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Chapter Text

It started with the first time she touched him. He was trying to barter with one of those tieflings when Tav's gauntleted hand came to rest calmly on his shoulder blade. Astarion had thrown a lazy smirk towards her, only to get a wink back, as though she had just been checking on his status with the merchant.

If that flirting was the game she wanted to play, he was a master. It wasn't until she had turned back to the wizard and he found the merchant just a little more susceptible to his charms that he realized: she was a trickery cleric. She had just cast a spell on him for good luck, to guide him through the negotiation. The warmth wasn't from her hand, or from his well-laid plan working, it was the feeling of her magic empowering his charm. The merchant had seemed none the wiser. Clever.

Astarion kept tabs on her, learning her behaviors. She was all sly smiles and honeyed words, all dexterous fingers and clever schemes. He'd be impressed if he wasn't clearly better at it than her. He could tell, because the smiles towards him were softer. Those mismatched eyes sparked with interest. His plan was simple, and she was following along in lockstep, none the wiser. 

That hand against his shoulder became familiar in its consistency. Every time he knelt to pick a lock, or slipped away to hide, her hand gave him the briefest touch. He later learned it was Guidance, a freely given cantrip for clerics, a way to ease a situation.  She never met his eye, or said a word. Simply gave him a boon, and never mentioned it again. The hand stayed respectful, too, despite the way she looked at him, and he had to give her credit for it. 

The other cleric, Shadowheart, was both more stoic in personality, and somehow more freely giving with her guidance. She would tap Gale's bicep, or graze her fingers against Lae'zel's forearm, or even heartily clap Karlach's leather-clad shoulder. She never touched Astarion. He was never sure exactly what he did, but she had sneered at him the morning after his vampirism was revealed, so he didn't particularly care. 

Tav, though, hadn't sneered. Tav had been stupidly understanding, had offered her neck that night and every night since. And Astarion had indulged, because what else could be done? If she was willing to bare her throat to someone she had just met, he was willing to reap the benefits. He did notice, though, her eyes were softer when they looked at him. He noticed her hand become slightly more confident in its silent touch, her thumb moving in an arc along his back before it returned to her side. He chose to ignore what a kind touch meant to him, but he knew he just needed one more night to solidify his plan.

He found it after the goblin camp, drinking swill for wine and watching people revel in their lust for life. Tav had made her rounds, seemingly avoiding his gaze, but he realized she was saving him for last. They slipped away individually, meeting in that beautiful clearing. And she was beautiful, so much slighter than her armor suggested. The hands softer than he was used to feeling, but equally as careful. She was always careful, he realized, so maybe that's why tonight felt different. He still found himself lost at the end of the night. 

He had Tav exactly where he wanted her - arms length on his end, beloved on hers. He again chose to ignore the way his smiles were genuine when her voice curled around his name, or the way guilt churned in his stomach when those sly smiles turned soft when directed his way. She was just beautiful, and he hadn't had a mark worth looking at in years, he told himself. 

He knew it was a lie in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, when the party had been ferried away from one another and garotted in the dark. He could still hear Karlach's rageful bellow, and Wyll's shouted spells, and Tav's anxious cry of his name, so he knew he wasn't that far away, but as the meazel's claws dug into his side and the blood kept pouring from his neck, he wasn't particularly worried. His head hit the ground, and his world went dark. 

He woke to the warm, familiar feeling of Tav's magic racing against his skin, and her bloodstained face in his vision. She and the others had definitely looked better, but the abject fear on her face was concerning. She had one hand gently placed on his jaw, the other gripping his hand with ferocity as she knelt over him. Karlach explained he had gone down, and immediately stood back up under the influence of the shadow curse and hunted them.

Astarion saw two arrows sticking out of a gap in Tav's armor, right in the gap between her hip and thigh. A targeted weakness he's passively calculated before, and apparently remembered in his cursed form. Slowly, he raised the hand not currently being crushed by Tav to caress her cheek, He alerted her to her own injuries, and she stared mistily down at him for a moment before moving to heal the rest of the party. That guilt hit him again like a punch, with an added strength that those were his arrows. His wounds on Tav. He wanted to jump out of his skin, the way it ached. The way she had looked at him...and the way he had responded. He knew his plan had failed spectacularly. He knew he had to tell her, and he hoped she wouldn't hate him forever for it. She'd certainly be justified. 

In the days following the fight with the meazels, wandering the shadows and recovering at the Last Light Inn, her guidance spells change. She no longer gives a bare touch of acquaintances, or the cautious possession of a new love. It's a casual intimacy. A hand placed on his chest, or curled at the nape of his neck, fingers tangling in his curls, one notably low enough on his backside to scandalize Shadowheart. She never brushed over the scars on his back, as if she could see through his armor. He thought of that hand, crushing his, gently cradling his neck when he was downed. 

He didn't understand what had changed there. On his end, surely, he did. But what possessed Tav to change? He’d been downed before, so it wasn’t that. So he had apologized for attacking her while cursed, and she had waved him off, telling him that everyone is unlucky sometimes. She told him she'd pray harder to Tymora on his behalf, and had winked her golden eye at him. 

He was swarmed with this uncertainty and guilt, and confessed it all to her another week later, after the incident with the drow. Her blood had smelled like decay, and he was growing used to Tav’s delicious rose and iron vintage. 

And Tav had taken it…well? That mischievous smile, with soft edges only for him, had disappeared. Worse, she was concerned. For him. Her left hand, so often the source of her wonderful spells, was clenched into a fist as he spoke. Her face was impassive. She hugged him. His anxiety was quelled, but surely he couldn't be this lucky. To have landed with, manipulated, and shot this woman, and have her forgive him? What had he done to deserve this kindness?

They clear the Thorm Mausoleum the next day, and realize they are in much deeper shit than they had thought. The devil lays the information at his feet, at the cost of an orthon's life. He's so focused on that, he doesn't notice that he goes the whole day without a single guidance placed on him. 

He does notice Tav making conversation with the orthon, like his future doesn't rest on the beast's death. He snaps at her, and is about to do so again when he sees a plea for trust in those gold and silver eyes. He bites his tongue and crosses his arms, brooding, but her plan reveals itself quickly. Those honeyed words of hers, that he'd almost admired when they'd first met, had convinced the orthon to kill himself. So he did, and Astarion watched that body topple heavily from the second floor. Tav calmly walked forwards and searched him, then handed Karlach a chunk of infernal metal. 

She didn't comment until after Shadowheart had completed the second Trial of Shar, but she had just smirked and reminded him to thank her. 

He still didn't notice. 

It wasn't until the Spear of Night was pointed at the Nightsong's chest, in Shadowheart's trembling hands, when Tav muttered a prayer to her god, cast guidance on herself, and spoke calmly but convincingly enough that her fellow cleric had actually forsaken her god, that Astarion realized. She hadn't touched him at all since he'd confessed. 

This was not the right environment for him to confront her on it, so he decided to wait, but as they left the Shadowfell he realized they had little to no time left. 

They stormed Moonrise Towers, leaving an enormous pool of sticky blood to lap at bodies of the Absolute's faithful. She looked exhausted, but resolute as she asked him to open the door to the roof. She didn't offer a hand, but he offered her a smile. She didn't smile back, her eyes trained on Shadowheart over his head. 

The defeat of the Avatar of Myrkul was a cruel fight - Shadowheart and Karlach had both taken drastic enough hits to be motionless on the ground. He knew Tav couldn't see him hidden away, so she stood bold and proud, staring down the lord of death, hoping she was lucky enough to get one of her companions up before that scythe embedded itself in her gut. And she did it. She had made her rounds to the important people they had met here, and had slinked off to an empty room to sleep without so much as a goodbye. 

She asks him for a kiss the next morning, and offers to let him feed on her, so he opts for a few more days of observation. He, like always, doesn't understand what she's thinking. He thinks better than to ask, at least until the dark circles disappear from under her eyes. He realizes that not only is he worried about his place with her, he's worried about her. Almost more than himself.

They travel to Baldur's Gate, interrupted by Githyanki politics and threats from shapeshifters and deals with archdukes, and he still doesn't ask. He knows Tav cares for him, but he also sees the weight that slowly bends those strong shoulders every time they hit another roadblock. He's never understood what drives her to touch him, especially with those guidance spells, so he brushes it to the back of his mind and focuses on more important issues. 

Besides, they're back in his home. He knows what he can achieve, if he kills Cazador and ascends himself. If he gets all that power, she'll stand up straight. She'll be protected, so she'll lose that worried crease between those orange brows. His second plan is in motion, he just has to convince her to go with it.

She doesn't, when they meet Petras and Dal in the flophouse. If anything, that crease deepened. He grit his teeth, but stayed quiet as they continued to solve everyone else's problems before his. She still let him feed, but she has made no moves towards the gothic palace that had been his prison for 200 years. She doesn’t guide him, and he doesn’t tell her that it had felt like gentle sunlight against his skin. 

Until they come for him in the night. Leon and Dal, in their camp, trying to take him to the place they still called home. She didn't let him lie to them about the Rite, and he snapped at her again. He didn't see the inklings of a plan in those eyes, just concern, so this wasn't like the orthon. She's warning them of his plans. They lunge for him, and he and Tav scramble for their weapons. 

They fell into the familiar pattern - Tav storming forward, mace raised high, divine magic swirling around her, and his siblings screamed. Astarion kept his distance, naturally, but seeing her surrounded by four vampires, ones who had seduced and lured and served like he had, made his heart twist even through his frustration with her. 

When Leon’s fangs pierce her neck, like his own had countless times, Astarion sees red. He dropped his bow, moving like lightning, and sank a dagger into the side of Leon’s neck. Tav, to her credit, barely missed a beat as she took a final swing at Dal, sending her in a puff of smoke back to Cazador.

It’s over, and Astarion doesn’t know what to do with the lingering feeling. He sheathed his dagger, set his bow back in place, and waited. He knew she would want to talk about his feelings. They coursed through him like blood, regular pulses of possessiveness and fury and fear, and he was almost shaking with the onslaught. 

He snapped at her, again, gods why did he always snap at her? He made up for it by highlighting her kindness, he thinks, what she means to him. Her face is pensive, and her neck is still bleeding, and he was wretched, but she held out her hand to him. A respectful distance, not touching. He would never understand her, but he took it anyway. 

She led him to her bed, and still offered a way out. She had told him she just wanted to lay next to him tonight, and he obliged her, wrapping one arm around her waist. It’s the most she’s touched him beyond a spare kiss since his confession, but tonight he could offer this intimacy. He chose to ignore the shakiness of her breaths as she tried to sleep, the trembling in her shoulders. It was a disagreement, that’s all. She’d see reason when faced with the full power of the Rite, he tells himself. 

So naturally, she doesn’t. In Cazador’s mansion, she constantly checks on him. He feels her eyes constantly watching him. After he saw Sebastian and the Gur children, he could see she knew how shaken he was. 

When she makes him think about what could have been…how she could have been in one of these gilded cages…he feels sick. Sounds are more distant, he’s on the verge of vomiting, he’s breathing harder. 

And when Cazador catches his hand, stringing him up to take part in the sacrifice, Astarion is terrified. He pleads, but he can barely see Tav and the other two across the coffin. He loses sight of her, and has never known fear that sharp in his two hundred years. 

But she comes for him, bringing Lae’zel along with her, a door opening to his left with the pair casually stepping through. She helps him down from the altar, and she provides him with a weapon. She even pulls back on a spell so his arrow can fly first, knocking Cazador back to his coffin. 

He doesn’t expect her to be so against it. To stand behind him and not offer him power. But he should have seen it coming. Hells, she convinced a cleric with no memories to convert to a new deity. The power in front of him is intoxicating, but he knew she was right, so he stabbed his former master and felt nothing but numbness. 

She knelt in front of him, letting him sob, until he could compose himself. He let her help him to her feet, and she let him decide the fate of the spawn. And he let them go, because it’s what she would have done. 

She still didn’t push him, just asked him what he felt and what he wanted to do, and in the fractured pieces of his heart, that thought sticks. He knew he’d have to take time to sift through everything, but as they walk back to the Elfsong, that one just sticks. 

He was silent as she shuffled him towards their room, as she pressed a pile of gold into Jaheira’s hands, and told the druid to celebrate with the party for a while before they came upstairs. He was silent as she asked if it was okay to remove his armor, and as she drew a bath for him. 

He only nodded his consent, each time she asked, as she softly, carefully undressed him and washed the blood and grime from his skin. 

As he thought about it, everything became clearer. He didn’t understand her because he couldn’t at the time. She was kind through all of this, but she was devious. She was clever, and she was a masterful liar. A mask, hiding her true feelings, every time he had told her a piece of his past. Her hands, especially possessive after he had fallen to the shadow curse, were overcompensating to hide her fear. That clenched fist when he confessed was what he should have focused on, not the concern in her face. The touches disappearing were what he had communicated, and she had respected it, even if it made something harder to do.

Gods, she had respected him, even when he felt less than worthless. His heart fluttered, but he should be mad at her for denying him power. Right? 

He slept in his own bed that night, after her tender care, still not making eye contact with her. Her worry was almost palpable in the air, but she let him go. 

The next night, he went to her. Those dark circles were still there, deep purple, and her eyes seemed ringed with red, but she smiled widely at him. He invited those touches as he led her to the graveyard, encouraged her that he was happy as he took her over his grave, laved his tongue over her neck as her nails pricked into his back. 

She approached him shyly the next day, so out of character for her, and gave him a ring. This wasn’t out of the ordinary, but as soon as he slid this one onto his hand, she whispered an incantation, and kissed him. He felt that presence of her magic, like sunlight itself, warm and bright and so familiar it ached, wash over him and stay. No guidance spell had ever stayed for more than a few minutes, as he could recall, but this was different. She told him it was a warding bond, a way to keep track of him when she couldn’t see him, and that the rings were a pair. That sly smile touched her lips again, only for a moment. That feeling of her magic stayed wrapped around him for the day. 

The next time he picked a lock, he paused and flipped a hand behind his shoulder expectantly. It took a moment, but those heavy gauntlets and the cautious hands underneath slid into place against his palm, and that lucky magic flooded him. He stood up without a word, the lock easily undone, and passed out the loot from the chest. There was no kiss, just a meeting of eyes, but he knew she understood. 

From then on, her casual touches from so long ago were back. That one simple permission, and she would rest a hand on the small of his back while the party was debating. She would lean against him and scoff when he delivered an especially cheesy line. A coy pinch to his thigh while she crouched to pick up some autumncrocus. The casual intimacy was more frequent than her casting a spell on him, not that he was complaining, but he still always smiled when he felt the magic wash over him.

Between the joy that soared in his heart with each of these touches and the blanket of warding magic that surrounded him throughout the day, the security he felt in his love for her, he was downright thrilled to be alive, even with the threat of the Netherbrain over them. And when he held her at night, their meditations were less frequently disrupted. Those dark circles lightened, at least a little, and that crease in her brows relaxed into winks and wide smiles. 

Maybe, he thought, life was finally worth living. He had just needed some guidance. 

Chapter Text

For her, it started with a blade at her throat.

She was having, possibly, the unluckiest day of her entire life, and she still gave this man the benefit of the doubt, thinking the scales of luck might choose that moment to swing back in her favor. They didn’t, and the man tackled her to the ground, dagger to her throat.

She understood, really. She would have done the exact same thing, especially when he said he’d seen her on the nautiloid. Now she was just annoyed she fell for it.

She saw fellowship in him quickly. While Shadowheart was secretive and also a woman of faith, she had too many walls to be easy to talk to. Gale was too smart, and Wyll too righteous. But Astarion? He’s all cheeky smiles and flirty lines, a man with a mask to keep people away. Tav understood, and even better, she reciprocated.

She smiled and flirted back, a fun, simple routine, but she kept watching him. It didn’t hurt that he was easy to look at. Conversations with him were downright fun, and in the grand scheme of the tadpole and their impending deaths by ceremorphosis, having fun was a rarity.

And then she woke up with his teeth at her throat. Or, fangs, she supposed, because as she stood up, she saw the connection. He was clearly a vampire, but as someone who knew liars, as someone who was a liar, he seemed genuine.

She didn’t trust him, but she trusted in her goddess. Tymora was luck itself, and Tav figured she’d earned a bit of good luck over the last week of adventuring and impending doom. So she took a bet, and let the vampire bite her.

And honestly? She liked it. Not just the weight of him over her or his lips on her neck, but the feeling of leaving her fate in the hands of someone else. Of taking a risk. And the next day, of seeing him happy.

She realized she liked him as much as she liked that feeling, and gods, how girlish. She caught herself staring at him, sometimes, or casting guidance on an easy lockpick just so she could justify a casual touch, or even smiling when his arrow hit the hide of a creature she was fighting.

She was taken aback, a little, when he actually offered to make good on the flirting after the goblin camp. She had been drinking and enjoying the companionship of their friends, politely turning down both Gale and Lae’zel, intending to find Astarion for a mirthsome debrief at the end of the evening. But he offered. She had expected that the lusty lines were just that: lines. But if he was interested, she wasn’t going to say no.

So she followed him to that clearing, and she couldn’t tell what was more beautiful bathed in moonlight: the trees or his pale skin. Tav could tell she was more into it than he was, so she filed that away for later. She couldn’t hold it against him if this was a meaningless fling, she hadn’t even expected him to want this in the first place.

In the morning she sees him basking. And she sees those cruel, twisted scars. She had felt them the night before, but hadn’t realized the pattern, the intention with which they were carved. The speed he rebuffed her question, too, meant they were still an emotional wound, but she at least recognizes the Infernal. She could give him that.

He continued to offer slight pieces of himself, real glimpses, under that easy facade, and Tav felt like that was progress. She hadn’t asked him what their relationship meant, what the sex meant, because every time she got him alone he would say things like he couldn’t remember his own face. Her insecurities weren’t relevant, in the wake of that. He couldn’t remember what color his eyes were. Her stomach twisted with the unfairness of it all, really, that he couldn’t remember, and she had nothing to do but offer words.

Words were not her strength, and she knew it. Nor could she draw, or paint, or cast illusions to show this broken man his beautiful face, just sincere platitudes. She had never felt anger at her god for life’s unfairness, but the crack in her heart when Astarion revealed his past felt close to it. Not that it meant anything - they weren’t much of anything to each other.

She realized she could lie to anyone, even herself, when he was downed in the Shadow-Cursed Place. They had all been separated, but she could still see Karlach, brutally ripping an axe from the chest of the monster, and Wyll, safely teleporting away in a burst of mist, but Astarion was out of sight.

She couldn’t cast spells with the razor wire around her neck, cutting in, but she was making progress at beating away the meazel in front of her when she felt it, hot and sharp: an arrow, sinking into the flesh at the top of her thigh. Astarion, with a blank face and empty eyes, shadows swirling around him, drew the bowstring again, as her other two companions raced to knock him out.

What happened in between becomes a blur. The meazel in front of her was gone. So were the rest, it seemed. Her heart felt like it stopped but she was moving so fast in that clunky armor, not seeing the surroundings. Just the not moving, not breathing body of the person who had shot her, twice. Through a weak spot he no doubt had found in one of their many nightly excursions, frantically unbuckling and unbuttoning and throwing clothes aside.

Through the panicked haze of her vision, she couldn’t tell if he was truly dead or just down. She knew she was almost tapped out, and like so many other times as a cleric of Lady Luck, she flipped a coin, and used the last of her energy to cure his wounds rather than revive him, placing her hand on that unsightly, awful gouge at the base of his throat. Her other hand, without direction from her brain, grasped his so tightly her bones creaked.

She was so upset, so concerned, like she was losing a love rather than just a friend. Tav finally admitted that to herself, swiftly, when his eyes opened and his hand came to her cheek. He was more, and the relief that had hit her like a blow, knowing her final spell was a gamble worked, only solidified in her mind that she should acknowledge it.

She’d spent the next week or so treating him like a lover. Kisses and jokes and suggestive comments, familiar touches and knowing looks.

But he’d sounded so surprised when she listened to him about the drow. She’d promised herself to define their relationship at the next opportunity, but at camp that night, Astarion beat her to it. He’d confessed his whole plan, and just like the dagger at her throat, she’d understood.

Self-loathing and disgust had made her curl her hand into a fist, though. That hand that had always touched him without asking, that had cast countless spells on him like she owned him, She’d never once asked if he’d wanted the healing or the guidance or anything, and he hadn’t known how to communicate his boundaries.

She was a liar and a manipulator, and had noticed something wrong that first time, but hadn’t looked deeper. She should have known.

But that was her fault, not his, and he wanted something real. She’d known she had to talk this through with him, but he’d already shown an unprecedented amount of vulnerability tonight, so she gave him a hug and told him she cared, because Gods above she cared.

Her sleep was plagued with images of Astarion in wicked dungeons, a shadowy face above him, tormenting him. She’d never tell him, she knew, but through the shadows she was sure she saw her own mismatched eyes glinting back, a familiar laugh as he was tortured.

She found the warding bond rings the next morning and immediately thought about him, and his penchant to vanish during fights. She never knew if he was downed or hurt, so she almost said something, until those gleaming eyes from her dream came back.

She wasn’t Cazador, she knew that. But she was terrified she’d crossed a boundary, and refused to touch him without an invitation. She wouldn’t hurt him any more than he already had been, so she pocketed the rings and pushed on.

And because she was, somehow, supremely unlucky, she ended up at the bottom of the Thorm Mausoleum, facing the implications of immortality. She had killed the orthon and walked with Shadowheart through the Trials of Shar, but to kill the daughter of Selûne, her goddess’s closest friend…Each day was a test, and each day she felt the scales tip further and further to perpetual unluckiness.

They traded this bloodbath for another, at the foot of Moonrise Towers, and then its peak. A bloodied oubliette and the Avatar of Death itself, and again unluckily, she found herself alone, praying to a goddess she wasn’t sure was even looking out for her anymore.

But that skull’s vision left her, for the briefest of moments, not to finish off her fallen companions but to search for the source of a blow, and her heart soared that she wasn’t alone. Astarion remained to rain arrows, and remind her what was at stake.

Myrkul was defeated, and all Tav felt was exhaustion. She went off on her own to sleep, but every step close to Baldur’s Gate was another burden. Another friend she prayed she could save. Another threat against their lives she’d die to stop.

She loved Astarion, but this wasn’t his burden either. She asked for the occasional comfort with a quick kiss, but played it off with a smirk and a line. She let him feed every night, but when his fangs were in her neck, she was paralyzed with anxiety about the Rite.

It only got worse the more she learned about it. Whispers from sources around town, an errant victim in the sewers, the other spawn in the flophouse. She couldn’t bring herself to put Astarion in that position, returning home and having to choose. She couldn’t bring herself to choose, endlessly selfish again when it came to him. Her laugh, in those wicked dreams, floated through her ears, haunting her waking hours just as often now.

But she finds glimpses of the fun, when she hadn’t felt the weight of the world or the guilt of her life, at the carnival. She paints the faces of Gale and Wyll, and she and Astarion trick the Djinn into revealing his cheating ways (even if it ends with her on an island of dilophosaurus), and they even commission a statue of a drunken Karlach.

The love test, though, she was having a blast. She knew she could answer honestly, peer past that mask, but they were in public, so she answered in their own way. A polite lie, a flirty joke, a haughtily-delivered half-truth, and he laughed along. It was banter from an easier time. He looked like he was going to lean in for some kind of touch, an embrace or a kiss, she didn’t know, before that dryad spoke again.

Not that Tav was worried about Astarion’s care for her, but it was nice to hear. She was worried about practically everything else.

That night, she woke to his shouting. Spawn, in their camp. His siblings, come to return him home. Tav saw his face as an impassioned plea, but she heard his sweet lies. She saw how tense he was, so she told them. They were to be sacrificed, and now they knew Astarion was willing to do it. She thought it would be enough information to leave and report to their master, but it earned her a cruel retort from him.

She didn’t want cuddly, she wanted him safe, and she wasn’t convinced that conducting a ritual with “profane” in the title was the way to get him there.

But she swallows her pride, and helps him fight them off. She tried to convince him that the world isn’t as awful to everyone as it was to him, but wasn’t that even more proof of how awful it was? She felt raw around the edges, guilt and confusion and anxiety and that crushing, endless weight on her shoulders, so she does what she hasn’t in weeks.

She held out her hand. And to her shock, after his rightful outbursts this evening, he took it. And if she quietly cries to sleep in his arms, he didn’t mention it, so neither would she.

That night, she’s haunted. Astarion, radiating power, laughs wickedly as faceless spawn are tortured under his heel. Shadowheart, a devoted Sharran, steals memories from the party’s already invaded brains. Jaheira and Minsc, carved and strung up in that bloody Bhaalist temple, a warning to those who dare to cross the Absolute.

And Tav, molding Astarion into an identical version of the master she’d never seen. All it would cost was seven spawn, and maybe her soul.

The twisting nausea she woke up with gets worse as they fight through Cazador’s mansion. It helped to kill Godey as quickly as she did, but the look on Astarion’s face almost wasn’t worth it. The quaver in his voice almost made her throw up.

And they learned the true cost wasn’t seven, it was a thousandfold. Not just her soul, but his, and so many others. Sebastian’s fury and heartbreak had clearly rattled him, but she didn’t know if it was enough to matter.

She tried to make him see, tried to put herself into that position, to show the true ruin he’d wrought, even though it wasn’t his fault. She didn’t know if it worked, but he wouldn’t talk to her again.

Of course Cazador, sniveling monster that he is, strung Astarion up in some magic for the ritual, and Tav heard him begging to be let out from across the dais. Without reading the room, she grabbed Lae’zel’s elbow mid-swing and pulled her through a dimensional door, hoping this position was winnable ground and that Jaheira, left behind, would be okay.

She helped him down, flinching at the need to grab him, and they fought his master. She even gave him the final blow, knowing his arrow would send Cazador back to the coffin just as well as her guiding bolt.

But then he had asked her to help him ascend. She had looked him in the eyes, the man she loved so desperately, and denied him. Denied him what he said he wanted most, denied him what he said would make him feel safe. She begged her goddess that she was right, and would beg his forgiveness if she wasn’t.

He had slaughtered Cazador, as was his right, but he had sobbed. She knelt next to him, knowing better than to touch, but hoping her presence was at least a small comfort, until he was ready to stand.

She was relieved, but not surprised, that he decided to let the spawn go. He even gave them the idea of the Underdark, and had threatened those that would run rampant. As they had spoken to the Gur and walked back to camp, Jaheira had been quietly talking to her about the implications.

That even a few errant spawn could be devastating to the Sword Coast. That there was no leadership there to keep them in check. That they should have killed them all anyways because their lives were over. Tav’s mind whirled with uncertainty, and the nausea she woke with only got worse. She wanted one fucking afternoon without implications.

But Astarion was silent, just a quiet plea to leave the mansion and a vacant stare ever since. So she tossed Jaheira a bag of gold in the middle of one of her moral questions, and told the group to stay downstairs. She had been selfish so far with him, what was one more night?

It had taken several calls of his name for him to show a sign of presence, but he eventually nodded when she asked questions, so she hoped he could at least hear her.

She tried to be as careful as possible, the lightest touches she could manage while also scrubbing dried blood from his skin. She hoped most of it was Cazador’s, but she had seen those claws slice at him, and took extra care with those wounds.

He was so still. So quiet. Her mind took her back, unwillingly, to the shadow curse he had fallen to, and the desperation she had felt with her last spell. She thought of every unfortunate thing that had happened to them since the nautiloid, and how he reveled in the sun and smiled to himself every time he walked into someone’s home and how he savored drinking blood, just because he could control when. She kept thinking of those unbalanced scales, the coin flips her faith relied on, and wondered if she had truly ever understood luck.

He staggered off to his bed once she had helped him redress, and she returned to hers, a world away. When her friends returned, they were too tipsy and joyous and generally raucous to understand that this wasn’t the time to ask why she hadn’t joined them for the celebration. They told her how proud they were of Astarion and how love had won and how glad they were that Cazador was dead, but all Tav felt was the unfairness of his life and the uncertainty of her choice, crushing her chest.

She had made the right choice for herself, and for Baldur’s Gate, she knew. But she laid down and tried to sleep, hollowed out at all that Cazador had taken from him, and hoped she wouldn’t be the last.

The next day they were setting off to rescue Duke Ravengard from the prison, and he hadn’t responded when she’d called his name to wake up. So she just glances at Gale, next to him, and waves him along to join.

When they trudge back, the Duke in tow, ocean water and sahuagin blood soaking into her socks, she still doesn’t see him, so she goes to take a long bath. She cried, at all the choices she’s had to make. All she’s pushed her friends to do, with no more guidance than any of them, all the weight she’s carried as their de facto leader.

But when she dries her tears and returns to the room, he’s waiting for her, and she can’t help herself but to smile widely. He asked her to follow him and she agreed, their conversation lacking its usual quips, with him seeming nervous and her empty exhaustion.

She collected herself when she realized the gravity of where he’d brought her. He’d never visited here, except to share that moment with her. Her heart swells, or cleaves in two, or maybe explodes, she can’t tell. All she knows is that she is overcome with emotion.

Even moreso when he says she’s what he wants. When he places those beautiful hands on her and pushes, when his knee catches her leg and hikes it up. When he breathes her name against her lips, and when for the first time, she sees how he is when he’s fully there and enjoying himself.

They stay wrapped in each other, even when they make it back to their room at the tavern, and even the next morning, they don’t stray far. It’s at the market, where Karlach and Wyll are discussing some blades, that she finally takes those rings out of the pocket they’ve stayed in for weeks.

He’s everything she’s ever wanted, she knows, and outside of the symbolism of a ring named True Love’s Caress, the warding bond enchanted into it is enough to make sure she never loses sight of him, that nobody can hurt him, without her knowing. That he can never be alone again.

He accepts, and hells below his smile is so sweet. She loves him. She can’t wait to ask him if he wants this ring to be real, rather than useful for their adventures, so she throws him a smile back and they continue.

Later, knelt down and picking a lock, he reaches his hand back to her. On instinct, she reaches back, but catches herself half way through the motion. He’s inviting her to touch him. Her heart warms, a smile dances at her lips. She follows through, casting the Guidance he’s looking for.

When he straightens, he meets her eye, and she sees acceptance there. A willingness to let her initiate too. So she does, since this is the man she loves more than anything. She seeks his opinion for reassurance, curls against his chest at night, basks in the clever smiles he gives her, all things she hadn’t allowed herself so far in their travels.

And with the nautiloid, and the fight through the city to the brain, she feels every scrape he receives, so she knows he’s safe. He had approached her, with what might be their final kiss, and she would fight with everything she had to get another.

In the end, he runs away from the sun. She stays behind, watching Lae’zel fly away on the back of a dragon. Watching Karlach and Wyll set off for Avernus. Watching all her friends, really, go their separate ways without much more than a casual farewell.

She finds him nearby, huddled behind some crates, and she wraps him in her arms and waits with him for the sun to go down. She thinks she hums to him, and tells him stories of before their time together, but it all passes in a blur.

And when they finally get him to safety, finally talk about it all, he still is so unsure of her place with him, he asks for confirmation. She tells him she’s never leaving, and will help him find a way to see the sun again.

Because if her whole life has been measured in scales, some unluckiness and misfortune of an adventure is worth it. This one certainly had been, because loving Astarion was the luckiest she’d ever gotten.