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jynrso · 1 month

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laid to rest

For the first time since drinking Tav's blood, Astarion has a nightmare. Eager for some sort of distraction, he goes searching for it. . .but quickly finds out that he isn't the only one in the camp with past trauma. tw for unintentional ableism on astarion's part due to a misunderstanding. it's small and he does . . . "apologize" in the only way he knows how, but i thought to mention it, just in case. if you'd like to know what the situation is before reading, skip to the end note. read it on ao3!

With the taste of Tav’s blood on his tongue, over the next few weeks, Astarion feels more powerful than ever. More alive.

For all its “supposed dangers,” the Underdark had hardly been a challenge –– not for him, anyway. It had been near effortless to carve through hordes of duergar and anyone else who’d gotten in the way of his blades.

Without the constant hunger gnawing at his gut, he’s able to watch his companions more closely. Though he’s got an in with Tav, it doesn’t hurt to diversify his interests in case their partnership sours. (Not that he has any interest in that happening –– her blood is still the best he’s tasted.)

But despite his best efforts, his attention keeps moving in her direction. When she’d first joined their camp, he hadn’t thought about her more than once a day, yet now it’s nearly impossible not to notice her.

Most notably, unlike Gale and Wyll, Tav had kept up surprisingly well in the pitch-black darkness for a human, so much so that it had piqued his interest. He’s kept quiet about it, not really caring what she’s keeping secret from the group (besides, don’t they all have secrets?) but makes a note of it all the same.

But even as his companions had struggled (both physically and morally –– he could care less about the annoying, whiny gnomes), it’s been. . . good. He still balks at the prospect of facing Cazador, but it almost feels like he now has a small chance of beating him rather than a nonexistent one.

Then once they hit the Shadowlands, it’s like a switch flips.

Astarion scrambles up in bed with a scream lodged in his throat, lungs heaving to suck in air they don’t need. He wipes a cold, clammy hand over his face as his chest stutters, a vise gripping tightly around his heart. He needs –– he needs. . .

He needs air. He needs to get up and get out of this damn tent, where the memories are closing in on him. He needs not to think about his dream about Cazador or Godey or the damned kennel, or any of his victims' faces as they’d passed by him in quick succession, one after another ––

Astarion scrambles upward, pushing his blankets away without his usual grace, and lunges out of his tent like some sort of animal.

He doesn’t mind the dark but the Shadowlands at night are another thing entirely. He’s drawn like a moth to a flame when he sees Tav sitting in front of a small fire, her shoulders hunched and back to him. It would be so easy to sneak up behind her and sink his teeth into her neck. . .

His eyes darken and he imagines the hot rush of blood flowing down his throat. His incisors bite into his bottom lip. It’s a want more than a need –– he’d just fed from her yesterday. But. . .

Maybe it’s for the best that Tav turns before he can do anything. Even though he keeps his tread quiet, she tenses when he approaches her, hand moving to the dagger holstered at her side as she twists to face him properly.

He clicks his tongue at her reaction. All of a sudden, with her eyes on him, he feels raw and all too visible. He’d come out here to escape his nightmare, had approached her on purpose. . .yet now he wants to skitter away like some sort of scared animal.

Pushing those urges aside, it’s easy to fall back onto the charm and oozing seduction he wears like armor. “None of that now, darling. Save it for all those shadow monsters, hmm?”

She relaxes, though only slightly. Even though there’s no immediate danger, her body remains oddly stiff, muscles rippling underneath her skin. Thankfully, however, her hand moves away from her blade and rests against her bent knee, dangling down toward the ground. Predictably, she doesn’t say a word –– though she doesn’t protest his company, either, so he takes that as permission to sit beside her.

The small fire in front of them does little to warm the chill that seems to have permeated every corner of his body. In need of a distraction, he opens his mouth to fill the silence. “You know, I could have sworn you were on watch earlier. But here you still are.”

Tav just barely glances his way, shrugging in response. A usual – albeit unsatisfying – answer. But something feels off beyond that. Her body, more rigid than usual, curls away from him as she stares with glazed eyes into the fire, almost as if in a trance.

Maybe she’s been woken up by a nightmare, same as him. But, a part of him wonders absently, does he really care? So long as she’s willing to keep giving him blood and remain by his side should a conflict arise. . .what else does he need from her?

They sit in silence for a few more minutes. To some, it may be the comforting sort, but not for him; instead, the air between them feels charged, almost frenzied. There’s a sort of buzzing beneath his skin that threatens to tear through his flesh and emerge into the world. He needs –– something more than this.

“It is odd, though, don’t you think?” he says suddenly. “With how often I see you pacing around, it’d seem that you didn’t need sleep! But. . .” he leans in conspiratorially, relishing in the way Tav shifts away from him, a frown pulling at her lips ( finally reacting! ). “Those dark circles under your eyes say otherwise, darling. Really, you look quite horrid. I’ve seen corpses with more life than you!”

Her mouth opens, teeth flashing and ready to rip into him –– yes! he thinks with a vicious sort of glee, eager for a bit of verbal sparring –– but after a faltering moment, she closes it and simply scowls. Silently.

“What,” Astarion sneers, upper lip curling back. His words fall like the lashes of a whip. “Nothing to say? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

Tav’s lips part, eyebrows pulling together in frustration as she inhales –– but says nothing. Instead, an odd, sort of guttural noise escapes her throat; both of them flinch back at the sound of it, Tav looking as surprised (and frustrated) as he feels.

But when that fades, he’s left feeling just as dissatisfied as he’d been when he’d come out here. The image of Cazador still lingers in the corners of his mind; to his immense irritation, she’s done nothing to distract him from the ghosts of his past.

“I don’t know why I even bothered.” He stubbornly pushes the voice in the back of his mind down that tells him exactly why as he gets up, face twisted in disgust as he prepares to spend the rest of the night in haunted silence alone in his tent.

Quick as a viper, she reaches out and grabs his arm. He pulls away as if burned, spinning on his heel to face her. His words come out in a hiss. “What now?”

He watches her hesitate before her hands make a series of complicated gestures in response. Astarion blinks once, frowning. After a beat, she does the same series of signs again, looking increasingly frustrated (and is that a hint of desperation he sees in her eyes?) when he doesn’t understand whatever the hell she’s doing.

He scowls, a ball of irritation forming in his chest. He’d been a fool to think that anyone would be willing to provide a distraction, let alone care that he currently wants to rip his skin off his bones and –– is Tav fucking drawing with a stick in the mud?

Dumbfounded, he blinks in disbelief as he watches Tav carefully make a series of lines in the dirt in front of her. When she’s finished, she jabs at her work with the stick insistently, a clear command for him to look at it.

At first glance, he’s left even more confused than before. It’s only when he takes a few steps toward her and looks it at from Tav’s direction that he realizes it’s a single word inscribed in the dirt at her feet: “Can’t.”

“Can’t?” he scoffs, brows pulling together as he struggles to parse out her meaning. “What do you mean, can’t?”

When he glances over at her again and sees the hand that slowly rises to her throat –– he finally understands.

“You can’t speak right now?” he asks softly, a bit more hesitantly. Revulsion begins to crawl up his throat once more, though not for the same reason as before.

A slow nod, as if she doesn’t quite understand it either.

“But –– you can speak sometimes.”

Another nod.

Hands propped up against his hips, he studies her for a few more seconds in the waning firelight. Then, he slowly takes a seat next to her. She shifts uneasily but doesn’t move away or slide one of her daggers into his gut, which he takes as a win.

(It’s not like he can have his only reliable source of food revoke the gift that she’s given to him.)

“Well,” he clears his throat, feeling out of his depth. “That would explain. . .” he gestures toward her. “. . . this. ”

Tav huffs out a breath, shaking her head.

And maybe he’s pushing it too far but he can’t help but prod further. It’s likely not the best time for it, not when he can’t understand her signing, but he’s surprised by how much he wants to know the answer. “ –– Can I ask why?”

For the next minute or two, she’s silent, considering his question. Instead of looking at him, she focuses her attention off into the distance, beyond the boundaries of their camp. The Shadowlands are quiet, for now, but it’s a temporary reprieve. He almost wishes that something would jump out of the bushes and attack, if only to interrupt the silence between them.

Astarion’s just beginning to think that he won’t get an answer of any kind when his tadpole squirms unpleasantly in his brain. It takes him a second to realize that it’s Tav’s tadpole on the edges of his mind, asking for entry.

What the hell, he thinks, opening his mind to the gentle nudge –– and then immediately regrets it.

All at once, he’s struck by half a dozen memories at the same time, all clambering for his attention simultaneously. The small snippets he sees –– hooded figures walking silently down a hall, a whip striking lashes against someone’s back, someone’s tongue being pulled out with a pair of tongs –– are disjointed and confusing, made all the worse by the sheer terror that undercuts them.

It takes a few seconds for him to regain his bearings and examine the scenes –– the memories, Tav’s memories –– with any sort of analytical eye. He finds himself –– finds Tav –– in a dark, dimly-lit castle or church. She wears heavy robes with a hood and so do the people around her. The flashes he gets are perhaps visions from her day-to-day life, yet she never utters a single word. Her hands act as her mouth instead; they’re moving almost constantly –– underneath tables, in the dark of night, in hidden nooks –– all away from the watchful eye of a few prominent figures that seem to repeat across all the echoes.

But just as Astarion is beginning to figure it out, Tav breaks the connection. Both of them reel backward, lungs heaving. Tav’s eyes are wide and uncharacteristically fearful, her lips moving silently. In her lap, her fingers twitch.

“That was. . .” he trails off, shaking his head. A hand absently moves to rub at his sternum, as if in an attempt to unravel the knot in his chest.

By now, it’s become clear that everyone in their little traveling party has some sort of trauma. He’d never excluded Tav from that grouping, assuming she has her own fucked-up myriad of problems, though it slowly dawns on him that perhaps their pasts might be a little too similar for comfort.

It can’t have been as bad as Cazador, his inner voice sneers, but –– he’d felt her fear, all the same. Felt her pain.

And more than any sympathy he feels for her, he needs her. Not only as a partner, should things go bad, but also to provide him blood in a place where feeding off of their enemies might be more trouble than it’s worth.

With that in mind, he shifts in his seat, then says, “I think I understand. Why you can’t speak right now.” And he does –– at least, sort of. After all, he’d come out here looking for company in the wake of a nightmare; if he were a betting man, he’d guess that she had one, too –– one that transported her back to that place where speaking led to physical punishment.

His next words are tacked on as an afterthought but are no less meaningful: “ –– But I didn’t, before.”

It’s not an apology –– even if he’d wanted to apologize to her for his callousness, the words are stuck in his throat. But it’s as close to one as he’s gotten in years and that means . . . something.

(He tells himself it’s not a big deal, that he’s doing it for survival, and then doesn’t think about it again until later.)

In response, Tav just shakes her head slightly. When she meets his eyes, the corner of her mouth quirks upward. Nothing needs to be said out loud for him to understand exactly what she’s saying: It’s fine.

“You impossible, wretch of a woman,” he mutters, throwing up his hands. He’s suddenly irritated with how quickly she’s seemingly forgiven him. “You’re supposed to –– I don’t know! ” His eyes dart down to her belt, the shine of her blade glinting in the firelight.

He’d fucked up and yelled at her –– now it’s her turn to retaliate. But she’s not doing that. She’s not doing bloody anything, just sitting there, looking at him like all’s been said and done –– but it hasn’t. He’s not––he’s not used to. . .

Astarion sags, his mind weighed down by a wave of exhaustion. This conundrum, combined with his earlier disorientation from the nightmare, leaves him unable to properly voice his thoughts without it being incomprehensible.

At his side, Tav shifts, moving slightly closer to him. There’s still a good few inches between them but the solidness of her presence is enough to ground him. She doesn’t say anything –– either with her voice or her hands –– but the silence isn’t as tense as it had been when he’d first emerged from his tent.

She doesn’t shout at him. She doesn’t pull out her blade and cut him to ribbons for the slight. Instead. . .they just sit. Together.

Astarion doesn’t know what she’s thinking –– doesn’t have the energy to try and guess her intentions. Had she somehow perceived what he’d been trying to say? Could she feel the war inside his mind, the constant tugging of abuse that threatens to tear him to pieces? Nobody knows about Cazador; he hasn’t said a word. But for the first time in a long time, he finally feels like maybe, just maybe, someone might understand.

He’s not at peace, his brain still reeling and muscles jumping at every sound. . .but perhaps there’s more to Tav than the blood she can give him. And by the way her breathing begins to return to normal, as her muscles relax and her eyes lose some of that distant shine over time, it might just be that she benefits from his presence, too.

That’s a troubling thought.

“Wizard.”

“I have a name, you know,” Gale replies dryly, looking up from the dusty old tome he’d been reading. “What is it? Don’t tell me you need money again.”

From his pocket, Astarion produces a glittering ring with a flourish. Though he’s had little practical training, he can feel the magic of it thrumming in the air between them. At the sight of it, Gale’s eyes widen eagerly.

“I found this a few days ago, carelessly thrown away,” he begins, falling into the cadence of his usual dramatics. “And I thought to myself, ‘well, this seems like just the type of thing that Gale would eat right up!’”

The wizard sighs. “I’ve told you all a dozen times that I don’t actually eat the artifact ,” he replies wearily. “It’s a rather complicated process that doesn’t involve. . .”

Astarion tunes him out for a few seconds.

“. . .And besides, now that Mystra’s stabilized the orb, I no longer have a need for such things.” He pauses, then remembers his manners, and adds, “Though I suppose it was thoughtful of you to think of me. Thank you, Astarion.”

He didn’t do it for thanks. Scowling, he tosses the magical ring in Gale’s direction anyway, forcing the other man to catch it lest it hit him in the eye. Once it’s in Gale’s possession, Astarion claps his hands together brightly. “Excellent! A ring for a favor. I’ll be cashing that in now.”

“You could have just asked––”

“Now, I’m sure you learned lots of things in wizard school––” he ignores the exclamation of protest at his wording and continues on, “but what I particularly need your, ah, expertise in is languages. Specifically those spoken with hands.”

Intrigued at the possibility of sharing his knowledge with someone who actually wants to hear it, Gale’s eyes light up as he hums in thought. “Well, there are quite a few. Common sign language, which, as the name suggests, is the most common. There’s quite a bit of overlap with that and thieves’ cant, which, admittedly, I know little about. Then the drow have their own variation that looks quite like spellcasting. I actually studied with someone who spoke it and stars, that was difficult to parse––”

He has to stop this before Gale goes completely off the rails. Astarion cuts in smoothly, “The first one. Common.”

“I only know the basics,” Gale emphasizes (to which Astarion shrugs because it’s better than nothing). He thinks Gale’s going to continue but the other man pauses, brows narrowing in suspicion. “. . .What’s this about?”

Astarion meets his gaze, eyes flashing dangerously. He could turn to threats but that would be a waste of a perfectly good Gale (and the only person in camp who might be able to help him) if he had to follow through on them. “No questions and you can have the next magical item I find.”

“Is this about Ta––”

“No questions,” he snaps, losing his temper and cutting the other man off before he can finish that sentence. Now he turns to threats. “The next words out of your mouth better be ‘ oh, yes, Astarion, I can’t wait to help you with this’ or I’ll start cutting off your fingers one by one . ”

Gale raises an unimpressed brow. “Give me the next two artifacts you find.”

“. . .Fine, you absolute cretin. But we start now. ”

Gale claps his hands, rubbing them together in excitement at the prospect of having a willing student. With one arm, he holds open the flap of his tent, motioning for Astarion to go first. “After you.”

Slowly beginning to regret this decision, Astarion lets out a long-suffering sigh and acquiesces.

#baldur's gate fic #bg3 fic #astarion/tav #astarion/oc #astarion fic #astarion fanfic #astarion x tav #my writing

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