TW: Suicide mention.
I've caught the BG3 brainrot and it's centered around Ascended!Astarion and Dark Urge. No, I don't want them to be happy. The first of multiple scenarios.
Who took my fucking boots?
Tav's thoughts ground through slush, bare fists pressed up to unfinished stone. There was nothing to see in the dark. Above was rock, and slippery fabric to the sides. Twice already she'd lost purchase against it, cracking knees into the roof.
Stop. Think. Try something else.
A spark cast the seam between stone and silk in weak, warm light. Desperation wrung the remaining power from her core into a telekinesis spell to wedge the slab aloft. It dragged across in a terrible grinding.
Dank air rushed in and she gasped, spent. The spell was gone.
After catching her breath, Tav squeezed her way through the new opening and sat at the edge. The room swam in the light of unnatural sconces. Where was this place? A tomb? Tombs meant treasure. She tried to stand, legs holding up for all of a half second before collapsing.
She closed her eyes tight, allowing a moment's intimacy with the cool floor. Echoes of the icy harbor churn she'd surrendered to moments ago still held fast, weight and dizziness betraying her limbs with the illusion of undercurrents.
The Harbor?
Behind her lids the water was still on fire against a sulphuric yellow sky. Distant heat radiated black where brine from fallen illithid vessels coated the surface. Everyone who mattered went ahead to rest, to prepare, to celebrate their victory. Alone at last.
The noose of her Father's ire above, and the water below. The weight of the dagger in her palm. The decision.
She should have been free. She thought she could escape her fate by taking it into her own hands. Foolish.
Air fought for passage past acid and the twisting in her gut. Breath raked metal under the ribcage, scraping to cough up ichor and old blood. When she thought she finally had it under seal, she turned to the side and fully retched.
Finally, the room was still.
Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she anchored herself using the side of the stone coffin to drag herself back upright. Still weak. It wasn't the dizziness alone. She'd atrophied.
Tav could see the murals on the walls, now. Carvings from a dead language, but she couldn't discern any real narrative. A chest at one end of the room, and an empty basin at the other. This tomb emulated the grandiosity of ancients, but was too empty, too well maintained. And, it had no door.
When she looked to where she'd escaped from, she jumped. From the lid emerged another body— or a carving of one. The shadows made it move. No wonder it had been so heavy. She now saw it for what it was; a sarcophagus.
Rather than an entity at peace like in the graveyards they'd ventured through, it seemed to writhe from the marble, limbs tangled in the impression of sheer fabric. A marble ghost in agony—
No, not quite. The tilt of the chin skyward, knitting of the brows. Like some kind of divine ecstasy.
Discomfort at stumbling across something intimate overshadowed the recognition needling the back of her mind. The figure's head wrenched to the side, features sanitized in the way that reverential statues were. The marks on the neck were freshly swollen. Tav reached to where her own puncture wounds had long healed over, attention turning to the forehead where impressions of gem-like scales had been carved into the figure's pleasure knitted brow.
"Oh."
Was this supposed to be..?
OCTAVIA
Like a switch, she soured from wonder into full criticism. Nipples tastefully peaked from beneath draping fabric, body twisted in a back-breaking nymph-fleeing-on-a-tapestry-like maneuver she'd never be dexterous enough to emulate in real life. Creative liberties were taken.
"You don't approve?"
"Fuck no." Tav snarled, turning to the voice. The space behind was as empty as before. Now all the dramatic flair that went into this place was starting to make sense.
"How heartless of you. Good masons put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears getting it to my exacting specifications." Turning back, Astarion stood separated from her by the sarcophagus. His palm rests on the lid, reminding her of its immodesty. "Well, mostly blood." His mock concern with her opinion gave way to reminiscing fondly over a good meal.
Unbidden images came of a halfling artist turned slave cowering under a crimson gaze while being critiqued over something lethally trivial. Their hands trembling, fighting to not slip the chisel lest it find its way into them instead of their medium. Visuals that would delight her under different circumstances.
Control yourself.
"The exit. Now. And I'll consider not experimenting with a fireball in an enclosed space."
"Ha! Now, darling— let's not fight. Really, I wanted to be here right when you woke up, but you've always been impatient."
Vampire lord or not, she'd wring his neck.
Tav started around one corner only for Astarion to lean the other way. When she headed one direction, he went the opposite. Circling around the tomb like this was a game.
"Why am I here, Astarion? We're done."
If he wouldn't tell her the exit, she'd find it on her own. She looked everywhere but down- at something sculpted from memories from his own mind's eye. Another possession to see the end to.
"You were done, and then went and did something stupid. I just took what you were so eager to throw away. Be grateful I kept you somewhere comfortable."
"This was supposed to be comfortable?"
His lip curled.
"By all means, try to kill yourself again. We'll give this a do-over."
Astarion had promised she'd regret leaving him more than anything. That he should have turned her into a spawn, just to teach her how he could have anything he wanted. He'd taken her last act of free will from her.
Her hands wavered, sparks of anger fading at the loss.
"Good, you understand. We'll blame it on that sleepy head of yours, hm?" He extended a palm to her. Did he mean for her to take it? "We have so much to catch up on. After a bath, of course. I'm afraid you're looking a bit feral for the company I keep nowadays. As much as I missed your bedhead."
Arrogant prick, true to new form. He had only extended his hand to gesture at her puke sleeve and semi-transparent funeral gown. "There's another robe in the chest. Unless you'd prefer to walk around in that, but I do recall your preferences being a bit more modest."
"Modest?" Tav gestured to the suggestive coffin lid.
"It's art, pet. Change."
Tav fumbled the chest clasp to pull out a whispering dark cloth suggestive of abalone shells overlain by sheer black. She'd only just fastened the gown's last tie when she realized she hadn't even thought about resisting or the exit again.
He'd ordered her to change, and she did.
The pale elf was pleased with himself. Every fiber of his being sung with it— he had everything he wanted.