Chapter Text
When they first met, Astarion had thought Karlyah would be the biggest problem.
She’s perceptive to his tricks, since she herself uses many of them. Her sarcasm is scathing, her charm turned up and outwards, and her beauty is crafted and sharp. With her long blonde hair and molten blood orange eyes, he thinks they could possibly pass off as siblings, if not for the fact that she’s only half-elf, and her ears are much shorter and rounder than his. Although, even then they could be half-siblings; if push comes to shove, they could always use that as a ruse if ever needed, they agree.
But by the gods, did looking in the figurative mirror ever become exhausting when it comes to her. He does find it amusing, usually, but he has to work to keep his mask up when his energy is tested so thoroughly. She gets under his skin like no other. He tries to do it back, of course, to burrow under there and wiggle about — he is petty, and vindictive at the best of times — but there is a difference between them that yawns like a cavern he hopes with desperation she never finds the edge of; he lured his victims to their death by the hands of another he feared so as to not starve or be tortured; and she, to her bed for pleasure in exchange for coin.
He isn’t so sure that she is digging into him on purpose, to be quite honest. Maybe she believes there is some sort of comradery to be had there. He wonders if she thinks this is great fun when he gets vicious as things cut too close, and he wishes that it actually really was. There is no reason for her to not believe that he, too, did this for the same exact circumstances she did. So, while their similarities make it easy to understand each other’s masks, it does not clear up the intricacies and origins. Who knows… maybe he is wrong, and she was not a prostitute at all. She could easily be a grifter, though so could he, he supposes — it all depends on the angle at which you look at things, and his perception will always be well and truly fucked.
In many ways, he is envious of her. (In many ways, he is envious of everyone he ever meets and even those he doesn’t.)
Her fighting form is nothing to sneeze at, yet she’s shown that sometimes the best way to go about things is to act as a songless siren. Such a beautiful thing surely can’t be so deadly, several idiot bandits decide over and over. Surely that club-like staff behind her back is just for show.
Once close, she swings, and Astarion can say with complete confidence that, even through years of torture and watching others be tortured, he has never seen someone so cleanly decapitate another with a fucking wooden stick. She is not above getting plastered in blood, relishing in a gushing fight. Sometimes, her eyes get wild and fevered, her swings get harder, and the brutality underneath her mask peaks to something even Astarion finds himself wary of. In those moments, her bosom heaves, her smile sharpens, and only one person can ever talk her down.
Karlyah is almost just like him. Her friend, on the other hand, is decidedly not.
Sephina is quieter. She’s a short dark-skinned little tiefling with tiny horns, straight royal purple hair and a too-long tail. At first he thought her skittish. After a few hours with her he comes to the conclusion that she is far less helpless than she appears. Her glinting eyes are watchful, not scared; her heavy gaze is thoughtful, not glazed and snuffed. She watches Karlyah’s back with a silent fierceness, always a handful of steps behind her, and yet seemingly several mental steps ahead. And when in a scuffle, or an all-out brawl, she fights like no one he has ever met.
She dances. There is no other word for it, he is sure. She is no bard, nor a rogue; when in combat, nobody ever touches her. She sways, she dodges, she fucking runs up trees to land behind whoever, what ever, is trying to stab her through with something pointy and sharp. Even when seemingly cornered, she isn’t. She moves with a grace that rivals Astarion’s instinctual vampire fluidity, but she has no daggers, nor a crossbow, or anything pointy and sharp of her own. Instead, she dances, and with her body movement comes a spark; as she gives a twirling step, it becomes a tidal wave. Magic crackles around her, and she casts with her whole physical form. A joyful clap becomes a thunder break. A lovely roll of the hips becomes a flame. A cheeky tap on the chest flings the victim twenty feet back and into someone else’s sword. It is the only time Astarion has ever seen her truly smile, covered in blood and gore, bright blue eyes glowing like an electric storm.
According to Karlyah, they’ve known each other for years, and Astarion doesn’t doubt it one bit. It shows in their synchronization; when Karlyah moves, Sephina shadows her, like a well-rehearsed waltz. They work off of physical cues, it seems, for they rarely ever talk to each other when in the thick of it.
Outside of combat, they purposefully mingle with the others; Karlyah with her wit and beautiful looks tilted this way and that as if to drop every trow in camp, and Sephina with her dry humor and wickedly deceptive unobtrusive nature.
You see, Karlyah, he realizes, is not the biggest problem. If anything, she makes Astarion’s ploys seem almost normal, and vice-versa; as they travel, Gale’s dislike of Astarion is quickly undercut by his amusement of Astarion’s banter with Karlyah. Shadowheart thinks they both are annoying, he can tell (given that she has said as much), but she typically ignores their over-the-top, disingenuous flirting all together. Lae’zel definitely finds both of them annoying (but seems to respect Sephina, likely because she can kill several men in under a minute and doesn’t talk as much). While Karlyah might understand him, and see him for mostly what he is (a liar, a masked man, a deceiver and seducer), she has made it clear over these past few days that they are at a mutual, beneficial arrangement, wherein both pretend that the other is actually not at all doing it to hide something, and instead are doing so for fun.
No, Karlyah is not the issue. But Sephina most definitely is.
When one has spent many years in the lovely company of a woman who uses her looks as a lure, her words as honeyed deception, and her sex as a weapon, one becomes… aware . And apparently rather immune to it all, he finds out, much to his frustration. His flirtations land flat to her unaffected deadpan. She barely spares him a glance when called darling or sweetheart . She easily sidesteps his scripted lines with the roll of her eyes or a quick and final “I don’t think so.” But the worst part is — well.
It’s when she gives it right back.
—
How she flirts isn’t actually flirting, he decides. It’s more like looking deep into his eyes and grabbing hold of his collar without ever touching him so she might pull him in and slit his throat. Metaphorically, of course — although she could probably do that, too. She’s quick and nimble enough, and Astarion is getting weaker by the day.
For example, when faced with a truly filthy line about how she might find a night of passion to be the best option to unwind after a long trek through the woods, her gaze had flicked up and down his form like a coiled snake might eye her prey. He’d frozen, completely caught off guard, as up until that point she’d either ignored him or snorted at his attempts. He’d been expecting her to rebuff him, at least, in her typical blunt fashion.
Instead, she’d leaned in close, eyes locked on his, a small, knowing smile playing across the corners of her lips. It had a twist to it that he did not like, as it came too close to honesty.
He found that he could not move. He wasn’t sure if it was a spell or if his instincts were telling him it was best not to tempt her ire.
“You look to me like a man who’d fall apart if I stroked your cheek and called you lovely,” she’d said, her voice a silky rumble that sent a jolt down his spine and rang all of his alarm bells at once. “You could not handle me, pretty elf. For I would easily handle you.”
And. Well. He didn’t know what in the realms to do with that. Everything felt tilted, suddenly, like she’d managed to change his axis of internal gravity. So he’d laughed, and pretended not to flee — while fleeing, of course.
—
Another time, after their party saved some sad sack of a trader from getting jumped by a large group of goblins, wherein he’d dispatched a fair amount of them all at once and felt rather smug about it, he’d tried again. Everyone else was talking to the trader, likely bartering for supplies. There was no better time to poke at her.
“You look so tense , darling. I could work all that tension right out of you, leave you breathless all night long.” he’d been lying — well, naturally, given that he’d rather do literally anything else but have sex with any living being at the time, and also he felt disgusting with goblin guts all over his leather armor and horrible smelling blood soaking in places he’d rather not focus on — but the other, more glaring lie was that she looked tense . She was as loose and at ease as ever, as she had danced her way about the battlefield like an acrobatic witch high on a potion of agility. But he’d been feeling smug, and smugness made him feel as if there might be a rug right under him that could be pulled at any time to put him back where he ought to be, so he turned to her, the closest person near, and propositioned, as he does.
She had picked parts of goblin off her own garment and said, “I think that you would find my care to be too genuine to bear, Astarion. Maybe ask when you are actually serious.”
He’d faltered, but then quickly tried to gain the upper hand, something fluttering in his throat that he did not wish to name.
“Oh, but I am deadly serious,” he’d purred, giving her a roguish smile that she didn’t even bother to glance at. Pity. He knew it was something that got even the most unsure to follow him into the dark more than a hundred times.
She’d sighed, shook her head, and flicked her tail to dislodge some green goblin skin from the tuft of fur at the tip. “You are not,” she’d said, a sense of unwavering finality to her words that struck him speechless.
She had left him standing there for a few seconds, like a man lost in a foreign land he’d never once been.
“Honestly, I don’t even know why you try,” Karlyah had said, and when he’d turned to look at her, she’d been wearing a truly unimpressed look while cleaning off her staff. “Sephina doesn’t like sex like ours.”
Like ours . Soulless, meaningless, transactional, forced, fake. At least, that was his. Maybe Karlyah gave more than he ever did. Much more than he ever could . Maybe she was one of those idiots who actually cared even when faced with their undesirable circumstances.
His pride had been hurt twice, though, and Sephina was an enigma he needed, suddenly, desperately, to crack like an egg and mix about with intention. Because that feeling in his throat was a new type of uneasy fear he’d yet to ever feel before. He already had so much fear inside him. He fucking hated it. He wanted it gone. He needed it as far away from him as possible, and Sephina was the cause. If he conquered her, he’d overcome it, he’s sure. She’d not be so frightening a concept, then, as she’d be like all the others. (Except not, because she’d be alive. And maybe that was actually worse, given the fact that it would be new. Uncharted territory. Yet so was the sun, freedom, and the wilderness. So maybe it would be joyful, and full of wonder; fucking someone and seeing them the next day, breathing, walking about, talking, fighting. What an alien concept. Frightening, yes. Exhilarating, absolutely.)
Karlyah and Astarion both refused each other’s advances by principle — without outright doing so, of course, as that would break the ruse that others see altogether — because they were two sides of the same coin; they’d both knew it was an act on either side and thus it was rather pointless. He saw no gain from bedding her, nor she him, for no connection would come of it besides the one where they’d both know they disliked it just as much as the other. It would be the definition of an unnecessary performance, a play in which they acted dual parts, yet it would be without an audience and so completely redundant.
Sephina had no intention of keeping the ruse. She stared at it with intent and poked at it consistently, whenever he tried to use it to lure her in. He had to give her credit where credit was due; she never did it without him doing his part first. She didn’t senselessly reach into his defenses and tear them like the fragile paper walls they were.
She was just asking for honesty.
Unfortunately, he could never give it.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean, darling,” he’d said, the purr back and the smirk fixed in place. “She’ll find me irresistible sometime soon. Everyone always does.”
Her smirk had been something darker — something spiteful, rivaling his empty, slightly uneasy one — as she’d put her staff at her back and stepped closer.
Quick as a whip, she’d snatched up the laces of his tunic under the leather, reeling him in with a harsh tug. Everything within him curled with rage, for she had never violated his physical boundaries before, and he had grown complacent in his expectations that she wouldn’t dare after so many days. He’d let out an involuntary snarl, desperate and vicious in his anger. She’d sneered back, looking like a vengeful goddess, real anger in her eyes to mirror his, and suddenly Astarion was sure that he had done something wrong, and he had no idea what.
“She is my sister,” Karlyah had all but growled, any of that flirtatious pretense that seeped in every single line and step and gesture dropped like a heavy costume flung to the floor. Astarion had faced worse, he knew — his own torturer and master of hundreds of years came to mind — but a deep thrum of terror licked at his dead heart like a desperate flame anyway. This fierce brutality was not unlike those moments where she’d lost herself and Sephina had to find her, coax her back. “She is not a plaything to be used. I will tear you apart and eat your heart if you start to treat her as such. I—”
She’d been suddenly knocked back, but instead of taking him with her on the descent, her fingers loosened and Astarion was left standing there, nearly trembling, eyes wide. His anger and fear had swirled like a horrible cocktail of bitter resignation and fury.
He could have killed her. He could’ve bitten and drained her but instead he had frozen up like a deer. He’s the fox. He’s the predator. He’s sharper and deadlier and that half-elf was just a little girl thinking her big shoes meant she was something more than she actually was.
But he’d acted like the prey he never, ever wanted to be ever again.
He watched as Sephina had straddled Karlyah and slapped her so hard he could hear her neck crack with the force of snapping to the side so suddenly.
“Don’t be a fucking hypocrite,” Sephina had said, a deadly calm to her voice that had made Astarion almost take a step back. “I can fight my own battles. You know this. Get ahold of yourself.” She’d pushed Karlyah back into the dirt twice, like she weighed nothing at all, and her eyes glowed bright electric blue.
Sephina had gotten up, and Karlyah stayed down, going limp. She’d not looked at them, but she did say one single word:
“Sorry.”
It’d sounded broken and, above all else, exhausted. Astarion hadn’t known what to say, but he began to try and gear up to make some stupid quip, something that would sap the reality of this situation back into a carefully constructed fiction. It was second nature to him at this point.
Things are messed up and not okay? No, they aren’t. They’re absolutely normal, and nothing is wrong. Quick, make a pass on her. That always works. (No, it fucking doesn’t, apparently).
Sephina had glared at him, then, and said, “Don’t. She doesn’t deserve it, this time.”
And he hadn’t, but he wasn’t quite sure if she’d been right or not, or what she meant by this time.