Work Text:
Astarion can’t sleep, so it’s convenient he doesn’t need to.
Even a trance, for that matter, usually escapes him. It’s not that he doesn’t try; he’ll lay there in his little tent, curtains drawn, flat on his back with eyelids half-closed, reaching for the meditative half-dream state that is supposed to rest and replenish him. Sometimes it even works. But he startles out of it more often than not, a sharp gasp of air, eyes wide open and scanning the pitch-black, back arching like a fucking whore--
Anyway. He can’t sleep.
He paces rather a lot instead, or prowls if you’d like to call it that. The edges of camp are decent places to catch something like a deer, or maybe a pig if he’s lucky; pigs’ blood isn’t quite the same as human, but it’s a good enough approximation that he doesn’t actively dislike eating. Sometimes he catches a wolf, which is fun for a fight, but doesn’t actually taste all that nice, what with the mouthful of fur and all.
He’s been doing this sort of pacing-and-prowling number for a few minutes or a couple of hours when he finally notices Shadowheart’s scent on the wind—copper and clove. He’d thought it was coming from camp and that maybe she just hadn’t bathed in a while, but the further he drifts from sanctuary the stronger it becomes. He follows it idly, mostly out of curiosity, noting the forest grow dimmer around them until everything’s got that hazy quality of pure darkness.
He’s still prepared. Really, he is. This isn’t his area of expertise, or even his area of competency. She’s clearly got her own shit going on, and he’s got enough of his to not need to deal with whatever hers is, and she might get the stupid idea that she should now be dealing with him if he tries to prod at what’s going on, and then they’d both be fucked. So: turn around. Slink away into the night. Leave.
“And what are you doing out here at this time of night, darling?”
Fuck.
She looks up without a startle; she noticed him already. Good girl, he thinks, then winces. Her eyes are pools of tears.
“None of your fucking business,” she says, which isn’t wrong.
“Alright,” Astarion says. He sits down in front of her, peering at the little arrangement she’s got going on in front of her. Stones arranged in some strange pattern, little bits of wood broken carefully into pieces and scattered seemingly haphazardly around. He has really very little interest in religion these days or any other days, besides the ways in which it burns his skin terribly to rub up against, so he’s at a loss for what she’s trying to accomplish and dearly hoping she doesn’t try to explain it to him.
“What exactly are you trying to accomplish?”
What the fuck is wrong with him tonight?
Shadowheart clenches her jaw. Her hands are shaking, he notices now, while she messes with the debris on the ground; her shoulders are hunched over in quiet protectiveness. Some treacherous little pang in his chest tells him he ought to reach out and touch her, or something; he manages to press that down, at least. She’s queit, for a long while; he doesn’t mind so much. He’s very good at quiet.
“If you must know,” she says eventually, like every word is heavy as iron and painful to touch, “it’s the date my daughter died.”
She looks pale, when she says it. Her hands close around a stone, pick it up, and put it right back where it was. She’s doing a very good job of not looking at him, but not so good a job at not not looking at him. He’s never seen her this nervous, and she’s got a worm inside her brain trying to explode.
“Sorry about that,” he says, convincingly flippant. “What’s with the rocks and all that, though?”
She huffs. Good. If she’s angry with him, she isn’t about to burst into sobs or something embarassing like that.
“It’s a memorial,” she says, still shaky. “Sharran ritual. Star patterns. Blah, blah, you don’t fucking care. Why are you here?”
He doesn’t answer that. For one thing, he doesn’t know the answer, so it would be foolish to try to give one. For another, she doesn’t fucking care either; she’s really saying go away.
He leans back on his palms, studies the rocks again. He guesses he can sort of see a constellation he recognizes in it, now.
“How old was she?” he asks. “When she died, I mean.”
Shadowheart’s rage is brilliant bright; it makes her blood smell almost like whiskey. His mouth waters every time she fights with Lae’zel. Right now, she’s trying to conjure that rage, but she doesn’t look appetizing at all.
“Why the fuck do you care?” she asks, but she’s crying again, and doesn’t even seem to notice.
He shifts. The answer bubbles up in his mouth, but he hates to say it. He tries desperately to swallow it.
“I was thirty-nine when I died,” he says. “I’m just curious.”
She softens. He hates when they do that: soften. Their little leader does it all the time when he speaks, even when it’s about nothing important, and it makes him itchy.
She swallows, touches the ground gently, like it’s just something to do with her hands. “She wasn’t born,” she says. “She passed away in the womb.”
The womb, he notices her say. Not my womb. He wonders if it’s less painful for her, like that.
“Sorry,” he says, which is what he hates other people to say, so he instantly regrets it. “Anyway. Do you want company for this little ritual, or would your rather I slip off into the shadows and leave you to it?”
She stares at him. It takes her a moment to realize he’s serious, which is fair, because it takes him a moment, too. He would do it, if she asked; he’d stay with her, sit across from her and mourn her little daughter with her, let her cry and wail if that’s what she wanted, or wait in silence until the sun came up and go about their daily lives. What’s left of them, anyway.
He’s getting too damn soft. He’s got to drink someone soon.
“No,” she says, finally. “Or, I mean. I’d like to finish this alone, if that’s alright.”
Astarion shrugs, picks himself up off the ground. “Sure,” he drawls. “Your funeral.”
It takes her a moment. She almost laughs.
He starts to leave, walks carefully back out of the clearing into the dense tree line.
“Astarion,” she calls. He turns his head over his shoulder; she’s not looking at him, twisting her hands in her lap. She says, like it nearly pains her to say it, “Thank you.”
He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to crack a joke; he can’t think of one. He wants to say something sincere; he doesn’t even know what that sounds like.
He just leaves.
In his tent, the rest of the night, he sleeps.