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petit-etoile · 5 months

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Astarion/Tav prompt (or Reformed Durge): "I would have you smile again. You will live to see these days renewed. No more despair." I know it's a Lord of the Rings quote but gosh if it doesn't remind me of them ;-;

this is the end of the world ( a time for something biblical )

pairing: astarion/tav wordcount: 5,219 content warnings: canonical mentions of death, spoilers for the dark urge storyline & astarion's act iii romance, graphic mentions of injuries, references to cann.ibalism as a metaphor for love, mental health issues & physical ramifications from the tadpole + rejecting bhaal, i highly recommend listening to the exogenesis symphony by muse other tags: canon compliant, canon-typical violence, character study, introspection, hurt/comfort, whump, canon temporary character death, the dark urge as player character, codependency, religious imagery & symbolism, p.orn with plot archiveofourown: here.

tag list: @azrielshadows1nger, @pandimoostuff, @faevi, @microskies, @foreverthemaraudersera, @queenofthespacesquids, @claryvoyantfray, @6doodlaang14, @anne-isnotokay, @itshimbotime, @yeeteth-the-raven, @sessils,@8-opossums, @worryknotdear, @abirdaboxandachippedcup, @ghosts-and-ink, @b4um3pfl4um3, @gunslingerorchid, @hypopxia, @m0ssytrees, @erysione, @odette-attackattack, @catching-fire-in-the-wind, @ashrio20, @wills-mental-illness, @queenofcarrotflowers-s, @kirahlene be added to the taglist here

summary: ‘Stay,’ Astarion says weakly. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’

‘Your life is mine,’ he says, cruel eyes gazing at you. ‘Accept your inheritance, or I will reclaim it.’

‘I would rather die,’ you say.

His hateful eyes narrow dangerously. It was never a good idea to betray a god, nonetheless one who had created you so lovingly. His voice is a low growl when he dismisses you — and suddenly, white-hot pain shoots through your veins and threatens to swallow you whole. Bhaal raises his hand and your blood obeys.

‘You were made to conquer,’ he snarls. ‘To devour!’

‘I don’t need any of this,’ you spit out. ‘I don’t need you. The only family — I know are those who fight by my side! I will not be what you made me!’

The sickness in your belly surges until you think it will overcome you. You stagger forward until your knees hit the stone floor. Bhaal is forcing you to submit, to become what he had made Orin. This thing won’t have you, Astarion whispers against the curve of your ear. It won’t win. You’ve got this, darling. And I’ve got you. You want to believe him, but your blood-kin has done damage beyond repair. What were children beyond the sins of their father?

‘You reject my blood?’ Bhaal asks.

‘Yes,’ you whisper.

‘Then I shall reclaim it,’ he says, his promise a growl in his throat.

You were your father’s seed cultivated to perfection by determination and bravery. Now, you were nothing more than a disappointment to be snuffed out root and stem. You choke on the warmth in your throat. Your veins seem to have exploded beneath your skin. You sneeze, red oozing from every orifice.

‘I will make another who is worthy,’ says Bhaal, lifting his hand.

As he raises his hand, you are forced to kneel. Every single one of your muscles contracts in agony. The others might be shouting but you can hardly hear them over the roaring in your ears. Your blood is rejecting you. Festering inside your flesh like a disease. Like the skeleton carved into the wall, you weep blood down your neck. No matter how hard you try to close your eyes to prevent it, your rich ichor abandons you.

No, you want to tell him. The rot of his blood will end with you as it had with Orin. The abomination of murder will never set forth and harm another. You reach for the dagger at your hip and raise it, but the Avatar of Bhaal dissipates before you can strike. The weight of your body collapses forward.

Like a wounded beast, you keen loudly, shaking your head as if that will free your ears from the blood inside of them. You were born from this blood. You were created by this blood to be who you are today. Rejecting it should be like a sin — but if sin is a seed, you have eaten it willingly from the hand of mortality. If Bhaal is to reject you, then you will reject his godhood.

You close your eyes as blood overtakes your sight. You press your forehead into the stone to fight your fever. You shiver and gasp. You gargle on the proof of vitriol and lean into the chilled floor, resigned to your fate. At least you wouldn’t become a mindflayer…

“No!” Astarion wails. Your heart shatters. ‘No, please — Not you!’

I’m sorry, you say. You close your eyes and remember the color of the sun in his hair. I didn’t mean for this to happen. This isn’t what I wanted. Your fingers curl against the stone, and then — There’s nothing. Astarion touches the sleepless bruises beneath your eyes with such tenderness you forget his strength. You lean your cheek into his palm and sigh sleepily, but even as exhaustion overtakes your body, you shudder. You’re afraid to sleep, to dream. You don’t want to hurt anyone else ever again.

‘You have to rest, my love,’ he murmurs. He allows you to lay on his hand as though it were a pillow. ‘When was the last time you slept through the night?’

‘I’m not sure,’ you confess.

‘I might be a sleepless creature of the night,’ Astarion says, ‘but you… You needn’t fear your dreams when I am here. I’ll protect you no matter the cost.’

‘And who will protect you if I sleep?’ you ask.

You must be frowning, because Astarion uses his other hand to soothe the crease between your eyebrows. He sounds so outrageously heartbroken that you want to cry. You don’t want him to think he isn’t a comfort… You haven’t slept beside someone in so long, and the warmth of his body has always lulled you to your dreams peacefully until recently.

Astarion swallows thickly. ‘I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of this. I’m with you forever and always.’

But what if there isn’t an always?

‘There is always a future for you and I,’ Astarion vows. ‘Now sleep. He can’t control you as long as I’m around.’ When you open your eyes again, you’re greeted by the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. His eyes are a soft cerise, and his cheeks are high and sleek, his lips plump and his hair soft and curled. An angel. You’re unable to control the way you reach your hand to touch his cheek, smearing a crystalline tear across his wan skin.

‘Who are you?’ you whisper, voice caught painfully in your throat.

‘Hush now, my love,’ he whispers. He presses a sweet kiss to your mouth, and when he pulls away, his lips are ruddy and wet. ‘Thank the gods… I thought I had lost you.’

Oh, you think. You remember now. This is the man from your dream… You try to recall the details of how you know him, but it’s hard to follow a train of thought. You turn from side to side. It’s so hard to move, to focus. Your limbs feel as though they are made of lead and marble. Everything aches. The tips of your fingers and your nails down to the little bones in your toes. Your head, though, is the only part of you free from intense pain. It’s as though a weight has been lifted from the veil of your memories. You rest your arm across your waist, too tired to keep it lifted.

‘Who…’ Your brows furrow in confusion. ‘Who am I?’

‘I know you were once a child full of life and love,’ the angel says to you, gently cradling your face in his hands. ‘I know one day you were afraid and unsure and half-mad. I know you stained the streets red with cruelty and devised a plan larger than all of Faerûn. But I know you are strong and that your heart is good. You saved the tieflings, and you saved the refugees, and now you will save the world that threatens to be plunged into darkness.’

You smile. ‘That doesn’t sound like me at all,’ you confess.

The angel shakes his hand, fingers pressing hard into your skin. His voice breaks. ‘But I know it to be true, so you must believe my every word. You are brave. You are kind. You are good. You are my love, and I know that I am loved by you in return. You are a protector,’ he tells you. ‘You have protected everyone, and now it is time to protect yourself. You have survived two gods and now you must survive a third.’

The knot in your throat grows larger with every word. You think you remember now. Yes, you can remember it all very clearly. You know the weight of his hands like baptism. You turn your cheek and kiss his palm, smudging his skin pink.

‘Astarion,’ you whisper.

Your love smiles down at you, your blood dribbling down his chin.

‘What happened?’

‘Let’s not worry about that,’ he shushes you, massaging the bruises beneath your eyes. ‘Come, let us get you cleaned up.’

‘I don’t think I can walk yet,’ you say. Admitting it makes you feel weak.

‘Don’t worry,’ Astarion says softly. ‘I can carry you.’

‘I will bloody your clothes,’ you say.

‘Bloody them,’ Astarion says. ‘I don’t care.’

Astarion does carry you. He carries you all the way back to the inn, to a private room just the two of you share. He orders a tub to bathe you in and then takes an hour to scrub your skin clean, carefully cleaning your gore from your hair and scalp.

You watch as Astarion passes a bar of soap against the skin of the top of your arm over and over again until it is red then pink then flesh. Then, he gently twists your wrist. He cleans the underside of your arm next, and your palm. He washes your fingers until they do nothing but shake in the cold air. You curl your fingers around his.

‘Was it hard?’ you ask him.

‘I will never forget the smell of your scent,’ Astarion replies.

He moves to wash the hollow between your collarbones, encouraging you to recline in the water. He washes your chest and your stomach until his grief washes over him in waves. His chin shakes until a sob escapes. He presses his face into your hair and wails softly into your crown. When he’s done weeping, Astarion returns to his cleansing. He speaks not of it again. There is so little of you left.

You often wonder how much of your brain is left between the parasite and the hole your father has left you. Sometimes Jaheira still looks at you as though the rot of your father isn’t entirely gone. You don’t blame her. You’re waiting for your control to snap. You were good once. You could be good again. You want to be good again.

Shadowheart smiles at you now. Lae’zel no longer frowns. Even Wyll has taken up eating beside you again when it’s nighttime and the adventure can go no more. Gale pours you an extra serving of wine. He says you need it. Karlach lets you hold Clive at night when Astarion goes hunting, and he goes hunting often now. It makes you wonder if your blood is vile.

Part of you wants to ask him if you’ve done something wrong. You’ve committed no crime, but you feel like you have. Your memories of before are slipping away. Your memories of now seem to do the same.

You wait in your tent that night for Astarion to return, your blanket pulled around your head and shoulders. You rehearse what you’re going to say. You want to reassure him you’re not angry. You just…feel loss. Empty. The loneliness nips at your bones like crows at carrion.

When Astarion slips inside, he looks guilty. It almost makes you want to change your mind, but you have to know. You feel as though you’re going mad. A flightless bird trapped in a cage. Like Dame Aylin trapped in Shadowfell. He refuses to meet your gaze.

‘Have I done something — ’

‘You,’ Astarion says through gritted teeth, ‘are perfect. Every time.’

You want to cry. ‘Then why do you avoid me?’

‘Avoid you?’ Astarion repeats incredulously. He looks at you now despairingly. ‘No, that isn’t what this is at all. I would never avoid you.’

‘You’re hunting more often,’ you say in a low tone, a whisper. Accusatory.

‘Can you blame me?’ he asks plainly.

It’s your turn to look away in shame. ‘If it’s too much, you should sleep somewhere else.’

‘I don’t want to be apart from you,’ Astarion says.

‘Then how do we fix this?’

‘You cannot fix what is not broken.’

‘Astarion,’ you plead. ‘Hold me or — I don’t know who I am anymore.’

Astarion wraps his arms around you before you can say another word. His lips are like a halo against your head. Each kiss he presses against your scalp is a prayer from a sinner. You turn your cheek, and he kisses you so passionately it makes your empty head spin.

You relearn who are you in his arms that night. And as he regales you with tales of your history, you think you can imagine them in your mind’s eye. He kisses your wrist. He tells you a happy memory when he kisses the curve of your belly, and when he kisses your ankle, he promises you that everything will be worth it.

It wasn’t you that was the problem. There wasn’t a problem, not really. Only an impiety he wanted to atone for. He struggles with telling you, but when he whispers it against your thigh, you understand.

‘Your blood,’ he says, voice strained. ‘I cannot escape the smell.’

‘I’m sorry,’ you say, but he shakes his head and his hair tickles your sensitive skin.

‘No, I — It is my shame,’ he confesses. ‘I’ll admit I’m a lech.’

Astarion struggles to put his words in a coherent structure. When you died, he was horrified and distraught. Only the gods know how hard he wept seeing you lifeless. Yet it was his vampiric nature that had betrayed him almost as much as your life’s blood had betrayed you. He felt hunger.

How could he be sad when he was so ravenous? Was he not an evil man, or is this what made him evil? That, in all of his beautiful tears and lamentation, the urge to devour you, bones and all, nearly consumed him? Your death was horrible, ugly, wretched. Your death was beautiful and coveted.

Astarion devours you again that night, mouthing and licking and sucking at your swollen core. He makes you a martyr in his grief. His tongue teases you over and over again. When you’ve climaxed once, Astarion seeks out to make you do it again until your legs are shaking violently and your voice has gone hoarse. He doesn’t take you that night, not in the traditional way, but he swallows you up regardless.

It isn’t until afterwards when he’s laying with his head on your chest that you understand his tragedy. It’s a misfortunate impossibility trying to grieve when you can’t stop salivating. Astarion thinks you’re horrified by the admission, but after knowing your past, it was hard to feel scandalized by anything.

You pet his curls away from his face, watching as he listens to the hum of your heartbeat. He might have it memorized by now, but each time it beats, Astarion’s eyelashes flutter with admiration. It is a hymn, a doxology, a liturgy that only he knows the words to. After all, he wrote them on your skin and immortalized them forevermore. He is so beautiful, you think, when there is no trouble to be seen.

You were once both trapped by your dark god’s design. You had set yourself free. You had sprouted the wings of a swan guided by the empathy you had planted in a garden as a child. It would be Astarion’s soon, and you would carry him in compassion until the thorn crown was placed upon his brow.

Astarion’s eyes are closed. In your perpetually confused state, you mistake him for having fallen asleep and resort to doing the same. The city becomes chilly at night and your skin is decorated with gooseflesh. He rises almost immediately and you try to chase after him, fingers piercing through a ghost.

‘I wasn’t going anywhere,’ Astarion says immediately. He drags his cape from the corner of the tent and lays it across your shins. ‘You were shivering.’

‘I’m not used to this — ’ Will my mind ever be the same? ‘ — chill.’

‘I will be here,’ he promises. ‘Here, let me hold you for the night.’

You clumsily trade places with him, and he tucks your blanket and his cape around your body as tightly as he can. He kisses you passionately and you taste your familiarity in his mouth. It’s so sweet that you sigh. ‘I know what you did,’ Orin says hatefully, spitefully, cruelly. Her voice is like honey.

‘What have I done?’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t know?’ she asks. ‘Filthy rotten blood-kin undeserving of our father’s gift!’

You repeat yourself. ‘What have I done?’

‘You,’ Orin spits, ‘think your grey matter deserves to be loved! I should carve it out! I should make it disgusting and sticky again! Split it’s skull open! You foul traitor!’

Slowly, you pull Orin into your chest. You hug her and smooth her hair down her back. Her arms wrap around you begrudgingly until the lovingkindness causes her to rupture. She sobs into your neck hideously, clinging to you. She wails and she wails until you are both children again staring up at your grandsire for approval.

‘It isn’t fair,’ Orin tells you, hiccuping. She wipes her nose with her fingers. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘I love you, blood-kin,’ you say. You kiss the top of her head.

‘Slaughter kin,’ she says sadly. She holds your hand with her snotty palm.

‘Sister,’ you say. In the coming weeks, your mind hardly gets better. Memories are still missing. You catch yourself gazing at the mirror longer than you expect to. You used to be so beautiful. It’s hard to recognize the face staring back at you. You touch one cheek and then the other. You turn your head and watch your jawline.

No, it still isn’t you.

You take the knife in your belt to your hair and begin cutting away pieces you don’t remember. You lean forward and smudge your eyes before sitting up straight and trying again. You recognize a part of yourself. You chase that feeling. You press your hand against your heart. You smile faintly. Astarion sobs so hard you think you might lose yourself. You’re at a loss of what to do. He’s alive but he keens like a dying deer. It’s supposed to be healing, you think. Cazador is dead. His reign of terror should end. Astarion is saved and he saved himself. You couldn’t be prouder of him.

Slowly, you step forward one foot after another. You collapse to your knees at his side. It’s easy to pull Rhapsody from his fingers. You drop it by his side. Slowly, as if in a dream, you hold him like you held Orin. Astarion sobs harshly into your collarbone and clings to you so tightly you might break.

‘I thought — I thought — ’ he cries brokenly.

I thought it would make me feel better, he says without saying. You shush him and pet his hair. Cazador’s blood smears against your cheek when Astarion burrows his face into your neck. You let him linger. You aren’t sure how long you sit on the hard marbled floors, but when you stand up, your knees creak so loud you’re almost insecure about it.

This time, it’s your turn to carry Astarion. He won’t let you pick him up, but you hold him by his waist. You carry him past your allies, past the onlookers who once saw you in opposition. You order the maids to bring you a bath, and as Astarion hiccups in the water, you bathe him.

You wash the taint of Cazador from his body. The soap cleans the dirt and the blood and the memory. You wash his chest and his belly and Astarion thanks you hoarsely. He looks at you, and his eyes are so wide and beautiful that you cry too.

Dying isn’t easy. It isn’t beautiful or romantic or a sweeping gesture. Dying is painful and hideous and ugly, and you have saved Astarion from a lifetime of torment. Rather, he did it by himself with your help. You swipe the soap against his cheeks and use a rag to clear it away. Astarion’s hair is somehow curlier when it’s wet, and you part the curls so they’ll dry without tangling.

Astarion watches you miserably as you towel his hair. You wipe droplets of water off his skin and slowly slide him into his smallclothes. He accepts your blanket and wraps it around his shoulders, staring at the wooden floor, at his feet.

‘Stay,’ Astarion says weakly. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’

‘I would never let you be alone,’ you say.

It isn’t what you bought the room for. Really, you only wanted to wipe the blood from his face but now, you climb into the sheets next to Astarion and hold him tightly. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about the future. He doesn’t want to talk about his siblings either or the thousands of spawn waiting to hang on his every word.

And you can’t even blame him. The gods know how long it took for your tongue to become free from the weight that held it still after you betrayed your father. Karlach said you talked a lot before, but now it’s hard to say anything without wondering if your words are in the right order. Astarion cries softly as if to not awaken you from your slumber, but you can’t fall asleep. You can’t toss or turn either, but dreams evade you.

Dawn peeks through the window. Dawn-bringer, Jergal had called you. You slide out of bed carefully then and cross the room. You draw the curtains shut. Astarion watches you curiously from where he burrows in the sheets. His brow furrows adorably when you climb back into bed and plaster yourself to his spine.

‘Ah,’ you say monotonously. ‘The sun is gone. I suppose we'll stay in until it returns.’

After a day of lounging, Astarion still isn’t ready to talk about what’s on his mind but he watches you do your favorite mundane mortal things with explicit interest. He has you read the book you’re reading aloud, and if it takes you a few hours to struggle through one chapter, he says nothing about it.

Every once in a while, another one of your companions comes to sit in.

Lae’zel tries to commend Astarion for his warrior’s heart without sounding stilted, but eventually she gives up on complimenting him to sympathetically let him know she understands. They had all seen Vlaakith. Karlach brings Clive by and carefully arranges him in the bed next to Astarion. She tells him that he’s fucking awesome and asks permission to hug him.

The touch nearly sends him spiraling.

Gale approaches in his usual manner. He brings Astarion a bottle of wine spiked with blood and lets him know he’s available to chat whenever Astarion feels up to it. Wyll spends thirty minutes apologizing for the bad blood between them, which is funny considering their bickering was hardly vitriolic. Shadowheart visits and gifts him a perfume that makes his lip wobble dangerously.

Jaheira, Minsc, Boo and Halsin come together solemnly. They might be the least offensive of the bunch. Boo gives Astarion a thousand kisses on his cheeks, and Jaheira finally tells them a story of her youth. Halsin has Astarion drink a potion, not because he’s injured physically, but because it should help with his pain. Minsc tries teaching you a Rashemen dance, but Astarion laughs for the first time that day and you do too.

‘It is good,’ Jaheira says, ‘to see you both smile again.’

You touch your mouth shyly. Your cheeks are sore. Astarion’s smile fades slightly but returns in full, timid confidence lighting his features once more. Halsin crosses the room and opens the curtains you’ve closed. The light douses the room in holiness, and you turn your face to watch the sunset, unafraid of what the future will bring.

‘That which troubles you will soon be over,’ she promises. She pats Astarion’s hand, and although she doesn’t say it, you know he’s her son. ‘You will live to see these days renewed. There will be no more despair.’

You’re both left alone again together. Astarion beckons you to the bed instead of your chair and you join him, carefully sitting atop the covers, a respectable distance between your thighs. You inhale carefully.

‘You did the right thing,’ you say. ‘Not completing the Black Mass.’

‘Perhaps I had inspiration,’ Astarion replies. ‘You had a chance to become the Slayer, a being more powerful than you could have known. But you didn’t.’

‘I betrayed my father,’ you whisper, staring at your hands. ‘And he killed me for it.’

‘And if I had completed Cazador’s ritual,’ Astarion says, ‘I would have become Mephistopheles’s whore. I refuse to bow to the whims of others. Being an Ascendent…was blinding me to the truth.’

You look at him curiously then. He confesses to you his sins. He has thought of ascending, and thought of it often but it was never to protect himself. After a certain point, he wanted to protect you too. Your Urges had been mistaken for something else then. A possession, an invasion. Astarion sought to exorcise you of your demons.

But when you had died and the diseased lifeblood fled from your veins, Astarion realized the truth. The ascension would not have helped him protect you. It would have tainted him. It would have contorted him. Rising above all other vampires, Astarion would have become cruel like those before him. He does not want to be cruel to you. He wants to learn kindness as you have. He reaches for it like he chases the sun.

Astarion takes you by the hand, smoothing your skin with his thumb over and over. His skin is cold beneath yours. You curl your fingers into his. He did not want to make you a slave, not again. Not to him.

‘You are the dawn-bringer,’ Astarion says. ‘Even if I never see the sun again, I am free.’

‘I love you,’ you say, voice shaking. ‘I’ll be with you. In the darkness.’

‘You fool,’ Astarion laughs affectionately. He leans across the distance and kisses your temple. ‘There is no darkness. You are daylight incarnate.’

You look at him sharply.

‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ he says. ‘It’s…been on my mind all day, but I think it’s time. Say you’ll come away with me.’

You and Astarion dress slowly. You would follow him almost anywhere, but this is different. There’s something to be done. You don’t dress in armor, and for that you’re almost grateful. You’re tired of fighting. You’re tired of seeing blood.

But it isn’t blood or anything blood related that Astarion takes you to see. One minute, you are wandering Baldur’s Gate at night, and the next, you’ve come to the hollow of a tree where a gravestone is coated in vines.

‘This…is where my old life began,’ Astarion tells you softly. ‘Beneath there, I was turned into a monster. But Cazador is dead now and I get to decide my own fate.’

Astarion tells you in painful detail about his transformation. How his wounds fused themselves shut but the pain never went away. He tells you about breaking through the wood of his demise and the fear that flooded his veins and how, just when he thought he had found his savior, Cazador had laughed wickedly with his cruel glowing eyes.

‘I was his,’ Astarion murmurs, ‘but not anymore.’

He kneels before you on the dirt before his tombstone and bows his head. The prodigal son returned home. The sight of it causes your heart to squeeze. You want to step away but you can’t. You’re afraid.

‘There is nothing left of the person I was before,’ he tells you. ‘I am free to become who I want to be, free to start a new journey. I have all the time in the world to figure out who I am and what I want, but I think I know.’

‘I love you,’ you say again. ‘You’re what I want.’

‘You were by my side through all of this,’ Astarion says, eyes glimmering in the moonlight. ‘And now I want you to christen me. Inaugurate me here on the site of my rebirth.’

This is another dream. You hold your hands over Astarion’s head and sprinkle imaginary water over his head. His eyes close instinctively. Love washes over him, something golden. You kneel down and pluck a flower from the earth and it does not bleed. Relief floods your veins. For once, you touch something and it does not rot. Carefully, like a ghost, you slide the flower into Astarion’s hair and watch as his crimson eyes spill open with tears and devotion.

Astarion kisses you, and for the first time in a long time, he presses his body against yours. He takes you that night in the dirt. His leg is tucked under yours, his cock against your core, his lips never leaving yours. Astarion recites verses in your ears until you burst with ecstasy, tightening around him so much that he can hardly move. He cradles the back of your head to comfort you as he drinks your blood. He cradles your head tonight because he loves you.

‘I am yours,’ he whispers against your skin, ‘and you are mine.’ You aren’t sure when or how Astarion has the time, but he presents you with a gift the night before the world ends. He wears a matching flower from his grave pinned to his armor at all times now. And on his hand, a ring with a silver band. He slides one over your finger as well and kisses your palm as you slowly realize what it means.

The family you’ve chosen throws you a celebration. The next day, Dammon arrives and shows you your repaired armor now dyed white.

You cry for hours out of happiness. ‘This could be the last chance we have for this,’ you whisper to Astarion.

Everyone keeps telling you that a light has returned to your eye, but you don’t see it. It isn’t until you’re laying naked with Astarion again, his skin pressed against yours, that you think you can see it too.

Astarion fucks you tenderly until you’re sore, and you cry and plead sweet things against his shoulder while he holds you safe in his arms. When the pleasure becomes too much and your spine arches from the mattress, he pulls you into his lap and holds you safe against his chest. You kiss him until your lips are sore.

‘Your life is mine,’ Astarion murmurs. ‘You belong with me, my love.’

‘I’ve never been happier,’ you moan weakly.

He has taken you again and again this evening. He doesn’t say it, but Astarion is afraid of what tomorrow might bring. You have outsmarted gods and men. You have found goodness where there was nothing but darkness. You refuse to be afraid now.

‘We were made to conquer,’ Astarion says. His mouth is like a fire across your cheekbone. You shudder around his cock.

‘Take my love,’ Astarion commands you, so you do.

You kiss a ruby bruise into his neck, and Astarion fills you with a grunt. He doesn’t part from you. He guides you back down into the sheets and burrows against your body as if determined to climb between your ribs. You smile. Astarion has already made a home in your bones and flesh. He has eaten the rot from your core and recreated you anew. You were not his sin but his salvation. Perhaps he was yours too.

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