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abigailmoment · 11 months ago

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I had a great deal of fun working this second piece into the larger Staeve-verse.

Staeve belongs to @velnna. Other works referenced are by Aly_Writes, chaiiii, and deerna.

For a moment, after he woke up, Halsin thought he was alone. He had gone to sleep with an elf and a half lying on his chest. And that weight and warmth was gone.

Well. Not entirely.

Staeve was sprawled out, legs long, tail splayed. He stretched long enough to reach from Halsin's chin to his waist. The claws in his left paw were half extended and he flexed them in his sleep. Clawing at some dream.

Astarion was curled into a neat almost-circle. Made imperfect by the fact that his head jutted out slightly. His chin was resting on top of Staeve.

Halsin smiled. He gently moved Staeve's paw so that the prickling sharpness of it wasn't right against skin. That would be what had woken Halsin. Staeve responded to the change by folding his leg back close to his body, retracting the claw and becoming more compact. But he did not wake up. His ear twitched.

Halsin was going to have to get up soon. He had to tell everyone else that this had happened again so that they could account for it and make adjustments for how it was going to change the plans for the day.

But that didn't have to happen just yet. It could wait until at least one of the cats woke up.

Gale called it morphic recidivism. Halsin's practice of magic didn't have a particular term, just acknowledged that when a form particularly resonated with a soul, sometimes the soul would walk that path again even without the trigger of a spell. It certainly happened to Halsin often enough.

Halsin wasn't sure which one of the two afflicted was so fundamentally catlike that he could spontaneously re-trigger a spell as powerful as polymorph. Halsin had suspicions, but no certainty.

Regardless of the fundamental cause, the fact that they were entwined enough that it always happened simultaneously was deeply wonderful.

To Halsin, at least. It was deeply inconvenient to everyone else. But they all made do.

Wyll got out the map and considered where it would be best to adventure given that they didn't have any way of dealing with traps. He and Lae'zel poured over it.

"A trek through the wilderness, I think," he said. "Clearing a path nearer to Baldur's Gate?"

"If we travel further we will miss this ruin," Lae'zel said, pointing to a sketchy structure in a blot of blankness not yet explored. There was a diamond symbol on it to mark that it was suspected to be involved in one of their quests.

"We could scout around the ruin, but not go inside," Wyll suggested. "And scout the path forward, but only follow it tomorrow."

Lae'zel grunted contemplatively. Wyll glanced around to see if anyone else had thoughts.

But everyone else was fifteen feet away, sitting in front of Astarion's tent, watching Shadowheart play with the cats.

Lae'zel followed his gaze and then grunted derisively. She immediately went back to examining the map. Wyll sighed and resigned himself to doing something that he knew would not make him popular. He walked over to the group.

Shadowheart had snapped the fletching off of an arrow, tied it with twine to the end of the broken arrow, and was twitching it back and forth like a pendulum. Staeve was lying flat against the ground, paws forward, ears forward, tail twitching, following the movement with his eyes. But he wasn't moving apart from his tail. Just watching.

Gale and Astarion were observing this action, Gale with clear interest, Astarion with affected disinterest. The cat was perched on an elegant stool and grooming between his claws. Occasionally he paused to rake his claws through the upholstery of the stool.

Karlach was watching from a little further back, glancing from the play to Astarion and back again. Her hands were folded behind her back because Halsin had told everyone that this was very much an 'admire but don't touch' situation. Which he also asserted was generally good wisdom for most animals you weren't familiar with. And Karlach wanted to keep her hugging instincts responsibly in check.

"Go on," Shadowheart murmured to Staeve, who still wasn't taking the bait. "Catch it."

"May I make a suggestion?" Gale asked.

Shadowheart glanced suspiciously at him, but as he made no move to take her modified arrow away she begrudgingly said: "Sure."

"They will be more inclined to give chase if the object acts like prey," Gale said. "Don't move it so constantly. Move it a bit, and then be still, and then again. As if it were something injured, limping away."

Shadowheart started doing this. Twitching the fletching away from Staeve, a few inches at a time. Staeve immediately stood, rising from laying flat on the ground, up into a crouch. Karlach wasn't directly involved in this ongoing drama, so she was the first person to notice Wyll.

"Wyll!" she exclaimed, bouncing from foot to foot. "They're so tiny."

"They are that," Wyll admitted. "Lae'zel and I were wondering if we might see the three of you around the map at any time soon?"

"Ah," said Gale, attentive enough to overhear. "We have been remiss. And unlike the afflicted, we have no excuse."

"I have an excuse," Karlach said. "They're really tiny."

But both she and Gale walked back over to the map. Then Shadowheart exclaimed in utter delight, because Staeve had launched himself at the fletching, pinning it under two paws.

Shadowheart tried to pull it away so that he could chase it again. Staeve did not cooperate. He retained a dogged hold on it, hooking his claws into the feathers, tugging back as it tried to escape.

"I don't think that's how this is supposed to work," Shadowheart told him.

Staeve meowed at her.

"Shadowheart?" Wyll tried to interrupt.

"As far as I'm concerned, for the rest of today, the Absolute can have the world," she told Wyll, not looking up at him, speaking with an intense certainty she usually only used for talking about religion.

So they figured out where to adventure today without rogues or their cleric.

Shadowheart approved of most things that Staeve did. She doubly approved of the things that he did when he was a small tabby cat. And Halsin was fairly sure she had started being friendlier towards Astarion when he was an elf with the express ambition of someday being able to pet him while he was a cat.

She was obviously and wildly jealous of Gale, who despite putting absolutely no effort into it was a perennial favorite of both. This was because he was an unparalleled prodigy at petting cats and would automatically begin to do so when prompted by a forehead nudge regardless of what else he was doing.

The growing tension was mostly dispelled when Gale offered to explain his technique.

"Staeve's trying to get at the chocolate again," said Shadowheart.

"Thorns and briars," Halsin swore, and got up to stop him.

The chocolate was becoming a constant struggle between the two people at camp who were very good at spotting things and one of the cats at camp who was very good at not being spotted. Halsin had so far prevented Staeve from poisoning himself, but it had been a close thing one time.

The various precautions he and Shadowheart had devised were not proving effective. Staeve had opened two of the pouches that the chocolate was hidden inside of, and was working at the last one when Halsin scooped him up and away from the messy scene of crime.

"If you wait you can have that," he told the rogue. "But not as you are now."

Staeve meowed at him in a way that did not bode cooperation. Halsin carried him away.

"I think I know why he does it?" said Shadowheart.

"Yes?" Halsin prompted, walking over to her with an armful of disgruntled cat. Staeve was still squirming, but Halsin was seducing him into compliance by rubbing his forehead.

"It always happens after he's spent a while trying to get Astarion's attention, but Astarion is ignoring him," Shadowheart said, gesturing to Astarion, who was mostly ignoring her, but through slitted eyes watched the crinkly bit of string and parchment she was tugging about.

"Then Staeve disappears and we find him trying to get at the chocolate," Shadowheart concluded.

"Well. That's a cycle as inevitable as the seasons," Halsin sighed. "So we are going to have to get rid of those confections."

Astarion slept a great deal when he was a cat. So much that Halsin might have become concerned. Such things could be indicative of illness. But there was context to be considered.

The first instance of feline recidivism had occurred after Astarion had suffered a particularly sleepless night. So it made sense that Astarion, in a body that had no other responsibilities, had wanted to catch up on resting.

When Halsin reflected on it, he realized that almost every transformation occurred after a difficult night. Halsin been present for that first one. Helped with salve and oil and words. Woken up holding a pair of cat burglars.

Halsin had watched the second one from a distance. He had been sleeping in his own tent. But he had woken up near midnight in that way you did when you sensed something was not quite right.

He had seen Staeve outside, pacing. Back and forth in the flickering shadows at the edge of the campfire's light. Staeve had the attitude of someone who was out here, a place he didn't want to be, because if he was where he wanted to be he'd do something that he wasn't supposed to do.

Halsin had not been sure whether his own presence would help or interfere. Staeve had vanished back into Astarion's tent before Halsin could come to a decision. In the morning, they'd both been cats.

Even on nights that were not explicitly difficult, it was not unusual to see Astarion twitching in his sleep. Or making stifled sounds, briefly, before settling.

When Halsin slept as a bear, his dreams were completely different from those that crept into elven meditation. Slow and lumbering. Less about sight. More about shape and smell and taste. And in parallel, it seemed that certain nightmares did not to translate into this smaller mind. Astarion slept still and peaceful, as a cat.

And also anywhere he wanted. On scrollwork. In backpacks. Other inconvenient places.

"I need that to..." Gale began.

"Shh," said Shadowheart.

"I do need that to make dinner," Gale said quietly.

"Get a different pot," Shadowheart told him. She was barely paying attention to him. Sitting entranced by how Astarion had somehow condensed himself into a perfect white circle of fur precisely in the center of the larger circle of black iron. It was so strikingly aesthetic you might think it was deliberate visual choice.

"We only have one wok," Gale pointed out.

"I don't have any idea what that means," said Shadowheart, and when Gale was clearly about to explain she added: "And also I don't care."

Gale sighed. "Honestly he should move for his own sake. He can't conceivably be comfortable like that. The thing is made of metal."

"Halsin said don't touch him," Shadowheart said warningly.

"I don't need to touch him," Gale said, reaching for a handle on the side of the wok. "I can just tilt this to the..."

The sound that came from Gale's immediate left was like if broken rebar could growl. A rough and intemperate noise, that somehow managed to be both much too large for the size of the creature that had just produced it, and also delivered in a hushed way. Such that it wouldn't wake anyone up.

Shadowheart and Gale both started in surprise. Gale more so, as he had been scratching Staeve's forehead completely on autopilot. A reflexive response to when anything cat shaped came within a foot radius of him. He hadn't realized he'd been doing it, and stopped now, because of the intemperate growl.

"I think this may be a bread and cheese sort of a night?" Shadowheart said sweetly from his right.

"Tara was never this inconsiderate," Gale muttered.

The realization about the dreams led Halsin to other speculations.

Late one evening Halsin was searching the camp to make sure both cats were still present and not involving themselves in anything that might make them ill. He found Astarion curled up in his own tent, on top of a pile of books, nosing at an open one as if under the vague impression he should be doing something with it, but wasn't sure what. Certain kinds of intelligence did not translate between forms.

Halsin knelt to say hello and was permitted to stay a moment and stroke Astarion's head. He decided to take this as an opportunity to check something and set a theory to rest.

Halsin generally confined himself to petting Astarion's head and chin, as those seemed the safest points of contact. But now he carefully ran his fingers down the neck and around the curve of the cat's back. Astarion's tail twitched at the change, but he didn't seem disturbed by it.

Halsin trailed his fingers deep enough to check, but could feel no lumps or raised sections of skin. The skin under the fur was intact and smooth.

So that also didn't translate.

That was the point where Halsin became very certain in his private theory about which of the rogues was triggering the transformations, and which of them was following along after.

Astarion stood suddenly. Ears up. Whiskers twitching. Halsin immediately stopped petting him. Halsin glanced around to see what had caused the change.

Staeve had arrived at the entrance to the tent. His ears were up and forward. He wasn't quite coming inside. Just pausing at the flap to see what was going on.

Astarion jumped down from the stack of books and Staeve retreated a couple of steps at the sudden movement. But he didn't leave. Because Astarion was watching him intensely with bright, red eyes. And there was no shape in which Staeve would walk away from that kind of attention.

Staeve approached, cautious and circuitous. Astarion continued to watch him, sitting primly and still. His only motion was a slight movement of the head to track the other cat, and his tail which lashed back and forth. Staeve made his way close enough that there were only a few inches between them. Astarion chose that moment to lunge.

A flurry of movement and claws. A hiss and a yowl. At the end of it, Astarion was perched on top of Staeve. Staeve was on his back, arms and legs poised to lash back. Cats lying on their backs were not actually vulnerable things. But his claws weren't out, not even a little, and Astarion was standing with a paw on Staeve's stomach and looked completely unconcerned.

Astarion dipped down and put his teeth in the lighter gray fur on the underside of Staeve's neck. He didn't bite. Just held them there for a moment. Then he licked a stripe from Staeve's chest to his chin. Started grooming his neck and chest.

Staeve melted. An immediate translation from tense to almost boneless. His arms went down. He started purring, loud enough to be audible from across the room. Astarion pressed his face into Staeve's. Cats did that, of course. Nuzzled each other. But the way Astarion did it implied that he had expected their faces to have a different shape, and come together in a different way.

That kind of interference, that loss of connection with the animal, meant that this effect was on the cusp of ending. So there was about to be a lot less space in this tent. Halsin also suspected there were about to be activities into which he might be intruding. He got up as quietly as he could and shifted towards the tent flap.

Astarion meowed at him. It was a high, complaining noise. Distinctive, and notable because Halsin had never heard it before. Astarion was a very quiet cat.

Halsin hesitated. He examined the cats. Staeve was still on the ground, looking dazed and uncertain what was going to happen next, but also completely okay with that. Astarion was staring pointedly at Halsin.

Halsin moved again towards the entrance. Astarion complained again.

"Am I wanted?" Halsin asked, amused.

Astarion meowed, and then made a significant and not very catlike motion with his head, indicating the far corner of the tent.

Halsin moved to sit there instead. This was a lovely thing, really. Astarion was getting so much better at understanding and asking for what he desired. Halsin suspected that getting enough sleep was helping with that.

Astarion subsided back into grooming Staeve, who was sprawled on the floor now in absolute looseness. Halsin sat and watched them fondly and waited to see what he was wanted for.

This story on AO3.

Other BG3 stories.

It wasn't just bad luck that Staeve was targeted. It was a calculated attack. Halsin knew well enough how a caster could examine their enemies for tells. Halsin did it himself. Considered an opponent's tactics, and guessed at the places their mind would be most vulnerable.

You didn't have to be a gifted empath to watch how Staeve hurled himself into the thick of combat, right at the biggest bandit wielding the two-handed great sword, and think that the man might be vulnerable to a spell that exploited wisdom.

The fact that it took down Astarion too, well, perhaps that one was just bad luck.

It happened like this:

This is written about @velnna's Tav, Staeve. I was delighted to discover that they don't mind fan fiction being written about him.

I'm always cautious about writing for other people's OCs--getting voices right is so important to me. I have elegantly avoided that issue here.

Full text below.

Full Text On AO3

The fight was an incidental bit of banditry. Dangerous banditry, certainly. Bandits with great swords, supported by wizards. Halsin hung back with Gale while the two rogues dashed forward to give truth to the old adage that the best defense was killing the other fellow extremely quickly.

They cut down the man with the great sword and the woman with the mace and shield. Reinforcements were coming from around a rocky overhang. Halsin coaxed the earth to throw up entangling vines to slow them down. Gale drenched them with glimmering light that illuminated all their vulnerable points for Astarion and Staeve to shoot at.

Only the half-orc made it through the vines and the light. He was bloodied and wrathful. He was huge, but it was two against one, and the two were flanking with each other. It would have been an easy end to the combat, except that apparently there was a bandit wizard hidden somewhere in the trees who chose this moment to cast a spell.

One second Staeve was a blood spattered half-drow sprinting full-tilt, sword out, towards a fighter twice his size. And then he was gone.

And Astarion knew that so he should be running away. But he wasn't running away. He was darting forward and ducking low and almost getting hit by a greataxe as he snatched something off of the ground.

Some sort of teleportation? Banishment? Gale was saying something about trajectory and scanning the treeline. Halsin was yelling, he wasn't sure what, the concern was more important than the words. He started running forward. Because two rogues against a barbarian was fine, but one rogue against a barbarian was an extremely fast way for that rogue to die.

Then he was running, thank the Gods. There was something cradled in his arms, which meant he didn't have his rapier out as he scrambled back.

It was a cat. Halsin saw. They were ten feet away from each other when Halsin realized that Astarion was carrying a large, extremely upset tabby cat with grey-green fur.

That was when Astarion vanished. No. Not vanished. As the tabby tumbled to the ground, something small and white was already there, darting for cover.

Then the half-orc arrived. Bellowing and huge, at least when compared to cats. Not quite as huge when compared to Halsin.

Halsin decided to turn into a bear. It was amazing how many problems you could solve by turning into a bear.

"I am feeling my oversight in not preparing dispel magic today," said Gale. "Or counterspell."

"This is not a situation we could have anticipated," Halsin said.

Staeve contributed to the conversation, but because of present circumstances, it came out as a meow.

He was large for a cat. His fur was pale brown, tabby-striped with green. His stripes crisscrossed in a way that reminded Halsin of his tattoos. His scar was a fur-less groove in his face. He had the same pale green eyes as always. That color was quite appropriate in a cat.

He meowed again, more insistently this time.

"We will," Halsin assured him.

"You're speaking with him?" Gale asked.

"Not magically," Halsin said. It had been a long day and he had barely anything left to cast with. "But I think I understand him."

"Do you?"

"Think a moment and I am confident that you too will guess what he wants from us."

It did only take a moment. Gale was an intelligent man, when prompted. And they'd all seen the small white cat vanish into the woods during the bear-orc fight.

"Ah. Of course." Gale addressed the cat, voice reassuring. "Astarion should be relatively safe though. Polymorph is temporary and even if something did happen to him in the interim, he would just revert to his natural form."

Staeve's whiskers went back and his ears went flat in a thoroughly unimpressed way.

"I think it would be best to find him and make sure nothing happens," Halsin said with mellow diplomacy.

"Of course." Gale paused, then said delicately: "Given my skill in woodland matters, or lack thereof, I may best serve this cause by getting out of the way."

Halsin smiled. "It is a wise man who knows his limitations."

"I'll meet you all back at camp then?" said Gale.

"Take a potion of invisibility for the trip," Halsin suggested. "There might still be bandits about."

Staeve had gotten impatient with them, and was padding off into the forest. Halsin handed Gale the potion and hastened to follow.

Staeve scampered about the forest like he was looting the place. No hole, hollow log, wasp nest, or brown recluse spider-web was left uninvestigated. The loss of seventy five percent of his gray matter had done the man's already flagging survival instincts no favors. Halsin spent half of his attention looking for signs of a small white cat, and half of his time making sure Staeve's efforts at tracking didn't get him killed.

After being only a hairsbreadth quick enough to pull Staeve away from the entrance to a dire-badger-burrow Halsin decided that his partner was now going to be carried. Staeve made a meowling, writhing objection. He was terribly invested in the search. A compromise was reached when he was offered a perch high on Halsin's broad shoulders. Staeve proceeded to clamber from shoulder to shoulder as Halsin walked, ears always forward and alert, eyes bright, head turning this way and that as he scanned the woods.

Small cats with stealth training were not easy things to track through dense forest. Halsin did end up using his last spell slot to cast speak with animals. The local mice and voles always noticed when predators passed, even small ones. Halsin spoke to them while keeping one hand on Staeve, who watched the tiny creatures with bright, newly interested eyes.

Halsin of course spoke with Staeve as well, but it wasn't quite the same. Talking to a person who had been transformed into an animal was not the same as talking to that person. Shape changed you. How you saw things. How you thought. The mind of a cat was a fraction of the size of that of an elf or half-elf. Thinking with it was different. The change was easiest for druids. It was hardest for the cursed, who did not choose the new shape. Who were surprised by it.

He spoke to Staeve and learned things he had already known from observation. He reassured Staeve that the mice had given useful guidance.

That guidance led them north, then west, and then to a long hollow log, moss covered and broken in two places. A good hiding spot, and the sort of shelter that had a lot of escape routes. Staeve jumped off of Halsin's shoulder as the druid knelt down and they both peered inside.

In the darkness, Halsin could just make out a pair of ruby-bright eyes staring warily back at him.

Beside him, Halsin watched Staeve relax for the first time since becoming a cat. He wasn't actually as large as Halsin had first thought--it was just that his hackles had been up and his tail puffed out for the duration of the transformation.

It could be a painful thing indeed, to have one's heart so completely entwined with another's safety. A deeply worthwhile thing, but a painful thing, sometimes.

Halsin made a deferring motion to Staeve, who nodded in a rather un-catlike like way. Halsin stepped back from the log, moving slowly so as not to startle anything. He shifted a few feet away and sat close enough to watch, but far away enough that his looming size wasn't an ominous thing.

Staeve didn't go inside the hollow log. He sat at the entrance. Lay down at the entrance, body long and casual, head up on the lip of the log so he could keep looking inside. Modeling relaxation.

He started to purr. Halsin could hear him purring even from a few feet away. A loud, constant, soothing rumble. It somehow did not surprise Halsin that Staeve had a loud purr.

And then Staeve waited. Patient as anything. Waiting and watching and purring in a low buzz, as steadily as a beehive.

Halsin could not see inside the log, but he could guess at when Astarion moved because Staeve's ears would flick. Staeve had a fine poker face, but everyone had tells.

Something happened, or occurred to him, that made Staeve raise his head and sit up slightly from his sprawl on the ground. Then he stood up entirely. He gave Halsin a significant look, and trotted off into the underbrush.

Conscious that he had just been assigned new responsibility, Halsin shifted so that he had a good view of the log's entrances and everything around it. There wasn't much danger, Halsin’s presence in general kept most predators away from this space. But still.

During his vigil, Halsin saw the glimmer of red cat-eyes once. And only briefly.

Staeve came back soon. He had a dead vole in his mouth and he looked exceptionally pleased with himself. He dropped the vole at the mouth of the log, took a few pawpads back and watched expectantly.

It took another long minute, but after that minute a small white cat crept out of the darkness.

This should surprise no one, but Astarion was a beautiful cat. Slender and precise with large eyes. His fur was pure, silvery white and just long enough to curl slightly. He moved with a cautious precision that Halsin recognized as his habit, and that deeply suited his new form.

He sniffed at the vole. He shot Staeve a judgmental look, because Gods forbid the man accept any kindness without prevaricating about it in some way. He glanced at Halsin. And then he leaned down to slide exceptionally long canines into the corpse's chest.

Staeve flopped down about a foot away and watched him with an expression of pleased devotion that would honestly be a bit more appropriate on a dog.

Astarion ate fastidiously, and without getting even a blot of blood on his snow-white fur. When he finished he licked his teeth.

When Staeve was quite sure Astarion was done eating, he sidled up slantwise, sauntering around the vole corpse as if he just casually happened to be taking a stroll in this part of the forest for no particular reason. He stopped just short of Astarion. His ears were forward. His tail flicked lightly from side to side.

Astarion regarded him levelly with his 'I know what you're doing and I know you think you're being clever about it but you're not' expression. Then, as if granting a boon, he deigned to rub his forehead gently against the underside of Staeve's chin.

Staeve took this as the invitation that it was and pressed back, much more enthusiastic and honest in his delight at the contact. Which in turn gave Astarion an excuse and space to do what he wanted and enjoy it.

They were always very dear to watch together. Whatever form they took. In about a minute they were curled over each other on the ground and Staeve was industriously grooming Astarion's head.

Halsin let this go on for as long as he could. But the shadows were lengthening, and they were very close to the Shadowlands, and he was out of spell slots, and the rogues were currently housecats.

"It is getting late, dear ones," he said softly.

Astarion twitched at the interruption, and Staeve licked him three times along the neck and chest in a soothing way. Then they disentangled from each other and padded over to Halsin.

Halsin picked up Staeve, but he knelt down and laid his arm on the ground so that Astarion could climb up and find what perch he wanted by himself. They did both end up in his arms. Staeve was tired and quite ready to be carried, and Astarion didn't want to be out of contact with him.

As Halsin walked through the woods with an armfull of cat, Staeve started to purr again. It was really the most marvelous sound. A soothing distillation of satisfaction and care. Almost enough to tempt one away from being a bear.

Astarion did not purr. Some cats didn't. Or purred only very rarely. But Astarion did, at one point, look up at Halsin and blink his bright red eyes very slowly.

And that was a precious thing.

#astarion #staeve #bg3 #halsin #meow

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