FSBE 67 - Walk of Shame
The rogue's hearing is quite good.
On AO3.
The little beast of a cleric keeps glaring at him. When she’s not moping at their leader like a disappointed grandmama whose only heir just stumbled home with an illiterate cowherd and a signed marriage contract.
Astarion pretends not to notice. Laps up her disapproval like a cat with a bowl of fresh cream.
Eleanor feigns ignorance for a time. Up until she sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose, and says, “I told you it ain’t what it looked like.”
The look on the cleric’s face when he emerged from his friend’s tent. He made a show of tucking his shirt back in. Made sure to give her a wave and a “good morning, darlings!” as he sauntered back to his own cold, empty tent.
That his friend will soon be sleeping in (warming up).
The cleric doesn’t stop walking, though it’s a near thing. They’re crunching along over the detritus of a long-finished slaughter, the hallway dim. He’s getting bored.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” the cleric says far too lightly to mean anything but the opposite.
“We ain’t like that,” his friend says. Steps closer to the Sharran and in a lower tone, “He needs a friend.”
Oh, she thinks he can’t hear her. How adorable. It helps that he’s fighting the screaming, tormented ghosts swarming about the necromancy tome. It makes him look distracted. Lets him drop a few eaves.
He teases dearest Eleanor, and she him. Because they’re friends. Because that’s something they can do with each other without anything hurting.
But now she’s taking the cleric into her confidence—and by extension, into his—and he finds himself tracking the next words more closely than a rat in the kennels.
“And you?” the cleric says. “Is that what he is to you?”
Now he’s focused.
His friend goes quiet a moment. A long moment. The book creaks ominously in his hands and he has to remind himself not to grip it so tightly. Cracking the spine in half might break whatever unholy magic it contains. And should a swarm of ghosts appear to try to consume their souls, all of them will be cross with him.
Dearest Eleanor is silent long enough the cleric starts to frown.
His friend cannot have that. Most certainly not. “I care about all y’all. Like, a lot. I’m not…real good at social stuff all the time. It feels, I dunno, presumptuous to call anybody that. It’s, one of my issues.”
Well, of course she has those. Who would ever be mad enough to offer friendship to a vampire spawn? Even one as world-endingly beautiful as him? Spawn are nothing but an extension of the lord that created them. Nothing but a tool or a weapon should that lord command it.
“Issues a vampire might take advantage of?” the cleric says, because she also knows how the world works. Even if those words wrap cold fingers around his dead heart.
But Eleanor. Oh, that disapproval. The disappointment of an entire patriar household in the single furrow of a brow. The soul-crushing disappointment in the flat stare, as if her sole heir left a barely legible note stating their intention to run off and join a pirate crew.
“He’s—y’all—are more than that. It ain’t fair to bust him down to only one part. Especially not when you know other people’d do the same to you about your goddess.”
Now his chest feels like it may burst. Not even in pain, just a spray of the memory of warmth mixed with globs of dead blood and necrotic organs.
“That,” the cleric starts. Stops. “He hurt you. I just want to make sure you’re certain. I’ve seen what happens when it goes badly for you.”
That vicious little wretch. He should have stabbed her a dozen times now. She’s half-elf, biir. She knows Astarion can hear her. She wants him to hear her. His first and only friend, and she’s trying to, what, warn Eleanor off? Convince her to reconsider?
She…is telling the truth, however.
He does tend to make Eleanor weep.
But that was before. They’re friends, now. He told her everything. They’re finding where they stand and she’s going to his tent to play a game or two, and he’s hurt others, yes, he’s a vampire spawn and nothing but a puppet.
But. He’s not now, is he? Under orders. It, her, everything, they’re all his choice, now. What he does, what he says, how that impacts her. That’s all, entirely, upon his head. Should he hurt her again, it will be his choice. His actions. Not Cazador. Not following orders. Just him, the man who’s never had a morning after, a second day.
A friend.
A whole other person who glances back at him as he pretends to read, and who leans in to her companion to say, “I’m pretty sure any human—er, person—relationship is like that. But I. I wanna try.”
Just. Just saying things like that. It’s atrocious. Disgusting. If the wrong person hears she’ll be punished. He’ll be punished.
She can’t just go peering through his dead skin to see what’s withered in there and, and just say it like that. For anyone to hear.
He wanted something real. He wants something real.
And so does she, apparently.
It warms him, even as the familiar terror creeps up the back of his neck to sink talons into the base of his skull.
***
Naturally, he allows the cleric’s hilarious failures cheer him up.
He’s reclined on the floor, his back to a half-crumbled wall in the first mystical chamber of Shar’s tests. The Necromancy of Thay sits open in his lap. His friend sits a hand’s-width away, right leg folded as she rotates her left foot back and forth. Rebuilding snapped sinews and all. What a chore for the living.
Before them, the gith runs through her sword drills over and over again. Astarion is fairly certain were she not, she’d be attempting to tear someone’s limbs off, and he’s not entirely sure she’d be particular about her target.
A flash of purple light. His friend pulls her left leg in reflexively (he doesn’t) as a body appears some four feet off the ground and smashes on the ancient, stone tiles. It’s always about four feet up. Not far enough to cause real damage, but high enough to hurt. How very Sharran.
Astarion licks his finger—no point in wearing gloves just now, as he can almost see the shapes of words around the damned ghostly wailing when he touches it with bare skin—and turns a page.
“Caught again?” he says, not bothering to look up.
The cleric lies as she landed a moment. Her eyes are squeezed shut, brow furrowed in pain or frustration, he doesn’t really care. It’s nice to see her humiliated for once. Though he knows better than to let that glee show.
Only. Eleanor just looks at their fallen comrade. Then lets her eyes fall shut and her head thunk against the wall.
He. Well. He can’t blame her. There’s nothing to be done. He offered to sneak through the trial (sort of offered, more of a jab at the half-elf’s ability to sneak anywhere in that kit). But the cleric refused him: I must prove myself to my Dark Lady (Eleanor gave him a look over the exaggerated mimic) (though she was also fighting a smile).
“This is foolish,” the gith says. “You forsake your allies going into battle.”
She means herself, obviously. Those two have been getting close. Oh, they both pretend not to. They must keep up appearances, after all, and they hated each other at the start.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t pathetic.
But the cleric has crawled into an oubliette of her own making. Says, “I am more than capable of proving myself to my Dark Lady.”
He elbows his friend and wiggles his eyebrows.
The cleric catches that. Turns her glare to him. “Oh? What insightful commentary might you have?”
“Nothing at all, darling,” he says. Turns another page. “You seem to be doing well on your own.”
She’s been caught by the phantoms patrolling the maze three times now. They don’t harm her, aside from dropping her precisely four feet from the floor.
Her glare narrows.
“Don’t mind him,” his friend says. “This ain’t about him. You’ll find the way as long as you don’t get distracted. I wish you’d let us watch your stuff, though.”
If the phantoms aren’t tearing her flesh, there’s no reason for all the armor. Or the shield. Or the mace. Or even her pack.
“I appreciate the offer,” the half-elf says so stiffly he might question her bowel movements. “I do. And thank you.”
But she will not accept advice or assistance. An oubliette of her own making.
She stalks back to the door on the right (the left has a much better vantage point, but since he was the one to state that, she’s refusing to take it) (her loss). She slips inside. Leaving them all bored and idle.
Until the gith turns to Eleanor, face pinched just shy of a snarl, and says, “Explain yourself.”
