Chapter Text
All day long, he caught her sneaking looks at him, when he was sneaking looks at her.
Instead of looking embarrassed though, she smiled at him. He was a little perplexed by the whole thing. She seemed so happy that it made him anxious, because he was suddenly unsure of what the next move was. Usually, he had a script to follow for the seduction, with a pretty clear end-goal to achieve. Now, he felt a little lost, and a lot certain that he was about to disappoint. It was only a matter of time, really, before she would want something he couldn’t give her.
Wyll pulled out the small lyre he’d gotten back at the tiefling party – such a long time ago, it felt like – and struck up a cheerful tavern song. Rin joined in, walking up ahead next to the warlock, and Astarion caught himself watching the slow swish of her tail. He was struck by a memory of walking, just like this, on the Risen Road. That day had ended pretty disastrously, and his stomach clenched when he thought of how close he’d come to losing Rin there, on the edge of a cliff. Back then, he hadn’t even realised the magnitude of loss it would have been.
“Hey Fangs!” Karlach’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “Do you play?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh, all sorts of games, darling”, he drawled.
She laughed, rolling her eyes. “Yes, yes, so rogue, so many games. An instrument you dummy. Did you learn any at school?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t remember school. But yes, I can play the violin, so I suppose I must have. Cazador certainly didn’t teach me.”
Rin stopped singing abruptly and turned to look at him, eyes wide and mouth open in shock. “What?” she just about yelled. “How did I not know this?”
He shrugged and gave her a dashing smile. “Is it any surprise, with these talented fingers of mine?”
Rin laughed. “Yes, you’re just full of surprises!” She was reaching behind her, for the violin strapped to her back. “Will you play with us?”
His mouth was suddenly a little dry. “I… would rather not, just at the moment, darling.”
She looked at him with her head tilted to the side a little, considering, and he was careful not to let her see anything in his face. “Okay”, she said, “maybe another time.”
*******
Astarion lounged on his bedroll, using a combination of pillows and a crate as a backrest. His angles were good, hair artfully mussed. A couple of candles lit for flattering light, giving his skin a warm cast. He felt nervous, but his face was schooled into nonchalance. It was the first night since he had confessed to Rin, for the second time, that he wanted something real with her. This time, it had not ended in hurt feelings – although he wasn’t exactly sure what they were to each other now.
The day had been uneventful. Probably their first uneventful day since this whole adventure began. The road to the gate was clear, the countryside empty in the wake of the Absolute army’s passing. If you didn’t pay attention to the occasional husk of a burned out farmstead, you could pretend you were out for a pleasant stroll. Their little group lagged behind the others – refugees, Fists, and Harpers – making camp close enough for some shared safety, but with sufficient distance for privacy.
He was relieved, that they weren’t travelling with the larger group. It would be about a tenday’s walk to Baldur’s Gate, and the thought of being so close to so many strangers, having to talk and charm and pretend, or listen to their tragic stories, seemed exhausting. Their camp was already getting crowded, with the addition of the Selunite cleric and her very loud aasimar lover, and another druid - who gave him shrewd and calculating looks that he did not appreciate.
They’d eaten dinner in good spirits, judging it safe enough to get into the wine. Rin hadn’t held her arm out to him, and he’d been relieved, because he didn’t want to drink from her in front of their new companions, and he also didn’t want to say no to her. So now he lounged here, as the camp settled to stillness, knowing that she would likely come to offer him dinner. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what he was feeling nervous about. She had said sex was not a requirement to… this new arrangement. But still, he'd fallen into his familiar role all day, teasing and flirting, and now he was gripped with uncertainty about what that might mean to her.
He was listening for her heart, following the sound around camp as she made the rounds like she did every evening, checking in on her menagerie of friends and strays. When she approached his tent, he called out a “come in, darling” before she could knock on the tent pole. He heard her chuckle, and she entered. She was carrying a small stack of books.
“Look what I got from Gale!” she grinned at him. “Some of it looks like truly awful poetry. Want to read a little?”
He smiled at her, and it was genuine, because he was flushed with relief. “There’s nothing I’d like more, darling.”
She was already coming to sit next to him, putting the pile of books down. She wore her ridiculous giant shirt, and scruffy patched pants, and once again, she was beautiful. She shuffled up close next to him, and held an arm out across herself to him. She was chatting about little nothings – how loud Dame Aylin was, how many books Gale took from the tower, how there were so many platinum blondes in camp now and maybe she should dye her hair blue…
He took her arm, reverently placing a kiss on the inside of her elbow. She giggled, a little shiver running through her, and then told him about how all the animals in camp had started sleeping in a giant pile on top of Karlach at night, even the imp they sometimes summoned. When he started drinking, she sighed, and put her head on his shoulder. Her blood was warm and sweet, bright happiness that filled his stomach and spread through his limbs like liquid sunshine.
He was listening to her heart – his feeding careful and calculated – so he stopped before it slowed. She paused her happy chatter and lifted her head to peer at the twin red spots on her inner arm. “I quite like them”, she said, smiling, “the little marks.”
He looked at her in wonder, because she was oblivious to how much of a gift this, all of this, was. He touched a hand to the silver amulet at his neck, and whispered “Te absolvo”. The marks disappeared in the wake of the magic.
“Right”, she said reaching for the books.
“Wait”, he said, and took hold of her chin, gently, with his thumb and forefinger. He made eye contact, to be sure he still had permission, before slowly placing his lips on hers. The kiss was sweet and chaste. He lingered there, on her soft mouth, his hand moving up to cup her jaw. He placed kisses on the corners of her mouth, and pulled back to look at her. She smiled at him. “You are perfect”, he said.
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Liar.”
He opened his mouth to object but she was already moving and passing him a book. With a quick word, she cast Light on one of the tentpoles, before blowing out the candles. Much more practical, for reading. “Do you mind?” she asked, as she manoeuvred herself to lie along the wall of the tent, perpendicular to him, head poised to be rested in his lap. He put a hand in her hair and she lay her head down, knees up, to read her book.
Astarion held up the book she’d passed him with his free hand, but he was just pretending. He wanted to look at her a little more. She was frowning in concentration. She’d been a very quick study, and hardly needed any help now. He should have told her, he thought, how clever she was in their lessons. He was not a very good teacher. They stayed like that for quite a long time. Occasionally, she would ask him for help with a word, but mostly they were quiet. Eventually, Astarion did read the book, and it was ridiculously terrible.
When he was about halfway through, the light started dimming, flickering to darkness every so often. He glanced down at Rin, he saw that her eyes were closing. Now and then, the book would dip down from where she was holding it up, much like her eyelids. He smiled, amused, and reached over to take the book from her hands. She hardly seemed to notice, her body obviously taking this as permission to succumb.
“Do you mind if I stay here?” she mumbled, the light fading away.
“Please do, kitten ”, he said, reaching over to slip an arm around her knees, so he could gather her up close to him as he lay down. She snuggled her face into his chest, and his dead heart felt full, as she started the soft rumble of her purr.
*******
“Do you not play, anymore?” Rin asked him.
She’d brought her lunch over to sit by him, away from the others. “I didn’t play for a long while, after… after the ship.” She bit the bottom of her lip, looking uncertain. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry. Yesterday you just looked a little… worried, I guess? When I asked you to play with us?”
“It’s fine, darling.” He sighed. At the beginning he would easily drop horrible little titbits about his past – what better way than to garner sympathy and endear himself to heroic types? Things felt a little different now. “I must have known how to play from my life before Cazador turned me. Aurelia plays the lute and has a decent voice, and sometimes, he would have us perform for his entertainment. I didn’t hate it, playing with her. Looking back, I think he must have realised. He liked to ruin things.”
He could see Rin biting her lip, probably guessing that this was going somewhere awful. She didn’t say anything though, so he continued.
“He caught us, one night, playing a song together. Just something quiet, for Dal, because she’d come home the night before with a black eye and no mark for Cazador, so she was… hurt.” He glanced at Rin, and decided not to elaborate on Dalyria’s hurts. She seemed to understand, anyway.
“He took us to the ballroom and ordered us to perform. And then he shut the doors and left.” He barked a harsh, bitter laugh. “We got a lot of practice in.”
“How long?” Rin whispered, horrified.
“A tenday maybe? Two? I lost track eventually, after Aurelia’s voice was long gone and our fingers were bloody and frayed.” He could still hear the scrape of bone on the wood of Aurelia’s lute. “I don’t know what happened to the instruments, after. We didn’t see them again. Which was fine with me.”
“I’m going to learn Disintegrate, just for him”, Rin said, and he looked up to see tears in her eyes. Her voice was quiet and steady though. “Unless you’d prefer to stab him to death, in which case I will wait patiently, and then disintegrate whatever is left.”
“You say the most romantic things, darling”, he quirked the corner of his mouth and was pleased when she gave him a little smile back. His stomach was in knots, and he didn’t quite know if it was gratitude or fear or amazement, so he resolved to ignore it completely.
“I get a question now” he declared, and she grinned at him.
“Sure.”
“Why can you turn into a cat? Wild-shape is a druid thing, and if you are going to be a druid on top of a sorcerer and a bard then that really is over-achieving, don’t you think?”
“I thought we were pretending you didn’t know about that? It’s the last secret I have left.”
He shrugged. “I get tired of pretending, occasionally.”
She scoffed. “It was when I had just arrived in Waterdeep. I was pretty desperate, I had nothing and knew no-one, and I’d just learned that I couldn’t go home even if I had a way to get there…” Her tail was doing nervous little flicks, which caught Astarion’s attention, so he listened to her heart, in the background.
“I got lucky, when I was pickpocketing, and stole something…”
Vague, he thought.
“…that would let me turn into a cat. I spent the first winter there as a cat, because I could hunt for food and sneak into warm places at night. It seemed easier to survive…everything, as a cat. When I’m a cat feelings are not quite so intense, you know? And I’d dream about catching birds and lying in the sun, rather than…” she trailed off. Astarion realised her heartbeat was picking up.
“Why does this conversation make you nervous, love?”
She hesitated, looking away before answering. “Because”, she said, and her voice was very quiet, “I’m scared to tell you what it is, that lets me turn into a cat.”
“Why?” he asked, confused.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Star, I do. It’s just…it’s been my escape-plan, my last resort, for a very long time. I’ve never told anybody that I could do it, never mind how. If no-one knew how I did it, they couldn’t take it away. And they'd never even know where to look for me, since I didn’t exist, exactly. Whenever things felt dangerous, if caught a hint of someone on my tail, I would go cat and stay that way for a while. Just, disappear, until the danger passed again. It’s the thing that’s kept me safe.”
Astarion sensed there was more that she wanted to say, so he hummed an encouragement, and gave her time.
“One time, I was a cat for a whole year. And…” she swallowed hard, and Astarion saw the way her tail curled close to her.
“I decided that I would never turn back. It was easier. The thing is, you start forgetting, the longer you stay. You forget what it’s like to walk on two legs, or to talk to people. After a while your own name starts to get hazy, and your memories of being a person slowly fade away… I could just be another stray without a name, and no one would miss Rin. It’s my last way out, if I ever needed it.”
Astarion’s stomach dropped, as he realised what she was saying. “Why didn’t you?” he whispered.
“I was sitting on a windowsill – there was a nice lady who would sometimes give me a bit of fish, I liked her windowsill – and a bard was singing on the corner of the street. He sang a tune that made me remember my mother. It was a song she sang to me, when I was small. Just a silly little song, about how I was her sunshine and stars. Her face popped into my head so suddenly, and I realised I couldn’t remember her name. And it horrified me. Tiefling-me popped back into existence right there on that windowsill.”
She gave him a rueful smile. “The poor woman who lived there had just opened her front door with a bowl of milk, and there was a hell-spawn falling off her windowsill. She chased me away, so I never even got to say thanks for the fish.”
“Lucky for us all he was there with the right song”, Astarion said, feeling a little bit sick.
After a moment, he nudged her shoulder with his. “Don’t tell me, love. I don’t need your last secret, and if it makes you feel safer to have it, then you should keep it.” When Rin looked at him he could see her eyes were glassy with tears again, and he pretended not to notice.
“Tell me instead, what was your mother’s name?”
“Claudia” she said.
“A beautiful name”, he replied.