Astarion x M!Reader

Thirty

The shadows chased restlessly around your feet as you wandered through the streets under the cover of night.

The wind was cold and for the first time in a long time you had to pull your coat tighter around your shoulders.

Red chased through the night. Your eyes had lost their chosen colour and instead it had awoken, the vampire you had tried to hide for so long.

A hiss escaped your throat as a woman stumbled across your path. Frightened, she ducked her head and began to whimper prayers at the sight of your teeth, her hands clasped over her head.

It wasn't really your intention to give in to what you were once made to be. But that night you simply couldn't restrain your nature.

Anger welled up inside you like rabies in the mouth of a dog. Without giving her a second glance, you walked on. Small stones dug into the soles of your bare feet. Once you had stopped wearing shoes to cling to that tiny feeling of sharp edges digging into soft flesh. Now you remembered how irritating it was.

Ears twitched with every sound of the wind. Your nose lifted into the air. Hundreds, thousands of odours mingled, some human, others animal, reptile, plant. Rarely had you taken in so much all at once.

But it all served one purpose. A search for the one.

Cazador.

Not far away, at least not for a vampire with nimble feet, you could smell him. Darkness ensnared your face like fine hair as you took one step, then two, then two more, and suddenly you were at the other end of the city.

The splashing of water tugged at your nerves, made your ears twitch.

Anger had an amazing effect on all creatures. It made one alert and yet careless, powerful but also easy prey. Nothing else sharpened the mind like the desire for revenge. And at the same time it was like a drug that clouded the senses.

At that moment, you had both components clashing and exploding on your face.

The desire to kill him shone in your eyes as if the red could be fed by his blood.

Yet at the same time there was this hesitation. You wanted to hear him out, to find out what his reasons were, even though you already knew they would never be good enough to forgive him.

Forgiveness. You almost laughed. No, forgiveness was not something Cazador deserved.

And you?

All at once, doubt crept into your mind as the familiar righteous smirk appeared on his thin lips. His dark brows lifted as he tilted his head.

"How is it to think about yourself when you have wasted your endless time on the suffering of others?", he asked, and there was unmistakable mockery and scorn in his voice.

"Silence!", it thundered out of you.

The shadows chased upwards, wrapped themselves around his feet. Like a wall of endless black, they built up at his back, pointed spears aimed at his neck.

You could kill him, right here on the spot, in an alley as filthy as the one you both crawled out of.

But there was still this hesitation. This disgusting, hopeful hesitation that there might still be a trace of your old friend in the man standing in front of you.

No, that was just an illusion, a lie you had fed yourself all those years to avoid the pain of reality. He was gone.

And he had taken something with him that you would never get back. He had broken you and made sure that you could never be whole again. There would always be a hole in you, a shard that he would never give you back.

All just because it amused him. Nothing filled his sick mind with more joy than seeing you unhappy. How changed he was. Once you would have given him the world, looked up to him.

Loved him.

And now?

Now you couldn't help but wish he would grow up the rest of his endless existence with dust in his mouth and fire in his veins.

"Cazador.", his name was like poison on your tongue, crawling up your throat and dripping from the tip.

His smirk grew. This was just one of his many ways to provoke, if you didn't go for it, you wouldn't be spilling blood today.

Was that really what you were afraid of?

No, not really. You had killed, both for reasons and completely indiscriminately. It didn't matter. When one was immortal, the value of a life dwindled, trickling through the fingers like ashes.

What really made you tremble was the fear that he was now more powerful than you. All those years you had convinced yourself that he couldn't grow if you didn't.

Two sides of the same coin.

But maybe that was just another lie you had told yourself. Just because you were made of the same blood didn't mean you would be equals forever.

How many years had passed since you had seen him, not even once?

And how many times had you realised that the shadows were becoming more rebellious, bending to your orders and developing a will of their own?

Once they had listened to you like dogs to their owners, had bowed down as soon as a breath had left your lips.

Gone.

So much of your cruelty had faded with time, but it had been that very cruelty that had given you your power.

And Cazador seemed to have realised this. Not only that, he had welcomed it. He had changed, not for the better, and if you thought about it, maybe he had always been like that.

But right now he had the opportunity to savour it. His nature was made for the dark. You, on the other hand, were a victim of events.

It wasn't hard to imagine which of you the power would choose.

All of a sudden, the anger evaporated and an icy wave of realisation washed over you. It swept you off your feet, dragged your head under the water and almost drowned you.

No, your hands clenched into fists. The red of your eyes flashed like two freshly fallen drops of blood in the first snow of winter. If this was the only way then you would enslave the darkness too. Just so he couldn't have it.

"You were in my house.", your voice could have slit throats with its sharpness.