AN: Thanks beyond measure go to jadesabre301 for her exhaustive and excellent beta. I'm deeply grateful for your commitment to making these things the best they can be, even when you're cringing at the grossness through most of it. I'm sorry I didn't fix everything you wanted despite you being objectively correct.
To reassure any new readers, this fic is completely written as of this posting and will be updated probably every four or five days as I finish edits.
Warnings: Cazador and all his attendant cruelties, as well as brief threats of sexual assault.
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World's strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
—The Wreck of the Deutschland, Gerard Manley Hopkins
—
"These damned fish," Astarion snarled, and with a mighty effort, he kicked one of the dead sahuagin back into the bay. The saltwater splash caught him mid-oath, and he coughed and spat out the brine. "Gods take every one of them for lamp oil and cheap leather."
Tav looked up from where she was crouched nearby, rummaging through what was left of the butchered chieftain. Sunset had begun in earnest, and the last gasps of daylight glittered orange as fire agate on the creature's wet scales. The dockworkers were already fading away into the nearby homes and businesses, still chattering like magpies over the sudden attack. "We couldn't just leave them, Astarion."
"We could have and we should have." He rolled his head on his neck, trying to stretch out the pulled muscle in his shoulder. One of the sahuagin had wrenched his arm badly as he'd gone in for a backstab, and he was eager to return to camp to nurse his wounds with a glass of red wine, his book, and—Tav willing—a hearty meal. "We were already tapped, my dear. And now look. Karlach's more a walking corpse than I am."
Tav grimaced and glanced over to the far side of the docks. Karlach was leaning heavily on Shadowheart's shoulder, her movements slow and drunken from the nasty blow to the head she'd taken at the end of the fight. Shadowheart was little better, both eyes blackened and one arm hanging sickeningly loose as she fished through her bag for a potion. "I hope she can make it back to camp. We might have to put up at the tavern tonight."
"Hot water, beds with actual mattresses, and a roof without a single hole in the thatch? How disgustingly luxurious."
"I mean, if you'd rather head back on your own, I'm sure they'll be glad to see you. I think it's Lae'zel's turn to cook dinner."
"From one pit of despair to another," he sighed, wiping his knives clean with a cloth, and she laughed. "No, I suppose I'll have to make do with the mediocre opulence of public lodging."
"The depths of your martyrdom could put even the Maimed God to shame," she said, and she laughed again. "You don't even eat what she makes."
"No, but I have to suffer through smelling it," Astarion said, and he looked up just in time to see the dagger materialize at her throat.
Tav recoiled back, but she couldn't go far—a man had appeared with the dagger, dropping out of a shivery red mist behind her, and as she collided with his chest he wrapped his other arm around her waist. She twisted like an eel, going for her own blade as Astarion lurched forward, but Leon was ready; he caught her wrist, yanked hard enough Astarion heard a grotesque pop, and Tav yelped and sagged in his grip.
"Now, now, brother," Leon said, sliding the dagger a little more neatly along Tav's throat, "you needn't make this any harder than it has to be."
Leon. Leon, here, now—Astarion looked in panic to the twilight sky and found it darker than expected, the sun dipped below the horizon without his noticing, the shadows gone long and purple. He took another step and felt the tip of a blade press into his own back.
"Please, dear brother," said Aurelia, and he thought she was begging. "We don't have any orders for bloodshed unless you force our hands."
He could hardly see for rage. "Force your hands—force your hands, you poisonous little—"
Another shadow detached from the nearby shack, then two more. Violet, smirking as always—Dalyria—fucking Yousen—
Tav met his eyes above the blade. Through the tadpole he felt her fury, her fear; her gaze flicked to Shadowheart and Karlach across the docks and he felt her impelling command to flee. Shadowheart's answering anger flared just as hot, but there was agony there too—she had nothing left and she knew it, and with Karlach barely conscious there would only be a slaughter. They had to go. No choice. No other choice—
Shadowheart swore so viciously the mental connection seemed to boil. Then she snatched a scroll from her bag, spoke a word, and she and Karlach vanished into thin air.
"Don't," Leon snapped as Tav tried again to slip his grasp. Astarion jerked towards her—Leon dug the tip of the dagger into Tav's neck, drawing a crimson pinpoint, and Astarion grimaced and fell still.
"They'll get help," Dalyria said worriedly. She'd come alongside Aurelia behind Astarion, her hands busy at his belt buckle, and even as his swords fell away with the leather she was already reaching for the rest of it, for his spare dagger at his hip and the knife in his boot and the lockpicks hidden in his sleeves, his left glove, the seam of his collar. Two hundred years of familiarity with his methods and he had nothing, nothing—
"Not in time, they won't," Violet said with glee, and Astarion sneered.
"How well you look, dear sister," he said, as if the mask might matter. "After last night, I'd have thought you all would be somewhat…indisposed."
Her smile was cold. "Listen to him. The runt finally wins one fight and he thinks he's cock-of-the-walk."
Yousen laughed, busy removing Tav's own rapier, and when her belt came free he slung the whole arrangement over his shoulder. The tip of the blade dragged in the dirt, the rapier longer than Yousen was tall, and Tav winced. "Not like that's anything new, sister," he said, and gods, Astarion had forgotten how even his voice grated. "Come on, let's go. The master told us not to attract attention."
"One scream would do it," Tav said dryly, though her face was pale.
Leon dug the tip of the blade a little deeper into her throat. The bead of blood swelled, hung there, dripped in a sudden line down towards her collarbone. Leon's eyes fluttered shut for a moment. "Can't scream through a slit throat," he said, though the malice was throttled by lust. "By this time tomorrow—"
"By this time tomorrow you'll be dead," Astarion said. Every sense stood heightened with animal fear; every muscle had locked against the cornered-beast urge to take Tav and run blindly into the dusk, regardless of Leon's dagger. "If you think Cazador has the slightest intention of sharing a single speck of his power with you, you're even more deluded than I thought."
"He said you'd say that, too," Dalyria murmured, and she pulled from a pouch at her waist a small glinting vial. "Come, brother. This does not have to be an ugly thing."
"Ugly," Astarion began, livid, but beside Leon Violet pulled a similar vial from her pocket and pinched off Tav's nose, and the rest of the thought vanished in blind panic. Tav tossed her head, trying to shake her loose; Leon tucked the edge of the knife under her jaw and leaned close.
"Drink it," he said into her ear, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled her scent. "Or we'll let the master know exactly how difficult you made all this."
"Is that a threat or an incentive?" Tav snarled, but Leon gripped her jaw hard in his other hand, forcing her teeth apart, and Violet jammed the vial into her mouth. Tav held still only a moment, the lavender liquid inside draining quickly; then she tore away and spat without swallowing. "Most disgusting sleeping potion I've ever tasted, you should fire your brewer—"
For an instant her eyes flicked up to Astarion's. He felt the glance of her mind against his own, felt her realize he had a trace of magic left, just enough to save himself and nothing at all for her. Her jaw hardened like iron—her eyes blazed—she spat again, and again he felt that same ferocious demand that he go.
"Fine," said Leon, and he slammed the heel of the dagger into the base of Tav's skull. Her breath hitched and her eyes rolled up in her head; then she went limp in his arms, and he barely caught her dead weight before she dropped to the cobblestones. "Now, brother. Your turn."
Two hundred years of slavery. A handful of months of freedom. His siblings here and his knives stolen and Tav unconscious, and every raw instinct in his body shrieked at him to run, to run, to run. They'd probably kill her—turn her—but he would be free. She wanted him to leave. He would be safe, gone, could come again to kill Cazador when he was more prepared, when he was stronger, when the rest of their little group might stand with him. Let Tav go. Save yourself. Run.
"Astarion," Dalyria said. He met her eyes, recognized in their red glow the promise of his master's horrors, and then he took the potion from her hand and drank every last drop.
—
The smell was exactly the same.
He knew before he opened his eyes that they were in the kennels, the rancid reek of dread and stale blood as familiar as hunger. He even recognized the thin layer of straw beneath him, not intended for comfort but for absorption—the back cage on the east wall, then—and out of habit, Astarion took three long, steady breaths before opening his eyes.
He could not think through the fear. It pressed on him like a thousand stones, weighed down every limb to something sluggish and slow, choked his mind like the rocky collapse of a cave's mouth. His stomach churned with it, the back of his throat bitter with bile; his hands trembled. Cazador's palace—Cazador's kennels—and Tav—
Gods. Tav.
A soft laugh rattled through the air. Cold as ever, heartless as ever, drawn from lungless bones. "There you are, my boy. My dear boy, come home to Godey at last. Right where you belong." A shuffle of leather, the hollow knocking of femur on patella. "Come now, don't try to fool old Godey. Your twitches when you wake, the way you grow tense all over. We know these all too well, don't we?"
Astarion forced himself to sit up. No point in hiding it—not to Godey, not here—and he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth to rid himself of the last dregs of potion. The back cage, as expected. The same rusted iron bars, the same sputtering torches, the same cracked flagstones worn polished and smooth at each cage door from decades of Godey dragging their bodies in and out. He was in nothing but his trousers and his shredded shirt. And where—where was—
"Searching for your little friend, are you?" Godey laughed again, his broken teeth chattering. "Looking for Godey's newest pup? You're one of a kind, my boy, but something tells me she'll scream almost as pretty as you."
Infinitely wiser to keep silent, but Astarion had never been able to resist the goading. "Wretched sack of marrow," he snapped. "When I'm through with you you'll be nothing more than a sneeze's worth of dust."
Godey threw back his head in laughter, but Astarion's eyes had adjusted to the dark, and the faint brush of Tav's mind had cut through the blind terror. She was here. In here somewhere, somewhere he could see—there. Not much more than a jumbled heap in the next cage down, her armor gone, her weapons gone, but alive and stirring. Even as he watched she pushed herself up, groaned, and clutched at the back of her head.
"Ilmater's red cord," she mumbled, and her voice in this place was at once a shocking comfort and the greatest horror he had ever known. "Fucking spawn. Fucking potion. Fucking Caza—"
She cut herself off mid-word as her eyes landed on the walking skeleton. He could have warned her. He should have—should have told her more—
"Well, well," Godey said, tramping over to her cage. "Little puppy's awake at last. Welcome to Godey's kennel."
"I'm going to turn you into a box of toothpicks," Tav said conversationally, and Astarion couldn't stop the barking laugh. Her head whipped towards him; she clamped her hand again to the base of her skull, then said, "Astarion?"
"Right here, my dear," he said, and she looked at him and smiled, and for one brief, silvershine moment the fear ebbed. "Welcome to hell. Meet Godey, its dogged doorman."
"Charmed." She leaned sideways against the grated wall of her cage—too short to stand in, all of them, though Godey had always found it funny to put Astarion in the shortest—and ran her fingers through her hair. Looking for her hidden lockpicks, he realized, and knew she'd found none when she only sighed. "I was hoping not to see you here. You all right?"
"If by 'all right' you mean 'technically unharmed while being dragged back into the greatest living nightmare I could have possibly imagined,' then yes, I'm perfectly fine. Thank you so much for asking."
Her turn to smile, though it was faint with pain. He felt her thoughts tentatively touch his own; she didn't use the power of their parasites often, but clearly these circumstances called for desperate measures. A sense of stalwart courage rippled over him, a caution against despair. The unflinching surety that escape would come, and likely sooner rather than later.
Astarion winced. He wanted to believe her—a fresh pain of its own—but two hundred years in this dim cesspit had taught him a number of unyielding truths. Even given the seismic shift in his circumstances, the likelihood of escape seemed a thin gasp. It had never been possible before, not once in two hundred years, but she was right that the others would come for her eventually. Karlach might even care that Astarion himself survived with minimal maiming.
But first, there would be agony.
As if on cue, the door to the kennels swung open. It was the predictably dramatic entrance Cazador always liked to make, his figure lit from behind by the torches in the hallway, the jewels in his over-tall staff gleaming with a red light of their own. He swept in like he was trying to clear the floor of breadcrumbs and planted his staff on the stone with a hollow ring.
"Well," he said, unctuous and smiling, his dark hair swept back just the same, his thin lips curling just the same, the smell of oleander and rot just the same, and Astarion hated him, hated him— "if it isn't our prodigal son come stumbling home at last. Ah, look at you, dear boy, on your knees before me, right where you belong. As if you had sensed the impending moment of my triumph and knew how much you would be missed."
Astarion sneered. The panic was back, the icy fear shivering up and down his spine, but somehow it was not so paralyzing as before. "Why, you've quite mistaken yourself, Cazador. I've come here to kill you." He gestured grandly at the cage around him. "Can't you tell?"
Cazador recoiled, something like genuine astonishment flickering over his marble face. "Such rudeness. Such brainless bleating, even from you. I know I trained you better, boy—be polite. Tell me that you've come home to serve me."
His master's eyes burned through the bars with power, with compulsion. The red glow swelled as it always did, and with a rush of panic Astarion braced himself for—for nothing. No impossible pressure bearing down on every muscle in his body, no unflinching demand forcing his mind to bend to his master's will. The worm in his brain gave a tepid wriggle, as if rolling over in its sleep, and that faint exertion was still stronger than his master, even inches from his face. "Cazador," he said, and his voice trembled with something almost like giddiness, "please believe me when I say, very sincerely—fuck you."
Cazador sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. That was victory enough—it had been decades since Astarion had truly offended his sense of dignity—and then his master composed himself, the rage smoothing out behind that pinched smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling with artificial warmth. "How disappointed I am with your behavior," he said, and then he turned to the other cage, and a new spike of terror lurched through Astarion's stomach. "He would never treat me so rudely before. A corrupting influence, perhaps?"
The butt of his staff rapped twice on the iron grating of Tav's cage. Tav, who had settled with her legs crossed out in front of her and her arms folded over her chest, looked up with some disinterest. "Sorry, is someone talking to me? Sounds like a bloated sow squealing to hear its own voice."
Despite himself, Astarion snorted. Cazador's lips curled back in a snarl—Astarion relished the look of that anger, even as the fear rose—and then his master passed his hand over his forehead and calmed himself again with effort. "If I did not have sixty patriars in the ballroom at this very moment," he began, almost to himself, and Astarion realized Cazador was in fine dress instead of his usual robes, and that the faint strains of violins floated through the cracked kennel door. "But they can wait a moment longer. Such gifts I have saved for your return, dear boy. Such wonders, one for each day you have been gone. I could not deny myself the pleasure of seeing your gratitude."
"As if you've ever denied yourself anything," Astarion said, mocking, insouciant, exactly the way his master hated. Cazador's eyebrow twitched again, but he only gestured at Godey, who disappeared into a small adjoining room with a cackle. A moment later the skeletal sentinel returned, dragging an enormous barrel behind him. The smell struck Astarion first—he gagged, clapped his hand over his mouth, gagged again—and Godey upended the barrel against the cage door, spilling hundreds of dead, putrid rats over Astarion's legs.
He recoiled, still choking, flung himself back against the iron bars. His shoulders dug into the low-grated ceiling; his bare feet shoved away the ones nearest only for two or three more to fall into their place. Hundreds—hundreds of them—the meat gone sickly green and missing patches of fur, dead little eyes cloudy and colorless, mouths sagging open to reveal broken yellowed teeth, and that disgusting gangrenous smell—
"Dear boy," Cazador said softly, "would you like to dine with me?"
"That's a fucking cheap trick," Tav snapped, and the warmth of her voice jolted through the horror. Alive. Alive and enraged and on his side. Two hundred years in this place and he couldn't think of a single other time it had happened. He dragged in a shaky breath and curled his fingers around the iron grating, as much for the sense of grounding as anything else. Her eyes were alight with anger. "I bet you were so godsdamned pleased with yourself when you thought that one up, weren't you? Bet you sat right up in your bed with a coy little smile and clapped your hands like a kid."
"Sarcophagus," Astarion said.
"Sarcophagus. I don't care."
Cazador was seething. Astarion hadn't seen that often in two hundred years—certainly not at all after the year of horror—and it made his face strange, unfamiliar. The eyes had narrowed to slits, the brows pinched down tight and hard; the nostrils flared with each quick unneeded breath, the thin lips curled back in a rictus of fury. Even a few strands of hair had fallen into his face. Astarion could only imagine the punishment they might receive for daring to flout their master's control in this moment of weakness.
"Godey," Cazador said, and his voice shook too, delicious. "You told me this—offal—was wounded."
The skeleton saluted, drawn into a facsimile of attention by Cazador's gaze. "Aye, Master. Left wrist, broken sure as I'm your Godey."
"Bring it out."
He should have expected this, and yet—somehow—he hadn't. Astarion watched with gritted teeth as Godey unlatched the cage door, dragged Tav out by her hair, and threw her to the floor before Cazador. If she had been made stronger—if she had been touched by the Weave in even the faintest way—but she had spent her life honing the same skills as Astarion himself, and he knew all too well how useless quick hands and a glib tongue were in this place. More than that, he knew she would not leave him behind, would not take the fight or the escape until she was sure he would be safe. Free. The gratitude and bitterness twined too tightly together; he could not pull them apart.
She was graceful, though, as she straightened her back before Cazador. Beautiful. Uncowed. It hurt his heart to see it. Defiance only ever ended one way here.
"So this is what you left me for, hmm?" Cazador used the end of his staff to lift Tav's chin. "This filthy urchin with a foul mouth. Astonishing, my child, that even now you find new ways to disappoint me."
"How much it must torment you, Cazador, that I've hardly thought of you at all since I've been away." His voice was steady again. Good.
And better yet, with the worm lodged in his skull Cazador could not see through the lie. Astarion saw the muscle jump in his jaw. "You impudent wretch. Intractable, defiant—Godey! Break its hand as well."
The shout burst out of him, as if it had ever mattered here. "No!"
So fast. It all happened so fast. Tav lurched back to her heels, tried to stand—Cazador's staff swept up and pinned her in place with a shimmering red light—Godey stumbled forward, teeth clacking together with each laughing step. He clamped a pair of familiar rusty pliers around Tav's outstretched, frozen left hand, and he wrenched.
The crackle of bones was deafening in the silence. A voiceless scream rocked over Astarion, buffeting every sense, then faded as she shakily scraped together her edges again. Sweat popped out in a glittering shine across her forehead, her throat. Her eyes met his, glazed with agony, and he was going to be sick—
Cazador laughed, delighted. "It pains you! Does it not, dear boy? It pains you to see her hurt." Cazador came nearer to his cage, peering down through the bars, Tav still suspended mid-rise behind him. "But perhaps I should not be so shocked. You always did have the bleeding heart of the family. Such sympathy for your targets, such resistance to your duty." He let out a thin sigh of pleasure, his eyes shut. "How fondly I remember breaking you to the saddle. I almost regret I will not have the chance to do so again." He turned back to Godey. "The fingers. Break those as well."
"With great delight, my master," Godey said, almost slavering, and Astarion threw himself to the front of the cage, trampling a half-dozen rats beneath his bare feet.
"Don't," he said, the words tripping over themselves in his desperate haste. "Don't do this. I'll eat the damned rats. I'll call you—fucking—Master—"
"Oh?" Cazador said, but he raised a hand, and Godey lowered the pliers and sulked. "You dare to negotiate with me? You presumptuous boy, you think you have any power here to bargain?"
But—he did. He did, and Cazador knew it, and the whole thing was such a mess of compulsion and authority and pain he could not begin to untangle it. Without dropping his eyes, Astarion reached down and plucked a rat from the pile at his feet. It was cold, congealed, stiff; the tail was thin and ropy, the texture as familiar as the revulsion.
"What do you think, Godey?" Cazador asked, holding Astarion's gaze just as firm. "Is this penance enough for our stray child?"
"One per finger, my master," Godey suggested. The pliers clacked together hopefully. "To start with, maybe. And then old Godey can do the rest."
"How right you are," Cazador said. To Astarion, he added, smiling, "It might be amusing, to see you for once take your treats of your own will. I permit you to convince me."
Astarion sneered. He brought the rat to his mouth, smelled the hideous rotted flesh—
Tav's mind slammed against his. Refusal. Absolute refusal, rage that he would even consider it. Don't do this.
Oddly enough, he wanted to laugh. Try and stop me. He bit down into the rat.
So many things he'd forgotten. Not this. Not the slippery, oily gelatin that a dead rat's blood became. The taste was vile, worse than the smell—he gagged again—he thought madly of another conversation, of plonk and bears and taking power where one found it because there was no such thing as rescue—
Tav's mind on his. Gentler now, no rage—a memory. Her own eyes, her own hands as they lifted a skewer of seared ham to her mouth. Wyll had cooked—that explained the rosemary, the honeyed glaze. The meat was tender, juicy. Delicious. Across the campfire Karlach was singing. She was a touch tipsy and the memory was rosy-warm and golden with sunset. He could feel the newer agony in her broken hand, but it had been shunted to the side, ignored by force.
Astarion threw down the drained rat. Tav withdrew—the loss ached—and Cazador stepped into the empty place. He was visibly displeased, another petty victory, and Astarion gave an ostentatious swallow. "As delicious as ever," he said, and considered licking his lips. But—better not to push too far too quickly. Not yet.
"If you think that pathetic display will satisfy me—" Cazador began, but a knock on the door interrupted him. Two sharp raps, as he'd always demanded from his slaves. "Enter," he snapped.
Dalyria opened the door and came in, dressed in the embroidered finery Cazador preferred when they entertained at home. She did not look at Astarion, Godey, or even Tav suspended still in the air; she only inclined her head to Cazador and said, "I apologize for intruding, Master. The guests are beginning to comment on your absence. Chamberlain Dufay humbly requests that you return."
"Does he?" Cazador laughed. "The fearful thing. He knows he was intended to take your place." He glanced at Astarion from the corner of his eye, twitched his staff, and Tav dropped suddenly, limply to the floor. "Rest well, dear child. For now. The time for the ritual will come soon enough, and then I will have my triumph."
"You'll fucking try," Tav muttered, clutching her broken hand to her chest, but her breath came thin and quick, and Astarion could see her cheeks had gone white beneath the freckles.
His master scowled. "This one. Beat it until it quiets, Godey. And mind the screams. It pains me that my dear child's flesh must remain unmarked until tomorrow, but I'm sure you can find some other way to elicit the appropriate…remorse."
"Aye, my master, but she's a runner, this one. Godey can always tell."
"Is that so?" Cazador lifted his staff again, made a gesture, and Tav was abruptly flung like a doll towards the far wall. She stopped just shy of smashing her face into stone, hung pinned there with her arms above her head like she'd been racked in an abattoir, and Godey ambled over and busied himself with a number of latches and chains dangling from the ceiling. In a matter of moments—even faster than usual, Astarion thought grimly—Tav hung shackled by her wrists, her tiptoes just barely touching the floor. Her shirt had been pulled up, tied up in a knot around her manacles to keep it out of the way, baring her freckled back to the cold, still air. Her left hand was already swelling; Godey gave that manacle a good-natured tug, and she groaned.
"A gift," Cazador said magnificently, "for you both." He swept out again, Dalryia following with bowed head, and the door closed behind them. The click of the lock felt final as the grave.
"Now," Godey said, rubbing his skeletal hands together with a sound like shells tumbling over each other, "Let's see what we can do, eh? Let's see what sounds old Godey can pull out of you."
"Pathetic, gormless coward," Tav said, but the words were tight with fear. "I bet even Kelemvor wouldn't have you."
"Aye, true enough," Godey said amiably. He wound a strip of cloth between her teeth, tied it tightly at the back of her head, then plucked a whip from a stand of many. The lash was short, wide, soft, meant more for welts and bruises than breaking skin. A mercy on the surface, Astarion knew, but in the end it always meant the suffering would only be prolonged.
"Darling," he said, sudden in the silence. She turned her head; her eyes met his through the cage bars, glittering in terror. "Try not to tense up. It'll only make it worse." He forced a smile. "But you know this, don't you? Remember that charming little nook in the goblins' camp? That priest remembers you, surely."
Godey's arm swung down. She clenched her eyes shut. He brought up the memory, offered it tentatively, as she had, in place of the present. The stink of goblin sweat, Loviatar's blessing, and the priest nearly giddy with her pain. By choice, then. Egged on by Astarion and Shadowheart, tempted more by curiosity than pleasure at the suffering. Laughter afterwards, shaking the ringing from her ears, wincing as Wyll clapped her on the back and then apologized profusely. A potion proffered from Wyll's bag, the relief of pain, a wink back to Astarion at his put-upon disappointment. He'd found himself smiling—the genuine article, not his habitual smirk. The feeling had still been new, then.
He felt her sink into the memory. Godey's hand lifted, fell again. Again. Again.
He cast blindly for something else—anything else. Found Karlach on the morning they'd emerged from the shadow-cursed lands, stretching her hands above her head in the bright shining sunlight—found the red-and-gold butterfly that had wandered to her nose and landed there, and her cross-eyed astonishment as she'd frozen dead still mid-stretch. Found the unrestrained laughter as a second butterfly had alit on the tip of her unbroken horn, and then a third beside it, all of them loitering with improbable courage until the wind had picked up a few minutes later and they'd fluttered off again.
A blow fell harder than the rest, and Tav screamed. The sound was muffled by the gag, soaked through now with spit and sweat; her mind scrabbled frantically for his, wild and desperate as someone drowning. He spooled out the memories as fast as he could summon them.
Lae'zel. Laughing at something Gale had said in Rivington, the sound almost surprised out of her. The embarrassed affront afterwards as they'd all stared and grinned, the insistence that it had only been a moment of weakness at his tone, his words, not real amusement. Chk. Tsk'va. I am not blushing. Never again accuse me of such a thing.
Wyll at camp, leaned up against the great bear that was Halsin, both of them snoring loud enough to shake crows from the trees. Shadowheart speaking with Isobel and Aylin in moonlight, her chin lifted stubbornly, her hands knotted together at her waist. Her sweet, surprised smile, the day they'd come across a city garden and Tav had plucked a white rose from the bush and tucked it into her hair. The stifled laughter as the gardener had exploded from the nearby home, shaking his walking stick at them as they fled.
The layered welts began to break open and bleed. One dangling tail of Tav's cotton shirt, already thin, shredded with each blow.
Gale expostulating about some sauce from Waterdeep as he cooked one night. Astarion needling out an argument after, just because he could, because neither of them meant the rancor and it made Tav laugh to see them picking at each other so fiercely over nothing. Jaheira dropping a strong, lined hand on Minsc's giant shoulder as she sat beside him on a log. The stupid hamster chittering back and forth with him, irritating Astarion to no end but making Tav smile.
Tav smiling. Tav laughing. Those were easy to reach for; each one had burned itself into his memory like a searing fire. A hundred smiles rose at the thought, all slightly different, all equally precious.
She was beginning to fade, flagging with exhaustion and the constant tide of pain. Godey's whip-hand had slowed; now he moved with the discerning strikes of an artist, a sharp blow here, a lighter tap here, pushing her right to the edge without thrusting her over. Her back was a ruin, scarlet from shoulder to hip, and the lash-marks were almost beautiful in their precise pattern. Loviatar's priest had been a hack with a handsaw in comparison.
Her mind dipped into unconsciousness, surfaced foggily once more. He curled himself around it like a cat, nestling it safely as he could within his own. He found one memory brighter than the rest and drew it nearer, gave it to her a little shyly. He felt a tired amusement from her at first—they were in the heart of the shadow-cursed lands, in the cabin above their camp, and she was striding away from him without a stitch of clothing on—but all too soon it shifted to the look she'd thrown him over her shoulder. A smile. Soft, hesitant. Affectionate. She'd thanked him, and that had been affectionate, too.
Astarion felt his heart lurch, just as it had then. Felt again that same realization that he would do nearly anything to see her smile like that again for him. The realization that whatever this was—whatever they had—had long surpassed the physical and had in fact become something he could not bear to lose. Something he treasured, something worth protecting at any cost.
Her mind shuddered, but he pressed inexorably into the memory. The warmth rose again in his recollection, the uncomplicated fondness. He cared for her. Deeply, terribly, in a way that frightened him if he allowed it. He thought perhaps he had begun to love her. Her face softened in his thoughts, the curve of her cheek lit gold and gleaming by candlelight, and he felt her shudder again, overwhelmed by the sincerity.
He had hidden it for so long. Here, in this house of torture and humiliation, he could hardly remember why. It seemed an easy thing now to tear open his guarded heart and lay it bare for her perusal, dead and small and scarred as it was. She seemed to want it anyway—was certainly tenderer with it than he had ever been—and perhaps—perhaps, if there were to be something like escape—she deserved to know.
The smell of blood hung so strongly in the air he thought he could drink it, and yet his stomach turned at the idea. Her exhausted thoughts brushed against his, grateful, gentle, a little shy herself, and then—at last, at last—he felt her slip away into welcome oblivion. She sagged in the manacles, her head dropping to her chest, and Godey broke off the vapid monologue he'd been running throughout to shake his head.
"Finally out," he said with some despair, though there was mixed pride, too. "And all those lovely screams come muffled. Well, well, we'll just have to try again another day, won't we?"
"You're a damned brute, Godey," Astarion said, deliberately casual. "I hope you know that when I kill you, I'm going to enjoy every delicious moment."
Godey only laughed, his teeth rattling as he unlocked the manacles, caught Tav under the armpits, and dragged her back to the cage. He threw her in with no care for either her injuries or her head—perhaps forgetting she was not one of Cazador's eternal spawn—and locked the cage again. Her shirt still lay twisted around her elbows.
He'd never been able to coax the man into anything before. Still, it was Tav, and for once he wasn't choked with the desperation of mindless agony. Only rage. "You know she is still mortal, don't you? Dies if she bleeds out, that sort of thing. It's been a while, I'm sure, since you had to bother with someone like that." He shrugged. "I'm only saying—if Cazador returns and finds her dead…"
Godey paused, the skull grinning and expressionless at once. He did not speak, but after a moment he dug in his belt and threw a shining vial towards Tav's body. There was a tinkle of broken glass, a waft of something cool and familiar, and the worst of her injuries grew smaller. Enough to keep her from dying. Enough the bleeding could clot the rest of the way on its own. He could be satisfied with that for now.
Astarion kicked the last of the rats from his cage, then sank back against the iron grating. Hours of torture and still better than he had hoped in the depths of Cazador's palace. Godey lurched back to his habitual resting place near the door and fell silent—never quite asleep, always watchful—and Astarion closed his eyes. Tav's breaths came shallow but steady, her mind peaceful and silent, and he focused on that rhythmic comfort until it was all he could hear. In, out, in again. If he tried hard enough he could pretend they were back in his tent at camp, moonlight draped along her bare shoulder, her weight warm and heavy in his arms.
But that was a dream. They were in Cazador's palace now, where there was no past and no future, and the only thing dreams did here was die.