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Senna woke gasping and sweat-drenched, as she often did, haunted by the foul, bloated specters of her nightmares.
Even in waking the images lingered. Lying awake in the dark of her tent she saw visions of her friends bleeding, of her own hands—or sometimes paws, or claws, or talons—gore-soaked and dripping.
In her nightmares the urge to kill became endlessly creative, no longer hindered by her will or her wisdom. She had seen, by now, each of her companions torn apart in grotesquely unique manners. It was nothing new. By now it was commonplace; she expected the visions of gore, just as she expected the random and lingering thoughts of violence.
That didn’t make it any less unpleasant. She’d give just about anything for a long stretch of decent sleep. One restful night was fine and good, but all it did was make her too comfortable and make the next night feel worse. No, she wanted a full week of good sleep. She’d be a new person, probably.
But it was a useless train of thought, and foolish to entertain. In the damp dark of her tent Senna took a moment to school her breath, counting them out in the way that Halsin had kindly taught her—and tried to go back to sleep.
It was no use. She felt uneasy and sick, as if she'd eaten under-cooked meat. Of course the awful wailing sounds of the Shadow-Cursed Lands did not help matters; beyond the glow of their moon lantern, the world was as hideous as the dreams that haunted her sleep.
She sat up uneasily, pushing away her bedroll and peeking outside the canvas flaps of her tent. They usually didn't bother keeping watch, but they’d all come to an unspoken agreement since entering the Shadow-Cursed Lands. Thus she was not at all surprised to see Shadowheart resting against a half-dead tree trunk next to the moon lantern, one hand at the hilt of her flail.
Senna crept out of her tent as quietly as she could manage, which she realized immediately was a mistake. It would have been better to be noisy, clumsy, than to look as she must have then to Shadowheart: a hulking figure in the dark, creeping quietly along the shadows.
Shadowheart clambered to her feet and reached for her weapon at the same moment Senna raised both palms open in surrender. "It's me," she whispered, but she could see—for just a moment—that Shadowheart did not look any less frightened.
Given her past propensity for murder, Senna did not blame her. But it still stung.
"Oh," the other woman said at last. "Next time say something first. You nearly gave me a heart attack."
"Sorry," Senna said, and meant it. Neither of them acknowledged the lingering fear on Shadowheart’s face. "I couldn't sleep. I can take over here, if you want."
She saw the way Shadowheart hesitated—calculating, no doubt, how wise it would be to let the amnesiac murderer take watch while everyone else slept. But in the end she must have decided sleep was worth the risk, because she nodded and said, "Thanks."
Senna sat beside the lantern and let her mind wander. Despite the horrors of this vile place, nothing had yet attacked their camp. But having someone to keep watch made everyone feel better. And that meant better sleep, which meant they were less likely to be killed.
So it was practical. But it was also boring.
She resigned herself to watching the flickering shadows. It was easy to mistake them for threats, but by now she was almost used to it. A shadow might look, briefly, like a creeping fiend or an undead bandit, but in the end they were usually just shadows. Except—
No, there was no mistaking it. A silhouette framed briefly against the half-light, which would usually be enough to raise alarm—except, she knew that silhouette very well. She’d caught him sulking about before.
And the shock of white curls certainly helped.
"Astarion," she called, keeping her voice just loud enough that he might hear.
He froze.
For a moment she wondered if he would ignore her and slink back into the shadows. She wouldn't have been angry if he did. But after two beats of silence he turned, and made his way toward her.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she said.
"Oh, you know." Astarion made a breezy gesture with a hand. "There is little rest for the eternally restless, the curse of sanguine hunger—blah, blah, blah.”
Senna watched him for a moment, cataloging the careful expression on his face and the practiced nonchalance of his voice. Since he confessed his true feelings mere days ago, they had not talked about feeding.
"Astarion," she said. "Are you hungry?"
"Well—" he caught her gaze and wilted. "Well, yes, if you must know. But it's no bother. I'm sure I can scrounge something up, even…” He made a face. “Here."
It was a silly problem, she thought. He was hungry and she had plenty of blood. There was an easy solution. But of course it might not be so simple for him. She thought carefully about what to say next.
"You know you can still feed from me," she said. "It doesn't have to be anything more."
His facade cracked a little. There was something like wariness in his expression now; he was watching her carefully, just as she was watching him.
"Just blood," he clarified, "nothing…more."
"No sex, I mean," Senna said. "But you can stay for cuddles if you want."
Astarion hesitated. She could see then, very clearly, hunger in his eyes and in the twitch of his mouth. "I would—" he hesitated. "I would like that," he said.
"Then come here."
It took some shuffling to find something comfortable. In the end they opted for their old arrangement: She stretched out on her back, and he gingerly climbed atop her.
It was still not entirely comfortable. The mixed dirt and stone dug uncomfortably into her back and the distant howling of monsters and shadows put her ill at ease. Meanwhile, Astarion's movements felt unsure—as if he was nervous, wary of her proximity.
She had seen through his manipulations before. She had known, to some degree, that what they'd had was mostly physical, and mostly for convenience. When she would let him drink her blood, it was with that unspoken understanding. There had been something almost sexual about it.
Now it was different. It was about care now, not the thrill of danger and sex or the security of an exchange. There was no exchange now. She just wanted him to not be hungry.
He hesitated for a moment, his breath— did he need to breathe? she wondered idly—pooling warm and damp on her neck. Then he bit.
There was the same sudden sharp sting she knew well by now, followed by a creeping, consuming cold. Astarion’s body relaxed atop hers. His curls tickled her face, smelling faintly of perfume but mostly of corpse and blood and grime. It was familiar and not entirely unpleasant.
If not for the threat of death, she would let him drink his fill. The sensation of blood loss was more pleasant than anything—it was numb and dizzying, a little like being drunk.
But she knew her limits by now. Too little blood and he’d still be starving. Too much and she’d be dizzy for days, lightheaded and unsteady on her feet. She curled her fingers in Astarion’s hair and tugged, just a little. He unlatched from her neck at once.
She sat up and he lingered over her. His eyes were wide, his pupils blown; he was watching her face, and she was watching his. Finally she reached for him and wiped away a dribble of blood from his chin with her thumb.
His gaze did not leave her face. He almost looked, she thought with a pang, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Feel better?” she asked.
His shoulders relaxed. “Yes,” he said. His voice had become soft and low, in the way she’d begun to associate with honesty. It was distinctly different from the way he’d spoken to her before his confession. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said, noticing then that he hadn’t moved. “You can, if you want—I wouldn’t mind the company. The cuddling thing wasn’t a joke.”
“I think—” he hesitated. “I think I would like that.”
He settled into her lap. It was tense for a moment—this honesty, this vulnerability was new, still—but soon his body relaxed against her, and his head fell against her shoulder. He said, “I suppose this is nice.”
“I think so too,” she said, leaning back against the half-dead tree and closing her eyes. Not for the first time, she thought about how small he felt in her arms. He was all bone and wiry muscle, and she was all bulk. Despite her fear of hurting him—and the knowledge that he was formidable in a fight—it made her feel protective.
“You know, I've been wondering,” she said sometime later, twirling a white curl around her finger. “Do vampires sleep?”
“Of course they do,” he replied, with an air of disdain that made her laugh. “Why in the blazes wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems like you never do.”
“I’m an elf,” he said. “I rest, but I don’t exactly—” He shifted in her lap to look up at her. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “On the mind, I guess. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”
“Hmm.” He let his head fall back against her chest. “Well, I suppose no one sleeps soundly in this horrible place.”
She wondered then how she might describe her nightmares in a way that wouldn’t scare him. She’d told him about her urges before, of course—after Alfira, everyone knew—but she’d never confessed the sheer depth of them.
She’d never explained the way the thoughts prickled the back of her mind always, the way they never seemed to stop, the way they seemed to know precisely how to torment her. The way she looked at Astarion now, peaceful in her arms, and thought it’d be so easy to kill you. You wouldn’t even see it coming. A snap of his neck. A knife slipped through his ribs. The snarl and rip of a bear’s teeth at his throat.
You’ve been dealt a vile hand, he’d told her once. He’d shrugged it off. He hadn’t seemed bothered at all. But he couldn’t know the extent of it; she’d never told him. If he knew, if he really knew, she wondered if he’d be so nonchalant about it. If he really knew—she wondered if he’d want to be close to her at all, if he’d even want to be held like this.
Senna took a breath. “Yeah,” she agreed. Then, before she could stop herself: “I think there’s something I need to tell you.”
Astarion’s body froze all at once. He didn’t leave her lap but straightened a little, lifted his head again to look at her, and that was almost worse. “What is it?” he prompted. His voice was soft, honest, but his eyes searched her face with a wariness she knew well.
“I—” She wet her lips. “It’s just—”
He waited. Worry made the lines in his face starker, his eyes rounder, and she hated that she’d put that expression there.
“I’m just new to this,” she said at last. It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say, but neither was it a lie. “It’s—it’s scary. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“This—”
“Us,” she clarified. “Whatever us is. I don’t know if I ever—I mean, I woke up on the Nautiloid with nothing. If I’ve done this before then I don’t remember it.”
His expression softened. He reached for her hand and held it between his. “I spent two-hundred years,” he said, “luring unsuspecting lovers to their death. Two-hundred miserable years spent lying, manipulating, using sex as a tool and a weapon. Whatever this is—it’s new to me, too. I have no idea what I’m doing—” he made a breathless sort of noise, almost a laugh. “But I like it. I like us.”
Senna fixed her gaze on a distant point. Looking at him was difficult, because looking at him filled her head with all the ways she might murder him.
Having sex with him had been easy. It hadn’t been serious. She hadn’t expected vulnerability. But now she cared about him, maybe even loved him, and maybe she had all along. She didn’t want to lose him.
She’d been silent for too long. He hadn’t let go of her hand and she could feel the nervous twitch of his fingers. “Senna,” he said. “Are you—?”
“No,” she said, “I mean. Sorry. Lost in thought.” She took a breath and made herself look at him. “I like it too,” she said. “Even if we die tomorrow finding this stupid necromancer.”
His mouth twitched. “It would be just our luck.”
It was hard to tell when dawn arrived, but she was reasonably certain it was close. Soon everyone would stumble sleepily out of their tents and the familiar sounds of morning would drift across the camp: Gale would start cooking breakfast over their measly, fizzling fire. Wyll would heat water for tea. Lae’zel would sharpen her sword and tend to her armor.
“Hey,” Senna said, nudging Astarion’s shoulder.
He stirred. “Yes?”
“It’s morning,” she said. Then: “I think?”
That roused a little chuckle out of him.
“Did you get any sleep?” she asked.
“We’ve been through this,” he said, stretching his arms like a lazy house cat. “I’m an elf.”
“Right,” she said.
He flicked the tip of one of her ears. “And you're a half-elf,” he said, enunciating clearly, if a little sleepily.
“An amnesiac half-elf,” she said, brushing back curls from his forehead. She let her fingers fall against his face. “Astarion,” she said.
The humor left his expression. When he spoke his voice was unbearably soft. “Yes?”
“When you're hungry,” she said—and it wasn’t really fair to ask this vulnerability of him considering she could hardly extend her own, but she did it anyway: "Just say something. It can be like this, if you want.”
“I would like that,” he said. "I'll still have to hunt, of course; I don't want to drain you—" he gestured vaguely with his hand. "But I appreciate it. Truly. Thank you."
Senna brushed another errant curl from his face. He looked so lovely in the light of the moon lantern. Even the awful glow of shadow-cursed dawn looked nice on him. She adored the way it caught in his curls and lit up his eyes. They were such a lovely shade of red.
He made her feel unbearably tender. She wanted to protect him from everything—from his hunger, from Cazador, from the world. From her.
"Don't look at me like that," Astarion said, his tone teasing. "You're making me feel sentimental."
"Good," she said, and kissed his forehead.
"Ugh," he said with faux-disgust, untangling from her arms as their companions began leaving their tents. "You're so adorable. It's sickening, really.”
Senna only smiled at him in response. He smiled back.
This new thing between them was frightening, still—because it was fragile, because it might end, because she might hurt him—but she wasn’t going to let it go. Not yet.