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The operating theatre is devastatingly quiet, now that the dead litter the floor.
Astarion's seen to that.
He's smiled, coy and pretty as you please, and he's chosen his words carefully, and he's talked all five of them to their deaths, bending what they want the most – what they believe in the most – into the fish hook that snags them.
It feels a little like old times.
Now the only sound is the breathing of his companions, too loud in a space so full of death.
Now the only sound is the pathetic whimpering of the man still strapped to the table, wet with his own blood, sans eyes and sans tongue.
Does he even know they're here?
It's hard to say. He's jerking and crying and thrashing, still, tearing the skin at his wrists in his efforts to get away. Astarion schools his face into something unaffected, and he carefully doesn't look at the man.
He's seen a thousand scenes just like this one.
He's lived them.
"You're alright, soldier," Karlach tells the captive, words low and compassionate, as she steps in nearer. Shadowheart, unconscious and bloodied, is draped over one of her shoulders. They were meant to be heading back to camp, spent as they are – exhausted and without spells, on their very last legs and not a single potion to their names.
Instead here they are, in this nightmare arena, with a man who's out of his mind with fear and pain.
And Wyll says, "Steady, now. You're safe. We can help you."
Astarion has heard the words a hundred times before, spoken to people scattered halfway between here and the Emerald Grove. They sting still, though perhaps less than they used to. Astarion refuses to examine why.
But perhaps this time there's a hitch in the plan – a hang-up, as Wyll and Karlach examine the man's bonds – because after a long beat, Wyll says, "Astarion. Do you mind?"
"Of course, darling," says Astarion, absently, and turns to take a look.
Right away, he sees the reason Wyll's voice is so fraught. The straps holding the man down are solid metal. They wind about his chest and his abdomen and his limbs, and there isn't so much as the hint of a lock to pick.
He checks again, to be sure – runs his fingers over the solid bands of metal, looking for a hidden catch mechanism.
There's nothing.
The man is thrashing harder now, perhaps aware of his proximity.
Astarion can do the math. He knows this calculation better than anyone.
He slips his dagger from where it hangs by his waist, and he steps forward – and perhaps Wyll thinks he means to pick some invisible lock, or to pry those intractable bars free, because Wyll doesn't cry out until Astarion's blade is nearly at the prisoner's throat.
"What are you doing?" Wyll demands, and catches at his arm.
Astarion lets himself be drawn away – turns to look at him, face carefully unconcerned. "What does it look like, my dear? I'm helping."
"Not like that!" Wyll hisses, at the same moment Karlach says, "You're meant to be letting him out ."
Astarion sets a hand on his chest and affects a careless smile – gives a little mock bow, for show. "I'm talented, sweetlings, but even I can't pick a lock that isn't there."
Perhaps they didn't notice. Karlach curses, low, and turns to stare at the bands; Wyll is looking at Astarion's face, still, examining him as though there's something he hopes to find.
"They had to have closed these things somehow," says Karlach, still searching.
"A welding iron, most likely," Astarion tells her. He does not think about how hot the metal must have become.
He knows very well how hot metal can become.
Wyll is breathing hard through his nose, now. He's set a hand on the prisoner's shoulder, probably meant to be a reassurance, but instead the man only flinches away.
"We'll come back with help," says Wyll. "Dammon will be able to cut him free."
All at once, Astarion finds he can't stand it – none of it. The empty promises, and the hand touching the captive so gently, and how damnably, laughably earnest Wyll's voice is.
"Oh, will we?" Astarion snaps, words quick and laden with venom, like the striking of a snake. "So let's leave him here, shall we, blind and mute and bound, at the mercy of whatever finds him? Let him transform into some writhing shell of his former self, as soon as we take the light with us?"
The man is making a low, pleading, keening sort of a noise.
In the back of Astarion's mind, images bubble to the surface, like rot at the bottom of a long-abandoned well, dragged upward when something disturbs the depths.
It's very dark, and he can't move, and he can't see, and everywhere there's nothing but silence. His own voice breaks it – pleading for mercy, scratching at unforgiving marble until the delicate bones in his hands break, and his nails give away, and he's reduced his own fingers to raw meat.
The mercy never comes.
And so he begs for death, finally, long after his voice is nothing more than a rasping whisper – long after the hunger has made the pain seem child's play, by comparison – and he finds that death won't come, either.
At some point, in the here and now, where he isn't trapped inside a tomb beneath the ground, Astarion closes his eyes.
When he opens them, he sees that Wyll and Karlach are staring at him with something very like horror, and he feels a telltale wriggle behind his eyes, and a faint roil of mental dissonance, as though of a connection being broken.
Sometimes, Astarion reflects, he really does despise their unasked-for little passengers.
"Astarion," Wyll starts.
"Not," snaps Astarion, "a single word."
Wyll closes his mouth again.
Karlach looks very much as though she might cry. Come to that, so does Wyll.
They're both such senseless, save-the-world bleeding hearts.
Wyll licks at his lips. Swallows. Tries again.
"We'll carry him out," says Wyll, voice low. "Karlach has Shadowheart, so – you'll take one half of the table, and I'll take the other. We'll carry him back to the inn."
For a moment, Astarion just stares, nonplussed. "It's metal," he manages, when he can find his voice.
"It's heavy," says Wyll, doggedly. "Not impossible."
Astarion's eyes flicker from Wyll's face to Karlach's. They come to land on the man strapped to the table, eyes gone, empty mouth parted in a cry of pain.
The moment drags long, and then longer.
And then, carefully, Astarion sheathes his dagger.
"This plan is absurd," he says, without heat. "Anything that wishes to dispatch us while we're hauling him around is going to have its pick of easy prey."
"We've cleared the way already," says Wyll, and there's something in his tone, low and soothing, as though he's trying to calm a spooked stray.
And Karlach says, "We got this, fangs," and her voice wobbles a little, there around the edges.
They're both awful.
Astarion makes a curt, dismissive sort of a noise, somewhere in his throat. Then he moves around to the foot of the operating table to lift the gods-forsaken thing.
It's just as Wyll said.
It's heavy, but it's not impossible.
They carry the table all the way to the Last Light Inn.
By the time they reach it, Astarion and Wyll are trembling with exhaustion. Their hands are blistered and bloody, and the man is so senseless with fear that the sounds he's making have become nothing but sub-vocal whimpers.
But when they get there, the Harpers come out to greet them, and they take hold of the table, and they bear him away.
In the downstairs room of the Last Light Inn, Halsin heals the man.
He wets a cloth, and he clears the blood from his face, and the touch is very gentle. Dammon comes, and brings his tools, and he gets to work cutting through the iron bands, one after the next.
That's about when Astarion leaves.
That's about all he can stand.
Wyll finds him sitting on the shore of the lake, staring off into the endless night and the still, dark, lapping water. The owlbear cub has curled itself up against his side, and it's very warm, and it's very soft, and he finds that the feel of the feathers through his fingers, soothing and repetitive as he strokes, does something to settle the jagged, jangling parts inside him.
"May I sit?" says Wyll, and Astarion doesn't answer – just nods, the gesture distant and disconnected.
Wyll sits beside him on the opposite side as the owlbear, so close that their shoulders brush. Sandwiched between the two of them, it's very warm.
"I wanted to say thank you," says Wyll, and it's so far from what Astarion expects that he looks up from the water – turns to face him.
"Whatever for?"
"For letting us try," says Wyll, simply.
For long moments, Astarion says nothing at all. He can think of nothing to say.
"He's resting now," Wyll adds at last. His gaze is fixed in some middle distance, staring out toward the lake. "The man we saved."
Astarion swallows around something tight and aching lodged in his throat. "Well, he can hardly be expected to be up and about just yet," he says, when he trusts his voice.
"Yes," says Wyll. "I suppose so."
For a time, there's nothing at all: just the quiet lap of the waves, and the soft purring of the owlbear, and the steady, rhythmic beat of Wyll's heart.
At last, Wyll reaches a hand out toward him – an offer, palm face up, if Astarion chooses to take it.
He does – takes hold and squeezes , and finds that the gesture is entirely shakier than he had hoped it would be.
Wyll doesn't seem to mind. His thumb traces the knuckles of Astarion's hand, achingly gentle. After what seems an eternity, Astarion leans in against him, so that his head rests against Wyll's shoulder.
They stay like that long into the night – long past when the owlbear falls asleep against him – long past when Karlach returns with Shadowheart in tow, the both of them healed and Shadowheart grousing about being carried like a sack of potatoes.
Astarion thinks of nothing much at all, but he finds that he quite likes the soft lapping of the lake and the warmth of Wyll's hand.