Chapter Text
She’d heard of feign death before, and knew other casters who learned it. It was mostly spoken of as a parlor trick, something that would rarely work but could buy you some time in a pinch. Cast it upon yourself or your companion when you were in a snag and you might pull off a convincing enough performance to escape or hide from enemies looking for living prey. She’d never used it herself, tending to avoid necromantic spells even at a lower level. But she knew it was a quickly cast spell, that it only lasted up to an hour or so, and that it required a willing participant.
So Tavali was taken thoroughly by surprise when the necromancer of Myrkul they found skulking around during an evening walk from camp managed to use it on her. One moment she, Shadowheart, Karlach, and Gale were fighting, the vicious human man spouting something about taking her body for a greater purpose. The next, he’d unleashed a scroll on her that brought her head to the ground with a crack, body limp, eyes still, and mouth parted slightly in surprise from her last gasp of air. She could only watch helplessly as Karlach let out a roar of fury and charged the man, unable to move or shift to join or follow the fight.
She lay there in the dirt like that, only able to see what was directly in front of her locked pupils. Shadowheart dropped to her knees in front of her eventually, and cast cure wounds. Tavali felt the spell dissipate over her, useless light fading after a moment. She wanted to yell, to twitch, to tell Shadowheart that she was fine, but there was no reaction.
She heard a shaky inhale from Shadowheart before the cleric rallied. The blue light of revivify didn’t even bother to fall over her. I’m alive, she tried to scream. There is nothing to revive!
“Oh gods,” Shadowheart whispered.
Karlach’s skin is uncomfortably hot against her face, and she prays desperately that her friend isn’t burning off the flesh of her cheek and forehead while they bring her back to camp. Feign death was meant to protect against further harm but that wretched mage had clearly changed the rulebook. She certainly already looked a frightful sight, limp and lifeless with her eyes frozen open. Pale faced Shadowheart and Gale flanked the tearful tiefling, who had already taken the time to cry over her body at the scene of the fight. They likely looked like a funeral procession, and it was her fault.
She'd been the one to beg for them to camp outside the city again for just a night or two. Between killing Cazador, Lae'zel's kidnapping, the Murder Tribunal and Temple of Bhaal, and everything else they'd had to fight through, Baldur's Gate had felt like a diabolical death trap. That wasn't even including the Emperor's latest antagonism.
She'd felt safer in their camp in the woods off Rivington. They hadn't secured proper lodging in the city yet anyway, camping in dirty alleys and around the docks. Halsin and Wyll in particular had agreed it might be best to put distance between them and their enemies, though Astarion had pointed out Halsin just hated the city and wanted "nature" back. Jaheira and Minsc had decided to stay in the city to communicate with the druid's network, taking little Yenna to the older half-elf's home for safety. Aylin and Isabel had stayed to be near the shrine of Selûne, and the rest had trudged back to the open ground and sky.
Now her cowardice had come back to bite her.
Tavali hadn’t been worried at first, was the thing. Feign death was only meant to last an hour! By the time they made it back to camp, she’d been mentally fighting tooth and nail to move her body. She was certain that the damn curse would wear off any moment! But not even the tadpole was reacting when she tried to send a quick reassurance to her friends, and that was enough to strike fear into her.
Head tucked against her large red friend’s body, she didn’t see the reaction of her other friends. There was a hiss from Lae’zel and a shout of alarm from Wyll. Then Karlach was carefully, so carefully, placing her down on a bedroll. Her head was still turned to the side, rolling over her right shoulder so she had another spectacular view of the ground and her companions’ shoes as they clustered around her at various points.
“What in the bloody hells happened?”
Astarion’s first reaction was, unsurprisingly to Tavali, anger. He sounded annoyed and frustrated and confused, and Tavali wanted to swallow through a thick throat because she had no way to tell him that everything would be fine. She wanted to tell him that eventually the spell would wear off and she’d be with him again. They’d be planning their next move in Baldur’s Gate over the dinner her group was meant to be hunting, she desperately hoped.
His knees appeared on the ground in front of her as Shadowheart gave a halting explanation.
“Bring her back, then! What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation from whichever god you serve now?”
“She tried, Astarion.” Gale intervened somewhere behind Tavali’s back. “Healing, revivify. Twice. It all failed. I don’t-” Astarion’s hands settled on her shoulders as he leaned over her. “I don’t know what damn scroll he used, but she dropped immediately. He said he intended to use her body for something. I suspect the bastard used,” the wizard inhaled slowly, and she felt the group’s attention focus on him entirely, “power word kill. It’s instantaneous.”
There was an ominous pause as those present took in that sentence. And still Tavali couldn’t say how wrong their resident expert was.
“That would not explain why she cannot be revived,” Halsin’s deep voice intruded, the first she’d heard him speak since they returned to camp. “There must have been a deeper curse infused with it. Have you tried greater restoration before revivify?”
Tavali lost track of the conversation as Astarion’s right hand found her face. He tilted her toward the sky, hovering over her and scanning her body for a reaction. She couldn’t focus on his face, not fully, but saw the way the low sunset caught in his hair. A glowing orange halo, like always at this time. She focused on it while the others debated. He tucked a strand of her bushy hair behind her left ear.
At some point she saw light appear to her left again. Shadowheart trying to lift a curse, she thought. She prayed briefly that it would work, that this would break the damn curse and free her limbs and mouth.
But Tavali saw that the light did not take her, and when Halsin’s looming form offered revivify, the spell slipped away as before.
Astarion moved his face up over hers again, gaze darting about once more for a reaction. She saw his throat and lips clench around a high, heaving breath.
“Nothing,” Halsin imparted sadly. Somewhere in the background, someone, Karlach, was asking after Withers. Tavali didn't hear more after that.
Astarion walked on his knees until they were pressed against her side. He put his left arm underneath her shoulders and lifted, keeping her from the ground with a pull on her spine. Her head flopped limply backwards against his arm until she felt his right hand grasp her cheek again. His fingers slid into her hair, tips digging into her scalp as he turned her face toward his. His eyes were wide and disbelieving, sweeping over her face while his palm pressed against the skin of her cheek, clutching her more tightly against his body.
“Look at me.”
I feel safe with you. Seen.
She can’t move her damn eyes, can only stare blankly. She hasn’t breathed or felt her heart beat since the spell hit. And sweet mercy, Astarion could feel that, couldn’t he? He would notice that her blood, the blood she shared so freely, was completely halted.
And whatever the future holds for me, I don’t want to lose that.
“Look at me, please. Please, darling, I’ve got you.” He was gasping now, shifting her in his arms like she was only sleeping and needed a jostle to wake. Because he had managed to force eye contact with her, she was able to see the tears as they started to ring his red irises. “You’ve got me and I’ve got you, remember?”
Tavali didn't answer outwardly, and she could have gone her entire life without feeling the shudder that wracked Astarion’s entire frame as the tears started to flow at her silence. She had learned early on with him that it was possible to hate someone else’s pain so viscerally you felt it yourself, and she didn’t know how the curse was possibly holding up against the metaphorical clench of her heart now. She wept with him and couldn’t even show him.
“No no no, don’t do this.” Her vision was obscured by his face because he was kissing her, lips pressed tight to hers before he pulled away and found her eyes again. “Don’t do this.” He whispered, painfully digging his forehead into hers. “Wake up. Please. I’m sorry, I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Please wake up.”
Stop! She screamed. You didn’t do anything wrong. What are you sorry for?
Her pale elf was leaning across her now, burying her face against the left side of his neck while he did the same to hers.
"Please," he begged into her skin, lips puckering to kiss the unbroken skin over her still veins, "don't leave me? I can't- No."
She couldn’t make out everything he was saying at that point despite his proximity to her ear and fluctuating volume. His hands kept shifting across her back and on her head like Astarion was searching for the right spot to make her body react again. He gasped broken words mingled with repetive, desperate pleas of "no."
It became worse the longer he held her and she did not answer in kind.
Aster, she wept, because against the cord of her neck he started wailing like he had when Cazador was finally dead. She was crushed against him so tightly her chest could feel the way his twitched and tensed with his cries. Choked, aching sobs and moisture gathering over her once pulse point between his low, grating screams. He was rocking them now, roughly one moment and tenderly the next. It made her uncontrolled left fingers and knuckles shift aimlessly against the dirt at her side.
The young woman thought she distantly heard the others move away, giving them space, and she felt another pang for her love. He would never have been this distraught in front of others even a few weeks ago. He was supposed to be getting a second chance at life. She was supposed to be with him for that second chance. Asked and offered and accepted over his empty grave. Astarion was not supposed to be weeping over her not-even-dead body a week after earning his freedom.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that. Astarion's voice tapered off eventually, scrapped thin and raw, though his tears didn't quite halt. He still held her against him, but his grip had slackened. They sat limply on the ground, Tavali cradled awkwardly against him as he stared past her head. His chest jerked sporadically like another sob needed to push through. His cheek was damp whenever he moved it against her, occasionally running his lips across various places on her face.
Night had long since fallen and only darkness was left when someone approached again. Astarion had to be stiff from staying hunched with her in his arms for so long. It was some of the longest contact she’d ever had with him if one didn’t count the nights they spent with him meditating and her asleep beside him.
“Astarion," Wyll, then. He was speaking very softly. "Halsin said there is a field with loose dirt not far in the woods.”
“No.” His voice was thin, but cold.
“Astarion.”
“No. No, you will not- you will not put her in the ground.”
Oh gods.
Tavali hadn’t thought that far. She hadn’t realized what her friends were preparing to do. She’d only been dead a few hours at most! They were already trying to bury her?
I had to punch a hole in the coffin and claw my way through six feet of dirt.
Astarion had only just told her that story a week ago. And now her friends were going to bury her and she’d learn exactly what it felt like. Much as she wanted to support Astarion and understand his pain, she desperately, desperately did not want to crawl out of a grave. Please, no.
Panic was setting in now, bone deep and still she could not move. Astarion tightened his grip around her and for a moment she thought he’d sensed her distress, but he made no further moves.
She saw Wyll move around behind Astarion’s back, crouching down like he would put a hand on his shoulder. Don’t, she whispered. Wyll and Astarion had rarely gotten along. Even with the tentative peace that had followed after Astarion's decision to walk away from ascension, things had been tense between them. Predictably, her pale elf snarled and arched away from the warlock. He shifted his grip on her again, lifting her fully into his arms as he stood. Her neck arched backwards again and the world tilted upside down as he started to walk away.
“Astarion, please, she was our friend, too. You aren’t alone in your loss-”
“You have no concept,” he hissed, and she didn’t need to see him to picture his fangs at that moment, “of my loss.”
Wyll didn’t speak again as Astarion took her away from camp. None of the others approached them, and eventually he shifted her around until her head was propped against him again.
Caring for her comfort, even when she was a corpse. Her dearest.
He brought her to a ridge edge and sat them down on top of it. She thought she saw the glow of camp back over his shoulder, but then he was repositioning her again so that… it was almost like they were just sitting together again. She in his lap, her right side curled against him with her forehead against his neck. But her arms were limp while his were wrapped tight around her back and waist.
“Apologies, darling. I hope you don’t object. But I-” His voice wavered and broke as he clung for a moment, throat flexing desperately as he tried to steady himself. “I’m not ready to let you go yet, selfish beast that I am. And part of my grand plan for us included watching the sunrise before- before I can’t anymore, so.” He shifted and she felt his left cheek press against the top of her head. “I don’t expect I’ll want to again after this. What in the hells am I supposed to do now?” He tilted his head and she felt his lips against her forehead.
“Gods.” She felt new tears smear between his lips and her skin. “You don’t feel gone. It feels like you’re right here.” There was a high inhale and shuddering exhale. “You don’t even feel cold yet.”
Yes, Astarion, yes, exactly! Tavali shouted in her mind. If only someone else had realized she should look different by now. She’d been dead for hours. Her body would have cooled, would have grown stiff. But no one besides Astarion had been close enough, and he clearly wasn’t in the right frame of mind to see it for himself.
They sat in silence for so long that Tavali wished she could fall asleep. She was exhausted, drained in a new and terrible way. When this was over, she was going to sleep for an entire day.
“All those promises we made. Such foolishness. That was something you put back in me, mind you. Foolishness and hopes and dreams. 'We’ll beat the Absolute, we’ll go off together.'” His chest was heaving, jerkily rising and falling while his right arm tightened around her waist. His back bent as he tilted his body over hers just slightly. “You started this dead heart of mine beating. How in the blazes is it meant to keep beating without you?” Astarion shook his head against her, mussing her hair a little. “I don’t- don’t even remember the last thing I said to you. What were your last words to me? My love, I-” He gave a great gasping sob. “I suspect I’m going to need them. What did we say to each other?”
She knew he didn’t intend for her to answer, but she thought about the question anyway as dawn began to push over the horizon, the pale blue light creeping forward.
She thought she’d given him a kiss on the cheek before they left, and she thought she’d made a comment about feeding him afterwards. She remembered the look in his eyes along with his usual devilish smirk, and thought he’d made one of his usual quips. I look forward to it, my love. I await with bated breath, my love.
Such cruelty, my love, to go and leave me wanting.
Yes, that last one. That was what he had said that evening. Of all the turns of phrase.
Astarion, she thought at him bleakly. Astarion, when I can move again, I’m going to stay wrapped in your arms until someone pries me out of them.
He was still shuddering a little, breaths hitching painfully as the sky lightened. I love you. I will remind you of it as soon as I can. Only please, please don’t let them bury me.
Dawn finally broke over the hill, and a few minutes later it reached their small spot. She was able to watch the trail of it going down his throat until the warmth fell across her as well.
That was, of course, the moment the curse was broken.
Her whole body came to life again, twitching and shifting in Astarion’s hold as her left hand flew up to clutch his shirt. She inhaled as though waking from a trance, but her lungs tried to exhale precisely as they would have if the spell had never been cast. It set off a coughing fit as she curled instinctively deeper into his body.
"What the devil-" Astarion jolted and pulled her away from himself, setting her nearly hanging by a firm grip on her upper arms as he propped her up in front of him. Her knees and the bottoms of her legs pressed against the ground while he held her upper body aloft.
"Asta-Astarion," she wheezed a little, head rolling as she tried to meet his eyes properly. Her lungs felt like they were barely shuddering to motion inside of her. In addition, her blood was rushing now and it left her head pounding with a surging headache.
“Oh- oh my gods, what-” Astarion's face was streaked with tears, baggy purple circles lining red rimmed eyes wide with shock while his mouth gaped like a fish.
“Curse,” she breathed out. “Better now.” Her left hand, she realized, was still clenched in his shirt. “Put… put me down, pull me in.”
Astarion did not move beyond the trembling he could not control. His pupils flicked over her face like it was an illusion.
“Don’t want to go yet,” Tavali tried again. “Oh, mercy,” her right hand came up to cover her throbbing forehead, pressing her fingertips there with weak strength.
Covering her own face broke whatever spell Astarion was under, because he whipped them around and took her to the ground, cradling her skull with his left arm in one fluid motion. With his other hand he pulled her wrist until her face was exposed again. He angled himself over her from her right side, their legs spread on the ground.
The young woman blinked over and over again. Her eyes ached from being open all day even if the spell protected them, and tears started to leak out to fall past her temples. Astarion flitted in and out of sight until she could slow it. She raised a trembling left hand to cup his cheek. “Dearest.”
Astarion looked angry again. That was fair, she thought dully. He’d thought she was dead for many hours and she wasn’t exactly providing an explanation. But when she inhaled with the hopes of at least getting out the words “feign death,” he turned sharply and set his lips over the pulse point in her wrist, closing his eyes. He brought his right hand up to cradle her left hand hard against him.
“Oh,” she exhaled shakily.
He opened baleful ruby eyes at her after a few moments of lingering on her pulse. “What in the sweet hells happened? Do you have any idea what this night- what I’ve- What happened? ”
“Curse,” she started slowly, still trying to convince her lungs that yes, they needed to keep inflating now. “Feign death. Don’t know. Scroll was altered, too fast to dodge.” Her entire body shivered in lingering fear.
Astarion’s mouth opened in a snarl. He looked livid. It would have been intimidating if his eyes weren’t swimming with fresh tears and his body wasn’t trembling all around her. She slid her left hand higher until it reached his hair. “Darling. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Frighten,” Astarion huffed, but he couldn’t even manage to carry the scoff without his chest heaving.
“Too tired. Dear. Can’t-” Tavali let her head fall back, right cheek pressed to his arm beneath her. “Need sleep.”
“You want to sleep? You think you get to just sleep now, after all this?” Astarion’s outrage was steadily becoming more frantic, and his right hand came around to cup her cheek again, tilting her face away from the crook of his elbow.
“I was awake the whole time,” she breathed out. “Can’t help it, going to pass out.”
“The whole time? Good gods, you wretch. When you are well again I’m going to- going to-”
“I love you.” Her eyes wouldn’t open again and she felt her left hand weakening its hold until it slipped from his hair. “Kiss me goodnight?”
She heard what sounded like a highly offended growl, followed by a very passionate and desperate press of lips that she was so relieved to respond to. That lead to a very sad and muffled whimper, and her lover’s face buried against the left side of her neck again. The moisture was back as she drifted off.
“M’okay. Prom’se.” She thought she got another “love you” out before sleep took her, but decided she would make sure to say it again anyway when she woke. Just in case.