#GOD... THE BRAINROT THIS EVENT BROUGHT UPON ME...

[fourraccoonsinacoat]

Midnight Prayer | One Shot

Pairing: Astarion x Dark Urge / Tiny bit of Enver Gortash x Dark Urge

Chapter Count: One Shot | Read on AO3 Word Count: 4,016

Summary: Takes place during the events of Baldur's Gate 3 after Gortash's coronation in Act 3. Explores the romance between Astarion and the Dark Urge after the implications of a past relationship between the Dark Urge and Enver Gortash are made known. Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff, Humor, Idiots in Love, Mentions of Violence, Soft Astarion, Spoilers for the Dark Urge and BG3 in general, Dark Urge as Original Female Character Rating: Mature

Author Note: Those new lines in Patch 6 between Durge and Gortash are to blame for this. Plus the fact that I adore the Astarion x Dark Urge dynamic because they're on the same level, meaning they're both barely functioning beings who no business getting into a relationship and yet they make it work. Also, Astarion gets to be the supportive one when Durge goes off the rails.

All these idiots live rent free in my head and I had this scene that just wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it out. This is a one-shot based on the same Durge MC, Eli, as my other ongoing fic - which I have not updated in some time, and I am sorry for that. Have some brainrot to make up for it! This is grade-A mushy, soft garbage.

Sleep was difficult to find as Eli lay on the stiff makeshift cot. Her glassy half-focused eyes were fixed on the patchwork ceiling of Astarion’s tent as her mind coiled around and around, like a snake trying to suffocate itself. Her thoughts were circular, aimless and chaotic as she chased the ghosts of memories that always haunted her nights.

Sleeplessness was nothing new, and Eli’s propensity for restlessness and nightmares was well known throughout camp. She had a tendency to toss and turn as rest evaded her, and when the darkness of slumber finally overtook her in the small hours of mornings it was never peaceful. She was often agitated and unsettled, mumbling low to herself until the shock of some cruel fever dream sent her into an outburst of screams as she flailed and fought to rouse herself from whatever terror had uncaged itself in her mind.

She’d wake shivering, breathing as if she were fighting for her life against legions of the Absolute rather than visions within her own mind. He was always there, though, whispering soothing reminders that they were safe. That they were together. That the horrors inside her broken mind were toothless phantoms. Remnants of a fractured past she could only catch flashes of.

She’d offered on many occasions to sleep alone, saying it made little sense for both Astarion and her to suffer because of her tortuous insomnia. He’d been firm in his refusals and finally told her that if she didn’t stop saying such ludicrous nonsense he’d figure out how to charm one of Gale’s used socks to jump down her throat every time she mentioned the idea.

Gods, was she thankful for that absurd and stubborn man.

She turned her head, eyes focusing on the pale elf who slept beside her. They’d settled into a habit of overnighting in his tent due to the plank of wood that served as a haphazard bed. Like her, Astarion’s sleep could be troubled, disturbed by his own breeds of monsters that lurked around the corners in his brain. His past was filled with grim and vicious memories. What small comforts he had been able to acquire over the past 200 years were things he clung to like life rafts upon a boiling and thrashing ocean. The stiff plank he slept on brought him a strange sort of peacefulness. He’d told her once that the only soft bed he’d been allowed to use while under Cazador’s control was the large plush bed in the palace’s guest room. The room where he and the other spawn “entertained” those who were brought back for Cazador to feast upon.

His bed in the dorms had been stiff and old, and yet he’d far preferred it to the lavish guest bed. Sleeping on something too downy and cushioned reminded him of the countless nights he’d spent being smothered into a pliable mattress by whatever piece of transient garbage he’d lured back to the palace. They’d have their way with him while he’d disassociate, his body working through the motions of sex while his mind walled itself off. It had become second nature to disconnect himself from the present the moment he slumped onto that soft bed.

It was a cruel byproduct of his torment that laying on comfortable bedding triggered a deep seeded anxiety in him, but Eli honestly didn’t mind the stiff makeshift cot Astarion had set up in his tent for them. Her body recalled sleeping on worse, even if her mind didn’t clearly remember the details. Astarion had even started laying down a thin bedroll atop the plank once their shared sleeping arrangements became a regular thing. It had been completely unprompted. One evening she’d entered his tent and it had simply been there, an unspoken acknowledgement of the validity of their relationship.

They were both uncouth morons when it came to navigating the delicacies and emotions of romantic relationships. They’d been quick to indulge in one another physically, the both of them looking to find refuge from the specters of their pasts in one another’s arms. They hadn’t meant for it to mean anything, and yet they’d kept seeking one another out - drawn together like kobolds are drawn to shiny objects. They’d tried ignoring their growing affections, but neither one of them were particularly good at pretending to be nonchalant and stable. Primarily because neither one of them really knew what that looked like.

Astarion had confessed first, admitting to his initially manipulative intentions with her and revealing truths about his enslavement to Cazador that made her heart ache for him. Eli knew, instinctively, that empathy was not an emotion she was incredibly familiar with. It made her anxious, feeling for someone else. And yet, when Astarion had said he wanted something real with her, she’d felt an almost wild desperation surge to life within herself. She wanted that, too. With him.

A cruel and vicious voice at the back of her mind had admonished her for her pathetic weakness. She should be punished, skinned alive for allowing herself to feel this kind of fondness and yearning for someone else. Once, she had been worshiped as a god by those around her. Once, she had been feared and her name whispered in awe and horror. Once, she had been something powerful, something violent and vicious, a conduit of destruction and carnage. Though the details were fractured, scattered about her ruined brain like shards of glass, she knew instinctually that she was a child of slaughter and that the bonds of mortals should have been beneath her.

But that didn’t stop her. Perhaps…perhaps she could be different. Something else. Something that was valued as more than just a weapon. Something that wasn’t just a means to an end. Something that didn’t need to butcher and rip the world inside out in order to be loved.

She’d pushed the Urge down, beating it back as she confessed her own affections for Astarion.

That had been some weeks ago, back in the Shadowlands. Now, they were just outside Baldur’s Gate, and things were…good between them. To her never-ending astonishment.

Her eyes focused on the sleeping elf next to her. He looked so peaceful, the worried lines of his face smooth and serene at rest. He was pallid, pretty and perfect like a cadaver forever tranquil. Just one stab, a stake through the heart and he’d always be like this – he’d never know torment or despair again. No one would ever hurt him.

She took a long, slow breath and banished the intrusive thoughts back to the shadows of her mind where they always lingered. She would never…she couldn’t…gods, she hated those thoughts that never let her be. They filled her with a sick guilt as she recalled nights tied up, howling and screaming and raging as she spat out all the ways she’d flay and ruin his beautiful body. Afterwards, once the Urges had quieted, Astarion would simply laugh as he cut her bonds, always joking about how you had to pay good coin for degradation like that in the city. He’d hold her until she calmed, the both of them quiet, content to just be together for one more day.

They shouldn’t work, not as a couple or as anything else, really. They were barely functional as individuals. Together, they should have been about as operational as a dumpster that was missing one wheel and was on fire. But they did work. They were careful with the broken pieces of each other, treating them with reverence and respect. They understood pain all too well, and not just the physical kind but the raw and panicked pain of having everything you valued ripped away. Of having your very self torn from your control…the pain of being used and the fear that no matter how loud you screamed or how hard you fought it would happen again.

The fear that you would never be anything more than a tool.

And so they were gentle with one another, in a way only reserved for them. Careful touches and trusting hands, concerned glances and warm smiles, constant wordless affirmations that they were at one another’s backs - that when one of them crumbled the other would be there to help build them back up, attentively and without judgement.

Neither of them knew what they were doing. Their combined histories with healthy relationships added up to an unsurprising number of zero. Astarion had admitted to her that he couldn’t remember ever bedding the same person twice. And Eli…well, she couldn’t remember anything, frankly. Her memories of past lovers were nonexistent…at least…

At least until today. Today, when they’d finally met the infamous Enver Gortash.

The name had always struck her as strange, from the first time she heard it when Karlach told Eli about the tiefling had acquired her infernal engine. The name had stirred something in her brain, like a familiar tune that she couldn’t remember the words for. And every time someone mentioned him, that sense grew stronger. It was as if there was a crack in her skull and every time she’d reach for that sense of familiarity, it would leak out and away just beyond reach.

Until today, when they stood in the opulent and grand hall of Wyrm’s Rock Fortress, surrounded by the elite of Baldur’s Gate, and she finally saw the man who had wrought so much suffering not only upon the city and the coast, but on her friends…

The flash in his eyes when they met hers…a sense of knowing, a sting of excitement. That spark of familiarity suddenly blazed hot and she knew this man was not a stranger. Not to her…

“If you keep staring, darling, I’m going to start charging you for the privilege,” a soft and slightly chiding voice lurched her back into the present.

Eli flinched, startled, blinking away the haze of her thoughts and focusing on Astarion, who now was peering at her through half-lidded and slightly weary eyes. He’d been sleeping with an arm draped across her waist – Astarion had grown fond of resting with an arm or a hand touching her, and she liked it, too. It was comforting.

He trailed his hand along her side in a calming manner, brows furrowing slightly with a hint of concern.

“Sorry,” Eli said with a slight yawn. “I was worlds away.” She gave him a small, tired smile as she reached out and brushed her fingers against the ruffles of his shirt, mindlessly beginning to fiddle with the cloth.

Astarion’s hand slid to her back, pulling her closer until her head was tucked below his chin and he could rest with his cheek against her silvery hair.

Eli could feel the soft rumble of his voice vibrate up from his chest as he chuckled quietly. “I’ve been told I have that effect on people,” he mumbled cheerily as his other hand began to gently brush through her hair, fingers carefully smoothing out any snarls as he stroked back and forth.

She hummed appreciatively, breathing deep and feeling eased by the familiar scent of rosemary and bergamot. “And who told you that?” she asked, teasingly.

“Hmm,” he pondered, running a dexterous finger along the side of her ear, causing goosebumps to prick along her arms. “I think it was you,” he mused slyly before his voice dipped lower into a growl and she felt his breath warm against her ear. “You remember, don’t you? That one night you told me I ravished you so thoroughly your soul left your body.”

He couldn’t see Eli’s exaggerated eye roll, but he could hear the grin in her voice as she responded. “I seem to remember that very same night you saying I exhausted you into delirium,” she teased, poking tenderly at his chest. “In the best way possible, of course,” Eli smirked.

Astarion sighed, the hand on her back drawing aimless circles as he murmured, “I do miss our nighttime trysts.”

Eli smiled, nuzzling into the crook of his neck and placing a light kiss there. “You know what they say. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or some such bullshit like that…”

“They sound awfully boring, whoever they are.” The vampire hummed low in his throat, kicking a leg over her waist and hooking his foot between her legs at her knees so that they were tangled together in a possessive embrace.

Eli just chuckled. They’d backed off the sexual aspects of their relationship for now, the both of them having their own flavors of hang ups that they needed to sort through. For Eli, that meant parsing through her strange, sometimes disturbing Urges which continued to insist that the lines between butchery and eroticism were blurred. Bloodplay was one thing, and that would likely remain a happy little staple in their titillating toolbox once they were ready to be that physically intimate again. But Eli had…other thoughts. Thoughts she wasn’t exactly comfortable with. Darker ones that bubbled up at extremely inopportune times and had her questioning whether she really wanted to shed light on her obscured past.

She breathed in Astarion’s scent, grounding herself in the now and pushing those musing away for another day. The desire between Eli and Astarion had not diminished, and on more than one occasion they had teetered precariously on the boundaries they’d set and wondering whether they should just say fuck it and…well…fuck. They’d always talk themselves down from the ledge, though, comfortable in the knwoeldge that when it did happen it would be earthshattering.

“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours, love?” Astarion’s voice held a note of worry and Eli realized she’d been drifting off into the confines of her own brain again.

“Everything,” she sighed, frustrated with herself.

Astarion was silent for a moment, considering. The hand in her hair stilled while the one on her back pulled her in a bit tighter. “Is it…” he began, then paused a bit uncertainly, hesitant with his question. “Are you thinking about today? About…Gortash?”

He said the name so quietly that it would have been inaudible had they not been so closely pressed together. Eli wasn’t surprised about the question. She’d been acutely aware of how Astarion’s eyes never left her as she spoke with the newly crowned Archduke of Baldur’s Gate earlier that day. How he had discreetly positioned himself closely behind her, just off to her right. How he’d tensed, fingers ghosting near the hilt of a hidden dagger when Gortash said he’d always liked Eli. How his gaze darkened and his jaw tightened as Astarion sized the man up from across the hall before they left.

She knew this was a delicate situation for the vampire. Astarion despised showing any sort of vulnerability that could be construed as a reason for pity. Vulnerability, in general, was something he was still figuring out how to navigate after two centuries of living in an environment where anything and everything that could be used against him was twisted into a tool for subjugation and pain. Even with her, there were times when he wouldn’t let his walls come down, needing space to sort through his own internal barriers before he was ready to open up. Eli didn’t mind, and would give him all the time and space he needed. And bit by bit it became easier, for the both of them.

“That…yes,” she admitted, wanting to be truthful with him.

It wasn’t just Gortash, though. It was what he had told her, about Eli’s role in the whole Cult of the Absolute fraud. It was difficult for her to reconcile what she had apparently done with who she was now…the misery she’d set in motion. The lives she had destroyed. She shut her eyes and pressed closer to Astarion, seeking comfort in the cool of his skin against the inferno she felt inside.

He hugged her close, voicing a thought that had been gnawing away at his insides all day. “Were the two of you…close? Like us?”

The tentative, halting way in which he asked squeezed at her heart. As if he were bracing himself for something terrible, for something that would rip her away from him, just like everything else he’d ever given a damn about.

She thought for a while, mulling over the question. There was still so much that she didn’t know about who she was. Who she had been. She’d tell him what she could, though. He deserved that.

“I think we were. Close, I mean,” she clarified when she felt Astarion stiffen anxiously. “Not like us, though.”

She pulled her head back, out from under his chin, so she could see his face and meet his gaze with her own. Astarion’s eyes were round and distressed, the pinch between his brows furrowed and the lines of his face were tense. His eyes searched her own, desperately wanting to know who that man was to her while also fearing the answer.

Eli smiled warmly, bringing her hand up to brush one of his white curls behind his ear. His face softened slightly at her touch while the hand on her back clutched at her shirt as if to hold her here with him.

“There’s still so much darkness in my memory. But, there are things that have come back in flashes and fragments,” she explained, holding his gaze as her finger trailed to the edge of his eyebrow. “And while I’m not wholly sure what Gortash and I were to one another, I know it wasn’t like this.” Her hand came to rest on his cheek, thumb gently caressing his face near the corner of his mouth.

“Not like us,” she affirmed with a tenderness that allowed Astarion to relax, the stiffness easing out of him as the hint of a smile twitched at his lips. “He knew what happened to me,” she said softly, putting into words a thought that had been lingering at the back of her mind.

“He knew what happened to me, and he welcomed the person who did it into his confidence,” she said with a tinge of sadness to her voice. There was an ache of betrayal behind her words, and thought she didn’t fully understand everything her history with Gortash entailed, she understood this. “He stood by while I was unmade. While everything I was, the person he claims to care for, was brutalized and decimated.”

Eli’s words took on a cold edge, sharp as a shard of ice. Astarion listened intently, his breath caught at the back of his throat. He ached to pull her back into him, to wrap her up in his arms and shut the world out. Instead, he placed his hand on the back of her own and intertwined his fingers with hers, holding it against his cheek as Eli spoke.

“When I woke up on the nautiloid, I was nothing. Just the discarded scraps of whoever I had been. I had been thrown away. And nobody came looking for me.” She paused, her eyes flicking down in a brief moment of uncertainty.

There were some truths between them that had still gone unsaid. Truths that neither of them were ready to admit, and some that simply didn’t need words to be understood. Not this, though. This, she wanted him to hear.

“Since then, it’s been difficult not to think of myself as damaged goods. Something that was used up until it broke and was discarded.” She felt Astarion squeeze her hand and she looked back to him. There was a pang of recognition in his red eyes. “Everyone who I spoke to about my…urges, they all confirmed that there was something very wrong with me, even if they sympathized. Everyone except you.”

She paused, brushing her thumb once more against his face before she lifted her hand from him and took his own hand in hers. She pulled it to her lips, lightly kissing his knuckles while he stared at her, afraid to take his eyes off her for fear that she and this moment might evaporate if he did. He had stopped breathing, which luckily was not something he necessarily needed to do in order to maintain his existence.

Eli searched his face as Astarion waited for her to go on, breathless and just a tiny bit desperate to hear what she would say next. She wondered if he understood just how much it meant to her to have someone who didn’t see the wreck that she was when they looked at her. Someone who didn’t see a monster and only saw her, broken pieces be damned.

She thought he probably did…

“You were the only one who encouraged me to simply be whoever I was, darkness and all. I know at the time you were probably just looking to entertain yourself with whatever chaos and bloodshed I could cause,” she laughed and the expression on Astarion’s face melted into one of complete adoration.

“Guilty,” Astarion admitted with a laugh of his own. “And you haven’t disappointed,” he added softly, brushing a knuckle back up against her lips with delicate reverence.

She kissed at it, holding his tender gaze. “I don’t think you know how much that meant to me, though. And then later, when I was at my worst, you stayed by me and took care of me and you never stopped.”

Eli swallowed down the lump in her throat and blinked away the warmth that was threatening at her eyes.

“Nothing else could be like us, because no one has ever cared about me like you,” she concluded, smiling softly and whispering the words with the sincerity of a prayer.

Astarion stared at Eli for a long moment, emotions colliding and burning in his chest with so much vigor he was surprised his dead heart didn’t start beating again. He felt elated and awed by what she’d said. So much so that he was struck speechless and could only play her words over and over again in his mind, wanting to capture them perfectly and tuck them somewhere deep inside himself where no one could reach to steal them away. He couldn’t recall anyone ever saying anything to him that made him feel so cherished and significant. He traced the planes of her face with eyes that were beginning to wet as he tried to clear his throat and failed.

Eli watched Astarion carefully for a moment before her eyes widened in concern and she lifted a hand to him, carding it gently through his curled hair.

“Oh shit, did I break you?” she asked, only half joking as she stroked her hand through his hair.

The feel of it helped to calm him as a wide smile spread over his face, eyes half-lidded and looking at Eli like she was the most precious thing he’d ever seen.

“Come here you sweet, silly thing,” Astarion said, voice low and underpinned with a raw adoration that caused a flutter to take up in Eli’s chest.

He pulled her into a needy embrace; one hand placed softly in her hair as he tucked her head back under his chin, the other hand tightening around the small of her back to hold her close. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in slow, savoring her scent. She’d always smelled like wildflowers and the cool mist before a storm, like something exciting and freeing.

“Gods, you’re incredible,” he breathed, wondering what in the hells he had ever done in his irrelevant life to deserve her admiration. “I don’t think I’m ever going to want to let you go, my love.”

Eli wrapped her arms around him and for a moment she felt safe, secure and at peace.

“Then don’t,” she whispered against him.

They stayed wrapped up in one another until dawn, thankful to have one more day and hopeful for so many more.