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abigailmoment · 4 months

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Astarion frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Mn." Tav shook her head and the expression smoothed away as she looked up at him. "The wine may be off."

"No. It's trash, but it's fine," he told her. "Why are you upset?"

She paused in that way she sometimes did in conversations--like she was deliberating between options and deciding which one would best suit her goals. It was often the precursor for amusement when she did it to other people, but it was irritating when she did it with him.

"It's feelings," she said, as if she were warning him.

Astarion shrugged. "So? You only talk about feelings with druids? Pretend I'm Halsin. I could stand on top of a chair if it would help."

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"Naive am I?" Tav asked, her eyebrows raised so high up that they were in danger of crowding her horn-stubs.

"It's just that you have a...big heart," Astarion said tactfully. "You like doing what's right."

Which was just a different way of saying naive. The woman was physically incapable of walking past a sob story without interfering with it in some way. It was the most absurd way to live life. She'd be intolerable if all her other energies weren't devoted to the far more admirable dual purposes of making money and having fun.

Case in point, they'd just finished ransacking the Last Light Inn for every bottle of wine the imp-children weren't supervising. Now they were on the second floor, sitting at one of the less-cobwebbed tables. They were sharing a bottle of Plum Fizz, which was utter garbage. They'd chosen that one because the others were nice years that might be sold well, and also Tav hadn't believed him about what utter garbage the stuff was.

Astarion had stirred his latest donation into his cup, and it made the vintage borderline palatable. Though privately he thought Wyll would pair much more nicely with elderberry wine.

"So I was thinking," he continued. "What would be the right thing to do when we get to Moonrise towers? When we come face to face with whoever's controlling the parasites?"

"I'm guessing you have an opinion," Tav observed, leaning back in her chair.

"Well think about it," he prompted. "How many people have the mind flayers infected? Hundreds? Thousands?"

"Probably hundreds," Tav guessed. "It's an involved process."

"Hundreds then." Astarion conceded a little of his daydream to reality, but only a little. "And they're not just goblin trash. There are powerful people in the worm's thrall."

"Sure," said Tav.

"Whoever's waiting for us at Moonrise Towers controls it all. But what if we can take that control from them?"

"Mm," said Tav.

"I'm just saying," he pressed. "There's an opportunity here. Imagine the entire cult under our thumb. If we can control the tadpoles we can keep ourselves safe, liberate the world from this evil, and enjoy a little world domination on the side."

He laughed a bit at the idea. It was so delightful he couldn't help himself. "You can't tell me that doesn't sound fun?"

He looked at her for confirmation. She'd gone quiet. She sometimes did that when he talked up the tadpoles. He presumed that was the kind of reticence that came paired with morals, and that it might be worn down by time and temptation.

She was staring down into her cup of wine with a tight expression. Brows drawn, mouth turned down into almost a grimace. She looked ill.

He frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Mn." She shook her head and the expression smoothed away as she looked up at him. "The wine may be off."

"No. It's trash, but it's fine," he told her. "Why are you upset?"

"It's feelings," she said, as if she were warning him.

Astarion shrugged. "So? You only talk about feelings with druids? Pretend I'm Halsin. I could stand on top of a chair if it would help."

He lost her to sniggering for a moment. When she'd finished laughing at his objectively hilarious joke, she spent another moment considering responses. Then she gave him a 'you asked' look and started talking.

"When I was in my early twenties I learned Charm Person." She was tracing the rim of her cup around and around with her fingertip. "And it was the only spell I cast for like, six months. It was like playing an easier version of life. It made everything manageable. Everyone tractable."

"There were a lot of long term consequences to that. The worst was I permanently fucked up my relationship with my sister." Tav tilted her cup almost to spilling. "She was a year younger than me and in her making bad decisions phase. And I could just stop her. Every time she wanted to do some idiot, dangerous thing."

"But.” Tav enunciated the conjunction so that it popped. “Enchantments that make false emotions can atrophy real emotions. By the time I figured out what I was doing it was too late. She didn't feel anything about me anymore, when she wasn't charmed."

Tav tipped her cup back upright. It looked a little like she'd wanted to let it spill. Probably to match her narrative or some dramatic thing like that. But that impulse had died under her need not to waste food.

"So I don't touch control spells." She continued. "No charms. No compulsions."

She hadn't looked at Astarion for the entire story. An attitude of shame, even though her voice was mild and steady.

"And then the mindflayer thing happened." She made vague gestures towards Astarion's head and then hers. "And now...I feel like a teetotaler with a bottle of wine hanging in front of me all the time."

She took another drink from her cup.

"Authority," she said in a tone that managed to be mocking and maudlin all at once.

She seemed to be finished. All right. He had listened. That was done. Now Astarion cast about in his mind for what you were supposed to do when someone told you a sad story and you cared about it.

...

It was depressing how shit he was at this.

She didn't seem to mind the long silence. She was staring into her cup again, swirling the cheap wine about, expression pensive and glum.

Astarion minded the long silence though. He finally landed on something to say that vaguely fit the shape of the conversation.

"Fine. Very well then, " he began. "Out of the kindness of my heart, to spare you this pain, I will be the one to take control of the Absolute cult."

She didn't spit up her drink, but that was only because it hadn't quite made it to her lips before she started laughing.

"Oh my Gods," she said breathlessly, a minute later. "No, you racist, squirrel kicking, sociopath. You'd better be actually joking because no one is letting you do that. I am in fucking love with you and I would never let you do that."

Astarion was gearing up to get catty, perhaps even angry, about the first part of that statement. Then the last sentence happened and it was like being struck by a very soft bolt of lightning. It jangled something in his head, and left him feeling numb and strange and a little warm.

That was wrong. That wasn't how things worked. Feelings weren't supposed to be warm like that. He wasn't a thing that produced warmth. What was this?

Tav was distracted, squinting at the bottle of plum fizz to gauge how much was left. Which was good because Astarion had even less of an idea than usual what his face looked like right now.

As he watched her, Tav smiled in that particular way that he was beginning to recognize as an expression that happened right before she said something intended to goad him.

Then she said: "We can put Wyll in charge."

"Absolutely not," said Astarion, snapping out of his confusing reverie by the need to object to that unconscionable idea.

"Ha!" said Tav, finally looking up at him. "Absolute-ly not."

"Don't start," Astarion said warningly. She could become absolutel--completely insufferable with puns if it wasn't cut off quickly. This wanted a distraction. He considered which of their companions he'd like best as an all-powerful cult leader if it couldn't be him or Tav.

"Lae'zel," he said. He was aware it wasn't the right choice, but it was the one he liked.

Tav snorted. "Sure. Never much liked Faerun being intact and at peace. Why not?"

"Gale," she suggested then, because apparently this was another game now. "He'll compel all of us to sit down and listen to him explain the distinction between radiance damage and fire damage."

"I distinctly prefer Lae'zel," Asterion said. Then inspiration struck. "No. Wait. We're both wrong. Karlach."

"Shit. You're right," Tav said immediately. "Karlach for cult leader. World domination. World dominatrix."

"She does look good in leather," Astarion admitted.

"Truth," said Tav. "Great. I'm glad we resolved that."

Astarion swirled the dregs of his spiked-wine about in his cup. He was putting off finishing it because that would be the last of his blood for the day.

"I am serious about the power," he told her. "It's not often the universe hands you something like this. I don't want us wasting it."

"We won't," Tav promised. "We're going to take them for all we safely can. And we're going to make a lot of powerful allies on the way. And if we do find the macguffin that lets us take control of the cult, I'm seriously now considering the pros and cons of Karlach being the one to use it. That might be the plum fizz doing the thinking, but I am currently letting it."

"Macguffin is a theater thing?" Astarion clarified dryly. Tav's incomprehensible nonsense words were usually theater things.

"Yes," she confirmed. "A magic object in a story that lets you do exactly the thing you want to do. They don't usually exist in the real world so don't hold your breath."

He gave her a significant look. She laughed.

"Or hold your breath if you want to, I guess, vampire privilege. You won't. Because it would also involve refraining from talking."

He tossed his head disdainfully and distinctly didn't respond. She laughed again.

The conversation hadn't gone precisely as he wanted, but he was fairly content with the results. Tav's assistance was, as always, intractably ethical and therefore conditional. But it still gave him better odds for getting something like what he wanted than just showing up and causing chaos.

It was rather nice having a friend who was a details person.

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This is part of an ongoing story. It begins here.

Here's a list of other stories like this.

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#astarion #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion x tav #astarion/tav #conversations you have at midnight #while drunk on plum fizz

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