WHO Octavia and Astarion Ancunín WHEN Afternoon of October 10 (backdated) WHERE The clinic WHAT Tav forgets that she can Misty Step for a second, letting her get gnawed on and landed in the clinic. Astarion rushes to see her, smoking just a little bit around the edges. WARNINGS Aftermath of the monster fight, some talk of violence/injuries. Hurt/comfort goodness.
It wasn’t that Astarion hadn’t seen Tav gravely injured before. That was the point, actually: he’d seen it happen. First hand. Had been in the Splash Zone. Had seen her crumple before. Had yelled incessantly at Shadowheart in the pitch that only dogs could perceive until she had been healed. He’d seen all of this before, many times, because he’d been fighting by her side.
But to have it happen when he was well away, fussing with a ‘Reap What You Sew’ order - that was a new experience. A wretched one that he hated. And was frankly not emotionally great at dealing with.
His journey to where the injured were being held was best left undescribed; suffice to say he was still lightly smoking from the wretched rays of the day’s gentle sunshine when he was ushered into the room where Tav was being treated. He’d been told to be calm and quiet; Astarion failed at both requests immediately as he rushed to her bedside and knelt with an accusatory: “What did you do?”, followed by “Who did this to you?”
As it turned out, Tav had lived better days. It had started normal enough, with her going off to work at the shop with a plethora of brewing on the docket to replenish the colorful wall of potions, but then monsters had appeared out of nowhere while she had been fetching some pastries for herself and Gilmore at one of the shops in the little village. One thing led to another and suddenly she was low on spells, inside the mouth of one of the giant monsters, and panicking. That panic kept her from thinking straight and instead of using one of her leftover spells to escape, she--against all odds, as her muscles were severely lacking--tore herself away.
An idea that worked and would have been grand, had it not been for the sharp teeth that also tore at her.
Tav didn't really know how she had gotten to the clinic and the hospital bed that she was currently lying in. The little metal person--Fresh Cut Grass, she remembered--had healed her as well as they could and it was comforting; it made her think of Shadowheart, who she missed as a friend and companion but, well, her cleric abilities would have been nice when she was bleeding out on the ground. Even magical healing could do so much, though, and Tav felt, and looked, like shit as she lay in the bed, eyes closed and hoping that maybe she'd be able to perk herself up before the sun set.
Of course, as soon as that thought crossed her mind, the vampire she hadn't been expecting so soon burst into the room. Tav's eyes flew open and she moved to sit up, wincing and immediately giving up on that as the wounds in her abdomen revolted. Nevermind that, though she still reached out toward Astarion with one of her hands, concern on her face and bypassing his questions for her own. "How did you get here? Are you okay?"
“Don’t-- don’t sit up! What are you doing - that’s idiotic!’ Astarion sputtered as she settled back down into the bed, once again proving that he had a terrible bedside manner (not that anyone had ever doubted it). Astarion prided himself on Not Thinking about the immortality thing - the whole ‘Tav will live for several hundred years while I’ll go on and on and on forever” thing - but it was admittedly a lot harder to do when Tav was so pale and weak.
“I got here the same way everyone does. Just - slightly less pleasantly,” he admitted, his hand grabbing hers and pressing it to his cold face. “We should probably send Leon Kennedy a gift basket, once you’re out of here. He’s the only reason I’m but medium-rare. But that’s not important.” He fixed his gaze on Tav’s, the corner of his mouth quirking to the side. “They said you were eaten? Only I’m allowed to do that.”
"I tried to tell the creature that, but it didn't seem inclined to listen." Tav gave Astarion a small smile in return, trying her best for levity. Whether or not she was successful was suspect, but the attempt was there. It would probably come across better were it not for the whole bit where she looked like she had been gnawed upon, but there was only so much she could do.
Tav let her thumb brush over Astarion's cool cheekbone, releasing a short breath as some of the tension seemed to leave her shoulders and body just by virtue of him being there. "I wasn't even trying to be a hero this time," she said, more or less honestly. "I just wanted some damn pastries when the creatures came out of nowhere. I was able to defend myself for a time, but one took me off guard." At that, she glanced from Astarion, pulling at her blanket to display some of the carefully set bandages around her middle.
Astarion’s face turned even stormier than it had been at the sight of her injuries. It wasn’t the gore of it all - hells, he’d inflicted worse on his enemies any day of the week. It was the fact that it was Tav. And he’d missed it. Because of his stupid allergy to the sun.
He didn’t often regret the fact he hadn’t Ascended. Astarion knew, when he was feeling clear-eyed, that doing so would not have solved any problems but provided him with new ones, and that he, Ascended, would not even be himself. But still, seeing Tav like this had him yearning for the ability to withstand the light of day.
He gently took the blanket from his girlfriend and tucked her back in with the sort of deft-fingered care that he inflicted on treasure chests riddled with traps. “What sort of creature was it?”
Tav hummed, fully relaxing back into the pillows as Astarion took care of fixing her blanket. Her eyes slipped shut as she imagined the beasts, putting the images together in her mind's eye from the adrenaline filled moments of battle. "They weren't like anything I'd seen before." A bold claim, as the two of them had seen a lot of weird shit. "Different sizes, but they were all black and purple, with these shadows coming off of them as they moved. Skeletal sort of arms, but they didn't have any issue grabbing onto people. There was a portal of some sort and anyone they did manage to get hold of, they started pulling them toward it."
Her eyes fluttered back open, blinking a few times before focusing on Astarion again. She could see how troubled he was and that in and of itself made her chest ache in some odd twist of guilt and comfort. With a soft inhale, she finished, "The largest were very big. Big enough to try to eat a full grown tiefling, at least. It was trying to carry me into the portal too, but I got away before it had the chance, obviously."
“Well. Most of you got away,” Astarion summarized, taking in her wounds, but his heart wasn’t in the snark. With a sigh, he allowed the tense line of his shoulders to relax a hair; Tav was talking and trying to crack jokes and wasn’t too woozy from the potions, so he’d take this one as a win, if forced. It was a solid six hours before night fell - six hours before he could do any prowling on his own, looking for the beasts that had done this.
“Oh darling, darling. You've made quite the mess out of yourself.” His hand found hers once again and he tried not to look like a wreck. “Did they give any indication how long you’d be here? If Shadowheart were here…” He wished, suddenly and violently, that the cleric was here. She would say something snide, wave her hand, Tav would be fine, and then she’d stalk off in disgust at the ensuing flirting. Wholesome stuff, really. Astarion didn’t like the way the stink of the hospital mixed with the smell of Tav’s blood; it was like dumping perfume into the garbage and taking a deep whiff.
"I'm under observation," Tav said, as though she had any idea what that really entailed. Anytime she had gotten this injured back home, she'd just take potions, receive magical healing, and then take a long, hopefully Emperor-free, nap. "The little metal person, Fresh Cut Grass, I believe they said their name was. They healed me a bit." Which didn't say much for the general state of which Tav had been when someone had dropped her off here, she had to think, given how she felt even now. "It felt a bit like when Shadowheart heals, though maybe...warmer?"
That hardly mattered, she thought, but Tav couldn't seem to stop talking. If she stopped talking, she would think about things, like how she could have been pulled through that portal to the gods only knew where, she didn't think to do the most basic of magic and teleport out of the damn thing's mouth, she hadn't had Astarion (at no fault of his own) or their friends (at no fault of their own) there to back her up as she'd grown so used to back home.
"If I look okay tomorrow, though, after another round of healing, I think that they'll let me go home, so long as I take it easy." Tav quirked a smile, trying for levity but it not quite reaching her eyes. "Will you wait on me?"
Astarion was about five seconds from making several unkind comments about the name ‘Fresh Cut Grass’, but luckily Tav distracted him with her question. “Darling, I will serve you until the end of days,” he answered grandly, clasping her hand and pressing his lips to her knuckles. “I’ll fluff your pillows, fetch your slippers, and feed that absolute mongrel of a dog you’ve adopted.” He didn’t promise to cook - that had solidly been Gale’s thing back home, and no one had wanted to eat his cooking even when he’d be able to taste it properly - but he was confident in his abilities to order in. He knew what she liked to eat, largely.
And gods knew he’d rather her at their flat than at the mercy of this place. They might have saved her life, but those sheets? Wretched.
"You spoil me." And Tav meant it, even if it sounded like a tease in the moment. She let her fingers trail over Astarion's cool lips, chest heaving gently in another sigh. She still felt immensely grateful in the moment, no matter the situation and where she was laying. Until Astarion and the rest of their friends, she hadn't had many people in her life that would risk something like a very fatal sunlight allergy to check in on her. She was lucky, she thought, even if she was laying there with wounds in her gut and aches in every extremity.
"I'm sorry, for whatever it's worth," she said after a moment, head tipping a bit against her pillows as she gazed up at Astarion. "For worrying you." It was that sincerity that she was prone to dipping into that she all too often tried to soften with sass or a teasing comment. She let this one sit, though; it felt important in the moment to Tav that Astarion knew just how she felt. Something about being nearly eaten and pulled into a portal that would have done the gods only knew what to her would do that to a person, but it was also a bit easier with Astarion than anyone else.
It also might have been because she was bone tired and unable to be but so clever, but that was neither here nor there.
Astarion’s expression didn’t hide his initial confusion over the apology - for a man who prided himself on deceit he honestly wasn’t that good at it - but as Tav elaborated, understanding slotted into place. “Well,” he said primly, fussing about with the blanket, “you should be sorry. Demented with guilt, almost certainly. Who gets eaten by a monster in pursuit of pastries? You, apparently.”
Softness and honesty didn’t come easily to him either, but he did make an effort. With a sigh, he scooted closer, and notched his face against her neck and hair in the only sort-of snuggle that the hospital bed set up would allow. “I’m just-- very glad you’re going to be okay,” he murmured. “Having heard of some of the carnage. It’s not-- I don’t like how we have to be separated.” The laws of daylight weren’t fair, but Astarion refused to expect Tav to give up having a normal life. He may have missed it, but he wasn’t petty enough to inflict the same lack on his loved one.
Tav didn't like it either, by no fault of Astarion's, of course. His inability to be in the sun hadn't been an issue the majority of them knowing one another back in their home and she had only just been getting used to the change before they were brought to Vallo. It was far starker here, when she had a regular job with daylight hours and much of the establishments held business at similar times. It had become normal, though, and Tav had aligned her daily habits to Astarion's necessary sleep schedule as well as she could accommodate.
Still: she didn't have to like it. She would have been lying if she hadn't noodled around the thought of possible magic items or creative enchantments that might help Astarion with his allergy. Even so, that had been more about him being able to enjoy the sun again, as she knew he had when they still had those tadpoles, than being able to join her on errands.
"I know, darling," Tav said quietly in return. As she let her head tip to press her cheek to Astarion, her hand lifted to bury her fingers into the curls at the nape of his neck. "I don't like it much at all, either." She wanted to make declarations that it wouldn't happen again, that she would remember to bloody well Misty Step, that she would avoid such situations entirely--but they were hollow. How could she know? Instead, she just closed her eyes and released a small sigh. "Just promise me you'll overlook the new scars. Tell me they make me look dangerous, instead."
“They make you look so dangerous,” Astarion answered dutifully. “We’ll be a matching set.”
He didn’t mind Tav’s scars, at least not in terms of how they appeared. Astarion loved a good aesthetic and physical beauty, and he was vain as one could be despite not sporting a reflection, but his love for Tav had gone beyond all that ages ago, embarrassingly enough. He would have stayed with her had she even been part-illithid - a fact that had remained unspoken due to Astarion’s general discomfort with earnestness. Tav’s appearance had honestly been beside the point in their early courtship; he had needed safety and her stubborn ideas of morals and protection had provided that. It was only happenstance that now that he loved her truthfully that he found her beautiful, too.
With a sigh that mirrored hers, he tried to relax into the moment, this sort of physical affection being still novel to him. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll be staying here until they rescind the invitation.”
An argument was on the tip of Tav's tongue; she was all right, she'd slept enough, she didn't want to leave him just to watch her sleep. They were all bad arguments, though, and she'd have refuted them quickly if Astarion had been the one to make them. Besides, she thought as she leaned a bit closer to him, her head resting against his, it was always easier to sleep with Astarion at her side. He'd said as much before, but it was just as true for her: Tav felt safe with him. After a relatively harrowing day, having him near her was exactly what she needed.
"All right," Tav agreed, head turning just enough to press her lips to Astarion's forehead before she settled back down. Her eyes fluttered shut, but still she softly--and ineffectually--added, "I'll fight them if they try to make you leave."
“Yes darling,” he murmured with a chuckle. “You’re absolutely terrifying right now. They’d be right to cross you.”