Fenris watches, memorizing the shape of Astarion's body, his clothing, his profile. Every inch of him a sculpture, crafted marble. The frustration is unmistakable, though, and Fenris rises to Astarion's side.
"Lyrium," he says, a gentle hand on Astarion's wrist, "aids magic."
Does Astarion realize what a capitulation this is, offering aid this way? It doesn't matter. Fenris would almost prefer Astarion not know.
Blue light flares across the veins in Fenris' hand, wrist, arm.
He hasn’t the slightest. In a way, he doesn’t really need to: at the height of desperation, so habitually used to self-reliance in all things, he expects to be alone.
And he’s not.
Does Fenris realize what it is he gifts by way of that mercy? Potent, suffusing, kind.
His lungs are cleared, his eyes shut, his shoulders forcibly rounded— he focuses every wearied fragment of himself, pours every shred of it down through his arm, into his palm, down to the edges of his fingertips, green spark limning like spreading embers, and—
“—ahh, it’s no bloody use,” choked out with a snapping sort of buckling as he goes slack, his arms too numb, his efforts exhausted. “I can’t. It won’t.”
"We will try again tomorrow," Fenris adds gently. He reaches out to run his fingers through Astarion's hair. "In the meanwhile... what will you need of me?"
As the sole occupant of their merry little band that can go out in sunlight, Fenris will dedicate his all to that, to whatever Astarion needs.
His body shakes, his knees locked, he feels fit to collapse. He sounds splintered. Hoarse. He sinks to the earth, down into the thick golden grass just outside the city limits, forearm slung across his knee in wearied abdication. It's not about sunlight. It never really was.
“You don’t understand– ”
It’s a kind thought, all of it. Right down to the way Fenris comfortingly draws his fingers through miserably soaked and knotted curls. Fitting, considering there’s probably nothing pleasant about the feeling of that gesture for Fenris.
“A vampire spawn isn’t just a slave. Our masters speak, and our bodies obey. Or rather they think and we act, strung along like puppets under their wills. You see it doesn’t matter if we don’t want to. It doesn’t matter if we try to fight it, or scream, or beg— nothing changes it. Nothing ever changes it.
Or so I thought.”
His exhale is low, thumb tracing the outline of that faded anchor. What would he do this time, he wonders. Not to himself, no, he’s had plenty of time already to know exactly what’ll happen when he returns.
But Fenris?
Would he attack him? Kill him? Lure him into torturous ruin the way he’d sent thousands upon thousands to their ends over the years? It’d be easy. Love always makes it easy.
“I hear him in my dreams. I don’t imagine that’s a good sign.”
A coolness settles over Fenris. This is a problem to be solved. There will be fire later, blood and passion and hate, but for now? Fenris knows what to do with slave masters.
"You know him best," Fenris says, "how do I kill him?"
"You won't be sending me," Fenris counters. This is going to happen, an inevitability regardless of how Astarion feels. Astarion should know that by now, and if he doesn't... it doesn't matter.
"But I could benefit from more... tactical information."
"Tactical information? You want tactical information?" Exhausted as he is, incredulity manages to come through all the same in the prickling angles his body makes where he's seated in the grass, like an animal fighting to make itself larger. Harsher. Warning its own ilk away from an impending threat.
"How about the fact that he has his own coven, filled with an entire horde of loyal spawn and true vampires to contend with before you could even hope to get anywhere close to him— and if you can somehow manage get through that, why, you’ll only need to worry about trying to strike him when he can shapeshift into pure mist at the nearest sign of danger. Not to mention a bat, a wolf: he could escape your very notice and you’d be none the wiser until it’s too late."
He has to breathe to fit in the rest, an inhale more like tightly fisted fingertips than anything kind.
"And let’s not forget mind control, vampiric glamor, or how if he bites you—"
Fenris nods, taking this as though it's the information he's requested, rather than a haughty retort. Astarion needs to accumulate himself to the idea. Fenris is readying to kill another blood mage.
A very advanced, very powerful blood mage, but all the same.
"Would he be so careful as to avoid the lyrium?" That, in this world, is still a poison. "He does not know my capabilities. You will tell me his. And his habits. All of it."
Astarion, ever mired in and made useless by dread in regards to the man they now discuss, only blinks, rattled from his tightly held moorings by the mention of a word he’d never considered before.
Lyrium.
But hope’s just as potent a poison, isn’t it? Would Cazador know better? No, probably not— had Fenris not warned him, Astarion probably would’ve sickened himself the second he sunk his fangs into that beautifully corded throat. But what are the odds of it working? What are the odds of it failing? And even if he succeeds, would Fenris still turn? He studies those markings under cresting daylight, wordless for a beat, as if trying to predict it all in every conceivable way. In the end, all he can come up with is a weak, paper thin:
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Maybe not. Maybe, maybe—
“Take me home first, darling.” Some middling midpoint, something to sort out the rattling in his head. Old ghosts, fresh fears. “You can ask whatever you need there.”
Fenris offers a kiss to steady him, quick and gentle, and they walk home. The walk is quick, brisk, and Fenris is entirely in his own mind as he thinks of tactics.
"Have faith in me," he says, locking the door behind him, "as I have in you."
"That’s unfair, you know." Mild-set, those words, said as he slinks towards his bed to sit across it in nearly the same fashion as he had before they left. "I don’t doubt what you’re capable of. I've seen it for myself already."
Fenris sits opposite, on his own bed, a mirror of before. One hand finds Astarion's, gentle and awkward with it. He wishes he had his armor on, but he had been experimenting, lately, with wearing it less often.
"The alternative," Fenris says, "is the loss of us both."
If Astarion is bid back to that creature, Fenris will mount his offense regardless. What use is there, living in this world alone?
Astarion, of course, prefers him without the armor most of the time. It's nice, seeing him living like a person for a change every now and then, and not just a fighter always on his guard.
A shame to think it might not last much longer.
“So either we’re damned together...or we’re damned together.” His smile is wry, all black humor when he tangles his fingers across Fenris’ own, turning awkwardness into easy solace.
It’s a lovely look, that. The kind that sets a heart at ease— or maybe just lets it forget. He raises his hand, lifting those intertwined fingers to his mouth, pressing the edges of his teeth against Fenris’ knuckles before he kisses them, light amusement.
He sighs, releasing his hold on Fenris with a reluctant cast. If it were someone else, anyone else, this segue would’ve been a much more turbulent one.
“There’s an alternative, you know.” To the fighting and bloodshed and terrible, terrible risk. “We could take precautions. Keep on as we are. Hope for the best.”
It worked for the tadpoles, in a way, and his smile flexes for the memory of it, humorless.
Fenris is... unconvinced. It seems like wishful thinking. But he wants to believe in Astarion as passionately as Astarion, sometimes, seems to believe in him.
"You’ll need to know them regardless, I suppose. Stop me if you need to, I realize last night wasn’t...the most restful experience."
If Fenris needs to pause and sleep, Astarion won’t put up a fuss.
"Something to keep in mind, Cazador is a vampire lord, not just a simple vampire. He’s ancient, and he’s powerful, and you can expect anything that effects a normal vampire or a vampire spawn like myself to do much, much less. Even so, you still won’t find him strutting about in daylight. Not only is it lethal to an elder vampire— albeit slower working— he won’t be able to fully transform in it."
Astarion’s pride and joy might make a little more sense within that context.
"So for that little detail, he has an entire network of very real, very mortal resources, that have no idea the kind of terrible creature they’re so loyally working for. City guards, local magistrates, thieves and monster hunters and the like— they might as well be his eyes and ears, but only if he’s onto you."
A light scoff lives here; a considerate segue.
"And considering no one’s come knocking on our door, I’ll take that as a sign that he remains blissfully unaware of my existence here. Though I can’t promise anything if the nightmares keep up. Could be nothing. Could be like something tugging faintly on the weave of a spider’s web. Bound to attract attention eventually.
So if anyone, anyone at all stands rapping at our doorway in the dead of night, that brings me to my second point."
He lifts two fingers for emphasis, as though this is a vital lecture.
"A vampire can’t cross the threshold to a home without an invitation. Sounds easy, right? Spot a vampire, shut the door, instant safety— wrong. Vampires, as you’ve seen by my own meager spell work, are capable of using a glance to send any creature into a sweet, doting stupor: if they can see you, then you’re already damned. And the older they are, the more potent that magic is. You’ll love them, trust them— slit open your own neck for them.
You don’t open the door. You don’t look through the window. You ignore it. Always."
"Aside from that, running water always burns, in a pinch. Don’t expect it to stop them, but it’ll hurt all the same. And lastly..." His attention drifts for a beat, jaw working tight as he considers distant knowledge, whispered rumors. There’s no guarantee any of it is true, of course, he’s never known anyone to succeed at killing a vampire lord— and he’s certainly no monster hunter with ancient rites to keep safe. "A wooden stake or a quick stab to the heart is usually enough to kill your average vampire or spawn."
He makes a little ‘x’ across his own chest with smooth-drawn fingertips, an example.
"But I’ve heard it said that if you kill a vampire lord, they’ll simply retreat as mist back into their coffin. And if you can manage to drive a stake through their heart there, they’ll be paralyzed indefinitely by it. Meaning you can do whatever you need to finish the job permanently: water, sunlight, fire— so on." His index finger taps against his palm as he lists options, lulled briefly into softness by the imagined thought of ash where his master's resting body once stood. "I don’t know how true that is. I don’t know what might happen if it ever comes to that. But what I do know is that if you’re cornered, you now know what to do and where to aim."
His posture goes slack at last, his spine sinking back to rest against the wall, as though the change in subject is somehow a sign he can ease his own defenses.
"...and as for myself, We can hang curtains before we board up the windows, so no one suspects you're harboring a monster. Check the shard every evening. Lock the door every night." Fenris, diligent, and seated across from him, makes for a softer draw for his stare.
"It might be a terrible burden, hunting for the both of us. I won’t lie."
Fenris listens, attention rapt, to every detail. They are slotted quickly and efficiently into memory. A target, an opponent, a slaver, he knows the peculiarities mages and monsters can are prone to. This creature seems powerful, not yet impossible to kill.
"He would send his lessers," Fenris wagers, puzzling it out for himself, "to slay me and bring you back. On the defensive, he has the advantage."
“Make yourself into too much trouble for him, and you’ll be lucky if it’s death he wants from you.”
They hadn’t discussed it, just how petty and vindictive Cazador tends to be at even his calmest— but then again, he imagines Fenris already has his suspicions. If anyone's familiar with the type, it's him.
“Of course if he knew what you meant to me, I don’t suppose that’d be any different, either.”
A sigh falls wearily from between bared teeth, the picture of a whinging child, utterly performative in the throes of its misery: he doesn't want to dwell on the dread of that thought, there are other, also terrible things he can moan about instead to a perfectly reasonable degree.
“I’d expected to be respected nobility again by now. On my way to having us live on a decent estate, drinking wine like water and wanting for nothing.” Instead, here they are. Planning as if to make war, or to stave it off. Still sunk in the same hole they'd nested in on arrival. “What an awful creature, reality.”
Fenris frowns, studying Astarion. He knows the man prefers fantasy to fact, but hesitation could be dangerous. "We are both in danger. I do not see the point in waiting. Lament if I fail."
He doesn't think he can get Astarion's head in the place it needs to be in, but maybe he doesn't have to.
Fear, violent and surging in its suddenness, tears down every ounce of poised pretense Astarion works tirelessly to weave: panic cuts through his expression as he rises, fingers outstretched to snare Fenris’ wrist before he moves an inch, a meter, a thought—
Wait. Wait.
“You haven’t rested. You’ll need supplies. You don’t even know how far away he is.”
Fenris laughs. Just one little bark of a laugh, and he leans into Astarion's touch. His forehead finds Astarion's shoulder, and he stays there, smiling into Astarion's collarbone.
"I can't leave now." His voice is very fond. "I don't know enough yet. Soon, yes, but not quite."
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"Lyrium," he says, a gentle hand on Astarion's wrist, "aids magic."
Does Astarion realize what a capitulation this is, offering aid this way? It doesn't matter. Fenris would almost prefer Astarion not know.
Blue light flares across the veins in Fenris' hand, wrist, arm.
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And he’s not.
Does Fenris realize what it is he gifts by way of that mercy? Potent, suffusing, kind.
His lungs are cleared, his eyes shut, his shoulders forcibly rounded— he focuses every wearied fragment of himself, pours every shred of it down through his arm, into his palm, down to the edges of his fingertips, green spark limning like spreading embers, and—
“—ahh, it’s no bloody use,” choked out with a snapping sort of buckling as he goes slack, his arms too numb, his efforts exhausted. “I can’t. It won’t.”
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As the sole occupant of their merry little band that can go out in sunlight, Fenris will dedicate his all to that, to whatever Astarion needs.
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“You don’t understand– ”
It’s a kind thought, all of it. Right down to the way Fenris comfortingly draws his fingers through miserably soaked and knotted curls. Fitting, considering there’s probably nothing pleasant about the feeling of that gesture for Fenris.
“A vampire spawn isn’t just a slave. Our masters speak, and our bodies obey. Or rather they think and we act, strung along like puppets under their wills. You see it doesn’t matter if we don’t want to. It doesn’t matter if we try to fight it, or scream, or beg— nothing changes it. Nothing ever changes it.
Or so I thought.”
His exhale is low, thumb tracing the outline of that faded anchor. What would he do this time, he wonders. Not to himself, no, he’s had plenty of time already to know exactly what’ll happen when he returns.
But Fenris?
Would he attack him? Kill him? Lure him into torturous ruin the way he’d sent thousands upon thousands to their ends over the years? It’d be easy. Love always makes it easy.
“I hear him in my dreams. I don’t imagine that’s a good sign.”
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"You know him best," Fenris says, "how do I kill him?"
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“...and I’d be a monster to send you.”
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"But I could benefit from more... tactical information."
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"How about the fact that he has his own coven, filled with an entire horde of loyal spawn and true vampires to contend with before you could even hope to get anywhere close to him— and if you can somehow manage get through that, why, you’ll only need to worry about trying to strike him when he can shapeshift into pure mist at the nearest sign of danger. Not to mention a bat, a wolf: he could escape your very notice and you’d be none the wiser until it’s too late."
He has to breathe to fit in the rest, an inhale more like tightly fisted fingertips than anything kind.
"And let’s not forget mind control, vampiric glamor, or how if he bites you—"
If he bites you.
"...you’ll end up just like me."
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A very advanced, very powerful blood mage, but all the same.
"Would he be so careful as to avoid the lyrium?" That, in this world, is still a poison. "He does not know my capabilities. You will tell me his. And his habits. All of it."
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Lyrium.
But hope’s just as potent a poison, isn’t it? Would Cazador know better? No, probably not— had Fenris not warned him, Astarion probably would’ve sickened himself the second he sunk his fangs into that beautifully corded throat. But what are the odds of it working? What are the odds of it failing? And even if he succeeds, would Fenris still turn? He studies those markings under cresting daylight, wordless for a beat, as if trying to predict it all in every conceivable way. In the end, all he can come up with is a weak, paper thin:
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Maybe not. Maybe, maybe—
“Take me home first, darling.” Some middling midpoint, something to sort out the rattling in his head. Old ghosts, fresh fears. “You can ask whatever you need there.”
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"Have faith in me," he says, locking the door behind him, "as I have in you."
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"But if I lose you to him— "
Eternity will make for a different sort of hell.
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"The alternative," Fenris says, "is the loss of us both."
If Astarion is bid back to that creature, Fenris will mount his offense regardless. What use is there, living in this world alone?
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A shame to think it might not last much longer.
“So either we’re damned together...or we’re damned together.” His smile is wry, all black humor when he tangles his fingers across Fenris’ own, turning awkwardness into easy solace.
“Comforting thought.”
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It’s a lovely look, that. The kind that sets a heart at ease— or maybe just lets it forget. He raises his hand, lifting those intertwined fingers to his mouth, pressing the edges of his teeth against Fenris’ knuckles before he kisses them, light amusement.
He likes this better than despair.
“You’ve certainly picked the right time for it.”
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He sighs, releasing his hold on Fenris with a reluctant cast. If it were someone else, anyone else, this segue would’ve been a much more turbulent one.
“There’s an alternative, you know.” To the fighting and bloodshed and terrible, terrible risk. “We could take precautions. Keep on as we are. Hope for the best.”
It worked for the tadpoles, in a way, and his smile flexes for the memory of it, humorless.
“Maybe it won’t get any worse.”
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"What are these precautions?"
onyxia takes a deep breath
If Fenris needs to pause and sleep, Astarion won’t put up a fuss.
"Something to keep in mind, Cazador is a vampire lord, not just a simple vampire. He’s ancient, and he’s powerful, and you can expect anything that effects a normal vampire or a vampire spawn like myself to do much, much less. Even so, you still won’t find him strutting about in daylight. Not only is it lethal to an elder vampire— albeit slower working— he won’t be able to fully transform in it."
Astarion’s pride and joy might make a little more sense within that context.
"So for that little detail, he has an entire network of very real, very mortal resources, that have no idea the kind of terrible creature they’re so loyally working for. City guards, local magistrates, thieves and monster hunters and the like— they might as well be his eyes and ears, but only if he’s onto you."
A light scoff lives here; a considerate segue.
"And considering no one’s come knocking on our door, I’ll take that as a sign that he remains blissfully unaware of my existence here. Though I can’t promise anything if the nightmares keep up. Could be nothing. Could be like something tugging faintly on the weave of a spider’s web. Bound to attract attention eventually.
So if anyone, anyone at all stands rapping at our doorway in the dead of night, that brings me to my second point."
He lifts two fingers for emphasis, as though this is a vital lecture.
"A vampire can’t cross the threshold to a home without an invitation. Sounds easy, right? Spot a vampire, shut the door, instant safety— wrong. Vampires, as you’ve seen by my own meager spell work, are capable of using a glance to send any creature into a sweet, doting stupor: if they can see you, then you’re already damned. And the older they are, the more potent that magic is. You’ll love them, trust them— slit open your own neck for them.
You don’t open the door. You don’t look through the window. You ignore it. Always."
"Aside from that, running water always burns, in a pinch. Don’t expect it to stop them, but it’ll hurt all the same. And lastly..." His attention drifts for a beat, jaw working tight as he considers distant knowledge, whispered rumors. There’s no guarantee any of it is true, of course, he’s never known anyone to succeed at killing a vampire lord— and he’s certainly no monster hunter with ancient rites to keep safe. "A wooden stake or a quick stab to the heart is usually enough to kill your average vampire or spawn."
He makes a little ‘x’ across his own chest with smooth-drawn fingertips, an example.
"But I’ve heard it said that if you kill a vampire lord, they’ll simply retreat as mist back into their coffin. And if you can manage to drive a stake through their heart there, they’ll be paralyzed indefinitely by it. Meaning you can do whatever you need to finish the job permanently: water, sunlight, fire— so on." His index finger taps against his palm as he lists options, lulled briefly into softness by the imagined thought of ash where his master's resting body once stood. "I don’t know how true that is. I don’t know what might happen if it ever comes to that. But what I do know is that if you’re cornered, you now know what to do and where to aim."
His posture goes slack at last, his spine sinking back to rest against the wall, as though the change in subject is somehow a sign he can ease his own defenses.
"...and as for myself, We can hang curtains before we board up the windows, so no one suspects you're harboring a monster. Check the shard every evening. Lock the door every night." Fenris, diligent, and seated across from him, makes for a softer draw for his stare.
"It might be a terrible burden, hunting for the both of us. I won’t lie."
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"He would send his lessers," Fenris wagers, puzzling it out for himself, "to slay me and bring you back. On the defensive, he has the advantage."
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They hadn’t discussed it, just how petty and vindictive Cazador tends to be at even his calmest— but then again, he imagines Fenris already has his suspicions. If anyone's familiar with the type, it's him.
“Of course if he knew what you meant to me, I don’t suppose that’d be any different, either.”
A sigh falls wearily from between bared teeth, the picture of a whinging child, utterly performative in the throes of its misery: he doesn't want to dwell on the dread of that thought, there are other, also terrible things he can moan about instead to a perfectly reasonable degree.
“I’d expected to be respected nobility again by now. On my way to having us live on a decent estate, drinking wine like water and wanting for nothing.” Instead, here they are. Planning as if to make war, or to stave it off. Still sunk in the same hole they'd nested in on arrival. “What an awful creature, reality.”
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He doesn't think he can get Astarion's head in the place it needs to be in, but maybe he doesn't have to.
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Fear, violent and surging in its suddenness, tears down every ounce of poised pretense Astarion works tirelessly to weave: panic cuts through his expression as he rises, fingers outstretched to snare Fenris’ wrist before he moves an inch, a meter, a thought—
Wait. Wait.
“You haven’t rested. You’ll need supplies. You don’t even know how far away he is.”
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"I can't leave now." His voice is very fond. "I don't know enough yet. Soon, yes, but not quite."
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here's my also tired secret: I didn't even notice lmao
lmao good jOB us
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puts on my dm hat and wizard robe
avali oh my god.
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1/2
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ur perfect this is perfect sh shh
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