[open] my little misbegotten, you're quite a stubborn bud

[vampires_pawn]

WHO: Astarion and YOU! (plus closed starters for Molly, Vanessa, and potentially others)
WHAT: Astarion reaps an angry witch's vengeance in the form of several weeks of psychic torture, culminating in a final confrontation. Plus some other catch-all threads!
WHERE: Around the city
WHEN: November
WARNINGS: Physical and psychological torture, references to past abuse, hallucinations, panic, suicidal ideation.

i. we will plant brambles in your bed (greenhouse)

[ Astarion knows, theoretically, that anyone could show up in this place; more often than not, it’s not a comforting thought. At least, he tells himself, it’s not very likely that anyone he actually knows will end up here. The city pulls in only a handful of new captives each month, from such diverse lands and realms that the chance of Astarion seeing anyone else from the Sword Coast, much less someone from Baldur’s Gate must be vanishingly small.

(That it might be one incomparably dreadful vampire lord in particular is even more infinitesimal.)

That’s not to say he doesn’t keep an eye out, if not necessarily for anyone he knows, then at least for someone useful. And as it turns out, when Astarion does finally catch a glimpse of someone familiar, it’s someone who fulfills both categories—someone he’d met only briefly, aboard the same illithid ship that had freed him from his master’s control. ]

Shadowheart?

[ He stares incredulously at the figure standing a ways away outside the greenhouse. It’s the same dour face, the same foreboding armor and even more foreboding mace on her back, facing the glass door with a distant expression. She doesn’t seem to have heard Astarion, not judging by the way she slips into the building without any acknowledgment of him at all. Either that or he’d made an even worse first impression on her all those weeks ago than he’d thought.

Regardless, he’s not going to just let her disappear into this city without a trace. He chases after her, towards the greenhouse entrance. ]

Shadowheart! Slow down for gods’ sake!

[ The last time he’d seen Shadowheart, they’d both survived an impossible fall after having illithid worms shoved into their skulls. She’d told him they needed to find a healer—and then he’d woken up here. Had she found one, he wonders? Or had she at least learned what the little maggots even are? He steps into the greenhouse just as he sees the cleric disappearing past the thorned foliage down the leftward path, just a few meters ahead of him. By all rights, unless she’d broken into a dead sprint or cast a hasty invisibility spell, she should be right there when he turns the corner. But as he steps among the curling vines, there’s no figure there waiting for him—nor any sign of anyone having been there at all. ]

Shadowh—ow!

[ He remembers, belatedly, the kind of plants that inhabit this part of the greenhouse. An opportunistic vine snags a wrist, thorns digging in and drawing blood. Astarion wrenches his arm away, eyes still casting around as he searches for the wayward cleric. ]

ii. you won’t know what will hit you next (around the city, cw: panic, allusions to sex trafficking)

[ He doesn’t see Shadowheart again after that. Which is just as well, because he very quickly comes to find that he has plenty of reason not to trust his senses.

The visions start small. So small, they’re easy to dismiss. A flash of familiarity as he passes someone on the street, that evaporates just as quickly upon a second glance. A whisper that makes him turn his head, only to find no one there. Sometimes, he thinks he hears his name. Sometimes, he thinks he hears laughter. He can never quite pinpoint the source, but then, this city has already shown its penchant for little tricks. He does his best to ignore the mysterious signs, loath to give this place the satisfaction of unnerving him.

Yet, as the month wears on, the visions become more frequent—and more intense. He begins to recognize those flashes of faces—faces from taverns, alleyways, brothels. The faces of those he lured to Cazador, faces that leer or glare or sob, and then are gone the second Astarion looks again. During these times, one might notice Astarion staring at them wide-eyed, as if he’s seen a ghost. Worse still are those times he thinks he sees Cazador himself. Those times, he looks as if he’s seen something far, far worse.

And still, the sightings escalate. Eventually, they are no longer mere flashes of faces—they are full-bodied apparitions.

A former victim stands on the street corner, eyes locked with his in an accusing stare. A gaggle of bloodied children follow him for several blocks, apparently unseen by anyone else. One morning, he wakes to a corpse in bed beside him, weeping.

He avoids sleep where he can help it after that.

Sometimes, the figures are silent. Sometimes, they confront him. They don’t seem to be able to actually touch him, thank the gods, but they can get in his space, scream and threaten and accuse. When it all gets to be too much, one might even catch sight of Astarion screaming back. ]

And if you hadn’t been such a fucking fool, maybe you’d still be alive! [ His teeth are bared, but his eyes are pained, anguished. ] At least you got your pleasure in the end, didn’t you?

[ Of course, when the visions take the shape of Cazador, it’s another matter entirely. At those times, one might see Astarion freeze in place, eyes fixed with inutterable dread on the approach of some invisible figure. Sometimes, he maintains enough control of himself to run, and afterwards one might find him hiding in the shadowiest corner or closet he can find, eyes wide, breathing hard.

At other times, his legs fail him. His knees hit the ground and he kneels there, trembling, before his master. ]

iii. just close your eyes and count to ten (around the city, cw: torture)

[ The pain follows the same pattern: starting small and easy to ignore, and rapidly escalating in severity. At first, it’s just an occasional headache or the slightest irritation prickling at the scars on his back—annoying, but nothing Astarion hasn’t dealt with before.

It’s about the time the visions worsen that the pain does, too. The scars begin to ache in a way they haven’t done in decades, and the headaches build until they’re nauseating, and then until they’re blinding. Astarion begins to hide from the sunlight he so loves, trying to avoid setting them off. It doesn’t help. One can find him in dark rooms and corners, a tight grimace of pain on his face, fingers rubbing circles against his temples.

At other times, it’s not his head that hurts, but his cold, dead heart. Most of the time, it’s simply an ache, not dissimilar to the one in his skull. Later in the month, though, it’s something far more dire: the feeling of a fist curling around his heart and squeezing. Astarion hasn’t needed to breathe in centuries, but now he coughs and gasps, clutching at his chest as smooth, slender fingers crush the un-life from his heart.

Sometimes, the pain lasts for just a few seconds. Sometimes, it lasts for far longer. The worse it becomes along with the visions, the more time Astarion spends locked in his room, as if he can hide from whatever force has decided to make him its plaything. Maybe it doesn’t help—maybe the pain is just as bad and maybe the visions just as terrifying, but at least here, there’s no one to see it. No one to take advantage of it. Still, sometimes it can’t be helped. He has to leave sometimes, even if just to restock on blood, and it’s then that he seems to suffer worst of all.

He’s in a smaller store when it happens for the first time. He’s searching the aisles, trying to move quickly and purposefully to finish this errand, eyes darting and alert for any signs of his spectral tormentors. His vigilance doesn’t save him. One moment, he is in the City, with its buildings of glass and steel and its strange, buzzing white lights—

And the next, he feels his face press against cold, rough stone as a knee digs hard into the small of his back. There’s an all-too-familiar weight pressing against him, an all-too-familiar whisper in his ear. ’Hold still now, boy. You only make it worse for yourself when you struggle.’

There is no time to brace, no time to cry out. The blade presses down, cold at first and then erupting into agonizing heat as Cazador drives it into his flesh. His master sighs, in ecstasy or contempt, Astarion can’t tell, and Astarion chokes back the screams in his throat, wishing that the bastard would just tell him not to scream, he wouldn’t scream if Cazador just told him not to, and then he wouldn’t have to start over, again and again and again.

Astarion can feel every slow, excruciating whorl, every jagged angle and flourish. He is already on his stomach, immobilized by Cazador’s command. It makes no sense that he can still feel another body, a million realms away in an impossible city, collapsing to the floor, that he can feel it writhing against cold tile even as he lies obedient and still under Cazador’s blade, his master carving poetry into his back.

And yet, all the same: back in the city, his body still moves, driven by some long ingrained instinct to survive. To flee. To hide. Drags itself blindly across the floor until it finds a corner and cannot drag itself any further, then curls up as tightly as it can so as to remain unseen. There it stays as Astarion’s mind remains trapped within the memory, eyes screwed shut tight, one hand pressing hard into his mouth to stifle his own screams. Screaming only ever made it worse. ]

iv. the gardener's coming to collect (closed to Vanessa, cw: suicidal ideation)

[ It goes on for weeks: the pain. The visions. The nightmares. Astarion wishes he could believe that it was just another of the city's tricks. He wishes he could believe that it would stop. But he knows better. He knows what this is.

When Cazador finally appears to give him his orders, he can't even find it in himself to be surprised.

It happens after he's woken from another nightmare, another night spent starving and mad and still inside a stone coffin. He'd rolled out of bed. Stepped into the common room. And there his master was, waiting for him.

"Oh, Astarion," his master tuts. "You really thought you'd gotten away, didn't you? Such an ungrateful child..."

Astarion says nothing. All the terror, all the pain of the past several weeks and now, all he can feel is cold, bleak resignation. His master goes on.

"These past few weeks have disabused you of that notion, have they not?" Cazador glides closer. A spectral hand is laid on Astarion's shoulder and it takes everything in him not to flinch. "Never forget: you are mine. Even here, even now." Astarion can hear the smile in his master's voice. "But I am nothing if not merciful. Even to a wretch like you."

The hand lifts from his shoulder and resettles atop his head. Suddenly, Astarion is no longer in his room. He is moving swiftly through city streets, guided by an unseen hand, one that leads him to an sprawling labyrinth of a building, and then down, down, through long dark corridors flanked by dead machines. And then, just as suddenly, he is back in his room, his master still standing over him.

"You will meet me there and seek penance for your transgression. Show me contrition, and I may forgive you yet." His master leans in, his next words no more than a hiss in Astarion's ear. "Do not keep me waiting."

And then Astarion is alone in his room once more.

Despite his master's final warning, Astarion finds that, for several minutes, he can't move all. He simply stands and stares into the darkness, feeling the freedom he's only just tasted slipping away from him, feels the heavy black cage of the past two centuries bearing down on him once more. For one mad moment, he thinks of escape. He doesn't need a weapon; this city has plenty of high spires and towers, and a vampire spawn like him needs nothing but a high enough fall to end his undeath.

But he knows just as surely as anyone else here: it won't last. And more surely than that: whatever punishment Cazador has in store for him, he can make it so, so much worse if Astarion defies him now. He is already making it worse for himself, standing here waiting. He cannot think. He cannot mourn. All he can do is obey.

And do he does. He makes his way out of his room and onto the streets, following the vision from before and feeling... nothing. Nothing at all. His feet seem to move of their own accord and he falls back into the same thoughtless obedience he's known for centuries.

How foolish of him, to think that he'd ever escaped. ]

Comments

(closed to kim kitsuragi)

[vampires_pawn]

[ The night after that first bite, Astarion doesn't linger on the city streets. The blood is invigorating, exhilarating—he's never felt his senses this sharp before. It's like a fog has been lifted from his mind, like he's seeing the world with new, clearer eyes. And yet, as restorative as all that blood had been, it hadn't erased the night's other events: being compelled into the city's little game. Being made to hunt and fight, with no control over his own actions. And of course, the drinking afterwards, of the more alcoholic nature. The warm contentment of the blood singing through him now rubs uneasily against the cold dread of the events that had preceded it, and all Astarion wants to do is to go to sleep and let those memories fade into half-forgotten dreams, fuzzed and fogged over, so that only the warmth remains.

The boy's screams echo in his mind. Why did he have to scream like that, Astarion thinks, nose wrinkling in annoyance. Astarion wasn't going to kill him. He hadn't wanted to, anyway. And even if he had, what would it matter? None of them can die here, not really.

When he finally makes it back to the room he pretends is his own, he at least manages to tear the stupid cat ears off before he falls into bed. With fresh blood in his veins and the guiltlessness that comes with knowing one has spent centuries doing so much worse, Astarion is asleep in mere moments. That night, he dreams blissfully of nothing at all, or at least nothing he remembers. He certainly doesn't stir, much less sleepwalk—

—which makes it all the more perplexing when he wakes up and finds himself in a different bed.

He squints blearily at the end table he doesn't remember being there, bearing possessions he doesn't recognize as his own. The beers from the night before have had their intended effect: everything that had happened that night is a hazy blur, punctuated by the bright taste of blood and little else. He hadn't walked into someone else's room on his way back, had he? That is something he can do now, thanks to the tadpole.

Still rather too hungover and disoriented to quite realize the implications of his circumstances, Astarion's head rolls the other way to see what else might be in the unfamiliar room—and jolts upright with a shout of alarm when he sees an entire other person lying in the bed next to him.

The motion jerks the other's man arm up with him and that also makes Astarion start. They're... they're manacled together? ]

What in the hells—?!

[ This is followed by another brief moment of stupefaction, right before Astarion begins a mad scramble with his free hand to find something on the nightstand he can use as an improvised weapon to threaten his new bed-fellow into explaining what the devil is going on here. ]

(closed to mollymauk)

[vampires_pawn]

[ Ever since the events of the city’s Halloween party a few weeks prior, Astarion has felt… out of sorts. Of course, the party itself had been disastrous. Astarion had been puppeted, driven into violent madness and wielded like a weapon against strangers and acquaintances alike, and ultimately left with a newfound apprehension of just how easily this city might make a plaything of him once more. At the same time, it’s also the first night he’d fed on the blood of a thinking creature, defying his master’s rule. There’s a cruel kind of irony to it—realizing he’s escaped one tormentor only to find himself in the hands of another, all on the same night.

But maybe those aren’t the only reasons he hasn’t felt at ease lately. The nightmares, the flashes of familiar faces, the burning ache of his scars—his master isn’t here. So why does it still feel like he’s being punished?

He finds himself returning to the poison garden more than once in those weeks, the same spot where he’d fed on the boy that night. There’s no evidence of his transgression, no damning patch of red staining the grass underfoot. Certainly, Astarion doesn’t feel guilty. And yet…

'First, thou shalt not drink of the blood of thinking creatures.’

His master’s words keep worming their way into his dreams, his thoughts. Astarion doesn’t know what’s worse: the thought that Cazador somehow knows of his defiance even untold realms away and is punishing him for it—or the thought that he has Astarion’s body and mind so well-trained that he doesn’t have to.

Of course, there’s another possibility that’s more terrible still, but Astarion refuses to think of it—even as flashes of his master’s face begin to haunt his waking hours as well.

One morning, he finds that is not alone as he wanders the poison garden. A familiar, amethyst-skinned tiefling has set up shop on the grass, a deck of ornate cards laid out before him. At the sight of him, Astarion’s memory stirs, fuzzed as it is by time, alcohol, and fear. He remembers Molly from the Halloween party—specifically, as someone he’d attacked on the second floor. More than that, he remembers a particular sensation: his fangs piercing someone’s neck, and then something stinging and vile filling his mouth like brambles. Yes, he remembers. There’d been something terribly wrong about the tiefling’s blood.

Which, Astarion can hardly hold against him given he’d bitten the man in a fit of compelled madness. When he approaches now, it’s with his hands open at his sides, his bearing easy and peaceable. ]

Hello again, [ he says, and when he smiles, he’s careful not to do so with fangs. ] No need to fret—I won’t bite this time. I usually don't when it's up to me, but I'm afraid I wasn't quite myself when last we met...

[ He's watchful of the tiefling's reaction, alert for any signs of hostility or resentment. He doesn't expect the realization that one's acquaintance is a blood-drinker to be a particularly welcome one, even among more laid-back sorts like Molly. ]

iii

[korol_rezni_nikolai]

[ Nikolai has been uncharacteristically cautious in approaching strangers in this place. The few people he has met so far have been decent, but it seems unlikely that streak will last. Nikolai doesn't have any friends or allies here. Besides which, his name doesn't hold the kind of sway that it would back home. Here, no one gives a shit if he's King of Ravka - which is more blessing than curse all things told. It does mean, however, that he has to be more leery.

But all that goes out the window when he's perusing a little store and hears a crash a few aisles over. Curious, he hurries to investigate and sees a pale man on the floor. ]

Are you alright?

[ Before he even finishes asking the question, Nikolai can tell it's a foolish one. The man is writhing, making the awful half-sounds that men in great pain make when they are trying to stay silent. Nikolai recognizes them at once. This could be some kind of a trap, but if so, this would need to be a preternaturally great actor. As far as Nikolai's concerned, no one can fake that kind of agony.

Nikolai looks around, but there is no one else here in the shop. No one even close by that he'd seen heading in. ]

You're injured, I can send a message to the doctor, just-

[ But the man moves away, dragging himself across the floor with much more speed than Nikolai would expect from an injured man. There's no sign of blood, either. And he doesn't seem to have heard Nikolai.

He follows after, all thoughts of his errand forgotten. Caution is all well and good, but he's not going to just abandon someone in this much distress. Nikolai feels a twist of something akin to dread in his stomach when Astarion wedges himself into a corner like a trapped animal. So, perhaps it is something different going on here.

Nikolai isn't going to loom over the man, so he kneels a foot or so in front of him, hands braced against his thighs. He has enough experience with soldiers and survivors to guess that shaking Astarion by the shoulder is probably not the best way to get his attention. He wishes Tamar or Tolya or Genya were here. A Heartrender would be able to slow his heartbeat, release chemicals in this stranger's brain that would calm him. Nikolai has no such talents.

What he does have is his voice. ]

Hey. Hey.

[ He speaks louder now, sharply. Nikolai is looking intently at the man, waiting to see if he opens his eyes or responds at all to the sound. ]

Can you hear me?

[ Again he uses his battlefield voice, sharp and commanding, demanding attention. ]

ii.

[thefreak]

( Eddie hasn't left his apartment that often lately. What point is there? Steve isn't answering his door, and Eddie isn't sure he trusts the city enough to explore places that haven't been wholly deemed safe. Besides, what's to stop the previously safe places from suddenly becoming overthrown by malignant ghosts?

So, Eddie stays put most of the time. Except at night, when the nightmares get so godawful they make Eddie's skin crawl. When it gets too suffocating in his bedroom, he has no choice but to wander the streets and hope for the best.

He rarely comes across someone else. Most people are sane and stay safe in their beds, but Eddie has never pretended to be a wholly sane individual.

When he comes across Astarion, though...it's like the whole world gets pulled in tighter, like when the movies use a fish eye lens to distort his surroundings and make him feel off-kilter. He's seen this before. When Chrissy stood there motionless, her eyes glazed over so that only the whites were visible. While this isn't identical, he remembers Max mentioning that she sometimes saw things that weren't there before the curse started taking hold. )

No... ( he mutters to himself, taking a step back, and then another, stumbling until he falls onto his ass. ) No, no, no, no, no. It can't be, it fucking can't be.

( He thought he escaped it when he showed up in this place, but if Astarion can be cursed by Vecna...then can't anyone? )

iv}{ my little misbegotten

[matermali]

( cw; all the above + scorpion talk )

[ While the corridor she guides him down may seem to stretch on endlessly, eventually he will reach a fork in the path where he can turn down the left hallway. The electrical room is well known to her by now, as is the security room at the end of the right path. There she waits with only her whispers and shadows for company until Astarion is summoned. This space is easy for her to control; there are no windows, the walls are thick, and the mall is not exactly a hive of activity, not after the horrors it once trapped so much of the populace with. Figments of their worst nightmares had haunted them for days while they sought escape, and killed them, killed them, killed them–

So it makes her little better, but she knows herself to be a monster. This isn't an honorable tactic. Honor is not her concern as much as keeping hers safe, and in certain cases, that is enough cause to commit any atrocity. It doesn’t mean that she enjoys torture; it only haunts her, hurts her. If she had her way, she could eradicate the threat quickly, without torment, and her loved ones would then be safer. But the captor of this city has tied her hands. More than once, now.

It won't be the first time she'll have been involved with imprisoning and torturing a vampire, only this time she's to be the one wielding the whip before offering the apple.

The visions that had been haunting Astarion were of his own making, not hers. She had only been certain he hadn't forgotten about them, even if she herself had lost so many of the details once she returned to the waking world. Many, but not all, and that pain has built to weigh on her chest. Vanessa has never been naive enough to think that revenge would lighten one’s heart.

But this is a vampire, and he had hurt Peter. It could have been worse. For the minutes that Vanessa had raced to his apartment and her blood had become ice, she had wondered if she would even find Peter when she got there, or if she was once again too late to save a loved one from being corrupted and lost. She will never forget how they took Mina or how she died as their pawn. She will never forget all the years that they hunted and tormented her. Peter has his own demons, and he has suffered enough, which she has been so determined to alleviate. There is no one better than her to help him. At times she has wondered if it is the purpose of her being here. ...And then this crude thing dares to encroach on her territory and threaten what little good she can create?

Perhaps some of it has been for spite.

Vampires can't be trusted beyond the commands of their master and such things don't seem to be so different in his world. So now he will tell her such things as that, and he will tell her truthfully, and she will discern if he will continue to be a threat or not.

Once Astarion turns the corner to head toward the dim electrical room that carries a faint hum, Vanessa will stand from the other end of the hall to follow. Beyond her whispers, the shadow of a scorpion reaches him first. It stretches just behind with a creeping hiss and tail poised to obscure any vision of her, should he think to look toward the sound. Click, click, echoes the sharp impact of her heels on concrete–they tap along with the scorpion’s crawl, hunting from behind its shadow. This is one of the rare times that she doesn’t bother with her usual form of quiet stalking.

As soon as he’s inside the room, the scorpion melts into the shadows that shift beneath the buzzing flicker of the fluorescent lights, leaving Vanessa standing in the doorway to observe him with a silent once-over. Whatever he was expecting to see, there is no more illusion. Only a dark-haired woman with a pale gaze. ]