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In theory, he was supposed to fear it.
All vampires were supposed to.
And once, he had. But that was as a spawn, after all - one as easily burned by the light as a thread above a candle’s flicker. The sun was fatal, as was any form of flame. Fire would kill him in a heartbeat. Yet, Astarion loved it.
It wasn’t love in the beginning, of course. More like a morbid sense of awe, a longing for what he knew would sear him. A longing for something that had turned inexplicably, strangely, and yet so naturally into a longing for someone.
He would never get over the shock of it - even with the pieces of the mindflayer’s ship all around in flames, and the smell of dead illithid flesh all around, the startling plunge into color and light. Darkvision had been all he had known for so long, a world of the night, but a lackluster one.
One that was already hopeless, pain-filled, and never filled with a promise of hope; only shades of dismal gray. Only darkness, no light.
Until the world all but exploded before him, tearing into his eyes and rattling his senses to his core.
The explosion showed him color; it showed him carnage and filth and wilderness and blood, but . . . it showed him. There was sight, and in it there was beauty, and light. And the sun was, for the first time in his memory, kind. Warm on his skin. Gentle on his face. Unthreatening, unhindering, and not even a little dangerous.
And then, he saw her. Just as battered, bruised and badly in need of a bath as he, but none of that mattered. No, what forced him into the true, real awareness of the world with this new sight, this new strange gift, was none of that. It wasn’t the sight of her, initially. It was her hair.
In hindsight, he was foolish enough to ruin the moment; foolish enough to allow instinct to kick in and nearly let him kill a woman that he knew now had meant him no harm, and he knew she never would. But in the days and weeks following, the longer he knew her and the more he saw her . . .
He’d truly be an accomplished liar if he said he didn’t find the sight an absolute marvel. It was so simple a thing to be fascinated by that he almost laughed at himself. Perhaps the deprivation of color, of warmth, for so many years had dulled his mental faculties. He had become aesthetically and fundamentally insensate; blind, deaf and mute to all but hunger and the compulsion to obey. He did not understand beauty, or color, or warmth. He could only just now see them, only just now begin to wonder at them. It was strange, and almost unnerving.
Was it that he was surrounded by people? People who were made of their own colors, eccentricities, and who wanted nothing from him?
Perhaps, after two hundred years, he was only just now realizing he had a fondness for redheads. Redheads that were kind to him, kind for the sake of just being kind. And it didn’t hurt that they were beautiful. And in love with him.
He didn’t know what to call it, that feeling when he saw the smile surrounded by the color, the vibrance. In the sunlight or by the campfire’s glow, he had always been mesmerized by it.
It was new, so new and indescribably beautiful to just see something beautiful.
But when, as hours turned to days and defenses slowly fell, battles were fought, alliances were formed, when he finally touched her, drank from her — warmth. Warmth that he swallowed and tasted, warmth of a life-blood that satiated him. Warmth given freely that didn’t burn him, didn’t hurt him.
Warmth that, for days and nights following, would come with words and embraces and hands that never touched him to harm him. Warmth that didn’t have a name, warmth that was real. And he chased it, chased it with all the hope he had long buried and had long since forgotten he had. The hope to wake up, to keep going, to survive.
Hope, hope that she helped birth with a spark, and that she fanned to a forest fire inside of his heart. She did this as effortlessly as if she could make that hope, that blaze, just by giving of what was already blazing within her. The warmth of her blood, her skin, and her hair that permated him with all the newness of the new sun.
He didn’t even have to fear the real thing anymore.
She was his sun. She was …
She was everything.
She shone so brightly, so beautifully. And she would shine this way for him, to him, forever.
And it was because of him that she could. She had done so much — and now, he could give her this gift. He marveled at it, continuously - that he’d found a fire that burned, but didn’t consume him. She was that fire. Bright, loving, safe and consistent, she burned. And burned, and burned. And he would burn with her. Forever.