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Once, a long time ago, Astarion had fantasized about keeping the company of heroes.
How Cazador learned of his little fantasy–gods, but Astarion doesn’t remember. He just remembers the mockery. The pain. And the dried blood under his nails that he was forbidden to suck clean.
“My dear idiot son,” Cazador said, soft and crooning, “a real hero would never save you, not after what you've become. Don't you know what heroes do to monsters? Any one of them would drive a stake straight through your craven heart.”
The joke is on Cazador. A real hero would do no such thing.
Real heroes don't exist
Wyll Ravengard is not a hero. Wyll Ravengard is a monster hunter who buys his own press.
It's actually sickening how easy it was to talk him into sparing Astarion’s vampiric unlife. One quick sob story about Astarion’s cruel master and Wyll was ready to open his own vein just to let Astarion drink his fill.
It would've been easy to drain him dry.
Wyll should be grateful to be alive. It’s Astarion’s mercy—and his better judgment—that’s kept Wyll breathing, nothing more. What a hero, ready to make an exception for any suitably sympathetic monster with a pretty face.
Wyll makes an exception for the devil-woman, too.
But of course the feared “General Karlach” is no devil, only a tiefling with some hellish modifications. Still, between the flames and the hole where her heart should be she meets the criteria of monsterhood—not that Astarion would say as much to her face.
Wyll meets the criteria of monsterhood, too. He has his own she-devil hanging off his shoulder, and it seems she does not take favorably to disobedience.
Astarion sauntered out of camp around the time the screaming started.
After two centuries, the stench of melting flesh and burning hair has rather lost its appeal. So, too, has the sound of someone being tortured due to a capricious master. Astarion leaves camp without knowing whether Wyll is going to live or die. Wyll’s life is no longer within his grasp, and therefore it no longer makes much difference to him. Astarion wanders around the woods in the darkness for a while, lunging fruitlessly at squirrels and skittish wild pigs.
He does not catch anything.
He wanders back to camp before dawn is a sliver on the horizon. There seems to be a number of people bustling about Wyll’s tent, which either means Wyll is dead and they are divvying up his belongings or Shadowheart has just finished regrowing him an outer layer of skin.
As Astarion approaches close enough to see the haggard look on her face, his intuition leans towards the latter.
“How’s the patient?” he asks.
Shadowheart, predictably, scowls.
“Alive, no thanks to you,” she says.
Astarion rolls his eyes. “I’m a vampire, darling, not a nursemaid. I assumed keeping out of your way would be best for everyone. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all.” He casually glances about the corners of the campsite. “Where’s Karlach?”
He’d waited to approach until she disappeared; devil or not he doesn’t trust her, nor the way she threw herself so quickly into Wyll’s good graces.
“I only just convinced her to go to bed.” Shadowheart rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. There’s blood on it, Astarion notes. “She didn’t want to leave his side. Not that I can blame her—he did save her life.”
“Hm,” Astarion says, without inflection. “Perhaps you should get some rest yourself? You look dead on your feet—and believe me, I would know.”
Shadowheart chooses that moment to sway like might swoon. “Perhaps,” she says, but glances over her shoulder at the open tent flap.
“I can watch him,” Astarion offers. “If you’re so concerned.”
Something—skepticism, relief, exhaustion—flicks across her face.
“Would you?” she says, not entirely a question. “He should be stabilized. But if he wakes—”
“I’ll fetch you, of course,” Astarion says smoothly.
“He was in a lot of pain before I got him to sleep,” Shadowheart says, as if Astarion somehow missed the screams or their obvious implications. “You need to keep his fever down.”
“Of course,” Astarion repeats.
She leaves, eventually, shooed on by reassurances. And Astarion is free to crawl into Wyll’s tent.
He is hit again by the smell. Burning. Necrosis. Sulfur and an undercurrent of sick. It is oddly hot and humid within the fabric walls, a miniature sauna of suffering.
In the darkness, at his feet, lies Wyll Ravengard.
Though the lack of light has stolen color from Astarion’s sight, he clearly sees the horns protruding from Wyll’s brow—sees, also, the sheen of sweat, the parched lips peeled against newly-fanged teeth.
Astarion almost laughs.
The monster-hunter has become the monster, indeed.
He slinks beside the unconscious hunter. It is easy enough to pull an arm free of the blankets—easy to shush Wyll as he turns his head, murmurs.
“Shh,” Astarion says, lips against Wyll’s skin. His arm is scalding, but the blood within still smells sweet. “Just a taste, hm? You won’t even remember it in the morning.”
His fangs press against the hollow of Wyll’s wrist—still rather human-shaped, despite the curl of claws at his hands.
Wyll shifts. Pulls, slightly, against Astarion’s hold.
“…father?” Wyll murmurs.
Astarion rolls his eyes. “No. Now be still. It’ll hurt less if you don’t move.”
It’s good advice—Astarion knows from personal experience—though wasted on a delirious man.
“Father.” Wyll pulls again. “It hurts.”
Astarion’s ears flick.
Wyll’s head twists to the side. His breaths are shallow, pained.
“M’sorry,” he slurs. “She said… couldn’t tell you. M’sorry.”
Astarion tries to drop Wyll’s arm. He can’t. Wyll has him by the wrist.
“Father,” Wyll whines. “M’sorry. Don’t make me go.”
“I’m not your father,” Astarion tries to say, but Wyll is shaking, pressing his face into his hand, begging, wordless whining interspersed with pleas, apologies. His voice breaks in places, mouth moving silently over broken sentences.
He’ll wake up the whole camp at this rate.
“Be quiet,” Astarion tries to snap, but the words come out tight, compressed. Small.
Wyll doesn’t seem to notice. “Please, m’sorry, Father. M’scared. I don’t wanna—”
The words break into a cough.
A heavy, thick, hacking cough. Like lungs turning inside out. Like splitting pain, like his chest is made out of nails and broken glass, like grave dirt and black bile congealed into a paste and splattered through teeth that don’t fit in a mouth that feels wrong and he inhales as much as he coughs up because he can’t get the air into his lungs fast enough between convulsions and his skin is fire and his bones are cracking and his tongue is a maggot in his mouth and it—
“ —hurts,” Wyll whimpers.
Astarion looks down at the devilspawn. The pathetic, broken, begging creature in the bedroll.
There are no real heroes. Astarion does not keep company with them. There are only monsters and those fool enough to show mercy to them.
Astarion presses his cold, dead hand against Wyll’s brow. Wyll clutches it there like a penance, like a lifeline.
Astarion’s mercy keeps him breathing through the night.