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There’s screaming. Right in his ear, screams of pain. Agony. For a moment, Tav is back in the midst of battle, his companions dropping around him as he struggles to bring them back up, to smite the enemies around them. But the moment is fleeting, and he is not in battle. He is in his bed.
Someone should let Astarion know that.
Astarion normally lies next to Tav, eyes shut in meditation. Tav, a half-elf, isn’t quite sure what the difference between trancing and sleep is on a good day. Now, with Astarion next to him - eyes pressed shut, thrashing and crying out – Tav believes they must have stumbled upon the elven equivalent of a night terror.
“Astarion,” he says, calmly at first. Astarion does not notice. “Astarion!” Tav cries out, louder this time, placing a firm hand on his lover’s shoulder. This time, Astarion does notice. His eyes fly open, a hand quickly clamping onto Tav’s. His grip is iron, his palms cold, but damp with sweat. In the dim light, Tav can see that Astarion’s eyes are wide, tears pricking at the corners; his face an expression of pain that Tav more closely associates with the monsters on the other side of his blade, not with the vampire on the other side of his mattress.
“Tav,” Astarion chokes out. “Make it stop.” He is feral, pleading.
“What, my dear? What do you need?”
“My back-” the elf chokes out, suddenly scrambling to claw at his back, sitting up abruptly. Tav follows. “I’m bleeding. Oh gods, I’m going to die.” Astarion is crying now.
Tav is lost. His brain, fogged with sleep and clouded by panic, begins to examine his partner’s back. The scars there are most definitely not bleeding. They look the same as they did the day before, and the days before that; faded and pink, raised in a way that affirms how little care was used when carving them into Astarion’s flesh.
“Astarion,” Tav places his own hand on the raised scars of Cazador’s contract, his own hand warm and calloused against Astarion’s back, cold and solid as a marble slab. “You are not bleeding. You are in our bed. You’re safe, remember?” He sounds patronizing, and Tav cringes at his own words.
“No,” Astarion is choked. “No I’m… It hurts. Gods above, it hurts.” He is scratching at his back, reddening the parts of his long-healed scars that he can reach. He folds into himself, crumpling his face down into his hands as he lets out a broken sob. “I need healing, Tav, now! I’m going to bleed to death like this."
There is a moment of hesitation, of pure confusion, before Tav places his hands on Astarion and wills him to heal. In battle, this had never failed him. Sharess, his patron, lent her power to Tav easily. He felt the familiar warmth of healing magic flowing from his palms to his lovers back, but it appeared to offer no respite. Astarion groaned, pained. It was not the groan of a man who just received enough healing magic to revive a fresh corpse, but rather that of a man who still lay, flayed and broken, upon the door of death herself.
Astarion was sobbing, deep and gasping cries that wracked his body. Each breath seemed to rattle him to his core.
“My love, what do you need? What can I do?” Tav begged, desperate to end this episode of pain.
“I don’t know. It hurts,” Astarion lets the words come out, broken between sobs.
Tav scrambles up, assuring Astarion he will be back. Their flat in the city is modest, their shared bedroom directly attached to a large open room that served as both a sitting area and kitchen. Astarion hurts, he thought, scrambling to make sense of what was happening, and more importantly what he could do to make it better. Flipping through cabinets in the kitchen, he gathered supplies. A rag, which he wet in the sink. A small tin of healing ointment, which Tav kept on hand for when he attempted to cook. A tin glass, charmed to remain cold as ice without watering down the ale it was intended to hold.
He rushed back to their bedroom and reclaimed his space in their bed. “Shh, I’ve got you,” he assured. “You’re going to get through this.” Tav wasn’t necessarily the most intelligent man, but he felt that he was beginning to put the pieces together when Astarion sighed in relief as he slathered his back in the healing cream. Astarion wasn’t hurt, not physically, but somewhere in his tranced state he stumbled upon his memories of being flayed at Cazador’s feet. There was no blood spilled in their bed, but it was still so real to him.
“Does this help?” Tav asked gently, pressing the frosted surface of the tin cup to the small of Astarion’s back, hoping the cold may soothe the burning sensation. Initially, the elf hissed in discomfort when the cold surface of the cup touched his already chilled skin, but he leaned into it.
“Yes. I – it feels… Better.” There are no snappy retorts on his tongue, no deflecting this evening. They are quiet as Tav rolls the cold glass over Astarion’s skin, as he wipes the damp rag along the rough edges of his scars; gentle, as though he was cleaning a fresh wound. Tav feels the seed of rage burning in his gut thinking about how no one had been there to do this the first time – no one had wiped the grime from the open gashes, no one tried to reduce his lover’s pain. Had they not already slaughtered Cazador, Tav would have left in that moment to skin him. As it was, he grit his teeth and remembered fondly watching Astarion exact his own vengeance and take his life back. Tav soothed the tattered skin on his lover’s back.
“I think that’s enough,” Astarion interrupted Tav’s thoughts. Tav, who had been mindlessly dabbing and caressing Astarion’s back. Tav, who had exhausted his well of healing magic for a man with no injuries. The tin of ointment lay empty beside him, the rag half dried, the cup long discarded. “I think it’s past time for me to get my beauty rest.”
Tav nodded in reply and roughly discarded the items on the floor next to their bed; dealing with them would be a problem for later. Astarion laid down, his eyes never meeting Tav’s as he positioned himself to trance again. His eyes slid shut, and Tav watched on, holding his breath and saying a silent prayer that his love would rest easily and that the worst was past. He laid down next to him, tense.
Astarion was already deep in his trance. He seemed exhausted, purple shadows lying heavy under his eyes. The wrinkles on his face seemed deeper, he looked sunken in. Tav laid next to him on his side, draping an arm over the elf’s stomach, and he closed his own eyes. He slept fitfully.
--
When Tav awoke, Astarion was nowhere in sight. This was not abnormal; Astarion only needed half the rest that Tav required. Their room was dark, but behind the thick woolen curtains that covered the windows, Tav could see no sunlight. He had taken to being nocturnal, to better spend time with Astarion, after the tadpole stopped providing him with its anti-vampirism benefits.
He stepped out of bed, kicking the cup and the rag and the empty tin of ointment. The floor creaked under his feet. The door to their living space creaked all too loud when he pushed it open. Astarion was sitting on the plush sofa in the center of their living room, reading a book, and at the sight of him Tav let out a breath he didn’t remember holding.
“Did you have to bump into everything on your way out of bed, darling?” Astarion asked, pointedly not looking up from his novel. Lit by a few candles, it was hard to make out the details of his face, but it looked sunken and tired.
“Sorry,” Tav replied lamely. His voice was too scratchy. He sounded stilted, worry still in his tone.
“I assume I owe you an explanation for last night,” Astarion sighed, closing his book and forcing his eyes to meet Tav’s. His gaze was hard in the way it often was when he tried to pretend to be something he wasn’t.
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Astarion ignored him. “I was there, last night,” Astarion was bulldozing through. “When I came out of my trance, I was there. Cazador – he had me flayed open. I came to myself and I was bleeding, and dying, and in more pain than I can ever recall.” His tone was even but his eyes welled in the corners, his gaze still hard, staring through Tav rather than at him.
“I thought so,” Tav replied, again feeling lame in his response.
“You were there this time, but it didn’t help. I was still in pain. It already happened, so of course you couldn’t go back and stop it now.” There was an edge to his voice. Somewhere between anger and pain and regret. “I needed you then.”
“I’m sorry,” Tav repeated. “You have me now.”
“I wish that was enough,” Astarion sneered. His expression immediately softened, the tears pricking his eyes shone in the dim light. “That’s not fair, fuck. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just mean… I don’t know, this should be easy. It’s over.” His relaxed facade dropped away quickly, crumpled like cheap parchment.
“But?” Tav asked.
“But I relive it every day. Or, not every day, but so many days. So many good days are tainted by the memories of him. Of what happened to me,” Astarion sighed. “I need to move on. Our lives are good now,” he gestured widely to the room around them. To the domesticity of their lives. His voice was quiet. “I want to move on. I can’t relive the worst moments of my life forever.”
Tav sat down on the cushion next to Astarion. “Can I touch you?” He asked. Astarion nodded in reply, looking so much more tired with the distance between them closed. Tav pulled him into an embrace.
“Perhaps one day you will move on,” Tav spoke into curly white hair. “Perhaps you never will. Either way, I will be at your side.”
If Tav felt tears staining his shoulder, he didn’t mention it.