#vampire spawns

Aurelia follows him to stand a few feet away from Astarion. She no longer looks at him, her gaze glued to the floor until Cazador snaps his fingers. She lifts her head and stares at the horrible display happening in the middle of the room.

A woman. Long silver hair, struggling in shackles on the ground while Godey presses his foot on her back, keeping her in place.

Astarion can almost feel his master's poisonous smile behind him.

“Do you recognize her, boy?”

It takes a few seconds for Astarion to realize Cazador is talking to him.

Anxiously, he focuses on the fragile frame in front of him.

She has stopped struggling the moment Cazador started talking.

Her hair is half hiding her face but from where he stands, Astarion can tell she’s an elf. Just like him. Just like what he used to be… And she’s staring at him with a face that expresses nothing but shock and fear.

“Astarion….” She whispers. “Alive… You’re alive?”

The young vampire spawn tries to step back, but his back hits Cazador's unmovable frame.

“Do you recognize her?” He asks again, insisting on every syllable.

Astarion’s memories are blurred.

The face looks somehow familiar, but everything from his life before seems so far away, already unreachable.

“It cannot be… we buried you three weeks ag-“ before the woman can finish her sentence, Godey kicks her in the face.

Aurelia tenses. Astarion gasps.

Cazador’s grip on his shoulder tightens painfully; a warning.

The master doesn’t want to repeat his question a third time. Despite the growing anxiety burning in his guts, the young vampire spawn tries to focus on the face, those pleading golden eyes staring at him in painful silence. 

He knows those eyes.

He has always known them.

Mother.

The word rings in his mind with grievous echoes. Since the night Astarion woke up in that coffin, he hasn’t really given her a second thought, memories from his past obliterated by the thick darkness of death. And even during the rare moments of calm, when he can lie on the shabby mattress iin the dormitory, his mind and body are so overwhelmed by hunger that he doesn’t try to remember his life. It doesn’t even occur to him.

Is it what being a vampire spawn means? A heartless creature with no tie with the livings, no tie with the person he was when he was alive.

An uncomfortable feeling washes over Astarion, something between confusion and self-loathing, and only the iron grip of Cazador on his shoulder keeps him from falling to his knees. His legs are shaking, and before Astarion can realize it, his own hands are reaching out in the direction of his mother.

“Astarion…” she cries once more, tears of pain, of relief, of confusion and fear rolling down her cheeks. “Please tell me what’s happening!”

Godey is about to strike her again when Cazador raises his free hand to stop him. With a low groan, the skeleton obeys.

“Answer her.” commands Cazador’s voice behind him.

Astarion’s eyes are moving in every direction. He doesn’t know the answer, has no idea what’s happening.

“Please master, let her go…” He finds himself pleading quietly.

Cazador’s reply comes immediately: his hand moves from his spawn’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, where he seizes him violently, sharp fingernail dinging into the tender flesh. Astarion lets out a whine, which earns him a 'pathetic boy', before Cazador shoves him down on the ground right in front of his mother.

Almost face to face, a few inches away from each other.

She looks into his eyes, and something in her face shifts.

She sees him for what he is now.

No longer alive.

Not dead either.

Undead.

“No….” She whispers, new tears falling down her delicate features.

“I’m sorry, mother…”

Astarion can almost feel Cazador’s delight dripping down onto him, coating him with shame. “So you do remember. Good.” Says his cold voice.

Everything blurs again.

There are still voices, mostly Cazador’s, but also cries and begging. Astarion cannot decipher any word. Everything is fading as if his mind wanted to keep itself away.

When the light comes back, Astarion is still on the ground, kneeling, and the smell of blood is intoxicating.

It takes him a few seconds before he can process it, but the coppery scent makes it hard to focus.

Cazador is standing in front of him, smirking gleefully, and the expression on his face is almost enough to make Astarion feel sick. Behind his master, Aurelia looks horrified, and it’s clear that she is holding back gasps and tears. As for Astarion, he’s slowly realizing that his own cheeks are wet with tears, and his throat is sore, as if he had been screaming for hours.

His main arm is painful too, strained.

There’s something in his hand. But he doesn’t dare to look down, keeping his eyes on this master’s infuriating smirk instead.

It’s only when he hears Godey snickering behind him that Astarion pulls himself out of this silent but anxious contemplation.

It’s a knife.

He’s holding a knife.

His fingers begin to shake uncontrollably, and the blade falls, but never reaches the floor. The little thud he hears is not that of steel against wood. It's that of steel against something softer... fabric, flesh.

He doesn’t want to look down.

The smell of blood is too heavy.

Are his own clothes covered with it? His own skin?

No, he won’t look down at whatever lies between he and Cazador.

He can’t.

“Good boy.” His master coes. And he steps away, heading to his office. “Get rid of the corpse, Godey. And you, aurelia, take your brother back to the dormitory.”

“Yes, master.” She nods, her voice so low and fragile that Astarion barely recognizes it. Her gaze moves to meet his eyes, but at the word 'corpse', Astarion knows he won’t be able to keep himself from looking down.

Slowly lowering his gaze, he bites his lip.

There she is.

Dead.

His mother’s body bleeding heavily, stabbed in the chest and stomach repeatedly.

And he... he is drenched in blood.

Her blood.

“Come on, Astarion. We must leave” Aurelia whispers.

But he barely hears her. He stares at his mother’s body, at his own work, at her horrified, dead face, her eyes wide open, frozen in time, as if she just saw… a monster.

Astarion is paralyzed. Only his stomach is spasming with disgust and nausea, but it’s too empty to let anything out.

Godey reaches down and grabs her ankles, already dragging the lifeless body away, but Astarion is quicker, and instinctively, he hurls himself down on the corpse with an almost animalistic groan.  

“Let go, sweet boy!” Snarls the undead servant. “You did a good job and had your fun, but the party’s over now!”

Unable to sob, unable to speak or cry or even whine, Astarion clings desperately to his mother’s body, smearing his face with her now cold blood. He can‘t even smell her perfume. The scent of death and blood and guts too intense for it to stand out.

And then comes a sharp kick on his own face. He can hear his bone cracking under the chock, followed by Godey’s cruel laughter. “Get the damn out of my way, boy.”

Astarion lies on the floor as he feels the body slip away from him. One of his hands is still clinging to her dress, ripping through the fabric as the Godey drags her away.

“The master wants us gone, Astarion. Get up.”

He wakes up with a cry.

His throat is still burning and his whole body shaking, legs entangled in the soft bedsheets.

“Astarion…”

A gentle voice beside him.

But he keeps his eyes shut tight, afraid of what he might find if he opens them.

“It’s alright, dearest. You’re safe.”

Astarion is progressively regaining consciousness: No smell of blood or death. He’s not wearing a blood-soaked shirt, and beneath him, instead of the hard wooden floor, he can feel a soft mattress. Godey’s snickers and Aurelia’s request are gone too, replaced by the now familiar, gentle voice of someone he can trust.

Safe. He’s safe.

If he opens his eyes, he won’t see any corpse.

No corpse. Just the cosy room they are renting these days. Heavy curtains on the window. And their beautiful face staring worryingly at him. They don’t touch him, they know they shouldn’t when he’s like this. They’re waiting patiently. As they always do.

Gratefulness is not strong enough to describe how Astarion feels about it.

“What time is it?” He asks carelessly, as if to change the matter.

“Late in the morning, the sun is already high in the sky.”

Astarion nods. No fresh air for him before tonight.

A moment of hesitation, during which Astarion realizes that he’s still trembling. He places a hand on his naked chest, almost expecting to hear a grounding heartbeat that is no longer here. That has not been there for more than two hundred years.

He needs grounding.

Reaching out, seeking comfort in their skin, in their scent. That’s what Astarion wants now. He grabs their arm, roughly, more than he intended, and presses his face against their collarbone.

"Another nightmare?” They ask quietly as their fingers start to slowly run through his silver locks.

“No, not a nightmare.”

Their heartbeat is slow, soothing. Their skin, warm. Their touch ever so soft. He breathes with them, no matter if he actually needs it or not.

“… A memory. Lost for too long.”

They nod and wrap an arm around him. “Want to talk about it?”

A fleeting hesitation. Not so long ago, Astarion would have withdrawn, keeping it all for himself. He would have answered with an acrid retort and pretended everything is fine. He still does sometimes.

But as their fingertips keep on moving slowly against his scalp, brushing through his hair, he knows he doesn’t have to do this anymore. “Will you listen…?”

“Always.”

“Will you judge me?”