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etoilehistoire · 5 months

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When talking about Astarion’s choice to ascend or not, we tend to act like it's our choice. The player decides if he ascends or not. But... there IS a roll involved. Yes, as players if it doesn't go the way we want we can always reload and try again, but... in-game, the characters don't have that option. What would happen, then, if a Tav desperately tried to talk him out of ascending... and failed? Rolled a one? What might they do? What might happen next?

This story takes place after the end of the game.

The little farmhouse was in the middle of nowhere – no other homes in sight, miles from the nearest town.

Not that Wyll was surprised. In her shoes, he’d surely value his solitude too.

It was pretty, he noticed as he rode up the path. A dark brown roof over white walls, almost completely hidden behind trellises of morning glories, climbing roses, and other flowers. A spray of sunflowers nearly hid the door. Berry bushes sprawled across the front yard in glorious disorder, many of them sporting ripe fruit that filled the morning air with a sweet scent. And there, filling a bowl with blueberries, her dark hair pulled back in a scarf, was Xia.

She turned when she heard his horse's hooves, a slow smile spreading across her face. “I’ll be damned. How long has it been? Ten years?”

“At least,” he agreed with a grin. Hopping down, he clasped her arm in greeting, and wasn’t the least bit surprised when she pulled him into a full-bodied hug instead. “Oof! You’re strong as ever. Country life suits you.”

She looked well too, he mused a moment later, stepping back to look her over. Her hair had a little grey at the temples, and crow's feet were beginning to form at the corner of her unscarred eye, but she seemed more at ease with herself and the world than he remembered her being before.

She laughed at the comment. “I suppose it does. But what about you? I didn’t expect to see you out here in the middle of nowhere! How’s the war going? How’s Karlach? How’s her heart?”

He threw up his hands in mock surrender, laughing. “So many questions! And the answers are all related. The war never ends, of course – it will outlive all of us. But sometimes you have to step away from battle for a moment, to focus on more important things.” He smiled, a softness entering his voice. “Karlach's new heart is treating her well. It’s stable. So stable, in fact, that… well, that’s part of what I came to tell you.” His dark skin flushed even darker. “We’re expecting.”

She gasped. “No.”

“Yes! Dammon's with her now; she’s already complaining about us coddling her.”

Xia laughed, the sound open and free. “Oh, I’ll bet. Tell her you’ll knock her down and sit on her if she doesn’t behave.” Looping her arm through his, she continues. “You have to tell me everything! Let me show you around while you do; I’ve got a little orchard started – the trees won’t bear fruit for another year or two, but it’s pretty. And oh, do you like tomatoes? Please say at least one of you does, I have so many tomatoes and I don’t know what to do with them all…”

She’s freer with her words now too, he noted, holding back a smile as he let her ramble on. She gave him a quick tour; he dutifully admired the gardens, and smiled at the chickens and the cantankerous goat.

Finally she gave him a sideways glance. “But happy as your news is, it could have been delivered in a letter. And you didn’t come all the way out here to see my flowers and be loaded up with spare vegetables. What’s up?”

He gave her a gentle smile. “Actually? I wanted to check on you. I was surprised to hear you’d hung up your sword.”

She smiled, but it seemed more reserved now. “I got out of the game, Wyll. It happens.”

“Doesn’t usually happen to someone who makes the kind of name for themselves as you did.”

She was silent at this. After a long moment he added, gently, “They’re singing songs about you, you know. About what you did.”

Now her shoulders sagged. “Ah.”

“Is it true?”

She looked away, dark eyes staring off into the blue morning sky. “They would hardly sing songs about it if it wasn’t.”

He touched her shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“What is there to say?” She still didn’t look at him. This, this was the Xia he remembered, careful and closed-off. It made him sad to see. “The ascended vampire lord has been destroyed and his budding empire torn down. I dealt the death-blow myself.”

His heart hurt for her. He, too, had grieved what Astarion had become, but he’d never been as close with the vampire as she was. Xia had always been driven to do the right thing, but he couldn’t imagine how it must have felt, having to kill her former lover. “Is that why…?”

“Why I stopped?” She shrugged. “I made a mess, Wyll. It was on me to clean it up. Once I did, that life didn’t have much appeal for me anymore.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. “We should have been there with you. You shouldn’t have had to do it alone.”

“I did have an army with me,” she replied mildly. “I was hardly ‘alone.’” Glancing over at him, she gave him a small smile. “I’m glad you weren’t, honestly. It makes me happy that you and the others are living your lives. You deserve some peace.”

He returned the smile. “Well. So do you.”

“And I’ve found it.” She leaned into him, wrapping an arm around him in a half-hug. “Listen, I do want to catch up, and I have missed you, but I’m afraid I have to be a bad host. The house is a mess – turns out I’m a much better gardener than I am a housekeeper – and I never get company out here so I don’t have a guest room set up. Maybe we could-"

Just then the door banged open and someone strolled out of the house. Lanky build. White, curling hair. Skin tanned pale gold from the sun. Pointed ears. Clutching a mug of coffee in his hand.

“Darling,” he drawled, “did a blight destroy our berry bushes overnight? Did you have to plant entirely new ones before you could pick the blueberries? I don’t mean to be impatient, but you promised me muffins, not abandonment-"

“Astarion??”

He froze. She froze. Wyll stared between them, his eyes growing wide as he tried to process what he was seeing.

Then Xia turned toward him, slowly, with the absolute strangest expression he had ever seen on her face: a guilty, sheepish smile.

“Explain.”

~15-20 Years Earlier~

Astarion sat on Cazador’s- no. His throne, now. His, all his, and he should be happy about it, damn it. Instead he drummed his fingers, their last conversation playing in his head.

“You will regret leaving me. More than anything else you live to regret.”

She’d simply looked at him with her quiet eyes. “No, Star. The only thing I regret is that I couldn’t stop you from doing this to yourself.”

He scowled. What did she know? He hadn’t ‘done anything to himself’ except seize the power he deserved, the power that always should have been rightfully his. After 200 years of pain, of fear, of being weak, now finally he was the one who was strong. He would never be afraid again. He could have kept her safe too, could have given her everything she ever wanted. Instead she rejected it. Said she liked him better when he was weak. When he was pathetic.

She didn’t deserve him. Didn’t deserve the gifts his power would have bestowed. So be it. She could grow old and suffer and die, while he was beautiful and strong forever, and he wouldn’t care. He was better off without an ingrate like her anyway. He would put her entirely out of his mind and never think of her again.

It didn’t go as well as he’d hoped.

The first thing to do, of course, was make new spawns. He was powerful, of course, but he was only one man. An army of offspring, all loyal to him, all able to be controlled by him, would increase his power exponentially, allow him to effectively be everywhere at once.

So he started.

His first spawn was less than pleased by his new fate. That was fine. Astarion hadn’t suffered under Cazador all those years without learning a few tricks to break the will of a rebellious slave. If the boy couldn’t see the advantages of serving the most powerful vampire lord to ever exist, he would instead learn the folly of resistance. He’d come around in time. Astarion would make sure of it.

The second, by contrast, took to it like a duck to water. She had a streak of cruelty that delighted him, and she was a sensible girl, able to understand the quid-pro-quo of “serve me loyally, and I’ll be good to you.” Yes, she would work out nicely.

It was when he was out hunting his third spawn that he hit a snag.

A tall girl. Well-muscled from hard work. Dark hair, dark eyes – a round face with a serious expression. Not Xia, of course, but similar enough to her that they could have been sisters.

He brought her back, of course, fully intending to turn her. As he should have turned Xia, nevermind that she said she didn’t want it. Once it was done she would have seen the benefits, and even if she hadn’t, she couldn’t have left him then anyway. He should have done it.

Her face came back to him, the way he’d seen it last. Cold. Sad. Judgmental, as if she had any right to judge him. He snarled, the rage filling his mind, and lunged.

When he drew back she was dead, her glassy eyes staring at the ceiling as the tattered remains of her throat slowly dripped onto his second-best couch. Ugh. Such a waste.

He made his first spawn clean up the mess – it would do the boy good to get used to such things. His second spawn (he should learn their names eventually, or perhaps give them new ones) he sent out to hunt a replacement. “And,” he added, glancing back to the cooling corpse. “If you can… find someone who looks like her.”

He could control himself better the next time. Of course he could.

He saw her again, a year or so later.

By that point his influence had grown enough that he was making alliances with other power players, but he wasn’t quite high enough – yet – to force them to come to him. So he was traveling, visiting a strange town to seal a deal.

He hadn’t had to hunt himself for months – his pets brought him all the fresh blood he could want. Still, there was nothing quite like the thrill of the chase, and he was in a new place where his face wasn’t widely known… so why not? Why not, for old time's sake? He donned a cloak, headed to a nearby tavern, and watched the crowd.

And there she was. Singing, for the gods' sake, like she was some common wench and not a paladin. His lip twisted in pity and disgust. If she’d only listened to him, she could be living in luxury right now, her every whim seen to, instead of debasing herself like this. Singing for her supper. She might as well whore herself out.

He stayed and listened, his fury growing as he did so. The song was sad, and told the story of a woman who had loved a powerful man, but her love wasn’t enough to keep him with her and so he had abandoned her.

How dare she. As if she hadn’t left him! As if he hadn’t offered her the world, if only she’d stayed! How dare she paint him as the unfaithful one, how dare she mourn their love! She had no right!

His hunt forgotten, he waited for her until she left the lights of the tavern. Stepping out of the dark night, he grabbed her by the throat and forced her back against the wall. “You know, darling, if you miss me that much you could always come home.” He bared his fangs, moving in closer. “Your place as my consort is still open. In fact, I’ve half a mind to put you there anyway – there are others who would kill to be my most beloved spawn, you’d learn to appreciate it in time.”

A blade pressed against his throat – gods, he’d forgotten how fast she was. Cold eyes stared into his. “If.”

He considered his odds. Her throat was right there – but lunging for it would mean the dagger slicing into his own neck. Possibly he could incapacitate her before it cut all the way through… but possibly not. “Beg pardon?” he asked, playing for time.

“If.” Her gaze grew, if anything, even harder. “I told you that it was a big ‘if.’ That I didn’t see it happening. But it’s getting closer.”

He stilled. He remembered now – a conversation long ago, around a fire. How pathetic he’d been then, cringing and sniveling, as if he needed her approval or affection. “Oh, pretty paladin, please tell me you aren’t threatening me.”

“Not a threat. A warning.” Now she leaned into him, bringing their faces close. “I know that ethics won’t move you, nor morality. Not love, not mercy, not kindness. You’ve seen to that.” Her words were quiet and emotionless, fired at him with a dreadful matter-of-factness. “So I’m appealing to enlightened self-interest. Keep your predations to a reasonable level, vampire. For your sake and mine: don’t become something I’m honor-bound to kill.”

He snarled, hate twisting his features. The blade biting into his neck was becoming uncomfortable; he took a few steps back, pretending it was his own idea, glaring all the while. “The arrogance. You really believe you could do anything to me? To me?”

She sighed. “Oh, Star. You know I was never afraid of you, right? Not once. Not even with your teeth in my neck. That hasn’t changed.” Her knife disappeared, vanishing into whatever hidden pocket she’d drawn it from. “Perhaps you should have been more afraid of me.”

And with that, she turned her back on him – deliberately – and walked away.

And Astarion, for reasons he absolutely did not understand, let her.

It wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t safe enough.

He wasn’t strong enough.

He had an entire horde of spawn bound to him, yes, but they could only operate at night. That was a limitation, and limitations were weakness.

He’d had the idea, once, to cover the city in fog and clouds, blocking out the sun, making it safe for his little pets. So he did. It took a while, of course, but he figured it out in the end.

Of course, then the people in the city were angry. There were rumblings of discontent. That wouldn’t do. The city should be his – he deserved that much, didn’t he? And anyone who disagreed, well. He always needed food. And he always needed entertainment. Those who spoke against him could provide both – quietly at first, then as publicly as possible – until no one else dared to speak.

So the city became his. But then it occurred to him – it was only one city. A single city could be destroyed, could it not? No, it wasn’t enough. To be truly safe, to be truly powerful, he needed multiple cities.

He needed an empire.

And, after all, why shouldn’t he have one? Why shouldn’t he rule this land? Who could stand against him?

Some years into this, the rumors first reached his ears. Whispers of tales told in taverns and common rooms, songs sung in secrecy. The story of a paladin who had been betrayed by a vampire lord, who would ease her heartbreak by taking revenge on her evil ex-lover.

He was furious. He sent out an entire squadron of spawn, with instructions: tear out the tongues of anyone heard repeating this rumor. He nailed the tongues to a board in the square, scores of them, a grisly display for all to see.

But the stories kept being spread.

Soon it was more than whispers. An army was amassing to the west, led by a scarred paladin, sworn to bring him down. Xia's name seemed to be on every pair of lips – a beacon of hope, they called her. A hero, come to free them from the scourge of – well, of him.

He hated her. Gods, he hated her. How could he have ever thought he loved her? It wasn’t enough to abandon him, to throw away everything he’d tried to give her. She had to try to destroy everything he was working so hard to build, too? Everything that would finally, finally make him secure, safe, happy?

They moved slowly. First a tiny border town, one he had only barely secured. The spawn he’d left in charge was killed, the fog dispersed. The people were free.

He sneered when he heard it. ‘Free.’ Free to live their miserable, pathetic lives, perhaps. To die meaningless deaths. Instead of being led by someone with vision, someone who would have protected them, who would only have taken a few lives here and there – and even then, those who died would have known they were sacrificing to further a glorious cause! But no. They wanted to live and die like animals? Fine. He didn’t need that town anyway. He had others.

But her army didn’t stop there. They moved forward, inexorably, whittling apart his budding empire and growing stronger all the while as people flocked to her banners.

He screamed as the reports came in, as he heard of each new city lost. Sometimes he took it out on the messenger. Sometimes he took it out on the townsfolk. So what if he did? It was her fault anyway, for angering him like this.

Then they were there, in his home city, moving closer, fighting pitched battles in the street. It should have been impossible for them to fight him here, in his own territory, but here they were, growing closer by the day. Until the city was theirs. Until they reached his walls.

And stopped.

They didn’t move on the castle.

Maybe they were recovering from the battle, licking their metaphorical wounds. Maybe they didn’t think they were strong enough. Maybe they were doing reconnaissance, or building a powerful weapon, or waiting for the stars to align. Whatever the reason, they stopped, and for months there was a stalemate. Astarion took advantage of it, building up his defenses and training his pets. If they were going to give him breathing room, he’d make them regret it.

Then, after several months, something changed. He wasn’t sure what – he shuddered, as if someone had walked over his grave, and afterwards he knew something was different. Something had fundamentally changed, and he hated that he didn’t know what.

A week after that, the attack came.

The fighting in the lower levels wasn’t going well, he could tell by the sound. His spawn were fighting for their own lives and his, he’d summoned wolves and bats and everything else he could think of, and yet the army kept coming, kept slicing his forces apart.

And then she was there.

In his private rooms. Alone.

He grinned when he saw her. “The years are catching up to you, Xia. Is that grey I see in your hair?” He clucked. “Should have let me turn you when you were still young and – well, as pretty as you’d ever be.”

She regarded him quietly, naked sword in hand. “I didn’t come here to talk, Astarion. I came here to kill you.”

“You still think you can?” He sneered. “Your little soldiers down there might be able to defeat my spawns, pretty paladin. But I am the ascended vampire. You cannot bring me down.”

“I can,” she said – calmly. Steadily. “And I will. I promised to make it quick, Astarion. And it will be.”

With that, they flew at each other.

She was every bit as fast and strong as he remembered – more so, even, after the decade or more she’d had to improve. But he was stronger too. Faster. And he had more tricks up his sleeve.

He drew first blood – the fingernails he’d allowed to grow long, had sharpened into talons, missed her neck but scraped against the melted flesh of her scar. He paused, grinning, and licked a drop of blood off of one of them.

Hells below, it was sweet. He’d forgotten how good she tasted.

“Oh, I’m going to enjoy draining you dry,” he purred, and lunged again.

He relished the look of surprise on her face the first time he turned into mist, her sword passing harmlessly through him. He danced around her, waiting for her to grow tired and out of breath, something he no longer needed to worry about.

She stabbed. He misted. He laughed inwardly at the confusion in her eyes as she looked around, trying to figure out where he was this time. Silently, he materialized behind her, moving in for the kill.

Too late, he realized it had been a feint, as she whirled to face him, knowing exactly where he’d be.

Too late, he saw the blade swinging for his neck.

Too late.

In his cold dead heart, he hadn’t actually thought she could kill him, any more than he could kill her. Oh, he could consider it. Fantasize about it, even. But actually do it? No. They were bound together. He would disarm her. Render her helpless. Then turn her, as he always should have, and they would be together. Forever. As it always should have been.

He was wrong.

There was the excruciating pain of the sword through his neck. The sickening spin of the world as his head left his shoulders and tumbled down. The darkness taking over his vision.

Then nothing.

The first thing he was aware of was… warmth.

He was warm.

That was new.

He opened his eyes to see Xia bending over him, her eyes red and puffy, tears streaming down her cheeks. That was wrong. Xia never cried. Not once, in all the time he’d known her.

“Oh gods,” she gasped out, as soon as she saw his eyes open. Then, standing, she stumbled away, turning her back to him as her shoulders shook.

Carefully, he sat up. His body felt… weird. Something was on him, littering his lap and the floor near him. Little stones, or gems maybe, but hollow and blackened as if they’d been burnt from the inside. He touched one and it crumbled to dust.

Something was wrong. Something felt wrong, familiar and alien at once. He stilled, trying to feel it, to understand what was happening to his body.

It was a heartbeat. It was his heartbeat. For the first time in over 200 years.

He stared at the paladin’s back. “Xia… what did you do?”

The answer was slow in coming. When it did, it was in a voice that was dull and despairing. “I undid the most important choice you ever made for yourself. I ignored your wishes and turned you into what I wanted you to be, without your consent. That’s what I did.”

His breath (he had breath!) caught. He stared at the crumbling gems again. Diamonds, he realized. Or they had been, before.

He remembered… oh, he remembered the ritual. He remembered Xia trying to talk him out of it. He’d ignored her, so sure he knew what he was doing, so sure it was the only way.

He remembered everything he’d done after.

His stomach heaved and he doubled over, retching, unable to bring anything up except strings of yellow bile. Still the horror and disgust washed over him in waves.

He'd become his own worst nightmare. He was as bad as Cazador.

No. He was worse.

When he finally regained the ability to speak, he croaked, “Why?”

She shrugged – one-shouldered, listless. “Because I’m selfish? Because I knew I needed to kill you, but I wasn’t ready to live in a world without you in it? Because I would rather have you alive to hate me dead.”

He shook his head, not understanding. “No. Not – what? Why would I hate you?”

She hesitated. “Star. You made a choice. You chose power. That was your choice; my choice was to fight you. And that choice was mine to make… but I didn’t have the right to take your choice away. You’ve been treated like a thing for too long, you deserve to make your own choices about your own life. And I knew that, and I did it to you anyway. Knowing it was wrong.”

He felt sick. “No. I didn’t – I didn’t know. Xia, please, I – I chose to do the ritual, yes. But I didn’t know it would be like this.” He swallowed. “I didn’t know I would be like this.”

She did turn then, tears streaming from her eyes, turned and knelt with him. Shaking, her hands reached out to cup his face. Hope, wild and fierce, blazed in her watery eyes. “You didn’t? Star. Please. Swear it. Tell me you didn’t want… this.”

He shuddered, shaking his head fiercely. “I swear it. Xia, the things I wanted to do to you – I would never.” He covered his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Strong arms wrapped around him then, holding him close; he let himself lean into her embrace, feeling like he didn’t deserve it. “You should have killed me,” he whispered. “You should have let me stay dead. The things I did… Xia, you don’t know the things I did.”

“You can tell me,” she murmured back, “if you want. But it wasn’t you. If you didn’t know what the ritual would do… then you didn’t choose what you’d turn into. The person who did those things, it’s not you, and it’s not anyone you would choose to be.”

“It was still my hands,” he whispered. “Still my voice that gave the orders. You tried to warn me.”

“I did,” she replied, rubbing his back. “With things I guessed. Suspected. Not things I knew. You were scared. You wanted something to make you strong. I wouldn’t have believed my warnings either.”

He had nothing to say to that, unable to believe in the easy forgiveness but unwilling to reject it either. He clung to her in silence, until the shaking stopped.

Finally he asked, “…What happens now?”

“Mmm. My army is pretty gung-ho on ‘kill the vampire,’” she mused. “Probably you’ll want to lay low for a while. I’ll tell them you’re dead, and after things calm down I can smuggle you out of the castle.”

He nodded, sitting back and wiping his face. “I’ll… I don’t know where I’ll go,” he admitted, “but I’ll figure something out. I won’t make trouble for you, I promise.”

She frowned. “…Oh,” she said after a moment. “I mean… yes, of course you can go off on your own, if that’s what you want.” She hesitated. “I just… can I give you anything? Money, supplies?”

He shook his head, not looking her in the eyes. “You’ve given me the greatest gift I could ask for. I’m… Xia, I’m alive.” A laugh escaped him, soft and disbelieving. “I never thought, never even dared to hope… it’s freedom. True freedom. A second chance, despite everything I’ve done. I… I couldn’t ask for more. I’ve done enough to your life as it is.”

Silence. Then slowly, tentatively, gentle fingers reached out to push hair away from his face. “I mean,” she said, hesitant. “You could do more.”

He looked up then, meeting her eyes with a look of utter confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I delayed my attack for months – over the loud objections of my generals – until I could get my hands on the magics that could bring you back,” she said. “Because I didn’t want to risk killing you for real. I mean that even knowing that I had the magic to fix it, it still hurt more than I can say to see you dead by my hand. I mean that I didn’t do all of that because I never wanted to see you again afterwards.”

Now his eyes filled with tears. “Xia. You can’t mean that.”

“Can’t I?” She met his stare unflinching, and there – in her dark eyes, there she was, his quiet, pretty paladin. “Astarion. My Star. I love you. I’ve always loved you. Nothing has changed that. Nothing could.”

He shook his head. “I’ve killed people. Enslaved people. Tortured people, mutilated people. For bad reasons, when there was a reason at all. I don’t-" He ducked his head. “I don’t deserve you. I never did.”

“Oh, Star.” She reached out, her fingers soft in his hair – and then, suddenly, she was gripping his hair, gently forcing his his head up like she did the first time he fed on her, when he lost control. She raised his head until she could meet his gaze. “I already cut your head off once.”

He stared at her. “I. What?”

“I already cut your head off once.” Her mouth twisted. “It almost killed me to do so, but I did it. Was that not enough punishment? I can do it again, if you need me to; bringing you back should be much easier now. Or I can just yell at you a lot, if that’s easier. Tell you what a horrible awful person you are and why you should feel bad.”

His heart lightened even as he scowled. “You’re making fun of me.”

“Little bit.” Her grip on his hair loosened and she sat back, ruffling the curls once before letting her hand drop entirely. “I could tell you again that I don’t blame you for what you did, but you didn’t believe me the first time, so. Let’s do this instead. You say you don’t deserve me. But what do I deserve?” She leaned in. “Do I, or do I not, deserve to finally be with the man I love? After fighting for him all this time?”

Gods, she was going to be the death of him. Again. He swallowed hard. “Can you blame me for thinking you could do better?”

“Better than the love of my life?” She smiled. “Can you blame me for not believing that that’s possible?” He melted. How, how could she still believe such things about him?

She touched his cheek again, her thumb running lightly over his cheekbone. “Beloved. My night has been empty for over ten years.” She leaned in. “Please. Give me back the stars?”

He felt himself sag forward. Felt his lips meet hers.

It felt like giving in. It felt like giving up.

It felt like deciding to live again.

~Present Day~

As the story wound down, Wyll reached for another blueberry muffin – they were really very good. “So… a combination of Wish and True Resurrection? Clever.”

Xia nodded. “I cast Wish ahead of time, to undo the time limit on my next use of True Resurrection.”

“Which I felt,” Astarion chimed in. “It was itchy, feeling someone mess with my fate.”

“I’m not sorry. Anyway, I took a week to recover from the effects, and then the rest is history.”

He nodded. “How did you know it would work?”

“She didn’t.” Astarion arched an eyebrow, smearing butter on a muffin. “Which I remind her of all the time, that if her theory had been wrong I would be dead for good.”

“Yes, you do, love, and it’s not traumatizing at all,” Xia deadpanned, poking him. “But, Wyll, you can see why we keep it a secret?” Her eyes met his, pleading. “You and I, we knew him before, and we understand the circumstances. But someone who lived through the Dark Times… whose son or daughter or sister or husband was taken to the castle and never returned… they wouldn’t forgive. They’d come looking for him.” She glanced at the elf by her side. “Maybe they’d even have a right to. But gods help me, I don’t care.”

He nodded slowly. “No, I… I understand the predicament. But… well, you understand I’m not the only one who cares about you two?” He leaned in across the breakfast table. “Astarion, I’ve talked to some of the others from back then. We all grieved, when we thought you were dead.” He glanced at Xia. “And for you, when we thought you’d had to kill him.”

Astarion blinked, but recovered quickly. “Hmm. I would have thought I’d burned those bridges long ago. Surely a decade or so of terror matters more than a few weeks of sharing a common enemy?”

Wyll reached out, laying a hand across his pale wrist. “You were our friend. We didn’t forget that, even after you changed. We never stopped caring about you.”

Astarion blinked again, then looked down; there was a rustle under the table, like the sound of one person kicking another. “I told you,” Xia murmured, then turned to Wyll. “Every new person who learns a secret increases the chances that it will get out,” she said seriously. “That’s why I was trying to get rid of you before. Nothing personal, just. That’s how the numbers work.” She sighed. “But… we do trust you. If you’re in contact with the others, if you think they can keep this secret… we’ll trust your judgment.”

He felt a rush of warmth within him at the words, at the two cagiest members of his old party choosing to trust him with something so monumental. “It’s been about fifteen years,” he remarked. “Maybe twenty. Might be high time for a reunion. We could have a party and everything.”

Xia and Astarion glanced at each other, a whole conversation seeming to pass between them. Finally Xia sighed, turning back to him with an expression of resignation that didn’t actually hide the joy beneath the surface. “You’re really going to make me set up that guest room, huh?”

He grinned. “I am. I really, really am.”

#baldur's gate 3 #astarion #baldurs gate astarion #xia!tav #astarion x tav #bg3 #etoilewrites #astarion bg3 #non-canon #wyll ravengard #bg3 wyll

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etoilehistoire · 7 months

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(A time-travel fic: we know Astarion was locked away for a year once as a punishment. We know no hero or god ever came for him. When something throws him back into the past, to relive his worst fears, will anyone come this time? Featuring my "Tav", a female human paladin named Xia.)

He’d fed. Supped at the neck of the pretty little paladin, endured her quiet comments (mocking, he suspects, but he can’t be sure and oh, how that rankles) and too-serious eyes. Returned to his own bedroll. Watched the night sky for a bit; let himself appreciate the stars with a sincerity he keeps carefully locked away, even from himself, most of the time. Closed his eyes, allowed himself to slip into a trance.

And now…

Now there are hands gripping him, strong and cruel, dragging him across a stone floor. A horribly familiar floor.

There are words, snarled and harsh, but he can barely make them out. Stolen (gifted) blood pounds in his ears, the fear making it nearly impossible to think. He can’t focus on the words because he knows that voice, he knows that voice.

Besides. He has a sinking certainty that he’s heard these words before.

When he’s flung down into the too-small, too-tight darkness, when his feebly-struggling hands are slapped easily away, his panicked protests ignored, and the heavy stone slab seals him in, he knows.

He's back.

This is a dream. Oh, surely. Elves don’t dream, as a rule, unless they choose too, and he certainly can’t imagine choosing to. Still, trance is a time to access and revisit old memories, and when one has memories as… insistent… as Astarion's, sometimes they demand to be revisited whether one wills it or no. This wouldn’t be the first time, although never before had it felt quite so real. A side effect of human blood, perhaps.

His heart, even when awash in fresh blood, doesn’t beat, and yet he imagines he can feel it in his chest, a frightened, fluttery thing. He has no need to breathe, and yet his throat feels tight as he gasps at stale air and pushes uselessly against stone walls that crowd him from every side.

Calm. Calm. You are in control. It’s a dream. A dream, and you’ll just have to wait it out. Calmly. Otherwise you might do something like shout out in your trance and wake the others, and wouldn’t that just be excruciating?

He coaxes a grim smile out of himself with the last image, and feels himself relax. He’ll wait it out. Gods, he ought to be good at waiting by now, oughtn't he?

Fifteen minutes later, his right leg starts to fidget. No, he is not good at waiting.

An hour later, no matter how he tries to keep himself from doing so, he finds himself pushing again against the stone walls holding him in. Every time they fail to budge, he feels another twinge of panic.

Twenty-four hours later, the thought he has desperately been trying to avoid pushes its way forward: trance-memories don’t usually last this long.

Twenty-four hours after that, and he is screaming, weeping, banging uselessly on the lid as if that would do anything, as his mind tries and fails and tries again to process the truth he can no longer avoid: this is real.

He's back.

On the third day he can feel the vitality the paladin's blood had given him beginning to fade. His frenzied attacks against the solid stone grow weaker – almost imperceptibly at first, but that will change.

One week in, he can feel the beginning pangs of hunger – pangs he knows, via agonizingly clear memory, will only grow.

Three weeks in, he distracts himself by indulging in increasingly-elaborate fantasies of being rescued. By the silly wizard, perhaps, or the oh-so-noble “Blade of Frontiers.” Or that little cleric girl, the one who always pretended to hate him. Or, hells, why not Xia herself, if he’s being ridiculous? He pictures it for a moment, the paladin swooping down on a gleaming white horse just to dig up a vampire spawn like him; the humor in that makes him smile, affords him a half-breath of relief. (Until he remembers that it’s hopeless, that they’re not even alive yet, that even if they were none of them would care enough to even look for him, let alone charge to his rescue. After that it’s harder to come up with fantasies.)

A month and a half in, he breaks the first of many nails completely off, scrabbling and thrashing against the lid. He knows he should stop. That it won’t do any good and he’ll just keep hurting himself. He begins scrabbling again, even though his raw finger screams with every scrape. (When his hands finally fall, exhausted, he remembers with grim anger that around this stage was when he began praying to the silent gods. He swears to himself, he won’t stoop so low this time.)

Three months in, he starts praying anyway.

Five months in, he stops.

At six months in, his muscles eating themselves, his throat a blaze of pain, the hallucinations start. Again and again, stone scrapes on stone, light shines down, and they’re there, come to rescue him. His party. His… well, friends is a strong word. His compatriots, perhaps. Gale. Karlach, the flames nearly blinding him. Wyll, with his gentle smile. Once it's a elven couple, a man and a woman, with faces he can almost recognize but not quite, and when they vanish he weeps dry tears for hours. More often than not it’s Xia, which would be funny if he were still capable – emotionally or physically – of laughing. The sharp, pretty paladin with her sharp, pretty sword might tolerate him for his usefulness, might feed him her blood out of pragmatism and a perverse sense of duty, but no more than that. Certainly he’d failed to charm or seduce her – he’d tried, gods knew, tried every trick in his repertoire to bind her to him, make her want to keep him safe, but when she simply fixed him with cool dark eyes that seemed to see right through his manipulation, he feared he’d simply made her despise him instead. So why would his mind show him her? Even if she were here, now, which she isn’t, she owes him nothing; even her oath to protect the innocent wouldn’t apply to an undead thing like him. She isn’t coming. (The worst part, though, are the nights when he hallucinates Cazador coming for him – the mocking laugh, the half-rotted rat he’s thrown. The way he drinks it anyway, gagging at the taste but unable to stop. The contempt in Cazador's eyes as he watches. Well. No. That isn’t true. The worst part is the gratitude he feels, every time.)

At seven months he begins to wonder if the people he remembers ever existed at all. Perhaps all those memories were simply a fever dream. Perhaps he has been here the whole time.

By nine months he knows, with whatever small scrap of consciousness is left to him capable of knowing anything, that it’s over. He’s broken. He knows, or had once known, that somewhere in the world there are blue skies and bright stars, the laughter of companions and the smell of cookfires, but he no longer believes in it. Everything is darkness and stale air and pain. His throat hurts, burns like fire in its dryness. His innards hurt, dessicated and twisting in on themselves. His limbs are atrophied, stick-thin and monstrous. His skin is dry and stretched taut over his bones. His hands are bloody lumps, fingers broken and scraped raw from useless attempts to escape. This is all there is, and all there will ever be, until Cazador decides to let him out. Until Cazador comes for him. And when he does, Astarion knows with a sickening sense of shame, he will be grateful. He will be relieved. He will be so, so desperate to never return here, so very willing to do whatever is necessary to stay in his master's good graces. He will be Cazador's creature once again, through and through, and this time he doesn’t know if he’ll ever again have the strength to leave.

And still, after that, time continues to pass.

Until stone scrapes against stone.

At first he thinks it’s another hallucination, except that it’s too loud, too bright. The scraping stone is shocking to his ears after hearing nothing but his own hoarse screams for so long; the light hurts, blinding him with his brightness. This is it, then: Cazador has come for him. Hope flares, wild and pathetic and clinging.

A strong hand grips the front of his shirt and he is ungently lifted out of the stone tomb. Before his eyes can even adjust his face is being pressed against something soft and warm and smelling deliciously vital, and he lunges without thought, latching on with desperate, ferocious hunger. There’s a brief moment when it registers, dimly, that this is a much finer meal than the dead rat he was given last time, but then the blood hits his throat, strong and thick and life-giving, and all conscious thought washes away in the need to drink, drink, drink deeply.

When he comes back to himself some minutes later, the thirst inside him – not sated, never fully sated, but subsided to the level he’s used to – three realizations hit him in rapid order.

This blood is better – richer, stronger – than anything Cazador had ever given him. This is forbidden blood. Human blood.

Familiar human blood.

And he has drunk far too much of it.

He rocks, back, shocked, already bracing himself (with a surprisingly strong stab of regret) for the sight he fully expects – her body, falling lifeless and drained to the filthy floor.

But what he sees is Xia, yes, but fully alive and not – as he had assumed – being held by Cazador, a cruel trick to make him disobey the rules and murder his own friend all in one go. Instead she’s kneeling in front of him, hale and hearty and under her own power, watching him with solemn dark eyes.

“Whuh,” he says, intelligently.

She nods, as if that meant anything. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

Well, that explained exactly nothing. He clears his throat. “How is it that I didn’t kill you?” It’s not the most important question right now, not even in the top ten, and it’s probably not the most tactful way to phrase it, but of all the thoughts currently crowding his head it’s the one that makes it to his mouth first.

A rare grin, bright and fleeting, lights up her scarred face, and for just a moment his “pretty paladin" is actually lovely. “Ring of Lesser Restoration,” she explains, holding up her hand to show it off – a flat band of silver, with a flake of some pale blue gem in the center. “I had a feeling you’d be hungry when I found you, and I didn’t want to have to cut you off.”

Oh. Of course. She bought a ring, for him. Because she knew he’d be this, she knew he’d be a mindless, feral monster who wouldn’t be able to stop himself from draining her dry, and rather than that being a reason to leave him to his fate, she just. Bought an expensive magic item. For him. So she wouldn’t have to make him stop. Of course. Entirely sensible.

Eyes burning, he repeats her words. “When you… found me.”

She nods. “You weren’t the only one thrown back in time. When I realized what had happened, when I realized when I was, I knew you’d be here. With him. So I came.” She gives him a lopsided shrug. “But I told you I’m not from around here. I had to come from the other side of the world.”

He tries to rally himself. He should make a joke, something about how of course you traveled across the world for me, darling, have you seen these cheekbones? Or perhaps turn gratitude into flattery, fluttered eyelashes and pretty words and a promise to repay her kindness however she might like.

Instead what comes out, in a voice so pathetic and broken he wants to cringe away from it, is: “You came for me.”

Something softens in those fathomless dark eyes. A hand comes up, impossibly gentle, to touch his sunken cheek. “Yeah. I did.”

“You came for me.” He feels tears welling, blessed real tears made possible by her blood in his body, and the humiliation he feels at weeping in front of her is overshadowed by the stinging relief of finally being able to do so. “For me.”

He didn’t – he didn’t do anything for her. He never gave her anything. He’d utterly failed to secure her loyalty in any of the ways he knew how. He certainly can’t do anything for her now. There’s no reason she should be here, based on everything he’s ever known of people. It doesn’t make sense.

Yet here she is.

When the tears start flowing freely she reaches out and pulls him into her, arms warm and reassuring around him – not trapping him but holding him, supporting him. He tucks his face into her shoulder and lets it all come pouring out, all the fear and rage and pain and despair of the past year, the loneliness and need. It isn’t elegant; it’s full of hiccupping and snotting and undignified sounds somewhere between a sob and a scream. She holds him through it, strong arms protective around him, soft hands stroking his hair.

He clings to her even as the sobs subside, dimly aware that if she wanted to, she could own him in this moment as thoroughly as Cazador once did. She won’t. She wouldn’t even want to. Of this, he is certain.

The thought does make him pause, though. He draws back (and oh gods, his face must be a fright, for once he’s grateful that he can’t see his own reflection) and meets her gaze with wide eyes. “Cazador.”

“Dead,” she replies bluntly. A small smile graces her lips, the one he always assumed was mocking but which he now suspects is affectionately teasing. “I know, I should have left some for you, but time was of the essence.”

If he weren’t already on his knees he would fall to them now. He feels like a puppet with his strings cut. “You faced him alone.”

“I faced him for you.” She studies him with those serious eyes, and he wonders why he ever thought her intense gaze was cold and judgmental. “You have always deserved better than what that man did to you.”

She says it so plainly, so flatly, as if it’s not a direct refutation of everything he’s secretly feared and believed for 200 years: that he had, somehow, deserved it. For being weak, for being flawed, for being… him.

He swallows. He doesn’t believe her words, not really, but… he never expected to hear them.

It’s… nice.

She unfolds to her feet, extends a hand to raise him up. “So.” Her face has returned to its usual dispassionate expression, but her eyes dance. “What say we loot the old bastard's house for everything we can carry, then find out if anyone else ended up back in the past?”

His heart leaps in a way he doesn’t care to examine just yet at the implication that she sought him out first, before any of the others. Linking her arm in hers, he finally manages to summon a ghost of his old smile. “Darling, that sounds positively delightful. Lead the way.”

#astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #astarion x tav #asexual astarion #(not explicitly stated but he is)#angst #angst with a happy ending #etoilewrites

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