Me: I shouldn't disturb Neil Gaiman. I shouldn't send an ask unless I really have no way of getting the information otherwise. I'll check old interviews and all the articles that vaguely mention the subject. Of course it goes without saying that I'll read though the FAQ in its entirety. Only then, will I send an ask. However, I'd be very polite and praise his work, as anyone would. I'd also keep it short, because I don't want to waste his time. But I'd keep it very very respectful. I'd be sending a message to a very talented, amazing author that deals with god knows how many like me. Or I'd just stay in the dark and not send him an ask. Yeah, I'll do that.
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Unfortunately this month hasn't been great for me so I haven't contributed much, but SpawNovember is such a fun event and it's been so cool to see what people have created! I love this community! (Thank you @oona-radiant-hopeful for organizing this!)
I wanted to at least contribute a little something, even if I didn't have a plan. This piece turned out almost like a poem, given the style. A little rambly and experimental, but it's what came to mind when I thought of the prompt.
How many times had Astarion died? How many graves might bear his name?
First there was the boy: Astarion. He had gone by a softer name, then, now forgotten. Some affectionate diminutive that suited the child's round face and bright, grey eyes. He was a dancing of silver light like morning sun through leaves. He died slowly, as summer dies and fades into the autumn of adulthood.
There was Astarion the man, magistrate of Baldur's Gate. He walked with his head high, clothes sharp and tongue sharper. The dreams of the child hardened into the ambitions of the man, wild curls tamed and styled with a careful touch. His ashen eyes still shone with belief in the world—in himself. He died bloodless in the arms of a monster.
Then there was Astarion the vampire spawn. The slave. Huddled in the corner of a kennel with a putrid rat clasped to his mouth as if in prayer, eyes bleeding red. Eternally colder than the steel chains that bit into his wrists. Eternally hungrier than the gazes of the people he was made to charm. He was an unwilling ferryman ushering them in endless parade across the river of death. That man died in the silence of a coffin.
It was perhaps his truest death, for then there was no Astarion. Only a useable facsimile, a ghost dragged from a stone box and made to feign life again. And how well he pretended, for so long. He did not die, for dead things cannot die.
Suddenly unbound and blind in the sunlight, that ghost forced on the mask of Astarion the adventurer. Astarion the rogue. Astarion the man being pulled in two by a heart that dared to start beating again. He sought to live, truly live, through whatever violence he must. He was still that ghost desperate to be solid again. To touch the world. To feel and not just hurt. He didn't realize at first when he started doing so all on his own. On the lips of those who loved him, his name sounded like that of a living man again. The darkest, agonized, most afraid piece of Astarion died weeping as it stabbed that old monster to death. Died when the blade slipped from his hand.
Now, there is Astarion. At last, just Astarion. Astarion who could be a hero, a leader, or anything he chose.
Astarion watched all those men who carried his name as they lay to rest one by one, and realized that he was himself a graveyard. There was a time when he would have hated the dead men within him—spat on the slave's grave and sneered at the naivety of the child. There were times when he couldn't even face the looming figures of these grave markers, in shame and fear and grief. Times when he refused to accept that they were all still part of him, that dead things cannot die.
Now, he tenderly brushes dead willow leaves from the headstones, and cares for the pale flowers that grow like a bed of stars around them. He lays his palm upon the stone and prays to no god but himself that each of him rests peacefully. He does it even on hard nights when cold rain saturates the grave soil and color drains from the garden. While friends can visit and place blossoms on the graves in remembrance and love, they cannot not do this work for him.
Astarion hasn't feared death for a long time, but for the first time in an age, he doesn't fear life, either. He is sure Astarion will die again, just as he is sure he will live again. Again, many times over. And what greater freedom is there than the ability to be reborn? To choose who he will be the next time he claws out of the grave?
Undeath is his art, and he is a portrait of a graveyard in bloom.
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Okay!! While I finish my one shot for the Sun week of spawNovember, I realised that I actually have something I can share for the Graveyard week (or, re-share, rather)
So here's the graveyard scene pulled out from one of my already published chapters, and totally readable as a standalone (if you follow the AO3 link you'll get the full chapter though, but skip to the end if you want only the graveyard)
Thanks @oona-radiant-hopeful for the event! :) (and sorry I'm publishing things out of schedule hahaha)
Rating: Teen & up (sex is fade to black)
Pairing: Astarion/m!Durge (Storm)
Word count: 2K (full chapter is 6K on AO3)
CW: None, but my Dark Urge is doomed, just so you are aware, so this is still a bit angsty 🥲
Read on AO3, or under the cut
Astarion hadn't anticipated the gates of the old cemetery would be locked. But in the middle of the night, it really shouldn't have been a surprise. Good thing he always carried at least one set of lock-picks. He started working on the latch, not even sheltered by the darkness of the night. The moon was out, unlike a few days before, and the streets well lit. Thankfully, no one in their right mind ever visited a graveyard at this hour.
No one but a vampire and his lover.
Storm chuckled as the gate clicked open under Astarion's tools. "Stereotypical, much?"
"Hah! Hardly. I haven't set foot in this place in two hundred years, thank you very much. As far as romantic dates go, you're the first one I ever take grave sighting."
"Can't imagine why. It's such a charming setting."
Astarion smirked at Storm's teasing. After so much silence between them, the past couple of days of shared banter had felt surprisingly natural. And oh so good. He bowed dramatically as he pushed the gate open, just enough to let them both in. "After you, darling."
"You know I could have flown us over the wall, right?"
"Yes, but this is more fun."
Storm hummed what Astarion supposed was agreement, since his lover had let him struggle with the lock.
Inside, he led Storm to a grave that should have probably been familiar, but that he hadn't seen in two centuries. His own. In the spirit of redefining painful memories, he had wanted to bring Storm to a place that held nothing but fear and regret.
"Is it…?"
"Yes. It was mine. Is mine, still, I suppose."
"Hm. Ancunín." Storm rolled the name around his tongue, the elven consonants not quite right on his lips, and Astarion found himself smiling fondly.
It took him a few minutes to clear the headstone, overrun by vegetation. The stone underneath had cracked in many places, weathered by the elements and decades of neglect. Storm knelt in front of Astarion's empty grave, and once the stone had been entirely freed of the vines, Astarion joined him. The faint smile on Storm's face had vanished, sadness the only thing left in his eyes.
"You were so young."
Astarion looked at the dates etched into the stone, the sharp edges lost to time just as surely as his memories were. The recognition of what had been done to him, an entire lifetime robbed before he'd even reached his fortieth year, somehow soothed him a little. He had been young.
"I was born again, here, once," he said. "Clawing my way out of the ground through six feet of dirt."
He could still feel it, two centuries later. Soil cluttering underneath his fingernails in clumps that had taken days to clean. His knuckles, bloody from the hole he had punched in the coffin. Then earth filling his lungs, because he hadn't known he didn't need to breathe, and the panicked instinct had been too strong to fight.
"I knew I had made a mistake the moment I saw him waiting for me and he ordered me to stand, once I was done retching cold earth and congealed blood. From this point own, I was his, entirely. True death stopped being an option for me. And yet, I left such a big part of me down there, in the ground, I might as well have been truly dead."
Nothing had belonged to him after that. Not even his own body.
"I don't think you were ever his," said Storm. "What he took, he took by force."
"Perhaps. But he did take it."
"And you took it back."
"Did I? There's almost nothing left of the person I was."
"But you are still an entire person, my love. Everybody changes, none of us are the same today as we were ten or twenty years ago. I know that better than anyone. The only thing that man ever truly took away from you was your freedom."
"The beat of my heart?"
"I will give you mine. It beats loud enough for two."
"The sun?"
"You still might get it. Who knows?"
"Mh. One can hope."
"So, yes. Your freedom was what he took. And you have that, now."
Unlike me. The unspoken words hung heavy. But there was nothing but tenderness in Storm's voice, his tone peaceful, despite the raging battle Astarion knew was always taking place in his mind. Not a trace of bitterness.
"How does it feel? To be free?"
Yes, Storm was a better man than he was. If it had been him, condemned to servitude and madness until the deliverance of death came, he wasn't sure he would have it in him to ask such a thing with kindness instead of envy.
Tentatively, he brushed his fingers against Storm's, not quite intertwining them. Everything would be his, now. All of it. The good, and the bad. Every choice, and all of their consequences. The weight of that responsibility was a terrifying one, after two hundred years of mindless obedience.
"It's exhilarating. And… a little scary if I'm being honest." Part of him felt wretched, to dare admit his fear in the face of this wonderful thing his lover would never have. But lying to Storm was a thing he never wanted to do, ever again. So he offered the ugly sincerity of his weakness, because he knew Storm would accept it. "I can do what I want, now. I just… have to figure out what that means."
"Well, one step at a time, darling. What do you want right now?"
The answer came so fast, so naturally. In this moment, there was only one thing he truly wanted. "You. I want you."
Storm said nothing, but this was a dance Astarion knew well by now.
I am dangerous, Astarion. What if I hurt you?
He found Storm's eyes, stark in the darkness of the night, the only spots of colour his darkvision allowed him to see, in this moment.
"Tell me you do not want this, and we'll stop."
"I do want this. I do. You already know I do." Storm's electric blue eyes searched his face, and gentle fingers came to brush his cheekbone. "But… I will die, eventually. I refuse to let him win, but the only way out for me will be death. I think you know that already."
"I— Yes. I know." He swallowed down the pain gathering at the back of his throat and leaned into the touch that was offered. "We cannot have forever. That doesn't mean we cannot have now." Astarion turned his head to kiss Storm's wrist, feeling the gentle pulse under his lips. "What better rebellion than to choose to enjoy the little life we can have?"
Storm choked on what could have been laughter just as well as tears. "I knew I was going to hurt you, eventually."
"Darling, please. I can take a bit of pain. I have practice." He took a deep breath, taking in the scent of Storm's blood, the faint coppery smell that lingered on his skin like air after lightning struck. "I want to live. I want to live, Storm. And I want to do it with you, while we still can. If that's not what you want as well, then… I will accept it. But if you do, then please don't take that choice away from me. I'm not scared of you. I'm not afraid of us."
He wanted to choose hope, and life, but he knew he couldn't do it alone. This was Storm's choice, just as much as his own. Storm's hand left his face to seek Astarion's own fingers, and Astarion played with Storm's index ring while he waited for his lover's choice.
"Alright," Storm said softly. "Alright, let's try. Let's see how much life I can give you, before the end."
The intensity of the warmth that sparked in his chest would have been enough to scare him, a few months ago. Now, he let it spread all the way down his spine, and until his fingertips tingled with it. He rose on his knees and shuffled closer to be able to look down in his lover's eyes, cupped Storm's face, and nuzzled the tip of his nose.
"I love you," he said.
It might have been the first time he'd said it. It didn't feel like a first time, though. Too natural for that. Storm's arms closed around his waist in a tight embrace, and he rested his head on Astarion's chest, as if listening for a heartbeat that was not here.
"I love you, too," came the answer.
Son of Bhaal, condemned to madness. Murder incarnate. And the safest embrace Astarion had even known.
"Well. I should probably fix this, then." Astarion gestured in the vague direction of his grave with one hand, still nestled in Storm's arms. He planted a kiss on the tip of one horn, the silver lying in all the cracks of the bone cool on his lips. "I rather hope that being born yet again today will hurt less than last time."
Storm let him go, and Astarion took his time, carving the year into the stone with his dagger, the new jagged cuts stark next to the faded old ones. Once he was done, he turned back to find Storm staring at the headstone, a slight smile on his lips.
"What is it?"
"You know I'm thirty-nine?"
"You are?"
Storm nodded. "At least from what I can remember, now. I thought I might be way older. I was once a Chosen, after all, and they do tend to age… well, differently. But no. Only thirty-nine. It's almost poetic, isn't it? I'm going to die the same age you did."
Despite himself, Astarion did find it rather poetic. "Who's a romantic now, hm?"
"Ugh. Gods. Please. Let's stop this."
"You started it, darling."
Astarion's fingers trailed a path down Storm's neck, toying with the half open neckline of his shirt, icy skin grazing a warm collarbone just enough to send shivers running wild. He wanted warmth, life and laughter. All of that which had so often been taken from him. Now so close.
"Shall we have sex, my love?"
"I— Do you want to?"
"Why else would I be offering?"
Storm nibbled at his lip slightly, and Astarion had to resist the urge to kiss him there himself, and bite hard enough to draw blood. He was still waiting for Storm's answer, he could wait five seconds before being greedy.
"Yes. I think I'd like that. If you want to."
"I could be persuaded," Astarion said cheekily.
Storm cocked his head at him, the ghost of a smirk on his face. "Certainly would be an improvement on the night?"
Astarion grinned back as the words he had spoken that first night they had shared were returned to him. "Something like that."
Not that this night needed much improvement. But why turn down warmth and pleasure, when it was what both of them wanted?
He could never erase the pain of what had been done to him here, two hundred years ago. But he could make sure that night shared with Storm would always be the first one on his mind whenever he thought of this place. A night of shared joy, rather than a night of pain and fear.
"Let's go slow," Storm said.
"Yes. Let's."
Astarion leaned into the warmth of his lover, kissed the lips that had been tempting him all night long, and Storm lounged back on the ground so that Astarion ended lying on top of him.
"The first time we did this, it was for you to forget," Astarion said, and Storm chuckled.
"I never forgot, though."
"Hah! No, of course not. Not with me." He rested his forehead against Storm's once more. Nuzzled his cheek. "It still was what I offered. For you to forget. But this? This is for me to remember."
And with a kiss, he sealed his choice, trusting that hope would be worth it.
How I wish I had enough time to make art for this scene <3 One day, one day. Maybe.
