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Astarion can refuse his master nothing, a truth that got drummed into him quite early as a cornerstone of the unlife he’d unwittingly chosen. Cazador commands, and his spawn obey; this is the way of things, no more to be denied than the rising of the sun that sends them back to the shadows each morning.
Even so, Astarion has come to understand that he is a possession, nothing more; when his master has no need of him, he might as well be a piece of furniture.
Sometimes he’s literally a decoration, because Cazador’s artistic whims are nothing if not inventive; when the mood takes him, he’ll find new ways to ‘turn them into art’. Once he tied a rope around Astarion’s ankles and suspended him from the ceiling for days, arms spread with a candle balanced on the back of each hand, the wax dripping down to scald Astarion’s cold skin as he struggled to keep from either dropping the candles or letting them tip enough to burn him directly (he wasn’t even sure if Cazador would put him out).
When not trying to position him for some artistic endeavor, Cazador has never once touched Astarion for any reason other than to correct his behavior or cause him pain.
Cazador’s long-term plans are never shared with the minions who carry out the details, but then, Astarion never expected to be let in on the secret.
What surprised him is that Cazador doesn’t care to delve into Astarion’s secrets, even though a simple command would force every one of them from his lips. But that would mean caring about Astarion as a person, and Cazador cares only insofar as it lets him devise more effective punishments.
When Astarion had lain battered on the street, his life fading away, Cazador had seemed to be salvation, caring and comforting, and Astarion had reached out for his aid.
The next night, once he’d clawed his way out of his grave and found his master waiting, he’d come to realize the deception: Cazador did not care, did not comfort, and was the furthest thing possible from salvation.
Some nights, when the sense of neglect has gotten particularly cruel, Astarion allows himself to imagine a master who brushes his hair out of his face, who holds a cup of fresh blood to his lips and murmurs encouraging words—but the vision fades all too quickly, incompatible with his reality.
Alone, Astarion stalks the streets and brings home the prey for Cazador to enjoy: the best and brightest, the most delightful new faces in town. And then he sits at the table and watches as Cazador ensnares their minds, sinks his fangs into their necks, savors their lifeblood.
Since he’s never been allowed to partake, it was hard to watch that even before Cazador started serving him strangled rats (penance for some misdeed he can’t even recall), but he knows too well what it means to refuse to dine with his master; and so he bites in and sucks down the coagulated blood, suppressing his shudders.
It’s been two hundred years since he got turned, so trying to recall the details from his old life nets him sketchy memories at the best of times, but he thinks he used to be a person of some note. Only the echoes remain, like a vision just out of reach; everything that he is now has been painstakingly crafted by Cazador, the work of decades of careful artistry.
The freedom to choose even so much as his own clothing was stripped from him a lifetime ago.
So for all that Astarion lives and slaves and breathes under Cazador’s command, there is nothing close about their connection, nothing that ties them together aside from the force of the bond and the rules that Cazador has laid out to govern him.
And sometimes, when he’s sharing laughs or casual touches with another beautiful, charming tourist, one whose guard is down and who has no conception that this is their last night alive, he wonders whether his former life had ever been marked by such an agonizing desire for connection, for the kind of knowing intimacy that he is forever denied.
But then, it also strikes him that for all his power, Cazador—without even realizing the lack—has got to be the lonelier one.