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strawbattyshortcake · 1 year ago

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Breathing Down my Neck

Read on AO3 Awful Glad We Met Chapter 2/3

Words: 8330

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3

Harken close and beware the Vampyr. Beware its cold beauty. Beware its charm. Beware its curse. Above all, beware the pale noble, for the Vampyr cannot bear to be of the common folk….

Let no stranger into your home. If it be a friend, look upon them. Do you find them pallid and wan? See you any mark upon their neck?

Astarion cares for the gods exactly as much as they’ve ever cared for him— which is to say not at all— but evidently they have a sick sense of humour, and it figures. He snaps the book shut with as much disdain as he can muster for an inanimate object.

First chance he gets, it’s going in the fucking Chionthar.

As of right now, it lives in disgrace, shoved beneath a stack of worthier volumes, lest the drow catch him trying to drown it, or burn it, or whatever suitably ignoble fate he can devise for the damned thing.

If his heart beat, it would have stopped when she showed it to him, some sick game before she produced a stake— but no. No, her big silver eyes were guileless, trusting, and if it was a cruel joke as he suspects, it was being done through her.

Astarion had kept his composure, more or less, and with quick thinking, he had at once gotten the book away from her before it could describe him any more perfectly, and won points with Triel’dra in the process. She was certainly the person whose favour he most needed, and even with a bit of a hiccup initially— mind flayers are creatures of the underdark, there was a drow skulking around on the ship, he’d made some assumptions— he’d say he was doing rather well for himself on that front.

It’s a brilliant stroke of luck that Astarion had full day to ingratiate himself to their fearless leader (“I do not understand how that happened,” she’d admitted when he’d first called her that to her face) before they’d stumbled across Gale and then Wyll. With only Shadowheart and Lae’zel around, winning her over had been child’s play. But these two…

He sees the way the wizard looks at her.

Fortunately for Astarion, Triel’dra does not.

Gale had been much, much too friendly from the moment Triel had dragged him from his own faulty portal, and all too happy to launch into a nauseating list of his many, many self-reported accomplishments; however, to Gale’s disappointment and Astarion’s immense satisfaction, Triel’dra’s only follow up questions were about the cat.

“Would you like to be a housecat, Erelae?” she’d asked the raven on her shoulder. Evidently it did, because the familiar was now trotting after her as a sleek silver tabby.

The warlock, though… Wyll Ravengard had swashbuckled his way across their path mid-battle, leaping in to defend a gaggle of cowering idiots who had led a pack of goblins right to the gates of their settlement. Astarion hadn’t worried, not at first, about this newcomer getting between him and his quarry but that was before they’d gotten inside the tiefling encampment and it had immediately become apparent that Triel’dra was also exactly the kind of incorrigible do-gooder who would stop and risk her neck for anyone with a sob story.

When he had decided to charm a drow woman for protection, too compassionate was not a problem he had anticipated.

The day before had been all hiking and looting and the odd reanimated skeleton, so he supposes he hadn’t had the chance to really observe her. She was difficult to read, in a way he’d taken to calling ‘resting murder face,’ a quiet stoicism and soft voice that gave little away, save perhaps a twitchy kind of wariness— when the worm in her head wasn’t interfering, anyway— and when beset by goblins and bugbears, had dispatched them with a promising, ruthless efficiency.

And then they’d walked into a settlement full of frightened little tiefling children and she’d melted on the spot.

She’d been visibly unsettled as soon as they’d crossed the gate, murmuring something about her conversation with what he presumed to be the tiefling leader, and had only become more distressed as they took in the chaos, white brows knit, those eerie pale eyes wide and troubled.

Triel’dra was hesitant with people, but she’d make time for anyone who asked— and her greatest weakness was for the little ones.

The first time Astarion had actually seen her lose her calm was after stepping away from the particularly unpleasant group of children with their miniature thieves’ guild.

“I do not understand,” she’d said, horrified as soon as she was sure there weren’t any more tiny little devils lurking around to hear. “Why is no one watching them? Where are their parents?”

Shadowheart had raised an incredulous eyebrow. “They’re orphans, obviously. They don’t have parents.”

Triel had floundered for a moment, the way she does when she gets stuck translating whatever is in her head from Drow to Elvish to Common and just gestured in helpless outrage to the adults milling about, panicking and arguing and running about like headless chickens. “No one’s child is everyone’s child.”

She had looked about ready to flatten the druids who tried to keep her out of the grove, once she heard they were keeping a girl captive, and he’d had little choice but to follow after her, ready to bolt if she was suddenly beset by angry bears.

It had been a rather impressive bit of hostage negotiation, if he’s being honest. Especially considering how much of it she had spent talking to a snake.

But now she was fully preoccupied with the druid’s predicament and could not be diverted.

Thus, the argument.

“We do not have time for any of this!” Lae’zel hisses. “The gaith tadpole in your skull grows by the hour. We do not have the luxury of running errands for every being we encounter!”

They’d returned to spend one more night at their campsite before moving on, either forward as Lae’zel wants towards wherever she thinks her Creche might be, or after these goblin cultists who have, more likely than not, already killed this Halsin person. Here they could rest, and argue without the subjects of the argument weighing in or making puppy-dog eyes.

“I understand,” Triel’dra was considerably calmer than Lae’zel. It’s the measured response of someone who already knows what they’re going to do, arguments be damned. “But I cannot leave them. If we find the Archdruid, the circle will cease their ritual, the tieflings will be safe. Otherwise, they die.”

“She’lak! Their fate is not our concern.”

Astarion is inclined to agree with her. Triel’dra is an adult elf, at least one hundred, more than old enough to know the world is cruel, let alone nature, and her behaviour is in stark contrast to the whispers he’s heard about drow societies. He’s wondering if he shouldn’t look elsewhere for protection…but he’d also seen her shoot down a bugbear in the time it took the rest of them to draw weapons.

Not to mention that one, brief glimpse of bloody murder he’d seen in her head.

Just for an instant, between flashes of her capture and her home, he’d seen, through streaming eyes and too-bright light, another drow woman pinned beneath her as she drove a dagger down with all the vicious force her small frame belied.

So for now, he’s retreated to his tent, thumbing through a book, keeping his thoughts to himself— and weighing his options.

Shadowheart is allied with Lae’zel, to everyone’s amazement, though she’s after a typical healer and not whatever in the hells a githyanki decontamination involves. She’s watching the confrontation warily, keeping her distance.

Gale is bent over a stewpot, hoping that if he stays very quiet and very, very still, he won’t be dragged into this.

“It’s fine, Lae’zel,” Triel asserts. “I do understand our situation; I will not ask you to delay, but I am staying. I will find Halsin myself and rejoin you afterwards, if I am able.”

“And me,” Wyll adds. He steps forward and gives the drow an approving nod. Triel smiles at him, gratefully. “The Blade of Frontiers does not abandon souls in need.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

When they’d first met, he’d been surprised to see so much of the surface in those brief glimpses into her mind. There’d been her capture, running through grey dawn forest as the nautiloid pursued, somehow tracking her beneath the canopy of the trees ahead, her only thoughts of leading it away from home. An ancient drow’s gnarled hands, revelry and prayer beneath a full moon, two figures wreathed in starfire. He knows enough to recognize worship.

Far fewer spiders and less ritual sacrifice than he had anticipated.

Astarion wouldn’t say he’s well-versed in drow customs or the politics of the underdark (enough to know that they’re brutal and depraved), just the bits and pieces he’s picked up in two centuries. Something something the Seldarine drove out the Spider Queen and she took her cursed followers with her into the darkness.

Triel’dra, it seems, is among those drow who came crawling back.

Judging by the way she shies from sunlight, they haven’t been forgiven.

But the gods had deigned to grant her something. It may be a mere taste of the kind of sacred power Shadowheart wields, but the silvery white fire Triel gathers in her hands had made the hair at the back of his undead neck stand up in terror all the same.

It’s a precarious position, a vampire hiding from vampires. The drow strikes the perfect balance of holy and grounded— able to protect him but without the kind of zealotry that might target him as well, on principle.

Astarion sighs, sets the book down carelessly, and steps from the safety of his tent awning and into the fray. “I’ll come along. The druids did say they would be very grateful if we found their missing leader…” The last thing he needs is Triel’dra going off on some heroic adventure with a fellow bleeding heart like Wyll. Where would that leave him?

Besides, she likes him already, and charming as he may be, winning over Shadowheart promises a challenge. She narrows her eyes at him now as he declares his allegiances.

“I am certain they would be willing to aid us if we return their leader. Perhaps in the form of healing?” Triel offers hopefully, and Shadowheart lets out a noisy breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Master Halsin has been studying these tadpoles for a long time, it seems.”

“You really should have led with that,” the cleric says, defeated. “Fine. Maybe the druids can help. Besides, you’ll all get killed without me.”

“Thank you,” the drow breathes as a relieved sigh, even as Lae’zel curses in Gith. “This is… this is important to me.” She falters, expectant eyes on her, and looks to Astarion. Not the way he’s used to being looked at. It’s never desire, never lingering or hungry, but if she’s looking to him for reassurance, that’s at least something. He looks curious, encouraging her to go on. “I… They are me? The Emerald Grove is…. It is very much like my home. If this happened to us, if our leader—” her voice fails her, and she shakes her head.

The place in her thoughts. The worshippers under the stars.

She’s reluctant to share more, but between the three of them they’re able to get a few details out of her en route to this goblin stronghold.

She calls their leader something that would translate like ‘Moonreader,’ a title passed from mother to daughter for generations: druids of great power who divine the will of Sehanine Moonbow through the stars.

“Drow druids,” Astarion remarks, eyebrows raised. “Drowids?”

“But you’re not a druid,” Shadowheart prompts, to which Triel nods and says nothing more.

The day is strange and eventful. Something about Triel just cows everyone they come across from this Cult of the Absolute, and one look at the drow is enough to convince most that she’s with them already. It’s remarkably easy to creep through their territory, looking through the ruins of an abandoned village for anywhere they might be holding the druid captive.

Triel’dra is forever preoccupied with fresh water, and can’t pass a source without checking on it. She wanders off to investigate a well, and calls them over urgently a moment later. By the time they reach her, she’s already disappeared over the edge.

Astarion darts to the well and peers down. It’s dry, the bottom seemingly dark stone, and Triel is looking up at him, her eyes gleaming in the darkness. “There is much down here,” she calls to him. Her voice is soft but it carries up the empty stone chute of the well. She’s used to this sort of setting.

Astarion smiles lazily at her from above. “Well, well, well… What do we have here?”

Triel smiles; Shadowheart threatens to shove him in.

The well opens into a dark cavern, festooned with massive cobwebs— studded with silk-swathed figures, distinctly person-shaped.

“Hopefully not our druid,” Astarion notes dryly.

“No,” Triel treads forward carefully, placing each step with deliberate care as she studies the webs across the floor. “No, these are old. Some of these webs are new, so it is difficult to say if it’s been disturbed recently, but the bodies have been here for a while.”

“Phase spiders,” Wyll assesses, and the drow nods her assent. “And lots of them. Watch your steps down here.” He takes a moment to obliterate a clutch of hideous eggs with a blast from his palm. “This doesn’t seem to be part of the goblin camp.”

“We’re already down here,” Astarion sighs, glancing to the others for their assent. “Might as well take a look. Someone hid an entrance to this place; there must be something worthwhile.”

There are, unsurprisingly, spiders. Many, many, massive, fuckoff huge spiders, and little else. He’s not sure which of them it was who stepped into the webbing and sent the things pouring in (he’s inclined to blame Wyll. Even with his expertise, and though Triel conjured some softly glowing wisps to light his way, he’s still a human with one eye) but in an instant they’re overrun.

Fire and distance both seem like worthwhile friends in this fight, and he sends a firebolt sizzling into a chittering beast.

Triel’dra is nearest to him, and after getting off a few shots, she tries to hide her cat. She shoos her familiar away, but the movement catches the nearest creature’s attention and it lashes out, the cat disappearing with an indignant chirp in a wisp of grey smoke.

Triel cries out. It’s in drow, but the distress and intonation are clearly cursing. The offending spider is too close to shoot, and she darts after it, short sword drawn, a dagger at the ready in her other hand. She’s deft with them, darting in close to slash and then out of its reach. But then it lunges forward, blinking out of existence to close an unnatural distance, and she isn’t quick enough as she throws herself out of the way.

The spider lets out a shrill wail as its fangs graze her skin. It’s trying to sink in, pump venom into her flesh, but only manages to graze at her with the sharp points as she retreats. The fang slashes through her sleeve as she jerks back, a spray of blood sent through the air by the sharp movement.

Astarion is caught in its path and the world stops.

Droplets of drow blood, hot and sweet, are splattered across his face, in his hair, and there is nothing else. He can smell it. He can taste it and all at once he knows why Cazador kept this all to himself.

He’s stunned long enough for the others to notice. A flash of that bright, hateful light that makes his cursed skin crawl snaps him out of his daze as Triel blasts the spider in its horrid face with a handful of holy fire, scrambling out from beneath it. He’s not sure how she got there.

“Astarion! Are you alright?” Triel’dra rushes over to him, close enough to feel the warmth of a healing spell already forming in her hand as she does a quick battlefield once-over. Close enough to hear her heart pounding, to smell the blood coursing through her veins just beneath her skin, still soaking the torn fabric of her tunic.

Astarion’s mouth is watering. He swallows hard and drags his attention, kicking and screaming, from the lavender skin of her throat not protected by her leather armour. He does what he does best and forces a smile, raises his hand, and a firebolt strikesd the spider coming up behind. It collapses with a shriek, oozing venomous ichor. “Of course, darling, never better. But do watch your back, won't you?”

Clearing out the phase spiders is a long, exhausting slog. Shadowheart gets too tangled in webs to move and has to be cut free… twice.

“Let's see you do this in heavy plate, Astarion!”

Finally, the creatures stop coming, the cavern free of echoing chitters and the clack of chitinous legs, nothing but the cold empty nothing and the rush of flowing water somewhere deeper inside. And Triel, being a drow dowsing rod— drowsing rod— of course, has to go find it.

A stream trickles over an outcropping to form a deep pool of dark water, and Triel kneels to examine it, then cups her hands and brings it to her lips. “It’s good,” she tells them and sets to refilling waterskins and scrubbing the dirt and blood from her face.

“I’m not sure I trust dank cave water.” Shadowheart notes as she lowers herself to sit beside the pool, and starts the slow process of removing her armour.

“I wouldn’t mind the rest, location aside,” Wyll adds with a weary sigh, worrying at a spider bite. He smiles at the drow, who is gleefully shaking off the cold water like a pigeon in a bird bath. “Though, perhaps ‘welcoming’ is a matter of perspective.”

“This is the most at home I have felt in days,” Triel admits, standing, stretching, still battered and bruised despite the refreshing interlude.

No one wants to delay, but it’s been a long day of hiking and spiders and they decide to make camp for the night. Shadowheart’s magic is exhausted, as is the ranger’s.

“No, wait,” she says, and with a word of incantation, calls back her familiar. To everyone’s dismay, she’s chosen its form as a spider the size of a small dog. She beams at it, lovingly. “Now I am out of magic.”

Astarion takes his time, keeps his distance, as the others wash and settle, making a fire, passing around the satchel with their food, taking turns washing up in the pool.

He’s been holding his breath. He doesn’t need to breathe, it’s just a habit, just something he needs to speak— and to smell. If he doesn’t breathe he can pretend there aren’t still droplets of Triel’dra’s blood across his face. That he’s thought of anything else since it happened.

Finally, once he’s sure no one will disturb him, he makes his way to the water. It’s icy and dark, that telltale nothing looking up at him from its surface, and after a moment of hesitation he works up the will to scrub it away. There are eyes on him.

The evening wears on. It's impossible to keep track of time in the cavern, but his companions sit and chat and eat and he tries to do as much as needed to keep up appearances. Astarion excuses himself to his tent, picks up a book, and stares at it, unable to take in the words.

Gods, one whiff of drow blood and he’s become the world’s most obnoxious sommelier. Full-bodied red, rich and sweet with notes of mountain spring water, night air, and blackberry.

He needs to hunt, deluding himself that he can sate this hunger with quantity. Does anything in this damnable cavern even have blood? He can get back out into the night, into the forest, he has to find something, something with… with more thin, useless animal blood.

There are goblins outside— that’s something— and now he’s fixated on how to be sure he gets one on its own, not be swarmed by a pack of the little bastards. And after all this, he knows, it still won’t hold a candle to Triel’s.

There are two other living bodies here, of course, but he’s like a bloodhound and he’s picked up her scent. Transfixed, single minded.

He tries to divert himself, but there is nothing but the hunger, nothing but the pulse pounding in Triel’dra’s throat and the gnawing weakness, the need.

But Astarion has been starving for two hundred years. He can last another night.

He can.

He has to. Triel is sitting with the others, trying to shield her eyes from the fire and nibbling on a hunk of bread as Wyll regales them with tales of monsters he’s slain. Even relaxed, there’s a dagger at her side, not to mention that sacred fire she conjures. She may barely know what a vampire is, but she certainly knows how to kill one.

Above all else, she’s an elf. She trances; Triel’s guard is never down. Even if he wanted to, it would be suicide, and he takes great comfort in the knowledge that no matter how hungry he gets, he’d never be stupid enough to try.

But as the fire is dying down and the others begin to drag themselves to their beds, Triel’dra approaches his tent, cautiously, like she would knock on the canvas if she could. “Astarion?”

He smiles, bites down the screaming in his head. “Ah, hello. What can I do for you?”

The look she gives him in return is nervous, hopeful. “I think… I think that I will try to sleep tonight.”

His cold, still heart plummets.

The other two have noted this exchange, but they can’t understand what it means, not really. How vulnerable Triel’dra is choosing to make herself.

He laughs, before he can stop himself. A nervous giggle, just for an instant, near hysterics. The gods all hate him. “Really? Sleep, here? Are you…. Are you certain that’s wise?”

She pulls something from her shirt, a round set of stacked pieces on a silver chain he’s seen her fiddle with. “The Lady of Dreams sometimes blesses her followers with visions, in their sleep.” She shrugs, weakly. “I… I do not think it will amount to anything, but it seems the time to try. We say: when the tunnel collapses, pray as you dig.”

A genuine smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “So, have the same outcome either way, but if it’s good it’s because of them and if it’s poor it’s on you?”

He regrets it, the slip, but she’s not offended. She laughs a little, the scar across her face twitching as her nose crinkles. “I see it as: do all you can for yourself, but it does not hurt to ask.”

Oh, but it does. It aches, to plead and beg and pray with no answer.

His smile tightens.

“Anyway… wake me when it is my turn to keep watch.”

This is their habit. It’s what they’ve done each night. He has no reason to do differently now. “Of course.”

With a grateful smile, she bids him a good night, and turns back towards her tent.

The others lay down to sleep, and Astarion is left alone with dying embers and his hunger.

He should leave now, find something to eat, but… Triel isn't trancing tonight. There’s no elf aware enough to rouse if something were to disturb the camp while he’s stepped away. He can’t— or is that just the excuse he’s made?

He creeps closer without meaning to, from his tent to the fireside to the edge of the pool and oh, that’s taken him right to Triel’dra’s tent, hasn’t it? How funny.

Triel’s is the smallest of the shelters they’ve thrown together, made of dark fabric and suffocatingly small. She’s sacrificed surface area for coverage, devoting as much of the canvas as she can to blocking out the light. She’s tiny, a stunted little thing hiding surprising strength, and even she has to curl to fit comfortably, her bedroll poking out from beneath the flap.

Astarion silently pulls it aside.

Triel’dra is sound asleep. He can tell by the way her breath falls, the way she flinches and mumbles to herself into her pillow, murmurs in Drow, but no sounds enough like Elvish. It’s an unpleasant dream.

As he moves closer he catches his foot on something— a less dexterous man would have face planted right into the pile of blankets stirring gently in the middle of the tent— but he rights himself and Triel’dra doesn’t wake.

She’s left her pack and all its provisions out for him again.

His mouth twitches, and he has to bite down hard on the bleak bubble of laughter threatening to slip free.

She’s always so worried about him going hungry.

With no sign of her familiar, he presses on. The fabric of the flap falls, sealing the tent behind him and at once he regrets it. Her scent is overwhelming in this close space, so tight he’s all but crouched over her, filled with her and her things— her blood, but more along with it. It’s woodsmoke and pine sap and the bar of soap she had from wherever she’d come from— night blooming jasmine and lilac, he knows his fragrances— and his mouth is watering.

The little drow is fast asleep, safe in the knowledge that her trusted ally is watching over the camp.

He can’t pretend anymore. He already knows what he’s going to do, knows why he’s in here, drawn irresistibly, a moth smart enough to realise what’s happening but too weak to stop itself as it’s drawn to the flame.

Astarion may be free of Cazador but he’s still a slave to his hunger.

He tells himself he won’t hurt her. He’ll be quick, take only what he needs, and she’s sound asleep. Just a taste, she’ll never know. Try as he might, the litany of excuses never completely drowns out the doubts.

What makes him think he can stop?

He’s breathing, desperate to draw in more of that delectable scent and it comes as ragged panting.

His teeth are so sharp. She won’t feel a thing.

He could so easily tear her throat out with his fangs.

She’s so strong.

She’s so small.

He’s been so hungry for so long and to have it here— fresh, living blood, helpless beneath him…

It’s as if someone else tugs gently on the blanket pulled over her head. She sleeps in a heap of them, curled into her pillow, as if even down here she’s afraid of sunlight sneaking in.

He swallows hard, holds his breath, tries to clear the haze of ravenous need driving him to lean in closer, closer….

He tenses, ready to spring back as she shifts beneath him. Triel’dra mumbles in her sleep and rolls over, brow furrowed and lips parted as whatever nightmare she’s having plays behind her eyelids.

She falls onto her back, her head dips to her far shoulder, baring her neck to him.

He could sob. When this is over, however it ends, Astarion is going to find a quiet place and laugh until he cries. He has no doubt now that the gods are looking on at their unhappy cosmic punchline.

Miserable of them, he thinks as he considers the sleeping drow, to use one of their own faithful as the set-up.

The last of his restraint gives way.

Astarion drops to his hands and knees as he inches closer, all too aware of the creeping, crawling thing he’s been reduced to. He doesn’t care. He’s too hungry for dignity, as if Cazador had left him with any to lose.

He can hear the frantic beating of her heart, sees, with some gruesome instinct, the place along her neck that would be best to sink his teeth. He lines himself up, fangs bared, shuts his eyes and—

A jolt passes through the figure beneath him as she wakes.

Oh, shit.

Astarion’s eyes fly open in time to meet hers, wide with panic and unfocused with sleep as in a a reflexive movement she draws a knife he’d been too distracted to see from beneath her pillow and a forceful kick to his midsection sends him sprawling backwards out of the tent.

This may well be the stupidest way he could die.

He manages to land on his feet, standing just in time to see her stop dead in the doorway, an attack abandoned as she wakes fully and takes in what she’s seeing. Triel’dra lowers the knife, blinking sleep from her eyes. “Astarion?”

He straightens against the ache promising a bruise in the shape of her foot, brushes himself off and tries to look as innocent as possible. “I can explain,” he says, and it sounds as weak as it feels.

At least no one else seems to have woken.

There’s a moment where he considers lying. That he was overcome by a different kind of hunger and meant to wake her to suggest a midnight tryst. But no. Triel has been unmoved by his flirtations and she’d woken with a face full of fangs. It’s too late.

She’s quick but if he turns and bolts he may be able to make it to the rope out of the well before she does. Maybe.

Triel’dra hasn't moved from before her tent, just lets the flap fall behind her, tucks her knife away, then raises her hand. He hadn’t noticed her familiar creeping from the top of the tent ready to lunge, but the spider halts at her instruction. Triel is eyeing him cautiously, that appraising stare he’s felt before. “You do not eat with us,” she says softly.

“No,” he says, his smile chagrined, defeated. “No, I don’t.”

“Blood-thief,” she breathes. “You…?”

He tries for casual, but the laugh that slips out is high and near-deranged, his eyes darting between the drow and the spider, trying to place the campfire behind him by the warmth against his back. Just how and when to bolt without tripping into it.

As much as Astarion loves a sharp knife, his wits have always been his first line of defence, but he finds himself disarmed beneath her steady gaze. Words bubble and spill, clumsy and panicked. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, I swear it— I’ve never actually killed anyone— to feed, I mean, I’ve killed people; you’ve seen me kill people— but I’ve always fed off of animals. I’ve been hunting deer, boars, kobolds—”

She had, until this moment, been observing him silently, her expression unreadable. Triel’dra’s eyes widen and she starts towards him, a bewildered outrage on her face. “You!” She hisses, a sharp whisper that makes him reflexively look to the other tents for movement. She crosses the distance and gently prods an accusing finger into his chest. “You are the one who has been killing the boars!”

“Shh, shhh!” he shushes, pleading. “Yes. Yes, that’s been me; please keep it down.” There’s no sound or movement from the others, and for his initial concern, her voice has never raised above a hush, drowned out by the steady trickle of water from the stream. She pulls back her hand to rest her face in it, exasperated. This is… not the reaction he had been expecting.

She mutters something under her breath. Language doesn’t matter, Astarion can always tell when someone is cursing. “Such a waste of meat. A carcass that size attracts wolves, owlbears, scares off all the small game…”

That’s the part she cares about? “I couldn’t exactly bring it back to camp, could I? Here’s a dead boar I hunted, don’t mind it being fully exsanguinated!”

“That is why you bring it to me. Or better yet, bring me with you. I field dress the boar, no one can tell how it died.“

It takes a moment for the exchange to fully process. Astarion stares at her, baffled, as he finally convinces himself that he’d heard her properly. His surprise turns to suspicion. “You would do that?”

“Of course. I am doing all I can to keep everyone fed, and that boar would have helped immensely. You get the blood, we eat the meat, everyone is full and happy.”

Astarion studies the drow, looking for anything like disgust or anger and finds none. He motions away from the group, and to his further surprise she’s happy enough to follow him closer to the pool, where the rushing water can better obscure their conversation. Someone should probably warn her that it’s inadvisable to wander off with someone like him. But for now, he’s impossibly grateful she does. “You… you don’t mind that I’m a vampire.” He shouldn’t really be so shocked. She barely knew what one was, and besides, he supposes it may be rather difficult to rattle someone from the land of things-that-go-bump-in-the-forever-night.

It does give her pause. Triel is quiet a moment, and he can feel her gaze on him, his red eyes, his fangs, observing the things he tries to keep below anyone’s notice. It sends an uneasy prickle down his spine.

“I wish you had told me.” She says, finally.

“Yes, well.” Astarion’s mouth twitches into a nervous smile. He clears his throat uncomfortably. “The response is typically less… this, and more…” He sighs, mimes the stabbing motion she had made the day before.

“Oh.” Her brows knit. He shouldn’t be giving her ideas. “Thus, the secrecy?” She thinks for a moment, the freckles across her nose shifting as her mouth works at something she can’t figure out how to word. “If you have been drinking boar blood, and it is plentiful, why were you…?”

He’d rather hoped she’d somehow forgotten about that.

Astarion sighs. He feels pitiful, but maybe it’s best to lean into it. “Animal blood is… fine. It will keep me going, but I’m… I’m so weak. The blood of a thinking creature is far more potent, just a sip and I’d be so much sharper, stronger…” He doesn’t expect much, but looks at her hopefully all the same. She’ll refuse, he’ll be cheeky about it, smooth things over with his charms and they can both go back to their reverie and pretend this never happened.

Instead her face is deadly serious, her voice soft with pity that would turn his stomach if it weren’t so empty.

“You are hungry,” Triel’dra says.

The laugh slips out before he can stop it, bitter. “For two hundred years.”

Her unbroken stare doesn’t waver, studying him. “How much do you need?”

He has no idea, but if it’s as powerful as it smells, it shouldn’t take much. “A sip. Just a taste, really, I swear that was all I wanted.”

“Alright.”

“Pardon?”

“My blood. You may have some.”

Astarion blinks at her. The words make sense, he understands them all individually, but cannot believe what he’s hearing when he strings them together. “I…. you’re certain?” She nods again, resolute. “Well then,” he forces his most reassuring smile, trying to hide the glance he takes around the campsite to ensure no one else is listening, to capitalise on this offer before she comes to her senses. “Shall we make ourselves comfortable, darling? Somewhere away from prying eyes.”

She leads the way when he gestures to her tent. He has to wonder if she isn’t agreeing so she might lure him back to where she has a stake, but he’s too hungry to let that stop him.

She grabs her pack on the way past, pulling it into the tent behind her as she disappears behind the canvas flap. He has to stoop as he nudges his own way into the cramped space just as Triel sinks cross legged to her bedroll and indicates the space she’s left beside her.

He laughs to himself as he gets to his knees beside the bed instead. “You should lay down for this.”

“Why?” It comes out in a hurry and for the first time she seems nervous, well after he would have expected it.

“Blood pressure, my dear,” he eases. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing but it makes sense. “Better to keep you from fainting on me.”

Triel considers this and hesitantly seems to concede. She’s uneasy as she lowers herself to the bedroll and settles back against the pillow, hands balled into fists and her eyes fixed on the dark canvas above her.

Slipping into place over top of her is familiar enough, a well-practised movement from so many other nights, and Astarion lays a hand to either side of her to rest his weight. Triel’dra squeezes her eyes shut tight as he draws closer and gives him a side, turning her head— away from him— to offer the crook of her neck and left shoulder.

Astarion pauses, studying her beneath him. Her whole body is clenched as tight as her eyes, breath stuttering, heart pounding… cheeks flushed.

Well, well. And here he had thought she wasn’t interested. Will wonders never cease? His vicious little gloomstalker is shy. An unusual surge of feelings pulse through him at the realisation. Relief and no small amount of amusement. He can work with this.

The aftertaste is disappointment.

He had thought she was different, but in the end, he knows exactly what he has to offer. All he’s ever had.

“Go on.” Triel swallows hard, he can hear it from where he’s paused, a whisper away from the heat of her skin.

“Relax, darling. You’re so tense I’d break my fangs if I bit you now. Deep breaths for me… There you are….” His smirk nearly brushes the hammering thud of her pulse as Triel doesn’t calm so much as force herself to go slack about the shoulder. She’s still gritting her teeth, breath hissed between them.

Her nerves have been an amusing diversion but his empty stomach clenches painfully. He has to breathe to speak and inhales a lungful of her scent, overpowering this close to her skin, to the veins calling to him beneath it. He’s salivating as he finally bares his fangs and surges forward.

Triel swallows a gasp and Astarion’s first taste of thinking blood hits his tongue.

He can’t really remember what it was to need air, but in that moment he thinks it must have been like this. How it was to gasp for something so desperately as he slips a hand beneath to cradle Triel’s head, holding her closer as he drinks, and drinks, and drinks, losing himself in it.

Astarion moans. It slips free on it’s own, not a pretty sound, not the pitch-perfect playacted panting he’s perfected over the centuries, but something deep and animal and real that would be mortifying if he had the wherewithal to care, but his mind is empty of anything but taste and sensation and blessed relief.

He feels it. The strength that was always just out of his reach, the heat of her blood spreading through his body, her pulse against his tongue—

“Astarion—”

Her voice is so small, so far away when it finally reaches through the drunken haze of his thirst. How long had she been calling? Her hand is fisted in his shirt, the grip going slack.

No. No, it’s only been a moment, only a few seconds, he can’t have—

The heartbeat beneath his lips is slow, the skin cool against the unfamiliar stolen heat of his own.

She’s still breathing when he pulls back, but the lavender of her skin has gone grey. She blinks at him through heavy eyelids as he swallows curses under his breath and fumbles through his pockets for— ah, here it is. He hurries to press the handkerchief to the still bleeding wounds at her throat, dragging her to sit up. She sways, slumping against him.

The rats were too small to tell but feeding on the boars he had been sure: there’s something in his bite that keeps the blood flowing.

“There you are, darling, that’s it. Just… Hold this here, would you? It just needs a second…”

Triel’dra steadies, the weight slumped against him lessened as she props herself up to sit under her own power, numb fingers grasping at the thin square of cloth. She mumbles something, slurred Drow that stumbles into Elvish, something like ‘I’m fine.’ Her movements are slow and clumsy, and when she looks at him she’s reeling, silver eyes are unfocused, but she’s keeping upright under her own power and the handkerchief clutched to the wound well enough, so finally he’s free to retreat.

“Well,” Astarion sits back on his heels, getting what distance he can in the cramped tent. She’s fine. It’s fine. A little rest, and she’ll be good as new, he’s certain. “That…” He feels breathless, giddy. He licks his lips, catches a stray trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “That was… amazing.” An ache so deep he’d forgotten how it was to be without it is gone. “My mind is finally clear. I feel strong, I feel…” It takes him a moment to find the word, so long since he’s needed it. Content. Satisfied. How had she put it? Full and… happy.

Astarion hears the need in his own voice, the heady desperation, and clears his throat. He smiles, polite, brisk, aiming for just the perfect combination of nonchalance and gratitude. What’s a pint between friends? Everything is fine. No need to panic, or call the cleric, or contemplate just how valuable this is to him. Not appreciative enough that it might be leveraged against him, but enough that she might agree to this again.

Gods, he can still taste her and already he’s angling for his next fix.

Triel just smiles a little, weakly, unsteady. Something about it makes him uneasy, a feeling that only intensifies as an eerie chittering sound from behind sends a shudder down his back. The flap stirs and her familiar creeps back into the tent, crawling along the ceiling and watching him warily with far too many eyes. Time to make an exit.

Astarion excuses himself to find something more filling he can feed on without restraint. “No boars,” he adds, forcing his most charming smile despite the disquiet still needling at him, “I promise.”

He can never just enjoy anything. A belly full of drow blood is more than he dared to dream of through his years of draining vermin, but the high is souring and he can’t put his finger on why. A mix of things, a potent cocktail of roiling troubles and he needs to leave before his facade slips.

“This is a gift, you know. I won’t forget it.”

Astarion can’t bring himself to look at her as he hesitates at the doorway, the image of her haunting him anyway: pale and trembling, big horrid spider curled in her lap like a housecat as the red staining the handkerchief clutched to her neck deepens and spreads.

A gift. As if there were such a thing.

That’s part of the disgust he feels. That she has something he needs, that she knows it, and that for all his talk of his improved usefulness, it’s something he owes her with no way to repay. A debt, just another thing weighing against him in the balance of his worth.

Well, at least Astarion knows what she wants from him, something he is all too able to provide, and the sooner he can tip the scales back in his favour, the better.

It’s as he stalks through the web-strewn cave that the other aspect makes itself clearer. It’is knowing, now, just what was being kept from him. Not just the taste, but the strength, the clarity, the relief. It’s not possible to hate Cazador more than he does already, but it brings the feeling back up to the surface, acrid and persistent.

Unfortunately, sharp as he is, the first thing he finds to stalk is an ettercap. It’s going to be one kind of spider or another down here, so he resigns himself to the thing with fewer legs, at least. He remembers from the earlier encounter to keep his distance, to hit it with fire.

Its blood is vile but abundant.

It doesn’t douse the heady craving for the drow’s blood as he had hoped. If anything it’s all the sweeter in his memory by comparison, the taste still lingering on his tongue.

He stalks back to camp, belly full, chest hollow.

Wyll and Shadowheart are asleep and he makes it back to his tent without waking them. It’s just as he’s about to turn in and try and get a decent stretch of reverie that a sound from the furthest tent catches his sensitive ears. The scent of blood is still heavy in the air and a stuttered, rasping sound just barely reaches him over the sound of the waterfall. Her familiar is meant to be keeping watch, but there’s no sign of the spider.

Astarion grits his teeth, the flap of his tent clenched in his hand, and with a roll of his eyes he lets it fall and creeps back to Triel’dra’s tent.

He’d left her sitting up. She’d been alert, mostly. She’d been fine.

When Astarion pokes his head into the tent, the drow is sprawled across her bedroll in a dead faint, the handkerchief loosely grasped in her hand drenched in blood. There’s a splatter of it across her pillow. She’s deathly pale, grey lips tinged blue, breath shallow and strained, and soon to stop.

Fuck.

He should leave. He should go back to his tent and trance, and be as shocked as everyone else in the morning. This cave is full of horrors, it’s no surprise someone died.

But no. Shit. Shit, they’ll find her with two perfect little punctures in her throat. All they need to do is look at his fucking teeth and he’s finished— and even if he gets away with it, he’s lost his best protection from Cazador.

Cursing under his breath, he darts inside, drawing the flap closed behind him. Turning he starts, finds himself face to face with the fey spider perched on the dying drow woman’s chest. It shouldn’t be possible, but he swears those many eyes are all glaring accusations.

The thing lunges for him when he moves towards her.

“Piss off; I’m trying to help!” he hisses through clenched fangs.

The spider only sort of…. Wiggles defensively in response, its first set of arms raised in a sad attempt at a threat display. It’s difficult to be intimidated by anything that fits under his boot but he still reflexively draws back.

“What do you care, anyway? You’re bound to her, aren’t you? If she dies, you’re free.” The fey spirit waggles its arms more emphatically.

Astarion sighs, surprised as he watches the creature by a sudden pang of pity. It probably can’t let her die even if it wants to, some clause in whatever fey pact familiars are bound by.

“Look,” Astarion raises his hands, placating, and it— Erelae, that’s what Triel’dra calls it at least— lowers its arms in turn. “I’m trying to help, alright? Here, see?” He reaches behind himself and feels for her pack, dragging it over to rifle through. There’s no way he’s explaining this to Shadowheart and no way she’s lasting until morning, which leaves him few options. His fingers close around the familiar shape of a potion bottle and he shows it to the spider for its approval.

Because that’s the kind of ridiculous his life has become.

Erelae relents. The spider backs up, crawling off of its mistress, all eight eyes still fixed carefully on Astarion as he uncorks the bottle with his teeth and gathers the limp form of the bloodless drow in his arms. Her head tips back against his shoulder, and he carefully drips the sweet-smelling liquid, an unnatural bright red, into her mouth. “There we are,” he says, more to reassure himself than anyone else. “All better… No harm done. Good as new.”

She’s still unconscious as the last of the potion trickles down her throat, but Triel’dra lets out a deep sigh, and her breathing seems to steady, the wounds on her neck fading. She’ll still feel like shit in the morning, but— in his amateur opinion, at least— she’ll live.

Astarion lays her back against her bloodied bedroll. He’s certainly had worse targets. Pleasant enough to spend time with, and she’s beautiful— if in a severe, rugged sort of way. This close, and without having to worry about being caught, he’s able to really study her. There’s the obvious, the freckles, the jagged scar that stretches across the bridge of her nose from her jaw to her forehead. There are more. Older, fainter scars. One across her eye, tendrils of lethal scar tissue that stretch across her throat, the other side than she’d offered to him. A lifetime of fighting, and more than one brush with death by the looks of her body— let alone what he’d seen in her memory.

Exactly what he needs, if he can just keep her attention.

Astarion reaches down, her skin warm beneath his undead fingertips as he brushes silver hair, matted with blood, from her face, acknowledges the spider creeping back into its place on her chest, rising and falling with each slow breath, and skulks back to his tent to try and salvage what he can of this rest.

[Prev] [Next]

#Lol triel is all what a sweetheart and he's all god I hate everyone in this party #astarion x drow tav #astarion x tav #tavstarion #bg3 tav #ranger tav #AG Writes things #Awful Glad we met #Title is from Will Wood's Yes to err is human so don't be one #Ammy takes liberties with the bite scene #and dialogue #Triel'dra Helvimtor #Triel tav #Astar'dra #ok look look healing wounds with your tongue is sexy bUT #Vampires would have anticoagulant spit they just would #DEFENSIVE WIGGLES

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strawbattyshortcake · 10 months ago

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Six Sentence Sunday 05/08

Astarion sighs, takes another shuddering swig, and pushes his hair from his forehead. “Grape skins on,” he says, indicating his bottle, “skins off,” he tips his head towards the crate and the assumed white. “A real rosé is fermented with some but not all the skins, and what you have there is an unholy desecration of both red and white wines.”

“Mixture of with and without the grape skins…. Versus a wine fermented with partially skinned grapes?” She actually laughs at that, taking a sip of her blush abomination. “What is the difference?”

“There— there just is!” Astarion clears his throat, tries to bite down on the undignified timbre his voice had reached. He’s hunting, why is he arguing with her?

#Triel likes Tyche Pink; Astarion is horrified #triel tav #astarion x tav #triel'dra helvimtor #astar'dra #tavstarion #wip: a little death

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strawbattyshortcake · 2 years ago

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Read Over My Shoulder

Awful Glad We Met (1/3) Words: 4665 Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

(I wrote a thing! Meant to be a two-parter, this got way longer than I was expecting, so now it's three. Title is from To Err Is Human by Will Wood <3 Drow words from the Forgotten Realms wiki's Drow Dictionary) ********

It’s difficult to tell if things are going well with her new companions.

Triel'dra is used to being away from home. She patrols the borders of their territory for potential encroachment, she wanders both the underdark and the surface for days at a time when it's needed, tucking herself away beneath brambles and roots to curl up and wait for the sun to set.

But she'd never been alone before, not like she was waking up on that beach in the wreckage of the haszak ship. Even if she knew where she was, if she could just find the direction and walk until she was home, she couldn't. Not with this thing in her head, not when it would bring danger down on everyone she loves. Her family, her community, this small enclave that’s all she’s ever known.

It's hard, admitting to herself that she's lonely, harder still to admit she's afraid.

So, when she'd found the half-elf she had been trying to free, up and well and pounding on a temple door, Triel had been all too eager to stay close to her, and had no idea how to go about it. They had the same concerns, the same ends, and it made sense even if Shadowheart didn't seem thrilled by the prospect, nor did Lae'zel, when they had found her shortly after. Lae'zel is sharp and impatient, Shadowheart taciturn and withholding, but perhaps this is simply how it is, to be with strangers. She'd been warned all her life to expect hostility from colnbluth, anyway, and had assumed that this was the chilly process by which all new acquaintances acclimatised.

Then they had found Astarion.

She'd never seen a surface-elf before, though she'd known at once what he was. No one hated ilithiiri like darthiiri did, and she'd been ready to defend herself, but he'd looked at her, full in the face, seen exactly what she was, and asked for help. And her foolish, lonely little heart had leapt, desperate for a friendly face, even if she hadn't quite let her guard down. He needed something hunted, she knew how to do that. It was familiar and simple in the way that nothing had been since she'd been taken.

She'd even given him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he'd simply confused the boar for one of the brain-creatures in the chaos of the crash site, but she'd caught the glint of bright light reflected off metal dancing through the dry grass and turned just in time to avoid the knife.

But Triel had misjudged him. It wasn't about that at all, just a misunderstanding based in justified fear of their captors. It sends a wary chill down her back, knowing he'd seen her and she hadn't noticed him— she's used to being the one observing, unseen— but more still, that she'd evidently walked past him without trying to help. Despite this, Astarion was, from the first... friendly.

Astarion had actually smiled, sighing in relief when he realised she wasn't a threat. He'd been pleasantly talkative once the initial shock of their prognosis had passed and he'd agreed to join them in search of a solution. It was a relief from the stilted silence she hadn't known how to break. Astarion had introduced himself, and was the first to actually answer when she asked him about himself—then been kind enough to translate into Elvish when she hadn't know what the Common word 'magistrate' meant ('arbiter of legal disputes', she'd learned).

Not something she had considered, needing someone to rule on conflict. It made sense with so many people in the city he'd mentioned. The glimpse of it she had caught in his mind was unlike anything she'd seen, like dozens of the sleepy little surface settlements she watched from afar piled on top of one another. It was overwhelming and fascinating. Her people were few, their lives so closely intertwined, matters that couldn't be worked out amicably were always resolved by—

Triel is struck with a pang of homesickness that knocks the wind from her lungs and settles as a lump in her throat, but if Astarion has noticed he's polite enough not to comment as she collects herself.

"Is it bothering you?" He does say, after a time walking in silence.

Triel looks up, startled out of her diversion.

"The sun, I mean," he prods when she doesn't seem to follow. Astarion gestures to her. She's wandered off the dirt road, preferring the shade cast by the trees alongside, even if it means negotiating the uneven terrain. "It doesn't seem to be affecting your vision."

"Oh." So he's observant, too. "No, I... I can see, though I have no idea how. I would normally be completely blind in daylight like this."

“Ah,” he says brightly. “Well, this must be a treat, then.”

The strange expanse of surface is hot and sundrenched, the patches of shade only a momentary relief. Triel can feel it beating through the dark leather of her armour. She’s been above ground in daylight before, but only as something she’s endured through bleary, watering eyes. The sky is an open, endless blue, empty save the scorching ball of the sun and useless wisps of white cloud that do nothing to obscure its fury. There’s no pain, but now that she can see, familiar sights of mountain path and forest are alien— too bright, too loud, and she finds herself anxious for the gentle darkness of night.

But Astarion loves it. He seems to glow where the light catches his pale skin, his white hair, head tipped back as he basks, taking in a deep breath of warm noonday air. “It must be the worm, mustn’t it?” He says, snapping her out of another nervous scan of the open sky. “They want us alive, after all. Can’t have you wandering off a cliff, or eaten by direwolves, or, well,” he laughs, apologetically, “eviscerated by a paranoid high-elf?”

She’s surprised by the laugh that she has to stifle. How at ease he makes her feel, despite the overwhelming circumstances that make her dizzy when she tries to think too much about them. It feels…. Good, to have people around her, again. Lae’zel is certain the Githyanki crèche is nearby, and that they can cure the infection, provided they don’t find another healer first. They have a plan. There is a course of action to be taken, and that’s kept her from despairing, but she thinks this is the first time she’s smiled since she was home.

“Almost makes you want to keep it, doesn’t it?” He’s crept into the shadows beside her so he can lower his voice, conspiratorial, eyes on Lae’zel ahead to be sure she hasn’t heard.

Triel raises an eyebrow. This isn’t the first time he’s said something along these lines. “I am very eager to be rid of it,” she replies, “by any means necessary.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand, I’m certainly not advocating… Mindflayerism. Perish the thought,” he makes a face, shudders theatrically. “I mean, perhaps there’s a way to render the worms harmless. Control them. It must be nice, being able to see in daylight? Useful. You could enjoy it, even. It’s lovely out there, you know.” He gestures to the sunny side of the road, drifts away as they walk to step back into it, then motions for her to join him.

She can’t.

Triel’dra stops at the edge of the pool of shadows cast by copse of trees and can’t bring herself to look at him watching her. It’s just a stretch of sunlight but it feels like fording a river— an undertaking, something to be endured to get to the other side, to the next blessed patch of darkness. It’s early afternoon, and the shadows are few and meagre, the next patch of shade a long way off.

She’s being ridiculous.

She’s travelling with surface dwellers. They sleep at night and travel by day, she’s going to need to get used to this.

The others have noticed. Up ahead, Shadowheart and Lae’zel have stopped and turned.

“Is everything alright?” There’s a tinge of impatience in the cleric’s voice. Her gaze turns to Astarion and her brows furrow, she thinks he’s done something.

“Chk!” Lae’zel makes that irritated hissing click in her throat. “We do not have time for this! I will drag you along or leave you behind if you cannot keep up.”

“Yes,” Triel calls back. “It is fine. I am fine. I will be right there.”

Triel takes a breath, shades her eyes and steps into the sun, falling back into step beside Astarion who is smiling at her, though there’s something else to it that she can only assume is him reevaluating his estimations of her. She can feel her face burning, and not just from the heat.

“Well,” he begins, briskly, trying to change the mood. “You really aren’t a fan of it, are you? But see, this isn’t so bad, is it?”

She has to admit, it isn’t terrible. She would still prefer night, obviously, but this is alright, what the heat is likely doing to all the wheels of cheese in her pack, aside. Slowly, reluctantly, she lets her hands fall back to her sides, lets her eyes adjust to the tadpole-tempered light. She tries not to think about how open the yawning blue void of the sky is above her, how exposed, how visible she is.

“There is a saying, in my language: oloth zhah tuth abbil lueth ogglin. The darkness is both friend and enemy.” She sighs, finally daring to really look up at Astarion. He’s watching her carefully, intent. Those red eyes send an instinctual shiver down her spine, but she brushes it aside. “The light has only ever been an enemy—” She cries out, her hand flying to press against the sudden stabbing pain behind her eye.

Oh no. No, no, not again.

She can feel the tadpole shifting in her skull, sifting through her thoughts, dragging a memory to the surface.

The pain she expects washes over her, the light piercing, tears streaming down her blood streaked face, one eye struggling against the brightness, the other swollen shut. Triel is on her back, doused in sweat, baking under the sun and too weak to crawl for cover. The pain radiating from the festering wound in her hip has long since gone numb, poison spread through her veins as the day stretches on in a feverish daze of delirious terror just waiting to die—

With a cry, Triel wrenches herself free of the memory’s grasp. To her horror, Astarion is clutching at his head again too, his chest heaving as hers is, still recovering from the feeling of it. He’s seen. Her mouth works uselessly, that mortified heat creeping back into her cheeks, small and pathetic and desperate to pretend it hadn’t happened.

“I did not mean— ah. I am sorry, I do not understand why that happens, I—” Gods all help her, she’s stammering like an idiot.

Astarion straightens, clears his throat. His hand moves away from the shared pain in their heads to smooth down his clothing, reclaiming that noble, put together kind of air he has in a moment. “Yes, well, no harm done. We’re all adjusting to our…. Uninvited guests.” He smiles, but she sees those red eyes tracing the ugly scar across her face.

Merciful Sehanine, strike me down now.

Triel’dra hadn’t realised Shadowheart had turned back until her armored hand is on Triel’s shoulder, studying her with a quirked eyebrow. “You alright?” The cleric eyes her sceptically as she nods, breathless, pushing aside damp hair that is not there but that she can still feel plastered to her face with sweat.

“Yes, I am fine,” Triel assures her. “The tadpole was acting up, but it has stopped.” Thankfully, a feeling catches her attention, saves her from this awkward interaction. Especially before Lae’zel can chime in; Triel is certain that she’ll have thoughts on increased parasite activity and she’d rather avoid another argument if she can.

It’s strange to consider the differences between the invisible bonds tethering her to other creatures. This tadpole is unnerving and invasive, crawling behind her eye and reaching out to probe the thoughts of everyone so afflicted, offering up her weakest moments for all to see. Her connection to her familiar, though, is a comfort.

Triel’dra feels Erelae’s presence before she sees the dark spot in the sky as the raven wheels overhead and swoops back down to light on her shoulder. She’s being such a good sport about this form. Erelae is usually a bat or an owl, but the surface in daylight isn’t kind to either creature, and she’s far less conspicuous this way. Erelae ruffles her feathers, nips at her ear with her beak, anxious but not panicked.

“There is something up ahead,” she tells the others, before turning back to her friend. “Like before? More wreckage?” The raven rasps a sound she understands as affirmative.

Refocused, the party sets off carefully towards the far-flung debris of the nautiloid in hopes of anything of interest but all they find is a dying haszak— Mind Flayer, in Common, Astarion tells her, though he and Shadowheart have heard the Undercommon ilithid, too.

She is so tired of things prying into her thoughts, twisting them, manufacturing them.

The injured mindflayer tries to claw its way into her brain, so she puts her boot through his.

She’s not sure who suggests making camp, but skull pounding, heart racing, spattered in haszak ichor, Triel’dra can’t disagree.

They decide to circle back to the temple they’d explored earlier in the day, take another look for anything they might be able to scavenge for bedding and shelter, especially with another pair of eyes and arms. Filling Astarion in on the details of the morning’s escapades was a welcome relief from their earlier conversation, though it did nag at her. Left hanging, unresolved.

Triel tries, as they set off in search of a campsite near the river with better access to water not contaminated by bodies and a ship made from one hundred tons of rotting crintishik. She falls into step beside Astarion again, a feat given his much longer stride. He slows for her, and something tightens in her chest. The tips of her ears are uncomfortably warm.

She makes an effort not to falter when the shadow of the temple, finally lengthening as the afternoon dwindles into evening, ends, but she still tenses visibly, bracing herself, and sighs at her own failure. “I know it’s alright,” she tries to explain, once again taking a moment to thank blessed Sehanine that she has someone to talk to. “The thinking part of my brain knows, but… When something has always hurt you, it is difficult to believe it will not again.”

Her Common is poor, and she must be talking nonsense, because Astarion doesn’t answer. He just hums thoughtfully, to be polite, she imagines, and thankfully it’s not long before she spots an ideal place to make camp and then there’s too much to do to feel uncomfortable.

She helps set up, to gather water, to make a fire pit and gather wood. This is what she’s best at, and keeping busy, feeling useful, soothes that nervous ache like nothing else.

Astarion disappears for a while— he says something about tidying himself up, which makes her laugh to herself, secretly. He’s the least battered of them all, but there’s smoke and ash and probably mindflayer fluids (thanks to her) and he strikes her as the fastidious type.

“Avoiding the hard work,” is Shadowheart’s take on it.

Triel doesn’t mind. Honestly, she’s used to doing these things alone, and inexperienced help can be more harm than good. Her only worry is that he seems to be gone for a while, and alone, but Astarion returns just as she begins to think she should go look for him. Sure enough, the elf saunters back into camp, his hair damp, his face scrubbed clean, and sets right back to arranging the pile of cushions he’s hoarded.

Triel’s pack is heavy with every edible thing she’s set eyes on all day, but these provisions will keep and it seems wise to save them for leaner times. Here, game and foragables are plentiful, and with a quick word to the others she sets off after one of those boars she’d been lured with earlier.

She returns later with an ample supply of herbs, plants, and a few river fish.

From where she’d set up her tent, Shadowheart smiles, a wry smirk as she eyes Triel’s catch. “No luck with the boars, then?”

“There is something wrong with the boars.”

“Sure there is.” Shadowheart rises from where she’d been knelt in prayer, following Triel to the campfire.

“I found a dead one,” Triel says as she continues her work. She sets the plants aside for later, then arranges the fish over the fire on cleaned sticks. “I could not tell what killed it. It may have been sick; I do not think we should eat them.”

Across from the fire, Astarion is watching them, a book he’d taken from the temple open in his lap. He’d been as interested in the many dusty tomes as she had, and between the two of them they’d amassed quite a little library. His gaze is intent, and those red eyes give her another misplaced jolt of panic. These are not the eyes she knows to fear, and she admonishes herself quietly.

It’s hardly this surface-elf’s fault he has the eyes of a Lolthite.

“These should not take too long,” she assures him, forcing a smile as she stands, gathering up the plants to take down to the river to wash. She’d found wild onions and blushcaps that would be satisfying if cooked now, and plentiful herbs to be dried for later.

His smile is tight, wincing. “I’m… actually not particularly hungry,” he admits. “Nothing against your… very resourceful culinary skills, of course,” from the wary way he’s eyeing the campfire, she suspects he has concerns. “Today has been… a lot. Not to worry, I’ll just scrounge up something later.”

“Alright.” Triel’s brows furrow, and she tries not to look him over too obviously. When would he have eaten last? Today was taxing and tomorrow promises more of the same. “Well, there is plenty of food in my pack, please feel free. You need to keep your strength up.”

He’s giving her that look again, like she’s said something odd, and she isn’t sure if it’s her Common or something she doesn’t understand about surface-folk. Is it her tent? Perhaps he doesn’t want to go into her space to retrieve something. Is it because she’s female? She knows colnbluth have strange (hilarious, honestly) customs about gender, but she supposes walking into a strange drow man’s sleeping quarters and helping herself to something would be…. Yes, that would be highly questionable. “I’ll leave it by the door,” she reassures him.

He thanks her as she starts off for the riverbank, but he’d sounded somewhat baffled and she gets the impression she’s said the wrong thing again.

She is so much better at making campfires than friends.

The sun is finally setting and she can’t help but sigh with relief at the dimming twilight. The air is cooling, the sunset reflected in the dark water. She’ll wait until night falls properly before praying for the evening.

If ever there was a time for it, it’s now.

Triel’dra manages to put together a decent enough dinner, but even the smell of cooking meat and onions doesn’t tempt Astarion away from his book. Shadowheart seems to have warmed to her a little as she sits down around the fire to eat with the others, but Lae’zel is restless and irritable, wolfing down her fish and then stalking back to her tent muttering about what a waste of time this is. She won’t speak to Triel afterwards, either.

Of all of them, Triel’dra is probably the least inclined to rest now. The sky is beautifully dark, the moon is clear, the world crisp and calm and welcoming, but she’s bruised and her magic exhausted from the day’s battles and she’ll be far better equipped for whatever lies ahead after a trance.

She excuses herself to the edge of the clearing, back to the river. It seems like the best place to clear her head. The water shimmers, stars glistening above and reflected below. She’d invited Shadowheart to join her, but the cleric is secretive in her devotions and vehemently refused.

Triel kneels, taking a deep breath of night air, and takes the necklace from beneath her shirt, clasps it in her hand. The thin metal pieces are familiar and comforting in her hands, three phases of the moon, full, half, and crescent, for She Who Is Three and Is One.

Her heart aches as she thinks of home, prays for Sehanine to watch over her people, her family. But selfishly, she can’t help but pray for herself. I want to go home. She tries to focus on the things that matter but beneath it the thoughts are there, betraying her. Please, help me.

Triel sighs, and rises back to her feet. If she was the kind of person who deserved The Lady of Dreams’ blessing, she wouldn’t have asked for it. She never has been.

Her gloom lifts for a moment when she spots a painfully thin figure amongst the reeds on her way back to camp, and finds Withers has followed them. She smiles, acknowledges him, and he responds with a solemn nod of his head before returning his attention to the heavy book in his desiccated hands.

“Before anyone is alarmed,” Triel announces as she makes her way back to the clearing and the glowing embers in the firepit, “the mummified fellow from the ruined temple is by the riverbank.”

“I’m sorry, the what?” Astarion looks up from the pile of pillows and blankets he seems to be continually rearranging. He’s a little frazzled, pushing white curls out of his face, on his hands and knees trying to get everything just so. It’s like watching a very industrious stoat nesting, and she shouldn’t find it as amusing as she does.

“Withers. Did I not get to Withers? We found him in a sarcophagus in the ruins. Very cryptic, but harmless, I think.”

“Well. I missed an interesting morning.”

Astarion is used to his city and struggling with the outdoors. This isn’t his idea of a comfortable night’s rest, but he’s making the best of it.

She has red clover and valerian drying by her tent, and she’s maybe a little too eager to offer to brew up a nice tea, something to help him settle in. He declines politely. “You sleep,” he assures her. “I’ll keep watch.”

She should stay up. She should stay up and protect the camp herself, but… she trusts him, and besides, Erelae is perched in a nearby tree, keeping careful watch, and she’ll be alert enough to rouse easily. She’ll trance, trade off with him when she’s rested. Between two elves, they’ll have the night well covered.

“Thank you,” she replies. “I will rest better for it. Wake me when you’re ready to switch out.”

“The pleasure is all mine.” Those red eyes look into her own and he smiles in that way that makes the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “Sweet dreams.”

Trieldra’s stomach flips, her heart does something fond and foolish in her chest. She knows better than to pay them any mind.

As she turns to retire for the night, Astarion cracks open a book and she remembers something else she’d been meaning to ask him. “Oh, ah,” she turns back, “there is one more thing. I hate to trouble you again, you have been so helpful already,” he looks very pleased with himself, “but I found a book I do not understand. Reading Common is difficult for me; there is another word I do not know featured prominently. I was wondering if you would mind translating?”

“Of course, darling. I’d be happy to,” Astarion obliges, snapping his own book shut again and waiting as she hastens to the pack she did indeed drag to the opening of her tent, and fishes out the item in question.

Darling. That is awfully familiar, isn’t it? Endearment? She shakes her head, chastises herself. She barely speaks Common, she has no idea about connotation.

“Here,” she offers the dusty volume she’d found in the ruins with its worn green leather cover. The title might have been on the spine but it’s long since worn away so she flips it open to hold up the first page with its large, dramatic lettering. “‘Curse of the…..’ This word. What is this?” She taps the oddity excitably.

Astarion doesn’t answer.

If anything, the little colour he has seems to drain from his face, leaving him ghostly pallid in the moonlight. His mouth quirks for a moment like he’s going to say something, jaw tightening, but he just stares at her in mute horror.

“Oh. Oh no. It is not profane, is it? I found it in a temple, it did not occur to me—”

“No. No, it’s nothing like that.” Astarion’s voice is soft, distant. His mind is somewhere else and she’s now certain she’s done something horribly wrong. “You don’t know what a vampire is?”

“I may? I do not know the word, I may know the thing. What is it in Elvish?”

“The same— there isn’t one, It’s…” he stops, thinking, resting his mouth against his knuckles. “A vampire” he begins carefully, “ is an undead creature that drinks blood.”

“Ah, yes!” She brightens. That description does spark something, something alluded to occasionally, but not often. He looks so uncomfortable. Was he afraid to scare her? Is he afraid? “We say qu'lithplynn in Drow. Blood-thief. Is this what you mean? With the sharp stick?” She mimes stabbing something and he laughs, a high, tight sound.

“Hm. Yes. Yes, that.” Astarion clears his throat, regains his composure in an instant, and that easy smile is back. “Tell you what, why don’t you give that to me? I can trade you…. Hmm,” He glances down at the book in his hands, its cover bright red and well-worn. “Journey Through the Jungle,” he reads. “Honestly, I’m getting the impression this is more suited for children, so not a bad read for someone’s… third? Language.”

“Fourth, if you consider Undercommon as distinct from Drow,” she sighs. “This is the only one that uses Thorass.”

“Nine sweet Hells, no wonder.” He plucks the first book from her grasp and deftly presses the new one into her hands. “I’ll take a look at this, maybe jot some elvish beside anything unusual.”

“Thank you!” Triel takes the book, drops her arms when she catches herself hugging it to her chest. “Thank you,” she repeats more calmly when she’s reigned in the mortifying warm feeling in her chest. You’re dying, she reminds herself, and that does it, a splash of cold water to her skipping heart. She needs only to think about it and she can feel the thing writhing in her brain; her stomach roils.

Much better.

It’s ridiculous, but focusing on this one little glimmer of… of humour, or warmth, or whatever it is, is so tempting in the chaos and terror of everything else, desperate to latch on to anything she can as if to keep from drowning.

Triel’dra knows better.

She bids him goodnight, and retreats to her tent, closing the doorway, pack still just inside, and curling up in the small space to let herself drift into that misty, in-between place of reverie. In her mind she recites familiar prayers, verse after verse to each of the Seldarine until the thoughts stop deep in her trance.

It takes far longer than it should.

[Next]

#astarion x tav #my tav #Triel tav #Triel'dra Helvimtor #AG writes things #bg3 #bg3 tav

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strawbattyshortcake · 10 months ago

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WIP Wednesday 7/31

He tries not to watch too conspicuously over the bottle raised to his lips, not to look too keen. It’s the jealousy of a dog with a bone. Something he wants, someone threatening to take it away. But if she’s noticed Halsin’s naked intent, it doesn’t seem to be affecting her— at least not the way that his had. He has her right where he wants her. He has nothing to worry about. Astarion releases a breath he doesn’t need, feels the tension drain from his shoulders as she finally drifts away from Halsin, and there’s nowhere to go but to him. She creeps towards his tent, hesitant, pauses a respectable distance away and idles like she means to be there. Like she’s waiting for him to chase her away. “Do you need an invitation, darling? I know the feeling.”

#wip wednesday #Didn't have anything for this week's word game #Astarion x tav #tavstarion #WIP: A little death #Triel'dra Helvimtor #triel tav #astar'dra #moon and stars #Triel and bear dad

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strawbattyshortcake · 1 year ago

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Six Sentence Sunday 4/28

Acting, subterfuge, these things didn’t come naturally to Triel, but with a bit of encouragement she’d tried. The goblins were none too swift, not sharp enough to catch the way she winced every time one called her mistress, the hard swallow before she issued a command, the bile she bit back whenever she played in to their view of her as some depraved torturer and pointed her straight to their prisoners, too stupid to notice the loathing in her eyes was for them. Deception may not be her forte, but stealth was. She was content to breeze past them, let them go about their horrible business— the roasted dwarf had given her pause, but she’d controlled herself, let them be, and kept on her way. She’d been perfectly content to lure the goblin priestess away to dispatch her quietly. Which is why it should probably have struck Astarion as odd when she’d reacted as she did to the halfling.

#WIP A Little Death #Six Sentence Sunday #astarion x tav #bg3 #bg3 tav #triel tav #triel'dra helvimtor #astarion ancunin #astar'dra

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strawbattyshortcake · 1 year ago

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Corpses on Ice

Read on AO3 Can't Help Where I Come From (2/2) Words: 3,537 Summary: Try as he might, Astarion just can't get away from his family. Triel'dra does what she can to help. A restless night at the Last Light Inn, an unwelcome reunion at the Elfsong Tavern (Astarion x Tav, Acts 2 & 3)

<- Chapter 1: Shakes in the Night

It’s just as the last wisp of black smoke dissipates that Karlach thunders in, sizzling mad, with nothing but her smallclothes and a battleaxe raised over her head.

“Wha’s happening? Where are they?” She’s still blinking sleep from her wild eyes as she takes in the Elfsong’s overturned furniture and splatters of blood, ready to cleave whatever threat’s roused her in two.

“They’re gone, Karlach,” Shadowheart yawns. The cleric is spent, woken abruptly after a long day of searching for Jaheira’s friend, hunting for clown chunks, and fighting (doppelgangers, redcaps… crabs. So many crabs). They’re all exhausted, the party that had ventured away from the inn’s magic all but run dry when the fight had begun. “Astarion’s siblings just paid us a visit.”

“Oh,” the tiefling relaxes, a visible cloud of steam sighing off her vented shoulders as she lowers her weapon, seeming at once concerned for a friend and disappointed to have missed a fight as she looks Astarion over from across the room. “You ok, Fangs?”

He isn’t. Or, at least, he doesn’t seem to be, not from where Triel’dra is standing. He hums something affirmative, distracted, but her surface-elf’s brow is creased, mouth tight as he watches a dim glow sputter at her fingertips where the last dregs of her magic fail to close the ragged punctures torn into her shoulder. That seems to be when Karlach notices them, too.

“Oh, fuck, Soldier!”

“I am fine. It is nothing a rest won’t fix.” The carpets are another story. She hopes Gale has some means to magic all this blood away, or the proprietors of the Elfsong are going to be very unhappy.

Triel abandons her failing reserves of magic in favour of clamping down on the injury with her good hand. It’s not the injury— she’d barely felt it, and Astarion seems unimpaired, despite the ring that protects her. It’s the wounds themselves. They won’t stop bleeding, and her arm is numb from the shoulder down. They’re familiar feelings, but… more so. The same properties, weaponized rather than carefully mitigated.

Jaheira is stretching out stiff muscles, returning her attention to the supplies she’d overturned in her haste to grab her scimitars and leap into the fray. Her own natural magic was spent as well, though her blades were more than enough to fend off the intruding vampire spawn.

“Shit, you sure, Soldier?” Karlach’s molten eyes dart between the depleted spellcasters as she inventories their assets. “Hells, I’ll wake up the big guy, gimme a sec, yeah?”

If the wood-elf hasn’t already woken, he’s dreaming, and if he’s dreaming he’s visiting with Thaniel and Oliver.

“It’s fine, Karlach, let Halsin rest. A potion will take care of this; I have plenty.” She smiles at her friend, grateful, trying to appreciate the concern for what it is. Her usual course of action would be to sleep off anything less than life-threatening, but…. As Triel looks around the room, it’s all tired faces and worry over the blood seeping from between her fingers. She’s learning. Taking care of herself isn’t selfish; it’s for them.

She would expect Astarion to be pleased with her concession, but when she looks up to search his eyes they’re unreadable. He’s smiling, his voice too high and bright as he ever so carefully sets a hand on her waist and shepherds her towards the washtub in the corner.

It’s not just her arm, now. Her head’s gone foggy.

He’s making a joke, the performative kind he doesn’t mean. She can tell from the cadence even if the Common is slipping by her, something lascivious between him and Shadowheart as she hands him a corked bottle, something about clothes and privacy.

Oh. Yes, privacy.

The tub is empty, but there’s a wooden folding screen, a stool, a basin of fresh water. Somewhere they can be away from prying eyes, and she can’t stop bleeding. She’d offered him a feeding that evening, and he hadn’t gotten to it yet when his siblings had arrived.

“What a mess,” Astarion says, his smile a bit too tight, voice clipped, as he sits her on the stool. “Well, at least you’ve met my family, now.” He pulls the folding screen across the floor to hide them from the others. She can hear movement down the hall, creaking floorboards and muffled voices. She can just make out Karlach trying to get everyone up to speed.

Yeah, it’s over, but uh, shit, we’ve had company.

“May I?” Astarion draws back her hazy focus, looking at her meaningfully and she nods, go ahead. He takes careful hold of the fabric of her shirt and sets to gingerly peeling the blood-soaked fabric from her skin.

This should hurt. It just feels cold, like the first time Astarion had fed on her.

Her shirt falls to the ground with a damp thud.

“I can fix that,” he assures her, that too-bright edge still in his voice. “Would you believe I’m remarkably good at getting out bloodstains? That it looks like you’ve been chewed on by a rabid animal will take a bit more work, but nothing a little darning won’t solve.”

It’s not the first time Astarion’s deft fingers have helped her out of her clothes. This is different. The whole situation is different, but still a part of her worries that he minds, searches for any hint of discomfort. If he cares that her top is off he makes no sign of it, singularly focused on the two tears still seeping blood down her arm.

Perhaps it’s just whatever it is in a vampire’s bite that makes her go numb and untethered, but Triel’dra just feels… comfortable. The cold is spreading, from a leaded pins-and-needles feeling to a deeper chill, the feverish kind left by potent necromancy. It should be unnerving; she feels wrong, but Astarion has her, and so everything is alright. She lets her head fall back against the wall and waits, arm proffered, for him to drink his fill.

He’s been talking all the while, she realises as her mind drifts, like slipping into a sickly reverie. He’s switched to Elvish for her, easier to follow than Common, at least slightly more private as long as neither Halsin or Shadowheart is eavesdropping.

“—and honestly, darling, for all I know he just had a sewer rat in his mouth, let alone all these torn threads shoved in. You’re mortal, you have to worry about this sort of thing if you can’t just burn it all away with holy whatever—”

He’s not feeding yet.

Astarion has taken off his jacket and set it, folded neatly, to one side. He rolls up his sleeves— all splattered with her blood, she notes with a pang, that looks like nice fabric and she can just hear her brother lamenting it— Gods, she misses Rhyl’fein, she misses all of them—

Astarion kneels beside the stool, and Triel’dra nudges her shoulder at him, prompting. Careful hands take the injured limb, but it’s not the press of his lips she feels but the cool damp of a wet cloth.

Oh.

“You are not hungry?”

Astarion raises his eyebrows as he wrings out the bloodied cloth in the basin. “Loathed as I am to turn you down, my sweet, I think you’ve had enough for one night.”

She tries to smile at him. Her teeth are chattering. “I am already going to be woozy in the morning. You might as well.”

“Darling, if I take any more you won’t get up in the morning.”

That crease is back between his eyebrows as he works at her wounds, carefully fishing bits of her sleeve from the torn flesh. Astarion is troubled. Of course he is.

“I know they are not your siblings as mine are, and I am not overfond of people who steal into camp at night to take you away.” A flicker of red eyes, a muscle works in his jaw. “But still… They are also victims of Cazador’s. if you complete this ritual, they will all die.”

She doesn’t know them, can’t pretend to understand any of his life before the nautiloid. An uneasy feeling stirs in her chest whenever he mentions this rite, at the wicked gleam it puts into his eyes. She’s made her feelings known. It isn’t her place to interfere, and she had kept quiet as he misled the other doomed spawn, but it seems worthy of a deeper discussion, now.

His mouth twitches, a momentary grimace of displeasure, but Astarion sighs. It seems he was anticipating this, and not looking forward to it.

“Trust me, darling. What they have isn’t living, and Cazador will never free them, whatever he says. I’m the only one with a chance, and I mean to take it.” He wrings the cloth out again. “And besides, there’s only six of them…. Hardly a drop in the bloodbath of our body count—” a humourless little smirk tugs at his lips, close to a snarl. “And I have to kill Leon now anyway, so really it’s only five.”

“Which one is Leon?”

Astarion looks up from his work, from so carefully tending her wounds: two semicircles of torn flesh between her clavicle and shoulder, the flow of blood from the two deepest punctures finally beginning to ebb. “The one who bit you.”

Ah. The one with the long dark hair. He’d lunged for her neck, his eyes black and vacant, and though she’d managed to twist away in time to save her throat, he’d latched on to her so tightly even his blunt human teeth had broken skin. She hadn’t been able to shake him free, not until Astarion had come at him with a sword in each hand and he’d been forced to retreat. Or evaporate. Been summoned? However it was they had fled back to Cazador.

“I don’t relish the thought that one of my siblings is still out there with a taste for you. If he thinks he can come back for seconds— shit! Shit, sorry, darling,” Astarion’s brow is furrowed, fury seeping into his voice, but it vanishes abruptly when he finally gets a hold on a deeply embedded scrap of her shirt and she winces as he lifts it free. He dabs gently at the last of the blood seeping from the now clear wound, an apology. Triel is so tired, and she leans into the care of his touch. His hands are careful but his jaw is tight. “He won’t have had blood like yours before, and who knows if he’ll be able to control himself. They are only vampire spawn.”

She frowns at that, fights heavy eyelids to meet his ruby gaze. “I happen to…” Triel’dra takes a breath, the word dies on her lips. She’s dizzy. Gently, Triel. Slowly. He needs to take things slowly. “I happen to care very deeply for a vampire spawn, thank you very much.” His face is unreadable, her heart does a nervous flip. “Astarion, we could help them—”

“Why?” he snaps, with an audible click of sharp teeth. “No one ever looked out for me. No one ever had a kind thing to say to me.”

She startles at how quickly the response comes. A thought, a rumination, fully formed, sitting and stewing and long desperate to leap free.

Triel was born in The Year of Shadows; she is one hundred and thirty-four.

Two hundred years. Her entire lifetime and then some, suffering. She feels her stomach churn whenever she thinks of it, imagining every second of her life in torment, drawing on the things he's told her and the depths of Menzoberranzan cruelty passed down in stories by her elders. Imagining Astarion, alone and afraid, battered and used, his mind and body someone else’s plaything.

Triel’dra swallows the lump in her throat. They’re his tears, his pain. She has no right to them.

The rage in Astarion’s eyes fades as quickly as it came. He blinks it away, his expression softening as he looks down at her, then seems to remember what he was doing. “You’re the only one,” he admits, softly, before taking the potion bottle and uncorking it with his teeth, presses it into her good hand, encourages it to her lips. “Other people don’t have a heart like you. You’re— drink up, Moonflower, there you are— you’re… you.” He gestures helplessly and looks at her with a familiar kind of desperation as words fail him, not quite managing to convey whatever it is in his mind. He takes another breath, just to steady himself. “No one is like that,” he insists.

Blessed Elistraee, how she wants to take him home with her. To take his hand and introduce him to her people, to her family. Her parents, who she’s sure would welcome him as one of their own once they know he’s safe, once they know what this lost child of the Seldarine has endured. Ardulune who is kinder and gentler than she could ever be will love him at once. Her little nieces, who will love his wit and flair for troublemaking…. her brothers, who will come around in time, she’s sure.

She won’t bring it up again. It’s not what he wants. He wants the surface, this city, the sun— but her heart aches to bring him to her enclave where he would be safe. “I am not special, Astarion,” she says instead, laying her head on his shoulder. “There are so many good people in the world. Look how many we’ve brought with us. They all care for you.” She looks towards the folding screen, to the rest of the suite hidden beyond it. “I am sorry you have been alone for so long. I know it does not undo the past, but we are all here for you, now. One way or another, however things end….” She cranes her neck to look up as best she can resting against him like this. “If there is still a world when this is through, you will have a home in it. I swear to you.”

Astarion is quiet for a worrying moment. His jaw works at words that don’t come, his throat bobs. Finally he shakes his head, and gently extricates himself from her embrace. She’s only dimly aware of the pathetic little sound she makes in complaint. “Right, then, darling. Let’s get you back to bed.”

Triel looks down at herself. The blood has been cleaned away, the wounds closed and fading. They’ll be little more than a memory by daybreak.

“Can’t put you back in that.” He’s folding his jacket over his arm, businesslike, as he gracefully slips past the wooden partition. “Which do you want?”

He’s gone by the time she realises what he’s asking.

“The grey one—?”

“Got it.” She hears in reply from the other side. He knows where her pack is, where she keeps things, and returns a moment later with a clean shirt.

She pulls it on. The linen is warm against her skin, but does nothing for the chill inside. She’s dizzy as she stands, but finds a solid body ready when she instinctively reaches out. Astarion is at her side, steady. He keeps his arm around her long after she needs it.

There’s a quiet cheer from her companions at the other side of the room when she emerges, and she smiles at them. Jaheira nods at her from her perch, cross legged on her bed. Shadowheart is already fast asleep.

“Ah, Darling?” Astarion stops her when she pulls away towards her own bunk. “Stay with me tonight, won’t you?”

She nods, all too happy to be led to his corner of the room.

They haven’t shared a bed since making their camp in this inn. The tent was cozy, private. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he was feeding on her at night, that they spent their rest curled up together, but it was another thing to do out in the open for the rest of the party to see.

There’ll be wolf whistles and wry jokes in the morning.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

“In case they come back?” She asks, and Astarion nods, his grip on her waist a bit tighter.

“Yes, my sweet. Precisely.”

Astarion sits her on the edge of his bed, draping a pile of sheets over her shoulders as he goes about gathering his weapons from where they’re abandoned across the floor, stops before retrieving the Phalar Aluve for her.

“This thing isn’t going to…. Oh, I don’t know, smite me if I pick it up, is it?”

She shakes her head fondly and he slides it across the floor with a careful tap of his foot until it’s within a comfortable distance. She knows how he feels about the gods, probably doesn’t want to hear again how Elistraee would love him, drow or not.

“Asta?”

“Hm?” He’s arranged his armaments to his satisfaction and has moved to his clothing. He doesn’t look up as he rifles through his pack for a shirt not covered in blood.

Shadowheart is asleep, as is Jaheira, seemingly, though it’s difficult to tell with the spymaster. She keeps her voice low just the same.

“He is wrong about you, you know. Leon.”

Astarion freezes, impossibly still, as only one who doesn’t need to breathe can be. Through the feverish haze Triel is afraid she’s made a mistake, but he needs to hear it. She can’t bear to let him think she agreed.

“Petras complained about eating dogs; you were given rats.” Nothing but a flicker of glowing red eyes. “He starved you, kept your siblings better fed.”

Finally a movement, his shoulders heaving as he draws in a breath to sigh. “Yes, darling, thank you for reminding me. We’ve established that I was Cazador’s favourite chew toy.”

Triel shakes her head. “He kept you weaker. You were harder to control.”

“That—” he bites off whatever he was about to say with an audible snap of his teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I—” he turns to her fully, and the agony in his eyes makes her heart drop into the icy pit of her stomach.

“Don’t make me out to be something I’m not. I disobeyed Cazador once,” he says, voice trembling until it breaks and comes out as less than a whisper, the shape of a word. “Once.”

Once, Triel would bet her life, was more than any of the others. More, from her understanding, than should have been possible.

She hadn’t meant to hurt him like this. She’d been trying to bolster his resolve, not dredge up the things that haunted him at night. “I am sorry,” she says, shrugging the blankets off her shoulders, and trying to get back to wobbly feet to slink back to her own bed.

Astarion instead forgets his search for a new shirt and simply tosses the bloodied one aside, stopping her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Stay.”

It’s a question, not an order, a fragile plea.

“Always, if you will have me.”

She likes the beds at the Elfsong, likes the walls she can curl up against to feel secure and hidden as she rests. She waits for him to get in first, snug against the bed’s sides, and she slips beneath the sheets after, placing herself between Astarion and anything that may come for him in the night.

Triel’dra feels herself sinking the moment she lays down, her eyelids heavy. She could fight like this, if she had to, she’s certain. She tries to stand again just to prove she can, but instead lets out a muffled groan in complaint as Astarion bundles her in a blanket to protect her from the chill of his body, and pulls her into his arms.

No! She wants to say something, but all she can manage is a petulant wiggle. She can’t get up like this, not quickly.

Oh, but it’s warm. It’s warm, and soft, and he’s holding her.

Triel is so cold, and so tired. This is a losing battle and she’s already drifting. She can’t open her eyes, can’t speak, but she can pray as she slips away, as she feels him settle behind her.

Lady of dreams, watch over us as I sleep.

Dark Maiden, protect him from those who would enslave him again.

She’s long past the point of no return when he whispers against her ear, so deep she can’t pull herself back, but just awake enough to hear him.

“I’m not selling my soul for calamari and sunshine. I’m doing this for you too, you know. To make sure we’re both safe.”

She won’t remember this in the morning, and she can’t answer. Can’t tell him that she wants him safe, but more than that she wants him himself. That she’ll protect him to her dying breath, just as he is.

That she loves him, just as he is.

“Forever,” he says against the shell of her ear. His breath hitches, again, but still his voice is set with grim determination. “For good.”

Triel’dra can’t remember her dreams that night, but she wakes with an ache she can’t explain in her heart and tears staining her pillow.

#astarion x drow tav #astarion x tav #tavstarion #bg3 tav #ranger tav #AG Writes things #Triel'dra Helvimtor #Triel tav #Astar'dra #BG3 Act 3 #border from saradika #Astarion makes Bad Life Choices but like for Love this time #Titles from Amanda Palmer’s “runs in the family”#Astarion's siblings #Astarion's family drama #Astarion has Scary Dog priviledge #It's Triel. Triel is the scary dog #I'm assuming the bloodsapped status ailment would make you feel like ABSOLUTE GARBAGE #like her hitpoint max is down mechanically

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