Somewhat Clear

deerna
somewhatclear

Rating: SAFE
Fandom: baldur's gate
Relationship: astarion/staeve
Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Serious Injuries, Rescue Missions, Developing Relationship, Dissociation, Implied/Referenced Abuse
Wordcount: 3604
Notes: first and foremost, the usual disclaimer: staeve belongs to Velnna/MAF, the brain rot is all mine.

timeline-wise, this happens a few days after this comic, for no other reason that i loved the idea of a still recovering staeve digging astarion out while thinking about his words over and over... (i love that line sm, im obsessed)

Summary:
astarion gets buried in a cave-in. staeve digs him out, and deals with the aftermath.

Excerpt:

But the rest of him was buried, buried, buried, the unshakeable fear of a recurring nightmare, of having been once again left to starve for twelve moons, curled on one side in the unfeeling embrace of marble, death and ancient mould his only companions.

{ read on AO3 | read here }

Astarion opened his eyes, and it was dark and cold and narrow.

Time had ground to a stop. Dust settled on top of him like a layer of ashes. It smelled like ancient death and fresh blood. A high pitched sound rang in his ears, the sound of panic deafening his thoughts. Unidentifiable aches and pains wrecked his bones; the broken doll of his body lay haphazardly with twisted limbs, like an old toy forgotten at the bottom of a drawer. Unmovable.

Grey stone above him, so close he could not focus his eyes upon it. A sensation of dread spread in the pit of his stomach.

He'd been there before.

Part of him was sure that, if he called out, someone would have answered. He wasn't going to shred his nails to splinters and mangle his fingers to bloody stumps as he pointlessly attempted to scratch his way out through solid stone; he wasn't going to feel his body dry out like an insect husk, while the parody of life that animated his limbs seeped out of him; he wasn’t going to cry and to tremble, cradled by fear and heartbreak. Not this time.

But the rest of him was buried, buried, buried, the unshakeable fear of a recurring nightmare, of having been once again left to starve for twelve moons, curled on one side in the unfeeling embrace of marble, death and ancient mould his only companions, waiting—

A reality that he'd known.

He shivered, remembering the icy touch of fingers clinging to his throat, tangling in his curls and pulling painfully at the roots; compulsions melting his brains, stealing his resolve, dissolving his mind, so that Cazador could—

A shudder wrecked his broken body, writhing in the limited space like it was trying to physically escape from the terror, the pain, the shame. His head was full of static, glimpses of half-recollected horror flickering through his mind. A sob lodged in his throat—hopeless.

Astarion closed his eyes, and slipped away.

The silver lining was that the cave-in hadn’t been Staeve’s fault, for once.

Just an old wall behaving like an old wall, collapsing at the wrong time. In the wrong place. On top of the wrong person.

“This is painful. Don’t we have another shovel?”

“Yes. Back at camp.”

“Ah. Useless, then. Never mind that.”

A normal dungeon run. Leading the way and checking for traps and interesting locks, as you would expect from a pair of rogues in that situation; Shadowheart and Lae’zel following, picking through their findings and stepping over the corpses of less skilled explorers that hadn't known to watch their step.

The old gate had seemed stable enough.

It hadn’t been.

“Shouldn’t you—” Shadowheart’s voice, loud and unthinking, then lowered into a whisper, ghostly and indistinct.

“Tchk.” A scoff, alien and yet familiar by now. “He does not need my help, and he does not want it.”

“If you say so. You better not blow your back out, Staeve. Halsin would chew our heads off.”

Staeve barely paid attention to the chatter happening behind him. The still-healing skin on his back pulled and burned a little every time he moved, and sweat was starting to stick strands of hair to his face. He held his breath in anticipation every time he pushed the tip of the spade into the ruins. The noise of metal against rock in the silence grated on his nerves.

Astarion had been right next to him. They had both jumped back at the same time when the arch started to collapse—Astarion hadn’t made it all the way out, but he hadn’t been far.

Any moment now, Staeve would find him. Any moment now. He was sure.

“I hate being the one to point out the obvious, but we must consider that the longer you dig, the more dangerous it becomes for us to stay here.”

Silence. “We may be forced to retreat. To regroup.”

“You girls can go back to camp, if you'd like,” Staeve pointed out, finally addressing them. He kept working as he talked, panting with effort between a sentence and the next. “You should, actually. Get some more help.”

“We're not leaving you behind.”

“We're not splitting the group.”

Staeve clicked his tongue. “Well, I'm not coming without Astarion.”

“Staeve—”

“I'm not leaving him behind. We're not splitting the group,” he turned their words on them.

The women exchanged a look, but didn't reply.

Staeve clenched his jaw, readjusted his grip on the shovel, and resumed moving heaps of crumbled stone. He could feel his companions’ looks boring holes in the back of his head. He was starting to feel tired. He was not going to stop for anything in the world. He was vaguely aware that he wasn't thinking clearly. He could not afford to stop and think.

(About this. About past mistakes. About—)

He could only cling to the feeling in his gut. He could only trust that the parasite in his head would have reacted, if something had gone really wrong. He could only keep digging, and digging and digging.

The shovel slipped.

The flat of the blade made a ringing sound as it hit the debris at an angle instead of gently sinking into it. The side of the wall of rocks and dust started sliding down. Shadowheart and Lae’zel went dead still and tense behind him, as Staeve looked on, bracing for the worst.

The wreckage held. Only a small part of it came down, revealing a part of the collapsed wall that hadn’t shattered, the splinters and the remains of the rusty gate that had been the original source of all their trouble, and—

Staeve’s heart stuttered.

“Astarion.”

His love lay among the ruins, curled up on one side with his back to Staeve, tucked away under a miraculously intact tract of the gate’s archway. He was covered in dust and a little debris, so still and unmoving he looked like a real corpse, arranged in its niche for eternal rest.

Mind full of static, Staeve threw the shovel aside and dropped to his knees, moving the remaining rubble out of the way with bare, shaky hands to reach Astarion’s side.

“Astarion,” he called out again, softly touching his shoulder. No reply.

Ever so gently, he applied a little more force, and rolled him onto his back. Staeve couldn’t help a sharp intake of breath.

“Is he dead?” Shadowheart asked over his shoulder.

“Tchk. The undead are dead by definition.”

“Very funny. That's not what I was asking.”

Astarion’s undeath made difficult to check on him even on a good day: his heart did not beat, his lungs did not expand and deflate unless he decided to do so, and he always looked too pale to be healthy, especially if it had been a while since his last meal. Peaceful death looked like sleep; Astarion’s sleep looked like death.

It was another matter when he was covered in injuries.

The archway had stopped him from getting crushed, but it hadn’t spared him from other injuries. His clothes were stained with gore, his armour dented in a way that suggested some untidy crack in his ribs. One of his boots had the sole torn off, the foot inside painfully mangled, and one of his wrists looked broken. His face was streaked with blood, and his eyes were only half-open, a glimpse of lightless red iris peeking from under his eyelids like he was deep in trance—

(or worse)

“He's not dead,” Staeve snapped.

I'm a fucking vampire. Astarion's angry snarl echoed in the back of his mind, the memory of his blazing eyes burned inside his eyelids. Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill me? Because I do.

But Staeve didn't.

A wave of helplessness threatened to make a home in his chest. His frustration tasted like fear. He shook himself off, willing himself to stop crumbling. There was no time for that.

“He’s not dead,” he repeated, slipping his arms under Astarion’s body, cradling him to his chest.

He took a deep, shaky breath, and carefully dragged him out and away from the half-collapsed wall. With his back screaming at him and exhaustion pulling at every fibre of his being, he got on his feet.

Without even turning to check if the girls were following him, Staeve started to walk.

Staeve didn't stop until they were clear from the caved-in area and out of the basement.

They had gone too far into the innards of the old castle to be able to reach an exit so quickly, but Staeve wanted to get as close to outside as he could. He eventually reached a sitting area full of neglected furniture; dust motes fluttered in the air, in the ray of reddish sunset that gently filtered from the stained glass window.

Staeve set Astarion down on an ancient ottoman with the stuffing bursting out of its upholstery, and sat down next to him. His back burned. His legs shook. Astarion looked dead.

“Astarion, wake up,” he muttered, jaw tense and throat tight.

Regaining conscience would have probably done Astarion more harm than good right now, with his injuries. But Staeve needed to hear him speak, he had to know that he was— okay. He needed to indulge that selfishness. Any flesh wound, any pain and discomfort could be soothed later, with spells and potions and Halsin’s poultices; the dread rooted deep in Staeve’s gut had no other cure than Astarion’s voice.

“Please. Wake up, wake up, wake up...”

Despite the bruised shadows under his eyes, the scratches and the bloodstains, Astarion’s face was beautiful as always. Staeve ached to trace the shape of his cheekbone with the flat of his thumb, to brush his fingertip over the soft skin under his ear, to cradle the familiar curve of his neck in his palm. He’d done that a million times before pressing a kiss to his mouth, to his cheek, to his forehead.

Would Astarion open his eyes, if he did that now…?

Staeve pressed a hand against his own face, his throat closing around a wet, shaky sound that solved itself in a bitter bark of laughter. How foolish. It was poor timing to start believing in fairy tales and miracles.

A soft whimper broke the silence, a quiet sound of pain and discomfort and suffering.

“Astarion,” Staeve gasped, breath catching with relief.

His limbs turned to jelly, and his muscles started trembling with the sudden release of tension. Jumbled thoughts and a dry tongue. Nothing existed in Staeve’s world except Astarion’s audible exhales, his half-aborted, involuntary movements as he tried to make himself more comfortable on the stiff padding

Hurt, but alive.

Overwhelmed with unspeakable feelings, Staeve reached out to cup his lover’s face.

Astarion panicked. He gasped like he was drowning, twitching out of Staeve’s hold like it had been burning the flesh off his bones. His frightened gaze was wide and startled, glossy and unseeing—looking through Staeve rather than at him.

“Astarion,” Staeve choked out, heartbreak like ash on his tongue.

He watched him sit up brusquely in reaction to his voice, moving in a way that suggested he had forgotten about his injuries or that he wasn’t aware of them at all, and his stomach dropped. Unthinkingly, Staeve reached out for him again, afraid of him hurting himself even worse.

It was too late. Pain flitted through Astarion's features for the briefest instant before sinking underneath the surface. His expression, turned perfectly blank with the effort of hiding what he was truly feeling, bloomed again with fear when Staeve's hand made contact with his shoulder.

“Please,” Astarion whimpered.

Feeling sick, Staeve wondered if Astarion even knew what he was begging for. “It's okay,” he whispered, slowly pulling his hand back. His heart felt heavy. “It's okay—”

After avoiding it so desperately, Astarion unexpectedly chased his touch, grabbing at his tattered sleeve with his broken hand. “I learned this time,” he whispered in a pleading voice, as if replying to someone that Staeve could not hear. “I will be good. I will be good. Please.”

“I know you'll be good.” Staeve turned his forearm so that he could support Astarion's, so that he wasn't putting strain on the injured wrist. “You're always so good to me. You're always good. It was nobody's fault.”

Astarion's eyes widened even more, a light sheen of moisture gathering at the surface.

He lowered his gaze. “Master, I promise you—”

Fuck.

Staeve squeezed his eyes and ground his teeth together against the wave of anger that boiled in his veins. The noise of rushing blood in his ears muffled the sound of Astarion’s pleading. Whatever end Cazador was going to meet by their hand, it was never going to be just enough.

He switched his grip along Astarion's arm until he had gathered both his hands in his, and stroked a gentle thumb over his knuckles. His damaged wrist wasn't swollen, but it looked oddly crooked. It looked like it hurt. Astarion didn't even stutter in his babbling, when he touched it.

“Astarion,” Staeve interrupted him, as kindly as he could. “It's me. It's Staeve.”

A somewhat confused silence. A shaky inhale.

Staeve took a deep breath. “Do you remember? We were exploring a dungeon, we were dismantling traps and having a silly race about it …”

“Staeve,” Astarion murmured, interrupting him. Like he was tasting an unfamiliar name. “Staeve?”

A sudden shudder shook him. He jerked his head to the side, like he was trying to dislodge something stuck in his ear. Then he straightened up and looked at Staeve.

Staeve's heart skipped a beat. “That's right, love. Do you—”

He couldn't finish the sentence. Astarion surged forward, throwing his arms around his neck, hiding his face against his chest. “You came,” he cried shakily in Staeve's shoulder. “You came for me.”

“Of course I came,” Staeve replied, embracing him back gingerly. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He didn’t know how long they remained sitting there, Astarion’s lungs expanding and deflating against Staeve with every exhausted sob, Staeve’s name on his lips like he was trying not to forget it again. Staeve cradled him close and gentle like the most delicate porcelain, hyper-aware of his injuries, and let him cry.

Astarion was hurt but he was alive, and he still was Staeve’s.

Astarion opened his eyes, and it was to the gentle dim light of a screened tent.

It was warm, almost uncomfortably so, under the soft furs. It smelled like leather and burning herbs and his own perfume, like old blood and healing potions. His body twinged with the distant aches of flesh and bones knitting before their time. A familiar feeling, no matter if it depended on his own vampire spawn regenerative abilities, or the artificial aid of magic.

He shifted slightly on his side, seeking a more comfortable position.

He found himself looking at Staeve, sitting cross-legged on the stripped-down other half of the pallet Astarion was laying on. He looked slightly lost in his thoughts, but he turned to look at Astarion when he noticed him move, a slightly trepidant expression on his face.

“Good morning,” Staeve murmured, leaning a little closer. Relief showed through his smile. “How are you feeling?”

Astarion licked his lips, briefly looked himself over as he slowly sat up in his bundle of covers.

It took him a minute to remember the events that had gotten him in that state: the discovery of the palace, the dungeon full of traps… the cave-in. He shuddered at the memory of panic, a wave of self-loathing washing over him. Pathetic delusions of a broken mind; apparently the parasite could not fix those. He had no real recollection of Staeve dragging him to safety (reveries of a nightmare, maybe, but surely, that had just been a nightmare) but he did remember how stony and silent he had been when Astarion had finally started to shake the numbness off.

He made himself chuckle. “I feel as if a centuries-old piece of masonry fell on top of me and broke all my bones.”

The smile that Staeve answered him with didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Ah. Too soon?”

Stave shook his head. “If you hadn’t gotten stuck under the remnants of the archway it would have crushed you. I thought—.” Again that stony expression. Then abruptly his mouth split in a cracked smile that was so unlike Staeve, Astarion felt himself stare in bewilderment.

“No matter! You scolded me for worrying about that once already, haven’t you?” Staeve said, brightly. He reached out for Astarion's hand — the one that was not wrapped in bandages up to his elbow — and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’re harder to kill than that.”

Astarion swallowed around a lump in his throat. “That’s right!” he replied, matching his tone. “In fact, here I am. Not dead—! Well. No more than usual.” He watched Staeve drop his head a little, that smile still fixated on his lips, hair falling in his face. It made his stomach churn. “Darling, are you alright?”

“Of course I am,” Staeve replied, too quickly. “Just a few scrapes. Nothing that Halsin couldn’t fix. Again.”

Astonishingly, even Astarion could see through the bad lie. “Staeve.”

“…I promise I’m fine, now.” The grip on Astarion’s hand tightened. “I just—I just couldn’t tell if you were alive for a hot minute there. Spooked me a little, that’s all.”

He laughed a little nervous laugh. Astarion kept staring. “Staeve. What happened?”

Staeve kept avoiding his gaze. “I don’t even know if you remember. You weren’t exactly. There.”

Astarion froze.

It hadn’t been a nightmare, after all.

“Did I. Say something?”

He knew he had been seeing the tomb. He barely remembered when Cazador had let him out, but he knew that he’d been starving and delirious and terrified. For decades the thought of repeating the experience had paralysed him so badly, he had not dared disobeying Cazador again. Not so outrageously, at least.

He could only imagine what sorry picture he had made. Crawling on the floor, blind and deaf to anything that wasn’t rat blood or his Master’s—Cazador’s voice, clutching at his robe, obscene promises dripping from his mouth, his body still broken and hurting from before—

“You didn’t recognise me, mostly,” Staeve murmured, pulling him back to the present. “You thought I was—”

“Cazador.”

Staeve’s mouth thinned. A sudden flash of anger. “Yes.”

A few weeks earlier, Astarion would’ve flinched, too used to having that sort of wrath directed at him; there was something comforting about it now, about having someone share the same outrage and resentment he felt towards Cazador. It had never happened before.

“What happened?” Staeve asked, then he caught himself. “You don’t have to answer—”

“Time becomes an odd thing when you’ve been around for a few centuries. It could very well be that it can fold onto itself,” Astarion interrupted him, surprising even himself. “Something about the narrow space, about the smell… I guess it brought back—unpleasant memories.”

Staeve’s eyes widened with understanding. “The… tomb?”

“Yes.” Astarion stopped, unsure on how to continue.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want,” Staeve said, when it was clear that the silence wasn’t getting broken anytime soon. “I’m just glad I have you back. I wasn’t sure what—”

“I want to tell you,” Astarion snapped, frustrated with himself, and then—stopped. Again.

If his heart had been still alive, it would have been pounding, loud and telling. He pressed the other hand against his face, feeling impossibly feverish, clammy. His wrist hurt. His heart hurt more.

He loved Staeve. He did. It was such a stupid thing to be doing, falling in love with a mark, but it happened.

(Again. You never learn, you stupid boy.)

Astarion had already thrown his hand by admitting it out loud, but could he really take a step further, and reveal the rest of the game? Could he confess that he’d been losing himself in time over and over again around Staeve, only he’d been better at keeping his cards close to his chest? Could he hope to tell Staeve that the reason he’d started to show interest in him was meant to be a trap from the start—a trap which he ended up falling into himself?

“Hey. Look at me.”

Astarion looked at Staeve. He seemed so tired, but also more at peace than he did a few minutes earlier.

“I love you,” he said, earnest and unwavering.

Astarion almost screamed at him, almost admitted the deed then and there. He bit on his lip instead and let him continue.

“We have time to talk about this. We can make time.” The little self-deprecating grin that stretched over his mouth was the first genuine smile he’d seen on him the whole time. “Maybe it’s a silly thing to promise a vampire.”

Astarion smiled back, despite everything. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, from the silliest man I’ve ever met.” He squeezed his hand back. “I love you, too. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Fine,” Astarion sighed, faking a put-upon tone. “Let me at least do this, then.”

It wasn’t the most skilled kiss Astarion had ever given him — he couldn’t move his body very well and the angle was a little off, the placement a little off centre — but like the ones they’d shared on the night Staeve almost got his back blown off, it tasted sweeter than usual.

It tasted like the promise of a new beginning. Something real.