#astar'dra

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Astar'dra:

Astarion: Right, now to maintain this seduction and manipulate her feelings so she'll never betray me.

Triel, like day three:

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Six sentence sunday 6/30

"Though…” Astarion chuckled to himself, darkly, noticing where her eyes kept darting. It was only upon following the nervous line of her gaze that he noted the spindly legs sprouting from the skull over his sternum. “Never did try this Spider Queen. Anyone who inspires that kind of terror must have some power worth petitioning.” Beside him, Triel stopped, stock still. Even beneath the leather armour, he could see the rigid tension in the drow's shoulders. “If Lolth answered the prayers of slaves,” she said softly, not looking at him, “Menzobarrozan would fall in a day.” Astarion’s stomach lurched, his body bracing like he’d been struck.

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Screaming, crying, throwing up, etc, etc ;w; aaHHHHHH

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Such a handsome couple <3

Triel's got her game face on and Astarion is like "Shit, we're helping people again, aren't we?"

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Astarion: Hello, beautiful~

cuts to my Tav:

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Got to THAT scene. She's so happy look at her face ahHHH (she loves him so much. Completely smitten)

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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?

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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.” 

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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. 

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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.

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S O F T

Welp, time to meet the in-laws.

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Shakes in the Night

Read on AO3 Can't Help Where I Come From (1/2) Words: 2,923 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 2: Corpses on Ice ->

No, no not again. 

Astarion grits his teeth against the pain, somehow just as real as the night it had happened. 

He knows, beneath the memory playing out behind his eyelids, that this is not real. He is in a bed at the Last Light Inn, his travelling companions around him for one last night in relative comfort before setting out on the road for Baldur’s Gate. 

They killed a demigod today, he’d say they deserve it. 

But no, he can never rest, can he? The shadows are always calling, Cazador always waiting in the recesses of his mind, needle in hand. He feels each cut,  can hear the condescending tuts whenever a spasm of pain overcame him, and Cazador had to begin an alleged stanza anew. 

He knows better now, knows what it is. The infernal runes fill him with a sense of revulsion and hope all at once.  It’s valuable, something Cazador needs, and that’s leverage— but he remembers what the devil had said about hope, and that his master’s claim on him goes as deep as his soul makes his skin crawl. 

A groan slips free as the echo of Cazador’s knife carves another shape he was never going to be able to read into his shoulder. 

A sound catches him, something real, and drags him from his poisoned reverie. He can feel it waiting for him, as it always does. The moment he lets himself drift, Cazador will pick up where he left off, ready with more patronising chastisements for failing to keep still. 

There it is again. A floorboard creaks, once, then again. Someone trying not to sneak up on him, and he knows even before he hears her voice that it’s Triel’dra. 

“Astarion?” she creeps up carefully, mindful of stabbing distance lest she startle him. 

He mumbles something to acknowledge her. 

“You were… thrashing, again.” 

He rolls over and is greeted by her mismatched eyes, the one she was born with gleaming in the dark, bright as a cat’s. 

“It was…?” She cocks her head, gestures over her shoulder. 

He mumbles an assenting sound. “No helping it, I’m afraid. I could get up, read, sew, doesn’t matter. As soon as I go back to my trance, it will continue. Best to just let it play out and be done with it.” 

The bright-eyed shadow sways, almost playfully. “Are you hungry?”

Astarion raises an eyebrow. “A pity feeding? Really?”

There’s a breathy sound as she laughs, and sits down where he shifts to make room for her. “Kethric’s revenants were inedible. You must be starving.” 

“We’re going to be on the road all day tomorrow.” 

“Exactly. I am very good at travelling long distances. You have been very vocal about your opinions on walking.” 

“Cheeky little—”  Astarion can’t keep the grin from his face as he pounces. It’s a well practised movement that sweeps her into bed, pinned beneath him, but it feels different. 

She’s beautiful in the darkness, this being of shadow and moonlight smiling up at him in a way he still can’t believe is real. 

He kisses her. 

Triel’dra’s arms drape over his shoulders as she returns the kiss. She enjoys this, and it’s… sweet. Gentle and unhurried and never more than what it is, never leading anywhere. Never a prelude to more. 

She kisses him on the cheek almost absently as they sit together, pulls him aside to drink the blood splattered across her face after a battle. Frantic, desperate kisses as she heals him when he’s downed. She always pauses a moment— a question, a chance to refuse. 

He’s still waiting for her to come to her senses. 

She offers him her throat, instead. 

This is its own kind of seduction, he supposes, but it never stirs up those same feelings, the revulsion and shame, losing himself as he slips into habit. He doesn’t have a script for this, never did this with any of his victims. 

This is new; this is theirs.  

Astarion kisses his way down her jaw, along her neck as she lays her head back to offer it to him, sighing, breath hitching at his attention. He has this down to an art: where to bite and as gently as possible, how much he can take, when to stop so the wound will close well. They have to be quiet not to wake the others, so she swallows a gasp as he breaks the skin, her fingers through his hair. 

It truly is a gift. Something she gives freely, because she cares for him, impossible as it seems. She shares her strength, her warmth, her life, and he endeavours to make it as sweet as he can, in return. Something intimate they share, not just to spite the phantom Cazador that lives inside him, to prove that he can.  

Astarion breaks away, careful of the wounds on her neck, careful to let them stabilise before he laps up the drops left behind. “My sweet, sweet little love,” he whispers, breathless, feeling practically alive, pulling back to look at her, to stroke her silver hair. She looks up at him fondly, heavy eyelids fluttering. He takes just enough to sate himself,  but that’s still enough to exhaust her. “Thank you.” 

Triel rolls over to make room for him beside her, and curled up on his chest they just fit together in the single bed. That’s the other way feeding is like sex: she likes to be held afterwards, clinging like a little bat, and he’s happy enough to let her. It’s the least he can do. 

She’ll go back to her own bed, soon enough, before the others wake. But for now, Triel’dra’s head rests where his still heart must be, the slow rise and fall of her chest lulling him back to his reverie. 

Where Cazador and his needle are waiting. 

He wants to scream. Wants to scream, and gnash his teeth, and spit curses, but he can’t because he didn’t. He trembled, and sobbed and whimpered, and he’d be lying if he said it was just the memory of the fear he’s feeling. It’s still there, same as it ever was. 

“Asta!”

Triel’dra is calling him, her voice hushed but urgent. He’s aware of her in his reverie, of both the past and the present, of Cazador’s disdain in one ear and Triel’s concern in the other. She’s shaking him, gently. 

Loathed as he is, he focuses on Cazador, fights to grit his teeth and get the ordeal over with. He’s congratulating himself on his prose now, the lying bastard. 

“Astarion, wake up!” 

There’s nothing else in the room, no rushed panic as people clamber for arms, no screaming. He thinks he can dimly hear Karlach snoring in the distance; nothing is amiss.  Still, Triel’dra is so persistent, he opens his eyes. He groans, the phantom pain receding. “Hmm. Yes, darling?” 

“It just keeps going?” She hovers above him, propped on her elbow, precariously close to the edge of the bed. “I have had an idea. May I see your back?”

“No!” He startles himself with that. It comes out reflexively, before thought, and something within him recoils, centuries of hardwon lessons telling him: yes, always yes. 

But Triel’dra’s expression doesn’t change, save perhaps an apologetic dip of her eyebrows. “Of course,” she whispers, no less warmth in her voice than before.  “I am sorry to have woken you.” And with that, she carefully shimmies back down into the sheets, adjusts herself to snuggle back around him. 

That instinctual knot in his chest loosens. Of course, he knows Triel’dra would never force him to do anything. But knowing and believing are different, and it’s only after realising he truly can say no that he begins to contemplate a maybe. 

“Why?”

“The marks on your back. They are essentially a wheel and spoke pattern. I think, perhaps… Could I show you? May I touch?”

Hesitantly, Astarion shifts aside, turns over so his scars are towards her. He trusts her, but he’s taught as a bowstring, the word stop ready on his lips. 

Warm hands rutch his shirt up towards his shoulders, and ever so gently, she traces a line, feather light, across a long line from one side of the pattern to the other. 

“She lays a bridge thread, first…” Triel’dra’s voice is soft and melodic. “Then she puts down anchor lines…” Triel traces what must be long lines of scar tissue, he remembers three that stretch towards the small of his back. Astarion shivers, and she pauses. 

“Go on.” He says. He’s reminding himself to breathe, something fearful flutters in his ribcage, but he doesn’t want her to stop. 

It’s when she begins to spiral between the spokes, laying traces of her fingers over the runes, that he realises what she’s drawing. 

“What is it with you and spiders?” He manages a weak laugh, hoping it hides the tremor. 

“The Spider Queen,” Triel begins, and he can just imagine the look of distaste she makes. “Is a tyrant who demands cruelty and betrayal of her followers and the antithesis of all that is good and holy. Spiders are fascinating creatures. Actual spiders, mind you, not Lolth’s monstrosities.” 

She’s mentioned the distinction before. Astarion isn’t sure where that line is, only that she has strong feelings about it and he isn’t going to argue with a drow about Spiders. 

She begins to trace the same pattern, back again the way she came. It tickles, gently, and as she goes his breath comes easier beneath her hands, though he’s trying to ignore the hot sensation prickingling at the corners of his eyes. 

He’s intimately familiar with pain and humiliation. Tenderness is still overwhelming. 

“This is what I imagine when I trance,” she continues, dreamily, lulling herself along with him. “A spider building her web, strand by strand. And then she eats it and starts again. Over, and over… Dextrous and beautiful and clever, with their thread,” she trails off almost shyly, and then, so softly he nearly misses it, she says, “like you.”  

Astarion’s heart is purely ornamental, but something in his chest swells and catches in his throat and it shows in his voice. “Why are you doing this?” 

“I thought it might help? To have something tangible to focus on.” 

That’s not what he was asking. 

What are you getting from this? 

“It does,” he says instead, and pleased, she continues, encouraging him back into his reverie. 

Fear and helplessness still turn his stomach. It still burns as Cazador slices the shapes into his flesh, the panicked instinct is still there, to run, to get away, maddening as he’s held in place by terror and compulsion. But the pain is tempered. Beneath it, alongside the agony, he feels Triel’s fingertips, warm and gentle, and realer than the knife. As his master hacks ugly deals with the hells into his skin, he imagines instead the delicate orbweaver lace. 

Along with the horror there’s another feeling that’s hard to name. 

Cazador’s pretentious diatribe continues, but Astarion isn’t listening. Triel is humming under her breath, that same hymn she likes, the one to her drow goddess of freedom, and moonlight, and love. 

There’s a lump in his throat and tears on his cheeks, but he’s not sure if it’s in spite of her help or because of it, not sure which is harder to endure. Suffering is at least familiar. Either way, it’s… it’s different. Evidence that things can be changed, that the lurking ghost of Cazador in his mind is not all-powerful. 

Astarion isn’t sure how long it goes on, how long she sits with him, but at some point, the memory must fade or conclude because there is, at last, sweet restful nothing.  ***

Something is wrong. 

Astarion rolls over, reaching for where Triel should be, curled beside him in the nest of blankets and pillows they’ve made on the tent floor. She sleeps more soundly than he trances; it’s near-impossible for her to leave without him knowing. 

The camp is quiet, the tent dark, the rush of the Chionthar soft in the distance. 

The vampire furrows his brow, rubs at his eyes, and gets to his feet, pushing aside the flap of his tent to peer out into the campsite. 

Astarion freezes. Icy cold floods his veins as the warmth of Triel’s blood drains away, his stomach plummeting. 

Cazador Szarr stands between him and the dying campfire. Astarion doesn’t need to count to know that there are six pairs of red eyes gleaming in the darkness behind him. 

Triel’dra’s body hangs limply where Cazador clutches her neck, eyes dull, blood long since still where it’s poured from her open throat. 

The dagger she keeps under her pillow is stuck where it fell in the blood-soaked dirt. 

“There you are, my lost son.” He smiles in a way that promises retribution. “All is set right. The under-elf won’t keep you from your family any longer.” With that, he tosses Triel’dra’s lifeless form aside, easily as a child’s toy, and his siblings descend upon it like a pack of starving wolves. 

Astarion wants to scream, wants to run. Wants to lunge at Cazador or wrest what’s left of Triel from his siblings’ jaws, but he’s rooted to the spot, eyes wide, voice gone, even as Cazador strides closer. 

Revulsion fills him but he can’t flinch away as his master reaches forward to lay a claiming hand upon his cheek, to fist his hand in Astarion’s hair and drag his face up to look at him, red eyes sharp as his teeth and filled with indignant rage. “Come along, boy. Time to go home.” 

*** 

Astarion awakes with a jolt, eyes wide, sheets plastered to his cooling body with cold sweat when he moves. He reaches frantically to the other side of the bed, and feels his stomach turn when they find nothing but empty mattress beside him. 

Finally, panting for air he doesn’t need, he wakes fully, and takes in his surroundings. The Last Light Inn is still dark and quiet, moonlight pooled across the dingey floors where windows and holes in the ceiling let it through. 

The bed beside him is empty, but there’s a lump at his feet that stretches and pads towards him. Evidently, Triel had left her familiar on biscuit duty, because Erelae slinks over once he’s stopped flailing and climbs on to his lap to purr and knead at his stomach with her paws. 

Triel is safe. Triel must be safe, because if something had happened to her, the cat wouldn’t be here. Also, because of course she’s fine, it was a stupid dream. He’s not even supposed to have those. All of a sudden he sleeps, like a child who hasn’t learned how to quiet their mind yet. 

Too much time connected to non-elves, he concludes. Or to Triel’dra. That she does this to herself voluntarily on a nightly basis is insane, and her useless Lady of Dreams has never once made it worth her while. 

He slumps back into bed with an irritable sigh, trying to ignore the persistent little fey creature nuzzling at him and purring. He raises a hand, absently, and the cat rams her little head against it, demanding scratches. 

This is ridiculous. He just needs to go back to his reverie. Triel is fine. It was nothing but a figment of his imagination. The room is undisturbed, everyone still asleep. He doesn’t need to check on her. 

He doesn’t. 

Astarion gets up, which pushes the cat aside with an indignant chirp, and gets to his feet, Erelae silent behind him as he sneaks over to the other beds. 

He finds her safe and sound asleep in a puddle of moonlight, surprisingly on top of her bed rather than under it. It had taken them a long time to convince her that she would be more comfortable that way, even if it did leave her out in the open. Her breaths are deep and slow, on her side beneath her cloak and one of the inn’s threadbare sheets.

The hilt of a dagger is poking out between the mattress and headboard, where she could grab it in a flash if need be. 

He smiles, despite the residual adrenalin flooding his system, a potent mix of fondness and terror that he’s beginning to find familiar. He wants to reach out, like he needs to make sure she’s real, but doesn't want to wake her. 

Her familiar has no such compunctions and the silver tabby leaps onto the bed.

Triel’dra stared down an avatar of Death today without flinching. Now, she opens her arms just enough for the cat to wriggle into her embrace, mumbling contentedly in her sleep as she snuggles her purring familiar close. 

Gods, this is what it is to care for someone, isn’t it? This tender agony, this fear. 

Still he sees two things, at once, the real and the phantasmal. Triel’dra sleeping peacefully in a warm bed, Triel’dra’s blood pooled in the dirt at Cazador’s feet while he can do nothing but watch. 

As lovely as it was to pretend, the thing slashed into his skin is not a spider’s web. They are, as they always were, the jagged mess of infernal runes. A piece of a contract with an archfiend, eternal and binding. 

He is going to make Cazador regret giving him something so powerful, and assuming he’d be too meek, to stupid to use it. 

Astarion has the means now, and he will never be helpless again. 

[Next]

[strawbattyshortcake]

WIP Wednesday

“The marks on your back. They are essentially a wheel and spoke pattern. I think, perhaps… Could I show you? May I touch?”

Hesitantly, Astarion shifts aside, turns over so his scars are towards her. He trusts her, but he’s taught as a bowstring, the word stop ready on his lips. 

Warm hands rutch his shirt up towards his shoulders, and ever so gently, she traces a line, feather light, between his shoulder blades. 

“She puts down a bridge thread, first…” Triel’dra’s voice is soft and melodic. “Then she lays anchor lines…” Triel traces what must be long lines of scar tissue, he remembers three that stretch towards the small of his back. Astarion shivers, and she pauses. 

“Go on,” he says. He’s reminding himself to breathe, something fearful flutters in his ribcage, but he doesn’t want her to stop. 

It’s when she begins to spiral between the spokes, laying traces of her fingers over the runes, that he realises what she’s drawing. 

“What is it with you and spiders?” He manages a weak laugh, hoping it hides the tremor.

[strawbattyshortcake]

Six Sentence Sunday 4/21

“He is wrong about you, you know. Leon.”  Astarion freezes. Impossibly still, as only one who doesn’t need to breathe can be, and through the feverish haze she’s 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.”

[strawbattyshortcake]

WIP Wednesday

“No one is like that,” Astarion 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 adore 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."

[strawbattyshortcake]

Six Sentence Sunday 04/14

Triel is small— average, or tall, even, for a drow, from what he’s heard, but she’s the smallest of the party by half a head and the pool of questionable cave water comes up to her mid-back. Even at this distance, Astatrion can see it’s as scarred and freckled as the rest of her. She pauses, wringing out her hair— wet and unbound it falls over her collarbones— and turns just enough to check over her shoulder, as if she’s felt his gaze on her.  Their eyes meet.  Astarion gives her a wink, and quick as a startled duck she vanishes beneath the surface.  He can’t help but chuckle to himself; he’d have taken that as standoffish, yesterday, before he’d felt her heart race beneath his teeth.