Burdens 21 - Fuck's Sake
You lift your skirts.
On AO3.
A man, dressed casual with no armor but a knife in his belt. He’s got clean hands and groomed hair in a tidy man bun. Seems to be loitering.
Fuck.
A purse snatcher, y’all can deal with. This one looking so neat tightens every muscle in your back up to the base of your skull. Especially since he’s moseying along after y’all.
“We being robbed?” you say. Hope they don’t got human trafficking, but this is fucked up Middle Narnia and they got to have human trafficking.
“I certainly hope so,” Astarion says all breezy. Part bravado, part murder hobo. He’s always hungry. You don’t like the idea of him running down some poor, uninvolved bastard. But the others in the brainworm party flagged that man as a vampire day one. If this chucklefuck starts something…well. Natural selection and all.
Y’all head on, arm and arm. It wigs you out a little. Not just because he’s had his hand and his face in your cooch (maybe a little bit because), but he’s been near you for months. You been using his shin as a pillow. Holding his damn hand sometimes. He’s a known entity to you, and you’re accustomed to his room temperature thermostat, so…
This whole thing has really fucked with your head.
A second guy steps out. This one wears a padded coat (whatever it’s called what Astarion wears).
“Left,” you mutter.
“Indeed.”
Any hope this wasn’t targeting y’all dies with a whimper as these two tail after. Nothing rushed. Nothing obvious. One will stop to check his shoe or gab at some rando in the street. If you wasn’t a teensy bit of a true crime bitch, walking arm in arm with a literal vampire, you might not have noticed.
“Any chance they’re undercover fisters?” you say.
You forget you been using that name in your head. Astarion stops dead. Fucking boggles at you. “The what?”
For a second, you think you got away with it and the dirt potion failed you at a good time. Except the longer he stares, the more his eyes take on a diabolic gleam.
In for a penny.
“The fisters. Guys running around with a fist on fire painted on their shirts?”
Astarion cracks. Throws his head back, mouth open so wide his fangs is bared to god and country, and he cackles. Goes full mad bastard so hard people stop to stare.
He does catch himself quick. Mostly because he seems to inhale his own spit and starts coughing.
“Keep walking,” you say. “It ain’t that funny.”
He’s crying. Laughing so hard the man’s got tears in his stupid eyes and has to wipe at them with his thumb.
“You are such a demented little freak,” he says, still grinning.
Your face is hot, even more than trudging along in the piss heat under salvaged fucking drapes. But your own lips twitch. You try to bite it back, don’t want to give him the satisfaction (that’s part of the game between y’all—he’s full drama queen and you’re stone-faced).
He catches that, too. Gives your arm a reassuring pat. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“So I guess y’all got that word.”
He cocks his head. Frowns a titch. Mouths out the shape of the English word—he don’t speak it as much as Gale, but he’s got your twang, too. Then his whole face twists up with malicious glee. “Bu the gods, it is. I suppose out respective peoples have that in common. Don't worry, darling, you’re hardly the first to make that particular comparison. It was simply shocking to hear it from such a, ahem, inexperienced mouth.”
“I choked one time. Ain’t that inexperienced.”
Then you both realize what y’all said, and stand and stare at each other as a weirdness settles over your skin.
Are saved from the weirdness when a third—a woman—joins the tail.
“Motherfucker,” you say.
Y’all’ve curved around closer to the outer wall and into something of a shanty town. Huts cobbled together out of whatever people can find. One with a busted wagon wheel as a door. People watch y'all, but make no move about it. Two civilians, one in a fucking curtain, and the other the pastiest fucker they ever did see.
It’s enough they leave y’all alone.
They don’t seem bothered by the tail, neither. That dings some alarm bells. Them people is known.
“Can we make it back to a busy section?” you say. Won’t stop a thief, but it might stop a stabbing or kidnapping.
“They’ve got us hemmed in,” Astarion says and squashes your dreams.
Wesa’s been keeping pace shuffling along on your ass. You readjust your skirt to get her attention.
“Tribe?” she mutters.
“Ground rules,” you say.
A pause. Then, “Tribe.”
Old girl might just get herself another kneecap today.
You can feel Astarion’s question even as you slip your free hand into your left pocket and rummage. Say, “Let me play along as long as I can?”
“A surprise stabbing from an elderly woman?” he says, amusement curling his words, turning them low and warm (why does your stomach flop) (you know why). “By all means.”
Y’all make it a few more yards before a fourth man steps out right in your path. He’s got neck-length hair, the front pieces pulled back into braids clasped behind his head. A shaved chin but a mustache a nineteenth century German baron would envy. The edges is even waxed into little curls.
“I see you’ve returned to your hunting grounds,” Mustache says.
He’s dressed casual. Plain tunic with embroidery around the cuffs and collar. A leather vest with loops to hold a couple tools you don’t recognize. A bandolier with little tubes in it where Arnold Schwarzenegger would have bullets for some stupid gun he’s carrying around in a jungle in the ‘80s.
“Terribly sorry,” Astarion says—simpers, actually. “I’m trying to get my ailing grandmother to a doctor.”
You suck in a wad of spit and cough as nasty as you can.
Mustache looks you over. You got the curtain pulled up into a grim reaper hood, make sure to lower your gaze so he don’t see your unwrinkled face. He says, “A high elf with a human grandmother?”
“My grandfather got around. Those beasts at the bridge won’t let us across. I heard there was someone over here we could see.”
Mustache folds his arms.
“Newly returned and already trying to slink into your master’s good graces.” A new voice. A woman.
You turn, find her and two others behind y’all. She’s a wiry old bird, silver hair shaved to the scalp on one side. Clearly armed and armored with some kinds braided, silver band around her forehead.
Something about that tugs at you.
“I beg your pardon?” Astarion’s good at this most of the time. Too much practice. But you know him well enough to pick up the cold edge.
His master.
Your fingers brush cool, sturdy wood in your pocket. You wrap your hand around it.
“We've no money, if that’s what you’re after,” he says. “Though I wouldn’t put it past your kind to rob an old woman.”
The fuck—rude. Then the pieces start to come together. Dread starts to coil—
“She’s not your usual type. Getting desperate, spawn?”
Astarion goes still as a corpse. His gaze is fixed on her, pupils blown wide. A hunting cat on something wounded, something small and hobbling.
“Whatever could that mean?” he says. Sweet words in a sweet tone absolutely curdled with malice.
Oh shit. Fuck you. They know what he is. He knows—and seems to despise—them. Oh shit, oh fuck.
One of the women with Silver Hair draws a short sword. The air swims around it and something like rancid garlic singes the hairs in your nose. Astarion’s whole face twists up until he stops breathing.
“How are you walking in the sunlight?” Silver says. Don’t take her eyes off Astarion. To her companions, “Take it alive. I have questions. You, flee.”
The last part to you, the unsuspecting victim. Clearly not a threat to what got to be gur.
“Wait,” you say. “Hold on.”
You tried to talk Gandrel down. Tried so goddamn hard. Didn’t want to hurt him. Couldn’t let him take Astarion, neither. And in the end…
“Please,” you say. “Just this once, please.”
Silver says nothing. Lowers her chin. It’s got to be a signal, because the two beside her advance.
Why in the fuck won’t people fucking listen. Y’all could be allies, for fuck’s sake! Put aside the hurt (the very, very valid hurt) and go after the sonuvabitch at the heart of it.
Astarion glances to you. Something almost…tremulous in his eyes. A question. A fear.
“Motherfucker,” you say.
You grab a handful of skirt. Say one word. “Tribe.”
Yank them skirts right up. A moment when the gur pause, less than a second of surprise.
It’s all Wesa needs to shoot out, leap into the air, and hit the guy on the left with both feet, square in the dick.
