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strawbattyshortcake · 5 months

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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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