws.

You screw your eyes shut. You try again. He is Lucas. He is kind. He—

—is arteries begging to be ruptured and organs waiting to be burst and veins craving the ripping of teeth—

—No, he is Lucas, and— 

—he is quarry. He is lowly. He is yours to take. You are filled with a vertiginous thrill as the room spins around you. Your thoughts are severed, scattered, distant. They belong to someone else. You are not a creature of thought, but a creature of feelings, of senses, of pain and exhilaration and hunger. And you are starving. The stench of blood fills your nostrils, overwhelms you, and your vision clouds sanguine-red, then black. Instinct takes over. You hunt.

Your skin erupts in a fire hotter than the hells. Your grasping hands find twisting flesh and grab, pull, and sink into straining muscles and struggling limbs. Your maw splits open and you plunge sharp fangs into waiting meat. Blood bursts forth on your tongue, and the taste is bliss like nothing you have ever endured. It is almost painful in its perfection. All-encompassing. Sublime. Supreme.

You drink, and you drink, and you drink.

You drink until finally you have had your fill. You are gorged. You are sated.

And then the red recedes from your mind, clearing your vision, leaving you reeling. A spluttering sound comes from somewhere, dragging you back to reality. You are suddenly, dreadfully aware of yourself. Aware of the red slickness of your hands, the dripping of gore from your chin, and the devastating taste of blood on your tongue. You are on your knees, just at the shadowed edge of the pool of sunlight filtering in through the window. Lucas lies before you, half-lit, half-shaded, his breathing ragged and uneven, his bloodshot eyes filled with more hatred than you have ever seen. They meet yours and lock you in a stare so brutal that you cannot even think of trying to break your gaze.

“Stay… away,” he coughs out, the effort of speech draining his breath faster than his broken lungs can cope with. You shake your head and reach to him, although you do not know how you can fix this. He wheezes and twitches away from you, forcing out more speech even as his breaths echo with death’s rattle. “Stay… away… from her. From Säde.”

Your eyes blur with tears, breaking the stare between the two of you. You try to blink them away, try to take stock of his state, try to figure out how to help him, to show him that you are not the monster he believes.

When your eyes clear, you take in the body before you in full. His neck is a bloody, gory mess, and though you can still see the remnants of a heartbeat in the blood pulsing ever so faintly from his wounds, when you look back at his face you see that his eyes are glazed, sightless, dead. 

He is gone.

He's gone, and it's all your fault. Your mind, for once, is clear enough to fully understand what you have done. The emotions you feel are as sharp and raw as knives after having been dulled for so long. The tears that you tried to banish come back with a vengeance. Your lip trembles, and though the sounds that escape your mouth are full of woe, the grief that builds within you is not at all relieved by their release. 

You hear the door click open.

"Sleep," says a voice, and darkness claims you once more.

Chapter Text

“Wake,” you hear from the darkness, and your eyes flicker open.

You are on the settee that Astarion placed Lucas on earlier. Before—

No. You won’t think about before. Not yet.

It’s hard to avoid, though. You do not know how much time has passed, but it can’t have been much. The glow of daylight is still bright around the edge of the now-drawn curtains on the window. The blood on your hands has grown sticky, viscous, but not yet dried. Your eyes flick over to where the body—his body— should be, but it is gone. There's no pretending that you didn't do it, though. If your hands weren’t already painted with your guilt, the pool of blood on the floor is proof enough of your misdeeds. You shut your eyes to the scene.

The emotions that had been snuffed out by sleep rush back into wakefulness, and you cannot keep the tremble from your breath. Tears well and begin to seep from your closed eyelids, and after a few more shaky breaths you break down into sobs. They wrack your body, curling your limbs in on yourself until you are tucked tight in a ball of grief, knees hugged to your chest, arms wrapped around yourself in search of comfort that you know you will not find and you do not deserve. You are hopeless. You are hateful. This is hell.

You feel a hand on your shoulder. Opening your eyes but keeping your head down, you see a pair of elegant shoes and know that your husband is standing beside you. You close your eyes again. You do not want to see him.

“Don’t cry, darling,” he says, his voice gentle and soothing, his thumb rubbing your shoulder consolingly. The touch is almost loving until he adds, “You look so dreadful when you cry.”

You stop crying, although there was no command in his words. You stop crying because you no longer feel sad. All of your sadness has frozen, in an instant, into an icy storm of rage. 

“Don’t touch me,” you seethe, glaring up at him to see that he is smirking at you.

“There's no shame in the hunger, my love. You should embrace it. It's what separates us from them.”

“I hate it.” You slap his hand away from you. His eyes flash, but his smirk remains in place.

“You’ll learn to love it with time and practice,” he says, moving to stand in front of you and taking your face in his hands. When you try to jerk away he tightens his grip, fingertips digging into cheekbones and chin, forcing you to maintain eye contact with him. “Maybe you’d like to practice some more on the boy’s sister, hm? Should I have her fetched from whatever hole they call home and brought here for you to feast on?”

You slap him, hard, across the face. Your hand moves before you can even think about what you are doing. Before you can even consider the consequences. Before you can even question whether it would be possible. 

He lets go of your face, but his grin only grows wider, and for some reason that is all it takes to tip you over the edge. You let out a wordless yell of malice and throw yourself at him.

Chapter Text

You never were much of a fighter, but gods damn it, you try. He might have taken your magic from you but he hasn’t yet taken your fists. Occasional sparks of sorcery fizzle and die at your fingertips in a mockery of the wild arcane surges that used to be at your command, as if to remind you of everything you’ve lost. You strike out with punches and slaps and scratching nails in a clumsy flurry of blows as he dances away from you around the room, laughing at your anger, goading you on further. You know deep down that with his ascended strength and speed every hit you land on him is a hit he lets you take, and that fact only drives you wilder with rage.

“Oh, I’ve missed this,” he taunts as he dodges a claw to the face.

“I’ll kill you,” you spit back at him, relishing the power of your enmity towards him. How long had he kept you starving, and small, and weak? How many days, how many months of bitterness do you have to make up for? You know you should feel remorse for the blood that courses through you, but the strength it begets thrills you. Regret can come later. Now is the time for revenge.

“Darling,” he purrs as you swipe at his neck, “I would love to see you try.”

He steps between two of your swings and fists a hand in the hair at the base of your skull, pulling you to him and smashing his lips against yours in a brutal kiss of teeth and tongue. He ignores your unwillingness, tongue plunging past pursed lips, and pays no mind to your scrabbling hands scratching at him until one of them catches on a delicate elfin ear and yanks with all the might you can muster. He snarls in pain, pushing you away from him. You pull your arm back to strike him once more, but he catches your wrist and then moves towards you again, flicking a leg behind yours and half-tripping, half-pushing you backward roughly onto the floor.

You land with a breathless wheeze as the air is knocked from your lungs, and wince as you feel shards of glass from the broken window digging into your back. You’ve landed in the still-wet patch of blood, and you feel it seeping into your clothes, cloying against your skin, filling your nostrils with its rich and heavy scent. Astarion lands on top of you, catching both your arms as you lash out at him, pinning them above your head. His eyes are full of feral fire, and you know what is to come. Still, the fight has not gone out of you yet. Though you struggle uselessly to release your arms from his grip, your legs are still very much free and kicking, battling against his free hand as he tries to work his way through your skirts. He pins one leg down with his knee, and you yelp as he puts some of his weight on it, pushing your leg down into the glass-scattered carpet.

“I hate you,” you say through gritted teeth, twisting and lashing out with all your might.

“I can't say I like you much either right now, pet,” he replies, “but by the gods, I've never wanted you more.”

He’s finally found his way through your skirts to your underwear, and as he brushes his fingers against your core he lets out a low chuckle. “And it seems the feeling is mutual. Gods, you’re saturated. You depraved little beast.”

“Fuck you,” you hiss, still struggling as he rips the sodden garment from you, balling it in his first.

“Now, now, darling. Mind your language. Here,” he says, a jeering smile spreading across his lips as he shoves your torn knickers into your mouth, muffling the curses you are trying to spit at him. “Much better.”

Letting out a gagged shriek of disgust, you flail your free leg at him, frenzied in your desire to make this as difficult as possible. You might not be able to stop him, but you’ll hurt him if you can.

“Enough,” he snarls, evidently tiring of your frantic endeavours. “Lie still.”

And with those two words, he shows you that all of this was no more than a game to him. Your limbs go limp, no longer straining against his holds on you, and your body relaxes into the damp floor. He pushes your legs wider, lines himself up with your entrance, and pushes himself into you.

You hate the way your body sings out as he fills you. Hate the way your eyes want to roll back in the ecstasy of his movements. Hate that the vile curses that were being muffled in your mouth have morphed into low moans of pleasure. He drinks in the dismay on your face as you are reduced to a barely resisting mess beneath him.

“Don’t you want to come, pet?” he croons as he pumps in and out of you, rolling his hips, hitting the soft and sensitive parts of you that send lightning sparks of pleasure branching outwards from your core. You can just manage to use your lax muscles to shake your head softly. “I don’t believe you,” he whispers with a smile.

You had been trying to ignore the inexorably building heat between your legs, but now he moves his hand to circle your clit with just the right amount of pressure to make climax imminent. There’s no escaping it. He watches hungrily as you fight the pleasure, writhing faintly, closing your eyes tight as if shutting out the world might also help shut out the sensations that shimmer through your body. It’s no use. Your release comes over you and you let out a raw and reluctant cry, clenching around him, your hips gently bucking against your will in an attempt to pull him deeper. He continues to fuck you, maintaining a languid pace as you twitch and contract on his cock.

“Has that made your manners any sweeter?” he asks when the ripples of your climax finally fade, reaching into your mouth and pulling out the impromptu gag.

“Fuck you, you fucking bastard.”

He tuts, runs a hand through the pool of congealing blood that you lie in, and then shoves two blood-coated fingers into your cursing mouth. You hate yourself for the fact that the instant you taste the blood your lips latch around him, sucking the intoxicating liquid off of them willingly. The sensation makes him groan and pick up his pace, his hips snapping against you with increasing ferocity, quickly forcing you once more to the edge of ecstasy. 

You feel him starting to come undone, his pace faltering, and the twitching of his cock inside you is enough to tear another orgasm from you. He collapses, panting, onto his forearms, caging you in close to him. When the haze of lust clears from his eyes, he looks intently at you, letting out a breathless laugh.

“I thought all the fight had gone out of you, pet. I should have known it would only take a little bit of killing to bring it back again.”

“I hate you,” you whisper to him, as feelings of regret and remorse and shame take the place of the rage that had been carrying you.

“Oh, darling, you wound me. You’ll remember soon enough that you love me. That there’s no one else out there for you. I’ll kill them all if that’s what it takes. I would burn the entire Sword Coast to the ground for you, my treasure. Or perhaps I’ll have you kill them. You’ve done such a wonderful job so far.”

You shake your head. “I will always hate you for this.”

He laughs. “Don’t lie, darling. You will always love me. You forget that I was a spawn once too. There is no denying the love a creation feels for its master. You cannot avoid it. Tell me. Tell me that you love me.”

“I love you,” you say, the command in his voice forcing the words from your unwilling lips. Still, you load the phrase with all the venom you feel for him. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe there will always be some sad, hopeful part of me that loves you. But I couldn’t love you any less than I do now.”

Astarion tuts, pouting sarcastically. “So cruel. Let’s just hope the boy didn’t get the message out to any of our old friends, hm? I would so hate to see them meet the same end as your young hero.” He lets out another cruel, high laugh, as if reveling in the sickening images he has conjured in your mind, then he lifts himself off of you. You notice no cuts on his arms or knees, despite knowing that you have been peppered with them from lying in the remnants of the smashed window pane. Your body is still limp from his command, and instead of releasing you, he bends to lift you into his arms. Another display of the power he has over you, another display of his strength when he lifts you as if you weigh nothing. Your insides writhe with loathing.

“I’m so glad you’re back to your normal self, my love,” he says as he carries you from the room of your crime. “Forever could get terribly boring with a broken toy for company.”

Chapter Text

“Good morning, my sweet,” is not a phrase that should make your blood run colder than it already is, but this morning it does. You doubt there will be anything particularly good about this morning, and the man whispering the words into your ear knows nothing of sweetness anymore. Besides, you had been having a wonderfully bloody dream about the various ways to kill an ascended vampire, and you are annoyed that this velvet voice has pulled you from your violent fancies.

You roll over to stare the monster in his face. He is lounging on his side on the bed, head resting on a bent elbow, posed like a besotted lover daydreaming of their sweetheart. The fact that he feels safe enough - comfortable enough - to sleep beside you when it is your dearest wish to wipe his existence from the world riles you instantly.

“Is it?” you ask. He said he missed the fight in you. Well, you hope he’s ready because you’re done taking his abuses lying down.

He smiles at your waspishness as he rises and begins to dress. “Hold on to that temper, my love. You’ll need it to get through your punishment.”

Your face falls at this. More punishment? Astarion seems to read your thoughts because he chuckles.

“Surely you didn’t think yesterday was a punishment? My dear, yesterday was a gift . A treat. A feast. I mean, look at you now. Radiant. Glowing. Beautiful.”

“I only look like I’m not starving anymore. A mere respite from starvation is hardly a gift befitting a lord as great as you.” You are not subtle in your sarcasm, but he doesn’t seem affected by it.

“Starving? Please. You choosing to be hungry is hardly my fault.”

“Choosing? You stopped the servants from giving me blood!”

He laughs bitterly. “Gods, what a spoiled little thing you are. I’ve clearly been too good to you. You’ve lost your grit.” His lip curls in disgust. “I endured a diet of rats and bugs for two hundred years , and yet you tell me that I starved you because I didn’t serve you the choicest blood on a damned silver platter?”

You stare at him, shock rippling through you in icy waves. “You want me to have to eat vermin?”

“I want you to know what I went through. You will never be great until you’ve suffered as I suffered.”

You are silent. There it is, then. The confirmation of the truth that you’ve been denying since the night you gave yourself to him. He wants you to suffer by his hand as he suffered under Cazador. You cannot think of any words with which to respond to this revelation. Now that it’s there in front of you, you can’t believe you have been pretending it isn’t so for so long. He’d outright told you that he dreamed of castigating the world, but in your addled state, you’d written it off as the drunken ramblings of a power-hungry lord. You’ve been clinging on to scraps of decency and hope - that night when he saved you from the Flaming Fist, that morning when he seemed to become his old self when he held the flail - as if they were lifelines that could lead you back to the man you had once loved, and now you know they were nothing more than figments. Dreams of a reality that will never come to pass. Glimpses into a lost world in which you made better choices.

“You think suffering made you great?” is all that you can think to say.

“Of course it did. Look at me.” He’s fully dressed now, and at his words, he turns to admire his reflection in the mirror.

“What about your siblings? Didn’t they suffer just as much as you? Where are they now?”

He lets out an angry hiss of air between his teeth.

“You know, darling, every time I think this might be hard, you go and say something that makes it oh so easy .” He moves towards the door. “Come with me.”

“I need to dress,” you say, faltering, although your body is already pushing itself out of bed on his command. You need to stall. You do not know what horrors he has in store for you, but perhaps you can hold him off for long enough that Gale finally comes to your rescue. That hadn’t been a dream too, had it? He had promised, hadn’t he?

Or had it just been another figment? A falsehood created by your broken mind to try to ease the pain of your cursed existence?

“Don’t bother. Your clothes won’t matter where we’re going.” He smiles, and his mask is so perfectly formed that it looks welcoming as he holds a delicate hand out to you. “Come, my love.”

You go with him.

Chapter Text

You follow Astarion through dimly lit corridors, deeper into the bowels of your grand house. Your scrap of a nightgown offers scant protection from the cool air. Since feeding so thoroughly every sensation seems to be increased a thousandfold, and your body prickles with cold, skin bumping and hairs standing on end. Still, every tenebrous shadow and every slightly swaying curtain that you pass hold a shade of hope: surely this obscured spot is the place from which your saviours will spring; surely that murky alcove is the perfect place to stage an ambush.

The further you walk, the more hope is whittled down to dust. No heroes come to your rescue.

You come to a stop in the middle of a corridor that feels vaguely familiar, although you cannot recall the last time you came so deep into the house. You’re so far down that there are no windows to block, and the air is still and filled with the kind of chill that you only feel when you are far beneath the ground. The silence is that of the tomb.

You look around, uncertain as to why you’ve halted in the middle of a seemingly empty corridor. No doors line the walls. There’s nothing here.

Astarion sees your confusion and purses his lips in something that isn’t quite a smirk.

“You don’t remember, then,” he says.

You shake your head, although there is a memory lurking just out of reach in your mind, haunting and ominous in its nature. If you could only recall when it was that you had been here before–

“No matter. After today, you’ll never forget.” The smile on his lips is cold, and his eyes are clouded and faraway. He presses his hand against the wall, caressing the stone with an almost wistful air, causing a hidden door to slide open. When he turns to beckon you in, he seems to look right through you.

Your stomach tightens. The memory creeps forwards in your mind. As you step over the threshold, shaking in your nightdress, the name for the place in which you stand is finally revealed to you as the fog of the past recedes.

The kennels.

Chapter Text

“Don’t do this.” Your voice is weaker than you hoped it would be, the request sounding desperate even to your own ears as you take in the room around you and tremble. It seems only moments ago you were burning with a fiery anger, but since the moment you stepped over the threshold you feel nothing but cold dread.

“Do you know,” he says, his voice light, conversational, and entirely at odds with the setting, “I never wanted to do this. Never planned on it. I really did think that you would already be perfect for me.” He walks to you, takes you by the wrist, and leads you into the middle of the room. Chains hang from the ceiling, and he reaches for one, pulling it down with one hand while keeping hold of your wrist in the other. When you see what he plans to do your eyes grow wide and you fight to break his grip on you, but his strength is too great. He only tightens his hold on you until you are sure that the bones in your wrist are about to snap beneath his fingers, and watches you with a detached sort of interest, one eyebrow raised, face otherwise impassive as he continues to talk.

“But you've shown me that you cannot be trusted. You tried to run from me. And as I cannot trust you, I need to ensure that there are other measures in place.”

When you stop struggling for fear of your wrist being broken, he pulls a cuff onto it and fixes it in place with an echoing metal click, then moves on to the next wrist, affixing it in the same way.

“What are you going to do to me?” you ask quietly. You don't even know if you want the answer, but you think the anticipation is more than you can bare.

“I'm going to bind you to me. Not in the way that I was bound, of course - nothing so infernal as that. You were not made to be sacrificed, after all, my love." He pauses to smile at you, brushing a finger down your cheek affectionately. "You were made to be mine.”

He leaves you chained in the middle of the room and walks to a table pushed against a wall. On it lies a book that glows with a familiar and sickly amethyst light. You swear you can almost hear the whispers of the souls trapped within its pages from where you stand. The Necromancy of Thay.

You shake your head, almost muted by the fear of what is to come. You have only attempted to read that book once, and the malevolent energies that took a hold of you were almost fathomless in their power. Whatever he has planned, if it combines his own unholy powers with the profane magic contained within the book, it will surely be an evil unlike anything you have faced before.

“Don't do this,” you say, your voice barely more than a whisper now.

“Come now, darling. You'll survive. I did. After all, it’s hardly fair that I’m the only one who bears scars, is it? So I will bind you to me in blood and in soul, with the book you gave me and the power I took for myself. Wherever you go, I will see you. You can run from me all you like. I will be able to track you to the very edges of the realm. No mountain pass nor stormy sea nor dark forest will hide you from me. We will be bound forevermore.

“Only a necessity, you see, because you tried to run. Try to remember that, my darling, when you are in the throes of this unfortunate agony. Remember that this could have been avoided. Remember that you chose this.”

And that’s when he produces the knife.

Chapter Text

You recognise the blade from that day that you've replayed over and over in your mind. The day you gave the man you loved everything he asked for and lost everything about him that you loved. The day you've wished so hard had never happened. The day you've tried so desperately to forget, even though you still feel reverberations of the sensations from that dreadful moment in the quiet space between waking and sleeping. The taste of blood and fear and power. The cold vastness of the air on your skin and Cazador’s screams in your ears.

“Don't. Astarion, don't. Please. Don't.” 

“Shh, now,” he says, circling around you, twisted knife in hand, until he's so far behind you that he's out of eyeshot from the way your chains hold you in place. “It's far too late for that.”

“Please, Astarion.” Your pleas carry a manic edge now. “There won't be any coming back from this. Please.”

He tuts. “That's the problem with you, my love. You're always looking back. Why would I want to come back from this? This will move us forward.”

“Please–”

You feel the cold of the metal pressing against your back, not yet firmly enough to break through your skin. You go still and quiet under threat of its touch. One wrong move and you could pierce yourself with its edge.

Time seems to slow and sound seems to amplify, a terrifying rushing building in your ears as your thoughts move sluggishly from the fear that floods your brain. You feel as though you stand on the precipice of some monumental shift in fortunes. You hear Astarion take in a deep breath behind you, and if you didn't know better you might swear you heard a tremble in his inhale.

Then you feel the pain. Slow, steady pain, bleeding out from the point of the knife that he carves through the flesh of your back. You feel it abstractly for a moment or two until the shock wears off and the sensation hits you with force. You let out an inhuman noise, somewhere between a keen and a yelp, and instinctively try to twitch away from the source of your torture. Muscles strain and chains rattle but you barely move at all.

“Don't move, darling,” says Astarion, his voice flat as he concentrates fully on the bloody canvas before him. “These runes might not be infernal, but they're no easier to carve. I'd hate to have to start over again.”

You cannot find words to reply - your mind has been reduced to a single sharp edge of suffering - so you let out a scream. It rebounds off the cold stone walls, amplified by their closeness, by the silence that otherwise fills this place, by the ghosts of tortures long since passed.

“That's right, my darling,” says the man who wields the knife. “Sing for me, my love.”

An eternity passes. Your screams are ground down into hoarse whimpers of defeat, your throat too raw to express your anguish any longer. The pain frays the edges of your mind as you unravel into the depths of your master’s torment. You enter a dreamy, trance-like state; an escape from the cold, echoing horror of the kennels in which you hang.

Eventually, the pain seems to force you from your own body. You feel the knife in his hand as if it were in your own, and some fragment of your mind stirs in recognition, remembrance, regret. You see the unending dance of suffering as it spins out from you, backwards and forwards, past and future, every step he leads you in as predestined as the last.

You think of all the fights that you have ever been in, and how they hardened you. How they gave you an edge. You wonder how that could have been the case when this violence only seems to soften your body and weaken your mind. 

Eventually, your thoughts find their way back to your body, and you realise with a sudden lurch that he is no longer cutting into you. The pain remains, an almost maddening constant of burning, bloody fire, but you manage to scrape together the willpower to form a stuttered question all the same.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I love you.” He answers with a glibness that makes you quite sure he's lying, whether he knows it or not.

You let out a bitter laugh. The sound almost surprises you; you can’t remember the last time you heard it. This pale imitation of yourself has had little cause for laughter since Astarion made you his.

You laugh because he knows nothing about love. Love is dying at the fangs of a monster and begging with your dying breath that your sister be spared. Love is planning the rescue of a friend from the hands of a vampire god despite knowing it could be your doom. Love is pain, perhaps, but a pain inflicted upon yourself, by yourself, because you love some other person enough for the pain to be worthwhile a hundred times over. Love is not causing pain to the object of your affection.

He knows nothing about love.

The thought fills your mind with such conviction that you're almost surprised he cannot hear it echoing off the walls of this hellish cell. 

He circles around your chained and hanging body to face you, and gives you a look that makes the blood freeze in your veins and the laughter die in your throat. Even the fiery wounds on your back cannot stop you from shivering under his dreadful gaze.

“Do you really want to know why I do this, darling?”

Something about the gleam in his eyes makes you think that, for once, you might be about to hear the truth from those beautiful lips. You clench your jaw and nod. He steps close to you, cupping your jaw in his palm, staring at you with such intensity that it is all you can do to not flinch away. He kisses you then, pulling your face violently towards his own, first on the mouth, rough and invasive, before melting into smaller brushes of his lips along your cheekbone. He pauses, his mouth at your ear, the sound and heat of his breath causing you to quiver. Then he speaks the words that you think might cause you more pain than the knife ever did.

“I do this - all of this - because you let me.”

Chapter Text

For a while, the only sound is your breathing, his breaths calm and measured, yours heavy and erratic. Your eyes glaze, and you barely have the strength of will to notice as he slips around behind you, appreciating the masterpiece of flesh and gore that he has created.

“Beautiful,” he whispers.

Your exhales become more forceful, almost rhythmic, and you hate yourself for a moment when you realise that you are about to cry. You despise your weakness.

But the sound that bubbles from your cracked lips isn’t crying. It’s laughter. Back again, after so many months without its sound, it now graces you twice in a single day. And it only builds. You giggle hysterically. Not weak, then; just mad. You are quite mad. He's broken his favourite toy completely and you can't even bring yourself to care. Even the pain that he has wreaked upon your mutilated body seems to be shifting into something more bearable; a shivering sort of hot nausea. Not pleasant - not at all - but not something that will destroy you either.

“Dare I ask what is so funny, my dear?” Astarion’s voice is cold as he moves back around to look you in the face. He hates not knowing why you’re laughing. Hates the idea that you could be laughing at him. The thought only makes you laugh harder. Well, you’re more than happy to share your thoughts with him. After all, what’s he going to do? Torture you? Kill you? Your giggles overcome you entirely for a moment before you calm yourself enough to splutter out a reply.

“You've gone too far this time,” you say, tears of mirth welling in your eyes.

“Too far? I hardly think so.”

Your face is still split open in a hysterical grin. “You'll always be him in my eyes now, do you see? There's no saving me, maybe, you’ll track me to the ends of the earth, sure, but there’s no saving you either. You’ve doomed us both. ”

“What are you talking about?”

You relish the curtness of his tone. You make sure to look him in the eyes before you reply. You want to see how much your words hurt him. There might be no magic left in your voice, but the damage is done nonetheless.

“You’re my Cazador,” you say with a smile.

Chapter Text

The twitch of his jaw must be the most sensuous thing you have ever seen. That tiny flex of muscle, that grind of tooth on tooth, that one inconspicuous proof of his anger is enough to drive you wild. You could watch a thousand sunsets and still not catch one quite so beautiful as the flash of hurt in his ruby-red eyes. The breath hitching in his throat is a love poem so poignant it might move you to tears. You have never felt a joy so pure as the delight you feel at the knowledge that you can still hurt him.

And hurt him you shall. You will maim and maul and mutilate until he is on his knees begging for forgiveness, and he will find there is none left within you. You will bathe in his blood, you will crawl up into his ribs and eat his heart raw, you will garland your house with his guts and pluck out his eyes so he can watch while you dance on his remains. He will learn what happens to those who cross a child of Bhaal. He will pray thanks to your father when you finally land the killing blow, for he will see by then that murder can be his only salvation. Death by your hand will be a divine blessing, and he will make such a pretty corpse. You are filled with glee by the bloody imaginings of your mind. The giggles overflow.

It doesn’t last, of course, because nothing good ever does.

The images in your mind's eye flicker as you watch Astarion regain control of his expression, and then they fade entirely at the sound of his short, cold chuckle.

“Do you really want to play that game, darling?” His voice is deathly dark and dangerous.

Your reply is cracked with a delirious gaiety. “What choice do I have? I made the decision the day I helped you take Cazador’s place. There’s not any changing it now, is there? Would I have done differently if I’d known I’d just end up with a different Cazador with slightly better hair? Maybe—“

Your words are cut off as he grabs you by the throat and squeezes hard, anger flickering across his face once more. Perfection. You wonder what upset him more, the Cazador comparison or the comment on his hair. Your laughter comes out as a wet choking sound. You make sure to maintain eye contact even as black spots appear in your vision.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he seethes. “You think I’m Cazador? Fine.”

He releases you with a violent shove, knocking you off balance and leaving you coughing and hanging painfully by your chained wrists. He moves out of sight again and you hear the screeching drag of wood on stone as he moves something heavy towards you. You think you know what is to come, and you smile at your fate. He wants to seal you away because he is scared of the truths you will say to him, but you know your words will haunt his dreams no matter how deep he tries to bury your body.

The sounds stop, and he walks back into view, the flames of fury still flickering in his eyes as he wordlessly unchains you. When he turns you around with a rough grip on your arm you are not surprised to find yourself facing a casket that has been moved from where it rested against the wall to lie at your feet. You don’t resist as he guides you into it, lying down as he moves you with ungentle hands, watching him with a smirk as he lifts the lid and slides it into place.

As he seals you away, nail by nail, knock by knock, you laugh and laugh and laugh.

Chapter Text

The noises outside your coffin fade long before your laughter dies. You wonder if he stayed to listen. You wonder if he’s still there now. The silence around you is fathoms deep.

You regret, now, that you let him lay you here. What throes of delirium were you in to not notice the roughness of wood against open wounds? You cannot shift even the slightest amount without opening up fresh agonies across your back. You would whimper, you would scream, but the thought of him standing outside of your tomb waiting for you to break is enough to make you grind your teeth and dive deeper into the silence.

You lie still and silent for so long that you think you could be dead were it not for the pain that ignites your whole being. Perhaps the pain is all you are now. Pain, and darkness, and silence.

You wonder what you did to the gods to end up here. You once thought - stupidly - that cutting the bloody cord that tied you to your father had marked an end to your connection with the gods of the realm. Oh, they cropped up here and there on your travels, but you never thought that the likes of Loviatar or Shar would make themselves so intimately known to you. It only shows how foolish you were. The Maiden of Pain and the Lady of Loss have certainly blessed you recently.

You wonder if you could embrace their attentions. Shar’s gift of forgetfulness holds more than a little appeal. Cleansing yourself of the guilt of your past would be a boon indeed. No more guilt for the thousand sins you committed in your father's name; no more guilt for the thousands of souls you doomed for love; no more guilt for the sweet young saviour that you feasted upon in your hunger—nothing but darkness of heart, mind and soul. Nothing of you left at all.

You tell yourself that you are not mad for wanting it.

You tell yourself that only a madwoman would think herself not mad in a situation like this.

You tell yourself that maybe you are mad, then. Anyone would go mad in here. Although here seems to change. Sometimes the darkness is so small you can feel it pressing in against you, crushing you, squeezing the air from your lungs, every nerve in your body bludgeoned from the pressure of its weight. Sometimes the darkness is so vast that the air is too thin to be able to catch your breath as it rushes out to fill the incomprehensibly boundless black that you float within.

Sometimes there are voices in the vastness. At first, you think it is him sending you messages through magic because the voice sounds so familiar. It says darling, you are made of sin, and I will be your salvation. He is not wrong, you think. You are made of sin. You are guilt personified. Another voice joins the first, rougher, more youthful, saying things like you killed me, you killed me, I tried to save you and you killed me, you monster, and again you cannot deny it. The voices of your friends join the chorus, whispering we forgot you and we’re not coming and none of us ever wanted you around anyway, stay with him, he’s the only one for you. True, true, true, you think, even as tears fill your eyes at their words. And even if it weren’t true, your hunger means you can never be around them again. Not when you’ve proven yourself to be so weak at resisting the urge to feed.

The moment you think of hunger it becomes all-consuming. It is an entirely different sensation from the sharp pain that needles and threads across your back in Astarion’s tapestry of torment. This hunger is a pain of pressure, of ripening, of growing ever larger. Your back, at least, will heal one day, blood scabbing over, open wounds knitting back together into pearly white flesh, forever tender and smooth to the touch. Your hunger will never heal. It will only increase. With every breath, it seems to burn hotter, brighter, a boiling acid melt of agony in the pit of your stomach. It swells even as your body withers around it. You try to distract yourself. You think of death.

When the voices fade, you think you are alone, until you are not. There is something in the darkness with you. Sometimes they are bugs. You are quite sure you can feel them, although you couldn’t say how they got in here with you. Sometimes a moth comes, drawn to the flames of your sightless eyes, fluttering and flickering around your face, wing beats thrumming in your ears, all gentlest touch and softest whispers, dusty wings tickling maddeningly as they brush against the downy-soft hairs on your face in its trembling airborne dance. Sometimes the bugs are heavier, weightier things, creatures with pin-prick legs and chitinous shells, chittering and clambering over your naked skin, biting and burrowing in the gaps between fingers and toes, under eyelids, beneath your tongue. The space is too tight to move your arms and hands to brush them off, and you know that if you open your mouth to scream more might climb inside, so all you can do is close your eyes and scream inside your mind.

The only thing worse than the feeling of them on you - in you - is the loneliness you feel when they disappear. You mourn their company. You whisper for them to come back. You beg them not to leave you. The darkness whispers back to you. More voices. More pain. More creeping, clawing things in the black. More darkness. More voices. More pain.

It goes on and on and on.

Eventually, though, there is acceptance. You are dead, or close enough to it that you might as well let go. You can stop being. Stop existing. Stop. Stop.

Then there is nothing but the darkness, and time stretching on into infinity.

And then, finally, there is light.

Chapter Text

It is a strange sensation, knowing with all that is left of the logic and reason in your mind that you despise someone so completely, and yet feeling such a rush of gladness when you see them standing in front of you. The dim candlelight is blinding to your squinting eyes, but you still recognise the silhouette of the man who levers the wood from the front of your casket as the man you loved and hate the most.

“Did you miss me, darling?”

You feel your lip tremble, and you bite it hard to stop yourself from crying. You don’t even know if the rush of emotions that you feel is relief at your release or sorrow for the end of the peace you had finally carved out for yourself in the darkness.

“Come on. Get up.”

He squats down, grasps your forearm and pulls, his new strength dragging you into a sitting position with ease. The scabs on your back tear free of the wood they have fused to, ripping open half-healed wounds and causing you to cry out in pain. Suddenly everything is too much - the hot sticky burning of your back, the bright glaring light of the candles, the loudness of his voice after the repose of silence - and your cry of pain gives way to sad, small sobs.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he says, sounding bored. “Are you really crying? You know, I only left you in there for a few days. Maybe a tenday at most. Gods above, I got shut away for a year. Do you see now how much better I am to you? If you’re good for me going forward you need never see how much worse it could be.” His words do nothing to comfort you and your quiet crying continues. He’s irritated now, his lip curling in disappointment. “Stop it. I know you’re stronger than this.”

“You think I’m stronger than this?” Your voice wobbles. You make an effort to stem the flow of tears, to kindle the anger that his words spark within you, but it’s like trying to get damp wood to take a flame. “How could you possibly know? You killed the person you think you know. The person who loved you. She gave herself to you entirely and you destroyed her. She's dead because of you. You put what was left of her in a gods damned coffin.” You hit the side of the casket weakly to illustrate your point, blinking away the tears and glaring at Astarion. “And now whatever is left is a monster just like you, and I pray for the day that someone finally kills us both.”

“Are you actually so eager for death?” He’s smirking now, all disappointment gone. “No gods would welcome you in the afterlife.”

“I don't care. I'd take an eternity of nothingness if it meant this whole game came to an end. Oblivion would be a mercy.”

“You want oblivion?” He sounds amused at your despondency. You nod.

“I can’t do this anymore, Astarion. I don’t want to do this anymore. I'm so tired of this cycle of feeling like I'm finally winning some tiny bit of my life back only to have you crush it in front of me for your own amusement.”

“I never wanted it to be like this either, darling. Never thought I'd have to do these things.” He sighs with such melancholy that you almost believe him, until he adds, “I thought you’d be worthier.”

You want to feel rage at that, but you only feel a bone-deep tiredness. “I hope I die soon. I just want it to end.”

He looks at you for a moment, as if weighing up something in his mind before speaking.

“I can do that for you, darling, if you really want me to. I could make it all better. Is that what you want?”

You nod. Of course, there will be strings. Of course, it will be a trick. A deal with a devil would have better terms than a pact with your husband, but you are too burned out to care.

“Then ask nicely, pet.”

Of course he would make you beg. He’d had you on your knees to accept your undeath, hadn’t he? Why would your true death be any different? “Please,” you whisper, worried that any louder sounds from your lips will swiftly devolve back into sobs.

“Very well, my treasure. As you asked so nicely. Shh, now.” He pushes you back gently until you’re lying on your back in the coffin once more, wincing as your back hits the wood. He kneels next to you, then holds you loosely by the throat with one hand while the other brushes the hair from your face with such loving consideration that you could almost forget that he has just agreed to kill you. The hand around your throat is unnecessary, you think. You won’t change your mind. You won’t struggle. You’ve been waiting for this escape for a long, long time. You can hardly believe that he has offered to do this - hardly believe that he has agreed to end it - but even disbelief requires more energy than you have to give.

It must be a closing act of cruelty of his that he keeps you waiting that bit longer, stroking your hair and outlining the features of your face with gentle fingers. Only when he is satisfied with this final cataloguing of your appearance does he meet your eyes, and you know that it is time at last. You wonder how he will do it. A bite? A knife? You hold his stare. You won’t shy away from it now. Besides, you think he will like to watch as the life in your eyes is snuffed out.

He licks his lips and opens his mouth. Bite it is, then. It feels fitting. But he does not lean forward; does not lunge for your neck. Instead, with his eyes still boring into yours, he says a single word.

“Forget.”

There is a moment - a fraction of a moment - in which your brain recognises the betrayal and seethes with rage. That is not what I wanted, that is not what I asked for, that is not what I meant. But before the thoughts can even fully form - before you can mourn the loss of the death that was promised to you - the command takes hold of you, and your mind goes beautifully, blissfully blank.

Chapter Text

The first thing you know is darkness.

There is breathing in the darkness. You are breathing in the darkness. So, you exist. That is good to know. What’s less good is the painful feeling in your gut, like you are starving, although the thought of food makes you strangely nauseous. Your back hurts as well, in an aching, almost ticklish way that you somehow know comes from deep wounds beginning to heal.

You open your eyes - yes, they exist, too - and find that you are not actually floating in darkness, but rather lying on your side in bed. An extremely comfortable bed, you realise, as you become aware of your naked limbs touching soft silken bedding. You are in a lavishly furnished room; vast oil paintings cover richly papered walls; gold-framed mirrors are incandescent in the light of a huge chandelier that hangs from the ceiling; the air is filled with the scent of cardamom and rose oil.

You are not sure who or where you are, but it seems you have expensive tastes.

“Good morning,” says a voice like velvet.

You feel movement on the bed behind you, and you’re suddenly awfully aware that you are not alone. You turn with wide eyes and see, lying beside you, the most beautiful man you have ever seen. His deep red eyes gleam like jewels under heavy eyelids, creases of warmth gathering at their edges as he looks at you with a smile. His lips are full, and even curved up at the edges as they currently are they carry a hint of a pout, a promise of kisses, a softness that invites your imagination to dream of them pressing breathlessly against your bare skin. He is at the very least shirtless - you dare not let your mind wander to what might be happening beneath the tangle of silk sheets that pool around his waist - and his torso is that of a sculpture, all hard muscles and impossibly smooth pale skin.

He is resplendent. He is glorious. He is so beautiful that the first thing you think - rather than who is this man and what in the hells is he doing in my bed - is gods, but he is beautiful. The other thoughts come tumbling after, awkward and jarring, but they are easy to ignore as you drink in the sight of the man before you.

You open your mouth to speak, but cannot find any words willing to come. A frown creases his perfect forehead when he notices your stupefaction.

“Are you alright, darling?”

You swallow, and blink, and still cannot conjure any speech. You shake your head dumbly. 

“Oh no. It’s happened again, hasn’t it? Your memories? Do you… do you know who I am?”

His eyebrows raise slightly in concern, and his eyes widen with the anticipation of grief.  Gods, he was beautiful enough when he was smiling at you, but the portrait of forlornness that he paints now is enough to ruin you. His eyes are so round, his expression so tender and pained, that you think your heart might break if you disappoint him. You cannot bear to look at him but you cannot bear to look away. Still, you could not lie to someone so beautifully perfect, so perfectly beautiful, so you muster all the courage that you can and give your uncertain reply.

“I’m sorry, but I— I don’t think I do.”

Chapter Text

The beautiful man tells you about your lives.

He is Astarion. He is a lord, a leader, a champion. A great hero of Baldur's Gate. You are his wife, and you are very ill. Your sickness is why you can't remember anything. It's why you can't be in the sun, and why your back hurts so much, and why you can only drink certain things - and never eat anything. A liquid diet is very important, it seems.

He brings you a cup of something red which tastes somewhat fruity and somewhat metallic. Sweet wine mixed with something you cannot quite place - you would almost think it was blood, given the viscosity. He doesn't know what it is, exactly, only that the principal apothecaries in the city have all agreed that it is your best chance at getting better.

And it does make you feel better almost the moment the liquid touches your lips. You tell him so, and he smiles. His love for you is so evident in all of his small movements, in every single one of his actions, as well as in the stories that he tells you in that honeyed voice of his. He pours the syrupy copper medicine into your mouth until you are bursting with health; he bids you to rest beside him until you are delightfully refreshed; he asks - with a shyness that makes your heart ache - if he might help you bathe. When you agree, he helps you into the warm tub, pours streams of steaming water over your body, rubs heady scented oils into your skin with his soft palms, and runs delicate fingers through your hair to ease out any tangles.

You tilt your head back and think how good it feels to be clean, and warm, and loved. You can’t imagine you’ve ever appreciated being alive this much.

He admits to you that it hurts knowing that you don't remember him. He worries that it might take years before you remember the love you shared. He worries that you might never fall in love with him again.

“I don’t think you need to worry. I don't think it will take very long to fall in love with you,” you say, eyes closed, lips smiling. “Whenever I look at you - even the first time I saw you - my chest tightens. It's like my body wants me to remember even though my mind can't. And even if I don't remember the times before, won't there be something wonderful in falling in love with you again?”

“You are so perfect,” he says. “You are so beautiful. I'm so lucky to have you.”

You turn around, sending water sloshing in the tub, to look at him where he sits beside the bath. He looks back at you as if you, too, are a creature of breathtaking wonder; as if you’re not something broken; as if he can see how to save you. His eyes smoulder with lust and his desire clogs the air like smoke. You want to breathe him in, to fill yourself with him entirely. You would choke on him if you could.

He raises one eyebrow in subtle question, and you reply with the faintest of nods. He may be a stranger to your mind, but some deeper part of you already knows him; the blood in your veins and the marrow of your bones sing out in reverence at the mere sight of him. He stands and begins unlacing his trousers with steady hands that belie his desperation, all the while never taking his eyes off of your naked form before him. You look up at him from where you kneel in the water and you think to yourself that he is a holy altar made of flesh and bone. You ache to pray before him. Your tongue feels thick in your mouth as you imagine the taste of him.

The moment he steps out of his trousers you reach your arms out, pulling him towards you, your hands trembling with desire. The smell of him fills your nostrils and you think that no mortal could ever smell so enticing. You are in the presence of the divine. You take his length in your palm, looking up at him for confirmation. He nods, and you begin your worship.

You bring his cock to your lips, admiring its beauty, its lustrous sheen, the way it makes you think of flawless pearls and ripe stone fruit, and the way you long to feel its stiffness on your tongue. You lick along the underside, languidly lolling your tongue over its head, delighting in the sea-salt taste of his precum as you lap and suck at him greedily. You hope he can feel your devotion as you slide him into your mouth, hard flesh bruising your soft throat, your eyelids fluttering as you fight to stop the gag. You pull your head back and forth, revelling in the texture of him on the flat of your tongue, in the taste of his desire in your mouth, in the ever-increasing heaviness of his breathing. When you look up at him through your lashes you are not ready for the fiery intensity flashing in his heavy-lidded eyes. 

He has been standing perfectly still, arms by his sides, allowing you to lead this service, but now he puts his hands on your shoulders and gently, firmly, irresistibly pushes you back off him. Saliva strings from his cock to your slicked lips, and he takes your drool-coated chin in his palm, smiling beatifically down at your hazy, lustful expression. He lets you go, pulls his shirt off, and climbs gracefully into the bath with you, pulling you onto his lap. You laugh as water splashes over the sides of the tub and onto the floor, and wrap your limbs around him as he pulls you closer, and do not hold back the moan that builds in your throat when you feel him rubbing his cock along your folds, lining up with your entrance, lowering you slowly down his length. He feels so perfect inside you: he fills you, fulfils you, completes you. You murmur his name again and again in breathless prayers of thanks, of need, of a feeling you can only imagine must be love.

You want more, you want deeper, you want to be body to body, breath to breath. He moves you together, as one, in time with the rhythm of his heartbeat, and the waves you create slap against your bodies and send droplets of rosewater spraying into the perfumed air. You stifle your cries of pleasure in the nape of his neck, and you press tender kisses along his shoulder as he thrusts deeper and deeper, faster and faster inside you. Your hands are full of his silver-white hair. His hands grasp at your back as if he is scared to lose you. Pain blossoms where his fingers dig into wounded skin, but he doesn’t seem to notice, and you don’t want him to let you go.

You are surrounded by warm water, warm skin, warm breath on your neck, more heat than a body can hold. Your whole being pulses, on fire, and each of his fingerprints sear themselves into your skin. It is a heavenly sensation, all burning stars and holy lights bursting behind your eyelids. Pleasure ebbs and flows between you, climax to climax, and when you are both eventually spent, you cling to your newly unknown husband, this sacred man, and you think to yourself that whoever you are, you must have been blissfully, rapturously happy.

Chapter Text

The next morning, after waking you with languorous kisses, passionate touches, and a use of tongue so expert you privately wondered if he had spent an entire past life in a pleasure house, your husband tells you to stay in bed while he fetches a surprise for you. When he returns, you are indeed surprised to see that he has two people in tow. You gather the sheets around your chest, trying to preserve your modesty, and raise your eyebrows at him questioningly.

“I have a gift for you, my darling. Two gifts, in fact. A lady's maid and an errand boy. They will tend to your every need while you recover.”

You take in the two figures he has shepherded into your room. They both look to be a similar age - both young enough that they could reasonably be called boy and girl rather than man and woman, each teetering on the cusp of adulthood. As you look the boy over, you feel an odd twinge of recognition, but when you frown and meet his eyes in search of some reaction or confirmation, he only looks down, giving no sign that he knows you. He holds himself uncertainly, standing slightly lopsided, and something about his awkwardness makes you warm to him instantly. You move your gaze to the girl beside him, and though you feel no spark of recognition when you look upon her face, you realise that they look remarkably alike: the same pallid skin, the same shade of hair, both tall and lanky and both bearing the same shaped eyes. This latter detail is admittedly hard to be sure of, as where the boy now keeps his eyes downcast, the girl meets your stare with such a fiery, narrow-eyed intensity that you find yourself having to look away. 

“Well, my love,” says Astarion, taking a seat on the edge of the bed, “do you like them?”

“Yes. Very much. Thank you.”

“Good.” He turns to the pair and waves a hand at them. “Leave us now. My wife will want to thank me properly.”

Your cheeks tingle with embarrassment at his lewdness, but you cannot resist the smile that tugs at your lips. You crawl across the mattress to him as the two servants leave the room, and plant a soft kiss on his lips the moment the door closes behind them.

“You are so good to me,” you murmur, nestling your face into the crook of his neck, peppering him with kisses across his throat. He pulls you fully into his lap, enclosing you in warm, strong arms, and you feel so wonderfully comfortable and happy that you hope this moment never ends. “I almost thought I recognised the boy,” you continue. “Are they new? Could I have known him before?”

“Oh, they’re both very new,” Astarion says, a slight smile twitching the corner of his mouth. “But they’re common stock. I can’t think of a single good reason that you would have had to spend any time with him before. He probably only looks familiar because there must be a dozen similar-looking young men wandering around the city.”

You hum a cosy acceptance of his words, nuzzling closer against his chest. “The girl didn’t look very happy,” you note.

Astarion tuts. “She’s new to servitude, but she’ll learn her place soon enough.”

When you look up you see that he is frowning, looking stormy. You laugh at his sternness. “Always so serious,” you tease, grinning and kissing the straight line of his lips. Something flashes in his eyes - playfulness, you think - and he picks you up and throws you back on the bed.

“Can you blame me? I take your happiness very seriously,” he says, and the storm has passed, and he’s grinning like a devil as he crawls up the bed to where you landed, breathless, on your back. He kisses you, one hand tangling in your hair to support your head. He kicks your legs open with a knee, gentle but relentless, and positions himself between your thighs. You can feel his hardness through his trousers and the mere thought of it elicits a whimper of desire from your throat. It is lost in the fiery kisses that he lavishes upon you, only stopping when your lips are swollen and your eyes are glazed with lust.

“Now,” he says, smiling down at you like the cat that's got the cream, “didn't I say something about you thanking me properly?”

Chapter Text

You pass the morning in each other's arms, pleasure spiralling out from every touch, love spilling out of every word. Bodies taut and sweat-slicked, breaths heavy and catching, minds and hearts and mouths filled with nothing but the want of each other.

When you are both replete, stuffed quite full of adoration, tingling with the aftershocks of the sensations of your lusts, he calls the servants back to bring food and drink to nourish your weary bodies. He pours ambrosia through your lips, bursts sweet grapes on his tongue, and runs fingers in bliss-sparking trails along your bare skin. He kisses your cheeks, your knuckles, your neck. You think love, love, love.

Your husband takes his leave of you to attend to business in the afternoon, and you decide to spend the day reading through some of the books he has placed beside your bed. You think to yourself that you must remember to ask him why it is that all of the front pages have been torn out. 

By the time he returns, you have become so engrossed in a story that you don’t notice him until he speaks to you.

“Will you come and dine with me? I have a guest who wishes to see you.”

“Of course,” you say, blinking away the fantasy world you had been lost in and trying to return to reality. “Do I know them? Who are they?”

“You knew them once.” He pauses, apparently choosing his next words carefully. “I would be… cautious around him. I have told him of your condition, but he always thinks he knows better, and he is insisting on seeing you. I would take anything he says with a touch of scepticism. He certainly can’t be trusted.”

“Then why is he here?”

Astarion tilts his head from side to side. “He’s a useful ally. He has knowledge of a certain item that I hope to obtain. But that doesn’t mean I trust him. Least of all with you.”

“Why least of all with me?” You’re finding this all so confusing. Things are so much easier when it’s just the two of you. Something about the outside world and all the people in it feels dreadfully overwhelming all of a sudden.

“My dear, a man as great as I am has many enemies. Those enemies would do anything to hurt me, and you are my most precious possession. If they wanted to move against me, you would be a prime target.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“Of course you didn’t.” He smiles at your naivety, and you think how lucky you are to have found such love from such a great man. He could have searched for a partner to match him in skill, in wit, in power, but instead, he is happy with you—his darling ingenue. Somewhere beneath your gratitude a different feeling stirs, but it is only there for a moment before slipping back beneath the dark waters of your past. Astarion takes you by the hand - gods, he has such soft hands, such delicate fingers - and quirks an eyebrow at you.

“Shall we?” he asks.

You smile, and nod, and give his hand a slight squeeze. Out of nowhere an image flashes in your mind: you, stabbing at those hands with a twisted blade, piercing that soft white palm, hacking at the marble skin of his forearms, twisting and snapping the bones of his wrist as blood and gore spray across your face, your chest, your mouth. The taste of his blood is so sweet. You blink, horrified at your own mind for conjuring up such visions of violence. You wonder if this is just another side effect of your illness. You wonder if you dare ask. No. You swallow your horror and follow your husband. He must see something in your expression - of course he does, he knows you and loves you so well - because he asks if you are feeling alright.

“Fine,” you say with a tight-lipped smile, “just a headache.”

But you know you must be very, very sick.

Chapter Text

You don't know what you were expecting, but the man waiting for you in the large dining hall that Astarion brings you to is certainly not it. Perhaps you had been expecting some classic villain, tall and dark-cloaked with a steely smile; or else a sneaky-looking rogue, hood pulled low, eyes narrowed and darting. Instead, you see a rather tame-looking human dressed in a simple but elegant purple wizard’s robe. His face is open, sporting a neutral smile, although his eyes dance with an intelligence that unnerves you. Just as it did with the servant boy, your chest sparks with a brief flicker of recognition when you look upon him. 

“Good evening,” he says.

“Good evening,” you reply, although your voice lilts up with uncertainty, making it sound more like a question than a greeting.

Astarion has already sat down at the head of the table and is now watching you closely. You take a seat on one side of him, and the man takes a seat on the other. You stare at the empty place setting in front of you, unsure what to say, as servants quietly approach the table and fill the two men’s plates. When the serving is completed, your husband allows a few more moments of uncomfortable silence before speaking up.

“Gale was just visiting to update me on a project that he's helping with, and he wanted to see you before he left.”

Gale. The name feels familiar to your mind. Friendly and warm, initially, until you remember your husband's words. Be cautious around him. You pull on a smile. He certainly cannot be trusted. You knew this man, once upon a time. He cannot know how ill you are. If he sees that you're weak he might use you against Astarion.

“So, Gale, how have you been?” you ask, forcing an inflection of affection into your voice which feels entirely false.

His eyes flick up to meet yours for a moment before returning to his plate. “I've been well, thank you for asking. Our joint project is going as smoothly as could be expected.” He raises his glass to Astarion as he says this, then adds, “Although I've found it harder to locate some things than I thought it would be.”

Where in the hells have you been? says a voice in your head. Not your inner voice, but a man’s voice. It could even be this man’s voice, you think, although he has been calm and level when he’s spoken to you so far, and the voice in your head sounds quite wild with fear or anger or frustration. Your eyes go wide and you freeze. First visions, now voices. You cannot afford this right now. Not when there is an enemy at your table. Not when your husband needs you to be strong.

You look up to see both men staring at you, and you realise you have been entirely spaced out from the conversation.

“I'm sorry, what was that?” you ask.

“Gale just asked you how you have been, my love.”

“Oh,” you say with a smile. This question is easy. You can answer this. “Very good, thank you. Really, really good.” You look lovingly at Astarion, and he smiles back at you, taking your hand in his and holding it on the table. By the gods, he is beautiful. You try not to think of his hand holding yours. Try to keep your eyes on his face. You do not want to invite in any further blood-splattered visions of severed limbs.

Tav, what's going on? Are you alright? You just disappeared-

The word Tav makes your guts twist and slither like snakes. You've heard it before, you're sure, but where? When? What does it mean? Just holding the word in your mind makes you feel nauseous. You screw your eyes shut and shake your head, trying to clear it of the voices, of the visions, of the painful thoughts.

“Are you quite alright, darling?”

“Um. It's just—it's my head. I’m sorry, I feel dreadfully ill. I think I need to go and lie down.”

“What's wrong?” asks Gale. “Can I help?”

“She'll be fine, but you need to leave,” Astarion snaps, before turning to you and continuing in a much warmer tone. “Why don't you take yourself to bed, my dear, and I'll be right up with you once I've seen Gale out?”

You nod wordlessly and push your chair back, quickly standing. The voices are coming back.

Don't go, Tav, what's wrong? What's happening?

You shake your head again and walk to the door with all the speed and grace you can muster. The serpent’s nest in your stomach writhes furiously at the use of that word - that name - again.

Where were you? We need to get you away from here–

You shut the door to the dining hall behind you with an unnecessary amount of force, and the voice falls blessedly silent. You stumble back to your room and barely manage to kick your shoes off before falling into bed, pulling the sheets over your head. You search for some safety in the soft darkness that you tuck yourself into, but your torment comes from within, not without, and you cannot escape the strange wrenching feeling in your mind, nor the contorting, serpentine squirming of your guts. You don’t know how much time passes as you lie alone in your silken cocoon with nothing but the sound of your own panicked, uneven breaths for company, but eventually, you hear a door open, footsteps approach, and a voice like sunlight speaks to you.

“Darling?”

He peels back your silk defences, looking down on you with concern. The sight of him makes your lower lip tremble. Your sickness, your brokenness, your ruin is made all the more raw and hateful beside his perfection. You cling to him so tightly that it must be painful, although he doesn’t show it. Surely, you tell yourself, he will have the answers to all of your questions.

“What’s happening to me? What is this?”

“Shh, darling. You’ll be alright.”

“Help me,” you whimper.

“I will, my love. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

Chapter Text

You sit in front of the mirror of your dressing table, watching your maid brush at the space of an invisible reflection. Your effect on mirrors was apparently caused by a misfired spell cast long ago in an attempt to heal your illness. There is something strange, almost unsettling, about this story, but you can’t put your finger on exactly what is wrong with it. Only that causes those unseen leviathans of doubt and fear to churn under the murky surface of your lost memories, although perhaps they are simply reverberations of the shock that you feel every time you see yourself missing from within the polished gilded frames.

You would never say it to him - you know how much he does for you, how hard he tries for you - but you cannot help but lament your husband’s choice in servants as the girl tugs ineptly at your hair with a large paddle brush. Sometimes you could swear she is deliberately obtuse, tightening your corset far beyond comfort, or leaving your shoes so loosely laced that they are doomed to slip and trip you up as you walk. You asked him why he had chosen these two as your personal attendants, but he had simply said that their family owed him, and something in his tone made you decide to leave it at that.

“Ow!” You exclaim when one pull of your hair goes beyond mere incompetence. “That hurt!”

In the reflection of the mirror, the girl looks mildly pleased with herself, and you bristle with indignation until Astarion appears behind her. He had been reading, lounging on a chaise on the other side of the room, and you are still not quite used to the speed with which he seems to be able to move. You watch her face transform from smug to terrified in an instant as she catches sight of his angered expression. When he speaks, his voice is quiet and low, and so cold that it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

“Did you hurt my wife?”

“N-no! I mean, not deliberately—“

“No, what?”

“What?” The terror remains, but there is confusion on the girl’s face now too.

“How have I told you to address me?”

The girl’s face sets as still as stone, but you still catch a flash of resentment in her eyes as she flatly intones, “No, master.”

It seems Astarion sees the spark too, because before you fully realise what is happening he has backhanded her across the face with a loud crack that you can feel in the air. You watch, shocked, as she falls to the ground.

“Astarion!” you exclaim, mortified that the man who has shown you so much tenderness could be capable of such a brutish act. He does not seem to hear you as he bends to wrench the brush from her hand. This time you see what he is going to do before he acts: you know, somehow, that he is about to beat this girl for her tiny act of defiance. You quickly stand, putting yourself between them and laying an appeasing hand on his chest.

“Please, my love! There’s not any need for this.” You try to keep your tone light, and conciliatory. This is not him, after all: he is all salvation and soft touches. He is benevolent, almost godly in his compassion, caring and kindhearted. You know this. You smile at him. You are quite sure he would never do any harm until you look upon his face.

His expression is inhuman and indecipherable, but there is such a promise of violence in his eyes that your chest constricts in fear. Suddenly the room feels very cold, despite the fire roaring in the hearth and the thick gown you have been swaddled in. He brings his hand back, and you think for a moment that he will strike the girl again despite your protestations, but instead, he brings his palm down hard across your cheek. The force of the blow sends you sprawling next to the girl, who scuttles out of the way as soon as she sees your husband’s attentions have moved on from her. You taste blood in your mouth, but the pain doesn’t even register over the ringing shock that fills you. He hit you. He hit you. He hit you. The surrealism of it stops you from moving, from crying out, from begging him to stop, because you simply cannot accept that this is really happening. You are dreaming. You must be.

“Shit,” he says, and you don’t think you’ve ever heard him curse before. He crouches down next to you, pulls you up and around to face him, and takes your face in his hands. He runs gentle fingers over an eye that is already swelling shut, a socket that must already be bruising, a brow that is tender to the touch.

“I'm sorry, my darling. I'm so, so sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. Normally I would die before laying a finger on you - you know that, don't you? It's just that sometimes you remind me so much of someone I used to know - someone who never did what I wanted them to do - and it drives me quite mad. You will forgive me, won't you? You mustn't make me mad like that. Promise me you won't do anything like that again, please, my love, I beg you. I so hate to see you get hurt. Tell me you forgive me?”

You gather his words like broken relics, clinging to them, wanting so desperately to believe. He is good. He is god. He is your salvation. It is easier, somehow, to accept that this was your fault, that you got in the way, that you made him do it, because if he is not the man you think him to be, if you have to question the things he has told you, then what truths do you have left to cling to? None.

So you smile at him. “All is forgiven.” You are amazed by how level your voice is. So smooth and sweet that you could almost believe it. Astarion certainly seems to, for he heaves a contented sigh and squeezes you tighter. Your sore cheek aches at the force of it, but you make no complaint.

“You know, my love,” he says, still cupping your face in his hands, running his thumbs over your blossoming bruises and bloodied lips, “I must say, I've rather missed you looking like this.”

You blink. “When have I looked like this?” You try to hide the horror that you feel. Has he done this before? What, exactly, have you forgotten? Why is your stomach once again twisting with a sense of something like foreboding?

“Oh, of course, you don't remember,” he says, smiling so warmly that you think he can't possibly have ever hurt you. “We used to adventure together before we settled down here in the city. We got into our fair share of scrapes. You partook in some rather noble quests with me, you know.”

“I did?”

“You did, my love.”

“But how? I can't believe—I mean, you're so strong and good at magic, and I can't really do anything. I can't have been very good.”

His smile broadens at this, and he allows himself a chuckle. “No, I suppose you weren't. But I was there to help you.”

“Was it just us?”

“Always,” he says, planting a kiss on your hair. “Is there something wrong? Why are you frowning?”

You shake your head and try to smooth your expression. Something feels so unsettling about what he's told you, but you can't for the life of you think what it is. Ignoring the roiling in your gut, you try to match his smile. “Nothing's wrong. It's just so strange hearing about the life I lived before and not being able to remember a single moment.”

“You don't need memories when you have me.”

“True,” you say.

You don’t know why, but the word feels like a lie.

Chapter Text

Astarion has gone into the city for business, staying out long past dinner. You’re lonely without him, but he has left you with a chest full of new dresses to entertain yourself with. You wondered initially if the gowns were some sort of conciliatory gift, but you tell yourself that he has done nothing from which to seek exoneration. You are trying them on when you hear the door to your chamber open. You’ve dismissed the girl already - you think you always will now, as soon as your husband is away, as you can hardly stand to look at her - so the noise irritates you. She’s no use in helping you dress anyway, and although you try to be nice to her despite her frankly unpleasant demeanour, you really cannot abide her not taking direct orders. You turn to tell her to leave again, but then you freeze.

The person in the doorway is not your maid. It is the visiting wizard from the other day’s dinner. Gale, you think, although you cannot be certain - your memory seems so hazy, even though you met him such a short time ago. One thing is clear, though. He should not be here. The thought must be evident on your face because he holds up his hands in a peacemaking gesture before speaking.

“Tav, it’s alright. Don’t be afraid. I’m not here to hurt you.”

Again you feel the now-familiar churning in your gut as your mind warps around the name he utters. You shake your head, trying to dislodge the strange pressure. “Look, I don’t know who that is, but it’s not me. Please leave. I’m not whoever it is you’re looking for.”

“You’re not Tav?”

You shake your head again. You feel as though you might be sick if he keeps talking.

“Then who are you?”

You frown, partly in response to the blistering headache that is developing, and partly because you suddenly realise you don’t know how to answer. “I’m… I’m his. Astarion’s. His wife.” You don’t feel that this has satisfied the wizard, judging by his stormy face, so you add, “I’m… I’m very sick.” This does nothing to soften his expression.

“He didn’t even give you a name?” 

You need him to stop speaking, but still, the question makes you pause. “I— of course I have a name. I just— I just don’t— I’m not sure what it is. I must have forgotten, with the sickness—“

And gods, the sickness is getting worse, every nerve in your skull screaming in agony, your mind feeling as though it could tear itself apart. 

“Look, Tav—or whoever you are,” he corrects at the sight of your anguished expression, “can’t you see that something isn’t right here? Are you really happy? Is he really good to you?”

Yes, you want to say as if your sleep wasn’t disturbed last night by the bruises on your face, as if you haven’t been worrying at the split in your lip all day, as if every blink doesn’t cause a flair of pain, as if your mind doesn’t feel like it’s breaking and your guts aren’t in a near-permanent state of tortuous turmoil.

“Please. Please. Just stop talking. Please stop talking,” you whisper, although even you can't say for certain whether you are addressing your own thoughts or the wizard.

“I will, but I’m afraid I must insist that you come with me.”

He moves towards you slowly, holding out a pacifying hand to you as though you’re some wild and flighty creature, and you want to dart away but the pain you’re in has you rooted to the spot. Astarion told you this would happen. He told you that you couldn’t trust this man and that enemies would seek to use you against your own husband. But why, by all the gods, did he not tell you what to do when this inevitability came to pass? You might be able to think straight if only your head would grant you a moment's reprieve from its dizzying, mind-splitting torture. You think your vision must be faltering because the shadows around the room's edges seem to sway and contort, but when you blink and look back at them you realise that what you’re seeing is entirely real. The shades twist together, condensing slowly into a humanoid shadow, then melting away to reveal that your hero has finally arrived, appearing out of thin air.

“Gale,” says your husband as he steps out of the misty darkness, with a voice as deadly as winter, “what do you think you are doing in my bedroom, with my wife?”

Chapter Text

There is only the briefest of flickers of horror on Gale’s face before he gathers himself, speaking in a loud, commanding tone, pulling glowing shapes from the air as he casts a spell at Astarion. You are not worried by it initially - after all, what mortal magic could hope to harm your divine husband? - but when you look at Astarion for reassurance you see that his eyes seem glassy and unfocused, despite his calm and cold voice. Purple threads of magic weave their way around his arms, legs, torso and neck, holding him firmly in place, although you can see from his flexing muscles that he is already trying to fight against their grip.

“Stop! What have you done to him?” you cry, running to Astarion’s side, wild with panic.

“Don’t worry, my love,” your husband grits out through clenched teeth, before turning his head to Gale. “I will kill you for this, you traitor.”

“We need to go!” shouts Gale, and for a moment you think the wizard might be foolish enough to be addressing you as if you would ever leave with him. However, your notion is swiftly shattered by the appearance of two hulking figures in the doorway behind him.

“Alright, fangs?” says one of them - a huge tiefling woman whose cheerfulness is entirely at odds with the hellish situation that is unfolding - and then they both bound towards you. Their faces make your chest constrict with nausea, and you take a few stumbling steps back, but they are upon you before the bout of sickness has even passed.

“She is mine,” seethes your husband, “don’t you dare touch her.”

“Or what?” says the tiefling, seemingly amused.

“Fight them! Kill them!” Astarion shouts at you, still bound and struggling against the wizard’s spell, and as always his words sound like the most sacred of commands. You will fight for him. You will fight as if your life depends upon it. You realise it probably does. These strangers are trying to steal you away from your beautiful salvation. You cannot let them. 

Unfortunately, it also seems you cannot fight. Not well, at least. Not against two unreasonably large people who have much more skill and strength than you do. As you try to lash out with clawing hands and snapping teeth and flailing limbs, the tiefling grapples you in an unbearably hot bear hug, whilst the other figure - a scarred elf - loops a thick arm around your kicking legs, lifting you off your feet and restraining you fully. Despite coming to the realisation that your efforts are pointless, your limbs continue to thrash with a will of their own, as if they are driven by some deeper instinct than your thoughts. It is a strange sensation, as if you are not in control of your own body, but then again, your body seems to be made entirely of strange sensations these days. You cannot remember what normal feels like. Only terror, and pain, and deep unease.

“C'mon, let's go,” says the tiefling, and together your attackers make their way to the door, carrying you with apparent ease despite your writhing.

“Astarion!” you shriek, panic flooding every inch of you at the certainty that you will perish if you are separated from him. “Astar—“

“Easy, soldier,” says the tiefling, pressing a silencing palm over your mouth as she and the elf carry you over the threshold and down the corridor. “We’ve got you.” She says it as though you are friends - as if she’s helping you - when all she’s really doing is causing you heartbreak greater than any you could ever have imagined. You can no longer see Astarion. They are going to take you away from him. Through the pain, through the nausea, a terrible sense of foreboding spreads through your body, and tears well in your eyes.

“Swiftly now,” says the wizard, catching up to you and your two captors, “we won’t have long before the hold breaks.”

“Get back here!” you hear your husband cry from behind you. “She is mine! Mine!”

You are carried so quickly through halls and corridors that your husband’s voice is soon lost in the vastness of the house. Before long you are in the entrance foyer, and moments later you are outside. As the cold evening air hits your skin your mind seems to schism: a part of you feels that being outside is somehow forbidden or profane, while another part rejoices at the feel of cool air in your lungs and silver moonlight on your skin. The division of your thoughts brings a fresh wave of nausea so powerful that you gag, bile rising in your throat and filling your mouth with its bitterness. At the gates of the estate, a huddle of figures waits in the darkness, parting to surround you as you are carried through. Each of their faces causes your affliction to twist and flare within you, and one of them speaks in a voice so sickly-sweet with familiarity that you think you might actually vomit into the tiefling’s hand. But it can’t be familiar, you tell yourself. You do not know her. You do not know any of these people. You only know him. Only him.

“What in the hells happened in there? Why is she flailing around like that?”

“Just get the damn thing on her! We’ve not got long before he’ll be free.”

You feel something hard being placed roughly on your head. It hums and buzzes with strange, otherworldly magic, and you feel your limbs go still, and your mind go clear, and then your world collapses around you.

Chapter Text

The cobbled streets you are carried through are nothing more than a blur as your mind breaks down. The sanctified words of your husband reveal themselves to be the lies of a false prophet. Every sacred tenet, every divine doctrine that you believed in is brought low. The cracks in the hallowed truth you cling to grow deeper with every passing moment, splintering and fragmenting every conviction that you hold, and reality slowly seeps into your head.

It’s sort of like waking up, if waking up was the most agonising thing a person could do. Months upon months of torture and falsehoods are relived in a single moment. With realisation comes guilt, anger, and mourning for every loss you have been made to forget.

Parts of you that you once thought were the very essence of you - carved into your bones, mixed into your blood - have been taken from you before, of course. Your father, cruel and vicious master that he was, drained you of every drop of the sanguine gift he bestowed upon you at your siring when you dared to defy him. Before that, your blood-kin tried to poke your brain so full of holes that you would lose yourself, yet still, parts of you remained - enough to claw your way back into being, enough to first seek betterment, then to seek revenge. 

But those were the actions of a murder-god and his spawn. To expect anything more from them than bloody brutality would have been foolish.

To have the same barbarity inflicted upon you by the man who was supposed to love you, though? The man who saw the ways in which your mind and body had already been taken from you time and again? That is an atrocity on a different level.

He rid you of every single part of yourself other than that small, pathetic scrap that still loved him, because for him that was the only part worth keeping. He tore all that was you down to ruins and then told you he’d brought you peace. Worse still, you had believed it. It had been true. Your chest burns with hatred. Your guts boil with revulsion. But your mind - fully your own for the first time in so, so long - rejoices, full of brilliant and bloody fantasies of revenge. He will pay for everything he has done to you.

As your mind slowly stabilises, you look around to see that your group of captors - rescuers - have come to a halt outside a large property that you vaguely recognise. Imposing spiked iron gates are yawning open, and the grotesques and gargoyles that line the building’s walls leer down upon you as your eyes strain in the darkness to read the sign above the door:

The Devil’s Fee

You are deposited gently onto your feet on the front step and some of the hooded figures who have been accompanying you melt away into the shadows of the streets. The tiefling who was carrying you - the tiefling that you now recognise as Karlach, saviour, friend - beckons you across the threshold of the building.

“Come in, then,” she says, holding a hand out to you when she sees you swaying unsteadily. You take it, gratefully, and silently step inside.

Chapter Text

Karlach pulls you further into the building as the doors slam shut behind you. It feels as though pieces of your mind are still falling into place, and you can barely keep up with what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen next. Questions spill from your tongue half-formed in your still-addled state.

“What’s— how—“

“There will be time for what’s and how’s once we’re somewhere safe,” interrupts Gale, taking lead of the group. “There’s a portal through the back - quickly now - we’ll explain everything once we’re through.”

So you allow yourself to be bundled through the strange shopfront and into a room that pulses and glows with conjuration magic. Most of the group do not hesitate in leaping through the large, mirror-like portal floating in the centre of the room, but Gale gestures that you should enter before him. Your mind, still sluggish from so many moons of disuse, throws an objection to the forefront of your mind.

“Wait, Gale, I know we need to be quick, but this is important. He can track me. There are runes— he—”

Your throat constricts at the memory, and you can't bring yourself to finish the sentence. How would you even say it? He cut me. He scarred me. He ruined me. Thankfully, you do not have to continue, as Gale speaks up before you can find the right words.

“I know he has some method to keep an eye on you. Last time we met you practically reeked of divination magic, and let me tell you, it has not faded. No matter, though: that's what the portal is for. Travelling to other planes tends to wreak havoc on even the most expertly cast scrying magic, and vampire-god or no, I can't say I think Astarion's skills are quite that good yet.”

You blink. “I’m sorry - we're going to another plane?”

“Oh, yes.” He smiles and holds a hand towards the portal. “After you.”

This is it, then. You try to push down the sense of trepidation that you feel as you approach the whirring oval of light. It would be mad, after all that you’ve been through, to feel anything other than relief at the prospect of getting away from here. It would be completely and utterly insane to feel any sense of loss at the idea of being free from Astarion’s clutches. It would be positively deranged to worry for even a moment that you might miss his voice, his face, his affectionate touches, his little cruelties. 

But you are a little bit mad, aren’t you? That seems to have been one of the only constants in your parade of lives, the carnival of personalities that life has forced upon you and torn away from you: each one of them mad, mad, mad. Mad with bloodlust or madly in love - no difference between the two, really. So while you do feel relief as you step into the portal’s arcane glow, it is tempered by a wrenching feeling in your chest, and your eyes heat with tears that you promise yourself you will not let fall. 

When you step out of the portal, you are hit with such a wall of heat that the tears in your eyes dry instantly, and the breath in your lungs almost burns. You look around at the now-familiar group of faces who cluster around the portal, some wearing looks of apprehension, others looking pleased, and some looking ready to fight.

Karlach stands at the front of the group and swiftly pulls you into another fiery hug. This time you do not resist, and instead allow yourself to be gathered into her strong arms. Something about the embrace - the warmth radiating from her, the comforting thrum of the engine in her chest, the way she holds you close with such a fierce protectiveness - makes all your trepidation melt away. Fresh tears come to your eyes at the realisation that she knew you needed this. She knows you like a sibling. She might even know you better than you know yourself right now. She, and all the others gathered here, know you and love you enough to have risked their lives to rescue you, despite the wrath of Astarion that they will surely suffer now. She knows that you need the hug to last for as long as it takes for you to fight back the tears, so she continues to hold you until you sniff, blink, and nod your head against her chest. Then she pushes you back, a hand on each of your shoulders, and fixes you with a blazing grin.

“Welcome to hell, soldier,” she says.

Chapter Text

Part 2: The Hells

The day starts like any other, awakening from your trance next to your consort. You watch her for a while, marvelling as you always do at her utter vulnerability, the way she puts herself so entirely at the mercy of her surroundings every single night. To be so dead to the world must be a terrifying sensation, you think.

You drink in the sight of her: all delicate bones showing through porcelain skin shot through with blue-green veins. So changed in the space of just a few moons passing. No more sunkissed glow, no more rosy cheeks, no more muscles and grazes and tangled hair. Just smooth marble skin, hair combed to a silky sheen, her body now only marred by bruises of your own creation, marked on those nights when your passions are stoked so hot you lose control of yourself. She cries so prettily when you hurt her, looking at you with wide, sad eyes as if she's trying to figure out what she's done wrong. She'll never work it out, the stupid little thing, especially not the way she is now. Still, you prefer her like this. Small and needy and dependent on you and you alone. It's safer. It's better for both of you. She is yours entirely.

You lament that you cannot wake her with your fangs in her neck. You've sorely missed the taste of her, these past few days, but for now it is worth it to enjoy this tale you've spun for her. Your sweet, sickly wife, so desperately in love with you. She plays her part well. She does not know of your ascension and yet she still treats you like a god. Such a darling little creature, so eager to serve, to worship, to give her entire self to you. There are a myriad of roles you want to cast her in, and you have all the time in the world to enjoy them. You look forward to seeing how she fares in each. Your sweet little fool.

Still, now that you've thought about it, your appetite cannot be denied. You reach out with your mind to the boy, commanding him to bring his sister to you. He arrives with her, his eyes placid, glazed and glowing, hers narrowed with hatred. You smile. You like her. You'd turned her brother on little more than a whim, but the fun you have had with her since has been well worth it. She'd resisted her new position at first, so you took her and the boy up to the manor roof and told him to walk off of it. When she realised that you could make the boy kill himself with a single command, she begged forgiveness and fell into line. You'd even stopped him from jumping at the last moment. It is good to be kind to the chattel once in a while. You do not strive to be good, exactly, but none could deny that you are great .

You've considered turning the girl too, but you rather like the fight she has. It reminds you of how your darling used to be. Amusing in small doses, but naturally not at all appropriate for a consort. Besides, it does irk you to have spawn of such lowly blood. One commoner is enough for now, you think, your lip wrinkling in distaste.

You feed on the girl while your wife sleeps beside you, then hand her back to her brother when you are sated. She's kept so bloodless these days that she is almost as pale as he is. Your hunger may be a thing of the past, but your tastes and desires are stronger than ever.

When your wife wakes, you tell her of your plans for the day and distract her with trinkets and clothes to while away the hours before you return to her. She thanks you so prettily that you cannot help but think to yourself that this is what she was made for. Your lovely little house pet, pampered and pleasing. Adventuring was never her true destiny. She was made to be yours.

The day passes in the usual humdrum of council meetings, decrees and rulings. Petitioners come and go, visiting dignitaries pay their respects, and advisors seek to please you by repeating back your own ideas in obsequious tones. Leadership has come easily to you. There are no issues that one cannot fix with money or violence. The problem with most leaders is that they care too much about preserving the lives of those they lead. Once you realise they are little more than cattle, they become much easier to manage.

It is when you attend a dinner at one of the city's mercantile guilds that things start to fall apart. Someone has tried to poison your wine. You're not sure what the poison is, exactly, but you know there is something wrong with your drink the moment it passes your lips. You smile into your goblet. This is not the first time someone has tried to kill you since your rise to power. Poisoning attempts are commonplace. You have come to rather enjoy them. You will drink the entire goblet, and they will watch in horror as their pathetically mortal attempt on your life has no effect whatsoever. You wonder vaguely which one of them did it. It doesn't matter; you'll have them all killed for this.

Although strangely enough, whatever they've put in your drink does seem to be having some sort of effect. It's subtle enough that you don't notice it at first, but you feel as though the world around you is speeding up - or perhaps as though you are slowing down. It is concerning, but you are sure that you are still strong and quick enough to know that you could kill every last person in this room before they had a chance to draw their weapons. You are a creature of darkness raised to godhood, after all. What chance would such puny mortals have against you?

But then you feel it. Fear . Not your own, of course, but a spike of fear from your lover, through the bond you hold over her as her master. And then, yes, you are aware of an uninvited presence - no, presences - within your domain.

Now the fear that you feel is your own. They have come for her. They will try to take her from you.

You rise from the table, lashing out with taloned hands at the merchants on either side of you. You are done here, and so their lives have come to an end. Those around the table foolish enough to look you in the eyes are overcome with an enthralling desire to kill. They turn on their neighbours with knives and forks in hand, stabbing out eyes and slashing at necks. You whirl around the chaos of the room, a violent shadow bringing death to all you touch. Before long, all who dined, all who served, and all who happened to be passing through this room at the wrong moment lay dead by your power.

But you are panting hard. This should not have been so difficult. Cursing whatever poison flows through your veins, you disappear in a cloud of dark mist, heading back to your darling wife.

The moment you step into your chamber, you know something is wrong. You see the wizard and your whole being flares with rage. You will kill him for this. You will end him.

But you cannot. You are held in place, and the world seems to whirl around you with frightening speed. You catch only a glimpse of two traitorous companions as they run to your love and bundle her through the door, and then all are gone. It could be seconds or an eternity that passes before you manage to break free of the spell.

Your face twists in fury, but you force yourself to think. There is no need to worry. You can already feel the poison in your blood fading. You can still sense your darling’s fear. You catch a glimpse of her vision, and see that damned cleric holding a circlet above her head, and then– nothing . You cannot feel her. You cannot sense her. This cannot be happening. Your chest lurches at the sense of loss.

Still, it is not over. You had foreseen something like this would come to pass. All is not lost. The connection of your blood is not the only means you have to track her. You speak aloud the runes that you so gently, so lovingly carved into her flesh. She is yours. You will find her.

You feel a pull to the south, and you move with all the speed that your godhood has gifted you. Through the corridors, through the foyer, through the front doors of your house. Through the moon-kissed gardens, through the wrought iron gates that mark the edge of your domain. Past statues and gargoyles and people of the night, down dim cobbled streets, chasing, straining, drawing ever closer.

And then, as if the breath has been snatched from your lungs, as if the heart has been torn from your chest, the pull of her soul disappears in a blink. 

Your cry of pain sends night birds cawing to the skies, sets dogs barking, drives cats to yowling, starts babies wailing. You collapse to your knees in the middle of the street holding your head in your hands, disbelieving and distraught. This fear, this terror, this loss was supposed to be a thing of the past. Never again would you feel powerless. Never again would you feel pain. And yet here you are, drowning in it once more, as if you are not a god, as if you are not infused with power beyond mortal reckoning, as if you are no more than the pathetic spawn of a boy you once were.

She is lost to you. She is yours. She is gone .

The world will burn for this.

Chapter Text

You look around at the group before you, standing in the ruins of some long-abandoned building, the steady red glow of hell’s burning skies leaking in through the broken windows. Wyll is smiling at you, and Shadowheart watches you warily. Halsin stands still and stoic as ever, arms crossed over his barrel of a chest, but you think you can see a glint of satisfaction in his expression. You hear a buzz of arcane energy behind you as Gale steps through the portal, which then disappears with a resonant hum. You notice those missing, too. No Jaheira, no Minsc, no Lae’zel, although the latter is hardly a surprise - you doubt her fight on the Astral Plane gives her much time off for happy little reunions.

“So… what in the literal hells is going on?” you ask. “Where are we? Why are we here? How did you know to get me out? What is this—“ You reach for the unknown something perched on your head, but freeze when every one of your companions shouts some variant of ‘no!’ at you.

“You obviously have a lot of questions, and we can answer most of them, but it is important - nay, imperative - that you do not take that circlet off.”

“Noted, but why? What is it? What does it do?”

“It’s a rather ingenious combination of gith and illithid psionic magic. It should free you from Astarion’s control. We got the idea from our old stowaways,” says Gale, tapping the side of his head with a finger. “Astarion was freed from Cazador’s compulsions once he was tadpoled, wasn’t he? We figured this would work well enough with a bit of tweaking, even against an ascended vampire. Some of it was guesswork, of course - there’s not exactly any literature on the effects of ascension—“

“You created this?” you ask, interrupting Gale before he can get too lost in the technicalities. He looks mildly annoyed at either the interruption or the question itself, and the expression is so familiar to you from your days of travelling together that you can’t help but find it incredibly endearing.

“Alas, no. I did not. Artificing has never been my favoured method of channelling the Weave. Your circlet was a joint creation of Roland and Lae’zel, who had guidance from a var'ith'n she’d recruited in her crusade on the Astral Plane. Although, let me assure you, my talents have been put hard to work on other equally important projects.”

“I’m sure,” you say, grinning. You decide not to mention the fact that you’re not sure you understood half of what he just said. “I just— I’m overwhelmed. This is so much to process. Where are we?”

“Avernus,” says Wyll, “but about as far from the front lines of the Blood War as we could manage. Apparently, the portal in The Devil’s Fee used to lead straight to Raphael’s domain, but he’s moved it since we gave him the Crown. I'm not sure what this place used to be - the whole realm is covered with ruins like this now.”

His voice is so smooth and level that the news that you are within any distance of the front lines of the Blood War seems somehow less shocking than it probably should. It may speak to how miserable you were before, but the concept of being close to the greatest battle between two of the most evil forces known to exist isn't even particularly horrifying to you. 

“To answer your earlier question,” adds Halsin, “we've known we had to get you out of Astarion's grip since he used his control over you for his own entertainment at your wedding. The fact he then cut you off from us entirely, coupled with what Gale saw in his occasional glimpses of you, only filled us with greater concern. But… he is not an easy man to move against. What he lacks in tactical thinking he more than makes up for in ruthlessness, viciousness, and an utter disregard for any life other than yours or his own. Still, we must all beg your forgiveness that it has taken us so long to get you out.”

You shake your head, about to object to his apology, but you are interrupted.

“And as for why we're here,” says Shadowheart, "I would have thought that's obvious. We're here to kill an ascended vampire.”

Chapter Text

Shadowheart’s statement ushers in a tense silence as her words sink into your still-spinning head. A fevered excitement sparks in your veins at the idea, swiftly pulsing through your body. While your mind processes the months of hurt, it is easy to latch on to the bloody pull of vengeance. Your blood might be cleansed of your father’s curse, but the memories of it still linger. Violent instincts are not so easy to wash away, and habits of a lifetime are not easy to break.

“Do you really think we can kill him?” you ask, trying to temper the eagerness in your voice. “Then why did we flee? Why didn’t we kill him when you came for me?”

“Well, for starters, taking down even a regular vampire lord in their own lair is no easy feat. For Astarion, with his current powers, it would be nigh on impossible.” Gale must read the disappointment on your face because he quickly continues. “But that’s why we’re here in the hells. We’re going to take his powers from him. Then, and only then, will we be able to strike.”

This does little to assuage your disappointment. You know that once upon a time you were something of a tactical prodigy, but these days you would prefer your revenge to be far more hands-on and, ideally, immediate.

“But he looked weak. Weaker than I can remember seeing him since he ascended. Distracted, somehow. And your spell took hold, right? So why couldn’t we have—“

“He only looked weak because a certain High Harper managed to switch out the wine cask at his dinner function for something somewhat more blessed,” says Shadowheart.

“You poisoned him? With holy water?” The thought is so delightfully ridiculous that you can barely keep a note of laughter from your voice. You think you must be becoming hysterical from the madness of the past few hours.

“Holy wine, actually,” she says with a self-satisfied smile. “It’s always nice when my two favourite pastimes overlap.”

“But my spell only worked because he was already weakened by the wine, and because it wasn’t causing him any harm. It did no damage, it only held him in place. And even then, it took far more energy than it should have,” adds Gale.

You sigh, sensing defeat in the face of Gale’s sensible rhetoric, and push the blood-splattered and gore-filled images of your vengeance to the back of your mind for now. “Fine. We’ll take away his powers. How, exactly, do we do that?”

“Easy. First, we destroy his infernal contract, and then we reverse the ritual.”

“Oh, yes, that does sound immanently easy.”

Gale gives a weary laugh. “Alright, not easy. Taking down a vampiric demigod was never going to be a walk in the park. But we’ve faced worse and come out on top.”

“Gale’s right,” says Shadowheart. “Who knows more of defeating gods than we do? We’ve plenty of deities defied between us.”

“That may be true, but we’re barely in a state to take on a spawn right now,” says Halsin gruffly. “We all need rest after the day we’ve had. There will be plenty of time tomorrow to go over the details. For now, you should all try to get some sleep. I’ll take first watch.”

At this declaration, you realise that you are indeed filled with a deep weariness that you had barely noticed over the rush and chaos of your escape. You’ve made it this far on a flood of adrenaline and excitement, but they are quickly ebbing away, leaving you entirely exhausted in their wake. The others seem to be in a similar way; none object to Halsin’s suggestion of resting. Karlach throws a pack to you that you barely manage to catch without dropping, and Wyll lays out a spare bedroll for you. You don’t miss that he’s set it up in the centre of everyone else’s, protected on all sides. It brings a heartfelt smile to your weary face. Gale lights a fire and begins preparing food, and it amazes you how, despite all the time that has passed, this feels like normality. This feels like home. Admittedly, the eerie red light of Avernus hardly makes this the most comforting of settings, but it still gives you a sense of belonging that you never felt while shut up in your lord husband’s house, frittering away the days in a daze of hunger and pretty dresses.

You immediately wish you hadn’t allowed your mind to wander to thoughts of hunger, and you’re glad when Gale approaches and you’re forced to push the thoughts aside. Hunger is a problem for tomorrow. Tonight you will rest and be grateful to be free. You smile at the wizard, although you falter when you see the concern on his face.

“I can only apologise for the fact that you’ve rather had to hit the ground running,” he says, passing you a bowl of food. “And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I must warn you before we rest: I worry that the circlet’s power will be limited during sleep.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you remember how the Emperor used to pay us night-time visits? I worry Astarion will be able to use your dreams to access your mind in a similar way. I’m not certain, but I didn’t want it to be a surprise if my theory turns out to be correct. Besides, if you’re aware of it, we might be able to use it to our advantage - he might let something slip that will aid us in our fight against him.”

And just like that, the cosy nostalgia of the camp is shattered. Of course safety wouldn’t be so easily won. Of course you’ll be haunted by your husband in your dreams. When have things ever been easy? When has fate ever been kind? Your mind begins to fill with all the tortures your lord has no doubt come up with for you in the hours of your absence. You wonder if the damage done to you in the realm of dreams can carry over into your waking life. You imagine you won’t have long until you find out.

“Gale, you know I can’t eat this,” you say, handing the bowl of food back to him in an attempt to change the subject and interrupt your ever more gruesome thoughts. Your voice comes out far more curt than you wanted, and there’s a flash of something in the wizard’s eyes as he takes the food back from you. You’d feel more comfortable if it was irritation, but you have a nasty feeling that it was pity.

“Of course. I forgot. That was remiss of me. I do apologise.” 

“Don’t apologise. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. We all are. Let’s just get some rest.” 

You shoot him a rueful smile, then rub your eyes. As much as you are now loathe to sleep, your body feels as though it is dragging you down. Your eyelids have a weight to them that makes them hard to keep open, and even your breathing feels slow and laboured. Around you, your companions make themselves as comfortable as they can, and you slip into your bedroll quickly. Karlach and Shadowheart are murmuring something to each other, too quiet and low for you to make out the words, and you let their voices lull you as you try to calm your mind. You’re so tired that stillness feels close to bliss, and almost as soon as you close your eyes, sleep smothers the final scared thoughts that creep around your head.

Chapter Text

The comforting restfulness of deep black sleep seems to only last a blink, and then you are back. Back in the home that served as your prison for the best part of a year. Back with him.

You’re still wrapped in your bedroll, but it no longer lies in the middle of that sacred circle of friends, each body marking out a glyph of protection. Their warding in this realm of dreams has waned, and it seems the pull of your husband’s power over you cannot be denied. You are on the floor of your bedchamber and try as you might, you cannot wake yourself up to escape what is to come.

Everything has a hazy sheen, as if you’re looking at it through a sheet of ice. You find the distortion comforting; it is good to have a visual reminder that this is just a dream. Astarion’s twisting image is hunched in a chair, feverishly reading through a pile of papers. As you stare at him he turns to look at you. His movements are frantic, animalistic; so far from his usual comportment of grace that you wonder, briefly, if this is in fact a normal dream. But despite the warping haze of the air, you know deep down that it feels too vivid, too solid, to be a figment of your imagination. No: you are here because Astarion has willed it. He rushes to you, but stops a few steps away, as if he is scared that touching you might make you disappear once more. Scared. He actually looks scared. He’s close enough now to see that the red of his eyes has leaked out from his ruby irises to mar the whites of his eyes, and his usually perfect hair shows signs of fretful hands tugging through it, leaving it messier than you’ve ever seen it.

“Darling,” he breathes, relief almost making his voice break, “you’re finally here. I’ve been reaching out, but— I couldn’t feel you— I thought—“ he cuts himself off, shaking his head like a rabid dog. “Where have those bastards taken you?”

“I don’t know,” you lie, hoping that your confusion reads as sadness under his darting gaze. You had expected anger. You had expected your own pain. You had not expected him to be an image of suffering. Your response, however, is enough to spin that weather-vane mood of his from despair to fury.

“Do not lie to me! Where are you?”

His voice is filled suddenly with such venom that it reminds you, cruelly, of the man that he once called master. His words carry the power of command, but although his charms tug at the dead thing caged within your chest, you find yourself miraculously able to resist their rule.

“I really don’t know,” you manage to say. The effort brings bile to your throat and tears to your eyes, but this only adds to your attempted mask of distress, and he seems mollified.

“Have they hurt you?” he asks. You shake your head. “I will kill them for this,” he whispers. “I'll kill every last one of them.” He looks at you and there is such hurt in his eyes that you realise, for the first time in a very long time, that he really does love you. It is a dark love, a twisted love, the love of a boy who has never known anything more than pain and suffering, but it is love nonetheless. It makes your heart ache for it. For him. “I'll find you,” he says. “I'll bring you home.”

Such earnestness and passion from a man that you had thought to be made of nothing but cold cruelty anymore. It almost makes you wonder if you have made a mistake. It certainly makes some sad, small part of you twist in regret. It's ridiculous, after all you’ve been through, to think that even the smallest part of you could miss him. But for some reason, you know that if he would only tell you that he loves you, that he sees you, that he knows you as his equal and he will treat you as such going forwards, you would go running back to him. You could each find peace and joy in each other’s mad, wild love. You could both heal. You could both be whole again. Foolish fantasies, of course. That doesn’t stop them from haunting your mind.

The rational part of you - the part of you he tried to destroy, you remind yourself - knows that it is best to make him think that you are still under his sway. It pains you to put on the face of innocence and naivety that he clearly wants to see, but you do it anyway. “Save me,” you say, doe-eyed, lip gently trembling. He likes it when you look weak. You like to give him what he wants.

“I will, my love,” he says. “I will search every last building in the city for you. I will send my legions of dark creatures to scour the Sword Coast for your tracks. I will hunt those traitors down and kill every last man, woman and child that I find has helped them.” He looks at you with those burning ruby eyes, and the heat of them makes your chest tighten. You can see, even now, how easy it was to love him. How enthralling it is to be wanted by him, to be desired by him, to be loved by him. When he looks at you he makes you feel as though you are every bit as beautiful as he is himself. When he sees you as perfection, that is what you become. It feels so good to be perfect. It feels so good to be his.

“You should rest now. I need you to be ready when I find you. I need you to be strong enough to run to me. But you should know, darling,” he says, smiling a smile that makes the breath catch in your throat, looking you straight in the eye, “that if I find out that you’re on their side - if I find out that you have gone willingly - I will kill you too.”

With that, he clicks his fingers and the room around you disappears, leaving you in the darkness of your mind.

You let out a shaky breath of disbelief. 

So much for love. Gods above, how do you fall for him every time? Why are you always so desperate to see love in his actions? You know he is incapable of it. You know the horrors he put you through.

It is so obvious, now that you are no longer mesmerised by those sparkling red eyes, that he will never see you as a person, never see you as an equal. At best, you are a beloved pet; more like a prized possession than a thing with its own thoughts or feelings. If you are allowed feelings, they should be nothing other than undying gratitude and unquestioning adoration for having been chosen to be his. He wants you back not because he loves you, but because he owns you, and because you being taken from him is a slight against his pride. You feel disgusted; both at him for his boundless cruelty, and at yourself for ever believing him. 

You do not rest easily.

Chapter Text

You wake up feeling as though you haven’t slept at all. Your eyes are gritty and raw, and your jaw aches as if you’ve been clenching it tight throughout the night. To make matters worse, the hunger pangs that you just about managed to ignore yesterday are back with a vengeance, and you still have no idea how you will manage to feed yourself. Even if there were creatures on this blasted plane that you could hunt, your utter lack of magical abilities and combat skills would likely make catching anything beyond your means.

Gale catches your eye from across the campfire and grins.

“Good morning!” His voice is so cheerful it makes you wince. “You look dreadful!”

“Thanks,” you say shortly, pushing yourself upright and rubbing the sleep from your eyes. You are most definitely not in the mood for joviality. Gale walks around the embers of the fire and takes a seat next to you.

“Bad dreams?”

“Safe to say your theory is correct.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. We’ll keep working on ways to make it better, you know. It won’t always be so hard.”

You shake your head, trying to clear it of the thought that has been lurking at the back of your mind since your friends first restored your reason. It sticks there, though, and in your tired state you cannot fight it down, so you decide to voice it rather than worry over it any further.

“Look, Gale, I’ve been thinking. I want to take Astarion down, I really do, but I don’t think I can. Last night showed me that I’m still so weak to his charms. Me being here is doing nothing but endangering you. I’m no use in a fight anymore—“

“Oh, come on now. You might be a little rusty after these past months, but loathe as I was to admit it, you more than showed me on our travels that sorcerers can hold their own.”

He has no idea, you realise. He doesn’t realise that you’ve lost the part of you that made you any use. He gives you such a warm smile that you think you might cry. You don’t know if the lump that is rapidly growing at the back of your throat will allow you to speak, but you try your best.

“Gale, I can’t— I’ve lost it. My magic. He took it. I can’t— I can barely cast the most meagre of cantrips. I just— I—“

Your voice breaks, and you look angrily at the ground, screwing your lips shut against the threat of crying. When you look back up at his face, the mixture of pity and horror upon it has you blinking back tears. He says nothing for a long time, sitting still and staring at the flickering flames of the fire. You’ve won your battle against the impending tears by the time he moves, nodding his head, as if coming to some agreement with himself.

“First, let me say that I am truly sorry. I never realised that was even possible. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use magic. I can teach you. It might be slow going, to begin with, but you should already have knowledge of the basic principles—“

“And in the meantime? I’m useless, Gale. I’m starving, and I’m powerless, and I’m putting you all in danger. I can’t be here. I have to go back. Not to him,” you clarify, catching Gale’s immanent objection before it escapes his lips, “but away from here. Away from you all.”

“Nonsense. You know as well as I do that we’re all in danger now, whether you remain with us or not. Astarion’s fury is hardly going to wane just because you are no longer present. Better to have you here, where we can all take care of each other, and I can help you learn a more studious approach to accessing the Weave.”

“But I’ll still need to feed!”

“Then it’s a jolly good thing I’m rather full of blood. Although I must warn you, I’ve been told I taste quite disgusting.”

This makes you pause. You don’t know why feeding on your companions never occurred to you; perhaps because for you, feeding has only ever been either inherently sensual or devastatingly violent. That aside, the second part of his statement only raises more questions.

“Who told you that your blood tastes disgusting?”

“Astarion, naturally.”

“What? When?!”

“Well, when I realised that you were letting him feed on you, I approached him about… spreading the load, so to speak. I thought it only fair that you didn’t carry the burden alone. Astarion agreed out of consideration for you, but that didn’t stop him complaining near constantly about how dreadful I tasted by comparison. Like bile, apparently, but still, better than nothing.”

You blink, overwhelmed by this new insight into the kindness of your companion. “You did that for me? He told me he was hunting creatures… boars, bears, that kind of thing.”

“Oh, he was, most of the time. But on the nights he was too tired, or where no prey was to be found, he split his feeds between the two of us. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to suggest it to the others - I rather think Lae’zel would have taken her sword to us both at the mere suggestion.”

You can’t help but laugh at the image.

“Gale, your chivalry continues to astound me. I have no idea what I did to deserve a companion like you. In fact, I know for certain that I absolutely do not deserve a companion like you. But I can’t feed on you. I don’t have control over my hunger. It won’t be like it was with Astarion. I think I might— I mean, I worry that I wouldn’t stop. That I’d kill you.” You don’t allow yourself to dwell on the images in your mind's eye of honey-gold skin, wide eyes, hot red blood and betrayal. There will be time enough to atone for your sins when the man who caused them lies dead.

“Oh, I’m under no false pretences on that account. I may be chivalrous but I like to think I’m no fool. I am quite ready to defend myself - I’ll push you off with force if it comes to that. I would appreciate you at least trying to have some restraint, though.”

“Gale, I just…” you shake your head, at a loss for words. “I don’t know what to say. I’d given up hope, and now you’re here, and your kindness—“ Your words are choked off once more by the tightness in your throat, and hot tears suddenly render the wizard’s face all a-blur.

“Come, now,” he says gently. “You’d do the same for me. You have done the same for me. It’s no exaggeration to say that I wouldn’t be here if not for you. It’s nice to be able to return the favour.” He rolls up the sleeve of his robe in a practised motion and holds out his bare wrist to you. “No time like the present, I say.”

Chapter Text

Your hunger holds such sway over you that it takes every ounce of your willpower not to immediately fall upon the wrist held out to you. You swallow and look Gale in the eyes, searching for any hint of reluctance. You find none.

“Right here?” you ask, suddenly very aware of your companions around you, going about their morning routines.

“Why not? There’s nothing inherently private about eating, is there?”

You suppose there is not, but you cannot help but think of your previous experiences of feeding, back when the roles were reversed. Astarion’s body pressed against yours, his cold breath on your skin raising the hairs on the back of your neck. The piercing chill of his teeth breaking through to the pulse in your throat, and your heart pumping your hot blood into his mouth while he languidly fucked you in your bedroll, hand over your mouth to stifle your moans, pumping slowly in and out…

You blink the image away. It is definitely not the kind of thing you want to picture when you are about to sink your teeth into another man’s flesh. Hardly a suitable thought to take one’s breakfast with, you chide yourself silently.

“Are you sure about this?” you ask, praying that your voice doesn’t give away your wandering mind.

“Quite sure.”

You give a small nod, more to convince yourself than anything. You can do this. You can control yourself. This will be nothing like the last time you fed on a person. You are not so starved now; Astarion at least kept you well-fed in the days leading up to your rescue. And Gale knows what he’s doing, surely, if what he says about Astarion feeding on him is true. You take hold of Gale’s arm with both hands and guide it uncertainly to your mouth. He gives a small nod of encouragement, and you slowly, carefully, almost delicately sink your fangs into the flesh of his forearm. He gives a small wince of discomfort but does not pull away.

You almost do, though. Your face puckers at the bitterness of him the instant his blood coats your tongue, but within moments the urge to withdraw is drowned out by the wonderful warm full feeling that comes with feeding. It is the only time that your hunger doesn’t gnaw at your insides; it is the only time you feel free of your curse of undeath. It is strange, being so torn between disgust at the taste and bliss at the sensation, but it makes it less of a struggle to pull back before you drain Gale too much.

“You see?” he says with a smile that is only slightly pained, “I knew you could do it. I didn’t even have to stop you.”

“It helps that you’re something of an acquired taste,” you say, licking the remnants of blood from your lips and trying not to grimace at the sourness of it. “Thank you, though, truly. That was— I needed that. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Just let us know when you need to feed again. We’ve all agreed to a rota of sorts, and Shadowheart says she’s missed having a reason to cast Lesser Restoration, so she’s more than happy to patch us up.”

“Gods above, you make it sound like you’re looking after a pet cat or something, not letting me drink your blood.”

“Well, maybe we see you as the pet cat of the group. Questionable past, somewhat feral, prone to biting, but somehow still incredibly beloved by all.”

“Coming from you, the biggest cat lover that I know, I will take that as a compliment.”

“As it was intended,” he grins.

The rest of your companions have begun to gather up packs and prepare to move out of camp, moving to stand by you and waiting expectantly.

“So what’s next? Please tell me you have a plan.”

“Oh, we have a plan,” says Gale. “As you know, ascending Astarion took two things: the infernal contract, and the ritual. We need to get the contract and destroy it, and then we need to reverse the ritual.”

“And we do that… how?”

“The first step is to get the contract from Mephistopheles.”

“You want us to steal from an archdevil?”

“Ideally, yes, we would steal it. Unfortunately, since a certain someone who shall remain nameless stole an exceptionally valuable item from him in the not-so-distant past, our hell-bound sources seem to think that he has significantly increased the security of his vault.”

You wrinkle your nose,  guiltily avoiding the pointed stares from your friends. “Right. Yes. Sorry about that. So how do we get it?”

“We make a deal with the devil.” You don’t miss Karlach’s look of fury, nor Wyll’s annoyed scowl. They share a glance that tells you that this has been a heated topic of conversation many a time before.

“We make a deal with the second most powerful archdevil in all the hells?”

“Yes.”

“Well, alright. What could possibly go wrong?”

Chapter Text

Your sarcasm, as ever, is not lost on Halsin.

“None of us are particularly fond of the idea,” says the druid. “But our only options for retrieving the contract are fighting our way to it, or bargaining our way to it. Fighting would mean certain death. If we bargain, we at least have a chance of survival.” His voice is as low and level as ever, but he looks troubled. “We must do this. It feels as though we barely removed one curse from the land before we unleashed another. We need to make things right.”

His words make you swallow your glibness. They force you to see that this is not only about getting revenge on the man you loved. For the others, this is setting right a wrong that you yourself helped perpetrate. You led them down this dark path. It might be a quest of vengeance for you, but for them it is justice.

“So how will we even make a deal with Mephistopheles? What can we possibly offer him?” Other than our souls, you think, but you decide to keep that thought to yourself.

“Unfortunately,” says Wyll, “getting much information out of the eighth circle of hell is a difficult task, so we won’t really know what we’re facing until we’re there. But there is one thing that we are fairly certain he will want: the Crown of Karsus, returned to him.”

You sigh. You had so very dearly hoped that revenge would be quick and bloody, but it seems to be growing more distant by the moment.

“The problems we will face are threefold,” says Gale. “One, as we all know, the Crown is now in the possession of Raphael. Two, as I’m sure you’re aware, Astarion is also planning on taking the Crown for himself.” 

Gale gestures to you as he says this, but your surprise must be evident on your face, because his brow crinkles when his gaze catches yours. 

“You did know, didn’t you?”

You shake your head. You do not allow yourself to dwell on the terror of the vision in your minds eye: Astarion, crowned, ruling all. You and all those that you love, gathered, kneeling, at his feet.

“Ah. Right. Well, yes, Astarion is set on taking the Crown for himself. It’s why he deigned to remain in contact with me these past few months - I told him I could help him retrieve it, in exchange for him allowing me to study it. Obviously, I never would have actually allowed him to take it, but I had to appear to be helping him in order to gather information about everything that he was planning, and obtain access to you.”

“Great. So we’ll need to outsmart both the devil that we gave the all-powerful artefact to in the first place, and my evil vampire-god of a husband. But you said the problems were threefold - dare I even ask what the third problem is?”

Gale gives you a grim smile. “The third problem is my own.” He taps his chest with a finger. “The Netherese orb within me still needs removing. If I were to return the Crown to Mystra, I could finally be freed from the shackles of my past mistakes.”

“Mystra is still willing to save you from the orb?”

“She certainly isn’t happy with me and my failures, but she saw that I tried my best to convince an incredibly stubborn companion not to give the omnipotent relic to a devil. She’s not your biggest fan, though, I must say.”

“Oh, good. I’ll add her name to the list of gods that I’ve disappointed.”

“You may joke, but I had rather hoped she might help you regain some magical power.”

“Oh.”

The feeling is familiar to you now: yet more disappointment caused by more bad choices you've made in the past. Gale might eventually be freed from the shackles of his past mistakes, but it seems you will be held captive by your own past blunders for some time yet. You press the heels of your hands into your eyes, wishing that things could be simple for once. You would never admit it to the group of heroes around you, but sometimes the simplicity of your previous life seems so appealing. Death and murder are so clean, so easy, so uncomplicated. Trying to be good, even without your past urges, is exhausting.

“Alright," you say, trying to rally. "Forgetting the Crown for a moment, what is the second step of this plan? Say we manage to get the contract from Mephistopheles. Do we even know how to reverse the ritual?”

“We do…” says Wyll, and something in his voice makes you quite sure that step one is actually the easy part of this plan.

You sigh again. “Out with it, then.”

Chapter Text

“So, we make a deal: Astarion's contract for one of our own, right?” Wyll continues, animated and full of confidence in the way only Wyll can be when planning your almost-certain demise. “And our new contract says that we return the Crown to Mephistopheles. So we fetch the Crown. But before we return it, we use it ourselves - we use the Crown to reverse the ritual.”

“We do what?”

“We use the Crown to reverse the ritual,” repeats Wyll, although this time with far less gusto. “Then we return it to Mephistopheles, complete our contract, and return to Baldur's Gate to take Astarion down.”

“By the gods,” you say, sitting down. “I thought you had an actual plan. How in the hells are we supposed to use the Crown? Isn't it supposed to be beyond mortal control? And how are we going to ‘fetch’ the bloody thing? Just waltz in and ask Raphael nicely?” Your voice has reached a high, hysterical pitch now.

Wyll gives Gale an uncertain look, and the wizard takes over once more.

“I've been communing with Mystra, and she will channel her power to us to allow us to use the Crown. Not just once, either, but thrice .”

“ Thrice?” You don’t quite know if you’re questioning the seemingly arbitrary number, or Gale’s choice of vocabulary. Both are equally baffling to you.

“Aw, come on. Gods love that dramatic shit. It’s always three wishes, isn't it?” says Karlach, grinning.

“But why only three times?”

“Oh, I don't know. Probably something to do with the fact that every time the Crown is used it carries with it a chance to rip apart the very fabric of reality as we know it.”

“Alright, but if it's so dangerous, why is she willing to do it at all?”

“Through our use of it, we believe that we will be able to drain the Crown of its power. Mystra’s channelling through my magic will give her access enough to absorb the Netherese weave within it.”

“But I thought you said we need to give the Crown back to Mephistopheles?”

“And indeed we will! Technically. It will just be, er, somewhat modified.”

“You’re willing to risk all of our souls on a technicality?”

“Trust me, I don’t like it any more than you do, but unless anyone has any better ideas, this is our only option.”

“Surely there’s some way around it - some clause or something that we could find?”

“Well, I have been dedicating a not inconsiderable amount of time to researching this over the past year, but if you think you’ll find something I have missed then you are more than welcome to search for it.” Gale is getting irritated now, and as frustrated as you are, you don't want to push him too far.

“And you're all okay with this?” You ask, turning to look each of your companions in the face. “You all think this is a good idea?”

“Look, I don't love step one - deals with devils are never good, and deals with archdevils are worse. But step two sounds an awful lot like a chance to kick Raphael's smarmy arse, and then play his father at his own game, and that is something that I am very much on board with,” says Karlach.

“It's risky,” says Shadowheart, “but if it gives us the means to take Astarion down, then I say it's worth it.”

“Agreed,” says Wyll. “Justice must prevail.”

You sigh. Utterly mad, the lot of them. “Halsin?” You ask, turning to your final hope. Wise Halsin, level Halsin, the last bastion of common sense, will surely object.

He grimaces. “I've been reflecting on it a lot, and I can't think of another way around it. We need to stop Astarion, and the only way to do that is to destroy the infernal contract and reverse the ritual.”

“Great!” Your voice is still shrill, still edged with hysteria, and now dripping with sarcasm, too. “Off we go, then! Straight to Mephistopheles, wherever in the hells he is. Let's get moving!”

“Um,” says Wyll, uncomfortably, “it's not actually that easy.”

You turn on him, seething, and hiss through gritted teeth.

 “Of course it isn't.”

Chapter Text

It is, in fact, fairly easy to begin with. The River Styx is apparently the best way to travel between the upper planes of the hells, and Wyll has found a boat willing to take you all the way to Phlegethos, the fourth layer of the hells. Karlach tells you excitedly that it is a fiery realm of dark delights. The first thing you think when she describes it is how much Astarion would have loved it, back when he delighted in anything other than cruelty and power. You hate yourself for thinking it. In Phlegethos you will find the city of Abriymoch, the hellish centre of entertainment, vice, and lust. It is there, according to Karlach, that you will find a portal to take you to the icy plane of Cania, the realm of Mephistopheles.

The boat is not even half a day's journey by foot, but the short walk is enough to show you the full extent of your body's deterioration under Astarion's thumb. You are quickly winded, and your pack, despite being the lightest, weighs you down. Before long you are lagging at the back of the group, your shoulders and back aching, withered muscles burning, limbs feeling leaden, feet landing heavily from the fatigue of lifting them step by trudging step. Wyll, ever the gentleman, notices and takes your pack from you, refusing to listen to your protestations and easily keeping your pack out of reach of your grabbing hands until you begrudgingly accept his assistance with a quiet word of thanks. Karlach, ever the tease, tells you that if you don't pick up your pace she will carry you the rest of the way and no one will ever respect you again. You punch her on the arm, gather your meagre strength, and press on. By the time you reach the boat, you are feeling sore and faint and unreasonably proud of yourself for making it on your own two feet.

The journey by river is strangely, undeniably pleasant. Your nostrils grow numb to the overwhelming smell of brimstone within hours, and you pass the rest of the day catching up with your companions. Other than Karlach and Wyll, who take turns attempting to maintain control of the crew of imps who steer the boat, none of you have much to do beyond talking. You are still finding it difficult to put the experiences of the past year into words, so you gladly allow yourself to be regaled with tales of regrowth in lands once cursed with shadow, with stories of studies partaken in long-lost libraries amongst stacks of tomes written in tongues that have not been spoken in ten lifetimes, with accounts of brutish slaying and trick playing in the ever-growing Blood War.

You are fully immersed in the fantastical anecdotes of your companions when Karlach suggests it would be a good time to rest.

“If you bunk down now, you'll get a good sleep in by the time we reach Abriymoch. And trust me, you'll want to be well-rested for Abriymoch. They don't call it the city of endless sin for nothing.” She gives an exaggerated wink to emphasise her point. Wyll and Gale both seem to blush slightly, but Halsin chuckles, and Shadowheart sports a sly grin. Everyone begins preparing to rest, with Halsin taking the first watch, and Karlach staying up to shepherd the imps.

You listen to your companions fall asleep around you, their breathing gradually growing slow and heavy. You feel exhausted after the day's activity, but ever since Karlach's suggestion to rest, a cold sense of dread has been expanding in your chest. Sleep no longer means escape. Sleep no longer means freedom from the day's drudgeries. Sleep means him.

So although your body longs for it, your mind will not let you rest. Your thoughts grow more manic, spiralling and scattered, and you toss and turn in your bedroll. Thoughts of the impossibility of success, of all the things that could go wrong, of the hurt and death that your friends might face all because of you crowd into your brain, clamouring for attention. Eventually, you cannot stand it any longer, so you rise from your bed and go in search of company with whom to while away the hours until your other companions wake.

You find Halsin on the deck, sitting cross-legged, looking out over the railing at the burning planes that you're gliding past. He turns to you when he hears your footsteps and smiles when he sees that it's you.

“Can't sleep?”

You shake your head. “Can't stop worrying about seeing him.”

You don't have to specify who you're talking about. Halsin is perceptive enough to know. You wouldn't be surprised if he was better at untangling your emotions than you are; for now, though, you want to leave the messy ball of fear-longing-loathing in your chest well alone. He simply nods and sighs.

“Come here,” he says, patting his lap. “You can rest on me. If it seems like you're having a bad dream, I'll wake you.”

With anyone else, you think this might feel uncomfortably intimate, but as you wordlessly move to rest your head in Halsin’s lap, you can't help but imagine that you're resting at the foot of a great oak tree. It feels intimate, yes, but in a way that feels wonderfully pure and beautifully genuine. When you close your eyes you can almost feel the dappled sunlight that would be filtering through the softly swaying boughs and almost hear the gentle notes of birdsong from elsewhere in this imaginary forest.

“You know how poor my singing voice is, but I can whistle a lullaby if that would help?”

You keep your eyes closed and nod into the warm firmness of his thigh. He begins to whistle, and the soft, low, slow notes calm your overworking mind. He lays one heavy hand on your ribcage, the light pressure slowing your breathing without restricting it. With another man, a hand so close to your breast might feel suggestive, teasing, but with Halsin, knowing how he feels about bodies, friendship, and love, it only feels natural. There is something so comforting, so protective, with the way you are curled up against him, and the way he holds you gently, and the sweetly haunting sound of his whistled lullaby, that within moments you find yourself drifting off to sleep.

Chapter Text

You don't know if it's Halsin's serene and soothing presence, or simply the fact that Astarion is not actively seeking you, but when you open your eyes you realise that you are dreaming. Actually dreaming, rather than being pulled to Astarion's side to participate in the waking nightmares that his powers allow him to concoct.

You also don't know why your mind has taken you here, of all places. You are back in one of the first campsites that you stayed in as a group, way back when you were first trying to find out why you had been abducted and how to cure an infection of an illithid parasite. 

“Here's my little treat with their cheeks all flushed,” says a silky voice behind you. You turn, although you already know who it will be. Astarion stands there in his old flowy white shirt and tight black trousers, and he smiles at you. The smile is warm and free, and something you haven't seen since he ascended. All of his smiles these days are cruel smirks, cutting and sharp. This smile, though, is full of flirtation, heat, and temptation. “You will come to my bed tonight, won't you?”

As you nod, the dream around you shifts, and you are lying in your bedroll under clear, starry skies. You are propped up on your elbows, and Astarion is crouching beside you.

“I thought you said you'd come to my bed tonight,” says Astarion, pouting slightly. The downturn of his lips forms such a perfect bow that you desperately want to reach out and trace the outline of them with a finger, but you resist. 

“It looks like you've saved me the journey,” you say.

“Cheeky,” he breathes. “That's promising.” He slips off his shoes, lowers himself onto his knees, and tilts his head to the side. “Any room in there for a weary traveller?”

You pull the blankets open, giving him room to slide into the bed beside you. It is a mild evening, and he lets out a breath of appreciation when he realises that you are wearing nothing but your underclothes.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were expecting me,” he whispers. Against the bare flesh of your legs, his cock presses into your thigh through the smooth leather of his trousers, already hardening. You flush with anticipation, heat building between your legs. You do not allow yourself to grind against him, to show him that you, too, are craving him. You think he already knows.

“It’s a warm night,” you say. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You are beastly. You almost make me think you didn’t enjoy our time together at the tiefling’s soiree.”

“I’ve had better nights,” you lie with a smile. He cannot know how wonderful it felt. To be seen, to be taken, to utterly lose yourself in bliss. The voices had been silenced. The urges had been quelled. Even then, a part of you knew that you would come to love him devastatingly. Even then, you knew he would be your demise.

What a beautiful demise, though, for a while at least. Even now, you cannot be sure that you would be able to do anything differently. Even now, you do not know if you would be able to resist.

“Have you, indeed,” he grins devilishly. “Then you should have no problem remaining completely silent if we recreate it right here, amongst our sweetly sleeping companions.”

Your eyes go wide as he rolls on top of you, catching your startled gasp in his lips as he presses his mouth to yours in a soft, deep kiss. His deft fingers are at work between you, unlacing the front of your underclothes, and within moments your breasts are exposed to the balmy night air. He circles your nipples lightly with cold fingertips, and once they have hardened from his attentions he drags a thumb across them, rolling one bud between finger and thumb. You arch your back, sighing into his mouth. They are so much more sensitive under his cool, teasing touch, and your need for him is only growing.

He breaks away from your kiss and moves down your body, taking a nipple between his softly parted lips. When you let out a gasp as he sucks, soft at first but then harder, with teeth, he presses a finger to your lips and pulls his head up to look at you.

“Quiet now, darling,” he breathes. “If you’re struggling to stay silent now, then who knows how you’ll cope when I do this–”

He moves with a swiftness that stops you from being able to prepare yourself, quickly slipping his hand past the waistband of your knickers and sliding two fingers deep inside you. They move through your slickened folds with ease, curling to press against that spot inside you that has your eyes flashing white with bliss. How he knows the path to your own pleasure more than you do is a mystery that you have never learned the answer to. The moan he was expecting has barely escaped your lips before he clamps his other hand over your mouth, smothering the noise.

“Careful,” he whispers, eyes gleaming darkly as he returns his mouth to your nipple, his fingers pumping in and out of you, your whimpers stifled in his palm. “Surely you don’t want the others to see how desperate you are.”

His lips tug and suck at your nipple, adding to the need burning inside you as his fingers pulse in and out of you. Your breathing is heavy and ragged, and try as you might you cannot hold in a moan of pleasure as you feel your climax growing closer. Astarion tuts softly against your breast, raising his head to chide you.

“It shouldn't be so difficult to stay quiet, darling. After all, you said yourself that you've had better.” He rubs a thumb over your pulsing clit with just enough pressure that the pleasure teases at the edge of pain, and sparks explode from your core. “Unless you were lying to me. Unless this is the best you've ever had. Is this the best that you've ever had, love?”

He removes his hand from your mouth and looks at you, his dark red eyes teasing, dangerous.

You meet his stare, and whisper “Yes,” as if the word is a confession to a far greater sin.

“Am I the best you've had?” His fingers still pump in and out of you, his thumb circling your clit, keeping a pace just slow enough that you cannot quite fall over the edge of bliss.

“Yes.”

“Good girl,” he whispers, covering your mouth with his hand once more as he curls his fingers inside you, anticipating the desperate keen that tears from your throat.

“Gods, I want to devour you,” he whispers in your ear. And gods, you want him to, too. You nod, tilt your head back, and run a finger down your exposed neck. It is an invitation he wastes no time accepting, although he does not allow himself to indulge straight away. He kisses along the length of your throat, and the feel of his cold breath on your skin, each exhale trembling with anticipation, with desire, with barely contained hunger, raises the hairs on the back of your neck. He drags his fangs along your jugular, and the promise of those sharp points drawing blood has you whimpering into his hand once more. 

“Please,” you whisper against his palm, and even if he can’t hear your muffled plea, he can see the begging in your eyes. He lets out a strangled breath of amusement or disbelief or something else you cannot read, then removes his hand from your clit to smoothly unlace his trousers and pull his length free. Your knickers are tugged aside as he rubs his head against your entrance, smearing his precum over your swollen folds, coating himself with the wetness of your desire. 

“I think the gods made you to ruin me,” he whispers in your ear, and you are so desperate for him that you almost sob, grinding your hips up to try to guide him inside. He looks down at you for a moment, drinking in the sight of you writhing beneath him, wild with lust, and the smile that flickers across his lips is one of wonder.

Then he plunges into you, and your combined arousal allows him to slide his full length inside, stuffing you, stretching you, making you so wonderfully, unbearably full after the teasing touches of his fingers. One smooth thrust, then two, and by three you are tumbling over the edge, clenching hard enough around him that he lets out an involuntary gasp of his own, and his hand over your lips is not enough to stifle the strangled cry of pleasure that you make. The world around you shrinks to the tiny space between you, the space where his cool breath meets your fever-hot skin, and then he is biting into you, piercing through the flesh of your neck as you twitch and rock in bliss beneath him.

You can feel the blood pumping through your veins, bursting into his mouth, hot and wet and red. Maybe it is only your imagination, your hypersensitive body imagining feelings you cannot possibly know, but you swear you can feel your blood rushing inside him, your pulse within his arteries, your heart beating for the two of you as you become one. He fucks you slowly through your orgasm as he feeds on you, pumping rhythmically, deeply, in and out, and the tingling bliss of your previous climax has barely faded from your body before you feel another building in your core.

At the same time, you feel your heartbeat falter, slow, fade. It should terrify you, dancing so close to the edge of death with this creature of darkness, but it does not. It thrills you. You chase the sweet oblivion that it promises as greedily as you chase the passionate release that your body is craving once more. But just as your vision becomes tinged with black, just as your lips and fingertips begin to tingle not from pleasure but from lack of blood, Astarion pulls back.

You loll your head back to meet his gaze, and you could weep at the sight of him. His full lips and sharp chin smeared with your crimson blood, his red eyes reflecting the glow of the embers of the campfire, his white hair haloed around his head. He slows his pace, fucking you deep and slow, embracing you, kissing softly at the wound his teeth tore into your neck.

“This is everything,” he whispers into your hair, “you are everything.”

You almost laugh at the words. You had thought, when he first said them, that they were just another pretty line from a talented rake. You know now that they are something far more terrifying. They are the truth, and Astarion is not the kind of man who will ever settle for anything less than everything.

For now, though, in the safety of your dreams, you can enjoy them for what you once thought they were: sweet, senseless nothings whispered in the throes of passion. The strength with which he slams into you increases, the pace quickening, all thoughts of silence and subtlety forgotten as your lusts take over. Skin slaps against skin, flesh pounds into flesh, and soon you cannot imagine being anything other than half of this blissful union. The pressure between your legs builds to a crescendo in which you forget that you are dreaming, forget what this man has become, forget anything other than the perfect, delightful rush of sensation that flows through you as you crash over the edge into your second climax, squeezing and clenching around him, dragging him over the edge with you. You feel his cock convulsing inside you, spurting his cum deep within, and his uneven breaths blow softly across your face as he presses his forehead to yours, lost in the bliss, entirely spent.

You lie like that as the world around you comes back into focus, trying to enjoy the welling feeling of closeness, of vulnerability, of blossoming love. The afterglow of your passion is where you first began opening up to each other beyond the cold masks you hid behind, through gentle breaths, careful touches, clumsy jokes and stolen glimpses.

You are glad your mind brought you here tonight. It is good to remember that things were once so sweet.

“Well, well, well,” says a voice, cold and severe. “Having fun without me, darling?"

Chapter Text

The word darling is a dagger to your mind. You blink, and suddenly you are no longer lying beneath the stars, no longer surrounded by the whispering of the night breeze weaving through the branches of trees, no longer lying in a lover's tender arms. You are once again in your bedchamber, looking through the hazy rainbow fog of Astarion’s dream power at your husband’s furious face. He is not even a step away from you, towering over where you lie on the floor. You scramble upright and try to back away, but he lunges at you, catching your jaw in a bruising grip as he forces you to look him in the eye.

“To think that I thought that you, my sweet, were just as desperate to return to me as I was to find you. Yet here you are, resting in another man’s lap, filled with some other man’s tainted blood, moaning and sighing over another man’s cock. Who knew that my wife was such a whore?”

He lets go of your face at this, bringing his hand back to land a stinging slap against your cheek. The force of the hit sends you sprawling to the floor. Even through the shock of the blow, this last accusation feels unfair.

“I was dreaming of you.” You blink away the tears in your eyes, trying to remind yourself that this is all taking place in some strange realm of dreamlike being. You hope the pain will not carry through to your waking body. You need to withstand him. Astarion does not yet know that you have control of your mind once again. He does not know that you're actively fleeing his cruel attentions. You know you must do all in your power to keep it that way.

He gives a cold, bitter laugh. “No, you weren’t. You were dreaming of the shadow of a man I once was. How dare you dream of him when you have me? Do you even appreciate all that I am? All that I give to you? Or must you be reminded?”

“No,” you say, your voice hoarse. He tuts, sneering at you.

“You can say no to me again, can you? My naughty little wife. Have you been letting the wizard cast his magic on you? I never should have trusted that snivelling traitor. He will pay. But for now, it seems you do need reminding that you are mine.”

You begin to shake your head, but Astarion is already advancing on you, grabbing you by the hair and pulling you roughly towards the bed. You scramble after him as best you can, and once you reach it he shoves you face-down onto the sheets. Your objections are muffled by the silk bedding, and he has your trousers and knickers pulled down in moments, exposing your pussy to his view.

“Don't–” you begin, but your sentence is cut off by the yelp you let out as Astarion brings a hand down hard to slap against your cunt.

“Don't what, darling? Don't do this?”

He thrusts two fingers inside you, curling them to hit your most sensitive spot. Though you try to resist it, you are already worked up and wanting after your dream, and your traitorous body melts at his touch. He knows you, knows your body, knows your pleasure too well. A moan escapes your lips, and he laughs.

“Don't you want this?” he taunts, thrusting his fingers in and out, adding a third, coaxing forth another reluctant groan of pleasure that you try to stifle into the bedsheets. “It sounds like you want this. It looks like you want this. Your pretty pink pussy is so puffy and wet, it's practically begging for attention.” He withdraws his fingers and slaps you roughly between the legs once more, making you cry out. “I can't believe I never saw what a whore you were before. It's so obvious now.”

You shake your head, your face rubbing against the silky bed sheets, hoping against hope that you will wake up any moment now.

“Don't lie to me, darling. You wanted this. You made it this way. I wanted power, and you wanted to lose yourself in me. We both got what we wanted, didn’t we?”

He has already unlaced his trousers, and as he finishes speaking he pulls out his length, lines up behind you, and roughly thrusts into you. You cry out, pleasure and pain spiking through you as he impales you. You can already feel your climax building between your legs, and all you can think is wake up, wake up, wake up, because you cannot stand the idea of coming undone for this hateful man.

He takes a handful of your hair in his fist and pulls your head back, grabbing your neck with his other hand to hold you upright, your back pressing into his chest as he pounds into you from behind. You screw your eyes shut at the sting of your pulled hair, then keep them closed in an attempt to focus as you try to push down the pressure building between your legs. His pace is punishing, bruising, pushing you closer and closer to the edge. This is no lovemaking; there are no tender movements, no gentle, lingering, teasing touches. It is simply a brutal study in how quickly he can drag you both over the edge. He nips along your neck, grazing you with his fangs, but never quite piercing your skin. He removes his hand from your hair, snaking his arm around in front of you, circling your clit with just the speed and pleasure to push you to climax. You briefly try and pathetically fail to hold your orgasm back, whimpering as the tortuous pleasure tears through you, your eyes rolling back behind closed lids in unwanted ecstasy.

“Open your eyes, pet,” he breathes in your ear, and when you do you are met with the image of your coupling reflected in one of the bedroom's huge gilded mirrors. Astarion stares at his reflection, his eyes glittering darkly, seemingly pleased with what he sees. His body, immaculate as ever, pale and beautiful and completely alone.

“Look at yourself, darling. Look at you coming apart for me. Do you see? You are all mine, my love. All mine.”

He laughs into your neck at the sound of the sobs that escape your lips and continues his vicious torments.

“But you can't see, can you? Because you are nothing. That's what you see. That's what you are. Nothing. Without me you are nothing.”

You see his reflected face twist in disgust as he lets you go and you fall forward. The moment your face hits the silken sheets you jerk awake, eyes snapping open, lungs gasping in the sulphurous air of the hells, sobbing inconsolably as you feel Halsin's strong arms pull you up to his chest, cradling you in a warm, solid embrace.

Chapter Text

You hear Halsin's rumbling voice through your tears.

“Shh, my heart. You're alright. You're with me. You're safe. He can't get you here. Just breathe for me. There you go.”

You focus on your breathing, shakily dragging air in, out, in, until your breaths have become level and calm. You should be filled with relief that you are awake, or perhaps with love for your friend who is here to hold you. Instead, for reasons unfathomable to you, you feel rage. You push roughly at Halsin's chest, breaking the wrap of his arms around you, and glare at him.

“You said you would wake me up,” you spit, and both of you seem surprised with the venom in your voice.

Halsin raises his hands, palms facing you in a calm peacemaking gesture that only infuriates you further. “I didn't realise anything had happened. You seemed to be resting peacefully–”

“You left me in there,” you say, shoving him in the chest. You are angry at the sting of tears that you can feel welling up. You hate that anger makes you cry. It makes you seem so much weaker than you want to be. Fury used to drive you to commit ferocious atrocities; now it seeps pathetically out of the corner of your eyes. You see what you have become and you despair.

Halsin does not react to your shoving. His face is creased with concern, but his voice remains calm, which makes you want to scream. “If I had known you were in trouble–”

“You left me there for months,” you say, and you hadn't even meant to say it, but now that it is out in the open you cannot stop yourself. “You left me with him for half a year.”

You hit him once more in the chest, but your heart isn't in it, and you let him catch your hands in his. Your tears are flowing freely now, and his concern has morphed into sadness at the sight of your weeping.

“I didn't realise it was so bad.”

“How could you not?! They were there when we did it - Gale, and Shadowheart. They saw what we did. They must have told you. You must have known we'd be punished for it. You must have known how bad it would get.” Your words are accusatory, but you notice they sound more like begging when they spill from your lips.

Halsin shakes his head sadly. “We knew we'd unleashed a great evil, yes. But we thought you would be safe until we could act against him. We thought he loved you.”

You let out an ugly, high, wet laugh which is entirely devoid of joy. “He doesn't know the meaning of the word. The closest he feels is possession. Ownership.” 

You say the word with a bitter sneer, and Halsin squeezes your hands. His eyes are full of an understanding that makes you regret your outburst.

“Can you tell me what happened to you?” he asks gently.

You cannot bear to hold his pitying gaze, so you stare at the floor and shake your head. “Not yet.”

He nods. “I understand. All I can say is that I am deeply sorry. We should have kept you safe.”

You shake your head again. The fight within you is fading fast. “It was my choice. My fault. It wasn't your responsibility. I'm sorry, I'm just– what I said wasn't fair. I'm just so angry, and sad, and I hate that I feel like I'll never be free of him.”

“Oh, my heart. Come here,” he says, holding his arms out and offering an embrace. You lean into his arms once more, your tear-streaked cheeks dampening his shirt as he continues. “We're here now. It's not too late. We will get you freed.”

Chapter Text

You sit in Halsin's solid hug, your face pressed against the slowly spreading patch of dampness on his chest, feeling the anger and resentment that has been building up in your cold, dead heart slowly wasting away. He knows the power of silence, and you feel as though he hears the turmoil of your unspoken thoughts without needing to give them a voice as you sit together in the quiet watching the banks of the Styx stream past.

Your tears have long since stopped flowing when you hear the heavy, bounding footsteps that can only belong to Karlach, and moments later her head pokes out from the cabin.

“Everything alright?” 

You break away from Halsin and nod, pulling a smile onto your face. 

“Well, better get packed up. We're almost there.”

“Already?”

“Yup. The imps have worked their magic. Best not to stay on the Styx too long if you can help it. Stygian floods, blood rain, you name it, the Styx provides." She gives an exaggerated shudder. "You ready?”

“I think so.”

Karlach laughs. “We'll see about that. This place is wild.”

You and Halsin share a dubious glance, then you get to your feet and follow Karlach. She leans against the railing on the opposite side of the deck, pointing towards a great mountain looming up ahead.

“There it is,” she says.

“I thought we were going to a city? That looks an awful lot like a mountain to me.”

“It’s actually a volcano,” says Gale, arriving from below deck, followed closely by Shadowheart. “The city of Abriymoch resides within.”

“Correct,” says Karlach. She is the only one of you who is grinning. To the rest of you, the imposing site before you invites nought but a feeling of deep apprehension. Your foray into the hells, thus far, has avoided any interaction with the plane’s denizens. You are not so foolish as to imagine you will be able to maintain this feat once you step foot in one of its cities. Before long you can make out docks at the foot of the volcano, teeming with distance-blurred figures. Their shouts and cries carry across the water, faint at first, but growing ever louder. You stand beside your companions on the deck, watching with awe as the docks draw closer, the mountain towering above you all.

“Ah! Almost forgot. Best you put these on,” says Karlach, rummaging in her gargantuan pack and pulling out a bundle of hooded cloaks. “Tieflings are rare enough here - other mortals are all but unheard of. We need to keep our heads down and try not to attract any attention. These should allow us to pass without trace.”

“Why do they smell like mushrooms?” asks Shadowheart, wrinkling her nose disdainfully as she dons the cape she's handed.

“Damned if I know,” says Kalrach cheerfully. “Bloke I bought them off said they granted fire resistance, but I'm pretty sure he was bullshitting to try to charge me more. Still, it'd be nice if they did. It gets hot in there.”

Before long, the boat is docked at the base of the volcano, and you and your companions make your way along a wide road leading from the docks to a vast, craggy archway leading into the heart of the mount. As you travelled along the river the oppressive heat of Avernus faded, but the closer you get to the archway, the hotter the air becomes once more. As you walk through the dark stone arch, you are blasted by the heat of a huge lake of lava that lies before you, filling the crater that makes up the centre of the mountain.

The lake is studded with islands of black rock of varying sizes, and each landmass is crowded with twisting towers and glass-domed turrets of impossibly intricate design. They spike upwards haphazardly, some leaning at dangerous angles over the lake as if the molten earth is trying to reclaim them. The glowing skies shining through the volcano's opening above and flaming lava below cast the delicate spires in a strange and otherworldly orange light.

Between the islands, gondolas dot the lava lake's surface, lesser devils serving as grim-faced goldoliers for shrieking gangs of demonic revellers. The heat and the spectacle of it all make you dizzy.

“By Balduran,” says Wyll, and as you turn to him you see that the wonder you feel at the sight before you is mirrored in his wide-eyed stare. “This is not the hells I know.”

“Spoken like a man who has refused to venture beyond Avernus before,” grins Karlach, slapping him on the back. “Welcome to the pleasure palace of the Nine Hells, baby. Wait here, I'll hail us a boat.”

You all crowd into a gondola, your devilish guide trying not to look concerned when the boat dips alarmingly low with the combined weight of Halsin and Karlach. As he pushes you across the lake, the towering sides of the mountain all around you make it feel like you and every part of this city are sinking, sinking, deep into the world's molten grave.

The shores of the isles are laced with strings of lanterns, each one sputtering and sparkling in a kaleidoscope of colours. Pixie lights, you realise as you are pushed closer to one island, each pixie tortured in its own way to produce its own unique colour. Suddenly the beauty of this alien place makes you feel sick. You remind yourself that you are in the hells: here, even beauty has a cost.

Chapter Text

Karlach points out places of interest as your boat weaves between the islands. The largest landmass is home to the Diabolical Courts, she tells you as you skirt around its edges; it is there that devils from every level of the hells can take their disputes before an impartial judge. Beyond that, in the distance, a collection of isles is home to some of the finest steelworks and armouries in all the hells, which belch thick, black soot up into swirling clouds above them. This island hosts all the best gambling dens; that one is where all the best taverns can be found; the next is where all the worst taverns can be found, which is infinitely more fun than the former.

You disembark on an island that Karlach tells you houses the finest pleasure houses in the realm.

“And how, exactly, do you know that?” you ask, all doe-eyed innocence.

“Cheeky, soldier. They let those of us fighting in the blood war spend our brief moments of reprieve in this place. I preferred to spend my time here rather than gambling away my soul in the casinos. Besides, where we're going offers more than just pleasure. I thought she could be my ticket out of here before our illithid friends turned up and whisked me away.”

The buildings here are gorgeous in their glamour, if a little worse for wear, painted in a rainbow of colours, with spun glass trinkets dangling and twirling on ribbons strung across doorways and window frames covered in flaking gold leaf. Karlach leads you down paved paths strewn with colourful sand, the remnants of smashed stained glass windows or domes broken in some wild revelry, ground down under trampling feet to fine, shimmering powder. Crystal trees of spun glass stand in front yards in sparkling imitations of the gardens of Faerun, blossoms gently tinkling, leaves catching and throwing flecks of light from lanterns onto the scorched dirt below them.

Heavy, fragrant smoke twists in tendrils onto the street through opened windows, the multitude of incense fragrances mixing into a heady, odoriferous cloud that blocks out the sulphurous smells you had been slowly growing used to, and fills you with a strange, implacable yearning. Devils of every creed and colour jostle through the streets around you, some looking broken and bewildered, others giddy with abandon. Furry and feathered creatures leer out from lantern-lit windows, whispering sweet promises of ecstasy in voices that make you shiver. The air is resonant with sin.

You fall into step beside Shadowheart, and despite the debauchery around you, you feel an awkward silence in the space between you.

“Tell me I’m wrong, but it feels like you’ve been avoiding me.” You try to watch her face as you speak, but her hood hides her expression from you.

“I have. A bit.”

“Why?”

Shadowheart sighs, as if she really doesn’t want to have this conversation - least of all here - but she relents when she turns and sees your concerned gaze. “Because I know you're mad at me, and I didn't want to face that fact.”

“So you heard Halsin and I earlier, I take it?”

“No. Well, yes,” she amends, looking sheepish, “but I thought you would be mad with us before that, too. I know I would have been.”

“It's unfair of me. I don't even know if I would have come with you if you'd come sooner, and if you didn't have a plan then he would have only found me and brought me back. I just feel like I lost myself so completely, again. The dark urges, Orin's tampering with my brain, Astarion's effects on me… I barely know who the person is who is left after all of that.” You sigh, then dodge a lust-drunk devil that stumbles between you before you continue. “But of course, you know what it's like, losing a part of yourself. Your identity. Not being able to trust your own memories.”

Shadowheart links her arm through yours and gives you a squeeze.

“I'm sorry I was avoiding you. I should have known you'd need someone to talk to about it.”

You smile and shake your head slightly. “I'm sorry I was angry. I'm not, really, I don't think. I'm just scared. Scared of him. Scared of what he'll do.”

Shadowheart smiles back at you, but there's a steely glint in her eye.

“Well, you shouldn't be. He's no match for us. The Disinherited Daughters. We eat gods like him for breakfast.”

You laugh and squeeze her arm. “I've missed you.”

She purses her lips primly, but her eyes now gleam with warmth. “I suppose I've missed you too.” 

Chapter Text

You and Shadowheart are so deeply engrossed in discussing - in great and gory detail - the multitude of grisly ways in which you could kill a certain vampire god that you almost walk straight past the others when Karlach motions for you all to stop outside a building. The facade is the deep blue of a Faerûn midsummer day, split by an array of tall stained glass windows displaying hedonistic tableaus in glittering shades of ruby-red glass. Karlach raises an eyebrow as if to ask ‘Ready?’ but waits for no answer before she pushes the door open and walks boldly inside. The rest of you follow with a little less swagger.

Your eyes take a while to adjust from the glow outside to the dimly lit interior of the building. You're stood in a square foyer, walls and floors covered in a mosaic whose tiles glint faintly in the light of the few red pillar candles that sit in a chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling. Three doors line each wall other than the one behind you, and everything is cast bloody by the tint of the stained glass windows.

Music spills out from one of the doors, a rich, melodious voice accompanied by a deep, low drumbeat. You cannot make out the words, but the melody sounds somehow profane, pounding rhythmically into your ears and drawing you further into the foyer, entranced.

“Melusine?” Karlach calls out.

The music stops abruptly. You and your companions share nervous glances as silence stretches out before you, but then one of the doors on the far wall opens, and the most beautiful woman you've ever seen steps through the door. 

Her hair falls in raven black waves to her feet, enrobing her full, moon-white body as she walks, hips swaying, towards Karlach. Her lips are full and cherry-red, and her skin is marked by freckles that cover her from head to toe in tawny constellations. Her thick lashes flutter around the roundest, bluest eyes you have ever seen.

Then you blink, and you realise that your eyes must be playing tricks on you in the dim light, for while the woman is still the most beautiful you have ever seen, she has thinner lips, hooded eyes, umbral skin, and her hair, cut short, curls in copper coils behind her delicate ears. But then she seems to change again, while not changing at all, she simply seems to be not what you thought she was. She is fair, a blonde cloud of hair floating atop her head, her apple cheeks blushing a pale rose pink. Her skin is ochre, she has twisting tiefling horns, flashing silver eyes, glowing red eyes, sparkling green eyes— 

Before you can begin to wrap your head around the sight before you, she speaks, and your brain all but empties of thought. Her voice had been charming enough before - for you are all but certain that she was the one who was singing - but now, seeing the words form and spill from her perfect lips, it is somehow even more electrifying, slow and husky and mellow. You think you would like to listen to it forever.

“Karlach? But it cannot be. We heard you got out. Why would you come back here? Surely not only to introduce these beautiful friends of yours to us?”

“Alright, Melusine, ease up a little. It's their first time. Look at them, you're killing the poor bastards.”

You might have known who this second voice belonged to once, but now it is nothing to you other than noise. Harsh, ugly noise that blocks out the beautiful woman's voice. The beautiful woman laughs, and you think your heart might be breaking with the sheer loveliness of the sound.

“I'm warning you, Mel,” says the other voice, the ugly voice, the voice you would silence forever if the beautiful woman only asked.

“Oh, fine. You're no fun anymore, Karlach.”

The spell you didn't realise you were under breaks, and reality splashes over you like a bucket of icy water. Looking at your friends' faces of shock, surprise and confusion, you do not think you were the only one affected. Only Karlach seems unruffled, rolling her eyes at the sight of you all as you get your bearings. Beside her, where the beautiful woman once stood, is a grey-skinned, black-horned fiend. She is still undeniably beautiful, but now she bears it in a way that makes the hairs on the back of your neck rise in fear. She is beautiful, yes, but she is dangerous: a succubus.

“Everyone, this is Melusine. Mel, this is Tav, Halsin, Shadowheart, Gale, and Wyll.”

“Charmed,” purrs the succubus. “And what is it, exactly, that brings you all to our little den of depravity?”

“We need to use a portal.”

“Karlach, sweetness, you know the portal topside hasn't worked for years–”

“We're not looking to go up. We need to go down. To Cania, specifically.”

“Oh,” says Melusine, her voice rising in surprise. “Whyever would you want to do that?”

Karlach hesitates, clearly weighing up whether or not to tell this fiend the truth, but eventually, she sighs and says, “We've got business there. With a certain archdevil.”

“Indeed?”

You don't like the amusement that glistens in the succubus's eyes. Neither does Karlach, apparently, because her tone changes to something harder than it usually is when she responds.

“Indeed. Come on, Mel, can you help us or not?”

“Of course I can help, fiery one. If you're willing to pay the price.”

“And what price is that?”

“Oh, nothing too terrible. Only a kiss.”

“That's all it will take? A kiss?”

“One from each of you who wishes to travel, yes. And anything else that our charms can convince you to give.”

“Our souls, you mean?” says Wyll sharply.

“We do not deal in souls, pretty one. We deal in pleasure. We will kiss, and then we will explore as many or as few delights of the body as you desire. And if you happen to shed a little of your souls in the process, what's the harm? We will not take the whole thing. Only that tiny sliver that you shuck off in your ecstasy. Where is the harm in that?”

“You cannot take a sliver of a soul,” says Gale, a frown creasing his brow. “Souls are a whole thing in and of themselves. They cannot be split or splintered like that. You'll take it all or nothing at all.”

“And what would you know of souls, clever one? About as little as you know of the body, we would wager. You've spent too much time on the mind to understand much of the spirit or flesh. Of course souls can be split. Like a snake shedding its skin, when you lie with us you may shed your weary outer layer, but the essence of your soul will remain the same. Only lighter. More free. More room to grow. To stretch out and discover more of your true self. Doesn't that sound nice?”

There is an uncertain silence as you all ponder on the likely cost of this transaction.

“Think on it, beauties. But first, we have been terribly rude, and that must be righted. You have entered our house and we have not offered you succour. Come; eat, drink, and when you are sated we can discuss how we might help you.”

Chapter Text

Melusine gestures for you to follow and then walks into another room, hips swaying, tail oscillating hypnotically in rhythm with her steps.

“Are you quite sure this is safe?” Gale asks Karlach as you all move to follow the succubus. “Accepting food in the underworld rarely goes well for the heroes in the old tales.”

“Nah, those stories are a load of bollocks. Probably made up by some devil to mess with us. This is about the safest thing you can do down here. It's the oldest form of contract, right? Offering and accepting food means both parties will avoid any violence against each other... At least while they're under the host's roof.”

Gale raises his eyebrows. “Fascinating. Very well. As always, I bow to your wisdom when it comes to infernal social graces.”

The room you are led into hosts a long wooden table at its centre, laden with dishes of every kind of foodstuff your heart could desire. You feel a twinge of longing as you note several delicacies that were once favourites of yours among the feast. You curse yourself for not asking Gale or one of the others to let you feed before you left the boat; this sumptuous spread is not helping with the constant gnawing of hunger in your gut, and that first feed on Gale is feeling like an eternity ago.

“Please, sit down. Partake. You must be weary to have journeyed so far from home.”

Melusine’s voice is so alluring that once you are seated, you almost find yourself reaching for food that you know you cannot eat. To have it on a plate in front of you would be one more torment that you do not need. You resist, and try instead to enjoy watching the obvious looks of delight on Wyll and Karlach’s faces as they tuck into the food. Gale still looks somewhat dubious, but he picks at his plate politely enough, and Shadowheart looks like she is desperately trying to look as though she is not enjoying herself, but is failing slightly, which makes you smile. Halsin sits between you and the succubus, and though his face is mostly impassive, you notice that his eyes seem thoughtful.

Watching the others eat, you cannot help but recall the previous time that you were invited to dine at a similarly lavish, similarly hellish feast. In your first meeting with the devil Raphael, he invited you to dine within his House of Hope. At the time you refused, fearing the consequences, but now you wish that you had dined when you had the chance; a contract stating that he wouldn’t harm you while you were under his roof would be more than useful in your upcoming quest. Then again, you doubt that the contract would hold if you were caught stealing his most valuable possession from him.

Still, facing Raphael is a future worry, and one that you won’t even have to face until after you destroy Mephistopheles's contract. To do that, you need to get access to a portal to Cania, and to do that, you need to deal with Melusine.

A kiss from a succubus. It's hardly a steep price for safe passage through half of the hells. A single moment in the charm of a pleasure fiend in exchange for a step closer to the revenge that you crave. There can’t be many better deals to be had in all the hells. That will be the thought going through all of your companions’ heads, and knowing that makes it so much harder to say what you are about to say.

“I don’t think I can do it.”

Although you had expected the shocked expressions of your companions, they do not sting any less.

“We’re in hell, soldier,” says Karlach, not unkindly. “Everything has a price. Better to pay with a moment of body than an eternity of soul. This is about as painless as it’s going to get.”

“I know,” you say, your voice growing quiet. “I just— I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can handle being charmed again. I’ve lost myself so many times, and the thought of willingly doing it again, I just— I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Oh, sweet one,” says Melusine, her voice silky, “you will not lose yourself in our charms. Where would be the fun in that? We want you to be you. We simply help you become more… free.”

You give a mirthless laugh. “Everyone knows that a person who kisses a succubus becomes charmed by them.”

“A different kind of charm, perhaps, than those you find in your mortal realm. We will not have any control over you. You will be entirely yourself. You will simply find that those darkest desires you bury deepest within you become stronger. We allow you to feed those forbidden appetites. We indulge in your tempting taboos. That is all we want. We do not want control.”

“And what if… what if I lose control?” you ask. You know well enough that the darkest desires of your past were not exactly the sort one typically plays out in a pleasure house. The succubus smiles.

“We're sure we could manage.”

“If my presence would make it easier for you, then I am happy to be there,” says Halsin slowly. “Each one of you is a piece of my heart, and I make it no secret that I find every one of you to be as beautiful as—“

“Gods, Halsin,” interrupts Karlach, “we’re bartering sex with a fiend in hell, not writing poetry.”

Halsin gives Karlach a yielding smile. “I admit my way of speech can be a little too… druidic at times, but my words are true nonetheless. You all know my views on sex are less traditional than most. I would happily be there, as a friend, if having a known presence would make this transaction with a stranger more comfortable.”

“How deliciously noble of you,” says Melusine, her warm voice full of amusement. Then she turns to you, and her smile fades, and your heart sinks; you cannot bear to be the cause of such a thing of beauty ceasing. “But we see you do not even wish to eat our food, let alone share our bed. Tell us, loved one, what have we done to you for you to scorn us so?”

“I’m sorry,” you say, and you mean it. “It’s not that I won’t; it’s that I can’t. I can’t eat any of this, although I wish I could.”

Melusine raises a questioning eyebrow - so dainty, so perfectly arched - but Karlach jumps in before you can answer her unspoken question.

“She’s a vampire, Mel.”

“Is she?”

The succubus’s inflexion implies curiosity rather than doubt. She slides out of her chair, and instead of walking around Halsin, she climbs directly over him, not even trying to avoid rubbing her body against his wide chest as she perches herself in his lap to get a better look at you. The druid’s eyebrows raise, but he otherwise makes no objections. You notice that she smirks slightly as she cocks her head to the side to take you in.

“We’ve never had a vampire before,” she says. “Still, we must feed you. It is custom.”

You look to Karlach, who half shrugs, half nods, as if to say yeah, she’s not wrong. But it feels wrong, for some reason that you cannot put into words. If kissing a succubus can charm you, what might drinking their blood do? Vampires and succubi both are rare enough creatures, you know, so you doubt any of your companions will be able to alleviate or confirm your fears. Still, the beautiful fiend is holding out her wrist to you, and your hunger is there, ever-present, ever-demanding, and you are having to exert significant willpower to even hesitate at the offer.

“Don’t be rude, now,” she says, her voice such a wonderful mixture of teasing and stern that your stomach almost flips at the sound of it. With the hand not offered out to you, she picks up a knife from the table and brings it slowly to her forearm, pressing the blade firmly against the spot where her blue veins show through her grey skin. Time seems to slow as she drags the blade along her wrist, as deep red blood beads along the fine straight line she has drawn in her flesh, as your mouth fills with saliva and your brain empties of all thoughts other than feed.

Shit, you think. Fuck it, you think. Then time starts up again, and you grab her hand with undignified desperation, pressing your lips to the cut and drinking, feeding, sating the hunger within you. She tastes divine. She tastes like you will never be hungry again. The ever-present pain in your stomach fades.

You feel free, for the first time in a very long time.

You feel peaceful.

You feel happy.

And then you begin to feel something else.

Something hot.

Something huge.

Something entirely all-consuming.

Desire.

Inescapable, uncontrollable, world-ending desire.

Chapter Text

Everything feels so good. Even breathing feels amazing, the stretch of your lungs as you inhale, the tingling of air it swells in your chest, the expansion and contraction of your rib cage as it rises and falls.

“Oh, gods,” you manage, but your tongue feels thick in your mouth as you pull away from the succubus's wrist, a trickle of blood tickling delightfully as it runs down your chin from your smeared lips. You wipe it clumsily with a finger that you bring to your mouth, and as you close your lips around it, something about the buttery metal taste, or the soft slick wet of your tongue, or just the sheer pleasure of existing in this very moment, makes you let out a soft moan of need.

“Mel, what have you done to her?”

“We don’t know. We told you, we’ve never had a vampire before.” She smiles at you. “But we imagine that will change soon, won’t it, loved one?”

Your eyes are struggling to focus, but even when slightly blurred, you can see that her face is the most perfect thing to ever have been created.

“Do you want a kiss now?” she asks, and it takes your mind a while to process the words, so spellbound are you by the sumptuous shapes that her mouth makes when she speaks. Eventually, you give a dazed nod, the room spinning slightly with each movement of your head, and then you’re leaning towards her, and she’s leaning towards you, and your needy lips smash against hers in a ravishing embrace.

You've never known a kiss could be so sinful. One of her hands tangles in your hair, pulling it just enough to elicit the lightest whimper of pain from your throat. Her sharp nails scratch blissfully against your scalp, sending frissons of joy cascading down from the base of your skull. Her other hand comes to your neck, her fingers playing across your collarbone, tickling, teasing, toying with the desire that somehow keeps exponentially growing within you. You’ve known hunger for so long, and you thought that was the strongest feeling you could experience, but this? This is something else entirely. It swallows you whole, and you love it. You want nothing more than to melt into it. You groan as the succubus pulls harder on your hair, grinding against the chair you’re sitting on in a desperate attempt to ease the pooling fire between your legs.

“Right. Um. We should leave,” you hear Gale say, and he sounds so wonderfully awkward about it that you break away from the kiss to throw your head back and laugh with glee. You turn your head to look at your friends, and once your vision catches up with your movements you beam at them. Gods, you hope they know how much you love them. 

“Or we could stay…?” suggests Shadowheart, her beautiful, wide eyes sparkling with mischief. Yes, you want to say, stay and let me show you how much I love you, but Melusine is already pulling your face back to hers, and when her lips meet yours you are once more lost in the ecstasy of her embrace.

“Nuh-uh,” you hear Karlach say, “she was already unsure about a kiss. She’s hardly going to want an audience.” Not true, not true, you think, watch me in my pleasure, join me in my ecstasy, but your mouth doesn’t want to leave the heat of Melusine’s glorious lips, so you remain silenced as Karlach, Gale, Shadowheart and Wyll make their way out of the room, Gale clearing his throat, Shadowheart snickering into her hand. Halsin, trapped beneath the succubus who is still perched on his lap even as she kisses you, makes a move as if to try to slide out from under her.

You reach out and wrap your hand around his arm. You try to, anyway, although even outstretched your fingers barely cover half of the circumference of his upper arm. It’s so thick, so strong, so pleasingly warm beneath your fingertips. The feel of him beneath your palm - all hard muscle, soft hair, delicate veins - has you running your hand up and down his arm, entranced, inviting, and you give a hum of appreciation. 

“Don't go,” you murmur between kisses, and although your brain cannot quite complete the thought, you know he feels like something sturdy, something solid, something secure. An anchor with which to stop you from floating away entirely. He looks questioningly at you, clearly doubtful of your true feelings. These are your true feelings, though, you’re quite sure; albeit enhanced by the diabolic blood that flows through you. You pull away from Melusine’s embrace once more, looking Halsin full in the face, trying to say with your eyes all the things your tongue is too clumsy to articulate.

“Please,” you say thickly as his face swims in and out of focus, and the candlelight seems to halo around his face, “please, don't leave me.”

Halsin swallows, then nods. Melusine laughs her dazzling laugh, and you laugh too, lust-drunk as you are, because he looks so serious, and you feel so light. She turns her body, lifting one leg over Halsin until she straddles him, face-to-face.

“Why so tense, sweet thing?” she purrs. “This will be pleasurable for all of us. Perhaps now would be a good time to take your payment, too? Will you kiss us, great one?”

He nods again, so stiffly that another giggle bubbles up from your chest at the sight of it. The succubus leans her face to his, stopping only when their lips are a mere breath apart. He holds still for a moment, then closes the gap, brushing his mouth against hers in a frustratingly sedate embrace. You watch as the corner of her mouth twitches, and then you see her press forward into the embrace, sliding her tongue into his mouth. Gradually, Halsin’s sobriety seems to melt away. He lifts his arms to wrap them around her, pulling her closer to him, gently at first, but with a building passion. His eyelids flutter closed, and as she arches her back to press herself into his chest you see him grinding his hips up against her, and you find yourself rolling your own hips, wishing that it was you that he held tight in his embrace.

Still, you can take delight in the sight in front of you. Surrounded by the dazzling flecks of candlelight, Halsin and Melusine seem like the most beautiful creatures you’ve ever seen. His thick, muscled arms bound around her supple flesh, her full lips dragging sensuously against the scarred skin of his mouth.

Your hand moves between your legs, and you let out a lustful whine at the sparks that explode from your core as you rub yourself slowly, firmly, through your garments. Panting slightly, Halsin breaks away from his kiss and turns to you, his eyes darkened by pupils blown wide with desire.

“Silvanus help me,” he murmurs.

“The gods can’t help you here, sweet thing,” coos Melusine, nipping at his earlobe, “but we’re sure we can find something else for you to worship.”

Chapter Text

Melusine slides off of Halsin’s lap, her fingers dragging across his chest as if she cannot bear to tear herself away from him completely.

“But we’ve been so cruel, ignoring our beautiful friend here. Come, both of you. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable.”

She takes you and Halsin by the hand, and guides you both to your feet, steering you through a door leading deeper within the building. You trail your free hand in shapes through the air as you are led by her, rejoicing in the feeling of the air rushing through your fingertips. Every movement of your body is blissful, every swaying step seems to rub the material of your trousers against your throbbing core, and by the time you reach your destination - a richly furnished bedroom - you are all but wild with desire.

“Clothes off, beauties,” Melusine says, her voice soft but demanding. 

Halsin has his clothes in a pile on the floor before you have even managed to unlace your trousers, and you laugh at his eagerness, but then he steps towards you and swallows your laughter in a rough, raw kiss. His hands cup your jaw, and your arms wrap around his neck, and you don’t think you’ve ever appreciated just how good kissing feels. The hot wet warmth of it, the softness of lips on lips and slickness of tongue on tongue, broken only by the occasional nip and scrape of teeth.

You feel Melusine approach you from behind, wrapping her arms around your waist to pick up where you left off with unlacing your trousers. Soon they have fallen to your feet, and you step unsteadily out of them, not wanting to break away from the embrace. One foot catches on a trouser leg and you fall, laughing, closer against Halsin, who gives a low chuckle against your smiling lips. Melusine tugs at your shirt and the smile on your face fades.

“Not that,” you say, tugging your shirt back down. You don’t want to have to think about what removing it will reveal. You don’t want to think about anything other than how good this all feels.

“Nervous?” asks Melusine, her musical voice teasing. “Would it be easier if we took another form? There is one you both long for, we feel.”

You look questioningly at Halsin, and by the time you turn to look at the succubus, you realise too late what she meant.

Astarion stands before you. Eyes burning red and lustful in the dancing candlelight, teeth gleaming ivory white between parted lips. The dead thing in your chest constricts, although whether in fear or longing, you cannot know; you never were much good at telling them apart. All you know with any certainty is that he is glorious, and you want to touch him, to taste him, to feel him inside you.

“Oak Father preserve us,” you hear Halsin murmur behind you, taking you by the shoulders and forcibly turning you back around to face him, breaking your gaze from the ravishing figure. “Change back immediately,” he says, managing to sound stern despite his lust-clouded stare.

“No, don’t,” you say, because the only thing more beautiful than the succubus herself is the pale elf who haunts your dreams, and you’re desperate to see him again.

“Tav—“

“I want this,” you say, more forcefully. There’s a look in his eyes that you’re too dazed to recognise, and he lets you go. The succubus warned you that your darkest desires would be unearthed, and maybe this is yours: the fact that after everything he’s put you through, Astarion is still the one person you want more than anything.

“Are you certain?”

He’s so serious, even now, standing naked before you with his arousal standing proud between his legs. It makes you laugh once more, and you reach up on your tiptoes to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“Quite certain,” you say between the kisses you pepper along his wide jaw, laughing as his seriousness melts beneath your kisses. “He’s so beautiful. You’re so beautiful. I feel so beautiful. I want this. Please.”

“Very well,” says Halsin, but there’s still a glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes.

“Stop worrying,” you say, placing a hand on his cheek, marvelling at the heat of his skin. “I want you to feel good. I feel good. I feel so good for the first time in forever. Won't you feel good with me?”

“Come, beauties,” says the succubus, smiling a smile that does not belong on Astarion’s face. They beckon you towards the bed. Now that you look closer, you can see that Melusine in fact wears only an approximation of your husband’s appearance: hair that waves and curls through shades of grey, then white, then silver. Pale skin that shimmers from bone white to blush pink and back. Eyes sometimes dark as the night, sometimes garnet, sometimes ruby, sometimes fresh blood red. 

You hold out a hand to Halsin and he takes it, letting you lead him towards the bed, towards the pale elf who sits upon it. Halsin’s fingers are rough against your palm, and your mind cannot help but wonder how they would feel running down your body, curling around your neck, pushing their way inside you. The thoughts are so pleasing that before you even reach the bed you turn, flinging your arms around his neck, pressing a long kiss against his lips. He gives a surprised chuckle, then kisses you back, deep and passionate, reaching his arms down to pick you up and hold you closer to him. You wrap your legs around his waist as he carries you the rest of the way to the bed, where he sits against the headboard, huge hands gripping you tight as you straddle his lap. You grind on him, aware that your arousal is slicking his thigh but not caring because you’ve never been so hot, so needy, so desperate to relieve the delicious pressure between your legs.

You whisper, “Please,” into his kiss at the same time he groans, “Yes,” loosening his grip on your waist.

Then he’s fisting his achingly hard cock, holding it upright for you as you lift yourself over it. The head, already glossy with precum, presses against your entrance and you catch your breath as you rub yourself against it, slipping it through your folds, grinding it against your clit, before slowly, slowly, sinking down onto it. The heat of it, the stretch of it would have you closing your eyes in pleasure, but you can’t take your eyes off of Halsin’s face. His breathing is heavy, his eyelids fluttering over dark eyes, and he brings his hands back up to your hips as his dark eyes meet yours.

“You’re killing me,” he says, his voice gravelly with lust, and he pulls you down further, further, slowly splitting you apart with his hot, thick length, driving up into that spot within you that sings out in pure ecstasy as he presses against it. You throw your head back as a deep sound of pleasure escapes your throat, and he begins to move you, slowly, deliberately, with agonising ecstasy up and down on his cock. Your breath catches as you feel another pair of hands snake under your shirt and around your torso from behind. In your passion, you had almost forgotten the other presence watching you, but now you lean back against a firm chest that feels like home. You feel yourself melting into almost-familiar hands that touch you with a softness that fills you with a longing so sweet and intense that you could almost weep.

“Look at you both,” says a voice over your shoulder, and it could almost be Astarion’s, although it’s a little too rich, a little too mellow. “What beauties you are.”

The succubus’s hands pull back from you, waving in the air to summon a glass bottle, unstoppered, from thin air. Oil pours out of it over delicate white fingers that you know as well as your own, which then move back to your body, one reaching up under your shirt to pluck teasingly at your nipples, the other reaching down between your legs, coating your already-slick folds and the shining shaft of Halsin’s slowly pumping cock with more lubrication. Languidly it moves to your clit, circling it tauntingly, just close enough to send bursts of bliss through your core when it makes briefly grazing contact. Just one touch, you think, just one proper touch would be enough. They seem to know it, though, and they keep you there on the edge, their breath on your neck making your skin prickle with pleasure.

“How does she feel, druid?” asks nearly-Astarion as their fingers smooth and scrape over your sensitive skin.

“Like… honey,” grunts Halsin as he buries himself deep within you, then pulls you back up his shaft. “Like sunlight. Like nature made flesh.”

The succubus laughs, tweaking viciously at one of your nipples and making you cry out before asking, “And you, beloved? How does he feel?”

Good, you think, so gods damned good, but even those simple words are too much, and you let out a moan that you hope says everything that needs to be said.

Abandoning your nipples, the succubus runs their other hand across your back, tracing the barely healed scars there, more sensitive even than the rest of your overstimulated skin. You whimper at the touch, and she breathes into your ear in her own voice, not her attempt at Astarion’s.

“What beauty is this, loved one? So much passion carved into your soul. Such pleasure and such pain. We want it. Will you give it to us, beloved? Just a taste? Just a sliver?”

“Yes,” you breathe, because you couldn’t say anything else to her. You know in this moment you would give her anything, and gods, you love her so much for only taking a sliver of your soul.

“Good,” she murmurs, “good. Now, why don’t we try some new passions, beloved?”

“Yes,” you say again, although your mind is so hazy with the bliss of her oiled fingers running over your torso, of Halsin filling you so completely from below, of the sparks that fly every time his hips roll and bump your clit against his pelvis, that you hardly know what you are agreeing to.

You gasp as one of her fingers trails around to your ass, pressing warm and slick against your tight, sensitive hole.

“Yes?” she says, and her voice has become Astarion’s once more.

“Yes,” you say, realisation slowly coming to your fuck-drunk mind, and you feel her trickle more oil over you, feel her circling that ring of muscle gently, feel her calmly, unrelentingly push a finger inside. Your breath stutters at the unfamiliar feeling, but she brings her other hand to press against your clit, touching you with the same mastery as Astarion, and suddenly any discomfort is swallowed by bliss. Astarion’s voice whispers filthy, debauched nothings into your ear as you relax around the finger, as it pushes in and out of you in rhythm with Halsin’s fucking. You don’t know if it’s the stream of debased whispers or Halsin’s leisurely pace, but you find yourself craving more.

You moan as much, and for a moment you think the succubus misunderstood you, for you feel the finger pulling out of you and you whimper at the loss. Then you feel something thicker pressing against your hole, blunt and oil-slicked, and your whimper becomes a keen of pleasure and pain as you feel the head of Astarion’s cock stretching you unrelentingly, gradually pushing further and further inside you. You close your eyes, focusing on the feeling. You are utterly defiled, utterly divine, completely lost to everything but the sensations taking over your body. You’ve felt so euphoric for so long that it’s been hard to tell whether or not you’re close to climax, but gods above, this feels like perfection.

“By the gods,” you hear Halsin choke.

“You take it so well, beloved,” says Astarion’s voice, “But that's not enough, is it? You want to be devoured. You want him to tear you apart.”

You let out a sob of pleasure, unable to form words, unable to comprehend anything but the devastating, perfect fullness of yourself.

“You too, my gentle giant. All this mild compassion is just an act, no? Beneath it all, a wild beast rages. Why not let it out, hm? We should so love to see it.”

The succubus behind you begins to thrust, speeding up from Halsin’s rhythm, and the druid groans and begins to roll his hips faster to match his pace, your drenched thighs slapping against his skin with every thrust. You hear his breath becoming heavier and uneven, and the succubus behind you laughs a wild, high laugh, thrusting deeper inside you, increasing his pace again, making you cry out in wanton delight as Halsin gasps in gratification below you. Rapture crashes through you, a tingling, impossibly euphoric rush, and you clench in unbridled pleasure around your lovers. The sensation sends Halsin over the edge, and he lets out a snarl, slamming your hips down onto his lap, spearing your overstimulated body onto his twitching cock as he spills his seed inside you. Your breaths come out as sobs as the succubus continues to thrust relentlessly behind you, and then they, too, come undone, their shape flickering strangely as their climax ripples across their body. As their fitful form becomes stable once more, they pull out of you with a satisfied hum, resting back on the bed behind you, letting you go to flop forwards bonelessly against Halsin. Your head falls forward onto his chest, and he drops his chin to rest on your head, heaving a long, contented, exhausted sigh. The fuzzy warmth of your orgasm slowly ebbs away, leaving a bone-deep, fulfilled sort of exhaustion in its place. You're washed clean of the desperate desire that had taken over you, and you think you would like to lie here, satisfied and sated, forever.

“Don’t get too comfortable, beauties,” purrs Melusine through pale elfin lips. “Two kisses but only one climax is not nearly good enough. We do have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

Chapter Text

Halsin lets out a tired chuckle into your hair. He’s still inside you, although you can feel his spend beginning to leak down your thighs, and every movement his body makes feels uncomfortably intimate without the fog of desire to blur things. Still, you are exhausted, and it takes an overwhelming amount of effort to gather the energy to slide slowly off of him and roll onto your back by his side.

“I cannot hope to live up to your reputation, I’m afraid,” he says to the succubus. “Besides, it’s been three climaxes, surely?”

“Oh,” she laughs through Astarion’s mouth, “We don’t count yours. No. Mortals are far too easy.”

“Are we, indeed?” He chuckles again, and looks over to you, apparently expecting an input.

You clench your jaw but say nothing. The humming aftershocks of your pleasure have all but faded, and your mind, cleared of lust, is in turmoil. This shouldn't feel like such a betrayal, but now that the rush of the succubus’s blood has worn off, it does. Astarion is not the only person you've ever laid with, but he's the only one you remember. He's the only one you've ever promised yourself to. Until now, he was your one and only.

But then again, hasn’t he broken every promise he made you?

You have reclaimed your mind from him. You’ve reclaimed your freedom. Why not reclaim this, too? Your pleasure. Your passion. They once were his, but now? Now, you have all but convinced yourself that the man you pledged them to is dead. You can almost force yourself to forget that one morning, that cursed flail, that single fleeting moment of the real him. So why not take back all the gifts you once gave him, and let yourself enjoy them as they were intended to be enjoyed?

“Tav?” asks Halsin, concerned at your silence. You feel a flash of annoyance at his consideration, which makes no sense to you until an unwelcome thought falls into place: Halsin reminds you of how things could be. How loved ones should act. How your life might have been if only you had fallen for a different man. A better man. 

Perhaps your inner strife shows on your face, or perhaps something else delights her, for Melusine giggles and claps her hands.

“She wants more!” she titters.

Halsin looks at you, solemn-faced once more. “I think you should rest—“

“No,” you say. “I want more.”

“Really?”

You nod, turning to the succubus. You can barely meet those gleaming red eyes. 

“Just not with him. Can you be yourself? Or anyone else? Anyone but him.”

You catch a glimpse of a smile on Astarion’s face before it flickers into the fiendish features of Melusine. 

“As you wish, loved one,” she says in her soft, silky voice.

“And no kisses. Not on the mouth, at least. I want to— I want it to be real.”

She smiles a smile that would be wicked on a face any less beautiful.

“Whatever you desire.”

She moves towards you on the bed, crawling up your body, pressing light, titillating kisses along your legs, your stomach, your chest, your neck. You focus all of your attention on her: graceful, fluid movements, gleaming black horns, soft grey skin. You can almost pretend Halsin’s troubled gaze isn’t there at all.

“And what is it that you desire, beloved?” she whispers in your ear. “We’ve already seen how you loved to be taken. But we think you have another desire.” 

You blink up at her, so mesmerised by her beguiling good looks even without her charm upon you that you cannot find the words to respond.

“We think you want to serve.” She kisses your neck again, but this time it’s a long, licentious kiss, hot and wet. “Would you like that, loved one?”

She pulls back to catch your eye, and there is something savage in her bewitching stare. You swallow. You nod. She kisses your cheek.

"Such a pretty face for sitting on," she purrs, and her smile is feral, dazzling, all sharp white teeth and full dark lips. She takes each of your wrists in her hands, holding them in place as she pushes herself up, then pinning them down with her shins as she positions herself over your face. Trapped as you now are, you can only barely move, but still, you strain upwards towards her cunt, eager to show that this is pleasure willingly given, this is pleasure that you control. She lowers herself further, and you lap at her folds, running your tongue in flat and slow circles up to the bud of her clit.

She tastes like syrupy berries, like ripe fruit, like—

Oh.

Like desire.

Chapter Text

You manage to think I should have known and she should have told me at the same time, but both thoughts are quickly replaced by a wonderful, carefree bliss that spreads out from your tongue, warming your throat, heating your chest, pooling in scalding desire between your legs. You let out a muffled moan and press your tongue deeper into Melusine, earning a breathy laugh of pleasure from the succubus. You writhe beneath her, desperate to please her, desperate to be pleased, trapped with your arms pinned beneath her legs, helpless to do anything about the flaming need that has flooded your body. It is milder than before, at least; you still feel as though you have some control. All the same, it is maddening, and you whine into her cunt, fucking your tongue deep inside her.

Melusine lets out a bark of mirth at your desperation. “Our little loved one wants some attention, but we’re rather preoccupied. Won’t you help her, druid?”

Oh gods, please, yes, you think, hoping that Halsin will sense your need and move to sate it immediately, but he does not. His hesitation will be the death of you; you can barely think beyond the need for release.

“Do you want that, Tav?”

You just manage to nod your head before Melusine grinds down harder onto your tongue.

“You’re certain?” 

You can’t respond, but if Halsin makes you wait a moment longer you might scream.

“She wants it, druid.” 

You cannot speak your consent, but you release an enthusiastic moan as you feel his hand find that needy bundle of nerves between your legs. You press your hips up against him, inviting, demanding, pleading for more. Your clit grinds against his palm as he slides one hot, thick finger inside you, gliding in easily through the lubrication of your reignited desire and his seed, which has been slowly seeping out of you, stickying your thighs.

The touch spurs you on and you push your face up against Melusine, your nose nudging against her clit as you circle her folds with your tongue before plunging it back inside her. Halsin moves his hand to thrust his finger deeper, curling it inside your tender pussy as he brings his thumb to rub toe-curling circles on your swollen clit. You feel him pushing a second finger inside you and your eyelids flutter closed. The girth of them, his steady pressure on your clit, and the taste of the succubus on your tongue are all pushing you closer and closer to the edge. You can feel the pressure building and rock your hips against his hand greedily, chasing your release.

“Don’t forget her pretty little asshole, now, will you?” says the succubus, her voice breathy with her own pleasure as she rolls her hips in a quickening rhythm on your outstretched tongue.

You whimper as you feel a finger press against your ass. It’s still slick from the succubus’s seed but sore from your earlier coupling, and your moan is one of both pleasure and pain as Halsin eases the first joint of his finger inside. Torn between wanting to pull away and wanting to push deeper, you squirm in agonising ecstasy beneath the succubus as he continues to push deeper. 

It feels so deliciously dirty, so overwhelming, so utterly overstimulating that with one final buck of your hips, your release breaks through you. Melusine’s movements on top of you become irregular, her own hips stuttering, thigh muscles flexing against your cheeks as she clamps onto your face in a climax of her own. You can’t breathe, but the burn of your lungs only adds to the tingling rush that fills your entire body. You distantly feel Halsin removing his fingers from your still-clenching holes, but the succubus stays in place until she’s ridden every shock wave of her release out on you. When she finally pushes herself off of you, your chin is left glistening with her arousal, and your chest heaves as you drag in the air that your lungs desperately crave.

You must look a mess, because as soon as she’s moved away, Halsin is beside you, brushing hair from your sweat-slicked forehead.

“Are you alright?” he asks softly. You nod, still dazed with pleasure, unsure if you’d be able to form the words in your mind, let alone on your aching tongue.

The succubus slides off the bed, looking supremely unruffled. Her voice is still lovely, but it lacks the molten warmth that it had before. “We don’t imagine we’ll be getting much more fun out of either of you, will we?”

You close your eyes and shake your head, breathing heavily. You feel utterly spent.

“Pity. Well, it’s a good thing we still have all your lovely friends to play with. You can clean up in the bathroom through there, and there will be food in the dining room.”

You don’t open your eyes to see where she’s referring to. You could so easily sink into sleep. Your body feels impossibly heavy, and even breathing feels as though it’s taking more effort than you have left.

“Come on,” says Halsin, moving an arm around your shoulders to sit you up. You make a sleepy sound of protest, but he continues. “Let’s get you cleaned up first. Then you can rest.”

You let out a deep, weary sigh, and force your eyes open. He half guides, half carries you off the bed, setting you down and allowing you to lean heavily on him as you make your way on unsteady feet to a door to the side of the room. As Halsin opens it, a wave of heat and humidity hits you, and you are suddenly incredibly grateful that he suggested you bathe before sleeping; the idea of a hot bath to melt away all of your aches and pains seems entirely divine. 

The bathroom is dwarfed by a large, steaming pool in its centre, and you waste no time in stumbling towards it, barely stopping to check that the water won’t scald you before you lower yourself in up to your waist. You tug mindlessly at the shirt that you’re still wearing, now stuck to your body with sweat, pulling it over your head and shuddering at the sense of freedom that you feel as you toss it to the side of the pool. You wade further into the water, delighting in the heat, sinking in up to your shoulders and releasing a contented sigh as the weariness begins to evaporate from your body.

“By the gods,” you breathe, a contented smile spreading over your face as you turn around to see what is holding Halsin up.

He’s stood by the door, frozen in place, staring at you. There is an unmistakable look of horror on his usually stoic face.

“What?” you ask, your own eyes widening in concern.

“Tav, my heart,” he says, his voice carrying the slightest tremor, “what’s happened to your back?”

Chapter Text

It’s your turn to freeze.

You don’t know how you could have forgotten.

You don’t know what to say.

You don’t know why the first thing your mind does is scramble for a lie.

“It’s nothing,” you say, backing towards the far wall of the pool as if hiding your back now might take back what Halsin has already seen.

“It’s not ‘nothing,’ Tav,” he says. He takes a step towards the pool but stops when he sees you press back further against the wall, holding his hands up as if approaching an injured animal. You suppose he is, in a way. You've often felt more beast than person, and there's no denying your injuries. Soul tattered, skin scarred, heart shrivelled black. He watches you cautiously, his face grave and his eyes sad. 

“Will you let me look?” he asks eventually. His voice is gentle, but you get the sense it's taken him a lot of effort to make it so. You want to tell him no. You want to pretend the scars aren't there. You want to let yourself believe that none of it ever happened.

So you surprise yourself when you nod.

You don't move towards him, but nor do you move away as he enters the pool and makes his way towards you. The closer he gets, the smoother his movements become, as if he knows that one sudden move might send you running. You don't know where you'd flee to, but the desire is there regardless. Anything to avoid having to face what is to come.

When he sees that you won't turn around for him yourself, he takes your shoulders and moves you, ever so gently, ever so carefully, so that you are facing away from him. Then, for a while, neither of you speak. Neither of you move. You stand there, trapped in the horror and shame of it all, listening to the sound of the water softly lapping at the edges of the pool. You notice the absence of his breathing only when he eventually heaves in a shaking gulp of air.

“Oh, Tav,” he says, and the sadness in his voice makes your resolve crack completely.

A whimper escapes your lips, and you press your hands to your mouth, desperate to keep the sound inside. Everything is fine. Nothing happened. There's no need to think about it. There's no need to cry.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

You shake your head. You do not want to tell him. Not because you want to protect Astarion, but because you want to protect yourself. Because you hate yourself for everything that was done to you. You hate these permanent marks of your shame. You blink, trying to banish the prickling of tears from your eyes, but instead, they overflow from your lower lids, spilling down your cheeks. Your lips tremble, your chest hurts, and your shoulders strain from the effort of holding back sobs. Halsin must feel the tension in your body because he rubs a thumb comfortingly along your shoulder where he still holds onto you.

That’s all it takes. One small, kind touch and you cannot hold your composure any longer. A snivel turns into weeping, and within moments you are wracked with sobs, shoulders shaking, chest heaving, eyes blurred with streams of tears. Halsin pulls you around into a hug, and you hide your face in your hands against his chest. You cry until your eyes run dry, your face aches, and your throat is raw.

Through it all, Halsin says nothing. No words of comfort or questioning. Just the slow, steady sounds of his breathing, and the warm, solid pressure of his arms wrapped around you. As your energy fails, your wails diminish into hiccuping sobs, then soft sniffs, then heavy, wet breathing, then nothing at all.

 The silence spreads out around you, making space for the things you never thought you'd be able to say out loud. You feel hollow, now. Empty and cavernous. There’s nothing left in you to hurt, so you might as well speak the truth.

To begin with, words fail, stuck in your throat like tar, choking you off from speaking, so you allow yourself to be held in the silence as your breathing gradually becomes steady once more. Eventually, though, you find your voice. It comes out jarring and unsteady at first, but before long the words are tumbling out of you, tripping over themselves in a desperate rush to be heard. 

You tell Halsin how he took your voice, took your magic, took your only friend from you. You speak of the way he controlled your body, your hunger, and your memories. You stumble through stories of locked coffins, days of darkness, chains and blades and bloody runes. You tell none of it in order. You’re sure most of it doesn’t make sense. You simply do not have the power to sort it through in your mind, so you let it flow out of you like a steady stream of poison until you’ve got nothing left to say.

“It felt like it happened so slowly, but also all at once,” you say, when you’ve told Halsin everything you can. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”

“You know that none of this was your fault, don't you? You didn't deserve any of this. If we'd known—“

“That's not true,” you say, your voice steadier than it has been the whole time you’ve been speaking. “I did this. I made him this. I deserve so much worse.”

“No, my heart. No, no, no. No one deserves what has been done to you. We failed Astarion that day, and we've failed you ever since. We cannot change the past, but we can ensure that the future will be better. We're here for you now, and always.”

You shake your head but say nothing. You don’t have the energy to argue.

“I think—“ says Halsin, before stopping, apparently reconsidering his words. He looks you in the eyes, then asks softly, “Do you want to tell the others?”

You close your eyes, then shake your head once more. You can’t do this again. Not now. Not yet.

“Very well,” he says, and he does a good job of hiding the disappointment that you are sure he feels.

“It’s not that I don’t want them to know,” you say. “It’s just— I just can’t say it all again. I’m so tired. I just can’t.”

Halsin pauses again. “Would you like me to tell them?”

No, you think, because you cannot bear the thought of them knowing. You cannot bear the thought of them thinking less of you. You cannot bear the thought of their faces, painted with pity, surrounding you and spouting words of comfort and sorrow and tenderness.

But you know it must be done sometime, and now won’t be any more or less painful than some future day.

You nod.

Chapter Text

You barely have the energy left to move, but you feel a desperate need to be clean, so you force your heavy limbs to wash themselves before allowing Halsin to help you out of the steaming pool. Your eyelids are a weight you can hardly bear, and as soon as you sit on a bench to dry yourself off they begin to flutter shut. With every blink, it becomes harder to resist closing them fully. 

“Come on,” you hear Halsin say, “let's get you somewhere to rest.”

You make a weak sound of agreement, but can't find the strength to move. You're glad when you feel his arms around you once more, lifting you up, carrying you out of the humid heat of the bathroom. You drift on the edge of consciousness, distantly aware of your body being laid somewhere soft, of warm, thick blankets being pulled over you, of Halsin murmuring something that you are too weary to make sense of. Then you sink deeper, deeper, into the delicious darkness of sleep.

“Hello, darling. Did you miss me?”

There has been a shift in the air. You feel it on your skin. It is colder, dry, and scented with perfumed oils and the coppery taint of blood. Still, you tell yourself that if you just keep your eyes closed, you can pretend this is nothing more than a bad dream.

“No company tonight, I see. Have they tired of you already? Or did they just remember what a monster you are?”

You screw your eyes shut tighter. There must be some way to wake yourself up, but gods, your body was so tired. How much longer could you keep yourself awake, even if you managed to return to the waking world?

Your thoughts are interrupted by a hot tingling sensation on your cheek. Your eyes fly open to reveal Astarion crouching over you, his hand pressed to your face. His touch feels strange, though; what should be the firm, hot flesh of his fingers pressing against your skin feels instead like an almost electric fuzz. Worse, the buzzing feeling somehow seems to be inside you, not just on the surface of your face. You feel it prickling on your teeth, your jaw, your tongue.

“Well, that's interesting. I can't touch you, but you can feel me, can't you?”

He tuts, withdrawing his hand. You blink, trying to gather your thoughts. Why can’t he touch you? Is he losing control? Or is this just a guise to lower your defences?

“You’ve been letting the wizard work his magic on you again, I see. What have you done, my silly little pet? Are you really willing to carve away at your own soul to try to get away from me?”

You say nothing, trying to keep your expression level. You know full well that Gale has done nothing to you beyond the magic of the circlet. Whatever is affecting his power over you must be coming from him. Unless, says a small voice in your mind, unless…

Your cheeks tingle as your mind calls forth an image of a panting Halsin below you, of a simulacrum of Astarion’s own hands running over the lines of binding scars on your back, of silken words whispered into your ear during the height of your ecstasy, of agreeing to anything, anything, anything, yes, even a sliver of your soul.

Astarion seems to take your embarrassment as a confession and lets out a humourless laugh.

“You’ll have to cut deeper than that if you want to separate us, my dear.” He raises an eyebrow at you. “Do you want to know a secret? This bond of ours only works when there is a connection on both ends. The day your soul stops longing for me is the day I won’t be able to find you, even in your dreams. I’m only here because deep down you want me to be, don’t you?” His smile is wide and full of malice. “You will never be free. You will always want this.”

And what he says is true, although you are incredibly loathe to admit it. Your overwhelming feelings towards him are fear, hatred, and regret, yes, but there's still something so mesmerising about him; some innate pull that you cannot resist. You want desperately to touch him although you know it would be like thrusting your hand into a flame; you want nothing more than to see how much it would hurt, to watch your flesh melt away for him, to watch your bones glow in his dreadful heat.

Something else seems to catch his notice, because his perfect brow creases into a frown, and he tilts his head to the side.

“You’ve been drinking again, I see. Not the wizard this time, either. Something else. Something…” He stops, takes a deep inhale, pauses. Then he lets out a laugh of what sounds like genuine surprise. “Oh, very clever. My clever little wife and her clever little friends. I should have guessed when I couldn’t find you— ha! This will be fun.”

He leans towards you to plant a buzzing whisper of a kiss on your forehead. His eyes are dark with glee.

“See you in hell, darling,” he says.

Chapter Text

Astarion snaps his fingers and your world goes black. You are falling, falling, falling endlessly into the bottomless darkness of your unconscious mind. It might last for seconds, or hours, or days, and then your eyes snap open and you jerk awake.

For a moment you are disoriented, sitting up in a strange bed, in a strange room, entirely naked, entirely alone. Your thoughts slowly filter back to you as you look around blearily. You are in the hells, in a succubus’s den, and—

Astarion knows.

He is coming. 

You need to warn the others.

Someone has left a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, so you hurriedly pull them on and then make your way to the bedroom door. You still don’t know the layout of this place, but you eventually find your way to the dining room and discover that all of your companions are in there already.

They look up when you enter. As you expected, they are awful at hiding their emotions: it is painfully clear that Halsin has told them of yesterday’s discussion in the pool. Still, there are more pressing matters at hand, so you blurt out your warning before anyone has a chance to say anything to you.

“Astarion knows we’re here. He’s coming.”

Silence greets your words for a moment, until it is broken by Karlach.

“Good. Let the fucker come,” she spits. “I’ll split the bastard in half, vampire god or not.”

“How does he know we’re here?” asks Gale. “You didn’t remove the circlet, did you? I thought I made it clear that it was imperative that—“

“No, Gale, I didn’t remove the circlet,” you say, slightly irked that he thinks so little of you. “He could tell that I’d fed from a succubus. Or something infernal, anyway. He must have put two and two together.”

“So… he doesn’t know where in the hells we are, then,” says Wyll. “That’s something.”

“Surely that’s more than something,” says Shadowheart. “The hells are vast. He could search for a hundred years and never find us.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” says Karlach bitterly. “We’ve just paraded ourselves - six mortals - through one of the busiest cities in all the layers of the hells. Word will travel fast. Still, I hope he does show up. I’d love to tear that stupid pretty-boy head right off his skinny pale neck.”

“Halsin told us… well, everything,” says Wyll, by way of explanation of Karlach’s ire.

“Yes, I’d just about picked that up.”

“Damn it, soldier, why didn’t you— why didn’t we— argh!” Karlach punches the table, leaving the rest of you blinking in surprise at the loud clattering of tableware. “Sorry,” she grits out after several heavy breaths, “it just makes me so mad! I trusted him! He was a friend! I told myself—“ she breaks off, shakes her head, and starts again in a lower voice, trembling with suppressed feeling. “I told myself that after that prick Gortash that I’d never fall for that shit again, but here we are.”

“Well, at least you didn’t fall as hard as I did. And still am falling, apparently.”

“Well that sounds ominous,” says Shadowheart.

You sigh. “According to Astarion, he can only visit my dreams because some part of me still… feels connected to him. Wants him.”

“How can any part of you still want him after everything he’s put you through?” The incredulity in Wyll’s voice borders on condemnation.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know that it’s true. But I suppose I— I don’t know. I think I still have some hope that the Astarion we knew is in there.”

“How can you say that?” asks Shadowheart. “After everything Halsin told us, how can you still think that he’s anything but pure evil?”

You shrug, uncomfortable under the weight of their collective disbelief. “I don’t know. There was one time when it seemed like the old Astarion came back. The real Astarion. He tried to help me, and he seemed so scared, it was like nothing had changed at all—“

“Only one time in six months, though?” says Karlach.

“How do you know he didn’t just do it to manipulate you?” asks Shadowheart.

“I don’t. I can’t. It just felt… real.”

The looks on your companions’ faces make your eyes prickle with something close to shame. You hate to feel like a fool. Karlach and Shadowheart share an incredulous look. Halsin looks sad, and Gale looks sceptical.

Wyll’s lip is curled in disgust. “He’s a monster, Tav. He’s always been a monster.”

Chapter Text

“That’s not fair—“ you begin, indignant, but Gale interrupts you.

“Really not helping, Wyll. Look, this is all conjecture for now. We should just stick to the plan. We warned Helsik to hide when she helped us set up the portal back in Baldur's Gate. That should buy us some time, at least, before Astarion can reach us here. We can still travel to Cania, get Mephistopheles to destroy the infernal contract, find the Crown and then reverse the ritual. If the Astarion we thought we knew is in there, then maybe he’ll be freed.” Gale’s emphasis on if makes it clear he doesn’t think much of that possibility. “And if not, then I’m sure we will all take great pleasure in destroying the brute who caused you so much suffering.”

In trying to play the peacemaker, Gale has only irritated you both. Wyll looks sullen, and you feel frustrated that none of them seem to be willing to consider that what you're saying could be true. It doesn't help that you're not even sure that you believe yourself. Somehow, though, their doubt has made you more certain. You always were contrary.

Astarion always liked that about you.

Before you or Wyll can snip at each other further, Karlach tries to change the subject.

“Mel’s working on the portal to Cania now,” she says. “It’ll take a while, but she says we’ll be good to go by tomorrow. Even if he manages to find Helsik soon, Astarion won’t be able to get to us before we leave.”

“A shame,” says Shadowheart. “I rather wanted to see how he’d fair against Melusine.”

“I wouldn’t count on her taking our side against him,” says Karlach. “Don’t get too attached to her. She’d throw us to the dogs if it amused her more than having us for herself.”

“You can never trust a devil,” says Wyll sourly.

“But you've all… paid the price?” you ask, unsure how to word the question in a way that doesn't sound tasteless.

“Yeah, we've all shagged the succubus, so we can all use the portal,” says Karlach, somewhat diminishing your attempt at propriety.

“Gale was in there for hours,” says Shadowheart, her prim voice offset by the sly grin on her face.

Gale blushes and lets out an embarrassed chuckle. “It was hardly– I mean to say, it was really not noticeably longer in duration than anybody else.”

“Probably just reading in bed, right, soldier?” grins Karlach, clearly glad for the lighter topic of conversation. Gale is now blushing such a deep shade of red that the thought of all the blood in his cheeks makes your mouth water. You force yourself to look away from him as he begins to speak.

“Erm. Well. Anyway.” He clears his throat, frowning. “Moving on to a more pertinent topic: we should all be prepared for our journey through Cania. Unlike the hells we’ve been through so far, Cania is a relentlessly cold and desolate land, holding remnants of ancient power so great that they would even give Asmodeus some pause. It’s said that even the mighty Mordenkainen himself once visited the realm in search of lost secrets—“

“But we’re not going to find secrets, are we?” interrupts Shadowheart, who by now is a dab hand at cutting off Gale’s musings. “We’re going to find Mephistopheles.”

“Right. Yes. Back on track. Cania is deathly cold, and we’ll likely have to make our way to Mephistopheles's citadel on foot, as there seem to be protections to stop portals opening up too close to it. I’ve already packed plenty of potions of cold resistance, and Karlach has somehow found enough cold weather clothing for all six of us in this city made of molten lava, but… well…” He trails off, looking shiftily at you and then back to the rest of the table. There is an awkward silence, and you get the distinct feeling that you won’t like where this is going. You raise your eyebrows in question but say nothing. You’ll wait it out. One of them will break before you do.

Eventually, Shadowheart sighs, then looks you straight in the eye.

“We don’t think you should come.”

“What?”

“You stole from him, Tav. You stole from Mephistopheles. The Lord of Hellfire. The second most powerful archdevil in all of the hells. He’s not exactly known for his gentle temper.”

“He probably won’t even know who I am. I barely even know who I am. I was the child of a god when I stole from him, and now I’m… this.” You gesture dispassionately at yourself.

“We might need to fight—“ she begins, but you cut her off.

“What, and I can’t?”

“Well, no! You can’t! You have no magic, and we’ve all seen your attempts at swordplay—“

Her voice is rising now, so you raise your own to match it.

“I can’t believe you’re asking me to do this! To just, what, wait here? While you go and risk your lives on a quest that I’m responsible for, all the while knowing that Astarion is on his way and could turn up at any moment!”

Silence falls after your outburst. Shadowheart’s lips are pursed as if she’s holding back what she really wants to say.

“Let's all try to calm down,” says Halsin. “Nothing is decided yet; we were trying to come to an agreement when you came in.”

“And how dare you try to make that decision for me? Which of you thinks I should stay?” you ask viciously.

No one speaks up for a while. Halsin's face is impassive, and Karlach shrugs and gives a slight shake of her head. Gale and Wyll were never good at hiding their guilt, though, and anger flares in your chest.

“We just don't want you to get hurt!” says Shadowheart. There are tears in her eyes, but you cannot bring yourself to care as you spit your retort.

“Well, it's too late for that!” Tears are forming in your eyes too, now, but you ignore them. “I've been hurt for six months. I've waited for six months. I refuse to sit and wait any longer.”

Once again, silence descends. You simmer quietly, trying to read the hidden conversations in the furtive glances your companions give each other. Finally, Halsin speaks up.

“You're right, Tav. This is no one's decision but your own. We'll stand by whatever you decide.”

Chapter Text

The rest of the day passes slowly, full of stilted, awkward conversations and uncertain planning for tomorrow's journey. Gale attempts to share the knowledge he has of Cania and the archdevil, but it turns out to boil down to very little. The lord of the eighth level of hell is secretive, capricious, and cunning. He has a fondness for magic and those who wield it that sometimes borders on an obsession. He delights in cruelty, has a flair for the dramatic, loves bardic poems and prose, and is famously unhappy with his lot as the second most powerful archdevil in the hells. Beyond that, he and most of his realm remain a mystery.

Despite your companions agreeing to your attendance tomorrow, tensions remain high between you all, and tempers fray. Everyone seems to snap at each other without much provocation. You get the sense that Gale and Wyll are unhappy with how things have turned out; you catch Wyll giving Halsin dark looks from time to time, and Gale seems to become more nervously verbose than ever whenever you ask him to explain any part of the plan. Shadowheart is mopey, and Karlach appears to be spending most of her energy on stopping herself from breaking out into angry tirades. Even Halsin seems weary by the time Gale suggests it is time to go to bed.

You've been thinking about Astarion all day. The real him. The man who, until this morning, you had all but given up on. Strange, really, how the mind can change so completely in the space of a single day. Now you are almost certain that it was him that morning when you were bound to the bed and beaten with the flail. The real Astarion, trapped somewhere inside that beautiful, dreadful, heartbreaking body. 

As you get ready to rest, Shadowheart approaches you. You give her a flat stare. She doesn't look much happier than you are at the prospect of a conversation, but she pushes forward anyway.

“Look, I'm sorry. Really. But before we knew Astarion had figured out where we were, staying here really seemed like the safest option for you.”

“Since when have we been worried about safe? Have you forgotten everything we went through together?”

“That was different, and you know it. Can't you see that we only want to protect you because we love you?

“Can't you see that I've heard that before?”

Shadowheart’s eyes flash. “That's not fair. We are not like him.”

“You're treating me like I'm incapable of making my own decisions!”

“Only because you're acting like it! Come on, Tav. Aren't you a little worried he still has control over you? You’re still seeing him in your dreams, for Selûne’s sake. Saying that you think the old Astarion still exists seems frankly mad after everything else Halsin told us.”

You want to scream. At her, at yourself, at the memory of Astarion's sad, scared eyes that one morning. You’re not even angry at her - not really - because you know that you spent long enough doubting her back when she sang the praises of the Sharrans and her Mother Superior, and you were far from subtle about it. You know that she only doubts you because she is worried for you. She watched you defend Astarion at your wedding. She knows that your mind and your tongue have not always been your own.

Still, you hate that you are once again unable to trust your own thoughts. Memories - real or unreal, missing or rediscovered - have caused you nothing but grief in the past. It is exhausting to be forever questioning yourself, and even worse when your friends do it too. You miss the Astarion you once had. The man who assured you that you would get through everything together. The man who understood what it was like to fight the demons inside. You are so tired of it. Too tired to put these feelings into words. Too tired to do anything but lash out like a wild and injured beast.

“Well, you don't get to try to control me in an attempt to deal with your own guilt for leaving me to fight him on my own for so long.”

Shadowheart’s eyes widen. She doesn’t respond immediately, but when she does, her tone is clipped and cold.

“We should rest. Tomorrow will be hard enough without us both being angry and tired.”

As she walks away, you resist the urge to call out to her, to apologise. You get into bed, feeling alone for the first time since your friends came to your rescue.

Tonight, you do not fear Astarion greeting you in your dreams. For one thing, you aren't even certain he will be there; he may be busy travelling towards you as you speak. Aside from that, a part of you holds onto a perverse hope that if he comes to you tonight, he will prove you right: in your dreams, you will be able to find some proof of the existence of the man you once loved. Tonight, you’ll find a trace of that man that no one else believes in any more.

Chapter Text

When you open your eyes, you are back in your bedchamber in Baldur’s Gate. Astarion is nowhere to be seen. You first walk to his desk, hoping to find some clue as to his whereabouts, but its surface is tidy and its drawers are locked. You’re not sure you’d be able to read his fine, scrawling handwriting through the shimmer of your dream vision anyway.

You turn to the rest of the room and notice that the curtains around your four-poster bed are closed. You’ve never known Astarion to rest with them closed before. You’ve barely known him to rest at all since his ascension.

“Astarion?” you call, your voice trembling with uncertainty. You can’t decide if you’re hoping for a response or not.

The hangings around the bed twitch, and your husband’s pale, delicate hands pull one of the hangings to the side just enough to peer out. When he sees you, he smiles and slides out of the bed, dropping the curtains back in place behind him.

“Hello, darling.”

There is blood on his chin.

You do not say anything about it.

You do not think you want to know.

“I thought you would be— I didn’t think you would be here.”

“Thought I’d be chasing you across the hells already? Sweet. No, that will take a while longer. Clever of you, my darling, to have warned the diabolist to flee after they assisted you, but you should have known that my dark creatures would hunt her down quickly.”

He stalks towards you, stopping a pace or two away from you and looking you up and down before continuing.

“Still, preparing the portal will take time. That’s alright. We can make do until I have you back with me, where you belong.”

Something in his expression forces you to ask, although you doubt you'll like the answer.

“What do you mean, ‘make do’?”

“Well, there’s no rush, is there? We have forever to be together, after all. But in the meantime, you can’t expect me to sit around moping over you while you’re spreading your legs for all the hoards of the hells.”

“I’m not—“

“Oh, please. You expect me to believe that you drank the blood of a succubus but didn’t lie with them? I think not.”

There’s nothing of the man you were hoping to find in his expression. His face is a mask of cold mockery. He closes the distance between you, bringing a hand up to your face and running his fingers along your cheek. The contact tingles with little sparks of not-quite touch.

“Tell me, though, darling… what form did it take? What is the deepest desire of your heart, hmm?”

He gives a cruel laugh at the look on your face.

“I thought so. Gods, you are tragic, you know. So easily led. You were happy here. I fed you, I fucked you, I provided you with everything. You told me that you wanted to be mine forever, and that’s what I made you. I gave you the gift of eternal life after your lifetime of death. But all it takes is a few days with the fools we used to run around with and you're questioning everything.”

You try to look past the words, to look at the man behind them. You search the planes of his face for some of the softness, some of the goodness, something other than the callous armour that he has built around himself.

“Is there any of you left?” you ask in a whisper. He raises an eyebrow, irritated at your question, but doesn’t respond. You prickle. “Have you even missed me? Do you even like me? If I didn’t come back, would that really be the worst thing?”

“Of course it would. You belong to me.” He moves his hand down from your cheek, collaring your neck with the strange buzz of his fingers, and rolls his eyes at your look of sadness. “You never used to be this sensitive. Would you prefer if I used prettier words? Fine. You belong by my side. We belong together. You know it's true.” 

He lets go of your neck, takes a step back, and looks you in the eyes to deliver his final blow. 

“I love you.”

Now his eyes are wide, open, honest. You stare at them through the rainbow haze of the dream’s air. All cruelty has melted away. You could so easily believe him. Perhaps he even believes it himself. Is there a spark in there of the man you knew? Are you just seeing the things you want to see?

A noise breaks your chain of thought. A quiet, desperate gasping noise. A noise coming from the bed. Your eyes tear away from his face, focusing on the drawn curtains, then move back to him. His expression hasn’t changed. He still looks earnest; almost sweet. You walk slowly towards the bed, trying to contain the dread that is growing in your chest. He doesn’t try to stop you. You go to draw back the bed’s hangings, but your hand moves through them as though you are no more than a ghost.

“Allow me.”

Astarion has followed you to the bed and now stands just behind you. Your arm buzzes when his brushes against yours as he reaches to pull back the curtain. His smile is beatific.

He reveals a figure lying on the bed.

Säde.

Completely naked, deathly pale.

Her eyelids are fluttering, her eyes are dazed, glazed, sightlessly staring at the canopy above her, entirely unaware of your presence.

Her neck is punctured and bloodied.

Her irises are red.

A gasp escapes your lips.

“What?” Astarion pouts. “I need a little wife to play with while you're off having fun of your own. She won't be nearly as fun as you, of course. But no matter. I can always try another. One of the tieflings, maybe. Bex? Dammon? He was always so pretty. Or perhaps Lia?”

“You bastard.”

That tiny flame of hope for him is snuffed out. If the old him was in there, wouldn’t he have stopped this? Wouldn’t he have stopped your voice being taken, your mind being taken, the runes being carved into your back? How quickly hope becomes hatred. You hate him. You hate him. You hate the version of him who has done this, and if the old him is in there, then you hate him too. Hate him for his weakness. Hate him for failing you.

“Language, darling. Anyway, I thought you had a taste for the infernal. I could always try sweet Isobel if you’d prefer I go for something a little more holy.”

“You wouldn’t dare. Dame Aylin—”

He barks out a laugh and looks at you almost pityingly. 

“I have nothing to fear from the child of a god.”

“I won't let you take me. You can come for me, but you’ll have to kill me. I won’t come back to you. Not after this. I came here tonight thinking I might still find you but— no. I’ll die before I come back.”

“You'd be doing me a favour, then, my dear. In death, all the parts of your soul will be joined again, and then you will be mine once more. We are bound for eternity, my love. Your soul will always return to me. As I have said, I am happy to wait. We have forever.”

He lets the curtain fall, hiding Säde from view once more. His voice is sincere when he speaks again.

“Or you could save yourself the pain, and come back to me now. I'll show you how loved you are. I'll show you how well I know you. Come back, my love, and stop all this hurting. Or stay away, and force me to find my distractions elsewhere while I hunt you down. It’s your choice, darling. I’m sure you’ll choose wisely.”

He presses a kiss to your twisted lips.

“Think about it. Sleep well.”

There’s a click of his fingers, and darkness comes for you.

Chapter Text

You wake up with a hollow feeling in your stomach and a weight on your chest. Your mind's eye is filled with images of past friends lying cold and pale in what was once your marriage bed.

Save yourself the pain, he said. Come back to me now. But you’re done falling for him. Done falling for his pretty lies and cruel threats. Going back to him won’t save the others. You know the kind of games he plays, and you’re all but certain that if you went back to him now, Astarion would only make you enact the tortures on your friends, dancing like a puppet on the strings of your master.

The only way to save them is to take him down.

And if, as Gale said, the old Astarion is still in there after you’ve cancelled the contract, retrieved the Crown, and reversed the ritual? He’d better come out on his knees, begging your forgiveness.

You’re done with hope. You’re done with him. It’s time to end this.

You dress quickly, seeing that your companions have risen already. It doesn't take long to find them; they have once again gathered in Melusine’s dining room, where they are eating and quietly - if a little antagonistically - discussing the plans for the day.

Shadowheart must see something in your expression because her face softens when you take a seat next to her.

“What's wrong?” she asks.

“I’m sorry. You were right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we can save him,” you say, because it sounds kinder than I don’t think I want to save him, and kindness is one of the only strengths you have left.

“Did you see him last night?” asks Wyll.

You nod. “We need to contact Jaheira. The tieflings are in danger. And possibly Isobel, and anyone else, really, anyone we knew together—”

“Exactly what kind of danger are you talking about?” asks Shadowheart.

“Astarion said he'd turn them. He said either I go back to him, or he'll turn them, and hunt me down anyway.”

“Well, you're not going back,” she says firmly.

You give her a weak smile. “I know. But that's all the more reason to warn them.”

She looks unhappily around the table. Wyll saves her from having to disappoint you by speaking up himself.

“We can try to contact them, but even with magic, it will be pretty limited. Everyone is so spread out - we convinced most of the people we know to leave the city. It will take time to get in contact with them all.”

“That might work out in our favour, though. If everyone is spread out it will make it harder for Astarion to find them,” points out Shadowheart.

You shake your head. “He’ll be able to find them. He's already found Helsik. Do you really think someone like Bex will be better at hiding than a woman who has dealt with devils her whole life?”

“If Astarion really has found Helsik, then contacting everyone will take time that we simply do not have,” says Gale. “He could arrive in the hells at any moment, and if he finds us before we’ve voided his contract and reversed the ritual then we won’t stand a chance against him. We cannot afford to risk the outcome of this quest.”

“We can’t just leave them to die! Can’t you see that if we don’t try to save them now then we’ll just end up fighting them when we go to take Astarion down? He’ll use them against us. He’ll use everything he can against us. He knows us. If we don’t act now then we’ll only make things worse for ourselves in the future.”

“I'll stay,” says Shadowheart. She says it so quietly that you're not certain you heard her. Neither is Gale, it seems, because he questions her immediately.

“What?”

“I'll stay. Tav is right: we’ll only make things worse for ourselves if we don’t save them now. And they deserve to be saved, after all they’ve been through. Besides, if we end up in a fight with Mephistopheles then it won’t matter if there's six of us or sixty of us. He'd be able to kill us all regardless. I'll stay here and contact the tieflings, Isobel, Jaheira, everyone. And I'll be here to make sure our succubus friend follows through on reopening the portal when you're ready to come back.”

You've never felt so grateful. You take her hand and squeeze it, mouthing a thank you under your breath. She responds with a wry smile, and you realise this is likely her way of apologising for yesterday. Gale, however, still isn’t satisfied.

“It's not just about Mephistopheles. What if we need you during the journey? We might still need healing. We can’t know how long it will take to reach him - we could be gone for days.”

“I might not be quite so adept at healing, but I should be able to be of some assistance,” says Halsin.

“And we were just worrying about having enough provisions,” adds Shadowheart. “If I don't come, you'll have plenty. You won't run out of potions, and you'll have spare clothing. It makes sense.”

“And what if Astarion finds you here while we are gone?”

“Then I’ll teleport myself to safety and get a message to you to warn you.”

“Hmm,” says Gale, brow furrowed and looking as though he will argue, but Melusine's entrance to the dining room cuts him off.

“Ah, beauties. All ready to leave? Come, come, quickly, now” the succubus purrs, beckoning you all to follow her with haste. You all rise and follow her back into the mosaic-tiled entrance foyer, then through a door that you haven’t yet entered. “The portal is open, but we can’t hold it for long. We’d be in dreadful trouble if anyone found out. Although you are, of course, most welcome to stay here.”

“Thank you. I’ll be taking you up on that offer, for now,” says Shadowheart as your companions file into the room with you. The far end of the room is taken up by a pulsing, humming portal of flickering blue and violet light, and the room itself is small enough to feel crowded once you are all inside. It is otherwise empty and unadorned, and the air within is filled with an acrid tang that tastes like spell-work gone bad. You try not to pay too much attention to the scorch marks that decorate the floor below the glowing portal.

Melusine looks mildly surprised at Shadowheart’s declaration, but a smile tugs at her full lips.

“How exciting.” Her eyes glitter teasingly, her gaze lingering on Shadowheart for a moment longer than is comfortable before she turns to the rest of your companions. “As for the rest of you, we’ve had such wonderful fun with you all. It is a great shame that we won’t be seeing half of you again.”

Wyll rolls his eyes. Of all of you, he has the least patience for fiendish trickery. “And what, exactly, do you mean by that?”

“Oh, nothing,” says Melusine with a smile. “Only that Mephistopheles kills every other supplicant that comes before him. But you know that already, of course.” 

Her giggle is as sharp as a knife, cutting through the hubbub of everyone else exploding into such a panicked babbling that you can barely hear yourself think.

“Gods damn it, Mel,” snarls Karlach above the din. “What do you mean? And how could you not tell us this before?”

“You never asked, sweet love.”

“So, what, he literally just kills every other person who goes to visit him?”

“Why, yes. It’s common knowledge.”

“Clearly not that common, Mel.”

“Well, where did you think the phrase ‘never join a Mephistophelean harem’ comes from?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a phrase you’ve just made up.”

“Nonsense!” She lets out another tinkling laugh. “It’s a commonplace saying amongst us succubi.”

“Well, gee, I wonder why I’ve never heard it. Fuck!” Karlach spins away from the succubus, punching a wall in her frustration, and then swears loudly again at the pain it presumably causes her.

“Alright,” says Gale, clearly putting some effort into keeping his voice level, “let’s not lose our heads. Why would Mephistopheles kill every other person who visits him?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Melusine’s smooth voice is full of genuine confusion. “He’s the Lord of Hellfire. It amuses him.”

“Fine. Fine! We will continue with our journey as planned, but only one of us will actually enter his citadel to speak with him.”

There is yet another laugh from the succubus. “Oh no, it’s not just visitors to his citadel. It’s visitors to his whole realm. He can’t abide distractions, interruptions, or visitors of any kind.”

“And you didn’t think that you should maybe have told us this before?” growls Karlach.

“Why yes!” replies Melusine. “Of course I did. But I thought I’d have more fun if I didn’t.” Her smile is genuine, gleeful, and enchantingly lovely. It almost makes you want to laugh yourself. “Better decide soon, beauties. The portal will close any moment now.”

Chapter Text

“One of us should go,” says Wyll. “Asmodeus himself has outlawed portals that cover this sort of distance; we likely won't find another opportunity like this. Certainly not before Astarion finds us.”

“It should be me,” says Gale. “Mephistopheles is drawn to magical power. I'm the one he's most likely to grant an audience.”

He withdraws a potion from his bag and unstoppers it.

“And what happens if he spared the visitor who came before you?” asks Karlach. “You just die? Nah. Not happening.”

You're not sure if it's just your eyes playing tricks on you, but the portal seems to be flickering more violently around the edges. You don’t have much time.

“If I do die, I might at least blow up the citadel, and Astarion's contract along with it.”

“Oh, yes,” says Shadowheart, rolling her eyes. “And I'm sure the ensuing vacuum in the diabolic power structure would have no undesirable and unexpected consequences whatsoever.”

“I'll go,” you say.

“Absolutely not,” she says.

The portal is definitely shrinking now, sputtering and sparking erratically, its arcane thrum increasing in pitch.

“It makes sense. The rest of you will actually be of some use in fighting Astarion. All I’ll do is… whatever he tells me to. Try to kill you, spread my legs for him, who knows. If I die, he’s lost something. It might make him easier to take down. And he’s after me, not you, and this will put more distance between us. Besides, I’m sure Mephistopheles will want to hear how I managed to steal from him. It might buy me some time, at least.”

You pull a cloak from under Shadowheart’s arm and pull it around yourself as if the decision has been made. In your mind, it has.

“But you don’t remember how you stole from him! Tav, it makes no sense for you to go.”

“I deserve this. You owe me this. After everything I’ve been through, I deserve to make my own decisions.”

You know it might not be a fair point to make, but you make it anyway. Your past suffering is a mark of guilt for them all, and you’re not afraid to invoke it when you need to win an argument. It is enough to make them pause, and a pause is all you need. It is enough of a lull, as they come up with their ripostes, for you to snatch the potion from Gale’s hands and pour the contents into your mouth, pull a pack from Wyll’s arms, turn on the spot, and throw yourself through the portal. You feel someone grasp your arm. You feel someone tug at your cloak. It is too late. You fall forward, blinded by the arcane flash of teleportation, and land on your knees in deep snow.

You feel the portal close behind you, and instantly the cold of the plane takes over.

You are quite sure you would have died without your prepared protection. You feel as though you might even die with it. The bleak expanse of white spreads as far as the eye can see, broken only by the jagged talons of sharp, dark rock spearing through the snow-skinned ground. Even your cold, undead breath billows in silver clouds from your mouth, and the bitter chill of the air claws at your nostrils and lungs. The sky glows with the argent sheen of moonlight, but there is no moon, and there are no stars. The sky, like the ground, is barren. Bare. Empty.

The only mark of life on this bleak blank canvas is a towering citadel in the near distance. An hour or two’s walk away, if you can bear the cold. You know you are lucky to have ended up so close. You know, if the succubus can be believed, that you are lucky to even be alive. You take in a shivering breath, push yourself to your feet, and force your legs to start walking.

As you make your trudging way across the frozen land, you realise that it is not only cold that stings your eyes and clogs your throat. This realm seems steeped in sorcery so powerful that it has choked the life out of everything else that ever lived here. The air is as if made of pure energy which fills your lungs with sparks of icy pain. You try not to breathe, but even after all these months you have never learned how to suppress the urge, and you end up gasping in huge, piercing lungfuls of air when your willpower breaks.

Before long, you are shivering uncontrollably. The citadel seems barely any closer to you, although you’re so tired that you’re sure you must have been walking for hours. You’ve never quite adjusted to your new, pale complexion, but you are quite certain that your fingertips haven’t always been tinged black. You shove them into your armpits in an attempt to warm them.

It’s hard enough walking through deep snow. It’s even harder when you can no longer feel your feet.

Your legs grow numb and move stiffly.

You wish you could have fed before you left.

You wish you hadn’t thought about your hunger.

You wish you hadn’t come.

You fall to your knees.

Inhale.

Daggers of cold slice down your throat, stab at your lungs.

Exhale.

Another lungful of vitality is lost to the bitter air.

You could close your eyes here and let them freeze shut. You could stop moving your numb and stinging limbs and let them rest for a moment. You could fall into the dark respite of your own demise.

Your eyelids are heavy. They close against the glaring white pain of the land.

Maybe here is as good a place as any to die.

Your breaths get shallower. You almost feel as though you're getting warmer. There's a comfort in being still. You don't think you'll mind being like this forever.

Death approaches you gently, slowly, arms outstretched in an embrace.

No.

Death is seductive, but you will resist. You've allowed yourself to be seduced before, and now you know the costs of seeking escape in the arms of a beautiful stranger. You have made a lot of mistakes, it's true, but you will not allow yourself to make this same one twice. Death is attractive. Death is temptation. Death is lose yourself in me. Death is the sweet relief of giving up, the sweet release of giving in. Death is the dark and mysterious man beckoning you to join him in the void. This time, you will not take his hand. This time you turn away from him. This time, this time, you will resist. Death can wait.

Inhale. Exhale.

You try to open your eyes.

They are frozen shut.

The darkness that felt like an escape moments ago suddenly feels like a prison.

You rub them with numb-fingered hands, but it does little good.

You move your senseless fingers to your pack and grasp blindly for a potion bottle. The clinking of glass lets you know when you've found them. You bring one to your mouth, using your chapped lips to feel for the cork stopper, taking it between your teeth and pulling it loose. You pour most of the potion into your mouth, feeling the warmth of the liquid spread through you. It restores movement and feeling to frosted limbs with a painful tingling. The pain is good, you tell yourself. The pain is proof you are alive. You pour the remnants of the potion onto your frozen lashes, rubbing the stinging liquid into your eyelids until they finally open. Your lashes may be gummed together, and the capillaries in your eyes may be bursting, but you have your sight. You have your life. You push on.

Death waits.

Chapter Text

Your legs don’t give out again until you have reached the front steps of the citadel. It feels as though you’ve been walking for days, but finally, the towering building of dark ice rises up before you. As you mount the stairs to the gated entrance, your foot catches on an ice-slicked step and you fall, heavily, onto your face. 

You do not even have the energy to pull your arms out from under yourself, let alone push yourself up. From the crisp quiet of the snowdrifts behind you, death looks on, watching, waiting. Your cheek stings where the frozen step digs into your face, and you listen to the sound of your own breath as you try to muster the strength to move again.

There's a strange clacking sound coming from further up the steps. You frown drowsily as you try to imagine what might cause such a strange, oscillating tapping. You do not have to wonder for long. You feel hard claws grasp you, flipping you over roughly, and then you are face to face with a creature that you cannot even begin to place. It looks almost like an impossibly giant bug; covered head to spiked feet in a pale, chitinous shell, with a face full of terrifying clicking mandibles and multifaceted eyes looming over you.

Your lips crack as you try to ask for help, but no sound comes out. The creature turns its head and speaks to something outside of your view. You cannot understand the strange mix of buzzes and clicks that it creates with those bizarre jaws. It sounds loosely like Infernal, but you cannot make out a single word.

There is more of the oscillating clack-clack-clack of chitin-covered feet on ice, and a second giant bug creature appears in your field of view. You barely have the energy to blink, let alone move away from them. After further incomprehensible communication between the two creatures, they each grasp one of your shoulders and lift you bodily from the ground. They are so tall that your feet don't even drag on the icy floor.

You can only pray that they will take you to the master of this place.

As you are carried inside, you are surprised to find the air becomes much warmer, even though the surrounding walls and floor are carved from ice. Your body begins to thaw as you are taken through corridors and courtyards, up and down twisting steps, down hallways filled with devils of every size and shape imaginable. The warmth makes closing your eyes seem all the more tempting, but still, you resist. If you close your eyes, Astarion will be waiting for you. If you stay awake just a little longer, you will be able to complete this first step in taking him down.

In the end, it is spite that keeps you awake as you are carried through the icy fortress. 

You eventually come to a long, vast antechamber, filled with churning bodies. Not the bodies of devils, though, who are all you have been passing so far, but rather mortal souls. Humans and elves, tieflings and orcs, dwarves and halflings and gnomes all teem around you, glassy-eyed, somehow seeming somewhat less real than a living person might. Many carry books that they frantically page through; others carry staffs, artefacts of unknown power, or scrolls that are reeled out and in as they search desperately for some hidden knowledge.

Beyond the throng, a towering doorway takes up a large portion of the far wall. Your captors carry you towards it, pushing the great doors open with an ear-splitting screech of ice on ice. They march you inside, and your blurry eyes refocus on the scene at the end of what you now see to be the throne room.

A giant chair of intricately carved ice reaches almost to the high ceiling, and on it sits the largest devil you have ever seen.

His face is a portrait of contradictions. His high cheekbones, strong jaw and full lips should make him handsome, but all of that beauty is offset by his strange, entirely white eyes, which still give you the sense that they are following you as you are brought before him. His skin is a vivid red, and his long, dark hair flows in shining curls to his chest. He must be twice your height, if not thrice; it is hard to tell when he is so seated upon his throne. Talons as long as daggers grip the icy armrests and his head is adorned with great, curling ram's horns. His crimson wings spike up and out behind him, despite being folded. You are dropped by the bug creatures a few paces away from the dais on which his throne sits, landing heavily on your hands and knees. The two beasts remain standing on either side of you, guarding against any chance of escape. A dread like nothing you have ever known clutches at your chest when you gather your strength to look up and see the archdevil staring down at you, a smile curling one side of his mouth. 

“An archdevil’s hoard is far beyond the reach of some mere vagabond, but you, god-spawn, came boldly down, and took for yourself my Netherese Crown.”

You had thought his voice would be booming, but it is not. It is the whisper of wind through white winter trees. It is somehow worse. You lick your peeling lips and force yourself to speak.

“Yes. About that. I—“

The archdevil holds up a hand to stop you, so you fall silent. The smile is gone from his face: he looks bored. He flicks his fingers, and there is a loud buzzing sound as a thin green ray shoots from his hand to hit the guard on your left, who is turned to ash in a blink. You stare at the empty space where the hulking creature stood moments before. Gone. Dead. Killed for nothing more than daring to bring you before this Prince of Cania.

“Stop. Try again, and do your best to excite me with the poetry of your quest.”

“I have to— poetry? Oh. Um. Alright. Err… Oh great lord Mephistopheles, I come to you on, um, bended… knees? Look, I’m really no bard, I can’t do this—“

Even if you weren't on the verge of collapse, even if you weren't too filled with fear to think straight, even if your brain hadn't been cut to ribbons by sister and husband alike, you don't think you would have been much good at meeting Mephistopheles’s demands. As it is, it seems all but impossible.

“You won’t play my game?”

“It’s really more can’t than won’t.”

“Disappointing. Not many disappoint me and live, little thief.”

Those blank white eyes narrow slightly as he stares at you, unblinking. You do not know if it is best to meet his gaze or look meekly away. You do not have long to ponder, though, for the archdevil speaks once more.

“But it is bold of you to come back here when you stole from me. Bold and brave and stupid. So very mortal. I would disintegrate you where you stand if I didn't think that your continued existence would lead to much sweeter suffering. Tell me, why are you here?”

“You made a contract with a vampire. Astarion Ancunin. I want you to end it.”

His pale eyes glitter with an intelligence beyond your comprehension. 

“You can imagine my surprise when that same thief that stole my prize let her dear love ask for my boon without seeing it would be her doom.”

You blink. 

“It was… everything with Astarion… was punishment?”

His laughter is gravelly and deep: bones grinding to ash.

“No, little thief. I would have done what I did to your vampire to any who completed the Black Mass. No mortal creature can partake in an infernal ritual of such power can escape unchanged. But it is a beautiful example of how the threads of fate weave themselves in favour of those who know how to spin them, is it not?”

You don't know what to say to that. You are so very tired. Still, you are resolved to complete what you came here for.

“I would still ask you to destroy the contract.”

“That won't reverse it, you know. It will only mean that I need not gift him his powers again should he… lose them, somehow.” If you didn’t know better, you might think there was the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth again.

“I know.”

“Very well. And what would you give me in return? I have little use for souls as doomed as your own, especially one without any magical abilities or theatrical flair to speak of.”

“I'll return the Crown of Karsus to you.”

“That, thief, would barely make us even. You will return it to me as payment for letting you live. What else are you willing to pay to free your love from our contract?”

Your thoughts are sluggish, slow, so exhausted. If not the Crown, if not your soul, then what can you offer this devil?

“Anything. I don’t know what else I can give if the Crown is not enough and you have no want of my soul.”

“Shall I name my price?”

“Name it.”

“Seven thousand souls.”

His voice may be a whisper, but his words hit you with the force of a gale. Whispers from within your own mind start up, murmuring and muttering about past deals, past dooms. Your mind is filled with the susurrous sounds of sin.

“Seven thousand souls?” Your voice breaks as you ask the question.

“The same price to break it as it took to make it. It is poetic, is it not?”

“But you’re not even going to reverse it! You’re just freeing him from any future bond to you!”

The look in his blank eyes freezes your tongue.

“I would think very carefully about raising your voice to the Lord of Hellfire again, little thief. I have made allowances because I see the suffering of your soul in times to come and it pleases me, but that does not make you immune to my anger. Do you accept my offer?”

You swallow. How can you possibly make this decision? How could you live with yourself if you agree to doom another seven thousand souls?

But then again, how many souls will you doom by allowing Astarion to live as he currently is? Seven thousand is a mere fraction of the souls living in Baldur's Gate, and it is not beyond imagining that your husband might one day doom them all in a fit of rage or revenge. He would raze the city if he thought it would get you back. He would kill them all.

“What are the terms?”

“You will have a year to gather the souls for me. I will have a year to come up with a suitable punishment for your failure, should it be necessary.”

Seven thousand souls, says a voice in your head.

“A year is not enough. It took Cazador centuries—“

“A year is all you will have. You need not prepare them for a ritual. Any soul felled by you in the coming year will be sent to me. Do you accept?”

Seven thousand more, your mind whispers.

“Surely there is something else— I’ll do anything else—“

“There is nothing. I tire of this. Accept.”

He clicks his fingers and conjures a glowing scroll in the air in front of you. You see your own name written on it, you see the words seven thousand souls. You feel a stabbing pain in your palm, and see a cut has been gouged across the length of your hand. It wells with blood already. You need only speak the words, and smear a single drop on the paper.

“You'll give me Astarion's contract as soon as I sign this?”

He nods.

You are grateful for your solitude in this moment. You are glad that your companions need not witness you take another desperate decision that will only lead to later regrets.

You are glad these sins are not shared between you. This will be your burden to bear.

You reach your hand forward.

But, says the voice in your head, seven thousand souls.

“I accept.”

You watch as a trickle of blood runs down from your palm, clinging for a moment to the edge of your wrist, then dropping down, down, down onto the waiting parchment below. It hisses as it makes contact, and the entire contract glows momentarily with hellfire. The heat of it singes your face, and you can smell burnt hair, but the paper remains unmarked by the flames and then disappears in a flash from where it hovered.

Mephistopheles clicks his fingers once more, and another contract appears in front of you. The contract for the Black Mass. The contract that guarantees Astarion his powers, come what may.

“Take it, then. Destroy it, if you will.” The archdevil looks about to dismiss you but changes his mind. “Do it now, so I may see.”

You think you know why the devil is asking, but you do not let that put you off. You know you have some tiny trace left of magic. No more than any commoner or street urchin, but it is enough for this. You concentrate with all your might and call forth a tiny, dancing flame in your hand. Your arms shake from the effort, but you hold your flame to the corner of the contract, and slowly, teasingly, it eventually catches fire.

The smug smile on the archdevil’s face confirms your suspicions. He wanted to see how much you struggled to call upon even the weakest of magic.

“Pathetic,” he says. “They say like calls to like.”

You don’t know what he means by this, but before you can ask, his face sets into the same bored expression he wore when he killed your guard. 

“Leave now. I hope not to have to see you again.”

You don't know where you find the strength to force yourself upright, but you manage it. You are turning to leave on trembling legs when Mephistopheles calls out once more.

“Oh, and little thief? There’s something for you outside. A gift.”

He smiles at you then. It is cold, and it is cruel.

“A gift?”

“Freely given. I expect nothing in return. Now leave my realm, and take it with you, before I decide your death is a better fate.”

You give a short nod. You have no energy for questions and no energy to play his games. You walk to the door, leaving the archdevil of the eighth hell behind you.

Chapter Text

You can think of a dozen cautionary tales about making deals with devils, but you can’t bring any to mind about taking gifts from them. You imagine the only thing worse than accepting this unknown boon would be rejecting it. You must have used up a dozen miracles to have avoided angering the Lord of Hellfire so far, and you dare not count on any further divine intervention to keep you safe, so you decide to accept whatever it is that is waiting for you through the doors.

When you step back into the antechamber, it is still filled with milling figures, the hordes of souls doomed to spend an eternity caught up in the archdevil’s everlasting experiments. You look around for a sign of Mephistopheles's gift, but cannot see anything immediately obvious. It is as you are looking that your eyes catch on a figure in the crowd that makes your blood run as cold as the bitter winds outside.

You freeze in your tracks at the sight of the man before you. You know that perfect form, from the crest of those waves of silver hair to the tips of those elegantly-shod feet, better than you know your own. You brace yourself to flee. Where to, you do not know, so long as it is away from him. How did he find you here? How did he get here? You had known that he would chase you to the ends of the earth, but a small, stupid, naive part of you had hoped that at least after your last dream visit he might be distracted for a time.

Then again, he always was good at showing you just how foolish you could be. Not even the depths of the hells is far enough away for him not to come and take back what is his.

As you stare at him, trying to work out your next move, some inner perception causes you to hesitate. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something about him - his movements, maybe, or the way he holds himself - gives you pause. He seems smaller, somehow. Diminished. Possibly even - you are shocked, no, thrilled at the thought - weak.

Well, that’s certainly something worth considering before fleeing, you think. Maybe this trip to hell has cost him dearly. And if he’s in a weakened state, then maybe this moment is the time to strike. Not that you know how you would strike, exactly, with your powers as diminished as they are, with your friends left behind in the fiery city of Abriymoch— 

Before you can decide what to do, he turns to you, and when his eyes lock onto your face, you realise it's too late. Still, though, something about him seems off. Familiar, but not. There's a strange ache in your chest that feels almost like homesickness as you watch him moving. Perhaps your body is already mourning the freedom that you’ve barely even had an opportunity to enjoy. You can't believe you didn't act when you had a chance. You can’t believe you didn’t try to kill him. You can't believe you didn't run. You're done for, now, and you doubt you'll have the chance to escape again. Gods only know what he'll do to you now.

Whatever it is, you're sure it won't be quick.

You're paralysed in fear as he steps towards you, like a rabbit caught in the gaze of a wolf. Initially, he seems like he’s in no hurry, stalking towards you as though he knows exactly how trapped you are within his stare. But still, something seems wrong, as he takes one uncertain step, then another. There's a look of shock on his face as he breaks out into a run, coming closer and closer, shoving desperately through the churning crowd of souls. Your doom is closing in on you. You brace yourself for the impact of whatever is to come - a slap, a punch, a grapple, and then the unending torture that is sure to follow.

Instead, he falls to his knees before you.

"Tav?" he asks in a broken voice, looking up at you, tears leaving tracks down his bruise-kissed cheeks as they pour from his wide eyes.

His wide, green eyes.

Chapter Text

Green.

The colour of living things, of growing things, of summers and sunshine and light filtering through the leaves of sighing trees. The colour of things you've left behind.

Not the colour of your one-time lover's eyes.

You know his eyes are red. Blood red. Lust red. Passion and violence and death red.

These green eyes are as soft as moss under bare feet, as soft as freshly unfurled fern fronds. They hold more softness than Astarion ever had. There was always a sharpness to his eyes, even when you loved him. 

So this green-eyed stranger kneeling before you is a trick.

You don't know how, and you don't know why. Your mind is as weary as your body, and you do not have the means within you to solve this puzzle. Your baser instincts take over. The urges of your past are gone, but not forgotten. You do what comes most naturally.

You strike.

You don’t think it’s a particularly hard blow, nor a particularly skilled one. Still, your palm smarts from the slap that you land across the pretty face before you, and the trickster's head snaps to the side, then drops to his chest. He lets out a shaking huff of humourless laughter before looking back up at you.

“I don’t know why I expected anything other than that.” 

The trick speaks with his voice. His old voice. The voice that you had barely noticed had been missing, but now, upon hearing it again, you can perceive the slight differences between this and the voice of the man your love became. This voice is warmer, less measured, more lively even now, despite being wobbly and hoarse. It is a good trick. A clever trick. All the more reason to be careful. 

His mouth twitches up into a momentary smile despite his watery eyes, then his tongue darts out to lick his lip, which has split from your slap. A bead of blood wells upon it before he licks it away. You can’t remember the last time you saw him bleed. Your stomach lurches with hunger. That’s new, too. Not the hunger itself, of course, but you’ve never wanted to bite him before. You always assumed it was because he was your master, or because he had compelled you during those foggy first weeks of being turned. Now, though, you want nothing more than to sink your fangs into him. He looks delicious. The flush of blood gathering in the outline of your hand-print on his cheek makes your mouth water. All the more proof that he is not what he seems.

“Who are you?” you ask. You meant to spit the words with all the venom you feel for this deceiver who has so cleverly disguised themselves as a monster, but your voice sounds weak even to you.

“You know me, Tav.”

“No. I don’t. You’re not him. So who are you?”

“I am him, Tav. I’m Astarion. It’s me.”

“No. If you were him you’d be mad. You’d be vicious. You’d be hurting me for leaving you.”

“I don’t want— I’m not the part of him that hurts you.”

“All of him wants to hurt me. That’s all that’s left. The rest of him— the Astarion I knew— is dead.”

“Well, yes. We are in the hells, my dear.”

It is said with such perfect flippancy that you almost believe it is him, for a moment. Almost. Not quite, though. You’ve fallen for this pretty man and his pretty lies enough times that you won’t be fooled by a throwaway line and a wry smile.

But there’s a dreadful, tempting voice in the back of your mind that whispers what if, what if, what if. What if this really is him? Is this not what you'd hoped for? Is this not the secret longing of your soul that you’ve tried to hide even from yourself? To find the man you loved again, to be held by him, to lie with him, for him to say that all is forgiven and for you to forgive him, too? 

It cannot be him, of course. You know that. But hope is an insidious thing, and you feel it crawling and scratching its way into your chest. You want him to convince you. You want to believe.

“Explain,” you say, trying not to sway on your feet. He sees your faintness, though, with those false green eyes. He gets to his feet before you and cautiously offers you an arm to lean on.

“I will. But first, let’s get you somewhere less crowded. You need to sit down.”

Chapter Text

You know you’d be too weak to fight him if he forced you, so you nod and willingly accept his proffered arm. It is warm to the touch, in a pleasant contrast against your own chill skin, though it makes your mind scream warnings of ascended, master, lord. You ignore them, because if it is indeed your husband then you have no strength to take him down, and you would rather face him without fear. You can only hope that some of the heat will seep into your bones, absorbing some spark of energy that you so desperately need.

You try not to look at his face as you walk side by side. It is too alluring, too enticing, and something in those green eyes tugs at your deadened heart in a way that you don’t like. You focus on the arm that you cling to instead, wondering what it was that caused those knuckles to be quite so scabbed, and how those fingers - delicate for a man, but so perfect on him - became so darkly bruised. He seems on edge, flexing his hands nervously, and you notice with a horror that twists your lips into a grimace that he is missing several fingernails.

You bite your tongue, as you so often have in the past with him. It is usually better not to know. You try not to think of putting those fingers in your mouth, of sucking them, of the coppery taste of the dried blood that cakes them coating your tongue. Hunger and revulsion writhe in unison in your stomach. You try to ignore their roiling duet, but together they make you feel queasy.

You allow yourself to be led through the teeming crowd of lost souls, down a quieter corridor to a window with a cushioned bench beneath it. You withdraw your arm from his and sit, grateful that your shaking legs don’t give way until you are seated. The bleak view out the window makes you shiver, and the man you still don’t want to name Astarion moves to reach out to you, but then stops himself. Instead of taking a seat beside you, he squats in front of you, his eyes darting across your face with a nervousness you haven’t seen in months. He cannot seem to stop staring. You cannot bear to look at him. You look to your hands, then look to the floor. You want to know, one way or another, before exhaustion makes all rational thought impossible.

“Tell me,” you say. “Tell me what happened.”

“Alright. Alright.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s hard to know where to start. It’s just— well.” He sighs. “You can't damn seven thousand souls without damning yourself in the process. The moment the ritual was completed, I arrived here. With them. All of them.” His eyes, still wet, are round with a horror that you do not yet comprehend. “It was such a mistake, Tav. All of it. No power is worth that cost. Seven thousand souls doomed, and for what? All that doom for nothing but more pain and suffering.”

You shake your head, your eyes flicking up to meet his. You can’t believe it. Not yet.

“I don't understand. If you're really here, who is the man I've been living with– the man I married?”

He gives you a sad smile.

“It's me. It's all me. The rite was such an evil act that the mere damnation of a soul isn't enough punishment. Besides, the rite guaranteed eternal life, and devils aren't the type to renege on a deal. The contract must be honoured. I was granted everything I thought I desired, but I tore my soul in two in the process. Or the ritual did, at any rate, or Mephistopheles himself. He hasn’t exactly popped by to explain the details.”

 He tries to laugh, but it sounds painful, and forced, and when he sees that you’re not smiling he continues without any levity. 

“The parts of me that most aligned with the devil were granted eternal life and infernal powers - near godhood, really - and whatever was left of my soul was doomed to hell to watch the evil that unfolded as a result. It was a fitting punishment, I must say. How do you torture a man who has already been tortured for two hundred years? I’ve been starved, I’ve been beaten, I’ve been scarred, I’ve been flayed. I’ve been left to rot in isolation. I’m numb to it all. But I swear to all the gods who ever were and ever will be, Tav, that I would take all two hundred years of torture over having to watch you go through the past year again.”

His lip is trembling now, and the tears are flowing from his emerald eyes in earnest once more. Your cheeks, though, are dry. Your eyes do not well with sadness. You only feel numb, and cold, and there’s a dreadful pressure in your chest that feels like it might crush you at any moment.

“I know I shouldn’t complain - I can’t complain - compared to what you went through my punishment was—“ he chokes off, shakes his head, and regains enough composure to continue. “But gods, Tav. As if watching you be so tormented wouldn't be bad enough to drive me mad. I had to watch the torture you went through, completely unable to stop it, all the while knowing that those torments weren't the sick whims of some devil or the dark desires of some unknown monster. They were thoughts taken from my very own mind. It was all me. I did that to you. Every action he took - I took - was familiar to me. Every torture was one born from my own imaginings. Every cruel word that was said to you had already been whispered in the darkest parts of my mind. Every step he took you down that descent made me weep because I knew how much further there was to go. I could see myself for the first time in centuries, and what I saw broke the heart that was long dead until I met you.”

Chapter Text

The pressure in your chest is unbearable now. You swear you can almost hear your ribs creaking under the strain of it, almost sense your lungs on the edge of implosion, almost feel your own heart break. 

“I can’t—“ you begin to say, but you stop when you realise you don’t know how to finish the thought. I can’t believe you, I can’t do this any more, I can’t be hurt again. Not when you’ve only just hardened your heart to him. Not when you’ve only just gotten free. If what he says is true, then the pain of that truth might break you, and you are not ready to be a broken thing again.

Scepticism feels safer. Let him carry the hurt for a while.

“How am I supposed to believe a word you say when we’re standing in the halls of a literal devil? Where did you even appear from? How can I trust you?”

“You can’t. Hells, I wouldn’t, if the roles were reversed. As for where I came from, I was… helping with one of Mephistopheles’s experiments when I was teleported to the room I found you in, just as you were opening the doors. You need to get out of here before the experiments start again. They are not something you want to experience. Trust me on that, at least.”

You nod, although the thought of moving makes you want to weep. You are exhausted and starving to the point of feeling sick. You make no move to stand, and the man who claims to be Astarion frowns at you, concerned.

“When did you last feed?”

You give a weak shrug. “I don’t know,” you say, because it’s the truth. Days ago, certainly. A small taste of blood from the succubus, and days before that, Gale’s bilious offering. You can’t know how long you were trudging through Cania, but it was long enough to drain you to the very depths of hunger.

“You should feed from me, then,” he says.

The moment he says it, you start salivating. You force yourself to focus and attempt to string together a question.

“Will it— do you think it will…”

You trail off, not even daring to speak the words out loud. Will it make me a true vampire, you want to say. Will it liberate me from his control? You dare not even dream of it, but there must be some flicker of hope that he catches in your eyes, because he looks pained, and shakes his head sadly.

“I don’t think it will free you from him. I wish it were so, but I have none of his powers, so I don’t think… Still, there’s no harm in trying, is there?”

He stands and moves to sit beside you, tentatively offering you a mottled wrist. 

You look into those strangely living eyes, searching for any hint of duplicity, but you find none. You wonder what could happen to you if you were to drink the blood of a devilish trickster. Nothing good, you think, but then again, nothing good will come of allowing yourself to starve. He certainly smells like something living; there isn’t a single whiff of infernal air about him. You only manage the briefest moment of further contemplation before you surrender to your instincts, pulling his arm up to your lips and sinking your fangs deep into his wrist. 

Gods, it is a sweet sort of surrender. The moment the liquid touches your palate every sense goes momentarily blank, before honing in exquisitely on the taste, the feel, the texture, the scent of the blood that flows from his body into yours. You’ve never tasted anything so ambrosial. His blood is rich, decadent, and so full of life that you swear you can feel your own body reawakening in response to it as it coats your tongue, slides down your throat, and fills your belly with its vigour. A shudder runs through you as heat spreads out from your lips, tingling out across your face, your chest, your entire being, filling you with a warmth that you haven’t felt since you entered this blasted hell. You drink in the pleasure of it. You drink in the bliss. You drink deep.

“Tav?” he says, a question, a warning, but damn him, this feels too good to pay him any mind. You deserve this, don’t you? You deserve to feel good for once. You deserve to feel warm and full and content. You deserve to feel like you’re winning. You sink your teeth a little deeper as you feel him try to pull away. And, says a cruel voice in your mind, doesn’t he deserve this too? He should be happy to let you drain him dry, after everything he’s put you through. He should be glad to do this in penance. He made you into this mess, this monster. This is barely the start of the reparations he owes you. You want his blood to become your blood. You want his heart to beat for yours. You cannot remember what love feels like, but you think it feels like this. Hot and livid and fleshy and desperate.

“Tav!”

Then there’s a pressure on your shoulder, and the wrist is wrenched from your mouth, and you suddenly remember to breathe as you watch the pale elf stagger away from your draining bite. You come back to yourself, and you are horrified.

“Oh, gods—“ you begin.

“Shit,” he says, wincing and rubbing the bite mark on his arm.

“I’m— gods, I’m so sorry—“

He laughs the pain away, his beautiful face lighting up beneath the layers of grime and bruising and blood.

“Don’t be. If anyone understands, I do.”

Chapter Text

Something in the way that he laughs, or perhaps the way that he speaks, gives you pause. Your brow furrows slightly as you realise what it is.

It sounds like one of his old lines.

“Why are you doing that?” you ask.

“Doing what?”

“Trying to charm me.”

You swear his eyes widen for a moment before he lets out an affable chuckle.

“I’m always charming, darling.”

“No, you’re not,” you say. It sounds harsher said out loud than it did in your head. You see a flicker of something in his eyes that it takes you a moment to recognise, but when you do, it breaks your heart.

Fear.

“You’re scared of me,” you say quietly.

His eyes dart over your face, looking for a way out. For an escape. He finds none. He sighs dramatically.

“Well of course I’m scared of you. You should have stabbed me in the heart by now. I should be long since dead. I’m waiting for a dagger to the neck as we speak.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” you say, rather incredulously.

“No? I would, if the roles were reversed.”

“I don’t trust you, but I don’t want you dead. Most people manage to keep things somewhere between the two, you know.”

He tuts. “Letting me live is an objectively stupid thing to do.”

“Well, we were hardly drawn together by our shared intellect, were we, darling?”

Your use of his favourite endearment sounds particularly vitriolic. He raises his eyebrows at your cattiness as if daring you to keep going.

“Sorry,” you say instead. “It's just… you never used to be scared of me. Not even when I was snapping and snarling at you in the night, or when we found out I was the literal child of Bhaal. What's changed?”

“I imagine I’m missing the part of my soul that made foolishly brave character assessments. He feels nothing, and I feel rather too much of everything for my liking.”

“You’re really just missing whole parts of yourself? What else have you lost?”

“Well, he got the cruelty, the power, the ability to live in the sun, and eternal life, but I got the fear, the eternal damnation and the humour, so you tell me who came off better in the end.”

When you look at him, you can almost be taken in by the humour and charm, even though you know how often he used them as a mask for his fears in the past. Still, you can see the uncertainty glimmering in his green eyes, even as he pulls that familiar wry smile onto his lips.

“It’s so much harder to read you with your eyes like that,” you say. “I’m so used to the old ones.”

“With my eyes like what?” he asks.

“You know, like, green,” you say, and then freeze at the look on his face. “Oh. You didn’t know, did you?”

He says nothing, only shaking his head. He brings his hand to his cheek as if he’ll be able to feel a new face, or an old face, or a face long lost to the darkness of times gone by. Now that you’re looking properly, you can see changes other than his eyes, too. Under the layers of dirt, patches of blush that were once a blueish pink are now warmer tones of rose and peach. His hair, which was once as silvery white as snow clouds, has taken on a faintly golden sheen, as if lightly touched by crepuscular rays of sunlight. You never would have believed that he could get more beautiful, but these warm sparks of life suit him. You’re watching the conflict of emotions play out on his face, mesmerised, when a horrifying thought strikes you.

“Gods, if you can see everything he does, can he see you too?”

Your question seems to snap him out of his reverie.

“Oh. Yes, but he just thinks that I’m some part of his guilty conscience. Easy enough to do, I suppose, when all he can see is me being tortured in the hells. He’s pretty good at blocking it out, from what I can tell. I don’t think he even notices me any more.”

Despite what he says, panic squirms in your gut.

“And if he does notice? If he sees me here? He might be able to figure out where we are. He might be able to find me.”

“Ah. Well, I suppose there’s a chance he’ll still think it’s just his imagination. I seem to have kept most of what little rationality I had in the first place.”

“And if not?”

“If not then that’s all the more reason to get you out of here. Are you feeling well enough to move, now that you’ve fed?”

You nod.

“How are you getting back to… in fact, where did you even come from to get here?”

You nearly say, I came through a portal from Abriymoch, but you stop yourself. You wish you could trust this beautiful man who talks and acts and looks like the Astarion you once knew, but you cannot. Even if he truly means well, those deep green eyes could be sending your secrets back to your husband in Baldur’s Gate.

“I came through a portal,” you say instead.

“So there’s a portal you can go through to get back?”

“Yes. Technically. There should be. Although, um, I’m not exactly sure where it will be. Or... when.”

“What?”

“Look, it wasn’t supposed to be just me coming here. The others had a plan, but things changed, and I sort of just… threw myself here before they could stop me.”

“Gods above, Tav. I know I’m not one to talk, but you really didn’t think this through, did you?”

Chapter Text

You shoot him a withering glare. He really is not one to talk, seeing as it is entirely due to his transgressions that any of this needed to be done in the first place, but you think that if you start down that path you might very well end up using all of your remaining energy on listing every way in which this is, in fact, his fault, so you settle on a slightly less cutting retort.

“Very helpful, thank you so much.”

“What were you thinking?!”

“It felt quite heroic at the time, actually. I was more focused on—“

You nearly say getting your thrice-damned infernal contract cancelled, but you just manage to catch yourself in time. Secrets are not for those pretty green eyes.

“I was mostly just focused on getting what needed to be done, done. I didn’t even really think I’d survive long enough to worry about getting back.”

“Ever the hero,” he says, and his tone sounds too tired to be sarcastic. “So we need to find a way to get you out of here.”

Although the air around is crisp and cold, now that your senses are returning after your supping upon his blood you can sense a foulness between you. There’s a strangeness to the atmosphere - a discomfort at knowing that things should be sweeter than this.

“Ideally, yes. Or, you know, you could just stand there and criticise me further.”

“Hmm. Tempting, but no. I’m really rather popular down here and I don’t think I’d enjoy having you around as competition.”

“Charming. Surely there are portals out of here? Mephistopheles must have the means to travel between realms.”

The more you talk, the more the uncomfortable feeling between you seems to grow. It feels like something in your chest that once was solid has turned to ash. Its shape, perfectly preserved for a time, is crumbling as you touch it. You and this man are sharing barbs as if you are friends, but he feels more like a stranger than your husband ever did.

“I don't think someone of his power needs to rely on portals, but there is a transportation hall.”

“Great!” you say, glad for any positivity.

“…But it only contains portals leading to elsewhere in Cania.”

“It feels like you told me that information in the most deliberately annoying way possible.”

“You wound me. It's better than nothing, surely.”

“It's not better than anything if it doesn't get me out of here.”

“One will come out towards the edge of the realm, I'm sure. If you can get to the  borderlands between Cania and Maladomini you should at least be safe from the cold.”

“But not from the hoards of devils that roam between here and Abriymoch.”

“So you're headed to Abriymoch?”

Shit, you think.

“Shit,” you say. Still, there's no taking it back now. You never were good at deceiving him. “You'd better keep your worse half out of your head.”

“I'll do my best,” he says, a smile that looks more like a grimace twitching the edge of his lips. “Alright. Not the easiest journey. Four levels of the hells is no joke. You said you were meant to come with others? “

You nod.

“Don't they have a way of contacting you? Weren't you with Gale? I saw him come for you. Can't he use his magic to communicate?”

“No. I'm blocked from divination magic. The moment I remove it, the other half of you will be able to track me.” You deliberately don't mention the circlet itself. Two slip-ups in a single conversation would be unforgivable.

“I see.”

“Would it be so bad to just wait here? They know where I am. They'll come for me if I don't return. They've probably already realised I won't know how to portal back.”

“Yes, Tav. It would be bad. This is not somewhere you should stay. You have to leave as soon as possible. Even if the others come for you there's no telling if they'll survive long enough to actually find you. You're going to have to get out of here yourself.”

“Great. I almost forgot he kills every other visitor.”

“What?” Astarion scoffs. “Who told you that?”

“He doesn't?”

“No. I mean, it might work out to be around one in two mortals who visit, but… no. It's nothing so regimented as every other visitor. What a notion!”

“A little less glee would be appreciated. That information is the reason I came here alone in the first place.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

There's an awkward silence. Were your silences ever awkward before? Didn't he usually fill the space with a quip, or a flirtation, or a hand snaking around your neck?

“Well,” he says eventually, “none of that changes the fact that you need to leave this place. You're tough, Tav. You'll find a way to get back. But if Mephistopheles decides to include you in his experiments—”

He swallows and briefly closes his eyes.

“You can't be here, Tav. Please. Anything is less risky than being here.”

“Alright,” you say. For some inexplicable and entirely irrational reason, you believe him. “How do I reach this room of portals?”

He nods his head to the side, indicating for you to follow as he starts off down a corridor. You wearily get to your feet to follow him. He notices your slowness and begins to lift the pack from your back without asking.

“Don’t—”

“Let me,” he insists. “You'll need all the energy you can get.”

You reluctantly accept, shrugging the pack off for him to sling over one shoulder. You notice him wincing as he does so. He's in no better state than you.

For a while, you follow him without sharing a word, down icy corridors carved from gleaming glacier. You break the silence with the worst question possible, but you cannot hold it imprisoned on your tongue for any longer.

“Who got the feelings for me?”

Astarion - gods, you're already calling him that in your mind - slows slightly ahead of you, but doesn’t stop, nor turn around.

“What?”

“If you and he are two halves of the man I knew, which half got his feelings for me?”

He turns to you, blinks, and briefly considers before answering.

“We both got parts, I think. But love isn’t something that should be torn apart.”

“What parts did he get?”

“Possessiveness. Desire. Obsession.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe the feelings I have left. The tear between us isn’t some neatly cut line. I still have some remnants of those parts he was given.”

He stops, turns, and keeps walking. You move to walk beside him, and he glances at you before he continues quietly.

“It’s like I got the memory of love, rather than love itself.”

You think that hearing that should hurt more, but it doesn’t cause you pain. If anything it just makes your own heart feel more numb. You don’t remember when it froze; perhaps when it stopped beating. Maybe sometime since. It’s been dead so long you can’t remember how it felt for it to be alive and wildly beating for another.

“Were we happy?” you ask. Like love, happiness feels like something distant that once belonged to someone you barely recognise anymore.

“There were certainly moments of laughter and light amongst the blood and chains and impending doom.”

“But was there really ever love?”

“I think so. I don’t know.” He gives you a sad smile and shrugs. “When you're chained, nothing seems as lovely as being free.”

Chapter Text

You do not speak again for some time. You pass through corridor after corridor; some grand and vast halls with ceilings arching high above in decorative vaults, others dingy passageways barely more than a shoulder breadth wide. Occasionally you pass by a devil of some sort, and more often than not they try to jostle or trip or barge into the two of you, but you follow Astarion’s lead, keeping your head down and ignoring them until the sound of their jeering is far behind you.

Your tongue might be still, but your head is in turmoil. Had the two of you truly shared nothing greater than a common desire for freedom? Had you simply been two trapped souls seeking comfort from your chains in the arms of one another? You had once been so sure it was more than that, but you find it hard to trust your memory these days. Once upon a time, you had thought that you and he had a love worth living for. A love worth dying for. But while he was casting off his chains, you were donning new ones. A love worth dying for, indeed, for had you not happily stepped into your own death to become imprisoned in his love? You let him kill what was you to become what was his. Love worth dying for was the reason you were in this sorry situation in the first place.

You eventually reach a doorway which leads to a hall almost as busy as the antechamber to the throne room, but crammed full of devils rather than lost souls. Without looking back, Astarion holds his arm out behind him, and you instinctively take his hand in yours as he plunges into the throng. You hold on tight, anchored to him as the currents of bodies around you push and shove you to and fro. His hand in yours, at least, does not feel like the hand of a stranger. It feels like safety, help, and comfort. You know, without needing to feel it, how if you repositioned your hands slightly, unclasping and re-clasping your grip, your fingers would lace perfectly with his, intertwining as if they were made to fit together. For the briefest of moments, you swear you feel the pad of his thumb rubbing gently over your fingers, but you quickly assure yourself that it is nothing more than the jolting movements caused by the press of the crowd around you.

As soon as you make it to the opposite end of the room, where the crowd begins to thin, Astarion loosens his grip, dropping your hand from his.

“Sorry,” he mutters, but you shake your head in dismissal of his apology. “We’re nearly there,” he says, gesturing at a door at the far end of the corridor in which you now stand. The door stands ajar, and you can see a faint purple glow emanating from within. Above the doorway, Infernal runes are carved in some sort of sign, but you never learned to read the language, so its meaning is lost on you. You wonder - not for the first time - if this is all a trap. You look at Astarion’s face, trying to read it, to seek out any hint of betrayal, but all you see is a beauty that still makes your breath catch in your throat. His words might sound strange, but his touch felt so familiar. You wonder how broken a person has to be before they stop being themselves.

You think you already know.

And still, your mind is as torn as your heart. As torn as his soul. But something about how bad at being charming this aspect of him is - something about how weak he seems - something about how jarring and stilted his conversation has been - makes you think it could be him. An aspect of him, at least. For surely a devilish trick would be more convincing, more appealing, more tempting than this?

The one thing you are sure of is that this man before you is not borne of some plot by your husband. His hubris would never allow even an aspect of himself to appear so weak.

By the time you reach the portal room, you are no closer to deciding whether or not you trust this image of the man you loved. The room is empty as you step inside. Four portals stand at the points of a compass which has been painted upon the floor. More Infernal script is scrawled around the base of each portal, but again, the writing means nothing to you.

You turn to Astarion, who is easing your pack off his shoulders. He offers it back to you uncertainly. His eyes are wide, but you cannot read his expression.

“I suppose this is goodbye, then,” he says.

You give an ambiguous nod, reaching for your pack. You still do not feel you know enough to decide whether you trust him or not, but you have run out of time. You need to leave. After walking in relative silence, your mouth is suddenly full of questions, buzzing from your lips like bees. You can only hope they do not sting so much as the last ones.

“What have you been doing these past six months? What will you do now? Were you just trapped within his mind? How did you get so…” you gesture with a grimace at his hands and his face.

“No. No, I wasn't just in my own head, so to speak. I was very much here, but I was aware of the rest of me at the same time. After a while of practice and focusing on it, I sometimes saw out of those eyes clearer than my own, but my body - this body - has always been here.”

“And the injuries?”

“Oh, Mephistopheles likes his souls to experiment with magic. Creatively.”

“But you can barely cast magic,” you say, your brow wrinkling. Had he not said that the other part of him had got all of the powers?

“Yes. But plenty of my victims could, as could Cazador, and apparently, I make a wonderful test subject.”

“Cazador is here?”

“Oh, yes. Quickly worked his way into Mephistopheles's favour. Cruel, creative, magically powerful. And those in favour get to choose the participants of their experiments.” His lips curve into a smile, but it does not cover the haunted look in his eyes. “As I said, I’ve been very popular down here.”

Chapter Text

And just like that, your mind is made up.

“You’re coming with me,” you say decisively. You sound more certain than you feel. There are still parts of your mind screaming that this is some sort of trap. A clever one, certainly, because this pretty pale elf has just mentioned the one thing you promised to always keep him safe from. Guilt is pooling, thick and sticky, in your chest. You told him you would protect him from Cazador. You swore it, and you failed. You are all but certain that the tortures you suffered by his hand over the past year are as nothing compared to the torments his old master must have lavished upon him.

You open the pack you took from Wyll, crouching down to rifle through the contents, hoping to find additional protections from the cold that you might face once you enter the portals. Astarion’s clothes - once so carefully maintained - look as battered and torn as his body. They will offer no protection against the cruelty of the elements.

“I’m not going with you, Tav.”

You pause from your rummaging to look up at him, bewildered.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you are. Mephistopheles himself said I could take you with me—“

“That doesn’t matter. I don’t deserve to leave. I belong here.”

“How can you say that?”

“How can I not? I doomed seven thousand souls, Tav. Do you think they’re faring any better than I am down here? I mean, gods above, some of them are children.”

Seven thousand more, whispers a voice in your mind before you can shut it out. You screw your eyes shut for a moment, steeling yourself against it. Your penance will be stopping the man who tortured you for the best part of a year. The man who, as you speak, is terrorising Baldur’s Gate.

“We might be able to help them,” you say, desperately hoping that you’re not speaking falsehoods. “If you come with me, we might be able to save them. But if you stay here, you’re not even giving yourself a chance to make things right.”

He gives a bitter laugh. “I couldn’t even save myself. How in the hells am I going to be able to save them?”

“You deserve a chance to try, at least.”

“No, Tav. This is what I deserve.”

“And what about what I deserve?” You attempt to blink away the stinging in your eyes and try to keep your voice from shaking. “I let you do it. I helped you do it. Did I deserve everything you did to me this past year? Should I go crawling back to the other you because it’s what I deserve?”

“What? Gods, Tav, no,” he says, eyes wide, walking towards you and dropping to his knees beside you where you remain crouched on the floor. For a moment you think he might put his arm around you, but he seems to change his mind halfway, letting it drop back to his side. “No, of course not. But can’t you see that I’ll only endanger you if I come? What if he can see through my eyes? What if I allow him to find us?”

“What if I starve to death alone in the cold? What if I get lost? I’m in more danger going alone. Please. I can’t leave you here. I am not leaving you with Cazador.” You sniff, clearing your nose, and attempt to look at him sternly, although you fear your watery eyes might be diminishing the effectiveness of your glare. He sighs.

“Fine. Have it your way. I’ll come with you, for a while at least. But I don’t even think I could return to Faerûn if I wanted to. My body is under his control.”

You nod, quickly wiping your eyes with the back of your hand, and continue your search through the pack. Faerûn feels like an impossibly far distance right now. You'll settle with making it back to the others alive.

“We should drink these,” you say, passing him a potion of cold resistance and setting one aside for yourself. “I can’t find any spare clothing, so we’ll have to make do with my cloak. Do you have any idea where these portals actually lead to?”

He frowns, his eyes roaming over the inscriptions at the base of each portal, then shakes his head.

“I can’t read much. I picked up a bit from books - I think that one means the river Styx,” he says flatly, gesturing at the portal furthest from the door. “The rest, I don’t know. But at least we could follow the Styx upstream out of Cania.”

“How will we know which way is upstream? Won’t it be frozen over?”

He shakes his head.

“The Styx never freezes. It should guide us away from here.”

“Alright,” you say, in an attempt to convince yourself as much as anything. There's no point in dawdling. You stand, slinging your pack back on, and motion to the potion bottles. “Ready?”

He nods, opening his bottle and drinking it down as you do the same. You pull your cloak out, awkwardly wrapping it over his shoulders as well as your own. He doesn’t quite flinch at your touch, but you feel his body stiffen as you reach around him to wrap him in the warm cloth. You link your arm through his, both to ensure that the cloak covers the two of you completely and to make sure he doesn’t try to slip out of it and stay behind. Something is bothering you, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Not while you walk together to the portal. Not while he meekly follows your lead and steps up to the chosen threshold. Only when the fizz of arcane energy fills your nostrils and the irresistible pull of teleportation magic drags you both towards your next destination does it hit you.

The real Astarion never would have followed meekly.

The real Astarion would have fought back.

Chapter Text

The portal pushes you out to land in ankle-deep snow a few feet away from a sluggishly flowing river. You let go of Astarion’s arm as you stumble to your knees from the thrust of teleportation, the chill of the air making your chest ache. He just about remains standing, swaying unsteadily on his feet before reaching out a hand to help you up. You eye it warily.

“What?” he asks. His face is blank; there’s not a hint of duplicity in those eyes. He’s either innocent or much better at this than you are.

“Nothing,” you say, shaking your head and taking his hand. “It looks like your rune-reading was right, at least.”

You gesture to the river and he nods nervously.

“We should move up the banks,” he says.

“Why? The snow is thinner here.”

“It's not safe being so close to the river. If we fell— well, let's just say we really don't want to fall in.”

“What happens if we do?”

“They say the Styx steals memories. Sometimes whole lifetimes of recollection are wiped out in an instant.”

Privately you think this sounds quite nice, but you don't say so out loud. Instead, you turn to trudge wordlessly up the river bank, clenching your jaw against the chattering of your teeth.

It takes a while of walking awkwardly, all bumping of shoulders and slipping of cloak, before you both give in and decide to walk arm in arm once more. You find a pace that works for you both and make your way in silence through the cold, heads down against the constant wind, eyes squinting through the flakes of snow that whip and dance around your faces. The cold permeates every inch of your body and before long you are both shivering uncontrollably, huddled beneath your shared cloak as you press onwards through the frozen, timeless realm. Hour and minute, day and night, all bleed into one bitter endless moment, with the bleak landscape offering little proof of the progress you might be making.

Not for the first time, you wish you still had your tadpole to allow yourself to see within this image of Astarion’s mind. His meekness, his softness, his tremulous lack of confidence is so at odds with the man you loved. There are fragments of him there, perhaps, but you cannot help but wonder if they are so broken that they might never be able to mend.

You force yourself to think how it would have felt if your roles had been reversed. You remember well enough the shame, the horror, the total lack of control that you felt the night your dark urges took over. You wonder how much worse it would have been to have to witness it with complete mental clarity. To have to watch yourself act in bloodlust and madness, trapped within your own eyes, with no way to change things. You think how much worse it would have been if Astarion hadn’t managed to bind you first. If it had been your hand, not his, that had cut through the soft flesh of the one person you had ever dared to love. How much worse it would have been if it had lasted for more than a single night. Ten nights. One hundred. More.

You wonder if you’re being unfair, thinking of this man as less real than the man you once loved. Of course he would be changed after the ordeal he has gone through. Not only has he had to endure the mental anguish and guilt of watching your own suffering, but he has also had to face whatever torments Cazador and his victims magicked up for him. You cannot even begin to imagine what they might have been, given the state you’ve found him in, and given the stories he once told you of his old master. You yourself would have been changed after such an ordeal. Indeed, you have been changed by everything you’ve gone through. You barely know the person that you used to be anymore.

You wonder if he misses her as much as you miss him.

You try to read his face, at once so familiar and so new. The chill has brought patches of red to his cheeks and nose, and his lashes are jewelled with tiny flecks of ice. Those green eyes and those splashes of colour still look strange to you, but you find comfort in the beauty of that straight nose, that sharp jaw, the shape of those lips that you once loved so dearly.

“What?” he says, catching you staring.

“I think I’ll need to rest soon,” you say, because saying anything else would be too hard. It’s not a lie, either: your feet are numb and your legs are leaden. He nods.

“I don’t think we’re far from the border now. The snow seems to be falling less heavily.”

“How much further, do you think?”

“Hard to tell. Could be hours, could be days. It’s difficult to know without any sun or stars to judge by. Still, if you’re tired, we should rest. That spot up ahead that looks fairly sheltered.”

He gestures to a spear of black rock jutting out from the snow nearby. You make your way towards it, and you are glad to find that it does indeed do a fair job of blocking the worst of the wind and snow. You begin to make camp as best you can while still struggling to share the cloak, and eventually, you have set up a decent enough shelter for the night. Still, the pack only held provisions for one: a single tent with a single bedroll. Once erected, you slip out of the cloak and into the tent, leaving Astarion standing, becloaked and bedraggled, at the tent’s small entrance. You reach into the pack for more potions and pull out a portion of rations alongside the glass vials.

“Do you eat?” you ask.

“I don’t have to, but I certainly feel hungry.”

“Well, you’re welcome to… whatever this is,” you say, holding out the rations to him. It’s something tough and dried, and it smells rather stale, but he accepts it without complaint. Definitely not the man I once knew, you think to yourself. “We should take another cold resistance potion, too. Freezing to death overnight wouldn’t be much of a way to go.”

He nods, taking a potion from you and pressing it to his lips. You drink yours down, grateful for the feeling it restores to your limbs, even if it does bring with it the aches and pains of overexertion. Astarion begins eating the strips of food from the pack, grimacing as he chews on them.

“Whatever this is, you are not missing out on anything,” he says. “I can’t believe we’re roughing it again. Curling up in the dirt— well, snow, in this case.”

“Makes you miss the bustle and warmth of the Elfsong, doesn’t it?”

“Gods, yes. At the time I thought I couldn’t wait for those times to end, but now… well.” He gives you a tired smile. “They don’t look so bad in hindsight, do they?”

“Not so bad,” you confirm, settling down in the bedroll. You hold it open for him to join you. “Are you getting in?”

“I’m not ready to rest yet. You go ahead. I’ll keep watch.”

“Very noble of you, but you are warm, and I am cold. Why don’t you keep watch from here?”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

He swallows, nods, and then crouches down to slide in beside you. His movements are hesitant, but once he’s settled in beside you something feels right. He throws the cloak over the top of the bed, then tugs the tent flap closed, plunging you into darkness. You turn onto your side and press back into him. Truth be told, you can barely feel any additional warmth from his body through your clothes, but the steady movements of the rise and fall of his chest behind you are soporific, and you are so weary that you quickly find yourself growing drowsy. When you close your eyes, you can almost pretend that you are back in the Elfsong tavern: these scratchy blankets are silk sheets; this lumpy snow is in fact a feather mattress. The howling wind outside is rather a group of rowdy merrymakers. The man beside you is not a stranger. Your brain dances closer and closer to unconsciousness as your memories from that happier time play out across your mind’s eye.

“Tav?” Astarion whispers from behind you. “Are you awake?”

You are, but you're so close to sleep that replying would be a gargantuan effort. Your eyes feel so comfortable closed, and your breathing is so slow that you don't think you have it in you to respond. He lies in still silence for a while, and you feel his warm breath on your neck as he nuzzles in closer to you. The heat feels good. That's all this is, of course: a means of keeping warm. If you think it enough times, you might actually believe it.

It's when you're right on the cusp of dreaming that he speaks again, in the same low whisper that he spoke in before. You might be dreaming already. You doubt you'll remember come the morning. His breath tickles the hairs on the back of your head as he murmurs his secrets into your sleep-addled mind.

“It was real, Tav. It still is. Our love was something real.”

Chapter Text

“Hello, darling.”

Your eyes snap open. You had known in the back of your mind that this - he - was waiting for you when sleep finally fell upon you, but you are surprised to find that you are not in your chamber. You are lying on the floor of a carriage, curtains drawn, the light of a magical lantern affixed to the ceiling throwing cold light around the enclosed space. Astarion is sat on a padded seat on one side of the carriage, staring dispassionately down at you with gleaming red eyes. Two veiled figures also sit on the seat, one on either side of him, heads down as if in silent prayer.

“You’ve been a busy girl, haven’t you? I’ve been waiting for you for days. I thought the wizard might finally have found a way to cut you off from me completely, but clearly not.” 

You had not realised it had been days since you last slept. Time in the hells moves strangely without the sun and moon to shepherd it along. The carriage jolts as you push yourself up into a sitting position, nearly sending you sprawling, but he seems unaffected by it. 

“Where are we? Where are you going?” you ask. 

He doesn’t respond, staring at you with his head cocked slightly to the side. You try to avoid his gaze, looking instead at the pair who flank him. Their faces are obscured by the black silk veils they wear, and every inch of their skin is covered in layers of fine black clothing, right down to their carefully folded hands - enclosed in delicate satin gloves - that lay clasped neatly in their laps.

“Who are they?”

Again, he ignores your question entirely.

“You look dreadful, my dear. You just haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

The rumbling of the carriage along the bumpy road is making your head spin, the shifting colours of your hazy dream vision twinkling and sparkling like sunlight diffracting across disturbed water. You blink, trying to gather yourself, and respond curtly.

“As you said, I’ve been busy. Will you answer my questions?”

“No,” says Astarion with a derisive pout, “I don’t think I will.”

“Why did you even bring me here?”

He gives a cold laugh, sitting back in his seat and looking down at you. “Why, because I missed you terribly, my love.”

He places a hand on the thigh of the companion to his left, slowly stroking it with his fingertips. He smirks when he sees your eyes follow his movements. The carriage jolts again, roughly shaking you from side to side, and again, Astarion and his companions seem unmoved by the motion, sitting still and serene on their shared seat.

“And I see you’re missing me too. Look at you, dreaming of being beside me. You truly believe me to be there, don’t you? My poor little lost love, run away from her devoted husband but desiring nothing more than to be back in his arms. You bewilder me, my dear. But I suppose you always were a little mad, weren’t you?”

You say nothing but watch him warily. Better that he believes you are dreaming of him than he knows the truth. If it even is the truth, that is - you still don’t know how you feel about the man you’re sleeping beside. Could he really be who he says he is? Had it been true, what he whispered into the dark as you were drifting off to sleep? Had you heard him correctly? Had you only dreamed it? Our love was something real.

Your husband interrupts your thoughts.

“And you have fed again, haven’t you? What a greedy little creature you are. Who was it this time?”

You stiffen at this. He sniffs at the air as the carriage gives an almighty lurch, throwing you to the side while Astarion and his veiled figures don’t move at all. Your head must have smacked against something because the colours in your eyes are swirling, streaking, blurring into blind blackness, and the more you blink the more your vision of the dream fades. You see the blurry image of your husband’s confused face, of his hand reaching out to grab you, but the carriage floor is falling away from under you and you are suddenly lying on your back on a cold, lumpy bed, with that same beautiful face looking down at you. Concern, rather than confusion, is etched into its features now, and even in the darkness, you swear you can see the faintest hint of green.

Chapter Text

You brace yourself to strike, your breath coming in short bursts, your mind struggling to catch up with reality. The man hovering over you holds up a placating hand, clearly seeing your intent.

“You're alright, Tav. It's me. Not him. Gods, I thought you'd never wake up. Could you not feel me shaking you?”

You force your breathing to slow as your eyes adjust to the dim light. You're awake, lying in your small tent in the frozen hells, and your husband is not there. Astarion - this Astarion - shifts back to lie on his side, propping his head on his hand to watch you with anxious eyes.

“I could feel it, I think. It felt like the whole dream was shaking. I just didn't realise– I didn't know it was you.”

“Are you alright?”

You nod, even as you feel your eyes well with tears. When the first one spills down your cheek, you change to shaking your head.

“I’m just so tired. Could you see it? The dream, I mean,” you ask.

He nods. “I saw it.”

“He's made more spawn. I'm sure of it. He threatened it when I saw him last—”

“I know. He started the hunt for anyone we befriended just before I found you.”

You picture his hand crawling up the black-clad thigh of the veiled figure. You hear his words in your mind. One of the tieflings, maybe. Bex? Dammon? He was always so pretty. Or perhaps Lia? 

“Did he find anyone?” you ask in a whisper. 

“Not before we left. I've been blocking him out since we took the portal here - I wanted to weaken the link between us in case he saw you. I don’t even know if it will work, but I didn't want him to know where you are. Where we are.”

You screw your eyes shut, hoping the tears will cease. You hate yourself for hoping that it was only Säde and Lucas sat there with him, despite the gnawing premonition that it was someone else. Someone new. Some additional souls that that your affection has doomed to a half-life under your husband’s yoke. Thinking of Säde brings to mind your previous visit with your husband. Her gasping, rattling breaths, her fluttering, sightless eyes. His mocking smile at your horror.

When you open your eyes again, his face is all you can see in the darkness. Your stomach roils with revulsion. You try to hide it from those wide green eyes, but he must catch the downward curl of your lip, the slight narrowing of your eyes, for he breaks his gaze from you, looking down, a pained expression on his face.

“What have we done to ourselves, Tav?”

You don't know where to start with replying to that, so you take a deep breath, exhaling with a tired sigh before you answer him.

“Nothing good.”

You try to remind yourself that the man before you wasn’t the one who committed all those wrongs. If what he says is true, he has suffered more than anyone this past year. You reach out and tentatively take this maybe-broken man’s hand in yours, giving it what you hope is a reassuring squeeze, ever so gently, so as not to hurt the scabs and scars that cover it. He looks back up at you, and you can’t read the emotions flickering behind his eyes.

“We never were great at being ‘good’,” he says.

You let out a reluctant huff of amusement. “No. But I wanted to be good for a while. For you.”

“I wish I had been good for you. I wish I had been enough.”

You stare at your loosely clasped hand in his, unsure what to say. You hear him swallow but don’t look back at his face. You don’t think you could bear to read his expression.

“You were enough,” you say eventually. “Before everything happened, you were enough. You were good, too, sometimes, but you were always enough.”

You don’t need to see his face to know he doesn’t believe you. There’s something like pain in the space between you, like a wound no longer bleeding, but sticky and scabless. You wonder, as you listen to your shared, slow breathing and the quiet beat of his heart, if this wound could knit back together one day, at first ugly and livid compared to what once was pure, but eventually growing tougher, harder, shiny and silvery white.

Either that, or it will fester. Maybe it will kill you both.

“We can still try to be good,” you say, to break the silence, to break from your thoughts.

“I think I'd like that,” he says. When you look up, you ignore the tear tracks on his cheeks and bask in the glow of his smile.

Chapter Text

Your conversation veers into lighter topics as time goes on, the pair of you reminiscing about moments in camp on your previous travels and the foolish quests and foolhardy choices of the past. The more memories he shares without prompting, the more you find yourself believing that he might really be who he says he is. Who else but one of your companions would know of all those strange little details, all those funny, odd occurrences, all those quiet, secret times that you shared?

You don't remember falling asleep, although you lay there together in the dark until your exhaustion felt almost pleasant, your limbs comfortably heavy, your body almost warm against his. When you open your eyes you start awake, fearing being dragged back into your husband's presence, but you find that you are still in your tent, and the steady, slow breathing of Astarion fills the air as he trances beside you.

In the dim cold light filtering around the edges of the tent flap, you take in Astarion's resting face. You have little water in the pack - certainly not enough to wash with - so his pale skin remains covered in dirt and dried blood. Still, the shapes and lines of him are so familiar to you that you long to run a finger around the edges of those puffed, slightly parted lips. They are split, chapped, and rougher than you have ever known them to be before, but still, you find yourself desperate to trace the perfect pout that they form in his repose. His hair, once a source of such pride - oh, you'd teased him about it endlessly - is now lank, matted, and so coated in congealed blood that in places it sticks to his ears. Those ears are nicked, mottled, bloodied, their fine points roughed by some torture you do not allow your thoughts to linger upon.

You drink in that straight nose, that sharp jaw, those fine lines so accentuated by the dirt that fills them that you can make them out even in the faint light. Despite the lines, despite his apparent mortality, he seems so young compared to the man you married. Perhaps his innocence seems to take years off of him, despite those familiar lines that are so highlighted in his current filthy state.

How you had loved to watch them form on this perfect face as he laughed with you, back when laughter had been something you shared as equals. You can't think of a single time you've laughed together since he turned you.

You swallow down the bitter reminiscences, focusing once more on the sight before you. He stirs, blinking blearily at you, yawns, and then winces.

“Are you watching me?” he asks, the remnants of his rest making his voice thick and rasping.

“Yes,” you say, quite unabashed.

“Oh Gods. Why? What were you thinking?”

You don't say anything for a moment, watching as his consciousness fully catches up with him. He looks at you with an eyebrow raised, mild curiosity - possibly even worry - written on his face.

“I don't know, really,” you say. Your lip quirks up in a smile. “Just that I think that things are going to get better.”

Chapter Text

Astarion tries to return your smile, although he looks pained - almost pitying - in doing so.

“We should get moving,” he says, and you try not to be upset at his evident desire to change the topic of conversation.

“Right,” you say. “Yes, of course. We should take more potions of cold resistance, and you should eat—“

“And so should you,” he says, watching you as you empty the pack onto the floor of the tent. You shake your head dismissively, placing the paltry contents of the bag on the floor between you: three potions of cold resistance, a single dagger, enough food for a day or two, and a potion of healing.

“I’ll be fine,” you say. “You’re not strong enough.” You look at the dwindled supplies before you, trying to stifle the pang of unease at the number of potions left. Astarion must read your thoughts on your face because he tries to reassure you.

“We’re near the border to Maladomini, I’m certain. The weather will ease the closer we get. We shouldn’t need more potions than we already have. But you should feed.”

“Alright. I’ll feed if you take this,” you say, holding out the potion of healing.

“I don’t need it.”

“You look like a ghoul, Astarion. You look more dead than when you were undead. You definitely do need it.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Why are you being so stubborn?”

“I’m just tired. I stayed up most of the night worried that he would try to get back into your dreams—“

“Well, that’s all the more reason to take the potion! If you haven’t rested properly you won’t have been able to heal—“

“You’ve got to stop this, Tav. You’ve got to stop being so nice to me. It’s making me think that things will be alright, and they won’t be, will they? They never are. And I don’t deserve them to be. Not after what I’ve done to you.”

Your chest clenches at his words, a coldness spreading through your stomach. You don’t want to hear this - not when you’ve just started to convince yourself that things might, after everything, start to improve.

“It wasn’t you who did those things to me. Not really.”

“It was, Tav. It is. There are parts of me… two hundred years of being Cazador’s slave shaped parts of me into something I don’t like. But they’re there. That’s who I am. You don’t spend two centuries choosing between putrid rats and being flayed and come out of it a hero.”

“But what about this? What about you?” You gesture at him, and he lets out a sad laugh.

“I suppose I’m whatever is left when you take those parts away. But I’m not whole, Tav. I feel so empty. Hollow. Somewhat like the hunger of a spawn, but more like… something is missing. The fact that I don’t like the missing parts doesn’t stop their absence from making me feel incomplete.”

You don’t know what to say to that, because you can’t pretend you haven’t noticed it yourself. If he is who he says he is, then he’s little more than a ghost of Astarion: more like a shadow of the man you loved, rather than the true him. 

You think that if you were less broken yourself, you might have the words he needs to hear to heal. Halsin would know what to say, certainly; Gale or Shadowheart would likely have some words of wisdom to impart. But when it comes to Astarion, you’ve never been good at finding the right words. You failed to find them on that fateful day all those moons ago, and you fail to find them now. You end up repeating his own words back to him, painfully aware that they are not what you want to say, but they are all that you can muster for now.

“We should get moving,” you say, chewing on your lip, and you busy yourself with packing so that you do not have to see the sadness on his face.

Chapter Text

You drink your potions of cold resistance in icy silence, then pass Astarion a portion of rations as you pull the cloak around you, preparing to leave. As you emerge from your shelter to break down the tent, you are immediately blasted by the cold gusts of wind and whirling flakes of snow that battered you so thoroughly the previous day. The immutable sky and barren landscape give little clue as to how long you have rested; you could have been tucked away in there for hours or for years.

You waste little time in pressing on upriver, and the realm wastes little time in chilling you to the bone. As you trudge together, ears deafened to all the words you do not say by the howling of the wind, you cannot help but wonder if the blood in an unbeating heart could freeze over. Perhaps that explains the ache you feel in your chest: it is tiny clots of ice in your veins, blood frozen and jagged and catching at the edges of your heart.

Your eyes feel frozen, too. Blurred from snowflakes that seem especially drawn to them, they play tricks on you as you soldier onwards, showing great shifting snowdrifts that seem to move just on the edges of your vision, but remain frozen as soon as you blink and stare in earnest.

At least as you trek onwards, the tension between the two of you seems to ease. Pressed together as you are under your single cloak, it is hard to the maintain barriers of cold wariness that had been thrown up earlier in the day. You remind yourself that he was tired,  and if the injuries that you catalogued in detail as you watched him rest are anything to go by, he’s also most likely in a good deal of pain. You tell yourself that his pressing against you a little closer than is necessary and his careful catching of your arm as you stumble through the snow are ways in which he is trying to apologise without having to say the words out loud. He never was one for saying sorry if he could help it.

Eventually - just as you are about to suggest resting your weary, numbed feet for a while - you realise that the snow is thinning. Knee-high drifts of powder have made way to ankle-deep patches of something closer to slurry, and the blinding snowfall has reduced enough to see clearly around you for the first time since you left Mephistopheles's citadel.

Your relief at this realisation does not last long, though, for your cleared vision quickly makes it evident that the shifting snowdrifts that you thought you had only imagined were moving are, in fact, most definitely something alive, and most definitely something following you. You catch sight of a pair of dark eyes in the white of the snow and realise with horror that you are being hunted.

You grip Astarion’s arm, your fingers squeezing tight to get his attention, and he raises a questioning eyebrow at you.

“I think something is following us,” you say, keeping your voice low to not be heard beyond the confines of your shared cloak.

“Oh, we are most certainly being followed,” he says. “The bear?” You shrug, unsure what beast it is that you have spotted. “Yes, it’s been sniffing around since we rested.”

You stare at him incredulously. “And you didn’t think to mention this to me at any point?”

“It’s only a bear.”

“It’s huge.”

“Would you feel better if I killed it?”

“What? No! If we ignore it, it might leave us alone. What makes you so certain that you could even win against it?”

You don’t say it out loud, but given the state that he’s in, you wouldn’t bet on him being able to beat a cub, let alone a creature the size of the beast that is currently stalking you.

“Do you forget that before I was granted access to your neck, boars and bears were my regular nightly fare?”

“I’m not sure how the lumbering creatures of Faerûn compare to the beasts from the eighth realm of the hells, but I imagine this one might be slightly more dire than your past midnight snacks. Besides, do you even have a weapon?”

In answer, he pulls a blade from his belt that looks suspiciously familiar.

“Is that my dagger? From my pack?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind if I borrowed it.”

“And what am I supposed to do if I need a weapon?”

“Trust me?”

“I think it’s a little soon for that.”

“Mm. Well, what do you envision happening sooner: your learning to trust me, or your learning to wield this dagger in a way that doesn’t result in us both ending up being mauled by a bear?”

You glare at him, although your heart isn’t in it. You secretly want to smile at his sharpness, for that, more than anything so far, has made you feel most certain that this is at least a part of the Astarion you once knew. Still, you won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing so for now, so you maintain your glare.

“Fine. Keep the damned dagger. But can you even use it anymore? I thought you said he got all the power?”

“Oh. Well, yes, in the sense that he got all the fun, new, dark-magic-beyond-mortal-reckoning powers. He hardly has a need for something so prosaic as a well-placed stab to the guts any more, does he?”

“I suppose not. But if we end up as bear food, I am going to hold you personally responsible.”

“My dear, we fought gods and lived to tell the tale,” says Astarion, the shade of a cocky smile flitting across his lips. “I don’t think a single bear will be enough to take us down.”

That phantom of a smile, faint though it is, causes something to stir deep within your gut. Ghosts of feelings past, perhaps; affection born anew. Then again, you were never very good at distinguishing the butterfly feeling of new love from the fluttering of fear that the shreds of your self-preservation release to warn you, urgently, to flee. 

Chapter Text

A single bear, it turns out, is almost enough to take you down.

Its presence is a permanent worry at the edges of your vision as you walk on, the snow melting away around you until only small patches remain underfoot, the shifting of the landscape from pure white to dirty greys and browns making the beast’s hulking white body all the more obvious. Ahead, you can see the shapes of lone crumbling structures of dark wood and red brick - the edges of the ruins that appear to spread across the land as far as the eye can see.

“We’re in Maladomini,” you say, disbelief and exhaustion making your voice wobble slightly. “We’ve made it.”

“We've still got three more levels to traverse, and we're not in Maladomini yet,” says Astarion, his dark tone instantly setting you on edge.

“What's wrong?”

“The bloody bear is getting closer. I think…” he trails off, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder towards the pacing beast before continuing, “I think we should run. If we can make it to one of those buildings before it catches us, it’ll be easier to defend ourselves, at least.”

“You were very ready to take it on directly a while ago.”

“Well, yes, but that was before I was quite so exhausted, and before I realised the thing is the size of a bloody carriage.”

“Excellent,” you say. “And what happens when we inevitably cannot outrun the giant bear?”

“Look, we'll throw the cloak off to the side, alright? That might distract it for a while, and buy us a bit more time.”

“And if it doesn't?”

“Then… we'll see.”

“‘We’ll see’?” Screeching in hushed tones is not an easy feat, but you manage it. “That's your plan? Gods above—”

“I suppose you have a better one?” he snaps.

“Obviously I don't, but that doesn't make yours any less dreadful.”

A low rumbling sounds from behind you, cutting off your bickering in an instant. The growl of a bear too close for comfort should be causing every instinct in you to tell you to run, and yet there is something in the sound that gives you pause. Perhaps it's only your ears playing tricks on you, but you could swear there's a familiarity to those rumbling tones. You place a staying hand on Astarion's arm, who has tensed beside you, ready to spring into action.

“Wait,” you say, stepping out of the cloak and turning slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, around to face the beast.

“What are you doing?” Astarion hisses at you, but you ignore him, taking in the creature that is now within a stone's throw from where you stand.

“I think it's Halsin,” you mutter, holding your hands up to the bear to show it who you are.

“You— what?! Halsin's bear form is brown! And he might be large, but he's not— gods, Tav, please—”

Astarion pulls desperately on your arm, trying to drag you towards the scattered ruins of buildings, but you stand fast, shaking off his grip. You had known your friends would come, of course. They must have realised moments after you first entered the portal at Melusine's that you wouldn't know how to get back, and that must have been days ago now. No doubt they have all been searching for you since. That doesn't explain how Halsin managed to find you here, in the border expanse between Cania and Maladomini, nor why he is so large, so white, but— but— 

But now the bear is close enough for you to see its eyes.

Now, the bear is close enough for you to see your mistake.

There's not a single flicker of humanity in those dark eyes. There's none of the warmth within them that normally radiates from Halsin. There is intelligence, certainly, but it is the cold, ruthless intelligence of a predator honing in on its prey.

Chapter Text

You would swear at your stupidity, but your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, fear stealing your ability to speak. You stumble backwards, but you already know that you’ve left it too late. The beast pounds towards you, closing the space between you before you’ve even had a chance to turn on your heel to flee. As you brace yourself for the impact of that slavering set of teeth, you feel yourself being thrown to the side by something— someone— pushing you away.

You are only stunned for a moment, sprawled on the cold, wet ground, before you roll over and turn to see Astarion standing in the spot you had been. The dagger in his hand looks piteously small compared to his adversary; barely the same size as a single claw on one of those massive paws. Still, he dodges to the side successfully as the beast comes at him, twisting around with an agility that belies his beaten and exhausted state, then plunges the blade deep into the bear’s side. It roars, turns, and brings a huge paw down on Astarion, catching him with those razor-sharp claws from shoulder to chest, causing him to crumple to the ground with a cry of pain.

For a moment, your mind tells you to run. You think that this could be the best outcome: an escape from the bear, who will be happy with its fallen prey, and an escape from the man whose face you cannot decide if you trust or fear. 

Then you look to him, his expression taut with pain and terror, and you know deep down that running was never an option. A feeling of something flares in your chest, and from it sparks a panic at the sight of him wielding nought but that tiny blade in the face of such a huge foe. Blood blooms from the gashes in his torso, staining the mud and snow on the ground around him. The delicious iron scent of it hits you, and you feel the rational part of yourself make way for the feral side of your being. You may no longer have your father's blood, but a lifetime of death has etched killing into your very essence.

You move to attack the beast before you on instinct, and your soul sings out a lament at the theft of your sorcery as you brush against those mystical places inside you where it once lived. You grit your teeth. Now is not the time to mourn. You have other powers - newer powers - powers which, until now, you have only seen as a curse, for you have seen and felt the destruction that they are capable of wreaking on a living thing.

But destruction is what you want right now. Destruction is what you need.

You let the scent of blood whip your mind into a frenzy, lips curling into an uncontrolled snarl as you throw yourself at the bear. It sees you coming and redirects an attack meant for Astarion’s prone form in your direction instead. You feel a lash across your stomach as great paws swipe at you, but you feel no pain from it; barely skin deep, you think, and no way near enough to stop you. You laugh, high and loud and wild and mad, and stand your ground in the face of the great beast.

As the bear rears up for another attack, you lunge forward, ducking below that yawning maw of gleaming teeth to sink your own sharp fangs deep into its thick neck. 

Your nose wrinkles in revulsion at the sensation of fur prickling your tongue, but then your teeth sink deep enough, and the feeling of revulsion is replaced by burning hunger. Blood spurts with such force that it chokes you when it hits the back of your throat. It gushes out around your mouth, splattering up your nose, running down your neck. You do not care. You will drink it all down, you will breathe it all in, you will drown in this ferocious hunter’s blood until its very essence belongs to you. The bear shakes its entire body roughly from side to side, trying to throw you off, but your fingers - once used so delicately to coax the arcane into existence - now dig themselves deep into fur and flesh, grasping with monstrous claws, piercing and tearing and never letting go.

The beast roars, but you barely hear it. Your mind has narrowed down to a single sharp red spike that only knows one thing: blood. You feed and feed as the bear bleeds out around your mouth. It falls to its side, and still, you do not let go. It is only when the bear stops moving completely - when the shakes and tremors of its approaching death have been entirely spent - that you unlatch your sticky mouth from the blood-soaked column of its neck. Still, you lap at the wound your fangs have ripped open, as the pulsing of blood abates beneath your tongue. You taste the moment its soul leaves its body, although you cannot quite say what it is that changed. Your mind is already elsewhere. A new scent intrigues you now. A sweeter smell, something light and still fresh, some new living thing that you want to taste the death of.

Your hunt has only just begun.

Chapter Text

You turn, blood-drunk eyes spinning faster than your head moves, and there's a twisting pain in your guts that you think must come from your overindulgence with the bear at your feet. You see Astarion lying on the ground. Living, yes, but barely. You already know how sweet he tastes. It would be so easy to bend down and take your fill. You could run your tongue through the gashes in his chest; you could lap at the trickle of blood that dribbles from the corner of his mouth. You could set your jaws over his throat and bite right through until teeth meet teeth. Your eyes roll madly with the desire for it.

No.

Perhaps only because the bear has already sated you to the point of painful fullness, or perhaps thanks to the strangely pressing feeling of something that you feel in your chest when you look at Astarion sprawled on the ground, you can faintly hear the rational part of your brain commanding you to stop. To think. To return to yourself. You take a deep breath, and even as your mouth waters at the thought of feasting on him, you shake your head to free yourself from those starving, depraved thoughts like a dog trying to shake off fleas. You are calm. You are in control. You look back at Astarion through less crazed eyes, and you baulk at the sight of him.

The little blushes of colour on his cheeks and ears have drained away entirely. He is pallid, pale lips parted to expel wheezing, rattling breaths. His chest rises and falls erratically, and his eyelids flicker as if he is trying to focus on you but cannot quite find the strength to.

“Shit,” you mutter to yourself as you sling the pack off of your back, only to find that it is entirely empty. The contents appear to have been thrown out when the bear tried to shake you off, and they now lie scattered on the ground around you. You scan the area desperately - your mind is clouded, drunken from the beast’s blood that courses through you, but you could swear there had been a potion of healing in your pack when you left the tent this morning. Finally, your eye catches a glint of red and copper nestled in one of the few remaining patches of snow, and you bound over to it, praying to whoever might be listening that it did not smash in its expulsion from your bag.

When you pick it up, you let out a shaking sigh of relief to find it still intact. You dash back to kneel at Astarion's side, uncorking the bottle and pouring the syrupy liquid into his lips with a shaking hand. He splutters at first, but then you see a brightness come back to his eyes, and when his gaze meets yours, his mouth twitches into a pained smile.

You want to return that smile with one of your own, but the adrenaline from your fight is fading fast, and you are beginning to feel dizzy, and sick, and the blood in your stomach feels strangely like an aching cramp. You manage more of a grimace, but you maintain eye contact with him, scared that if you look away that spark within those green eyes will fade, and you’ll lose him. Again. Forever.

“So much for a single bear not taking us down,” you say through half-pursed lips, trying to fight the growing nausea, trying to ignore the growing pain.

“'I think it’s Halsin’,” returns Astarion in a weak mockery of your own voice. “I mean, honestly, darling— wait, Tav, what in the hells—“

He suddenly pushes himself up to a sitting position, his injuries apparently forgotten, to stare wide-eyed at your midriff. You look down, too, and your vision swims. Your top is torn, although that’s no surprise; you’d felt the scratch of the bear’s claws when it swiped at you. It is stained with blood, too - a little more than you would expect, given that the attack only seemed to graze you. But a graze does not account for the great tear across your belly. A graze does not account for the glistering guts poking out of the wound. They look like bloodied snakes, like worms, like maggots crawling out of carrion.

It’s as if the pain was waiting, politely, for your acknowledgement of your hurt. Until now, it had been present as no more than an ache, a twinge, a slight irritation. Now, though, now that you see with your own eyes the great rupture of your body, the pain hits you like a tempest. All breath is knocked from your lungs; all speech is stolen from your lips; all thought is wiped from your mind. 

“Oh,” is all you manage to say before the world starts to spin around you, and your ears fill with a rushing, thunderous sound, and your eyes roll back to black.

Chapter Text

The tiny part of your mind that can feel anything beyond pain seems to detect a feeling of falling through the darkness of your closed eyes until suddenly you are still once more. The rushing in your ears slowly organises itself into the distinct, messy, busy sounds of a party in full swing.

“Darling!” calls a mocking voice through the din of pain and the clamour of the crowded room you find yourself in as you open your eyes. “I wondered when you'd be—”

Your husband's voice cuts off as your head lolls back and cracks against the hardwood floor. Your vision waltzes in and out of focus, the floor seeming to sway beneath your body. Pain is the only constant. Pain strong enough to follow you through your subconscious, pain great enough to make even this dream body shake with the overwhelming might of it.

“Darling? What's wrong? What's happened?”

Stars of exquisite agony dance behind your lids when you close your eyes. When you open them once more, the room around you spins in a senseless prismatic shimmer. Figures veiled and clothed and nude and bloodied alike blur into one incomprehensible streak of shapes and colours. One of them seems to be coming closer, but still, your eyes cannot focus on them beyond a flash of silver, a smear of red. You shut your eyes, and everything falls away but the pain. It is easy to assume that the worry that you hear in that silken voice is no more than a figment of your feverish imagination.

“Oh, my treasure, what happened to you? Who did this?”

A buzzing feeling tingles on your brow. It's not a particularly good feeling, but it's a welcome distraction from the other sensations that currently fill your mind. You let out a groan of appreciation - speech is far beyond you now - and your eyes stay heavily shut.

“Out! All of you, out! Leave us!”

The shout is so loud that it shocks your eyes back open, and you see enough of the blurry figure kneeling beside you to know that it is Astarion. There’s a tingling on your arm where his hand grips right through you, white-knuckled, clutching at nothing. What false masquerade have you found yourself in, where red eyes can look down on you through a mask of such care, such concern?

“Stay with me, darling. Who did this? Can you tell me who did this? Who hurt you? I'll kill them, pet. I’ll kill them for you. Just tell me where you are and I’ll come for you, and we’ll kill them. Together, my darling, we’ll kill them.”

You wonder at the strangeness of the scene. Looming over you, your suave and scornful husband is reduced to kindness. Is killing ever kindness? You try to let out a hysterical laugh, but it mutates into an ugly splutter from your lips. Killing was once the only kindness you knew.

“If I could only touch you— if I could only reach you—“

A feeling that you think must be death is tugging at you, trying to pull you from this room, from this man, from his hazy hold on you. You risk a glance down and see the layers of your body peeled back in a grotesque display, skin and fat and muscle giving way to the gore of your insides. You look back to your husband’s face, your eyes blurring further as they fill with fearful tears. So misted is your sight that you almost think you can see the glimmer of tears in his own eyes, but you know that cannot be true. 

“Why did you have to go, my love? Why did you have to leave me?”

Strange words, maddening words, words that almost sound like love to your frantically dying mind. They are spoken with a softness that does not suit this red-eyed face that floats apprehensively over you as your vision begins to fade.

“Stay with me,” he says, “please.”

His begging is not enough to keep you from the death that calls to you. You see a flinty hardness spark in his eyes when he realises that you are slipping away from him.

“Stay with me!”

A command this time, some of that unusual softness faded. It tugs fruitlessly at a part of you that once would have obeyed without question. He might have been your master enough to command you to do most things, but death is master of all. 

You close your eyes and heed its call.

Chapter Text

“Stay with me, Tav.”

You don’t know how you can still hear Astarion's voice. You’re quite sure you felt yourself passing on. You moved between existences, escaping from that counterfeit of sleep. You felt your body shifting; you felt the air around you change; you felt his buzzing grip on you fade away. Certainly your pain feels different now: older, somehow, itchy and peeling. The thought of your wound sends a febrile flush through your body, making you shiver as you picture your belly split open like a ripe fruit, your insides shining out like pomegranate seeds, juicy and weeping and fresh for the plucking. Absurdly, the image makes your mouth fill with moisture as your hunger roars back to life inside you.

Are bodies supposed to ache in death? Are they supposed to feel hunger? Surely you should have been freed from your corporeal hurts and desires. You force sticky eyelids open and find yourself blinking up at a dilapidated ceiling. Through a hole in the roof above you, you can see the muddy red of an otherworldly sky. The smell of sulphur fills your nostrils. Not dead, then. Just in hell. 

Death has spurned you once more.

You roll your head limply to the side. You are lying in a bed made up with tattered sheets, but the mattress and pillows are comfortable enough, if a little musty. Your husband’s green-eyed double, who must have moved you here, is sat in a rickety chair beside the bed reading a weathered book, although he looks up from it when he hears you stirring. His tired green eyes fix you with a tense, worried stare. You don't know why, but the sight of him makes you burst into tears.

“Tav? What's wrong? I mean, stupid question, I know what's wrong - lots is wrong, but— are you alright?”

He reaches out to you, placing an uncertain hand on your shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort. It is not enough. If you're not dead then you have to face the tumultuous emotions that have built up inside you, and the ravenous hunger that claws at you, and the injuries that must still threaten you, and all the wrongs that you still need to set right, but you do not have the strength for any of it. Death would have been easier. Death would have been kinder. The sobs that have taken over you should be splitting you open with pain, but they cause little more than an uncomfortable pang with each heaving breath you suck in.

“Can I— should I?— gods, alright, come here,” Astarion says, moving to perch on the edge of the bed and pulling you into his arms. At first, he holds you loosely, almost apologetically, but when you lean into his embrace and clutch at his shirt with desperate hands, he wraps his arms more firmly around you, holding you against him. Your tears soak into his filthy shirt, and you press your face hard against the solid warmth of his chest as if doing so might crush the feelings that are welling up in your mind. You hate him, and you love him, and you miss the real him all with equal strength. It is all too much to bear, your heart pulling itself in different directions with such ferocity that you're quite sure it will tear itself apart. The physical pain of it eclipses even that of your wounded stomach, and the only way to alleviate it is to allow the tears to fall, to allow the sobs to continue, and to listen to his hesitant attempts at comfort that he blathers into your hair while you cry yourself into exhaustion.

“It's alright— well, not it's not alright, but it will be—  well, maybe not alright, but better— I mean, we can try— well, I'll try to make it better, if I can— I just want you to know that we’re in this together— I’m here, is what I mean to say.”

You cry until your face aches from the effort of it. Slowly, your sobs become quieter, shaking things, diminishing into tremulous breaths, in and out, and your tears are all spent. You do not immediately pull away, preferring to catch your breath pressed up against his chest, coming back to yourself in his warmth, grounding yourself in the steady thudding of his heart.

You still do not know how you feel about this man with his arms around you. You still cannot decide how you feel about the husband who held you with such concern in your dream. Your body still aches, your hunger rages, and your mind is restless and tired. All that you know, as you peel your tear-sodden face away from his shirt and look into his apprehensive green eyes, is that when you are in this fearful, broken man’s embrace, for some reason, everything feels just a little bit less hopeless.

Chapter Text

You take a deep, steadying breath, and try to organise the myriad of questions that clamour for answers in your head.

“H—“ is all you manage before you are overcome with a fit of coughing. Your stomach twinges, uncomfortable, but still not the agony that you had expected. Daring to look down for the first time since waking, you do not see the expected viscera of your own body, but rather that your bloodied shirt has been rolled up to reveal a swathe of blackening scabs, and beneath them, the sticky pink paleness of newly healing skin.

“Easy now, darling. You’re alright. Take it slow.”

Astarion watches you, brow wrinkled, until your coughs come to a spluttering end.

“How,” you say breathlessly, “am I not dead?”

“You got pretty close. What were you thinking, just running at the bear like that?” He tries to keep his tone light, the remonstrance full of his usual sarcasm, but you can hear the genuine reproach beneath it.

“I could ask the same of you.”

“I had a weapon, and you did not.”

“And whose fault was that?”

“Yes. Well.” He has the good grace to look sheepish. “You're healing remarkably well, at least.”

“But how?”

“You are a vampire, my dear. Even spawn have prodigious healing capabilities.”

You shake your head. “I never have before. I was bruised all the time, and my back—”

You cut yourself off, not needing to say anything further. Astarion's face is already wracked with guilt.

“Yes, well, the damage caused by a spawn's master is a different matter, in my experience. Cazador often used his control over our healing. Sometimes he'd stop us from healing for weeks. He said he liked to see his artistry preserved in all its beauty. Other times he'd heal us instantly just to start his chosen torture over again on fresh skin.” His lip curls, as it so often did in the past when he spoke of his vampiric master. He shakes his head, dismissing his chain of thought, and changes the topic smoothly. “Still, you should feed, and rest—”

“I don't want to rest if it means going back to him.”

“Ah. Yes. Some good news, for once, on that front: I found these while I was searching for more healing potions.”

He gets up and walks to your pack, from which he withdraws a potion bottle. He displays it to you as if showing off a particularly fine vintage of wine, and seems somewhat disappointed at your blank stare in response.

“Potions of angelic slumber,” he says, a hint of pride showing in the upturn of his mouth. “One of these ruins must have been an apothecary way back when. They were locked away in a safe, but that was hardly going to stop me.”

You raise your eyebrows. “You’ve retained your lockpicking skills, then?”

“Oh yes. Far too grubby a skill for a great vampire lord.” He sneers this last phrase, but you cannot miss the pridefulness in his expression now. You try to hide your smile.

“And you think these potions will stop me from seeing him?”

“They’ll give you the benefit of a full night’s rest in the space of a mere moment. Even if you do get pulled to him, you’ll be there for a blink and then right back here, well rested and hopefully more healed.”

“Alright,” you nod. “I’ll try it.”

You reach a hand out for a bottle, and he passes the one he holds to you. You uncork it, but then pause. You don’t know why you cannot stop yourself from asking questions that you know you won’t like the answers to. Perhaps it's that in your mind, the only thing worse than knowing is not knowing.

“Do you know what he’s thinking? What he’s feeling?”

Astarion looks caught off guard, and his countenance becomes reticent as he answers you.

“Not completely. I understand some of what he’s thinking, but I can’t read his thoughts. Why do you ask?”

“He just—when I was passed out, he seemed to genuinely care. He looked genuinely worried. Like…” You swallow, forcing out your final thought. “Like he genuinely loved me.”

Astarion’s face softens slightly, and although he still looks guarded, his voice is gentle.

“I have no doubt that he thinks he loves you. He desires you. He obsesses over you. But for him, love is possession. I think he sincerely wants to protect you from harm by anyone else, but he wants to do so because you are his. Any damage done to you is an injury against him. But love is not possession, Tav. When you own something, you take its power and you make it your own. The possessor is empowered and the possessed is constrained. If he truly loved you, he wouldn’t want to possess you.”

“Did you feel like that before the split?”

Astarion shrugs, looking uncomfortable.

“Not so extreme. I mean, I wanted you all to myself, but I still wanted you to be your own person. Yes, I hated when you gave so much of yourself to others, and yes, I hated when you went out of your way to help people when we had our own rather pressing issues to attend to, but I knew it was unfair. I was only bitter because I didn't get you until so much later than I needed you. I was jealous, but I could rationalise it away.”

“If you’d got me any sooner I probably would have ended up killing you,” you point out with a wry smile.

“And I, you,” he retorts, grinning in a way that would once have displayed his fangs. You realise with an unmerited shock that he no longer has them. He wouldn’t, of course, with his mortal eyes and his warm body and his beating heart, but it still comes as a surprise, for some reason. It makes his smile smaller, and less dangerous. You’re not sure how you feel about it.

“And now?” You ask, to mask your confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve told me how you felt before you were split, and how he probably feels now. But how do you feel now?”

He sighs as if he’s saddened by the question, or as if he knows you’ll be saddened by the answer. He shrugs again, dismissing his answer before he’s even said it.

“Now I just want you to be free.”

Chapter Text

“What does that even mean? You want me to be free?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Just drink the potion, Tav.”

You give him a searching look, but his expression is closed off, so you bring the bottle to your lips and drain it. It tastes bitter and floral, and you can feel its effects almost instantly. You lean back on the thin pillow of the bed you lie in, but you cannot help but fight the feeling of sleep as it rolls over you. You are reminded of the days in your hazy memory when you would watch storms sweep into the docks of Baldur’s Gate from across the Sea of Swords, blacking out the sun and sending the people of the city scurrying for shelter. You stand as the gale winds hit you, and stay as the salt-whipped rain drenches you, and remain until the urge to watch the destruction fades away. Through the thunder of the roiling sky, you think you can hear a voice, so distorted by the sounds of the storm that you might not recognise it if you didn’t know it so intimately. For many months, it was the only voice you heard.

Your husband calls to you through the tempest, and you realise you have lost your fight against sleep.

When your eyes open slowly, you brace yourself to be back in your husband’s control. It is a relief when your lungs fill with the mildly sulphurous air of the hells, and the sounds of the storm fade into nothing, and you realise, for the first time since you escaped his palace, that you have avoided your husband during your repose.

“Did it work?” asks Astarion, coming back over to sit on the edge of the bed. “How did you rest?”

You blink, dozy-eyed, trying to free yourself from the torpor that lingers after a long and heavy rest. Beneath the fading drowsiness of your slumber, you feel, for the first time in your recent memory, quite wonderful. You have energy abounding within you, and your mind feels clear, and your shoulders feel lighter than they have in months. Even the ache across your gut has faded to something closer to an itch, barely worthy of notice.

“Well,” you say, “really well. I feel good, for once.”

“Can I see?” he asks, gesturing to your almost-healed belly. You nod, sitting up fully and pulling your shirt up as he scoots beside you, taking in the state of your wound. Keeping your breathing steady is harder than it should be as he grazes the edge of the wound with gentle fingers, your skin tingling in every spot his fingertips touch.

“Hard to be sure under all the mess, but it looks good. You should still feed, though. Healing so much will have drained you.”

He’s not wrong - your stomach churns with emptiness, and you’re struggling to take your eyes off of the pulse that you can see pattering in his neck. Still, you shake your head.

“You were injured too.”

“It’s fine. I found more potions of healing alongside the sleep potions. I’m veritably overflowing with blood.”

The phrasing makes you wrinkle your nose, but the scent of him now that he's so close to you - his blood, his flesh, his thrumming vitality - has your insides aching with hunger. You lick your lips subconsciously, your mouth moistening, and he laughs at you, tilting his head back and putting his pulse dangerously on display.

“Your hunger is not exactly subtle, you know, darling. Come here.”

He shifts you closer to him, pulling your legs over his lap so that you’re almost sat side-saddle on him, then angling his neck towards you in offering.

“You want me to drink from your neck?”

“Is there something wrong with my neck?”

“I’ve seen cleaner ones,” you say, trying for humour in an attempt to hide your desperation, even as your jaw begins to tremble from the overwhelming want that floods you. Astarion gives you a flat glare, but you see the corner of his mouth flick up nonetheless.

“Just feed, Tav,” he says. He reaches an arm around you and laces his hand through the hair at the nape of your neck, guiding your face towards his throat. The warmth of his touch makes you shiver, and the pressure of his gentle pull is all it takes for the last thread of your self-restraint to snap. You press your lips against him. You feed.

You hear his sharp intake of breath when your fangs pierce through his skin. You feel the increase in his heartbeat as you latch onto his neck. You fail to withhold a moan the moment the taste of him hits your tongue, warm and rich and buttery, and perhaps it was only the sound you made amplified by your increased desire, but you swear you heard him groan too. Instinctively, you press closer to him, wrapping one arm around his back, bringing your other hand up to hold his neck, to hold him tight against you as you drink him in.

His warmth spreads through you, and you feel a thrill at every beat of his heart as more of him passes your lips. His breaths become quicker, and heavier, and his hand in your hair clenches, tugging on your hair just enough to sting, but holding you in place rather than pulling you away. It’s not only his breaths that are changing, either, you realise with a flush: beneath the thigh that rests over his lap, you can feel him growing hard. Something flutters in your chest, and you squirm closer to him still, your sense of hunger melting away into something hotter, pooling molten and throbbing between your legs.

You drink deeper and allow yourself to drown in the pleasure of him. A voice in your mind reminds you that he is not the man you knew, he is not the man you loved, he is not a man you trust, but the gratification of drinking down his hot, smooth blood washes over your worries, stifling them with satisfaction, overwhelming them bliss until all you can think of is how good you feel, how good he feels, how good it feels when the two of you are joined together like this. You want him. You want more.

You pull back slightly from his neck, withdrawing your fangs slowly, carefully. You lick at the blood still smeared on his throat, holding back a moan at the delight that it sparks on your tongue; you kiss over the two small wounds that you’ve left behind. Just gentle pecks, to begin with, but the heat in your veins from his blood and the fire between your legs from the feel of his hardness pressed against you spurs you on to press deeper, wetter, slower kisses up his throat to his jaw.

“What are you doing?” he whispers. It sounds like he is trying very hard to keep his voice level.

“Touching you,” you reply as you raise the hand on his neck to comb through his hair. Your fingers catch on a knot in the silver waves, and he hisses.

“Why?”

“Because you feel good,” you say, sliding one leg over his lap so that you’re straddling him, your face still buried in the crook of his neck.

“You're still injured.”

“So make me feel better,” you say. “Please.”

“We shouldn’t, Tav,” he murmurs, even as his arm wraps tight around your waist, pulling you closer to him, making you grind against his length in a way that makes you both gasp.

“I know,” you say, breathless.

“You don’t even trust me.”

“I know.”

“…you’re not stopping.”

“No,” you whisper between kisses, because you feel as though something scary and new and dangerous is beginning, and stopping it seems like the only thing worse than continuing. “Do you want me to?”

He swallows. 

“No.”

Chapter Text

You continue kissing along his neck, running the flat of your tongue against the gently weeping puncture wounds you have left there, relishing the taste of him. He moves his hands to cradle your face, one cupping either side of your jaw, and draws you up to look straight at him. He gazes at you, his thumbs running whisper-light touches along your cheeks, tracing over your sticky, blooded lips. Something in your shared stare catches, sending a frisson of feeling through you, and before you can decide what that feeling is he pulls you into a kiss. His mouth meets yours, and it is hungry, and hot, and desperate. One of his hands snakes back into your hair, fingers tangling in their frenzied grasping, while the other cups the back of your neck, holding you in place in his impassioned embrace.

His kiss is unexpectedly bruising, wanting and wanton, and when his tongue slips into your mouth you are surprised at how new he tastes. He tastes like something living, although your mind is too flushed with desire to place it: something like sunshine, like pollen, like marrow, like birdsong. Your teeth clash in your greed for one another, tasting each other as though you have been starving for months. You cling to each other with the clumsy yearning of youth, and you think to yourself that you would rather breathe him than air, that you would learn not to breathe if it meant this never ending, but then he breaks away.

“Sorry,” he pants, “is this—?”

You do not allow the question to finish forming on his lips before you answer it with a new kiss, threading your fingers through his curls and pulling him back to you. You revel in the silky smoothness of the inside of his mouth, how it contrasts with his rough, chapped lips, and how you hear the occasional guttural moan issuing from his throat.

You’re both moving in a slow, teasing rhythm now, his hips grinding up into you as you roll your core down against him, red-hot pleasure sparking from your swelling clit as it rubs against his length on every gyration of your bodies. The hand on the back of your neck massages you in time with the rolls of his hips, kneading and tightening in a way that is just on the edge of possessiveness. You exist within one another’s breath: you are alive only for his touch.

It's him that you want, you realise. In this moment, pressed together, riding waves of passion against each other, this man between your legs is enough, is all you want, is all you need. You want him. You want more. You want to take of his body as you’ve taken of his blood. You want to submit to your covetous desires.

You move a hand between the two of you, tugging at the opening of his trousers. You are clumsy in your desperation, your dexterity entirely overwhelmed by your deep want to feel his cock in your palm, to squeeze your fingers around his girth, to climb up on him and slide down his length until you reach your peak in unison.

“Not that,” he says in response to your fumbling, bringing his hand down from your neck to grip your wrist, moving it away from the laces of his trousers. “Not yet.”

You freeze, holding your breath.

“Do you want to stop?”

“No,” he says, letting out a ragged laugh, “no, my dear, I most certainly do not want to stop.” As if to emphasise his point, he rolls his hips up against you, pressing the outline of his length harder into the aching spot between your legs. You see stars, your eyes rolling at the pleasure of the pressure on your clit, and you groan as you redouble your movements, grinding yourself against him in a desperate chase for release. He moves his hand to your waist, the other still combed through your hair, guiding you to continue the motion that is driving you dangerously close to the edge.

You want to curl in on him, to bury your face in the crook of his neck, to hide your flaming, craving desire from his dancing green eyes, but he closes his fist in your hair as you go to do so.

“Don’t,” he says, “I want to see you. I want to watch you.”

He does just that, his eyes hooded, his gaze glassy with desire, drinking in the sight of you moaning and riding and chasing your pleasure on his lap with such rapture that the simple act of being watched feels sinful. He devours you whole in his stare, his breath coming faster, bursting out in uneven, hot pants that prickle against your skin.

“Tav, I think— I’m going— gods—“

The desperate, breathy gasp that escapes his lips, the sudden tensing of his body, and the blissful look of escape that washes over his face as his eyes close in his moment of release are all so erotic to you that you find yourself crying out as he twitches beneath you. His hands let loose your hair and neck, grasping down your back to clutch needily at your shirt, his arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you against him as if he's changed his mind, and he might just get inside you if only he crushes you together hard enough.

You feel the wet warmth of his spend soaking through to your thigh, and the filthiness of the sensation drives you wild with want. The grind against your clit has your vision flashing white, and you move your mouth without thinking as he holds you tightly to him, finding his neck and sinking your fangs back into his sweaty flesh.

You hear a breathy “fuck,” in your ear, and taste his copper blood on your gluttonous tongue, and the sensations within you build up to a breaking point. Bliss becomes all you know, and you groan into his neck as your own climax crashes over you. Your legs clamp tight around him, trapping him against you, beneath you, as wave after wave of pleasure sweeps through you.

Even after the initial rush, you stay latched to him as the aftershocks of your peak buzz through you, filling you with a warm glow. You do not drink deep, but you relish the small tastes of blood that his heartbeat thrums into your mouth, and sigh at the gentle strokes of his hands that he runs up and down your spine. Eventually, the tremors die down, and you pull your teeth from his neck, and find that the thoughts and feelings that had been eclipsed by your shared passion come creeping slowly back into your awareness. You close your eyes on them for now; you do not want to face them yet.

“Well, shit,” Astarion whispers into your hair when as you sag into his embrace. “I didn’t think I could possibly get messier, but— well. I think we had better find somewhere to take a bath.”

Chapter Text

You allow Astarion to lead you, gently, by the arm, collecting up your scant possessions before leaving the ruined building he brought you into to heal. Outside, the land seems to exist in a permanent state of twilight, the ruins of a city stretching out before you as far as the eye can see in the semi-darkness. Upon leaving the building Astarion dropped his hold on your arm, but still, you walk close together, your arms all but connected, the backs of your hands brushing with each step, fingers occasionally catching on each other but never quite developing into an actual clasp. You think, from the glances that you steal at him, that he is watching you through his lashes. You find yourself having to resist the urge to smile. There’s a strange quietness between the two of you, full of the anticipation of something new. Neither of you mentions it - you barely speak a word to each other as you begin your search for a place to bathe. It’s as if you have come to some unspoken agreement that the thing between you is too delicate to be handled directly.

As you venture onwards through the gloaming, stopping to check in any building that looks intact enough to potentially house a bathroom, a thought hits you.

“Shouldn’t there be more devils?”

Astarion pauses from his spot in a doorway, where he was peering into the remains of what might have once been a house, and turns to frown at you.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’ve been strolling through the hells for long enough now that I would have thought we’d come across someone. There’s no one in sight. There’s not even traces that anyone has passed through here.”

“Well, it is the Realm of Ruins, or whatever it is that they call the seventh layer of the hells.”

“Still, I would have thought we’d come across some looters or something. The fact you found so many potions shows that there is plenty of stuff left lying around for the taking.”

“Are you really asking me to worry about the fact we haven’t come across any dangerous marauding devils?”

“No. I’m just saying it seems odd.”

“No doubt they’re all caught up in whatever devilish whims are currently sweeping the hellish hoards. Isn’t there a war on, or something?”

“I suppose,” you say, unconvinced but unwilling to push the conversation any further.

You continue onwards in a silence with slightly more of an edge to it. Despite his apparent nonchalance, you notice Astarion checking behind you far more frequently than would be natural, and his eyes rove over shadowy spots of cover as you pass them by. By what feels like the hundredth ruined building investigated with no bath in sight, you are beginning to lose hope of ever feeling clean again. 

“Do devils even bathe?” you ask, frustrated. You are, by now, uncomfortably sticky, and ever since Astarion’s earlier mention of a bath hit you have been acutely and unhappily aware of your current grimy state. 

“Oh yes. There were bathhouses in Mephistopheles's citadel. Besides, Raphael was always impeccably groomed, wasn't he? Always smelling of perfume and cherries.”

Your face crinkles with delight at the opportunity to tease him. “Why were you smelling Raphael?”

“I— what? I wasn't deliberately smelling him, thank you very much. My sense of smell was simply superior. You'll notice his scent yourself should our paths ever cross again.”

“Which they obviously will—“

You cut yourself off suddenly, realising your mistake. It's hard to feel cautious when you're still basking in the glow of his kiss, but you still need to be on your guard around this man. Not simply because you don't know if you can trust him - a mantra that you have to constantly remind yourself of, for you are growing more trusting by the moment despite your best intentions - but even if everything he's said is the truth, you have no way of knowing whether your husband in Baldur's Gate will be able to watch your every move and hear your every word through his proximity. Neither this green-eyed image nor the beast you married can find out that you need to steal the Crown from Raphael.

Astarion has not missed your abrupt silence, and turns to you, eyebrows raised in question.

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, you know what Raphael is like,” you say, scrambling for a lie. “He's just the type to pop back up again, isn't he?” You try to grin, but Astarion’s eyebrows only raise higher.

“Very convincing. Honestly, darling, it's a good thing you can be so persuasive when you need to be, because deceptive you are decidedly not.”

You narrow your eyes at him. It's amazing how quickly that love-struck glow can fade when such a pretty mouth has such a penchant for spouting annoyances, especially when you are feeling so irritatingly dirty. You had thought that you both being well rested and healed would make things easier, and in many ways it has, but it also seems to have sharpened both of your tongues. Whereas before you were too tired to snip at each other, you both seem to have rediscovered your previous appetites for verbal jousting.

You can’t pretend you haven’t missed it.

“I’m a perfectly good liar, thank you very much.”

“Oh? And the panicked little look you get every time you utter a lie—“

“—is all an act, obviously. I know how much you love to be the sneaky, roguish one, and I don’t want to step on your toes.” You sigh dramatically - an affectation you know you picked up from him. “The things I do to preserve your fragile ego.”

His eyes flash, their edges creasing with amusement, and he grins at you. 

“You are too good to me.”

“Oh, I know,” you say sweetly, choosing to ignore his sarcasm.

You continue on your search. He does not ask for clarification on your slip-up about Raphael. It seems he knows as well as you do that he cannot be trusted.

Chapter Text

It speaks to your desperation that you eventually split up in order to search the ruins faster. You stay within earshot, only investigating buildings close enough to hear a shout should your regrouping be necessary. The more you see of this realm, the stranger it seems: some buildings are beautifully preserved, save for a single room or roof or door that appears to have been blasted by fire or magic, while others are ruined beyond all recognition, reduced to piles of rubble and jagged planks of wood.

It is only because you have still not come across a single other living being that you decided that separating would be safe. Nevertheless, you are on edge as you search through the building you are currently checking, listening with strained ears for the slightest sound coming from across the road where you left Astarion to explore.

It’s only when you are checking the final room that you hear the sound you have been dreading. Astarion calls your name, loud, desperate. You freeze for the slightest moment, then break into a sprint to follow the sound of his voice.

The door that his voice emanates from is set in a wooden structure, which appears to be in better condition than many of the surrounding buildings. You dart in, just in time to hear him call your name again from a higher floor.

You dash up the rickety stairs and hear him call your name for a third time from the end of the upper hallway. You brace yourself for the worst, but when you burst through the door at the end of the hall, you find him in perfect health, standing beside a great copper tub and looking rather smug.

“Oh, thank the gods,” you say, trying to hide the mixture of worry and irritation that floods your mind. Just in case he takes your exclamation as concern for him - he is looking smug enough already, you decide - you add, “I thought we’d never find one.”

“The gods? I’m the one who found this, thank you very much. The gods had nothing to do with it.”

“Well then praise you, dearest bath-finder, for blessing me with this most righteous discovery.”

You look around for a bucket with which to fill the bath - surely there must be a well somewhere in this damned ruin of a city - but you can't see a suitable vessel anywhere. 

“Have you seen a bucket or something? I feel like I want to bathe immediately, and not get out of the tub for a week.”

He grins. “No need. Behold!” With a dramatic flourish, he fiddles with a tap coming out of the wall behind the bathtub, and clear, clean water begins pouring out of it.

“Gods above,” you say. “I know I was sarcastic earlier, but you are honestly a hero.”

He holds up a finger to silence you, although you’re sure you see a faint blush colour his cheeks beneath the dirt. “That’s not even the best bit.”

“No?”

He shakes his head, the self-satisfaction on his face almost unbearable. “It’s already hot.”

“What? How? This whole place is in ruins!”

“Magic, if the previous inhabitant’s taste in decor is anything to go by.” He nods his chin up to the ceiling, and you are forced to properly take in the details of the room that your worry for him blinded you to previously.

Straw dolls are strung up like convicted men from the wooden beams of the high ceiling,  and posies of dried herbs and flowers festoon the space between them. Charms carved from what you can only hope are animal bones hang in strange constellations over the grimy windows. Shelves bowing under the weight of countless potions line almost every wall, and between the bottles, you spot viciously bestial masks and tortured figurines, all coated with a fine layer of dust. Above the threshold of the doorway you stand in is mounted a great carved horn of some huge and unknown monster, with the words I Will Not Lie Below carved into it in the common tongue.

You swallow.

“Well, I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about.”

Chapter Text

Astarion gives a nervous chuckle. “Admittedly their taste in decoration leaves a little to be desired, but really, it’s clear nobody has been here in quite some time. We can just wash, and maybe rest a while, and then we’ll be off again.”

“It reminds me of Ethel’s teahouse,” you say, your nose wrinkling in disgust at the mere memory of the putrid swamp it sat within.

“Oh, gods, don't say that. I feel dirty enough already.” Astarion runs his hands under the flowing water and lets out a deep, satisfied sigh. “You know, I never understood the phrase ‘cleanliness is close to godliness’ until now.”

You walk over to the bath, joining Astarion in washing the worst of the grime and dried blood off of your hands.

“I think it rather depends on which god. I can't say the Bhaal temple ever paid much heed to the saying.”

“True. That place was disgusting.”

“Um, excuse me,” you say, blustering with mock outrage and flicking some of the water into Astarion's face, “I'm allowed to nay-say my family home, but you are most certainly not.”

“Oh, I do apologise,” says Astarion, folding into an elaborate bow of unconvincing sincerity, “it's just hard for me to remember that some people can be touchy about their families, coming from such a warm and stable environment myself.”

You shouldn't laugh, perhaps, but you do anyway, and he joins you, even if somewhat half-heartedly.

“Gods, it's no wonder we're in such a mess, really, is it?” you say before you can stop yourself.

“Perhaps not. But at least we can do something about this mess,” he says, gesturing at you. “If you don't get into this tub right now, I shall do my best to upend it on top of you.”

You laugh again. “It must weigh three times what you do - you wouldn't stand a chance.”

Still, you happily begin to undress, and smile to yourself when you catch Astarion's cheeks flushing before he quickly turns away to busy himself investigating the shelves.

“Are you sure you don't mind if I bathe first?”

“Quite sure. It might be mostly healed, but your wound needs cleaning far more than I do.”

The water is only half full by the time you have stripped bare, but you get into the tub anyway, hissing a breath in through your teeth at the heat of the water. You quickly acclimatise, your hiss turning into a sigh of relief as you sit down in the rising warmth, stretching your legs and leaning back against the edge of the bath.

“See anything good?” you ask Astarion’s back, watching through half-closed eyes as he takes stock of the cluttered contents of the room.

“I'm not sure I'd call most of this rubbish 'good',” he says, cautiously lifting a bottle and tilting it in the light of the window to peer dubiously at its contents. “What do you suppose this even is? The label says ‘True Love's Kiss’.”

“I dare you to drink it and find out.”

You watch with a grin as he mimics drinking the potion, and laugh out loud when he swoons dramatically, clutching his heart with one hand and pressing his brow with the other.

“Oh!” he exclaims, “you'll like this, though.”

He throws a small pale object to you - he never was good at remembering that you lack his dextrous ways - and you just manage to pluck it from the air with your wet hands before it promptly slips through your fingers and drops into the murky water of the tub.

“What was it?” you ask, grasping blindly in the murky water around your legs.

“Soap.”

“Ahhh. You know, if you keep finding things for me, I might give you a true love's kiss without the need for a potion.”

“Tempt me not, you soggy succubus.”

You snort. “I suppose your acumen for insults went to the other half of you?”

“How dare you? Let me try again. How about… watery witch?”

“Dreadful.” You finally find the bar of soap, turn off the tap, and begin cleaning yourself in earnest. There's something wonderfully satisfying in watching the blood and grime wash away, even if the pallor of your skin underneath still gives you an uneasy feeling deep in your breast.

“Bedraggled bitch?”

“Somehow even worse.”

Astarion tuts. “There’s no pleasing some people.”

“Are you nearly ready? I'm almost done in here.”

“What? You haven't even touched your hair.”

You try to run a hand through your hair and grimace at the touch. “I think some things are past saving.”

“Nonsense. Let me help.”

You watch him through eyes narrowed with doubt as he pulls a chair up to the edge of the tub, then sits behind the edge that you lean against. With a gentle downward touch on your shoulders, he guides you to sink below the surface of the water, submerging your tangle of hair into its warmth. You stay there for a moment, soaking in the joyous feeling of weightlessness that surrounds you. You hear a buzzing noise that must be him talking, but the water deafens you to his words. You know if you could just resist that strangely hard-to-shake urge to breathe, you could stay here forever, protected from the difficult truths and disquieting feelings that exist in the outside world. It would be nice, you think, to stay right here in the warm, wet, cosy quiet.

Eventually, though, your willpower fails, and you emerge from the water, heaving in deep, heavy breaths, hair plastered across your face. You slough the water from your eyes with your hands, then gather your hair over one shoulder. You’re about to turn to Astarion when he speaks. His voice is bleak. Haunted.

“By the hells, Tav,” he says before his voice chokes up.

Chapter Text

“What’s wrong?” You look over your shoulder, wide-eyed, to see him staring at your back.

“I haven’t seen— I mean, I knew they were there, but seeing them in person is…”

He brushes a finger along your back, tracing one of the lines scarred into your flesh. The softness of the gesture robs you of speech for a moment, and for some reason, you feel your eyes misting, so you turn away from him and sit in silence until he speaks again.

“You really should hate me, darling.”

You turn to pull a face at him, half-smirking, half-grimacing, but his expression is deadly in its seriousness. “I never was good at doing what I should do.”

“I’m serious, Tav. We can’t keep doing this. This has to end. I won't let you waste another moment of your life on me. I won't let you waste your love on a monster.”

You know, already, that his use of the word love will churn around in your mind for hours, for days, maybe for moons from now, but for now you push it aside. You let out a shaky laugh, and turn in the bath to face him fully. 

“You won't let me? I've had quite enough of you letting me do anything, thank you very much. Do you forget who you're talking to? Must I say to you the very same words you said to me all that time ago?”

His throat bobs as he swallows, and he gives a small shrug of inquiry but says nothing.

“‘I don’t hate you, because this is not you.’ I know you, Astarion Ancunín, whether you like it or not. You - the whole you - wouldn’t have done this. What else was there? ‘Whatever this is, you'll get through it. And I'll be here to make sure that you do.’”

“I'm sure when I said it it sounded less like a threat.”

You laugh properly at that, though you’re sure that you both notice the edge of hysteria in your laughter. He still looks rather saturnine, but one edge of his mouth twitches up slightly.

“You really remember everything I said to you that night?”

“Yes. As surprising as it may seem, the night that I tried to murder the one person I loved is somewhat etched into my memory.”

It’s his turn to laugh; the sound is like a tonic to your soul.

“Really, though,” you say, “I remember it because it’s the first time I felt hope. Everything you said to me that night… it made me feel, for the first time, like I might have a chance.”

This level of earnestness is clearly too much for even this softer version of him.

“My deepest apologies for getting your hopes up,” he quips.

“Mm. Save your apologies for now,” you say, turning back around to lean against the edge of the tub once more. “For some reason, I’m not quite ready to give up hope just yet.”

Chapter Text

Before you turn fully, you catch him smiling at your words.

He returns to tending to your hair, fetching a carved bone comb that he found on a shelf and using it to tease out the mats, tutting whenever he comes across a particularly stubborn knot, uttering murmured apologies when he causes you to hiss in mild discomfort at an overly zealous tug. You sit mostly in silence, allowing your mind to float free, vaguely wondering when the last time was that you were treated with such care.

Perhaps those memories have been eviscerated in one of the many brutal treatments of your tattered brain.

Perhaps you've never been cared for like this at all.

Time moves slowly, sticky and sweet as honey, soaking the aches out of your cold bones and pale skin as you absorb the heat of the water, and yet it feels like no time at all has passed when Astarion announces, with a not unnoticeable hint of pride, that your hair is quite as perfect as anyone could hope to get it. You silently lament the loss of his tender attentions, but hide your disappointment by turning and lifting yourself out of the tub to plant a wet kiss of gratitude on his cheek, sloshing a good amount of water over the side of the tub in the process. He does a bad job of hiding his embarrassment by complaining that you've entirely soaked his trousers. You point out to him that his trousers are every bit as dirty as he is, and a little bit of water will do them far less harm than good.

This leads you to realise that your own clothes, currently lying in a discarded pile by the side of the tub, are so filthy that putting them on seems unconscionable. Instead, you decide to leave the tub to stroll, entirely naked, across the room to fetch a blanket from your bedroll to wrap around yourself until your clothes can be cleaned and dried. You admit to yourself that you do this, at least in part, because you think that Astarion's reaction will be quite delicious, and you are glad to see that you are entirely correct in your assumption (what wide eyes! What a sweet shade of pink!). 

By the time you’ve secured the blanket around yourself, Astarion has begun emptying the bath to refill it with clean water. The luxury of it feels almost sinful after so long travelling in such bleak conditions. There’s a fireplace in the room with some remnants of wood lying within, so while Astarion is busy, you decide to try to light a fire so that you can dry your clothes once they are washed. You crouch down by the hearth, wondering whether any of the strange charms and talismans that inhabit the room might help enhance your own magical power.

Unfortunately, it seems not. You suppose your luck had to run out eventually. Drawing on the faint echoes of magic in your soul feels barely easier than drawing blood from a stone. Still, after a dizzying amount of effort, you conjure a pathetically flickering flame to your palm and manage to get a fire to catch on some of the wood in the fireplace. You are panting from exerting yourself, and Astarion calls to you as he lowers himself into the tub.

“Are you alright, Tav?”

“Fine,” you say, covering up your exhaustion with a smile. You do not want him to feel guilty again so soon. “Can I help with your hair? Or do I need some sort of decade-long training course and subsequent legal contract to be involved in its styling?”

He grins. “Normally you absolutely would, but given the circumstances, I think a helping hand would be permitted.”

“How gracious of you!”

“My dear, my benevolence knows no bounds.”

You snort, but go to sit in the stool beside the bath, pretending not to watch him as he lathers soap on his body, and rinses the dirt from his face.

When he’s finished, he turns to you, asking if your offer for help still stands.

“Of course,” you say, and you lean towards the bath as he slides down in the water until all but his face is submerged. His eyes close, his lips part in a contented sigh, and his hair floats around his head like a faded halo. You have to fight the urge to place a kiss upon his faintly lined forehead. You have to fight the urge to bite the flushed flesh of his cheek.

Something in your chest tightens as you look down on him. 

It cannot just be his beauty, although that alone is devastating; you have known beauty in many forms, and it has never called to you quite like he does. And surely it cannot only be your joint intimacy with death, for you have lived beside death’s acolytes and never once found one who feels as familiar to you as he does. 

There is something about him, surely: something else, something special, something written into the essence of his hair and teeth and blood and bones that made your soul quite sure that you know him. You have always felt as though you have always known him. That first blade against your throat had felt like an old friend, and this stranger soaking before you feels like a part of you in ways you cannot explain.

“I missed you, you know,” you say. “I missed this. I missed us.”

His eyes flick open, and his gaze meets yours.

“You know I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

“Good,” you say, smiling down at him. The way his green eyes glitter as he stares back at you makes you wonder whether he might not have heard you after all.

Chapter Text

You move your hands to his hair, combing it through gently with your fingers, and he closes his eyes once more. The water is already softening the dried clots of blood and grime that cling to his curls, so you tease them loose, being as gentle as you can be. You see, as the water works its magic, that the hints of gold you had thought you could see were in fact only bloodstains, and the more you run your hands through his locks, the more they return to the cloudy silver-white that you know so well. You scratch softly at his scalp, and he closes his eyes and leans his head back in appreciation. You run your fingertips along his hairline, massaging the lines that worry and fear have etched on his forehead, praying that your tender attentions might help ease the pain that must have been inflicted to get so much blood here in the first place.

It is as you hold his head between your hands that a thought comes to you, unbidden, that tastes like death. You think how it would feel to crush a skull between your hands, to sink your thumbs through the softness of his closed eyelids, through those delicate eye sockets, to feel the squish and slick and burst—

But no. That is not the person you are any more. You let out a long breath, and let the thought wash away like a bloodstain. You are no longer in the thrall of your dread father. You are no longer death incarnate. But then, if not that, what are you? Not a hero of Baldur’s Gate, for what hero would so willingly doom seven thousand more souls? Not a beloved wife of a great lord, for what kind of wife would flee from her enamoured husband? Not a sorcerer, for what sort of sorcerer would struggle with casting even the meanest of spells?

Every power you’ve ever had, every position you’ve ever held, every part of who you once were is lost to you.

On your first night together, some part of the man before you had asked you if you wanted to lose yourself in him, and you had thrown yourself willingly, happily, wantonly into the wild unknown of his affections. You cannot help but wonder if you might, through this part of him, find yourself again. 

You've become so lost in your thoughts that you've barely been paying attention to your actions, until your fingers graze the shell of his ear, and his whole body tenses for a moment, a gasp escaping from his sweetly parted lips. A small smile flits across your face. You had almost forgotten the nights you spent together on the road, where the faintest whisper in his ear had driven him quite wild, and a sensuous nip or lick on a lobe or at the edge of those finely pointed tips was sometimes enough to send him over the edge. Since you married, such exploitation of this vulnerability had not been something you were permitted to engage in.

With more deliberation this time, you brush a fingertip up the length of his ear again, and watch his throat bob as he swallows, although he says nothing, and keeps his eyes closed. You continue to massage his scalp, but begin running your hands through his hair closer and closer to each ear, occasionally running a finger the length of his pointed helix, sometimes dragging the pad of your thumbs along the length of his cheekbones until they rub against his tragus.

His breathing is getting heavier now, ragged and uneven. You roll his lobe between your fingers, then run along the shell of his ear with the back of your nail. He whimpers, and the sound is so beautiful and vulnerable that you want nothing more than to hear it again.

Your own breathing is growing shallow at the evidence of his excitement, and you gaze upon the flickering of his closed eyelids and the slight puckering of his perfect lips, thinking that maybe this is all the power that you need. The power to make this beautiful face sigh and smile in pleasure. The power to make things better, even if only for him, and only for now.

His eyes snap open, and he grabs your wrist with a firm, wet grip, jerking his head away from your caresses.

“Stop,” he says, “or I’ll—“

“I know.” You grin slyly. “I want you to.”

“I don’t want to, though,” he says, looking away from you. 

“Oh,” you say, your eyes widening, all the warmth and excitement draining from you in an instant. “Oh. Oh, gods, Astarion, I’m sorry. I just thought— it seemed like you wanted—“

“It’s not that I don’t want it. Well, it is. But it's not that I don't want you.”

You scramble up from the stool from which you were tending to him, backing away from the tub and shaking your head.

“Gods, Astarion, I shouldn’t have assumed— just, with the kiss, and everything, I thought— but I shouldn’t have, I am so sorry—“

“Come here,” he says, the calmness of his voice only highlighting the panic in yours.

You shake your head, staying where you are, pulling the blanket that is draped across your shoulders tighter around yourself as if it might hide your shame.

“Come here,” he repeats, more forcefully this time. Still, you hesitate for a moment longer before walking back to the bath, where he holds his hands out to take yours in his grip.

“It’s not that I don’t want you,” he says, lifting your hands to his lips and pressing a kiss to the back of each of them.

“Astarion—“

He shakes his head and cuts you off.

“And it’s not that I don’t want this,” he says, reaching up to unwrap the blanket from your shoulders and push it off of you. It falls, discarded, to a pile beside the bath, and you suddenly feel terribly exposed, despite your earlier comfort with your own nakedness.

“Sit,” he says, and he guides you to balance on the edge of the tub, your legs dipping into the water on either side of him. You let go of his hands to grip the sides of the bath, in an attempt to balance on this rather precarious seat.

“I want this,” he says, running his hands softly down your rib cage.

You shiver, though not with cold.

“I want you,” he says, his hands reaching your hips, then dragging fingertips along your thighs to your knees.

You go to say his name again, but your lips part noiselessly, his name catching in your throat.

“I just can’t— I can’t yet.”

He dips his head to plant a soft kiss on one knee, then the other.

“So why are you doing this?”

You cannot tear your mind away from a dark night in the shadow of Moonrise tower: the night when you had learned that confessions of love could cut deeper than any knife. A voice in your mind whispers it’s so easy to seduce you, and I manipulate your feelings so you never turn on me, and all you have to do is fall for it.

“I'm doing this—“ he plants a kiss slightly higher up your leg, on the inside of your thigh, “because I want to.”

“But why do you want to? If you won't let me touch you in the same way?”

“Why do any of us want to do anything?”

“That's not an answer.”

“Because it will make me feel good to see you feel good.”

You're not sure what to say to that - it's so hard to know whether or not to believe him - but he sees the uncertainty on your face.

“You are going to have to trust my word on some things, you know, even if you don't trust me.”

“I do trust you,” you say, although it's only as you say the words that you realise they are true. “I know it's stupid of me, but I do.”

“Well then trust me on this. Yes?”

“But how can I?”

“Please, Tav. Trust me.”

You look down at him, pained and torn.

“I want you,” he says again. “I want this. Let me?”

Maybe it’s that he asks, and maybe it’s that if you don’t believe him now then you know you never will. You say nothing, but nod, exhale, and close your eyes as his kisses climb, slowly, slowly, up your thigh. 

Chapter Text

His kisses reach higher and higher up your thigh, so close to your pussy that you can feel his warm breath against your lips.

“You don't have to do this,” you manage to say, and you hope he knows that you mean it even though your voice trembles and your breath shakes.

“Gods above,” he laughs, and you feel each word as a hot rush of air between your legs, “how many times must I say that I want to?”

Before you can push it further, his mouth is on you, and all thoughts of resistance, all worries, all objections melt away into nothing. You move a hand to lace your fingers in his wet curls, although it leaves you swaying dangerously on the edge of the bath until one of his arms wraps around your back, holding you up as he feasts on you.

Your knees fall open further as he licks you with heavy, hungry strokes of his tongue, tasting your desire with such exuberance that you lose any doubts as to his eagerness. His hand digs into the small of your back as if trying to pull you closer still, as if he never wants to let you go, as if he’s torn between worshipping you and devouring you and so he’s trying to do both at once. He laps and sucks and nips at the sensitive flesh of your inner thighs, at your swollen pink lips, at your aching clit, teasing breathy moans and whispered prayers from you.

“Gods, I’ve missed the taste of you. You're so perfect, Tav,” he murmurs between swipes of his tongue.

Even in your lust-drunk state, you laugh at that, looking down at his face between your legs through hazy eyes. “I am about as far from perfect as you can get, you beautiful fool.” Your voice is slurred with desire, punctuated by pants of pleasure, and you close your eyes once more to lose yourself in the wanton wonder of his attention.

You feel him move his face away, so your eyes flick open, and you make a small sound of disappointment. It has barely escaped your throat when you feel his thumb grazing over your clit, slicked with your desire and his spit. He looks up at you through his lashes, his eyes hooded with desire, taking satisfaction from his ravishment of you. Your breath stutters and you let out a loud and loose moan as he slides two fingers inside you, slowly thrusting them in and out.

“You’re perfect to me.”

“The spell-less - ah - maniac child of - oh, gods - the god of murder? I question - mm - your taste.”

“I’ll show you,” he says. “I won’t stop until you feel exactly how perfect you are.”

His lips move to your clit, enveloping it in a hot, open-mouthed kiss, then sealing his mouth around it sucking with fervour. His tongue brushes against it, its repetitive whirling sending sparks of pleasure streaking through you, and you cannot help but cry out, brought so close to the edge from this sensation alone that you know you’ll be gone any moment. His fingers still pump in and out of you in time with the movements of his mouth, and just when you think you can’t take any more, as stuffed full and overly stimulated as you feel, he thrusts a third finger in, and you groan with torturous delight. The rhythm he sets is slow, steady, decadent, just enough to keep you teetering on the knife edge of your climax, the pressure building up and up until you’re not sure you could bear another moment of it. Then he curls his fingers inside you, pressing against that tender spot that he can always find so easily, and with the swirling of his tongue and the pressure of his mouth and now this thrusting curl of fingers, you crash over the edge, your head thrown back in ecstasy, your grip tightening in his hair, your muscles tensing as your cunt squeezes desperately on his fingers. Waves of heat and lust wash through you, and you feel incandescent with pleasure. Gods, maybe you are perfect, maybe he is perfect, maybe this is perfection and please, gods, please let this perfection last forever.

Nothing ever does, of course. So it is that as you arch your back in pleasure, as your eyes roll back and your mouth falls open in a cry that comes from deep within you, you slip, backwards, off of the edge of the bath.

For a moment, the toe-curling bliss of your orgasm is combined with the horrifying weightless feeling of tipping backwards through the air, and your cry of ecstasy morphs into one of terror. Then strong arms catch you and pull you back upright, and then you’re sliding the other way, off the edge of the tub and into the water, landing in Astarion’s lap. He holds you tight, and you clutch at his chest as your breathing comes out in a confused whimpering of adrenaline and pleasure and fear, and then you both laugh. You laugh until your laughter verges into the hysterical, and you bury your face in his warm torso, your cheek pressing harder against him in time with the chuckles that shake his chest. You are entirely awash in his mirth; entirely enshrined in his arms.

You don’t quite know how to put your feelings into words, but that’s alright. You don’t think you need to.

The one thing you’re sure of is that this - this is nice.

Chapter Text

It is nice. It is.

So it’s something of a surprise when you feel yourself beginning to cry.

“Are you— Tav, are you crying?”

“No,” you say, in a voice thick with tears.

“Gods, darling, what’s wrong? What did I do?”

“Nothing,” you say thickly. “They’re not sad tears. They’re just…” You trail off, sniffing, not sure how to describe the feeling. The ache, the release, the dreadful, painful hope and nostalgia and that other unmentionable feeling in your chest which might, if you touch it just right, feel like love. None of these are things you can mention. They’ll tarnish if you speak them out loud. “They’re good tears,” you say instead. “They’re happy tears. They’re nothing. I’m just being silly.”

It seems he knows you well enough to know that you are lying and that he knows you well enough to know that you don’t want to be pushed on the subject, although you suppose it could also simply be that he doesn't know what to say. He leans back, gathers you tight against his chest, and presses a kiss to your forehead, then allows the silence to work its comfort on you. For a while you accept the solace of his steadily thudding heartbeat, his softly sighing breaths, and then you decide you’re being rather silly. You’re lost in the hells, you’re on the run from your villainous demi-god of a husband, and you’re on the hook to an archdevil for seven thousand mortal souls. Wallowing over whether or not you love the fragment of a man you once knew will simply have to wait.

“We should get out before we catch a chill,” you say briskly, sitting upright and shaking your head as if you might shake out any remnants of the sadness that overcame you. “We need to wash our clothes, and then we need to get going.”

You climb out of the tub and retrieve the blanket to dry yourself off on, then hold it out to Astarion, who watches you closely as he clambers out and takes it from you. You know he’s looking for evidence of more tears. You know you won’t show him any.

“We might as well rest here while they dry,” he says.

“We can just take the sleep potions.”

Astarion shakes his head. “You can take one, but I’ll trance. We should save the potions for you.”

“Fine. Everything in, then,” you say, dumping your pile of clothes unceremoniously in the water. He's still watching you as though you're a wounded animal, and it's making you want to be brusque.

“What about that?” Astarion asks, pointing to your forehead.

“Oh, no,” you say with a smile, putting a hand to the damp circlet. “That's fine. It's had a soak of sorts already.”

“It could do with rather more than a soak, my dear.”

Your smile becomes a little more fixed. “All the same, it'll be fine.”

He raises his eyebrows and mutters under his breath something that sounds like so much for trust as he adds his own clothes to the tub. You give him a sharp glare, but he speaks again before you can.

“No, you’re right, that was unfair. You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s probably better that you don’t.”

You sigh. If he had objected further you would have resisted telling him quite happily, but his meek acceptance only drives home the fact that his trustworthiness seems genuine.

“I barely know what it does, honestly; all I know is it stops him from being able to find me.”

“Oh.” Astarion pauses for a moment. “Well, yes, probably best to keep it on then.”

“No burning desire to reconnect with your other half?”

“I think I’ll manage without for now, but thank you for the kind offer.”

You grin. “Why don’t you start trancing while I wash these? 

“You’re sure?”

You nod, so he sets up the bedroll by the fireplace, poking at the flames briefly before settling down, covering his modesty with the now rather damp blanket. You do your best with the clothes, although you know from experience that the bloodstains are unlikely to ever come out, and then hang them about the fireplace to dry before sitting cross-legged beside Astarion.

There’s something so fascinating to you about watching someone rest. The vulnerability of it is almost indecent. A sleeping body makes so many tiny movements that prove it to still be alive in a most alien way.

You’ve always thought that death becomes people far better than sleep does.

As you watch him, Astarion’s brow furrows slightly, and you find yourself wondering what it is that he meditates on during his trances. You wonder if he replays the past year in his mind. You think that you would, were your dreams not so preoccupied by your tormentor.

You force yourself to think how it would have felt if your roles had been reversed. You remember well enough the shame, the horror, the total lack of control that you felt when Astarion told you of your behaviour the night your dark urges took over. You wonder how much worse it would have been to have to witness it. To have to watch yourself act in bloodlust and madness, trapped within your own eyes, with no way to change things. You think how much worse it would have been if Astarion hadn’t managed to bind you first. If it had been your hand, not his, that cut through the soft flesh of the one person you had ever dared to love. How much worse it would have been if it had lasted for more than a single night. Ten nights. One hundred. More.

You get quite lost in the tragedy of it. You couldn’t say how much time passes, watching the shadowy savagery of your imagination. It’s long enough that you are glad when his eyelids flutter open, and his consciousness returns to save you from your own mind.

Chapter Text

You sit on your throne alone.

You are flanked by your spawn, veiled and silent, two on either side. A pretty enough picture of your power, and yet you feel alone.

Across the city, you feel the thousands of minds that are under your thrall going about their business, never more than a whisper away from being at your beck and call. They fill council offices and counting houses, merchants' guilds and dens of filth, each one entirely under your command, and yet you are alone.

Your beloved wife is dead.

You watched her die, while she was both in your arms and hopelessly beyond reach. Even you, with your great power, with your near godliness, could do nothing to save her. Nothing beyond comforting her with words of your love, and promises of vengeance.

For a while, you had convinced yourself that she was wounded and that she would heal. Her fading away had simply been someone by her side performing restoration magic, although you couldn’t think who it might be. Each companion had been accounted for.

The druid, your spies tell you, had hastened to his precious settlement, as if he’d find anything worth saving in the ashes that you left for him. Nothing but fragments of bone and echoes of cries await him there.

The other druid - curse her old hide - is continuing to be a thorn in your side from whatever hole she is hiding in within the city. She's been spotted often enough to know she is still here and still working unaccompanied by your wife or any others.

The two devils spawn you're keeping an eye on with the help of the slippery Helsik, not that either of them was ever much good at healing. They've been traversing the hells, she tells you - indeed, you've seen yourself through her black mirror - and your wife is never with either of them.

As for the wizard, you ensured he'd make a beeline for his precious tower. Your wife was not with him when he arrived.

And the cleric— well, it couldn’t have been the cleric.

So you had to face the facts. None of your one-time companions were by her side. Even if she had survived, she would have had to sleep by now, and it has been days without a single sighting of her at rest. Just ghosts. Just whispers.

She’s gone.

They left her to die, and now she’s dead.

You think you’re going mad from the grief of it. You catch glimpses of her lying on the floor nearby, or sitting propped against a wall, and then she's gone in a blink. When you close your eyes sometimes you can see her, and when she turns towards you she looks at you as though you’re really there by her side, as if you hadn’t wasted time in going to catch her, as if you’d found her in whatever hell she’d gotten herself into and you were still there with her now. Sometimes she holds your hand. Sometimes you make her laugh. You kissed her, once. You tasted her. She looks at you with love, still, in the image of your mind.

She may never look at you with love through those eyes again.

The screaming in your mind did not fall silent the moment that she left, but sometime in the rage-filled days since. Not even that strange echo of your own past agonies keeps you company now.

You are alone and empty in the vastness of your power and your immortality.

You are always ravenous. You have been ever since you ascended from your past form. A different kind of hunger to the base desires of spawn. Hot meat and fresh blood do nothing to sate you. Nor does indulging in your other appetites of the flesh, no matter how thoroughly you partake: the bruises and gashes hidden beneath the fine lace veils around you are proof enough of that.

You miss the sight of her, feel of her, taste of her. You miss how beautifully her silence complemented the screaming in your head. Hadn’t you done everything to show her the depth of your love? Carved sigils so tenderly and so very deep into her weeping flesh. Marked her forever as yours. Showed her that you loved her enough to possess her entirely.

Still, she had fled. Still, she had dared to die by a hand other than your own.

You try to find comfort in distractions, but they feel hollow. You summon a servant to fetch you your tome on necromancy. You try to find instruction on the returning of bound souls, but the book of Thay is frustratingly vague on how long it might take a soul to return to you. It seems to imply that her soul might remain in the Fugue Plane for decades of Faerûnian time before the hooks of your binding pull her back to you. You picture her floating, listless, lifeless, on the currents of the Astral Sea, far beyond your reach. You almost burn the book in your anger, but you reign in your rage just in time.

You burn the servant instead.

Their screams help you think. You have had two centuries of practice in closing out the screams and retreating to the safety within. In the past year, the screams crept within you, making their echoes ring out in your thoughts whenever you relaxed your mind enough to let them in. You find you feel lonely without them. This burning thrall’s screams help you enter into the parts of your mind where the pain is lesser. Here, you can think clearly. Here, you can plan.

She had smiled when you promised to kill for her. She had smiled her last ever smile for you.

That gives you some comfort, at least. That those last moments of her life were yours.

It was vengeance that your beloved wanted.

It is vengeance that you shall get.

You have been reserved so far in your punishment of the companions. You had feared that they might retaliate against your beloved if you caused too much destruction. They needed to be punished for taking your wife from you, of course, but you had been enacting punishments worthy of stealing, rather than killing. You had made a concerted effort not to cause too much death. Oh, there had been the orphans, of course, but you'd been angry; it was a rash decision, and you might have regretted it now, although you hardly think it matters if nobody is going to miss them. And yes, it had been unfortunate that Gale's mother had been so determined to put up a fight, but really, she had to have known what would happen to her. Besides, Gale was your ultimate betrayer. You feel no guilt for it.

Now, though? Now they will all pay in earnest for her death. Now you will not hold back. They will face the full and unrestrained power of the Vampire Ascendant. You can already hear their screams in your mind. They harmonise with the screams of the servant before you. They will replace the screams of your past self.

You turn to the shrouded, black-clad figure to your right. The veils had been to preserve the surprise for your darling wife, so you could truly savour her reaction at their reunion. They're pointless now. You tear the veil off and slap the face beneath it, hard. Their head snaps to the side, but then they right themselves, staring back at you placidly. You can't bear the sight of them, but that's alright. You know exactly where to keep them so they're well out of sight. Perhaps you'll even be able to forget their very existence.

You almost smile at the thought.

Chapter Text

Your face must have a haunted air from the visions of violence that your mind had conjured while Astarion was resting, for when he pushes himself upright he immediately asks if something is wrong. When you reply that everything is fine he pulls you into his arms anyway, and you smile as the horrors of your imagination are melted away by the warmth of his embrace.

You prop yourself against the wall beside the hearth to drink a potion of sleep. While you rest, Astarion tells you that he plans to attempt to fix the tear in your freshly dried shirt with a needle and length of rough clear thread that he found amongst the clutter of the room’s shelves. You do not care whether or not your clothes are in tatters, but you get the sense he wants to make you happy, so you thank him with a smile before imbibing your drink.

Sleep rolls over you more smoothly now that you know what is coming, and although you have a strange feeling of travelling, of falling, of floating and flying, of echoing whispers of where are you and I miss you, you soon open your eyes to find yourself in the same oddment-filled room that you closed them in.

Astarion sits across from you, brow creased in concentration as he works his magic with needle and thread. You watch him for a while, not moving so as to not disturb him. He becomes so focused on the task of sewing up your shirt that his tongue starts sticking out of his mouth ever so slightly in such a way that you cannot help but laugh. He looks up, tongue retreating, and raises his eyebrows in question.

“What?”

“Nothing. You just have a certain face when you concentrate.”

“What face?”

“Sort of like this,” you say, pulling a particularly grotesque expression, tongue lolling and eyes crossing.

“I never look like that.”

“You absolutely do. Especially when you’re concentrating on picking locks.”

“I do not!”

“No? If you say so.”

It’s a struggle to keep a serious expression on your face while Astarion finishes his work, but it is entirely worth it to watch the parade of emotions that his expressions display as he tries to decide whether or not you are lying.

“Do I really?” he asks eventually, his voice rather quieter than before.

“Oh yes. It’s almost as bad as those snorting noises you make when you trance.”

For a moment his eyes widen, then quickly narrow.

“You’re toying with me.”

“I am.”

“You are wicked,” he says, throwing your shirt at you with mock aggression. You catch it and inspect it - it’s now slightly less ruined than before - then pull it on.

“The wickedest,” you confirm, and he smiles.

You begin packing up to leave, but you notice the smile fading from Astarion’s face, replaced by a troubled look. You’re about to ask him what’s wrong, but he speaks before you can.

“Do you really think we're bad people?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Humour me.”

You consider for a while before replying, and Astarion doesn’t rush you. “I think that maybe being good is like any other skill. Some people are naturally good, perhaps, but it takes practice all the same. Maybe every time we're good, it will be a little easier the next time.”

“We've both had a lot of practice being bad.”

“Yes. And we were very good at it by the end. But that doesn't mean we can't start being good now, even if it takes time. What's time to us immortals, after all?”

“A fair point. Although I'm not sure I am immortal. I'm not sure what I am.”

“A question for the sages and the devoted, I think. Luckily we'll be able to ask a rather wise cleric and an incredibly knowledgeable wizard in due time.”

He falls silent again for a while, then bursts out with a question.

“Tav, what will they do to me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know you need to get back to them, but if I’m with you, what in the hells are our companions going to think?”

“Well, I doubt they'll throw flower petals and release a cloud of doves upon your arrival, but I'll try to stop them from killing you, at least.”

“How incredibly reassuring,” he says with an unconvincing chuckle.

You grin. “I tried, alright? Senseless killing I can do, but reassuring comfort is something that might require a little more practice.”

Chapter Text

You’re still grinning as you step out into the ruined street, continuing your aimless journey onwards towards what you can only hope is a way further out of the hells. The outside world is quiet, still. The silence has an oppressive air; there’s something sepulchral about it, as if being there, alive, is disturbing the peace of a place long since dead.

Or perhaps not quite dead. The back of your neck prickles as you leave the shadows of the house, the hairs of your skin rising despite the mild temperature. You tell yourself you’re being paranoid. You tell yourself it’s nothing.

When the sensation doesn’t pass by the time you’ve walked the length of the street, you turn to Astarion.

“Is it just me, or—“

“No, it’s not just you,” he says, his voice quiet and wary. “We’re definitely being watched.”

“Watched by what?”

“I have no idea. I can’t see anything. Best if we stick to the shadows. We might be able to lose them.”

So begins your journey deeper into the ruins, following Astarion’s lead as you tread a stealthy path through street after ruined street. Although the twilight gloom of the realm ought to have provided plenty of cover from prying eyes, the shadows seem to conspire against you, twisting and fading when you step into their shade to leave you exposed to the unseen eyes that you continue to sense upon you. Still, you do your best to mimic the way Astarion moves, shifting your weight carefully from foot to foot in order to not disturb the rubble beneath you, stepping into Astarion’s footprints as he picks out a path of least obstruction through the debris. Occasionally he stops to peer around corners or duck around the remnants of some building, indicating that you should wait with a feather-light touch of warning before he disappears momentarily from view. During one such intermission, shortly after watching him disappear around a corner, you hear him draw breath in through his teeth. Ignoring his silent instruction to wait, you dash after him, only to find that as you turn the corner, the ruins come to an abrupt end around you.

Astarion stands on the precipice of a dilapidated roadway where a bridge must once have stood, staring out at a vast expanse of water. It moves with a sluggish current and is shallow enough that here and there you can see detritus spiking out of the water from the clogged river bed. The opposite bank is just visible in the murk, where more ruins stand in bleak, dark shapes at the very edge of your vision. Astarion turns when he hears you - you never could sneak quite well enough to surprise him - and gestures to the view.

“Looks like we found the river again.”

“Were we looking for it?”

“Not particularly. But we will need to cross it, somehow. Because that—” he points to a vaguely darker shadow on the far horizon, “—is Malboge. The, what, sixth layer of the hells? We’ve only got to get through that and Stygia, and then you’ll be back in the realm of our companions.”

He’s phrased it in a way that should sound positive, but you cannot help but feel a sense of despondency at his words.

“I have to say, stepping through a portal was much easier.”

“Yes, well, unless you feel any burgeoning surge of magic— oh, gods, sorry. That was thoughtless.”

His eyes have widened in guilt at what he’s said, but you smile and shrug.

“It’s fine. It’s not like you’re the one who took my magic,” you say, although in truth you’re not sure whether being reminded of what you’ve lost will ever feel anything other than painful. He still looks awkward, so you attempt to brush off any lingering unpleasantness with a brisk return to to matter at hand. “Anyway, we won’t find a way forward just standing around talking. Shall we?”

Without waiting for a reply, you start walking along the edge of the river. You still feel an uneasy sense of being watched, but after what feels like a full day of walking, you’ve become rather numb to it, and so you find yourself moving with a little more speed and a little less care than previously. Eventually, you catch sight of a promising way across the river. More of an accidental dam than a bridge, it looks to be made of an aggregation of rubble from the deteriorating buildings that line the river banks, collapsed bridges from further upriver, and sagging, teetering planks of wood and other detritus that have become caught up in the teetering mess of the aforementioned assemblage. Perhaps promising was too strong a word to describe it, but you are trying your best to remain optimistic.

“We should take a short rest before we attempt to cross,” says Astarion, clearly finding the crossing every bit as foreboding as you are.

“We could keep looking for another way?”

“I doubt we’ll find anything. How many broken bridges have we passed already? Five? Six? Everything here is crumbling away to nothing. This tottering pile of rubbish will likely be our best bet.”

You nod reluctantly and look around for a place to take a break. The ruins around you are particularly ramshackle, missing roofs and windows and entire walls. Deciding you are unlikely to find anywhere particularly pleasant, you drop your pack against a teetering wall and sit down with your back against it, taking in the sights before you. The dismal, alien light of this plane does nothing to lessen the dour view of the dreary river and decrepit ruins.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” says Astarion, taking a seat beside you. You snort, then pass him the pack to rifle through in search of food.

“Can I ask you something?”

He looks up at you, eyebrows raised, and hesitantly says, “go on.”

“You asked earlier if I thought we were bad. But I was wondering… What made him bad? To me, specifically? You were never bad to me before. Mean, sometimes, and a pain, often—" you ignore his wounded look, "—but never bad. What changed?”

He licks his lips and looks down, clearly uncomfortable. “You know I can’t read his mind.”

“But you must have some idea. He’s a part of you, in a way, isn’t he?”

Sighing, he looks up at you once more. “Fine. I can try. But I promise neither accuracy nor satisfying answers." You nod in acceptance, and he continues. "I imagine it’s that when he looks at others, all he sees is everything he has gained. The power he has over them, the influence. He used to be so afraid of everything, and now he need fear nothing. But you were— before the ascension, I mean— you were the only thing we didn't fear. The only good thing we had. So now when he looks at you he sees you as his only weakness. The only thing that can cause him pain. And by the gods, my dear, you cause him pain, because he can see in your eyes that you regret it. You regret letting him ascend. He's so close to believing it was the right choice, and then there you are, the one good thing he ever had, and you think it was a mistake. If he could only get you to love him as he is then he would know it was the right thing to do, but he can't. You made him feel weak, so he was cruel to you, so you loved him less, and so the cycle goes on, and on, and on. So he hates you, and he wants your love, and he despises how you remind him of his own weakness. You remind him of everything that he's lost.”

Chapter Text

You stare at the river in silence for a while, letting his words sink in. You don’t know how to respond to them, so you hold your tongue. Astarion eventually breaks the peace.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, it's not your fault. I shouldn’t have asked,” you say, giving him a tight smile. “It’s just… it’s like picking a scab. I can’t help it, even though it hurts. I just want to peel it back and see what’s underneath.”

The image in your mind's eye - an image of freshly flowing, bright red liquid seeping from under a crusted layer of dark dried blood - makes your throat constrict with unwanted thirst. You swallow, your mouth suddenly overly wet, and Astarion gives you a grim smile.

“Hungry?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Only because I've felt the same for two centuries. The mere mention of blood - the mere thought of it - was enough to set me off, even on my good days.”

“It never fades?”

“I would love to lie and tell you it does, but no, darling, it does not. It will always be there. But you know you can always feed on me. You can feed now, if you'd like.”

You shake your head. “Can't have you woozy for the crossing. Maybe I'll have a celebratory drink on the other side.”

He laughs at that. “Who knows, maybe we'll find an abandoned wine merchants over there, and we can both toast to crossed bridges.”

“Getting drunk in the hells: what the hell could go wrong?”

“I never said it was a good idea.”

“You haven't had a good idea in your life,” you say with a grin.

“Oh, I don't know. That initial knife to your throat seems to have gone pretty well so far.”

“Has it?” you ask, and although you try to keep your tone jocular, you sense that the conversation is slipping once more into painful territory. “Anyway, we should probably take the plunge and try to cross, shouldn't we?”

“I feel you could have chosen your metaphors with a little more care, but yes. Let's.”

With that, Astarion stands nimbly, reaching down a hand to help you up. You go to put on the pack, but he takes it from you, shaking his head.

“No offence, my dear, but you will need all the dexterity at your disposal to get yourself across. Let me.”

You roll your eyes but accept his reasoning without argument. When he gets to the edge of the bank, he pauses, turns to you, and looks you in the eye.

“Are you ready? Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” you say, because one of you needs to be certain, and it certainly won’t be him. He nods, takes a deep breath, and turns to make the short jump from the bank onto the makeshift bridge. You realise you’re holding your breath. Your palms are clammy as you watch him scramble for a hold, and even when he finds his footing, your throat feels as tight as if you were swinging from a hangman’s noose. You can’t remember the last time you felt like this. Actual worry. Actual fear. You certainly didn’t have it when you willingly threw yourself this deep into the hells.

You realise it’s probably because now, it feels like you have something to lose.

Chapter Text

“Well, that went better than I expected,” says Astarion, turning back to face you with arms extended for extra balance, moving them briefly to point out the best path ahead for you. “I'd avoid that plank if I were you. It wobbles dreadfully. Just jump over to that platform there and I'll do my best to pull you up.”

You nod, and decide that giving yourself time to agonise over all the ways in which this could go wrong would be pointless. You take a running leap, almost trip when the bank slope turns out to be steeper than you expected, stumble slightly just as you push off, and find yourself slamming bodily into a lower section of the ramshackle bridge with such maladroitness that you could almost laugh at yourself, if only Astarion wasn't already doing it for you. You look up at him, winded and glaring balefully, trying to get your breathing back in check after your brief flirtation with the fear of falling.

“Oh, don't look at me like that,” he says. “It was funny.”

He holds out a hand to drag you up to the top of the bridge, which you reluctantly accept. Once you're safely up, upon seeing that your glare has not faded, he takes a step back, still holding your hand, bows dramatically, and presses a kiss to your knuckles.

“Will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me for laughing at you?”

You roll your eyes. It's very hard not to smirk at the puppy dog expression he has pasted on his face. “You're awful.”

“What can I say? You inspire me.”

You snort at that, unable to withhold the smile any longer. There's been a lot of this recently. The smiling, and the laughing, and the back-and-forths that might seem mean, but you know them to be more than that. They're a way of saying that there's no need to pretend. They're a way of saying, yes, you're catty, you're cruel, and I'm here still. When your gazes meet, you feel a rush of affection so strong that you find yourself overcome with an urge far more wholesome than the kind you were once used to.

“Can I kiss you?”

“You needn't ask,” he says with a smile, “but I'm glad you did.”

So you step towards him, tentatively on the uneven flooring, thread your arms around his waist, and kiss him. It is not the most passionate of kisses you have shared - you are, after all, balanced somewhat hazardously over a river of death - but you try to put into it all the feelings that you cannot find the words for. There's something in the way his fingers lace through your hair, and the way his warm, soft lips press firmly into yours, and the way his heartbeat thuds, quickening, against your chest, that makes you feel as though he's trying to tell you something too. You listen to the unspoken words. You repeat them back to him with your tongue, your lips, your touch. Your hands bunch at the material of his shirt.

Your foot slips.

Chapter Text

You've barely even noticed your balance faltering before Astarion has grasped your wrist to steady you. You let out a breathless laugh, all amorous feeling jolted out of you by the momentary feeling of your stomach flipping in that weightless way it does before a fall.

“Shit,” says Astarion. “Perhaps we should continue that in a slightly less precarious setting.”

“Probably a good idea. Yes. Um. Lead on, then.”

He gives you a slightly wonky grin, then turns and begins to move across the bridge. He takes his time, testing each step with a little weight before moving on, sometimes backtracking if a certain path has led to an impossible end. Occasionally, for trickier gaps or thinner paths that require more dexterity than he seems to be willing to bet that you have, he turns around, holding out a hand for balance or an arm to catch onto. You are grateful for his thoughtfulness, so you stifle the pang of resentment that you feel at the fact he feels the need to treat you this way. You were once fearsome enough to do this all while laughing in the face of the danger, but that person was lost sometime over the past year, and he clearly knows it. You wonder if you will ever find her again.

For now, though, the crossing is difficult work - the kind where you have to constantly remind yourself to breathe, and your head aches from concentrating so hard on copying the exact placement of Astarion's hands and feet - so you're glad for any help you can get. It comes as a relief when you spare a glance away from your feet to the path ahead and see that you're barely more than a stone's throw from the other bank. The bridge has dipped closer to the water to meet the far bank, which slopes down gently into the river; you are gratified to realise that no more running leaps will be required. Now that you're only a few strides above the river's surface, you can see that the water below flows strangely. The current is languorous, and the eddies of the murky water seem to twist into the images of faces, vortices of mire and mud swirling as screaming mouths and staring eyes, only to flow back into meaningless ripples in the next moment. The longer you watch, the more entranced you become, and it's only when Astarion calls back to you that you realise you have come to a complete stop.

“Tav? What's wrong?”

You blink, tear your gaze away from the river, and shake your head.

“Nothing. It's just— I thought I saw faces. In the river. If you look, there are faces under the surface.”

Astarion frowns, and turns around fully, making his way back towards you. “We can look from the bank, alright? We're almost—”

Your eyes have been dragged back to the anguished faces in the river, and you are so mesmerised by the way they tortuously twist and turn in and out of existence in the current that you do not see the moment Astarion missteps. His startled cry catches your attention, though, and you look up just in time to see the floor beneath his feet give way, watching in shock as he tumbles down, off of the bridge, into the oddly enthralling river below.

He splashes through the surface, but doesn’t disappear completely; you can see the pale outline of his face and shirt through the murky water. The faces in the patch of water he hits explode out into a thousand broken droplets and ripples, breaking your trance entirely. He emerges, moments later, spluttering and coughing, to stand unsteadily on the riverbed, the water only reaching the bottom of his shirt.

It takes your mind a moment to catch up with the rush of emotions that flash through you: enchantment at the faces, horror at his fall, bemused relief at the sight of him standing, bedraggled but unhurt, before you. You let out a shaky laugh.

“By the gods. We’ve been crawling over this bridge as if we’re crossing a flow of lava, only to find the river is barely waist deep?”

You expect Astarion to return your laugh, but he doesn't. Alright, you think, he is rather bedraggled - maybe he's not in the mood to laugh. Still, you would expect at least a smile in response. Instead, he looks up at you blankly, head tilted to the side.

“Ta—” he begins, but then shakes his head, blinking, bewildered.

“Are you alright?” you ask, concern quickly pushing its way back to prominence in your emotions.

“What's going on?” he asks.

“What? You just fell in. Did you hit your head? Come here, I'll pull you out.”

You move forward carefully, lie flat on the uneven surface of the bridge, and extend a hand down towards him.

“What is this?” he asks, looking around disconcertedly, his eyes growing wider as he makes no move to accept your hand.

“Astarion, please. Just take my hand. You need to get out of the river.”

“Where are we? Who are you?”

“I will explain everything once you get back up, but please, please, just take my hand.”

You lean further forward, reaching desperately towards him. He'd said, hadn't he, when you first came through the portal together, something about the Styx affecting memories? Maybe you'd known it yourself once, before your brain was left tattered and broken. But surely it couldn't happen so quickly. And if it did, well, hopefully, gods, hopefully it is only temporary. The one thing your mind seems to manage to cling to is hope.

Still, there are whispers in your head of ominous portents that you cannot silence. Perhaps his entire mind is being wiped clean as you speak. Perhaps those last vestiges of the man you love are being washed away by the flow of this hellish river. You have to get him out before he loses any more of himself. You stretch further, hoping against hope that you’ll have the strength to heave him out of the water, because you cannot lose him.

Not again.

“Astarion, please,” you say, stretching further still. You're so close to being able to grab him - a finger's breadth away, no more - when you feel the plank beneath you shift. You try to scramble back, but it's too late: you're already slipping, sliding, falling forwards, and you catch the briefest glimpse of Astarion's confused face before you, too, hit the water.

Chapter Text

There is the briefest of moments when your mind is confused by the heat that radiates off of the surface of the water before you are plunged into it. Then, your mind is filled with one thing only: pain. Boiling, roiling pain covers your entire body as you sink beneath the surface. Your vision goes black as the water consumes you. You lash out mindlessly, somehow finding your feet in the process of desperately trying to get away from the sensation of the water all around you, and your upper half breaks through the surface of the river. You just drag enough air into your lungs to scream before your legs give out again, or your legs are burned away completely - you cannot tell, the agony is so overwhelming - and you collapse back beneath the surface. Your mouth, opened in your screaming, fills with water, and you fill with torture from the inside out. All instinct is lost beyond suffering, and any remaining sense is flooded out by the anguish. The pain has entirely enveloped you; you breathe it in. You claw desperately, blindly, at your throat, at your face, with hands that must be melting away to nothing with every movement that you make. You cannot be dead, though, for surely even in the worst of hells, the torment could not be this great.

Time, like your sight, like your voice, seems to have been destroyed in the scorching heat of the water, so you cannot tell how much time has passed when the pain seems to lessen. An eternity, at least. A time longer than your entire existence so far. All past and future is gone in place of this writhing, all-consuming inferno of suffering.

The pain is still too great to form words, still too great for your senses to take in all but the most basic of happenings, but you think you feel yourself being hauled upwards, and most of the pain is diminished. When your drowning lungs suck in a ragged breath, it is air, not water, that fills them. Your arms still drag unbearably through the water, but you are too wretched and weakened by your ordeal to pull them out of the molten river. You hear a splashing, then the squelching of wet and muddy boots and the muttered curses of a language you barely know. You try to blink your blinded eyes, and your vision swims back slowly. A blurry riverbank, an out-of-focus building, a doorway, the inside of the dark and dreary ruin of a home.

Loving arms hold you close. Loving arms drop you roughly onto the decaying wooden floor. Loving arms pin you down, and a loving hand presses a sharp, shining dagger to your throat. You try to twist away, but in your crippled state you manage little more than a helpless wriggle.

“Ah ah ah! Don't struggle,” hisses a loving voice in your ear. “We're not leaving here until you tell me what in the hells is going on. Corellon damn you, what have you done to me?”

Chapter Text

“Astarion, please, put the knife down and we can talk.”

“How do you know my name? Where are we?”

The knife stays pressed, cold and threatening, to your neck.

“Gods above, you just saved me in the river, didn't you? Why would you do that only to hold me at knifepoint? You know me, Astarion.”

“I have never seen you before in my life,” he spits. “I dragged you out of that river because you obviously know what's going on, and I need answers.”

“And I'll give you answers, alright? But not with a knife to my throat!”

He considers you with narrowed eyes, then clicks his tongue in irritation and withdraws the knife. He backs off slightly, still holding the dagger up defensively as if worried you might make a move to run or attack at any moment.

“Fine. Tell me, then. Where in the hells are we?”

“Funny you should say it like that,” you say weakly, wincing as you push yourself up into a sitting position. Your arms tremble at the effort; your whole body is still fizzing with the aftershocks of the pain from the river. “We are, in fact, in the hells. Maladomini, currently.”

“What? Why, by the grace of Corellon, am I in the hells? And who are you? And how do you know me?”

“How long have you got?” You try to grin, attempting to cover your pain with humour, but it probably looks like more of a grimace. Judging by Astarion's stony face and stormy brow, he is not won over. “Look, it's a long story, alright? I know you because— well, I know you quite well, actually. We're sort of married.”

“We're what? And— wh— how can one be sort of married?”

“Well,” you say, unsure where to even start, “you’re not entirely you. That is to say, you—“ you gesture to him “—are actually only a part of yourself. You’re sort of split in two. Your soul is, anyway. So you’re here, but there’s also a part of you up in Baldur’s Gate. And I’m married to him. You. But then I came here, to the hells, and found you you. And then you fell into the Styx, and it seems like it’s affected your memory, right?”

He looks at you suspiciously. “You were in the river too. How do you know all of this? Why isn’t your mind all—“ he makes a twirling gesture with his fingers against his forehead “—messed up, too?”

“I honestly have no idea,” you say, pressing a hand to your own forehead and feeling some relief when your fingers brush the cold metal of your circlet. “Perhaps a person can only lose their memories so many times before they become immune.”

“You’ve fallen in the river before?”

“No, this particular method of losing memory is new to me. But I have had my memories taken before. Twice, actually. Once by my sister and once by, um, something else.”

“Hmm.”

Your unsubtle catch of the second something that wiped your memory clearly hasn’t gone unnoticed and has done nothing to lessen Astarion’s mistrustful stare.

“So you can see why it's complicated.”

“Well, at least that explains why my mind feels so strange. It feels like it’s been split in two.”

“I imagine losing all of your memories is playing a part in that too.”

He shoots you a sharp look.

“So there's really a whole other part of me?”

“Yup. Lording it up in Baldur's Gate.”

“Gods above. And I married you?”

You glare at him. “You know, for a man who has just lost his memory, you're awfully full of yourself.”

“Well, flailing around in a river like a maniac is hardly a promising introduction. I apologise that I didn’t immediately take note of you as potential marriage material. What were you doing back there, anyway? What was wrong with you?”

“Let’s just say that it seems that running water and I do not get along.”

He looks questioningly at you, and you watch his eyes go wide when you flash him a particularly wide smile.

“Gods above,” he says, backing away further and holding the dagger slightly higher. “You're a vampire.”

“You're a vampire.”

“I most certainly am not.”

“Well, not now. Not you. But you were. Or are. The other part of you is.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head in denial. “I can't be. No.”

There's a questioning look in his eye; the slightest glint of something pleading and desperate. You give a small nod, and his expression crumples.

“Gods have mercy. When? How?”

“I—” you falter, not knowing what to say. Now is surely not the time to recount two centuries of torment. “I don't really know.”

“You said you're my wife. How can you not know?”

“It's not important right now—”

“I would say that the fact I've become undead is pretty gods damned important!”

“Alright, I'm not saying it's not important, but the most important thing right now is to get out of here so that we can find our friends. They'll be able to heal you. They'll help us.”

“They'll know how to cure memory loss, will they?”

You can't help but grin at that, although it only deepens Astarion's frown. “One of them is a cleric with something of a speciality in memory loss, actually. And the rest have impressive powers of their own. There's a wizard of some renown, and an arch-druid—”

“I suppose it's too much to hope that you have any impressive powers?” he cuts in coolly.

You swallow. It stings more than it should. “No. I don’t. Not as such.”

Astarion tuts. “Typical. Although I'm not sure why I expected more from the woman wearing a shirt that looks like it was mended by a blind child.”

You snort at that. “You sewed this, actually.”

“I do not sew,” he says, affronted.

“You do. Quite well, in fact, when you have something other than catgut and bone needles to use.”

He curls his lip as if preparing to say something cutting, but you cut him off.

“So what do you remember?”

“My name's Astarion.”

You nod encouragingly. “Anything else?”

He narrows his eyes in concentration, looking from side to side as if he might find more answers floating in the air before him.

“I'm… a magistrate. In Baldur's Gate.”

“Ah.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, ‘ah’?”

“Is that all you remember? Surely there’s more?”

“Of course there’s more,” he snaps. “It’s just all a bit misty right now. Look, this is all rather tedious - can’t you just tell me what’s happened?”

“There is no way I’m going to be able to cover the past two centuries—“

“You don’t mean centuries, surely? Centuries means hundreds of years, you know.”

Oh good,  you think. Rude and condescending. How charming.

“Yes, I mean centuries, Astarion. It’s been two hundred years.”

“No. No. It can’t have been.” He shakes his head at the look on your face. “But what about my things? My house? My career? My friends?”

“Do you even remember all those things?”

He frowns. “I–I remember some of it. The house… on the square? And the parties, and the dances, although… gods damn it all, it’s all so blurred.”

“I’m sure it will all come back to you,” you lie. “We just need to find the others, and you’ll remember everything. We should really get moving.”

“Fine. Although I am exhausted. Are there any places to rest in this blasted plane?”

“Plenty, as long as you’re not above curling up in the dirt.”

His lips purse in disgust. “Gods, you’re not even joking, are you? Fine. Corellon preserve me, I cannot believe I’m about to trust a vampire to lead me through the hells.”

“Do you have any better options?”

He heaves a haughty sigh. “Evidently not. Let’s go, then. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

He straightens up in a lithe movement, and you notice that although he lowers it, he does not stow the blade. He watches you coldly as you get to your own feet far less steadily than he, and follows wordlessly as you move towards the battered doorway of the house.

When you get outside, you point out the vast umbrageous shape on the horizon that Astarion himself pointed out to you just before the crossing. When you inform him that your friends - your salvation - lie beyond it, he gives a curt nod and strides off down the street at a pace that you have to force your shaking legs to keep up with. He does not turn back to check on you.

He moves differently, you realise, to the man that you knew. You've seen him saunter before, of course, in those early days of your seduction. Back then it had always seemed somehow sagging under the weight of practice and performance, although it was only later on that you found out the real extent of that truth. Now, though, he strides through the hells as if he owns them. As if they owe him. As if even here, in this realm of devils and death and destruction, nothing bad could possibly happen to him. He wears his scrappy, sodden rags as if they were the finest garments in Faerûn, and holds his chin high as though his face wasn't smeared with river scum and his forehead wasn’t plastered with damp and messy curls. You can see the man that Astarion once was, in all his glorious arrogance, and although you cannot say that you like him, it breaks your heart to see this living proof of how the past two hundred years have shaped him.

You love the man those two centuries have forged, but now that you can see who he was before, the extent of his brokenness is all the starker. You can see how he has taken aspects of his old self, shattered and jagged around the edges, and held them up as a shield to hide the wounds of his past from the world. It would be easy to see this version as some ghost from Astarion's bygone years, but you know the reality is that the man that you love is the one who is the ghost. Here, you see an image of him as he could be if you could peel back the years of sorrow, put down the weight of fear, cast off the shackles that anguish moulded around him. There is something solid and simple and beautifully unblemished about this incarnation of him. There is something so strong about this untarnished body and spirit.

You suppose he would have to have been strong, deep down, to have survived all that came to him.

It makes you wonder what wounds he carried that you were never aware of. You know that there were scars that ran far deeper than those he showed you. There were shadows of pain in his eyes, in his movements, in the unspoken things that he avoided talking about. He never liked to speak of his past beyond the occasional whispered confession that would come amidst a particularly bad night terror. Secrets steeped in shame would spill across your shared pillow after his stifled sobs woke you up in those dark little hours before dawn, but even those quiet revelations stopped once he ascended. 

When he turns to you now, telling you to hurry up, don’t you want to get out of here, why are you dawdling, you pretend that looking at him doesn't feel like drowning. You pretend that his contemptuous sneer doesn't break your heart. You remind yourself that he must feel scared and lost and is only lashing out.

You try to believe what you told him. You try to believe that this will be temporary and that your friends will be able to cure this.

You try to believe that doing so would be the right thing to do.

Chapter Text

It doesn't take long for Astarion to swap places with you, lagging behind as you trudge along a ruin-flanked thoroughfare towards the dark mass in the distance. It still seems impossibly far away, but at least the outline of it is slowly shaping into something recognisable: a great, black mountain, so tall that even at this distance you cannot see its peak, streaked with red and orange threads of lava. Now that the adrenaline from the disaster in the river is fading, you find yourself once more on edge. For a while, you can pretend it is nothing more than the fact that a very disgruntled Astarion is walking behind you with a knife still grasped tightly in his hand, or the fact that you narrowly avoided dying in running water, or the fact that you have no idea if you will ever recover the man that you were just beginning to love again. However, eventually you have to accept the uncomfortable truth: you still feel as though you are being watched.

You turn around to hurry Astarion up, hoping that picking up the pace might eventually lose the ominous presence that seems to have been following you.

“Ugh, I’m coming, I’m coming,” he says, speeding up marginally to catch up with you. “You know, nagging is a terribly unbecoming trait in a woman.”

“I’m afraid that being ‘becoming’ is fairly low on my list of priorities right now.”

“Evidently,” he says, wrinkling his nose as he gives you an unsubtle look up and down. “What's that on your head, anyway?”

“It's a circlet.”

He tuts, then makes the faintest of scoffs under his breath.

“I'm perfectly aware it's a circlet, thank you. I meant what does it do? One can hardly wear something so ugly just for the style of it, surely.”

“It's for protection.”

“It's magical?”

“Obviously.”

“Well, maybe that's why your head isn't a complete mess.”

“Maybe,” you agree cagily. You can't say the thought hasn't crossed your mind, but you also don’t think you like where this conversation is going.

“Well, give it here then.”

“What?”

He clicks his fingers and gestures for you to pass it to him. “Give it to me. It might cure whatever's going on with my memory.”

“I can't.”

“Oh, don't be a brute. Give it here.”

“No, I really can't.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because I still need it.”

“It will only be for a little while.”

“No, Astarion.”

“Just to see—“

“I said no. You can try to take it from me, but I don't fancy your chances.”

This is a lie - the fall in the river seems to have entirely washed you of all but the most meagre vitality, and you barely have the strength to keep moving, let alone enough to fight him off. There's no reason for him to know that, though. You only hope that whatever regenerative powers that saved you from the bear attack are going to kick in again, although you're not hopeful - you’ve been walking for long enough, and you’re not feeling even the slightest bit better.

“Well, honestly! It's so typical of your kind to immediately resort to violence. I was only asking.”

“'My kind’?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. Don't be obtuse.”

“There are about a dozen things that you could be referring to right now, and I would dearly like to know which one it is.”

He sighs dramatically. “Fine. I mean, I don't claim to know your upbringing, but clearly we were not raised in similar circles. I doubt I'd even have heard of your family name.”

“Oh, I don't know. I'm fairly certain you would know my father, actually.”

“Really? I would have heard of your father?” He scoffs. “What, was he in court often?”

You glare at him, deigning not to answer. Besides, you worry that revealing yourself to be bhaalspawn might be the final straw that sends him fleeing into the hells alone. Instead, you change the topic.

“Look, if you’re only going to be rude, can you at least keep it down? I’m fairly certain we’re being followed, and you wittering on isn’t going to help matters.”

“I do not witter,” he hisses. “And if you really think we’re being watched, why don’t we hide in one of these blasted buildings? That way I can get some rest. I’m exhausted.”

You consider his suggestion. The only reason you haven't stopped to rest so far is because you're not sure you'd be able to get back up again; certainly not without feeding, and you have a feeling that this Astarion will be rather less than generous when it comes to his blood. Your pause is all the encouragement Astarion needs to plough on with his argument.

“You know, I cannot be expected to walk all day like some kind of plebeian labourer until you deem us to have travelled far enough.”

“We've not been walking that long at all—“

“Well surely we must have been walking before the infernal river. My feet hurt dreadfully, and my back aches from this thrice-damned bag—“

“I can take the bag,” you say, praying - although admittedly without much hope - that he will be enough of a gentleman not to take you up on your offer.

“Thank you,” he says, not sounding particularly thankful at all, taking it off and passing it to you without so much as a smile. The weight of it, paltry though it may be, is enough that your weary legs almost give way. There’s nothing for it: you are going to have to find somewhere to rest soon.

“Alright,” you say, as much to yourself as to Astarion, “we’ll start to look for somewhere to rest. Briefly. But we really should try to get away from whatever it is that is following us. I don’t suppose you’re any good at sneaking?”

“No,” he replies with a sneer. “You do understand that the role of a magistrate is to put a stop to petty criminals, not join in with their underhand ways?”

You roll your eyes. “Well, at least try to be quiet, won’t you?”

“Fine. But if we don’t find somewhere to rest in the next— well, however one measures time in this gods-forsaken place, then you will find I may become most disagreeable.”

“Become?” you mutter, lowering your voice enough for him to not hear you.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

You smile sweetly, then turn to duck through a collapsed archway onto a shadowy side street, keeping your eyes peeled for a suitable place of rest.

Chapter Text

The shadows become thicker as you creep between broken streets into twisting alleyways, moving slowly and pressing yourself into the darkness of the crumbling walls that line the pathways, wincing to yourself every time Astarion kicks a stone or crushes a fallen piece of glass beneath his feet. He has run out of conversation topics, having already graced you with ‘What kind of a name is Tav, anyway?’, ‘Where does one even find clothes like these?’, and your favourite so far, ‘So, was our marriage the result of some kind of spell gone wrong, or…?’. All you’ve heard from him more recently has been muttered curses when he trips over rubble or stubs his toe on some hidden hazard. You’re not sure why, but his ineptitude is causing you far more annoyance than his arrogant attitude and sharp tongue. You suppose you’ve always known he had a snarky side, but incompetence when it comes to his agility is not something you ever thought you would have to worry about. 

Eventually, having wound your way deep into the ruins, you feel the stalking sense of dread lessening slightly. Although you have to admit that it could simply be your growing exhaustion dulling your senses, when you next pass a building that still has the majority of its walls and roof intact, you slip inside it, gesturing for Astarion to follow you.

The first room you enter is small and dingy, the dismal light from the dusky sky outside spilling in through the doorway and a single broken window to lay bare the cheerless interior. One wall supports the remnants of a rickety staircase with planks of wood jutting out at sharp angles where it has collapsed in on itself; another wall sports a rotting door hanging off its hinges.

“Homey,” quips Astarion. You ignore him, sliding the pack off your shoulders and putting it down, then removing the bedroll and shaking it out to lay it on the floor. You reach into the bag’s main compartment to pull out whatever supplies you have left for Astarion to eat, only to quickly withdraw your hand with a gasp. Your hand had brushed something piercingly sharp, and upon inspection, blood beads well up out of jagged cuts on your fingertips. Before they can spill over you shove them into your mouth.

“Shit,” you say, although the curse comes out muffled through your fingers.

Astarion watches with disinterest as you open the bag fully with your other hand, and then carefully tip its contents onto the floor. A few wrapped portions of rations tumble out, followed by first one, then a second potion bottle, which roll to a stop by your feet. You tilt the bag further, but all that comes out now are shards of smashed glass and a trickle of spilt potion. Your chest constricts. Only two potions left. Two nights of rest before your husband has you in his grip once more. You remove your fingers from your mouth to swear in earnest.

“Shit.”

“What are these?” asks Astarion, stooping to pick up one of the two unbroken bottles.

“They’re mine,” you say, snatching it back from his grasp. “I need them to rest. There were more, but, shit, they must have smashed when you fell in the river. Shit.”

Entirely unperturbed by your distress, he reaches for one of the packets of rations instead. “What about these?”

“Food. Help yourself.”

He shrugs off your brusqueness and unwraps the rations, wrinkling his nose at the discovery of the dried piece of unidentifiable sustenance within.

“Are you quite sure it’s food?”

“Yes. And this—“ you kick the bedroll with your foot “—is the bed. I’m sorry if they don’t meet the levels of luxury you clearly feel entitled to, but they’re the best you’re going to get while we try to escape the literal hells.”

“I’m not saying I expected anything gourmet, but this barely seems edible—“

“Eat it or don't,” you snap, your concern about the dwindling amount of potions causing your patience with him to wear thin. “I'm going to see if there's anything worth taking in here.”

You leave through the single door before he has a chance to whine further. Your nerves are frayed enough from tiredness, and from hunger, and from the throbbing pain of your cut fingers, and from the constant worry of feeling like you are prey being hunted by some unseen, unknown predator.

You find nothing as you wander from room to abandoned room. The cupboards and closets have been stripped bare; windows and furniture have been smashed; one room is blackened by evidence of a long-dead fire. When you’ve explored every room - it doesn’t take long in a building this small - you take a deep breath and brace yourself to return to Astarion. You desperately want to rest, but you don’t trust this memory-less man enough to take a potion around him until he’s deep within his own trance. Even the few moments that the potions knock you out could be long enough for him to do something stupid, and from what you’ve seen of him so far, something stupid seems like something he is highly likely to do. You sigh and head back to the front room.

“I've been thinking,” Astarion says the moment you walk through the door.

Gods guide me, you think, but you bite your tongue.

“Go on,” you say, making a concerted effort to keep your tone neutral.

“You’re a vampire.”

“I am.”

“Well, I was thinking I might let you… taste me, so to speak.”

You blink. This was not at all what you were expecting.

“Why would you do that?”

“Why not? Call it curiosity, if you will.”

You raise your eyebrows in evident disbelief. “Really.”

“Besides, I'm not an idiot. You'll be more use to me if you have your wits about you. And who knows, maybe you’ll be slightly less of a shrew if you’re less hungry.”

You don't rise to his insult. You’re still not buying his reasoning. It seems far too benevolent for the man Astarion once was. You narrow your eyes and wait for the silence to force the truth from him. There’s a moment of awkward waiting, and then he sighs and rolls his eyes, speaking once more.

“And, alright, fine, if I were a vampire, and I was hungry, I imagine I would wait for my companion to sleep or trance, and then I would eat them, and if you are going to eat me, I would much rather it happened while I am awake, thank you very much.”

The nostalgia that his words conjure up makes you grin before you can stop yourself.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because some things apparently never change. Alright, fine, if you’re really willing to let me drink from you - fine. Yes. Please. I’ll only need a little, but I would be grateful for it.”

Chapter Text

Astarion nods, and if you didn't know to look for it you might have missed the slightest hitch of uncertainty in the movement. You wonder if he was secretly hoping that you would decline. You're desperate enough for the sustenance of blood that you can't really bring yourself to care.

“It won't, uh, do anything to me, will it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I won't end up, I don't know, enthralled by you or whatever it is that vampires do?”

“Are you not already enthralled by me?”

“Ugh. Gods. Can you imagine?”

Yes, actually, you think to yourself, but you know he wouldn't believe you even if you told him. Instead, you return to his first question. “No, feeding from you won't do anything to you. I've done it before and you were fine.”

“Alright. Well, good. So how, exactly, does one go about ‘feeding,’ then?”

“Well, it’s probably best if we sit down,” you say, and he walks to the bedroll and sits. You kneel beside him, swallowing, unsure why you’re suddenly nervous.

You can smell him now: the familiar musty scent of his sweat that should disgust you but instead makes you think of a feeling like home, and, beneath the sour suds left on him by the river, the gamey, hot, tender smell that all living beings now carry for you.

“And then I just, um, bite you— your wrist is best, probably— and then drink a little of your blood.”

“Right,” he says, so much of his cocksure attitude faded now, although you can tell he is desperately clinging to his bravado. “Well, go on, then.”

He holds out his arm to you in a gesture that you’re sure is meant to look casual, but in fact appears uncertain. You take it in both hands and bring his wrist to your face, your eyes flicking up to his in search of confirmation, and he shrugs nonchalantly as if he couldn't care either way, as if you can't smell the fear in the air or see the sweat on his brow.

You take a deep breath. You open your mouth. You bite. Your fangs pierce the flesh of his arm and you feel the hot liquid coat your tongue. You close your eyes and let the sensation flood through you. Just a drop, you tell yourself. Just enough to help you recover.  You might have only drank from him a couple of times, but you know that the taste of his blood is going to be seared into your mind forever. 

You swallow one mouthful. 

You should pull away, but that strong, mortal heart of his is beating with such vitality that your mouth is already filling again, filling with that taste of love and life and him, the real him, the him that you used to sate with your own body, with your own blood. Your chest swells with the bittersweet nostalgic flavour of it, and the warmth of it spreads through your body, dissolving all the aches and pains and replacing them with ardent, tingling bliss. Heat pools between your legs from the carnal pleasure of it. Heat pools behind your eyelids at the painful poignance of it.

You swallow the second mouthful.

When your mouth is filled for the third time with his hot, rich blood, you finally muster the power to drag yourself away. You pull your head back and push his arm roughly away from you, swallowing the liquid as slowly as you can, trying to savour this sanguine proof that he is Astarion, your Astarion, the same Astarion that you've always known under these newly reformed layers of sass and coldness and cruelty. 

Opening your eyes, you lick the remnants of your feeding from your lips, craving that one final taste of him, pushing down the desire to lick the trickle of blood that runs down his wrist from the marks you have left there and look up to meet his gaze. There’s a strange look in his eyes. For a moment you worry that you drank too much, although you could swear pulled away in time, and his expression isn’t the glazed, dazed look of one who is bloodless. He moves his hand in a jerky, uncertain movement, and you think he’s about to hit you, or worse, stab you. There’s a burning in his eyes that might be anger, or disgust, or hatred. You have no idea where his dagger is, and you curse yourself for thinking that he would let you do this to him without any consequences. You have a split second of panic, of tensing, of readying yourself to spring away from him, but then his hand hooks around the nape of your neck and he pulls you towards him, smashing your mouth to his in a savage, clumsy, desperate kiss.

Chapter Text

He catches the sound of your startled gasp in his lips, and you are kissing him back before your mind has even fully registered what is happening. It is as if your body knows how to respond to his touch without the need for thought. A whimper catches in the back of your throat and you lean towards him, your fingers tangling in the waves of his hair as his hand that isn't on your neck comes up to cup your jaw.

Kissing him is a strange experience. The taste of his mouth, the feel of his lips, and the scent of him as you press against him are all so familiar, but his movements are bizarrely alien to you. His lips move with a graceless hunger, his tongue plunging ruthless and vulgar into your mouth. There's more fight than finesse to this embrace, and although this is hardly the first time that your passions together have felt more like sparring than softness, there's something new and unfettered about the insistence of his hands and mouth.

Still, it’s only when he eventually reaches his hand from your jaw down to your breast and squeezes in a brutish and artless grope that you are no longer able to ignore the reality that this is not the man you were in love with. You jerk back out of his arms, pushing him away with a yelp before admonishing him.

“Ow! What in the hells was that?” 

“What?” he says, seeming utterly unembarrassed. 

“That hurt.”

“Really? Sorry. It just felt right.” He runs a hand through his hair, avoiding your glare and attempting to hide any appearance of being ruffled. “That feeding business - hells, you could have warned me. I wasn’t expecting it to give one such a rush. It felt good. Like the first hit of silkroot, or a particularly good brandy. Mild pain, and then… well. Something close to euphoria.”

He tilts his head to the side, looking at you as though considering something, and you stare back into his eyes. They glitter in the faint light, seeming deeper, darker, a more complex flecking of green than they have before, as if their depths have only just opened up to you. You wonder if you're imagining the glimmer of recognition in those emerald fathoms. You are far too old for fairytales - not to mention the fact that the ones you were told as a child never had what you could call the traditional kind of happy endings - but you can’t quite quash the tiny part of you that thinks that maybe a kiss was enough to shake some of his old memories loose. Or perhaps the taking of his blood has unsettled just the right part of his body to spur his mind into action. You search his face for the re-emergence of the Astarion you know. Maybe, just maybe, he’s grasping right now for some newly rediscovered remembrance.

“You know,” he says, drawing his speech out as if he’s perfectly aware that you are waiting on his every word with bated breath, “you have an incredible talent. You could make quite a name for yourself in the pleasure houses when we get back to the city if you were willing to do that to people.”

And just like that, your hope is snuffed out.

“You know, you have an incredible talent for ruining things,” you snap.

“Don’t be like that! I’m quite serious. You could make a fortune in Sharess’ Caress if you play your cards right.”

“Do you forget that I am your wife?”

“Oh. Yes. That.” His features crease into a look of disgust. “Still, worth considering for the future, should things not work out between us.”

“If I didn’t know better, I would think that you are trying very hard to make that possibility become a certainty,” you say.

“Well, you can hardly blame me, can you? A powerless vampire commoner from the lower city, if your accent is anything to go by.” The way he says this makes it clear that being from the lower city is the most heinous of all of your traits. “You’re not exactly the type one would take to the Moonflower midsummer ball, are you?”

He chuckles derisively. You have never heard of the Moonflower midsummer ball, which probably proves his point, but you don’t want to say so, so you glare at him instead.

“Are you actually ever going to rest, or did you just want to find a spot to complain about the food, throw yourself at me, and then irritate me to the point of madness?”

“No need to get snippy,” he says with a sniff. “I was only having fun.”

“Is that what you’d call it?”

Astarion rolls his eyes at the ceiling.

“Very well, then, I shall try my utmost to calm my mind enough to meditate in this horrid little hovel you’ve chosen for us. Oh, don't look at me like that, I'm only joking. Gods, women really don't have a sense of humour, do they?”

“If you think that you are going to struggle resting here, I'm more than happy to knock you unconscious. Really. It would be my pleasure.”

“No need,” he says with a sigh, lying back on the bedroll and stretching his legs out in a way that kicks you off of it. “I'm sure I'll manage.”

“I'll take the first watch, then, shall I?”

“What, in case we’re attacked by all the countless hordes of monsters and devils that we came across today?”

“Just because we haven’t seen anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing there!”

“Do what you like. It makes no difference to me.”

You clench your jaw and force yourself not to engage any further. The quicker he falls into a trance, the sooner you can drink your potion, and take your penultimate rest in peace. If you were sensible, maybe you'd try to resist using any potions for as long as possible, but you're too exhausted to face the idea of seeing your husband in your sleep. Besides, resting properly would require a far longer time spent unconscious around this insufferable version of Astarion, which seems like a worse idea the longer you spend with him.

You've been ruminating on your problems long enough for said insufferable idiot to drift off. Your eyes rove over that face, as familiar as your own, and the sickening mix of love and loss that you feel threatens to drown you. You agonise over those delicately pointed ears, that straight, strong nose, those thick lashes and full lips. They felt so real to the touch. They look so real before you. It is maddening that they no longer seem to house the man you love. You wonder how many times you can go through this before these most adored features shift into markers of hatred in your mind.

As you watch him trance, you are overcome with the thought that if you only cut him open, you might find your Astarion inside. You might have to sift through the guts, crack open the bones, slough out the excess blood and fat and gore, but maybe, deep within that glistering skinful of innards and tendons and muscles, the man you love is waiting for you. The dagger is right there by his side as if he hoped that he might retain enough awareness of the world while resting to sense it if you tried to take it. You could do it ever so gently, though. Pick up the dagger with slow, subtle fingers. Carefully cut a neat line down his torso, peeling back shirt and skin layer by layer, digging through white fat and red gore until you find your beloved—

You shake your head, catching yourself, and press the heels of your palms into your eyes. Your vision had been starting to fade; you must be so tired that you're starting to risk falling asleep unwillingly. Astarion is deep in elfin slumber. Now might be your best chance to safely drink a potion of sleep, risking those short moments of vulnerability in exchange for the rejuvenation that will follow. 

You move slowly over to where the bottles have been set, keeping your eyes on the unconscious form of Astarion all the while. Propping yourself against the wall opposite his resting place, you carefully remove the stopper, then pause for several breaths before putting the bottle to your lips. You wait to watch his chest fall once more, then rise in that same steady rhythm of dreaming. You tilt the bottle back, drink it down, and place the empty vessel quietly on the floor beside you.

When your eyelids flutter shut, you do not fight it.

Chapter Text

Sleep cloaks you in blackness, and then slithers away before your chin even hits your chest. The aches and tiredness that had wrapped themselves around you like a second skin have been sloughed off, and even your irritation with Astarion feels lessened. Affection outweighs annoyance as your eyes blink sleep away and you take in the sight of him, lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling, an expression of blank innocence smoothing the sneer from his face.

He’ll be out for hours, and as beautiful as he may be, you don’t think that you have quite enough amorous feelings towards him to spend the entire time watching him in slumber. You take the dagger from beside him and decide to explore the buildings nearby. Circling back every now and again to check on him, you discover that this part of the ruined realm seems entirely decimated. Every last object is either long since stolen or shattered to pieces; no matter how much you investigate, you cannot find a single thing of use. No more potions, nor weapons, nor anything else that might help you survive this ordeal.

Dejected after your fourth trip of searching nearby buildings and discovering absolutely nothing of note, you head back to the room you left Astarion in, only to find it empty. The fear that has been following you for days now tightens around your throat like a length of hempen rope. You don’t let yourself swing. You force yourself to take a steadying breath and go in search of the missing elf.

“Astarion?” you call tentatively as you edge deeper into the house. Each room you enter is empty, but when you come to the farthest room, you notice that the back door is slightly ajar. Attempting to push it slowly in order to open it quietly, you wince when, halfway opened, a low creak emanates from its rusted hinges. You freeze for a moment, but hear nothing in response to the noise, so you slip through the door and into the street.

Astarion is there, sitting on a pile of rubble with the self-assured air of a king on his throne. He is combing his hair. You feel such a rush of emotions that they rob you of speech for a moment, relief and irritation and amusement and exasperation combining into such consternation that you blurt out the first thing that comes to your mouth.

“Where in the hells did you find a comb?”

Not, why did you leave without finding me, or why are you brushing your hair in the middle of the street in hell, or any of the other slightly more pertinent questions that your mind could have come up with, but never mind. Besides, you can’t pretend you’re slightly curious, if a little put out, at how Astarion has managed to find the one intact item in this entire area.

“How should I know? It’s mine, I assume. It was in my pocket.”

“But why—“

“Look, shouldn’t we go, now that you’ve finally returned from wherever it was that you disappeared off to? Excellent job at keeping watch, by the way. I felt incredibly protected waking up alone in the middle of the hells with my companion nowhere in sight.”

“What? You can’t be annoyed at that! You’re the one who was convinced that we didn’t even need to keep watch!”

“Until you convinced me that we do.” He stands, gives you a look that you cannot read, then turns and starts walking in the direction of the looming mountain in the distance. “Come on, then. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

“We still need to get the pack—“

“Then fetch it,” he calls over his shoulder, not slowing down. For a moment you stare after him, waiting for him to stop and wait, but you quickly come to the realisation that he does not plan on doing so. Swearing, you dash back into the building, grabbing the pack and stuffing its strewn contents back inside before running back out to the street. Astarion is already at the end of it. He pauses to look around - though never back at you - then strides onwards. You curse him, and hurry to catch up. Affection lies beaten and bleeding inside you. Annoyance has once again won out. 

Chapter Text

The sense of foreboding stalks the streets behind you. You are being watched, you’re sure of it. Still, you cannot fathom how. You’ve not seen anything living for days now, and you’ve more or less decided that your circlet must stop you from being magically scried in any way: you can think of no other reason that Gale wouldn't have contacted you or tracked you down by now. Your friends' silence is proof of your protection, and you cannot risk losing that protection in the hopes that they manage to get through before your husband.

Once again, it doesn’t take long for you to take the lead on the walk, with Astarion lagging several paces behind you. Still, you are surprised to find he seems to be actively helping in your search for the source of your sense of unease. At each intersection of rubble-strewn street that you come to, he makes a point of peering in each direction, sometimes crouching or leaning to peek around crumbling brickwork or scraggly foliage in his investigations.

You assume he is attempting to make up for his general disagreeableness by making himself useful. It seems that this Astarion and the one you love share one trait, at least: an extreme aversion to apologising directly. Fond memories of finding your tent already set up or an item of clothing mended before you could even ask for it to be fixed come back to you, quirking your lips up into what feels like your first smile in an age.

Eventually, you decide that you, too, should extend a tentative peace offering.

“Thank you,” you say to him when you next see him searching. He turns to you, eyebrows up in question.

“Whatever for?’

“You know, for helping me look. For keeping an eye out for whatever it is that's following us.”

“What? You still think something is following us?”

Frowning, you scan his face for a hint of sarcasm, but you find no evidence that points to him joking.

“Yes. Of course. Don’t you? Can't you feel it? Like we're being watched?”

“Not particularly.”

You blink. Perhaps perceptiveness is just another skill that Astarion has forgotten, but his nonchalance is making you second-guess yourself. You suppose it would be only natural to be a little overly paranoid after everything that you've been through.

“So what the hells have you been looking for?”

“Some form of civilisation. Surely even the hells have shops? Bathhouses? I feel disgusting. And these clothes—“ 

“I’m sorry,” you say, pressing your hands to your eyes in incredulity, “you’ve just lost a lifetime of memories, and we’re stuck in the literal hells, and you’re worried about what you’re wearing?”

He shrugs. “You know what they say: clothes maketh the man.”

“Isn’t it manners maketh the man?”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“Besides, it seems to me that it’s actually memories that maketh the man.”

“Well, if you’d only give me that circlet then we might be able to save ourselves all this wonderful back and forth, mightn’t we?”

“I’ve told you I can’t.”

“You haven’t told me why.”

You sigh. “It’s protecting me from someone who wants to find me. If I take it off, they’ll know where I am.”

“You’re in the hells, woman. Whoever it is, they’re hardly going to be able to show up here at the drop of a hat, are they?”

“They might, actually. He’s rather powerful.”

“Oh, please. How powerful can one man be?”

“He’s about one step removed from godhood, so…”

At this, Astarion freezes, then spins on the spot to face you, his expression flipping from contemptuous to livid.

“You’re being hunted by a god and you're only just telling me now? You’ve just been dragging me around with you? What if he finds you? What will he do to me?”

“You know what, I'm fairly sure he'd like you. He'll kill you before he realises that, I’m sure, but still. You and he certainly seem to share some traits.”

He narrows his eyes at you, but his response is flippant.

“I'm sure you mean that to be insulting, but all I'm hearing is that you think I’m godlike.”

“Of course that's all you'd hear.”

“What would a god want with you, anyway?”

“He wants me back with him, I imagine.”

“But why.”

“Because I’m his wife.”

Astarion frowns. “But you said you’re my wi—“

Watching comprehension dawn across his face is a beautiful thing, and you could almost laugh at it, until you see the gleam in his eyes. Something about the hunger in them scares you.

“I’m a god?”

“The other half of you is a sort of demi-god, maybe. He’s not an actual god, as much as he - and you, apparently - would like to be. But he’s bad, Astarion. Really bad.”

“Good and bad are always relative.”

“Not really. Not in this case.”

“Hmm.”

“No, not ‘hmm.’ He kills people. Tortures people.”

“Allegedly.”

You grind your teeth together. You've been trying to save Astarion - and, yes, admittedly, yourself - from the painful explanation of the past year. You know better than most how horrifying it can be to discover that your past was a dark and bloody thing. That protection can only go so far, however, and if he's reaching a point of seemingly starting to idolise the very man you're fleeing, then you think it's high time for some difficult truths.

“You want proof, do you?” you snap.

“Well, I'd at least like to give myself a fair trial.”

“Fine. Fine .” 

“What in Corellon’s name are you doing?”

Astarion’s voice is slightly muffled by the shirt that you are now lifting over your head. The rough threads that he so considerately used to mend it mere days ago scratch at your face as you pull it off. You turn, baring your back to him, then glare at him over your shoulder.

“He did this . To me. So you can see, I think, why I say he's bad. And why I'm not willing to risk him finding me.”

Astarion's mouth is open, but for once, no words are spewing forth. His eyes dart to and fro across your back, seemingly unable to tear themselves away from the mess of livid lines that pattern it in jagged, raised scars. His expression is one of horror, and you wonder if you should feel at least a little bit bad for springing this on him so suddenly, but you don't. If anything, you resent that it had to come to this. He drove you to this. A little horror might be exactly what he needs.

You drag your shirt back over your head and turn back to him. He doesn't meet your gaze; his eyes seem a million realms away.

“Look, I'm sorry to break it to you like that, but you didn't exactly leave me much choice.”

Your tone is brusque, but you are starting to feel the faintest of pangs of remorse. Your voice has pulled him back to the present, his eyes refocusing as he shakes his head.

“I wouldn't do that. Never. I wouldn't.”

“Not you, maybe. Not now. But two hundred years is a long time, Astarion. A lot can happen over the centuries. A lot can change.”

“Not that much. I cannot change that much. Surely.” The hunger is all gone from his expression now. When he finally meets your stare, there's a pleading look in his eyes, and the way his voice lilts up on his final word makes it sound more like a question than a statement of fact.

“Not all of you,” you say softly. “But some parts.”

“Gods above.” He shakes his head again, looking sober for the first time since his accident in the river. “What in the hells happened to me?”

Chapter Text

You begin walking again, and Astarion walks by your side, no longer allowing himself to fall behind. You chew on your lip as you try to decide how best to answer him.

“That’s not an easy question to answer,” you say eventually. “I didn’t know you for most of it, but it wasn’t an easy two hundred years. The time we did spend together, though… well, that was pretty rough going, too. Death cult, brainwashing alien tadpoles, ritualistic sacrifice, rather too many deals with devils…” You count them off on your fingers, and Astarion winces at the list. “You get the picture. You didn’t just become like that overnight. Bad things happened, and you got swept up in them, I guess.”

“Swept up in it? Look, I have never been one to see myself as a hero, as far as I’m aware, but I should think that I’m a few steps above being swept up into bodily torture. I must have become a monster.”

“Parts of you have, maybe, but not all of you. And, you know, we all have our monstrous sides.”

“Oh, do we? Pray tell how many people’s backs you have brutalised in the past two hundred years?”

“I’ve carried out more than my fair share of horrors.”

“Really.” His voice is flat with disbelief.

You give him a sad smile. “Do you want to know the first thing I thought when I met you? For the first time, I mean. My very first thought?”

He gives an uncertain nod.

“I thought what a pretty corpse you’d make. And I had a thousand equally dark thoughts to come. Sometimes I would wake up in the night and turn to look at you as you tranced, so silent and peaceful, and all I would be able to think about was now satisfying the snapping of the bones in your neck would feel beneath my palms.”

He is staring wide-eyed now. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“It’s supposed to make you feel like you’re not the only person in the world who has ever thought or done fucked up things. And seeing as we’re both still here, we’ve clearly managed to control those thoughts enough to stop from killing each other. Admittedly there’s been a few bumps along the way—“

“A slight understatement, from the sounds of it—“

“But,” you continue doggedly, “we have a chance to fix those issues. And then we’ll have a shot at getting better. At being better. And I think, after everything, we deserve that. Don’t you?”

“Well, I suppose so,” he says, but his tone is glib. “It’s all rather a lot to think about, you know. I’ve only just discovered that I need to get better. If you’re even telling the truth, that is.”

You let loose a humourless laugh. “I’m sure it would be much easier to decide that I’m making it all up. By all means, make your own way through the hells if you want.”

“I think we both know I won’t be doing that.”

“I know. I am trying to help, Astarion. I love— I mean, I care a lot about you. Or the person you have become. I just want to get us to safety, and it will be a lot easier to do that if I can trust you.”

He eyes you warily for a while, then sighs. “You can trust me. And I do believe you. For now, at least. Until I find any evidence to the contrary.”

“Good,” you say, and try out a smile. He returns it, if a little awkwardly, and you continue on your journey in a tentatively amiable silence.

Chapter Text

The dark shape of the mountain ahead seems no closer, despite the weariness of your feet telling you that you've been walking for hours. The scene around you is slowly changing, though. The tightly packed ruins are becoming sparser and tumbled red brick houses make way for rotting, greening wooden structures, which eventually peter out entirely. Beneath your feet, the paved road becomes cobbled streets, which becomes a dirt track. In the distance, you can see more buildings - all teetering spires and toppled walls, perhaps an hour or two’s walk away - but the space between is wide and open, devoid of any features beyond a dry and ruddy soil aside from a smattering of wonky huts around halfway between the two sprawling wreckages of the towns.

“That blasted mountain isn't getting any closer, I swear,” says Astarion from just behind you. You've been continuing your journey in silence, only breaking it with the occasional comment on which street to take, or whether to avoid a certain hazard blocking the path. “And I'm exhausted. And there's nothing for leagues around. Can't we rest here?”

You shake your head, although you can feel the exhaustion nipping at your heels too. You won't be able to go for much longer, but you can hold out a little while yet, and you're loath to rest before you need to; you've only one potion of sleep left.

“Those huts aren't too far. Let's get to them, at least, before we call it a day.”

Astarion rolls his eyes, but seems to want to stay on your good side for once. “Fine. If you insist. But I will not be taking the first watch.”

“Deal,” you say, too weary to argue. You wonder if it has occurred to him that you never appeared to rest the last time you stopped off to sleep, or whether this version of him is too self-involved to pay attention to such necessities of others. Either way, he hasn't brought it up, and doesn't seem about to now.

You stride on into the plane, feeling more exposed than ever in the vast open space.

“Can you really not feel it? The sense of something watching us?” you blurt out eventually, turning to him, exasperated.

“I don't know. Maybe?” He shrugs. “It's pretty low on my list of sensations, if I can be frank with you. There's this awful hollow feeling in my chest, like I'm missing a part of myself, and from what you say, I am. Then there's the headache of not remembering anything at all beyond vague, blurry images of my life before. Plus the fact that, according to you, I'm now some sort of vile undead god-monster… well, can you blame me for putting maybe being watched as a fairly low priority?”

“But you must feel it a little, at least?”

“A little, maybe.”

You get the sense he's only saying it to placate you, but you don't push it further. You're both getting tired, which means you're both far more likely to snap at each other, and today's walk has been bordering on amiable since you revealed your scars; you don't want to do anything to risk the delicate accord you seem to have come to. You walk on, every step becoming harder going, your feet growing leaden, your eyes growing heavy. Even your breaths become slow and laborious, and you force yourself to keep your head up, keep your legs moving, keep your eyes on the horizon.

Maybe your tiredness by the time you reach the huts has dulled your senses. Maybe the lack of any living things around for days has caused you to become lazy. When you eventually reach the strange cluster of huts in the middle of the plane, you barely even think to check inside the largest of the structures before going to step in. All you can think of is sitting down, taking the weight off of your feet, and trying to resist drinking your final potion for as long as possible. You cannot bear the thought of your next rest after this. The knowledge that you'll be back in your husband's grip is a curling tentacle of dread that has snaked its way through your insides, cramping and twisting until it's almost all you can focus on. It's only when a slight movement catches in the corner of your eye that you freeze on the threshold. Astarion almost bumps into you, but blessedly has the sense not to exclaim when he does so. He simply raises his eyebrows in question, and you point into the hut.

There are three huge piles of what look like rags standing in the centre of the shack. The shape of each of them is almost, but not quite, humanoid, hunched and sloping and far too wide and low to be actual people. All three of them are twitching slightly.

It's the sight that makes you freeze, but the stench, when it hits you moments later, has you doubled over in a silent retch. You stumble back from the doorway, dragging Astarion with you.

“Gods,” says Astarion, his lip curled in disgust, “what in the hells is in there?”

“Shut up,” you hiss under your breath, “whatever it is, it might hear you.”

Chapter Text

You wait, in tense silence, to see if you hear any movement from the huts. Your hand is still wrapped around Astarion’s wrist from dragging him away, and you can feel one heartbeat pass, then another. You’re about to breathe a sigh of relief when the voices begin to speak.

“We can hear you already, petal,” croaks a voice like dying trees.

“Been hearing you a while, haven't we, sisters,” rasps a voice like rotting leaves.

“Hearing, yes, and seeing,” sighs a voice like wilted flowers.

“And smelling,” adds the first voice with a cackle.

“Seeing and hearing and smelling you for at least one sleep–”

“Two sleeps!”

“Not quite three sleeps!”

“Saw you cross the river, we did. Saw you trip.”

“Saw you slip!”

“Saw you pretties take a dip!”

A shrieking laughter starts up, spilling out of the doorway of the hut, succeeded by the shambling shapes that you just saw within. You only caught a glimpse of them from behind before, but now that they are facing you, you can see their features clearly enough: protruding noses, bat-like ears, dark and sunken eyes set in faces of putrescent green skin. In the dim light of the hells, you can see them for what they truly are.

Hags.

Your mouth is dry, and you have to swallow before you can force yourself to speak. The sense of doom is so great that your chest feels entirely crushed by it; there is something so terribly, terribly wrong with these creatures. Their cackling and cawing islike nails on a chalkboard, raising the hair on the back of your neck and beckoning bile to the back of your throat. You force it down, and force your words out.

“Why have you been watching us?”

“You've taken what was ours, petal,” croaks the first hag.

“We stole from hags?” Astarion hisses at you in disbelief, but you shake your head in wide-eyed denial.

“We’ve never met you before. We’ve never taken anything from you.”

“Lies!” rasps the second hag. “Bone and guts you took from us!”

“What? We never— ah!”

You’re cut off as a blistering heat spreads out across your chest, and you look down to see the new stitching of your shirt glowing white-hot. You cry out, desperately pulling the shirt away from your skin. Beside you, Astarion doubles over, cursing, clawing at the pocket of his trousers before throwing an object onto the floor by your feet. Its radiance burns its shape into your eyes: a comb. The comb Astarion was using earlier. Your heart sinks as you realise, suddenly, where you have seen it before: in the strange home that you and he rested in, bathed in, and tended to each other in days ago. Hadn’t you said yourself that it reminded you of Ethel’s teahouse as he combed your hair with that very comb? Hadn’t it so clearly been the residence of something magical, something dark, that a hag’s lair should have been obvious to you?

You curse your stupidity. You’ve fought a hag before, and that fight was enough to teach you that here, now, with the state that you are in and the powers that you are lacking, you have no chance against three of them.

Your only option will be to beg for mercy. You try to ignore the scent of decay that rolls off of them as you plead your case.

“We’re sorry. Truly, truly sorry,” you begin. “If you’ve been watching us, you’ll know—“

“We've watched you, yes,” interrupts the first hag. “But we see you now.”

“She: Thrice born and twice died,” says the second.

“He: As above, so below,” says the third.

You share a brief glance with Astarion. There’s something about their riddling speech that makes you feel queasy, as if the words they speak have some power that you cannot quite see. There’s a corruption to their voices that makes you want to shudder.

“Your fortunes we shall tell, if you'll return what was stolen,” says the first hag, and you immediately shake your head.

“We'll return it without payment,” you say, for you know enough of the ways of hags to know that no deal with them is ever as it seems.

“A deal has been offered. You’ll take it, or you’ll see what happens if you don’t.” The threat is all the more scary for its insidiousness. Before you can object, the third hag speaks.

“First, a half-truth for the half soul: only half a future told. And thankful he should be, precious, yes indeed.”

“No, no,” says Astarion hurriedly, “no truths needed for me.”

You’re not sure if he, too, knows the nature of hag’s deals, or whether he’s simply perceptive enough to realise that he wants nothing that these creatures are offering. Unfortunately, the hags do not seem to care.

"Silence,” says the first hag. “Speak not against the truth of your future.”

“Well, if I must get a truth, I rather think the truth of my past would be more useful.”

“You’ll take what you’re given, boy,” says the second hag.

“You always were good at taking it,” adds the third hag. They all cackle at that, and Astarion looks to you, confused, seeking an explanation. You shake your head, indicating that now is not the time for explanations, seething with hatred for the hags.

“We’ve seen your future, mortal,” croons the first hag when their laughter dies down.

“We’ve seen your end, half soul.”

“It lurks. It comes closer.”

“Which would you know: the how, or the who?”

“The what?” says Astarion, unable to hide the revulsion that their presence is causing him.

“Would you know the how of your death, or the who of your death?” says the second hag.

“I would really rather not know—“

“Choose,” shrieks the third hag, with such unexpected venom that Astarion takes half a step back, eyes widening in shock.

“Fine! Fine. The who, I suppose.”

The three cackle.

“The who, he says!”

“We knew he’d pick the who.”

“Always good at picking, that one.”

“Locks!”

“And lovers!”

“And futures told!”

He looks to you again for an explanation, and again you give your head a small shake.

“Well, go on then,” Astarion snaps at the crones, clearly losing his patience with the hags’ games. "Tell me my damned future, if you must."

"Damned it is indeed, petal," says the first hag.

“A half-truth for a half-life, precious," says the second.

"She will be the one to kill you,” cackles the third.

The three turn to point gnarled fingers in your direction, and Astarion’s stare follows them. You try to assuage the look of betrayal on his face before the crones can do more damage.

“Oh, come on, Astarion. I’m obviously not going to kill you. They said it was a half truth, didn’t they? They obviously mean that I’m going to kill the other part of you. Not you.”

Astarion turns to the hags once more, eyes narrowed and not entirely mollified, but at least the betrayal in his expression is turning to something closer to doubt.

“Some clarification would be useful,” he says, in a haughty tone that you are quite sure the hags won’t take kindly to.

“Can’t be done, precious. Futures too clearly seen have a nasty habit of changing.”

“That’s quite alright with me. I should think I would like this future to change.”

Chapter Text

The hags cackle once more at Astarion’s tone. As much as you may hate these creatures, you cannot deny that he does make himself a rather easy target for their mockery.

“We shan’t change it,” says the first hag.

“Won’t,” says the second.

“Can’t!” sighs the third.

“Besides, we like the taste of this future, don’t we, sisters? Sweet and rotten.”

“Fetid,” agrees the second with a smile.

“Rancid,” adds the third, smacking her lips.

“At least you’ll make a pretty corpse, half-soul,” croaks the first hag, smiling a pestilent smile at Astarion, then turning to wink at you. Astarion’s gaze follows her, and his eyes flash with accusation as he rounds on you.

“That’s what you said! Those very words! Earlier, when you showed me your back, you said you thought I would make a pretty corpse!”

“They've been watching us this whole time, Astarion, she's clearly just copying what I said to make you trust me less. Besides, as I said then, I thought those things back when we first met, but I don't any more—”

“Lies!” cries the second hag.

“She lies!” calls the third.

“We heard her thoughts while you were sleeping—“

“Thoughts of cutting!”

“Thoughts of gutting!”

“Thoughts of slashing and peeling and seeking—“

“No! I didn't—it wasn’t like that,” you protest, interrupting the hags' screeching taunts as Astarion backs away from you. “If I was going to hurt you, I could have, but I didn’t, did I?”

He shakes his head as if your words are no more than wisps of air that he can disperse with enough movement, and doesn't respond further beyond a distrustful glare and a continued backing away.

“Please, Astarion, don’t leave. You can’t believe them more than me—“ 

“Fear not, petal, he won’t be leaving,” says the first hag, making a grasping motion in the filthy air with her wizened hand. Astarion freezes in place, legs rooted to the ground, eyes sparkling with dismay. “Not while we still have futures to see. What do we think, sisters? One truth each? Three revelations for she who has lived three lives?”

“Three’s a good number. Three sounds nice,” agrees the second hag.

“We’ll tell her sorry future thrice,” giggles the third.

You drag your eyes away from Astarion’s paralysed form as the three hags close in on you. Two stand on either side of you, and the third stands right in front of you, uncomfortably close, her strange dark eyes catching yours and instilling such an animal fear within you that you don’t think you could back away even if you tried. The atmosphere has changed around you, becoming something strange and ominous, and you shiver from head to toe. You’re sure your heart would be beating impossibly fast if it still beat at all: instead, it feels like a bursting mass within your chest, simultaneously sucking in your breath and pushing out a nervous tension so great that you feel as though your ribs might splinter any moment. The hags on either side of you move closer still, so close to touching you that you can feel their blighted presence even when you close your eyes in an attempt to steady yourself.

“Great power you shall rediscover,” croaks the first hag, her foul breath tickling your ear.

“One master shall replace the other,” rasps the second hag, running a clammy finger down your cheek, making you flinch.

“When back you do return to hell, you’ll meet your master—“ 

The third hag falls silent, her singsong voice seeming to cut off halfway through her rhyme.

“Oh,” says the first.

“Oh,” says the second.

“Ohohoho,” cackles the third.

“What?” you ask, eyes flicking open, suddenly feeling far more sympathetic to Astarion’s earlier frustrations.

“Mother should know,” says the first hag to her sisters, ignoring your question.

“Mother should like to know!”

“Call her, sisters!”

“Call who?” you ask, but the hags no longer seem interested in your presence. You are shoved roughly to the side as they reach out to one another, clasping gnarled hands with each other, making mutterings and murmurings that you cannot understand.

“What are you doing?” you ask, with little hope of an answer. Their speech - if it is indeed speech, primal and guttural as it sounds - grows louder, and you think you can hear the occasional dash of common within the noises now, although even the words you feel you should recognise carry little meaning for you. Their voices layer upon each other, burying the distinct words within the repetitive building sound of their increasingly loud chanting until it sounds as though tens, then hundreds of voices are joining in with the otherworldly cacophony of primaeval magic.

You edge away from the three hags, keeping your eyes on them lest their chanting leads to anything more sinister, and move to stand by Astarion.

“This doesn’t sound good,” you mutter to him, “do you think we should run— ah.”

When you flick your eyes to his face, you see his stare is already boring into you, the only movement in his still-frozen expression. It seems running isn’t an option for the two of you after all. It could be an option for you, but it would mean leaving Astarion behind. Having seen the fates of those left in the care of a hag before, you couldn’t allow it to happen even to this most annoying and suspicious idiot of an elf.

You have no choice but to watch the fiendish ritual unfold before you, the three hags swaying grotesquely in time with the peculiar rhythm of their chanting. Eventually, the dissonant voices seem to blend into one, and although you cannot see the words forming on any of the hags’ lips, you begin to make out words that make sense to you. It is as though you are feeling them, rather than hearing them, for the sounds in your ears are as bewildering as ever, and yet you seem to understand their meaning at last.

Truths spoken, futures seen,
Hell’s dark mistress, Baalzebul’s queen,
Maiden, crone, mother of all,
Join your daughters! Hear our call!

Chapter Text

Something in the air breaks.

Astarion moves slightly by your side, and for a moment you think he will run, but instead, he stares at the hags, transfixed by the sight of them still, even though, from his idle movements, he does not seem to be ensorceled by their magic any longer. It is only because you are watching him, and not them, that you see the change in his face. His expression drops the edge of terror that it held, changing to one of wonder. His eyes widen, soften, glaze over slightly with a look that you yourself have received from him in the past: lips parted slightly, a look of lust, or love, or some intoxicating mixture of the two. You turn to the hags, to see what spell they have cast upon him, for surely he would not look upon them with such adoration without the power of magic.

You see, when you turn, that it is not them that he looks at after all.

It is another.

A woman.

She stands between the three hags, who have dropped their hands to their sides to allow her to step out of their encirclement. They have stopped their chanting now, although the din of the sound still hangs in the air, growing slowly fainter, more muffled, but not yet faded completely.

The woman steps towards you.

You know her, although you cannot for the life of you think how. She is familiar to you in a way that feels almost familial, as if you have always known her, as if she knew you before you even knew yourself. It is only when you try to pin down a single feature to see if your recognition comes from some similarity to another, rather than this woman herself, that you realise she has no specific features.

It is not as if she changes appearance in the shimmering way of succubi, nor in the bone-cracking way of shapeshifters. She embodies every feature at once, and at the same time, none at all. Her hair, you are quite sure, is raven black, and fiery red, and sun-lit gold and wiry, frizzy grey. Her skin glows pearly-pale-black, bruised-baked-earth-red, iridescent bronze and weathered bark brown, all and none at once. She blooms and withers, barren and burgeoning, a fighter and a lover and a mistress and a slave. She steps towards you, wide hips swaying, frail legs quaking, strong feet bounding, all in one smooth movement.

She is woman, and she is lovely and terrible in every form.

The only things of tangible permanence on her body are the two creatures that adorn each shoulder: on one side perches a screech owl, its wide orange eyes filled with the innate fury of wild things; from the other, a huge green snake hangs heavy, tail entwined down her arm, the length of its body curled around the curve of her waist, scales twisting slowly as it writhes languidly about her.

“A mortal man, for me?” She asks in a voice as light and old as spring. She stands in front of Astarion now, her eyes roaming over his body as he looks back at her in a love-struck daze. When she drags a finger down his cheek, you expect him to react, but he does nothing but continue to stare. When she runs a hand down his chest, still he does not move, but you feel something hot and writhing knotting in your gut. A sense of danger, you think, or protectiveness, anger, or fear. Before you can act, or at least speak up, the woman speaks again, throwing words over her shoulder to the hags who watch her carefully.

“You shouldn't have, daughters. Truly. I like them well enough, but I have things of greater import to be—”

“Not him, mother,” croaks one of the hags. “Her.”

“Her?” says the woman, turning her head to you and cocking it to one side. You’re not sure why the disdain in her tone hurts so much. 
 
“Look at her, mother,” says another of the hags.

“Why? She has little that I want in a daughter.”

“See her, mother,” sighs the third hag, her tone wistful.

The woman turns to you fully, and you cannot help but meet her sparkling, rheumy stare. You feel the owl’s glare from one side of her as it snaps its attention to you, and feel the flick of the snake’s tongue as it sucks in your trepidation. You are trapped there, for a moment, and it feels as though every shame and hope and past and future of yours is dragged into sight of these three beasts, and the three creatures behind them. 

“Three lives,” breathes the woman with is marvel in her voice. “Thrice, thrice, thrice for the nine.”

“Do you see it, mother?” Asks the first hag.

“I see it, daughter,” says the woman, and there is craving in her eyes. “I see her.”

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” you say, taking a step back from the woman, and, on a whim, dragging Astarion back with you. “What in the hells is going on? Who in the hells are you? And what is all this about masters, and threes, and nines, and—”

“You’ve had one, pretty,” says the first hag.

“You’ve had two, precious,” says the second.

“And you’ll have a third, sweetness,” says the last hag.

“The one of the nine,” whispers the woman.

“Absolutely nothing any of you have said so far is making any sense,” you say, trying to push yourself between the woman and Astarion’s stupefied form. “Who are you?”

“She is mother,” says one of the hags.

“She is the first,” says another.

“She is the woman who came before,” says the third.

You get the sense that you will not be getting a clearer answer than this, so you try a different line of questioning.

“What do you want with me? With us?”

“I want you to carry my message,” says the woman.

“Why? To whom?”

“Your thread of fate is tied to one I wish to contact, who is, for now, beyond my reach,” says the woman. “And, my, what a red and bloody thread it is, for one who stands so weak before me. Still, what has gone will come again. Such is the wheel of fortune.”

Her enigmatic responses leave you with more questions than answers, but there is something in her words that ignites a spark of memory in your mind. Her phrases sound familiar, and you wonder whether it could be more than a coincidence. Though this woman looks, in all her abstractness, to be human, there is something distinctly infernal about her.  You cannot help but think that her words echoing those of your previous diabolical encounter in the hells might be more than mere happenstance.

“You’re not the first devil who has spoken to me of threads of fate,” you say, watching her for any reaction.

“No?” She peers at you, then rolls her eyes. “Ah. Mephistopheles. The brute. He might like to think he sees, but he does not have the grace required for this most fragile of powers. The weaving is women’s work. It calls for delicate fingers and a careful eye. You’ve seen his realm, blasted to icy bleakness by his hand. You’ve seen the savagery of his force. Do you think one such as him has the skill to pick out the gossamer strands of destiny? No, girl. He sees a glimpse, perhaps, he gets a feel for a flash of a wider tapestry, but he does not know. He does not truly see.”

“And you do?”

“Perhaps.”

“All of these theatrics,” you say, gesturing to the hags, “and you’re not even certain?”

“It would be manfully arrogant to be certain.” Her face shows a childish solemnity, an old crone’s graveness, yet you are sure you can hear a lilt of amusement in her voice. 

“So, what, you want me to speak to this person for you? Why can't you contact them yourself? And who is it? And why me?”

The woman sighs again. “So many questions. You could take note from your lover here. Silence can be a blessing.”

“He's not my— what have you done to him, anyway? Silence is not a blessing he's usually gifted with.”

“I have done nothing. This is simply the way of mortal men. And some women,” she adds with a smile. “But not you.”

“I'm not sure I can be called mortal any more.”

“No indeed. Perhaps you never were, god-child.”

“Are you going to answer any of my other questions?”

“Only those that have been portented.”

“And which questions are those?”

“All those I have answered, and one more to come.”

Chapter Text

You give a derisive laugh. You know patience to be a virtue, but virtues don't seem to be worth much in the hells, and yours is wearing decidedly thin. You are tired and hungry, and the immense sense of dread hasn't left you since you came across the hags, although it is now battling with bewilderment for its place in your exhausted mind.

“So,” you say, trying not to snap at the presumably rather powerful devil who stands before you, “I’m to regain power, but you won’t tell me when; I’m to have a master, but you won’t tell me who; I’m to carry a message for you, but you won’t tell me what it is or who I’m to deliver it to. Oh, and, I’m to kill him—“ you point at Astarion “—but that’s only half-true, so I presume I’m to kill the other half of him, although you won’t confirm that either. Is that everything?”

The woman smiles at your irritation. “You do not need to know who you will deliver the message to: they will ask you for it.”

“How will they know to ask me— ow!”

The woman has grabbed your forearm, her grip tight enough to be painful, the force behind it far stronger than should be possible by such frail, old fingers, such chubby, ruddy fingers, such pale, delicate fingers. With her free hand, she presses one finger firmly into the pallid flesh of your inner wrist. Your brows knot in consternation, but you have only a moment of confusion before it is replaced with a scorching, flashing pain.

You yelp, wresting your arm free from her and pulling it back, nursing it against your chest. The burning still flares across the skin where she touched you, and your eyes widen as you take in the source of the sensation: a single infernal rune, branded onto your skin, your arm already livid and welted around the place it has been burned into you. You shoot the woman a glare meant to wound. Accusation and confusion sting through the tears in your eyes, but she only smiles wider.

“Now they will know to ask you,” she says. “Now we may send you on your way.”

“What?" You blink. "Why did you have to do that? Why couldn't you just tell me— wait, on our way to where?”

This woman, and these hags, all seem to be operating with some hidden knowledge that they are clearly unwilling to share with you in any way that makes sense, and trying to follow their trains of thought leaves your mind spinning.

“Your thread pulls up—“

“Up! Up! Up!” Cry the hags in unison.

“—up, up back to your land of the living. From there, you will find the way you are meant to go. You'll be abroad once more before long.”

“Why not just send me to whoever it is you need me to give your message to?”

“They are far too well guarded against infernal magic. You shall not reach them from within the hells. Besides, that is not the path fate weaves for you, and I would not risk snapping the thread that binds you.”

“So you’re sending us back to Faerûn?” You try to keep your voice calm, attempting to hide the hope that must dance behind your eyes. You can hardly believe that you might have finally stumbled upon a piece of good luck after every bit of misery that your journey through the hells has thrown at your feet so far.

“Not I,” says the woman, “but one who is gifted in stepping between realms.” She turns from you to face the hags. “Summon her, daughters.”

The hags join hands once more without a moment’s hesitation. Their harsh voices tear through the heavy air, although their chanting does not reach the cacophonous levels of their previous conjuring. You are watching them closely enough this time to see, after a moment of their spell-work, a dark, shadowy shape appears in the space between them. It solidifies, its edges firming up in the dim light, until a form appears that is familiar in its enchanting, shimmering state of flux: a succubus.

The succubus’ eyes first fall on the woman before you, and she smiles a beautiful smile.

“Ah! We thought it was your daughters’ foul claws we felt plucking us from our boudoir.” The succubus swats at the hags’ interlocked hands which currently keep her enclosed in their circle. The action might seem rude if done by one less pretty, but by her fair hand it seems playful, and coquettish, and it makes you smile. “Still associating with none but the finest the realms have to offer, we see,” she says to the woman, wrinkling her lovely nose in the direction of the hags.

“Melusine, my dear. So good to see you. Still subsisting on those scraps of souls you slice up?”

“We’re doing just fine for ourselves, thank you,” the succubus purrs before turning her gaze to you and Astarion. There’s a glimmer of recognition in her wide, round eyes, and she raises her perfectly formed eyebrows at the sight of you. “Oh,” she says, with a smile you cannot read. “It’s you.”

Chapter Text

Melusine's eyes narrow, but you realise with a twinge of trepidation that it is not you that she's looking at. Her stare is fixed on the man beside you, who is still enraptured by the strange woman the hags initially summoned.

“We see you found her, then,” spits the succubus to Astarion. He seems entirely unaware of the succubus’s glare, his rapturous gaze still fixed firmly on the woman, and ignores her words entirely.

“What do you mean by that?” You ask, a tendril of fear curling around your gut, but Melusine waves away your question and turns to the woman, her eyes flaring.

“Release him from your hold. We would speak with him.”

“Why with him?” You ask, standing in front of Astarion to get the succubus's attention, but still, she pays no heed to your questioning.

The woman's eyes glitter, and the owl on her shoulder ruffles its feathers, but she nods. 

“As you wish.”

The woman waves a hand that seems to change as it moves through the air, every line and wrinkle filling out to chubby youthfulness and back again in a single gesture, and the snake that bracelets her arm tightens its body around her to stay in place. There's movement behind you, and when you turn to face him, Astarion blinks. He closes his mouth, which had been hanging open in his stupor, looks around somewhat bemusedly, blinks again, and then settles his eyes on you with a distrustful gaze.

“What's going on? What happened?”

“We were just wondering,” purrs Melusine, causing his head to snap towards her instead, “if you came down here to return what is ours? We were more than helpful to you, and still, you took from us that which was not yours.”

Astarion narrows his eyes, shakes his head, and scoffs in a way that feels either incredibly brave or incredibly foolhardy given the fire that dances in Melusine's eyes and the confusion that still lingers upon his face.

“What in all the realms are you talking about? I've never met you before in my life—” Astarion catches himself, turns to you, and adds in a rather quieter voice, “have I?”

You shake your head, then shrug. “Not that I know of, but—”

“You cannot deny that you have taken what was ours? What was hers?” Melusine interrupts, gesturing to you.

“Melusine, what are you talking about? I've been with him almost ever since I left you, and he’s had little time for thievery” you say, deciding not to mention the pilfered comb. “What is it you think he's taken from you? Where are the others? How have you even seen him before?”

You know of one way she could have seen him, of course. If she's seen the other him. You do not want that to be the truth of it, though. You do not want to imagine your husband coming into such close contact with one who has helped you before. At your words, the succubus’s face creases into the most picturesque frown you've ever seen, and she advances upon you and Astarion, stopping just in front of the elf. She breathes in a deep breath, sniffing the air around Astarion in a way that clearly makes him uncomfortable, then sighs.

“Ah,” says Melusine, “not him, then. Simply one who wears his face. No succubus, for we would have known. A changeling?”

This last question is directed towards the woman by way of a glance through thick lashes, and the woman shakes her head before responding.

“A half soul.” 

“Ah.”

“Is anyone going to tell me what is going on?” You ask, raising your voice. “Melusine, where are the others? What has happened with the one who looks like him?”

Your tired mind is tripping over all of the terrible things that could have befallen your friends if, as Melusine says, one who wears Astarion’s face has found them. The succubus finally turns to you, finally gives you her attention, and finally begins to answer some of the questions clamouring for a response in your head.

“Your friends, beloved, all left us. They have scattered in the winds of the worlds. Three returned to your realm of flesh and sunlight, to tend to mortal matters. Karlach and her horned hero set off on a hunt through the hells to find you; though, we assume from their absence, without success?”

You nod, and the succubus continues.

“Your husband has since summoned us - no doubt one of those beautiful friends of yours let something about us slip - and when he spoke with us, he stole that piece of soul that you so willingly gave us.” Her eyes, wide and wistful, sparkle with a misery that has your chest constricting with sympathetic sadness. “He took it, beloved. It was not his to take, and yet he has it in his grasp—”

“Melusine,” snaps the woman, cutting across the succubus’s lament, “I did not bring you here to hear your woes of trinkets taken.”

Melusine looks reproachful, clearly unused to having her melancholic musing interrupted.

“Well, then, why were we brought here?”

“I assume you are still offering your services?”

“Why, of course, dearest,” grins Melusine with a sultry flutter of her eyelashes, all despondency quite forgotten. “Our carnal offerings are always available for one so resplendent—“

The woman tuts. “What need would I have of that? Your other services, Melusine. Portals.”

The succubus sighs a delicate sigh.

“Perhaps. For the right price. For the right person.”

“She—“ the woman points at you “—needs to be sent to Faerûn. She may turn the tide.”

Melusine raises her eyebrows slightly. “The cost will be steep.”

“I will meet it.”

“We will need payment from her, too.”

“So take it.”

“Payment is as it ever was,” Melusine says with another alluring smile. “Will you be joining us?”

“I think not,” says the woman, the sternness of her voice backed by the hissing of the snake draped around her.

“Oh, that is a shame,” says the succubus, although there is something in the melody of her tone that makes you doubt her sincerity. “You would be more than welcome, you know. You would not need to lie below.”

There’s a twinkle in Melusine’s eyes that makes you feel as though you are missing out on some inside joke, but the other woman’s face is stony as she responds.

“I will leave you to it, then. I need not warn you of my wrath should you fail.” The strange woman turns to the hags and beckons them to her. “Come, daughters. Our time here is done.”

“Wait!” You call to the woman as she turns to whisk herself away. It feels as though you have a thousand questions you still want to ask her, but you settle on the one that feels the most unknown, holding out your branded forearm to her. “I don’t even know the message I’m to tell this fated person when I meet them—“

“But of course,” says the woman, turning back to you. The owl on her shoulder blinks its fierce eyes, and the snake coils slowly about her. “Tell them this message, then: the seventh kneels to him.” Then, with a soft smile, the woman adds, “And tell him Lilith sends her regards.”

Chapter Text

The three hags reach Lilith as she finishes speaking, and join hands around her as the last word falls from her lips. You taste a tang of something strange in the air and feel a weird pulse of pressure emanating from their circle. The snake wrapped about Lilith rears its head, fangs bared, and the owl on her shoulder flaps its wings as if to take flight, and in a hiss of tongue and ruffle of feathers, the creatures and the crones and the woman all blink out of existence. You stare at the empty space in which they stood for a moment, waiting for any further magic that might spark there. When all is still and quiet for some time, you turn to Melusine.

“You'll really send us back to Faerûn?”

“We shall send you, beloved. Him, we made no deals for.”

“I won't go without him,” you say, although you're far from certain that you have any power to bargain in this situation. Melusine tilts her head to one side, eyeing you, sucking in breath through gleaming white teeth, then shrugs. 

“He'll have to pay the price.”

“He will,” you say quickly. You had been expecting more of a fight, and you're not foolish enough to leave the succubus time to change her mind.

“I do beg your pardon,” says Astarion, in a tone that makes you suddenly appreciate his previous stupefaction, “but are you implying that I need to lie with this… this devil woman?”

“Oh, don't worry, handsome," purrs Melusine. "Your friend will join us too. You won't be alone.”

“Friend? Oh no no no. If you expect me to be glad of not only having to sully myself by fornicating with an infernal being, but also having to bed the very ruffian who has just been fated to kill me, you ought to think again.”

“Oh, for the love of all the gods, Astarion, I am not going to kill you. And you seemed perfectly happy enough to throw yourself at me, ruffian or no, when I fed on you the other day.”

“Well, no doubt your vampiric charms had some effect on me. All the more reason not to do this, I say. You will probably drain me dry of blood, and she will probably steal my soul, or something equally devilish and ghastly.”

“Only a sliver of soul,” says Melusine with a feline grin. You shoot her a look that you hope says please shut the hells up, and she laughs her tinkling laugh. “But you need not lie with anyone if you do not wish it. Our payment is far less than that. All we ask for is a single kiss.”

“Just a kiss? No more?” Astarion's eyes are narrowed with suspicion.

“No more, no less.”

The succubus flutters her dark eyelashes at Astarion, who seems to be weighing up his options, and then she turns to you. There’s a sparkle in her eye as if she’s waiting for you to say something - something along the lines of 'just a kiss, perhaps, but it will make you want to do far, far more.' You meet her stare and stay silent. Devils keep their word, after all, and if this is the price you have to pay to return to Faerûn, you would pay it a thousand times over.

“And you'll send me back to Baldur's Gate afterwards?” Astarion asks.

“We'll open a door to Faerûn for you, yes,” agrees Melusine. You do not miss that she doesn't confirm it to be Baldur's Gate that you will be sent to, but you don't press the issue. Anywhere must be better than here.

“Fine. Very well. Truly just a kiss, and then you'll teleport us away?”

Melusine's lips curve into a smile that could start wars.

“Exactly that. Will you assent?” 

Astarion says nothing, but gives a single nod. 

“Wonderful,” she says, moving towards him. His uncertainty is made clear by the rigidity of his frame, his nervous fingers plucking at the fraying edges of his shirt. His eyes flick to you as if searching for reassurance, only to dart away again when he seems to remember that you, too, are supposed to be a danger to him.

"Come, then," says the succubus when she reaches him, taking him by the hand and leading him into the nearest hut. You follow them inside, unsure if you want to be present yet unable to resist the temptation of watching what is to come.

When Melusine takes Astarion's face in her hands, you cannot help but feel a pang of jealousy, although you're not sure who it is that you're jealous of: her, or him. For her, you feel a desire so wrapped in fear it feels primitive. Your tongue tingles at the memory of the taste of her, and you feel a prickling of the ghost of a blush spreading across your undead skin in remembrance of her hands skimming over your naked form. For him, you feel a longing so painful it aches to consider it for more than a moment. Even when you look away, the image of his face is burned into your mind, and you think you could perfectly sculpt every perfect feature with a thought, they are so ingrained within you. Echoes of his voice still ring through the empty holes left in your head, a constant reverberation of the love and support he once offered you. There is love there still, for you, at least, although it is a painful and jagged thing, closer now to mourning than the fresh adoration it once was.

You blink away your reminiscences and force yourself to watch as Melusine pulls him to her and presses her lips against his. You see the moment when her kiss takes hold. The nervous tension disappears from Astarion's frame: his shoulders sag, and his eyes close slowly, then open again to reveal a lust-hazed stare. His gaze floats over Melusine's form as she pulls back from the embrace, a satisfied smirk on her beautiful face at his expression of infatuation. His heavy-lidded eyes roam over to you, and when your eyes meet, something in his gaze seems to flash. He pushes past Melusine, not overly roughly, though not politely by any means, and closes the gap between you and himself in two quick strides. You catch a glimpse of the succubus's face as she turns to watch him, her pouting lips parted in an expression of surprise that dances on the edge of offence. You barely have time to make the high sound of surprise that escapes your lips when he grabs you and drags you against him before he smashes your mouths together in a desperate and uninhibited kiss.

Chapter Text

Perhaps you shouldn't be surprised, knowing how the magic of Melusine works, but still, the shock of his sudden embrace keeps you frozen for a moment or two. There's a part of you that knows you should push him away - that he's only doing this because he's under the succubus's spell; that he's only kissing you and not Melusine because no doubt this version of him considers you one small step above infernal beings. You know these things, but you cannot find the willpower to break away from him. Not when his hands feel so familiar as they rove across your body. Not when his lips taste so similar to love. You can smell his want - his need - and that scent alone is as intoxicating as any devil's kiss. Instead of moving to push him off, you raise your arms to wrap them around him, and the shape of his torso feels as if it has been made by the gods to be held in your embrace. 

You're so caught up in the sensation of his lips on yours, his tongue dancing between you, that you do not notice Melusine coming to stand behind you until you feel her pressing right against your back, feel her hand snaking around your neck, feel her strong, smooth fingers prying your face to turn towards her. Astarion whines when you move your lips from his, then quickly begins pressing needy kisses along the length of your throat instead, running greedy hands under your shirt, forcefully grasping at your hips and breasts and waist as if he cannot bear not to be touching as much of you as possible. He pulls you closer to him, jealously, greedily, and you can feel the outline of his desire for you pressing against your stomach as your bodies crush together.

Melusine catches your mouth in hers, and your lips part instinctively for this beauty of the hells. She seems to know she need not ask for permission to take her payment: this kiss was hers ever since she reappeared before you. The moment your tongues meet, you are reminded of her power. Astarion's hands, which had until now been grabbing you with such intensity that it hurt, now feel passionate rather than painful. Every ache in your travel-weary body fades: the bruising of your feet is gone, the pain of muscles pushed past their limit dissipates, and the bone-deep exhaustion that has been shrouding you like a fog is suddenly lifted. 

What blossoms in their place is faint at first, although you still retain enough sense to know that it will not remain so. The whispering of young love, of fresh and warm desire, breathes up and down your body, growing stronger, louder, deeper, until that heady combination of lust and love and want and need are all you can think of.

You are reminded of loves from a life you can barely recall, lovers whose faces are blurred but whose feelings are real and raw and new. Where your ravaged mind cannot remember names, your bruised heart can clearly remember the love-struck, love-sick feelings you felt for those boys and girls with naive eyes and wandering hands and chapped lips and sweet, fumbled words. Every drop of obsession, jealousy, soft love, hot love, not-yet-broken-by-the-world love tumbles out of the memories that Melusine's kiss causes to resurface within your mind, filling you with unquenchable desire. You float in a state of limerence between these two bodies whom you have already known so well, yearning for each with such flaming passion that you might cry out if only your lips weren't already so engaged with Melusine's deep kiss.

You need more.

Astarion must feel the same way too, because he begins to tug brutishly at your trousers, and you hear battered seams rip as he pulls at the laces with inexpert strength. Melusine pulls back from your kiss to let out an unbridled, melodious laugh at his desperation, then presses nibbling kisses from your ear down your neck. You move your hands down to help Astarion undress you, and you feel Melusine reach her arms around your waist to unlace Astarion's trousers, loosening and pulling them down far quicker than is managed by yours and Astarion's fumbling fingers. He pulls away from you momentarily to kick off his trousers and then drag his tattered shirt over his head, and the glimpse of his naked form that you catch in the moments before he drags you back into his rough embrace makes the breath catch in your throat. He swallows your gasp, his lips and teeth clashing against yours in his avaricious kiss.

Something stirs inside you, something gutwrenching and bittersweet and not at all in keeping with the euphoric atmosphere cast over you by the succubus. It is not quite sadness, but it is closer to pain than pleasure, and once you start to feel it, you cannot help but delve deeper into the sensation. Perhaps before, the last time Melusine had kissed you, you had wanted nothing more than to get lost, and you had found your escape in her bewitching touch and Halsin’s warm embraces. Now, you want nothing more than to find. You should be entirely enamoured with this pale beauty before you, with his sculpted muscles and lustrous skin, with those dangerously flashing eyes and that feral curl to those perfect lips. If you had loved him for his looks alone, then you know this sight would be enough for you to lose yourself in the ecstasy promised by the succubus’s kiss. Now, though, your longing for the man you found only to lose him again is so strong that even through the lust-filled haze that hangs over you, you cannot help but feel a raw pang of devastation at his absence. 

The succubus must see or sense the disarray of your emotions, for she nips at the shell of your ear before purring into it with perfumed breath.

“Why are you holding back, beloved?” she pouts. “It’s far less fun when you hold back from us. Let go, beloved. Give yourself to us. You so loved it last time, after all.”

She drags your face away from Astarion’s, turning you to the side again to kiss her once more, and this time her magic is enough for your worries to melt away. That recognisable carefree bliss, hot and wet, trickles down your spine, pooling between your legs, wiping your mind of anything other than the flames of desire that her tongue stokes so expertly within you. After all, is it not Astarion’s hands that even now are pulling off your clothes, delving between your legs with unabashed want, pushing inside you with the arrogant desperation of one entirely unashamed of their longing? Is it not Astarion’s lips that graze down your neck, peppering you with hot licks and bruising kisses and savage, blunt-toothed bites? If it is truly Astarion that you want, should you not take every part of him that is offered to you, whole or not?

Melusine breaks away from your kiss, and you twist your head back to look down upon the beautiful elf sucking kisses along your collarbone. He looks back up at you, and when your gazes meet you see that his eyes, heavy-lidded though they may be, are shining with clear, pure lust. And maybe, just maybe, there is a spark of something behind that glow. Maybe there’s a flicker of something closer to love. Maybe you’ll find your love again, and maybe you’ll find some way to be safe together, to be whole together, to be in love together once more.

For now, though, you find you cannot bring yourself to care. You are drowning in that same lust as you can see in his eyes, and in this moment you want for nothing other than more of him, more of her, more lips and teeth and skin. You drag your fingers through his hair, fisting the waves in your hand, pulling his face to yours to kiss him again. You lose yourself in the joining of your mouths, in the strange warmth of his tongue and the familiar taste of his spit.

“What do you want, beloved?” asks the succubus in your ear.

“More,” you murmur into Astarion’s hungry mouth.

Chapter Text

Melusine’s presence disappears from behind you, and you sense her backing off to circle around you and Astarion, watching the pair of you in your clumsy and desperate embrace, letting loose a tinkling laugh through her bared gleaming white teeth. You wonder if you've ever heard a more lovely sound; other than, perhaps, the feral, barely subdued growls that occasionally emanate from Astarion's throat. The succubus slips out of her garments with graceful ease, although you are far too enraptured with the pale elf before you to pay her more notice than a passing glance. Between you, you finally manage to unlace your trousers, and Astarion sinks to his knees to pull them down your legs. He pulls you down onto his lap the moment you step out of them. Your core, already slicked with desire -  for him, for her, for what is to come - presses against the heat of his length. Your lips find each other again, and he releases a guttural groan into your mouth as you roll your hips, rubbing yourself along his cock, your arms wrapped around his neck for balance.

Melusine circles you again before stopping behind you and kneeling at your back. She whispers delicate kisses across the stretch of your shoulders, reaching around you to brush her soft fingertips over your breasts, tenderly rolling your nipples between her fingers with teasing pressure. You are enveloped by their warmth, each so different in their burning. She is the sun, languorous and warm, caressing you with her tender power. She is serene in the constant, eternal nature of her passion, each touch deliberate, unhurriedly setting your body aflame with its want of her. She palms your breasts with gentle hands, her hot breath on the back of your neck making you whimper into Astarion’s kiss, who nips at your lip in response.

He, though, is an inferno. Where she is soft and delicate, he is hard and rough, setting your mind ablaze with a passion tinged with pain. His hands grip bruisingly at your hips, dragging you against him, grinding you over his cock which now weeps with his desire for you. Every movement of his is frantic and uncontrolled. His teeth bite down hard on your lip, his eyes burning with something dark and dangerous as you let out a pained whine, before he releases you and catches you in another deep and savage kiss. You’ve never quite become used to him having the warmth of life, but this version of him burns with it.

As Melusine leans closer to your back, you feel her pillowy breasts squashing against your shoulder blades, and then, to your great surprise, the hot length of her cock pressing into your lower back. You tear yourself away from Astarion’s mouth to twist around and look at her, and she laughs a lilting laugh at the sight of your wide and startled eyes.

“We often forget that you beautiful fleshlings are so bound by one form,” she murmurs in your ear. “Well, you've tasted us in our other shape, beloved. Won't you taste us again now?”

You give a giddy nod, unsure, with the lusty fog in your brain, if you have ever wanted anything more in your life. The sudden longing to taste her in your mouth, to feel her on your tongue, to give yourself entirely to her pleasure is overwhelming. Astarion, spurned by your lips, kisses hungrily down your neck. The succubus gets to her feet to stand by your side, smiling down at the sight of you opening your mouth eagerly to take her in. You make a pleased hum as she slides her length past your lips, delighting in the texture of the devilish ridges and raised veins that glide over the flat of your tongue.

You stare up at her reverentially, drinking in the desire that spills out of her glittering eyes as she smiles her wicked smile. She threads her deft fingers through your hair, guiding you into a steady motion, your head bobbing smoothly in time with her pace. Through your desperation to please her, you feel Astarion watching you as you move your head back and forth, the heat of his stare burning into you.

“Shit,” he breathes, the sight of you gagging so fervently on the succubus's cock appearing to dull his normally sharp tongue. He lets out a heavy breath, a rush of something like lust or jealousy, and then he lifts your hips up, his grasping fingers digging into your pale flesh, holding you hovering above his lap before plunging you down on the full length of his hardness with no warning or hesitation.

You cry out at the stretch, the painful pleasure, the pleasurable pain. The sound comes out as a spluttering groan, gagged as you are on Melusine's cock. He gives you no chance to acclimatise to the fullness you feel before he begins fucking into you with vehemence. Between her steady thrusts into your mouth and the brutal snapping of Astarion's hips into you, you are quickly lost in the sensations, your mind full of nothing but the overstimulating feelings and the wet, rhythmic sounds of the two beautiful creatures taking their pleasure in you.

If you weren't so immersed in the thrill of it, you might notice that Astarion’s movements lack the masterful flair that you once knew. Instead, there's an animalistic element to his energy. The rocking of his body into yours has you careening towards the edge of bliss. His are the movements of a man ruthlessly chasing his pleasure, without his usual instincts of obliging and pleasuring those he lies with, yet still, through passion or force or the magic that has you both so wrecked with desire, he manages to drag you recklessly along beside him towards your own orgasm.

As your climax builds within you your head drops back, the succubus’s cock slipping from your lips, its length dripping with strings of your drool. You cry out as Astarion smashes into you with a savage final thrust, clutching and spasming around him as he twitches inside you, his arms wrapped around you tight, crushing you against him, pushing himself as deep into you as he can be as your bliss overwhelms you. Time stops moving, the moment stretching into hours, hours tumbling into days, days turning into months turning into millennia of pleasure so complete you cannot bear it. For a time you cannot imagine anything else, cannot comprehend any sensation beyond this perfect moment of you and him joined in ecstasy.

Eventually, heart-wrenchingly, the climax fades, and Astarion's grip on you loosens, although you still cling to him. You press your face into the nape of his neck, closing your eyes, breathing in the smell of his sweat and the scent of his hair. You would like to stay in this close darkness forever, your chests rising and falling in unison, the memory of your pleasure still lingering in wisps about you.

And then, slowly, Astarion peels himself away from you.

Chapter Text

Although you ache to keep ahold of him, you let Astarion pull back from you, noticing how cold it feels without the sticky heat of his skin pressed against you. You slide slowly off of his lap, his softening cock slipping from you as you lean back to lie on the floor in front of him, propped on your elbows, your chest still heaving from your coupling, your eyes trying to drink in every detail of his gorgeous dishevelment. His clear green eyes meet yours, glittering and wide, his face painted with an expression you cannot fathom through the dizzying magic of the succubus that still has its hold on you.

Despite her magic - or maybe because of it - you could almost forget Melusine’s presence until she speaks.

“Too quick, beauties,” she purrs, “far, far too quick. We're not even close to being done with you.”

She crouches down beside Astarion, brushing a wayward curl from his sweat-slicked forehead. He moves his head away from her, trying to maintain eye contact with you, but she grasps his jaw and drags him into a ravishing kiss. His gaze is pulled away from you, his eyes closing as he is drawn back into her spell, his mouth opening to accept the irresistible embrace of the succubus. When she releases him, his eyes drift back to you, and the clarity you saw in them is gone; they are fogged over again with lust.

“Beloved,” says Melusine to you as she runs a splayed hand over his chest, her voice warm with amusement, “beloved, listen to his heart! Can't you hear how quickly it beats for you?”

You wish she had not spoken, for now it seems you can hear nothing but the quickening thud of Astarion's heart, and with each beat, you are reminded more and more of the hot, thick blood running through his veins. When you look at him now it is not to look into his eyes, but instead to watch the teasing flutter at his throat. You find yourself entirely spellbound by it. The pulsing throb in his neck calls to you, beckons you, beats out a fast rhythm that has you imagining sinking sharp fangs into soft mortal flesh. A different kind of hunger fills your mind now, your mouth filling with saliva as you remember the heavenly iron taste of him coating your tongue.

“He wants more, beloved,” the succubus sings in her mellisonant voice, and although you felt spent moments before, something about the beautiful curve of her lips and the sparkling promise in her eyes has a fresh wave of want slowly washing over your body.

“He wants to take, yes, but he also wants to be taken. He wants to taste and he wants to be tasted. Isn't that so, handsome?”

“Gods above,” slurs Astarion, blinking heavily, running a trembling hand over the pale skin of your thigh, eyes hazily tracing the shape of you lying on your back before him, your legs splayed open, each bent at the knee. “I–yes. More .”

“Taste her, handsome,” encourages Mélusine, pushing him forward until he's on his hands and knees between your legs. “Taste her desire for you. Taste yourself within her.”

He nods slowly, his eyes unfocused as he sinks to his forearms, his hot, uneven breaths tickling your inner thigh. Your protests, already only half-hearted, fade into a choked exhale as he licks a deep stroke along your cunt before circling his warm, wet tongue around your clit. Your eyelids flutter closed as he laps at you vigorously, and you whimper as you feel him sliding two fingers inside you.

“Curl them inside her, handsome,” you hear Melusine whisper, and you can’t help but moan as Astarion follows her instruction, pressing against that place inside of you that has your vision flashing white. You open your eyes to look down at him, his tongue ardently circling your clit, the spend that he’s not pushing deeper into you leaking out around his fingers. When he looks up at you, eyes heavy-lidded and drunk with lust, you’re not sure if you’ve ever seen a sight so sinful.

You're awash with pleasure, and you watch through a haze of bliss as Melusine positions herself behind Astarion and kisses slow, deliberate kisses down his spine, past his hips, down and down until her mouth is beyond your view. 

You can only imagine, from Astarion’s surprised gasp and subsequent groan of pleasure, that she is mirroring his movements on his own entrance: the passionate licks, the insistent, pushing fingers pressing inside in search of the pleasure within. His movements at your core become erratic, distracted by the succubus's ministrations, but your pleasure is building to such an extent that you thread your fingers into his hair and buck your hips against his mouth, selfishly chasing your own bliss as his breath stutters against you.

Through eyes half-closed in gratification, you watch Melusine rise up again on her knees behind Astarion, fisting her glistening cock with one hand, the other still pumping fingers steadily inside him. She deftly, delicately removes her fingers, swiftly replacing them with the blunt head of her cock, pressing it slowly, inexorably into him. He whines into your cunt as Melusine pushes further in, whispering unintelligible curses against your core as she begins fucking into him. He has given up on licking you, tasting you, fingering you, and instead looks perfectly, beautifully wrecked as he rests his head between your legs, eyes closed and lips slightly parted, consumed by the sensation. The succubus in turn murmurs praises and sweet nothings to you both in her dulcet tones: you feel glorious, handsome , and doesn't he look wonderful like this, beloved , and oh, but wouldn’t it be delightful if you were inside her, too?

Astarion’s eyes flutter open at this last suggestion, his gaze creeping up your body until his eyes meet yours and you give the slightest of nods. With an apparent mustering of effort, he pushes himself up on his arms, hooking one under your hips and pulling you down into position with shaking arms and heavy breaths. All the while, Melusine is fucking him, and you can see his face twitch and spasm with pleasure in time with her thrusts. He grasps his cock, lines up with your cunt, and slides in smoothly, evoking a moan of pleasure from deep within you, his rhythm set by the snap of Melusine’s hips against his own. After a few pumps, he collapses back onto his forearms, caging you in beneath him, looking down at you for a moment before dipping his head to kiss you, wide and wet and open, wantonly sharing the taste of the two of you that still lingers on his lips.

As you feel your climax building, Melusine fists a hand of Astarion’s hair, pulling his head back with a force that makes him whimper, exposing his beating pulse to you once more. You don't know if it's Melusine's tempting whisper of “take him, beloved , ” or if you were already baring your fangs and straining your neck up towards him, but before you fully realise that you've moved, your teeth are sunk into Astarion's throat, his blood filming over your tongue in buttery metallic waves. Your eyes roll back, filling with stinging tears of pleasure as your orgasm breaks over you. You might hear Astarion cry out - it is hard to hear anything over the rush of pure euphoria that overwhelms you - but you stay latched on, not drinking deeply, but allowing the delicious liquid to pulse into your mouth in hot surges as your cunt clenches in ecstasy, while Melusine ruts into Astarion and he ruts into you. 

Eventually, their rhythm speeds up, Melusine letting lose a mellifluous cry as her movements falter, Astarion snapping out a few more thrusts of his hips before his body, too, stutters with bliss, and he trembles above you, speechless in his climax. You release his neck from your bite, licking softly at the smears across his skin and the beads that form on the small puncture marks you have left behind, unwilling to admit that this experience might have come to an end. When his skin is cleaned of any blood, you wrap your arms around his back, sheened though he is with sweat, and hold him against you.

This time, he does not pull away. When Melusine pulls out of him he rolls onto his side, keeping his cock inside you as he catches you up in his arms, rolling you with him and pulling you against his chest. You wonder, then, how much longer the succubus's magic will have its hold on him, but you try to push the thought down. Instead, you bury your face into the warmth of his torso, breathe in the scent of him, and focus on the pitter-patter of his heartbeat. He heaves a contented sigh, and you cannot help but smile, despite knowing how fleeting this affection will be, when you feel his lips press a tired kiss into your touseled hair.

Chapter Text

You do not know how long you lay like that, with nothing but the sound of your erratic breathing echoing around the dark cavern of his chest, his own breaths just as uneven as yours, his heartbeat gradually slowing. You would like to stay in the blackness forever, full of bliss and blood, his arms wrapped around your back the clear and uncrossable boundary between you and the rest of the world.

It cannot be long before Melusine breaks your arbitrary barrier, for your breathing is still laboured. You’re too tired to make any protests at her intrusion: indeed, you’re so close to sleep that you dreamily think it might be nice for her to be in your embrace too. She does not join you, however. She simply moves to stroke your hair, her fine fingers threading through your locks, her nails scratching delicately at your scalp. You sigh happily, though you are quite unsure how it is possible that you had any space within you to feel more gratification. From Astarion’s heavy exhale, you can only presume that Melusine is affording him the same treatment. You nestle in closer to him, and he holds you tightly, both aglow in the pleasance of the moment. When Melusine speaks, her honeyed words seem to flow slowly through the haze of delight that surrounds you.

“Will you give us a sliver, beloved? Just one little bit more of your beautiful soul? He took from us the part you gave before. Won’t you let us take another slice?”

Your mind, though fogged with pleasure and desperate to block out the outside world, catches on her words. He took from us. The mention of your husband is like a fine crack in the joy of the moment. The mere thought of him is enough to remind you that this - all of this - could shatter at any moment. You’re so tired, though. You’ve been running for so long. You don’t know how much longer you can keep going. You want nothing more than to succumb to the call of sleep, to give the succubus anything she wants, to stay under her spell forever—

You open your eyes, starting suddenly with a jolt, causing Astarion to murmur discontentedly, when the dreadful realisation hits you of what the sleep that you are drifting towards would entail. Your husband will be waiting for you. If you want to rest, you must take the potion - the final potion - that you have stowed in your pack.

You take a deep breath. You will hold off for as long as you can.

Your thoughts circle back to Melusine’s request. You remember how the last part of your soul that the succubus took had reduced your husband’s power over you, if only a little. You had given her a tiny sliver of yourself, and Astarion had no longer been able to touch you in your dreams. A spark of an idea comes to you, and you blurt it out through swollen lips into the safety of Astarion's chest before you can think better of it.

“Take it all,” you murmur into his sweat-scented skin. “Take every part that he holds power over. Take every part that loves him. Slice every trace away from me.”

You feel her pull away from you at these words, her hand retracting from the tangles of your hair. When you reluctantly turn your face out of the closeness of Astarion's embrace to look at her, you see her eyes flash with something close to fear, although there is hunger in her expression too.

“You are quite sure, beloved?” 

“Will it hurt?”

“Probably.”

“Will it work?”

Her smile is dark and seductive, all twinkling black eyes and shining white teeth. It seems she does not need to ask what you are planning. “Certainly,” she says.

“Then I’m sure.”

She stoops down and pulls you into a kiss that makes your fear subside into nought, that sends warmth and energy flooding through you once more, that makes you feel as though you could live in this beautiful expanse of bliss with her and him and nothing else forever. Eventually, she pulls away from you, and you latch back on to Astarion instead, pressing your cheek to his chest, needing to feel the hot, sweat-sticked touch of his skin on yours, wanting to devour him and wanting to be devoured. Melusine pecks at his cheek with pillowy lips.

“Once more, handsome?”

“Gods above,” he pants, “I cannot.”

“Oh, come now, darling,” Melusine coos, pulling him by the shoulders back into a sitting position with fearsome and obvious strength that entirely belies her slender form. He drags you up with him in his arms to perch on his lap as you cling to his chest. She threads her graceful fingers through his hair once more as she guides his face to meet hers in a soft but passionate kiss. When she breaks away, he's breathing heavily, but her voice remains silky and smooth. “We're not quite done with you yet.”

Astarion groans, his head dropping forward to rest on your shoulder, his chiselled chest heaving. He shakes his head.

“I truly can’t.”

“Just once more for us, handsome,” the succubus says. “She'll need the pleasure if she's to survive the pain.”

He looks at you through heavy eyelids, and for a moment you think he might say no, but after a long pause, he gives a fatigued nod. You give Melusine a sharp look, though, not having missed the implication of her words.

“You really think it will hurt that much?”

“Well, we don’t know, beloved. Did it hurt when he carved himself into your soul?”

You swallow. “Yes. A lot.”

“Then you know what to expect,” she purrs. “Do you wish to continue?”

Chapter Text

You ponder the succubus’s question, fighting against the fog of desire that her kiss has shrouded your mind in, trying to ignore the stirring between your legs as you attempt to decide what to say.

To your surprise, it is Astarion who breaks the silence.

“When she talks about carving,” he says, “does she mean the marks on your back?”

You nod, looking into his eyes, trying to read his thoughts, wondering where he will go with this line of questioning. His voice is unusually low, gravelly with fatigue or desire, and it makes you want to press your lips to his, to taste the words on his tongue. You force yourself to blink, to concentrate, to ignore the radiant beauty of his tired eyes and flushed cheeks.

“You shouldn’t do it,” he says with a look more serious than any you’ve before seen grace this Astarion’s face. “You can’t put yourself through something like that again. It’s not worth it.”

“Freedom is worth any price.”

You try not to let your lips twist with the bitter fact that he should already know that to be the truth. The true him knows it better than anyone. A little pain, a temporary cost - they are as nothing to the freedom you could gain. You could rest freely once more. You could be free of the fear that he could track you down.

You realise you have come to your decision.

“Do it,” you say, turning to Melusine. “Take it.”

“As you wish, beloved. Now, you had best embrace this image of your love once more—“

“Can’t you just tie me up and be done with it?”

It’s not that you don’t burn with the spell-tinged desire for the man whose lap you’re still perched on, but you cannot miss the exhaustion etched into those fine wrinkles of his face. Melusine laughs her chiming laugh and bats her thick lashes.

“We’re afraid not, beloved. We, unlike your brutish husband, are a being of gentle nature. We’ll need your soul soft and malleable before we peel away quite so much of it.”

“It’s fine,” says Astarion, catching your unconvinced glance at him. “I’ll manage.”

You think that under any other circumstance, you might have bristled at the idea that any part of your husband would have to manage to bed you, but given the two previous rounds of copulation, the domineering stare of the fiendish succubus beside you, and the unavoidable threat of immanent torture, you feel as though you should probably let his choice of words slide. Melusine, it seems, does not share your sentiment.

“You’ll do more than manage, handsome,” she coos, moving forward to kiss Astarion. You wonder if the magic of a succubus ever fades, or if she has the power to keep you here forever, sharing kisses when your want begins to wane, enraptured by the beauty of her body and the bliss of touch that her kiss confers.

You watch, from your intimate position on his lap, as Astarion’s eyes film over with lust, and you feel his length hardening, twitching between your legs, and you cannot tell if his groan is one of ecstasy or agony. Melusine turns her head to you, presses her soft lips to yours, slips her hot tongue into your mouth, and the flames of your passion are stoked to blazing once more. Your body instinctively presses closer to Astarion, grinding languidly on his lap, and you make a hum of approval when you feel him guiding your hips up, lining up his head with your entrance. Melusine backs away as you slowly sink down onto him.

You wince, and Astarion hisses in a quavering breath, each of you too far past the point of over-stimulation for your joining to be anything other than a dizzying mixture of pleasure and pain. Your breathing becomes heavier as you sink further, Astarion’s hands gripping harder at your hips. You press your foreheads together as you slowly fill yourself with him, heedless of the beads of sweat that bejewel his brow, smarting at the stretch of him and at the same time pining for more. When you finally have taken his whole length within you, you pause, trembling and tender in his arms, savouring the anticipation or drowning in the apprehension of what is to come.

He leans in for a kiss, and when his lips meet yours you are both spurred into movement again. There’s nothing rushed in either of your movements. Your pace is slow and steady, rocking into each other with hot breaths into each other’s mouths, down one another’s necks, coaxing forth your shared pleasure until the soreness that you felt becomes an ache of a different kind. Your breath hitches, your hips rolling faster, Astarion mumbling wordless, meaningless noises into the crook of your neck as he bucks up into you with gradually increasing intensity.

You had been thinking that you didn’t have it in you to reach another climax, but now your thoughts are fraying as the sensation of pleasure swells within you, the anguish of exhaustion melting away to reveal the thrumming of ecstasy. You can hear from the changes in his breathing and feel from the jaggedness of his movements that Astarion is nearing his own peak. He lets out a throaty moan, thrusting with such strength that his pelvis grinds against your clit, and you gasp at the white-hot sparks of pleasure that it sends shooting through your body, knowing that you must both be moments away from tumbling together over that edge.

And that’s when Melusine strikes.

You do not remember feeling anything the last time Melusine took some of your soul from you. Hadn't she said it was like shedding skin? Something so naturally shucked off that you wouldn't notice, wouldn't feel, wouldn't even realise when it's gone?

This time it is different.

It's like skin being removed, that much is certain.

But this time, it's a flaying.

Chapter Text

You lash out frantically at the slash of sickening, white-hot pain slicing across your back, twisting yourself half off Astarion’s lap before his arms catch you and haul you back against him, your front pressed against his chest, your back bared to Melusine’s tortures.

“What in the hells are you doing to her?” his voice echoes from somewhere beyond the seething ball of pain that is your entire existence.

“Hold her still.”

“I’m— I'm bloody trying—” Astarion spits in response.

You hear a rush of air through sharp teeth, and imagine you can feel the perfumed breath of the succubus on the raw slice of your back before she speaks.

“Be still.”

Maybe her kiss has given her some power over you, or maybe she purrs the command with such perfect sweetness that your mind can do nothing but obey, or maybe the pain has simply paralysed your body. Whatever the cause, your body slowly stiffens, then collapses limply into Astarion's arms.

“Keep going, handsome,” she purrs, and you screw your eyes shut as another stab of pain splits you open from behind.

“What?! She’s half dead, for the love of the gods, I cannot just keep going—“

“Well, she will be entirely dead if you do not keep her tethered. She needs pleasure to balance the pain.”

If you could focus on anything beyond the anguish you would hear the threat in her words, the danger that drips from her tongue. As it is, their conversation flows past you as you writhe in stock-still agony.

“She didn’t die the first time, did she? Are you telling me that he— that I— that he fucked her while making those marks?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he had words and spells that we do not. It matters not. She needs an anchor.”

There is another flash of pain, so bright it blinds you through the inside of your eyelids. You find some strength again, though not enough to kick and struggle as you want to. You let out a scream so loud it echoes off the hollow of Astarion’s throat. You scream until there’s no breath left in your lungs, until your throat cracks, until the only sound you make is a broken, gasping inhale. Your screams become an animal keening, and your head flops forward, resting on Astarion’s collar.

“I can’t,” he says, and you can feel the vibration of his voice through his throat where your forehead presses against it. “She’s bloody screaming, for Corellon’s sake, I cannot—“

“Fine,” hisses Melusine, with the voice of a viper, “she can tether herself.”

You feel a fiendish hand grip your hair tight, and the succubus pulls your head back, presses her soft lips to your ear, and as your eyes drag back open she murmurs her wicked words into your mind.

“Bite him, beloved. The pleasure will help with the pain.”

Your vision swims from the torment, but eventually, your gaze drifts in and out of focus to settle on him. You look at him with your eyes of famine. You smile at him with all the sharpness of your teeth. You do not think there’s anything in the realms that you wouldn’t do to make the pain stop.

He looks so scared, though. Little more than a frightened boy. There’s some disgust on his face, too, you think: as if he doesn’t know that you have been far, far worse than this tortured, half-mad thing before him. As if he doesn’t know you at all. He looks so pure, so untouched by the horrors of the worlds, with his fear and his haughtiness and his sad green eyes, that for a moment you almost think you might muster the strength to resist ruining him.

Almost.

But flesh is flesh and blood is blood, and you’ve never been one for denying your instincts. The trail of bodies that lie in the wake of your past are testament enough to that. It’s the kind of realisation that you would have laughed at, were it not your life, were it not so sharp: you never truly got rid of your dark urges. At best, you replaced one with another.

Astarion was always on the list of those who should have been consumed by the first. Perhaps this is how it was always meant to be.

Him, consumed by you. You had almost allowed it to happen the other way around. This way around, though? This way feels right.

So you bite.

You bite with the full strength of your love.

Sharp teeth snag into tender flesh and then, gods, then there is a burst of the only thing that seems to dull the pain: blood. You drink greedily, entirely unthinking in your natural, bestial instinct to take more, more, more of the only thing that seems to offer any escape from the agony you are in. You are mindless, unaware of anything or anyone around you, unaware of cause or effect, your entire existence sharpened down to the hot, bright knife edge of pain that is all you know. Pain and blood. Blood and pain. All you can be sure of is the more blood you can drink, the less pain there will be. You drink more.

More.

More.

Chapter Text

It's as though Astarion wants to be drained. It’s as though he only ever existed to be yours entirely; as though he was made to be consumed. His blood rushes into your mouth with the giddy glee of a long-lost love reunited. It coats your tongue with its thick, coppery embrace, mingling in taste with the salt of the sweat on his skin. You revel in the sensations: iron and salt, warmth and the promise of death.

And why not drink him to death, says a voice in your head. A familiar voice, high and reedy, sneering through teeth like broken bones. Who is he to us?

He is love, a quieter voice replies from a deeper, darker, lonelier place inside you, and you cannot be sure which voice speaks the truth. Perhaps, though, you can work it out. Perhaps you can remember the truth of it, one way or another, through the fog of pain and bloodlust. You try to recall the vividness of his smile, the deftness of his ever-moving hands, the perfectly coiffed waves of his hair. Had these things not been things you loved?

They seem of little worth compared to the blood. 

With the hunger in your heart and the agony of the flaying of your back, it's all too easy to ignore the desperate battering of his unskilled arms against your chest.

You force yourself to think of his bark of a laugh. You loved that, didn't you? And the way that he would make you laugh, too, with his quips and jokes and catty lines. The way he thrived trying to make your face light up with nothing but his words, his wit.

But doesn’t his blood do just the same? Can’t you taste yourself, your lost life, that burning sun of vitality within his pulsing veins? Doesn't that, too, light you up from within?

The strength of his resistance is failing now, harmless hands clawing weakly against your skin.

You disregard them. You try to focus instead on the way he made you feel. Safe. Seen. Like life was worth something. The way he never made you feel like a monster. 

His blood is coming slower now, straining less to escape his perfect form. You no longer feel his hands on you. His arms are neither fighting nor enfolding.

You remember how he once thanked you for saving him. You remember how you had been the only one he hadn't been afraid of. He had welcomed you into his life like a hero from the bardic tales as if you weren't death herself in disguise. You had both been slaves to your individual urges, and you had vowed to save each other from them. 

But now you have both urges, and he has none. Now it's you, alone, who can save you both. Now it's up to you, to change, or to doom.

His blood is only the slightest pressure on your tongue. His pulse seems to live within you, rather than in him. His heart beats into yours. His life belongs to you.

It's time to choose: monster or hero. Resist, or embrace.

A heartbeat passes between you; yours, or his, or something shared. Then another beat, but fainter. So faint you hardly feel it at all.

It's time.

You pause for one moment longer, waiting for a heartbeat that never comes.

Is it too late, then? Have you missed your chance? Surely not, surely not, although it's so hard to feel the grainy passage of time with the blood thundering in your heart and the pain strangling you from behind— 

You tear your teeth away from Astarion's neck, your mouth agape, breathless and witless. As the buttery summer-game taste of him melts from your tongue, the agony of Melusine's ministrations hits you once more with full force, and this time Astarion's arms are not there to hold you in place. Your vision crashes to black from the torment, and you lash and thrash and flail blindly around you. A hand connects with solid, hot flesh, nails digging into something soft, and you hear a cry of distress so poignant that tears spring to your sightless eyes, and you blink away the stinging of them as the pain on your back begins to fade.

Your vision returns, and drags your other senses with it. Your body fizzes and trembles with the aftermath of your suffering. Your stomach glows with the power of your feast.

Melusine is crouched a few steps away from you, one delicate hand clutching at her cheek, black blood seeping through her fine fingers, exquisite eyes shining with accusation through her dark lashes. While usually your gaze would long to linger on her glorious form, you have no thoughts to spare for her now. Your sole focus is on the ground before you.

Astarion lies there, motionless. You gather him into your arms, barely able to hear the sound of sorrow that seeps from your lips over the pounding of his blood in your veins. His body is corpse-soft in your embrace. Eyes once glazed with lust are now glassy from blood loss. The flush of life has fled from his cheeks, and the murderous bow of his lips is deathly pale.

“He's not dead, you know,” says Melusine, in a voice that makes it clear she wouldn't care either way.

“No?”

She shakes her beautiful head, still dabbing at the gash you must have made in her cheek, her raven locks swaying sombrely with the movement. “Listen to his heart, beloved,” she says.

You close your eyes and listen. You're not sure what you're hoping for, but hope sparks in your chest regardless.  You hold your breath to shut out the wheezing rattle of your lungs.

There's a sound that breaks through the subsequent silence. You can hear the faint, struggling beat of his heart. His breath, though tremulous, persists.

You exhale.

“And my soul? His control over me? Did you take it?”

“We think so. We shall see. It was not the cleanest of cuts.” She prods pointedly at her cheek, which is already knitting itself back together. “Still, we think we took enough.” She cocks her head alluringly to one side, then nods towards Astarion’s inanimate form. “What do you feel, beloved?”

You blink down at him, trying to fix him with a piercing stare, trying to see beyond the injuries and into the image of the man you loved. You hadn’t considered that your twisted love for your husband might be tangled with your love for the rest of him. Then again, now that the adrenaline is fading and the weariness is setting in, you wonder how much you considered any of this. This, like everything else in your life, seems to simply have been a thing that happened to you, rather than something you deliberately moved towards. This was nothing more than another beat in the strange play that you find yourself acting out, centre stage, with lines that fill your mouth and movements that happen without thinking, acts that you only have time to reflect on when the curtain has already dropped.

You see the meagre pulse that still beats within Astarion, stuttering in his ravaged throat. He has a splendour to him still; that much you cannot deny. There’s an appearance so perfect beneath the bloodstains that it stirs some destructive urge within you, although your body is far too spent to act without your accord. But attractiveness is all there is, you think, as you look down at him. You feel cautiously for any tender spots, any adoration beyond that which is natural to hold for a being of such beauty.

“I feel nothing,” you say eventually. Your words sound as hollow as your heart.

It’s not quite the truth, though, although your mind and body still reel from the pain too much for more elaboration out loud. You do feel something. You can still throw your mind back to happier times, and though you no longer feel the agony of love, you do not feel entirely numb. There’s something like nostalgia, perhaps, warm and honeyed and golden, humming around the edges. There’s something crueller, too, that tastes like the bitter green of jealousy, of watching others who have something that you desperately covet but can never truly own. So it’s not quite true to say that you feel nothing.

But you are certain you do not feel love.

Chapter Text

“Good,” says Melusine. “Feeling nothing is a good sign.”

You’re not sure anything about this is good. It certainly doesn’t feel good. It feels as though you’ve lost something you weren’t even aware that you had until now. Still, there’s no taking it back now. That much, you are sure of.

“So I’m truly free?”

“Oh, we wouldn’t say that,” she says, accompanying her words with a melodic giggle that feels entirely out of place in the face of Astarion’s grisly state. “You’re a vampire, are you not? We’ve freed your soul, yes, but you and your master will always be bound by blood.”

You feel a yawning emptiness within you: something like hunger, but more raw, bleeding, bloody.

“So all of this was for nothing?”

“We wouldn’t say that.” Melusine tilts her head, her pretty nostrils flairing as she sniffs for something you cannot perceive in the air. “You need to go now.”

“What? I can't just go— go where? Astarion is in no state to travel—”

“So leave him.”

“What?!”

She shrugs. “Leave him. What is he worth to you, after all this?”

“I'm not— what? No! I might not love him but I'm not just going to abandon him in the damned hells—”

“So take him, then,” says the succubus, sounding bored. “But you will need to take him now.”

There's something in the way she says it that brooks no argument. She begins waving her fingers through the air, snagging fingertips on strands of magic or matter that are entirely hidden from your mundane eyes, and you know she must be using her fiendish powers to summon the portal she promised you. You crouch over Astarion, shaking him gently by the shoulders, tapping at his pale cheek in a desperate attempt to garner some kind of reaction. His eyelids twitch but do not open.

“Come on,” you mutter at his lax face, trying to ignore the sparks and thrums of magic that are filling the hut at the succubus's summoning. “Please wake up.”

A portal crackles into life across the hut, and you swear under your breath.

“Just give him a moment to recover,” you say, turning to Melusine.

“We cannot, beloved,” she says with a sweet smile. “We are needed elsewhere, and here is not a safe place to stay. Lilith only bade us to teleport you, after all. It matters not to us whether he stays or goes.”

“Fine. Shit. Fine.”

You pick up one of Astarion’s limp arms, looping it around your neck then clasping it in one hand, then standing and lifting him up with a hiss of effort. He is heavier than he looks - or perhaps you are weaker than you thought - so wrap your spare arm around his waist in an attempt to keep him there. You’ve never been the strongest, and your recent ordeal has sapped what little strength you had, but you can draw up just enough force to drag him to Faerûn with you. From what you remember, you owe him that much, at least.

“Wait,” you say, turning back awkwardly to face Melusine, “he's a soul, or part of a soul, or something. His body is already in Faerûn. How will he exist if I take him through with me?”

She laughs her musical laugh, and the beauty of it grates on your frayed nerves. “Oh, you fleshlings and your corporeal husks. If you take him with you, he'll be made in the image of his soul. Your bodies are not nearly so complex nor unique as you would like to believe.”

You might be offended by her tone if you had the energy to feel anything beyond exhaustion. As it is, you simply nod tiredly and turn away from her, adjusting your grip on Astarion as you move towards the portal. 

“Where does it go?” You call over your shoulder, unwilling to waste any more of your waning endurance on turning, encumbered as you now are.

“To Faerûn, of course.” You fancy you can feel her mocking smile slicing through the gloom behind you, sharp teeth perfectly shining out from her perfectly full lips.

“Where in Faerûn?”

“Somewhere you and we both have a pull.”

You resist rolling your eyes at her ambiguous answer. You have no energy left to bandy words with her. You are done with these fiends and their riddles. You’re done with the hells and their torments. Wherever the portal leads, surely it will be better than here. You take another step towards the portal when a tremor in Astarion’s arm makes you pause to study his face closely.

He finally seems to be stirring; his eyes flutter open to stare dazedly at the floor, before trailing slowly up to your face. You think you feel him try to pull away from you, but it's so weak that it could be your imagination. You tighten your grasp on his arm, pull him closer, and step into the flickering light of the portal.

Chapter Text

Part 3: Returning

There’s a popping sound, and a strange twang in your guts, as if your insides tried to stay in the hells for a moment longer than the rest of you. For an unknowable wisp of time, you float weightlessly in a swirl of colour and sound, and then a flash of pure darkness blinds you. Suddenly solid ground materialises beneath your feet, and your knees almost buckle from the pressure of reality reforming around you. You hear a wheeze from Astarion by your side, and just manage to grip him tightly enough to keep you both upright.

The rushing in your ears subsides to the delicate sound of birdsong and the soft rustle of tall, ancient trees gently swaying their leafy branches. The quiet noises of life buzz and chirp and hum all about you. Somewhere out of sight, a stream must flow, for you can hear the sound of it dancing and splashing its merry way through the forest. Your lungs fill with the verdant scent of Faerûnian countryside. Currents of warm spring wind and cool river breeze caress your cheeks and whisper through your hair. Motes of pollen hang lazily in the air, dancing away from the spot where your arrival has disturbed them. They flit in swirling flecks before your face as you breathe in deeper, then exhale heavily, relishing how clean and fresh the air is compared to the dank, festering miasma of the hells. The blossoms decorate the trees so heavily that you can almost taste their sweetness on your tongue.

As your eyes adjust to the brightness after so long in the endless gloam of Maladomini, you catch a glimpse of green and gold, of dappled light shining through wafting leaves, of sun-drenched rocks and well-worn woodland paths through sandy soil. Far off, past grassy slopes and gilded orange sand dunes, there is the glimmer of a body of water, the light of the midday sun dancing across its calm surface in shimmering prismatic flashes.

For a moment, the sun languidly kisses your pallid skin, and the warmth of it is more welcome than a true love's embrace. But then you notice that the kisses have teeth. It kisses with daggers. It kisses with a flaming tongue and molten lips. It bites.

You think your body should be used to pain, after everything you've been through. You think your nerves should have been scorched to numbness. You think your mind should welcome it like an old friend, rather than screaming out in alarm and then shutting off entirely.

It is not so, however. The pain is not familiar, nor lesser for having been known so intimately for so long, nor for being suffered so recently. The pain is instead dreadful in its enormity.

You fall to your knees in the sunny grove, dropping Astarion’s weakened body beside you.

You burn.

Chapter Text

Your vision splinters into black. You think your eyes must have melted from their sockets in the intensity of the heat, because sight is quickly lost to you. You sink into the kind of pain that is so absolute that it is impossible to remember - impossible to even imagine - existing in a state that isn't entirely consumed by the utter torment of it. In this moment, pain is all that ever was, and all that ever will be. Worse still, at the flickering edges of the agony, you can feel your body trying to heal itself, sticky-new skin and fire-kissed blood desperately spreading and pumping only to slough off in a new burst of ashen sparks. The tiny fragment of your mind still capable of thought thinks only one thing: that you wish it would stop. You are bent on death. You know that its embrace will be your only escape from this infinite suffering. 

It is a surprise, therefore, when you suddenly feel the pain seep away, and a new sensation rolls over you. You are still in darkness, but it is a blessedly cooler kind of dark. You cannot see the change from the empty sockets of your eyes, nor feel it through the disintegrated nerves of your skin, but some other, deeper sense tells you that you are now safe.

Safe from the sun, at least.

But then there is movement in the darkness: a feral growl, a snarl so animal in its nature that some primal part of you longs to flee if only your half-molten body were capable of movement, and then comes the sound of tearing flesh and crunching bone. For a moment you are afraid that it is your flesh, your bones, your wrecked body that is being savaged by the unknown beast that shares the darkness with you. You fear you are being torn apart without even being in control of your faculties, lacking the senses to even feel it, until you hear a cry of pain in a voice that is not your own - a cry in a voice that is at once so familiar, and yet so strange. You know then that the monster has attacked another. Not you. You are safe.

You sag in selfish relief.

You feel new eyes begin to swell in your sockets; you feel your eyelids stitch themselves back together over them. Your skin knits itself back over bones that were mere moments away from becoming ash, and you find the wherewithal to emit a rattling groan as your body slowly regains its shape. Your mind reforges thoughts, too, though they are slower and heavier than you would like. That cry you heard - that cry of pain - was undoubtedly Astarion. You cannot find a name for the feeling that squirms in your gut at the realisation that he has once again been the victim of harm. It's not quite guilt, not quite worry, not quite horror. Before you can land on a choice, and a subsequent action, a voice cuts through your contemplation.

“Quite the entrance, little cub. How about we get you inside before this spell wears off and your undead bones drift away on the wind, eh?”

This, too, is a familiar voice. You would recognise that harsh accent anywhere, although it must be close to a year since you heard it last. You want to cry at the sound of it. Your body does, at least, although your mind fights the urge. Your newly reformed eyes are becoming hot with tears, and there is a prickling pressure at the back of your throat. You don't let yourself let them loose, though. Not yet.

“Jaheira?” You ask, needing to be sure. In the darkness the weakness of your voice is all the more pronounced, and you wince inwardly at the wavering quality of your words.

By way of response you feel strong, wiry arms pull you into a hug, and you smell a waft of Jaheira’s scent, of cloves and herbs and incense, as she holds you in her arms. She hugs you like a mother would, maybe. You cannot remember how that ever felt, but you imagine it must have been something like this. She hugs you in a way you long for: that much, at least, is certain. In a way that feels as though it does not belong to you, somehow. It makes it harder to stave off the tears. Impossible, in fact, which you realise when they begin to seep from your screwed-shut eyes. She hears you sniff, and pulls away brusquely.

“Not here. Come on. Let's get you somewhere safe.” 

And with that, you feel her arm wrap around your shoulders and lead you firmly through the cloud of blackness. There is still movement around you: something else is here in the shadows with you too, although your straining eyes cannot see it. You sense her turn her head, and she shouts back over her shoulder into the depths of the darkness.

“We need him alive, Halsin. I have questions that need answering.”

You open your mouth to tell her that him is not the person she thinks it is, but the threat of further tears still has you in a chokehold, and all you manage is a suffocated whimper. You’re not sure you could find the right words to explain the hellish past few days anyway. There’s another growl from dark as you let yourself be led through the black. Eventually you feel a change in the air: the cool crispness and echoing quiet of stone all around you, and the damp, musty smell that comes from being underground. 

It’s only when the darkness falls away, and you find yourself safely inside the inner sanctum of the Emerald Grove, and you see the concern, the care, the love on Jaheira's wise and wizened face that you finally allow yourself to weep.

Chapter Text

Jaheria tuts, though not unkindly, then drags you back into a hug. She had partially wrapped you in her cloak while leading you into the sanctum, and now she tugs it off of herself and wraps it fully around you as she embraces you. The hug is a little awkward - she's all bone and stringy muscle, and never was one fully in touch with those traditionally maternal virtues - but you are sobbing too deeply to care. She pulls away long before you have fallen quiet, resorting to half-hearted pats on the back and slightly nettled mutters of “there, there,” when her patience for your outburst of sadness has waned. Eventually, your crying quietens, though only because your chest feels hollowed and empty and the sounds of your sobs have ground your throat red-raw.

“There you are,” says Jaheira, when she deems you to have fallen still and quiet enough. “You're alright, aren’t you?”

You sniff, and give a weak nod, blinking the last of the tears from your eyes.

“And you're quite done with all the emotional theatrics?”

Her tone is slightly mocking. You try to make an indignant scoff, but it comes out as more of a watery hiccup, which somewhat ruins the effect.

“I see you're not done being a complete witch,” you snap, in a voice still thick from weeping.

“Ha! Never. Besides, I've been called far worse things. Never marked you down as such a crybaby, though.”

Your sadness and exhaustion have all dried up, and have been replaced by a spark of irritation that is close to catching on anger. You've just survived gods only know how long alone in the hells, and you'll be damned if this old woman is going to mock you for having finally reached the end of your tether after a year of no contact. It's only when you go to spit some retort back at her that you see the glint in Jaheira's eye and the twitch at the corner of her mouth that tells you she is riling you on purpose.

“You're being deliberately mean,” you say, half accusing, half bemused.

“Maybe. A witch never tells of her tricks.”

“Why?!”

“I've always found rage more useful than sadness when it comes to keeping going.”

You want to stay angry - she’s quite right that it feels a damn sight better than weepy - but you cannot help but be amused at her familiar flavour of cynicism. The irritation fades, but the exhaustion and sadness remain blessedly at bay too. You give her a reluctant grin, shaking your head at her.

“I've missed you,” you say, somewhat reticently.

“Ach, you bhaalspawn. Always so sentimental!”

She says it with a roll of her eyes, but she smiles slightly and gives your shoulder a squeeze before continuing.

“So. Tell me. What happened?”

“You tell me what happened. Why are you here? Why aren't you in the city?”

“That can come later. Right now, I need to know how you arrived here - straight from the hells if the stench is anything to go by - with an extremely weakened terror of Baldur's Gate by your side.”

“It's not him, Jaheira. Well, it is, in a sense, but not the one who has been terrorising us. You can't hurt him—”

“I'd wager it's a little late for that.”

“He's done nothing wrong. Please—”

Any further pleading is interrupted by the grinding sound of the great stone door at the entrance of the sanctum opening. You back further away from the entrance, wary of the sunlight that spills in through it, although you already stand several feet into the safety of the internal gloom. In the doorway, the great, looming silhouette of Halsin stands, dwarfing the pair of tieflings that enter by his side. As he moves further into the inner sanctum, the candlelight throws his face into harsh relief, and something in his expression makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You’ve seen him grim-faced before, of course, but there had always still been an ember of warmth in his eyes that acted as a counterweight to his grizzled visage and imposing frame. Now, though, there’s a hardness to his expression that you’ve never seen before, and his eyes are cold and predatory. You try to suppress a shiver and pull the cloak tighter around yourself as he addresses Jaheira.

“He’s secured,” he says, in that low, slow voice, and you wish you could find comfort in its familiarity, but you instead find yourself wanting to cry. He turns to you, and there’s the slightest of breaks in his voice as he opens his arms to you. 

“Tav,” he says, by way of greeting or offering, you’re not sure, but you fling yourself into his arms regardless. His hug is everything that Jaheira's wasn't - sure and warm and all-encompassing. You feel yourself growing misty-eyed again, but you blink the tears away for fear of Jaheira’s scorn. Despite the disquiet you felt at his expression, you cannot deny that his broad arms wrapped tightly around you create an overwhelming sense of safety. For a moment you can ignore the tense atmosphere of the grove, the ferocity of his expression, and the new layer of sharpness in Jaheira's speech. For a single, wonderful moment, you forget your worries in his strong, loving arms, and you let yourself think, for the first time in a terribly long time, that whatever comes next, you won't be facing it alone.

When you finally loosen your grip on him, he pulls back to hold you at arm's length, his huge hands grasping your shoulders. He looks wearier than you have ever seen him, but he still manages to tug his lips up into a genuine smile for you.

“By Sylvanus,” he says, and you think you can see the slightest spark of his usual warmth in those tired old eyes. “I am glad to have you back.”

Chapter Text

Jaheira gives quiet commands to the two tieflings who entered with Halsin, and the pair leave to carry out her instructions as the two druids lead you deeper into the grove’s sanctum. You recognise the tieflings, you think, although your tired mind struggles to dredge up either of their names: they look like some of the refugees that you helped the last time you came to this grove. Before you can ponder their identities for long, you come to a stop in one of the grove's sleeping quarters, and Jaheira pulls a rough shirt and rather tattered pair of trousers from a chest to thrust into your hands before sitting down on one of the room’s many cots.

“Not beautiful, perhaps, but better than nothing,” she says, nodding her head at your murmured thanks. She doesn’t bother to avert her eyes as you pull the clothes on, but Halsin respectfully becomes deeply interested in a crack on the opposite wall until you are fully clothed. You can’t help but feel this attempt at preserving your modesty is a little redundant, given some of your past activities, but you still appreciate the gesture.

“Are you hurt?” He asks when you’re done dressing.

“No. Not badly. Incredibly tired, and always hungry, and a little shaken, but not badly hurt.”

It's not entirely true, but you don't know how to say how you feel in a way that will make sense to them. With the flaming agony of the sun over and done with, you are becoming increasingly aware that something inside of you isn't quite right. The scars on your back feel like a gaping wound, a great open window to your soul left shattered and empty. The hollowness of it isn't a hurt in the sense of a physical injury, but something more akin to the eternal hunger you've felt ever since Astarion turned you all those moons ago. Still, you tell yourself that this feeling, like your hunger, will be something you can learn to live with.

It's hardly like you have any other options.

“You were burning alive, Tav,” says Halsin. Some of his characteristic softness returns to his features as his eyes crease with worry. You bite your lip and nod, inspecting the skin on your hands for evidence of the sun damage. They are still a little red - a rare sight on your pallid, undead complexion - and your fingers show a slight tremor that you cannot quite suppress, but otherwise, you seem relatively unscathed.

“I was. But you saved me just in time, it seems.” You turn to Jaheira, frowning. “How did you find me?”

“We've got a constant watch set up around the grove. You could say we're on high alert these days. You were lucky it was me who spotted you, though, and not some oaf with a sharp stick and not a word of magic to his name.”

“You're truly not hurt?” Asks Halsin.

“Truly. Vampiric healing at its finest, I suppose,” you say, shrugging. You can’t help but wonder if it would have been quite so successful had you not fed so recently, and the thought of your most recent bite causes a stab of guilt to lance through your gut. You look to Halsin with worried eyes.

“Astarion - is he alright?”

“He’ll survive.”

Halsin says this rather brusquely, but you suppose that is as much as you could have hoped for.

“It’s not him, Halsin. You must have noticed. His eyes— he’s not the one who ascended. He’s everything that he stopped being— I don’t even think he’s a vampire—“

Halsin holds up his hands in a calming gesture, cutting you off as you trip over your attempt at an explanation.

“Alright. Alright. He’s safe enough as he is for now, whoever - or whatever - he may be. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been, and what’s happened to you? We thought—”

He stumbles over his own words and casts his eyes to the floor. You turn to Jaheira, eyebrows raised in question, and she continues for him.

“We thought you were dead,” she says, with her distinctive bluntness. “Your husband certainly seems to think you are. So tell us from the beginning exactly what has happened, and who exactly this nice mortal man you’ve brought back from the hells with you is, and then you can rest, and feed, and we can decide what to do next.”

You nod, attempting to corral your thoughts into a timeline that makes sense, and then, with words that stutter and sentences that start and restart in order to tell the tale properly, you recount your adventures in the hells as best you can. When you tell them you succeeded in destroying Astarion’s infernal contract with Mephistopheles, Halsin visibly sags in relief.

“That is welcome news indeed,” he says. “It feels rare, these past few days, to hear anything other than misfortune.”

Jaheira, however, is harder to please. Her eyes are narrowed as she questions you.

“And how, pray tell, did you get Mephistopheles to agree to that?”

“Oh,” you shrug, “you know me and my sorcerous silver tongue.”

You are not sure why you do not tell the whole truth. The words seemed to form on your tongue without any real deliberation. Jaheira raises an eyebrow at you. 

“I know it. But I'm not sure I know it to be slippery enough to bargain with an archdevil of the hells and come out on top.”

You shrug again. Something about the empty pit inside of you makes it easier to lie to them. You tell yourself that you're saving them from the worry of your deal with the archdevil. The seven thousand souls will be your burden alone to bear.

“He must have been in a lenient mood. He gave me a gift, too.”

“A gift? From the archdevil of Cania?” Jaheira is no longer attempting to maintain polite levels of incredulity.

“He gifted me him. Astarion. His soul. Half of it, anyway. That's who you've got out there. You can't hurt him, Halsin, he was trapped down there - tortured down there - he's just as horrified by everything that has happened as the rest of us are.”

Chapter Text

The two druids share a look that you cannot interpret. They look less surprised than you were expecting; they certainly seem less surprised than you felt when you yourself discovered the truth of Astarion’s split soul. Halsin simply sighs, nods, and passes a hand over his tired eyes.

“That makes sense,” he says.

“It does?”

It does, of course. You know it does. But only because you’ve heard the whole story from Astarion’s own lips. You weren’t expecting this much acceptance from your companions, and certainly not so quickly.

“We knew there must be something. Something that happened to him during the ascension. And there was something off about the man I’ve just put in the cells. The lack of fight, the eyes, the scent… I should go and tend to him soon.”

Those words have your mouth drying out from worry. You swallow thickly, your tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth.

“You said he was safe.” You try to keep the note of accusation from your voice, but you don’t quite manage it.

“So he is. But I could have shown more restraint. Should have shown more restraint. I think, deep down, I was glad for the excuse to lash out.” He sighs again, as if breathing itself is quite the task. “Actions made in anger often lead to regret, but rarely quite so quickly. I’m sorry, Tav. But I doubt there is a person in this grove who would be surprised to hear that there’s some infernal influence at play here. The actions of Lord Ancunín in the past days have been— well, they've been beyond anything I thought possible of the Astarion we knew.” 

A tight coldness constricts your chest at his words, making you have to fight for your next breath. For a brief, giddy moment, you wonder if you could live with not knowing. You could just not ask. You could pretend you didn’t hear a word of what Halsin has just said, and you could go on living in the wonderful ignorance of whatever it is that has caused him - sweet, steady Halsin - to appear so world-weary.

It is a nice thought, but you never were very good at letting things be, and the questions break from your lips regardless of the fact you’re quite sure you won’t like the answers.

“What has he done? Where are the others? What happened after I left you?”

Halsin meets your entreating stare, but says nothing, shaking his head as if he doesn’t have the strength to form the words.

“Halsin, please, I have to know—“

“And you will know, in time,” Jaheira cuts in, “but not until we’ve heard your story in full. So you found some lost part of Astarion. Great. Then what? How did you get back here?”

There’s a flintiness in her tone that tells you that striking back might spark a fight that you are in no position to win. You sigh and return to your tale, trying to push the gnawing worry of what your husband might have done in your absence down as you force your mind to focus on your slow escape from the hells.

“Right. So I found Astarion. This Astarion. Well, not this this Astarion— gods above, this is going to be difficult,” you say, pressing your palms into your eyes. When you look back up, both Halsin and Jaheira are watching you expectantly. You force yourself to try again. “Alright. So, Astarion’s soul was split in two by the ritual, and I found the other half in Mephistopheles's citadel. But then, um, he lost his memories. In the Styx. And now he’s… well, he’s still Astarion, I suppose, but he’s different. He doesn’t know about anything much - not about Cazador, or the Absolute, or us, or any of it.”

“Is there anything he does remember?”

“His name. And that he was a magistrate in the city.”

Jaheira does an exceptionally bad job at hiding an eye roll at that.

“I’m sure a little youthful arrogance has done wonders for his personality.”

You grimace. “You could say that.”

“Alright. So we’ve got a useless half of his soul. Then what?”

“Then we tried to make our way back to Abriymoch. I thought you found me, at one point,” you say to Halsin, “but it was just a regular bear.” You say this last part a little apologetically, unsure if it’s rude to mistake infernal beasts for friends, but he doesn’t appear to be offended.

“We were searching for you, of course. Wyll and Karlach were, at least. But we had no way of tracking you down while you still wore that.” Halsin gestures to the circlet that remains on your head. “It was strange, finding some comfort in the fact that if we couldn’t find you, it meant you were at least safe from Lord Ancunín.” He says the name with a sneer that borders on a growl, and the worry tugs at your gut once more.

“Safe from him, perhaps, but not from said bear. I think that must be why that Astarion thinks I’m dead. He saw me after I was attacked by it, in my dreams, or my head, or however it is that he can contact me when I’m unconscious. I was in a pretty bad state.”

Your lip twists at the memory of your guts spilling out from you like pink velvet ribbons, red blood blossoming across your ruined shirt, a pair of pale hands desperately grasping through you as if you were made of air. It conjures a strange mix of emotions: part horror, part hunger. As is so often the case these days, you push the feelings down, trying to stamp them out like the embers of a campfire.

“But you’re alive,” says Jaheira.

“But I’m alive. Well, as alive as an undead thing can be. Astarion - the other Astarion - helped heal me.”

You describe your journey onwards: the blossoming of joy at having found Astarion; your horror of hearing of his torture and his horror at having watched your own; Astarion’s fall in the Styx; your tentative building of trust with the memory-deprived version of him; and how that trust was then shattered by the strange chanting prophecies of the hags.

“It was strange,” you say. “We didn't see a single living thing for days, and then we came across three hags in the middle of nowhere. What were hags even doing in the hells? I always thought they were fey.”

“Night hags, most likely,” says Jaheira, looking thoughtful. “The infernal cousins of the hags of our realm.”

“Can they really tell the future, do you think?”

“I don't know. I may be haggard, but that does not make me knowledgeable in the ways of hags.” She tuts, seemingly irritated at her lack of knowledge, then looks back at you. “Well? What did they say?”

“Something about new masters and rediscovering great power. And lots about threes. Oh, and they said that I'd be the one to kill Astarion, but they also said it was only half true. And I did just drain him half to death, so I suppose…”

Jaheira tuts again. “Anyone could have predicted that. You're a vampire, are you not? That's like prophesying that a pup will chew on its master's shoe.”

“And I'm the dog in that situation, am I?”

“You're the vampire in this situation, cub. Being close to you carries the risk of getting bitten.”

You can't argue with that, as much as you might like to. Hells, even with your belly still full of Astarion's blood you can't deny you've been paying close attention to the thrumming pulse in Halsin’s thick throat this entire conversation. You sigh, nod in reluctant agreement, and continue retelling your journey. You tell them of Lilith, and of Melusine, although the pain from your ordeal with your soul is still a little too raw to touch upon, so you only tell them how she teleported you directly to the grove.

“And then we were here, and, well, you saw the rest.”

Halsin nods gravely as you finish speaking, then gives your arm an affectionate squeeze.

“Thank you for telling us. We've much to discuss, but first, I had better go and check on Astarion—”

“Won't you tell me what's happened with you?” You ask, although you know it's selfish to keep him from Astarion for much longer.

“I can tell you what you want to know,” says Jaheira, waving Halsin away. As he leaves the room, she pats the space beside her on the cot, inviting you to sit beside her. “I'd take a seat if I were you. It's not a pretty tale.”

Chapter Text

“So,” says Jaheira, turning to you fully as you take a seat beside her. “You left everyone behind in the hells. Shadowheart came back almost immediately to warn the tieflings - she sent me a message to say that you told her our dear Lord Ancunín had threatened to harm them. From what I've been told, Wyll and Karlach left to search for you, while Halsin and Gale remained in Abriymoch to wait and see if you returned.”

“They didn’t wait for long, though?”

“No. Not for long. I let them know they needed to come back not long after Shadowheart's return to Faerûn. I'm afraid your husband did not take your apparent death lightly.”

“What did he do?”

The words come out as barely more than a whisper.

“I can only tell you what we know. We've pulled most of the Harpers out of the city.”

“But what did he do?”

The weight of desperation in your words makes your voice break.

“We're still gathering information about the extent of his actions. Karlach and Wyll are safe.”

This knowledge should be reassuring, but the way she says their names - as though they make up a definitive list - only makes you worry more.

“Where are they?”

“Still in the hells, searching for you. Once you're all settled here, I'll contact them and call them back.”

You nod. “And the others?”

“It seems we’ve all been targeted by your husband in some way or another. Waterdeep is in chaos. Gale has returned there, although we've heard little from him since. 

“You've heard little from Gale? Of all of us, surely he has the best means to remain in contact?”

“You would think so,” says Jaheira. “Alas, the whole city has fallen silent. We've heard a message or two, but little enough, and nothing at all over the past day or so.”

You try to force your hands to unclench, your shoulders to relax, your jaw to slacken. Gale has powers beyond your reckoning. He has the means to protect himself and his city. He is probably safe.

You have always been a skilled liar, but it seems that lying to oneself requires a skill beyond your current capabilities. 

“And where's Shadowheart?”

Jaheira's jaw tightens, and she pauses before replying.

“We don't know. She got to most of the tieflings - you'll see them around the grove. The last people to see her were Bex and Danis, who say she was on her way to Lakrissa. Neither Shadowheart nor Lakrissa have been seen since.”

You look at her face with searching eyes, and she nods at your unasked question.

“We think Lord Ancunín must have caught her.”

The confirmation of your fear knocks the breath out of you. Jaheira sits in silence beside you like a stone sentinel, waiting for you to process the unspoken horrors implied by this new piece of information. You find that your mind is desperately grasping for anything to think of other than what might be happening to your friend at this very moment. Your eyes catch on the wrinkles and ridges of the old druid's face, and you wonder how many new lines of worry have been etched across it in the past year. You would like to stare at them for longer, to map out the creases and follow the furrows, to see if each line might lead to somewhere less painful than the here and now.

You realise you have been sat in glassy-eyed silence for some time. You force yourself to face the truth. There might still be room for some hope in it, after all.

“Shadowheart is strong,” you say, and you try to make your voice strong, too, as if to prove something.

“Nobody is that strong.”

You try to smother your anger at her brusqueness. You know she is only trying to be realistic. There’s a sparkle in her eyes that reminds you that you are not the only one who is hurting.

“She could just be in hiding,” you try instead, with less strength.

“She could be. But I doubt it.”

You are saved from trying to squeeze any more hope from Jaheira’s stone heart by the return of Halsin. He must see the pain in your face, for his expression sags at the sight of you.

“You've told her, then?”

“Of Wyll and Karlach, Gale and Shadowheart, yes. But not yet the rest.”

They look so tired, the pair of them, that it makes you want to cry. Halsin nods slowly, then comes to kneel at your feet beside the cot that you are sitting on, taking one of your hands into his own huge, rough paws. You wonder if the gesture is meant to offer comfort or to seek it from you.

“Very well,” he says. “Let me tell you the rest.”

Chapter Text

Before Halsin continues, Jaheira slaps her thighs and gets to her feet. The noise makes you jump. You know you must be the picture of nerves: your twitchy fingers picking at your peeling nails and plucking at the fraying edges of your clothes, ready to be spooked by the slightest of sounds.

“I think I will leave you to do this alone,” she says, raising an eyebrow at Halsin for confirmation. When he nods, she adds, “I’ll reach out to Karlach. Having her and Wyll back would be a boon, and the gods know we sorely need the help.”

Halsin nods again, and the weight on your chest feels just a little lighter at the anticipation of Karlach’s company. When Jaheira has left the room, Halsin turns back to you, your hand still clasped within his, and he fixes those deep, tired eyes on you.

“Do you remember my plans after our defeat of the Elder Brain?”

You nod, although they feel like the memories from a different life. A life in which you still lived, and loved, without the curses you have piled upon yourself. 

“You were returning to the Shadowlands. To rebuild.”

“Correct. We were building a home for anyone who needed one, in the heart of Thaniel’s realm. From the ashes of the shadow curse, we were growing a place that welcomed all to live in harmony with nature.”

You cannot ignore his use of the past tense. It carries a threat that looms darkly over his bright words of building and growing. You do not question it, though. You leave the silence open for him to continue.

“He burned it, Tav. The whole settlement. The fields, the trees, the homes. All of them burned to ash.”

You can see it in your mind’s eye. Golden fields and green forests and houses built of deep red wood. A thriving community of the lonely and the lost, the wretched and the poor, building something for themselves from the bountiful earth. Then comes your husband’s wrath, draining the land of colour and life, leaving nothing but cold, dead grey.

“Some - most - got out alive. And I thank Sylvanus for that.” Halsin’s voice is growing hoarse, each word seeming to take some great force to speak out loud. “But those in my house— those in my care—”

The dread is thick, viscous, and colder even than your undead body. Hairs raise on your arms. You find yourself holding your breath. You stay silent.

“The children. The tieflings. Silfy, and Mirkon, and Doni. I wasn't there to get them out. They—“

His voice breaks with emotion. Around your frail, pale hand, his thick fingers are trembling. You take your free hand and place it on his, knowing that this small act of support could never be enough. He stares at it with such an intensity it feels almost vulgar; bestial, somehow, and uncomfortable to behold. You have buried so much pain of your own that you can hardly bear to see it laid so open and honest in someone else. Halsin closes his eyes against the tears that glisten in them, and for a long time, he stays like that, eyes shut, hands growing steadily still. The only indication of the passing of time is your breath: his slow and shaking; yours shallow and quick.

Eventually, he opens his eyes and the tears that were in them are gone. When he speaks again, his voice is void of emotion. It is cold, and hard, and quiet, and it chills you to the bone.

“They burned. They died. He killed them all.”

Chapter Text

“Oh.”

It’s a hollow sound - more of a croak than anything - not made with conscious thought. You think you should feel something. You think that you should fill the silence. You wonder why you're not weeping.

Perhaps you're a monster. Perhaps you simply have no tears left.

“What about Mol? Mattis?”

It doesn't feel like the right thing to ask, but you're grasping for anything to break the dreadful silence, and it is the first thing that your numbed mind stumbles upon.

“No. Thank the Oak Father, they were in the city. Mol still is, as far as we can tell. She is angry with us. With me. Understandably so. Mattis is— he’s here, now. But he’s… quiet. I worry for him. Did you know Silfy was his sister?”

You shake your head and realise that you're pressing your lips together tightly. You tell yourself that the way they tremble is nothing more than a twitch, but soon you have to close your eyes at the building pressure of heat behind them. It seems you do have tears left, after all.

Halsin keeps hold of your hand as the tears begin to leak from between your eyelids. You keep your mouth shut and your breathing slow. You do not want to give into the desire to sob. You are not sure you would ever be able to stop. Crusted around the gaping wound of your soul is the knowledge that this is your fault. You made this happen. You ascended Astarion, and then you fled from the horror that you yourself created, and now this has happened and it is all because of you.

There are no words to make it better. Your crying won’t save the lives that have been taken. Sadness will not help you now. Anger, though? Anger might give you the strength to keep going. Action is the only chance you have at making this right.

“We could resurrect them,” you say. “Why haven't you resurrected them?”

You do not mean to sound so aggressive - so accusatory - but it is better than sounding weak, so you do not apologise for it.

“You need a body for resurrection, Tav,” Halsin says. You picture the scene again: a carpet of fine grey ash. Root and stem and leaf, timber and corn sheaf and child, all made as one in Lord Ancunín’s destruction.

“True resurrection, then. You're a bloody archdruid, aren't you? It must be within your power—”

Your voice comes out mocking, mean even to your own ears, and you marvel at the power of despair to turn you so cruel.

“I have the power for it, yes, but the cost— the diamonds—”

“Surely they're worth it—”

Halsin looks angry at your implication. For a brief, brutal moment you feel as though you’ve somehow won by breaking his newly forged resolve, and you hate yourself for it.

“Of course they are worth it,” he growls, and you know you've finally pushed too far in your lashing out. “But we have next to nothing here. Your lord husband has seized control of the city - and the counting house - and with it has taken most of our gold, our assets, the deeds to the Harper’s damned buildings— we've little enough to feed the refugees fleeing his reign, let alone enough diamonds for such advanced spells.”

“People are fleeing Baldur’s Gate?”

“Some. We've done what we can to convince people to leave, but you know what folk raised in that city are like. When people face disaster every other year they become numb to it. Plenty won't leave, but those with little to tie them to the place are now flooding the villages and towns for leagues around. More are leaving by the day. We’ve tried to gather those who need the most protection here. We can only pray that we will have enough power to resist him when the time comes .”

“But what’s happening in the city that they need to flee?”

“We’re not sure exactly what he’s doing. A few days ago, the skies over his house began to darken. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the dawn never came to that part of the city. The darkness seems to be spreading, but what lurks within it is hard to say. We felt it would be wise to try to get people out before we find out.”

Your spark of anger has flared and died, and you feel nothing but a tired sense of despondency. When you had first arrived here - first seen the familiar faces of Halsin and Jaheira, first felt the cool, crisp air of Faerûn in your lungs - you had, for a blissful moment, allowed yourself to feel safe. It seems so foolish now. This paltry enclave of resistance, with its few resources and little hope, could never stand against whatever plans your godlike husband has in store. How could you feel anything but melancholy in the face of such a hopeless task? It seems futile to resist him. You gave him the power to destroy you all. You do not even know what you are fighting against.

“Fuck me, the mood’s bleak in here,” says a voice from the doorway. 

You look up to see Karlach standing on the threshold, battered and beaming, and suddenly the room seems just a little bit brighter.

Chapter Text

You are on your feet and running into her arms before your mind has even fully processed her being here.

“Gods above, soldier, you stink,” she says as you wrap your arms around her. You can hear the grin in her voice. “Seriously, Halsin, you couldn’t at least let her bathe before depressing the shit out of her?”

“She needed to know what has been going on.”

“He’s right. And I demanded to be told. I wasn’t really thinking about all this.” You step back from the hug and gesture down at yourself, noticing properly for the first time just how caked in grime you really are. Astarion’s blood is still sticky between your fingers and has seeped into the folds of your hands, filling strokes of colour into the sharp, needle-thin lines on your palms. You feel a pang of guilt at the thought of him, bloodless and undoubtedly bruised by Halsin’s handling of him, ‘secured’ in whatever place was deemed fitting for the elf they thought he was when you first arrived here. You will go to him soon, you tell yourself. But as you take in the rest of your state, you think that maybe you could at least wash first. Besides the blood, you are coated in the dust of the hells, your nails are blackened with dirt, and your feet are darkly muddy from your blinded stumble from the grove to the sanctum. You wrinkle your nose in self-disgust, then look back up at Karlach, still brimming with questions of greater import than your own comportment.

“How did you get here so quickly?”

“Right place, right time. Seems luck can be on our side when she wants to be, even if it does feel like she’s been avoiding us recently.”

“And where’s Wyll?”

“He’s coming. He and Jaheira are probably caught up talking tactics.” She pulls a face to indicate that any tactics beyond hit it with an axe are a boring waste of time, then thumps you affectionately on the shoulder. “Anyway, let’s get you washed, yeah? And rested, too, probably. You look dead on your feet. Deader than usual, even.”

You nod and look to Halsin - for permission, perhaps, although you’re not really sure why you would need to ask it of him. Maybe it is rather that you are looking for confirmation that your difficult conversation is over.

“Bathe, by all means,” he says, getting to his feet. “As for resting, I would not wish to keep you from it, but I cannot help but think that we might use Astarion’s belief of your death to our advantage somehow. Is it not the case that he might see you when you sleep?”

You are saved from having to answer, although you fear your salvation may only be temporary, by the return of Jaheira, with Wyll following shortly after. Though they both arrive with furrowed brows, apparently in the midst of deep conversation, Wyll’s face breaks into a smile at the sight of you.

“By Balduran's bones, but it’s good to see you. You lead us on quite the merry chase through the hells these past few days.”

“It’s good to see you too," you say, returning his smile. "Gods know I could have done with the Blade of Avernus by my side down there.”

“Ha! Well next time you throw yourself through infernal portals, maybe grab me before you go, rather than my pack.”

You scrounge up just enough good grace to look shamefaced at this friendly reprimand.

“Sorry about that, Wyll. All of you. That was a hasty and, yes, foolish decision. It feels like a lifetime ago, with everything that’s happened, but I am sorry. Truly.”

Wyll waves your apology away in his usual good-natured manner.

“Think nothing of it. I’m just glad you’re alright.”

“I was just saying to Tav that we need to consider arrangements regarding her rest,” says Halsin. “Astarion’s ignorance of her being alive could be advantageous, but if he learns of her living when she sleeps—“

“I, uh, don’t think I need to worry about him contacting me in my dreams any more,” you say.

“Why?” says Jaheira, quick as ever, stepping close to you and fixing you with the same sort of stare with which a hawk might befix its prey.

You swallow. You had really hoped that you might be able to avoid this conversation, at least for a while, but the intensity of Jaheira’s look tells you that there will be no easy escape. You keep your face carefully expressionless and your voice carefully light, as though what you are saying is of no concern, although you know deep down that your companions are unlikely to share this viewpoint.

“I made a deal,” you say, as steadily as you can, “with Melusine. She took the part of my soul that connected us. I should be free of his influence in my dreams.”

“You did what?”

“I made a deal with Melusine to take the part of— ow!”

Your sentence is cut short by Jaheira slapping you, none too gently, on the back of your hand.

“You idiot! You foolish girl. What were you thinking?”

“I—”

“Ah, but what a stupid question, when it is clear you were not thinking at all! Wonderful! Another deal with a devil on top of all of our worries!”

You bite your tongue at the retort that of all your devilish deals, this one is just the tip of the iceberg. Now, you feel, is most definitely not the time to bring to light that particular questionable choice of yours.

“I’m sure Tav was only doing what she thought was right,” interjects Halsin, his slow, level voice a stark contrast to Jaheira’s viciously acerbic tone.

“Oh, yes? Well maybe she should stop doing the things she thinks is right and start doing the things she thinks we would think is right.”

Karlach snorts with a laugh that she tries - poorly - to disguise as a cough. Halsin, that seemingly bottomless well of empathy, looks worried, but your hand smarts more than your feelings at Jaheira’s sharp tongue. 

“You’re right,” you say. “It was another foolish decision. But it seemed like the right one at the time. And Melusine can be very… persuasive.”

Wyll, Karlach and Halsin all turn their own shade of sheepish at that, no doubt remembering their times in Melusine’s boudoir back in Abriymoch, but Jaheira only tuts.

“So I’ve heard,” she says, then shakes her head. “Well, no changing it now. Fine. Fine! Go, get some rest. You two, too. I’ve no doubt we’ll need you all at your best before long.”

Chapter Text

Bathing feels like being reborn. The warmth of the water, the peaceful ritual of sloughing off the dirt and blood and grime until the water runs clear when you pour it over your head, the detangling of your matted hair with fingers no longer so filthy you could barely see their skin, all make for a sense of newness, of freshness, that you haven't felt in gods only know how long. You feel like a snake shedding a foul skin to emerge new and true and pure. The only brief moment of horror comes when, lost in the pleasures of your ablutions, you come close to removing your circlet out of some unconscious instinct to rid your body of everything alien to it: dirt and clothes, blood and headpiece alike. You catch yourself loosening a strap between thumb and finger and curse whatever sleep-deprived moment of madness caused you to be so unthinkably foolish. The shock of your folly at least lends you some wakefulness, and after retightening the strap you finish up your bathroom rituals buoyed up with the frantic, frenetic kind of energy that is so often the companion of those who desperately need to rest.

The cleanliness brings to mind an image of Astarion, green-eyed and rosy-cheeked, reclining in a tub in the middle of the hells. You feel something strange at the thought of it - not quite a pang of loss, but rather the ghost of one, as if you've just dodged a stab from a dagger and feel only the movement of the air around the blade.

You loved him in that moment, you think. He had been the first one to say the word love out loud, and you remember thinking that his use of it would stick with you. Here it is now, proving you right, haunting you with its presence: a mere outline of a thing you know you once treasured. Now, it is hard to feel anything for him, other than a sense of something missing. Still, warm and clean and missing something is a far sight better than filthy and cold and missing something, so you rally, after bathing, to go and find your companions and ask to be led to wherever it is that Astarion has been taken to.

You find Karlach, looking far less travel-worn than when you left her, back in the dormitory that Halsin and Jaheira first brought you to. She is dressed in a similar outfit to your own; tatty, somewhat moth-eaten, but clean and serviceable. When you take a seat beside her on one of the cots, she fills you in on your other companions’ whereabouts. Halsin and Jaheira have both been called away, Jaheira to return to her watch, Halsin to attend to the general running of the grove. Wyll, too, is absent. Despite his exhaustion, Karlach says he has decided to dedicate some time to training refugees in the art of swordsmanship. Thinking too long on this leads to remembering his tutoring in the grove when you first met him, which leads to thinking of the tiefling children, which leads to you blinking back tears of frustration and anger, and so you force yourself to focus on something - anything - else. 

“Do you know where Astarion is?”

“In the cells, apparently. It’s really him, then? Jaheira said some part of him was here, but, I mean…” She puffs up her cheeks and blows out an incredulous breath. “I dunno. It’s pretty mad, right?”

“Yeah. The whole, well, everything since you came and saved me has been pretty mad, really.”

“True that,” she says, chuckling as if it’s all been highly entertaining.

“I should go and see him.”

“Yeah? You can if you want, but you’ll have to wait a while. It’s the middle of the day, and he’s all the way across the grove. The sun will be an issue.” She sees your look of anxiety and tries to assuage it. “Look, pal, he’s not going anywhere. And he probably needs a rest as much as you do. Why don’t you sleep for a bit, and we can go over there tonight?”

“I don’t know. I really should—“

“Alright, well why don’t I check on him? You can stay here. Rest a little. I’ll tell him you’ll come as soon as the sun goes down.”

You mean to argue, but you find you don’t have the energy for it, so instead you give a defeated nod of your head. You realise that any protests that you might make would come from a sense of duty rather than any real desire to see him. Karlach stands, patting you on the shoulder in such a way that she nearly pushes you over, and you find yourself giving in to the movement, curling up on your side on the cot. You could just lie here for a little while, you think, just until she comes back.

“Alright then. I’ll head over there now. Gotta say, I’ve missed that little fanged freak.”

“Not fanged any more,” you murmur sleepily.

“No? Damn. Looks like we’ll have some catching up to do.”

You nod vaguely into the pillow of the cot. There’s a notion in your mind that you really should have tried to go and see him yourself. You wonder if you should care more. You wonder why you care at all.

You do not wonder for long, though. Almost the instant you close your eyes, the blackness of sleep consumes you whole.

Chapter Text

You dream.

You really, truly dream. For the first time in a very long time, your mind slips into the realm of sleep and your dreams are entirely your own.

You find yourself a stranger to these foreign floating lands of your subconscious. The dreamscape around you is foggy and empty, and you walk through wisps of white nothingness. You have lost something, you think, or something has gotten away from you. You must find it. You must search. At first, the ground beneath your feet is smooth and featureless and you glide through the liminal space with ease, but after some time, the way becomes craggy and rough, and you find it hard to stay on your feet.

As you stumble onwards the pale mists start to fade and shapes begin to loom up out of the haze. You clamber past great standing stones that spring up to line your path, each one carved with words like the epitaphs etched on tombstones. The closer you get to them, the more the writing seems to fade, words sinking back into the stark rockface. When you try to read the messages from afar, their meaning is unclear, as if they are written in receded alien symbols, so you continue onwards, ignoring their directions or warnings or words of wisdom left for you from long ago.

You trip and tumble on until your legs are aching and your feet are heavy, and you are on the verge of stopping and giving up your journey when you remember that this is your country. This is your land. You are the dreamer here, and you will go where you will without struggle.

The way forward feels easier. You move freely, though without purpose. You may stride through this place without constraint, but you are still lost. You do not know where you are, or where you were, or where you should be.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that your mind leads you back to familiar places.

Back to him.

One moment you are strolling through the half-formed lands of your brain, and then you arrive, out of nowhere, in front of an ornately carved double door. It towers above you, huge and dark. You reach out to push it open, and the moment your hand feels the intricate pattern of the wood below your palm, you are elsewhere.

You stand, now, without having moved, in a grand hall. The room is wreathed in shadows, its features unmaterialised beyond a great throne, and yet you know it to be the ballroom in which you once watched the great and the good of Baldur’s Gate dance around your lord husband with that strange certainty that dreams often allow you. You are back in your husband's house, back in your home. You stand before the throne as if you are here to petition the one who is sat upon it. You look up with surreal veneration to the lord of this dark place, and you see an image of yourself draped across his lap. Shadowy, ruby-eyed spawn are arranged around him, some kneeling at his feet, some standing by his side, all arranged about him like the tarnished frame around a masterpiece of art.

He is perfection made flesh. He is power and solidity and threat. The image of you splayed over his knee is nothing of the sort. You watch yourself from the foot of the throne, marvelling at how waifish you look, how barely-there, how lifeless. 

For a moment the dark lord’s eyes seem to meet yours, and you smile wolfishly at him, for it feels right to do so. You feel no hatred in your dream. Only gladness, and freedom, and something of a thrill. He smiles back at you. At least, he tries to. His lips twist up in a way that entirely lacks any joy, and his eyes seem to struggle to focus, and he ends up staring a little past you. He frowns, then, and turns his face away from you, down to the image of you on his lap, and the joy that was missing from his smile fills out. Joy, and hunger, and desperation, and maybe a little madness. They perfectly suit his perfect face. It lights up with the storm of those emotions like lightning flashing across a stone-grey sky. Your other self seems to agree, for she smiles back up at him, wraps a pale arm around him, and kisses him softly.

You’ve never seen anything so lovely. The devotion must be the most immaculate thing you've ever laid eyes on. Surely such adoration is all you could wish for. It certainly seems to be the thing that you dream of. It feels so right, and good, and just. 

The dark consort who wears your face turns to you and reaches out an inviting hand. Her movements are lethargic and her smiling expression is stuporous, but her eyes are clear and bright when they meet yours. She seems to see you clearly, unlike the lord she lives to please. You reach out, and for a moment your hands clasp, and you become her and she becomes you, and you feel a little more complete.

Then, in the instant-yet-meandering way of dreams, everything changes while seeming to stay exactly the same. Something shifts, and everything is different.

Where before there was shadow, now there is fiery light all around. The great throne is still there, but where it once was made of dark wood and deeply stained leather, now it is made of countless chains. Thick, heavy iron chains; delicate, winding golden chains; half-decayed rusted chains; thin, shining silver chains. All piled and coiled about each other to form a throne every bit as grand as the one before.

An image of you still sits on the throne, but there is no beautiful dark lord beneath you now. You reign from it quite alone.

On your head there is a glittering crown, and on your teeth there is glistening blood, and in your eyes there is a wild light that both terrifies and enthrals you. Your thronéd self is smiling in a way that shows a few too many teeth. Her hands grasp tight at the arms of the throne, her knuckles bursting white against the dark metal of the chains. There’s a noise like the sound of war all around you, the screams of the lost and the damned, but it only makes your image smile wider. She looks you in the eyes, then, and you can hear her thoughts as if they were your own. What care we for such weak things? She seems to say, and her words seem to reverberate in your mind with a note of premonition, and you find yourself agreeing with her. Something in the rightness of it feels so wrong. Something in the wrongness of it feels so right. You have spent so long straining to be good. To be better. There looks to be such a rush in letting go, in being true to yourself. 

Your heart beats thunderously, for it seems that the echoes of your life are still ringing out in this land of dreams. Emotions charge through you: joy, and hunger, and desperation, and maybe a little madness. You are full of scorn at your earlier self, for now you know that this image, not the other, is the right, the good, the just.

When this version of you reaches out her hand you do not hesitate in grasping it. For a moment her hot fingers wrap around your cold palm, and you feel full in a way that makes you realise that you have been empty until now, and you almost want to cry. You linger there for a time that feels both infinite and impossibly quick, and then your eyes snap open, and you jerk awake with a gasp.

Chapter Text

You wake with cold sweat soaking the neck of your shirt and the taste of prophesy coating your tongue like rosewater, sweet and cloying. The dormitory is empty, and you are grateful to have found yourself in solitude. You had not been scared while you were dreaming, but now that you are awake, a cold trickle of fear is spilling down your spine, raising the hairs on your nape and filling you with a weak but unmistakable sense of dread.

You try to tell yourself that this is just how dreams are. It only feels momentous because sleep has been a stranger to you for so long, and before that, it was a time controlled by an enemy. It only feels portentous because - dare you admit it, even to yourself? - you want it to. There is something in that final vision, in her power and in her solitude, that calls to you even now, even as the wisps of sleep break away from your mind. 

You wish you could dream normal dreams. You fear the person you could become should your mind continue along the path it seems set upon. You had thought yourself free of such dark desires, but you cannot deny the stirrings of something wicked within you. Where other little girls dreamed of becoming princesses and ruling over golden kingdoms, you dreamed of becoming a monster who brought down dynasties. Where other women dream of a peaceful home and a husband with soft hands and a tender heart, perhaps all you can hope for is a gilded cage and a man strong enough to keep hold of your leash.

Karlach interrupts your gloomy musings by barrelling through the dormitory door loud enough that she certainly would have woken you had you still been asleep, but still looking surprised at the sight of you sitting upright in bed. Something about her relentless energy causes the last gossamer threads of your dream to be brushed aside for the promise of a new day. The sight of her forces you to feel a little less hopeless. When the fates tried to doom her, she sharpened her axe and came out swinging. You suddenly feel very silly for your feelings of bleak despair. You are here, and you have friends, and you can still fight to be good.

Unfortunately, good carries with it the guilt of all the bad things you have done to get here.

“You’re up! I thought you’d still be sleeping.” Karlach had entered the room with a smile, but she now frowns a little at you. “You alright?”

“Fine. Just had a bad dream.”

“Shit. It wasn’t him, was it?”

“No. Not like that, anyway. It was a normal dream. Sort of. He was in it, but I think I was the bad thing. I think… I think I might be the bad thing in real life, too.”

“What makes you say that?”

Some half-forgotten cunning instinct holds your tongue from telling Karlach the worst of your recent actions. Still, you have plenty more than your very worst decisions to feel bad about, and the confessions come easily to your lips.

“I can't believe the things I've done, Karlach. I don't know what I was thinking. To let Astarion pay the succubus - him - after everything he's been through. And I bit him when he clearly didn't want it, and I nearly drank him to death. He's lost his memories and he's vulnerable and I should have been protecting him, and instead, I cut away my feelings for him and trampled every boundary that meant anything to him—“

“Well, not every boundary. You didn't kill him, and his hair looks alright, so—“

“Karlach, I'm being serious!”

“I know, soldier, it's just– c’mon. Guilt is a luxury, and I don’t know that it's one you can afford right now. You sure as shit couldn't afford it then. You were stranded in the hells! What were you supposed to do?”

“Find you? Find another way out?”

“Yeah, well, you tried that, and it didn't work, did it? Look, you're here now, and that's all that matters. It worked out in the end.”

“For me, maybe, but he's in a cage.”

“Not for long, yeah? They’re having a vote tomorrow. He’ll be a free man. Gods help us.”

Karlach grins through her last statement, but you find yourself frowning. “Why are they having a vote? I’ve told Halsin and Jaheira everything - who he is, and what happened to him - why can’t he just be let out?”

“Ah, you know what druids are like. Everyone’s equal in nature and blah blah blah. Can’t even dig a new latrine pit without a passing vote. It’s driving Jaheira mad. Almost makes you appreciate the bloodthirsty tyranny of the hells.”

“Really?”

“Nah, ‘course not. Although there might be blood here given the rate Jaheira’s being wound up by it. She's more into decisive action than ruling by committee, I reckon. Still, they’re obviously going to vote to free this un-fanged Astarion, so don’t worry about it, yeah?”

“I should go and see him, anyway. Was he alright?”

“He’s fine. He’ll live. Sun’s still up, but it won’t be for long. You can wait in the main chamber for it to go down if you’re that desperate.”

She seems to be half joking, but you nod. You were glad for her company when she arrived, but you feel too guilty to take pleasure in conversation. If you're going to try to be good, you should start by making amends for those wrongs you can right. You stand up, nodding vaguely. 

“Yeah,” you say, ignoring the faint concern on her face. “I think I will.”

Chapter Text

You realise, when you come to the stone entrance of the sanctum, that you must barely have rested for an hour. The sun still hangs proudly high in the deep blue sky. You take a seat in a shrouded alcove and wait impatiently for the last of the day to fade. You find yourself watching the capricious clouds drifting over the sinking sun from the safety of the sanctum’s shadows. They taunt you with glimpses of perfect shade, tempting you beyond belief to try to dash across the wide open space to the grove’s prison during the brief periods of shadow that they cast as they flit across the sky. None lasts long enough for you to risk it, however, so you spend what feels like hours by the entrance, your head nodding in an exhaustion so deep that you wonder if you do indeed drift off again from time to time until the sun has finally sunk below the horizon.

Halsin arrives as the sun is setting and offers to accompany you to Astarion’s cell, despite having been absent for the entirety of your waiting: it is clear that he and Jaheira are worked to the bone in the running of the grove. 

“I’m sure I’ll be fine alone,” you say, unsure why his offer of company has put you on edge.

“As am I,” he says, although his smile is a little too tight for you to believe him. “Still, no harm will come of being cautious. Come. Let’s go.”

As you cross the grove, you cannot help but notice just how crowded it seems. There was a large enough presence of refugees the last time you were here, but their numbers must have increased tenfold now. They are easy enough to pick out from the druids by their tattered clothes and their wide, helpless eyes that seem to follow you as you walk past them. They congregate around campfires dotted around the grove, some sharing threadbare blankets, others passing around loaves of bread and bowls of stew that look far too small to feed so many.

“How many people are there here now?” you ask quietly.

“Close to three hundred, including the druids that were here already. During the day most are out foraging, or hunting, or scouting, but at night it gets a little crowded.”

You continue onwards in stunned silence, occasionally having to squeeze through throngs of refugees and druids alike. You tell yourself that it is only your guilty conscience that makes you feel as though some of the stares you receive are a little less than friendly.

Eventually, you make your way to the prison area, which is being guarded by a vaguely familiar druid and a much more familiar tiefling.

“Dammon!” you exclaim, a smile breaking across your face as you approach.

“Hey there! Bet you never thought we’d meet again here, of all places.”

 “I can’t imagine you’re thrilled to be back after everything that happened last time?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The grove has some positives,” he says with a grin, and even the gathering dusk isn’t enough to blind you to the twinkle in the guarding druid’s eye when he says it. You give Dammon a knowing smile, then turn to the druid, hand outstretched.

“I’m so sorry - you look so familiar, but I can’t remember your name.”

“Maggran. You might recognise me better if I was in bear form.”

“Ah.”

You briefly shake hands. The image of Maggran roaring at you in bear form when you first tried to enter the grove’s sacred pool is indeed a sharper memory than any you have of the tall tattooed man before you now.

“You here to see the prisoner?” asks Dammon.

“Astarion,” you correct, frowning. “You know him, Dammon. It’s Astarion.”

Dammon and Maggran share a glance, then Dammon smiles, and nods. As handsome as he looks with his lips curved up and his cheeks dimpling sweetly, you find that you are growing quite tired of tight-lipped smiles.

“Of course. In you go, then.”

Halsin gestures for you to go first, then follows you into the prison, taking a key from Dammon as he passes him. When you reach the cell door, Halsin unlocks it without a word then steps back, but makes no move to leave. You wait for him to go. The silence gets awkward.

“I’ll wait here,” he says eventually.

“You really don’t have to. I’ll be fine.” You don’t know how your conversation with Astarion will go, but you don’t relish the thought of it being overheard either way.

“I know. But I’ll wait anyway.”

You’re about to argue when you’re struck with a sudden realisation. It might not be you that Halsin is worried about at all. He might be concerned for Astarion. After all, it was only earlier today that you admitted to almost draining him to death.

You bite your tongue, nod, and step into the cell.

Chapter Text

The cell door swings shut on squealing hinges behind you. The earthen room is almost entirely empty besides a rickety bed in one corner and Astarion in another.

He's crushed into the corner, all arrogance gone from his crouching frame. His clothes, though no longer bloodstained, are even more ragged than your own sorry garments. His head jerks up at the sound of you entering, but he does not look at you - cannot look at you - due to a thick, dark blindfold that has been tied around his head.

“Oh, gods,” you say, eyes wide at the sight of it. “Hang on. Halsin?”

Astarion doesn’t move as you turn back to the door. You look out through the bars and see that at the calling of his name, Halsin has started to make his way towards the cell from a bench a little way off.

“Is something the matter?”

“Why is he blindfolded?”

“You told Jaheira he watched your torture through his other half’s eyes. We have to assume that connection goes both ways.”

“Even if it does, he’s been seeing me for days. Don’t you think it will be more suspicious if I suddenly disappear and everything goes black?” Halsin’s hesitation is enough for you to push your advantage. “It’s hardly like the room gives anything away,” you say, gesturing over your shoulder to the featureless cell. “You can always ask him to put it back on for any of you, but he’s already seen me. Please let me take it off?”

Halsin sighs deeply, his tired eyes distant for a moment while he contemplates your request. Then he nods, waves a hand, and speaks a magical word that you just recognise just enough to understand its meaning: unbinding, undoing.

“You magicked it on?” The words slip out in all their confrontational rudeness before you can think to stop them. Halsin’s face hardens.

“We couldn’t have him taking it off around us. I’ve told you our reasons, Tav. We cannot afford to take risks.”

You think of everything Halsin has risked and lost recently and immediately regret your accusatory tone. You know you should feel bad, and there’s certainly the bubbling of some unpleasant feeling in your gut on top of the guilt and worry you already feel - or, at least, that you already think you should feel - for Astarion.

“I know,” you say, “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Halsin gives a small, terse nod. “Anything else?”

“No. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

Another small nod, and then Halsin walks back to his seat, barely out of earshot, but you are hardly in a position to complain about anything so benign. When you turn back around, the blindfold has slipped down from Astarion’s face and now hangs around his neck, loose and noose-like.

He looks almost as pallid as he used to - almost as pallid as you are now - which makes you think that he hasn't received all the healing he might need. Bruises circle his eyes, deep purple with tinges of blue, stark and breathtaking against his white skin, though whether for beauty or horror, you can hardly tell. He looks almost fey-like in his weakened state, pale and frail and glittering with malice.

You don't know what to call the stirring of feeling inside you as you take him in. There's something feral in his stare, a wild thing caught in a trap, and it makes you want to help him and destroy him in equal measure. You see his hurts, his wounds, and you want to tear them wider, to press your fingers into him to see how deep the pain is rooted. Maybe then you would dig it out for him. Maybe you would plant seeds of your own.

 He bares his teeth when he starts to talk, and all you can think is how blunt they are. How harmless.

“Come to kill me again? Or set one of your savage friends on me?”

“Astarion, please—”

“Is this the three things those hags were talking about? Three attempts at murder? Are you actually going to do it this time?”

He spits the words with serpentine venom, but you can still hear the quaver of fear in his voice that he seems desperate to suppress.

“If I was going to kill you, I would have left the blindfold on, wouldn't I?”

He presses his lips together in something between a snarl and a sneer, but has no retort, so you press on.

“I'm not going to kill you. Nobody is going to kill you. I’m sorry if they were savage or rough, but you have to see that they thought you were the other you. But I’ve explained everything now, so—“

“They're putting me on trial for murder,” he interrupts, still seething. “For multiple gods damn murders! Of children! That I’ve never even met!”

“It's just a formality—“

“It doesn't feel like just a formality when I'm left caged in here like a dog.”

“Trust me, Astarion, we'll be able to explain everything, and it will all be fine—“

“Trust you? Why by Corellon's good grace would I trust you? You have been nought but an unlucky talisman since the first bloody day I can remember! I have no memories, and certainly no friends here, and no idea what is going on, but the one thing— the only thing that I know, without a doubt, is that you are not to be trusted.”

Chapter Text

Astarion is on his feet by the end of his outburst, and for the first time, you feel the faintest twinge of fear. His face is lit up with the light of feral anger, his soft lips curled in a snarl, his pale hands clenched into fists, and you know well enough how unpredictable a caged animal can be. You hold up your hands in a peacemaking gesture, but you do not back away.

There’s a part of you that likes him like this. There’s a part of you that wants the fight. You try to suppress it.

“Alright. Alright,” you say, trying to meet his eye. “You’re right. I’m sorry—“

“Oh, you’re sorry? Why, whatever for? For making me an accomplice to a literal devil carving apart your soul? Or for apparently hating me so much that doing so was worth it? Or, perhaps are you sorry for draining me to the brink of death? Or for your beast of a friend near tearing me apart? Is that why you’re sorry?”

He is spitting with sarcastic rage, so familiar that you have to wrestle a smile away, but what little energy he has left is draining before your eyes. It makes you notice your own exhaustion. You think - just as you've thought before - that pain should become easier to bear, the longer you carry it with you. This pain, though - the dragging, wretched pain of the tatters of your remaining soul - only seems to get worse. It wears at you day and night, draining you, grinding you down to a raw ball of nerves and irritation and a desperate desire for violence.

But no. You are good. You are trying to be good.

“Yes,” you say, pushing your feelings aside. “I’m sorry for all of those things. Of course I am. And sorry for more, probably— certainly, in fact— but, gods above, this would be easier if you at least remembered. You'd still be mad— more mad, probably— but at least you'd understand—”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” he says, scorn rolling off of him in waves, “what exactly am I not understanding about you almost killing me?”

“Well you'd remember that you did the same to me, for starters,” you say, a little more brusquely than you wanted, but his grating attacks are sharpening your tongue against your better judgement. It shuts him up, at least. Only for a moment, but you take it as a victory regardless.

“When? How?”

“A few days after we first met. You bit me. Fed from me. Drank me to actual death, rather than just to the brink, but to be fair to you it was your first time drinking from a human, so…” You shrug. You are not sure why you are defending him, especially to himself, of all people.

There’s another moment of silence, then he shakes his head. “How do I know you're not lying to make me feel bad?”

You sigh. “You don't. Not until we can get your memories back. I can't prove anything to you until you remember…”

Your voice trails off, your eyes widening at the obvious solution that you have missed. You turn back to the door, calling through the bars to Halsin.

“What are you doing?” Astarion asks from over your shoulder, but you wave him into silence. Halsin approaches cautiously, carefully staying out of Astarion's line of sight.

“What was that mushroom from the Underdark? Noble-something? Nobleroot?”

“Noblestalk?”

“Yes! Noblestalk. Do you have any here? Does Nettie?”

His expression twitches in a mixture of pity and exasperation.

“No, Tav. It's incredibly rare, and therefore extremely expensive, and you know how tight we are on resources.” The brief elation you felt - the fickle flame of hope - is replaced with a cold disappointment. The yawning emptiness within you seems to expand, and the pity in Halsin’s expression grows stronger. “I also considered it as an option. But…“

He trails off, then shakes his head, as if regretting his decision to speak further.

“But what, Halsin?”

His broad face is heavy with the gravity of the words he's holding back. He winces slightly before continuing, sensing your reaction to his words before he even says them. “But even if we had it, I don't know that I could give it to him. We have so many people in need of healing, and though I care about you— and about him— deeply, I cannot make the same mistakes I made the last time I was here. I must prioritise those who need my help the most.”

“He needs it the most!”

“He's alive, Tav. He will live. There are people under our care who face the risk of death in fighting beside us. I know that for you, his memories might seem like the most important thing in the realm, but I have to focus on the best for everyone. I cannot make the same mistakes I have made in the past.”

Clenching your jaw, you fight off the urge to argue back. Cruel and cutting remarks clamour to be let loose, but you bite them off before they escape your lips. Instead, you turn your back on Halsin, a rude action of dismissal that a better person might feel bad about, but you feel proud of your restraint. You hear him sigh and move back away from the cell, but you do not turn back to check. Astarion has been watching your conversation through narrowed eyes and raises an eyebrow in reluctant curiosity.

“What’s noblestalk?” He asks.

“A mushroom. It restores memories. I thought— but no. Of course they don’t have any here.”

Pressing the palms of your hands into your eyes to squash the tears of frustration that have begun to sting there, you lean your back against the cell wall, slowly sliding down it in your tiredness to sit on the floor. You breathe in slowly, trying to fill your lungs with so much air that there is no room for the disappointment that sits heavy in your chest. When you breathe out, you try to force yourself to see the positives in what Halsin said, rather than feeling the heated anger that threatens to strangle you: Astarion is not a desperate case. He is alive and well. At least he is not suffering as others are.

It does not really work. The anger simmers.

“What are you doing?”

Removing your hands from your face, you stare up at Astarion before replying.

“I’m just tired. Aren’t you tired? Of all of this?”

He gives a surly nod but says nothing, and continues to eye you warily.

“So let me just sit here. For a moment. Please.”

He looks you up and down with darting eyes, considering. For a moment you imagine you can see a softening in his expression, and your shoulders begin to sag in from relief and exhaustion, but then his eyes narrow once more, and he shakes his head emphatically.

“No. No, you should leave. I want nothing to do with you and your supposed help. I am perfectly capable of representing myself well enough that even these savages shall have to acknowledge my innocence, and then I want nothing more to do with any of this. With any of you. Go on,” he says, jerking his head towards the cell door. “Get out!”

Chapter Text

You have stumbled out of Astarion’s cell before you can think of a reason to fight against his banishment of you. Halsin is quick in making his way to your side, and you hear him murmur the magical words for binding, blinding as you blink away the blurring in your eyes. There’s the heavy clunk of a lock being turned, and then his huge arm is around your shoulder, leading you out of the prison area, away from Astarion’s cursing at his reacquired blindness.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine. He’s just angry. I’m angry.”

“I am aware,” he says, a chagrined grin tugging at the corners of his scarred mouth. “And I understand. If it were just me— just us— we could do it differently, but it isn’t just us any more. We have to follow the same rules as everyone else here.”

“It’s not that I don’t know that. But knowing that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. I’m tired of this, Halsin. I’m tired of everything being so difficult.”

“I know. But we will get through this. I forget, sometimes, how impossible things must seem to one as young as you. This will pass, Tav. We will get through the trial tomorrow, and then we will tackle the wider problems we face. The battles may be many, but they will not be insurmountable. Not together. We’ve faced worse and survived, have we not?”

You nod, although you find it hard to believe his words.

“Good. But for now, you should rest. You’ll need to be at your best tomorrow. Let’s find Karlach. I don’t doubt she will have found a place for you to sleep.”

“Alright,” you say, defeated by the prospect of anything beyond sleep.

“Ah,” he says, catching sight of someone in the crowd and waving them over, “but before that, there is someone you should meet. Tav, this is Nimihar, the new archdruid of the grove. Her willingness to step into my old position is the reason we were able to travel together and end the shadow curse.”

As far as appearance goes, the two archdruids that now stand before you could not be more different. Nimihar is short and willowy, with skin so fair that it seems to glow silver in the dim light of the fires and torches about you, lending her an air of ethereal fragility. Her piercing, pale blue eyes hold none of Halsin’s warmth, and seem to strike straight through you when she fixes them upon you. When she speaks, though, it is with the same calm, measured cadence that you associate with Halsin, and that, at least, gives you some comfort.

“It is an honour and a pleasure to meet you,” she says, smiling a half smile that does not match the geniality of her words. “You did a great deed in ridding the realm of the threat of the Absolute, and in banishing the blight of the shadow curse. The people here will be glad of another hero in their midst.”

“It’s good of you to take me in,” you say, summoning the strength to pull your lips into a lukewarm smile of your own. “It’s good of you to take everyone in.”

“We learn and grow from our past mistakes. We are all equal, and therefore all equally deserving of a place here.”

“Except Astarion.” Your bitterness is poorly concealed. Halsin shoots you a look, but Nimihar only sets her smile a little harder. 

“Astarion will be judged by all who wish to cast judgement upon him. Any may speak for him or against him. Your own words, I imagine, will carry much weight, whichever way it is you may wish to speak. I’m afraid I was on my way to something, so I must leave you, but it was truly a pleasure to meet you.”

Those winter-filled eyes linger on your face for a moment longer before the pale archdruid turns and melts into the crowd. You turn to look at Halsin.

“She’s… interesting,” you say.

“Nimihar is a great woman. Harsh, at times, but fair. My opposite in many ways. The grove has benefited from her leadership.”

“Astarion certainly hasn't.”

“You don't think so? I think she's been kinder to him than you realise.”

“He's caged and scared and barely healed. How is that kind?”

“Most people here are out for his blood. He— or a man with his face— is directly responsible for many of them losing their homes, friends and family members. Nimihar would have made herself very popular had she allowed Astarion to be torn limb from limb the moment he arrived here— and yes,” he adds in response to your raised brow, “it is to my great shame that he almost was— but she believes in peace and justice for all who deserve it. She's taken criticism for her decision to even allow him a trial, and I do not doubt she will take even more when she insists it is overseen fairly. If it is her judgement that will save or scupper him, we could not hope for a better judge.”

Chapter Text

You find Karlach and Wyll sitting together on a felled-tree-trunk-turned-bench that has been dragged close to one of the many campfires smattering light around the grove. As you approach, their familiar faces are rendered demonic in the dancing incandescence of the fire. Halsin gives you a nod goodbye before disappearing back into the throng of people searching for a place to rest in the crowded grove.

The glow of the firelight is cast just far enough for the surrounding trees to appear suddenly monstrous as the flames dance and flare. You hasten to Karlach’s side, sitting on the grassy ground and resting your back on the tree trunk with a sigh.

“Alright, soldier?”

“Yeah. I just saw Astarion, so… yeah.”

“Bit of a prick, isn’t he?”

“A bit,” you can’t help but agree. “For good reason, though.”

“Yeah. Still, who would have thought the grouchy little asshole we knew was the tame version of him,” she says with a grin. You raise your eyebrows and nod in bemused agreement, then smile a little back at her. It’s hard not to smile around Karlach. She’s always had that effect on people.

“It wasn’t just me he isn’t a fan of, then?”

“Nah. Refused to believe we were mates when I went to check on him earlier. He’s really got that elvish superiority thing going on, doesn’t he? Not a fan of tieflings at all.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, but Karlach shrugs, affably unbothered by it all.

“Maybe I’ll try talking to him,” says Wyll.

“Do you think he’ll be any better with you?”

“Perhaps. I know how to play those games. I went to school with people like that— grew up with it, really. My father might have been a Grand Duke, but he was born to a poor family in the Lower City. I faced plenty of people thinking we were below them simply for the fact he was a self-made man. I can handle one put-out elfin magistrate, I think.”

“He’s pretty upset. Understandably. He barely knows what’s going on. I barely know what’s going on.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“Well, then I wish you luck,” you say, watching with mild curiosity as Wyll gets to his feet and brushes off his trousers.

“Won’t need it,” he says as he straightens up. “None can resist the charms of the Blade of Avernus.” He gives you a half-joking salute paired with an admittedly debonair grin, then strides off in the direction of the prison. You shake your head, baffled, as you watch him leave.

“What’s that face for?” asks Karlach.

“It’s just… last time I saw Wyll, he wasn’t exactly Astarion’s biggest fan.”

“Ah, yeah. That. Look, I love the guy, but even after the whole—“ Karlach does an impressive mime of signing a contract in the air then sprouting horns “—thing, he doesn’t half see the world in black and white.”

“I know. So why is he suddenly jumping to help him?”

“Because now he can see Astarion in black and white, can’t he? Big evil Lord Ancunin, bad. Sweet innocent soul fragment, good. It’s clear-cut for him now. Makes it easier for him, I reckon.”

“I’m not sure it’ll be so clear-cut after he speaks to him.”

Karlach laughs. “True that. We’ll see.”

Chapter Text

“Anyway, d’you want to eat?” Karlach asks, nodding towards a cook-pot balanced on a stone beside the fire.

“Unless that's a steaming bowl of blood, I think I'll pass.”

“Shit, right. I forgot.”

“It's fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

You close your eyes. The light of the fire glows red through your eyelids, and you can almost pretend it is sunlight.

“No,” you say. “I’m not.” You sigh, open your eyes again, and turn to her. “How are you, though? I haven’t even asked. How’s your heart? You can be up here again?”

“Yeah,” says Karlach, smiling. “Yeah, it’s good. Typical that it became useful for me to be in the hells around the same time Dammon finally fixed me up to stay here.”

“So it's all fixed?”

“Close enough. Still needs the odd bit of servicing, and he tells me to take it easy, but you know me. I take that advice with a large fistful of salt.”

“But you were in the hells anyway? I mean, even before you rescued me?”

“Yeah. Trying to track down the damn crown we gave away and keep an eye on what’s going on down there.”

“How was that?”

Karlach blows out a long breath, her usually happy face growing grave, apparently unsure where to start. “Honestly, the hells have been more hellish than ever. Our old mate Raphael is really making a meal of this whole takeover of the realm. Almost every devil down there is caught up in the fight on one side or the other. Raphael’s fought his way through to Phlegethos - can't pretend I didn't cheer when he took Avernus from Zariel - and Levistus knelt to him before he even needed to fight.”

At this, the message Lilith gave you resurrects itself in your mind. “The seventh kneels before him,” you whisper, more to yourself than to Karlach.

“Nah, Levistus is archdevil of Stygia. The fifth circle of hell.”

“The seventh circle hasn’t knelt?”

“I don't think so,” says Karlach. “Not yet, anyway. Where'd you hear that?”

Apparently your voice doesn't carry quite the right tone of prophecy that the fiendish woman could manage. You shake your head. 

“I was given a message. To give someone. From Lilith.” You hold up your wrist to show the brand that Lilith left there and Karlach winces.

“Bloody devils, man. Those bastards just love marking us mortals.” She puts a sympathetic hand on your shoulder and looks at you with such pity that you have to look away. You have to grind your jaws together to stop your mouth twisting in disgust at it. “Still,” she says, “it's hardly Lilith's place to send such a message. Baalzebul rules the seventh level of the hells. Lilith's no more than a consort.”

This makes you smile a little, although it is a cruel sickle of a smile. 

“Maybe she’s decided it’s time the consorts took some power of their own.”

Karlach raises her eyebrows at that, but before she can press you further, Wyll steps back into the circle of firelight, grin still firmly affixed on his handsome face.

“I didn’t expect you to come back smiling,” you say.

“I’m not back for good. Just grabbing him some food.”

“They haven’t been feeding him?”

“Oh no, they have. But he doesn’t trust that Halsin and the other druids aren’t trying to poison him. He is really not a fan of Halsin.”

“Not a fan of me, either,” you say, sounding more morose than you mean to.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” says Wyll. His good eye twinkles in the firelight as he leans over towards the cook-pot to ladle some stew into a bowl. “He’s certainly trying to be angry at you, but he’s asked after you a few too many times for the act to be particularly believable.”

You shake your head dismissively. “I can’t believe he’s even talking to you. He called us all savages when I was with him.”

“Posh boy privilege, man,” says Karlach, whose grin has returned. “It’s a load of bollocks. Even in the prison cells of a druid grove, you can trust the toffs to have each other’s backs.”

Wyll smiles even wider, and says, with what you hope is exaggerated pompousness, “You can take the man out of the Upper City, but you can never take the Upper City out of the man.”

“Piss off.” Karlach gives Wyll a friendly punch on the arm that nevertheless carries enough strength to knock the bowl of stew straight out of his hands. “Oh, shit, sorry—“

“It’s fine! It’s fine. I’ll get more. I doubt he would thank me for bringing him floor food— by Balduran, Karlach, don’t eat that!”

“Why not?” says Karlach, her words somewhat distorted by the mouthful of stew she is speaking around. She chews, swallows, then plucks a second chunk of the stew’s contents from the ground and pops it in her mouth. “Or is ‘waste not, want not’ only a phrase for us paupers in the Lower City?”

Wyll laughs. “I’ve heard of it, certainly, though I admit I’ve never heard it applied to food dropped in the mud before.”

“We’ve all eaten worse on the road,” says Karlach, shrugging. “Tell us, then, fancyman, what’s your secret in getting through to our de-fanged friend?”

“Ah, Astarion’s not so different, you know. He just needed to talk to someone who understands him.”

You try to smile at that, although you are sure it's unconvincing. Something in Wyll’s words has reminded you of the feeling you felt when you first met Astarion, in those bygone days of tadpole-inflicted madness. The complete strangeness of knowing nothing about a person and yet having the overwhelming sense of immediately understanding them. You could not even say you got on uncommonly well: there was a sharpness between you in those early days, each too jagged to connect fully without the risk of bleeding. Still, you were taken by him in a way you instinctively knew that you had never even experienced before, despite the blankness of your memory.

Now, though, the opposite seems true. You know more about him than he knows about himself, and yet the actual understanding between you seems to be diminishing by the day. Where before it seemed you were both full of affinities - dark and bloody though some of them were - now you are both vacant husks of who you once were. There’s nothing left inside you to even attempt to connect with.

So hearing Wyll say that he understands Astarion, when you yourself cannot, makes you want to push the dashing young Blade of Avernus backwards into the fire, to hear his screams of pain, his flesh sizzling, his fat popping, the smell of burning horns and hair filling the air—

No.

You don't even like Astarion. All you feel for him is empty space. So why do you feel something hot and writhing like jealousy in your chest at the thought of Wyll befriending him when he wants nothing to do with you?

Because you're going mad, laughs a cruel voice in your head. Because you've always been mad, says another voice, quieter and calmer and all the more frightening for it.

Chapter Text

Not long after Wyll has returned to Astarion, Karlach produces two bedrolls - originally pilfered for her and Wyll - and suggests you get some rest. She seems ready to bunk down by the fire until you remind her that the dawn would be a rather painful awakening for you, so you set off in search of a more suitable place to sleep.

The dormitory, Karlach tells you, is reserved at night for those with jobs of the highest importance, and is therefore usually full of Harpers, druids, and those few refugees with scouting or combat skills. In the end, you find a spot in the grove’s library, and you curl up between the shelves, the smell of old books and cold stone and residual magic filling the air around you.

“I’d offer to give you a bedtime snack,” says Karlach as you snuggle down into your blanket, “but I still run pretty hot.”

“’S fine,” you murmur, sleep already dragging you down into its soothing embrace. You want nothing more than to fall into its escape. There’s no hunger in sleep. No pain, no loss, no jealousy. Strange dreams, perhaps, but no danger. It feels like the only advantage you've gained from sacrificing so much of yourself, and you want to make the most of what little positives you can find. “Are you sure Wyll won’t mind me taking his bedroll?”

Karlach snorts. “That man would make you a bedroll out of the clothes on his back if you asked him. It’ll be fine. Get some sleep.”

You hardly need encouragement. Closing your eyes feels like bliss. Your body feels weighed down, bones heavy, limbs sinking into the floor on which you have made your bed. You sleepily think that you should feel lighter, if anything, now that so much within you is hollow, but you cannot follow the thought very far before sleep claims you.

It feels as though you've only just closed your eyes before you're shaken awake again, and you jerk into a sitting position with a gasp, immediately filled with panic. In doing so, you almost headbutt Wyll, who is crouched above you, the hand that was shaking your shoulder now held out, palm towards you, in a calming gesture.

“Sorry! Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I just got back from Astarion.”

“What's wrong?” you ask, your voice slurred with sleep. Then you add, somewhat thickly, “Did you want your bedroll?”

“What? No! I just thought you might want to feed before tomorrow. Better to do it now, so I can sleep off the effects.”

“Oh.” You blink the drowsiness away.

“I figured you might be hungry.”

“I— yes. Always. I, uh, drank quite a lot recently— I'm sure Astarion said—”

“He might have mentioned it,” says Wyll, smiling wryly.

“But I'm still— I mean, I'm always hungry.”

It's true enough, although now the hunger bleeds so completely into the dark void inside your soul that it's hard to tell where one ache ends and the other begins.

“Well, then, be my guest,” says Well, gallantly rolling up his sleeves and proffering a wrist.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He says it with such an easy affection - such genuine kindness. It's hard to remember if such warmth ever came so naturally to you. You don't think you've felt kind since your heart stopped beating and your skin turned cold; certainly not since you allowed Melusine to tear away so much of your soul. Maybe the hunger within you has pushed out the kindness. Maybe it's grown like a weed around all the parts of you that could be good and choked them out. Maybe kindness lies dormant within the dirt inside you, and will one day bloom again.

For now, though, the hunger wins out.

You take his offered wrist in both hands, looking up to meet Wyll’s eyes. He gives one more nod of affirmation, and you sink your fangs into his flesh.

His blood is hot and heavy. Rich and ripe. You wonder, as it rolls over your tongue in thick bursts and seeps down your throat in slick ripples, whether human blood tastes all the more sumptuous for man’s closeness with mortality. There is an intensity to it; a vibrancy unlike any you have tasted before. Perhaps it’s that richness, or perhaps it’s only because you fed quite recently and gorged so heavily when doing so, but you find it easier than you were expecting to pull back. Wyll winces as you release his arm, scrunching up his face and flexing his fingers.

“Sorry,” you lie. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not hurt, exactly. But it’s a mighty strange feeling.”

You nod, leaning back against a bookshelf and blinking your eyes against the giddy rush that spreads through you. Despite your previous tiredness, you do not want to sleep. Not while the fresh blood courses through you. Wyll looks drained, but sits down heavily beside you rather than setting off to find his own place to rest, settling down in a way that implies he, too, is willing to wait before resting. You can look at him with clearer eyes now that your hunger has been sated, and you are reminded of how very young he is. You hope his youthful optimism will stay with him for years to come - you do not think it would be possible for him ever to become as scarred and broken as you are - but when he meets your gaze he sighs with the world-weariness of a much older man.

“Are you alright, Wyll?”

He nods in a way that somehow says no.

“I worry for them, that's all. About Astarion, and Shadowheart, and Gale. About all the people still in Baldur's Gate.” That's all, he says, as if it wasn't a weighty enough worry to drag most people to despair. “I know we’ve faced long odds before, but I don’t remember ever feeling so hopeless. We had a plan - a bad plan, maybe, but a plan nonetheless - and there was a moment when it felt like we had a chance. But now, even though you’ve managed to destroy the contract, the rest seems so impossible. We haven’t been able to find the Crown or the House of Hope, and even if we knew where it was, how are we to get there without Gale or Shadowheart’s magic? And how are we to use the Crown without Gale’s connection to Mystra?” He sighs again, with a grimace that is weakly attempting to disguise itself as a smile. “But why am I telling you all of this? I’m sure we share the same worries.”

“I worry that I'm not worrying,” you say. He raises his eyebrows, but says nothing, waiting for you to continue. “I know I should be worrying. I should worry about the fight to come. I should worry about our companions. I love Shadowheart and Gale. I know I do. I love Astarion, too - I think I even loved this version of him, in a different sort of way. I wanted to protect him. I remember thinking that.”

“But you don't think it now?”

“I don't know what I think now. I don't know if I feel anything at all.” Just pain, anger, and the occasional desire to burn you alive, you think, but you decide that some thoughts are better left unsaid.

Wyll gives you a sad smile. “You should talk to him, you know. When he's less angry. After the trial, maybe. I think he'd understand more than you think.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I think he feels, if not the same, then similarly enough. It hurts him. The missing memories. The split soul. He said it's like his head has been ripped open and most of him has been torn out. Add to that the fact the world is two centuries changed from anything he knows, and the fact a good chunk of the people he's met so far seem to want to kill him…”

“Gods, I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I?” you say, leaning against Wyll’s shoulder with a heavy sigh. He leans back into you, resting his chin on top of your head. You feel him nod slightly, the movement ruffling your hair.

“Perhaps. But we will get through it. Good always prevails in the end.”

Chapter Text

You and Wyll talk long into the night, keeping your voices low so as not to disturb Karlach’s sleep, trying to convince each other that this Astarion will recover, that Gale has the power to take care of himself, that Shadowheart, wherever she is, is fine. You don’t know if Wyll believes the lies you tell yourselves any more than you do, but it feels better than wallowing in despair.

You do not remember deciding to sleep, but you wake from a muddled dream of your companions calling out your name through impenetrable grey fog. The memories of it are muddy when your consciousness returns; all you remember is desperate voices, silver hair, shining red eyes, and a glimpse of a cruel smile on lips you once dreamed of kissing.

You find yourself curled on your bedroll, a blanket draped over you, Karlach’s gentle snores filling your ears as your senses return to the real world. Your sitting up causes her to stir, and she blinks blearily up at you as you get to your feet.

“Morning, soldier,” she says thickly. “Today’s the day, then. Not sure any of us are ready for our de-fanged friend to be free to menace wider society, but I’m sure we’ll manage.”

She grins at you, and you try to smile back. You wish you could share enough of her optimism to be able to joke, but despite Wyll’s best efforts last night, you’ve woken with an unnerving sense of dread. You suggest that you get ready and go to find Halsin, in the hopes that his calming presence will soothe some of the discomfort you feel.

You find him with Wyll in the main inner chamber, and he tells you Astarion’s trial will be held by the light of the moon, in accordance with Nimihar’s druidic circle. Though you hate the idea of having to pass an entire day in such a state of apprehension, you are at least grateful for the time it gives you to prepare for the coming event. You will all speak for him: Karlach of his character when you were travelling on your quest; Wyll on the sorry state he is in now; Halsin on the complexities of split souls; you on the many ways Astarion has proven himself to be good. Halsin offers to tell your tale of the hells on your behalf, which you gratefully accept. The nervous energy that has afflicted you since waking is making the thought of having to stand before a crowd and give more testaments than you need to all the less appealing.

Once your roles in the trial have been established, you are kept occupied throughout the day with various menial tasks within the inner sanctum. You and Karlach assist Nettie in the grove’s overcrowded infirmary, while Wyll goes to Astarion to prepare him for the trial. That same sense of something hostile squirms inside you at the fact that it is Wyll, and not you, who is sent on this task, but you manage to mask the insidious frustration by busying your twitching fingers with the chopping of alchemical ingredients and the arranging of what meagre curative potions the grove still has.

As dusk begins to fall, you watch from the door of the inner sanctum as the sacred grove fills with people. Some of them you recognise as druids of the grove, or tieflings from your past, but most are strangers to you. They form a circle around the grove’s centre, where Nimihar stands in the dying light, proud and still. Beside her, in the place where an idol once stood, a chair has been placed, marking the epicentre of the growing audience.

When the last rays of the sun have faded, Halsin leads you and Karlach to stand with him beside Nimihar within the centre inner circle. Faces in the crowd turn to watch you as you walk past, but you try not to meet their eyes. You focus on the quiet sounds of the evening that pierce through the low murmur of the gathered people. You can hear the eerie calling of nightjars, the mellow song of a nightingale, and the occasional screech of some wild nocturnal creature stirring from deep within the trees. The air is cool, and the sky is clear, and around the silvery moon, faint stars are winking into existence. Something flits above you, bat or bird or moth, only just visible against the fading blue of the twilit sky. You come to a stop on the other side of the chair to Nimihar, who, up close, you can see has her eyes closed, her face upturned to the shining moon.

The crowd's chatter swells, and you look up to see three figures walking down from the direction of the grove’s prison. You cannot make them out in the dimness, but it is clear from the reaction of those around you that Astarion must be one of them.

It’s only when they get closer that you can see that Astarion is being led by Wyll, clutching his arm for support because the former is still blinded. You recognise the third figure as Maggran, who walks a half-step behind the pair, grim-faced and certain beside Astarion’s hesitant form. The dark blindfold cutting across Astarion’s face reminds you a little too much of a gallows hood, but you tell yourself that it is only your morbid imagination. He is innocent, and will soon be freed. 

The crowd parts and then reforms around them as they walk towards you. When he reaches the centre of the grove, Wyll helps him into the chair and then steps away to stand beside Nimihar.

Astarion sits there, in this mockery of a throne, blind to the circle of judgement that surrounds him. His mouth is set with a tension that seems on the verge of snapping, and his hands grasp the arms of the chair, white-knuckled, pale fingers splayed across the dark wood. You want to break them. You want to hold them. Looking at him makes your chest swell and tighten as if something within it is about to burst. Without thinking, you reach down dreamily to touch his hand, and he jerks it away. You let out a gasp at the sudden movement, snapped back into reality, freezing in place. You hardly even know why you reached out; whether you intended to wound, or to comfort. He cocks his head to the side as if trying to see you through the thick cloth. Slowly, uncertainly, he moves his hand back to the arm of the chair. Your hand is still there. The tip of your little finger touches his where it comes to rest. You think it must only be your nerves being so on edge that causes the faint jolt of lightning to pass through you at his touch. Still, you do not move your hand away.

Neither does he.

Nimihar finally rouses herself, opening her eyes and turning first to look at Astarion, and then to look at the gathered crowd. She murmurs some quiet words of magic, her fingers twining through the darkening air, and when she speaks her voice is amplified with the power of the Weave.

“We stand here in the darkness of night for the trial of Astarion Ancunín. The truth is like nature herself: an unstoppable force, but wild and tangled and hard to comprehend. Here, gathered under the stars, we can seek the guidance of the moon’s deep intuition. We can search for the truth without the distractions of the day. Within the anonymity of the night, we can focus on the matters at hand. Blinded by the dark, we may better hear the verity of the words of those who wish to speak. May Silvanus grant us the wisdom to find the truth.”

Chapter Text

Silence settles over the gathered circle as Nimihar finishes her speech and takes a seat on the cool ground, folding her crossed legs beneath her. Around you, the gathered crowd begins to sit too, some immediately, and some with more hesitation, looking around at those beside them before following their lead. You look questioningly to Halsin, who nods and sinks to his knees. You follow his lead, sitting down on the soft, grassy earth, careful to keep one hand on the arm of the chair, not wanting to break the connection between your hand and Astarion’s. It feels as though his touch tugs at some frayed thread inside you, and though you cannot quite follow the fibre through the tangled mess of your insides, you do not think you want it to break. It feels as though it tethers you somewhere, keeping you anchored when your mind threatens to unravel.

The shuffling sounds of people sitting eventually fade, and you are left wondering how many unspoken druidic rules are at play that you have no knowledge of. For a moment it seems the quiet stillness will last for an age, but then Halsin gets to his feet. Nimihar’s moonlit silhouette nods, and she casts a murmured spell in his direction. His voice is clear and resonant in the calm of the night when he begins to speak.

He speaks of Astarion’s split soul, of the infernal ritual that Astarion was bound to as Cazador’s spawn, of your discovery of this mortal part of him in the hells. You notice that while he never lies, he frames Astarion’s ascension as something none of you could have controlled: he makes it seem as though the only choices were to ascend, or to be consumed. You realise with a pang that you are the only one remaining who could contradict his implication with first-hand testimony, with Shadowheart and Gale lost to the unknown. You are grateful for Halsin's diplomacy - it seems pragmatic not to add the wilful sacrifice of seven thousand souls to Astarion’s list of crimes - although you cannot help but notice that Wyll is watching with mild reproach at his discrete handling of the truth. Though they were not there to witness it, doubtless your companions shared many a night discussing the ritual away from you and Astarion's hearing. Occasionally Halsin turns to you to clarify points of your story that seem confused, and from time to time you speak up to add details that have been missed. It is strange hearing your story told with another’s words. It makes you feel all the more disconnected from the events that have led you here. Still, you are glad that it is Halsin’s steady voice that is telling your tale. Though you have relied on your charisma in the past, Halsin’s wisdom carries through his words, and you hope that those listening are as impressed with his recounting of events as you are.

When Halsin reaches the end of his explanation, Nimihar invites questions from the circle. Voices from the dark immediately speak up.

“How do you know he’s not just lying to you and he’s really Lord Ancunín?” shouts a voice from the crowd.

“How, exactly, could he be both here and in Baldur’s Gate?” Wyll shoots back.

“We don’t know he’s in Baldur’s Gate,” calls a second voice. “Scouts haven’t seen him for days now.”

“Sorry,” says Karlach, “is the great big bloody cloud of darkness over the city not proof enough for you?”

Her scathing tone is enough to cut off any further questions, and silence falls again until Nimihar breaks it.

“Astarion,” she says, her voice still loud and level, “would you speak for yourself?”

“Yes. Fine. It's as he said, really,” says Astarion, gesturing in the direction that he must think Halsin is in and misjudging it by several feet. “It wasn't me. I may not have many memories of my time as a magistrate, but I cannot imagine I ever presided over a trial so farcical as a man having to defend himself against crimes he wasn't even aware had happened—”

“If you’ve really got no memories, how can you be sure you didn’t do it?” shouts a voice.

“Well I have got memories of the last few days, and I am quite certain that they do not involve the murder of innocent children,” he snaps. Beside yours, you feel his finger twitch as his hand tightens on the arm of the chair.

“The attack was almost a tenday ago,” pipes up another voice from the dark.

“Well I— I mean, I might not remember that far back, but I was with Tav,” says Astarion, before adding in a quieter voice, “wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” you say, loud enough for the crowd to hear. “He’s been with me the whole time. We were stuck in the hells with no way out. He couldn’t have done it.”

“Look,” says Wyll, apparently sensing that Astarion's haughty tone is doing him no favours with the crowd, “I’ve spent the last few days with the guy, and he's hardly the kind of person who would commit atrocities. He doesn't even know what year it is. He's not capable of planning an attack like the one on Halsin's settlement. No offence,” he adds as a quiet aside to Astarion.

“None taken,” says Astarion, in a tone that implies that some has, in fact, been taken.

“Some of you knew Astarion,” says Karlach. “He was a bit sharp, maybe, but he wouldn't kill kids. This part of him might be a little more polished around the edges compared to the Astarion we knew, but he’s clearly the same man. I mean… Dammon, you knew him. Surely you don't think he'd do something so fucked up.”

“Yeah, I knew Astarion,” says a voice from the dark that you recognise as Dammon’s. “Not that well, but well enough. And Karlach's right, he never seemed like the type who would do something so callous. Admittedly, when he was around, things did seem to go missing more often—”

“Is that relevant to this trial?” asks Nimihar.

“No. No, sorry.”

“It might be relevant to the trial!” calls out another voice. You don’t recognise it, though from the accent you would assume it to be one of the refugees, rather than a druid. “It wasn’t just things that went missing when he was around, was it? People did, too, didn't they?”

Dammon pauses for a moment, then, with a breath of recognition, speaks aloud a name. “Alfira…”

Chapter Text

At the mention of the sweet bard's name, you are momentarily thrown back to that dark night so many moons ago. Alfira’s sticky copper blood on your chin, Alfira's hot slick guts in your hands, Alfira's sightless, empty sockets staring up at you in blank horror as you finally awoke to the terrible deed you had done.

You snap back to the present, and the prickling of guilt at the back of your neck makes you feel as though you are the one on trial. After all, maybe it should be you sitting in that chair, not Astarion. You wonder - if this broken fragment of his soul could even be considered culpable of the sacrifice of all those souls and all the deaths since - which one of you carries the most guilt. How many souls have you damned who are now lost to the gaping holes in your memory? How much guilt are you walking free of that should be crushing you under its weight? You cannot even be sure that you would feel guilty if you could remember. You know that in the past you have desperately wanted to be good. Now it’s more like an echo of that one-time desire: you desperately want to want to be good. Still, you cannot deny that while the thought of the nameless, senseless deaths you have left in your wake should horrify you, in reality, they barely stir your feelings at all. Where once your inner self teemed with thoughts and emotions and love and life, now it is a cold, dark lake, entirely devoid of any signs of movement beyond the whispering reeds that clog its edges, rustling with ghostly reminders of everything that you have lost.

Perhaps it's time to take the plunge. Perhaps it's time to own your guilt. If it saves Astarion, wouldn't it be the good thing to do? And don't you still want to be good?

Wyll speaks before your numbed mind can formulate the words you know you should say. “Alfira came to our camp one night asking to join us, but she was gone by the morning. We all assumed she simply changed her mind. The life of adventure is not an easy one, nor one to take up on a whim.”

“So he could have killed her.”

“No! If anything had happened in camp we all would have heard it.”

Not entirely true, you think. You covered your crime too well for your companions to know of it. Only one of them might know of that particular nighttime atrocity, and even then, you never discussed it. Perhaps it was the thick smell of blood in the air that woke him, or perhaps he was staying up for a nocturnal kill of his own, but you swore that you saw a glittering pair of red eyes reflecting the dying embers of the fire when you made your way back to your bedroll after hiding the bloody evidence of your most violent crime in memory.

Astarion had never mentioned it, and you had never brought it up. He won't remember now, of course. Your husband alone holds the knowledge of your guilt.

“And you never thought to ask after her?” an accusatory voice calls from the circle.

“We all had a lot on our minds,” says Wyll, his frustration growing ever more apparent. “Quite literally, in fact. What with the imminent threat of turning into tentacled monsters, not to mention saving you from being kicked out of this very grove.” He tuts, the lines of disappointment and disgust twisting his face made all the more apparent in the stark silver light of the moon. “I admit, I had hoped your gratitude for a man who helped you in your time of need would be a little longer lasting.”

You know that Wyll always sees only the best in those he believes to be good, and you are gladdened that he clearly now counts Astarion among that number, but you cannot help but think that even he must be stretching the truth a little with that final statement. Astarion, when you had met him by the grove, had been the most unwilling of all of you to lend assistance to the needy. None had helped him, after all: why waste time on hopeless cases when you had pressing problems that could cause you harm? What did the lives of a few refugees matter in comparison to his one, final shot at freedom after two hundred years a slave?

Surely it hadn't only been you receiving his snide remarks upon every quest you accepted on behalf of the downtrodden. Surely it hadn't only been you that he griped to around the campfire before you settled in for the night, talking of how you’re wasting time on these hopeless cases, how you have to focus on yourselves, now, while you have a chance.

But as you go on to listen to Karlach's testimony, you come to the dawning realisation that maybe it had only been you. Maybe it was only in you that he saw a kindred darkness, and felt safe to expose his own. Lost in your thoughts, you barely register what Karlach has said in Astarion's defence, only returning to the present as she finishes her speech.

“He could be petty, maybe,” she says. “But he never would have killed Alfira, and he never would have touched Halsin’s settlement. He loved us, and he had a good heart.”

“Why are you all talking about how good he is? He killed Silfy! He killed my friends!”

You are surprised by how thin and shrill the voice from the circle sounds until you realise with horror that it is the voice of a child: Mattis, the tiefling boy—the sole survivor of your husband’s attack on Halsin’s orphanage. You are still smarting from the sparks of nostalgia that the thoughts of those early days of Astarion have sparked within you when you rush to his defence.

“It wasn’t him —“ you begin, as if a change in blame could ever salve the obvious hurt in the child's voice, but Mattis cuts you off.

“He looked like him! He spoke like him!”

You dredge up the remnants of your patience before replying. “I know, Mattis. I know this is confusing. But it wasn't him. Don't you remember him from before? He helped you here in the grove. He helped you in the Shadowlands. He helped find Mol!”

There's no response from the dark silhouettes that circle you, so you continue. Now is your chance to speak out for the man that a lost part of you once loved.

“I don’t claim to have suffered as much as many of you have by his hands. I know that you have lost your homes, your families, your friends. But I suffered under his thrall for months—“

“If you were under his thrall then, how do we know you’re not now?” shouts a voice from the darkness.

“Tav wears a circlet imbued with a power to relinquish his command over her. She speaks freely.” Halsin speaks with such calm authority that the anxious mutterings of the crowd die back down.

“A part of him has carried out unspeakable evils. I know that. But this part of him had no part of it. And even if we count him as a whole, doesn't he deserve a chance at redemption? I mean, look at me. I—”

You pause, trying to choose your words carefully. You are a fool, perhaps, but not such a fool that you think admitting to being a bhaalspawn in front of a riled crowd could go anything but badly.

“I have a dark past,” you say. “I lost my memories before meeting any of you, but I've discovered that I, too, did unknowable amounts of evil in this world before that mindflayer ship crashed upon this grove's very doorstep. And just because I’ve forgotten it all, do you think I’m suddenly absolved of all of my sins?” You shake your head. “I’m still just as guilty. But I have to believe that we’re not beyond redemption. We have to believe that now is our chance to step into something better. Otherwise, what’s the point of anything?”

“Your guilt was forgiven for the role you played in saving the city,” says Halsin, his resonant voice seeming to calm the uneasiness in the crowd. “And Thaniel’s realm, and this very grove. You earned your redemption, Tav. Do not think you haven’t.”

“And how is Astarion to earn his redemption if we kill him?”

“How does he plan to earn it if we spare him?” asks Nimihar levelly.

You sense the movement of the crowd in the surrounding black as everyone turns to look at Astarion, who cannot see their stares.

“Astarion?” you prompt.

He throws his hands in the air. “How should I know? I’ve never met those I’ve apparently wronged. Tell me to do something and I shall endeavour to do it, but I hardly see how I’m supposed to fix all this when I barely have a grasp of what in the hells is going on!”

“Tav did exactly that,” says Dammon, rather unhelpfully.

“Yes, well, Tav is…” he begins spitefully, but then sighs, the vitriol melting away. “Tav is different.”

Tav murdered an innocent bard in cold blood, you think. Tav is hardly the one to look to as far as tales of redemption go. Before you can think of a way to phrase this that won't make matters worse, another voice cries out from somewhere far off in the circle.

“Even if he isn't Lord Ancunín, if he's a fragment of his soul, maybe killing him will weaken the bastard!”

“Yeah, and maybe killing this part of him will alert the rest of him to something happening here and draw his ire to this bloody grove. Hardly a risk you can afford to take, is it?” You could kiss Karlach for her quick response. Once again, it seems that angering the fiery tiefling who towers above all but Halsin is a scary enough notion that the crowd falls silent.

“We cannot cast judgment based on hypothetical theories either way,” says Nimihar. “And we cannot condemn a man to death if he is innocent simply because we believe it may help our cause. I urge you to disregard such lines of thought when you cast your votes.”

Chapter Text

Nimihar brings the trial to a stuttering close. A few more questions are called out and quickly handled by a steady reply from Halsin or a fiery remark from Karlach. Nimihar tells those gathered that they have until the sun reaches its peak tomorrow to cast a vote, and at her words, two druids emerge from the shadowy circle carrying a large box. They tip it out on the floor before you, revealing a clattering mass of dark and light stones.

“Black for guilty,” says Nimihar, gesturing to the pile of stones, “white for innocent. If you wish to vote, place a stone into the box to be counted. May the truth be discovered in the clear light of day. Cast your vote wisely.”

With that, Nimihar dismisses the crowd, nods to Halsin, and steps down from the inner circle, melting away into the dark silhouettes of the crowd. After she leaves, Halsin makes a clear show of walking to the pile of stones, picking up a large white pebble between thumb and forefinger, and dropping it with a thunk back into the box. He then leans towards Astarion, murmuring something in his ear so quietly you cannot catch it before reaching out a hand in an offer of guidance. 

Astarion hesitates, then moves his hand forward, breaking the connection between you that you both seemed unwilling to disrupt for the duration of the trial. When the occasional gesture or jostle interrupted your touch, your fingers inevitably found their way back to each other in the dark. Now, though, Astarion reaches out blindly and clasps at Halsin’s outstretched arm, allowing Halsin to pull him to his feet and guide him carefully away from the centre of the sacred pool. You watch them go for a moment, considering why the loss of Astarion’s touch feels so strangely monumental. As you look at them, you see how Halsin’s huge form and gentle movements are in stark contrast to Astarion’s slender body and uncertain step. Just as the pair are about to walk out of your limited view, you pick up a white stone of your own, placing it into the box before following the two elves on their way back to the prison. Above you, the stars glitter yellow-white, and all around you moths and fireflies flutter falteringly through the chill night air. You pay no mind to their timid mirroring of the heavens: you only have eyes for the silver curls reflecting the moonlight in front of you. You cannot know if he knows that you are following. You do not even know why you are going with him, rather than back to the quiet comfort of the inner sanctum with Karlach and Wyll, but your feet seem to lead you after him without any conscious thought.

When you reach the cells, Halsin leads Astarion inside and guides him to sit on the shabby bed, then turns to you, seemingly unsurprised by your presence. He gives you the kind of deep, serious smile that can only come from centuries of experiences - a perfect balance of joy and sorrow - and then leaves the room, the heavy cell door shutting and locking behind him. After listening to Halsin’s footsteps retreating, you reach forward to remove the blindfold that cuts across Astarion’s face, but then stop yourself, realising that he might think himself to be alone.

“I’m here,” you say, and the way his head jerks up in surprise confirms your suspicions. You begin to untie the dark fabric, its magic seeming to fall apart at the touch of your shaking fingers, and then he’s blinking back at you, worried green eyes meeting dead red. When he does not immediately object to your presence, you take a seat beside him on the bed, resting your elbows on your knees and your face in your hands, staring resolutely at the floor to escape the questions that you thought you saw glimmering in his gaze.

You are not touching. You sit, side by side, and you do not touch. There is not a single part of your body, from head to foot, that is in any contact with him. The air that fills the space between you is so full of some strange magnetism that it feels almost solid. It pulls you in and repulses you from him in equal quivering measure. Silence buzzes loudly in your ears, and through it, you realise you can hear the gradually slowing drumbeat of his heart.

“You spoke up for me,” he says eventually, his voice carefully flat.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“I would say ‘your innate tendency to do good,’ but seeing as you also tried to eat me recently, I imagine it was more to try to make things even.”

You cannot resist an exhale of amusement at this, and you’re grateful for his attempt at lightening the weight that seems to hang over you both.

“I should have said more. I had so much more to say. I could have said how good you were— how good you can be— but my head just went blank. My thoughts were so scattered it’s as if…” You trail off, shaking your head. “It’s as though I’ve lost so much of myself, and the parts of me that were left behind keep coming back to haunt me.”

“Well, I obviously have no idea what that must feel like.”

The sharpness in his words makes you twist around to look straight at him. You must have moved too quickly, or perhaps it’s because you’re finally looking at him properly instead of avoiding his gaze, but whatever spell there was between you has been broken. Still, despite the bitterness of his tone, you do not want to leave. You speak quickly, the words coming out ungainly and blunt before you can stop them.

“I know you don’t like me, Astarion, and—“

“I like you perfectly well enough. I liked you better before the whole draining-me-dry thing, but still, I… I like you.”

His pause betrays his reluctance to admit it, and for some reason that goads you into pressing him further.

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Yes, well, obviously I’m also terrified of you. I hate to flog a dead horse, but really, the whole eating me thing? And I’m not exactly used to talking to people like you. I mean, you’re hardly my type—“

“What is your type?” You don’t know why you’re pushing him. There’s some faint part of you that says that this is what the two of you do. The back-and-forth, sparring, the bickering and barbs. You just cannot know if it still works without the love beneath it.

“I don’t know. High-class. Rich—“

“I’ll have you know I once had a vast inheritance.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

"Well, you're hardly—“ He catches himself. You can only imagine what rudeness he was about to impart. “What I mean to say is, yes, I find that somewhat surprising.”

You suppress a smile. “Admittedly it was an inheritance of death and violence rather than gold—“

Astarion actually laughs at that. Once upon a time, that sound alone would have been enough to soothe your worries. It has no such power any more, beyond a guts-deep pang for what once was. Still, you think it is a nice enough sound. You can think of no better way to pass the night than to try to hear it again.

Chapter Text

Astarion’s laughter fades, and silence rushes back in to fill the dim corners of the cell. You force yourself to speak.

“I really am sorry that I nearly killed you.”

Astarion sighs dramatically.

“Yes, well, everyone has seemed to want to recently, haven't they? At least you weren't so sanctimonious about it.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“Hells below, no. Let's just say my gratitude for your help is currently winning out.”

“That seems fair,” you say, coaxing what feels like a genuine smile on your face. It is almost immediately wiped away by Astarion's next choice of subject.

“So, you and Halsin…”

“What?”

“Oh, come on. I know you think me stupid, but I’m not blind.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” you say, only half lying, “but you have quite literally been blindfolded almost the entire time you have been around Halsin.”

“It was a figure of speech. His voice goes all gravelly around you. It’s hideous.”

“His voice is always gravelly.”

“I refuse to believe that you cannot see that that beast of an elf is interested in you.”

“He’s a wood elf. His interests are a little… eclectic, maybe, compared to what you’re used to.”

“Do you like him?”

“Why are you asking? Are you interested in him?” 

“Gods, no,” he says, aghast, and again you feel a thrill at having needled a reaction from him, although it’s hard to tell how much of his affront is an act. “What is there to like about a big brute who chooses to spend his days out in the dirt and din of nature?”

“Some people like nature,” you say, smiling.

“Do they? I can’t see why. You know, when I woke up this morning, there were snails right on my pillow? Just one of the uncountable downsides of living in commune with nature. Utterly disgusting.” His nose wrinkles and you almost smile. “But then again, I suppose that is what my life is these days. Disgust, and confusion, and pain.” The bitterness has crept back into his voice now, his lip curled in a sneer so familiar that you long to reach out and trace it with a fingertip. As his mood falls, yours tumbles down alongside it. These ravaged souls of yours seem so mercurial.

His pain, too, is familiar to you. There cannot be many who understand the sorrow of a split soul. How strange it is that you are both here, now, to experience that blighted existence together. How foolish you were not to have asked about it more in the hells before you allowed Melusine to slice your essence up like meat. That butchery of yourself seemed like a good idea at the time, and you ruefully reflect that that phrase seems to have been your mantra ever since helping Astarion ascend.

Astarion once told you, here in this very grove, that it was as though the gods had made you to ruin him. Later, as your husband, he told you he believed he was created to punish you for your past sins. In the hells, you had truly believed, if only for a moment, that perhaps you were instead fated to save one another.

Now, though, you don’t think any of those are true. You think that he and you were simply made to be each other’s mirror. When that dead black lake within you stills to a mirror-calm, all that is reflected on its surface is him. Which part of him, though? You think you already know, but you do not like the answer, so you ask the question again, over and over. Which part of him? Which part of him? Is his the only path left for you? In tearing your very soul apart to be free of him, have you doomed yourself to tread the same steps he has tread? To wander deeper into darkness, either to linger in this shadow of a life or to rise as something else - something darker, surely, more evil and more great? The future looks bleak, whichever path you take. You do not wish to dwell upon it. Not now, when the blackness of the night feels like a boon, like the final bastion between the two of you and whatever it is that waits for you past the dawn.

When you shake yourself out of your thoughts, you find Astarion is watching you carefully.

“You feel it too, don’t you? The pain?”

You nod.

“Was it worth it?” he asks.

Chapter Text

You let out a long exhale, trying to empty the dark thoughts from your mind.

“I don’t know. It felt like my only chance to be free.” You shrug, unsure if you can answer him properly when you hardly know the answer yourself. “There’s a version of you who would say freedom is worth any price.”

“I don’t mean the soul-tearing succubus ordeal. I mean everything before. Us. Was whatever we had worth all of this?”

“Oh,” you say, so taken aback that you don’t even think before the words come out, “then, yes.”

He’s watching you closely again, sharp green eyes tracking the movements of your face from beneath his thick lashes. You can think of nothing else to say.

“It’s that simple? Even after everything they say I’ve become?”

You laugh, although there’s little mirth in it.

“No. Nothing ever is. But you have to understand, the person I was before I met you—“ You cut off your words, remembering Astarion’s horror at discovering your vampirism. You can only imagine what his reaction will be if you add bhaalspawn to the list. Still, there’s a part of you that wants him to know. You take a deep breath and continue. “The part of you in Baldur’s Gate might be killing for power, or for revenge, but I used to kill for the sheer joy of it. I mean, gods, you should have seen some of the things we found when we were exploring my past. I don’t remember any of it, but I’m pretty sure I ate people. I did unspeakable things to dead bodies, I was the instigator of a plot that left thousands dead… I was bad. A monster. But you never made me feel like that was all I could be. All I’d known was death and thrill and fear, and you showed me I could have something else. Something more. I don’t know if I know love at all any more, but I know I did love you. Only you, I think.”

“You still eat people.”

A bark of a laugh escapes you, although you can’t decide if you feel amused or offended.

“That’s all you took from everything I just said?”

“No. I apologise. I am not a natural at any of this. I barely know you. But then…” He trails off, tilting his head to the side, seemingly searching for the right words. “I don’t remember anything about us,” he says, after a time. “But sometimes I think I can sense it. The ghost of it. Sometimes it feels as though something is there.”

“Do you miss it? I suppose it must be hard to when you can't remember it at all.”

“I can't say I do. But I think it would have been nice to have known it.” He gives you a half smile, then asks, “Do you miss it? Even after everything?” He gestures at your head, then at your back, wincing ever so slightly.

“I do. So much that it physically hurts, sometimes. Not the bad parts, of course, but the rest of it. The early times. And the times before you fell in the Styx.”

There's a flash of something on his face, and the expression is gone before your mind can fully process it, but you realise after a moment that he looked hurt.

“Oh, gods, I'm sorry,” you say. “That was so rude. I don't mean—”

“I know. But you miss the man you knew. The man I was. Or the man I am. I suppose I'm the man I was.”

“I didn't mean that I don't like you, though. I do. Really. This has been nice.”

“Nice?”

“And I haven't thought about disembowelment or snapping bones or popping eyeballs once.”

“How incredibly reassuring.”

He’s being sarcastic, but you can hear the fear in his voice. Still, he manages a wary smile. When you reflect it back at him, his expression softens slightly, and although you can still see the apprehension on his face, you think you can see the faintest glimmer of something more hopeful, too.

You wonder how long this version of the two of you can last. Nothing between you ever seems to take. Not the two of you who spent night after night on the road to Baldur's Gate. Not the two of you who danced a sickly dance of marriage, of possession, of obsession and pain and torture and lies in that great palace on the hill. Not the two of you who rediscovered each other in the depths of the hells. Perhaps you should see all these little deaths of your pairing as a sign that it is doomed. You, the child of death. He, a child of night, reborn to a mortal life. What could you possibly know except more pain? More endings?

And yet you cannot help but see it as something else entirely. For does this connection between the two of you not keep crawling back? Does it not keep on growing through the cracks in your broken souls? Every time it is snuffed out, snipped off, drowned or burned or pulled up, unrooted, it still blossoms back with a vengeance. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to tear it down, and instead see how this variant of it might grow.

Chapter Text

For two people who have lost so much of themselves, you find a surprising amount to talk about. He does not seem to want to delve into your dark past, and you recognise that he is likely trying to keep his fear of you at bay. Instead, you tell Astarion tales of your adventures together, and he listens with the wide-eyed fascination of one who has never lived through such interesting times. There's an unspoken sense that you don't want to talk about the looming result of the vote, so you keep your stories light, and he keeps his attention rapt, and there are moments that you could almost pretend that you are back on the road together, and he's the man you once fell in love with.

Morning falls fast upon you, and all of a sudden your quiet night of conversation is a thing of the past.

“Astarion?” Wyll's rich voice calls through the door, bringing your attention to the pale glow of sunrise that has begun seeping through its gaps. “May I enter?”

“It's a prison cell, Wyll, not a private study. Of course you may enter.”

It’s only when you hear the familiar bite to his voice returning that you realise it had slipped away at some point in the night.

“Hadn't I better put that back on you?” you ask, picking up the blindfold from where it lies crumpled on the bed behind him. 

“I suppose,” Astarion agrees, albeit with a wrinkle of annoyance creasing his brow. You tie it quickly, then call for Wyll to come in.

“I would have come earlier,” says Wyll as he walks into the cell, “but Halsin seemed to think it would be best for you both to have an opportunity to talk.”

“How good of the man who mauled me half to death to suddenly care for my best interests.”

Wyll's laugh cuts off the defence of Halsin that was forming on your tongue.

“Come, now, Astarion,” he says with a winning smile that must be entirely lost on his blindfolded friend, “you know how it looked. I can't say I wouldn't have run you through with a blade had I been in his shoes.”

“A blade I could take, but a bear was positively beastly.”

“I believe ‘the bear’ has since apologised,” says Wyll, ever the peacemaker.

“Hmm,” is Astarion’s only response, making it clear that it will take more than an apology for him to forget Halsin’s welcome.

“Anyway,” Wyll presses on, “Halsin has spent the night speaking with Nimihar, but Karlach and I have been studying the laws of the moon druids.”

“Well then, I’m sure my freedom is all but guaranteed,” says Astarion, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Wyll clears his throat, hiding a chuckle, but you frown at Astarion's rudeness. The sudden change in his demeanour has unsettled you more than it should have: surely by now you should be used to this man and his many masks. Still, it hurts to see the sharpness that almost seemed to have melted away overnight to be back with such viciousness.

“Wyll and Karlach have spent all night looking for ways to help you, and this is how you show your gratitude?”

“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong, I'm grateful for Wyll. I'm simply saying that I'm not sure how much help a tiefling will be when it comes to the complexities of law.”

You narrow your eyes at him, despite knowing he cannot see your expression.

“Really? I knew this version of you could be an arse, but you’re a racist, too?”

“Don’t be like that,” says Astarion, the wheedling note of exasperation in his voice making you quite convinced that his eyes are rolling beneath the blindfold. “Wyll knows what I mean, don’t you, Wyll?”

You raise your eyebrows at your horned, devil-eyed companion. “You haven't told him?”

“It… didn't come up,” says Wyll, somewhat sheepishly.

“What didn't come up?” Asks Astarion.

“You do know that Wyll is planetouched, right?”

“What?”

“Afraid so,” says Wyll. “Horns and all.”

“But you said your father was a patriar! The Grand Duke, no less!”

“And so he is. But I made some foolish mistakes in my youth, and I paid the price for them.”

“Oh. Well.” Astarion falls silent, and you and Wyll share a glance that is part amusement, part incredulity, and part - on your side, at least - annoyance. You wait for an apology, but Astarion's next words make you feel quite the fool for your optimism. “Well, at least they're not letting hellspawn become peers. One must thank Corellon for the little graces, I suppose.”

“And you're so above these ‘hellspawn’ that I suppose you aren't interested in anything they've found that might help you?”

“I never said anything of the sort. Wyll, I apologise. I don't think I'm used to coming across those who have been inflicted by the hells. I imagined you would all be like the other one - Karlach, is it?”

You grind your teeth, but Wyll has always had more patience than you.

“Apology accepted. But you should know that you and Karlach are dear friends too.”

Astarion purses his lips, apparently holding back whatever rudeness he was thinking. You are glad he has finally learned to bite his tongue. His current attitude has rendered your previous comment about not having thought about disembowelment and snapping bones a complete and total lie.

Chapter Text

Wyll’s eyes flick to you, and he must read the obvious expression of irritation on your face because he quickly tries to move the conversation on.

“As I was saying, we've been looking into our options for if a guilty verdict is reached—“

Despite your annoyance with Astarion, the casual nature with which Wyll mentions a guilty verdict shocks you.

“But you can't think that he'll be found guilty after everything we said at the trial?”

Wyll manages to keep the smile on his face, but you sense his discomfort. “Always best to be prepared for every outcome,” he says with a little too much pep for it to sound genuine.

“That doesn't answer my question.”

Wyll sighs and rubs his brow in an expression of anxiety that you recognise from your past travels together. “I honestly can't say which way it will go. The druids seem to be mostly on our side. Even if they don't understand the magic at play here, they can see how it could be true. The others… I don't know.”

“How can you not know? Don’t you train with them? Can’t you talk to them?”

You should feel bad for your brusqueness, but your irritation with Astarion is quickly growing into anger with the entire situation, and you never were one to manage your temper.

“Tav, you have to understand that most of them are wary of magic, and understandably so. They have little experience of it, beyond perhaps some occasional basic healing that probably costs them a month's wages, and even then they're just as likely to fall victim to a hag’s curse or a charlatan as they are to get the healing they seek. Beyond that, their only experiences are of terror. Evil gods rising up and wreaking havoc on their homes; maniacal wizards seeking power at any cost; entire cities cast down into the hells. Some of them have heard how the druids treated the tiefling refugees last time they sought shelter here, and are distrustful of them and anything they seem in favour of. To us, magic is a part of life, but to them, it's nothing but a scourge. Telling them to find someone innocent, despite the fact that he looks and sounds exactly like the man who has terrorised them, because of some complex magical ritual that even we barely understand is a hard ask.  You can't blame them for being wary.”

“I can blame them if they find an innocent man guilty because of their ignorance.”

“Perhaps. But ignorance cannot be undone in a single night. Which is why we thought it best to be prepared for either outcome.”

“Well tell us, then,” Astarion snaps. “What have you found?”

“If you are found guilty,” says Wyll, emphasising the first word in an attempt to placate your thunderous look, “you have the choice of two outcomes: restoration or retribution. Restoration requires the guilty to restore what they have been found guilty of, and their crimes are then forgiven. If you've stolen, then you return what was taken. In this case, though…” Wyll shakes his head. “Returning to life those who have been killed, and providing compensation for everything that was destroyed. It would take years to amass enough wealth. The gems alone needed for the restoration spells would be a king's ransom.”

“So let it take years,” you say. “We could at least try. I want to try. Those children deserve to be brought back. They never did anything—”

Wyll gives you a pitying smile. “It's not so easy, Tav. The druidic code allows a single night to restore what was taken.”

There's a sinking feeling in your chest as if your ribs are curling in on themselves, crushing the air from your lungs. You know you do not need to breathe, but that knowledge makes the sensation no less terrifying.

“And retribution?” Astarion asks, his voice hollow.

“Retribution is decided by the archdruid. Some will call for death, but Halsin believes Nimihar will choose exile.”

“Oh, well,” says Astarion, his shoulders sagging with relief, “that, I can cope with. Leaving this cursed place would hardly be a punishment at all.”

“It's not just leaving. You would be cast out to a place known only to Nimihar, with nought but the clothes on your back. Her druidic magic would teleport you through plants, and none would know where you were sent.”

“I’ll go with you,” you say, although you don't know why. Your annoyance at him has all but washed away the warmth you felt from your night of conversation, and you can't even be sure he would want your company.

“You cannot,” says Wyll. “The laws are clear. The guilty is cast out, alone, to an unknown place, to face the justice of nature.”

“We could ask Nimihar where she sent him and make our own way there, then. Surely Halsin can do the same magic?”

“I doubt she would tell us. Her sense of justice cuts both ways. Still, we could use our own methods to find you, Astarion. You would only need to survive until we could get to you. It would be a fate better than death, at least.”

Chapter Text

You cannot help but think that Wyll's optimism feels a little misplaced. Casting anyone out to an unknown place with no weapons, food, or other means of survival would be risky enough, but with everything you know of this iteration of Astarion, he'd struggle to last on his own even if he were well-equipped. He was hopeless when it came to sneaking through the hells, and any knowledge he might have maintained from his early life - and it seems little enough - will be two centuries out of date. His skill with a blade, from what you saw of him holding a knife to your throat after he pulled you from the Styx, was nothing compared to the smooth, dagger-happy movements of the rogue he once was. It feels as though the only discernible skill he's truly displayed is the uncanny ability to irritate everyone who is trying to help him. Exile would be the same as a death sentence to him. A slower death, perhaps, but a death nonetheless.

Unless, of course, Nimihar decides to send him to some high-class neighbourhood of a thriving city. Somehow you doubt that she will.

Astarion seems to share your reservations regarding his chances of survival.

“So this woman could send me anywhere - back to the hells, or to the infinite layers of the abyss - and I'll have to survive there until you figure out some way to come and get me?”

“No,” says Wyll. “Her magic can only teleport you elsewhere on this plane, and only somewhere she herself has been before. You'll most likely end up somewhere in Faerûn.”

“How reassuring.”

“Why don't we just run?” you say. Neither of them responds although Astarion tilts his head to the side in interest. Wyll frowns, though, so you keep speaking in the hopes of convincing him. “I mean it. We know the secret path out of here. Why don't we just leave now, trial be damned?”

“That ‘secret path’ is no longer such a secret - and it’s well guarded now that the grove has increased its security. Besides, running would be as good as admitting guilt. You'd lose what goodwill you have from the druids, and the whole grove would likely hunt you down, refugees and druids alike. We cannot afford to lose allies when we're already so outmatched by the enemy. Without Gale and Shadowheart's powers - without yours - their magic could be a real boon in the fight against Lord Ancunín.”

The mention of your missing friends hurts you, but now is not the time to dwell on their misfortunes. At his words, though, you cannot resist the instinct to reach within, feeling without hope for the magic that once resided inside you.

You feel nothing. You feel numb.

“And without Gale’s powers, how are we supposed to find wherever Nimihar sends him?”

“I may not be in a pact any more, but I learned enough about scrying when I was a warlock to be able to track him down. A lock of hair would make things easier, if you would be willing, Astarion?”

“Why not? It’s not like my hair can look any good after the literal hells I’ve been dragged through. Corellon only knows what possessed me to cut it to this hideous length anyway,” he says, bringing a hand up to run through his ever-perfect curls. “I must look like a common labourer.”

You can’t decide whether to be glad or exasperated that Astarion still has the energy to care about his appearance, of all things, at a time like this, so you choose to ignore it completely.

“And when we find out where he is, what then? How will we get to him?”

Wyll’s pause is enough to tell you that you’ve found the weak point of his plan. “We’ll manage. We’ll find a way.”

“Will he manage?”

“I am right here, you know,” says Astarion, and you can almost feel his glower through the blindfold.

“We’ll go over some basic survival tips now, and with any luck, Nimihar will choose a place not entirely hostile,” says Wyll, and from his choice of words you can see that even his optimism has its limits. “Besides, this could all be for nought. Astarion may well be found innocent, and we need not worry about any of this.”

You wonder if he believes his own words. You certainly do not feel convinced.

You listen without really hearing Wyll’s plan for Astarion’s possible exile. Astarion asks question after frustrated question, and Wyll tries to impart as much survival knowledge as one can possibly hope to cram into the tired mind of a memory-less magistrate in a single morning. 

Staying up all night talking seemed like a rare moment of pleasure at the time, but now you wish you had taken the opportunity to rest. Your mind moves sluggishly, though your nervous adrenaline courses through you with enough strength to set your hands fidgeting and your jaw clenching. You have a nagging feeling that there must be a way to solve this if only you could shepherd your wayward thoughts into a semblance of a plan. Instead, your mind tortures you with images of Astarion, alone and afraid, in various settings that you arrive at too late. His broken body, his lifeless eyes, his pretty corpse lying before you. A part of you wants to smile at the picture, but there’s also a deep, twisting pang in your guts that tells you that it isn’t what you want. Not truly.

Still, the image lingers in your mind, as if it has crawled up past your lashes and etched itself into the thin flesh of your eyelids. Wyll’s words wash over you, past and present, disturbing your increasingly desperate attempts to form a plan from the scraps of ideas that come to you.

Running would be as good as admitting guilt, Wyll said, but here you all are, acting as if his guilt is something already assured.

If anything comes at you, run, Wyll says, to this man who has been running the entire time you’ve known him.

Return what was taken, Wyll said, as if lives and goodness and hope are things that can ever truly be restored.

All you have to do is survive, Wyll says, to this man who has survived more lifetimes of suffering than either of you can imagine.

The gems alone would be a king's ransom, Wyll said, and something within you gnashes and claws and rages at your uselessness, at your weakness, at the powers you have lost, thinking of all the kingdoms you would willingly topple, all the counting houses you would brazenly empty, all the faceless lives you would happily sacrifice for this one hopeless cause.

Don’t try to be brave, Wyll says, to this man made of fear.

Chapter Text

It's only when the cell door is pushed open with a squeal that sets your teeth on edge that you are finally wrenched from your muddled thoughts. Jaheira stands in the doorway, her clothes travel-worn and her face grim. Though previously you were too caught up in your own worries to notice her absence, her appearance has made you realise you haven't seen her since two days before the trial.

“Where have you been?”

“Scouting. In the city. Do not look so betrayed, cub, my old heart cannot take it. I made sure to be back in time to vote. Besides, I think I would have been of little help during the trial. My patience is limited with these druids and their long contemplations about truth and justice.”

“Aren't you all druids together?”

“Ha! No. Why should I look to the skies when the ground beneath my feet speaks to me?” Jaheira tuts, shaking her head. “No, now is not the time for lengthy debates by moonlight. The land calls for action. It is a pity she cannot seem to see that fact in the face of her precious moon.”

If it were anyone else you might apologise for your misspeaking, but you know Jaheira is not so easily offended. She is a practical woman, and you both know you have more important things to worry about.

“You said you were in the city? How did you get there and back so quickly?”

“Magic,” she says, waggling her fingers dramatically. “It is the only way in and out of the city now. The gates have all been closed, and even if they were not I would be wary of being seen so out in the open.”

“Did you see him?” There is no need to specify who you mean.

“No. But your dear husband has amassed more wealth and power than the tyrant Gortash could have dreamed of. His influence can be felt everywhere in the city.”

“What about the darkness?”

Jaheira hisses a breath in through her teeth. “It’s spreading. It covers a large part of the upper city now. Rolan is watching it from his tower.”

“He’s still there? What about Cal and Lia? Are they safe?”

She lets out a joyless laugh. “As safe as anyone can be. That tower is old and full of its own magic. Still, they know to come here, should things turn. But enough about the city for now. I was sent to fetch you all. It's time.”

A stillness falls over the room at her words. Your mouth suddenly feels very dry, and it's an effort to unstick your tongue enough to croak out the first words your brain can come up with.

“It can't be midday yet.”

“The sun would disagree. Come. I'll cast darkness so we can go back to the inner sanctum. I'll watch with you from the shadows.”

You turn to look at Astarion, who is sitting beside you on the bed. He stays very still. Even his breathing seems to have stopped. Perhaps it’s only your undead ears with their supernatural hearing, or perhaps it is his newfound mortality, but you have noticed that his breaths have a deeper, heavier quality recently, and you find that you miss it now that it is gone. The blindfold still blocks his eyes, but you imagine you can picture them anyway, unfocused, starting at a spot beyond the wall. You wonder what he is thinking. You wonder what you could say to make it better.

You can't help but think that if you had only had a little while longer, and been a little less tired, you might have figured out a way to make everything work out. To make the outcome certain. To make sure Astarion isn't torn away from you. Not again.

“Astarion? Are you alright?”

Your voice seems to pull him out of his reverie. He moves his head to look towards you despite his sightlessness.

“Of course I'm alright.”

His snappish tone tells you he is anything but, but there is nothing you can think to do or say that will help now.

“Come,” Jaheira says again, holding out a hand to you.

“Go on,” Wyll assures you, gesturing you towards the door. “We'll follow shortly.”

You throw a final worried look towards Astarion, but allow Jaheira to take you by the arm and guide you from the room. She mutters a few words as she leads you from the sheltered hollow towards the sacred grove, and just as you are about to step into the sunlight, a cool cloud of black envelopes you. You are glad of its shadowy darkness. It saves you the torment of seeing the faces of all those you must be walking past. You know that, if you could see them, you would be torturing yourself by trying to read their expressions, trying to guess their thoughts, trying to pick apart each glance and grimace to see which way they voted. In the embrace of Jaheira's darkness, you finally have enough of a semblance of peace to allow yourself to think.

The wisps of an idea begin to solidify in your mind. A bad idea, probably. A stupid idea, almost certainly. An idea that, with any luck, you will never have to share. Astarion will be found innocent, and you will all be able to focus on the things that really matter: finding your missing friends and bringing an end to your husband's rule of terror.

Still, a bad idea is better than no idea, and you cling to it as it clicks its vague pieces together in your head. You try to shut out the growing din around you to give it a chance to fully form. There are voices all about you now, and gentle birdsong from the trees that surround the grove, and above you you hear the harsh cawing of a crow. Jaheira keeps a tight grip on your arm as she leads you with a purposeful step towards the inner sanctum. The closer you get, the more you are jostled past shadowy figures of other druids and refugees. Some cry out and gasp as the dark surrounds them, but you move so quickly that it passes over them before any real panic can unfold. By the time Jaheira drops her spell, you are standing within the inner sanctum, a few paces from the entrance, safely out of the direct light of the bright sun that sits at its zenith in the sky.

Jaheira must take in your set jaw and unfocused gaze and decide that you do not want to talk, for she says nothing to you, folding her arms and watching the grove and those gathering around the sacred pool with quiet focus. You stay silent, thinking, trying not to absorb the suspense that fills the air around you. It's only when the two figures of Wyll and Astarion appear on the slope down into the grove that your attention is dragged back to the present, and this time you find you cannot escape the tension: there's a charge to the air that is impossible to ignore, and the hushed murmuring of the assembled inhabitants of the grove grows louder as the pair move down towards you, beloved hero and accused villain walking side by side. The sound of birdsong is all but blocked out by the muttering and whispering now, but the cawing of the crow just manages to cut through it still, the carrion hunter's call cutting like a blade through the susurrus din.

By its third grating call, you have spotted its stark black form circling against the deep blue sky above, dark beady eyes no doubt scanning the ground for prey. You think that if stepping into the sunlight was not a death sentence, you might very well attempt to kill the beast, so frayed are your nerves and so harsh is its screeching call. Not that you have any means to achieve your murderous goal. You let out a huff of disgust, although you cannot say whether your displeasure is with your brutal desires or your weakness. Have you always been so quick to long for violence? It's hard to recall. It's hard enough to work out what is left of you now, let alone to remember all that you once were. Last night you felt close enough to comfortable that you almost forgot the state of your ruined soul. Now, though, it feels as though that wound has opened up once more, fresh blood bleeding out of it, your sense of self bleeding away with it.

A hush falls over the grove when Astarion finally reaches the centre of the circle in the middle of the sacred pool. Halsin and Nimihar stand on either side of the chair that Wyll guides him to sit upon. Even the birds of prey and song alike seem to choose silence over sound. Or perhaps they are still calling and singing, and it is only the rush in your ears that drowns out their music. It's a strange feeling, knowing that your heart would be beating fast were it not little more than a dead lump of meat at the very core of you: you can almost feel the ghost of palpitations tapping against your ribs, filling your chest with the unsettling sensation of life in a place that has known nothing but death for so long.

You force your attention away from your tumultuous insides, back to the grove before you. Three butterflies flit prettily from rock to sunbaked rock, their dancing wings flapping in time with the spectral beats of your heart. The silence gapes wide as Nimihar stands before Astarion and gazes out at the gathered crowd.

“Astarion Ancunín,” she eventually calls out, her voice deep and sombre. “You have been tried by the people of the Emerald Grove, and found guilty of your crimes.”

Chapter Text

The silence following Nimihar’s announcement roars loud in your ears and time rushes to a stop around you. You have the strangest sensation of falling even though your legs are locked in place, as if the ground is screaming up around you, trying to swallow you whole. For a moment that seems to last an age, you tell yourself that you must have misheard. That Nimihar must have said something else. For all of the preparation - for all of Wyll's warnings - you never really thought that Astarion could be found guilty. The truth was so clear. His innocence was too obvious. You never truly believed that he could be found at fault for the crimes of your husband.

You think - childishly - that if you stay perfectly still, Nimihar’s words will become something else. That their meaning will change. You hold your breath, hold your limbs in place, hold your tongue. It's only when your eyes flick to Jaheira's stricken face that you realise that any of it is real. Astarion has been found guilty. Astarion is going to be sent away, or killed. His death is all but guaranteed regardless.

You shouldn't care. You know that. You know that you don't love him. You doubt that whatever kind of broken being you are now is capable of love. But still, without any real thought or purpose, your feet move of their own accord. You run to him. You have to be with him. You have to stop this.

You feel something tighten around your wrist, and come to a jerking stop a step or two outside of the shelter of the inner sanctum. You don't remember crying out, but you know you must have made a noise from the way Astarion jumps blindly to his feet and all of the faces in the grove turn towards you. There's a brief moment before you feel the sun and a briefer moment when you feel its warmth spread across your bare skin, and then you begin to burn. Before the pressure on your wrist can drag you back into the shadows, the heat of the day rolls over you, the pain building to an incomprehensible, inescapable agony that eclipses all thought. It's only when the black ocean of pain wanes enough for your sight to return to you that you see that it is Jaheira who has pulled you back out of the sun, her hand still gripped tight around your wrist, the skin on your arm slowly fading back from glowing silver to flaking red to pale, deathly white before your eyes.

“I have to go to him.” The pain doesn't matter to you: you have endured worse. All that matters is being there for him in the light of Nimihar's proclamation.

“You know you cannot.”

“I have to,” you say, pulling free of her grip and causing her to curse and lunge to grab you once more. You don't know where your strength comes from, but you know you could break free again with ease. It's only her words that keep you from acting without thought for the consequences.

“Think, girl! What kind of response is it to burn yourself alive for nothing? You are no use to him as a pile of ash and bone. Be still. He will come here. Halsin will make sure of it. Nimihar will at least permit him to say goodbye.”

You grind your mouth shut against the flaring desire to sink your teeth into her wrinkled, wiry flesh at the mere suggestion of goodbyes. You clench your jaw tight and try to tamp your boiling rage down to a more manageable simmer. She is right, and you know it, but that doesn't stop some part of you from needing to be by Astarion’s side.

You force your body to relax, and when she sees that you are no longer tensed to flee, Jaheira loosens her grip on your arm. You turn to look back out at the grove, and sure enough, after a brief exchange between Halsin and Nimihar, Wyll takes Astarion by the arm and leads him carefully towards you, the two archdruids following side by side behind them. You see Karlach peel away from the watching crowd to join their procession of the guilty, and before long you are backing away to allow them a clear path into the inner sanctum.

Chapter Text

You feel strangely breathless as you stand aside to allow the group inside, Wyll taking smooth, thoughtfully slow steps as he leads Astarion’s shuffling way, Nimihar and Halsin walking blank-faced behind them, Karlach looking unusually surly as she brings up the rear.

“So what now?” Karlach asks when everyone has gathered within, her usual glow of fiery gusto dulled by the scenario you find yourselves in.

“We have adjourned the trial so Astarion can decide his fate. Retribution or restoration.” Nimihar's voice is calm and level, but she at least has the good grace to look sombre.

“I truly never thought…” Halsin's voice comes out as little more than a whisper, rasping and low with the weight of his mistake. “We've helped these people. We showed them the truth. How could they vote this way? Against us?”

His use of us instead of him is all that stops you from spitting a cruel response at Halsin. Still, it does not stop the callous diatribe of thoughts that run through your mind. Halsin has never had the soundest of judgment, after all. His previous leadership of the grove - and even his handling of the Shadow Curse before that - is proof enough that being too kind, too good, too generous in one's opinion of the wisdom of crowds and the goodness of men is little more than a curse in a leader, rather than a virtue. The man is a fool. A kind fool. A loving fool. A fool, nonetheless.

You can sense Astarion's own curt reply to the druid’s musings in the hard set of his jaw, but he says nothing. He simply stands awkwardly, obviously uncomfortable and unaware of his surroundings. You walk to him, taking his hand and leading him to sit on a stone bench at the edge of the room, and he follows with a meekness that can only come from his being blindfolded. Jaheira has already started pointing out the many flaws in Halsin's unwavering belief in the self-righteous and farcical procedures of this particular circle of druids, and in the ensuing quarrel, you lean towards Astarion and murmur in his ear.

“Do you trust me?”

The blindfold across his eyes shifts slightly as his brow wrinkles, but after a moment he gives a short but decisive nod.

“Choose restoration,” you murmur, trying to keep your voice low enough that you do not interrupt the others’ argument. Unfortunately, your efforts are quickly wasted by Astarion's loud hiss of a reply.

“What?”

You wish more than anything that he was not blindfolded so you could look him in the eyes, although you are not entirely sure whether you would use the opportunity to shoot him an imploring gaze or an irritated glare. His exclamation has cut through the clamour of your companions’ arguing, and they have all turned to look at you.

“Can we have a moment to talk? Alone?”

“You have agreed to our justice by participating in the trial,” says Nimihar, her icy eyes boring into yours. “You cannot attempt to flee simply because the outcome has not been as you hoped.”

“I’m not trying to run,” you say between gritted teeth. “I just want to talk. We’ll go to the library - there’s no way out but back through here, is there? And it's not like I have any magic to teleport us away.”

“It's true,” says Halsin. “Go, then. But it would be best to be brief, if possible.”

“Halsin—” begins Nimihar, her disapproval apparent, but he cuts her off.

“Let them have this.”

He gives you an affirming nod, and though Nimihar frowns, she does not openly object again. You muster a look as close to gratitude as you can manage while still feeling distinctly annoyed at Halsin, then take Astarion by the arm, pull him to his feet, and lead him deeper into the inner sanctum.

When you reach the library - blessedly empty - you release his hand and reach to untie his blindfold. Once removed, he blinks for a moment while his eyes readjust to the dim light, and you watch them fill with a gleam that seems part distrust, part excitement.

“I mean it,” you say. “You should choose restoration over retribution.”

“I suppose they cannot actually expect me to be able to restore everything that the other half of me has done.”

“It seems they can. But you can do it.”

“So much for nemo potest praecise cogi ad factum,” he scoffs.

You don’t know what the words mean, although you are certain from the context that they have some legal significance - some form of high elvish, perhaps, entirely incomprehensible to your ears. You have never liked admitting your weaknesses to others, though, so instead you mirror his scorn.

“Where were all these fancy legal terms when you were actually, you know, on trial?”

“One can hardly expect these savages, druidic though they may be, to follow jus naturale.”

He smirks. You glare at him. It seems safer than admitting your ignorance. Besides, there’s a small part of you that is glad to see him seemingly making jokes when his life hangs in the balance. It seems like something that the Astarion from your memories would have done.

“I presume you have a plan?” he asks, interrupting your reminiscence.

“Yes. It’s probably stupid. But so is sending you to some unknown place, alone and unarmed.”

“How incredibly reassuring.”

“You remember what Wyll said, about the wealth required to restore what has been broken being so much it would probably take years to amass?”

“Yes.”

“Well… what if someone else has amassed it already? And what if we were to simply take it from him?”

“You want me to steal?”

You nod.

“From… me?”

You nod again.

“We’d be right within his grasp.”

You think you can hear a note of fascination in the hushed tone of his voice, although his face remains a mask of horror.

“We would. It’s dangerous, of course. But this way, they - the fleeing cityfolk, the druids, the refugees from Halsin's settlement, all of them - will have to support us. And if we succeed we'll have their support in whatever the future holds, too.”

His eyes dart about unseeing, and you wonder what private calculations he is making in his mind.

“We could say that’s what we’ll do,” he says eventually, “then flee when we get to Baldur’s Gate. There’s bound to be an opportunity once we’re in the city—“

“We could,” you agree, “but I don’t think we should. We need them. I don’t like it, but it’s true. We need all the help we can get if we’re going to have a chance at taking down the other part of you.”

He gives you a long look through slightly narrowed eyes, and you find it unsettlingly hard to read his face.

“Alright. We’ll do it your way. Hardly my first choice of allies, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

You let out a breath of relief, and give him an assuring smile.

“Let’s get back and tell the others, then. We'd better put this back on,” you say, holding up the blindfold.

“Cursed thing,” he mutters, before sighing and saying, with more volume and an impressive amount of theatre for a single syllable, “fine.”

Chapter Text

Jaheira and Halsin seem to have made up by the time you lead Astarion back to the room where they are waiting. They are speaking in low voices together when you return and quickly cut off their conversation to look up at you as you enter. Wyll and Karlach are a little way off, Karlach's arm wrapped comfortingly around Wyll's shoulders. Nimihar stands exactly where you left her, still and calm and cold-eyed.

“Well, Astarion Ancunín? Have you decided your fate?”

There's a breath of a pause before Astarion replies, and for that single terrible moment, you fear he will go against your request.

“I choose restoration.”

One of Nimihar's brows raises ever so slightly, but otherwise, her face remains impassive. The same cannot be said of your companions.

“You will restore everything - everyone - that was lost?” Nimihar's cool eyes flick to you, and you answer her question despite knowing it was meant for Astarion.

“Yes. We'll bring the children back.”

Halsin is the first of your companions to regain the power of speech.

“Tav,” he says, his voice heavy with a sad sort of compassion, “we've already told you we haven't got the resources—”

“No, but we know who has, don't we?” You pause, trying to gauge your companions' reactions from their faces. Halsin's face is serious and still, Jaheira appears to be suppressing a smile, and Wyll looks blank. Karlach, however, frowns at you.

“This better not be some bullshit idea where you sacrifice yourself in exchange for some gems—”

“No, nothing like that. It's hardly likely that he'd honour any trade we attempted to make, anyway.” And I'm done with sacrificing myself for others, you think, but you do not believe that saying so out loud will win you any favours here.

“So, what, then? You'll sneak into the same gods-damned house we had to break you out of and take whatever you need? The house surrounded by some unknown darkness and full of his thralls and teeming with gods only know what other traps and security since you were there last?”

There's a growl of angry disbelief in Karlach's voice, which makes you a little nervous. Of all of your companions you had hoped that she, at least, would be on your side when it came to taking what you need from the man you seek revenge upon.

“No. We won’t be doing any sneaking, actually. It's just that we just so happen to have a perfect replica of his lordship right here.” Karlach’s eyes go wide as she realises what you’re implying, but Wyll’s good heart appears to make grasping any plan involving criminal activity difficult, so you continue for his sake. “We'll go to Baldur's Gate and take it from the counting house.”

There's a stunned silence that follows your declaration. You might like to think that they are stunned by the sheer brilliance of your plan, but you know that it is far more likely that they are struggling with its audacity or sheer stupidity.

“They’ll have protections against theft—“ begins Halsin, but you are ready for this objection, and you cut him off quickly.

“It won't be theft, will it? He'll be taking what is already his.”

“But there are measures against just waltzing in and pretending to be someone you're not—” protests Wyll, but again, you are ready for it.

“Yes, antimagic fields, but this isn’t some magical disguise, is it? There’s no illusion to be revealed: it’s him.”

There’s an uneasy silence, and you can feel your companions reaching for more objections, so you press on.

“Wyll said himself that it would take a king's ransom to bring the children back. This could be our only chance to save them for years. You're clearly in need of more resources to help with the grove’s current numbers. And with the darkness spreading over the city, it's not as if we have forever to attempt this. Why not do it now and save Astarion at the same time?”

You wish you could say that this plan was formulated out of your desire to do good, restore balance, and right the wrongs of your husband, but try as you might, you cannot quite lie to yourself well enough. This plan has not come from a desire to be good, but has rather been woven from the scraps of whatever foolhardy cunning that you still possess. You've simply ensured that it contains enough potential to do good that it will snag on the consciousness of your better companions, whose desire for balance and justice has made running from this folly an impossibility. 

You need to keep them on your side. You are weak, and Astarion is weaker, and without your companions, you have no chance of making it far. Any plans you make will need to appeal to them just enough to maintain their support. But you're done trying to be good. Tying to do good has got you nowhere. These druids and refugees no doubt believe they are doing good by allowing a man you know to be innocent to be punished.

What you need to do now is try to survive.

You look to the only companion yet to speak, moulding your face into a mask of beseeching hopefulness.

“Jaheira? What do you think?”

Jaheira wrinkles her nose a little and gives you a long, hard look before she responds.

“It is foolish. But perhaps no more foolish than allowing him to be sent to gods only know where and wasting precious time trying to find him. Certainly no more foolish than this trial and outcome have already been.”

Chapter Text

“You surely cannot support this madness,” says Halsin, though the conviction of his words is not met in his uncertain tone. You can see the confusion that he is trying to tame in the look he gives Jaheira, who raises an eyebrow at him in return.

“Careful, bear, lest I have to use those same words back at you.”

“We've spent months planning how best to confront Lord Ancunín. To go charging into the city now could be the gravest folly.”

“And where have all those months of careful planning got us? Two party members missing and so poor we can barely afford to heal the scouts who come back injured or feed the fleeing people we take in. Think what good we could do if we just had the resources.”

“Choosing exile may be less of a risk.”

“For him? No. Letting him get sent away is no better than letting him die. Look at him! I doubt the man can even hunt.”

“I can hunt,” says Astarion hotly.

“Oh yes? On pretty ponies with a pack of hunting dogs by your side?”

“They are horses, actually, and I'll have you know gentlemen hunt with birds of prey. Dogs are for farmers and labourers.”

Jaheira scoffs and looks at Halsin with a raised brow.

“See what I mean?”

Halsin lets out a long, tremulous sigh, shakes his head, and looks at the floor. “I never was good at choosing the right path. I will bow to your better judgement.”

He looks so dejected that for a brief moment, you feel bad, but the feeling is only fleeting. He has agreed to your plan, albeit begrudgingly, and if he and Jaheira are both on board then your other companions must surely follow. You look to Karlach for confirmation, and she grins and shrugs.

“Fuck it,” she says. “Why not? We stole you from the crusty old bastard, after all. Why not a hoard of gems and gold too?”

You turn to Wyll, whose smile is a little less certain, but he nods all the same. “Where Karlach goes, I will follow.”

“Your dedication is noble, Wyll,” says Jaheira, “but I fear that none of us may follow Astarion in this endeavour. Our faces are plastered on posters throughout the city. Such a vast withdrawal will be suspicious enough without a crowd of wanted criminals by your side.”

You force your face into a blank expression, not wanting to show how much of a blow Jaheira's announcement has been.

“That's fine,” you say. “The fewer people the better, probably.”

Astarion looks mildly panicked at this statement.

“I'm only going if you come too.”

“Of course,” you say, at the same time Halsin says, “Absolutely not.”

You give him a flat glare, but he meets your gaze levelly.

“It is out of the question.”

“Halsin, it's fine. I'll be fine.”

“She’s getting stronger,” says Jaheira. You turn to offer her a smile in acknowledgement of her support, but you catch her and Halsin sharing a dark look, and wonder what hidden import her words must contain to have earned it.

“For Silvanus’ sake, she's supposed to be dead. Tav going along with him will be even more suspicious than the rest of us.”

“No,” says Jaheira, though her brows are wrinkled with something that could be concern. “Lord Ancunín has kept news of his wife's abduction and subsequent demise limited to those he had helping him search for her. To the wider city, all is well in House Ancunín. There are whispers that something is wrong, of course, but there are few who are willing to say so out loud.”

“And what if Lord Ancunín is able to see through his eyes?”

“He never seemed aware of the connection before,” you say. “Not what it meant, at least. There's no reason to think that will have changed.”

Halsin's continued disquiet is clear from the worried lines creasing his brow, but he seems to have run out of objections for now. Nimihar waits until the uneasy silence has settled like a thick dust over the room before speaking.

“If an accord has been reached, then I will announce the sentence to the grove.” She has been stoic and unmoving throughout your discussions, and her voice is emotionless as ever, but when she turns to look at you and Astarion, you think you can see the faintest flame of sentiment in those ice-cold eyes. “The laws of this circle are older than the trees, and cannot bend or break. You have until this time tomorrow to restore the cost of what has been lost. I will pray to the Forest Father for your success.”

Chapter Text

As Nimihar leaves to announce the decided sentence to the milling occupants of the grove outside, your companions immediately spring into action. It feels surreal, watching your seemingly hopeless seed of a plan unfurl into something real through your companions’ tending.

Halsin says that he can teleport you and Astarion to Bloomridge Park, alongside Jaheira, who will keep herself hidden there in order to teleport you back to the grove when you are done. This is apparently the method Jaheira has been using to carry out her scouting trips in the city, so they are fairly certain it will work for you too. It gladdens you to know that they are planning for your return. It makes it feel as if you are not leaping into an entirely doomed quest. As if you have a chance at succeeding. As if the fates might be kind to you yet. When you ask why Halsin wouldn’t teleport you closer - for surely the less time spent walking through the city the better - he informs you that druidic magic often requires a touch of nature, and you will be teleported via the trees in the grove to the trees within the park. The bother of a slightly longer walk pales in comparison to the other risks you will be facing, and you hardly want to remind him of that fact given his earlier reticence, so you thank him quickly and move on.

Wyll uses his charm and goodwill with the refugees around the grove to borrow outfits that, though woefully below the standard that your husband would usually wear, should be suitable enough in passing. When you lead Astarion away to an empty room to try them on, even this version of him immediately finds fault with the quality of the garments.

“I mean, I know they were fleeing for their lives,” he says, holding up his borrowed shirt by the very tips of his fingers as if touching it might dirty his hands, “but this is what they chose to save? Really?”

“That level of disdain is perfect. If you could just bottle it up and save it for tonight, rather than for the people who are actually trying to help us—”

“Those people are deserving of a little disdain, thank you very much. They just voted for me to die, in case you had forgotten. I thought I was supposed to be the one with a memory problem.”

You know he's only snapping because of the stress of the situation, or the exhaustion from the past day's events, but your own tiredness has your temper on a short fuse, so you snap right back at him.

“It's hardly likely that the owners of these clothes voted against you, is it? You could be a little kinder. They've lost almost everything they ever had.”

“They've lost everything? I've lost everything. I had friends, and parties, and actually nice clothes, and now I find myself dragged through the hells, then condemned for a murder I didn't commit by a bunch of idiot commoners, then thrown against some great and mighty other part of me to commit a crime in order to be freed from the previous crime that, as I already said, I did not commit.”

You should apologise. You know you should. You should comfort him or reassure him, but you simply cannot find the energy to form words that would be soft enough to make things better. You finish trying on the clothes in a thorny silence, and though you try to show your contrition by being especially gentle when retying his blindfold - a precaution Halsin has insisted upon, at least until you are teleported to the city - you cannot be sure that he knows that you sympathise with him.

When you return to the others, Karlach tries to offer up her blood for you to feed on, although she warns you that despite her heart being somewhat stabilised, she still runs pretty hot. You are relieved when Halsin offers his instead; you readily accept his offer. Jaheira attempts to give you and Astarion tips for navigating the city, and she and you both try to school him on how he will need to behave if he is to have any chance at passing for Lord Ancunín. For all of Jaheira's sound advice, Astarion cannot seem to resist asking her ever more dread-inducing questions about his other half of a soul. 

“We’re really about to steal from the most powerful man in Baldur’s Gate?”

“You really are.”

“And he truly has enough gold and gems and whatever else to pay these druids what they need?”

“He truly does.”

“And he's really in control of the entirety of the city watch?”

“He really is.”

“And you definitely think he would kill us if he were to catch us?”

“No. Death would be a mercy if he catches you, and he has not shown himself to be a particularly merciful lord.”

Despite Jaheira's dire words, your fear is kept at bay by the overwhelming tiredness that you've been struggling against since spending the previous night talking with Astarion. Feeding from Halsin helped stave it off for a while, but when Jaheira's sharp eyes catch you stifling yet another yawn against your hands, she tuts and tells you to go and rest.

“There’s too much to do,” you protest. “I haven’t got time to rest.”

“There’s hours left yet before the sun goes down, and you cannot make your move until then. Go, now, and I’ll wake you before night falls. You too, little lordling. The rest of us can prepare things for you. There’s no hope for any of this to go well if you’re too tired to think straight.”

Astarion has a look on his face as if he can’t decide if he’s annoyed at being called such a diminutive name or grateful at the suggestion of rest. It seems the appeal of sleep wins out, though his reply is a little haughtier than usual.

“Gladly,” he says, standing to leave before anyone else can waylay him with further tips or plans. “Why not spend a few hours in slumber before being whisked away to my likely demise? It will doubtless be good practice for the sweet embrace of death.” When you and Jaheira offer no more than an icy silence in response, he tuts. “Gods, your sense of humour is even more severely lacking when you're tired. Come on.”

He gives an impatient jerk of his head in the rough direction of the dormitory, and you realise that he cannot find his way there alone while blindfolded. You get unsteadily to your feet, the room spinning slightly in your exhaustion. Jaheira gives you a smile, tight-lipped but encouraging, and you turn to lead Astarion out of the room.

The dormitory is empty when you enter it. Once you remove his blindfold, Astarion tugs his shirt off and collapses dramatically onto the closest bed, so it is left to you to walk around the room extinguishing the lamps that glow softly on the walls. You put out all but one, then make your way clumsily in the flickering dimness to the bed next to his. You kick off your boots and roll onto the bed fully clothed, turning to face Astarion, only to find that he is lying with his back to you. You stare at him for a moment: the silver curls you so often ran your fingers through, the shoulders you clung to in moments of tenderness, the back you so foolishly used your own eyes to help him see. Your eyelids feel weighted and your tongue is heavy with sleep by the time you rouse yourself from your drifting thoughts enough to speak.

“Astarion?”

“Mm?”

His voice sounds just as thick with tiredness as your own, and you have to stifle a yawn before you can speak again.

“Are you afraid?”

There's a breathless sort of silence as you wait for an answer. He doesn't say anything for what feels like a very long time. You do not know if he ever responds. You are fast asleep long before he utters a word.

Chapter Text

You dream of pale, thin hands catching in your hair, scratching at your face, grabbing at your arms. You struggle to fight your way out of sleep, away from the grasping hands, back to the waking world, back to freedom, but even as the dream fades away you still feel their grip upon you. A spiky, glittering hoar frost of fear spreads across the dead lump of meat that once served as your heart as you realise that even in waking, those dreamed-of hands are wrapped around your arms, pinning you down to the bed. It's only when your bleary eyes blink open and you see the frowning face of Jaheira above you that the panic ceases its settling over your body.

“Bad dream?” she asks, removing her hand from your arm as you stop mid-struggle, her brows quirked in a mixture of amusement and concern.

“I thought— your hand—” You shake your head, trying to dispel the last remnants of sleep from your mind. “I'm fine. Is it time?”

“It is. Best wake the lordling and get changed. Come to the inner sanctum when you're ready.”

You get up and shake Astarion gently awake as Jaheira leaves the room. From the faint grimace on his sleeping face, it seems you are not alone in being visited by troubling dreams. When his eyes snap open and focus on you, they appear for a moment to be filled with something close to rage, but it quickly fades as he pushes himself up to a sitting position. You gesture to the pile of borrowed clothes and tell him it's time to get ready, and he responds with a dazed nod.

You dress in stilted silence, your growing anxiety about the task ahead rendering all attempts at small talk futile. You feel Astarion's eyes on you almost constantly, but whenever you look up to meet his gaze he looks away.

The glow of the sunset still paints the stones at the entranceway to the inner grove a golden orange when you walk out of the dormitory to meet your companions. They are all in the midst of preparations, but they each look up and greet you with smiles of varying certainty. At the sight of them standing there, you cannot help but linger on the thought that this should have been a much larger group. You feel the absence of Shadowheart, Gale, Lae’zel and Minsc more than you ever have before, now that you are preparing once again to visit the city that was the final destination on your previous quest together.

Jaheira has told you that Minsc and Boo remained in the city to ensure clear paths of escape for those trapped there. Although you might like them to be here with you, there is some comfort to be found in the imagined image of them back in the sewers where you first met them, fighting their way through the dark and malevolent creatures that make their homes deep beneath the city streets, guiding fleeing citizens to safety. Lae’zel, as far as any of you are aware, is still fighting for her cause on some distant plane, though you wish dearly that she might return to lend her sword to your own fight one day. As for Gale and Shadowheart—

Now is not the time to think too long about missing friends. If things do not go well for you in Baldur’s Gate, you and Astarion may well be joining their ranks before long.

You lead Astarion, well-dressed and blindfolded, over to where your friends are gathered, forcing yourself to ignore the empty spaces standing amongst them. Wyll presents you with two packs. One is filled with a meagre assortment of potions and scrolls: a few potions of healing, a pair of scrolls of expeditious retreat, and a single scroll of sleep.

“Not much, I know,” says Jaheira grimly. “But it is all we have to spare. This, though,” she says, picking up the second pack, “I think you will be pleased with.”

You eye the rather empty-looking pack doubtfully. It is a sad-looking thing, even compared to the paltry offerings of the previous pack; all patched and worn and threadbare. Halsin smiles at your clear hesitation.

“A bag of holding,” he says, and you cannot help but gasp.

“Pretty cool, right?” grins Karlach. “What I wouldn’t have given to have had one of these when we were fighting the Absolute. These arms were made for fighting, not carrying every gods damned item you degenerates pilfered from here to the Gate.”

“It’s probably the most valuable item left in this entire grove,” says Jaheira, “so it had best return filled to the brim with gold and gems, eh?”

You smile, knowing that there is affection hidden beneath her false sternness. The sound of footsteps comes from the grove, and you turn to the entranceway to see who it is that approaches. The light of the setting sun casts a tall shadow of the figure standing on the threshold. The silhouette sprawls across the room, lean and dark and crowned with two curling horns, a projected devil incarnate.

As the figure steps forward and the trick of the light fails, a being of a much smaller frame is revealed. Mattis, who you haven’t seen since hearing his voice at the trial, approaches you, his little face twisted with rage.

“I can't believe you're doing this,” he says, his eyes glistening with angry tears. “I can't believe you're helping him. I thought you were good. I thought you were all good. He killed Silfy!”

Patience has not come easily to you for a long time. Nor has kindness, nor compassion, nor empathy. Still, you force yourself to crouch down to the tiefling child's level and look him straight in the eyes, laying a commiserating hand on his small shoulder.

“I told you before, Mattis, it wasn’t him. He’s good. We’re all good.” Perhaps he can sense that you do not fully believe what you say, for your words seem to do little to relieve his mood. You try a different tack. “It might be our only chance to get them back. Helping him now might be the only way to save Silfy.” Angry glowing eyes meet yours, and you think how sad it is that a face so young can hold so much mistrust. “What have you got to lose? If it goes wrong - if we’re caught - he’ll be killed, and you’ll have got your revenge. But if we succeed - if we bring back what we need to save them - you have to let him live. You have to forgive him. He’ll have repaid the debt of his other half.”

“I don’t want you to die,” he says sullenly.

“I won’t,” you say. I can’t, you think. I’m already dead.

Chapter Text

Karlach shepherds Mattis away and you make the final preparations to leave for the city. As the last of the day’s light fades and the sun dips below the horizon, Halsin leads you and Jaheira out to a tree at the edge of the grove, with Wyll guiding Astarion close behind you. When you have all arrived at the tree, Halsin turns to you, his kind eyes creased with concern.

“Are you sure you are ready for this, Tav? The spell won’t last for long.”

You nod, not wanting to prolong the inevitable and allow the ever-increasing worry that you are feeling to take a deeper hold. You turn to take Astarion’s hand, but before you can, Wyll pulls you into a warm and unexpected hug.

“Good luck,” he says, squeezing a little tighter before releasing you. You are surprised at how good the contact felt. Surprised that, beneath the thoughts of ripping your teeth into hot succulent flesh and gorging on rich flowing blood, you feel a pang of affection and softness that you had thought was lost to you. You smile a bittersweet smile at him as he pulls back, unable to put the feelings into words, then you blink away the sentiment and reach out to take Astarion by the hand.

Halsin speaks aloud the words of magic required to turn the tree into a brief beacon of teleportation magic, touching it with one large scarred hand. It glows faintly, a pale light spreading out from the point that Halsin touches. The glow runs through the gnarls in the bark, highlighting the irregular ridges of its branches, running up into the veins of its many leaves and down its thick trunk to the roots deep below the ground. When Halsin steps back from the tree, Jaheira turns to cock her head at you.

“No point in waiting,” she says. “Let’s go.”

With that, she steps towards the tree, and the moment her outstretched hand touches it, she vanishes from sight. You pull Astarion gently forward, pushing his hand towards the tree, and as soon as his fingers brush the bark, your hand that was guiding his wrist closes around nothing. He, too, is gone. You cast one final glance back at Wyll, then Halsin, trying to twist your mouth into a reassuring smile, and then you reach out to touch the tree yourself. 

For the space of a blink, your vision goes black and there’s a rushing in your ears like strong wind in bare branches, and then your vision returns to you and you step out into Baldur’s Gate. Not the place of your birth, perhaps, for you have never found an answer to the question of where you, a chunk of a dead god’s flesh, took your first breath. Nor the place of your childhood, as far as you know, although most of the memories from that time of juvenility are lost to you. Still, you feel in your bones that returning here is a homecoming. You know this city better than you know your own past. You have lived within its rhythm, immersed yourself in the perpetual thrum of its heartbeat, soaked yourself in its lifeblood. This city is yours, and you belong here. You know it better than you know yourself.

And you can sense, the moment your feet touch its familiar cobbled streets, that something is very, very wrong.

“You know where you're going?” asks Jaheira. She’s standing under the bower of the tree you must have stepped out of, although you seem to have taken a few steps away from it in your daze. You nod, despite feeling disoriented, and she gives you a grim smile. “Good. I'll see you back here shortly. Use those scrolls if you need them. Good luck, cub.”

She turns and fades away into the leafy shadows of the park before you can say anything. You are not sure what there is to say, anyway. You all know there's something wrong here. You all know what you are up against. Still, there’s some part of you that wants to warn her against mingling with the darkness that shrouds the city tonight. Too late for that now, though. You shiver, unsure if it is from the coolness of the night air or the fear of what is to come. Astarion stands a few steps away from you, and you walk to him and remove his blindfold, glad of something to do while you wrestle with your disarrayed thoughts.

“So where now?” Astarion asks when he’s freed of the blindfold, his voice sounding brash in the quiet of the evening. The city is never silent, but there is a subdued quality to the usual sounds of people making merry tonight. “You do know the way, don’t you?”

“Of course. But surely you know the way too?”

“Roughly, I suppose. I tried to avoid coming down here, I think, if I could help it. I much preferred being up there.”

He points over your shoulder in the direction of the Upper City. There’s a prickling on the back of your neck, and you turn to stare up at the grand house high on the hill above you. Szarr Palace looms before you, a cut-out of blackness against the star-flecked sky, its many windows studding the void with tiny squares of golden light to mark out the shape of its darkness.

“Now that’s much more my sort of place,” says Astarion, coming to stand and look up at it beside you. You let out a derisive snort.

“What?” he asks sharply. You cannot tell if the frown on his face is one of disgust at your snorting or irritation at being so derided.

“It seems your taste, at least, hasn’t changed. That’s his home. Our home, technically.”

Astarion lets out a low whistle, and it’s your turn to frown at him.

“What?”

“Well, it rather puts things into perspective, doesn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it seems this whole thing is essentially a bunch of scared people who are hiding out in caves amongst the trees going up against the kind of man who rules an entire city from a house like that.”

“So?”

“So it doesn’t seem we have much of a chance.”

Your frown deepens.

“Of course we have a chance.”

You wish you believed your own words. Astarion rolls his eyes.

“If you say so.”

You want to snap at him, but you tell yourself it is only because the proximity of Szarr Palace has you on edge; you feel as though it is somehow watching you, and you want nothing more than to get out of its oppressive shadow.

“Come on,” you say, deliberately avoiding looking at the scornful doubt etched across his face. “We should get moving.”