Chapter Text
Weeks later, they defeat Cazador.
The fight is over too fast, in the blink of an eye. Astarion cannot remember anything but snatches of color, feeling, and how real the desperation in Cazador’s eyes looked. He wonders if he looked like that, too, once upon a time. Before getting tadpoled, before finding people who liked him for him, before Tav.
It is not even a choice when, bathed in blood after the fight, Tav looks at Astarion with a question in her eyes. There are the exact number of sacrifices gathered that Astarion would need to complete the ritual and ascend in Cazador’s place, and maybe if Astarion had been given this choice a year ago, he would have taken it without hesitation. Ascension would mean freedom from his undead curses: no more lurking in the shadows to avoid the sun’s glare, no more prowling like vermin to carry out Cazador’s bidding. Ascension would mean power. Invulnerability. Astarion would be the strongest.
Astarion realizes, now, that ascension would also mean losing something vastly more important than any of that. Being untouchable means no longer having those soft, vulnerable moments with Tav after battles. There would be no more sitting together and tenderly patching each other up—he’d have no more trust to give to Tav, because what does an infallible being need of trust? Trust is a form of power over oneself that is voluntarily given, power can only be given by someone who can still be hurt by betrayal. How could Tav trust someone who couldn’t even trust her? How could any of his friends trust him, after that?
So, even though Tav’s expression frames the whole situation in a question mark, this was never a choice for Astarion.
Long after they left Cazador’s castle, stories about the day seven thousand missing people were liberated from an evil vampire’s lair by a crew of no more than a handful of travelers would be passed on from generation to generation.
Astarion has many regrets. That day is not one of them.