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inaconstantstateofchange · 3 months

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finirà bene - an Astarion/Dark Urge/Halsin time travel redux [Chapter 3]

Summary:

At the very moment of the Absolute's defeat, Astarion opens his eyes to find himself amidst familiar burning wreckage, face-to-face with a Shadowheart who has no knowledge of their companion, the dragonborn Kelis. Stuck in this familiar-unfamiliar situation, Astarion will have to reforge alliances alone as he seeks to make his way out of this nightmare, and find his missing partner(s).

Word Count: 5.8k

Banner by me, using Kelis artwork commissioned from the spectacular @somespareserotonin-please. Shoutout to @sky-kiss for the beta read and the Shadowheart characterization consulting.

Prologue and Chapters 1 and 2 available on Tumblr or read it on AO3.

Chapter 3: don't know how to win

“So, Astarion…” Shadowheart’s voice, when it comes, is not tentative by any measure, but scrupulous. “Are you planning to share what that was about?”

Astarion carefully evades her searching gaze, scanning the rustling foliage around them for any possible distraction to foist her attention onto, realizing the reason for the familiar appearance of the path before them just as a loud shout echoes from around the curve of the dirt path.

Willfully ignoring the part of him that mutters about abandoning the pan for the fire, he begins to speed up, deciding to pretend he didn’t hear her question and instead is feeling replete with heroic goodwill. At the very least, the githyanki undoubtedly waiting ahead of them will make him seem a veritable fount of goodwill by comparison.

Shadowheart sighs, deeply, but follows after him still.

The tieflings look down at them suspiciously, eyes flickering over the blood flecking Astarion’s face and hands as their hands move toward their weapons. The male puffs his chest up and calls to them with false bravado, stinking of stress, “And who are you? Leave us, lest you meet the same fate as this creature here.”

Astarion and Shadowheart open their mouths to speak at the same time, turning to give each other a look but neither willing to back down. Before they can begin again to see who will speak for them first, a haze shivers over the landscape in front of Astarion’s eyes, and the furious voice of Lae’zel speaks through the tadpole connection. He grimaces, never having come to terms with the disquieting feeling of squirming tendrils within his mind, and grimaces still further when her words come through moments later.

“Get rid of these k’chakhi, and get me down from here this instant!”

He looks at Shadowheart from the corner of his eye, and finds a look of caution increasingly overtaken with animosity come over her, the furrow in her brow telling him she too has been included in the psychic message.

The tieflings are not fools entire, and do not fail to note the interplay either, even if they are not aware enough of the true form of it. Their hands go to their weapons, beginning to draw them. The man shouts, “Nymessa, back away from them!”

Astarion feels his muscles twinge, and he tries to recall what came of these two in the past-future, but can’t summon even a single shred of recollection. Surely the timeline could forgive two such unimportant deaths as these… His muscles twinge again, harder, and he sighs, wanting nothing more than a bedroll and a moment’s peace. But Lae’zel is still there, eyes boring into him as though she can kill him with her mind – a feat he would not put past her, in fact – so that is unlikely to be a leisure afforded him anytime soon. And if it were to come to a fight, neither he nor Shadowheart is truly at their best, not after the trials of the temple.

Diplomacy it is then. Joy of joys.

He looks to Shadowheart one final time, tilting his head toward the increasingly alarmed and readied-for-violence tieflings, attempting to indicate that surely she, as the cleric - not to mention the one of them less spattered in blood – would be the best to speak with them.

She shows no sign of understanding his attempted signaling, her own hands beginning to move toward her weapons, a subtle glow about the fingers that indicates her battle-readiness.

He scoffs in the back of his throat. Right. Sharrans.

He makes a show of moving his hands visibly away from his own weapons, trying to think of what Kelis did in this situation, aside from not completely bungling it up by making visible the strange correspondence between those cursed with this blighted tadpole. He credited the scales and the alien facial features. It truly made her damnably hard to read, even when she wasn’t even trying — a benefit he himself fully lacked.

Intimidation was right out as well. At his best he could have sliced through these two with no hesitation, and made them face their own mortality with laughable ease. As he was now, in this diminished iteration? They would laugh, and, damn it all, they’d be right to.

A story then, to explain the odd interaction between them, and to get them to leave, and bugger off to wherever they’d gotten to before. He smiles, wide and inviting.

“Apologies, friends, for the reflexes of my…” He hesitates on the words, loathe to speak them, but pushes on, “compatriot here!” He waves his hand out to the side to gesture elegantly to Shadowheart.

“You see, we’ve been on a long and arduous quest, chasing just the very monster you’ve managed to trap yourselves.”

Actually… he took no note of it originally aside from a flash of humor, but being far more familiar this time with githyanki in general, and Lae’zel herself in particular, how in the Hells did these two fools manage to string her up like that? He’s seen her go from unconscious to gutting a gnoll in a few seconds flat, so it truly boggles the mind that these tieflings managed to not only trap her, but apparently with not even a scratch to show for it. Regretfully, he puts that thought away for now, to bring out at some later point when he needs to amuse himself — from a safe distance, of course.

The tieflings are clearly dubious, not having shifted away from their readied combat stances, but they have at least not made a move to attack yet. He readies his second volley.

“My companion is… well, I truly oughtn’t say, for her security and your own, but suffice it to say, someone very important from the Cloak Wood—”

He is cut off by the male tiefling, who looks at Shadowheart dubiously, then pushes back pompously against his claims. “I’ve never heard tell of any elves within the Cloak Wood!”

Astarion schools his face into a mask of wondering pity. “Well of course you wouldn’t have — not and lived to tell the tale—”

He is cut off again by the aggravating fool jumping back, pushing the increasingly frustrated Nymessa behind him. “Aha! So you admit you plan to kill us along with your — your conspirator here!”

Astarion keeps his sigh mostly internal, letting the story he’s building carry him along with it, interested himself to see where it will go. He exchanges a commiserating glance with Nymessa over the fool’s shoulder, her hands by now well away from her weapons. She’s clearly invested in his narrative; if he can just push her a bit further she’ll take care of the idiot on her own.

“As I was saying prior to your interruption, my companion is very important in the Cloak Wood. I am not at liberty to give exact details you understand, for matters of security, but suffice it to say that certain improprieties took place between these two—” he gestures to the trapped githyanki and the ominously scowling Sharran at his shoulder “—and the gith here ran off before making an honest woman of my companion.”

Astarion feels himself pinned between two lasers of sudden and intense focus, icy and shadowed from Shadowheart and crystalline and brutal from Lae’zel. Well look at that, they’ll have something to bond over already!

He continues on, a touch more hastily, trying to spin the rest of his fiction before either of them actually does figure out how to kill him with their minds, “By the laws of the Cloak Wood, we’ve been sent to hunt her down and exact justice on behalf of our House. We’ve been tracking her for weeks now, but she has proven wily prey indeed, and we were simply not expecting to find such valiant warriors and allies such as yourselves here, in our hour of need.”

Nymessa’s eyes are shining now, and the male tiefling is puffing out his chest at the perceived compliment, weapons fully sheathed and hands well away. Time to strike the final blow.

“Now that we’ve found her, we will of course bring word of the bravery and nobility of your people to the Lady of our House,” He shifts his body slightly to the side, pebbles shifting and rolling down the hill as he does, implicitly leaving an opening by which they might take their leave. “Now, I don’t mean to be ungracious, but the ritualistic process of punishment that our House’s honor demands requires the absence of outsiders. In truth… It is not for the weak of stomach, either. We’ll do our best to muffle the screams, but they do carry so in these regions.”

Nymessa nods quickly, and begins to move toward the path he’s made for them immediately, relief at no longer having to deal with their captured menace clear across her face. Her companion hesitates a moment longer, looking back and forth between the three of them. He seems to need some final push before he can justify leaving them alone.

Astarion pulls on his best conspiratorial air, and leans toward him, gesturing over his shoulder toward Shadowheart. He doesn’t even need to look at her to know exactly what expression she is certain to be wearing at this exact moment. He can feel the evidence of it itching between his shoulder blades. “My good man, I dare you – or anyone – to look upon my fair companion, and tell me that that is not the face of one determined to rend limb from limb the object of their attentions!”

The man frowns momentarily, as though sensing some warp in the weft of the argument, but ultimately shrugs, his face smoothing out into cordial neutrality. “A fine point! I wish you well in the culmination of your hunt then, and… be careful with that one.” With a last dart of his eyes to the furious githyanki in the cage, he walks by Astarion and Shadowheart to catch up to Nymessa, waiting with evident impatience for him.

As a parting gesture, he gifts Astarion with a companionable clap to the shoulder as he walks past, which by some foul happenstance manages to catch the lingering remnants of the wound from earlier, not fully healed by the weak capacities of their current store of potions. Astarion’s fangs flash reflexively in a silent snarl, but luckily the man is already past him, and he is able to pass the movement off as a simple shift.

Shadowheart at least exhibits the good sense to wait for the two tieflings to be definitively out of earshot before she grabs his shoulder – in the same damned place, and he knows it to be on purpose, thanks ever so – to jerk him around to face her, glaring at him fiercely.

“What the hells was that, Astarion? Implying I’d lie with – with that thing?!”

He shakes her hand off roughly, managing to stifle the flash of fangs this time. “Excuse you? What was I thinking? I was thinking a pretty story would get us out of yet another ill-advised combat, but my sincere apologies for expressing foresight. By all means, next time lead the way right into a battle we may bravely fall to!”

As Shadowheart is opening her mouth to respond, whatever no-doubt-charming retort she was planning is interrupted by the contemptuous voice of their trapped gith would-be-companion, who seems determined to see any possibility of alliance stillborn. “Tchk! What fool would take this long to talk them into fleeing when a simple knife would have seen the matter finished long since?”

Shadowheart scoffs, “A typical gith response. We should kill it and be done with it. The day grows long and I’d prefer to make camp sooner than later.”

Lae’zel’s face grows stormy, and she reaches for weapons she does not possess. Unhindered by the lack, she grabs the bars of her cage, and hisses down at them, “Try it, k’chakhi! I’ll give you one free strike, and then my retribution will be swift and fearsome, as befits a warrior of Vlaakith.”

This is… spiraling a bit out of his control, comparative to the last time, where the encounter didn’t even warrant a fraction of his attention. Not for the first time, and he’s certain not for the last, Astarion feels a pang, and wishes for the brush of warm and comforting scales beside him. Kelis’s methods are much less effective when coming from an elf of his admittedly somewhat unimpressive stature, rather than a bulk of rippling scales and sharp fangs.

He decides to play up his confusion, hoping the reminder of their shared circumstance will incite at least one of them to see sense. He doesn’t like his odds if both of them remain this stubbornly aligned — although they’d doubtless hate to hear it labeled as such.

“You — you’re a githyanki, yes? Then you must have some knowledge of what’s been done to us, and how to get rid of it?”

He’d rather not make a habit of expressing any weakness in front of these two in particular, but better than explaining to Kelis why one of her deputies has died out of turn, or having to explain the reason for his own incongruous knowledge of every potential cure and healer in the region.

Lae’zel snorts dismissively even as Shadowheart turns back to him, appalled. They both start speaking at once, overlapping, then break off to glare at each other. Lae’zel wins whatever contest of will that turns into, and speaks again, as cutting as ever. “I could label every entrail and intestine on a mindflayer in my sleep, istik, so yes, I have some knowledge. Let me down from here, and I might impart it to you before I gut you.”

Astarion blinks. Did she… actually expect that to work? He shakes his head, affecting a bright smile, “Well, as tempting as that offer truly is – quite rightly are the githyanki famed across the Planes for their skill at diplomacy! – I have a counteroffer.”

Lae’zel frowns, perceiving some semblance of the ridicule but not its true form, but nods once, sharply.

“Answer me one question on these realms, and I’ll release you and claim no debt between us. You can impart your own great wisdom, or depart, as you like.”

Shadowheart protests, but he ignores her studiously. Lae’zel smiles smugly, declaring, “You are a weak-minded fool indeed! Nothing within this realm is a mystery to the might of githyanki scholarship.”

He nods equanimously, carefully schooling his ill-timed humor behind a mask of neutral consideration. “If you are incorrect, of course, you must honor your debt of knowledge by assisting us with seeking out a cure for our mutual affliction.”

A flash of ill humor darkens her face, but is ultimately subsumed by her arrogant superiority. She gives a sharp, jerking nod to signify her begrudging agreement to his terms.

“Those beings that captured you, what are they called?”

Lae’zel’s face goes even smugger as Shadowheart turns to him furiously.

“Teethlings of course, tchk.”

Shadowheart’s look morphs from anger to consideration in a heartbeat, a new level of scrutiny in her gaze.

Astarion keeps any glee well off of his face. No need to sully the victory by delighting unbecomingly in it. “Not so, I’m afraid. Not to worry, we all maintain blind spots in our education.”

He doesn’t know if Lae’zel has ever embodied the raw fury of a natural disaster more than at this moment. “You – you lie, you honorless kainyank!”

Shadowheart has her own air of smugness about her now as she directs her attention back to Lae’zel, confident now in her own upper hand. “Sounds to me like you’re projecting, gith. If you wish to confirm with a neutral party, perhaps we can remand you back into the custody of your original captors — tieflings.”

Astarion turns to exchange a sly sideways glance with — the empty air. He sighs, the momentary humor of the situation dropping away all of a sudden and leaving him feeling empty and hollow.

“Will you honor your promise, gith?” He calls across the two feuding figures. “It’s a harsh road for lone travelers these days, and I certainly would not turn down the prospect of adding a skilled sword such as yours to our company — but faithless company is worse than none.”

Shadowheart cuts in before Lae’zel has a chance to speak, her words coated with false courtesy. “Astarion, a moment?” He can tell by the flinty look in her eyes that whatever extent he has recently risen in her estimation is by no means sufficient to get him out of this one.

“By all means, lead the way!” He waves a graceful hand gesture out toward the shrub-lined path leading back in the direction they came.

They walk further down the path, stopping just around the bend but enough to keep the captured githyanki within eyesight. Shadowheart’s face is stern, with no evidence of any wavering. “Are you mad? Better to invite an owlbear to share our fire, than make camp with that thing!”

Astarion is struck by the most ill-timed inclination to bark out a laugh. Of all comparisons for her to choose, for it to be that one… He keeps his face straight by willpower alone, and sets his mind to the question of how best to bridge this gap. However much it might gall him, he clearly lacks Kelis’s natural – albeit unconventional – charisma that led their companions to defer to her by default — even those most headstrong, such as Lae’zel (and, although he is loath to admit it, himself to some extent). Instead, he must manage to maneuver their goals and objectives alongside one another until external matters conspire to bind them together with a strength he alone cannot manufacture.

Shadowheart must now fear for her precious artifact, and the potential of failing her mission for her Mistress. His nose wrinkles in disgust. She knows as well as he that the gith will show no hesitation toward those who steal from them, let alone objects of such great significance to their queen.

However, Lae’zel’s importance to their venture cannot be overstated. Not only would they sorely miss her martial prowess on the road ahead – he does not like the thought of their prospects against some of the enemies they are bound to face without it – but she herself will hold great significance to Orpheus and the new Gith people.

Fortunately for his aims, there is one thing Lae’zel has in droves that both he and Shadowheart ostensibly lack: detailed information on her abhorred ghaik.

“Do you truly relish the thought of stumbling blindly through this affliction we share?” He gestures sharply toward his eyes, knowing she will take his meaning, the reality of their precarious situation never far from either of their minds.

She grimaces, but pushes on, “I’m certain we can find a… a healer or some such. There must be someone who’ll be able to help us extract these… these things.”

He scoffs, but eases the edges of his response. She has no reason or ability to know with the certainty he does how little their search for aid will avail them. “And you would wager our safety on that? You know as well as I that something is wrong here. We should have undergone ceremorphosis long since. I don’t relish the thought of living in fear, never knowing which moment’s breath will be my last as a free man.”

Begrudgingly, she nods her agreement with this point, but pushes on. “Even still… a gith, Astarion? We both have our secrets, such is clear, but we’ve done well enough to keep each other alive. I don’t see how we could possibly trust her not to slit our throats in our sleep.”

He raises an eyebrow, the irony of her statement not lost on him, given her own future actions. “We remain watchful, not trusting, never that. I truly believe the potential rewards outweigh the risks, but survival is paramount.”

He makes himself pause, knowing that if this argument won’t convince her, bearing it down with yet more verbiage certainly won’t. She grimaces, looking between him and the still-caged Lae’zel, before finally releasing an explosive breath and nodding sharply at him, once. “Very well… it's only our lives on the line, after all. By all means: on your head be the consequences.”

He smiles at her with bright and empty eyes. “But of course! I wouldn’t dream of having it any other way.”

Lae’zel scowls down at them when they return, the wooden bars of the cage around her creaking as they sway slightly with the minute shifts of her body. “My patience wanes, k’chakhi. Let me down and honor our accord, or I will not be so gracious when next we meet.”

Astarion gives his most gallant bow – careful to never show the back of his neck in truth – before finally making introductions, in hopes of not having to explain away any slips of the tongue before the githyanki finally sees fit to introduce herself. “Of course, of course! But first, sworn allies should know one another in truth, shouldn’t they? My name’s Astarion, and my delightful companion is Shadowheart. Who might you be?”

He lets the pause linger for several seconds beyond propriety before Lae’zel tchks, shaking her head to the side and striking her hand through the air. “I am Lae’zel of Crèche K’liir, and you are at grave risk of trying my patience.”

Astarion tips his head, ignoring entirely the latter half of her statement, and nocks an arrow to his small crossbow, shooting it through the rope holding the cage up in the air with no further delay. Lae’zel is silent as she hits the ground in a smooth crouch, undeterred by the lack of warning or the fall itself.

He and Shadowheart both keep a careful eye on her movements as she checks for her gear, finding it lying on the ground on the far side of the small valley in an unceremonious pile. She inspects her sword with a frown, turning it this way and that as it catches the dying rays of the sun’s light. Finally satisfied – or as satisfied as one can be if one is a perpetually-aggravating githyanki of Crèche K’liir – she sheathes it along her back and turns to them, assuming a warrior’s rest.

They size each other up for long moments, broken only by the rustle of leaves and the swaying of the branches around them. Finally, Astarion pushes forward, toward the dirt path that leads out to the side and the slightly-more-defensible space between their current location and the excavated side of the temple. “Well, the sun is soon to be gone, and I don’t know about you two, but I would rather a defensible campsite to this ambush waiting to happen.”

With their begrudging agreement, Astarion pushes forward, missing Kelis with a pang reflected in every thudding step he takes alone.

“They defer to you like no other — it’s an impressive command of them you hold.” Astarion works to keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice. There is so much he could do with such sway, and the beast barely even notes it.

“Hm?” Kelis’s response is distracted, a hum drawing from the base of their throat. They look up a moment later, black eyes meeting red.

“Why, our charming companions, of course!” He keeps his voice light and lilting, inviting them to share in intimate conversation with him. “You must have some manner of leadership experience behind you to hold such an assortment of characters together like this — or have no small amount of natural talent.”

Kelis hums again, unconvinced. “If you say so.”

They turn away, back to their original focus – some manner of pilfered text he hasn’t managed to get a look at yet – and he grits his teeth, controlling his breathing as he stalks back over to his own section of their day’s campsite.

He’ll win them over yet.

The air in the camp is tense — even more so than it was the previous evening with him and Shadowheart alone. Shadowheart looks like she would rather be as far from them as possible, but caves to reason and their perilous and barely-defensible position by settling around the campfire along with them, keeping Lae’zel very transparently fully within view at all times.

The silence drags on for long minutes, broken only by the cheerful crackles of the fire, at odds with the sullen pall settling over them like a dense cloud of fog. Finally, unable to take the cacophony of his own thoughts any longer, and willing to take any possible distraction, Astarion turns slightly to direct a question to Lae’zel.

“Lae’zel… were you alone on the nautiloid when it crashed?” He already suspects what her answer will be, given Shadowheart’s, but he asks all the same. He was not fortunate enough to be freed at the same time as their little group – although from what he’s heard of their confrontation with the cambions and mindflayers, perhaps that is for the best after all – but he’d heard the account of their escape several times from all three parties.

Lae’zel looks up from carefully cleaning dirt out of the grooves of her armor, slowly buffing it to a worn sheen once more, scowling. “Tchk, of course! I am a warrior of Crèche K’liir! I need no help, and require no aid.”

She scowls harder for a moment, a barely-discernible edge of hesitation entering her voice, “Although… there was a red drago—” Astarion’s heart lurches in his chest, and he leans forward in a sudden motion, controlling his eagerness by the barest measure.

She shakes her head sharply. “Tsk’va! What foolishness. Of course there was a red dragon, they are the staunch allies of our Queen’s finest warriors. It knew I required no aid, however, and would prove myself or perish, as all githyanki must.” She ends her proclamation with a proud tilt to her head, and Astarion leans back again, a knot in the back of his throat. Of course. He shouldn’t have expected otherwise.

He smiles, bright and blank, and waves it away as simple curiosity. The remainder of the evening passes in stilted silence that he no longer has the mind to break, staring blankly into the crackling fire and imagining it warmer, fiercer, deeper and red. He takes to his bedroll only when it has smoldered to embers, and the other two have long since laid to rest.

Astarion’s fragile grasp on his trance-state breaks apart as he hears a soft-soled shoe scrape across the ground across the fire from him. His frustration hits a peak as the heavy shroud of respite slowly settling over him breaks and shatters, spinning away into nothing. He takes a measured, steadying breath and focuses on the need he still has for his current companions, before slitting his eyes open to see which of them have disturbed him.

The fire, down to embers and a few remaining hungry flames now, tints the darkness as he looks across it to where Shadowheart is crouched over Lae’zel’s still and furious form. The Sharran’s braid hangs down almost to the ground, as she holds a knife to Lae’zel’s throat with her right hand, and pins Lae’zel’s left arm with her other hand. Lae’zel’s right arm is prevented from moving by Shadowheart’s foot placed across it, digging punishingly down into the ground. No fear shows in the githyanki’s face, only fury.

His brow furrows as, stupidly, his mind catches on one thought: This… wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

“So you choose the coward’s way,” Lae’zel hisses, “attacking while your opponent is unaware. Are you so uncertain of your victory, istik?”

Shadowheart hitches – something like a laugh – her eyes obscured from his position. “You’re joking. Of course I’m uncertain! I’m alone in this godsforsaken place, my… previous companions dead, an illithid tadpole in my brain, and he—” she doesn’t shift to indicate Astarion in any way, but the quick dart of Lae’zel’s eyes to him makes her meaning clear “—bit off someone’s hand today! And at least him I could take in an honest fight. You? I am more than familiar with what your kind is capable of.”

Lae’zel sniffs derisively. “You are slightly less of a fool than I took you for, then. Very well. Take your strike. But should you fail, know that you will not receive a second opportunity.”

He almost, almost, leaves them to it. The day – has it truly only been one? – has worn punishingly on, trying to ensure as much as possible remains as it was — surely this one thing will manage itself? He allows his eyes to slip closed for one moment, before they are driven open again upon hearing the rustle of Shadowheart’s movement. She is… actually going to go through with it.

Fuck.

He curses internally, launching himself up and across the fire even as he is hit with an odd, mingled wave of exhaustion and exasperation, and a new sense of appreciation for everything Kelis took on before. Keeping this group from killing each other was a more monumental endeavor than he had fully appreciated.

He hits Shadowheart with the full force of his body, strategically relaxing his muscles before the impact to convey the maximum available momentum, toppling her off of Lae’zel and immediately being forced to contend with her knife himself. He flips them around so Lae’zel, now crouched in her own battle-ready position, is firmly in his field of vision herself. He spares a moment to cast her a firm look that he hopes conveys his fervent desire for her to refrain from joining in, and then turns back to his struggle with Shadowheart, who is putting every ounce of her obnoxious flexibility and pain tolerance behind her efforts to bring her knife to his throat now.

Finally, absolutely fed up and no longer caring to maintain the slim shred of caution obscuring his now least-interesting secret, he grabs her hanging braid with one hand, gritting his teeth as the spiked chain bites into his flesh, and pulls her head to the side to expose her neck. He bares his teeth, fangs broad and flashing, ensuring that they both get a good look at the weapons he is never without, and that he is fully prepared to use against either of them. Shadowheart’s struggling stills for the moment, but he knows from disagreeable experience how little that means in regard to her long-term willingness to cooperate. Best finish this quickly, before he loses the scant upper hand he yet possesses.

His voice is flat, devoid of the usual ornamentation he tries to add to it, “We have few enough allies as it is, don’t you think?” A pang, as ever, as he thinks of which of those allies he would happily trade the sun itself to have at his side in the current moment. “It makes little sense to cut that number down even further. Regardless of your personal feelings, our overall goal is still aligned.”

He takes a moment to meet both of their eyes in turn, for once not concerned with concealing his true feelings. In a moment of private irony, he notes how similar their expressions are in response to his statement – bitter frustration, directed at each other as well as, in this moment, at him. Whatever works, he supposes, although he might need to be even more judicious in his trancing for the next few days, until the scale of their reprisal, if any, is revealed. The thought that he is to be further denied its slim reprieve makes his fangs itch with needle-sharp aggravation.

“Are those terms you can live with?” He makes a token attempt at his more usual mocking levity as he continues, “If not, by all means you are welcome to go your own way — only I’d appreciate no further nighttime disruptions. A natural beauty I may be, but the less fortunate among us could certainly use it.”

Shadowheart rolls her eyes, her own edges smoothed away behind her characteristic composure, and he judges it safe to release her, pushing her knife hand outward as he breaks away, and takes two steps back from both of them for good measure.

A long, tense moment follows, as all three of them size each other up and weigh their responses. Shadowheart arches an eyebrow at him. “I suppose your actions at the portal make a bit more sense now. We’re certain to face plenty of brigands in future, however, so try to restrain your appetites to our actual enemies.”

Astarion sighs, considers arguing, but ultimately gives it up. The explanation she’s decided on is… as good of one as any, and might do well to engender some further goodwill to patch up its currently frayed state. He dips his head in acknowledgement.

“But of course! I wouldn’t dream of touching a hair on either of your darling heads.” His still-bleeding palm twinges at the reminder of how that went for him but moments ago, and he valiantly ignores the smug turn to Shadowheart’s smirk as she catches it.

Lae’zel scoffs, tossing her head in derision. “Tchk. Next time, we shall battle in truth, and I will prove myself the natural victor. Until that point, you may continue to benefit from my command.”

Shadowheart begins to protest immediately, while Astarion claps his hands once, a slightly cracked edge to his smile. “Perfect! So glad we’ve got that sorted. If that’s all, some of us would rather like to rest before the morrow and its fresh horrors.” He ends his statement almost at a hiss, smile still pulled wide on his face. Shadowheart and Lae’zel give him complex looks, but ultimately offer no argument.

He moves back to his bedroll, considers moving it further away from the others, but finds himself overcome with a wave of exhaustion that makes the decision for him. He’s done his one good deed for the day. If the timeline wants the other two alive, it can intercede itself.

Then

Kelis stared down the squabbling warriors before them. Did they truly wish each other dead more than they desired freedom from the parasites within them? Fools, both.

They stood in one smooth motion, sinuous scales shifting as they moved. “Enough, Shadowheart.” They kept their voice low, but brooking no dispute. Her attempted defense of the necessity of her actions did not suffice to sway Kelis, who saw all-too-clearly through to the root of rank fear behind it.

Lae’zel did not thank Kelis for the intercession, but they would not have expected her to. It was to be hoped that the animosity excised here would heal over into something akin to a warrior’s regard. Kelis resolved to keep the two on the field team until they were certain such would be the case. Better to resolve their issues here, in relative peace, than when anything less than a united front would be their undoing.

15 notes · View notes