Waking Daydreams - ushauz - Baldur's Gate (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

The first touch of freedom was thrilling and terrifying alike. Astarion, for the first time in two hundred years, walked in the sunlight. Astarion was able to do this because there was a worm in his skull that would devour his brain if left untreated.

But Astarion wanted to focus on the thrilling.

He’d forgotten most of these colors. The spawn dormitories were only barely lit, and Astarion had grown used to mostly seeing things through dark vision, colors faded if not fully grayscale. Cazador viewed keeping them lit ‘a waste of resources’ as vampires could see in the dark. And the streets, where he normally sought his prey, were dark as well. Color was reserved for special occasions when Cazador would actually let his spawn attend whatever party he was hosting as well as at the edges of dimly lit taverns (risking a brightly lit tavern gave higher chances for people to start wondering on his high collar and bloodless skin and red eyes after all).

But the sky was so blue, so absolutely, gloriously blue that Astarion felt as it might swallow him whole. There was grass, so vibrantly green it almost hurt to look at. His skin nearly gleamed in the sunlight, and even his own clothing held traces of purple that he simply had never realized it held.

The first few hours from escaping a freaky tentacle ship were not spent in pursuit of survival. They were spent splashing about in a river, giddy at his power. This was followed by saying every expletive and curse he knew towards Cazador before saying what he really thought of Cazador’s new outfit and how terribly his plans for Baldur’s Gate domination were going, as well as the hysterics of him stopping there because oh no, a bit of sunlight was stopping Cazador, and, wouldn’t you know it, not stopping his lowly spawn right now.

After that, he simply found a sunny place and rested, basking like some sort of glorified lizard, while he just stared up at the sky in wonder.

Reality had to come settling in around the edges. The tadpole squirmed in his brain, and shortly after he ran into people who had been on the ship, and after determining at knife point that they weren’t the kidnappers but instead fellow kidnappees, he went with them.

Maybe they killed people that first day. There was something about a temple? The details swam, because all he could pay attention to was breaking into a holy building, was the color of the wizard’s robes, was watching grass sway in the wind or the dappling effect light had when shining through leaves.

A ghost of a memory. He’d watched dappled light before, but he had utterly forgotten that light did that.

Astarion had even forgotten to put on a bored magistrate performance when people talked to him that night, forgetting to be more annoyed at sleeping in dirt (he would rectify that going forward). He had, dazedly, instead something about how sleeping in dirt was a little novel, and he forgot to be annoyed by that.

Because he was out. And, right now at least, he wasn’t compelled to return to Cazador.

At night, on watch, Astarion picked up handfuls of dirt, staring at them as if they had secrets to what was going on. What was a little dirt to freedom? What were a few blisters on his feet to being able to sneak out and feed on a live rabbit, hale and kicking as he drank until he was, for the first time in two hundred years, not that hungry.

He’d forgotten that sensation, felt even more a stranger without it there gnawing in his stomach, and he wandered back to the camp as if pulled by strings, because his mind was stuck in this surrealistic play.

The next few days pierced through the surreality. There was a tadpole that would turn him into a monster if it wasn’t removed. His fellow kidnappees were suspicious of him and trusted him not one whit. Walking rapidly lost its charm, as he hadn’t done heavy hiking through nature in ever, in his entire life, undead or otherwise, and his feet were developing nasty blisters that weren’t healing, because of course the thing that would turn him into a monster had taken away Astarion’s one sole gift: the ability to regenerate.

The hunger hit him again, and he snuck away to feed off the wildlife and got lucky with an entire boar, who had ended up gouging him across the ribs before he was able to get in at a good artery, and at least some aspect of vampiric regeneration still kicked in during feeding.

He got unlucky that boars were heavy as balls, and he wasn’t able to move it out of the way, and then the group stumbled across it the next day.

Lae’zel very astutely noticed the boar had been drained, and Astarion resolved to hide the animal carcasses better.

It was enough of a sobering moment that Astarion had, at this point, fully come back to reality, or so he thought.

They were seeking any kind of healers, or information about creches, at this druid’s grove/tiefling refugee camp. There were children with sticky hands, and squabbling, and druids with cold eyes, staring at him as if they could smell the undeath on him and were a breath away from impaling him through the heart with vines.

Astarion rather wished the entire lot would die on him.

But there, teaching children, was a peculiar man. He had warm brown skin that in the beautiful sunlight looked like his cheeks were some sort of precious bronze. He had mismatched eyes, one a prosthetic gray, and the other the softest brown eye imaginable, offset by the thick scars on his face. He was dressed simply in brown and red leathers, with black hair braided closely to his head and the sides shorn, showing off his lovely cheekbones.

But when he turned to look at Astarion, Astarion was caught off foot.

In the center of the stone eye was a little heart shape.

"I'm the Blade of Frontiers," the man said. "But I'm Wyll to my friends."

Shadowheart said something pithy, but Astarion's brain was melting.

Astarion, for some reason, knew he’d seen that exact heart shape before. And while the name was common enough, of course it was common enough, he'd met dozens of Wills, the familiarity of it swept up from underfoot and pulled him back into that dreamlike haze he’d been under. But whenever Astarion tried to rack through his brains— empty headed child —for where exactly he knew that eye from, it slipped through his fingers like trying to physically snatch fog.

It didn’t matter anyhow.

The man, attractiveness aside, was a monster hunter. So. That was reality for you.

—

Astarion had nearly put it out of mind and out of sight. The joy of being gloriously free was starting to war with growing nerves, because he was a vampire spawn. And the more he was out and about, the more he remembered that people really didn’t much care for spawn.

Before, Astarion wouldn’t have minded about this. After all, the worst thing someone who didn’t like vampire spawn could do to him was kill him. And if he died, that would finally be an end to his suffering, and bonus, Cazador would be peeved as sh*t about it. So. Win/win.

But right now, without Cazador around, Astarion realized quite strongly that he didn’t want to die anymore. Not now. Not when he’d been re-gifted the sun.

It was worse with this Blade of Frontiers around, because in theory (braggarts were a copper a dozen) the man hunted monsters. And by all rules of society, Astarion was one.

Don’t sympathize with the cattle, child. Did you care for the lowly tick in life? Do not be deceived that their hearts would open to a dead thing.

It had to be only a matter of time until he was found out. It’d be smarter to bring it up himself instead of letting it be revealed by circ*mstance, but what was Astarion to say? Oh yes Mister Of Frontiers, I know you kill monsters, but I assure you, I’m not a monster.

Even if the Blade was a good man, which, he probably wasn’t—monster hunters were lecherous handsy louts who liked to extort people for money, or if they were genuine, they were very shortly dead by monster hands—even if he was a good man, here was the thing.

There wasn’t an easy way to tell apart a vampire spawn from a true vampire. Surely, surely no monster hunter would risk that. What, keep alive some undead thing on the off chance that vampire spawn was only somewhat a monster instead of a full monster? Which, in this case, was a terrifying monster that could shrug off blows or control wolves?

Or worse, make a vampire out of said monster hunter?

What man would risk that, bound to an eternity of slavery on the off-chance someone wasn’t a monster? Astarion wouldn’t take that chance. Not now. Not ever again. No one who actually knew what vampires were would.

So, if Astarion told Wyll, Wyll would, regardless of morals, regardless on whether or not he was the real thing, kill Astarion because Astarion wasn’t worth the risk.

No one was.

—

The next day, Astarion continued his descent into madness.

Wyll would, for some reason only fools could glean, strike a little pose when introducing himself as an instrument of murder.

It wasn’t charming in the least.

No, it was foolish, self-aggrandizing stupidity. It was entirely unprofessional, probably, and it gave one the sense that they were talking to someone who genuinely believed he was in a storybook and had wandered off of the beaten path to sanity some time ago. Worse was the little smile he’d make, as if he was telling a long-running joke with just himself for company. His voice also flared out at the introduction, the Blade of Frontiers, an extra punch of wasted air.

Sometimes, Wyll would look at him, and both eyes swiveled, the prosthetic moving as if it were real. The heart-shape followed him.

But both eyes weren’t real. Or, okay, they were real, but the prosthetic didn’t work. Some magical prosthetics did, but common ones didn’t. Astarion, for his own knowledge, decided to test this, walking up at one point on Wyll’s left, and then at one point walking up on Wyll’s right, and that started Wyll enough that Astarion nearly got stabbed.

Wyll was very apologetic about it.

“Sorry!” Wyll said, hands outstretched in pacification. “Most of my experiences of people walking up that side have been when someone was trying to ambush me.”

Astarion snorted to cover up his the desire to plaster himself against a tree or something for safety. It was fine. It was more than fine. Everyone remained unstabbed. And yet Wyll’s tone had been slightly noted, as if he’d suspected Astarion had done it on purpose.

Oh don’t give me that face, child. Did you not think there were consequences to your tongue? Again and again I have tried to teach you any kind of responsibility for the things you do, and each time you delight in testing me. Pick up the knife, boy. You will remove strips of your own flesh until you genuinely feel remorse for your actions.

But nothing could stop Astarion’s tongue. Not even when Astarion wanted to stop Astarion’s tongue. “Dare I ask how you handle villages, or, ooh, cities? How many daily stabbings do you give out there?”

The sharpness didn’t cause Wyll’s gaze to harden. He seemed, for some stupid reason, to take the question in good faith.

“Well that’s where the ‘Frontiers’ part comes into play,” Wyll said, tapping the side of his nose. “I don’t spend a lot of time around large groups of people. Cities usually have their own protectors. It’s the small villages that need me the most, and even then, I don’t stay long.”

The tadpole squirmed in Astarion’s head. He couldn’t feel it in his brain, but he felt where the tendrils were brushing up against the inside of his skull, the faintest bits of pressure. Astarion couldn’t quite access Wyll’s head, but there was something unsaid, and that was tantalizing. Of course Wyll was too good to be true, and this was Astarion being delighted about it.

For sure.

Definitely.

“Well since it’s just going to be us for the foreseeable future until we get these worms out of our heads, maybe try not stabbing people in your blind spot,” Astarion said.

“I’ll try to remember that they could be an ally and not an enemy,” Wyll said.

“Let’s not get crazy,” Astarion said, wrinkling his nose, and Wyll, for some reason, simply laughed at his response.

—

A day later, Wyll caught up with his quarry. She was not a devil at all but a tiefling woman with infernal machinery for insides. They had to stupidly talk Wyll out of killing said tiefling woman, and he seemed frustrated? Displeased? By this, even if he faked good-nature enough to fool the others.

(Horrified, some part of Astarion wanted to say, except that emotion didn’t make sense.)

Wyll had his theatrics about it. Said they would understand soon enough even if the damned man wouldn’t say what ‘it’ was. Astarion rolled his eyes and ignored Wyll.

Except then that night a devil came knocking and took Wyll’s mortality with it, left Wyll this screaming wet thing for a solid minute before he was able to rip his way out of his own flesh and crawl out of it in some disgusting devil metamorphosis, soaked in his own blood and whatever devil tar substance that had been, shaking and now the devil he claimed the tiefling to be.

There was a lot Astarion could reflect on here.

He could reflect on the fact that Wyll mostly just seemed surprised he was alive. He looked, strangely, like how Astarion imagined he looked earlier, staring at trees and rivers with his mouth stupidly open.

Astarion could also reflect on the irony of it all, that the monster hunter was now a monster himself, and after years of building up trust with locals they would only see something bound to eat their souls. Or, if Astarion wanted to get crazy here, which he wasn’t sure he would, okay, just voicing the options on the table, Astarion could look at the angle that Wyll really did seem to be one of those rare good people in the world.

Were things different, Astarion could simply dust off his hands and say this was a shining reason on why being a good person was a scam and something to be avoided at all costs.

Unfortunately, Astarion ended up being obsessed by the fact that Wyll was now a devil.

And not just any devil, no, and here was the truly mortifying part, but a devil that seemed oh so embarrassingly close to one of those prince-like figures Astarion dreamed a lot about in his early spawn days, maybe around thirteen or so.

Surely no later than that. Anything later than that would be too much of a humiliation for anyone to handle.

So it was thirteen, fourteen tops.

Said prince figure also could not possibly have been named Wyll, because- because! Because that wouldn't make sense. That wouldn't happen. That wasn't how things worked.

Astarion must be misremembering a few (thousand) dreams and daydreams. That was all. He had a tadpole in his brain now. Surely that was messing with things.

That said, the horns curled about how Astarion remembered, though with less of that exaggerated sweep that Astarion’s imagination had really run away with around year fourteen, had to be year fourteen. His skin was less red than Astarion dreamed about, instead still that rich deep bronze, healthy and vibrant, though his cheekbones, now more defined with infernal ridging, were indeed like Astarion had fantasized his tiefling princeling on having.

But the big thing, the real thing he couldn’t get past, was that Wyll had the mismatched eyes. Now, he’d met hundreds of people with one eye, lured a few dozens of those to their deaths, sorry, but Astarion needed to not get flayed again, nothing personal.

Some of these people had pale prosthetic eyes, but none of them had a pale prosthetic with a heart-shape in combination with that bright garnet set in a void. Somehow despite being a devil’s eye, it looked just as soft as before, just as inviting. It caught the dying sunlight just so and glinted all the more brightly for it, only highlighted that statuesque appeal Wyll had.

And gods, the ridges on his neck rather invited the mind to think about necks and what Astarion could do with them, but maybe nicely.

(That wouldn’t happen.)

Most of this could have been dismissed as projection, as deja vu, as by the nature of being two hundred years old, Astarion simply would on occasion run into people that looked like someone he fantasized once about. (Astarion didn’t fantasize about people anymore).

But Astarion’s hindbrain could not move past the stone eye with the devil eye. His hindbrain was spinning in its grave fast enough that it could break down wheat into flour.

The specifics of the first dream were lost to time, or rather to the repeated and varied embellishments on the tale. Astarion had decided that that particular dream had been a good enough comfort fantasy to get through some of the more mundane horrors of unlife under Cazador, though he’d learned his lesson the first time on why it only made torture worse if he imagined a reprieve out.

The main cornerstones of the fantasy were this: the fantasy tiefling was always, stupidly, generous with his blood. He gave without holding anything over Astarion, and let Astarion drink as much as he wanted until he felt full, and it always tasted like how he imagined sunlight would.

The tiefling man was, always, simply there for Astarion and Astarion alone.

Things after that varied depending on how Astarion felt. Sometimes the tiefling man wouldn’t touch him anymore than the point of contact between fangs and wrist (or, occasionally, neck). Sometimes the tiefling man would touch him but only when Astarion asked for it, when Astarion had fumbling tried to imagine enjoying his body again. (Those fantasies were ground out by time). There would be gardens, or a library, or a cottage, or the parks but in daylight, or any number of pleasant locales that had nothing to do with Cazador and everything to do with Astarion getting to marvel at color and safety alike. It was always, always pleasantly warm.

Only once did Astarion fantasize about his tiefling knight going to kill Cazador for him, but even in his fantasies, Cazador’s power could not be denied, and the fantasy had turned nightmarish with a spawn tiefling man being forced to hurt Astarion where the hands had before only been gentle.

So. Astarion stopped doing that. And he stopped daydreaming about his tiefling prince period.

Problem solved.

Except now, Wyll was resembling tiefling prince knight to such an embarrassing degree that Astarion for the unlife of him could not tell if he could be normal about this.

Shadowheart and Gale were both tending to Wyll, running through a list of diagnostics to see if he had any lingering curses or Hell maladies, and also to figure out if he was any specific kind of devil that might cause problems in the future.

“I’ll be honest, I’ve never had anyone do that for me before,” Karlach was saying, knees pressed up against her chest. “And coming from the Hells— I just know if Wyll needs anything from now on, anything at all, I’m going to help him.”

Her eyes were reddened, though Astarion hadn’t caught her crying. He didn’t really know what to say. He couldn’t imagine anyone doing that for him either.

Granted, no one had.

“It’s not your fault that happened to him,” Astarion said. Because a lesser man would use this as leverage over Karlach to get her to do whatever he wanted.

Not that Astarion was sure anymore what kind of man Wyll was.

“Ain’t about fault,” Karlach said. “It’s about being a good friend. And honestly, after ten years of backstabbing, it’s kinda nice to have someone that trustworthy let me know. Not that I’m happy he’s sprouted horns or anything. But I mean. They’re fetching horns.”

Wyll was propped up against a backpack. While Shadowheart did something, Wyll was trying to clear his horns of blood and plasma and skin. His hands were shaking, but where he finished cleaning, his horns were left like polished onyx sparkling in the night air.

“Not that they don’t look flattering on him,” Astarion said with a little dreamy sigh. “Almost everything does. Honestly, that man.”

And just like that, all that fantasy slipped out in his voice in the most embarrassing way, because gods, Wyll did look divine with a pair of horns. And Astarion did know everything looked flattering on that body because Astarion had gotten big into giving his tiefling prince all sorts of dashing outfits to wear that Astarion had made with his own two hands (or imagination really).

Karlach wasn’t wrong either. He’d been branded with the act of being all stupidly heroic and trusting, and, you know, they framed his skull nicely, gave him a dramatic silhouette.

She gave Astarion an amused look, and Astarion looked away before he could dig his grave any further.

—

In the morning, they went to a swamp.

Astarion had been enjoying nature, but swamps? Swamps were a hard pass. Swamps were a mistake of nature. Swamps were why people wanted to push druids into large sinking mud puddles, just like the ones you could find in swamps, and then maybe burn the whole thing down and start a dairy farm because at least then you could get some veneer of civilization out of the thing with particularly high-priced cheeses.

In said swamp was a hag. This was apparently their problem, because Wyll thought it was a problem, and then when outlining why this was a problem everyone just looked at his horns and his new claws and his new tail and were unable to tell Wyll no.

Shadowheart kept making a confused noise, as if maybe Wyll had simply forgotten last night and the lessons it contained.

“Hags… can curse people,” Shadowheart had said in the tone of voice that said she was questioning if Wyll’s transformation had led to some brain damage of some sort.

“Exactly. So we need to go deal with her to keep people safe,” Wyll said. “Now, we’ll all use a scroll of protection from evil and good that will make it harder for her magic harm us or for her to charm us, and-”

The rest was a blur. Astarion wasn’t allowed to make fun of the screaming drow man, so he simply did it while Wyll wasn’t looking and had a great time. Fighting the hag didn’t lead to a great time. And yet, somehow, that was better than what came after.

Astarion watched, with fascination, as the saved screeching damsel hurled insults and expletives at Wyll, who looked completely unfazed.

“She wasn’t going to resurrect your husband in a way you like,” Wyll said. Or rather the Blade said. Wyll seemed to like his hero persona or whatever, but strangely when acting as ‘the Blade’ Wyll seemed a lot more unflappable.

Bizarre. Fascinating. Astarion wanted to peel at the edges of it and see what happened.

“Oh f*ck you,” the damsel said. “You know nothing.”

“You seem a tad ungrateful I will say,” Gale said. He was currently getting Shadowheart to heal him from death via poisoning, and his veins were dark against his skin.

He was also seeming peeved at said damsel.

“She’s a hag,” Wyll said, calmly, and it took Astarion a moment to figure out if Wyll was talking about Auntie Ethel or, possibly, the damsel. “Hags delight in misery and suffering. They are one of the many masters of the twisted promise. They will always find a way to ruin you with your own contract.”

So, still could have been either of them.

“You’d know all about that,” Astarion’s tongue said.

I understand that you are the dimmest of my children, but to mock me in front of my peers? Oh Astarion. Astarion I think we’ll need a month in a tomb for that. Now. Say thank you for my mercy, that I am not my own sire, and that I won’t make it a year this time. Thank your master for correcting his disobedient spawn.

Wyll’s good eye didn’t even twitch. “She said she would resurrect him? Alright. When? Long after you are dead? And in what state? Will he know you at all? Did she agree to resurrect him or just his body?”

Astarion released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Please,” the damsel said, half-pushing at Wyll in a way Astarion did not care for. “I was careful.”

“There’s an entire entryway of people who were careful,” Wyll said, and Astarion’s eyebrows rose. So he could get reproachful. Interesting. “And those that weren’t cursed in such an overt fashion had their faces fused permanently into the masks they wore.”

“She only wanted my child,” the damsel said.

And that was what finally got Wyll’s eye to twitch. “Undoubtedly. She would have then devoured it and digested it and then vomited up a new hag. That’s the hag reproductive process.”

“She wouldn’t,” the damsel said, horrified, and gods she was annoying. Astarion wanted to push her into that massive pit. They nearly die trying to save her, and this was what they got? This was exactly why Astarion didn’t deal with heroics. “She promised to be a good mother, and fey can’t turn back on their promises.”

“Did she promise to be a good human mother or a good hag mother?”

Finally the damsel faltered.

“Are we even getting paid for this?” Astarion asked out loud, feeling like if this dragged on any more Astarion might actually stab the woman. “I nearly had my arm blown off with those damned fire flower traps or whatever they were.”

“I’m not paying you sh*t,” the damsel said.

“If you are looking for compensation, I’m sure there’s cursed potions we can get,” Wyll replied.

Astarion sneered. “I’ll pass.”

“Not so fast. They can be very helpful. You, after all, don’t have to be the one drinking it.”

An entire world opened up in front of Astarion. He found himself giggling, all of a sudden, which made Gale make a very displeased face.

Shadowheart sighed. “Can you not say that out loud in front of him? I don’t want to watch what I’m drinking.”

“We’re planning on invading the goblin camp soon, are we not?” Wyll asked, the picture of innocence. “Having some cursed potions could come in handy there.”

“Find your own,” Astarion said. “If I get them, they’re mine to do with as I please.”

“Pretty sure you weren’t interested until I pointed that out, mate,” Wyll said.

“That’s just false promises,” Astarion said. “Oh, you’ll give me a present, but only if I use it exactly how you say? Terrible gift-giving.”

Wyll laughed. “Okay, fair. But if you are looking for people to spike their drinks with, I would recommend the goblin party.”

“I’ll consider it.”

Later, as they were knee-deep in mud and walking carefully to make sure they didn’t get lacerated by traps again and immediately infected with swamp rot, Astarion looked to Wyll, who was traveling with the normal care and consideration that seemed to go into everything the Blade of Frontiers did.

Honestly, it was ridiculous to think that he’d stepped from Astarion’s dreams. For one, the Blade didn’t give Astarion his every passing fancy. And clearly the eyes were different somehow. The stone one was far too pale and rough. And the tiefling man in his dreams had much larger muscles.

Or maybe that was an addition from all the repeated fantasies.

“Not always a win, is it?” Astarion asked, loud enough damsel woman could still hear from where she was sobbing in front of her husband’s decaying corpse.

Wyll tilted his head, confused. “What do you mean?” And then he nodded. “Ah yes, it’s not a full win. This wasn’t her true lair after all, and she will regenerate in time. But for now she’s dead, and thus the magic she’s held over her ‘collection’ has been severed. But while the threat lives on, people were saved. And every person that can be saved is victory enough for me.”

Astarion stared at him for a moment, unable to figure out his angle, and trying to shoo his hindbrain away from the fantasy drawer where all the stashed fantasies were, because as painful as it was to admit it, he just knew there was something absolutely insipid and cringe-inducing stored in there along the lines of being a far, far more gracious damsel than whosit. He would even swoon.

But his brain was fixated on ‘can be saved’.

The tadpole was flickering again, attracted to some deeply unpleasant memory stirring in Wyll’s mind. It didn’t take the brightest spawn to figure out the connection there, and for once, Astarion decided not to go peeking.

He found, all of a sudden, that he wasn’t interested in the people Wyll hadn’t been able to save before.

“They can’t all be this ungrateful,” Astarion said instead. “Karlach wasn’t.”

“It’s hit or miss,” Wyll said in his Blade voice. “The reality is that you are usually showing up in one of the most emotional and traumatic moments of a person’s life. Rarely do such people behave their best. They usually cannot. The horrors of their situation ate it away. I don’t take it personally. I try not to hold people’s worst days against them.”

Astarion’s tongue felt thick in his mouth, and he found he couldn’t continue the conversation.

—

They ended up taking a short rest just outside of the swamp, setting up to patch their wounds. Astarion decided on napping, because he was free and there was no Cazador to command him to work every hour he was awake.

Astarion awoke to terror. His skin was starting to burn.

Oh gods. Oh gods the immunity was starting to wear off.

Astarion ended up in the shadows, desperately overturning packs to find any spare tadpoles, because maybe his just needed a touch more power to protect him, when Wyll caught him in the act, knee-deep in everyone’s belongings, and skin a damning red.

Astarion, for some reason, waved. “Something’s wrong with my skin,” he announced calmly, despite the inner horror. And then, for reasons unbeknownst to Astarions, he giggled, high-pitched.

He was starting to peel.

“You’ve just got a sunburn,” Wyll said, sounding not only as if he was smothering the urge to laugh at Astarion but also that, worse, he wasn’t even trying that hard. Astarion tried not to hiss. Hissing would display fangs.

But the terror abated a bit. He stared at the flesh, reddened and blistered.

His face probably looked terrible.

“I’m not used to this,” Astarion said, primly, staring at his own flesh in distaste. But some of the panic was quelling. He’d forgotten that even mortal people did sometimes find the sun an inconvenience. “I’m an indoors sort of man.”

“Really?” Wyll asked. “I thought for sure that someone like you would be used to sunburns by now.”

Astarion stopped.

Astarion slowly, lifting his gaze from his blistered flesh to stare at Wyll.

Wyll looked innocent.

The first urge was to stab Wyll now before he could spread anything, but the panic brain was quelled by-

by what?

It had to be an innocent joke. There was no way Wyll would trust like that. No one would. No one could.

Astarion glanced to Karlach, loudly splashing in a puddle, and shrieking with glee about it.

Right.

Astarion had been staring too long now, far too suspiciously long, and some of the humor had faded from Wyll.

“If it’s a problem, there are ointments to protect you,” Wyll said, slipping back into the Blade professionalism that Astarion wanted to rip off of him. “Even I have to worry about sunburns after all, but I’m sure it’s worse for you considering how pale you are.”

“Oh sure, mention this now, ” Astarion said.

Wyll held up his hands. “I forget people aren’t used to traveling outdoors. I genuinely thought you were all using sun protection. This is hardly less embarrassing than Gale misidentifying mushrooms. Though you still don’t seem to know how to set up a tent.”

“That’s what you’re for,” Astarion said.

“Aye, and when I’m killed by mindflayers, you won’t know how to set up your own tent. You want to risk the rain ruining your hair?”

Astarion resisted the urge to run his fingers through it.

“Look, you can claim yourself an expert all you want,” Astarion said. “But god, your clothes. Did you do the mending yourself? It’s terrible. The string is just dangling through several holes at random. Were you possibly drunk when you dressed yourself?”

All sense had gone out the window. He was now actively antagonizing the monster hunter who knew he was a vampire.

I think, child of mine, that you will stop speaking. You clearly cannot be trusted with your own tongue. We will try a year, and then we will see if you have learned any manners in your silence.

You are, of course, still expected to hunt for me. In fact, without your prattle, I suspect you will find an easier time luring prey when you stop sabotaging your every effort and actually use your one asset you have. For this year, you will be bringing in twice the prey. I would not recommend trying my patience further.

“It’s functional,” Wyll said. His tone was the same as before, a touch of wry humor, and if Astarion’s words actually hurt him, he showed it none on his face.

There was, strangely, a thrill that ran through his system, like the first jolt of living blood he’d ever had. No one was forcing him to shut up. No one had snapped his limbs in half for talking too much when people were trying to rest. There was instead something starved in Wyll’s devil eye, like this was something he too craved.

Like he was actually enjoying Astarion’s company.

Astarion found himself grinning. “Oh? That’s the baseline these days? Functional?”

“With these tadpoles?” Wyll asked. “Yes. I’m settling for functional these days.”

Astarion laughed, and was pleasantly surprised by the feeling.

After a beat Wyll held up his hands, showing off his fingers ending in black, hooked claws, just as glittering onyx as his horns. “I keep filing off the claws, and they keep growing back,” he said, sounding less pained and more embarrassed. “It’s harder to thread the string.”

“I see,” Astarion said. “I’d settle for just functional too. But we can aspire to do better than that. No one is going to take you seriously as a monster hunter dressed like that.”

—

That night Astarion dreamed of Cazador finding him in a dark forest, reminding him of all the commands. That night Astarion nearly fled from the camp in a blind terror, desperate to return to Cazador so that at least it would lessen the pain that was coming.

And yet.

He froze at the precipice of the camp, shaking and actually sweating in terror, before he looked back.

He hesitated, tongue running over his fangs.

How badly did he want to know?

The risk was unfathomable. There was a monster hunter who had to know that Astarion was a vampire, and yet Astarion could only think of dreams of feeding willingly from a wrist.

He banished the dream. It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. But that didn’t mean Astarion couldn’t feed tonight. If he tried, if he swallowed down so much as a thimbleful of thinking blood, it would be proof that he couldn’t be compelled. That the tenets were broken for him.

That Astarion was his own man, at long last in two hundred years.

He crept back into camp, eyes looking over the sleeping companions. He felt predatory, and not in the fun way he felt earlier when he got to kill someone.

This was risking getting staked, his hindbrain said. Just wait until later. Just wait until there were goblins or something, and he could try to swallow some of that blood then. That would be the smart play. He knew the smart play.

But he had to know now.

Half of them were twitchy paranoid bastards. The two remaining weren’t edible: Karlach had fire for blood, and Astarion had gotten a whiff of Gale’s blood either, and it smelled far worse than any decaying rat, and that was a bad sign.

This left Lae’zel, who would stake him, Shadowheart, who would stake him, and Wyll, who would definitely stake him.

Astarion could be more clever.

He hesitantly took out a vial of that drow poison. It did nothing to harm someone but simply put them into a deep sleep.

But he didn’t even get all the way to Wyll before Wyll awoke, apparently having already stirred when Astarion had been making sound earlier. At the very least, Astarion could stash the poison before Wyll could see.

But Wyll’s good eye still caught to Astarion, still standing suspiciously over everyone.

There was a flicker of suspicion, a slight hardening of the eye, but for someone willing to banter with Astarion earlier, the distrust felt like sandpaper on freshly-flayed back.

And yet, suspected vampire was now lurking suspiciously over everyone.

Astarion could feel his chances grow paper-thin, and the urge once more to try to talk his way out of pain compelled him beyond reason.

“Can we chat?”

Wyll hesitated for a good long moment before he nodded, and on his own lead them away from the camp. Which was probably bad. It’d be easier to stake him out here, but also if Wyll staked him in camp, Astarion didn’t have a single soul to protect him anyway.

The dream churned in his stomach. The hunger was fine, but he was starved for answers.

A drop, a single lick would be all it would take. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

But right now, that question could kill him. He needed to divert earlier suspicion, make him seem less a lurking thing and more of-

They’d bantered, hadn’t they? Wyll had trusted that far, right?

“So,” Astarion said in the quiet of the evening, ignoring the chorus of crickets and frogs and owls.

He faltered, because he needed to get this right. Say, hello Wyll. We’ve built up some level of trust. Well, I’m a vampire spawn. Trust me, definitely just a spawn, hoping to remain unstaked about it.

“So,” Astarion repeated. “There’s no sense beating around the bush. In which case, are you brain damaged in some way? You’ve just been letting me walk around, fangs out, and you haven’t staked me one time.”

Wrong words. Bad words! Bad!

Wyll blinked, shook his head, and then stared at Astarion. “You can’t possibly disapprove.”

“Well- no, but it’s- are you a particularly bad monster hunter? Did you flunk out of monster hunting school?”

“Never attended,” Wyll said with such seriousness that for a second Astarion desperately was running through his brain for if there actually were monster hunting schools and he was just being obtuse at the moment.

Astarion scowled.

“I’ll admit, I considered killing you,” Wyll said.

It shouldn’t hurt to hear. It was what any sensible person would do. It stung, regardless.

“And yet here I am unstaked,” Astarion said, folding his arms defensively.

“I didn’t know if you were a spawn or a vampire,” Wyll said. “I didn’t know how much of a threat you were to others.”

But he hadn’t.

He’d let Astarion just walk around and make not-jokes about pushing damsels into pits.

“So is there some way to tell the difference?” Astarion asked instead.

“None, aside that from natural behavior,” Wyll said. At Astarion’s silence, Wyll continued, “It took a few days to confirm you weren’t killing anyone when we weren’t looking. Well, anyone innocent at the very least. No one showed up with any mysterious bite marks, and the camp doesn’t like you enough for you to be secretly enthralling them. That’s one of the first thing a true vampire would have done.”

Astarion scoffed, trying not to show how utterly thrown he was. “Well, you would have been the first to be enthralled.”

Wyll tapped the side of his horn. “No I wouldn’t. I was casting magic on me to keep me safe from enthallment all those days. Nothing personal. I just didn’t know you, and I didn’t want to take that risk. You didn’t seem strong enough to be a true vampire, but then we’ve all been weakened. Also, you didn’t protest when I suggested everyone cast protection from evil and good on themselves earlier with the hag. A true vampire would have protested more, as it would have been protection against them as well, and true vampires are a paranoid lot.”

“That’s stupid,” Astarion said, feeling strangely angry. It was a senseless anger. The logic seemed sound enough to Astarion, and hadn’t he been hoping people had been forward thinking enough to not immediately splatter his dead brains across the ground?

But for a moment, all Astarion could feel was a strange anger. What? If someone talked well enough they could get out of their death? Astarion had seen dozens of monster hunters bought off by Cazador before, and they probably hadn’t been enthralled at the time either. He’d hoped Wyll would have been at least a stumble ahead of those.

“Do you even know vampires?” Astarion continued. “Really? Outside of hypothetical stories? Do you know the harm a true vampire could cause?”

“I’ve seen the aftermath,” Wyll said. “I’ve seen a small town plagued by dozens of vampire spawn, some feral, some not. Vampires are monsters. Can’t say the same of all spawn. And I’m not going to kill someone potentially innocent just because they might be evil. Besides. Believe it or not, while I don’t know your particular situation, I do have sympathy with being forced to do the bidding of a hellish master.”

The anger receded, like it was punched out of him.

Seven years wasn’t two hundred. But it was still seven, and Wyll had clearly been feeling it lately.

“Well, thank you,” Astarion said. Without anger, there was raw relief. He stood there, unstaked, and it still felt like a trick somehow. “I appreciate it, despite the risk you took there.”

Wyll looked back towards the camp towards were Karlach slept.

“I seem to be making a lot of those these days, and yet I find it hasn’t backfired on me yet.”

On the tip of his tongue was the question, that if Wyll was willing to take that many risks, what was one more. Just one tiny more risk.

Instead, Astarion hedged his bets. The nightmare had receded. The urgency of needing answers had waned, and if he could only wrest free a single favor, he knew which one he wanted.

“Then- if you’re the expert monster hunter, understand, do you mind so terribly, ah, just being a supportive presence while I explain the situation in the morning to the others?”

“Of course,” Wyll said reassuringly. “I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine.”

Astarion’s smile was genuine, he found. “Of course, my dear.”

—

Wyll was indeed willing to back-up Astarion the following morning, apparently feeling relieved that Astarion was just going to out himself.

(Wyll in direct sunlight seemed to glow, Astarion had noted.)

The reaction was mixed. Everyone agreed Astarion was not to bite anyone, on their side at least, but should he bite someone in battle, that was fine. Karlach said he could still sit by her fire, and Gale mostly seemed fascinated on the level of magic that was going on Astarion but loudly proclaimed that ‘Gales were not for eating purposes’, and Shadowheart was mostly doing a terrible job pretending she knew the entire time and only barely being able to mask her shock of the situation.

The relief was near overwhelming, but Astarion kept that where no one could see it.

He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t anywhere near safe, but he was saf er , and that wasn’t nothing.

And, again, he was allowed in battle to bite people. They’d allowed that. The only arguments on whether or not he’d be allowed to bite the party, but enemies he was allowed to chomp down on, and not a single person had voiced against that.

It was so much more than he could have ever hoped for. It felt akin to that first day of glorious freedom.

As there was a deadline on ceremorphosis, the group split ways temporarily after breakfast. Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Gale headed up the winding road to see if this missed shipment was valuable and able to be exchanged for mountain gear and traveling provisions. Astarion had forgotten just how much living people ate. He pretended that his centuries of vampirism had left him finding the whole activity a lot of disgusting mashing of teeth and slurping up weird pastes.

(He missed it. If he had to pick between sunlight and food, he would have picked the sun, but gods, why couldn’t he have both? Food and wine all still smelled good; it was only in taste that they betrayed themselves.)

So Wyll, Karlach, and Astarion went more westward to what was supposed to be an inn.

Said inn was actively on fire, and the moment Wyll saw he darted into the smoke and flames. Astarion swore, loudly, repeatedly to make his point, and ran in after him, Karlach right behind them both.

Astarion had to remind himself that he didn’t need to breathe, but the heat in the air was scorching his nose. Some of the guards had managed a wet washcloth over their faces, but Wyll hadn’t even done that.

Bizarre.

Wyll knew better, but Wyll was darting up stairs like a man compelled. Astarion followed, and then he heard a voice call out for aid in a side room.

Wyll turned, having heard the voice, and was for a second torn between in which direction to run. Astarion slowed behind him, unable to move forward with Wyll in the way.

And that was when something exploded.

For a second, there was simply air.

And then Astarion landed hard against stone, feeling his ribs shattered in the impact, and something hard and something wooden impaling him through his chest.

By sheer luck, it hadn’t gotten his heart. It was through his ribs, having pierced his lower lung, but it was on fire, and Astarion couldn’t scream because it had pierced through his lung. He writhed, like a fish on a hook, and he could feel the pieces of his ribs grate along the floor in bursts of pain that had him gasping against the wood, which had him writhe harder, and-

There was shouting, at a distance, like when Cazador was having his servants hold Astarion under running water.

It is no matter. I understand you are a base creature, but I will see if I can’t burn away your disobedience. Stop your sniveling. It is unbecoming of you. Over a century, and you still cannot accept the slightest correction without this humiliating display.

And then he was being carried out of the building. Astarion blinked in the harsh light, and his eyes found horns, and not Cazador’s face, and the relief nearly had him sobbing. He tried to say something, but a single twitch of his lungs had him trembling like a new spawn who’d never been told to flay himself before.

“I have to pull it out. You can’t be healed with this in you,” Wyll was saying. “On three, okay?”

The pain made the sky above white out, and the world reduced to a bright shining gray, and he found himself retching despite it sending secondary tears through his lungs.

He was barely aware of Wyll searching through their packs, and then a second time, and then a third.

“We are out of healing potions,” Wyll said, and this was breaking through his Blade’s calm. “Okay. Okay. It’s fine. The best plan is the one that works. We’ve still got this.”

And then Wyll was taking off a gauntlet.

And then Wyll was holding his wrist in front of Astarion.

Astarion stared at Wyll instead, uncomprehending. His mind couldn’t connect whatever facts Wyll was presenting him with. They had just this morning talked about this. The details were fresh in Astarion’s mind because, again, they had just talked about this.

“Come on,” Wyll said in a low voice. “I moved you somewhere private. No one can see. Blood’ll help you heal, right?”

Astarion stared at Wyll’s face, and there was no duplicity in it, and then his gaze slid down to the offered wrist, palm up, and he could smell the blood pumping faster than normal in it.

The deja vu was nearly overwhelming.

Maybe this was a dream. Maybe Astarion had been knocked unconscious and bloody on the floor. This wouldn’t be the first time. But if it was a dream, the tiefling man always had as many healing potions as it took in the dreams. The juxtaposition was catching reality at the seams.

Shakily, Astarion secured a hold of Wyll’s upper forearm, keeping the wrist steady. His gaze flickered again to Wyll, and then down to the wrist.

He could see the arteries and veins like rivers inside of Wyll, so familiar, all that life he carried inside of him, on display for Astarion that he’d mapped and remapped again and again.

But also, tendons. He’d have to be careful around those.

He bit, carefully, and then care was lost to him as the sunlight inside of Wyll spilled into Astarion, and by the tadpole’s power it harmed Astarion not one bit. Everything was lost to primal concerns. For a moment, for a glorious moment, there were no injuries. There was no hunger, or exhaustion. There wasn’t even a Cazador. There was the rich blood being shared, and every desperate gulp pulled him that much further out of unlife, into something that was maybe even a person.

He drank, and drank, and drank. When Wyll first put a hand on his shoulder, he whined deep in his throat, tried to pull the wrist closer to him so none could take it away.

“I have to have some blood left,” Wyll said, and that wasn’t what the tiefling prince said, but the tiefling prince didn’t have real blood.

It was better than any fantasy he’d ever had, and only by the absolute dredges of his willpower left was he able to let go.

There was the tiniest pangs of guilt, because Wyll was looking a touch more ashen now. His cheeks weren’t as bronze, and his breathing heavy.

But that only meant Wyll had, what, let him have that much of his blood?

“Feeling better?” Wyll asked, like Astarion hadn’t been tempted to drink Wyll dry like a particular good vintage bottle of wine.

Astarion breathed, and it didn’t hurt at all.

“Yes. Ah, thank you,” Astarion said. He still felt like he was floating, like he was in a little bubble where even the memory of Cazador couldn’t hurt him. No living animal could compare to this sensation. “Very generous. You’re a true gift. A delight.”

And gods.

This meant he was immune to the compulsions. He hadn’t even thought of that initially, but he was free from Cazador. Free to do whatever he pleased. And sure, Cazador was still alive, but right now that fact couldn’t even hurt him.

He felt… happy.

“Didn’t meant to hog all the heroics to myself,” Astarion said lightly. “Sorry! I’ll try not to get exploded next time.”

The thought didn’t even bother him.

“I trusted Karlach to save him,” Wyll said. And there was a strange undercurrent from the tadpoles, that there really was some element of trust Wyll had placed in Karlach for him to leave her with a task he’d decided on, because Karlach herself couldn’t pick up Astarion and take him to safety. “I couldn’t leave you on the floor in a burning building.”

“What you don’t think the Flaming Fist would have lived up to their names?”

Wyll snorted, helplessly.

Wyll tried to stand up, and his legs wobbled, and then Wyll was sitting back down again, blinking.

“We can let Karlach handle things,” Astarion said, patting his arm and trying to ignore how warm his own skin felt against Wyll’s now cooler skin. “She is, in hindsight, immune to fire, and we aren’t.”

“Right,” Wyll said. “Yeah. Just going to sit here for a moment.”

What did Astarion care about any dream tiefling man? What he had was far better than any half-dredged fantasy past him could have come up with. The blood in his stomach was real, as was the man next to him.

Well. Karlach hopefully wouldn’t mind if Astarion stole him.