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ghost-proofbaby · 9 months ago

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“By all means, sharpen your axe, dear,” his voice has dropped to a hush, and she feels a shiver run up her spine once she realizes just how close he is now. She hadn’t even noticed his hand creeping up between them until his fingertips were just barely brushing her throat. A hovering grasp, a mere breath away from wrapping around her, “And I’ll ready my hands.”

summary: aruna and astarion begin to have a few interesting conversations, but she can't seem to shake that part of her that craves to keep him close. the part of her desperate to convince her that she knows him.

wc: 5.1k+

warnings: continued memory loss, spoilers for the game (specifically for a conversation that you can have with astarion that isn't triggered by a cut scene or exclamation point lol), talk of hypothetical murder as flirting

a/n: possibly one of my favorite rewrites of a canon scene thus far. will always be mad we couldn't say 'strangulation' as how we want to go. but i digress. also to anyone who is unfamiliar with the game this might seem fast paced, but to anyone who has played the game, this is probably dragging. my bad. anyways, please enjoy <;3 and peep my nod of homage to the way i keep making bard tavs only to abandon them

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The tiefling, Zevlor, had proven to be an interesting conversation.

He wants something in return for a favor. Of course he does. Aruna doesn’t even glance Astarion’s way, because she’s not in the mood to be told I told you so once it’s all said and done. She’d heard every huff and sigh from him as she’d talked to Zevlor, and she already knew he was less than impressed with how the conversation had gone.

The grove is closing itself off. The refugees are at risk of being sent to their certain death. Zevlor wants them to speak to the druids. There’s a healer named Nettie who may be able to help them.

There’s a healer named Nettie who may be able to help them.

Aruna is an optimist, and chooses to focus on that bit rather than the performance she had put on back there. There’s hope yet – they just have to take the scenic route to get to their final destination.

The group explores the grove a little bit, perusing several small booths that have been set up amongst the large caves. They all keep their distance, not yet deciding to approach any vendors, but Aruna still keeps a list in case they need resources: there’s a corner with a frail elderly lady who’s surrounded by tables littered with what Gale can identify as healing potions, beside her is a tiefling stirring some giant cauldron of what must be food as it smells delectable, and across from her is some sort of blacksmith who has a small shop set up with a depleted source of weapons and armor. All people who might be useful to speak to at some point.

But that’s for another day. The elderly lady piques Aruna’s interest for a moment, but Zevlor had said that Nettie could be found in the druid’s grove, and this was decidedly not the actual grove.

Aruna watches Astarion like a hawk through all of it. And he knows that she’s watching him closely, because at some point he even teases her about it.

“Say, shall I just creep over there and snatch one of those healing potions for myself, dear leader? I doubt the woman would notice it missing. I do have quite skilled hands.”

She’d nearly smacked him for the suggestion of theft, and he’d only cackled when she’d started to look around for any signs of guards that might have overheard his words.

Just before they leave back to their camp for the day, for Aruna to mark this place on their map and begin to formulate some sort of plan for finding this Nettie come tomorrow, they find Wyll. Wyll, the human who had joined in the fight at the gate, tearing down goblins easily with eldritch blasts and the flourish of his rapier.

He’s kind enough. Astarion is rolling his eyes when through that tadpole connection (which is once again, not as painful as it had been with the pale elf), a new quest is presented to them. Hunting a Devil with Wyll. Securing his companionship, increasing their numbers. It’s a small cost, Aruna decides, and she invites him back to camp without hesitation, fully agreeing they’d help him track down this Devil soon after speaking to this Nettie.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a bleeding heart?”

Despite an additional body now joining them on their trek back to camp, Astarion still clings to Aruna’s side as she leads the group.

“It’s not a bleeding heart,” she quips back, giving a quick glance to the map in her hands. Less for finding her way to camp, and more for engraving what she needs to draw out once they get back. “He has a tadpole. He needs us as much as we need him – the Devil will just be something to keep in mind.”

“It’s a side quest, and side quests will sidetrack us,” Astarion points out as Aruna finally veers between trees, beginning to stumble into heavier bramble that they have to navigate in order to arrive at their clearing, “It’s going to take years for us rid ourselves of our little problems at this rate.”

Aruna rolls her eyes before stepping widely over a fallen log, “You’re being dramatic.”

“Never denied having a love for the theater, darling,” Gods, his tongue is fast. Always equipped with a new comeback, always readied with a new nickname to make heat flash through her body. “My point is, we don’t have years. Time isn’t exactly on our side, if I’ve been listening to that wizard correctly.”

“Gale,” she corrects him absentmindedly, stopping for a second to gather their surroundings as well as allow the other three to catch up a little bit, “His name is Gale, and… and he’s right, I think. We should be weary of ceremorphosis.”

Astarion waves off the reminder of Gale’s name as if he has no use of it. Which, at the rate in which he only seems keen on speaking to her, he might not. “We haven’t sprouted any tentacles yet. And our flesh has yet to melt off our faces, so to speak. However, I am curious as to what your plan is if any of that does start happening to one of us.”

She starts to head west. Or at least, the direction she thinks is west.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that at the first sign of change, I’d have to stop that pretty little bleeding heart of yours.”

Aruna nearly trips over her own feet.

Is he seriously threatening me right now?

When she turns to look at him, though, he doesn’t look one bit as frightening as she had expected. His hands are far from his daggers, and she swears there’s a smile playing on the corners of his lips.

“I am open to suggestions,” he presses on, meeting her gaze and leaning forward, the face of playfulness, “Knives, poison, strangulation – whatever you’d prefer.”

He’s not going to kill her. There’s absolutely no way that there’s any weight to his words. If someone were going to choose to kill someone, they would not be indulging in this type of conversation with them, would they?

She stares at him for a few moments, completely still and silent as she blinks slowly before finally saying, “You are odd.”

It makes him laugh. A scoff that echoes through the trees around them as she starts to quicken her pace. Camp is near, the rest of their group isn’t far behind – he’s not going to kill her. She’s not worried about that, but she is worried for his sanity by thinking that this was small talk.

“Humor me,” he calls after her. Even as her strides turn longer, he doesn’t struggle to keep up, “I deserve it after being on my best behavior at the grove.”

She’d argue that he hadn’t been on his best behavior, but the more she gets to know him, the more she’s thinking that the way he had restrained himself today was him attempting to follow her rules.

“I’m not sure,” she sighs, “How would you like to go?”

Even in her peripherals, she can see him light up as he realizes she is actually humoring him.

“I don’t think that poison is for me. Nor stabbing, come to think of it. I always felt decapitation was a fine choice. One good swing and then – nothing,” Gods, he’s thought about this quite sincerely, hasn’t he? “But we were talking about you. What’ll it be?”

Through the breaks in the trees ahead, she can see the camp. She could choose to ignore him, dart ahead and leave him behind without an answer. But for some reason, she found herself almost enjoying the conversation. There was something in his cadence, in the hand gestures she was only catching the tail end of. If she were going to question his sanity, she might as well also question her own, because she was actually entertaining what he was suggesting.

“You said strangulation was an option?” she stops and turns to him, catching sight of just far ahead they’d gotten from the others. Probably for the best, given their current exchange.

His grin widens. His eyes sparkle in the warmth of the setting sun. He’s beautiful enough to take her breath away if she’d let him. Literally, given what she’d just said to him.

“Strangulation?” he parrots back. She’s taken him off guard, returning the favor of setting him off his kilter, “Can’t say that was the option I’d imagine you’d choose. It’s the least messy, of course, but you did strike me as someone who might prefer a classic knife.”

“Or a goblin bow,” she says before she can even think of it. It rolls off the tongue easily, and the moment the words hang between them, they’re both smiling. She’s almost laughing, even.

Just hours before, she had almost met her very real and very timely death by the exact object of her joking. It hadn’t been a joke then – it had been a real fear, staring her right in the eyes as she had helplessly reached for daggers that she severely needed to grow more skilled with.

And he had helped her. Saved her life, even. The exact opposite of the hypothetical they were posing to one another now.

“Or… that,” he’s so close to being at a loss for words, she’s nearly proud of herself, “But this is all hypothetical, of course. I’m sure tomorrow we’ll find this Nettie and there will be no need for any gore.”

“Or we won’t,” she can hear the footsteps of the others now, not far off, but she’s in too deep to not finish Astarion at his own game, “And I’ll just have to sharpen my axe.”

He takes a step closer to her, lips still curled. She’s glad she’s humored him – glad she can make him smile, make him laugh, even with such morbid conversations. They deserve a little bit of that joy, even if it comes by odd means.

Something inside of her sparks. Yearns, weeps, lashes out as his hand drops just before the other three join them. It wasn’t just his velvet voice or the brush of his breath against her cheek, it wasn’t just the alarming temperature of his hand and the way her body reacted to the mere thought of him putting it on her – it was a strange need for closeness. As if he had belonged there, pressed right against her, staring right into her eyes until she’d grown nervous that he could see straight to all the memories she couldn’t unlock quite yet.

“Interrupting something?” Gale asks, oblivious, once the rest of the group has caught up to the pair. Astarion had moved away at just the right moment; just close enough for them to see they’d been talking about something, but not to catch that innocent movement of his hand that had sent Aruna into a tailspin.

It had felt right.

For a moment, his skin had been on hers, and everything fell into place. As if she didn’t have a brain riddled with holes. As if she hadn’t had to learn her name from some letter. As if she’d known Astarion for two hundred years, not a petty two days. The buzz of the frustration she has battled with since waking on that beach had simply quieted by her space being invaded by him.

She wants him close again. She wants to feel it again.

Instead, she only lies to Gale, shakes her head and pretends like there had never been anything to interrupt. Acts as if her whole mind and soul are there with the rest of them, not lingering on that blip of a moment, stuck in a capsule of time in which Astarion had somehow made her feel whole again. She hadn’t even remembered a damn thing from her past – not a single vision, not a single thought of something as trivial as to what her favorite color might have been before the tadpole – but none of that mattered with the distraction of his presence.

They carry on into camp. She knows she has an endless list of simple tasks to complete before she can fully rest for the night: she needs to speak with Lae’zel, she needs to help Gale ration out their supplies for dinner for the next few nights, she needs to update the map, she needs to curate a plan for the next day.

She does none of the above.

Some pathetic excuse is mumbled out between her lips in a voice she can’t even recognize as her own, claiming she’ll go gather some mushrooms or pick some berries for Gale to utilize for tonight’s feast. And no one stops her as she departs from camp, not even the pale elf who hovers by the fire Wyll begins to build, eyes locked on her in curiosity she doesn’t witness.

He was right. Her heart is bleeding, a gaping wound in the center of it that gushes with every beating of her pulse. But for which it bleeds, she isn’t so sure.

Not quite the tieflings they met today and offered to help. Not quite the companions she’s offered to embark on personal journeys with.

No, Aruna’s heart is bleeding, and she’s starting to suspect that it all begins and ends with the garnet eyes she feels on her long after she’s departed back into the trees.

—

“And I thought I was going to be the broody one of the camp.”

Astarion’s voice should startle her, especially considering it comes from behind her in the woods rather than him approaching her from the rocks leading up to her perch, but it doesn’t. No surprise, no annoyance, no irritation – all she really feels is a deepening of a gaping hole inside of her that hasn’t subsided since her tadpole first connected with his.

Upon her arrival back to camp, she’d handed over a pitiful handful of berries and a small bouquet of mushrooms to Gale, and had immediately retreated. She wasn’t in a talkative mood; she’d glanced around for somewhere to hideaway, and had landed on the small lookout atop a stone cliff not far from where Lae’zel had set up a tent.

Most of her companions had set up tents. Where they’d gotten them from, she has no idea. But each one has found a corner to call their own in the camp, creating almost homey environments, except her.

Her, and Astarion.

She tilts her head ever so slightly as she shakes it, a small tsk falling from her lips, “Nope. I’m afraid that title has already been taken, my friend.”

His footsteps are light as he approaches her side, hesitating before he awkwardly lowers himself onto the ground beside her. She’d offer up space on her rock, but her body was heavier than even the stone below her, and she couldn’t find it in herself to make any movement.

They’re just out of sight from the rest of the camp. A thinner grouping of trees offers minimal coverage, a large boulder her current seat. She could easily walk out onto the stone ledge and expose herself, but she was already feeling a little too seen for the night.

Has anyone ever told you that you have a bleeding heart?

She wonders if someone had, before all this mess, from a time she can’t recall.

“Friend,” he echoes her. His tone isn’t condescending, but rather curious, “I’m not sure I’ve ever-”

And then he cuts himself off, as though he’s caught himself in the act of opening up. He looks as if he hadn’t been in control for a few moments.

That draws in her curiosity well enough. She thought she had been burnt out for the day, beyond the capability to hold conversation, but he’s drawing her into it easily. Like a moth to his flame, like a moon stuck in his orbit.

“Well? Don’t hold out on me now. I’m absolutely on the edge of my seat,” she only sinks into a more comfortable position to add humor to her words, “Let me guess. You never would have called someone such as myself a friend before all this. I understand if that’s the case-”

“I’ve never called someone a friend, period,” he interrupts. He says it all in one breath, and when she looks down at his face, nearly hidden by the shadows, it looks absolutely petrified. As if he can’t believe he’s just said that outloud. As if his mouth had moved without permission in order to spill the words out for her.

The soft ‘oh’ that leaves her is completely involuntary. She isn’t sure how to respond to that – that level of vulnerability, the kind that is making him shrink under her gaze and curl his lips in disgust at himself. It’s not the kind of thing you’d reveal to a stranger.

But Astarion feels like anything but a stranger, fight it as she might try.

“If it would make you more comfortable,” she starts, and his head whips up to look at her in alarm, “I could always refer to you as an enemy instead.”

When he laughs, it’s a symphony. She wishes she were lying, but the music of his joy fills her with an indescribable light, as though she might have just swallowed the sun whole. It warms every joint, every crevice, every shadow she has within her. For just a moment, all the monsters within her are quiet once again, content to sit and simply listen to him with a smile.

It makes her want to run. It makes her breath catch, and a certain resentment begins to build against the way he can have this effect on her so effortlessly. It’s the same gut reaction as she’d had on the beach when Gale had also laughed for her, but more.

It’s better than hearing Gale laugh. So, so much better.

Would it be better to not fight this wonderful blanket of deja vu? If she just loosened her fists, unclenched her jaw, she could let it anchor her easily in an almost comforting manner. Even after the echoes of his amusement had long faded, it whispers to her in the dark.

She’s terrified of the way it feels; it feels as though she’s spent countless nights listening to that laugh. By a campfire, in dark tents, in shared beds. She’s heard it withheld with constraint, free without care, hushed for the sake of others – for a moment, she swears, she knows Astarion’s laugh like the back of her hand. And that, that indescribable feeling, is what stokes all her fear.

“You know, perhaps you’re a bard,” he jokes once he’s calmed down, waving a hand through the air without purpose.

“Ah,” her smile she hadn’t even noticed finally falters, remembering what had happened outside of the Grove. She needed to speak with Gale, as well. She’d just add it to the list. After another moment, she swears to herself that she’ll see to doing all that she must before retiring for the night, “So I see you’ve heard of my little identity crisis.”

He tilts his head back to look at her fully, and she’s moments away from genuinely offering to share her boulder as a seat.

As if to stop herself, she makes another bad joke. Maybe he’ll laugh, and she’ll have no room to say something stupid, like offering him a seat next to her. Letting him close to her again. “Gale is a terrible keeper of secrets – noted.”

There’s still ghosts of giggles on his lips as he sighs, pressing two hands into the dirt behind him and leaning his body into a reclined position.

“Not entirely. Less that he’s terrible at keeping secrets, and more that I’m particularly skilled at learning them. Ask anyone the right questions, and their pretty tongues will always sing.”

He rolls his ‘r’ when he says pretty, and that gaping hole nearly enlarges itself enough to swallow her up.

This surely isn’t how their nights are supposed to go. They’re strangers. Surely, surely, they should be more guarded. Less jokes, more awkward silences. Less revealing of who they really are, and more false pretenses to cover up the truth.

The quiet is nice. It’s exactly what she had been seeking out when she’d sulked away from the others for a moment to herself, and Astarion neither adds nor takes away from the tranquility. He’s just there. If she tilts her head just right, leans back to an even more horizontal angle, he’d leave her line of sight entirely.

She doesn’t. She keeps him there, safe in her peripherals, no longer trying to unknot all her emotions that draw her to him. She knows the letter still waits for her in her pack, and there are conversations to be had, responsibilities for her to shoulder. But for a brief moment, it’s just them – it’s just Aruna, and it’s just Astarion. Two unfortunate souls stuck with tadpoles in their brain, and now each other. No more, no less.

The moment passes eventually.

“Do you truly believe I’m a bard?”

She isn’t sure why she asks that. But she’s handed over her trust to him freely thus far, a few more inches can’t hurt.

“Hm?” he hums, rolling his head on his shoulders, a tension under the surface she only sees glimpses of in the moonlight, “Oh, who’s to say? I’m not all that well-versed in magic, being a-”

“Wait, don’t tell me,” she stops him quickly, scooting to the edge of her boulder, ankles now swinging dangerously close to him.

He peers up at her curiously, brow furrowed, “Don’t tell you… what? That I’m a-”

“Let me guess,” she nearly begs.

The last three days have felt anything but normal. Tadpoles, mysterious letters, lost memories. Guessing someone’s class just felt normal. She needed normal, if only for a moment.

“By all means,” he lifts a hand, flourishing it in invitation, “Be my guest.”

She presses her elbows into the tops of her thighs, studying him intensely as her fists squish her cheeks. And he lets her – he even tilts his head back to the sky, clearly putting on a show as her eyes scan him intensely. He’s used to it. He’s used to being the center of attention, of being something pretty to gawk at. He slips into the role far too easily to not be accustomed to such.

The longer she looks at him, the more she notices.

The surface level is what she drinks in first. Soft, white curls that nearly glow under streams from the moon. Lashes so long that they brush the porcelain skin of his under eyes. Perfectly pointed ears. And a perfectly sloped nose, albeit a little crooked if she were to scrutinize it too long from the side. Somewhere along the ridge, it’s almost as though he’s experienced a break that never quite healed right. Laugh lines that dig in deeply to his cheeks, but that almost fade from existence when his face goes as slack as it is currently. He’s not a young boy, not by any means, but there’s a certain youth to him in this state that could break her heart if she tried to contort it into a perfect metaphor. He’s a devastatingly beautiful stranger. His confidence is well earned.

But his confidence is only the surface of it all. Once she scratches past the way he doesn’t seem to falter under her careful observation, the layers practically reveal themselves. He appears relaxed, she’s been under the assumption that he’s been relaxed this entire conversation, but as she lets her eyes fall to his shoulders, she sees a tenseness that she hadn’t noticed before. One that can’t be brushed off by his current position or the weight his palms are balancing. His neck rolls with it, and she gets the smallest glimpse of his neck beneath the high-neck of his collared shirt – a scar. It flashes for only a second, giving her no time to know exactly the shape nor circumstance, but it’s there. An imperfection. A spanse of skin on him that holds a story she certainly won’t get out of him tonight, not when his shoulders still nearly tremble with that tenseness.

He’s not a damsel in distress. She doesn’t know why the letter insists that she save him.

“Well,” his voice finally startles her, breaking her from her trance, “Are you going to gawk all night at my ethereal beauty, or are you going to guess my class, young bard?”

She’s decidedly not a bard. She knows it the moment he properly refers to her as such. Really, she has no idea what a bard is, but she almost wishes she was if only to let him be right.

“I only know the few classes that Gale has mentioned in passing,” she admits into the night quietly, her voice a whisper.

His eyes flutter open at that. Gorgeous, piercing red.

“And which ones are those?”

She knows now that he’s wearing a mask. Maybe not a heavy one, maybe not a thick one, but he’s wearing one all the same. If she were more clever, she’d put on one herself. Simply for protection. A shield for whatever game the two of them were playing at.

And yet, she can’t seem to find the mind to dig through her arsenal and mirror him in defenses.

Instead, she prattles off the list Gale had rambled on about to her. Sorcerers, wizards, warlocks, druids, clerics. He’d mentioned paladins in passing, but never elaborated. Really, he hadn’t properly elaborated on any of them. He’d simply reassured her again that he had books for her to read back at camp.

None of those books were in her hands, at the time being. All she had right now was Astarion. And surprisingly, he appeared to be feeling particularly helpful.

“I see,” he nods, looking out over the camp. Gale begins cooking for all of them, Wyll rests by the fire, and the other two women of the camp are nowhere to be seen. In their tents, presumably, “Well, I can tell you that I am none of those. I don’t wield quite as much magic as those who are.”

“Quite as much?” she mimics back, a smile creeping up on her lips, “Are you insinuating that you do hold some?”

He chuckles in response, “Of course I do. You aren’t this beautiful and intriguing without having a little bit of magic, dear.”

Something flashes in his eyes when he takes on that tone with her. A faint taunting, a gentle flirtation. But when she looks in his eyes, they’ve lost some of their glimmer. His words are playful enough, but the feeling doesn’t extend beyond his voice.

She wants to poke and prod, pry till her fingers bleed and he’s cursing her name. Because she knows he would. If his little slip ups just in this conversation and his reactions to them are any indicator, Astarion hates nothing more than to offer up any vulnerability. And yet, for her, he already had.

He’s admitted that he’s never had a friend before. It’s a small detail, petty in nature, but it is a stepping stone nonetheless.

Tonight’s not the night. There will be other nights to spill the blood of honesty.

“Oh, of course. My mistake,” she plays along, feeds into his act. The insatiable animal inside of her prefers his company, after all. His simple presence is a soothing balm she can’t quite place, and she’ll do anything to drag out their time, “I’ll keep that in mind during my studies with Gale.”

Speaking of the wizard, she catches the tail end of a cautionary glance from him, his head whipping away from the direction of herself and Astarion. Whatever he’s managed to scrounge for dinner is done, plated to the best of his abilities as Shadowheart crosses camp to join him.

They’ll have to join them soon enough.

As soon as she realizes this, she has another realization, looking down to find Astarion watching a nearby tree with vexed interest, “We’re going to act like this conversation never happened come morning, aren’t we?”

We’re going to pretend like you never opened up for a fraction of a second. Like I didn’t let my guard down as well. Like we didn’t sit in the forest like two well-acquainted souls, protected by the moonlight as we shared laughter and a kinship forgotten.

We’re going to pretend like the thing ripping apart my chest doesn’t know you, somehow, someway.

“I suppose so.”

She hops down from the boulder, keeping her balance easily as she turns to offer him a hand. But he’s already standing back up, completely ignoring her offer as he brushes away the dirt on his legs and palms.

She swallows hard, nods slowly. “That’s fair, I suppose.”

It was nice while it lasted.

Even after the dust has long since been discarded off his body, he makes no move to walk down the slope of the miniature cliff and rejoin the other companions. He’s waiting – waiting for her to take the lead. Just as the others had during their travels thus far.

She’s selfish. So, so ardently selfish. But before they leave this space, before they abandon the serene moment they’d been granted, she has to learn one last thing about him. If nothing else, she’d like to say she knows the very basics of who he is.

His name, the fact that he’s never been privy to friendship before, that he is a very guarded individual with a superior skill at hiding that mask, and whatever his class is.

And that she has to ‘save him’. Apparently. Allegedly.

“What is your class?” she asks, voice steady and head held high as she only looks at him. She doesn’t care if Gale spares them any more side glances.

His head tilts curiously towards her, “What? Giving up so quickly?”

“Well, if we’re to pretend this conversation never happened, then-”

“I’ll tell you what… bard,” he starts, but when she shakes her head, he’s quick to correct himself, “Or… not bard? Regardless. Once you’ve figured out your own class, see if you can then figure out my class, hm? Read those dreadful books our camp cook has assigned to you, and then get back to me.”

She knows what that is.

It’s more than playful banter. More than him hiding away secrets.

They won’t be pretending that this night never happened – not even close.

taglist:

@emmaisgonnacry @writinginthetwilight @moonmunson

#ghost's stories #astarion #astarion ancunin #astarion x oc #astarion x tav #astarion fanfic #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #also heyo we finally have wyll in the party!!!#slight spoiler but astarion only goes along with the bard bit because that man KNOWS she isn't a bard #really preying on her ignorance there mister pale elf #the moon will sing

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