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Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
—Love Is Not All, Edna St. Vincent Millay
—
“It’s the right thing to do,” Tav hissed to herself. Sarevok’s great two-handed cleaver swept down like a mountain. “It’s the right thing to do, the right—oh, gods!”
No right to be so large and so fast at the same time. They’d been fighting for what felt like hours and still the sword whistled on the backswing, sharp enough to cut wind. She barely threw herself into a tucked roll in time. She came up on the other side of Sarevok on her knees just as Karlach smashed her fiery fist into Sarevok’s face, and with a little luck she managed two deep, incisive strikes to the small of his back. He threw his head back in a yowl that sounded like two boulders crashing together, and then that great horned head turned to stare down at her in unblinking, glowing fury. His mouth still bled from an earlier blow; his chin was wet and red.
“Are you lot finished dithering about, or are you going to kill him?” That was Valeria, still chained near the pool, her nasal whine jangling over Tav’s nerves.
“The right thing,” Tav gasped, and scrabbled back just as the tip of the sword slammed into the stone floor between her feet. The paver cracked into a thousand jagged lines. “I swear to Hoar, shut up or I’ll shut you up myself—”
The last of the ghostly, bloody women near the back wall let out a shriek of laughter. Jaheira was harrying her as a panther, snapping and snarling at her edges, and as those long white teeth sank into the echo’s arm, the woman cackled again. A half-dozen wounds bled across Jaheira’s flank, but none badly, and Astarion—where—
An arrow streaked through her periphery. Sarevok seized his side with a bellow of pain, and a second arrow thudded next to the first. Long white fingers clamped down on her shoulder from behind and Astarion’s voice singsonged in her ear. “Come along, darling. This is no place for you.”
“No place for you either,” she gritted out, but Karlach rammed her trident square into the back of Sarevok’s skull, and his eyes rolled up in his head. Just for a moment, just long enough—Tav lurched to her feet and flung herself backwards, her knuckles white around the rapier’s hilt. “Come on, come on, he’s nearly—”
“Nearly split you in two, yes, I noticed!”
Jaheira let out a panther’s roar of triumph. She’d pinned the writhing echo to the ground, her long teeth snapping inches from the creature’s throat. Sarevok gave a wordless shout of fury and spun to Karlach, his sword high above his head. Karlach braced, eyes shining with golden rage, and there was his back, unguarded, open—
Tav and Astarion moved at the same moment. His daggers went high towards Sarevok’s heart; Tav’s rapier drove with lethal precision through a gap between plates at his waist. The blade sank a full handspan into his flesh.
A black scream echoed with the voices of the damned. Sarevok shoved Karlach away and turned like the earth on a grave, backhanding Tav across the face to send her flying. She landed hard on her side next to the red pool, the world spinning wildly—her ears rang like a bell—her hands found no stone under her, only wet, shifting sand. Get up, gods damn you, get up, right now—
A sound pierced the chaos with peculiar clarity. A sigh from Astarion—a gasp. Small, sudden. Afraid.
The dizzying whirl receded. She found stone at last, pushed herself up—what she thought was up—and froze. Sarevok had one hand clamped over Astarion’s face, his white hair caught in the riveted joins of the massive gauntlet. Astarion had seized Sarevok’s wrist in both hands, futile struggle against the inexorable lift into the air, against the sudden thrust of Sarevok’s sword-arm—
Three feet of bloodied steel burst through Astarion’s lower back.
Tav thought she screamed. The image hung in her vision like stained glass, longer than it had a right to, all its edges brilliant and glittering with horror. Torchlight shrilled over the blade as Sarevok twisted—Astarion’s arm jerked horribly—
Karlach rose like a tower of fire. Her powerful arms wrapped around Sarevok’s throat from behind, clenched tight as a god herself—Sarevok bowed backwards beneath the pressure—Tav scrambled to her knees, then her feet, numb and blind and deaf to everything but the blood thundering in her ears and the need to kill.
One ferocious upward thrust. The rapier’s tip entered beneath his left jaw, exited just above his right temple. The crack of bone was deafening in the sudden silence; the helmet lifted from his head and hung crazily askew.
Sarevok stared down at her. “Not yet,” he said, and the words were slurred, surprised. Then his eyes clouded over, his mouth went slack, and like a landslide he fell dead to the floor.
The hilt slid from her grasp and she let it. Astarion, impossibly conscious, had tried to land on his feet and fallen instead to his knees. The sword pierced a handspan below his navel, then angled upwards to exit just beside the small of his back. His eyes were glassy with pain; he was shoving at the blade, making terrifying retching noises in the back of his throat.
She felt trapped outside herself, frozen in a tableau from all her nightmares. She was struggling, struggling, slow as time and getting nowhere—then finally on her knees beside him, grasping uselessly at his shoulders, at the flat of the blade staring upwards, its reflection empty. “Oh—gods, Astarion—oh, Iallanis, mercy—”
“Get it out. Tav, Tav—get it out.” The words were hollow, crazed. He coughed, a wet burbling sound, and blood spattered over the steel. “Gods, it hurts—”
“Karlach!”
“I’m here, I’m here—”
“What do we do? What do we—” Panic. Useless panic. Tav sucked in a sharp breath. “We’ve got you. Astarion, can you hear me? Listen to me.” She seized his face in both hands. “We’ve got you. Let go, dear heart. You’ll be all right soon.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. Terror shook through him like the glare off a battered shield. “Please,” he said, naked and raw and desperate, and he clutched at the sword’s edge. “Master, stop, please—”
“Astarion,” Tav choked out, and then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he went blessedly limp.
He was still kneeling, arms fallen slack at his sides, his head dropped down towards his chest. The enormous sword’s hilt rested on the flagstones before him, propping him up with the lopsided thoughtlessness of some inexpert sculptor.
Karlach’s voice was strained. “Is he—dead?”
“No,” Tav began, “he’s—”
But how could she tell? Out of habit she’d put a pair of fingers to the side of his throat, but of course there would be no pulse. The flat of a knife beneath his nose—but no breath there either. For all intents and purposes he was dead, except for him that wasn’t the same as dead, and she didn’t know how—had never thought—
Valeria bleated something by the pool. Tav shut her out, shut out Karlach and the sound of Jaheira’s magic returning her to the shape of a woman, and reached out with her mind. There. The faintest glimpse of thought, weak and thready but not gone yet, his tadpole struggling to grip together the vestiges of a life running out like sand through a sieve.
“He’s still alive.” Tav flung out a hand. “Jaheira, I need you. Your healing—please. Karlach, my bag. One of the knights smashed it in the fight—I heard glass break. Tell me there are some potions left.”
“Fuck. Just a little one. Here. I think I should—I should get that out of him, yeah?”
Jaheira knelt on Astarion’s other side and braced his shoulders. “I fear not much strength remains to me after such a battle, but rest assured, I will do all I can.”
“Thank you,” Tav gasped, and then Karlach started to pull.
The sound was awful. Wet, thick, with a cold edge; the emerging metal smeared with ropy gore. Every now and then his hand would twitch, or his head, and Tav’s heart would leap to her throat, but his eyes remained steadfastly shut, and when the last of the blade came free he fell forward into their arms like some child’s broken doll. Gods, had he always weighed so little?
Jaheira helped her lay him on his back, helped arrange his limbs in a facsimile of comfort. The moment he was settled Jaheira’s hands began to glow blue, and she pressed them hard against the seeping wound in his gut. Crimson blood welled around Jaheira’s fingers—my own blood, Tav thought with insane amusement—and as Jaheira’s mouth firmed in a line the wound began slowly—so slowly—to close.
Valeria’s peevish voice shattered the tense silence. “I say, can any of you hear me? By Tyr’s right hand, this is the worst rescue I’ve ever seen.”
“Karlach,” Tav said without looking away from Astarion’s face, “go kill her.”
“Honestly, given your casualty rate I might have been better off with the—what was that?”
“I’m not going to kill her.” Karlach laid a heavy, warm hand on the crown of her head. “I’ll be right back.”
Footsteps, and then the jangling of chains. Karlach grunted and something metal gave way, and Valeria let out a noise of impatient satisfaction. Tav heard her mutter something to Karlach as she left, and at last the beating of her wretched wings passed through the door, turned a crumbling corner, and diminished into silence.
The healing would not be enough.
Even Tav, inexpert in the Weave as she was, could tell. Sweat poured down Jaheira’s face, her eyes clenched shut and her mouth twisted into a grimace; her hands began to shake. The wound was not a quarter sealed. Blood still spread rapidly through the tear in his leathers, staining the stitching and lining the creases. His face was white as she’d ever seen it, his lips horrifyingly pale, the ever-present bruises under his eyes gone almost black.
Too much blood. He was too weak and the healing was too weak, and it was too much blood—
“Oh,” Tav said.
Her gauntlet tried to stick, one of the clasps smashed flat from the fight, but even one-handed she was able to prise it free. The skin beneath had bruised, was striped with red creases from the padding and very sweaty, but—good enough, surely. She prayed it would be good enough.
The first cut she kept small. No more than a half-inch along her wrist, right over the pulse-point at the base of her thumb, safely away from the tendons. The pain rose and faded, forgotten the instant it came. Karlach grimaced but said nothing.
Tav pressed her thumb to the flesh beside the wound. A good flow. Steady crimson, but not a gush; she’d judged the depth precisely. No danger of bleeding out. How stupid, this pride at her own improvement.
“Here,” she said aloud, as if Astarion could hear her, and she put her wrist against his lips and waited. Between Sarevok’s lifeless corpse and the pool of sickly, unholy blood, the smell of death was overpowering. She knew Astarion could detect even fine differences in mortal blood, could pluck hers from a sea of others—but here, in this reeking pit? Would he even be able to tell? Was there enough—was her pulse strong enough that he could find the lean thread of her heart among the rest of the rot?
The blood smeared over Astarion’s cheek as she shifted closer. It collected at one corner of his mouth and ran down his jaw in a thin red line.
Nothing.
Nothing. No twitch. No purse of his ice-cold lips, no mindless pull. Oh, gods. Nothing—nothing—
The steady blue glow around Jaheira’s hands flickered and went out. The druid’s face turned in Tav’s periphery, but her desperation transcended shame. “Please don’t let up, Jaheira. Please.”
“No. You have been wiser than I. He has lost much blood and it must be replaced. Karlach, a little pressure there, I think. Good. And—here, cub. Let me show you.”
Her voice was low, as if soothing a maddened animal, and her lined hands when she placed them over Tav’s were gentle and strong. Not quite enough to stop the trembling; not quite enough to quell her pounding heart. A thick agony lodged high in Tav’s throat—a scream or a sob, she couldn’t tell. “Jaheira, I don’t know how—if he can’t—”
“Hush. Like this.”
She turned over Tav’s bleeding wrist to reveal a mess of scarlet, still seeping freely. Jaheira swept Tav’s forefinger through the thickest of it, then squeezed Astarion’s cheeks until his teeth parted. “Under his tongue,” she said. “As you would a runt who will not take the teat. It will reach his veins quicker there.”
His mouth was dry as the Calimshan Wastes. Her blood was sticky, warm; it felt like smearing honey on a stale scone.
“His brother called him a runt.” Tav hardly knew what she was saying. Another drag through her own blood, another press of her finger to the underside of his tongue. “I suppose you mean—goats or something.”
“Goats, cats, very small owlbears. Any litter you like; nature has a way of balancing the scales.” Jaheira adjusted her grip on his jaw as Tav brought her hand back a third time, and the tip of a fang slit Tav’s knuckle open. “Ah—accursed teeth. Even here he cannot keep them to himself. Though I suppose there might be worse times. Never mind—now along his gums, inside and out. The roof of his mouth. Good.”
Astarion’s face remained lax and white, his eyes still tightly shut. He’d taken her fingers into his mouth before—had even sucked blood from them with evident delight—but this, this coarse manipulation of his cheeks and teeth and tongue, the impersonal shove of her forefinger between his slack lips over and over—awful. Beyond awful. Hideous in a way that made her stomach churn.
“Arsehole,” she said, eyes stinging. “Wake up, would you?”
His eyes flew open all at once. They were black as Sharran pits, utterly sightless, and without warning he clenched his teeth as hard as he could. Her first knuckle broke with a soft snap.
“Fuck!” Tav gasped, agony rocketing up her arm. “Oh, hells—shit—"
Karlach lurched towards her while still trying to keep pressure on Astarion’s wound. “Soldier?”
“Fine—shit—I’m fine—fuck!” His teeth had sunk deep into her skin. Every tug only worried the flesh ragged—Jaheira drove her fingers into his cheeks, trying to force his jaw open from the outside—but Astarion was never stronger than when he had fresh blood on his tongue, and it was like wrestling iron.
“Tav—”
“Loviatar’s scourge,” Tav hissed, sucking in air through her teeth, and then she leaned over Astarion and took a hard hold of his face. “Astarion,” she said, stern and sharp, the voice she used in battle. “Let go of my hand.”
A long, frayed moment. Then one ear twitched, his black eyes regained the thinnest ring of red, and his jaw unlocked.
Tav slipped free with a gasp. The pain was incredible, a bright throbbing ache that shot starbursts behind her eyes with every heartbeat. The top knuckle hung crooked now, puncture marks bleeding above and below, and if she examined the wounds too closely she could see—no. Better not to look after all.
“It had to be the finger,” she managed, and clutched her hand to her stomach. “Not a foot or a shin or a forearm or something. Oh, gods. Oh, gods—no, he picks the one thing I actually need good use of for everything I do—what’s this?”
“Our last potion.” Karlach thumped the pathetically tiny bottle against her shoulder once more, her other hand kept tight to Astarion’s wound. “You’d better take it after all.”
“I’d better not. Astarion might need—”
“To watch where he puts those teeth? Yeah, you’re right. Drink up, soldier. Not a request.”
Tav hesitated, but Karlach had the advantage of a hundred pounds of muscle and a mind not fractured by pulsating agony, and Tav downed the potion without further complaint.
Relief came instantly, heady as wine. Skin and muscle knit together in seconds, the little potion more than equal to a broken finger where it would have been wasted on Astarion’s graver injury. Jaheira guided the knuckle straight the last few seconds, and by the next blink Tav’s hand had been made whole.
As had her wrist, Tav realized, just in time for Astarion to give a terrible, rattling gasp.
“Tav,” he said, his eyes rolling sightlessly, his head tossing from side to side. “Tav—”
“I’m right here. Astarion, I’m right here.”
His voice flaked and broke like rust. “Please. Please, I need—”
“I know. I know. Here. Take it.”
His teeth slid along her forearm as if he were lost. Tav clenched her hand and pressed harder against him, breaking the skin herself; he shuddered with every inch of his body and clamped his mouth against her wrist. Little grunts escaped him with each swallow; one hand hung forgotten in the air above his chest, fingers twitching rhythmically, as if caught up by her thudding pulse.
Jaheira’s steady gaze burned like a brand. Tav knew, logically, that Jaheira had seen far worse over decades of adventuring; she knew Karlach’s grip was quite literally the only thing holding him together at the moment. Astarion’s feeding habits were hardly a secret these days; she had the scars to prove it. She wanted the two of them here—couldn’t hope to keep him alive without them.
And yet, to see him so exposed, so—unvarnished in front of an audience, his eyes clenched shut and his mouth working mindlessly and those desperate, begging sounds in the back of his throat—God on the Holy Rack. She’d trade every coin she’d ever stolen for the floor to open up and spirit them away to privacy.
“Continue just as you are,” Jaheira said suddenly, a kind smile curling around the words. Tav nodded shortly, unable to look at her, and a moment later a sleek black panther stood in Jaheira’s place. She padded once around Astarion in a surveying circle, tail lashing, then precisely and definitively dropped her whole weight atop his legs and stomach, just south of Karlach’s firm hold. She gave a great, toothy yawn, dropped her head between her paws, and shut her eyes.
Silence, save Astarion’s swallows and half-choked gasps. The rate had slowed—and a good thing, that, as Tav had begun to feel the lightheaded vertigo that always came when he drank too much too quickly. His raised hand fell, slid along the back of her own hand, and came to rest limply on his own chest.
Gods. If this quiet continued an instant longer, she’d go mad. “Karlach? How’s the wound looking?”
“Better.” She sounded surprised. “A lot better, actually. Let me look at his back.” She lifted him an inch or two with a great deal of care and no effort at all, then peered at the rent in his leathers. Jaheira bared her teeth in feline annoyance at the jostle without opening her eyes. “Still bleeding here, I’m afraid. But it’s trying like hells to close.”
“Good.”
“What about you, soldier? You’re starting to look a little peaky yourself.”
Nothing else for it. Tav sighed. “Can you reach Astarion’s pack from where you’re sitting? There’s an amulet. Front pocket. Gold, with a green stone on the pendant.”
“Where, here? Tav, there’s nothing in here but knives. I don’t—ow!” Karlach grimaced, putting the side of her forefinger to her mouth, then fished out the amulet gingerly. “When he wakes up, he and I going to have a long sit-down about edge safety.”
“Thanks.” The amulet felt warm in her palm, its magic gentle and familiar. Part of their morning routine now, as comforting as his hand on her waist or his voice in her ear or the now-familiar sting of his fangs. Tav pressed the stone to her heart with her free hand and closed her eyes. The magic took a sluggish moment to respond to her unpracticed call, as the Weave always did, and then the restorative spell washed over her with soothing familiarity. Warmth flooded through her cheeks, her fingertips; Astarion let out a fevered sigh and arched up towards her, just for a moment, before relaxing again.
Fucking Sarevok. A ferocious protectiveness surged so suddenly her hands shook. Gods, to slaughter him all over again—how dare he do this to Astarion? The wound and the fall and forcing him back into his basest self like this—the self with a bared throat, pale and vulnerable—the self he could still barely stand for Tav to see, much less their friends. She wanted to stalk back and forth like some feral animal in an alley, lashing her tail, daring any and all to get past her to the place where he lay, to even try.
Any lingering shreds of her own embarrassment went up in smoke. Something was roaring in her chest, a howl of fury that grew louder every time she looked at Astarion’s white, senseless face, and if he didn’t wake up soon she was going to tear this godsdamned shrine down brick by fucking brick until everyone who had ever thought of hurting him was nothing more than ash—
Her tadpole lurched. Her own rage swept through her, fiery and impotent—then a white surge of terror from Astarion flung itself back in indiscriminate answer. Karlach swore, startled.
A face thrust itself into her mind: black hair, burning red eyes, skin stretched over the cheekbones like a hide drum. It smiled with teeth like knives and Astarion made a noise of blind animal fear. The noise a child made before it was struck; the noise the Rivington courier dog had made behind the kennel fence.
“No!” Tav almost shouted, and Jaheira’s panther head lifted in alarm. “He’s not here. Astarion, listen to me. He’s not here, I swear it. It’s just me. I’m right here with you.”
A panicked scrabbling for her mind, his body too weak to match the motion. She cupped his face and leaned over him, trying to break through a drowning man’s terror by sheer will. “I haven’t left you. I’m right here, dear heart. I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe, Astarion, here with Karlach and Jaheira and me. He isn’t here; you’re not alone. Can you hear me? We’re all staying right here.”
His dreaming horror receded, slow as an ebb tide. Tav kept up the recitation, her thumbs stroking over his cheeks, her fingers running through his sticky, bloodstained hair. Every now and then she pressed her still-bleeding wrist to his mouth; occasionally he took it for an instinctive pull or two, then turned away as if confused, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
Lathander’s light, she was going to stake Cazador herself. She gave a sharp sigh and he flinched, Astarion who’d smirk at any threat of pain, and gods, if this didn’t end right now—
“Astarion,” Tav said, her throat tight. “Wake up.”
His mouth found her wrist, clenched once, then eased. So subtle she thought she’d imagined it—then his lashes fluttered, and a thin slit of garnet red, clear as daylight despite the pain still pinched hard at the corners of his eyes, drew into focus on her face.
“Darling,” Astarion murmured against her wrist, the word slurred and weak, and every ounce of anger in her body transmuted itself in a single instant to relief.
“You idiot,” she managed, and she ran trembling fingers over his cheekbones, his forehead. “You fool. You monstrous bastard.”
“Mm.” His eyes slipped closed again; his hands curled with clumsy purpose around her arm, holding her wrist against his mouth. His chest hitched every few swallows, as if his body could not remember how to breathe. His voice was rough with thirst. “Hate to ruin—such sweet nothings, but—” his mouth slid wet and sticky along her arm as he groaned, then again caught his breath “—it hurts. It hurts.”
“I know. Be still. Stop talking.”
“He’s here.” A question, despite the tone. He’d aimed for steady, but the undercurrents were choked, frightened.
“He isn’t. Look at me.” She drew her arm from his grasp, held his face firmly until his eyes turned up to hers, until she could be certain he could hear her. “Cazador’s nowhere near us. You’re safe here with me.” The laugh splintered out against her will. “Well, aside from the impalement.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “Aside from that.”
Her heart ached like Karlach had reached through her ribs and squeezed. His face still had hardly any color, only the barest flush risen to his throat and cheeks beneath the scarlet smears; his fingers were chips of ice. The veins of his arms stood purple and still, far too visible through even his white skin.
She pressed her wrist to his mouth once more and he drank obligingly. These pulls were weaker, his strength gone with the terror, and after only a few minutes he pushed her arm away. Tav clamped her other thumb over the marks his teeth had left. “Don’t stop. That can’t have been enough.”
He scoffed impatiently, and that sound was weak too. “You needn’t be so eager to die for me. I can taste how thin you’re running.”
“I’m fine.”
Astarion looked at her, sharp as an arrow despite the pain, and her eyes fell. He hummed. “That’s what I thought.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten stabbed, then.”
“Darling, if it’s cutting repartée you’re aiming for, you’re woefully outmatched.” His lips tightened. “I can’t move my legs.”
He began to crane his neck, but he hissed like oil at the pull of the wound and Tav pressed one fingertip to his forehead, pushing him back down. “That’s because Jaheira’s lying on them. Don’t smirk like that, you preening twit. She’s a panther.”
He laughed. They both pretended not to hear the pained relief in it, and when Tav wiped clean his mouth and chin he leaned into the touch. Quietly, she asked, “How bad is it?”
“It’s hardly the worst I’ve ever had, my dear. Keep these distraught looks for the next time Gale twists an ankle.”
Not really an answer, but she’d expected nothing else. “We’re out of potions. One of the knights smashed my bag in the fight.”
His gaze drifted to her stained wrist, to Karlach’s quietly sizzling heat, then vaguely towards his legs, where Jaheira’s black flank still shone with sticky stripes of her own blood. “And us a few grapevines short of a claret, I see.”
One of Jaheira’s ears flicked back, and Karlach laughed. “Listen to you, fangs,” she said warmly. “Nothing keeps you down long, does it?”
“Sometimes I wish it would. Gods below, you couldn’t have skewered him a few seconds earlier?”
“You’ve had it soft for too long. We all agreed.” Tav stroked the sweaty curls from his forehead. “Astarion, I’m not sure—this place is holy to Bhaal, and somehow I doubt he’ll appreciate us killing one of his favorites, even as much as he likes murder. I don’t think we can wait around here for help to find us. Do you think you can walk?”
Astarion gave a sharp, caustic laugh. “Darling, I’m insulted you’d even ask. This is nothing at all, I promise you that.”
“A moment ago you were in so much pain you thought it was Cazador.”
His lip curled. “And that moment has passed. I’ve moved on. So should you.”
“Fine,” she said, and wrapped a hasty bandage around her wrist as Karlach helped Astarion sit up. Every movement was ginger, careful as if Astarion were made of glass, but even that could not stop the flinches, the bitten oaths as he sat up, then struggled to his feet. Tav, who could hardly stand to listen to it, collected what was left of her pack and his, stowed the amulet safely away once more, and took up the pitiful handful of valuables worth selling from this blasted pit. A helmet for Minsc, pried from Sarevok’s cursed skull along with her rapier. A keen-edged two-hander worth a fair amount of coin. A half-dozen parchment scraps and journals she’d pick through somewhere else—anywhere else. Another useless key to add to the already-overburdened ring she kept out of perverse spite.
“Ready,” Karlach called, and Jaheira let out a low rumble of approval. Karlach held Astarion carefully upright, one hand firm on his back, the other securing his wrist slung over her shoulders. Astarion was tall, but she had to stoop even so, and he kept his other hand clenched to his stomach as Jaheira, still a panther, circled watchfully around them both. His eyes were closed.
“Come on, then,” Tav said, her voice steady. “It’s not far.”
Astarion’s jaw twitched, his lips white from pressure, but he said nothing. Worse. That was worse than the sarcasm, the biting asides. They limped together through the stony ruins, alert for danger but accosted by nothing more than spiderwebs and flickering shadows. Tav gave one of the collapsed armored knights a moody kick as they passed, staggered, and caught herself on the wall.
“You all right? Don’t tell me Mama K needs to get hands on you, too.”
“Fine, fine,” Tav said, but Karlach clearly believed her even less the second time around. Not that she could deny it—black spots danced at the edges of her vision, and the world kept spinning importunately under her normally-sure feet. Astarion had been right to stop himself from drinking further—to stop her from letting him. As usual, she’d ignored her own limitations, pushed her way into reckless danger as if that were the same thing as courage. Gratitude surged, overtook the worry for a brief, wonderful moment, and receded again.
They turned the last corner. Astarion was breathing hard. His eyes had taken on that glassy, unfocused look that always came when the world had become too much, when retreat came easier than the agony. He began making noises in the back of his throat with each step: half-swallowed grunts, first, as if they’d been jolted out of him, and then soft, gasping whines that tore at Tav’s heart like hooks. As if each step had dragged him to the very precipice of what he could bear, as if one more might break him at last.
“Should we stop?” Karlach asked wretchedly. Jaheira nosed Astarion’s fingers where they were still clamped to his stomach. He didn’t seem to notice.
In fact, his face had hardly changed at all. Eyes lidded and very distant, mouth straight and flat. No twisted agony marring his features. No gritted strain in his face to match the noises escaping him.
Lady of Mercy. They weren’t real. Not that he didn’t hurt—she was sure of that—but he wasn’t hurt in the way those sounds hurt, not really. They were for show instead, a performance, an offering to an absent god who took pleasure in hearing his pain.
He said my screams sounded sweetest.
“Fuck,” Tav said, and covered her eyes. Just a moment to get her bearings—just a moment to clamp down like a steel vise on the raging, bone-deep need to kill Cazador. “No. Let’s keep going. I think it’s—as good as it’s going to get.”
“If you say so,” Karlach said doubtfully, but Tav put her hand over Astarion’s on his side, and the next few steps saw his inarticulate protests dwindle, even if his gaze remained very far away.
All too soon they reached the stairs up to the door that led to Candulhallow’s Tombstones, to the streets and the Elfsong Inn beyond. Not a long stairway, only two or three dozen steps, but Astarion’s gait had become a halting shuffle, and even the brace of Karlach’s support would not be enough to climb the entire thing. His back was bleeding again; Tav’s fingers came away from his leathers red and sticky.
“I could pick him up, I guess,” Karlach offered, though she sounded skeptical. “He’d probably try to kill me for trying, but I bet I could pin him first. He’s a lot slower like this.”
“I’d rather not,” Tav said, but no alternatives sprang readily to mind. Astarion simply waited, the hand over Karlach’s shoulders limp in her grasp, his head drooping with exhaustion. Even his curls seemed to lie flatter than usual. Beshaba’s antlers, maybe it would be better if—
Astarion’s knees buckled.
“Oh, shit!” Karlach said, but she had a good-enough grip on his arm to keep him from going down completely, and Tav managed to snare his waist and catch the rest of his weight. He’d gone out again like a doused torch, his mouth slack, his eyes shut. “Damn. Guess that answers that.”
“Have you got him?”
“Snugger than a bug in a toasty-warm rug, soldier.” Karlach hefted Astarion in her arms in one smooth motion, his white head tucked securely against her shoulder. His legs were crooked neatly over her forearm; his hands had fallen one over the other in his lap. He would have looked peaceful had he not been so covered in his—her—own blood. “Come on. Let’s put this rotten hole behind us.”
Jaheira made an approving noise very like a meow—not that Tav would ever say that to her face, especially when it came so toothy—and took most of the stairs in one great coiling leap. She turned at the top to look down at them, tail sweeping back and forth, and meowed—roared softly, that was better—again.
“All right,” Tav said, inexpressibly weary, and together she and Karlach trudged up the stairs towards the promise of late afternoon sun. Astarion lay perfectly still against Karlach, unbreathing, unmoving, save the first moment they passed out of the shadows of Candulhallow’s Tombstones. Then, as the sunlight struck him, he turned his face towards the warmth, and the pain around his eyes eased as if the light had smoothed it away.
—
Tav awoke just after midnight.
She wasn’t sure what had woken her. Blearily, she realized she hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place. She’d been sitting on the floor beside the bed where Astarion slept, reading one of the journals they’d unearthed from Sarevok’s things. She’d propped her forehead in her palm, just for a moment as she turned a page; then—nothing. At least a few hours had passed, she thought, judging by the glimpse of stars through the window. That explained the thrice-cursed ache between her shoulders.
Tav ran her fingers over the back of her neck and yawned. Most of the candles on his bedside table had dwindled with the hour, but two squat wax pillars still shone steadfastly against the dark. The Elfsong had gone quiet with night; only Karlach’s faint snores broke the silence. More vibration than sound, really, especially around two corners and who-knew-how-many privacy screens.
Something brushed against her hair.
Again, she realized, recognizing at last what had woken her in the first place. Tav turned to look, and sure enough, Astarion stared back at her, his eyes slits of scarlet, barely cracked in the candlelight but gleaming all the same. The covers had been pulled high over his bare chest, almost high enough to hide the bandages peeking out above the patched hem. His brow was creased with confusion and no small amount of pain.
Still. Awake. Alive, and awake. “Hi,” she said softly.
The hand which had been trying to touch her hair brushed clumsily over her cheek. His fingers were ice-cold, graceless as she’d ever seen them; on the second pass he nearly poked her in the eye. That was worrying in and of itself, but the terrible relief swallowed the worry soon enough. She set the journal aside, caught his hand, and pressed her lips to his knuckles.
He did not smile, but some of the tensed lines around his mouth went soft, and Tav’s heart puddled like melted snow. “How are you feeling?”
His voice came out an inelegant croak. “Utterly rotten.”
“I believe it. You’ve slept almost five straight hours. Real sleep, too, not those lightweight trances.” She touched forefinger and thumb together as if in explanation, and the roll of his eyes brought a fool’s smile to her face. “Should I get Shadowheart?”
“Hardly. If I craved the comfort of her bedside manner, I’d just as soon languish on hot coals.” He licked dry, cracked lips. “What happened to the helmet?”
“What helmet?”
“Whose do you think? Karsus’s pronged tiara?” He closed his eyes a moment, as if even that slight sneer had sapped his strength to nothing. “Sarevok’s, my dear. That great gaudy nightmare with all the teeth.”
“Oh. I gave it to Minsc.”
“I want it.”
“Why?”
“Because, darling. I earned it. With blade and teeth and fucking blood.” He smiled, a sharp fanged thing without humor, though his eyes still looked very tired. “I deserve a trophy and I want you to give it to me.”
Tav laughed, delighted. “And? What would you do with it? Conceited berk. You’d never wear something that grotesque.”
“Who knows? Perhaps I’ll throw it back and forth for the dog. Perhaps I’ll break off all those fangs and make hideous jewelry. Perhaps I’ll sell it for a Hhune to piss in. I have so many delightfully vindictive ideas.”
His fingers curled into a loose lock of hair framing Tav’s face, gentle despite his tone. She leaned into the touch. “Maybe you should wear it after all. Prove us all wrong. If anyone can pull it off, it’s you.”
Astarion hummed, his eyes falling shut. “I’m quite sure I could,” he said, but it was quiet, and when she reached up and stroked his cheekbone he let out a soft sigh.
“And not even a word of thanks to me,” Tav said, just as low. “Sitting here like a nursemaid at your bedside for hours, fetching and carrying everything Shadowheart ever thought of wanting in her whole life. Do you have any idea how much of my blood you wasted?”
“As if you don’t race to spill it yourself at every opportunity.”
“That’s very rude of you. I’m fully reformed, and you know it. Perhaps better than anyone.”
“Liar,” he said distractedly. “Why in the hells are you so far away?”
“You’re frail as eggshells, obviously. You’re on death’s very doorstep. Didn’t you know?” She rose with the pop of a hip, her knees likewise more stiff than she liked after her impromptu nap, then sat beside Astarion on the bed and leaned over him. “All it would take is one look. I’m sure that’s what Shadowheart said. One cruel look, and you’d expire all over again.”
“Little idiot,” Astarion said, and when lifting his hand to her face made him grimace with pain, she laid down beside him atop his covers, fitting her elbow beneath his shoulder and her knees alongside his knees. His forehead came to rest in the crook of her neck, cool and steady and soothing; she wrapped her arm around his waist, pressing at the small of his back until he was fully flush against her warmth, as near to her as they both could get him. Astarion’s breath caught at some twinge to his bandaged waist, just for a moment. Then he heaved out a sigh that seemed to drag out with it every last rivet of tension in his body, leaving him boneless as a rag in her arms.
Gods. Every bloody, blasted moment of the entire day—Sarevok—the murder tribunal—the image of Astarion pierced through like an insect pinned to a mat—every single cursed second went up in smoke. All was well. Astarion was in her arms, alive—so to speak—and healing, griping about a truly reprehensible helmet and complaining about her own behavior in the same breath. He was bruised and beautiful and in pain and perfect, and Tav let every feeling that was not her tremendous satisfaction at holding him close to her, at having him safe, drift away like smoke in a breeze.
Safe. He was safe. He would heal soon, would be back to his clever sarcasm and conspiratorial disdain in a matter of days. She hadn’t lost him yet. Not yet.
Tav ran her fingers carefully through his hair, rearranging a few curls to lie more neatly alongside their fellows. Without opening his eyes, Astarion gave a tired, throaty hum.
“Your hair is so lovely I can’t stand it,” she murmured, threading her fingers through strands like woven silk. “I’m going to pray tonight for Sune to take it back. Snatch it all right off your head.”
“She never noticed me before,” Astarion managed, the words lost in her collarbone. “Somehow I doubt she’d bother about it now.”
“Mm.” Tav pressed a kiss to his curls, then to his hairline, then to the center of his forehead. “I love you, Astarion,” she said quietly, and she felt the familiar little tremor run through him. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
A terrifying sense of exposure. Tav was at her best in shadow and secrecy, in passing without notice. In her line of work to be seen was to be caught; and when she was caught a Fist always followed, some hard hand clenched on the back of her neck, slinging her once more into that dank Heapside cell. To be trapped out in the open like this—to be perceived—was to have failed.
But this was more important. She pushed through the old instincts with deliberate effort. “When you were so hurt—when I thought you were dead—Astarion, it was awful. The fear nearly killed me. If it weren’t for Jaheira...” She kissed his hair again. “Gods, I love you.”
Worth the discomfort for him to know; worth the shiver of nerves that she was throwing herself off a roof without a rope. She’d tell him a hundred times, a thousand times, if that was what it took for him to believe it.
Astarion didn’t answer, not that she’d really expected him to. Instead he was very still against her, and then, slowly, his fingers curled into her collar. Tight. Tight enough she felt the seams of her shirt flex, tight enough her shoulders curved even more closely around him. Not quite affection, she thought; instead it was—desperate, almost urgent, as if he’d lost all his footing in the world and she were the only thing tethering him to solid ground.
“Tavish,” he said, and the word trembled like streamwater over sunlit stones.
A peculiar, precious thing. He’d been reduced to his basest self earlier, stripped down to the raw slavering hunger at his heart, and she’d been defensive enough of him then. This somehow felt infinitely more vulnerable.
Tav adjusted her knees, fit herself even closer against him. He grunted once as she bumped some tender place on his back by accident, but he only pressed closer himself, and when she wrapped an arm around him he buried his face in her shoulder. “I’m right here,” she murmured, her lips in his soft curls. “I’m not going anywhere. No one’s getting through me, all right? Not even Cazador.” This close, she felt him flinch at the name. Gods damn, she thought, and she ran her fingers through his hair. “You’re safe here, Astarion. Do you hear me? You’re perfectly safe, and I’m going to make sure it stays that way.”
He turned his head just enough to clear her collarbone. A few white strands tickled over her nose. “Your vision of safety appears to stroll hand-in-hand with a truly offensive amount of pain.”
“My safety guidelines are fine. You must be rotten at following orders.”
Astarion gave a soft huff of laughter, which surprised her, then stilled once more. The room was very quiet, even Karlach’s distant snores faded away, and in the silence one of the remaining candles on the nightstand gave up with a pitiful puff of smoke. Tav had just begun to drift off again, her nose still buried in his hair and every limb perfectly fitted around his, when Astarion suddenly spoke.
“It was your voice, you know.”
She dragged her eyes back open by force. “Hm?”
“How I knew I was…how I realized he wasn’t really there. Cazador.” He shifted restlessly against her. “Hearing you speak, knowing you were with me and that he wasn’t.” A long pause, and then, as unsure as she’d ever heard him: “I found it rather nice, actually.”
Her heart clenched. “The Absolute itself couldn’t have dragged me away.”
“Promises, promises, darling.” But he sounded relieved, and Tav began trailing her fingernails lightly along his scalp. “We needn’t pretend you’ll make a habit of chatting me out of my nightmares.”
“Oh? Try me.”
Astarion laughed again, but it cut off into a pained yelp, and she felt him make an aborted reach towards his own stomach. “Gods above, that hurts.”
“Sorry, I’ve already offered once to fetch Shadowheart and you turned me away. You’re on your own.”
He lifted his face from her shoulder. His eyes found hers, gleams of brilliant scarlet even in the dimness of candlelight, and for just a moment genuine anxiety flickered through his expression. The guilt rose instantly—even now, it seemed she couldn’t keep from hurting him—but before she could find words for an apology his mouth firmed and he raised his chin.
“Kiss me, darling.”
A lump lodged in Tav’s throat. She untangled one arm from his shoulders and ran the backs of her fingers over his cool cheek; then, as carefully as she could, she leaned down and pressed her lips to his.
A quiet kiss. His touch was hesitant, searching. She pressed back as firmly as she dared, offering every surety she could drag out of herself, as if she could convince him with this alone that she could be trusted with his heart. His eyes fell shut; his fingers twisted back into her shirt collar.
I’m here. I’m sorry. Tav ran her hands through his hair, over his cheekbones, along the lean line of his neck. She tripped over the twinned scars there, then passed over them, and smoothed back up over his jaw. She kissed him a second time, and then a third, slow and very gentle. It’s just me. I’ll watch your back when you can’t do it yourself. I’m not going anywhere.
Astarion’s breath caught. He drew back—not far, just enough to break contact—and she let him go. Her palm still rested on his cheek; he’d wrapped his hand around her wrist at some point to keep it there. His thumb stroked over the scabbed place where she had opened her vein for him earlier. His fear had wholly vanished, the tension around his eyes melted away like a spring thaw to reveal the new, clumsy gratitude beneath. The lump in her throat grew tighter.
I’m right here with you.
Tav ran her own thumb along his temple. “All right?”
“What an absolutely revolting question.” His legs twined with hers as best they could through the red wool covers. “Don’t tell me you’re going soft, my dear.”
“Don’t tempt me to prove otherwise.” She ran one hand down the expansive scars on his back and found the thick bandage beside his spine. A light touch only, no pressure, and he neither flinched nor pulled away. She lingered above the wound a moment, as if wishing might make her hand a shield; then she slipped free, pulled the covers higher over his waist, and rested her fingers atop his hip. Astarion watched her, his eyes dark and lidded, and when she gave a comforting squeeze he sighed and shut his eyes.
Sune’s sash, how she loved him.
“Get some rest,” Tav said softly, and squeezed his hip again. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “I rather think you will. How pleasantly novel.”
“Mm. Get used to it.”
“Yes,” Astarion said again, and then he tucked his head firmly back into the crook of her neck as if he belonged there. Tav wrapped her arm around his shoulders obligingly, fitting them back together, and shut her eyes. He’d taken most of the pillow and her bare feet were cold; her arm beneath his head was already falling asleep.
No matter. He trusted her to keep him safe. When he’d been at his most vulnerable after Sarevok, when he’d been badly wounded and blood-starved and frightened out of his senses; and here, in the warm beds of the Elfsong, in much less immediate danger, when he was only tired and in pain. He’d held on. He’d allowed her to hold him, like some stray cat beginning to believe the proffered hearth might not vanish without warning after all. A shade of the ferocious protectiveness she’d felt in Sarevok’s lair rose again, dwindled, and settled into the low-burning ember-bed somewhere deep in her heart.
She’d keep him safe. Hers to protect, not just because she could but because she had to, because she loved him, because he’d let her.
The last sputtering candle went out with a plaintive hiss. “I do love you,” Tav whispered into the dark. The words curled between them, safer in the shadows, where the light would not shine so harshly on the tenderness. She felt Astarion’s lips move in a tired kiss against her collarbone, and, satisfied at last, she closed her eyes and slept.
—
end.