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Astarion had never considered how fragile she was until she was crumpled in a heap in front of him, her blood seeping into the cracked stone beneath her. It went beyond how she looked; the way she carried herself betrayed little of what she was thinking, and if she had ever been scared, Astarion was not sure that he’d noticed. She hadn’t seemed scared when they’d walked through the iron-wrought doors of the Bhaalist temple. There was an air to her, one that made Astarion almost nervous that they had walked into a trap—that she had, once again, been the centerpiece for some elaborate plan. Only this time, she was in full control and entirely aware of the prey.
When he’d killed Cazador he was sure a piece of him had gone with the man, and when he’d cried it was less out of belated sympathy for him and more borne from relief at having that violent bit of himself stolen.
He had, of course, noted the similarities of their situation. She was running from her birthright, scared and witless, finding herself at the center of a whirlpool of decades of death. Astarion had been running from his Master, his father in a sense, and had returned home to prove that he was better, more whole than he ever had been under Cazador’s thumb.
And now they were here, and she had done the same thing he had: run back into danger with a sense of having unstoppable power, only to be proved powerless in the end.
The moment she had crumpled to the ground, Shadowheart had rushed to her side. Her hands shook as she looked over her injuries. Gale stumbled to his knees beside her, unable to heal as always but desperate enough to try. Lae’zel, who had only just been released by Orin, stood over them, eyes wide and afraid, younger than Astarion had ever seen her before.
“She’s not breathing!” Shadowheart dug her fingers into the body’s bloodied armor and started to fling pieces of it off. Dark red sprang from where metal had once been.
Astarion had cried when Cazador had finally laid still and quiet. She hadn’t hugged him, exactly, but he remembers her hand on his shoulder as he stood to speak to Dalyira.
Emotion washes through him and he shoves past Shadowheart and Gale, clawing at the ground and dragging himself forward on his knees. His fingers wrap around her wrist. Her pulse is gone. He’s desperate, suddenly, for her and for justice and for peace, finally, don’t they deserve peace? Don’t they deserve each other in the soft, gentle way they had settled into after the Shadowlands?
But she remains limp, her head set upon his lap, her eyes closed and mouth slack.
“Astarion,” whispers Shadowheart. He can hear the beat of her heart spiking, and he knows what she’s going to say and exactly how worried she is that he’ll react violently. “She’s— she’s gone.”
Maybe, somewhere in the last few days, after Cazador and after the graveyard and after hearing her laugh into a kiss, Astarion had lost his anger. That fervent, hungry thing that had clawed at him for two hundred years. Begging for release, begging to be flung upon the next person that dared to hurt him. Maybe that had been the piece of him Cazador had taken with him when he died. Astarion brushes a strand of her hand behind her ear. Stares at the shadows her eyelashes make against her cheeks. She looks at peace.
“I know,” he says.
“I—”
The thing about her that drove him crazy was her desperation, he remembers. He hadn’t even seen her as a person in those first few days of knowing her, but as a bargaining chip, something to be thrown on the floor of Cazador’s dungeon when things got tough. She was sweet on him from the start, though. Astarion knew that. There was a certain kindness that she saved only for Astarion. She had slathered it on and stuck herself to him and he had hated it. Fate had brought them together, and she had seen a kindred spirit in Astarion.
“I’m sorry,” says Gale quietly.
He had hated it because it reminded him of himself from so many years ago, playing to the interests of others to feel safe. She had no need of protection, Astarion knew, but there was a great sense of longing for connection. In her attempts to escape her own then-unknown fate, she had latched onto Astarion because she knew that he too, perhaps, had seen himself in her.
Astarion smooths his thumb over her cheek. “Stupid,” he mutters. “You’re always so stupid.”
A burst of cold slams through the air. Astarion tenses as someone steps beside him.
“Thou hast defied Bhaal, thy liege and father…”