Chapter Text
There was a night, so long ago now it feels nearly ancient, when the nautiloid crash still poured smoke and steam into the air, and Astarion lay on a bedroll by the fire, looking up at the star-filled sky, thinking about freedom, how much he may have gained and how to test it. Cazador is a man of rules, from the holy: thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures, to the mundane: straighten your shoulders before you talk to me, boy. Yet what is a lawyer but a person who knows the rules well enough to stretch them to their very limits, to slink and skitter around them, and what better time would there ever be to do it? In one singular moment everything is so very changed, not a wholly unfamiliar feeling, all things considered, yet powerful all the same.
So the stars danced newly brilliant in his vision and he wondered what thinking creature would become the home for his fangs when the answer came drip drip dripping up from the river all soaking wet, clothes and everything, that filthy off-white blouse clinging to her tits, to the ribcage beneath, her thin trousers sucked against her thighs. He’d said something patronizing, something along the lines of, you’re supposed to take your clothes off to bathe, darling, and she didn’t even look at him when she went limply into a bedroll opposite him. Astarion had the distinct feeling that whatever happened was no accident, and that made him a little nervous, because of all the complete freaks he’d picked up over the past days, she at least seemed willing and able to lead, and though he was no longer a person who needed leading, there must be someone to wrangle the others.
Circe had muttered, more to herself than anything: “Mind is never quiet.”
Then she put her eyes on the stars too, and hours passed that way, both looking up with the fire diminishing between them, saying nothing. He’d noted the incident, noted, even, that little bit of a flame which licked at him at the sight of her all wet like that, at the ambient feeling of her tightly pounding pulse, and that was the moment he’d begun to watch her more carefully, but things had progressed so quickly after that he’d not thought of it again until now, watching Circe disappear through the night, past camp, past the looming watchtower, toward the river.
Circe has woken up, as she so often does, and shaken him awake, and said: What the fuck have you made me do?
Without thinking he had said: Oh gods, already? because despite his terrible luck he hadn’t thought she’d sour on their union quite so quickly, and he can’t think of anything he’s done between her falling asleep and this lethal accusation to help her along; he hasn’t consummated the thing, that’s true, he hasn’t even tried, but she did promise she didn’t care about all that, and thus far she’s been true to it. Nevertheless, she threw herself from the tent as though he was some contagion, and all there was to do was scramble after her.
So he careens behind and he feels not even the faintest hint of confusion; for her to leave him seems the easiest thing in the world, all it takes is to keep on walking, and whatever the reason she’s likely right to do it, in the end. It’s only that she hasn’t let him explain himself, or even argue his point at all, and that seems more than a little dramatic and even unusual on her part.
No confusion, then, but instead immense fear, because she isn’t a strong swimmer, and if she paddles out far enough, she’ll die out there in the middle of that black expanse, and the nameless god who bars her entry to the other side will look down and see what her life looks like, will see him, and will judge the thing fairly, and say: to be bonded to such a miserable thing is penance enough for a life of violence, and then they will step aside, and let her at last into paradise, and leave him to the ruin of eternity without her.
He says: “If you want to end it with me, that’s fine, but must you be so godsdamned theatrical about it? Drowning yourself in the river like some –”
Circe reaches the shore and all she does is kick a rock with her slipper and then stalk up and down the bank kicking up gravelly sand, holding her palms to her cheeks, huffing in wild breath.
“Always made to give deference to that youngling bitch!” she shouts, which is curious in that it seems a statement which cannot be about him or any crime he may or may not be guilty of. “I will find uncle and tear him limb from limb for saddling me with that wretched whelp! The sorriest thing my father ever produced!”
It isn’t that Astarion is stupid; he assumed there would indeed be ramifications for the events of the day, it’s only that he’d naively hoped they’d wait at least until morning when he’s gotten some rest, for he is so tired after all, and while lack of rest can’t kill him, nothing much can anymore, it can leave him on the backfoot as far as the ramifications are concerned. Still, it does seem as though whatever complaint Circe so rudely woke him up with was misplaced, and so he breathes a sigh of relief.
The sound of it makes her turn around, puts him directly in her spotlight, and he sees immediately how wrong he was. “And you!” she hisses, stalking up the sand to him, eyes aflame, every muscle tense to ripping. “You have me walking away like a weakling! A coward! Is there no man living or dead who won’t be my fucking ruin?”
So here is the crime, then. She has come to regret walking away from her sister, and while they very obviously decided to do it at the same time, she finds it easier to pretend it went differently, and that he is to blame.
“This language, Circe,” he complains. “It’s beneath you.” She may be a lot of things in one body, but she does maintain an elven sense of propriety about her, and he can count on one hand the number of times he’s heard her swear like this and were it not for the whole drowning herself idea it may be the most unsettling thing about this ordeal.
“Tell me vampire, when did you become so soft?”
Any other time, an insult like this would have him driving her against the nearest tree to prove just how hard he can get; they would undoubtedly come to some resolution that way, and almost there is an edge of it happening, a brief yet taut moment in which it could manifest, but then it passes, because he recognizes that teaching her a cock-based lesson may well backfire and have him tenderly apologizing for something he isn’t sorry for, and he won’t be reduced to it, come hells or high water. He merely sneers back at her until her fury increases so much she can’t bear to look at him anymore and prowls back down the shoreline.
“– should’ve chopped her in half and been done with it!” she’s shouting, throwing her arms wildly into the air, kicking at rocks with her slippers, a pastime she simply can’t resist and the reason there are fake jewels hanging on by mere threads, and some missing entirely.
“If any more of those godsforsaken things fall off, I won’t be sewing them back on. I’ve told you enough times.” This is what he can do, he can meet petulance with petulance; after all, a few centuries trapped with insane siblings of his own has taught him a few things. “And by the way, darling, I’d sooner apologize to Cazador himself than apologize for keeping you safe from the bhaalspawn.”
Circe ignores him. “What the hells was I thinking? What were you thinking?” She doesn’t give him any time to point out that he’s just told her what he was thinking, and if she isn’t going to listen, he may as well go back to bed. “Doppelgangers, here in camp –” she flails her arm back toward where their companions sleep. “– any one of them could be –!”
“It isn’t terribly ideal,” he admits, for of course he’s thought of it already, and concluded that it’s likelier than not that one of their cohorts has already been taken over.
“Ideal?” Circe nearly shrieks, but in trying to tamp it down it comes out half-swallowed. “She’s going to take you!” He hears the fear in it clearly, and perhaps if not for the near-death of panic she induced in him only moments ago, he might even find it sweet; ultimately it lands on him as more an insult then calling him soft. He swiftly closes the distance between them, thunders into the cocoon of her raging heart, and almost the moment where he could pin her under him and shove himself inside her is returned; abruptly he wonders why he can only fuck in moments like this, moments of some extreme emotion or other, yet this is undoubtedly a concern for another time.
“Am I merely some toy to you in all this? I won’t be taken anywhere, Circe. I will not go anywhere I do not wish to go, ever again.”
Eyes startled wide become guilty, and then she turns away from him entirely. “Hells, Astarion,” she laments. “So many chances to get rid of her over the years – I assumed she couldn’t best me and – gods, look at me now! Carved up into a fool, brought lower than I ever could have imagined! And now everything I’ve gained is threatened and you had me walk away!”
“If you are determined to be unfair, so be it,” he says, and then he sits rather unceremoniously down on a fallen log and folds up his arms and means to let her keep ranting while he puzzles everything out, for aside from the obvious absurdity of the accusation there is another thing that discomforts him: the difference between Circe and the bhaalspawn is usually plain as day, their separation perfectly obvious. Now in this frantic condition there is a bleeding of personalities, and she talks as if she is the creature and the creature is her, yet there are no hints of its wakefulness in her eyes nor her demeanor. While he’s always known it would be difficult to get rid of the bhaalspawn, he is suddenly stricken by the notion that it may not be possible at all, or else it will come at an extreme cost to her, and therefore to him.
“Hells,” she’s saying, her wild pacing only gaining momentum. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Circe,” he snaps; everything has become terribly distracting, a thousand different worries colliding, as if this day has not been long and fraught enough, and he feels more tired than ever, and annoyed at this whole process, uncharitable as it may make him. “Kill them one by one until the doppelganger reveals itself? I could start with Halsin… Gale…” Yes, that would lift his spirits a great deal, wouldn’t it.
“Fucking hells,” she says, her voice dropped to something low and pained. “There’s got to be something –” Then she halts, straightens, possessed of a sudden solution. “Sceleritas!” she shouts into the night, and it takes but a moment for the nasty skeleton to appear, and Astarion feels the air fill with that acutely queasy anxiety the thing always brings with it.
“Oh good,” he sneers. “Add the little biter to the mix, why don’t you?”
“My Lady,” Sceleritas says with an eager and deeply flushing bow. “You called?”
Circe grabs it by the tattered lapel, hoists it off the ground. “Where is my sister?”
Sceleritas sputters nervously, twists his bony hands over one another. “I do not know where Orin is, my Lady. She does not tend to inform me of her doings, as you well know.”
Circe’s hand moves quickly up to its neck. “Orin,” she hisses, twitching through the name as if to know it now has sent a lash of painful remembering through her whole body. “Orin is the reason I know nothing,” she snarls, her grip tightening. Astarion sighs again; whatever spur-of-the-moment plan she concocted has just as quickly devolved back into personal grudge. “It’s because of her that if you were to cut me open, you’d find an empty hollow inside! Where were you then? Where were you when she was beating me senseless? Leaving me for dead?”
Hours ago, when they’d walked away from the thing called Orin, Circe had found some grace for her sister, acknowledgment that it was only with her wretched assistance that she’s here now to experience what she never could before; it’s a tall order to maintain a thought like that, as Astarion knows well enough himself. To give his captor even the smallest credit for bringing anything good into his life, even in a roundabout way, is too bitter a taste to keep on the tongue for more than a moment.
“I was watching, Lady!” the skeleton is begging. “Watching and despairing! She is a vile thing, how I hate her, how I loathe her!”
Circe swings it down to the rocks, smashes it against them. “Why haven’t you killed her, then?”
“I cannot harm anything of the Blood! My very nature will not allow it!” Though valid enough an answer, it does nothing to quell Circe’s despair.
“You’re meant to help me! To protect me!” she is weeping with the frustration now, begging this thing for the help it’s already failed to give, reaching back into the past for rescue that won’t come.
Sceleritas chokes out from under her closed hand: “I am made to protect you from yourself, Lady!”
Astarion shakes his head, knots his eyebrows together over closed eyes, for suddenly there is a strange kinship for this horrible little creature; they are two opposing forces alike in devotion to this person who, for differently selfish reasons, compels them to action. He imagines the butler appearing and dragging Circe from that cold river back to shore and imploring her to live up to her inheritance, to strive for the greatness she’s capable of. Is it so different from what he’s asked of her, every day in some way or other, since he took her to that clearing and fucked her senseless? He thinks: Can it be that I am nothing more than some absurd entity chained up in her service? It is what he had been afraid of, back then: switching one master out for another.
Sceleritas is mournful in his wailing. “Even in the face of that most wretched progeny, you refuse your birthright, eschew your talents, dishonor your father’s divine bloodblessing! I try and try to serve you, to please you, but you will not listen!”
This sends Circe over the edge, and she drags Sceleritas to the shallows and screams as it thrashes in her grip. It takes an age to die, an age in which all the world goes silent but for its gurgled choking and her rasping throat. When at last it stops, she falls back into the sand with it clutched to her chest, and she sobs, and caresses its mottled, pitted face, and she apologizes to it: “I’m sorry, oh, I’m sorry.”
Astarion’s heart aches, astonished that her boundless tenderness can surprise him even now, so late in this endeavor. Another thread of kinship, too, for he and the butler count themselves among the things Circe loves though she ought not to, things she would be better off without but seems unable to help keeping with her anyway.
“Circe,” he says, coming to a crouch beside her, risking a gentle hand out to her shoulder. “Come away from the water.” He scoops tear-wet hair away from her cheek, brushes it behind her ear, and he thinks: I am not in your service, but I am in service to you. This is a new kind of thing; to serve for love is different than to serve for power, and the distinction is in the choice of it. This is the distinction, too, between him and that skeletal retainer. It’s a thing crafted by a murderous, deranged god to operate in the most explicitly outlined way; it cannot kill Orin because its precepts dictate it cannot. It cannot truly love Circe for herself, for her spirit, because what love it has is made of conditions, of limitations that only a god could skirt around.
“I’m sorry,” she says, looking desperately at him; she mistakes his generalized disquiet for disappointment. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I never mean to. I promised I would stop, and I’ve tried –”
“Hush,” Astarion says. She is sobbing so hard the tears have stopped and now it’s just breathing so harshly she can’t form words, and her legs stick out into the gently lapping water.
“I’m not – I’m not –” She shudders. She gulps. “I’m not like Cazador.” It’s a statement and a question, and since there is a dead slave in her lap and a hint that it isn’t the first time she’s killed it, and since Astarion himself has already drawn some kind of tortured connection of his own to his Master, he can’t be surprised she has as well.
“You aren’t,” he says simply. “And gods, how I’ve wanted you to be, at times. How much easier it would have made things.” She doesn’t know what he means, and she never will. He sighs and stands up; there’s nothing more to accomplish, and he means to put this day behind him if it takes everything he has.
Circe twitches away from him, cradles Sceleritas tighter as though she senses already that he aims to take the corpse from her; he can see damn well that she loves the thing, and he ought to tread carefully, but there are the things a person wants and the things they need, and his loving service is in knowing the difference, and this is how it has always been. Stay alive, Circe, stay here with me. Remain yourself, you will be better for it. Let the wraith go, he compels you toward all your worst inclinations. If you’re mad, so be it; if you hate me for it, go right ahead. My heart will hurt but my conscience, insofar as I have one at all, will remain light as a feather.
“It’s not his fault he’s made like he is,” she’s saying, petting at it. “He only wants me to stay alive.”
“Alive and in chains,” Astarion spits, and then he does grab the stiffening corpse and pull it away, and her arms fall open to let it out though she resents him for it. “He’d have you forever in supplication to your father, and nothing more.”
“He’s my –” She must know better from the look on his face then to finish the sentence, to say the word family to him. That she could claim such a thing despite these ridiculous events would have him start a whole other argument. With the mottled corpse in his hands, he steps away so that she can’t reach out and stop him, and then he hurls the wraith into the river’s inky depths. He nods to himself, appreciation of a job well done, and turns back to her, brushing his hands on his trousers.
“Well, it’s a good thing you have a new one, then, isn’t it?”