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Astarion prides himself on not caring about most things. It’s a strength to be faced with people like Shadowheart and Karlach and still feel little to nothing about them. (Or, at least, outwardly display he feels little to nothing.) He’s not a bleeding heart, not like the ranger whose stoic demeanor and nimble hands on her bow have corralled them under her command, but people like Shadowheart - brittle people, cold people - sometimes inspire empathy in him. People like Karlach, who are ever-optimistic despite all the odds being against them, are some of Astarion’s favorite people. He’ll bitch and moan about their never-ending cheer but deep down he likes it, soaks it in like the sunlight he’s only just been able to feel.
But there are, of course, people who inspire absolutely nothing in him; most people are like this, which is why Astarion deems most people quite dull. The only person in their merry little party who is absolutely uninteresting is Gale of Waterdeep. Even his name sounds boring.
Astarion scrubs at a bit of well-worn metal peeking out the hilt of his dagger and glares at Gale across camp. Despite the most recent revelation - that Gale is quite literally a walking, talking bomb - he seems enthusiastic. Prideful, even, smirking at the ranger who gives back as much as she gets in the form of ribbing him about “being a hero.” Good for him, Astarion thinks, not at all bitter. He’s never wanted to be a hero, and if Gale is oh-so-willing he will gladly pass off the opportunity. He quite likes being alive, thank you very much. As alive as a vampire can be, anyway.
The ranger pats his arm and wanders away, rifling through her pack and pulling out a diadem she had found that morning for Shadowheart. Gale watches her go with little change to his expression, but as Shadowheart allows herself to be drawn into a conversation, Astarion watches as Gale’s mouth quivers and his eyebrows crumple together like a tower without a foundation.
Feeling the gaze of another, Gale’s eyes swivel to Astarion’s. His mouth purses tightly and he gives a slight dip of his head in acknowledgement.
There, in the dimming firelight, Astarion can see him for what he really is. An abandoned, discarded, volatile scrap of a human - not at all the vain, egotistical prick Astarion had pinned him for. His robes hang off his frame like a reaper’s cowl, hiding his soft figure. At his temples gray sneaks in with the original chestnut brown of his hair. Even now he looks older than Astarion, worn down by the years and the people he’s met within them. He bears the thin smile of a dead man.
Astarion snorts and returns to scraping at the bloodied hilt. Well, good riddance. Gale was set to die sooner or later, as all are wont to do, and Astarion hardly cares how he goes or even if he does.
He feels Gale’s gaze slip off him like he’s oil and the soft burn of Gale’s eyes is water. Something tightens uncomfortably in his gut, squeezes his insides until he finally looks up to see Gale no longer standing where he had been just a minute ago.
“Hmm,” says Lae’zel, sitting beside Astarion with the gentle finesse of a learned fighter. She doesn’t look at him as she continues: “He was not meant to live long, then.”
Astarion snorts. “I do hate to break it to you, my dearest githyanki, but none of us will live very long with this parasite bullied into our brains.”
She shoots him a deeply unimpressed look not unlike her usual facial expression. “Do not play games with me, spawn. You know what I meant.”
“Yes, yes. The wizard will most certainly die soon and I shall celebrate it. Is that what you wish to hear?”
“No,” snaps Lae’zel. “Understand me, Astarion. From the moment he pledged his loyalty to his goddess, she penned his death in her hand.”
Grimacing, Astarion sets the dagger aside and looks at her. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“He is disposable,” she hisses, “a flesh shield. A useful piece of equipment but hardly a human, and Mystra knew it from the moment she claimed him.”
“Aren’t we all cogs in the great marvel of life?” Astarion says tonelessly.
“Perhaps. But to be abandoned by one’s owner simply for following in her footsteps, to be cast aside and then be told that you can regain some of what you had lost if you perhaps gave everything else…” She shakes her head. “It is a cruel fate indeed. One you might feel some sympathy towards.”
“Don’t tell me that you feel bad for him?”
Lae’zel shrugs. “I do not feel bad. I merely recognize that there is an element of unfairness to his situation. Perhaps you can empathize with that, at least. You and him are similar in ways you refuse to acknowledge, spawn.” And with a swish of her braided hair, she heads for her tent.
Astarion stares after her, befuddled and more than a little angry.
Who is Lae’zel to tell him he needs to extend his sympathies towards Gale? She’s the toughest of the bunch, a warrior with little regard for the propriety of society, someone Astarion thought shared his values. But for her to ask him to, in simple terms, be kinder to Gale, must mean that she truly, genuinely feels bad for him.
Which means Astarion isn’t taking this as seriously as he should.
He tries to think of the situation as if he were Gale. A young boy of maybe seventeen, maybe eighteen, whisked away into the arms of his goddess and touted like a glorified lapdog. Astarion doesn't know if he could stomach that, being who he is and knowing what it feels like to be a dog to an owner, but, he reminds himself, for now he isn’t Astarion.
Gale must have felt overwhelmed. He must have felt like he was drowning, maybe. Astarion can scarcely remember being younger than he had been before he was turned; the idea of an even younger Gale, only a few years older than some of the tiefling children they’d rescued, makes him feel nauseated.
Then: Gale must have felt that he was loved.
Astarion does not remember what it feels like to be loved, and that is perhaps why he disregards this idea. If love is powerful enough to make Gale want to blow himself up then Astarion has no interest in it - he has no interest in being owned by someone else. Where Astarion has shunned Cazador, Gale has clung to Mystra. He knows he will never be satisfied until Cazador is dead; what is Gale searching for from his master? What satisfaction does Mystra’s forgiveness give him? Gale must know that she doesn't love him.
Or, maybe, this is where Astarion is wrong and Gale really does believe that he is still loved. That, for the one person he dedicated himself to, there is still a shred of kindness in her heart for him.
Astarion knows this story. There is no kindness; there is no love; Mystra will never, has never, and could never, ever love someone like Gale.
Good riddance, he thinks again, and tries to ignore how it sounds much weaker this second time.
When Astarion stumbles out of the forest, bloodied and exhausted from his hunt, Gale is already sitting in the center of the clearing and heating a pan over a burst of orange-gold flame. Astarion’s eyes fix on it like it’s a jewel. The color flicks from burnt sienna to something softer like buttercup yellow before staggering to greater heights as gold licks the bottom of the pan.
“Good morning Astarion,” says Gale. He sounds tired.
He doesn’t so much as glance at him as Astarion steps closer, mouth pulling taut as he examines the bruises beneath Gale’s pretty hazel eyes.
“You look like a right wreck,” he bites out.
“Thank you very much,” Gale snaps, “now, if you would, please fetch me the bag of herbs from Tav’s chest or leave me in peace. I have no wish to hear whatever insults you’ve to lay on me today.”
“Why, Gale,” says Astarion, putting his hand over his chest, “you almost sound hurt.”
“Heavens forbid,” mutters Gale, flinging his hand out and catching the bag of herbs as it flies across Astarion’s vision.
“Don’t be like that,” Astarion croons.
“I am not like anything, my dearest friend,” he says sarcastically, “I only wish to be left to my own devices to cook. I don’t expect a vampire to know how to poach an egg.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Nor do you know me,” Gale sighs. “Astarion, what do you want? You have taken no notice of me ‘til this morning and yet you expect me to welcome your presence with open arms when it seems like you’ve shunned mine until now.”
Well. When he puts it plainly like that, Astarion can see how it looks. But Astarion is also used to sneaking back into people’s lives, slipping into a role that leaves people wanting his attention, coveting it, and it isn’t the first time someone has shut down a conversation from him but it’s the first time it matters.
“Be that way, then,” he snips, haughty, and retreats back to his tent. A moment later he hears the sizzle of an egg hitting the pan.
The wizard is not particularly handsome. He is very young by vampire standards but nearing middle-age by human ones. He’s soft in the stomach and in the thighs and everywhere, really, and he has eyes like glimmering water, overflowing with emotion and looking like they might spill at any moment. Astarion has slept with people much prettier than him.
Then why does it feel like he can’t peel his eyes from him?
The ranger plucks the two of them plus Shadowheart from the safety of camp and sets them scampering in the Shadowland’s underbrush. They butt heads with a group of Harpers, who Tav manages to charm well enough that they invite them back to their camp. The Last Light Inn is overcrowded and full of the tieflings they’d rescued from the Grove, and each and every one of them seems to want to extend their thanks. Astarion slips away sometime between the fourth and fifth blubbering “thank you”. He sets up the stairs and down the hallway. A shimmering light comes from the two doors up ahead but he turns right and wanders down a set of stairs to find Mol and Raphael engaged in a vicious game of lanceboard.
They’re alone. He meanders up and tips his head to look at the devil, startles a little when he finds that Raphael has already been watching him.
A toothy smile makes its way across Mol’s face. She tells him it’s her first time playing and he goes along with it, pretending to bang his knee under the table and upending some pieces so that Mol can take the game.
Once she’s run off, Raphel turns back to him. He’s not smiling, though there are traces of amusement in his voice when he says, “Are you going soft, little vampling?”
Astarion bares his teeth. “I have no idea what you’re blabbering about,” he spits back.
“Hmm.” Raphael swings his boots onto the table, nearly knocking over the lanceboard, and stares at him like he’s picking him apart one flake of skin at a time. There is an aura of power that surrounds him. An aura of confidence, one that has been won from centuries of being right when others are wrong. Astarion desperately wishes he had that.
“I suppose this is about the runes on your back?” asks Raphael.
“Correct. What must I do for you to transcribe whatever gibberish Cazador has carved into my skin?”
“Well,” begins Raphael. He pauses, suddenly, and then a wide grin creeps across his face. His legs swing back off the table and he stands, dusting off his lap. “Ah, hello. You must be Gale Dekarios.”
Dekarios. Gale’s last name; it humanizes him in a way Lae’zel must have hoped for last night when she had urged him to reconsider his stance on the wizard. No longer Gale of Waterdeep, but Gale Dekarios, so young and so powerful, so eager to take and give in equal measure. Hungry.
Like Astarion himself.
“Ah,” says Gale, flushing red. It’s just him in his purple robes, the top half of his hair sectioned off into a messy knot at the back of his head. Mystra’s earring dangles enticingly from his ear, shining silver and cruel under the wavering lamplight. “You’re the devil.”
Raphael laughs heartily. “I do apologize that I did not meet you the first time. You are quite the interesting specimen, I have to say - would you consider a deal pertaining to the orb in your chest?”
Gale’s mouth opens in an ‘O’ of surprise. For some odd reason he looks exceptionally small; he has always taken up the same amount of space as Astarion, but at this moment he might as well be seventeen again, so unsure and gangly as he meets Raphael’s humored gaze. “You’re powerful enough to dispel this amount of Netherese Weave?”
“Not enough to dispel it,” says Raphael, “but I may be able to halt it, make it dormant for a few weeks, months. As you know, the closer you travel to the Absolute, the more it intertwines itself with you. It is a part of you, Gale Dekarios, one I cannot remove, but I can… settle it.”
Astarion stares at Gale, his mind a muddled mess of confusing thoughts. Gale’s orb is not just a bomb, then: it’s timed to go off at a precise moment, just as they reach the Absolute. Mystra has not burdened Gale with a weapon to hold. She has turned Gale into a weapon and sent him off with the knowledge that someday soon her former Chosen will be turned to bloody mist by her gentle hands. Knowing this intrinsically and hearing it from Raphael’s mouth are inherently different. Astarion had known that Mystra had abandoned Gale. He had not known that Gale’s orb grew more painful the closer they got to the end of their journey as if it was preparing him for his final, lethal dose of pain.
Astarion resists the urge to reach out and touch Gale. Instead, he stands beside him in stony silence.
Gale takes a deep breath. “I appreciate the offer,” he says softly, “but if my death is what my goddess wishes of me, I will serve her willingly. It is by her will that I have been able to become the wizard I am today, and I owe her more than my life.”
Raphael nods as though he had expected it. “Well,” he says, turning back to Astarion, “why don’t the two of us make a deal, then?”
After Raphael has disappeared in a burst of flame, Astarion cannot help but turn to Gale and simply look. The fine skin by his eyes is crinkled permanently, though the pinch between his brows also remains when Gale’s face is relaxed. There is a mole to the right of his lips, so small and insignificant that Astarion had not noticed it before now.
Full of rage, “Why do you still serve your goddess?” snaps Astarion.
Gale inclines his head. “She loved me,” he says simply, and then turns around and walks off, leaving Astarion alone with his thoughts and a floor covered in lanceboard pieces.
There is no time to think about Gale after that. They have to save Selüne’s cleric (Shadowheart makes an impressively pained grimace at that), Isobel, and then they have to gather Jaheira and her men to figure out their next steps. Astarion lets Tav do most of the talking, preferring to lean against a wooden beam and watch them tire themselves out.
They spend the next few days mapping a path to Moonrise Towers. Gale stays at camp for approximately half of those days, instead replaced by an over-enthusiastic Wyll. Astarion had once thought Wyll to be the second-most boring person at camp, but after listening to him prattle on and on about whatever heroic nonsense he thinks up, Astarion moves him up to first place.
Because of the heroic nonsense. No other reason.
The night before their siege on Moonrise is fraught with tension. Shadowheart is moping badly enough that even Tav is avoiding her, and Gale seems to have sunken into a depressive state in the last few hours. They eat dinner quietly.
Tav waves Gale off when he tries to talk to her, excusing herself to go wrangle Shadowheart back to herself, and Astarion watches as Gale sinks deeper into himself.
What is he moping about? Astarion thinks irritably. It’s bringing the whole camp’s mood down.
Then, of course, it hits him: tonight may very well be Gale’s last night alive. He watches Gale carefully tear off a piece of meat and thread it between his teeth, mechanically chewing down on it.
What would it be like to live without Gale? Astarion doesn’t eat the food he makes; he doesn’t talk to him; they don’t know each other. They aren’t friends, are barely acquaintances, and yet… Yet, Astarion doesn’t want him to die for the simple fact that it would be a waste of a perfectly good person.
No - a waste of a perfectly good Gale.
He lets the rest of the party slip away before he follows the wizard outside. The Shadowlands are damp and dark, but Selüne’s blessing lights Gale’s steps like the goddess wants him to be followed. In this pocket of sky that Gale has found, a single star shines through the blackness. It twinkles as Astarion sets himself down beside him.
“I apologize if I’m not who you expected,” he begins snarkily.
Gale smiles, shakes his head. He looks at Astarion like he’s seeing him for the first time. Astarion is used to looks of heat, of envy. He’s handsome and he knows that the reason people stop and stare is because of it. But Gale looks at him with ill-disguised wonder, like Astarion is magical simply for the reason that he followed Gale out here.
She loved me, Gale had said.
Astarion clears his throat uncomfortably.
Gale’s smile widens. He truly is quite nice to look at. The tousled chocolate brown hair, the dark fan of his lashes, the soft planes of his chest that peek through the neck of his sleeping robe. “You know,” he says, “I’m beginning to think you might like me.”
“Perish the thought,” answers Astarion firmly.
With a bright laugh, Gale shakes his head. “You know, I never expected it would be you to find me here, in the last hours of my life. I never imagined it would be you and I at the end of the universe.”
“Well,” he says, “it is just you, you know.”
“I know.” Gale shakes his head. “It was a silly thought. Tonight may very well be my last night alive; I wanted it to be under the canopy of beauty and wonder. I… don’t think I’ve quite managed it.”
Astarion glances up to where the single star is shining and snorts. “No, I don’t reckon you have.”
“That’s alright,” says Gale. “There’s beauty in everything.”
“Aren’t you scared?” The question jumps out of his mouth before he can stop it. He clamps his lips together and looks away from that tiny speck of hope, down at the dirty grass beneath their feet.
“I’m terrified,” Gale whispers. “But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“No,” says Astarion very softly, “I don’t suppose there is, my dear wizard.”
“This is it,” says Gale tiredly. His hand comes up to press at his chest. “This is the time.”
Astarion glances towards where Kethric and the two others are arguing and then back at Gale, who has that now-familiar look of decision on his face. Blood coats him, darkening one side of his hair to a deep burgundy, and for a moment Astarion thinks that if Gale is going to die right now he might as well clean himself up before he does it.
The ranger bites down on her lip. She must know, then, that this is an impossible battle. With the three leaders gathered in one place, a Gale-manned bomb could easily solve their tadpole problem and have them escape a fight that surely won’t go well. “Gale,” she starts.
And Astarion - Astarion thinks back to Lae’zel, to Raphael, to all the moments between then and now that he’s noticed Gale - really, honestly seen him, and before he knows it he’s reaching out and gripping the other man’s wrist.
Gale’s pulse skyrockets. “Astarion?”
“No,” says Astarion with surprising firmness, “no. This isn’t the way. I will not let you wipe yourself out for a goddess who couldn’t care less of you. I will not let you waste yourself.”
A miserable expression floods Gale’s weary face. “It is not a waste. What am I supposed to do, if not do what Mystra asks?”
Astarion hand tightens.
“Let’s find out.”