#overprotective astarion to the point of it being ooc my beloved

[ghost-proofbaby]

You have to keep him alive, she absently thinks. She assumes the thought is private. If anyone may hear her, she only prays it’s Gale. He’s not all bad, and you have to keep him alive.

summary: aruna nearly dies (again).

wc: 5.9k+

warnings: descriptions of drowning, descriptions of being stabbed by a log, a lot of everyone being bad at feelings (both in present and in the... past? the other timeline? not sure what to refer to it as)

a/n: how many times can aruna almost die in this fic? let's find out, ig.

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“Wyll, no!” 

Aruna should have saved her breath. She really, really should have. 

There’s no air to spare in her lungs, mouth left wide open still, as she crashes into the current below. It’s a vicious thing – the water shows no grace as it moves her center of gravity, pulling her along in the rush, so quickly she doesn’t hear the shouts of her companions. 

Another voice even joins them. An unfamiliar one, that somehow carries just as much concern as she practically drowns. 

Similar to when she’d first used her magic, Aruna doesn’t have to ponder or remember if she can swim. Her body acts accordingly; her feet kick exhaustingly, her arms try to move against the waves to slow her down. Nothing works. All she gets out of it is another mouth full of water as a sudden drop in the river yanks her under. 

This is it, she thinks through the burn of her lungs as the fresh water fills them, this is how I die. I managed to survive the poisoning only to die because I slipped. 

She wonders if Astarion would have laughed had he been there. 

It’s meant to be a soothing thought, but through her sheer panic, all she can recall is Shadowheart’s reveal. The way Astarion had been frantic when he’d returned her to camp, the way he had been so ferociously protective of her while she was in such a vulnerable state.

Her shadow had left her to her own devices, and this time, he wouldn’t be there to save her. 

I wish he was. 

Her elbow scrapes against a jagged rock as she breaks the surface of the water again, gasping for breaths before she’s taken under again. It stings – Gods, it stings – and her palm only takes a beating when she tries to grab onto the culprit. 

It’s too deep for her to reach the bottom. She can’t stop. She’s completely at the water’s will, and she’s going to drown. 

Save Astarion, no matter the cost. 

Maybe the letter had meant her blood.

Save Astarion, no matter the cost. 

Maybe now that she had allowed him to feed, had given him a group to travel with, he’d be safe. 

Save Astarion- 

A hand wraps around Aruna’s bicep suddenly, her arm being the only thing even poking out of the water, lifting her up with absolutely no gentleness. She swears, there’ll be bruises in mere hours from the rough-handling. 

She’s tossed suddenly to a nearby bank, a broken branch stabbing into her side. If she had any breath left, that certainly would’ve taken it. She yelps out regardless as her fingers dig into pebbles below, no longer being dragged violently down the river, only below her knees still in the current’s grip. 

The water around her runs a light pink as she army-crawls her way up the bank to get clear of the currents. 

“Aruna!” 

It’s Shadowheart screaming for her. Even with spotted vision, even as she’s coughing up mouthfuls of water, she can decipher that voice. Which begged the question…

“You-” a very wet Gale gasps, his hand still holding onto her bicep for dear life, “-have got to stop nearly dying.” 

“Can’t breathe,” she hardly manages wheeze out, trying to sit up and failing miserably, still feeling the stabbing pain of the branch that must be lodged between her ribs, “I- I-” 

Gale’s touch suddenly turns gentle, tossing his head about to get his hair out of his eyes as he looks her over. It’s only once he’s turned her onto her back, water rushing into her ears but no longer drowning her, that he spies the culprit. 

What in the Hells has happened? 

It’s certainly not her own voice in her head sounding detrimentally pissed off as she continues to whimper, struggling for each deep breath that gets cut short. 

“Hold still,” Gale instructs her sternly, maneuvering their bodies so that her head rests in his lap, leaning over her as his shaking hands hesitated in touching that branch. A few droplets of water run down the bridge of his nose, dripping down onto her chin, but she hardly cares. 

She can’t breathe. 

Where are you? 

Astarion’s voice in her mind does little to soothe all her panic. She’s not going to drown, but she has a giant fucking log of wood pierced into her side. 

When she doesn’t respond, she can feel irritation traveling down that tadpole bond. It��s weaker than she’s used to – not nearly as potent as it was whenever she was actually in camp with Astarion – but she can still feel every swirling emotion as he does. 

Irritation. Anger. And then… panic. 

Not her own. A sense of urgency that bleeds into the one consuming her now, mixing in a disastrous way. A kind of desperation that would make a man pull a dagger on his fellow companions, demanding help for the limp girl in his arms. The kind of anguish you don’t feel for a stranger.

“Shadowheart!” Gale yells suddenly, fingers hardly prodding the surrounding armor around the wound, only to elicit a yelp from Aruna, “I- Gods, I- I’m sorry. Shadowheart, we need healing!” 

The water is cold. Her entire body aches with shock, the wound beginning to numb once Gale moves his hands to simply cup each of her cheeks. They offer a little bit of warmth, something she’s quick to welcome, leaning into them as she continues to struggle. 

The shallow water here is turning a darker shade of pink, swirls of red focused at Aruna’s right side, exactly where the rather large stick protrudes. 

Aruna, tell me where you-

River. 

It’s all she can muster to offer him over the bond. She can hardly even flutter her eyes open, barely making out Shadowheart’s silhouette on that distant makeshift bridge. 

“If I die,” Aruna manages to croak, and she suddenly feels Gale’s hold on her cheeks press just a little bit harder, “Do me a favor and-”

“No,” Gale stresses, tearing his gaze away from where Aruna thinks Shadowheart still is, “No, you are not dying. Save your energy.” 

“If I am-”

“If you make me promise to take care of that damn dog,” Gale’s voice wavers, dark brown eyes locking with Aruna’s own amethysts, “I’ll leave Astarion to deal with him. I swear.” 

“Shut up about the dog,” Aruna nearly laughs, but the new wave of pain effectively cuts her off, “I’m more worried about Astarion.” 

Gale’s entire demeanor changes. She watches as waves of concern and confusion drag him under just as the river had done to her, “Astarion?” 

She manages to nod her head, even with his steady palms on either side still. 

“He’s not all bad, y’know,” her voice is a whisper of a murmur, hardly audible over. Her eyes flutter shut once more, fatigue making her bones heavier than even her soaked armor. She swears she hears sloshing footsteps nearby, “And… And I have to… I’ve gotta keep him…”

“Aruna,” Gale begs now, shifting beneath her. She can smell his cologne now, even through the biting wetness of the river’s bank. It’s sweeter than Astarion’s, softer, “I promise you, whatever business you have with Astarion, you can take care of once we’re back in camp. We are getting you back to camp.” 

You have to keep him alive, she absently thinks. She assumes the thought is private. If anyone may hear her, she only prays it’s Gale. He’s not all bad, and you have to keep him alive. 

She thinks for a moment that she’s said it outloud as Gale starts to call out to their other companions frantically once more, as though her words may have triggered something within the man clinging to her. She swears she can feel them dragging her body further out of the water, causing her to shiver ferociously as the lightest breeze damn near freezes her. 

I won’t be doing anything of the sort. You will – because you’re not dying. Keep him alive yourself, Aruna. 

He hadn’t said that outloud. Any voices she can hear are all muffled, but Gale’s voice comes through clear as day. 

It’s a different caress than her connection with Astarion. Whereas the presence of Astarion in her mind causes a soft purr, a gentle warmth that she’s eager to nestle into, Gale’s presence is electrifying. Sparkling, dazzling. Shivers run up and down her spine, and she can’t distinguish if they’re due to being completely out of the water now, or if they’re due to the new occupant privy to her mind and thoughts. 

Even the dancing, purple sparks that she can nearly envision behind her closed lids aren’t keeping the beckoning darkness away at the edges of her consciousness. 

Before it takes her, though, that familiar warmth is back. She decides as she hears the call of Astarion’s voice in her mind, that if he were to be allotted color, it would be a deep burgundy. A staining maroon. Something deep, something old, something warm. Bolder than even the blood she can feel still slowly seeping out of her wound. 

If you die before I get to you, I will incinerate the wizard. 

The darkness claims her. 

—

“I think you like Gale more than you let on,” Aruna teases from her seat at the particularly fancy stool Astarion had set out in front of his tent’s entrance. She wasn’t even sure where he’d procured it, the red velvetine of the cushion far nicer than anything else that litters their camp. She’d be complaining relentlessly about it, if it wasn’t for the fact that the comfortable stool had practically become hers from how often Astarion allowed her to loiter about and sit on it. 

“Is that so?” Astarion murmurs, his nose currently buried in a book as he stands, eyes flitting over the pages. Another item that she’s clueless as to how he’d obtained it – along with the other fifty tomes stacked within his tent. 

Aruna leans forward, legs crossed beneath her, hardly balancing on the cushion, “Indeed. Don’t think I didn’t notice you saving him from that kobold earlier.” 

At this point, Aruna’s convinced he’s only pretending to read, blatantly ignoring her to get a rise out of her. He hasn’t turned the pages in several minutes. Plural. 

“His magic has proven useful from time to time,” Astarion drawls, shifting his weight between his legs but still making no move to look up at Aruna, “Besides, I’m sure if I let the wizard perish, you’d have my head.” 

“Do you think me so cruel?” 

“I know you so cruel.”

He’s wearing a half-smirk, and she hates the way it lures her closer. She has half the mind to demand they all call it a night early, if only to get Astarion alone in his tent so that she could curl up within a safe distance from him, not quite touching, but still locked away in their own little bubble.

It’s not the same camp as the one they began in. They’d long since left that one behind, their journey taking them farther than any of them had ever anticipated. Earlier in the day, they’d taken to investigating the Creche – although it hadn’t lasted long when they’d stumbled into a room of kobolds, and an ill-timed firebolt on Aruna’s account had nearly burned them all to ash from all the firewine in the room. 

This camp suits him better, though, Aruna thinks. The sun shines brighter here without the cover of the forest around. A certain golden hue floods their small nook within the mountains, and the way Astarion basks in it is a sight to behold. 

His skin and hair is so light, he almost becomes the sunlight. 

“I have no idea what you could possibly mean,” she hums in a playful tone, leaning back, narrowing her gaze at him, “I am an absolute ray of sunshine, I’ll have you know.” 

“On whose account?” he scoffs, finally snapping that book shut. He doesn’t even mark the page he’d been holding up this entire time, “Yours, or that poor merchant you flambeed?” 

Some of the playfulness deflates out of her shoulders, “That merchant was not some poor soul. She was demanding we hand over a child, Astarion.” 

“I’d hardly consider a githyanki egg a child. And it could have awarded us quite the pretty amount of gold.” 

“I couldn’t give a damn about the gold. Even without Lae’zel present, I would have wanted to turn that gods-awful woman to nothing more than a pile of soot and ash.” 

He finally looks at her, taking steady steps towards her until he’s within reach of setting his book down at the table before her. There’s a mirror balanced there, one that proves useless to him, but he still keeps it around for some reason. 

He leans down until he’s eye-level with her, still just out of reach, ruby eyes glowing, “Remember that the next time we come across a trader who holds a pretty weapon that you ache to get your hands on.” 

“That was one time,” she scowls as he cracks a deceivingly sweet smile. 

“All it takes is a taste of corruption, my dearest Aruna.” 

It wasn’t her proudest moment, admittedly. But Astarion had been just as eager to comply when Aruna had pulled him aside and whispered the request to him – she’d distract the merchant, and he’d put his nimble hands to use by getting the enchanted bow that had caught Aruna’s eye. It had worked out in the end. That bow had proven more than just useful, repeatedly proving it’s worth in battle when Aruna would use it to cover Astarion from any foes he happened to not notice. 

He knows she’s recalling the moment as she shifts to suddenly stand and leave his tent. But she doesn’t even make it to her feet before he’s caging her in, a hand steadied on either side of her against that rickety table, fully invading her space now. 

No one else in camp even blinks an eye. Gale is across the camp, deep in discussion with Karlach as Wyll idles near them, clearly listening in. Lae’zel is out of sight, but the sharpening of her sword can be heard clearly. 

They’d all known that Aruna had taken to fortifying with the vampire. She hadn’t been very sneaky about it. That was more Astarion’s style – not hers. 

What they didn’t know, however, was how far it had gone beyond the exchange of bodies. Long gone were the nights of distracting sex and honeyed words of seduction; in their place now settled quiet nights of simple discussions in Astarion’s tent, whispered confessions of haunting pasts exchanged rather than bruising kisses. A bearing of scars, of souls, rather than their nude bodies. 

He’d never explicitly said it, but Aruna knew better than to utter a single word of what Astarion confided in her during those private moments. He’d trusted her – he trusts her. 

And so she let him keep up the overly flirtatious act in front of others. For as long as he allowed it, she would let them think she was doing nothing more than keeping his tent warm. He was well worth that scuffed reputation. 

“Now, just where do you think you’re going?” 

A game of cat and mouse still exists between them, and she never can tell if it’s still just for show. She can’t tell if he can hear it – the unfortunate thrumming of her heart, always racing when he’s near, even without her own volition. 

She’s toeing a dangerous line. 

Mindless sex was fine. A blooming friendship was encouraged. But whatever she had begun to feel? Somehow, she’s convinced she’d rather be known as Astarion’s plaything than ever admit the fondness brewing within her. Better for everyone to assume she only wanted Astarion for his body, for the pleasure he could bring her, than to confess the way his words were amongst the most sacred things he had offered her. Better to play the role of a doting fool vying after his alluring lips than to admit that his mind intrigued her more than a single muscle across his lean form. 

It would simply have to become her best kept secret. Both from all their companions, and especially from Astarion. 

“To speak to Gale and Karlach,” she snarks, tilting her chin up, meeting his daring gaze, “At least they have the galls to admit when they consider you a friend.” 

“Full of fire tonight, are we?” his voice drops to a whispering rasp, eyes flickering across her face. Any onlooker might assume he’s simply catching a glance at her lips in hopes of a kiss, but she knows better. Just two nights before, he’d admitted (although it had taken quite a bit of persuasion on Aruna’s part) that he was mesmerized by the freckles across the bridge of her nose. Someone of drow lineage, kissed by the sun. It was a rare sight, and one Astarion hadn’t stumbled across in all his years before. “We both know you’ll grow bored before the sun even sets. They won’t play with you like I will.” 

“Perhaps I’m not in the mood to play tonight, Astarion. Maybe I’m just looking for earnest conversation.” 

He recoils slightly, faux disgust wrinkling his nose, “Earnest conversation? Ugh, spare me. You’ve truly been spending far too much time with Gale.” 

If she were stronger, if she had just a bit more self-restraint, she would have held back her bark of laughter. But she’s not – she’s nothing more than molten putty when it comes to him, all her worst flaws exposed against her own will, and her head tilts back as she lets out a sound that nearly embarasses her to death. Something between a choked scoff and an orc-ish snort. 

The sun is so bright at his back, she doesn’t notice the glimmer of something reflected. Not from the mirror, but from herself. 

A brewing fondness bathed in the golden hour. A best kept secret that Astarion swears he’ll get a hold of, come Hells or high water. 

It’s a good look. On both of them.

—

Aruna comes back to with a start, just as Shadowheart has yanked the branch from her side. 

“Fuck!” she screams out instinctively, going to reach for the wound before Gale grabs her wrists. He manages to corral both her arms and press her back down, allowing the cleric who kneels in the mud beside her to properly look at the wound as her own hands glow with magic. 

“Welcome back to the world of the living, my friend,” Gale quips, hardly breaking a sweat as he continues to fight against Aruna’s thrashing, “Thought we lost you there for a few seconds.” 

Seconds? Aruna head pounds as though she had been out for days, not seconds. The same heaviness in her chest from when she’d been poisoned lingers now, making it exceptionally difficult for her to writhe in pain as her body was attempting to. Attempting to wriggle away from the pain, away from the thing that was technically helping her. 

“What-” she gasps out, trying to steady herself, to stop moving. Another flash of Shadowheart’s magic has her crying out again, however, body twitching to its own accord, “What do you mean seconds?” 

She grits the words out between grinding teeth, hands turning to fists as Gale refuses to relinquish his hold. She’d have to thank him later – she doesn’t know if she’d be capable of holding down one of them like this, even if it were clearly necessary, if they were grunting out in such severe pain as she was currently.

The entire right side of her body felt as though it was ablaze. Everything else had been thoroughly chilled, her teeth even attempting to chatter from the cold, but the heat that radiated from where she’d been stabbed persists. 

“You passed out,” Gale explains as though it was obvious. He’s unaware of what she’s just experienced; he’s unaware of where exactly her mind had gone for those mere seconds. “Likely from the pain and blood loss, and surely the lack of oxygenation from almost drowning wasn’t helping. You’ve got yourself into quite the situation here, it seems,” he pauses and glances down at her as another strike of Shadowheart’s magic pulses into her. This time, only her face moves, twisting up into a wince, “I am truly sorry for the discomfort. It’ll be over soon. We just have to stop the bleeding of the wound, at the very least.”

She can feel the skin of the wound twisting and reforming, from the inside out. If it weren’t from the pain of the healing, she’d probably be able to notice the way her breaths were finally coming more easily to her. 

“Right,” she manages to spit out as Shadowheart’s magic begins to wane once more, “Of course. Stop the bleeding. I can handle that.” 

“I have healing potions back at camp,” Shadowheart mumbles through her concentration. She looks positively drained when Aruna dares to peep a quick look, paling with each passing second that she uses more of her magic, “If I can just-”

“Am I still bleeding?” Aruna asks suddenly.

Shadowheart looks up, eyes wide, albeit a bit dull, “You’re… No. The bleeding has mostly stopped.” 

“Great. Then let’s go to camp.” 

She doesn’t want the half-elf wasting any more precious magic on her than necessary. They’d return back to where they could rest, she’d take one healing potion from Shadowheart (and not a drop more), and she could see if a restless night’s sleep might do the trick. 

If she could just walk, it would all be fine. Surely time could heal this wound. 

“Are you sure about that, soldier?” a new voice sounds from above Aruna, and the dizzying deja vu that had incapacitated her to the point of falling returns. This time, thankfully, it doesn’t affect her nearly as detrimentally, “I just- That stab looked pretty gnarly. You might want to let the healer do her thing before-” 

“Karlach.” 

Aruna isn’t sure how she knows the tiefling’s name, but the moment her eyes land on her, it simply comes to her. The flames still idly lapping at the warrior’s skin, her uneven horns as one curls fully over her head of hair and the other has clearly been broken off. She knows this force of a woman – she’d seen this woman in that goddamn memory that had stolen away precious seconds in the here and now. 

Wyll looks painfully guilty as he stands a few feet away from her. 

“This was the woman from your visions,” Aruna attempts to cover up her recognition easily, and everyone seemingly buys it, “This… this was the devil you were chasing?” 

“The past tense there is very important, my friend,” Wyll insists, swallowing hard and glancing at Karlach again, “She’s… Well, she’s no devil.”

“Make no mistake, it was an honour to be chased down by the Blade of Frontiers, but-” Karlach excitedly begins, but Aruna only softly smiles as she cuts her off. 

“No need to explain yourself,” Aruna somehow knows more than she should. But if every other encounter was the blueprint for this one, surely they had all seen the truth. If Karlach was still standing there, unharmed, Wyll having resigned his hunt – they knew she was a friend, “I’m Aruna. Nice to meet you. Although, I wish we had met under… better circumstances.” 

“Oh,” Karlach laughs, almost nervously, as she waves a hand through the air, “Please. No better time than the here and now, yeah? Plus, you’ve effectively proved yourself to be a certified badass from the get-go, soldier.” 

Soldier. A cute nickname, but Aruna’s brows crease together regardless. 

“Soldier?” she questions aloud, slowly sitting up and ignoring the nearly unbearable pain in her side. Nearly being the key word. 

She’d deal with it. She was the one who had idiotically fallen into the river, and she’d deal with the consequences. Maybe next time she won’t run across the slippery log. 

Karlach freezes up a bit, eyes darting around to the other companions worriedly, “I, uh, yeah. I don’t know. Like I said, that branch looked gnarly. Only a soldier could take a beating like that and still insist on walking it off.” 

Aruna has to bite back a simultaneous grin and tears. There’s something comforting about Karlach, something that makes Aruna want to cling to her side. To be the shadow rather than the leader for once. 

“You learn to walk it off when you’ve been as clumsy as I’ve been,” Aruna shrugs, turning to look at a still very pale Shadowheart, “Say, Wyll, could you help Shadowheart up? We don’t need any more of us falling into this water. It’s fucking freezing.” 

Wyll’s clearly startled, looking between the two women, “Shadowheart? What about you-”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” 

They wanted a leader – they needed a leader. And Aruna had been assigned that role whether she liked it or not. As long as she held the title, the only person who would be getting injured due to her own stupidity would be herself. 

No more shrugging at the thought of them dying due to them choosing her as their leader, it seems. 

“Are you sure you can even walk?” Gale stammers, rising quickly when he notices Aruna beginning to lift herself out of the shallow water they were gathered in, “Please be careful-” 

“Stop hovering, Gale, and just help me up,” she insists, holding out a hand for him to grab. 

Shadowheart doesn’t even have the energy to argue as Wyll appears at her side, letting her lean some of her weight on him. 

Aruna’s guilt is far, far heavier than her armor now. 

“Shall we?” she mumbles, looking to the ground in shame, trying to hold most of her own weight even as Gale willingly offers his arm for her to cling onto. She only looks up to glance Karlach’s way, forcing another kind smile through all her pain, “You should join us, y’know. If you’ve got one of those worms in your head.” 

“I-” Karlach’s eyes shift to look off into the distance, back towards the path they had taken to find her, but clearly looking a bit beyond it, “I’d love to. I really would, but I’ve got some business I need to take care of. Some goons are tracking me and-”

“We can help,” Aruna offers before Karlach even asks such a thing of them. And she can imagine Astarion’s bristling, his sigh and roll of his eyes, his voice whispering of her bleeding heart, “Join us at camp, let us rest up a bit, and we can come back and send those assholes back to wherever they came from.” 

Electricity runs along the outskirts of Aruna’s mind, purple sparks coming to life as Gale grips onto her arm to steady her.

Just like that? He asks through the tadpole. You’re going to offer our help, just like that?

If it had been Astarion, the question would have been laced with judgment. 

But Aruna doesn’t find a hint of it in Gale’s voice, merely shock as he looks to her with wide eyes. She’d even dare to say that she saw admiration behind those shades of umber. 

Just like that, she confirms silently, looking patiently to Karlach for a response. She needs help. I want to help. 

Aruna has plenty wrong with her. She has a head full of holes, gaping wounds not visible to the others that haunt her every hour of every day. She has a mysterious letter in her pack, insisting that she saves one of their dear companions. She has daggers that she can hardly use, she has a worm in her head that has become the least of her worries, and she has a bleeding heart. 

She is a kind fool. And, all things considered, it’s probably the thing that is least wrong with her in this exact moment. 

She’s going to help Karlach. Just as she promised Lae’zel, just as she had promised Wyll. If there is nothing else she can do for this world, she can do that. 

Our fearless leader, indeed, Gale hums through the mental connection. In her peripherals, Aruna catches the glimpse of a soft yet proud smile. 

Your kind fool, more like it. 

Karlach is oblivious to the silent conversation, and finally secedes with a deep breath, “Ah, what the hell. Lead the way, soldier.” 

Aruna is becoming awfully fond of the nickname. 

—

They hear Astarion before they see him. 

“What in the Hells did you do to her?” 

His words are pure venom, and Aruna can feel the fear that strikes within Gale when he freezes up at her side. The chill from being soaked by the river had been seemingly only affecting Aruna, who’s teeth had chattered the entire way as they backtracked to where they’d originally found the dog. But she swears, as Astarion catches sight of them as he rises from the corpse of Scratch’s previous owner, a shiver runs up the wizard’s spine. 

“They didn’t do anything,” Aruna says. The stab wound still ached terribly, and breathing still wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but she had no doubt she’d make it back to camp. She might end up collapsing, unable to move again until tomorrow, but she’d certainly make it back, “I was just a clumsy fool and fell into the river.” 

Aruna hadn’t realized just how much she missed Astarion during the days he’d avoided her until he’s right in front of her, eyes blazing and fangs nearly peaking out as he snarls at Gale, hands already reaching for his daggers. He may be a terrifying sight to everyone else, but not to her. His presence instantly soothes, leaving the shooting pain in her side to fade out of existence for just a moment. 

But she doesn’t have time to linger on the calming effect. 

The moment she catches sight of him unsheathing his weapons, she forces herself in front of Gale, albeit a bit wobbly. 

“Astarion,” she snaps, holding out a hand as the other instinctually clutches to her injured side. Not a smart idea, as it brings back the pain, “Put the daggers away. Now.” 

“I leave these fools to keep you alive for a few days, and suddenly, you nearly die – again,” Astarion snaps, stopping just shy of her palm, gaze shifting between herself and the cowering wizard, “I should have known bett-”

“You’re not my keeper,” she calmly reminds him, acutely aware of Shadowheart’s look that screams I told you so. The rogue is more furious than Aruna had witnessed in all their travels, nearly feral, “And I didn’t die. I survived. Gale saved me. If anything, you should be thanking him.” 

She isn’t quite sure why Astarion would be thanking Gale. Astarion wasn’t her keeper – he didn’t have some ridiculous letter telling him to keep Aruna alive, as far as she was aware. 

“Oh, my apologies,” he sneers, leveling a look to Gale, “Thank you so very much for keeping our precious leader alive, almighty wizard. What ever would we do without you doing the bare minimum?” 

Our precious leader. Through all the sarcasm dripping from Astarion’s words, those somehow feel sincere. 

But it might simply be the fact that now that he’s so close, all Aruna can feel is that lingering desperation clinging to him, all the fear sticking around like smoke in the air. His hands are twitching at his sides as they let go of the daggers, as though he might reach out for her any moment now. 

“Bare minimum?” Gale squeaks out from behind her, “I understand you feel awfully protective of Aruna, but-”

“She’s the reason any of us are even alive. She’s the only reason we’ve made it this far.”

Aruna pales, “I don’t think-”

“Is she the reason we’re all alive?” Shadowheart weakly questions, taking a step closer as she glares at Astarion, “Or is she the reason you’re alive? I’d reckon you’re only terrified of losing the one person in this group who will actually tolerate you, willingly, Astarion.” 

In an instant, Aruna loses all her patience. It’s only momentary, but she swears she sees red as her head whips towards the cleric, “Shadowheart.”

Her tone makes it clear she isn’t joking around – it’s a threat. Even through her chattering teeth, Aruna’s voice comes out strong and clear. It’s a warning for them all to tread extremely carefully with their next words. 

Some of Astarion’s anger leaves him, face softening as he chooses to only focus on Aruna. He glances over her stoic face, but eventually, his attention is grabbed to her bloodied side that she still grips. She watches as his pupils dilate and his nostrils flare immediately. 

“You’re bleeding.” 

Aruna is shocked it had taken him so long to notice. She’d assumed given his vampiric nature, he’d smell her blood instantaneously. 

“Yes,” she deadpans, pressing a little harder on the wound, wincing only a little. Her hand is already turning sticky with her ichor, “Like I said, I fell.” 

“And conveniently impaled yourself? Gods, the pain I felt, that’s-” Astarion cuts himself off, still staring in disbelief at the wound, “Let me see it.” 

“No.”

“Aruna-”

“Astarion,” she parrots back, leaving no room for discussion, “We need to just return to camp. I just need to rest. I’m fine, we’re all fine. As long as you all stop trying to bite each other’s heads off, at least.” 

With each word, her voice is becoming more breathy, increasingly aware of the depths of her wounds yet. Shadowheart may have healed her enough to guarantee she won’t drop dead, but there’s certainly still a chance for her to pass out if they don’t get a move on. 

Surprisingly, Astarion only nods at that, finally looking back up to her eyes as he takes a step forward. His hands reach out, and she can see them shaking. 

It’s probably just from the blood. It’s been days since he last fed, that Aruna is aware of, and the comedown had no doubt been more intense considering he’d just had his first taste of a thinking creature’s blood. 

“I can walk,” she insists when she realizes he’s offering to take over from Gale as her crutch.

“You can hardly stand.” 

“I can walk.” 

This latest memory returned more than just knowledge to Aruna. Something more had been returned to her – a spark of fire that hadn’t been there before now rests in her chest, a flicker of who she once was. Headstrong, stubborn, determined. She feels less like a poor wandering soul. She’s more sure, and more staunchly independent, than before. 

Slowly but surely, the puzzle that is herself is coming back to Aruna. She feels like a person now, not a mere ghost. 

A person, a leader, someone who can hold her own. The last thing she wants to do is cling desperately to anybody else, to accept any help that might portray her as weak. Because she wasn’t – she couldn’t be – if she had to lead these people. And certainly not if she kept getting into these near-death experiences. 

“Gods, you’re stubborn,” Astarion grumbles. It’s a slow switch, but she notices it then; the more Astarion spoke directly to her, the softer he grew. He didn’t offer her the same ferocity that he’d thrown at the others. Shadowheart’s earlier observations are painfully loud in her mind as she realizes it. 

His hands drop, but he’s no less stiff as he moves to the side, letting her begin to walk, to lead them all further down the path. 

She’s quick to notice the way he returns to his rightful place at her side. 

Her shadow. For better or for worse, it seems.

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