Recovery (Astarion BG3 Fan Fiction)

13: The Things We Do

When they arrive at Moonrise Towers for the second time, flanked by Harpers, they quickly realize they are deeply in over their heads.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck," Aysla mutters to herself, arrows flying behind her.

Astarion had been in his element, a knife in the shadows, and Aysla had been watching him during a brief reprieve, all the enemies surrounding her having dropped dead.

He noticed her staring, and cocked his head, grinning at her from across the chaotic battle, when the shower of arrows began to fall.

He was still smiling at her, when he felt one thud into his leg, and another into his side.

Aysla carries him piggyback, panic rising in her throat, until they find safety behind a stone wall where the rest of their companions await them. Astarion crumples to the ground against it.

Aysla kneels besides him, as she tugs up her sleeve and presses her wrist to his mouth. He looks up at her, clearly fading, and she screams at him through their tadpole, 'BITE - YES - DRINK.'

So he does. He sucks and sucks and sucks, and then her wrist pulls away as she stands. He's too dazed to see what she does as she mutters to Shadowheart, digging through a pack. She crouches down to him again, and he hears her voice by his ear.

"Drink this, now, darling." He feels her tip a healing potion to his mouth and he swallows, wincing at the taste.

She knocks a potion of her own back, and then her wrist is back at his mouth, and he sucks eagerly, life returning to his eyes, washing out the taste of the bitter medicine with that of her sweet, metallic blood.

She chugs potion after potion, up until they run out, and still she tells him "Drink, drink."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When they reach Ketheric, finally, Aysla is conflicted.

She had read his journals. She couldn't help but feel for the man.

Yes, the horrors they discovered were shocking - yes, he was responsible for countless deaths, and a terrible curse upon this land, etc.

But what bothers Aysla is that she can't really say that she wouldn't do the same thing.

His cherished wife and daughter, both dead within months of each other. What would a good man do? What about a man who was neither truly good nor evil, but loved his family deeply?

To the Tieflings, sure - he is an evil, irredeemable man. To the Harpers, too, who lost their comrades fighting him, surely. To Halsin, who loved this land he had wrought devastation on, absolutely.

But can anyone say that he isn't a godsdamned devoted father?

It doesn't bother Aysla when she plunges her sword into his chest, and he falls backwards to his death.

It doesn't bother her when she hacks and slashes at Myrkul, either. Her skeletal wings appear, and she utilizes her own necrotic shroud as she fights back the god of death - a mirror to herself.

But it does bother her, a bit, when Aylin flies out - an aasimar that Aysla thought to be more pure, more righteous than herself - and she stomps on Ketheric until he is pulp.

And it bothers her, especially, when they return to the celebrating Tieflings and Harpers, and she watches Aylin and Isobel reunite, rejoicing in Isobel's revival from death - a life that her father, the very same man Aylin stomped on and spurned, bought her at the cost of his soul. At the cost of the rest of the world. And they shed not one tear.