Astarion x M!Reader

Thirty-Two

Every dead body had its own weight. Sometimes it was barely noticeable, lighter than a feather in the wind. Others weighed heavily on shoulders, making legs tremble and breathing heavy.

Lorelei was neither.

In the end, you couldn't describe it, that feeling of emptiness in your arms as you carried him through the night, his face so pale that even the moon couldn't light it up.

His arms hung limply from his sides as his head bobbed with your every step. There was no tension in him, no sign that his muscles still had a job to do.

Eyes wide open, he hung in your arms while the wind ruffled his long hair. He was bloodshot and yet drier than freshly tanned paper.

You could smell it, the dryness, the way his skin began to wither like a flower at the touch of hydrochloric acid.

Blindly you followed the streets, the night followed you with its stars like a caravan of mourners. Shadows nestled against your legs. Their touch on your skin was still fresh, the black stuck to your fingers as if it were a reminder of what you had lost that night.

Lost. No, that wasn't quite right. You hadn't lost anything. It had been taken from you. Again. And again by the same man.

How many times could he slam his claws into your flesh and make blood flow until you fought back?

Shame and sadness mingled inside you, bringing tears to your eyes.

But you couldn't cry. Not anymore. Not for a man who had betrayed you.

But who?

Lorelei or Cazador?

You chuckled bitterly to yourself. How macabre it was to think about it. Tiredness tugged at your mind.

Your feet tumbled, you were in danger of stumbling. Lorelei's legs slipped out of your arms and his body threatened to land on the hard stone of the pavement. It wasn't strong enough to survive this unscathed.

For the length of a breath, your heart skipped a beat. But in the next moment, a familiar feeling filled you.

Weightlessness enveloped your body. Darkness swallowed the world before your eyes, but the pain remained.

Betrayal. Lorelei's last gift to you had been betrayal.

Did you deserve that?

All those years, centuries even, you had only wanted to care for him. For him and the others. But maybe that wasn't what they had been longing for.

Had you ever asked what they wanted?

Probably yes. Or maybe not. You couldn't remember, your mind was too shaken to form a clear thought.

When you had been born again, from mortal to spawn, a euphoria had made you drunk. Everything had been as you had always imagined. Time was but a thread between your fingers, there was no need to starve and when you did, you had been powerful enough to take what it took to feed it.

Then the darkness had come.

Your arms clawed into Lorelei's pointed shoulders. With clenched teeth, you pressed him to your chest, so hard that bones cracked audibly.

You gasped, whether from anger or grief was unclear to you.

Vellioth the Martinet had not been a kind master. He had made you work and if it wasn't enough he had made you suffer until his desire for torment was satisfied.

Agony. Yes, he had loved it. Not to feel it himself but to experience it, to hear how others had to endure the pain he had caused.

Cazador had always whispered in your ear at night, when everyone else was asleep and his arms were around you. It had been the only bit of security you had had.

Back then, he had sworn to kill Vellioth. Not only that, he had promised to repay him tenfold for all the suffering he had caused.

His words had made you laugh. Madness, you had called it.

But how could you have known that your words had not been too far from the truth?

In the end, Cazador had kept his word, he had killed Vellioth the Martinet and multiplied the agony tenfold.

And yet.

In the end, he had not freed the darkness from him but had merely taken his place. Whether he did it because he liked it or because the suffering had robbed him of his mind, no one could say for sure.

But you had sworn never to become like your old master. And certainly not like Cazador. Worse.

As the beat of your undead heart levelled out again, the shadows scattered and the familiar darkness you loved to wallow in was gone.

Instead, there was the smell of your house, of home. Candles flickered on the walls as the shadows receded until they seemed almost natural.

Everything was silent. Nothing filled your ears but your own breath. Lorelei hung limply in your embrace, his hands dangling down his sides.

The skin was already beginning to peel away like old paper. Soon he would crumble to dust.

There was no afterlife waiting for him, no heaven but no hell either. Vampires died and became nothing. From nothing back to nothing.

It was a bleak death, but at least not one with the prospect of more punishment than the existence before.

Flames flickered as shapes flitted through the house. Smells filled your nose, familiar, beloved. Footsteps filled the silence.

Suddenly there was weight pulling you back. You refused to let go of Lorelei. One last time. Just one last time you wanted to hold him.

"Platinum.", after all these years Albert had never forgotten how to make his voice sound soft when you needed it most.

And yet.

There was this bitterness in you, this longing. None of them would ever know your real name. Lorelei hadn't known it. Albert probably didn't want to know it and Cillian wasn't allowed to because he could never have kept that secret.

And Horren?

By the Absolute, he was merely a newborn. You didn't even trust Horren yourself.

Tears drowned your vision in salt as your eyes opened a crack.

There he was, perfect and yet as frail as you felt. Like a white sun, Astarion's hair framed his head. He was tired, weak. And yet he was here to mourn with you, even though he had never even known Lorelei for who he had been.